Sense at last?

"The British public has become more sceptical about climate change over the last five years, according to a survey."

And that's from a BBC article.

The most sceptical are:

Men more than women

Rural more than urban

Older people

High earners

Conservative voters more than Lib Dem voters; Lib Dem voters more than Labour voters.

Read it here

Maybe I'll send this to my MP

There's a DVD coming out, attempting to show what the measures taken by the climate change hysterics, will mean to ordinary people.

I've only seen the trailer, so I can't really comment much, but I think I'll buy it anyway.

The site is here

And yes, it will go to my MP after I've watched it. That is if it's any good.

UPDATE:

The greenies hate the thought of this film, so they do what they usually do, call the producers denialists. Even death threats.

Read here

Bloody BMA.

I know everyone else is ahead of me on this one, but I needed to have my say.

I've just been reading their report and consider that is most definitely a temperance movement in all by name.

Changing these excessively pro-alcohol social norms cannot be achieved by targeting irresponsible drinkers alone. We all have an obligation to balance our collective relationship with alcohol. This does not mean that we should all become abstainers. Many human behaviours carry risk and this commonly adds to their appeal; these risks need to be properly understood and appropriate precautions taken. As the World Health Organisation (WHO) reminds us, alcohol is no ordinary commodity, but a toxic and addictive drug that should be carefully regulated and controlled. Strong
measures are required at a population level to eliminate the unhealthy cues and prompts that serve to encourage alcohol consumption. By far the most important of these is the marketing and promotion of alcohol. At the same time, the choice to abstain from alcohol use should be supported as a viable
and acceptable option.

It's that last line that gives it away.

And this, Here they want to control us like lab rats:

In the case of young people, selective targeting is also likely to make alcohol more attractive by reinforcing its forbidden and adult nature – and smack of double standards. As with tobacco control policies, reducing alcohol-related harm in the UK requires a comprehensive strategy that promotes individual behaviour change across society as a whole and seeks to remove or mitigate the unhealthy and unhelpful influences on that behaviour (Berridge 2007).

More control:

As the leading professional organisation representing doctors in the UK, the BMA aims to promote the development and implementation of comprehensive alcohol control policies.

Of course, think of the children is there as well:

The frequency of heavy drinking by the mother is also associated with the occurrence of a range of completely preventable mental and physical birth defects

Naturally people are drinking more at home. Remember the smoking ban:

Recent years have seen an increasing trend among UK adults toward home-based alcohol consumption.

They still won't admit it:

This trend toward home-based alcohol consumption most likely reflects the lower cost of alcohol in off-licences compared to licensed premises in the UK.

And of course take no notice of studies that don't match the crusade:

Early attempts to measure the impact of alcohol advertising on young people relied on econometric studies,l mostly conducted in the 1980s and 1990s. These examined the correlation between the amount of advertising taking place in a particular jurisdiction (typically in terms of expenditure) and the amount of alcohol being consumed (typically in terms of sales). With one notable exception (Saffer & Chaloupka 2000), these have found little or no evidence of advertising influencing young people, which has led one author to describe the effects as ‘barely measurable’ (Duffy 1989). The fact that they are difficult to measure, however, does not mean that they are minimal or do not exist; it may just reflect inadequate research methods.

I could go on but I won't. If you want to read it all. It's here

A day in the life of a Marine Engineer

I'll just explain how hard working I am.

Glossary:


FE.......................Filthy Engineer (Me)
Bow....................Pointy bit at the front end of the ship.
Stern..................Blunt bit at the back of the ship.
Poop Deck.........At the back, and the only place to have a fag.
MCR...................Machinery Control Room.
HQ1....................Part of the MCR where firefighting and DC incidents are controlled from
DC.......................Damage control.
R.O. Plant..........Magical fresh water making equipment.
Down below.......Nautical term for Downstairs.
Up Top...............Nautical term for upstairs.
Smokoe..............Strange name meaning Tea break.


0645. Alarm goes of and theFilthy Engineer leaps out of bed. (That bit was utter twaddle).

0700. Make a cup of tea.

0715. Down to the poop deck for a fag or two.

0745. Down below to the MCR and settle down with one of the computers to read E mail, and hide in the background .

0800. The working day starts. Boss starts by asking who has any priority jobs. FE sticks hand up from where he has been busy on the computer pretending to read pompous E mails from his boss.

"Please Boss, I've got some essential maintenance to do on the Refrigeration plant."

Now FE knows that the Boss has never done the refrigeration course and considers that this is one of the black arts akin to alchemy, Turning heat into cold. All I have to mention is that the superheat on the evaporator in the deep freeze room needs resetting and the next hour is mine to do with what I want.

Luckily the Refrigeration Machinery room is close to the poop deck, so a quick fag is in order.

Ok, must show willing, down to the Fridge plant, look in, all is well, but the peeps in the central store are looking bored, so better wander in and chat with them.

Time goes by.

Another Fag on the poop deck.

After Smokoe, Boss nearly catches FE playing solitaire on the MCR computer, but quick as a flash, FE lets it be known that he was just checking the Fresh water tank levels, and that the tanks need filling.

Now as you may realise we all need fresh water to survive. (FE needs water for the copious amounts of duty free whisky he needs for his personal survival). Therefore water making is important. Water making on ships used to be by using steam powered evaporators but is now produced from Sea water using RO plants. (If you have been too lazy to read the Glossary, please do now).

These RO plants look incredibly complicated, and of course my Boss has only worked with an Evaporator and knows nothing about RO plants. Good, thinks FE, I'm on to a winner here.

Right then, off to make water, but first things first. FE sidles over to HQ1 and does the first step in making Fresh water. Turn off the surveillance camera that monitors the RO plants.
Next put on ear defenders. Not because off noise levels in the Machinery space but to stop the Boss from telling FE that he has something else to do like clean out the shithouse treatment plant.

This is where FE should panic. The RO plant looks incredibly complicated with pipes, pumps, valves, wires, filters, membranes, teamakers (made that up), and all sorts of sundries. However FE is an avid reader and has read the instruction manual page 33. The first 32 were dire warnings from the HSE about fires, floods, and pestilence. No need. The RO plant has a touch sensitive display, looking complicated at first glance, especially to the Boss, only needs one command. Press "Start". Voila, off it goes, and there's the FE's morning completed. Fag break beckoned after such hard work, then off to lunch.

Maybe I'll let you know what I did after lunch.

(If the Commodore reads this, tough shit you Tosser, I've retired, and no bullshit about you've signed the official secrets act)

They're dead right.

From an article in the Times today shows that even the MOD are overstaffed with civil servants.

The Ministry of Defence is so stuffed with civil servants that they outnumber the combined manpower of the Royal Navy and the RAF.

The statistic, produced by the Conservatives yesterday to attack the Government’s record on defence manpower, followed condemnation by General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, a former Chief of Defence Staff, over imbalances between uniform and non-uniformed personnel.

Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said that 16 per cent of the Civil Service resided in the MoD, and that the number of civilian officials (86,620), was about 12,000 more than the Royal Navy (34,830) and RAF (39,260) put together.

I work for the Royal Fleet auxiliary, and worked ashore for a couple of years in an office helping to manage the re-fitting of ships. My job was to collate the work for each ship's refit in my group, and edit each job specification to weed out cost overruns.

Now as most engineers know, it is not an exact science and you can't plan for every eventuality. Because of this we expected a cost overrun on several jobs.

For instance, if you open up a pump for survey you may find that the wear is far more than predicted, therefore extra cost incurred.

To this end we were allowed a package of extra money, usually between 5% and 15% depending on the age of the ship to be refitted.

Our outfit was comprised of 50% uniformed staff and 50% civil servants.

One part of Office was entirely staffed with civil servants devoted to writing specifications for alterations to the vessel, ie new equipment to replace the obsolete stuff. (Every thing wears out in time and can't be fixed)

What shocked me was the length of these specs. Sometimes 20 pages or more with endless waffle. The number of lines stating the bleeding obvious such as, "The contractor will carry out the following work", beggared belief.

Needless to say, often these specs arrived at my desk only just in time to be sent to the various tenderers, which procluded me from giving them the real once over.

5% or 15% overrun?

Bollocks! Some of these came in at 150%. What made it worse, is that for a lot of the specs, they called in outside contractors to write them.

Just to end it all, (Not me) when I went into the office there were 21 ships. Now we have 16 and the office has expanded their personnel by over 25%. Make sense to you? Me neither.

Here is the Time article

I'll write a post about the shipboard workplace sometime.

Let them drink beer

A well deserving cause.

RAF chiefs are appealing for donations so British troops returning from Afghanistan can enjoy a cold beer on their flight home.

Dutch brewery Grolsch has donated 10,000 cans, enough for all the personnel coming home after six months away from their families. But Wing Cdr Chadwick would like to be able to offer troops a beer on every military flight out of Afghanistan. "It would be nice to do it all year round, not just for the Rip," he said.

Anyone who wants to contribute to the "Beer for the boys" fund can send a cheque, made payable to "SIF Funds, RAF Brize Norton" and with "Beer for the boys" written on the back, to Wing Cdr Chadwick at 216 Squadron, RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire OX18 3LX.

You know it makes sense.

PS Bugger Liam Donaldson and his Ilk

Think on this before the next election . This means all parties.

My MP voted for a smoking ban, that's why I'm now a Libertarian.

A Tangential attack by the new puritans?

Just another good post at Frank Davis.

Regardless of any claims to the contrary, it has always seemed perfectly apparent to me that the war on smoking is above all a moral crusade. The fundamental objection of antismokers to smoking is that it is a vice, a perverse instinct, an unnatural practice, a species of self-abuse. This is where the antismokers start out. This is their underlying conviction.

It is not, however, the main thrust of the case that antismokers actually make against smoking. They do not say, "Smoking is wrong" or "Smoking is bad". Instead they say, "Smoking is bad for you" and "Smoking causes lung cancer". They do not make a direct assault on smoking as something that is immoral in itself, but instead make an indirect attack by pointing to the consequences of smoking, rather than to smoking itself. After all, nobody is going to say that lung cancer is a good thing. And if lung cancer is an evil, and smoking causes lung cancer, then smoking is also necessarily an evil. QED.

Read The rest here.

Growing Polarisation

I've just read this article over at Frank Davis's blog and find it fits my mood about the smoking ban and the bit by bit loss of our freedoms. Especially the end. Do go over there and read it all.

I'm getting isolated. I realised today that I haven't met up with any friends of mine for months.

I used to meet up with my friends in pubs mostly. Either I'd call them, or they'd call me. And we'd meet up for a few drinks. And maybe other friends would show up, invited or by chance. And we'd sit and have a few drinks, and smoke cigarettes and eat peanuts and talk about this and that. It doesn't happen much now.

With the smoking ban, the pubs became unwelcoming places for smokers. They became as sterile as dentists' waiting rooms. Smoke-free is friendliness-free. The bar girls still smile winningly, and they're still as pretty as they ever were, but it's not the same as it was any more.

Read it all here

Is he ill or....... is it an exit strategy?

ESTABLISHMENT 'COLLUDING IN PLIGHT OF SICK MAN BROWN'?

"The Prime Minister of Great Britain is a man too ill to be holding the Office." This was the conclusion last week of a senior civil servant liaising regularly with Gordon Brown. For reasons which will become clear, the person involved will not go public with the evidence for this conclusion. The same applies to a high-ranking Treasury official who told us "In both a physical and mental sense, the Prime Minister is a very sick man, seriously disabled." Three years ago, an Opposition MP told nby "He is on extremely heavy doses of cutting-edge anti-depressants, but so far they have made little difference". And during the last fortnight, another high-ranking government source claimed "He is now on pills which restrict the foods he can eat and what he can drink. He is losing the sight of his good eye quite rapidly. It's a mess, and nobody knows what to do".

You can read it all here. It makes disturbing reading.

If this is true, and is known about in Cabinet circles, then those ministers that do know, should be hounded out of office for allowing a mentally sick man to be left in charge of the country.

However my thoughts are that this could be a way for Brown to leave office in October with his supposed (In his mind) reputation in tact. There would be no need to have a public leadership election, for the very reason that they could state that the general election in May would be close enough.




©2009 Not Born Yesterday and John Ward.

H/T to Anna Raccoon and Old Holborn.