A gnat's chuff of difference

I just logged in with some trepidation to see the popular comments on the BBC's website on the Live Earth concerts.
I was pleasantly surprised. People are not as stupid as politicians like to believe.
Here are the first few (most recommended) comments:

I have serious doubts as to whether man (and women !) are having such am impact on the environment through carbon emissions as we are led to believe.

The Earth goes through natural climatic cycles - that's why we've had ice ages in the past and we don't have one now. How else do we explain things like isostatic readjustment ? (increasing obesity causing the over populated south to dip ? Maybe !)

I'd like to see a more balanced debate, rather than bandwagons. And global initiatives.

[CeeofGee], Oxford, United Kingdom

Recommended by 332 people

If global warming is a natural phenomenon, does that still make it okay to pollute the planet? If the scientists are wrong, does that mean we should stop recycling? I think we all have a responsibility to make positive changes whether global warming is our fault or not.

Darren, Leicester

Recommended by 290 people

The main problem with the climate change debate is there is no data older than 250 years to compare the current "warming" with, however polar ice samples suggest warming and cooling has been going on for thousands of years, which would suggest that climate change is a more natural occurance than the greens and the Government want us to believe. "Climate Change" cannot be blamed on humans alone on only 250 years of data.

Chris E, Norwich, United Kingdom

Recommended by 270 people

I will not be changing my lifestyle one iota, it won't make a difference as the whole Global Warming thing is a scam dreamed up by enviro-fascists and the government. If they want to live in a cave, fine, but don't expect me to adopt their holier-than-thou attitudes. It's called the SUN, and piddling about on this dirtball is not going to make a gnats chuff of difference to the climate.

Steven Thompson, Ayr

Recommended by 249 people

This is less of a distrust of Climate change in particular but more a general distrust of Government. People believe that the Government are simply using Climate Change as a way to impose more stealth taxes. The Govt also seem to allow big business to sell products that are clearly damaging to the environment, whilst criticising and taxing the public for buying them (witness the debate around "chelsea Tractors"). Until such issues are resolved the public will remain sceptical

Jon G, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Recommended by 217 people

The BBC has closed down all significant debate with regards to Global Warming - this forum is just window dressing.

I would like to see some of the worlds leading MMGW Heretics given the same prominence as the High Priests of MMGW on the BBC.

What are you afraid of?

The debate or the actual truth?

Righty Rightwing

Recommended by 213 people

Time

The Speaking Clock


On the third stroke,
It will be 1789,
Precisely.

Robespierre and Danton will preside,
As the Bastille falls
And seven old men are released.

Later,
Citizen Capet will be taken
To the Place de la Revolution.
And on the third stroke
God will be created
In man's own image,
Precisely.

On the third stroke,
It will be 2001,
Precisely.

Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri will preside,
As the twin towers fall
And three thousand are `released'.

Later,
Ateqeh Rajabi will be taken
To the place with the crane.
And on the third stroke,
Death will be created
In religion's image,
Precisely.

On the third stroke,
Your head should come off,
Precisely.

Brown's dilemma

I missed this one.
Rather a nice article by Stephen Pollard on Brown (El Gordo) and the EU constitution treaty:

There is no constitutional requirement in Britain for a referendum. Mr. Blair's promise of one on the earlier treaty was unprecedented, and Mr. Brown could argue that this year's version is not as extensive and thus doesn't require a popular vote.

He could do that. If he did, however, he would confirm at the very outset of his premiership all the electorate's worst images of him as a Stalinist control freak, as a man contemptuous of opposing views, and as a politician unworthy of the country's highest office.

...

A referendum defeat -- the certain outcome -- is, after all, a defeat. Even if his support for the treaty is lukewarm, Mr. Brown will not want to begin his time in office with a humiliating loss at the polls. He could not, after all, call a referendum seeking support for a treaty and then distance himself from it. If his support were anything other than wholehearted he would look vacillating and weak. And the opposition would run rings around him, accusing him of foisting on the country a treaty which he did not back.

New possibilities

According to Augean Stables, new possibilities are appearing in the Middle East and the Arab world. Here's the concluding paragraph:

I’m not sure what the author meant, nor what his readers derive from this. On one level (my hopeful projection?) this is a call to get on with life and start dealing with things like Israelis and Kurds in a positive-sum way. The obscure and allusive language may reflect the inability of Arabs to say such things explicitly… yet, and this excursion in exploring the Arab world when it’s free of the standard excuse for not growing up, is already huge. Sophisticated Arab readers, accustomed to reading between the lines, may well see this; while others, accustomed to screaming bloody murder when they are offended, may not have enough to seize upon here so that they can take it to “the street.”

Who knows what this all means?

Melanie Phillips-as usual

Just read this. It's a bit of a rant, as Melanie Phillips' articles usually are, but with great justification:

The most fundamental failing of all, however, is the Government's counter-terrorist strategy itself. Known as Project Contest, this refuses to acknowledge that the true driver of Islamist terror is religious fanaticism.

Instead, it attributes its causes to Muslim poverty, discrimination and grievances over foreign policy. In other words, it blames us.

The analysis is demonstrably absurd. Many of these terrorists are prosperous, middle class and well-educated. Indeed, two of the suspects who have been arrested are doctors. Muslims are being murdered in vast numbers in Iraq not by us, but by other Muslims.

And as Mr Brown said yesterday, the first attempt to blow up the Twin Towers occurred as long ago as 1993; Islamist terrorism is taking place all over the world and in countries where there is no connection with Iraq or the Middle East at all.

The fact is that the Islamists have always used any and every grievance - Bosnia, Kashmir, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Salman Rushdie (twice) - to recruit to their cause.

But the real source of this terror, as former extremists have told us, is the aim to conquer the West and Islamise the world.

Hat tip: Joshuapundit.

Two interesting posts

The ever-reliable EU Referendum has two interesting posts.
First is "futuritis" in which Dr North discusses the weird attitude of the E U and most of the UK's senior military to the current war(s).
Here's the peroration (which neatly sums up the terrible danger of this attitude):

Thus there seems to be a collective determination to avoid thinking about what is, ignoring the real and present danger, in order to focus on the much more entertaining and rewarding task of writing "Capability Development Plans", to deal with hypothetical wars of the future, against mythical foes in far off lands which, as yet, do not exist.

So we lose this war, but hey! We can always win the next one!

Next up is a post about Ed Husain: who has recently published The Islamist.
Here'sa quote from his article from which Helen Szamuely quotes:

Second, we need to realise that Muslim communities recognise the extremists in their midst long before they show up on the radar of our intelligence services. We observe their condemnatory rhetoric, rejection of mainstream mosques, sudden change in dress code. Yet whenmoderate Muslims seek to complain, they are told that nothing can be done because of "freedom of speech". It's time we got real about ho libearl we're prepared to be. Preventing terrorism is a civic duty, just as preventing murder and rape is, but we need to facilitate that process.

Where is Tommy Atkins when you need him?

Some cheerful news from the Commons public accounts committee:

There are not enough servicemen and women to meet the demands placed on the UK armed forces by the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, MPs have said.

The Commons public accounts committee said the overall shortfall in personnel stood at 5,850, or 3.2%, of full strength in April.

Now that's bad enough, but then read some of the comments:

I don't think operations in the Middle East are a major factor in people leaving, people join up to put into practice what they train to do, the problem is the length of deployments, the lack of correct equipment, the lack of working equipment, and most importantly pay. For the job they do, members of the armed forces, particularly amoung junior ranks are not very well paid.

Jamie

Well they shouldn't have sacked us all in the mid 1990s should they. They knew there was a demographic trough comming but did nothing. Now we are wrapped up in two wars and they are still closing RAF units and mothballing Navy ships. Prehaps if we went back to the same proportion of national income being spent on defence as we did at the beginning of the 1990s we wouldn't be in this awful mess right now.

Simon, Farnham

As a former infantry officer, consider how the military is structured versus the tasks its carries out. Out of 100,000 soldiers, there are 30,000 infantry. About 1 third are immediate support staff - leaving 20,000 fighting troops; of which a fifth will be sick/downgraged/training; leaving about 16,000 fighting troops. The army is used as HMG's reserve not only for war but other emergencies (eg Foot and Mouth/fire strikes) So that's 16,000 fighting soldiers for Iraq, Afghanistan and very very little left over. The result is that soldiers are usually multi-roled; multi toured; immensely busy and hugely underpaid for the hours they work. No suprise that they are leaving in droves.

GTL, London

Perhaps if Gordon Brown didn't take most of our money in taxes already, we wouldn't mind spending some more on our armed forces.

Blood and treasure

Richard North at EU Referendum, has it about right, as usual. If we can't care enough about winning we shouldn't be there:

...that the military – no less than the nation in general (each for their own different reasons) – is not committed to the current wars. As we listened to the RAF commentator coo and gasp at the performance of the Eurofighter, delivering a torrent of propaganda in favour of the new "toy" as it went though its paces (admittedly impressive), one's impression was somewhat reinforced that fighting wars in distant fields were regarded as an irrelevance at best, and a distraction, from the real business of constructing that mythical beast, the "balanced force".

Frankly, if neither the military nor the population – to say nothing of the media and the political establishment – are committed to winning these wars then (no matter how vital it is that we do win them) we have no business sending out troops there, some of them to die and many more to suffer horrific injuries. We might just as well bring them home to play with their "balanced" force and forget all about the untidiness and inconveniences of real fighting.

Read it all here.

Not forgetting the basilisk

We were six
(Not forgetting the basilisk).

How did he join us?
Hedgehog says we asked him,
Badger says he just came.
Basilisk says he flew
On the wings of the injustice
Our forefathers
Did to his.

We five voted,
The day he looked at fox
With his special look.
Badger said `go',
Hedgehog said `stay'
And Basilisk got three votes,
Because of the vote denied his father.

After he ate Hedghog,
Basilisk said
That his practices
Were not to be criticised.

`They are' he said,
`The result of profound
Cultural differences,
Not to be comprehended
By stupid woodland creatures'.

We were four
(Not forgetting the basilisk),
when he gutted Badger.
`A slip of the claw'
He said. ` A reflex.
The cockatrice coughs like Badger,
And she's a dangerous beast.'


We were three
(Not forgetting the basilisk),
before he froze Snake.
`Nasty stripy thing'
said Basilisk.
`Trying to be me
And failing.
At the end,
The stones cried out
When she slithered.
Best she was gone'
said Basilisk.


We were two
(not forgetting the basilisk),
when I started this.

End of the (academic) year

Here I sit, glass of wine in hand, contemplating the end of term. Graduates classified; firsts awarded, fails regretfully announced, cheers audited, groans heard; students comforted, encouraged, consoled, congratulated, mopped-up, dressed-down, dried-off, dried-out, calmed down, geed up, praised, primped and pruned.
Next year, the same again.

Meanwhile, Brown is finally in, the world has not ended, but the worst is yet to come. Another liar and a cheat running the UK. We move on from Blair- who tried to be `nothing to all men' to Brown- who is the second-greatest purveyor of `the big lie' the world has known.

Sometimes I don't know why I love the place. Or the people.

Poverty linked to lack of education

This headline from the BBC obviously reflects somebody's amazement, but it's not mine:

Poverty linked to spoiled ballots

Of course it's referring to the enormous number (c 140,000) of spoilt ballot papers in the recent Scottish elections.

I like the last sentence:

The Strathclyde report's authors said action was needed to restore public confidence in the Scottish election system.

I suggest reintroducing banishment as an electoral option might do the trick.

That's entertainment

OK. As the report on BBC bias has now been published, I thought I might give a link to comments on Biased BBC.
If you want an explanation of the title, it's because `entertainment' is the section on the BBC's website under which the report is available.

BBC bias report due

The Sunday Times covers the report which is due next week and is expected to be fairly damning. Here's the start of the article:

THE BBC is institutionally biased, an official report will conclude this week. The year-long investigation, commissioned by the BBC, has found the corporation particularly partial in its treatment of single-issue politics such as climate change, poverty, race and religion.

It concludes that the bias has extended across drama, comedy and entertainment, with the corporation pandering to politically motivated celebrities and trendy causes.

I would cheer, but I fear that it will be quickly supressed and equally quickly forgotten.

Israel only became illegal when it did not go away.

The title is from a long piece by Howard Jacobsen in The Independent (of all unlikely places) about the UK academic boycott of Israel and Israelis (h/t The Augean Stables).

Some highlights:

To rub it in - and this would be childish were it not villainous - the UCU resolution includes proposals to "organise a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academics/educational trade unionists". In other words, we will hear them, we will not hear you. Anyone familiar with the emotional politics of the campus will be able to imagine the rapturous applause awaiting these Palestinian educational trade unionists - given free rein to vent their grievances while the other side of the argument is gagged;

(about the Six Day War):

It is probably futile to imagine what would have happened had victory gone the other way. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that had the Arab countries won decisively Israel would not exist. Annihilation has, after all, been (as it continues to be) the declared aim of most of the states and organisations that surround it;

about a boycott were the shoe on the other foot:

Whether the enlightened Universities of Birmingham and Brighton would have enforced an academic boycott of these conquering Arab countries, we can only guess. But since there are many Arab countries, in actual as opposed to imaginary existence, whose practices one might think deserving of a boycott but who have so far escaped one, I think we have to guess not;

about Israel's behaviour:

In the present climate, however, it is almost impossible to make the case that some of Israel's most detested actions (I do not say all) are themselves responses to provocations. At a certain stage the pieces are pushed from the table. Israel can make no legitimate response to a provocation because Israel is not itself legitimate.

about `rights of audience' for Israeli academics:

An Israeli scholar dare not be in even the most partial agreement with his government. For an Israeli academic not to think exactly as they think on the campuses of Birmingham and Brighton is to be guilty of a crime for which the punishment is expulsion from the international community of thought.

It is the last of these which makes me most ashamed as an academic and scholar. Unfortunately, I am unable to resign from the UCU as I have never been a member.

Physics fiasco

I know about Maths, and I was coming to realise the degradation of the GCSE Physics syllabus as my younger daughter is going to take the exams this summer and next but this skewers the whole nonsense:

The thing that attracts pupils to physics is its precision. Here, at last, is a discipline that gives real answers that apply to the physical world. But that precision is now gone. Calculations — the very soul of physics — are absent from the new GCSE. Physics is a subject unpolluted by a torrent of malleable words, but now everything must be described in words.

In this course, pupils debate topics like global warming and nuclear power. Debate drives science, but pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate. Scientific argument is based on quantifiable evidence. The person with the better evidence, not the better rhetoric or talking points, wins. But my pupils now discuss the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power plants, without any real understanding of how they work or what radiation is.

We have a severe shortage of physicists in the UK. This crap will not address it, in fact, it will do the opposite.
Hat tip: Devil's Kitchen.

Speaking with your mouth full

The EU has always taken away national soverignty bite by little bite. But now there is an explicit admission of this by Giscard d'Estaing:

"public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly".

A quotation to remember

As we eagerly await the anointing of Gordon Brown, let us recall this quotation:

at least he knows he is an unprincipled unscrupulous ruthless villain, whereas Blair does not.

Wonders will never cease

I suppose it is no surprise that it takes someone who grew up under communist rule to spot the fingers itching for the feel of the levers of power amongst the environmentalists: nevertheless, Vaclav Klaus speaks more sense in his response to the American Congressional committee on energy and commerce than any three UK politicians in the past decade.
Try this:

It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom;

or this

...policymakers should under all circumstances stick to the principles free society is based on, that they should not transfer the right to choose and decide from the people to any advocacy group claiming that it knows better than the rest of the people what is good for them. Policymakers should protect taxpayers’ money and avoid wasting it on doubtful projects which cannot bring positive results.

or this

I warn against adopting regulations based on the so- called precautionary principle which the environmentalists use to justify their recommendations, the clear benefit of which they are not able to prove. Responsible politics should take into account the opportunity costs of such proposals and be aware of the fact that the wasteful environmentalist policies are adopted to the detriment of other policies, thus neglecting many other important needs of millions of people all over the world;

or this

The developing countries will be forced to accept irrational targets and limitations because “earth is first” and their needs are secondary. The environmentalist argumentation gives ammunition to protectionists of all colors who try to eliminate competition coming from newly industrialized countries.

or this

My recommendation ... is ... to protect and foster fundamental systemic factors without which the economy and society cannot operate efficiently – i.e. to guarantee human freedom and basic economic principles such as the free market, a functioning price system and clearly defined ownership rights. They motivate economic agents to behave rationally. Without them, no policies can protect either the citizens or the environment.

To which I say hoo-bloody-ray.

Aid? Oh good.

It seems good to remember this just after the latest G8 summit: ... for God's sake, please just stop:

"The main reason for poverty and unsustainable development in Africa, Asia and South America is oppression by incompetent, violent, and corrupt governments – and an attendant lack of property rights and the rule of law."

I still exist (just)

I apologise for the non-existent posting for the past week. I've been `in the tank' trying to fix the proof of a theorem in a 38 page paper. Anyone who knows about doing research in maths will realise that that's a fairly monstrous paper. It's a bit of a nightmare when you discover a mistake right in the middle. So...it had to be fixed. I think it's done now and the world is safe for mathematics once more. And tomorrow I go on a week's holiday.

See you when I get back.