Wind power? What wind power?

It has fallen below freezing outside Mind Towers, ice is covering the car windscreens and the central heating has been turned up. No doubt families up and down the country are having to use more energy to offset the cold.

So now is a good time to take a look at how much power wind turbines are contributing to the UK energy supply after the billions of pounds lavished on them…

1.2% of all the energy being generated!  Money well spent, eh.

But don’t worry.  Our brilliant political class has declared there are many more of them to be installed at crippling cost to consumers, to stand virtually idle just when we need power the most, on freezing nights like tonight.  Sheer bloody genius.

Thank God we still have some coal fired generating capacity to shoulder the burden of our power needs.  In years to come though…

Tony Hall appointment at BBC demonstrates Tory corporate stupidity

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the utter stupidity of senior members of the Conservative Party.  When it was announced that Tony Hall was being appointed BBC Director General after the sopping wet Lord (Chris) Patten foolishly rushed in to fill the post without carefully examining other potential candidates for the vacancy, the Labour Party speedily showered Hall and the decision with praise and plaudits.

You would have thought Labour’s delight would have started ringing alarm bells in Tory HQ, but no.  Perhaps the problem is threefold.  Firstly you have the legendary idiocy of the Tory elite, which treats its members and the public with contempt while making all manner of balls-ups.  Secondly, perhaps Tories just possess incredibly short memories and therefore have forgotten about Tony Hall and what went on at the BBC while he was in cheif executive of BBC News and Current Affairs?  Let’s take a couple of moments to remind them.

Under his Tony Hall’s management, the BBC had an incestuous relationship with the Labour Party.  BBC staffers assisted Labour’s ‘rapid rebuttal unit’ by tipping them off every time a Conservative said anything that challenged Labour in the run up to the 1997 general election.  Former BBC journalists ran as Labour candidates (remember Ben Bradshaw who remained on the BBC Radio 4 payroll despite not working and instead campaigning to win the Exeter seat?) while Labour people went the other way into the BBC (remember Joy Johnson, ex-BBC PR professional who became Labour’s director of communications, then lost her job and was immediately re-hired by the BBC?)  What about the champagne strewn corridors of the BBC after Blair’s election victory and the BBC bias against the Conservatives that had Brian Mawhinney and Charles Lewington in red faced fury as the Patten-loving Major government was pulled to pieces?  It was under Tony Hall that the BBC effectively campaigned for Martin Bell in Tatton, without once challenging him on his motivation for standing or probing his behind the scenes relationship with the Labour Party.

Small wonder Labour has welcomed his appointment, and the corporate stupidity of the Tories sees them also welcome a man into a post far more powerful than the one he used to help to see the Tories ejected from office in 1997.  But what of the third possible problem?  Maybe the long stroll leftwards of the Conservatives, which has accelerated under David Cameron, has made the Tory leadership so indistinguishable from Labour they now share the same mindset enabling them to convince themselves Tony Hall is someone they can do business with.

The timing is incredibly ironic.  Here we are, mid-term of a somewhat unpopular coagulation government, where the Lib Dems are electoral dead ducks struggling to remain the third mainstream political party as UKIP catches and overtakes them in the polls; and the Conservatives are being painted as evil for supposedly trying to repair (badly it has to be said) the economic scorched earth of Labour’s insane tax, borrow, spend and borrow some more policies while continuing to fawn over the EU.  Labour is on top of the polls for simply not being Tories or Fib Dims, despite being led by an incompetent champagne socialist career politician who has never done a proper job in his life and who lives in comfort with a couple of million in the bank.  And now the man who gave Labour a free ride on BBC’s news output to help them win the election in 1997 is placed into an even more powerful role as head of the BBC, enabling him to ensure the BBC helps Labour to victory again in 2015.

Describing the Tories as lemmings doesn’t seem to go far enough.

Without the slightest trace of irony

Is this one of the finest examples of a stunning lack of self awareness?  Here we have a man, writing for pay in the mainstream media, criticising the mainstream media for failing to uncover and report information that was apparently very simple to find.  The irony of course is this man is an ‘expert’, a self professed ‘historian of the United States’.

Now forgive me, but I thought the mark of a historian was the ability to uncover and interpret information.  So what is Dr Tim Stanley’s excuse for not finding this material himself?  Some historian.  Where in the name of all things holy do these people come from?

Panic!

It’s as if there was never a world before the Euro.  It’s as if countries inside the Eurozone never had currency of their own, never had the ability to value and manage their currency as they saw fit, and had political structures where decision making was domestic rather than outsourced to Brussels.

But anyone reading Failygraph and the dire warnings of Robert Chote, head of the Office of Budget Responsibility, could be forgiven for thinking anything prior to the creation of the single currency is pre-history.  The Fail’s interpretation of Chote is designed to further the sense of panic and requirement to fill column inches:

Britain’s economy may suffer “permanent” damage and “never quite get back up” if the euro collapses in a chaotic way, the Government’s chief economic forecaster has said.

Reality is being replaced by theatrics.  It never ceases to amaze me how this country manages to survive with so many defeatist idiots in positions of responsibility.  A break up of the Euro would result in pain, probably for some years.  There are banks that would fail and debts that would not be repaid.  But the planet will continue to spin on its axis and orbit the sun.  Countries would revert to currencies they can control, which would be more beneficial for them than the restrictive and skewed one-size-fits-none political tool that is the Euro.

Economic activity will continue as before.  People will still need to buy food, goods and services and companies will continue to trade to provide those – paying taxes and employing people.  Some economies may look and feel different, but to suggest ‘permanent’ damage could result is nothing short of ridiculous. There will still be the same markets in Europe that we will sell to today.  Remember, if it were not for the same political motives behind the creation of the Euro we would be working in our own national interest to access markets elsewhere around the world and trade freely on our own terms without being constrained by the interests and wishes of other EU member states.  If the Euro goes, so to might the bureaucracy that hamstrings us.

No doubt when the Great Depression took hold there were fearmongers like Chote saying economies would suffer ‘permanent’ damage.  Yet we have seen huge growth and economic transformation since then.  People adapt, people are entrepreneurial and opportunities are created and seized.  The fearmongers are those who have an agenda and see it crumbling before their eyes.  They are the ones who can only see their own vested interests in the intermediate, rather than the big picture in the long term.

All too predictable

Gordon Brown was renowned for his rehashing and re-release of announcements to make existing commitments or actions already underway appear as new initiatives.  It seems David Cameron is taking a leaf out of Brown’s book.

In an all-too-predictable piece in the Barclay Brother Beano today by Patrick Hennessy, readers are told that Cameron:

… will produce a series of measures that he hopes will give “red meat” to Conservative backbenchers, who are calling for action to appeal to their core voters after poor local election results.

One of the few mentioned is this:

* clamp down on crime with a new “British FBI”, tougher anti-social behaviour measures and community sentences;

A new British FBI?  Apparently Cameron:

… hopes that other items in the Queen’s speech – including the creation of the new National Crime Agency, which is seen as a British FBI; more “intensive” community punishments and moves to seize credit cards, passports and driving licences from criminals – will satisfy critics.

The inclusion in the Queen’s Speech of the creation of the National Crime Agency is a mere formality and is not the signal of a change in direction to appease pissed off Tories.  Its creation is old news.  It was offically announced in June 2011 by Theresa May, who hailed its creation as:

… a landmark moment in British law enforcement.

We were told nearly fully one year ago that the NCA will come fully into being in 2013, with some key elements becoming operational sooner. Its new head was announced in October 2011.  The timetable for it to be formally brought into being was included in the Home Office publication from which May’s comment was taken:

And as per the timetable, the work of putting the pieces into place has already happened.

So given all this, how is it that the Tories are being allowed to spin the widely trailed creation of the National Crime Agency as one of a series of measures that Cameron hopes will give “red meat” to Conservative backbenchers, who are calling for action to appeal to their core voters after poor local election results?  Why is the lamentable Telegraph conning its readers by pushing this matter as a reaction to poor local election results?  If this is what the battle plan to avert a Tory civil war looks like, they are probably be using Wellington’s plan at Waterloo as a template for the defence of the Falkland Islands.

If the NCA is something that is supposed to appeal to core Conservative voters – circa 9.3% of the electorate on Thursday – one wonders how many of them will be pleased when they discover down the line that this is a big enabling step on the patient journey to a cross-border EU policing agency, which carefully maintains the promise not to integrate existing police forces while achieving what Brussels wants.

Update: A subsequent tour of my blogroll shows that the always excellent The Boiling Frog was on to this last night when the Failygraph article was published.  It is well worth reading.  TBF shows that several other Queen’s Speech inclusions mentioned in the Fail are also rehashes.  This is not so much ‘red meat’ for Tories as undercooked Groundhog for the rest of us.

John Redwood is Tory dead wood

If anyone ever required further confirmation that John Redwood is just as out of touch and deluded as any other Conservative, he obligingly provides irrefutable evidence on his blog, where he writes:

There are various EU initiatives being undertaken by a variety of Conservative MPs. Bill Cash has tabled a Bill to seek to sort out the growing legal and sovereignty difficulties.  Bill through the European Foundation keeps up a stream of informed comments on the evolution of the EU. As Chairman of the EU Scrutiny Committee he and his colleagues daily seek less or better rules and regulations, and try to strengthen the government’s hand in negotiations about the new measures.

Daily seek less or better rules and regulations?  Really?  No, really?  I have just three words to say in response to that…  Integrated Maritime Policy.

See here and then here.

The Europlastics have been too clever by half

Let us set aside for one moment whether the House of Commons debate scheduled for Monday will actually achieve anything other than confirming MPs are a craven bunch of lying hypocrites, whether or not this is the right time and for an In/Out referendum on the EU, or if the Westminster Parliament has enough competence to resume powers that have been given away.  There is some good news amongst the mess.

The amendment tabled by George EUstice to this Monday’s debate on a Motion relating to the holding of a national referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, and Bernard Jenkin’s subsequent letter to EUstice which was copied to all backbench Conservative MPs (reproduced below) confirms our argument that EUstice is a Europhile stooge.

With poll after poll showing a majority of people in this country want an In/Out referendum, George EUstice is now doing his level best to subvert the wishes of the people and fulfil the wishes of David Cameron.  EUstice claims to be a Eurosceptic, but the reality is EUstice is pro-EU.  He wants to keep Britain in the EU and arrogantly believes it can be reformed, despite this belief being utterly incompatible with the EU’s definitive aims and conditions of membership.  This letter from Jenkin holes EUstice below his Europhile waterline:

Dear George

Firstly, David Nuttall’s motion sums up the EU question which faces the nation: do we carry on with EU integration on present terms of membership; or get out altogether; or renegotiate revised terms of membership? Your amendment seeks to narrow the terms of the debate by removing reference to one option which is clearly available to this country, which is to leave the EU. I personally don’t agree with an in-out referendum, but I recognise that that it is a legitimate option to be debated. The argument that this was not in our manifesto is irrelevant.I think we all appreciate your and others’ efforts to build bridges here, but I feel I must make it clear to colleagues why I (and probably most colleagues) cannot support the amendment as drafted. I am copying this to backbench colleagues.

Second, you advance your amendment on the basis that it is consistent with the coalition agreement, but this is not relevant either. Both the coalition agreement and our manifesto have both been overtaken by events. Support for fiscal union in the Euro area was not in either – and would have never have been entertained if it had been proposed for either document. It is fiscal union which is leading to a fundamental change in the character of the EU, and which has given rise to the demand for this debate.

Third, as a supporter of renegotiation, why am I not tempted by your amendment? Because any remit for renegotiation must set out the objective of establishing a new relationship with our EU partners. For such a new relationship to be meaningful, there must be a fundamental change in that relationship. It must restore the basic democratic principle that the authority to pass laws should be democratically accountable to those who are affected by them. The powers delegated to the EU (or withdrawn) must in future be determined by Parliament, and not by the EU institutions acting autonomously. Without this, nothing much will change. The difficulty we now face is that the EU Treaties are now so all encompassing, and the institutions so assertive, that the exercise of merely nibbling back powers and competences here and there would not reverse the effect of the Lisbon Treaty on the UK, or Nice, or Amsterdam, or Maastricht, or the Single European Act, or address the fundamental problems which actually arise from the Treaty of Rome.

Finally, there is a great danger that Parliament will emerge from this looking very out of touch if the House is not to debate the original motion or at least something which reflects its spirit. The BBBC adopted this motion in response to the e-petitions which demand an in-out EU referendum. Had the authors of the amendment approached the BBBC with their motion, it would not have been entertained by the BBBC, since there are no e-petitions behind it. If this amendment were to be selected, the debate and the vote which followed would be on the amendment, and not on the main motion – hardly an example of e-petitions working as they were intended!

Yours ever

Bernard

Bernard Jenkin MP (Harwich and North Essex)
Chairman, PASC (Public Administration Select Committee)

More people will be asking what kind of Eurosceptic would put forward an amendment which attempts to delay a national referendum on EU membership until after the UK had ‘renegotiated its position’ in the EU?  After all, such a call only serves the interests of the EU and those who are pro-EU.  Questions are being asked and the true face of EUstice is being revealed to more of those who have been taken in by his scam.

EUstice, along with fellow unprincipled climber, Chris Heaton-Harris, thought they were merely doing their master’s bidding – and their careers a favour – by forming the Parliamentary group of Europlastics to act as a pressure valve to ease the demands in some Tory party quarters for a straight In/Out referendum concerning our membership of the EU.

But it seems EUstice and Heaton-Harris have been too clever by half.  Their vanity has compounded their stupidity and led them to court so much media attention for their supposedly Eurosceptic club they have painted themselves into a corner.  It appears to be backfiring spectacularly.  With some in the media completely taken in by the EUstice/Heaton-Harris con trick, and others trying to help them in their attempt to undermine genuine Eurosceptics, copious amounts of oxygen have been pumped onto the story with unintended consequences.

Something that was supposed to grow no larger than a small flame to contain those who want Cameron to fulfil his Eurosceptic promises is now burning out of control.  Outside the Westminster bubble ordinary people, campaign groups and some of the useful idiots in the media who were taken in by the EUstice/Heaton-Harris spin and deception have seized the moment and given it a momentum that was never intended.

A debate in the House of Commons the Tory high command never wanted is now going to be held.  MPs who were selected for their supposed Eurosceptic credentials are now being called out by the people who were taken in by them and expect them to deliver on their pre-election pledges.  Cameron and Hague are seething with anger and have, with breathtaking arrogance, moved a backbench debate forward so they can personally attend and rein in those who are might go too far in playing to their constituency audiences and the public in general. It would be hilarious if it were not so serious.

So, on to that good news I referred to.  There are some upsides to all this.

After the debate it is likely that more people will be more aware than ever that all but a single digit number of Tory MPs who profess to be Eurosceptic are anything of the sort.  David Cameron and William Hague’s claims to be Eurosceptic will be finally exposed as utter cant, further eroding their credibility with the less engaged members of the public.  The BBC’s desire to showcase apparent Tory splits in news headlines will awaken resentment of the EU among more people outside the Westminster bubble, making our membership more unpopular and unsustainable.  And the political class will be more marginalised than ever as more people grasp the fact none of the three main parties share our views or interests – and that the idea of representative democracy is an illusion.

Before people can set about fixing something they have to understand exactly what is broken.  At this time not enough people realise what is broken.  This Parliamentary debate and the furore surrounding it will help more people on that journey of understanding.  No matter what the outcome of the debate itself, the charade that brought it about will bring about some positive benefits.

Europlastics – Giving it to Telegraph readers straight

The best way to counter misrepresentation and falsehood is to present the facts.  Online readers of the Telegraph’s latest ludicrous ‘prop up the Tories’ editorial have been treated to some facts this morning by The Boiling Frog and yours truly.

It is all well and good using our blogs to tell people the reality – and with increasing visitor numbers our message is reaching more people. But when compared to the huge readership of the Telegraph site we cannot hope to challenge the propaganda anywhere near as much as we need to.  So we need to make use of the comments sections, when they are provided, and give it to readers straight. Presenting facts in a robust and responsible manner will ensure more people question what they are being told and perhaps look deeper to uncover the reality for themselves.

What are you waiting for dear reader? Away to the Telegraph site and firmly but politely give it to them straight.

How reaction to Spencer & Braswell underlines the corruption and politicisation of science

I want to tell you a story.  Are you sitting comfortably?  Then I’ll begin…

Once upon a time there was a big, shiny, expensive computer system upon which programmes were run.  The programmes were written by very clever scientists to create projections of what things might be like in the future.  They called these projections ‘models’.

Some places had got very dry over the years so the very clever people wrote a programme to see what the models said was going to happen.  After the very clever scientists entered all the information and parameters they thought were important, they ran the models.  When the models came back they suggested that unlike in the past, the rain would no longer make anything outside wet.

Now, because the models were developed by a small group of some clever very scientists in very big universities who had been given a lot of public money to carry out research, they were accepted as actual fact by politicians who said there was a big problem that only they could solve.  Being part of the establishment, the media wrote lots of stories about this endorsing what the politicians said and telling people things would have to change.

Because of what the computer models had suggested, the government decided that everyone must install complex and expensive systems to use water from a brand new source to irrigate grass, trees, flowers, crops and bushes because lots of places were drier and the rain won’t make anything wet in future.  So with other governments around the world they made lots of new laws and created big plans and spent billions and billions of pounds, dollars, euros, roubles and yen to convince people of the need for this expensive change to watering things.

They also gave lots of peoples’ money to a lot of new campaign groups and businesses to go into schools and companies to tell them to had to change the way everything is watered.  It also gives lots more money to other scientists to start from what the small group of very clever scientists has already decided and find more reasons to agree with them and arrive at the same conclusion.

But all this seemed strange to a lot of people who thought there was still lots of rain and it was still making everything outside wet.  A lot of people were not convinced and they were called sceptics and they started to point out problems with the claims from the very clever scientists.  The governments were very angry because they were making lots of deals to spend money on big corporations they were friends with to develop solutions that everyone would have to use, making owners and shareholders very rich while ordinary people were left with less money. The media wrote lots of nasty things about the sceptical people and because the media was so clever and always right about everything they called those people ‘deniers’.

Not all very clever scientists agreed with each other.  Some of them became sceptical and started to examines in detail the real world observation of what happens when it rains.  Amazingly, when they looked outside and examined lots of data records, they found that not everything was drying up after all and the rain was still making things outside very wet and therefore the basis for everyone installing the government mandated water systems was flawed.

The sceptical scientists wrote a paper about this, and it was examined and tested by other very clever scientists in their discipline in a process called peer-review, before being accepted and published by a journal called ‘Remote Sensing’.  Those people who were not convinced by the need for watering change pointed at the paper as evidence that not everything was as the government and their very clever scientists made it seem.  They argued that the small group of clever scientists supported by the government might be getting things wrong and government should wait for more evidence before taking such sweeping, expensive and draconian action.

The media largely said nothing about the paper because after spending so long saying rain wasn’t making things outside wet anymore they don’t want to be proved wrong.  And besides, some of their pension plans depended on money made from investments in the new watering processes being made by the government’s corporate friends.

A little while later, the editor of the paper-publishing journal ‘Remote Sensing’ said he didn’t agree with the paper because of all those very clever scientists who believed rain wasn’t make things wet anymore because their computer models had been saying so for a long time now. So the editor resigned in protest and the media attempted to discredit the sceptical scientists, citing that one of them once had to alter a previous paper many years previously, and that he is in some way odd because he is a committed Christian.

The media agreed with another very clever scientist who said that the paper must by defintion be flawed until it satisfied all of the observations, agrees with physical theory, and fit the computer models.  He said this even though computer models are only as good as the data put into them by humans who are nowhere close to understanding all the complex relationships that causes nature to do what it does.  Although common sense and science in years gone by would have it that real world observation is the only reliable measure of any changes in nature and has the capacity to invalidate computer models, this very clever scientist and his friends had turned science on its head by claiming computer models have the capacity to invalidate observed reality.

It would have all been very confusing if one of the very clever scientists had not been caught out saying that even if they had to redefine what scientific peer-review is, they would somehow close down any views from sceptical scientists, even though doing so would utterly corrupt science and the correct way of furthering it.  But after putting complete faith in computer models and using them as the basis for lots of incredible projections that have never become reality, he had to put his own interests before his duty to science.

And for the ordinary people, nothing changed.  The governments continued to press ahead with their financially ruinous plans.  The media continued to exaggerate every story that fitted their narrative while refusing to cover any story that contradicted them.  The computer models continued to churn out projections that did not reflect observed reality.

——————————–

The real story is carried in the words of the sceptical scientist, Dr Roy Spencer on the excellent Watts Up With That? blog.  The media hatchet job is most prevalent in the Guardian and on its broadcast arm, the BBC.  Dr Spencer goes on to explain the findings in layman’s terms on his own website.   In response to the resignation of Wolfgang Wagner, Dr Roger Pielke Snr puts the politicisation of science into context.  And the ludicrous position on observations having to fit in with computer models as advanced by Dr Pete Gleick, and Dr Phil Jones’ comment about keeping sceptical papers out of the public domain, are both covered by Indur Goklany on WUWT.

What we are seeing is anti-science.  We are experiencing pseudo science that aims not to question or challenge, but to reinforce the validity of a body of opinion that is yet to make the jump from theory to fact.  It is being done to fit a political agenda.  It is a corruption of science and the latest example of why people should be sceptical of the claims made about climate change and its causes and effects

In closing, one comment left on Watts Up With That? sums up the situation superbly and deserves to be repeated widely to help others understand what really is going on:

This is all part of the same pattern that has characterized the warmists’ approach to climate “science” since the last century. They come up with models and use these to produce predictions which are then baptized as sovereign truth. In real science, they would have been required to demonstrate the predictive validity of their models before their predictions would be granted any confidence – and when observations contradicted predictions, they would have been expected to revise their models instead of beating the data until it fit the model outputs. Instead, thanks to Algore, Hansen, left-wing politicians looking for regulatory and legislative mechanisms to control the polity and extract more tax dollars, and a compliant left-leaning media hungry for “imminent disaster” headlines, the burden of proof has been shifted to those who challenge the modellers instead of being left where it belongs: with the modellers who still have not demonstrated the validity of their models. I simply cannot believe we are still discussing a theory that, 20 years after it went mainstream, has yet to produce a single scrap of confirmatory empirical evidence.

The extent to which the AGW true believers have warped the scientific method to serve their pecuniary and political ends is simply breathtaking. Climate science represents the greatest perversion of the scientific method since the Enlightenment. It is phlogiston, phrenology and Lysenkoism all rolled up into one big, fat, corrupt boil desperately in need of lancing.

Police swift to seize the new opportunity

Barely a week has passed since the mass murders in Norway.  But that hasn’t stopped Britain’s ‘finest’ using the attacks by Anders Breivik to justify their own paramilitary behaviour in defence of the establishment.

A reader has written to AM today with anonymised details of something that happened a few days ago.

A man was arrested in an English town following his written demand for a senior council executive to resign from their job, over their refusal to listen to local residents’ demands for a proper consultation over a contentious issue.  The man sent in a strongly worded communication, including his details, and with typically British humour included some tongue in cheek comments to demonstrate his annoyance.

The authority in question chose to interpret the letter as a threat and called in the police in an attempt to criminalise the individual.  Contempt of local government is clearly a priority for the police and so, at 6.00am, several officers arrived at the individuals address, arrested him and also removed his computers.

It was during this daring operation that one of the officers explained to the gobsmacked individual:

‘After Breivik we can’t be too careful’.

!!!

He was later released and his computers returned to him, but to satisfy the lust for retribution from the local authority the police gave the man a caution for good measure.  On the advice of his solicitor he has asked that no information that can identify him or the easily offended authority be published, in case it results in further attempts to acquaint him with various organs of the state whose intrusion and interference would make life somewhat less enjoyable.

Suffice to say this is another example of police over reaction. Never slow to miss an opportunity to impose themselves on people in dubious circumstances they are already citing the Breivik factor as justification for their disproportionate and heavy handed behaviour.  Didn’t take long, did it?

Had a member of the public reported an actual threat they could only dream of this kind of police response on their behalf.  Clearly we have a two tier nation where the establishment can make vexatious complaints and count upon rapid and fullsome police action, but ordinary people are often left to fend for themselves when faced with genuine threats.

Continuous Insurance Enforcement, bureaucracy and big government

In these times of austerity it must be reassuring for the likes of Ed Miliband and his band of big state, champagne Fabians to see that this (supposedly) cost cutting government continues to generate work for itself in order to cause inconvenience to law abiding car owners.

The latest example is the recent change to insurance requirements for those car owners who choose to keep their taxed vehicles off the public highway, known as Continuous Insurance Enforcement (CIE).

If for example a driver has a car he uses on, say, a seasonal basis - such as a soft-top or classic car – and the vehicle is properly taxed, the law has been changed to force the driver to keep that vehicle insured.  Whereas common sense would dictate that if a properly taxed vehicle is off the road for a period of time there should be no need to have motor insurance for it, the government has decided otherwise.  The thinking behind it is to reduce the number of uninsured drivers on the road.  The reality is that this could turn otherwise law abiding motorists an even larger cash cow and significantly increase the bureaucratic overhead required to monitor and enforce the new law, at taxpayer expense naturally.

Drivers who wish to keep their vehicles off the public highway for a period of time often don’t bother with the trouble of completing a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) and sending back their tax disc for a refund of unused duty.  That means the Treasury benefit from a bit of extra money and there is less bureaucratic work required of civil servants.  Now however they must complete a SORN and return the tax disc, or they must by law pay insurance premiums even though their vehicle is off the highway and not an accident risk to anyone.  Not having insurance on such a vehicle because it is plainly unnecessary is no longer acceptable.

What the government has done is not only counterproductive, it also undermines case law dating back to 1777 that enshrine the fundamental principle of insurance cover.  It is ably explained by Tony Bridgland writing in Insurance Age magazine:

In 1777, a ship was due to sail from England to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Under her insurance, it was warranted that she would make the voyage in convoy. But she was late in arriving at the assembly point, and the convoy sailed without her and she sailed alone.

This meant that, because the warranty was not satisfied, the insurers carried no risk.

In Tyrie v Fletcher, Mansfield ruled that the premium should be returned. In short, they could not charge for a risk they had not run.

This became one of the main principles of modern insurance, and still is.

So what we have is an example of hyperactive, interfering government tearing up long standing insurance and legal principles so that motorists are being charged for a risk they are not running.  True, they can avoid this, but only by declaring their vehicle off the road and claiming back their unused duty, then at more inconveience to themselves, having to present at the Post Office (assuming it hasn’t closed down) with all documentation to get a new tax disc later – not even being able to make use of the online mechanisms to get the disc.  As the sole commentator to the piece observes:

If you are a crim who thinks nothing of risking a £200 fine, 6 points and the car being scrapped when you take it on the road, the risk of a further £100 fine through the post is not going to get you quaking in your boots, is it?

The only people being put out and paying extra to service the administration of this change are the law abiding.  The people the government claim they are targeting will continue their law breaking regardless, in all probability not even having tax in the first place let alone insurance (and in many cases not even having a licence) and on the rare occasions they are caught will take the slap on the wrist as the price of doing business and carry on as if nothing has happened.  The answer is our money being spent on police traffic patrols instead of cash generating speed cameras.  Speed cameras don’t identify dangerous vehicles, dangerous drivers, or catch those without licences, tax or insurance.

And we wonder why we end up with ever more laws, pay ever more in tax and have ever less to show for it.  Be sure of one thing, if big government claims to have the answer then it is a bloody stupid question.

Good people of Crawley, rejoice!

If, as a voter living in the Parliamentary constituency of Crawley in West Sussex, you oppose the idea of giving £9 billion of our tax pounds to the International Monetary Fund to gift to Greece and other failing economies with no prospect of getting any of it back, congratulations!  Your MP, Henry Smith, voted against the measure in the Commons.

Representative democracy in action.

If, as a voter living in the Parliamentary constituency of Crawley in West Sussex, you support the idea of giving £9 billion of our tax pounds to the International Monetary Fund to gift to Greece and other failing economies with no prospect of getting any of it back, congratulations!  Your MP, Henry Smith, voted for the measure in the Commons.

Representative democracy in action.

Yes ladies and gentlemen of Crawley, Henry Smith MP is the very epitome of consensus politics. No matter what your view on the important issues, Henry has found a way to ensure he has given voice to your wishes.  The full incredible story is on EU Referendum.

With startling insight Henry has realised he can bring cheer to the supposed Conservative Eurosceptics by declaring he voted against the increase in contributions to the IMF.  This results in honourable mentions from the Guardian’s Content Partner.  But not only that, he can tell the whips and David Cameron that he supported the demands of the leadership to vote for the increase, thus preserving his hopes of getting a junior ministerial job in the future.

Henry Smith is a pioneer.  He has mastered the art of what political scientists are describing as ‘hyperactive abstention’.  Instead of refusing to vote, he simply votes for and against.  Not so much A Man for All Seasons, as a Man for All Arguments.  Rumours that Henry received campaign donations from http://www.confused.com have not yet been verified.  It is believed he came up with the idea of ‘hyperactive abstention’ when he was teaching children the Green Cross Code, where youngsters were encouraged to look both ways.  The exciting part of this is if all MPs do the same we won’t have any more idiotic legislation imposed on us from the Westminster bubble because every vote would be tied.

Unlike Richard North at EU Referendum we have been unable to reach Henry for comment.  However our sources just south of Gatwick tell us that Henry has come up with a sure fire way to be returned to the Commons at the next election.  He will be standing for the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and UKIP.  When AM pointed out this would not leave the voters of Crawley much of a choice, we were told that it’s not a problem as voters who put an ‘X’ next to Conservative Henry will be able to revisit the polling station a few minutes later and vote again by putting an ‘X’ against Labour Henry, thereby cancelling out their vote.

‘It’s more fun than abstaining by staying at home and watching Jeremy Kyle or sitting in Tilgate Park being eyed up by a gang of chavs from Broadfield,’ our source explained. ‘It also means when people ask you how you voted you can say you supported the eventual winner and couldn’t stand the other lot.’

With the turnout in Crawley likely to exceed 270% at the next election the local Borough Council is advising residents to vote early and vote often.

Their continuing ignorance and a very interesting conversation

Another day, another story of the UK political class moaning about the consequences of EU membership.  This time the Daily Mail reports the ‘news’ that:

The European Commission yesterday revealed budget demands which would cost UK taxpayers £10billion.

Well, that is what governments do, they create taxes when they want to raise more money.  And the face is the EU is our government, despite the people of this country never being asked to give a mandate for it. This blog picked up on comments preparing the way for the EU’s new taxation approach over six months ago being discussed right out there in plain sight.  But what is telling about this EU taxation story is the Mail’s observation that:

In what Treasury officials viewed as one of the most outrageous power grabs in recent memory, they demanded the right to raise a Europe-wide sales tax.

What a load of utter crap.  It is not a power grab.  The EU has been given the power to do this by the quisling politicians sent to Westminster over the last three decades by the voters of this country.

Of course no EU story is complete without Downing Street spokesmen and women rushing forth with comments indicating the supposed frustration and/or outrage of the Cameron-run coagulation.  But what will cast-iron Dave actually do about it?  The answer to that is the sum total of diddly squat.

If Cameron truly wanted this country to be independent once again and run its own affairs he need only call a binding referendum asking the British people if they wish the UK to remain bound by the anti democratic EU.  But as Cameron made clear in November last year, he is keeping that firmly off the table:

I do not believe in an in-out referendum for many reasons. I think we are better off in the European Union—we have to fight our corner very hard—but I would grant a referendum if there were any proposed transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels.

At least the first part of that sentence was honest. The second part was a lie, as demonstrated so clearly by East Midlands Tory MEP Roger Helmer, who last week in ConservativeHome reminded people that the Conservative-LibDem cobbleition are transferring new powers to the EU faster than the previous Labour administration did. Did any of you spot a passing referendum asking for your permission?

The timing of this is rather amusing as it follows a week after AM had a long chat with a member of the Conservative Party Board.  The board member wanted to know, over two years on, why AM had walked away from the Conservative Party.  They were familiar with the arguments, after all they have heard them time and again as a third of the membership has deserted since Cameron become party leader.

But the board member implored me to understand that Cameron is a man with a plan.  The plan apparently is to pick a fight with the EU next year and use that to justify a referendum he apparently wants, although he will make it appear to his EU friends that he is doing this with all reluctance.  When it was pointed out to the board member that the Cameron led administration has granted more power to the EU in the last year more quickly than Labour managed, AM was told to wait and see.

The notion of Cameron being a strategic genius who will throw off his cloak of Europhilia and reveal his inner democratic nationalist is laughable given the catalogue of pro EU actions to date.  So it seems the ignorance is all pervasive and the effort to make us buy into it is being reinforced at every opportunity.  The gullible constituency where this idea is being swallowed is obvious to all who look – the British media.

Step aside Lil Lou, Bonnie is the new Queen of Telegraph envirobull

Two months ago this blog covered the story of llamas being used to transport a population of tiny fish – the vendace – in the Lake District to safety because:

‘the Environment Agency said the species needed to be protected from the warming effects of climate change and its impact on rivers and lakes’

It seems this aquatic armageddon template has now been adopted in Australia.  For just two months on we learn from the credibility-devoid pages of the Barclay Brother Beano that the Duck-billed platypus is supposedly at risk from climate change:

‘As a result of global warming, researchers have found that the cool rivers and ponds that platypus love to swim in could become too warm for them to survive.’

But rather than this story being shoved down the ether from the tofu and University of East Anglia press release covered desk of the arch enviropropagandist, little Louise Gray, this little piece of vacuous, mind bending, unquestioning, cut and paste idiocy has originated from The Fail’s correspondent for Australia and the Pacific, Bonnie Malkin.

Clearly the Barclay Boys have found s0meone whose capacity for publishing completely unscientific drivel – elegantly ripped to shreds by a few of the people who could suppress their laughter long enough to leave comments beneath that press release masquerading as news – exceeds even the desperate excesses of La Gray.  And that really takes some doing.

One thing is for sure. When it comes to envirobull the Telegraph really is a world leader. Perhaps if Bonnie Malkin wants to tell stories about threats to the platypus she could take a few moments to see what the genuine risks are.

You do the fighting, I’ll do the talking

Every time he opens his mouth David Cameron reveals a little bit more of the idiocy within.

His latest comment, an attempt to stem criticism from senior members of the armed forces, underlines Cameron’s stupidity.  How exactly does Cameron expect the military to do the fighting when the size of the armed forces is being pared back, equipment that is essential for independent operations is being decommissioned at break neck speed and certain personnel have little time for training and recovery between deployment to theatre?

Yes, the Ministry of Defence has squandered billions on ludicrous procurement decisions. Yes, the Defence Chiefs have failed their commands by setting their hearts on equipment designed for use in conventional warfare while all our operations since the Falklands have been asymmetric. But this has been allowed to happen by the utter failure of the politicians to control that for which they are responsible.

In a way Cameron is being honest when he says he will do the talking.  Talk is all he is good for.  Cheap talk and empty rhetoric.  But he is fundamentally dishonest when he tells the armed forces to get on with the fighting because the defence policy of his band of traitorous quislings is eviscerating the British military and neutering its ability to function independently. It is not even an accident, it is being done by design as part of a bigger European plan to create an EU army that leaves member states reliant on interdependency.

Perhaps the Defence Chiefs could restore some semblence of honour if they admit they have been wrong to go along with the EU’s grand plan, discovered their backbones and oaths to defend this country’s interests and told Cameron what he can do with his words.

‘The Eurosceptic Steve Hilton’ or ‘Agendas in action’

So the man who is a parody of himself, Cameron adviser Steve Hilton, has let it be leaked in the media that he is said to have swung behind moves for the UK to go it alone after being shocked to discover how much sovereignty has switched from Westminster to Brussels.

Very little leaks out of Westminster in this way unless someone has an ulterior motive.  That motive could be to show up Hilton for the vacuous fool he is, it could be an attempt to soothe the ruffled feathers of the Tory grassroots that a man with Cameron’s ear is a Eurosceptic to arrest sliding membership numbers, or it could be an internal power play by someone who would benefit from Hilton’s removal. Whatever, there is more to this than meets the eye.

What the article does do is draw attention to the lack of understanding among senior government figures about how this country is run and by whom, and the sheer dumb ignorance of those who profess to be in leadership positions. There is nothing more to add about this ‘story’ that has not been analysed by Dr Richard North at EU Referendum. His post on the matter is worthy of your time.

The fall and fall of Tim Montgomerie

Many bloggers on the right of the blogosphere will remember the time when Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome was considered influential. To see how far Montgomerie has fallen, subsumed into the rent chasing claque in his desperate effort to be a ‘pundit’, just witness his piece in the online version of the Barclay Brother Beano this evening.

Whereas many people once considered Montgomerie to be a free thinker, genuine Eurosceptic and voice of the conservative leaning grassroots, he has sacrificed all in the interests of tribal party loyalty.  The Conservatives are in trouble, so Montgomerie has been drafted to write a distraction piece that poses such heavyweight political questions as ‘Is George Osborne actually running things at Number 10?’ and ‘Will Steve Hilton go?’

And to think CCHQ was once allegedly worried that Montgomerie’s grassroots focus was a threat to the party.  How wrong they were.

For when push came to shove, the Tory membership had accepted the Faustian deal to go along with Cameron’s new social democratic autocracy and, safely inside Downing Street, Cast Iron Dave was tearing up the few conservative principles that still remained, Montgomerie was shown to be nowhere.  Indeed, far from being the siren voice of the centre right determined to keep Cameron honest, Montgomerie is now CCHQ’s useful idiot, running interference to keep people outside the Westminster bubble watching the birdie and focusing attention on matters of little consequence or zero substance.  In return Montgomerie gets a national profile and repeated media opportunities with Downing Street’s blessing.

Thankfully at least one of the early commenters has failed to be taken in and has hit the nail squarely on the head with this incisive observation:

On these matters of substance Montgomerie is all but silent.  It is the best rated comment already, and it may well remain so as those who have not abandoned their convictions rail against those like Montgomerie who have sold out and therefore condemned themselves for a meteoric fall and increasing irrelevance.  When Cameron is finished there will be no way back for Montgomerie.  Having jumped the fence he will find attempts to jump back will be too much even for political editors to stomach.

Greens’ idiocy underlined again

A BBC story today about a scheme to allow electric car users to charge their vehicles across London being launched reveals the idiocy of the political class on a number of levels.

But while London Mayor Boris Johnson is shown up for yet another bout of foolishness, pledging to install 1,300 charging points across the capital in the next two years instead of the 7,500 he originally promised in that time frame, it is the Green party that takes the prize for their environmental lunacy. As the story explains:

Green Party London Assembly member Darren Johnson said: “The mayor never explained how he would fund the ambitious plans for 25,000 charging points which he launched with a big fan-fair in 2009.

“He has also failed to guarantee that the charging points will run on renewable energy, so the environmental gains are far less than they should be.”

Perhaps we should be asking Darren Johnson just how electricity from renewable sources can be segregated from electricity generated by conventional means as it is sent down the lines into London.

Perhaps he could also explain how, assuming electricity could be segregated in such a way, what electric car drivers would do when the wind doesn’t blow and no juice is coming down the wire from the lavishly subsidised wind farms where turbines are barely moving.

There is a certain surreal quality to the kind of utopian world the Greens think we should inhabit. Their lack of realism and their rejection of an industrialised world, where people can travel long distances inexpensively and engage in trade that benefits millions, shows them up for the deluded and damaging ideologues they really are.

In the world of the Greens the lights will regularly go out, transport and industrial production will often be interrupted, the cost of our power will soar ever higher as decades of progress are reversed in the name of environmentalism. Perversely the Greens’ plans would result in far greater pressure on this country’s natural resources and far more harm being done to the environment than is done today.

Do shut up Cameron you self absorbed prat

As the ‘Heir to Blair’ it comes as no surprise that David Cameron wraps himself in pathetic soundbite politics.  Like Blair, Cameron is also fundamentally dishonest. Today we are provided with another of those ‘Oh piss off’ moments.

We learn that Cameron’s speech to the What’s-left-of-the-Conservative-Party Spring Forum will see him vowing to fight the “enemies of enterprise”. It appears that:

The Prime Minister will tell the Conservatives’ spring forum he wants to make it easier for people to start their own business and will get rid of some of the rules and regulations that stand in the way.

Get rid of rules and regulations eh?  What, the ones that are dreamed up in Brussels and made law here?  You know, laws and regulations that before the election Cameron promised to repatriate from the EU, then after the election his government added to by rubber stamping a raft of EU measures and opting in to others. My bullshit-o-meter is already red lining.  Apparently:

Among his proposals is a plan to encourage government departments to award more contracts to small and medium-sized firms.

He will accuse Labour of smothering the life out of business and say he has an “almighty job to do” fighting against bureaucrats and their “ridiculous rules” and town hall officials who “take forever” making planning decisions.

Labour did what the Conservatives are doing, bowing before the altar of the EU to impose every wheeze the bureaucrats can come up with as quickly as possible.

As any small or medium size businessman will tell you, just try being considered for a government contract.  Just put yourself forward for the assault course of jumping through hoops, agreeing to abide by irrelevant compliance commitments on things such as diversity and sustainability, and having every aspect of your activity pored over by faceless officials who will determine if you are worthy enough to participate in such state generosity.  While trying to satisfy all these pre-requisities, how do they have time to run their business?

To cap off his stupidity, Cameron will say:

“There is no shortage of enterprise in this country,” he will tell delegates in Cardiff.

“I see it in the ideas and energy of all the entrepreneurs I meet – British people selling curries to India and fashion to France.

“The enterprise culture is alive and well. Now, we just need an enterprise government to go with it,” he will add.

The entrepreneurs who are doing this have done it despite the government, not because of it.  Government has made it harder for them, not easier.  What they need is government to stop meddling and stay out of their business.  What Cameron is proposing is more government activity, rather than less.  You cannot have more government activity without more bureaucracy – and you cannot have more bureacuracy without ever increasing regulation, monitoring and intrusion.

If Cameron wants to fight the ‘enemies of enterprise’ he can start by punching himself in the mouth.  If nothing else it might give us some respite from him for a while.

UK supports sustainable trade in ‘endangered’ Polar Bear parts

No, really.

The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), believes that the Polar Bear is ‘vulnerable’ therefore at a high risk of extinction in the wild. Apparently it’s climate change and big oil to blame in case you were wondering. Although populations are reported to be growing or stable in many areas various agencies are convinced climate change could impact their numbers in the future.

Despite this we learn that DEFRA works through the UK’s membership of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to ensure that the international trade in polar bears or their parts is sustainable and does not further threaten the species’ survival in the wild. This inexplicable contradiction was revealed in a written answer to a question in Parliament shown below.

(click to enlarge)

So this is how animals we are told are at a high risk of extinction are protected?  Is it only the idiots in government circles who fail to see the irony of their contradictions and flatulent opinions?