Oh, wonderful.
Just look at this!
Those poor people at East Anglia didn't have the capacity to store all the raw data they used to predict doomsday!
They had to delete it, poor lambs.
It's time for this nonsense to end, don't you think? There can be no defence of the crap at all now.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Friday, 27 November 2009
What will it take to kill this monster?
With full credits to Pedant-General over at Devil's Kitchen......
As others have commented, ad nauseam, the response from the proponents of AGW essentially boils down to the following main components:
This does not merit any response beyond laughter.
Still an appeal to authority and, more importantly, dealt with damningly here.
Firstly, we must understand how the whole thing hangs together, because the edifice of AGW is very definitely not just pure science, boffins in white coats in labs and so forth. It spans the whole gamut from real pure science, through the applied sciences and Engineering, passing through economics and finally ending up in the dark arts of Politics and Diplomacy. That's a lot to take in, so I have created a handy diagram that explains. Never let it be said that your polymathematic Pedant-General makes you do the hard work.
Let's start at the top, and bear with me.
It is also useful to plot where you and your friends sit on this decision tree:
Simples.
Except of course it is and it isn't. If you do really accept the heavily-lauded consensus, then the decision tree changes quite a bit. Think about it in first aid terms. If it is the case that the climate is changing in an unprecedented manner and that change is driven predominantly by manmade CO2 emissions, then we really shouldn't be muddling about with adapting to effects: we should address the cause and that inevitably means finding a way to reduce manmade CO2 emissions. The problem with this is that everything becomes a bit too clearcut and the diagram now looks like this:
Because there is a skip from the straight science, straight to politics and policy, the science becomes absolutely essential.
As a result, no dissent can be tolerated because the wheels come off very quickly as soon as you have to make your way through the rest of the decision tree.
Suggesting that it's not unprecedented is straight denial and even doubt has to be censored.
But what of George's Knights Carbonic? How can this small number of scientists with "clever mathematical techniques", or "fudge factors" according to taste, affect the whole scientific foundation layer.
Richard North suggests historical parallels, but his analysis does not pull back the curtain, "Wizard of Oz"-style, on the Knights Carbonic.
Permit me to try. Here's how the process works:
Temperatures, CO2 levels, sun spot numbers et al are gathered currently using all the sophistication that we have today. We have the real measured data but only for a short (and geologically utterly insignificant) period.
Next, we try to see if we can find other things, with a longer history, that might be useful for telling us what those key measurements might have been if we had been there at the time with all our technology to measure them. We need proxies and we need to show that those proxies are a good match with the current data.
Once we have done that, we can then use the proxy data to fill back the history. At this stage, we can also say whether or not we believe the current data to be exceptional even without reading the entrails from the GCMs etc.
Now we can add some light seasoning of the real physics and chemistry that determine how things actually work, thermodynamics, mechanics, spectral absorption of different gasses and the lot.
Finally, we bake all the ingredients together in the models to try and tie all the inputs (CO2 levels, solar activity, orbital wobbles etc) with the outputs (particularly temperature, but also climate generally, plus sea levels etc). In particular you are trying to identify how the each thing interacts with everything else, given all the control theory horrors of signal delays (introduced by thermal capacity of the oceans that delays temperature rises by the massive amount of energy required to do so) and feedback couplings (that the solvency of CO2 in water changes with temperature, so the oceans absorb and release CO2 in response to temperature).
But this is where the game is. If the temperature today is NOT unprecedented, in particular relative to the MWP, then we have a big fat data point that says the unprecedented current level of atmospheric CO2 probably isn't tremendously relevant to climate. Or rather, there is some other input signal that is just as important that we are overlooking and therefore the impact of CO2 will be being overstated.
This is not about whether we are warmer than we were 100 years ago. That is undeniable. 30 years ago, almost every Christmas in Scotland was white. Memories of sledging after Christmas lunch cannot be false consciousness. That stopped in about 1980 and has not happened since. The question is whether or not we are warmer than we were when they spoke Norse in Perth. That we are denied post-prandial sledging tells us nothing about that.
This is where CRUdGate is so important. Just look at where CRU and more generally Phil Jones and Michael Mann have - and have had - an influence on the process:
The Harry Read Me file shows just how badly knackered the HadCRUT temperature series really is. HADCRUT is one of a tiny number of recognised ("peer reviewed" even?) global temperature sources. All of them feed off each other and the people implicated in the emails are linked to some of the others. RealClimate's Gavin Schmidt, for example, is a protege of the team, is extensively mentioned in the audit trail of shame and works for NASA's GISS - one of the other of this tiny number of recognised ("peer reviewed" even?) global temperature sources.
So that's goosed the first box.
"Hide the Decline" reveals the fact that the second box doesn't work properly, especially for the tree-ring proxies. Since there is almost no-one of any stripe publishing in the field of paleodendroclimatology (sod the trillions of dollars to be squandered, I want that on a triple word score) who is not very deeply implicated in this leak, it is clear that the failings of this step have been censored.
There is then ample evidence of the attempt to wipe the MWP from the dendro data and we now know that MBH relied on just 12 trees in North America and, when that was challenged, just 1 tree—one lone tree—in Yamal, Siberia.
In any event, the whole paleo data thing is probably onto a hiding to nothing as we can't trust the two steps that got it there. So (I'm being a bit flippant here) any genuine proxy data (ice cores, lake sediments etc) is knackered because it's trying to be matched to goosed temperature data. That's not to say that there aren't pre-existing shenanigans there too though. So even if you haven't actually attempted to censor your failings (and the mails contain plenty of evidence that this has indeed been happening), your results are going to be goosed anyway.
By this stage, you don't have to touch the actual hard science because, since all your input data is garbage, your models are going to be garbage no matter how carefully you understand the basic physics.
Lastly and as a slight aside, why so little from the MSM? That one is easy. You need to have a decent analytical brain just to deal with the chain of events. You need to have a decent analytical brain, a mathematical/scientific mind and a good grasp of some very hard statistics to understand what is being done to massage the numbers and to see how significant it is to the chain of events.
Slice your average environment correspondent through the middle and you're going to find a left-leaning liberal arts graduate who is utterly out of his/her depth. Their world view is being swept from underneath them and they are being shown—in ways that they do not really and have never had to understand—that the guys they thought were the goodies are in fact "at it" and that those they have spent a decade disparaging as deniers were in fact spot on.
I would find that hard to report too.
CRUdGate - Why this can't be swept under the carpet
(NB, It's me, the P-G)As others have commented, ad nauseam, the response from the proponents of AGW essentially boils down to the following main components:
- The mail (often there is only one, not several thousand threads of multiple mails and it's usually only mail, rather mail, code, data and commentary) was hacked and that's frightfully naughty. Aren't hackers nasty? Particularly when they are Russian.
This does not merit any response beyond laughter.
- The science is peer reviewed and it withstood that process.
Still an appeal to authority and, more importantly, dealt with damningly here.
- This is but one part of the literature, it's only a handful of bad apples and the structure is utterly unchanged even without it.
Firstly, we must understand how the whole thing hangs together, because the edifice of AGW is very definitely not just pure science, boffins in white coats in labs and so forth. It spans the whole gamut from real pure science, through the applied sciences and Engineering, passing through economics and finally ending up in the dark arts of Politics and Diplomacy. That's a lot to take in, so I have created a handy diagram that explains. Never let it be said that your polymathematic Pedant-General makes you do the hard work.
Let's start at the top, and bear with me.
- If the climate and recent changes are not unprecedented, then there's nothing to do. Let's go to the pub.
- If it is unprecedented, then we need to know why. If we don't know if it is unprecedented or if we don't know why, we need to stop here until we can find out.
- If it is unprecedented but it's not us, then we need to question seriously if there is anything that we can do about it and the answer to that is very very likely to be "no".
- If it is us, we then to move into economics. Will the damage outweigh the benefit?
- And even if the damage does outweigh the benefit, we still need to consider if the cost of stopping the climate change at source is less than the cost of adapting to the problem to minimise the damage.
- And even if the mitigation does cost less than adaptation, we need to ask if our only option for mitigation is to subborn all our freedom to a putative benevolent world government.
It is also useful to plot where you and your friends sit on this decision tree:
- Whilst I wouldn't wish to claim to speak for our diabolical host, I suspect that he is in the box labelled, if not actually, "in the pub".
- Steve McIntyre et al are in the "Find Out" box.
- Interestingly, although the "Hockey Team" declare themselves to be at least on the "yes it is caused by man", they appear both to have been buggering about at the bottom in the politics and policy bits and yet the leak makes it clear that actually they are indeed right there in the "Find Out" box with the very chap they hate so much. They really don't actually know. They want to like to think they do, but they know that actually they don't.
- Next, we get down to the economics and again, we find that there is a disconnect between stated and actual positions. The blogfather Tim Worstall—whatever his private views—maintains a carefully studied neutrality on the science, erring always on the side of "let's grant that it is correct". But he then falls off the "critical path" at the economics. If it's not clear that the downside of GW (whether "A" or not) are worse than the upside, it's similarly not at all clear that we have to do something (or that what we are already doing is not already enough). More importantly, the worse the climate situation is, the greater the cost of mitigation and the more attractive it is to go for adaptation. This is the oddity with the Stern Report. If his numbers are correct, we're either doing enough for mitigation already or we shouldn't be doing it at all. As the shrieking gets louder, the costs of mitigation inevitably rise and the argument gets stronger AGAINST mitigation.
- Finally we get to the politics and the Bjorn Lomborg position. Even if it is all ghastly, there are many more important things to do with our resources. Millions really actually will die from preventable water-borne diseases, malnutrition and malaria and we really actually can do something about those. Buggering about with the climate, although it definitely will be expensive, is desperately uncertain both in terms of its effectiveness and the lives it will save. That's not a good trade off.
Simples.
Except of course it is and it isn't. If you do really accept the heavily-lauded consensus, then the decision tree changes quite a bit. Think about it in first aid terms. If it is the case that the climate is changing in an unprecedented manner and that change is driven predominantly by manmade CO2 emissions, then we really shouldn't be muddling about with adapting to effects: we should address the cause and that inevitably means finding a way to reduce manmade CO2 emissions. The problem with this is that everything becomes a bit too clearcut and the diagram now looks like this:
Because there is a skip from the straight science, straight to politics and policy, the science becomes absolutely essential.
As a result, no dissent can be tolerated because the wheels come off very quickly as soon as you have to make your way through the rest of the decision tree.
Suggesting that it's not unprecedented is straight denial and even doubt has to be censored.
But what of George's Knights Carbonic? How can this small number of scientists with "clever mathematical techniques", or "fudge factors" according to taste, affect the whole scientific foundation layer.
Richard North suggests historical parallels, but his analysis does not pull back the curtain, "Wizard of Oz"-style, on the Knights Carbonic.
Permit me to try. Here's how the process works:
Temperatures, CO2 levels, sun spot numbers et al are gathered currently using all the sophistication that we have today. We have the real measured data but only for a short (and geologically utterly insignificant) period.
Next, we try to see if we can find other things, with a longer history, that might be useful for telling us what those key measurements might have been if we had been there at the time with all our technology to measure them. We need proxies and we need to show that those proxies are a good match with the current data.
Once we have done that, we can then use the proxy data to fill back the history. At this stage, we can also say whether or not we believe the current data to be exceptional even without reading the entrails from the GCMs etc.
Now we can add some light seasoning of the real physics and chemistry that determine how things actually work, thermodynamics, mechanics, spectral absorption of different gasses and the lot.
Finally, we bake all the ingredients together in the models to try and tie all the inputs (CO2 levels, solar activity, orbital wobbles etc) with the outputs (particularly temperature, but also climate generally, plus sea levels etc). In particular you are trying to identify how the each thing interacts with everything else, given all the control theory horrors of signal delays (introduced by thermal capacity of the oceans that delays temperature rises by the massive amount of energy required to do so) and feedback couplings (that the solvency of CO2 in water changes with temperature, so the oceans absorb and release CO2 in response to temperature).
But this is where the game is. If the temperature today is NOT unprecedented, in particular relative to the MWP, then we have a big fat data point that says the unprecedented current level of atmospheric CO2 probably isn't tremendously relevant to climate. Or rather, there is some other input signal that is just as important that we are overlooking and therefore the impact of CO2 will be being overstated.
This is not about whether we are warmer than we were 100 years ago. That is undeniable. 30 years ago, almost every Christmas in Scotland was white. Memories of sledging after Christmas lunch cannot be false consciousness. That stopped in about 1980 and has not happened since. The question is whether or not we are warmer than we were when they spoke Norse in Perth. That we are denied post-prandial sledging tells us nothing about that.
This is where CRUdGate is so important. Just look at where CRU and more generally Phil Jones and Michael Mann have - and have had - an influence on the process:
The Harry Read Me file shows just how badly knackered the HadCRUT temperature series really is. HADCRUT is one of a tiny number of recognised ("peer reviewed" even?) global temperature sources. All of them feed off each other and the people implicated in the emails are linked to some of the others. RealClimate's Gavin Schmidt, for example, is a protege of the team, is extensively mentioned in the audit trail of shame and works for NASA's GISS - one of the other of this tiny number of recognised ("peer reviewed" even?) global temperature sources.
So that's goosed the first box.
"Hide the Decline" reveals the fact that the second box doesn't work properly, especially for the tree-ring proxies. Since there is almost no-one of any stripe publishing in the field of paleodendroclimatology (sod the trillions of dollars to be squandered, I want that on a triple word score) who is not very deeply implicated in this leak, it is clear that the failings of this step have been censored.
There is then ample evidence of the attempt to wipe the MWP from the dendro data and we now know that MBH relied on just 12 trees in North America and, when that was challenged, just 1 tree—one lone tree—in Yamal, Siberia.
In any event, the whole paleo data thing is probably onto a hiding to nothing as we can't trust the two steps that got it there. So (I'm being a bit flippant here) any genuine proxy data (ice cores, lake sediments etc) is knackered because it's trying to be matched to goosed temperature data. That's not to say that there aren't pre-existing shenanigans there too though. So even if you haven't actually attempted to censor your failings (and the mails contain plenty of evidence that this has indeed been happening), your results are going to be goosed anyway.
By this stage, you don't have to touch the actual hard science because, since all your input data is garbage, your models are going to be garbage no matter how carefully you understand the basic physics.
Lastly and as a slight aside, why so little from the MSM? That one is easy. You need to have a decent analytical brain just to deal with the chain of events. You need to have a decent analytical brain, a mathematical/scientific mind and a good grasp of some very hard statistics to understand what is being done to massage the numbers and to see how significant it is to the chain of events.
Slice your average environment correspondent through the middle and you're going to find a left-leaning liberal arts graduate who is utterly out of his/her depth. Their world view is being swept from underneath them and they are being shown—in ways that they do not really and have never had to understand—that the guys they thought were the goodies are in fact "at it" and that those they have spent a decade disparaging as deniers were in fact spot on.
I would find that hard to report too.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Monday, 23 November 2009
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Time to act?
OH sounds a bit depressed.
It really does seem that it's past time that we do something. What that is, I don't know.
However, this crap has gone far, far beyond sane.
Let's get together and consider where to go.
It really does seem that it's past time that we do something. What that is, I don't know.
However, this crap has gone far, far beyond sane.
Let's get together and consider where to go.
Stop press - Harriet Harman to be prosecuted!
So the CPS has done a good thing and decided that HH should be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention, driving while using her mobile, and failing to stop at the scene of an accident!
Should be fun :)
Should be fun :)
Help for the unemployed and jobseekers? Maybe not.
My partners' daughter is bright, optimistic and motivated. Mind you, that's potentially in the process of suffering some damage. Not the bright bit, though.
She achieved a degree in Mechanical Engineering two years ago, worked for a year, then decided a masters degree would help he career. She's just passed that, and has been looking round, bright-eyed and eager, for her next job.
Trouble is, there aren't any.
Today, she went to the jobcentre in a certain amount of desperation, to register a claim and seek assistance in finding a job.
Because she shares a flat with her boyfriend, she's not entitled, it seems, to anything..... no benefits of any kind, and not even an interview to help find a job. They just basically told her she was on her own, and to go away.
She's hit a reality check hard. Prior to this, she basically believed in the integrity of government, the state. Like so many of her generation. So many to be disillusioned.
I'd like to see Brown explain and justify his policies to people like her, one to one. Because he's doing so much for the unemployed, isn't he?
She achieved a degree in Mechanical Engineering two years ago, worked for a year, then decided a masters degree would help he career. She's just passed that, and has been looking round, bright-eyed and eager, for her next job.
Trouble is, there aren't any.
Today, she went to the jobcentre in a certain amount of desperation, to register a claim and seek assistance in finding a job.
Because she shares a flat with her boyfriend, she's not entitled, it seems, to anything..... no benefits of any kind, and not even an interview to help find a job. They just basically told her she was on her own, and to go away.
She's hit a reality check hard. Prior to this, she basically believed in the integrity of government, the state. Like so many of her generation. So many to be disillusioned.
I'd like to see Brown explain and justify his policies to people like her, one to one. Because he's doing so much for the unemployed, isn't he?
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
A grand deceit
I'm stupid.
I lost sight of this.
What proportion of the population doesn't understand the difference between "defecit" and "debt"?
I'd wager it's frighteningly close to 100%.
So, to put it simply, the defecit is the gap between income and spending.
Aaaaand...... that means that Labour have just promised to legislate that our national debt will be slowed down from growing at £200 billion a year now to £100 billion a year in four years time.
Wonderful. Thank you Gordon, you liar, you deceiver, you hate figure, you selfish, freedom hating scum. As time goes on, I realise I'm coming to hate you with a burning passion I've never experienced before. You've subverted our country by your misrepresentation and "clever" manipulation. You drone on and on with your preprepared misinformation speeches.
I want you gone. I want the average person to see what you've done and you're doing.
This socialist, statist government is finally showing its true colours. The things that New Labour tried to hide.
Just bugger off.
I lost sight of this.
What proportion of the population doesn't understand the difference between "defecit" and "debt"?
I'd wager it's frighteningly close to 100%.
So, to put it simply, the defecit is the gap between income and spending.
Aaaaand...... that means that Labour have just promised to legislate that our national debt will be slowed down from growing at £200 billion a year now to £100 billion a year in four years time.
Wonderful. Thank you Gordon, you liar, you deceiver, you hate figure, you selfish, freedom hating scum. As time goes on, I realise I'm coming to hate you with a burning passion I've never experienced before. You've subverted our country by your misrepresentation and "clever" manipulation. You drone on and on with your preprepared misinformation speeches.
I want you gone. I want the average person to see what you've done and you're doing.
This socialist, statist government is finally showing its true colours. The things that New Labour tried to hide.
Just bugger off.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
A sobering and frightening read....
I commend you to read Anna Raccoon's article over at OH's place on the Court of Protection.
If anything highlights the evil immoral, and in any other circumstances, surely illegal nature of state control gone mad, this does. I find it hard to understand how it has been allowed to continue without total public outcry.
Much power to Anna in her determined campaign to shine some light on this abomination.
If anything highlights the evil immoral, and in any other circumstances, surely illegal nature of state control gone mad, this does. I find it hard to understand how it has been allowed to continue without total public outcry.
Much power to Anna in her determined campaign to shine some light on this abomination.
Apologies?
So, as I heard on the radio this morning, Gordon Brown is going to apologise for the UK's role in sending thousands of children to the colonies, where many were abused.
Another apology from Brown the clown for something he wasn't actually responsible for. Call me thick, if you want, but how can he possibly apologise and it mean anything? It's stupid and meaningless, illogical. Decry and condemn the actions, by all means. Say it was wrong and never should have happened. Express sympathy to the parents and children affected. But apologise?
He's free enough with these meaningless apologies, isn't he? But as John Redwood points out, there are lots of things we'd really like to hear an apology for!
Another apology from Brown the clown for something he wasn't actually responsible for. Call me thick, if you want, but how can he possibly apologise and it mean anything? It's stupid and meaningless, illogical. Decry and condemn the actions, by all means. Say it was wrong and never should have happened. Express sympathy to the parents and children affected. But apologise?
He's free enough with these meaningless apologies, isn't he? But as John Redwood points out, there are lots of things we'd really like to hear an apology for!
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
A stranger in my own land
I posted the other day on my negative feelings about the way things are.
Seriously, I feel absolutely appalled at how the country has changed in the last decade or so, and shocked and guilty that it's really only very recently that I've noticed.
Reading stories like this, this, this, this, this, the Neather stuff (and the subsequent Home Office leak confirming it), the barefaced lies and deceit spewed by most labour politicians, and the general decline in the standard of living and quality of life, while the politicians live the life of Reilly and get away with murder, I just feel like curling up and giving in.
This honestly is not the country I grew up in. And the coming adult generation won't know how things were. They've grown up, been indoctrinated by the government on things like climate change, and most of them can't see what's wrong with all the impostions and intrusions and limitations and control on our lives.
As I see it, there is a limited window of opportunity to restore the balance, to roll back the iniquities and corruption of democracy that labour have wrought, before the sheep overwhelm those that can think and see and fight for what is right. Like it or not, the next government will almost certainly be a Tory one. Regardless of what many bloggers say about the Tories delivering just more of the same, I believe that Cameron has enough of the right instincts to want to do enough of the right things to restore some sanity to our lives. I think we need to support them, but hold them accountable - they can have my vote, but I insist on them making lots of changes - unpicking all the rubbish legislation and giving us our independance and privacy back.
Right now, I feel like an outsider in this country and this society. I hate what has been done to it, and those who did it, with a burning, incandescant rage. I despise Brown, and Blair before him, and all this government for the astronomical deceit and arrogant, self-indulgent underhand planned infiltration and undermining and corruption that they fooled the country with. I earnestly believe they should be charged with treason.
Seriously, I feel absolutely appalled at how the country has changed in the last decade or so, and shocked and guilty that it's really only very recently that I've noticed.
Reading stories like this, this, this, this, this, the Neather stuff (and the subsequent Home Office leak confirming it), the barefaced lies and deceit spewed by most labour politicians, and the general decline in the standard of living and quality of life, while the politicians live the life of Reilly and get away with murder, I just feel like curling up and giving in.
This honestly is not the country I grew up in. And the coming adult generation won't know how things were. They've grown up, been indoctrinated by the government on things like climate change, and most of them can't see what's wrong with all the impostions and intrusions and limitations and control on our lives.
As I see it, there is a limited window of opportunity to restore the balance, to roll back the iniquities and corruption of democracy that labour have wrought, before the sheep overwhelm those that can think and see and fight for what is right. Like it or not, the next government will almost certainly be a Tory one. Regardless of what many bloggers say about the Tories delivering just more of the same, I believe that Cameron has enough of the right instincts to want to do enough of the right things to restore some sanity to our lives. I think we need to support them, but hold them accountable - they can have my vote, but I insist on them making lots of changes - unpicking all the rubbish legislation and giving us our independance and privacy back.
Right now, I feel like an outsider in this country and this society. I hate what has been done to it, and those who did it, with a burning, incandescant rage. I despise Brown, and Blair before him, and all this government for the astronomical deceit and arrogant, self-indulgent underhand planned infiltration and undermining and corruption that they fooled the country with. I earnestly believe they should be charged with treason.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Keep things like this alive!
I quote verbatim from OH, and I do my little bit to stop important sentiment from being cleansed from the Interweb.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Mandelson censors Jeremy Clarkson
I spotted this earlier by Jeremy Clarkson in the Times. Great article
Jeremy Clarkson
Sunday Times
I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I’m afraid I’ve decided that it’s no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I’m afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn’t alive any more.
He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country’s top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon the conniving idiot has leapt
I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn’t bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he’s resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.
There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can’t see the point because she won’t be going to university, because she doesn’t have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don’t live in America.
Then you have the chaps and chapesses who can’t stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They can’t understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nation’s capital. They can’t understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They can’t understand anything. They see the Highway Wombles in those brand new 4x4s that they paid for, and they see the M4 bus lane and they see the speed cameras and the community support officers and they see the Albanians stealing their wheelbarrows and nothing can be done because it’s racist.
And they see Alistair Darling handing over £4,350 of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesn’t understand because he’s a small-town solicitor, and they see the stupid war on drugs and the war on drink and the war on smoking and the war on hunting and the war on fun and the war on scientists and the obsession with the climate and the price of train fares soaring past £1,000 and the Guardian power-brokers getting uppity about one shot baboon and not uppity at all about all the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, and how they got rid of Blair only to find the lying twerp is now going to come back even more powerful than ever, and they think, “I’ve had enough of this. I’m off.”
It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?
You can’t go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can’t go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don’t sweep your lawn properly, and you can’t go to Italy because you’ll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse’s head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for “organising” a plumber.
You can’t go to Australia because it’s full of things that will eat you, you can’t go to New Zealand because they don’t accept anyone who is more than 40 and you can’t go to Monte Carlo because they don’t accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you can’t go to Spain because you’re not called Del and you weren’t involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you can’t go to Germany ... because you just can’t.
The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you’ll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it’s okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can’t go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.
Canada’s full of people pretending to be French, South Africa’s too risky, Russia’s worse and everywhere else is too full of snow, too full of flies or too full of people who want to cut your head off on the internet. So you can dream all you like about upping sticks and moving to a country that doesn’t help itself to half of everything you earn and then spend the money it gets on bus lanes and advertisements about the dangers of salt. But wherever you go you’ll wind up an alcoholic or dead or bored or in a cellar, in an orange jumpsuit, gently wetting yourself on the web. All of these things are worse than being persecuted for eating a sandwich at the wheel.
I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it’s been for decades, but the lunatics who’ve made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.
So actually I do see a reason to be miserable. Which is why I think it’s a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit. onto in the meantime.
Guess what? It's gone
Red Rag to a Bull, I say.
Ha! But the article is still being advertised in the Times comment banner!
Update: Well, that's a good story spoiled..... it's on the Times website again!
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Tired, confused, sad and pessimistic
Today, I feel mostly despair.
I've watched all that's gone on over the last few years with anger and disappointment.
Recently, it's got so much worse. Especially the intrusions into how we lead our lives; our liberties and our freedom to act, harmlessly, as we want.
The thing that really makes me despair is a result, as I've blogged earlier, of the fact that our children have seen no different. When I say our children, I mean those capable of coherent and logical thought, of course. With some kind of values. Not the wild animals that the underclass has graced us with.
I'm seeing more and more, people that have no sense of a value of our nationality. No sense of suspicion of the motives behind european politicians. No realisation that our freedom and our rights are being washed away. No hesitation in saying "yes, lets surrender our freedom to the EU project". They have no sense of vested interests...... see Kinnock, and what he earned and earns through the EU, and so many besides. The naivety terrifies me.
Look at the comments on any news item. How dissenting voices are shouted down.
What can we do? Please.
I've watched all that's gone on over the last few years with anger and disappointment.
Recently, it's got so much worse. Especially the intrusions into how we lead our lives; our liberties and our freedom to act, harmlessly, as we want.
The thing that really makes me despair is a result, as I've blogged earlier, of the fact that our children have seen no different. When I say our children, I mean those capable of coherent and logical thought, of course. With some kind of values. Not the wild animals that the underclass has graced us with.
I'm seeing more and more, people that have no sense of a value of our nationality. No sense of suspicion of the motives behind european politicians. No realisation that our freedom and our rights are being washed away. No hesitation in saying "yes, lets surrender our freedom to the EU project". They have no sense of vested interests...... see Kinnock, and what he earned and earns through the EU, and so many besides. The naivety terrifies me.
Look at the comments on any news item. How dissenting voices are shouted down.
What can we do? Please.
Friday, 6 November 2009
Afghanistan
After listening to Brown drone on this morning, a few things occur to me.
I'm fully behind our troops, and I think it's unhelpful, to say the least, when people try to connect any criticism or questioning of policy or tasking of the forces with lack of support for them.
It increasingly seems to me that we're chasing an impossible outcome, and losing lives in the process, if we follow the route of trying to achieve a corruption free, western style democracy in Afghanistan. "Corruption" is seen as the norm there, and accepted by the Afghans. They are a tribal society. It's been that way for centuries.
All we really need to see happen, is for a stable society/government to settle down there. If it's tribal, regionalised, and doesn't conform to our notion of morality, we should let them have that, as long as there's a framework in place to ensure it works. Why should we impose our notion of how a society should look on them?
Did anyone notice, too, how Brown played his old trick of dumping responsibility onto others? It's up to Karzai and the Afghan government to make all this work. And - he said, if I recall properly, that if they fail, they will not be deserving of outside help. Can you believe that? What happens then, Brown? You said we're there to protect ourselves - to stop terrorist attacks on our streets. Are you really going to say after the next bombing "it's not my fault, it's Karzai's!".
The final thought, that sent a shudder through me, was that Brown can say whatever he wants. He knows he doesn't have to deliver, only has to hang on for six months. Then it's someone else's problem.
I'm fully behind our troops, and I think it's unhelpful, to say the least, when people try to connect any criticism or questioning of policy or tasking of the forces with lack of support for them.
It increasingly seems to me that we're chasing an impossible outcome, and losing lives in the process, if we follow the route of trying to achieve a corruption free, western style democracy in Afghanistan. "Corruption" is seen as the norm there, and accepted by the Afghans. They are a tribal society. It's been that way for centuries.
All we really need to see happen, is for a stable society/government to settle down there. If it's tribal, regionalised, and doesn't conform to our notion of morality, we should let them have that, as long as there's a framework in place to ensure it works. Why should we impose our notion of how a society should look on them?
Did anyone notice, too, how Brown played his old trick of dumping responsibility onto others? It's up to Karzai and the Afghan government to make all this work. And - he said, if I recall properly, that if they fail, they will not be deserving of outside help. Can you believe that? What happens then, Brown? You said we're there to protect ourselves - to stop terrorist attacks on our streets. Are you really going to say after the next bombing "it's not my fault, it's Karzai's!".
The final thought, that sent a shudder through me, was that Brown can say whatever he wants. He knows he doesn't have to deliver, only has to hang on for six months. Then it's someone else's problem.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Oh, god - just look at this!
This QE business looks like it's just making things worse. The article at CH shows that the billions injected into the economy is essentially just IOUs for the government debt. It's not going to help the economy at all.
Please, let's get this government out and have a fresh start!
Please, let's get this government out and have a fresh start!
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Lord Sugar of TackyAmstradville - what a prat!
See.
Very constructive. Can we disenoble people? Why was he made a Lord, other than by a Tourettes jerk by Brown?
Ridiculous.
Very constructive. Can we disenoble people? Why was he made a Lord, other than by a Tourettes jerk by Brown?
Ridiculous.
A conflict of interests?
Actually, it rather demonstrates a purpose to the madness.
Al Gore is set to become the first carbon billionaire. I'm beginning to be more persuaded by the huge commercial and political interests involved than by the science that AGW is a major hoax and manipulation of society. It truly is a religion now.
What do you think?
Al Gore is set to become the first carbon billionaire. I'm beginning to be more persuaded by the huge commercial and political interests involved than by the science that AGW is a major hoax and manipulation of society. It truly is a religion now.
What do you think?
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Please pass this on!
This is the first good article in the mainstream press I've seen since the original item, revealing how Labour maliciously and willfully encouraged mass immigration. I really, really want everyone in this country to know about this and understand how outrageous and criminally thay have behaved.
Getting angrier and angrier.....
Getting angrier and angrier.....
Megrahi - an update at last!
I've been wondering about the health of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, who was released on "compassionate" grounds, due to experts having assessed that he had three months to live.
The Telegraph carries a story today. It seems that his health has not significantly deteriorated.
Surprise, surprise.
What kicked me in the face, though, was who the "experts" who gave the diagnosis were. Now, bear in mind that the figure of three months is critical, as that is what is required to meet the guidelines for compassionate release.
Expert #1
Well, that sounds good..... but read on....
The Telegraph carries a story today. It seems that his health has not significantly deteriorated.
Surprise, surprise.
What kicked me in the face, though, was who the "experts" who gave the diagnosis were. Now, bear in mind that the figure of three months is critical, as that is what is required to meet the guidelines for compassionate release.
Expert #1
Within three weeks of the medical examination by Professor Karol Sikora, one of Britain's leading cancer specialists, Megrahi was put on a plane and sent home to Tripoli to die.
Well, that sounds good..... but read on....
Smelly? Who were the other two experts?Prof Sikora, who is the medical director of CancerPartnersUK in London, was one of three doctors who visited Megrahi in jail on July 28.
He was paid a one-day consultancy fee by the Libyan government to draw up a report delivered two days later. In an interview in September not long after Megrahi's release, Prof Sikora said he was initially "pessimistic" that the experts could say he would survive any less than a year.
But Prof Sikora admitted that the Libyans had encouraged him to conclude that Megrahi had just three months to live following his examination.
"The figure of three months was suggested as being helpful [by the Libyans]," he said. "To start with I said it was impossible to do that but, when I looked at it, it looked as though it could be done – you could actually say that."
While one of the doctors in the team was apparently 'more vague' about putting a limit on Megrahi's life expectancy, a third doctor, Professor Ibrahim Sharif, a Libyan oncologist from the Tripoli Medical Centre, agreed Megrahi had 'about three months'.I don't recall these sort of details being aired at the time, do you? An interesting quote from another, "real world doctor"....
Prof Nick James, professor of clinical oncology at the University of Birmingham, said: "I would not be surprised if Megrahi was still here well into next year. For sure it could be right his condition has not deteriorated."What a stitch up. Given all the other things we've learned recently, I withdraw the benefit of the doubt to anything the government says. Even more than I did before.
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