State Education As Crap As The Education Secretary

Education Secretary Michael Gove has made something of a splash by bemoaning the dominance of the public school educated in Britain. He quotes the facts and figures and call it morally indefensible. But like all good members of our political elite - wether educated privately or not - he doesn't actually come up with any radical proposals or solutions.

The fact is that successive governments have thrown more and more money at education, increased teacher numbers, standardised and changed and brought in policy after policy all to no avail. Rather than improve things, they've made things worse. And it's not just a UK thing, it's the same in the US. And in case you think it's an Anglo thing, it's the same in France.

If state schooling is such a wash out, and no amount of extra money changes it, then surely the thing to do is look at whether the state is the problem and not the solution. Perhaps state control of education, which has increased enormously over the same period that more money has been pumped in, is the cause of the problem.

I write this as someone who went to a crap boys comprehensive in south London (the school that Oliver Letwin famously said he'd rather lose his right arm then send his kids to). My kids went to/attend local comprehensives. I've got no hidden agenda here. Politically I would always have defended state schooling - but now that I see what my kids come home with, and when I think back to what I endured...

Private schools are not run by the state. They do better than state schools. Therefore lets give the money to parents and let them send their kids to the schools they chose. Can we expect any mainstream politician in this country to make that very obvious connection? Nope, not any more than we can expect a politician to say look, the NHS isn't the best health system in the world...

London Mayoral Election Result 2012

The most depressing thing about the results of the London Mayoral election is not that turn-out was so low, nor that the result was fairly predictable nor even the fact that it proved yet again that UKIP is not going to break into national politics any time soon. The most depressing thing about the result was what the political class will take home from it. It's generally agreed that Ken won it for Boris, if Labour had chosen someone less obnoxious it could have been theirs, as it was lots of people (myself included), would have voted for anyone but Ken, which meant a vote for Boris in the event.

No, the most interesting thing was just how well the Greens did. And this is the result that the political class will be focused on. Even in the midst of austerity, the slow-motion collapse of the Euro and the effective disappearance of global warming as an issue, the Green vote went up, beating the Lib Dems into third place. How is that they managed this? Green policies are at the heart of coalition policies - witness the continued debates about wind and solar subsidies, the pussy-footing about fracking and so on. No matter what label the big three parties attach to themselves, Green policies are central to the message they deliver to voters and to the policies they actively pursue. Yet for all the disasters that these policies bring, the Green vote itself went up.

In part this is because the Greens can still market themselves as being anti-establishment and therefore the recipients of plenty of protest votes. They are not in government, therefore they can criticise and be seen as radical, despite the fact that their policies are being enacted by the present and previous administrations. Green is the establishment colour for all the major parties, and green thinking is at the forefront of the mainstream media. Yet despite this, the green propaganda machine (including the BBC and the mainstream media), continue to pump out the message that green is somehow anti-establishment and radical. And so we see a rise in the green vote and in London they came in ahead of the Lib Dems and way ahead of UKIP, the BNP, the Trades Union candidates etc.

London Mayoral Election 2012

I always said I'd vote for Coco The Clown to stop Ken Livingstone - a poisonous turd of a politician. I never imagined actually having to do it, but last night I did. It was decidedly not a vote for Boris, but a vote against Ken.

For the other two ballot papers it was a vote for UKIP as two-fingers to the main parties. Again, a vote against rather than a vote for.

I know that lots of people think indifference is what sends the message - but indifference is mistaken for apathy. And it'll be the alleged apathy that will be used to state fund political parties in the end. If the people can't support the parties, thte argument will go, and parties are what democracy is all about then it becomes imperative to write the people out of the script and just give the money to the entrenched political elties that are there already.

It is for this reason that voting for the minority parties, or voting for the candidates that will inflict the most damage to the established parties (as they did in Bradford), is not wasting votes. It's making votes count. High turnouts but low scores for the established parties is precisely what they least expect - and will not welcome one little bit.

Climate scientists death threat scam

As we know, many climate alarmists are creatures with enormously thin skins and a massive tendency to be profligate with tax payers money. Back in June 2011 the Guardian and other media outlets headlined a story that 'climate scientists' at the Australian National University had received death threats and that the university had to tighten security and move the scientists to a new location. While it was big news for climate alarmists, several sceptics were, frankly, sceptical... And, as you'd expect, this scepticism was greeted by further howls of outrage from the warmists and their media supporters.

However, an Aussie blogger, Simon Turnill of Australian Climate Madness, did the honourable thing and filed an FOI request to see the death threats. This was refused by the university (no surpised) and went to appeal. The adjudication is now in and it turns out that there were no death threats. Or as the headline in the Australian put it: Climate scientists' claims of email death threats go up in smoke.

Read the whole story here: http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/05/anu-death-threat-claims-debunked-the-australian

The best follow up to this would be to file an FOI request for the university to reveal how much money was spent on tighter security and office relocation. How much did this little scam cost? And are they going to refund the money? It's only right that they do...

Well Said

Sometimes the Daily Mash hits the nail on the head - how can you improve on this?

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/old-bastard-attacked-by-useless-shower-of-piss-201205025183/

My thoughts on Murdoch, Leveson and the rest of the circus... A pox on the bloody lot of you.

And will the bastard BBC just STFU about it? The way they're devoting so much time to the story and attacking their key commercial rival is sick-making.

Another Met Office Fail?

Keeping up a grand tradition of forecasting fails, the UK Met Office forecast for April (now officially the wettest UK April on record), stated:

The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for Apri lMay June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months.

Outstanding. But don't worry, they can't get the weather right a few weeks in advance, but they can't get it right decades in advance in climate modelling...

Windfarms Cause Climate Warming

The odious Richard Black, uber green propagandist at the BBC, highlights a new paper that purports to show that windfarms cause local warming:

...the researchers say the scale of the effect they saw is equivalent to a warming of about 0.72C per decade.

Now given that, according to the alarmists, warming is always and everywhere bad, does this mean that we can expect that Black and his comrades will start to campaign against windfarms?

No, I guess it'll just prove that some warming is more equal than others...

Green Energy - Value For Money?

According to a piece from the BBC:

He [David Cameron] will also welcome the investment of £350 million on energy projects that will create 800 jobs.

Surely some mistake. The Prime Minister is 'demanding' value for money from green energy, but welcomes an investment that will create 800 jobs at a cost of £350M. That works out at a nifty £437500 per job. And it'll deliver a tiny fraction of energy needs. Yep, that's affordable.

Double Dose of Good News On UK Shale

It's not often we can report on two bits of good news at the same time, but today there are two things worth noting regarding Shale gas in the UK. The first, and mostly importantly, is that a panel of experts convened by the government have given the go-ahead for fracking to continue. It's hedged with provisos and conditions to appease greenists, but it's decidedly a step forward. Even the odious Richard Black of the BBC reported the story rather than ignoring it. We hope, like the GWPF does, that this is a sign that belatedly common sense is asserting itself.

The second story is also connected with shale gas in the UK. This time it's a report from Reuters that suggests that the UK is sitting on vast off-shore shale deposits. Enough shale gas to put us in the top five in the world. The figures are mind-blowingly large: UK offshore reserves of shale gas could exceed one thousand trillion cubic feet

Of course it's more expensive to get at the stuff off-shore at the moment, but as the technology develops who knows when it will become economically viable. What it suggests though, is that shale is here to stay...

Useful Idiots

Donna Laframboise has an interesting post about Big Oil funding of environmentalism, highlighting in particular the long-lasting relationship between Shell and the WWF. This isn't an isolated example, and it's known that the fuel companies have been more than generous with funding and patronage across a range of green organisations and campaigns. The fuel companies have also been notably active in climate alarmism. How is it that the green movement can accept cash from the corporate enemy while at the same time they imagine that Big Oil is funding climate skepticism? And how can they justify their own feeding from the hand of Big Oil?

Lenin talked of 'useful idiots' in describing fellow travellers and Soviet sympathisers from amongst the bourgeois class. These were people who would have been put up against a wall and shot in Russia, but who adopted positions that were useful to the Bolshevik state. For Lenin, there was nothing morally wrong in exploiting these people at all. In fact pretty much any act could be justified if it was for the cause.

In the modern world the useful idiots sit on the boards of Big Oil. They are more than happy to fund green causes and organisations that view them as the spawn of Satan. They will happily give money to people who are delighted to bite the hand that feeds them. What the greens get out of this is funding and influence, but they feel that they are not compromised because they are exploiting the relationship.

What's harder to understand is why the fuel companies are playing the game? Perhaps they feel that their money buys them some influence in the wider green movement - it doesn't. Perhaps they want some useful publicity - but they're paying for anti-fuel and anti-energy publicity that's more virulent than any marginal brand benefit they get. Or perhaps they really are idiots who just aren't bright enough to see themselves as useful idiots...

Earth Hour 2012

Over at the ever wonderful Watts Up With That, Anthony Watts has chosen to reprint Ross McKitrick's response to Earth Hour.

It is well worth a read. It expresses perfectly the sentiments of so many of us who reject the reactionary idea that we should seek to 'return to Nature'. And he points out that:

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

Absolutely.

Here's a simple thought experiment- if there was a time machine that could take you on a one-way trip back to a time when you could 'live in Nature', without electricity, clean water, modern medicines and the other benefits that we have now, how many of these environmentalists would take it? How many would really opt for the state of grace they like to imagine over and above the benefits of modern capitalist society? There are plenty of people I'd chose to send - starting with the gurus of the modern green movement - but I for one would stay put no matter what.

More UK Shale

A report on the Global Warming Policy Foundation's website covers the discovery of even  more potential shale gas fields in the UK. You'd think that this would be good news all round. Good for the economy, good for the local community, and, if you're that way inclined, good for lowering CO2 emissions. But no, this is the age of green, sustainability and climate alarmism. Instead of being greeted with a welcome and the wish that the government takes the brakes off development, we get local politicians like this:

Melton borough councillor Matthew O' Callaghan said: "While an additional source of fuel is to be welcomed, there are significant concerns about the process used to extract this form of energy.

"There should be exhaustive tests and concerns allayed before any commercial extraction is even considered in what is an extremely sensitive area of the countryside."

Coun Malise Graham, a member of the same authority, said: "It is vital that a thorough investigation is undertaken before work goes ahead."

Tony Stott, chairman of the Leicestershire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: "The development of a gas industry on a large scale could transform and industrialise countryside and many rural communities.

"More research on the environmental effects, such as methane leaking, pollution, groundwater contamination, and the risk of minor earthquakes, is urgently needed."

It's hard to feel optimistic when green ideology is so all-pervading that even local officials, whom one would hope are more closely connected to their communities than the parasites that infect Westminster, respond so negatively to the chance of lower energy and increased development.

Save The Carrier Bag

Of all the lost causes that this blog supports, the campaign to defend the carrier bag seems the most Quixotic. After all, who can love the humble supermarket carrier bag? They're cheap, ugly and functional items that manage to unite forces as disparate as the BBC, the Daily Mail and legions of right-thinking people everywhere. But not here.

Firstly, let's note that the terminology around these bags has shifted. The bags are now referred to as 'single-use carrier' bags, to emphasise the wastefulness of the whole enterprise. Single-use is bad by definition, however, who decided that supermarket carrier bags are single use? Most people I know generally re-use the bags. A lot of people have a pile of them at home for storing and carrying all kinds of stuff, including taking them back to the shops to use again.

Next we have to look at why 'single-use' has such negative connotations, and it's all to do with using up the Earth's scarce resources. Except that supermarket carrier bags are made from polyethelene, which comes from ethelene which is a waste product from natural gas production. If it wasn't used as a feedstock, then the ethelene would have to be burned off - which is both wasting energy and also produces more CO2 emissions (if you care about such things). So, far from wasting valuable resources, making carrier backs finds a use for an existing by-product.

But surely bags from renewables - like paper - would be better for the environment? Nope. Think again. Carrier bags are light, and take less energy to produce and transport than paper bags. According a story from the Independent (hardly a bastion of contrarian thinking), a study sponsored by the Enviornment Agency, showed that polyethelene carrier bags have about less than a third of the carbon emissions of paper bags.

Ah, but what about the pollution? What about the plastic 'garbage patch' twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific? We've all seen the pictures in the Daily Mail... Sorry, overdone. Not only is the size of the problem exagerrated, there's also not much evidence that carrier bags are a key component of the pollution.

So, in all, the plastic carrier bag is yet another example of environmentalism wanting to solve non-existent problems. The solutions proposed end up being worse for the environment, and in the process make life just that little bit more expensive and a little less convenient. So, par for the course really.

BBC in bed with FoE again

As usual, the BBC can do a good job in leaving the reader speechless (with rage, usually). Take this latest example from the always odious Richard Black. Under a headline of UK nuclear plans 'put energy in French hands', Black regales us with the story of 'four senior environmentalists' (all former directors of Friends of the Earth UK), warning David Cameron that the plans for new nuclear build put the UK tax payer at too much financial risk.

The gall of these people is unbelievable. One of them is even quoted as saying:

"How on Earth can the prime minister justify paying billions of pounds of subsidy to French power companies when the chancellor is slashing welfare budgets for poor people in Britain and there are a million young people unemployed?"

Since when have these four ever been interested in the British tax payer? I hear no complaint from them about the millions wasted on wind farms, solar and other 'renewables' gravy trains. Nor do they seem to be aware that it's because these renewables don't function as effective power sources that we're having to go the nuclear route - all in the cause of reducing CO2. Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock, George Monbiot and Mark Lynas have followed through on their own logic and accepted that nuclear is the way to go.

But the truth is that we're already dependent on nuclear, including French nuclear generated electricity piped to the national grid. And that dependency will grow even as we throw money at windfarms.

These four unelected politicians (which is what they are, the FoE being part of the corporate state that runs the EU), are also against the one fuel source that can stop both windfarms and new nuclear in its tracks: shale gas. What's more, shale will also reduce CO2 emissions to a greater extent than most renewables. If they were serious, they would be out campaigning for shale and trying to end the windfarm subsidy-fest that they helped engineer in the first place.

And, if we were serious, we'd also be campaigning for more research into thorium reactors - which again promise cheap, low-carbon energy and without the military spin-offs that have driven so much development of conventional nuclear energy.

But that's never going to happen. The truth is what Porritt and co want is to scale back industrial development, cut back on cheap energy and move society back into a world where light and heat are luxuries and we live in a cold, dark world that's closer to nature and more in tune with Gaia. When all is said and done, primitivism is where their brand of environmentalism inevitably leads...

Please Help Us Poland

Living as we do in the UK, in one of the citadels of green orthodoxy in the world, we often have to look abroad for positive signs that world is coming to its senses. It's normally slim pickings, but we did have the recent example of Canada coming out strongly against a new Kyoto-type climate treaty. And for a long time we've had the positive example of the Czech President Vaclav Klaus of a leading national politicians speaking sense on climate change and the EU. Increasingly we are also taking note of what's going on in Poland. First off there has been the welcoming of shale gas and fracking, giving Poland a chance a cheaper energy and more independence from Putin's Russia.

Now in a another positive move we see the BBC reporting that:

Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper says that "tomorrow Poland is ready to veto the EU plan to reduce CO2 emissions"...Poland's Environment Minister Marcin Korolec has sent a letter to his EU colleagues urging them to reject the 25% target, the Financial Times newspaper reports. "There is no point whatsoever in gambling with the European economy's future, introducing policies that might put our industries in jeopardy versus our competitors," he was quoted as saying.

This isn't the first time that Poland has acted. Back in June 2011 Poland blocked similar moves to go for more stringent cuts in CO2 emissions.

As always the UK is at the forefront of the suicidal tendency in Europe. Confirming once again the power of the orthodoxy to close eyes and ears to economics, science and reality in general, the BBC quotes an unnamed spokesman from our Department of Energy and Climate Change:

"Moving to a higher target will bring other benefits such as reducing our dependence on imported energy, stimulating jobs and growth in green sectors, and delivering health benefits from reduced pollution."

So, not for the first time, we have to hope that we are saved from the follies of our leaders by politicians from other countries...

Fakegate or Deniergate?

The battle of the gates is more than a silly bit of trivia. Climategate stuck as a name, and it continues to resonate. After the initial release of the Heartland documents, the alarmist camp was almost wetting itself because finally they had a gate of their own - Deniergate. Here was the one word which they hoped would eventually eclipse the running sore that is Climategate. Alas, for the warmists, Deniergate itself was eclipsed by Gleick's confession (after he was outed by the sceptic blogosphere) and the announcement that the smoking gun document was a fake. Now there's a new gate on the block - Fakegate.

A quick Google this morning shows that Deniergate gets 70,400 results, while Fakegate has already surged ahead with 325,000 results. Tough luck warmists...

However, both of these are still far behind Climategate, which on my spot check still gets 2,920,000 results.

Update: Just checked to see how one of the other climate-related -gates compares. Amazongate - a relatively minor affair in the IPCCs continuing sink to the bottom - gets a lively 191,000 results.

The Poverty of The Left

Far be it for me to suggest that what passes for 'the Left' in this country is reactionary, backward looking and a force for conservatism, but what else can one say when the following arrives in an email from Pluto Press...

Get Political Campaign - key activists urge engagement with Trotsky, Lenin and Luxemburg

Fifty key figures on the left, including China Miéville, Lindsey German, Ken Loach, Suzi Weissman, Michael Yates and Immanuel Ness, have backed a Pluto Press campaign urging activists fighting for the 99% against the 1% to draw inspiration from the lives and writings of three giants of 20th-century political change: Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and VI Lenin.

Yep, from the whole of the 20th century and what we've had so far of the 21st, these 'key figures' can only hark back to the period around the Bolshevik coup in Russia. This is a form of politics immune to history, knowledge or experience. It ignores both the failure of every form of state socialism and central planning ever attempted and the huge advance of economic development since the early 20th century. It even ignores any developments from the non-Leninist left.

Nope, it's still the same old cant on offer:

The Get Political campaign statement argues that 'It will not be a simple thing to win the battle of democracy...Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin were among the most perceptive and compelling revolutionaries of the 20th century. The body of analysis, strategy and tactics to which they contributed was inseparable from the mass struggles of their time. Critically engaging with their ideas can enrich the thinking and practical activity of those involved in today's and tomorrow's struggles for a better world.'

Note the use of the word democracy there. How well does that sit with Lenin and co? Remember, Lenin is the architect of 'democratic centralism', 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' and other zany ideas that ultimately lead to the murder of millions all over the world.

Have these 'key thinkers' - the vast majority of them being salaried academics and/or aligned to the Socialist Workers Party - really not learned anything at all? Sure they have... Why, the campaign is also part of a commercial endeavour by Pluto Press, who are flogging a new set of books off the back of it. Good to know that at least some elements of free market thinking have got through...

Faster than light neutrinos - not proven

So it looks like the faster than light neutrino experiment may have been wrong after all - just as most people suspected. Now what's interesting is that if ever there's an example of someone going against the scientific consensus then this has to be it - big time. And yet not once did I see anyone insisting that there was 'consensus' on the speed of light. Nobody called the team responsible for the experiment 'Einstein deniers'. The scientific societies didn't issue statements insisting that it was irresponsible to speculate that Einstein might be wrong. No papers were denied publication and no journal editors were pushed out of their jobs. Hell, from what I can see nobody was even ostracised for daring to suggest that neutrinos could break the light barrier.

Isn't this how science is supposed to work?
Isn't this precisely what we don't see when it comes to 'climate science'?

Russian Heatwave Due To CO2?

Having covered the Heartland affair early on, Richard Black of the BBC has been notcieably silent on the follow up. No news of the Gleick confession or the fact that Gleick's career is imploding - for example he's been dropped from the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) task Force on Scientific Integrity. Black is resolutely looking the other way, even when he's been directly challenged on it on his Twitter feed.

It was while checking on Black's Twitter feed that I saw mention of a story that says the Russian heatwave can be explained as part natural and part global warming. Or in Black's Tweet:

Latest on Russian heatwave - natural or human-driven? New AGU paper says a bit of both http://t.co/rIicn4Fu - extreme temp risk x3 from AGW

Follow the link and you get a story on the AGU website:

Russian heat wave had both manmade and natural causes

Now that's a fairly definite headline - and it's in contrast to previous studies that explained the heatwave as being due to natural weather phenomena and not AGW. Attribution - assigning causes to specific weather events - is a big deal. If scientists can pin the blame on climate disasters to CO2 then that's a major step forward in convincing the unconvinced masses that the AGW hyopthesis is not just a massive scam.

So how have they untangled the complex mix of factors that can partially pin the blame for the heatwave on human CO2 emissions?

Well, the short answer is that they haven't. What they've done is run a series of simulations and compared results. In one set of simulations they used data said to represent the 1990s, in the other they ran data said to represent the 2000s. The results showed that the chances of a comparable heatwave occuring were three times greater in the later set of simulations.

Yes, that's all there is to it. You run a model one way, tweak the inputs and run it again and then compare the results. You don't actually look in detail at the specifics of the real heatwave that happened. You don't look at the weather patterns or anything like that. You run two sets of simulations and just note that in the second set you can get some of the characteristics of a heat wave occuring more often.

I don't need to labour the obvious inadequacies of this. I don't need to point out the inherent uncertainties involved in such a process.

But where is the hint of this uncertainty in that headline or in Richard Black's Tweet? Where is there anything to indicate that this is all based on software and models?

Sceptic Blogosphere Devours Gleick

Peter Gleick's confession that he lied to obtain the Heartland documents - though at present he's insisting that he didn't fake the key document that has the warmists ablaze with righteous anger - is welcome. It would have carried a bit more weight had he not already been fingered as the most likely candidate by Steven Mosher, Roger Pielke and innumerable sceptic bloggers. Now that he's confessed, he'll be wanting to clear his name of the forgery charge by allowing some IT forensic analysis to be done on his computers and servers. It should be fairly straightforward to establish that the forged document arrived unbidden and wasn't just rustled up on his machine...

The whole affair casts an interesting light on the whole climate wars front, particularly on the asymmetry of forces.

While the warmists were over the moon about the Heartland documents because it shed a light on the perceived nefarious forces fighting 'climate science', what they revealed instead was the petty cash available to the sceptic side. When cast next to the millions of dollars available to the climate orthodox from governments, transnational bodies (the UN and the EU, for example), from chairtable foundations and big-dollar environmentalists (Greenpeace, WWF etc), the money available to sceptics is tiny. I mean really, really, really tiny.

And it's not just the money, it's also the media. The climate orthodox have at their disposal most of the world's mass media - from the bastions of climate alarmism at the BBC and the Guardian, to well-funded web sites such as RealClimate, DeSmogBlog and others.

And yet, despite the money and the media, the climate alarmists know they are losing support. Despite everything that they have done to subvert peer review - and the Climategate emails showed us what was going on, warts and all, without the need to resort to forgeries - more and  more papers are being published which cast doubt on the alarmism. The public perceives the lack of warming and the message that there is still so much doubt about what we do know is getting across. The only way for the alarmists to explain this process, despite the clear disparity of forces, is by an appeal to conspiracy theory. As the Guradian puts it, in its story about Gleick's confession, there is...

a network of fossil fuel interests, rightwing think tanks and politicians have been working to block action on climate change

Greek General Election Cancelled?

If, as looks increasingly certain, the next EU bail-out of Greece goes through, then it is almost inevitable that all attention in Brussels will switch to stopping a Greek general election. Having been completely sold down the river by it's political class, the Greek people are inevitably going to be looking to those parties that reject the imposed austerity. For now it looks like the hope lies on the Left, with the Communists and other leftists doing well in the polls. If Merkel was leant on to get her to agree to the bail-out, then her domestic standing will plummet if a rejectionist government takes hold and renounces the terms of the bailout. And those who pushed most stringly to keep Greece in the fold, will also suffer badly in their own domestic politics.

All this means that the only way to keep the peace - and the existence of the EU - is to stop a Greek general election from taking place. In days gone by the army would have stepped in. But this is the EU, there's no need for that kind of thing anymore. Instead we should look to see what pressure is applied to those elements of the left who'll prefer to stick with the EU rather than risk 'chaos'. And this is the trump card that the Euro class has got - there's a lot of people who fear the chaos that would emerge should a new government simply renounce eveything and go for a fast exit from the Euro and the EU. It's this fear of chaos and the anarchy on the streets that the right will seize upon, ably abetted by the existing unelected powers that be.

Greece Should Look To Iceland

Here's an interesting little snippet from the BBC...

Iceland is safe to invest in again, according to Fitch, which has upgraded its credit rating three years after its economy spectacularly collapsed.

It's almost text book stuff. Economy collapses under a mountain of debt. Country living beyond its means. It's the end of the world etc etc. Currency collapses and no one is willing to touch Iceland with a bargepole.

With a collapsed currency exports are cheap and start to pick up. Because of the disaster the government is even allowed to borrow and delays implementing the kind of austerity being foisted on the Greeks.

So, remind me again why Greece should remain in the Euro?

The Heartland Non-Story

OK. I've looked at the Heartland documents that were filched (as highlighted by the ever delightful Richard Black of the BCC) and put online. I've looked again. But I'm obviously missing something. So, please can someone point me to the documents that do the following:

• talk about subverting the peer review process
• gloat at the death of warmist scientists
• talk about punching opposing scientists in the face
• discuss how to hide the decline (oops, I mean how to hide the massive increasing in global temperatures)
• discuss ways of getting pesky journal editors fired
• discuss ways of getting opposing scientists fired from their academic positions
• talk about ways of giving each other more awards and prizes
• privately discuss their doubts about scepticism while publicly villifying anyone who expresses such doubts
• work out how to hide problematic papers from the NIPCC report

I've looked, but all I can find are some rather mundane documents that talk about trifling sums of money compared to the millions rolling into the warmist camp.

I Wish I'd Said That

More rottenness is put forth in the name of Science because of the twisted cogitations of statisticians than because of any other cause.

So sayeth the inimitable William Briggs in a piece entitled Why Do Statisticians Answer Silly Questions That No One Ever Asks?. It confirms, once again, that he is the one statistician above all others worth reading. Even if, or possibly especially if, you distrust statistics and statisticians then Briggs is someone you need to investigate.

Well, him and Deirdre McCloskey (and to see why, take a looksie here: http://www.londonbookreview.com/lbr0052.html)

All Eyes To Greece

All eyes should be on Greece again. Looking at the scenes in Athens last night the heart goes out to the protestors fighting in the streets while the political class sells the country further down the river. Mass protest and a refusal to submit is the only option now. The country is being reduced to poverty for generations while the politicians show once again that they are not Greeks but EUroperans.

There's no doubt that many on the streets view their fight as one against 'capitalism'. The Anarchists, who are leading much of the street fighting, see this in simple terms as a fight against 'neo-liberalism' or the 'tyranny of the market' and so on. And it's not just the Anarchists, the same is being said by the Greek Communists (KKE) and the other leftist parliamentarians (who are as scared by the Anarchists as the rest of the political class). However, this is anything but a fight against capitalism, the fact that so many people think so shows how successful the political class has been in shifting the blame from themselves to the faceless market.

What we have in Greece and the rest of the EU, including the UK, is not free market capitalism. We have a system of corporatism. It is an alliance of a liberal political establishment, headquartered in Brussels but with local branches in every captial city in the EU, a set of favoured corporate allies and NGOs and a compliant media. Call it crony capitalism, state capitalism, corporatism, market socialism or whatever, but it's not free market capitalism by a long shot. What we have in EUrope is the biggest experiment in anti-democratic statism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This system is founded above all on an avoidance of democracy, it is about technocratic and bureaucratic control by an entrenched political class. And it is for this reason that even someone who is pro-market and pro-capitalist can support the anti-capitalists fighting in the streets of Athens.

Greece needs to default. Greece needs to bring down the Euro. And with the Euro down we can hope that the flames will be fanned across Europe to destroy the EU as a whole.

The BBC And Himalayan Glacier Melt

The projected melting of the Himalayan glaciers has long been a key weapon in the armoury of climate alarmism. It has long been one of those 'everyone knows...' arguments, such that anyone doubting it could be accused of wilful ignorance, denial or, most famously of practicing 'voodoo science', as Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC famously put it. And of course, the BBC has been at the forefront of the alarmist bandwagon - trumpeting again and again that the galciers were melting.

So, it is a major embarassment to warmists everywhere that once again nature refuses to play ball. As has been reported extensively, and covered with some glee on the Watts Up With That, Autonomous Mind and other sceptic sites. ANd, to be fair, it has also been covered on much of the mainstream press, including a detailed report in the Guardian.

The BBC, however, has chosen not to report the story. No sign of it on the website at all. Not even a Tweet from Richard Black, who finds the time to Tweet on letters to the Wall Street Journal attacking AGW sceptics. This is the same BBC that has, in the past, published articles on the publication of obscure papers that attempted to debunk Henrik Svensmark, that publishes prolifically on every alarmist claim that is made, and which prides itself on keeping us informed about all matters climate related.

So, once again we find that our state broadcaster attempts to shape the agenda and to shield those who get their news from it from any disquieting stories that might dent the public's appetite for climate disaster. The rule seems to be that climate porn is fine, but anything that suggests catastrophe is not looming is hidden from view.

Maldives Coup

Can we now expect the new President of the Maldives to follow his predecessor Mohamed Nasheed and hold a cabinet meeting underwater? Is this something that should be enshrined in the constitution? After all, if it is to secure its place on the world stage as a laughing stock that will resort to any stunt to raise some funds, it will need to keep piling on the pressure. Perhaps the new President can have the old one drowned so that he could be proclaimed a victim of global warming? Perhaps the army can help here, and drown all those it doesn't like. A few floating bodies in time for the next underwater cabinet meeting will focus minds inside and outside the country...

Consensus Not Important - Unless It Supports AGW

After having been told for years that there was consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and that anyone who stood outside of this consensus was a crank, paid industry shill or a right-wing contrarian, it now appears that consensus isn't so important after all. So says Richard Black, blogging on the BBC website. Argument from authority, which is what the appeal to consensus is, has been the key plank of the AGW for so long that it's hard to imagine life without it. The entire IPCC process was about creating the illusion of consensus. A huge part of the Climategate email stash is all about perverting the course of peer review and academic freedom in the name of fostering the illusion of consensus.

At the same time, sceptics have both disputed the existence of consensus and the importance of it should it exist. Against consensus they have argued that the scientific method does not depend on a popularity contest. Largely it's an argument that has been ignored or rubbished by the mainstream media, particularly the BBC.

So, what should we make of Richard Black suddenly appropriating a key sceptic argument? He actually says:

But it is surely the arguments themselves that ought to be the focus for discussion - not what they purport to say about a cracking consensus.

Absolutely true, but he comes to it only as the weight of numbers in the climate debate starts to turn. The number of people willing to voice criticism of AGW orthodoxy is growing rapidly. The line that they are all cranks or have been bought off can no longer be sustained. At which point we should expect to see more and more warmists adopting Black's strategy. The line will now become - 'we never claimed consensus is important'. Soon it will be that they've always had some doubts about the most alarmist claims, but that the broad truth of the greenhouse effect is true (as though most sceptics disputed it), and that warming is real (again, most sceptics will agree that there has been some warming over the last few hundred years).

Also likely to happen is the fall-back position that although catastrophic global warming is unlikely to happen, CO2 needs to be controlled for other reasons - with ocean acidification likely to be the new line in the ground.

In any case, we can expect that the luke-warmist position will be in the ascendant.

Where should Chris Huhne serve his sentence?

Here's your chance to indicate where you think our former secretary for Energy and Climate Change should serve time - assuming he's found guilty. Take a look at the poll on the front page of this blog and make your choice. Go on, where do you think he'd be happiest...

About bloody time...

Finally it's been announced that the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, is to be charged with perverting the course of justice. About time. We look forward to the resignation.

We also hope that his replacement will be less wedded to climate change mania and that we can look forward to someone who will take the brakes off regarding shale gas. But nobody's holding their breath. Despite some small signs of change recently, the fact remains that our political class is the last refuge of climate change orthodoxy...

Perhaps now that Obama has deleted climate change from the political lexicon in the United States, we can have a new Energy secretary who does the same.

Thank You WUWT

There's a good piece by Pat Michaels over at the Cato Institute about Obama's headlong retreat from 'climate change' as a major theme of his presidency. Michaels, who has long been on the alarmists hit list as a major 'denier', suggests that a major factor in this is the Watts Up With That website.

How could disagree? WUWT is a big player and outranks the alarmist sites both in visitors and influence. It's a fantastic resource, and we all owe a big vote of thanks to Anthony Watts and his helpers and contributors. If ever you needed an exemplar of what citizen science is all about then WUWT is it.

The Hester Gesture - Part 2

So, Stephen Hester refuses his bonus. The politicians, newspapers, the BBC, Guardian and masses of churchmen (and women) are happy. So to are lots of the public, who think that this is justice, of sorts.

The cost to those same members of the public? £900 million off the share price. Probably aroynd £500,000 of lost income to the tax man. The job of getting our money back from RBS even harder.

Everybody happy now?

The Hester Gesture

After all of the hysteria and hyperventilating Stephen Hester submitted to the inevitable and canned his bonus. All I can say is thank Christ for that. The hyperbole was becoming unbearable. We should be grateful to him for putting an end to the posturing that was already completely out of control.

There are some things that are worth pointing which were pretty much obscured in all of this fuss.

Firstly, RBS shouldn't even exist in its current form. It should have been allowed to go under. For those who are convinced that  the whole bonus fiasco is an example of unconstrained capitalism, think again. If we had unconstrained capitalism (or even capitalism just a little less restrained), then RBS, Northern Rock et al would have been left to sink or swim. Capitalism is an evolutionary process at heart. By deciding to intervene and part-nationalise the banks, Gordon Brown showed once more that he was no friend of markets or market processes, but a statist who believes that capitalism is dangerous because it is uncontrolled. His first instinct, and that of Obama, Cameron and the entire Euro class, is to intervene and take control.

The fact that the Labour government did intervene means we have the situation where what is effectivaly a state employee - Stephen Hester - is able to get a potential bonus of nearly a million quid. What rankles is that at a time when everyone else is fed a diet of austerity, this class of state employee is able to earn huge bucks. And remember, this was only 60% of the bonus pot, in theory he could have met his targets and earned the full lot. If this was just another bank and not a semi-state bank, people would have shrugged, got angry but there would never have been the same reaction. And perhaps, we would  have been spared the panto from political figures across the spectrum (a spectrum that stretches all the way from A to B, but never beyond that).

However, the fact is that the tax payer did rescue RBS, so arguing that it shouldn't be here is a moot point.

Having said that then, where were the politicians arguing the case that if we're ever to get our money back then RBS has to be re-privatised? Where was the case that Hester should be judged on how well that goes? His bonus should only be cashed after that privatisation. His incentives should be to get the most for RBS for the tax payer, and unless he does that his bonuses should be deferred. And what better way of making the case then to suggest that tax payers would benefit in the form of a chance to buy shares in the eventual privatisation ahead of institutional investors?

CBI Stands Beside FoE

Following the Court of Appeal's rejection of the government's appeal against the ruling that the cuts to solar feed-in tariffs are not legal, the Telegraph  quotes John Cridland, CBI Director-General, saying:

The judgement should be used to draw a line under this saga, which saw the Government scoring a spectacular own goal and confidence in the renewables sector undermined.

We must bring certainty back to this high growth sector. Looking to the future, the Government should guarantee the rate applicants will receive earlier in the process, for all the technologies covered by the feed-in-tariff, to give buyers the confidence to proceed.

Not only is the head of the CBI not standing up for consumers who end up having to foot the bill for the renewables gravy train, he is also not standing up for his members in companies suffering increased fuel costs. There are some who claim that solar is a 'high growth' industry, but it's high growth only insofar as it can suck endless subsidy. As the experience of Germany, Spain and other countries who've gone this same route has shown, the growth is illusory and represents a net loss to the economy, not a gain.

We expect this kind of nonsense from Friends of the Earth, but really, has the head of the CBI got no understanding of basic economics?

Why Vote Yes To The EU?

I must admit to being suprised by the turn out of the Croatian referendum on joining the EU. I just assumed that the low turn out meant that most voters had been bored to apathy and that the result was that only those who wanted to join bothered to vote. Now with more detail in an excellent post over at England Expects...

It's what we ought to expect by default really...A massive corruption of the political process by local elites working hand in glove with Brussels...

Stop The US Research Works Act

It's not often that I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with an article in the Guardian, but when it comes to the argument about free public access to tax-payer funded research it's a no-brainer. We - that is tax payers - pay for huge amounts of research, particularly when it comes to medicine. The results of that research, which we paid for, should therefore be free for all of us to access. In the US the powerful National Institutes of Health have given us PubMed, Biomed Central and a committment to making the research they pay (with tax payer dollars) should be published online and accessed for free.

Now the academic publishers are fighting back in the form of the proposed Research Works Act. This would take tax payer research results out of the public domain and back behind very, very, very expensive paywalls.

You'd expect that scientists would be out there fighting this change, but as detailed in a piece in the Guardian:

What is surprising is how complicit scientists are in perpetuating this feudal system. The RWA is noisily supported by the Association of American Publishers, which has as members more than 50 scholarly societies – including, ironically, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which by its implicit support of the RWA is making itself an association for the retardation of science.

This blog gets a fair number of visitors from the other side of the pond and I would urge them to contact their representatives now to stop this Act in its tracks.

More state action against sceptics?

Following on from the recent police action against the climate sceptic blogger known as Tallbloke, we have the police turning up on the doorstep of an anti-windfarm activist...

http://www.epaw.org/media.php?lang=en&article=pr7

Is this the shape of things to come? The more that they lost the battle to convince the public - and the more that the 'science' falls apart - the more desperate they are becoming..

BBC Ignores Damning Report on Windpower

BBC bias works in many ways. Often it's as important to look at what is not said as it is to look at the surface of what they is said. A prime example is the report by the think tank Civitas on wind power. Authored by economist Ruth Lea, the report 'Electricity Costs: The folly of wind-power', is frankly scathing. While it's not news to those who follow climate politics, it is blunt in its assessment of windpower, finding that that there is no economic case for wind, that it does little to reduce CO2. The headline conclusion is:

Wind-power is therefore expensive and ineffective in cutting CO2 emissions. If it were not for the renewables targets set by the Renewables Directive, wind-power would not even be entertained as a cost-effective way of generating electricity and/or cutting emissions. The renewables targets should be renegotiated with the EU.

Not surprisingly the story has been picked up in many parts of the mainstream media, as well as the sceptical blogosphere.

What about the BBC? Which is the broadcast arm of the British windpower industry? No sign of it on the website. No mention on the environment pages. No blogs that I can see. OK, so I try the search function on the website. Searching on 'civitas' shows up plenty of hits. The BBC have reported on many of the previous reports produced by the think tank, and have turned to it for comments on other occasions. Doing a search on 'windfarm' brings up a huge number of hits, including a just-published story: 'Daviot Wind Farm near Inverness to 'benefit' education'. It's a typical puff piece for the wind industry, with no real content and no challenge to the alleged benefits of this particular windfarm.

So we have a major report on wind power being reported elsewhere (Daily Mail, Guardian, Telegraph etc), but not a word from our state broadcaster.

Perhaps the BBC are just being a bit slow. But perhaps they'll prefer to set the agenda by ignoring an inconvenient report that helps burst the bubble that is windpower.

School and lack of structure

Can anyone really be surprised by the findings of the Prince's Trust Youth Index 2012 that unstructured lifestyles amongst children lead to educational underachievement? It's right there at the top of the stating the bleedin' obvious tables. Still, the story got a fair amount of prominence, especially from the BBC. The emphasis has been on the chaotic lives of children and teenagers from poor backgrounds - the cause being poverty in the narrow sense of the word rather than referring to the culture that these children are raised in. Theodore Dalrymple, for example, has written extensively about the slack jawed chaos of the underclass. None of this is news, as I've already said.

But what hasn't been mentioned in the stories about this report, as far as I can see is the educational system that encourages disorder and lack of structure. So-called 'free flow' teaching methods that are used in many primary schools do nothing to impose set timetables for activities. Children are encouraged to manage themselves and to engage in activities that they want to do when they want to do them. The idea of having a set reading time, or class story or any other organised activity that children have to take part in is anathema to such a system. If a teacher wants to read a story to the class at the end of the day, for example, then the children (including reception and year one children) can simply decide that it's boring and carry on playing or doing something else.

This lack of structure is supposed to help children learn for themselves - it's based on Piaget's theories. These children are young scientists driven by natural curiosity to learn - imposing structure on them is authoritarian and destroys their ability to learn and be creative. While that may have been fine with Piaget's little angels, for kids brought up in chaotic homes, with no rules, no structure and no direction, all it does is perpetuate the aimlessness into the classroom. Kids schooled using free flow pay for it later - they simply never get used to structure, timetables and the idea of being told what to do and when. It's a disaster for these kids, and yet it is sanctioned as a recognised and widely used teaching methodology.

Can we expect any discussion of this from the BBC or other liberal media? Nope. Far easier to focus on economics and to blame capitalism than it is to point out that the liberal educational establishment perpetuates and worsens existing cultural poverty in huge swathes of the country.

Freezing Cancer Patients

One of the stories that appeared in the press over Christmas was based on a report from Macmillan Cancer Support about cancer patients and fuel poverty. According to its own figures, the number of patients needing financial support for fuel payments has increased markedly in the last few years.

Of course nobody should be surprised by this. Our politicians regularly admonish the fuel companies for making 'fuel poverty' worse - conveniently ignoring their own role in driving the increase in costs. It's the natural consequence of environmental legislation to fight 'climate change'. And, as I can attest as a trustee of a small cancer charity, cancer patients are especially vulnerable.

However, we mustn't ignore the part played in all of this by our medical establishment. The medical profession are among the front ranks of climate alarmism. They have trumpeted the lies and the hysteria from the beginning, from journal articles and papers in the BMJ and the Lancet, to working for the NHS to become 'carbon neutral'.

How many of those medics will stop to think of the effect that this climate alarmism is having on their patients?

And it's not just fuel poverty - how much money that could be spent of cancer treatments is being wasted on fighting 'climate change'? As one blogger has put it:

the NHS will be paying our money on carbon off-setting instead of investing in new treatments, or improving the existing treatments.

Angry? We ought to be bloody furious.

Climate Change Sceptics - Craving A Cause

Climate change sceptics, according to Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, have:

...created an intricate web of their own associations and allusions, to produce their version of an alternative story which runs contrary to that of mainstream science.

This is an article on the BBC news website ostensibly about the novelist Umberto Eco, and in particular about his second novel, Foucault's Pendulum. As she describes it, the novel is about "...the credulity of those who crave a cause to believe in." She describes the outlines of the novel, which involves an elaborate conspiracy and a manufactured alternate history of the Knights Templar. In time one of the authors of this occult history is killed by people who believe it is true, and who are convinced that he holds more secrets that he is unwilling to reveal.

Aside from being very pleased with herself for being clever in front of Eco during an interview, the article says a lot more about Jardine's mindset - and that of the BBC - than it does about climate change scepticism.

You see, Jardine feels that only those people who are on the outside looking in, those who feel excluded in some way, become sceptics in order to have something to believe in. We are, as the title of the article suggests 'craving a cause'. To climate scientists she says:

Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that international scientific near consensus is not enough to allay the fears of those who feel left out of the whole debate.

Now, personally, I feel deeply affronted by all of this. I have a PhD in a scientific discipline, I work as a mathematical modeller, I read the scientific literature and I do my research. Like many sceptics I started out wanting to understand more about the science. I had seen the hockey stick graph, I was a Guardian reading warmist who despised the United States for not signing the Kyoto Treaty. I saw the IPCC as representing an honest and robust view of the science. It was settled, I just wanted to find out more. And that's where the problem started.

In reading more widely, and at a deeper level than the New Scientist or Scientific American, I came away deeply disturbed. It had simply never entered my consciousness that so much of the evidence was model output. As a modeller this is stuff I am familiar with, it's what I earned my PhD doing. And as for the physical evidence, I was amazed at the lack of it.

And, it has to be said, far from craving a cause, I thought I had had one in wanting to fight climate change. If ever there was a cause that inflamed peoples passions and gave them something to believe in it was the fight against CO2-induced climate change.

What I discovered has caused me to question so much of what I took for granted. The people I once saw as political allies I now see as pernicious and dangerous. This has caused all kinds of arguments and strained relationships with family and friends. It's certainly not been an easy ride - I would have been better off ignoring the science and sticking to the Guardian. But I couldn't. You see, unfashionable as it might be to some, I actually believe in the scientific method. I actually think that science is not just another discourse, science is different, science has to be honest.

Jardine is blind to all of this, of course. In her simplistic world there is the 'near consensus' on one hand, and the cranks, conspiracy theorists and the excluded on the other. It would not enter her head that there are many scientists out there who disagree with AGW. It would not occur to her that the state of ignorance about climate is vast, and that far from being settled, the science is becoming more uncertain as more research is performed. And it would not occur to her to actually look at what Climategate revealed, or to look as the inner workings of the IPCC. To her and to her kind, the favoured circle of climate scientists are the good guys, the rest of us are not.

If we're talking about Umberto Eco, I would say that it's his first novel one should look at. In The Name of The Rose we have the story of a fanatical priesthood prepared to go to any steps to keep people from getting at the data (in this case a manuscript by Aristotle). The hero of the novel is William of Occam, the archetypal sceptic and one of the founders of the scientific method. The parallels with climate change are obvious, and require none of the intellectual contortions that Jardine has to go through tp make her point.

Come to think of it, maybe I do feel excluded now, thanks to people like her. But the feeling of exclusion came second, long after I had changed my mind because of the science.

Silence On Europe

Given my stated desire to see the Euro and the EU collapse and die, my recent silence on the matter might seem strange. However, there's a simple explanation - the fact is that there are two blogs which say it all: Richard North's EUReferendum and Mary Ellen Synon's blog at the Daily Mail. These two blogs are streets ahead of the mainstream press, ahead of most commentators in the blogosphere and way, way, way ahead of anything I can say on the topic.

I know it goes against the blogging credo, but I won't pretend a knowledge or competence I don't have. Instead I'd refer people to keep an eye on what North and Synon both have to say - and to then compare and contrast with the drivel that most of the media produces. In particular, the contrast between these two and the BBC is striking. The BBC would make the North Korean state media proud.

A Stunning Endorsement...

Seema Malhotra, the newly elected MP for Felthmam and Heston, claims her "victory" is a vote of confidence in the leadership of Ed Milliband. And she's right. It's a stunning vote of confidence. At a time when the global economy is heading over the edge of a cliff, the Euro is collapsing and we all look ahead with a deep sense of foreboding, a massive 15.7% of the electorate in her constituency felt that Ed Milliband's leadership was worth a vote.

It's a truly sad state of affairs that our political classes have colluded in making politics about as relevant as a Christmas Panto in Easter. Having ceded real power to the EU, been up to their necks in fiddles and graft and pretty much focused on making political debate an idea-free zone, is it any wonder than so few of us can be bothered to get up and vote. You can bet that they'll be earnest discussions on how to make politics relevant again - but by relevant they mean something very different to what we mean by it. To them relevant means that you go through the motions and vote in elections. That you sign up to their moribund parties. That you appear engaged in whatever narrative they're offering.

What we mean by relevant is entirely different. It means having real influence and power, of forcing our elected representatives to truly represent us. It means having a handle on how things are run, how decisions are made and being able to change things. It means being able to control the purse strings, vote directly on issues (yes, that means holding referendums) and having the ability to recall and reject politicians.

Instead of these ideas, we'll be subjected to those favoured by our politicians, many of them imported from the Euro class. Ideas like compulsory voting, various forms of proportional representation and the state funding of political parties. All of these should be rejected. Instead we need to push for our alternatives - and we need to push for things like Richard North's Referism. The idea might or might not work, but it does represent a radical departure from what the political class want.

Thank you, Canada

Thank you, Canada. Thank you for formally dumping the dead treaty that is Kyoto. For leading the way so that hopefully others can follow.

All you need to do now is withdraw from the UN's various climate bodies - to follow through completely. Do this and you'll have the undying love and admiration of climate realists the world over. The BBC will of course declare war  on you, but that's a small price to pay for daring to show true leadership.

Chris Huhne Visits This Site

As has long been suspected, Chris Huhne is a visitor to this site. We now have definitive proof. The trap was set when a poll was added to the site - our first ever. The question was straightforward enough:

Who is the most stupid person in the government?

There was one clear front-runner: Chris Huhne. He lead the pack from the beginner, with a clear 100% of votes going to him. For a while it looked like the poll would end with that clear and overwhelming result. However, at the last minute somebody visited the site and voted for somebody else. This voter can have been none other than Chris Huhne himself. He cast his vote for David Cameron, confirming once and for all his identity.

Chris, should you drop by again, please do us all a favour and resign...

Polar Bear Cannibal Holocaust

Delingpole has already picked up on the Polar Bear Cannibal Holocaust story from the the BBC. A story that is illustrated with a photo of the nasty deed being committed. Of course according to the BBC it's not just the polar bear cub who is the victim, it's also the male polar bear who has killed and eaten the cub. It's a victim, of course, of global warming. We all know that before CO2 sizzled the planet polar bears would never have devoured their own...

When I mentioned this strange occurence to sprog #3, he reminded me that he had an old book on polar bears that he bought at the local library when he was younger. This august tome is entitled Polar Star, by Sally Grindley and John Butler, and was published in the dim and distant year of 1997 (ISBN 1860394221). In this kids book we discover that, shock horror, male polar bears sometimes devour young cubs, and the book even features a sequence where a mother defends her cubs from the predatory male...

Here's the cover of the book...

The sequence where the predatory male attacks the cub begins here:

The text itself states:

And all of this without mention of melting ice, rising sea levels, global warming or CO2.

Where's David Attenborough when you need him, eh?

40% of cancers caused by life-style choices

Well, at least that's what the headlines are telling us - and there are plenty of headlines based on these figures right across the media.

Now I know it's a bit much to expect scepticism from the likes of the BBC, but I'm really surprised by the lack of critical comment or scepticism that has greeted such a shocking claim. So far I've found two places where the figures are queried.

Spiked Online take a gander here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11875/

Anticancer.org.uk discuss it here: http://www.anticancer.org.uk/2011/12/cancer-and-lifestyle-choices.html

Has anyone found other articles that do more than regurgitate the press release?

Seeing as this report is being seized on by 'health activists' the world over, you can bet your life that these figures are going to be quoted again and again to support all kinds of new restrictions on food and alcohol.

Scottish Madness

In a bid to out-mad the rest of the UK, the Scots government decided that the EU's commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 was piddly, that the UK's commitment of a 34% drop was derisory, and that Scotland could out-mad the world by going for a massive (and impossible to acheive) target of a 44% reduction. Yep, 42%.

Of course there's a massive cost to this madness, which has just been estimated at £11bn, which seems mighty low to me. But then again we are in the world of make believe here. How else could you explain statements such as this one, from SNP MSP Rob Gibson, convener of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee at Holyrood:

The SNP Government has made a commitment to this country which has the world's best developing technologies and energy resources in wind, hydro, biofuels, and the exciting future industries of tidal and wave and photovoltaic (solar) technologies.

Photovoltaic in Scotland?

Absolute madness that shows no signs of abating. Of course, this kind of nonsense is aided and abetted by the BBC, who in their report on the topic insist on describing CO2 as pollution. Perhaps BBC journalists don't breathe in the same way we do...

And for our next trick...

There's a fair amount of comment about the Merkozy plan for a European fiscal union, much of it along the lines of 'they're having a laugh, they'll never get treaty change through in any time frame that makes sense.' Critics point to the glacial pace of treaty change, and the high probability that the first referendum on change will give a resulting no vote (in whichever country it's in). So, is Merkozy just blowing smoke and hoping that the illusion of change will be enough to calm the markets so the Euro can ride the storm enough to survive?

Unfortunately all of that is predicated on the theory that our Euro class politicians play by their own rules. Having engineered two coups - Greece and Italy - do people really think the Euro class are not emboldened by the crisis? The stakes have never been higher, there is no way on earth that the Euro class can afford to pay attention to the wishes of any electorates.

Mary Ellen Synon can already see the lie of the land. She has a must-read blog at the Mail, which ends:

What we have now is a German and French-led EU cartel which has so far pulled off coups in Greece and Italy. Each of those states is now ruled by unelected governments dropped into office by Berlin, Paris, the European Commission and the European Central Bank

These successful coups have made Germany and France confident of further success. They are on a roll: next target, a coup of the entire system of EU treaty law covering fiscal powers.

And here’s the surprising part – or maybe not so surprising, given his history of Vichy-like behaviour – Merkozy can count on the cooperation of David Cameron in this manoeuvre to stop any chance of any of the peoples of the eurozone countries being given a chance to vote ‘No!’

What we saw today in Paris was an announcement by Merkozy that they intend to go ahead with their drive to destroy democracy across 17 European states. By agreeing to this -- and he will -- Mr Cameron will act as collaborator in establishing Germany and France as the fiscal commanders over these nations of Europe.

Across Europe, one can only feel dread. In Britain, one ought to feel shame as well.

Keep that in mind when you hear reports that:

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said Standard & Poor's (S&P) threat to downgrade eurozone countries is the "best possible incentive" ahead of Friday's summit.

Statists never let a crisis go to waste.  Merkozy need the threat of disaster to keep their less confident colleagues in line.
 
Our politicians can bleat about how we are protected from further treaty change by a referendum, but what if everything that the Euro class needs can be magicked out of existing text? Expecting the Euro class to play by the rules is as naive as believing that Cameron et al are really Euro sceptics at heart.

Frermany Calling! Frermany Calling!

With the moves for political union gaining afoot, any talk from 'our' Euro-class about 'the national interest' is more smokescreen than anything else. We can expect the usual prattle about losing our influence, of being left out in the cold, of being in the slow lane of a two-speed Europe etc. We've heard it all before. But time and again our Euro class puts it's own interests first. And that interest lies firmly in the EU.

With Merkozy making all the running, Cameron and co will squirm, pout and pose in front of the cameras, but they'll not say no. They never do.

Our only hope is that the Euro does collapse - even though the consequences fill most of us with dread...

Ten Days To Shake The World?

The headline in today's Metro is certainly eye-catching: Save the euro in 10 days or see the EU fall apart, European leaders warned

The destruction of the Euro is necessary - it's the best chance we have of destroying the EU. Let's be clear, no amount of Euro-plastic tinkering is going to make any real difference. The colleagues are all-out for political integration, only the collapse of the Euro can stop that. They've already beggared Greece for generations, and they have no qualms about doing the same to the rest of us. For the Euro-class, economic destruction across the continent is a small price to pay to make sure the 'project' succeeds.

However, what's the likely cost of a Euro collapse? To pretend that because we're not in the Euro we have any real insulation is a fantasy. It's going to hurt like hell.

According to economist Danny Gabay, an economist at Fathom Consulting (quoted by the Economist ), we can expect:

Our simulation implies that the impact of a disorderly euro break-up on the UK will be roughly half as bad again as the collapse of Lehman Brothers.The UK economy contracts by over 7% between now and 2013, assuming a euro default in early 2012.

Moreover in the absence of massive monetary easing to prevent sterling from rising by upwards of 35%, we see the UK slipping into deflation, which would make servicing its debt even harder. And you can forget those fiscal targets, In our simulation, the austerity measures are simply overwhelmed by the impact such a huge sovereign default event has on global bond yields. Even with austerity, we see UK bond yields rising above 10% by 2013.

In other words we're talking major recession again. It's time our political class started to prepare for this, but Osborne and the Office of Budget Resposibility are decidedly looking the other way. Can anyone really believe that public debt is not going to sky-rocket above the magic 80% figure when all this goes off?

If there was ever a perfect time to seriously cut back on climate change spending, the endless layers of quangos (still largely untouched by the promised 'bonfire') and pointless foreign adventures, it's now.

Update: It looks like things are hotting up, with the latest spate of announcements from Mervyn King et al. Meanwhile, there are more important things to think about... Like the faux outrage over Jeremy Clarksons comments.