UK attacks sovereign territory.

Maybe I’m stupid. Surely, if we bomb the government of Syria we are unilaterally declaring war against said government.

Is that not the same as the Japanese when they bombed Pearl harbour in the second world war?

If the world considered it wrong then, why is it right now?

Should we bomb Government assets in Syria?
	Yes. It's the right thing to do.
	No. It's wrong to attack a sovereign state without due lawfull process
	Yes. I'm the Prime Minister and I need to be remembered for something before the next Election,
	No. Our armed forces are stretched as it is.
	Phone a Friend (Hint: USA)
	Other
pollcode.com free polls

Freedom of speech. Hah.

Are you certain?

The MSM are salivating over pronouncements that the PM and his lapdog of a foreign secretary are considering taking action against the president of Syria and his armed forces. I keep reading sound bites such as “The Syrian government forces are most likely to have used chemical weapons against the rebel forces”.

Two questions I’d like to ask:

Q1. What would the government gain?

Q2. What would the rebels gain?

A1. Nothing. They were sweeping back the rebels. Why would they need to resort to chemical weapons and invite the Ire of the civilised world?

A2. Everything. The Free Syrian Army is not as we are led to believe, a single entity fighting for freedom from the tyranny of he Assad regime. Instead they are a disparate group of factions that include jihadists that are fanatical Al Quaeda followers, that have no compunction in sacrificing civilians, in their cause to spread Islam across the globe.

Just remember 9/11.

Even in the MSM, it has been stated that Government bases have been overrun at times. Could nerve gas weapons have been “liberated” by the rebels?

My take is that, the fanatical Jihadist, would have no compunction on using chemical weapons on an innocent population in order to further the cause of a world wide caliphate.

I would suggest that that the government should stand back, await for positive proof before committing any of our armed forces personnel.

But I’m not expecting that to happen. Over the last two decades all I see is idiots in Government, using war to enhance their status as defenders of the free world.

Tossers the lot of them.

British service personnel may die, and we will stoke up the fires of Jihadism.

I maybe wrong. You tell me.

And I thought that........

Private dentistry was expensive. They're just amateurs.

Vets beat them hands down.

A friend of mine yesterday contacted her vet, on advice from me, as her old cat was showing extreme distress. The poor animal was just lying on it's side in the front doorstep in the pouring rain. This was the same symptoms as an old cat of mine had suffered two years ago so I know what she should expect. The poor creature was dying.

Now my dentist charges me £50 for a half hour session, the Butcher of Belsen Hygienist charges £45, you would think that those altruistic vets who have dedicated themselves to saving fluffy bunnies and the like would charge less.

You would be utterly wrong in that assumption.

My friend was quoted £300 quid!

As mentioned above I've been through this and know that from the time you arrive at the vet, till the time you leaving tearfully carrying the body of a trusting, small, lifeless animal, is only at the most, fifteen minutes.

The cost my friend was quoted was £230 for an examination and £70 for the lethal injection.

FFS. That means that the vet is charging £230 x 4 = £920 per sodding hour.

How on earth can anyone possibly justify these sort of charges?

I now consider vets as in the same league as payday loan companies.

Am I Stupid?

Today I received this in my Email

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
22/08/2013

TAX REFUND NOTIFICATION

Dear Sir/Madame,

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 379.83 GBP
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.

To access your tax refund, please follow the steps bellow:
- download the Tax Refund Form attached to this email
- open it in a browser (recommended internet explorer)
- follow the instructions on your screen
NOTE: Fill in all required fields, otherwise the refund process will be canceled.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.
Revenue and Tax Administrator
HM Revenue & Customs
Tax Credit Office
PO Box 1970

To which I as a greedy tax dodger replied by filling in their on line form.

Did I miss out on a refund?

You have been warned.

A public service broadcast from Filthy Engineer Productions^TM.

Somewhere on the Kent coast…..

Is a pub with one of the best smoking shelters I’ve come across.

High on the cliff top there is a hostelry that is always full. One of the reasons being is that it caters for smokers. It doesn’t consider 25% of the population as scum like some pubs in my area.

Overlooking the English channel is a large patio and nestling on one quarter, is a large shed situated close to the doors to the pub. This shed is of adequate proportions to allow at least twenty smokers to enjoy a cigarette in comfort. There are comfortable chairs, tables, superb heating and lighting and of course myriad ashtrays.

The beauty about it,  is that apart from the entrance, it is totally enclosed. Breaking the law you say? Well yes temporarily. However if an antismoking Nazi Inspector were to approach, sections of the side can be jettisoned in seconds, thereby conforming to the regulations.

It is interesting to note that just recently a smoking friend of mine entered the shelter on a blustery day to find a man and woman sitting there. When my friend lit up the woman immediately did the usual anti smoking hand waving, nose wrinkle and asked my friend in a petulant voice to stop smoking. My friend replied that the couple didn’t have to be in there. Her reply was that they were sheltering from the wind.

My friend doesn’t mince her words normally, but this time pointed to the large sign above the woman’s head. “Smoking shelter”.

They left eventually as my friend on returning to the pub, mobilised every smoker to use the shelter even if they didn’t really want a cigarette.

Needless to say the woman and her partner hurriedly left.

And no, I’m not going to divulge the location apart to say it’s somewhere between Eastbourne and the Isle of Grain.

That poll

A few days ago I posted up a poll trying to gauge the response to smoking rooms in public houses. Below is produced the results as of last night. Now ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) would have you believe the opposite. When the smoking ban was introduced in 2007 they gaily came out with the statistic that 80% favoured this draconian law. My simple poll would beg to disagree.

My stats show that almost the exact opposite is the prevailing view. When you add “Most certainly”, “Maybe”, and “No I prefer to get pissed at home”, you arrive at a figure of 81%. The “No”, and “I hate smokers so I would boycott the pub”, just muster 17%.

Governments seem to have the prevailing view that they know best. I say bollocks to that. It’s my life and I’ll do what I want with it. I refuse to be a statist clone that religiously eats his “five a day”, eschews alcohol, and cycles everywhere to save the world from “Global warming” or whatever the new mantra is now. (FFS, don’t get me started on cyclists on a Sunday morning in rural Kent).

Incidentally I came across the best smoking shelter situated on the Kent coastline this weekend. Most of the time it was eighty percent enclosed, but with the provision that the windows could be ejected within seconds. Mind you I doubt whether the smoking inspector would have lived after being tossed off the white cliffs even if he had objected.

If I had my way, and was in Government I would stop the government funding of Neo Puritan organisations such as ASH and Alcohol Concern, and tell them to take a running jump.

I want two of these.

For the Grandchildren.

Pub smoking poll.

Just a quick poll.

Be truthfull. (Actually you can tick whatever floats your boat).

If Pubs had a smoking room, would you visit them more often?
	Most certainly
	Maybe
	No
	I hate smokers so I would boycott the pub.
	Drink is evil. I would never cross the doorstep of a pub
	No. I prefer to get pissed at home.
	Undecided
	Refuse to vote on this poll as I'm like that.
pollcode.com free polls

Drug smuggling Lite

Much has been made in the MSM today of two girls caught drug smuggling in Peru.

Two British girls locked up in Peruvian jail have not eaten for seven days and are said to be terrified and hysterical after they were arrested on suspicion of trying to smuggle £1.5million of cocaine out of the country.

Michaella McCollum Connolly, 20, and Melissa Reid, 19, are being held in maximum security cells following claims the pair may have been working for a South American cartel.

However this is the tip of a very large iceberg.

A few years back whilst on patrol on counter drug ops in the Caribbean we received intelligence that their was a fishing vessel that was a prime suspect due to the course it was heading. After shadowing it from a point astern, over the horizon, we were ordered to close and board it at first light in the morning.

Morning came and we pounced. Actually No! On demanding full power from the diesel electric power system a Thyristor decided to blow, leaving us almost dead in the water. Well there’s also tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and things actually went to plan. After working up to full speed we launched our Lynx helicopter with orders to tell the fishing boat to heave to. (Nautical term for STOP). Of course the fishing vessel stopped. You would too, if you saw a grey chopper  circling you and pointing a Mk 48 mini gun in your general direction.

Anyway I digress.

On catching up with the fishing vessel our boarding team discovered quite a haul of cocaine in 1Kg packets. How many you ask? 3,200 Kg in all. Approximately 1 billion dollars at todays estimated street value.

We boarded another two vessels in a two month period in which forensics also estimated that they had carried large quantities similar to our bust.

So when the MSM crow about a mere 11 Kg, then they’re being distracted from the big picture.

DOH.

Love it or hate it?

 

It would seem that the Neo-puritans have even less of a sense of humour than I thought.

A TV advert in which a spoof rescue team saves "stricken" jars of Marmite from homes where they have been neglected has prompted 278 complaints.

Some 250 complaints were received by the Advertising Standards Authority in just 24 hours, following the advert's debut on Monday evening.

Those who objected found the advert "offensive" and "in poor taste", said a spokesman for the ASA.

FFS can’t you see it’s a spoof.

Comments include the like of this.

"This ad shows no regard for all those involved with animal welfair [sic] and I personaly [sic] will no longer eat Marmite till this ad is pulled," wrote one.

Hah.

And from a main suspect.

The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) said it understood that "animal lovers are concerned on our behalf".

Bollocks. I’m an animal lover and even I can see the advert as a light-hearted parody.

Wankers.

Women drivers?

Why the Neo Puritans are killers.

Just been reading an article on conservative home written by an MSP, Brian Monteith. In the article he takes the Government of today to task about their zealous continuation of labour’s anti-smoking campaign.

For example:

Whatever one thinks of Europe and its hunger for more and more regulations, this latest assault on the buying and selling of a legal product in Britain is entirely self-inflicted by our own government. Who would have expected a Conservative-led government to take Labour’s public health regulations that restricted the availability or consumption of tobacco and the campaigns that demonised smokers – and seek to make them even more punitive?

The Conservative Party had originally suggested that, if elected to government, it would not follow through with the removal from sight of cigarettes and other tobacco products that Labour had planned to introduce before its defeat in 2010.  With an eye on protecting the fragile incomes of small shopkeepers vital to local neighbourhoods, such a costly and invasive policy did not appear in the election manifesto or Coalition Agreement. And yet the Coalition succumbed to the tobacco control lobby, and soon carried on with the policy regardless.

Just goes to show that politicians of all colours couldn’t give a flying fuck about the voters who elected them. All they see is a bandwagon that has to be boarded.

However this is not the reason for the headline. That is caused by one of the comments underneath the post from Anna.

I'm close on seventy years old. In all that time the only health problems I've ever had were associated with sporadic attempts to abandon the dreaded death sticks. Mostly I realised for myself that I'd done it long enough and did the sensible thing. On the last occasion, at the anguished pleading of my then teenage daugher, I lasted five years. By the end of those five years I'd developed virulent psoriasis from stress, was three stone overweight, at severe risk of developing the type 2 diabetes inherent in my family and on such strong prescription anti-depressants that they themselves were sending me insane. Eventually the daughter who'd begged me to give it up begged me to take it up again. I did, thirteen years ago. 20-a-day later I'd ditched the anti-depressants, the psoriasis cleared up and I needed no more expensive NHS treatment. I rapidly returned to a healthy weight with no prospect of diabetes and I've never had a day's ill-health since.

Says it all really.

Don’t talk about the voltage.

Yesterday I wrote a pretty awful post about why I didn’t consider the government’s decision to encourage owners of diesel generators to prop up the National grid, in times of power shortage.

I spent most of that post banging on about frequency and load sharing. I should have added another factor  I think it’s a laughable idea.

Voltage.

In our houses in the UK the standard voltage used is 230V. This is a very low voltage in the great scheme of things but it is reasonably safe. If you touch an exposed wire it will make you remember it but unlikely to come to harm from it.

Not so the National Grid. This has sections that transmit at 400 kV (400,000 V). The simple reasoning is the formula taught in basic science classes. E=IR, where E is the voltage, I is current, and R is resistance. Even the best conductors in normal use today have their limitations. It would be infeasible to try and transfer electrical energy at household voltage. The cables would have to be huge in diameter. Therefore the high voltages.

Now in the  Hospital, public building, brothel, etc, it is not realistic to generate at those sort of voltages as there is only a very short transmission distance. Therefore it is most likely that they will generate at 440V(I’m going with my own experience here) for heavy power usage such as industrial heating systems and pumps. For general use it will be transformed down to 230V.

In short you have two totally incompatible voltages which you have to tie together with transformers and their losses, to make a back feed situation work.

Can it work? you tell me.

*Bought more candles*

I may post about the death and destruction that could be wrought.

Power bollocks

I was just reading Christopher Booker’s  article this morning in the Telegraph this morning.

We could soon be paying billions for this wind back-up

In it he explains the Bizarre thinking that to stop the lights going out the government is going to use all the backup diesel generators that exist in hospitals and other places that need to have an emergency supply of electricity.

The answer National Grid has come up with, only made possible by the latest computer technology and “cloud software”, is to hook up thousands of diesel generators, remotely controlled by the grid, to provide almost instantly available back-up for when the wind drops.

Personally speaking as an engineer that has spent most of his working life working with diesel generators, I think it is a disaster waiting to happen.

I don’t see how it could work.

1. All types of generators have a different “Characteristic”. Steam turbine generators, gas turbine generators, and diesel generators all respond differently to changes in load. All these generators have to supply power within a narrow frequency band either side of the grid frequency of 50 Hz. Usually within a maximum of + or - 3 Hz. How is your local hospital’s 1 Mw diesel set going to respond to the response of  a 2 Gw gas turbine. The danger is that unless the load sharing is precise (involving electronic governors these days), you could end up with a gas turbine actually “motoring” a diesel generator. In other words the DG is being driven electrically against it’s will. NOT A GOOD THING. It usually ends up with large lumps of diesel engine deciding to spread it’s self into it’s component parts. (I know. I walked past such a generator 5 seconds before it did it.). That’s your hospital fucked in the middle of winter when the wind turbines are not working.

2. All emergency generators are just that. They are arranged that if the mains power fails they are an autonomous entity.Just there to  supply the Hospital, public building, brothel, etc. Usually they are arranged that if the main supply circuit breaker drops out due to mains failure, the standby diesel generator will start and then close it’s emergency breaker onto the needed system.. QED. For safety reasons, the mains supply breaker and the emergency supply breaker are interlocked so that neither can be closed simultaneously. I’d love to know how they are going to load share between their patients and the grid?

3. As above. Does the hospital, if the rules change on electrical safety, save it’s patients or sell it’s Kws to the grid?

I feel that this is a cynical ploy by a government that has lost the plot on energy production to try and calm the average citizen, that the lights will remain on.

I have candles.

Did you know?

Today is……….

International Beer Day.

Apparently.

CACC

I was just watching the local news on the idiot box tonight and note that they are still giving undue prominence to the anti fracking protestors at Balcombe in Sussex. Now I know that quite a few of those protestors are from a group called The Campaign Against Climate Change (CACC).  As far as I can see this group are made up from left wing sociologists, green party activists, and naive idiots who believe that only they know what's best.

When you visit their site and read their "Who we are" page, you find, shock horror, that the most of them have little or no science training (WTF is a PGSE in Science, when it's at home?)
Of course though, all the guardian readers that flock to this blog  (Spits) will be overjoyed to find the Honorary chairman is their very own, *drum roll*, George Monbiot. When you look at the rest it's a gaggle of a mediocrity of people who have jumped onto a band wagon, and don't realise the wheels are falling off fast.

I really despair when I see people like this who don't seem to inhabit the real world that the rest of us live in, being so bloody stupid. If they want to live in yurts, eat tofu, and die of the cold in the winter, then they may do so. What I want is an energy supply that is reliable, affordable, and relatively clean. By achieving that we will enable our kids, and grand kids to survive. If we don't innovate, we die.

(Don't fucking dare mention bird mincers or solar panels).



Climate twats