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.