Car scrappage scheme ends

The government car scrappage scheme has now ended. It cost £400,000 and the government claims that it helped save 4000 jobs.
Full story here
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/research/2010/03/expensive-scrappage.html


Do the maths. It works out that the government spent £100,000 of taxpayers money to safeguard a job that probably pays £25,000 pa. Someone on £25k probably pays 8k in taxes and NI, so they spend £100k and get 8k back.


Sound economics eh?


http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/research/2010/03/expensive-scrappage.html

UPDATE. All the cars are stored on the runway at Thurleigh. Sensible eh? The government paid to empty acres of new cars stored on runways, and left thousands of older cars in their place.

The first soviet style show trial

We all know about baby P. We know how disfunctional the Social Services were. We all know that it cost Sharon Shoesmith her job. We all know that.


The Daily Mail's article here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262812/Baby-P-report-Sharon-Shoesmith-beefed-justify-sacking.html
reports that Ed Balls ordered that the report into the scandal be "beefed up" in order to intensify pressure on Ms Shoesmith, and in time she was dismissed, with the full approval of mad Hatty Harperson's "court of public opinion".


I'm not disputing that Ms Shoesmith should have been sacked. She should never have been appointed in the first place. Overpromoted individuals are commonplace in most organisations, but the current obsession with quotas and political correctness has enables incompetents to get into positions of influence based solely on their ability to spout jargon and knowing the right people. Ms Shoesmith is one such person.


However, Ed Balls insistence that they rewrite the report in order to get Shoesmith sacked, if proven, has set a dangerous precedent. We have now returned to Stalinist style purges and show trials.


So who will be next?

Local Government Rich List

The Taxpayer's Alliance have been doing some heavyweight research to find out exactly how much the local government fat cats are troughing.
The results can be found here
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/thrl2010.pdf
It's almost 200 pages long but it's worth checking up how much the top dogs and bitches at your local council are trousering.
There are at least 1250 of them earning more than £100,000 a year, and in this time of economic uncertainty, where many in the private sector have either lost their jobs, had below inflation pay rises or indeed, pay freezes or cuts, isn't it heartening to know that this figure has grown by 14% since 2007-8?
Well no actually.
These people are public servants. They serve us. Remember that.

I checked the list and found that Corby Borough Council don't have anyone earning more than £100k, but Kettering Borough Council's Town Clerk (or as he prefers to be addressed, Chief Executive) David Cook earns a whopping £145,000.
My council tax goes to pay his salary, then his pension, then the other salaries, then their pensions... oh and if there's anything left, they might empty my bin every couple of weeks.
I worked as a binman as an agency temp a few years ago. It was hard work and I was paid the national minimum wage, which as everyone knows, is actually the national maximum wage.
If the Chief Executive's pay were cut back to £100k (still four times the national average) they could afford to employ a couple more bin men. They'd be a lot more useful.

Northants County Council have seven people earning more than £100k. I'm not sure what any of them actually do, as their titles are in government doublespeak. I mean, what exactly is a "Director for Community Leadership"? We pay him/her over £117k. Nice little earner that.
And the Chief Executive gets almost £180k!

East Northants Town Clerk (sorry, chief executive) earned about £105k


South Northants failed to respond to the TPA's Freedom of Information requests.
Remember that. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"?

Northampton Borough Council also refused to give the information, despite being asked under the Freedom of Information Act. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear", eh?




Wellingborough council's chief executive "only" earned £110k. Compared to Kettering, that's good value. Both Corby and Wellingborough have free car parking for their shoppers and their chief executives earn far less than Kettering's.
Does this mean that parking charges in my town are there to help pay the Chief Executive's salary? We need to be told.


I encourage you all to have a look at the TPA report, and ask yourself if our local councils are serving us, or are we serving them?


http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/thrl2010.pdf

April 1st

It's April 1st, April Fools Day, traditionally the day when the media publish spoof stories. I bought a copy of the Daily Mail and scanned the pages to see if I could find the spoof stories among the genuine ones.


One of these stories is a spoof. But which one?
Is it this one?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262584/First-wives-swept-aside-whim-rich-powerful-Top-barristers-wife-wins-215-000-payout-husband-divorced-25-years-ago.html

Apparently a barrister's ex-wife has successfully won another £215k payout 25 years after they divorced. My first marriage ended almost 30 years ago. Does this verdict open the door to my ex-wife sueing me for money to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed half a lifetime ago? You couldn't make that up, could you?


What about this one?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262533/The-Hubble-Bubble-tower-welcome-visitors-London-2012-Olympics.html


A huge twisted pile of rusty looking steel will be the lasting monument to the London Olympics. Ironic eh? They allowed the Stratford area of East London to become run down so that it resembled a bomb site, with ruined factories and warehouses everywhere, then clear away all the wreckage and leave in its place a huge pile of twisted steel, designed and funded by foreigners. They are having a laugh at our expense aren't they? This is the April fool story, isn't it?




Ok, is it this one?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262708/Goldfish-seller-Joan-Higgins-gets-used-life-tagged-criminal.html


Pet shop owner gets caught in a sting mounted by trading standards for selling a goldfish to a 14 year old (a crime that didn't exist 4 years ago) and is fined £1000, is placed under curfew and has to wear a tag. That has to be a spoof doesn't it?


This one?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262697/Auctioneer-Jim-Railton-fined-1-000-selling-oak-cabinet-bird-eggs-inside.html

An auctioneer with 20 years experience has been fined £1000 for attempting to sell a 100 year old wooden cabinet complete with 100 year old eggs, most of which were broken. He was arrested, fingerprinted, a DNA swab taken before being bailed.
He turned up in court expecting a wrist slapping, but no he was fined £1000 and had to pay costs.

"A spokesman for the RSPB said: 'We are very happy with the result. The fine imposed by the magistrates shows the importance of these cases.'

Dear RSPB, you will never receive a penny from me again.
Oh, and all the stories are genuine. It's too depressing for words.

Off to buy some whitewash

The report into the leaked emails has been published and the verdict is as expected- a total whitewash.
I despair.
Read Antony Watts post here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/30/results-of-the-climategate-paliamentary-inquiry-in-the-uk/#more-17952
Here's the press release

"Phil Willis MP, Committee Chair, said:
“Climate science is a matter of global importance. On the basis of the science, governments across the world will be spending trillions of pounds on climate change mitigation. The quality of the science therefore has to be irreproachable. What this inquiry revealed was that climate scientists need to take steps to make available all the data that support their work and full methodological workings, including their computer codes. Had both been available, many of the problems at CRU could have been avoided.”
The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.
On the much cited phrases in the leaked e-mails-”trick” and “hiding the decline”-the Committee considers that they were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead.
Insofar as the Committee was able to consider accusations of dishonesty against CRU, the Committee considers that there is no case to answer.
The Committee found no reason in this inquiry to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity”. But this was not an inquiry into the science produced by CRU and it will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel, announced by the University on 22 March, to determine whether the work of CRU has been soundly built.
On the mishandling of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, the Committee considers that much of the responsibility should lie with the University, not CRU. The leaked e-mails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure, particularly to climate change sceptics. The failure of the University to grasp fully the potential damage this could do and did was regrettable. The University needs to re-assess how it can support academics whose expertise in FoI requests is limited."


Nothing to see here. Move along please.


But wait a minute. This is our money they're spending. And they're going to tax us into the stone ages if they get their way.


You can't build the truth using a lie for foundations.
And there ain't no right way to do a wrong thing.
Who gains from all this? Follow the money.

I will continue to ignore everything the government and global warming scientists publish because unless they can convince me that their motives are good, the science is clear and unambiguous and has been subject to rigorous scrutiny by both sides of the argument, and when the sponsors of this new religion practise what they preach, as far as I'm concerned it's just hot air and spin.

Spin spin and more spin

I'm a bit late responding to this, as the original article was published in the Daily Mail yesterday
You can read it here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1261290/HEATHER-BROOKE-The-great-razzle-dazzle-rip-off.html

The government is the biggest advertiser on tv. I've stopped watching them because they are almost all factually incorrect or biased or downright lies. Global warming, passive smoking, obesity, all designed to keep the population fearful and/or guilty.
The police, the NHS and local government spent countless millions every year on spin. Nobody in any of these organisations is allowed to speak to the media without the permission of the relevant press office.
This is from the Mail yesterday

"The TaxPayers' Alliance, the campaign group for lower taxes, trawled through 445 annual reports just for 2008 and then all those for previous years to compare spending.
The 2008 report revealed the average local authority spent £971,985 on publicity, with the total local authority publicity bill being £430million. Six local authorities each spend more than £5million annually on publicity, including Birmingham City Council, which spent more than £9million. Tower Hamlets, my old council and one of Britain's most deprived boroughs, spent £2,354,000 in 2007-08 on Press and PR - an increase of 82.6 per cent from ten years before."

Inspector Gadget reports that Northumbria Police nominated themselves and won a public relations award "for the way they handled the media after the tragedy of a schoolgirl knocked down and killed by a speeding patrol car."

I encourage you to visit his blogsite and read the article. You'll be astonished and appalled

 

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/hayley-adamson-is-dead-but-nprthumbria-win-gold/

All this money being spent on press officers and media advisors instead of front line services. Thousands upon thousands of Comical Alis defending the indefensible.

Now you'll know where all those media studies and political science graduates got jobs. Very cosy.

Ayn Rand quotes

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. "


"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."

 "Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims"

"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? "

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see. " 

 "The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

More here-
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ayn_rand.html 


 

Policing with the public's consent

If you google "Peelian principles" you will discover that Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the modern day police force enshrined a number of principles. Here they are-

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it

A few years back when I was involved in our local Community Association we had a local bobby. It sounds unbelievable I know but only fifteen years ago the Police used to assign a full time Police Officer (not a PCSO) to our part of town. He'd patrol the area, visit the local schools, pubs and shops and be a visible presence. He even attended our meetings, as his bosses said it was a good idea. All that changed when the new Chief Constable came in. All the police were assigned to a central pool and allocated as required, which meant that we never saw a policeman or woman again as they were all in Northampton.
Our community policeman had a mantra which he'd repeat at every opportunity.
"The Police only police with the public's consent."

Which explains a lot. It explains why travellers can set up camp anywhere and terrorise whole towns. It explains why the police won't enter a gypsy camp to recover stolen goods even if they have cast iron proof that the villains are there with the loot. It explains why Peterborough is overrun with Eastern Europeans who are killing and eating all the wildlife along the Riven Nene. It explains why the huge travellers camp to the north of the city is a no-go area.

The inhabitants of these illegal camps won't consent to being policed, and the Police only police those who consent.

It explains why have a go heroes are arrested and jailed while the villains go free. It's because they don't consent to being policed you see?

And now the government want us to spy on each other and report illegal activities to the police.
Well I don't consent.

Ayn Rand was right all along

The Devils Kitchen blog has an interesting post. He's commenting on the number of laws that Labour have passed in the last thirteen years. It's 4000 plus and still rising.
I've often said that the law will make criminals of us all, and it appears to be looming closer each day.
DK quotes from Ayn Rand's 1957 masterpiece "Atlas Shrugged", and I've copied the quote for you to read
""Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against—then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

So now you know. Governments rule by guilt and fear. They have to have a bogeyman to keep you in line. Once upon a time it was the "reds under the bed", now it's climate change.
Don't believe a single solitary word. Ever.
And wake up to the fact that we are facing enslavement.

West ham Utd & UK Plc

I happened to watch West Ham Utd get beaten by Wolves earlier this week. They are in a mess. Whatever your football allegiance, you have to admit that if they go down, they will fall a long way, further than Leeds Utd. If they stay up, they may survive.
This is David Sullivan and David Gold's press conference when they took over the club. Listen to them. The cupboard is bare. There will be no money coming in for years. The previous owners have borrowed and borrowed, using season ticket income for the next two seasons. Any money they get for selling players will only go to service debt.


It's like UK Plc in miniature. West Ham owe more money than most people can imagine, but it's nothing compared to what UK Plc currently owes. UK Plc doesn't have any assets. It no longer owns any part of the infrastructure. It owes trillions. The only thing going for it is its AAA credit rating, which is a bit like Premier League football status. Lose that, and you go into freefall.


I watched a bit of the budget yesterday. In the end I gave up in disgust. Such lies, amounting to treason.
The electorate are in denial. They don't want to hear about how bad it really is. Like West Ham supporters, they feed on past glories and believe that the good times are just around the corner.
It may just be that Labour pull it off and get re-elected. It may be that West Ham surive and live to fight another day. However, the debt is still there. It won't go away.


I can easily envisage a press conference in the near futuure where the new Prime Minister and his Chancellor sit down and tell it like it is, just like Messrs Sullivan and Gold did.


No I can't. For all their unsavoury background in pornography and sex aids, Sullivan & Gold are more honourable and more honest than any politician sitting in the house. And I never thought I'd ever think that. Dream on people, the good times are just around the corner.

Combatting scepticism by shouting loudly

Biased-BBC pointed me to an interesting article on this site
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/03/combating-the-growing-influence-of-climate-sceptics/




Now I'm an AGW sceptic. As far as I can see, global warming or climate change is all about money. There's money to be had by trading on people's fears and taxing them as punishment.
When the "climategate" story broke, it revealed to the world that the figures quoted by all the "authorities" were in fact made up. The antics of the warmists and their refusal to countenance any deviation from the party line, followed by calling us "denialists" only made me more convinced of the shakiness of their argument. The science is not settled, and when one party in a debate has to resort to name calling, then he has lost the debate, full stop.


The BBC and the Met Office are central to their cause. This was highlighted in a recent report commissioned by fake charity and political lobby group Oxfam . My eye was drawn to this line on the Leftfootforward site, which sums them up -
"Oh, and remember to check out James Delingpole’s column at the Telegraph. If any of it makes you angry, you might like to let him know. Did I say be polite? Scratch that."

So, more encouragement to be rude towards sceptics. You don't win arguments by shouting louder than everyone else.
Here's a handy little diagram that accompanies the article.

Click on it to enlarge it.

The truth about rubbish

The Daily Mail is running an article about the possibility of households being fined up to £1000 for putting the wrong rubbish in their bins. Of course, this is the Daily Mail and they've never knowingly underhyped a story, but it's worth investigating a bit. The story is here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258755/Families-face-fine-using-wrong-bin-household-waste-crackdown.html


There is a simple way to counter this of course and that's to make sure that you leave no identifying items in your bin and just empty the bin in the street and phone the fly-tipping hot line and ask the council to come and pick it up. Not that I'm suggesting any such thing of course.
Local councils must be made to understand that they are the servants of the people and not the other way around. We pay a lot of money in council tax and we expect a good service. The knee jerk reaction of local authorities when their ivory tower existence is threatened is to pull the "washington monument" trick. Cut front line services while keeping their won overpaid and overbloated existence unchanged.

I note that this rule only applies to household waste. In my day job as office manager of a solicitor's firm I have to deal with the disposal of the waste that we generate. In our town we buy blue rubbish bags from the council. They are currently about £1.50 each. Being a good citizen and mindful of the need to avoid putting recyclable items into landfill, I asked if the council would take our cardboard and paper separately.
The answer amazed me. No they wouldn't. They have no facility for separating trade waste. They had no plans to instigate separate collections or even provide a collection point for my cardboard and old newspapers. They weren't interested. So, we have a double standard in the heart of local council's recycling policy. If you're a household, you separate everything, if you're a business you can't. Not "don't have to" but "can't". That's crazy.
I refuse to pay the council to take away paper and cardboard that could easily be recycled. The council will quite happily fill up its landfill sites with trade waste , whilst fleecing the householder and wringing its hands and making us all feel guilty about some european directive or other.
Admittedly we are a small firm and we can easily recycle within the office.Our confidential waste has to be securely disposed of, but old envelopes and newspapers and spam faxes about lease cars and drinks machines can be boxed up and taken to the local public tip every month or so. we recycle our cardboard and cans through our houselhold collections and we've cut our trade waste to one bag per week.
Recycling and recycling policy- it's all rubbish, designed to extract more cash so that the council fatcats can get their gold plated pensions.
Local government officials used to be called public servants. When did that change? As far as I'm concerned it never has.

Cash-Gordon

Wind farm contract cancelled

At last, some sense regarding wind farms. They are an expensive eyesore and are bad for your health and for the local wildlife. They only work if the wind is blowing and won't work at all if the wind is too strong. You still have to have a backup in the form of coal fired or nuclear power stations.

Denmark is held up to be the shining example of renewable energy. It's a myth. Most of the time they have to buy electricity from neighbouring countries. Any electricity that is produced is way too expensive. Renewable energy is just another scam, and only exists in order to claim the generous subsidies on offer.
One of the comments on Wattsupwiththat-
"Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).
Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark’s largest energy utilities) tells us that “wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and additional coal- and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery… "

Someone wrote that green energy is not green if it requires a subsidy. Amen to that.

So here's the news from the US
"In a statement made last Friday by EDF Energies Nouvelles (French Green Power Company), a power purchase agreement was terminated without explanation by Indianapolis Power and Light Company regarding the supply of wind energy by enXco, a local EDF company. The contract was unilaterally terminated by IPL, and more than 10 days later, EDF has acknowledged it to the market."

Somebody woke up to the fact that as well as erecting scores of unsightly turbines, they'd also have to build a new back up generating facility. So why have the windfarm at all?

Every week we hear of more plans to desecrate our countryside with windfarms. This part of the UK is not known for being windy- far from it. So why do they persist? It couldn't be for the subsidies on offer could it?
Full story here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/15/indianapolis-wind-power-contract-canceled/

Get rid of the non jobs

The public sector Unison has recently launched a video that claims that cuts to public spending will hit front line services. This is called the Washington Monument Syndrome. Defined on Wiki as
"Washington Monument Syndrome, also called the "Mount Rushmore Syndrome", is the name of a political tactic used by bureaucrats when faced with reductions in the rate of projected increases in budget or actual budget cuts. The most visible and most appreciated service that is provided by that entity is the first to be put on the chopping block. The name derives from the National Park Service's habit of saying that any cuts to its projected increases would lead to an immediate closure of the wildly popular (and not very expensive to maintain) Washington Monument.

The Taxpayers Alliance have issued their version of Unison's video. It shows that public expenditure can be reduced without harming front line services
Check it out here

Even Google can't cope with Kettering Town Centre

I was bored so I decided to look at our house on Google Streetview. After I'd done that I decided to look at the street where I work. It's right in the town centre and in the middle of Kettering's notorious one way system. It seems that the street isn't on Street view. OK, no problem. I rather expected that. After all, the traffic system is a trap for the unwary.
The traffic mess all began about twenty years ago when a branch of Wilkinsons opened. They very conveniently placed a pedestrian crossing between Wilkinsons and the shopping centre doors. The street was the main north-south thoroughfare through town.
The inevitable result was gridlock in the town centre. Cars just couldn't make any progress along Newland St without shoppers walking straight into the road and bringing traffic to a halt.
The simple and cheap solution would have been a pelican crossing linked to the traffic lights fifty yards away. It would have cost a few thousand at most. But no, this is Kettering Borough Council that we're talking about.
They appointed consultants with a brief to stop traffic from clogging up the town centre. The result was staggering both in terms of the cost and the ineptitude of those who carried it out. Overnight it made rat runs of previously sleepy and traffic free streets. If you didn't know the town it was impossible to travel from south to north without either driving through a pedestrian precinct or through one of the rat runs. It was a fiasco.
Eventually the Council caved in to pressure and asked the consultants to revisit the brief. One expensive consultation later and they came back and said that they'd fulfilled the brief to the letter, therefore there was no problem.
They were asked to stop the traffic from clogging up the town centre and they had. The fact that it now clogged up the side streets was neither here nor there.

Sometime last March a google car tried to negotiate the town centre traffic system. The driver failed and the evidence is there for everyone to see.
Type NN16 0BN and follow the arrows. The driver should have turned right into Montagu Street but instead made an illegal left turn into Gold St. He continued along the pedestrianised street to the junction with Meeting Lane. He must have got confused because Streetview stops there. I wonder if the poor chap is still driving around and around, trying to get out?

Whatever it is- I'm against it

Groucho Marx's wonderful satire on grundyism*.

The Marx Brothers began their careers during one of the craziest periods in US history- the prohibition era. It's now acknowledged that alcohol consumption went up during the "dry" years, and it allowed organised crime to control the supply and reap the profits. The US government had to reinforce the ban and had no revenue from liquor sales to pay for the enforcement.All brought on following an outbreak of grundyism.
The same this is happening today re the smoking ban. People still smoke as much and much of it is contraband. So the government has all the hassle of upholding an unjust law with none of the revenue. Added to that is the fact that pubs are closing down everywhere and the government is losing VAT and tax revenue that way.
And all because of a few Mrs Grundies who hate the idea that people might actually be enjoying themselves and put every obstacle in their paths to stop it.
So when he sang this song back in 1932, did all the Mrs Grundys realise he was taking the piss out of them?

Just listen to the words of this song that's less than a minute long.


*Wikipaedia defines Mrs Grundy as "a feared dispenser of disapproval"

Nick Hogan

The blogosphere has been busy commenting about Nick Hogan, who has been jailed for allowing customers to smoke in his pub. The story is here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254126/Pub-landlord-Nick-Hogan-given-smoking-ban-jail-sentence.html

I've never smoked and so you might think that I was in favour of the ban. Far from it. I think that it's outrageous that one minority can dictate to another how they should behave. Apparently the smoking ban is an EU directive. Go into bars in eastern Europe or Spain and see if they're taking any notice. They're not.
And quite rightly so. Since when is it the task of government (and an unrepresentative and unelected one at that) to define whether private establishments should allow smoking on their premises?
I wouldn't mind, but smoking is allowed in the bars in the Houses of Parliament. It's one rule for them and another for us.
If the majority of members of a private club decide to allow smoking, what right is it of anyone else to interfere? If a pub chooses to ban smoking, that's up to the pub. The customers will vote with their feet. Likewise, if it chooses to allow smoking, those who object can go elsewhere. This is what markets are about, surely?

Despite what the anti-smoking brigade may say, the evidence against secondary smoking is flimsy to non-existent. They say- what about Roy Castle? Didn't he die of lung cancer?
Yes he did. And yes he did work in smoky clubs a long time ago. But so did I. Both my parents smoked and the smoke hung in a cloud in the living room. You could taste it. However, I'm still here and still healthy. My dad died of cancer and yes he was a smoker. Did smoking kill him? I don't think so. When he was a young man he worked on the railway and they used to lag the boilers of the engines with asbestos. He told me they used have snowball fights with the stuff. That's more likely to be the reason.

I'm against a blanket ban on smoking because I believe that the individual should have the right to choose. I don't believe for one moment that the state has any right to impose bans like this. Prohibition didn't work and this won't work either.

I live next door to a pub. Before the ban you'd never know it was there. Since the ban, the noise from the beer garden and smoking shelter disturbs the peace- my peace. What do I do? Do I complain about the noise? If I do and he closes down as a result, then I'm just part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm a musician and my livelihood has been affected by the ban. Pubs are closing at an alarming rate. If I do get a booking then I play to a half full room, because the audience are outside smoking. The ban is hurting the entertainment industry but we must shut up and lump it.

Soon they are saying that they will ban smoking in the home. Surely that's my decision, not the government's?

Meanwhile Nick Hogan is in jail- as a lesson to others. He has no income and no way of paying his fine. His wife can't get to see him. If you feel strongly about this, please go to Old Holborn's site
http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/
where you can donate to pay his fine. It now stands at over £2000.
And lobby your MP

The lessons from history

A friend sent me a email with this message. The sad lesson we learn from history is that we never learn the lessons from history. I'm printing it in full and I hope you will read it and if your agree, let others know.


A German's View on Islam
A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II,
owned a number of large industries and estates.
When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care.
I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools.
So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen.
Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.
Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide.
It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.
It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.
It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up,
because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. 
 
 Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts--the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world-wide, read this and think about it, and send it on - before it's too late.

Farage Rules!!

I know other bloggers have posted this, but it deserves to be seen. Here's UKIP's Nigel Farage asking the question that's on everyone's lips



And thanks to Wrinkled Weasel, here's part of what he said
"I don't want to be rude, but you know, really, you have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk."
To loud protests, Mr Farage continued: "The question that I want to ask and that we are all going to ask is: who are you? I had never heard of you; nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you, Mr President: who voted for you? And what mechanism - I know democracy is not popular with you lot - what mechanism do the peoples of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy?"
"Sir, you have no legitimacy in this job at all, and I can say with confidence that I can speak on behalf of the majority of the British people in saying: we do not know you, we do not want you, and the sooner you are put out to grass, the better."

Atta boy. Go get em.

Stop spending our money promoting mythology!!!!

The Register and the Grauniad are both running stories about the government's "drowning dog" tv advert that was broadcast in December and January.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/24/ofcom_drowning_dog_probe/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/24/ofcom-climate-change-bedtime-stories

I saw it and almost threw something at the TV. Here's the offending advert. (Caution- liable to induce stress related vomiting)



It seems that Ofcom are to investigate claims that the advert is blatant political advertisng, while the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) have received about 1000 complaints that it breached advertising standards. Too right it did.

The truth is out on AGW. It's a money making scam involving carbon trading credits.
Read this story for the full sick making extent
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/protecting-big-carbon.html

The advert cost £6m of our money and the news comes hard on the heels of the announcement that the department that produced this rubbish spent £600k of our money on Google adwords last year.

As a postscript to the Carbon Trading scam. On the day that the BBC made Tiger Wood's fake confession its no1 news item, Corus closed its Redcar steelworks.
Corus is owned by Tata.
This article may help explain why they closed it.
http://www.matador94.nl/global-climate-related/u-n-climate-chief-pachauri-cashes-in-on-tata-owned-corus-carbon-credits

" Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits simply by closing a steel production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs.
The Tata Group headquartered in Mumbai anticipates receiving windfall profits of up to nearly $2 billion from closing the Corus Redcar steelmaking plant in Britain, with about half of the savings expected to result from cashing in on carbon credits granted the steelmaker by the European Union under the EU’s emissions trading scheme, or ETS."

Here's the link between Tata and Pachauri
"In 1974, the TATA Group provided the financial resources to found the Tata Energy Research Institute, or TERI, a policy organization headquartered in New Dehli, India, of which Pachauri has been chairman since the group was formed."

No wonder they chose to bury the news.

FFS!

Just when you think it couldn't get any crazier the Register is reporting this

"The government department responsible for climate change policy has admitted bidding against one of its own quangos for advertising on Google, forcing up the cost to taxpayers.
Ed Miliband's Department of the Environment and Climate Change (DECC) said it sometimes battles the Energy Saving Trust to sponsor links on the dominant web search engine.
DECC has spent £361,700 in the last 12 months on search keywords such as "climate change" and "global warming" to target Google users with government publicity urging them to cut their carbon emissions.
The Energy Saving Trust has meanwhile spent more than £270,000 on similar advertising in the last 12 months."

Quite apart from the fact that the whole AGW scam is discredited and is only about fleecing the paying public, we have the government spending our money on advertising on Google- more than half a million in the last year alone.

Give me a machette. I'll cut goverment spending at a stroke.

The origin and meaning of words

I'd say I was good at spelling. The fact that there is more than one way of spelling "right" doesn't bother me at all. So I was interested in a poem sent in to the Daily Mail by a reader this week.
His gripe was that he couldn't see why we had to have different spellings for words that sound the same
Cues & queues
Juice & deuce
Brews & bruise
Chews & choose
Hues & hews
etc

I could add
Right and write and wright and rite

The point is that the English language has its roots (routes?) in more than one language, and the spelling will give you (yew, ewe) a clue as to its meaning.
Standardising the spelling would make it more difficult to understand what is meant.
For instance. there is a reason why "counsellor" and "councillor" are spelt differently. They describe different jobs and functions
A counsellor is someone who gives advice, who counsels.
A councillor is a member of a local government council.

I work in a solicitor's office and I come across examples of using the wrong spelling of a word almost every day. Because people do not understand that correct spelling is important, there is always the likelihood that using the wrong word will convey a meaning contrary to what was intended. That could be very expensive.

There is a reason for the different spellings. Trying a one size fits all approach to spelling will never work.

Hands off my work!

I read an intersting article in the Register today. You can read it here
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/19/not_invented_anywhere/

"A teenage literary sensation who lifted large parts of her debut hit novel from the Web, without giving credit, says she's justified because "there's no such thing as originality".
For good measure, Helene Hegemann said the plagiarism was justified, because copyright holders had it coming."

I know it's not original Ms Hegemann, but if you as much as lift a sentence of any of my work, you'll get a fat lip.

What is it with the so called creative people these days? Unmade beds and graffiti masquerading as art, recycled riffs masquerading as music and now recycled stories masquerading as literature.

When I write a song, it's hard work. I think long and hard about what I'm trying to say and once I get the thread I work hard at refining it, so that each line scans and rhymes, with not a misplaced syllable. What I don't do is lift lyrics from other songs. That's theft.

There is such a thing as intellectual property, and those who create such works deserve any rewards going.

The author of the piece in the Register is Andrew Orlowski and this is his conclusion-

"Copyright is about credit, particularly credit of the valuable green, folding variety. But if something could be found to avoid giving credit, then perhaps the whole difficulty could go away too ? This is very much a stroppy three-year-old's approach to a problem, but sometimes the internet can bring out the stroppy three-year-old in nerds. Copyright is a social settlement and not something that lends itself to a clean compile, with (0) errors and (0) warnings.
Unfortunately this failed approach hasn't really got us anywhere, except to drive us down an intellectual cul de sac, where creators are told (often by wealthy, state funded academics) that richer means poorer, plagiarism is originality, and obscurity means fame."

Excellent post Mr Orlowski. More doublespeak exposed.

Trouble brewing at the BBC

Back in November the Grauniad ran a piece about troubles with the BBC's new IT system that had just been installed by Siemens
"The BBC has been hit by a major technological breakdown affecting its phone and computer networks that could cause chaos for the corporation's news output and leave it marooned in a "pre-digital age"
Read it here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/25/bbc-news-pre-digital-age

A week or so later I read over at iamseb.com

"The prob­lem is that the BBC doesn’t con­trol its own tech­nical infra­struc­ture. In an act of stag­ger­ing short-sightedness it was out­sourced to Siemens as part of a much wider divest­ing of the BBC Technology unit. In typ­ical fash­ion for the BBC, they man­aged to select a tech­no­logy sup­plier without inter­net oper­a­tions exper­i­ence. We can only assume that this must have seemed like an accept­able risk to the tower­ing intel­lects run­ning the BBC at the time. Certainly the staff at ground level knew what this meant, and resigned en masse. 

Read the full article here
http://iamseb.com/seb/2007/12/perl-on-rails-why-the-bbc-fails-at-the-internet/


Today the Register is running this story
"Siemens IT staff working at the BBC are mulling possible strike action over a planned pay freeze by the tech firm.
Bectu said it was sending out ballot papers to members today, in which the broadcasting union recommends industrial action.

The ballot will close on 19 March and followed Siemens' decision to bring in a pay freeze for employees working on its 10-year Beeb contract.
Bectu said more than 70 BBC contract staff had been laid off by Siemens, which provides technology, transmission and IT services to the Corporation."

Full story here
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/22/siemens_bbc_strirke_ballot/

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The BBC has succumbed to the madness that plagues the NHS and government departments. They all spend public money without regard for consequence. There is no accountability at the heart of these organisations. In fact the only people in danger of losing their jobs are those who do the work and know what is going on.
The first act of these vandals of business upon gaining office is to get rid of anyone and everyone who is deemed a threat. These tend to be the ones who actually run the business and know exactly how it works. With them out of the way, madness begins. Oblivious to the age old truths that if it ain't broke don't fix it, and ignoring the mantra that cheapest is dearest, they order systems without knowing what they are buying or having the foggiest idea of how it is supposed to work. As the man said- "what do you mean it's automatic? I have to press this button!"
The smooth talking salesman sees an opportunity for profit and bumps the price up. It doesn't matter if the thing will work. IT professionals are ignored. They say it won't work and a few sorry years later say I told you so.
Meanwhile the very people whogot rid of the knowledge base are floundering. Something must be done they say. Someone pipes up "This is something!" so they all say in unison "Let's do that!"
Down at the BBC the shit has hit the fan. They've locked themselves into a contract with a supplier who has no track record in IT. The system doesn't work. Trouble is the BBC transferred all the staff to Siemens and they're in danger of losing their jobs. They can't go forward and they can't go back.
And the BBC bosses carry on as if nothing happened. No-one will lose their jobs over this, except the innocent workers. The clever ones jumped ship long ago.
How does that song go?
"It's the same the whole world over, it's the poor who get the blame.
It's the rich wot has the pleasure, ain't it all a bloody shame."

Rules of confidentiality

 

Artwork by Louis Sidoli.

Much has been made about claims that Gordon Brown bullied his staff so much that one or more of them phoned the Bullying helpline. Why do we know this?

Because the head of the helpline told the media.

Great. Whatever happened to client confidentiality?

One of the patrons of the charity has reigned in disgust, and rightly so.

When can we expect Ms Pratt's resignation?

Betrayal of confidentiality is serious. It could get a doctor or solicitor struck off.

I work in a solicitor's office. What happens there stays there. Full stop.

The problem with censorship

I'm a libertarian and believe in small government and less regulation. I also believe that children should be treated as children and adults as adults. This may mean that my views on censorship run contrary to yours.
Some countries are trying to censor the internet, most notably Australia. This article at the Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/28/australian_censors/
highlights how difficult it is to define what is obscene and what is not. Most internet porn sites have a 2257 declaration which states that the person modelling or featuring on the page was over the age of 18 when the pictures or video was taken.
The Australians are getting hot under the collar over models who look younger than their age, or whose breast are small, so as to give the appearance of pubescence.
From the Register's article
"Breasts came under the spotlight a year ago, as Senators Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett commenced a campaign against publicly available porn. Rounding up magazines from corner shops and filling stations, Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia."



The outcome is that the magazines now only show pictures of large breasted women.
The Register again-
""We are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup size. It may be an unintended consequence of the Senator’s actions but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late."

This is ridiculous. Images of some but not all women deemed to be obscene because these women have small breasts and/or look younger than their years. Is the proof of age rule currently in place not sufficient?
What if the girl is a minor but has large breasts and looks older than her birth certificate states? Is that OK then?

It is impossible to impose a one-size-fits all definition of obscenity. Different cultures have differing ages of consent for a start. In the UK it's sixteen. Sixteen year old girls have modelled for Page 3 in the past. I can think of Samantha Fox in the 1980s and Lindsay Dawn Mckenzie in the 90s. Both were well endowed girls, so that's OK then?
In the US they set the age at 18. That seems sensible to me., even if their alcohol laws mean that these girls can't legally drink until they're 21.
You see, it's all nonsense. A girl can be old enough to get married and have sex, but not old enough to have pictures taken of her in the act (even if she's a willing participant). She can work in a strip club but not drink there.

The article goes on to discuss female ejaculation. From then on it descends into farce.  I speak from personal experience that some girls (very few in my limited experience) ejaculate when they achieve orgasm. It's a rare phenomenon that pornographers and their models fake as part of the entertainment.
The censors are trying to ban its depiction. How Victorian is that? Queen Victoria refused to accept that lesbianism existed, but it did and still does.
It's life. Get over it.
The girls who make porn films for a living and who are trading on their youthful looks shouldn't be discriminated on in this way.
If the censors get their way and this material is banned, it will only drive the material underground, and 2257 will go out the window. Then you won't know what you're viewing.

When prohibition was introduced, people drank more, not less. When will these people learn?

HM Goverment advertising

 HM Government is the biggest advertiser on UK TV and radio. They spend our money lecturing us on how we shoudl conduct our lives. They spend an absolute fortune on it.
My blog's been a bit heavy on Youtube videos lately, but this is worth 90 seconds of your time.
The video is produced by The Taxpayers Alliance.

Government statement on unemployment figures

It's from Not the Nine O'Clock News first broadcast in 1982, but nothing changes

The Ecranoplan

I saw a brief glimpse of the military version of this on tv a few years ago and was intrigued. just what was it?
This may only be an evolutionary backwater in the development of long range transportation, so it may never see the light of day again. And it's Russian.
But it looks cool. I want one.

Gordon, Gordoff

Much was being written yesterday about the Labour Camera-on, Camera-off internet poster campaign. (they can't afford to hire poster sites these days).
Obnoxio has a much better poster on his site today.

 

Obnoxio- great site & recommended

http://obotheclown.blogspot.com/2010/02/so-much-funnier-than-labour-one.html#links

Excellent !

First posted by Raedwald, and picked up by Guthrun at Looking for a Voice, here's a speech by Dan Hannan MEP complaining about the 27 European Commissioners, and how they are appointed to decide European policy without having to submit to the electorate. His particular gripe concerns Baroness Ashton, a woman who has risen to the top of the greasy pole without once ever stood in a election. She is the European Foreign Minister. The French don't like her because she doesn't speak French.
Listen to Dan Hannan's speech (reading the subtitles) and marvel at the delicious irony. The MEP campaigning to end the corruption that lies at the heart of Europe, and Europe's foreign minister not being able to understand it.
Priceless!

The Port of Dover to be sold to the French

If any proof were needed that this country is bankrupt, the papers are publicising that

"The Port of Dover is being recommended by Government advisers for sale to the French authorities.
It is one of a string of public assets which have been earmarked for privatisation as the Government battles with a record £830billion national debt."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249194/Dover-symbol-British-sovereignty-sold-French-help-reduce-debt.html#ixzz0exQgRYId

However, if you dig deeper, it seems that this is part of a bigger plan to carve Britain up into a number of regions, one of which is to be called "Arc Manche" 

Here's a link to the Arc Manche site

http://www.arcmanche.com/en/the-arc-manche/presentation/

"Arc Manche is a geographical area made up of the British and French territories bordering or in the English Channel. Since 2003 the Arc Manche has also become a political project resting on an informal and voluntary network of local authorities who can use the network to share best practices, coordinate initiatives and pull together project ideas to draw in EU funding,
In October 2005 the Arc Manche Assembly was created to improve the visibility of the network."

Informal & voluntary eh? What doublespeak! What happened to British sovereignity?

 

Please check out this UKIP site for more information

http://www.ukipwsx.org/?EU_Regions:Arc_Manche

Wake up England. The invaders are at the gates!

Get over it

Grumpyoldtwat has produced some posters in response to the increasingly strident Stonewall organisation.
Go to this site for more
http://grumpyoldtwat.blogspot.com/2010/02/gobby-gayers.html

English Speaking Driver

I don't normally read the Express, so I wouldn't have picked this up if I hadn't called by the BigBrotherWatch site
Here's the link to the Express article
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/155892/Race-row-over-taxi-drivers-flying-the-flag


It seems that a group of English speaking taxi drivers have been told to remove a badge from their taxis. It's a St George's Cross emblazoned with the slogan "English speaking driver". The local council have declared it racist.
Excuse me, but surely the local council, who licence the taxis should be making it a condition that speaking English should be a must?


Or have I got it wrong?


Thanks to Big Brother Watch. Highly recommended site
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2010/02/taxi-drivers-ordered-to-remove-the-cross-of-st-george-from-their-cabs.html#comments

Heads they win, tails we lose

This article in the Daily Politics. com website caught my eye.
http://www.the-daily-politics.com/component/content/article/56-environment/169-un-climate-change-canute-policy-still-on-the-table

"Goals on reducing greenhouse gases announced by major industrialized nations are a step forward but not enough to forestall the disastrous effects of climate change by midcentury, U.N. officials said Monday. Janos Pasztor, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's top climate adviser, said the goals, submitted to the U.N. as part of a voluntary plan to roll back emissions, make it highly unlikely the world can prevent temperatures from rising above the target set at the Copenhagen climate conference in December."



Here's my comment that I posted-
It's increasingly likely that we are entering another "Dalton Minimum", when minimal sunspots coincide with greatly reduced temperatures. Should this indeed be true, then all the emissions controls that are proposed will be useless. If anything we ought to be looking at ways to keep the temperature up.
Of course, if we have another cold period lasting decades, then the IPCC will claim the credit for averting Global Warming. And we will have paid dearly, some of us with our lives.

Sunspots and climate

I've been following the Wattsupwiththat.com blog for a year or so and have read the various posts regarding the climate. As you are aware I'm a climate skeptic. The climate is changing but I don't believe that it's down to the amount of CO2 being put into the atmosphere. The more people shout that the science is settled , the more I dig my heels in. It's too simplistic, and the time scale is too short.
I read a lot of history and this week I read about Eric the Red, who discovered Greenland and established a colony there that included a church that was part of the Bishop of Hamburg's diocese. They were able to live there for a couple of hundred years until it got too cold. Why did he name it Greenland? Because it was green when he discovered it.


The climate scientists are happy to discount stories like this. They conveniently ignore the well documented fact that there used to be ice fairs held on the frozen Thames in London in the 17th and 18th century. There have been warm period and cold periods in the past 2000 years of recorded history.
The earth's climate is controlled by the sun. That should be obvious. The planets that are closer to the sun are too hot for human life, and those further out are too cold. Everyone knows that.
The sun from time to time shows sunspots on the surface. Astronomers have photographed them and shown huge solar flares that sent heat and radiation deep into space.
Scientists and astronomers have been studying the sun for centuries, observing sunspot activity. It just happens that the times when sunspot activity was at a minimum coincide with below normal temperatures.
The Dalton Minimum, according to Wikipedia

The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named for the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.^[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2.0°C decline over 20 years.^[2] The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, also occurred during the Dalton Minimum.



Then there's the Maunder minimum


The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum",^[1] when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. Astronomers before Eddy had also named the period after the solar astronomer Edward W. Maunder (1851–1928) who studied how sunspot latitudes changed with time.^[2] The periods he examined included the second half of the 17th century. Edward Maunder published two papers in 1890 and 1894, and he cited earlier papers written by Gustav Spörer. The Maunder Minimum's duration was derived from Spörer's work. Like the Dalton Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Maunder Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.
During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000–50,000 spots in modern times.

So it can be shown that low sunspot activity coincides with low global temperatures. So what about the current cold weather? It's too early to say with certainty, but sunspot activity has been very low for the last few years. If we are indeed at the start of a new minimum period that could continue for many years yet.
As I've blogged repeatedly, we have more to fear from the cold than from the warm. We may yet find ourselves huddled around our gas guzzling cars trying to warm ourselves on the exhaust fumes.

I found this interesting link
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/Solar_Cycles_24_and_25_and_Predicted_Climate_Response_22nd_October.pdf

It's titled " Solar Cycles 24 and 25 and Predicted Climate Response", and sets out all the relevant study of the effects of sunspot activity. It's a pity that the IPCC and the other warmists didn't read it before making their outlandish and alarmist fables about melting glaciers and drowning polar bears. If it gets as cold as it did in the 17th and 18th centuries, we'll be chasing them away from our rubbish bins, as they walked all the way from the artic on the ice cap.

It's funny what you find on the HM Government's website. Evidence that contradicts the government's own claims about global warming!

Democracy, the least worst option

I got back from the cancer clinic to catch a glimpse of Mad Gordon trying to justify a change in the "first past the post" voting system that we currently use. If anything reeks of a desperate measure to stay in power, this is it. I heard the boss of the Electoral Reform Society say that the problem with the current system is that the person who gets the most votes can also be the least popular, a statement that sounds contradictory. His view is that the candidate with 40% of the vote actually has 60% of the electorate against him. We are however, discussing popularity, and the most popular newspaper or soap opera or chocolate bar all share the fact that more people voted for other choices than the most popular.
Can this version of democracy be changed for the better? The problem is falling turnout. A significant percentage of people don't turn out on polling day. They say they don't/won't vote because it only encourages them (the politicians). Many local elections have a turnout of less than 50%, which means that the combined total of votes cast is still a minority, thereby reinforcing the Electoral Reform Society's viewpoint.


I've thought long and hard about this and have come to the conclusion that if the turnout decreases through voter apathy, we'll end up with a comitted minority going to the polls and electing an extremist government by default, because the majority of the electorate didn't or wouldn't vote. And that would be dangerous for everyone. So how can the turnout be increased?


My limited knowledge of world affairs nags away at me. Is voting compulsory in some countries? I don't mean the so-called democracies where a dictator stands unopposed, but countries like Australia.
My system would involve both compulsion and choice. Firstly, the right to a free vote is precious and must never be lost, therefore make it compulsory for every UK citizen of voting age. This is obligatory and a condition of UK citizenship.
Then add the element of choice. There are lots of them, that's why they're called choice. My favourite would be to abolish political parties and have every candidate stand as in Independent. The candidate would then have to be someone well known to the electorate, thereby ensuring that local interests are put before party lines.
Anyway, let's say that the political parties are retained and the names are put on the ballot paper, along with one extra box marked "NONE OF THE ABOVE". Each voter must tick one box. The extra option can be used as a protest vote where instead of the customary practice of voting against a candidate by voting for a rival.
The votes are counted. It's still "first past the post".  If the "None of the above" candidate scores the highest number of votes, then  the election must be retaken, perhaps with different candidates.


I can see a hundred reasons why a system like this would be unpopular with the political parties,which is why it won't happen, but it is democratic. I'm as sick of our politicians as the next man, but if we are to retain democracy as the least worst option, something must be done, or else we'll see ever more extreme polticians elected with ever decreasing majorities.


What about the problem of elections being declared null and void? That's the price of democracy, and the art of politics is to get people with differing viewpoints to agree on something. The current political system gives the real power to the unelected government officers. In local politics, the council officers make the decisions and the councillors tweak them before rubber stamping them. If the council wishes to build a house, the councillor can choose the curtains and the colour of the front door and no more. He can't choose not to build the house, or build it somewhere else, or build more or less. This is not democracy, but that's how it is, because the electorate aren't encouraged or compelled to contribute any more.


I've read of lot of books and enjoy the speculative and prophetic fiction of authors like Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein ( The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an excellent political what-if book), George Orwell and others.


Brown's proposal is crazy, an act of a desperate man looking for allies in the Liberal Democrat party. Like everything he devises, from tax credits onwards, it's badly thought out and impossible to implement. In short, it's rubbish and will only hasten the demise of the current system. Maybe that's the long term plan?