In the shadows

I’ve just been reading an article in the Guardian(Shock, Horror) about that shadowy body called ACPO. For those that don’t know, this stands for Association Of Chief Police Officers.

Now most people would think that it would be a good thing for all those nice Senior Police Officers, to get together to discuss strategy in the war against crime.

But what do you know about them? I suspect not very much.

Fact one.

Acpo was once a liaison group. But, like all bureaucracies, it has grown. It now runs its own police forces under a police chief boss, Sir Hugh Orde, like a British FBI.

Fact Two.

It is self financing. It trades on its own account, generating revenue by selling data from the police national computer for £70 an item (cost of retrieval, 60p).

and

It owns an estate of 80 flats in central London.

and

Operating a separate private firm offering training to speed-camera operators, which is run by a senior officer who was banned from driving.

Having just assisted my daughter to buy a flat in London, I know that they’re not cheap. My estimate of that “little investment” in monetary terms is a value of at least £20,000,000. That’s my lowest estimate. Other sources indicate the figure could be as high as £32,000,000.

What do they need all that money for?

Fact Three.

As a private company, Acpo need not accede to Freedom of Information requests (Section 32 of the FOIA. Law Enforcement) and presumably could distribute its profit to its own board.

Maybe that’s the answer to my question about Fact two. But then one of their basic principles stated in their own code of ethics reads.

Holders of public office should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends.

Which can be downloaded HERE and their structure can be seen HERE

Should we not be a tad scared that a few senior Police Officers wield so much power with so little accountability? 

Questions I would like answered are:

Why does this body need to make so much money if it is only a discussion group of CPOs?

Why is it allowed to sell data from the Police national computer?

The article where I sourced this material can be read in the Guardian . The article is about Mark Stone, the Police Infiltrator that went native.

*Puts tinfoil hat back in cupboard*

We’re all doomed I say.

And I’m not talking about Global warming here.

Wait a Mo while I put my tinfoil hat on.

Ok now that’s done, I shall begin.

You remember all those stories in the press in the last week of birds falling out of the sky? Well here’s the reason apparently.

Because the Earth's magnetic poles are shifting!

Last week, a report from the Russia's Ministry for Extraordinary Situations (MCHS) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minist...) warned that the weakening Earth magnetosphere was allowing "poisonous space clouds" to enter deep into Earth's atmosphere where it is coming into contact with birds.

And further on in the article this came from:

The most likely explanation is that the birds were killed in-flight by changes in the composition of the air they were breathing. And as it turns out, Noctilucent clouds are largely made of a poisonous gas known as Hydrogen Cyanide. For all you chemists reading this, as the EUtimes.net website explains:

Hydrogen Cyanide is also formed in interstellar clouds through one of two major pathways: via a neutral-neutral reaction (CH2 + N -> HCN + H) and via dissociative recombination (HCNH+ + e- -> HCN + H). The dissociative recombination pathway is dominant by 30%; however, the HCNH+ must be in its linear form. Dissociative recombination with its structural isomer, H2NC+ produces hydrogen isocyanide (HNC), exclusively. (http://www.eutimes.net/2011/01/pois...)

And of course if you believe that…………………….

*FE quietly takes of his tinfoil hat and steals away down to the cellar. Hoping no one will see him go*

And you wonder why the crime rate is high?

A police force had to spend thousands of pounds fixing vehicles after officers put petrol in diesel cars — despite “talking” fuel caps warning them not to.

Officers from Essex Police used the wrong fuel 332 times in the past seven years at a cost of £62,000.

Figures disclosed by a Freedom of Information Request show that police chiefs were first alerted to the problem in 2008. They decided to take action by installing yellow fuel caps and a warning system on each car at a total cost of £4,000.

But despite the precaution, diesel police cars were wrongly filled with petrol 110 times in the following two years.

Filler caps at £4,000 a car! Why couldn’t they’ve  just written above the filler in felt tip?

DIESEL

Muppets

SOURCE

Global Warming Panic explained

 

This six and a half minute video has the lot. Hot, cold, hurricanes, Al Gore, Denier, Holocaust, Politicians, Cap and trade, Green, and much much more.

H/T to Michael at WUWT

Fight

My three least favourite organisations in the UK (Apart from Parliament of course), seem to be heading for a bit of a bun fight.

The BBC serves Freedom of Information request (FOIA) on UK Government over weather forecast failures secrecy in worst winter for 100 years.

In an almighty battle to salvage credibility,  three British government institutions are embroiled in a new global warming scandal with the BBC mounting a legal challenge to force ministers to admit the truth. Sceptics ask: Is the UK government’s climate propaganda machine finally falling apart?

I haven’t seen this in the UK MSM and certainly not on BEEB news.

And hopefully this will come to pass.

With the BBC appearing to take the side of the Met Office by seeking to force the government to give honest answers, untold harm will likely befall Prime Minister Cameron’s global warming policies on energy, taxation and the environment.

We shall see. You really should read the rest. It could spark an explosion in the next few weeks.

H/T to Canada Free Press

No wonder my Council tax is so high.

A PLAN to remove safety railings which shield walkers from traffic in Tonbridge town centre has already cost the taxpayer £39,000 – and that's before a decision has even been made.

The Courier can reveal Kent County Council has handed a staggering £39,037 to Jacobs Engineering to look into tearing down the pedestrian guard railings in 12 towns across the county.

Now I could have done that at a cost of a few litres of diesel, a pad of paper, and a pencil.

It gets worse.

Kent County Council's Pauline Banks said the cost of the report "did not include the cost for actual removal".

Well, Kent County Council, I have a proposition to make to you. If you want them taken down then buy me a hacksaw, plenty of blades, and a file and I’ll do it for you for £10 an hour. If you don’t mind it taking a while.

Let me see. There’s 350 of the blighters so if I were to remove two per hour for eight hours per day, it would take me 21.8 days. Now as a true working man I would expect to have numerous Tea breaks and chats to passers by, so I’ll say a month would be reasonable. I’ll even save on expenses as Mrs F.E. can drop me in the High street in the morning, on her way to work, and pick me up on her way home.

Lets see 31 days x 8 hours x £10/hour = *Looks for calculator* £2480.

Lets make it a round £2500. You can pay for my tea.

How about it KCC?

That Toll Bridge.

The Dartford one.

When it was first decided to have a Dartford crossing, the Criteria was that once it was paid for with a suitable profit for the builders it would revert to a free crossing.

Ministers said they would abandon the tolls - £1 for cars and £2.90 for trucks - when construction costs for the tunnel and bridge were paid off, but when the project went into profit in 2004 they remained in place.

More than 54 million vehicles use the crossings each year, contributing more than £60 million to the Treasury.

Not content about raising the cost of the Toll this year by 50%, they are now going to make even more money in future years.

The main problem with the crossing is the tailbacks at peak times, caused by the booths that extortionate  collect money on behalf of the Treasury.

However the government has a cunning wheeze. Yes, it will get rid of them  to ease the traffic flow, but replace them with ANPR.

And of course to pay for all this we the Cash Cow motorist are going to have the privilege of an increased charge of £2, rising to £2.50 next year.

Notwithstanding that they will be able to track the movement of 150,000 vehicles every day. Think what they can do with that data. (hopefully get snowed under).

Damn Climate sceptics.

The other day I was just reading through one of James Delingpole’s climate blogs when I came across a reference by one of the regular commentators to CACC. As I read further I realised that this was a website set up to attempt to prevent discussion on various blogs, by have Trolls invade the sceptic blogs and try to mitigate the effects in the comments. This group calls themselves the Campaign against Climate Change and has a website to support warmists in disrupting discussion which doesn’t agree with their views on AGW.

What they do is send out regular E mails to those who subscribe, on who are the most evil sceptics of the moment Well I must admit I couldn’t resist subscribing, just to see what I would receive.

Below is what I received in my E mail today and I was surprised that all it was, was a list of a few blog posts. I thought at least as a “paid up” (supposedly) member I would get some hint of  what I should be posting on these evil denier blogs. The pitiful offering is below:

• Bishop Hill: The Heretic
• Bishop Hill: Baroness Buscombe
• Bishop Hill: Greenery BC
• James Delingpole: Obama, Holder – get your filthy hands off Twitter!
• James Delingpole: Michael Gove: the Coalition’s Werner Hartenstein
• Christopher Booker: The Met Office fries while the rest of the world freezes

Included was a small précis of each which I wont bother you with.

I’m just wondering if I’ll ever get on their esteemed list. (Note  to self: Must try harder).

And the icing on the cake is…………………………………..

George Monbiot is their President.

They don’t seem to have a comment facility on their blogs, but I see that they have a Forum. In that case I shall have to break out my secret weapon.

Myths about Climate Change.

Thought I’d post this just in case there are any warmists passing by.

TEN MYTHS of Global Warming

MYTH 1:  Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT:  Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8Cover the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands"), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects").

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.

MYTH 2: The "hockey stick" graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT:  Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17^th Century the "average global temperature" has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.

MYTH 3:  Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

FACT:  Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO₂ content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO₂ is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO₂ levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth's oceans expel more CO₂ as a result.

MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

FACT:  Greenhouse gases form about 3 % of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO₂, CH₄, Ozone and N₂O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO₂ constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as "greenhouse agents" than water vapour and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 60% of the "Greenhouse effect".

Those attributing climate change to CO₂ rarely mention this important fact.

MYTH 5:  Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.

FACT:  Computer models can be made to "verify" anything by changing some of the 5 million input parameters or any of a multitude of negative and positive feedbacks in the program used.. They do not "prove" anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover.

MYTH 6:  The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.

FACT:  In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1)     “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute  the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2)     “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”

To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming. 

MYTH 7:  CO2 is a pollutant.

FACT:  This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is.  CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included  CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means to politically control it.

MYTH 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.

FACT:   There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale.  Regional variations may occur. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.

MYTH 9:  Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.

FACT:  Glaciers have been  receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier's health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature.

MYTH 10:  The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.

FACT:  The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica.

Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.

SOURCE

Mind you warmists are unlikely to take any notice and shout me down as an evil denier. Then again, who am I to care.

Climate change

I just thought I would promulgate a worthy document borrowed from Autonomous Mind. It’s a good read, if you like me feel we are being conned into paying for energy that is essentially worthless. Except of course for those who stand to make a great deal of money. Thanks AM. Have a read.

Of Course Our Climate Is Changing