Cameron’s arrogance and idiocy shine through yet again

David Cameron has long been UKIP’s biggest and most insulting critic, famously employing his most smartarse comment when describing the party as made up of:

…fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly.

Today, having seen UKIP figuratively tear his party a new orifice, Cameron laughably attempted to portray himself as being above the very fray he personally stoked, by declaring:

It is no good insulting a political party that people have chosen to vote for.

One of the many things people in this country are sick and tired of is politicians attempting to dispense lessons to them that only the politicians didn’t understand in the first place.  It is utterly pathetic and it only serves to make Cameron look even more stupid.  He may as well have delivered his little monologue to a mirror, because that way his message would have been targeted at the correct audience.

The David Cameron speech – reality, delusion and ignorance

It was the kind of speech one should expect from a privileged individual, who has been brought up with a sense of entitlement to rule.

Cameron has a misplaced belief that in spite of all evidence he alone can change a decades-old destination; while leaving intact the structures built to enable its eventual arrival, ignoring reality and insisting that political union is desireable can be made to be democratic and be achieved while leaving nations states in charge of their own affairs.

This was less David William Donald Cameron, more Hans Christian Andersen. But no one who has paid any attention to this man’s approach and behaviour will have been surprised.

We cannot do justice to the response needed to David Cameron’s speech and tackle points that need to be rebutted with an immediate blog post. So a considered and detailed response will be forthcoming in the coming days – drawing upon evidence Cameron simply refuses to acknowledge.

The die has been cast and it is what we expected. Everything is being put together in a way that maintains the status quo. We now have the time to counter Cameron’s assertions and whimscal ideas with hard fact, and time to share it with people acriss the UK who perhaps feel there is more to all this than meets the eye. They are right. The clarity they are seeking will be published soon.

Sausages and laws, the media doesn’t understand how either are made

Witterings from Witney picks up on an article in the press about proposals for more 20mph speed limits and enforcement cameras, one in which the well-paid hack has failed to ‘dig beneath the surface’ of the story where the origin of legislation is concerned.  It indirectly provides more evidence of the fallacy of the ‘fax democracy’ the EU supposedly dictates to non-EU members of the European Economic Area (EEA).

It is a valuable piece that all readers would benefit from taking on board, as it shows that much of the legislation being introduced by national governments – and the European Union – is not ‘home grown’ and does not even originate in the European Commission, but rather is formulated by sovereign nations and handed down by UN bodies to which they have acceded.

The EU’s ‘common position’ as representative of its 28 member states therefore mean each member state has less of a voice in shaping these decisions than independent nations such as Switzerland and Norway – who engage directly with the UN bodies to shape legislation with their own voice.

As WfW wryly observes:

As mentioned on twitter by @WhiteWednesday, no doubt – and hopefully – the Swiss “faxed” Brussels to give them advanced warning of legislation they would shortly have to introduce – but I digress again.

Quite.

What a waste

The Daily Wail has a piece today titled ‘Binmen take a battering‘ which reports how frustration among residents at ever more rules and regulations on household waste disposal – combined officiousness and high handed behaviour by councils and rubbish collectors – is boiling over into instances of violence.

What has happened has being typically overblown by the Wail, but where it’s happening it is an unsurprising reaction to public servants imposing constraints on the people they are supposed to serve, without any consultation or permission.  In short it is a reaction to everyday, overbearing, anti-democratic behaviour by the establishment.

As is usual with the British media the article stops where it does and makes no attempt to explore possible solutions or explain where and how the regulations originated.  So being a considerate chap, I have just left the following comment for consideration:

There is a simple solution to disposing of rubbish that would go into landfill – PLASMA GASIFICATION. It is a safe form or incineration that doesn’t put dioxins in the air and leaves only a small amount of residue which is inert and can be used as hard core for roads and developments.  Plasma gasification units, which have a 35-45 year life and would pay for themselves within 10 years, can also work in the same way as combined heat and power units.  Instead of putting waste into landfill, incurring huge costs thanks to the EU, landfill can actually be emptied and sent for gasification thereby generating power and solving the waste problem.  Ask your local and county councils and councillors why they are not installing this technology instead of burying rubbish or using incinerators.

To be clear, I have painted the positive side of plasma gasification and not referenced some of the cost and maintenance issues.  But the cost and maintenance issues could be quickly reduced if the technology was taken up more widely because there would be commercial value in improving the offering and increasing the longevity of systems within the plant.  The technology has opponents who play up the downsides, from anecdotal experience these tend to be people with interests in building and running incinerators, which is why the Wikipedia page puts concerns before the advantages.

In the county where I live I raised this issue with the county council ‘cabinet’ member with responsibility in this area.  He pledged to look at gasification but did nothing of the sort, and is now involved in a local fight over his decision to sanction a new incinerator.  Lazy, backward thinking and ignorance of the opportunities that exist.  Yet another example of how the public interest comes a distant also-ran to vested interests and narrow minded views.

Reality of wind folly dawns on the National Trust

According to the Chairman of the National Trust, Sir Simon Jenkins, ‘not a week goes by’ without the charity having to fight plans for wind farms that threaten the more than 700 miles of coastline, 28,500 acres of countryside and more than 500 properties owned by the Trust. He is quoted in the Barclay Brother Beano, saying:

Broadly speaking the National Trust is deeply sceptical of this form of renewable energy.

Jenkins has correctly identified wind power as the least efficient form of power generation.  Despite having previously supported all forms of renewables, the National Trust’s official position now caveats this heavily. The official position now is to support renewable energy, including wind, although only in places where the turbine will produce the maximum amount of energy and ‘with regard to the full range of environmental considerations’. Jenkins said:

We are doing masses of renewables but wind is probably the least efficient and wrecks the countryside and the National Trust is about preserving the countryside.

Only the stuffed suits inside the Westminster bubble and those in the wind industry who stand to make a fortune from installing turbines, whether the wind blows or not and whether the energy contribution to the grid is negligible or not, remain doggedly in favour of this unreliable form of renewable power.  But that is all that’s required to push ahead with spending many more billions of pounds of our money on this folly.

As if to underline the level of reality disconnect among the political class, the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey, has already stated his position when he claimed wind power will ensure energy security as fossil fuels run out, cut carbon emissions and provide jobs.  Very much a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Wind power cannot provide energy security. Wind fluctuates, therefore the power generated from it fluctuates. That is not reliable and therefore it cannot help us secure our energy needs. Until the dogmatic lunatics in orbit around the Cameron Presidency base policy on fact instead of the spin emanating from the rent seeking wind power companies, this subversion of common sense will continue.

Our lazy press and its appeals to authority

Scenario.  You’re a highly paid journalist working for what is considered by many as a heavyweight broadsheet with an international reputation.

The world economy is convulsing and an entire currency is sliding towards collapse, barely being held together by political interventions and actions that increasingly bind nations using that currency into fiscal and political union.

You secure an interview with one of the chief architects of that currency to talk about how this currency crisis came to be and whether he got it the design wrong.  It is time to prepare.

Do you:

a) Revise by looking back in detail as far as the interviewee’s report in the 1990s which formed the plan for the currency

b) Go back to the origins of the bigger project of which the single currency was merely a milestone, and the method of implementing change without stirring the people into revolt

c) Rock up to the interview with pad and tape recorder, ask if he got it wrong and accept whatever answer he gives as truthful fact and report it accordingly

If you answered ‘c’ then the Barclay Brothers might be interested in hiring you to work on their comic. It would explain the uncritical acceptance of the comments made by Jacques Delors in this piece by very grand Charles Moore (whose bio states he covers politics with wisdom and insight!), which is notable for the lack of any challenge of the points Delors makes.

There is a reason this blog describes the Telegraph as the Barclay Brother Beano, and Richard North’s tour de force on EU Referendum brings it into sharp relief.

While Moore faithfully relays the answers Delors provided to his lightweight questions – demonstrating a classic appeal to authority and lack of journalistic rigour – North does the job Moore should have done and gets into the history, the detail and the methodology to put into proper context what is happening now and why.

It puts a very different hue on Delors’ deceptive attempt to rewrite history and keep the masses in ignorance of the nature of the beast he loves and cherishes.

Update:  The BBC News is leading with the Delors interview furthering the ‘faulty execution’ line.  This is the derivative, unthinking media at its worst.

But what really stands out is how UKIP’s Nigel Farage has jumped into the story – spectacularly missing the point of the strategy behind the plan – to use Delors’ interview comments as evidence that the Euro was always destined to fail.  When Farage blows it this badly it vindicates my decision not to support his party.

The EU reality ignored by politicians and media

This week’s announcement by Sir Max Hastings that was supposed to reverberate around the media bubble with the force of a volcanic eruption – namely that he has changed his unimpeachable view and now thinks his precious EU has been a disaster – landed with all the impact of a downy feather gliding slowly down on to a paving slab.

Despite his 1800+ words of grandiose moral superiority, Hastings still didn’t ‘get it’, a point illustrated superbly by EU Referendum.  Now, following on the heels of that clinical assessment of Hastings’ waffle, Christopher Booker uses column in the Sunday Telegraph to point out the vacuous nature of Hastings and the Tory Europlastics and remind readers of the reality of the EU that is either ignored or disregarded by our craven politicians and useless media:

Until the points Booker makes are understood and accepted there is little point listening to anything the politicians and hacks have to say about the EU issue.

Talking to the political class’ non-issues will help expose their ignorance and duplicity but it will not move us forward very far.  Perhaps we are finally approaching the time when we should switch our focus from attacking the failing EU to presenting a positive vision for Britain’s future as the independent nation it would be if it threw off governance by Brussels.  Events are changing the terms of the debate.

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.

Reality of sea ice is starting to bite

One problem with ‘global warming’ that scientists and journalists seem to gloss over is that it doesn’t seem to be, well, global. Some areas have exhibited more warming than others.

The Arctic is one area that gets a lot of focus.  Each summer the media makes a big deal of the extent of Arctic sea ice melt during the warmest months of the year, focusing on navigation passages and often proclaiming that before long the summer will see all the Arctic ice melt away. The BBC never misses an opportunity to relay the story, even if it is barely mentioned elsewhere, and rolled out the latest iteration of it last week.

However there seems to be a lack of coverage about the increasing extent of sea ice in the winter.  With the non stop global warming narrative burned onto the subsconscious of decision makers, it the therefore of little surprise that there has been barely any investment in new maritime icebreaking capability.

Always ahead of the game, EU Referendum pointed to this problem in March this year. Richard North reported the former Prime Minister of Estonia Tiit Vähi arguing that the country should urgently order a new icebreaker, “Instead of spending money on buying icebreaking services.”  The reason? The country’s two existing icebreakers cannot cope with the “difficult ice conditions” in the Gulf of Finland.  Elsewhere, North was an almost solitary voice in the western blogosphere as he reported on shipping trapped in the Sea of Okhotsk by a huge volume of thick sea ice and the subsequent challenging rescue effort.

So it is that a reader used AM’s Tips/Stories link to draw our attention to a little reported story about the way increasing sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere has resulted in Sweden withholding an icebreaker from US use in Antarctica.   After increasingly bitter winters that have resulted in more iced over navigation passages, the Swedish government wrote to US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to announce that the icebreaker Oden (pictured) will be kept at home and not be made available to support the work of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) in Antarctica, for the first time since 2006.

Update: This morning, AM contacted the press office of Sweden’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Bildt, and requested a copy of the letter sent to Hilary Clinton.  In less than one working day the press office has located it and forwarded it to me (below). Compare that level of service to the often grudging response we in this country are subjected to when submitting Freedom of Information requests…

View this document on Scribd

It validates the story published in the journal Science two weeks ago which explained:

Last month, the Swedish government abruptly ended an ongoing agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation that allowed NSF to lease Oden, the pride of the Swedish icebreaking fleet and also the world’s most capable polar-class research vessel. NSF has used the ship each winter since 2006–07 to clear a path through the sea ice to resupply McMurdo Station, the largest scientific outpost in Antarctica and the hub for U.S. activities on the continent. The Swedish government decided that the Oden needed to stay at home this coming winter after two harsh winters disrupted shipping lanes in the region.

However, the decision was not abrupt. The move had been mooted for months and such was the concern among the Americans, Earth and Space Research (ESR) wrote to the Swedes in early May in a bid to influence them not to withdraw Oden:

View this document on Scribd

And the Subcommittee on Polar Issues (see page 12 of the Minutes) of the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Programs and Plans (CPP) was also aware in May that Oden had not been secured for use.   The ESR letter above highlights the importance of Oden and underscored the lack of icebreaking capability that could be drawn upon to cut a passage for supply vessels to the US Antarctic Program’s McMurdo Station on Ross Island.

In July the Swedes confirmed Oden would be needed at home and therefore not be available for use in the Antarctic.  The increasingly difficult ice conditions have affected commercial shipping around Sweden and the Baltic nations and the Swedes plan to keep their sea lanes more open this year using their premier icebreaker.  Following the confirmation the NSF laid bare the serious implications of the icebreaker not being available to its programme in an internal letter to colleagues engaged in Polar research:

View this document on Scribd

But it seems the National Science Foundation only has itself to blame for the position it found itself in, for the NSF is responsible for managing the U.S. icebreaking fleet.  Under NSF management the US icebreaking fleet has been ‘emasculated’.  The American fleet of icebreakers numbers three – for now. It boasted two of the most powerful non-nuclear icebreakers on the seas, Polar Sea and Polar Star, but that changed some years ago.  Polar Sea  is to be decommissioned next month and Polar Star has been undergoing a re-fit since 2006, but there is speculation it might never to return to service. The third, Healy is not designed for heavy icebreaking of the nature required in Antarctica.

This begs the question, why did the NSF not properly maintain the US icebreaking fleet?  Could it be the faith in its own belief that global warming is reducing ice cover and therefore spending money on icebreakers would be a waste?  No matter, the NSF was forced into an embarrassing and desperate search for a suitable icebreaking replacement.

Having already said it would need to find and engage a suitable replacement by mid-August, or else implement contingency plans that would curtail activities in Antarctica, it seems the NSF experienced a near-run thing.  Indeed, it was only last week they announced they had agreed a contract for a smaller and less capable icebreaker, the Vladimir Ignatyuk (pictured):

View this document on Scribd

The press release from the NSF, when explaining this replacement Russian vessel had been drafted in because Oden would not be available, avoided mentioning the reason for the Swedish decision.  You can see how the two icebreakers measure up on Wikipedia – Oden / Vladimir Ignatyuk.

The story may seem trivial in isolation.  But the fact that no newspaper appears to have picked it up so far tells its own story.  Maybe it is because there is a media agenda to avoid covering stories that could lead to people questioning commonly made assertions about global warming.  Which is why the news and the more important issues underpinning it exist behind paywalls, in house journals and little read snippets from entities such as the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office…

In Estonia and Sweden at least reality is starting to bite. How long before it takes hold elsewhere?

We haven’t a clue… starring Rotherham Council

When you consider the huge sums being spent by local authorities on their ‘fight’ against climate change, you would expect them to have a full understanding of their aims and what they expect to achieve.

They do things differently in Rotherham.  It is the town where everyone matters, but evidence that informs their actions does not.

An AM reader has kindly brought to our attention this Rotherham’s FOI response to a local greenbelt campaign group (posted on their campaign website) which asks a number of reasonable questions about  Rotherham Council’s consistency and understanding when approaching the issues of ‘climate change’ and ‘reducing carbon emissions’.

Rotherham Council proposes to build 12,750 new homes from 2012-2027.  But the impact of this would surely undermines their stated environmental policy. So the campaign group wanted to understand how Rotherham’s policy proposals of building on large swathes of scenic greenbelt land can be reconciled with their climate change and carbon emissions efforts.  The FOI response below shows just how vacuous and dogmatic Rotherham Council’s position is.

View this document on Scribd

Asked if concreting over greenbelt land will result in an increase in CO2 emissions Rotherham MBC’s official response is that they do not know.  Incredible.

This begs the most obvious question.  If all they can cite is a graph and a generic link to the Met Office website, should they be spending massive amounts of taxpayers’ money on the fight against evil CO2 in the first place when their growth agenda contributes to increasing urbanisation which counteracts it?

Two wrongs still don’t make it right

In the aftermath of the Oslo and Utoya mass murders the vicious and juvenile leftist attempt to smear anyone who is right of centre, by highlighting any political position that appears to have been shared by Anders Breivik, continues apace.

It was only a matter of time before some activist would dig through Breivik’s ‘manifesto’ to see if he held any views on climate change.  They have, and he did. Consequently, because Breivik is a ‘climate change denier’ believes that global warming is an eco-Marxist plot ‘to create a world government’ using the ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming scam’, anyone who shares that view is, by definition, in league with the evil, homocidal maniac.  In fact, the piece cross posted onto Grist.org apportions responsibility for Breivik’s views on the subject on ‘climate denial pundits’:

Inspired by climate denial pundits, right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik railed against global warming “enviro-communism” in his manifesto.

You can almost feel the author itching to make a connection between ‘deniers’ and the murderous attack itself.  The man who wrote this warped article is one Brad Johnson, editor of an electronic, Joe Romm cheerleading rag called ‘ThinkProgress Green‘. His hatred of anyone who dares question the hypothesis to which he subscribes is evident by the inflammatory rhetoric he employs throughout his labour of ego. Clearly the irony of this is lost on him, probably due to his mypoic, tribal, quasi-religous observance to left wing orthodoxy.  He kindly spells out his vested interests in leftist campaign groups to show where he is coming from:

Johnson is one of those big government loving, politicised, rent seeking ‘scientists’ who is so threatened by anyone highlighting flaws in the hypothesis he is wedded to he tries to invalidate them by labelling them climate change ‘deniers’.  He is completely wrong.

The issue is not whether the climate is changing, but what the cause is and to what extent mankind has any influence over it.  So vicious is Johnson’s assault it has prompted a remarkable comment from a somewhat unexpected quarter:

Ouch. While trying to draw parallels between a mass murderer and those who dispute the narrative on climate change, in a crass attempt to shame them into silence on the subject lest they be labelled Breivik sympathisers or allies, the distasteful Johnson has managed to fall foul of one of the people he would reasonably be expected to idolise.

However, in his comment, Richard Betts states that the ‘actual scientific evidence [for man made climate change] is pretty good’.  The problem with this assertion by Betts is that, like Johnson, he is completely wrong.

The ‘evidence’ for man made climate change that exists today is utterly flawed, fact.   There is still no proof whatsoever of causation, fact. The climate models upon which the whole climate change industry is based have singularly failed to predict the hiatus in warming over the last 15 years and as the Climategate emails made clear, the politicised scientists irresponsibly and cynically pushing the hypothesis as fact can’t account for the lack of warming, fact.  Therefore the claim that mankind is to blame for the observed warming over the decades remains nothing more than a theory. Fact.

Johnson’s piece is the latest in what will be a long line of similar hatchet jobs that seek to make right thinking people feel guilty for their views and opinions.  Over at EU Referendum, Richard ruminates on this with an excellent piece that puts matters into context and shows up the shallow nature of those seeking to exploit the situation for political gain.

Now is not the time to be cowed into silence. The only person responsible for the actions of Anders Breivik is Anders Breivik.  Just because he shared some of the views of a large number of other people on a number of issues does not make the views wrong.  What was wrong was his reaction to them.  Opponents of big government, the EU, climate change orthodoxy, et all have nothing to be ashamed of.  Keep presenting evidence that exposes failings in the narrative that misleads the public.

There is more tosh in the same mould here.

What Tory commentators think of Northern Ireland

‘Criticise ye not’ seems to be the message from Tory commentator, pundit, sometime blogger and all round media personality, Iain Dale.  Dale got embroiled in a Twitter row with Belfast blogger John Collins, who writes the Politics NI blog. It followed a piece by Dale’s stablemate at Total Politics, Shane Greer, who wrote a piece titled ‘Northern Ireland is a beggar‘. which included words such as:

And let me be clear, as someone born and raised in Northern Ireland who now lives in London and will never return to the province, I feel sickened by the way ‘my country’ comes cap-in-hand; particularly at a time when the people in England have their own financial challenges to contend with.

and:

After all, what opportunity is there in a nation which wants nothing more than to live off the hard work of others. It’s pathetic, and so long as there are people like Bumper [Bumper Graham, the assistant general secretary of the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance] around that’s how it will stay.

It seems Greer thinks the trade unions are Northern Ireland and therefore the entire province is a beggar. But of course that doesn’t generate a headline, so he has purposely chosen (wrongly) to tar the entire place with the same brush.  It is as lazy as it is dishonest. He would have been well advised to suggest the State should stop its incessant meddling in NI which is the reason so much taxpayer money gets spent there, buying off terrorists and bile filled interest groups of various stripes.

Greer likes to come over as controversial in order to get attention for his generally mediocre fayre and is the blue equivalent of the moronic Labour mouthpiece Laurie Penny (PennyRed).  Needless to say, an indignant Collins took issue with Greer’s blanket description of the province being a beggar. It was after seeing this that Dale jumped in to defend the CEO of his publishing company – even though he hadn’t read Greer’s piece. The row swept back and forth, but it was Dale’s last comment on the subject (at the time of writing) that underlined the low regard in which he holds Northern Irish folk:

Perhaps there is an awareness among Northern Irish people that this is the way they are viewed by the Tory talking heads, which possibly accounts for the dismal electoral showing for anyone professing to be a Cameron Conservative. After all, why would people in the province vote for a party whose visible supporters in the media demonstrate such undisguised contempt for them?

Now I am a supporter of the Union and also believe England should have its own Parliament within it. But Dale’s wrongheaded and arrogant comments demonstrate an ignorance of the contribution Northern Ireland makes to the Union and a desire to couch everything in narrow financial terms.  One wonders what CCHQ thinks of its vocal cheerleaders spouting such views.