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Tuesday 31 March 2009

Going to work

Blogging will be light to non-existent for a while as I'm travelling abroad. It's a work thing.

Monday 30 March 2009

AGW, what do you think?

The article is a long read, but shows how the AGW theory is really a green religion. Note the typical agenda of those who believe in it, always try to taint their opponents with Nazi or other epithets. reasoned debate is beyond them. "We are right and you are wrong", no attempt at discussion of the facts.

This interesting report comes from St Andrews University Debating Society, written by Dr.Richard Courtney ...


I write to report on a debate that defeated the motion “This House Believes Global Warming is a Global Crisis” during a meeting of the St Andrews University Debating Society. It is difficult to arrange a debate of anthropogenic (that is, man-made) global warming (AGW) because few proponents of AGW are willing to face such debate. They know from past experience that they always lose such debates because there is no evidence that AGW exists and much evidence that it does not.

However, on Wednesday 4 March 2009, the St Andrews University Debating Society held their debate of the motion, “This House Believes Global Warming is a Global Crisis” in the Old Parliament Building, St Andrews. The debate was organized and presided over with exemplary efficiency and professionalism by the Speaker of the Society, Ms Jessica Siegel. It was conducted with all the pomp and ceremony that could be expected of an ancient society of so ancient and prestigious a university.

And the debate was lively, informative and entertaining. It got emotional at times. Some of the contributions from the floor were of exceptionally high quality. But, it was somewhat spoiled by the weakness of the proponents of the motion (I have good reason to suspect this weakness is because stronger speakers could not be obtained to propose the motion. If so, then it is yet another example of leading proponents of AGW fearing to face their critics in open debate).

The proponents of the motion were Ross Finnie MSP, former Scottish Government Minister for Environment and Rural Development; Mike Robinson, Chief Executive of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and Chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland; Gregory Norminton, Novelist ‘Serious Things’, Environmental Activist, Founder of ‘Alliance against Urban 4x4s’.

The motion was opposed by myself, and Nils-Axel Morner, Leader of the Maldives International Sea-Level Project who was awarded the ‘Golden Contrite of Merits’ by Algarve University, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Former advisor to then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and now an Investigator of Scientific Frauds.

Each speaker was given a strict maximum of 7 minutes to speak. The speakers would alternate between proponents and opponents of the motion until all 6 had spoken. No speaker was allowed to speak more than once except to raise a point of information, order, or etc.

The proponents had clearly not prepared. They were not co-ordinated in their presentations, they each lacked any significant knowledge of the science of AGW, and they each assumed that AGW is a fact. None of them made a substantial presentation of arguments supporting the motion, and they all (including the politician!) lacked adequate skills at public speaking. The opponents of the motion were a sharp contrast to that. They each have significant expertise in their subject, and they had agreed the case they were to put and how they were to put it. Also, they are all very competent public speakers and their very different styles made their presentation much better than the sum of its parts.

Finnie spoke first. He argued that AGW is a fact because the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) that says the IPCC is “90% certain” that AGW exists. From this he claimed there is a “crisis” because governments are failing to give the matter sufficient importance. It is necessary for governments to decide a treaty that would follow on from the Kyoto Ptotocol that intends to constrain emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) but ends in 2012. The decision needs to be made at a meeting later this year.

I replied by outlining the case for the opposition. I asserted that governments do need to have policies on climate change but empirical evidence denies the existence of AGW and so there is no need to constrain fossil fuel emissions. Indeed, the harm caused by the emission constraints would be greater than any harm that AGW could induce if it were to exist.

Robinson’s response was very angry. He seemed to think attacking the opposition speakers would provide a victory for the motion. Almost his entire speech was attempted defamation of the opposition speakers. Within seconds of starting to speak he had accused them of being “like supporters of the Nazis in 1930s Germany” (my family lost everything in the blitz so I did not take kindly to that). The speakers on the opposition side “could not get anything published in peer-reviewed journals” (Morner and I each shouted out that we have and we do). And much of the same. He said people and governments must act to stop global warming (but he did not say how they should act) because - according to him - if a person had an elevated temperature of 2 degrees then he would die so we cannot let the Earth get 2 degrees hotter in case that kills the Earth.

Morner then gave a witty, entertaining and informative lecture on sea level change. The major potential threat from AGW is severe sea-level change. He interacted with the audience and selected one individual to jape with (his skill at this selection was later demonstrated when that individual stood and gave a speech that won the prize - of a Society neck-tie - for best speech from the floor). Morner presented data that showed sea level is not rising as a result of AGW at a detectable rate anywhere.

Norminton then spoke to conclude the case for the proponents of the motion. Like Finnie he seemed to be extremely nervous: both were shaking during their presentations. Norminton’s hand was shaking so much he put it into his pocket (I know others interpret this to be nervousness, but I think it was extreme anger: Norminton had not expected any opposition to the motion, and the assertion of clear evidence that AGW does not exist was - to him - an outrage too hard to accept). Also, like Finnie, he did not address the motion. He said he was not a scientist so he had to accept the word of scientists about global warming and scientists agree that global warming is real and man-made. He said the speakers on the opposition side were “not scientists”. Lord Monckton interjected that “Courtney and Morner are”. And Norminton replied, “So was Mengele.” Monckton raised a Point of Order demanding withdrawal of the remark. Norminton lacked the wit to withdraw. Monckton persisted, pressing the Point of Order, and Norminton continued to refuse to withdraw. Only moments before Morner had made himself the lecturer the students would most like to have, and support for Norminton drained away as he insisted that Morner was akin to a murderer operating in a Nazi concentration camp. Norminton continued by saying the threat of global warming was real, and it was killing polar bears, but it is not clear that anybody was listening to him.

Monckton then summated the case for the opposition. He had not prepared a speech but took notes of the proponents’ speeches with a view to refuting arguments of the proponents that Morner and myself had not covered, and by defending the opposition case against rebuttals of its arguments. This was a deliberate use by our side of Monckton’s debating skills. But he had a problem because the proponents of the motion had not made a case and they had not addressed any of our arguments. Instead, they had made personal attacks on the opposition speakers, and they had asserted - with no evidence or argument - that the IPCC is right. So, Monckton’s summarizing speech consisted of evidence that the proponents of the motion had merely provided errors of logic and fact but they had not a case. He pointed out that polar bears had quadrupled their number in recent decades and this was not a sign that their species is threatened. And he cited and named each of the logical fallacies utilized by the proponents of the motion.

The debate then opened to the floor. Four persons each spoke well. One gave a balanced presentation and the other three spoke in favour of the motion. But by then the debate had been settled. Prior to the debate the opponents of the motion had expected to lose the vote because the students have been exposed to a lifetime (i.e. their short lifetime) of pro-AGW propaganda. We consoled ourselves with the certainty that we would win the arguments because opponents of AGW have all the facts on our side. But in the event we won both. The motion was defeated when put to the vote.

Leaving aside the slightly adolescent tone of Dr.Courtney's report, this was evidently a fascinating occasion - one wishes one had been present.

Debates are essentially a very democratic process - everyone gets their say, and the audience decides who said it best. But in recent years it's become very typical of the green lobby that democratic process isn't to be allowed to stand in the way of their superior knowledge and will. They know best, and the rest of us can just keep our opinions to ourselves. Secretary of State Ed Miliband is our current Wanker of the Week for saying just this - he claims that opposing wind farms should be as socially unacceptable as not wearing a seatbelt.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa and the darling of his American Global Warming co-religionists, said this week that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash. The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."

Hansen, who famously dubbed coal-trains "death trains", said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent.

So, democracy is all well and good as long as it produces the results Hansen wants. As soon as the majority of people stop accepting the gospel according to Gore, democracy is clearly not working and should go out of the window. Let's leave the last word to Christopher Booker, writing in the Telegraph ...

If the present trend continues, the world will be 1.1C cooler in 2100
Considering how the fear of global warming is inspiring the world's politicians to put forward the most costly and economically damaging package of measures ever imposed on mankind, it is obviously important that we can trust the basis on which all this is being proposed. Last week two international conferences addressed this issue and the contrast between them could not have been starker.

The first in Copenhagen, billed as "an emergency summit on climate change" and attracting acres of worldwide media coverage, was explicitly designed to stoke up the fear of global warming to an unprecedented pitch. As one of the organisers put it, "this is not a regular scientific conference: this is a deliberate attempt to influence policy".

What worries them are all the signs that when the world's politicians converge on Copenhagen in December to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, under the guidance of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there will be so much disagreement that they may not get the much more drastic measures to cut carbon emissions that the alarmists are calling for.

Thus the name of the game last week, as we see from a sample of quotations, was to win headlines by claiming that everything is far worse than previously supposed. Sea level rises by 2100 could be "much greater than the 59cm predicted by the last IPCC report". Global warming could kill off 85 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, "much more than previously predicted". The ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica are melting "much faster than predicted". The number of people dying from heat could be "twice as many as previously predicted".

None of the government-funded scientists making these claims were particularly distinguished, but they succeeded in their object, as the media cheerfully recycled all this wild scaremongering without bothering to check the scientific facts.

What a striking contrast this was to the second conference, which I attended with 700 others in New York, organised by the Heartland Institute under the title Global Warming: Was It Ever Really A Crisis? In Britain this received no coverage at all, apart from a sneering mention by the Guardian, although it was addressed by dozens of expert scientists, not a few of world rank, who for professional standing put those in Copenhagen in the shade.

Led off with stirring speeches from the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the acting head of the European Union, and Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the most distinguished climatologist in the world, the message of this gathering was that the scare over global warming has been deliberately stoked up for political reasons and has long since parted company with proper scientific evidence.

Nothing has more acutely demonstrated this than the reliance of the IPCC on computer models to predict what is going to happen to global temperatures over the next 100 years. On these predictions, that temperatures are likely to rise by up to 5.3C, all their other predictions and recommendations depend, yet nearly 10 years into the 21st century it is already painfully clear that the computer forecasts are going hopelessly astray. Far from rising with CO2, as the models are programmed to predict they should, the satellite-measured temperature curve has flattened out and then dropped. If the present trend were to continue, the world in 2100 would not in fact be hotter but 1.1C cooler than the 1979-1998 average.

Yet it is on this fundamental inability of the computer models to predict what has already happened that all else hangs. For two days in New York we heard distinguished experts, such as Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Center, Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, authoritatively (and often wittily) tear apart one piece of the scare orthodoxy after another.

Sea levels are not shooting up but only continuing their modest 3mm a year rise over the past 200 years. The vast Antarctic ice-sheet is not melting, except in one tiny corner, the Antarctic Peninsula. Tropical hurricane activity, far from increasing, is at its lowest level for 30 years. The best correlation for temperature fluctuations is not CO2 but the magnetic activity of the sun. (For an admirable summary of proceedings by the Australian paleoclimatologist Professor Bob Carter, Google "Heartland" and "Quadrant").

Yet the terrifying thing, as President Klaus observed in his magisterial opening address, is that there is no dialogue on these issues. When recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he found the minds of his fellow world leaders firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers. As I said in my own modest contribution to the conference, there seems little doubt that global warming is leading the world towards an unprecedented catastrophe. But it is not the Technicolor apocalypse promised by the likes of Al Gore. The real disaster hanging over us lies in all those astronomically costly measures proposed by politicians, to meet a crisis which in reality never existed.


I personally think that Al Gore should be dumped on the arctic ice cap alone without a gun. Polar bears 1, Al Gore 0.

H/T to the grumpy old sod

Anyone remember the CAP?

Mr Hannan speaks it is it should be.



Only a short speech, but we must remember this insanity that we are paying over the top for.

Sunday 29 March 2009

Daniel Hannan and the Left

I've spent a while on various lefty/left leaning websites tonight. What is astounding is that, believe it or not, most of the comments about Daniel's speech have been positive. The gist of the comments is "I will never vote Tory, but I agree with what he said".

Hopefully the tide is about to turn.

Michael White of the Guardian has been attacked from all sides for his dismissive, and condescending remarks.

Even the comments on labourlist are about 60% in favour of Daniel Hannan's speech.

However, can we last, if that one eyed fuckwit decides to continue with a slash and burn policy for the next 440 days.

Do I go quietly?

I'm going to retire after my forthcoming appointment to one of our government's ships has been completed. However I can't right a retirement letter, but instead, have to right a resignation letter. Considering my para-military outfit are a shower of politically correct, H&S nazis, can't run a piss up in a brewery, etc, what should I put in that missive?

Would, "I think that you are a shower of wankstains and I quit", be too strong?

Or, should I write, " I have had the honour to serve in the *** for more than 43 years, and it is with regret.................

Your obedient servant

PS. can I have an MBE.

Personally I don't care, but if anyone has any good lines for either, please let me know.

Note to self: Need to write the letter soon

Saturday 28 March 2009

We need her here

This is the mayor of a city in Canada. 88 years of age. Elected for 11 terms. Watch the video. I wish she was the mayor of my town.



Not only has she 91% of the vote, but her city is debt free and running a surplus.

Not likely to happen in Kent, where our leaders lost £50M in the Icelandic bank crash.

H/T to Iain Dale for this.

Thursday 26 March 2009

I've got to fly

Readers may know that I work for the Ministry of defence, and that occasionally have to go and do some work. ( Have I any readers? who cares?)

Anyway, I've to join my ship on the Island of Crete. Simple you would think. Oh no it's not, Not if you work for MOD.

If I was to book my own flight I would have a direct flight lasting 6 hours.

The MOD has arranged this:

Leg 1. Depart Heathrow 1710 hrs
Arrive Amsterdam 1935 hrs

Leg 2. Depart Amsterdam 2035 hrs
Arrive Athens 0050 hrs

Leg 3 Depart Athens 0550 hrs
Arrive Chania 0640 hrs

That's nearly 12 hrs to do the same journey. I cannot believe that's the cheapest option. Apart from the fact that I've got to hang around Athens airport for 5 hours in the middle of the night. I did that in Johannesburg a while back, no fun believe you me.

Mind you, they've contracted out our travel arrangements to a private travel firm.

Mmmmm

We've had it.

This is staggering.

The FT’s resident economics guru Chris Giles has a flabbergasting explanation of the scale of the debt the government is raising in the next two years: £350bn.

“That is more debt bequeathed to its successor than the total borrowed by successive rulers and governments of Britain between 1691 and 1997, the year Labour was elected.”’

Will we ever be able to pay it off?

Wednesday 25 March 2009

The workers and the welfare state

We don't suppose there's anyone in the country today who doesn't know who the Chawners are. We particularly appreciated a thought-provoking article in the Times last week by Alice Thomson ...


Be afraid, be very afraid ...


Michael's alarm still goes at 5am every morning, by 7am he has cleaned his Notting Hill house, at 8am the children have a three-course breakfast and by 9 he has walked them to school and is sitting at his desk sending out his CV. Six weeks after he lost his job at Goldman Sachs, he still works a 14-hour day. He now waits tables at his favourite restaurant, sweeps the leaves from the communal garden tennis court and helps the neighbours' Filipina housekeeper to clear the drains.

Paul Bright, a factory manager for a paper doily factory in Essex who has also been made redundant, has the same drive. At 60, he could retire. “All I want to do is work again,” he says. “I am like a smoker who doesn't know what to do with his hands once he's quit. I need to feel useful.”

The Chawners wouldn't understand. Mr and Mrs Chawner and their two daughters insist that they are “too fat to work” because they have a combined weight of 83 stone - so they watch television all day living off their £22,000 benefits. In the past 11 years, only the youngest daughter, Emma, has attended a job interview and that was on The X Factor, where she was kicked out in the first round. Mr Chawner explains: “Often I'm so tired from watching TV I have to have a nap. I certainly couldn't work. I deserve more.”

These are Britain's two nations. Not those born abroad and those born here, not black or white, rich or poor, men or women, North or South, public or private sector. But those who belong to the world of work and those who are alienated from it, living off the taxes from other people's earnings.

In the past ten years a chasm has opened up between the workaholics and the quaintly named “work-shy”. Labour still isn't working, claims a revised version of the classic Tory poster, as unemployment passes two million. In fact, nearly eight million people of working age in Britain have been “economically inactive” for the past few years. More than 2.5 million of them are on incapacity benefit - of these 2,130 people are too “fat” to work; 1,100 can't work because they have trouble getting to sleep; 4,000 get headaches; 380 are confined to the sofa by haemorrhoids; 3,000 are kept at home by gout; and half a million are too depressed to get a job. According to Dame Carol Black, the National Director of Health and Work, one child in five now comes from a family where neither parent works, yet at the end of last year there were half a million job vacancies.

The BNP's message over the past decade has been loud and clear - your job is being stolen by the Somali next door. But it's just not true. The Somali and the Romanian, Chinese and Ukrainian are doing jobs that many British won't now contemplate. The majority of migrants to Britain - more than 80 per cent - are earning less than £25,000 a year in industries that have become unpopular for British people to work in.

That is why immigration in Britain rose by 2.5 million in the past decade and why English is now a second language for one in seven pupils in primary school. Immigrants have kept Britain working. It is also why the Tories couldn't turn immigration into a vote-winner in the past two elections. People recognised that we needed the Chinese to pick our strawberries, the Czechs to blow our children's noses, the Pakistanis to sweep our hospitals, the Afghans to drive our minicabs, the Australians to pull our pints and the Poles to put up the scaffolding.

Only last year £13 million of British fruit and vegetables went unpicked because farmers couldn't find enough British labour to harvest their crops, forcing the Government to raise the quota for migrants under the seasonal agricultural workers' scheme. As one man outside a Jobcentre Plus in Peterborough explained: “I'd prefer to sign on than do that. I don't want to work in no cornfield for £25,000 a year.”

Now, however, everything has changed. The new unemployed aren't those who don't want to work, they are the committed, driven employees who are horrified at the thought of no longer being able to commute into the office. They are the 3,000 people who are prepared to queue for 150 part-time jobs at Twycross Zoo in the Midlands and who bitterly resent having to sign on.

These are the unemployed who keep Gordon Brown awake at night. The millions of British citizens who are already economically inactive will be eternally grateful to the former Chancellor for having provided them with such generous pocket money, but those now joining the unemployment statistics won't be bought off so easily.

They are the newly unemployed dry cleaners in Didcot and Devon, the estate agents in Christchurch and Cornwall, the factory-floor managers in Swindon and Staffordshire and building contractors in Brighton and Bedfordshire - people who won't vote Labour again if they can no longer pay their mortgages and don't appreciate being forced to watch flat-screen TVs all day.

The Government's response has been to blame the immigrants who helped Britain for so long. Only this week Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, brought up Sangatte again. Yesterday, as the unemployment figures were released, Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for Communities, suddenly announced a new migrant tax of £50 on overseas workers coming from outside the EU to pay for their public services.

But the answer doesn't lie in supertaxing the migrants, cordoning off the white cliffs of Dover or forcing Ethiopians on to planes at gunpoint. Like drugs, immigrants will find a way into this country if the demand exists. They may be putting a strain on the NHS but many services wouldn't exist without them. In 2008, 14.7 per cent of health and social care workers were migrants.

Attacking immigrants and talking about British jobs for British workers won't help anyone but the BNP. What is required now is the courage to push ahead with welfare reform despite the recession, and close the only gap that matters - between the active and the idle. Michael and Paul will find a job in the end, it's part of their DNA. Tackling the Chawners is the real challenge.

Of course this isn't the first time the Chawners have hit the headlines. Their younger daughter Emma took part in X-Factor (twice) and was swiftly booted out by judge Simon Cowell who, even if he is one of our most-hated celebrities, is no fool. Watch a film-clip here (if you must).

And the family made themselves so unpopular with their neighbours that last October they were evicted from their council house.

They don't seem to be disposed to make much of an effort for themselves. "We have cereal for breakfast, bacon butties for lunch and microwave pies with mashed potato or chips for dinner," Mrs Chawner told Closer magazine. "All that healthy food, like fruit and veg, is too expensive. We're fat because it's in our genes. Our whole family is overweight. We all love nibbling on biscuits. I once bought some pears, but they tasted funny".

They've become expert at playing the victim card. "I’m a student and don’t have time to exercise," Emma said. "We all want to lose weight to stop the abuse we get in the street, but we don’t know how."

Awful though this family is, and penetrating though Alice Thomson's article is, we'd like to suggest another scenario. We think the Chawners are just stupid.

They're so dim that they have completely swallowed the modern media's philosophy that all that matters in life is celebrity, that success doesn't have to be worked for, that all you need is a little luck and you'll be catapulted to fame and fortune, and that the fact that you "really, really want it" means you must be entitled to it. Most of us know this garbage for what it is, but to the Chawners it's real.

And they're so dim that they accept without question the modern left-wing belief in a benefits system that sprays money in all directions (unless, that is, you're an elderly invalid who has the misfortune to own a house, or a child whose parents are invalids and need caring for all the time).

They're so dim that it never occurs to them that while they and others like them live comfortably off the state, the rest of us are paying through the nose to fund their lardbucket lifestyle. It never occurs to them that the big white thing in the kitchen can do a whole lot more than just heat up supermarket pies and oven chips, or that millions of other people quite happily eat pears that "taste funny" so it might just be worthwhile persevering.

And they've bought in wholeheartedly to the modern craze for victimhood: if you're fat it's someone else's fault and you're the victim. If people shout at you in the street or snigger behind your back it's their fault and you're the victim. If nobody'll recognise your talent and give you a lucrative record contract, it's their fault and you're being victimised. If your shouting and caterwauling in the small hours of the night annoys your neighbours so they complain to the council, it's so unfair and you're the victim.

And they won't ever change, because in order to change you have to understand what the problem is. And the Chawners won't ever know what the problem is, because they're too thick.

Mind you, this is just a theory. We could be entirely wrong. Maybe they know exactly what they're doing. Maybe they've worked out what the system is and how to exploit it.

Maybe they're just having a laugh, and the laugh's on us.

Either way, it's possible that the Chawners are the face of the future, and that's very scary indeed. It makes you view Polish immigrants in a different light, doesn't it? When did you last see a fat Polish person?

We really are going to hell in a handcart. Why have I spent the last 43 years working to support these wankers? Have they no ounce of shame? Afraid not, they are the core labour voters, that is if they can get off that fat arses to waddle to the polling station.

Tuesday 24 March 2009

A message to Gordon Brown

This is a must watch.



Daniel Hannan MEP puts it to the dear leader. (And well and truly shafts him). One of the best speeches of recent weeks. Dave, you might need to watch this man.

That green paper

We should be so glad this won't come into force.




 
Posted by Picasa


In return,citizens would be obliged to:

Treat public sector staff with respect

Bollocks, why should they get preferential treatment?

Live in a green way


I'll live in a way that suits me. If I want to turn the heating up, that's for me to decide. I pay the bill.

Report crimes to the Police

Only if you reassure me that I'm not going to be forced into giving a DNA sample

And where's the bit about getting off the social security and finding a job?

Monday 23 March 2009

ACPO

I've just read their Memorandum and article of association. It left me with some unease as to it's pupose and structure.

Para 4

(e)to take and accept any gift of money, property or other assets whether subject to any special trust or not;

Can I influence them with my money?

(f)to issue appeals, hold public meetings and take such other steps as may be required for the purpose of procuring contributions to the funds of the Company in the shape of donations, subscriptions or otherwise;


Can I come to those meetings?

(g)to draw, make, accept, endorse, discount, execute and issue promissory notes, bills, cheques and other instruments and to operate bank accounts;

Are they starting up their own bank now?

Can I find out what they do? Resounding NO.

ACPO and the Freedom of Information Act 2000
ACPO is a private company and the Office of the Information Commissioner has confirmed that the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to the Association, since Schedule 1 of the Act does not include a definition which covers ACPO.



Oh well, should have expected that, After all I'm only a humble taxpayer.

I think the time has come for locally elected Police Chiefs.

Sunday 22 March 2009

That sacked Plod

Maybe I'm stupid but when I read that PC Steve Bettley of Merseyside Police had been sacked, for allegedly supporting the BNP, I wondered again about that secret private firm called ACPO.

What I can't understand is how they have the power to prevent anyone joining a political party that is legal and not proscribed. It's the thought police Agenda rearing it's ugly head again.

The leak of the list, apparently by disgruntled former staff, provoked uproar after BNP members were revealed to be current and former servicemen, teachers and doctors.

The list included the names, professions, addresses and telephone numbers of thousands of BNP supporters.


They really are recruiting agents for the BNP aren't they?

Saturday 21 March 2009

Sacked for telling it how it should be.

I heard on Radio 2 whilst I was on the way back from getting essential supplies to repair my heating system, that Deva Kumarasiri had been forced to leave as postmaster. If you remenber, he was the one that stated that to be British you must integrate and speak the language of the country.

Read it here

I wish him well

We're all at it.

This evening a female friend of ours called in for a cuppa and a chat. A year ago the conversation would have revolved around how the kids were doing, and other mundane subjects.

Not tonight. The conversation swiftly turned to how our country had been betrayed from the top, and how long it might take our children to pay off the debt, foisted on us by these incompetent, lying bastards.

Even now, I don't believe that those fuckwits in Westminster, really realise the depth of feeling in the country at the moment. The anger is welling. They may yet need to invoke the civil contingency act.

Incidentally our friend runs a charity specialising in looking after kids whilst their parents go out to work. Apparently play schools are to be funded with up to £1200 each to buy toys for the kids. She would like to know what sort of toys they need costing that much? She spends a fraction of that.

Friday 20 March 2009

Cut the blue wire, no, no, the red one.

We've all seen those action movies, where the hero has to decide which wire to cut in order to de-activate the thermo-nuclear weapon or other sundry device that might hurt.

Well I've been having trouble with my central heating. The room thermostat seemed to be playing up. Considering the wiring to the stat is a bit iffy,(ever since I drilled into the buried cable) I decided that I would renew it with a wireless device. Seems simple, I say, just disconnect the existing stat at the multi- terminal box and wire the receiver unit into the same terminals. The connector box has a wiring connection schedule in the cover showing that the room stat is wired into terminals 2 & 3. Excellent so far.

The game begins.

1) terminals 2 & 3 disconnected and cable withdrawn.

2) Go to garage for cable to wire in the receiver unit. No cable. Wife threw it out.

3) Ahaa, part of the redundant old thermostat cable could be used.

4) Cut the cable back to the wall, great, just what I need.

Aaargh. Central heating installer had taken no heed of the wiring schedule and had decided to be creative. I've just disabled the hot water thermostat.

5) Temporary repair carried out using cable and choc block. (Do not snitch on me to health and safety please, I have a wife with a cold, and three cats.)

6) Down to DIY store tommorrow for more cable and a junction box.


Moral of the story: Before you cut the blue or the red, make sure you know what it does. Do not believe what any other bastard would like you to think.

This is all to show to the Ranting Penguin that there is more to life than drains.

UPDATE: Heating working well.

Thursday 19 March 2009

Electric sheep. Wow!

Found this on the Englishman's blog.




Well worth a minute or two out of your busy day

Wednesday 18 March 2009

Call me racist. Oh no you can't.

An asian postmaster has refused to serve customers that can't speak english. He rightly states that when he arrived in the UK, he appreciated what it was to be British. Ie, fit in with our culture.

There's a huge Union Flag flying proudly outside Deva Kumarasiri's house and it's been there so long the edges are tattered and torn.

Nearby, another one flutters from the back of his favourite Land Rover as he drives to work as the local cornershop postmaster.



Read the full article here

Not sure how the racial equality righteous are going to handle this.

H/T to the Lone Voice

UPDATE: I heard on radio two today that he's been sacked.

Save our pubs

We are losing 39 pubs per week

There is a petition here

H/T to Trixy

Tuesday 17 March 2009

500 things you can't do now.

I occasionally pop over to the website of the Grumpy old Sod. There is always something over there to have a good chortle, seeth, cry at,etc.

Now he has made a list of 500 things you can't do anymore.

Have a look

It makes you despair but written in such a way as to stop you slitting your wrists

I particularly liked this one:

141. You can't refuse entry to your house to someone who wants to enforce the Ottawa Convention on Landmines.

Monday 16 March 2009

Sanctimonious Cockwaffler

I read this comment on another Blog tonight. Obviously a Righteous clone of the first order. Even when other posters had stated that the tax at the moment, was more than enough to cover the consequences of the binge drinking, he still didn't understand.

Why can't he understand that it is the attitude to drinking that needs to change, and that price won't effect the average binge drinker? They'll just give up something else like food. I should know, because that's how my twin brother died. Read below.


I have been an advocate of a minimum price for things for a while now.

Well, not a minimum price as such, but an obscene level of tax on things like Alcohol, Cigarettes etc… to the point where a pint is £10 and a pack of fags £15 say.

The way I see it, as it stands, people will go out with £50 or often more, and with that money they can buy so much alcohol they could kill themselves if they wanted to, several times over. Education isn’t working, police presence isn’t working, so what will? Well, they are going to take out their £50 or more regardless, so limit the amount they can buy with their money. If their money only buys them a few drinks rather than a fair few pints plus a fair few shots, that can only be a good thing.

In addition, if this is coupled with tax breaks on non alcoholic beverages in clubs, and fining clubs that have blind drunk people coming out of their exists at the end of the night (easy to spot), it will be in the clubs best interests to throw out people “well on their way”.

Add it all up and it starts to become very difficult to get totally smashed on a night out, which means less NHS pressure due to dealing with drunk people, and less alcohol fuelled violence at the end of the night.

Put it this way, i’m 25, and as you can imagine, no stranger to city centre pubs and night clubs, and during my first and second year student days in particular I drunk to excess like everyone else (although I was never violent), and there were times when I was glad to have some friends around me or I would have simply passed out in the street or been arrested most likely. How pathetically stupid was I? Seriously embarrassing to remember how much I was drinking just a few years ago. Thankfully i’ve grown up since then. These days I don’t drink at all. I like to go out, but I equally like waking up early the following morning and not being hungover, and not having to worry whether i’m still over the limit to drive from the night before.

I’m not trying to be holier than thou though, and say that no-one should drink, just that drinking should be in moderation, and the best way to ensure that is to make it financially difficult, coupled with other measures, for people to get into such a state on a night out. After all, rules and regulations don’t work. Banning things doesn’t work. Hitting people in the pocket works every time.

Not holier than thou? Yes you are, you pig ignorant gobshite.

And he continues later on with this


I really don’t see a problem with this for one simple reason. Public attitudes. Just take cigs. Who would dare criticise the increase in duty on them year on year? No-one, because it’s now socially unacceptable. Alcohol is getting to be the same. Criticising any clamp down is a loser, and will only get more so as time goes on.


Oh, and his name is John, if you happen to meet him in a dark alleyway whilst trollied.




Sunday 15 March 2009

Sharon bloody Shoesmith

This evil biddy really is trying my patience. Can she not see that being sacked for being useless at her job, is what most normal people would accept?

Not content with trying to push the blame onto everyone else, she's now trying to gain compensation under the sexual discrimination act.

She will argue at an employment tribunal she was unfairly dismissed and treated 'less favourably' than a man in similar circumstances.

To back up her claim, she will point out her successor as head of children's services was a man - as was her replacement as chair of the local safeguarding board.


The fact that this Bloody Incompetent Twat is trying to screw £1M out of the taxpayer makes my blood boil.

Read and weep over the full story



Thursday 12 March 2009

Different standards for the ruling elite

Yet again the double standards of our ruling "Elite" come to the fore.

The G20 summit will have an indoor smoking area. WTF, are they not bound by the same law as you and me. If not, why not? I suppose they'll say it is "security" or some other weasle worded bullshit. Well, I value my security in that I don't want to die of pneumonia, in a pub garden at -5 deg C.

World leaders to flout the smoking ban.

I sincerely hope the local authority come down on them and fine the World leaders for smoking illegally. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Bastards

Update:


Members of pro-choice group Freedom2choose are understandably furious with this decision, claiming it as double standards.

Andy Davis, chairman of the group states, 'this clearly demonstrates that there are alternative solutions to the current smoking ban that our government is ignoring. Smoking rooms would provide welcome relief for our hospitality industry with the ban being acknowledged as one of the major factors in its current downturn.'

This amendment is also viewed as confirmation by the government that it is inconvenient (unnecessary) for smokers to leave the premises should they wish to smoke, and that it isn't deemed civilised to treat people in this manner.

'Our government are accommodating, rightly so, the political leaders from across the globe, yet they are not prepared to accommodate millions of their own citizens,' continues Andy Davis. 'This concession should now be made available to all private businesses and clubs for them to adopt if they so desire.'

The smoking ban legislation, incorporated into the Health Act 2006, prevents smoking in all substantially enclosed public places and all places of work. The Excel Exhibition Centre falls into this category.

Source: PR-inside, 11 March 2009

So I might be a fraudster

Dizzy has found this by Fraser Nelson.




Bugger. I'm with Natwest.

Powers of arrest

I was just browsing another web site a moment ago, when my eye was drawn to this article in the Guardian. It's about an ex Police Officer who is petitioning No 10 to repeal a particularly odious piece of legislation.

A retired senior police officer has expressed concern about the "sweeping power" that he claims is being abused on a daily basis in all of the 43 police forces.


Read the whole story here.

It would appear that the plods can arrest you at the drop of a hat. Didn't know it had come to that.

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Oooh what a big one

A house of Chavs and chavettes have just had their 62" TV impounded after complaints about excessive noise. Why on earth does anyone need that size of TV? If they had a mansion, then maybe, but in a two up,two down terraced house. Oh and by the way it was all for the sake of the chillun.


It makes you sick, no wonder they're both partially deaf.

It's probably the TV that caused the deafness in the first case.

Hope for the future

And yeah it shall come to pass........

Posted by Picasa


And I'm reserving a plot for the future, for the rest of the shits in Westminster.

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Bearded Tossers

I see that the radical Islamists were out in force in Luton today protesting against the Royal Anglican Regiment.

You can watch it here

They would have really have been screwed if the "Poachers" had turned gamekeepers. Notice the fixed bayonets.

Sunday 8 March 2009

Riot Training

I was visiting an old Aunt in Hospital this afternoon. I happened to eavesdrop on the conversation at the next bed, which concerned a young lass telling her Gran, that next week was her riot training week. (No, not the Gran)

Is this a coincidence or a portent of events to come?

Clause 152 Dead

Reading in the Sunday Telegraph it looks like Jack Straw has been forced to amend clause 152 of the Coroner's and Justice bill. (Clause 152 for the unitiated would allow an individuals personal data to be shared amongst almost, all government departments.)

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is to shelve proposals which critics said would have led to patients' confidential medical records being passed to third parties.

A spokesman for Mr Straw said the "strength of feeling" against the plans had persuaded him to rethink.

Read the full article here.

Here it is

Maybe the power of protest is not dead.

Friday 6 March 2009

Some things change for the better

I have been a customer with Orange for a number of years, almost since Mobile phones begun.

Up till recently, to get through to customer services entailed spending ages listening to crap music, and "we value your custom" messages every minute or so.

At the end of January I was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by a very respectful customer services rep and advised that I was overdue for a replacement phone. What really staggered me is he also advised that I was paying too much and would I like to change to a less expensive tarriff? Well you could blow me down with a feather, my gast was most definitely flabbered.

Was this a one off? No. this evening when opening my phone, (It's a slide phone), bummer, the display was corrupted. Anyway I phoned customer services not expecting stirling service again, only to find that within less than five minutes it had been arranged to send me a new phone by courier, to arrive by tommorrow morning.

I think it shows that with the recession, companies are having to value their customers at long last.
Well done Orange.

Thursday 5 March 2009

Oh dear

Today I'm entitled to a free bus pass.

Now I feel old.

They can't have this right?

I'm so fucked I think. Or am I?

If this prediction is correct in the link above, then I've missed nearly all, or the whole of the nulabour fiasco. Hurrah.

PS Don't click on the links on that site as they are from the usual "You are doomed if you don't change your lifestyle" TWATS

Wednesday 4 March 2009

Gordon has given away a sliver of my early life


Gordon went to Washington bearing gifts. I read that one of them was a pen holder made from the timber of HMS Gannet, a sloop of war. What readers will not know is that this scribe spent three years of his formative youth onboard that mighty vessel. This vessel was used for some years as an accomodation ship for the school known as the "Training ship Mercury". The three years of hell I spent there in the early sixties surely entitles me to that pencil case. I want it back.

Slavery British style

Monday 2 March 2009

FSA

Maybe I'm naive. If the FSA has made such a cockup in regulation of the banks, should it not be wound up? Why does it still exist having proven how inept it was? can someone give me a reason why it still exists?

Whisky galore

I see that the Scottish parliament want to raise the price of booze to prevent too much drinking. They might as well piss into the wind as most drink loving Scots that I know, will grin and bear it, and carry on. Why are they going to punish the whole population for the fault of the few?
Once they've as always tested it out on the Scots (remember they had the smoking ban first), then it'll be the turn of the English and the Welsh.

They might do well to remember that there will be an election and would do well to bear that in mind before they get carried away in their own self importance.

As someone else has bagged the franchise rights to start up an alcohol superstore in Berwick-on Tweed, I'm requistioning the right to set up in Gretna.



When are we going to be rid of this sanctimonious drivel? The Brown Broadcasting Company ran it as their top story this evening. We will need a dram or two to get through the next few years.

Sorry about the vid.

Sunday 1 March 2009




































H/T to Dizzzy & B3TA

They've got there at last

I'm glad that the MSM have finally caught up to the fact of the loss of our civil Liberties. Better late than never.

This article by Suzanne Moore in the mail put's it rather well.

Joni Mitchell


And I always liked that song from Joni Mitchell.