It didn't happen m'lud

Thursday, March 12, 2009

It didn't happen m'lud

Lord Ahmed, last seen being handed down a remarkably lenient sentence for dangerous driving, to wit sending and receiving numerous long texts on the motorway, which may or may not have caused a man's death, will not have to serve it.

After the terrible imposition of 16 days in Doncaster gaol, Lord Ahmed will be released as his sentence has been suspended on appeal.

The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Wilkie, made it clear his text messaging had finished two minutes before the accident took place and was not connected to the collision.

Lord Ahmed has served 16 days in prison and was due to be released on March 20. Allowing the sentence appeal, Lady Justice Hallett said the imposition of a prison sentence in his case had been justified.

However, she added the court had been persuaded that it could now take an "exceptional" course and suspend the 12 week term for 12 months.

Well, I am not sure what justifies that "exceptional" course but who am I to argue about justice with the political establishment?

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Muddled thinking

Having expressed a certain lack of enthusiasm for the great Declan Ganley, I did go with interest to the launch of the Libertas's electoral campaign in the UK.

The press conference was not as well attended as I would have expected. When Kilroy Silk launchedVeritas in 2005, there was barely standing room in the big hall in One Great George Street and the main media had sent their big guns.

This launch was thinly attended though I gather from Mark Mardell'sblog on the BBC site that he was there or, at least, he had spoken to the leader of the campaign, Robin Matthews, described as a former British soldier. Actually, that may have been the previous day as the blog was posted at 10.30 am, the start of the press conference.

A "former British Soldier" is a remarkably coy way of describing a 21-year army career and Mr Matthews was no more forthcoming during the press conference, saying merely that he had served in Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. Mr Ganley also added in ringing tones (he is good at ringing tones) how ironic it was that Mr Matthews has travelled round the world as a British soldier "championing the values of democracy" only to find them being eroded at home.

Yes, that is ironic, all right and one is glad that Mr Matthews has understood this but one is not too sure that he knows quite what to do with that understanding.

The rest of this long and long-delayed analysis of Libertas UK and its launch is over on Eureferendum2. Enjoy.

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Well, they are certainly stirring

No sooner has the Conservative Party announced that very soon they will leave the EPP (I do seem to recall distributing information about that nefarious organization at a Conservative Party conference over ten years ago, but who is counting?), then we get a grand strategy from at least one eurosceptic MEP, Roger Helmer to be precise.

Mr Helmer has, rather shrewdly at a time of fiscal problems, decided to go for the wallet, arguing that that is the way to the average voter's heart. I am not sure he is entirely correct since the arguments about how expensive and wasteful the EU is have been accepted by one and all for some time but that has got us nowhere. Perhaps it is not the way to the politicians' hearts if, indeed, they possess such attributes.

Toryboy Blog covers the story, complete with puerile comments that were inevitable and, presumably, deliberately played for by the accompanying poster.

As it happens, only some of the points made on that poster (if you have stopped looking at the lovely young lady and the tattoo just above her buttocks) are directly about money. The others are the usual sort of stuff - EU employment rules cost us jobs and reduce prosperity, EU closes post offices etc.

All good knock-about stuff. The only thing neither this posting nor Roger Helmer's own website manages to explain is how voting Conservative in the June election for the Toy Parliament would change the situation. I guess I am not really supposed to ask.

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Different agendas

 Eco-freaks

Westminster bubble

Real world?

I suspect the latter would be quite happy to tell the former just exactly where to put their light switches. But - as we have noted - if you compare the media coverage, you will find that the vast preponderance of attention is given to the eco-agenda.

This is no longer an academic issue – not that it ever was. There is a major economic crisis developing and no one is under any illusions that it is going to do anything other than get worse. 

However, for most people, the detail of the crisis is too complex, too remote, too frightening for them to take in. They will not respond to the detail. They will respond to the effects. And, whether you like it or not, history tells us that a population under pressure starts looking for "scapegoats".

It will, of course, not have to look very far and the reality it, whether the nice, well-meaning "liberals" and multi-cults like it or not, immigration policy is going to come under more scrutiny than ever before. This is not a prediction. It is fact. History tells us this is the case.

The spoilt little eco-brats can have their fun turning out their lights on 28 March. But this is the same lot who were so against Gitmo. In the not too distant future, I suspect someone will be turning out their lights … permanently.

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Barking

Britain should continue to give development assistance to China despite the phenomenal growth in prosperity which has seen the Far Eastern giant overtake the UK and Germany to become the world's third largest economy.

So says the Commons International Development Committee, which states that, despite increasing wealth in some parts of China, around 16 percent of the country's 1.3 billion people - equivalent to one-third of the population of sub-Saharan Africa - still live in poverty.

We should thus continue to offer, through the Department for International Development, between £5 million and £10 million a year until 2015 in a "development partnership" to support projects to provide healthcare, education, sanitation and clean water.

To give them their due, the Tories oppose the idea. One never ceases to marvel though at the stupidity of some of our MPs. Do they not have the first idea what is happening in the real world?

And have they no memory? We have seenrecently a "mere" £50 million in extra aid given to Afghanistan, for much needed projects which are directly in our strategic interests yet, over the same period, our MPs want to give £60 million to China?

These people are barking mad.

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Mote and beam?

Mr David Hughes writes on hisTelegraph clog, "Why does the BBC treat us like morons over climate change?"

Rightly, he asks, "Does the BBC have a shred of credibility left in its coverage of global warming?" Warming to his theme, he tells us that the question is prompted by last night's puerile report by their environment correspondent David Shukman on the warning that emerged from the Copenhagen climate summit that sea levels could rise by a metre by the century's end.

This is a deadly serious topic, writes Hughes. Such a rise in sea levels would have a catastrophic impact on the lives of millions. "So why did the BBC's coverage treat its viewers like morons?"

Having regaled us with Shukman's doings, Hughes then concludes: "Global warming is too important an issue to be covered by such gimcrack reporting. Last night's report simply reinforces the view that the BBC has bought hook, line and sinker the most apocalyptic assessment of the impact of global warming and is not going to allow a more informed and grown-up debate to take place. Is that what we want from a public service broadcaster?"


All good stuff, but has Hughes looked at his own newspaper recently? In its Armageddon section today, we have (amongst other things) an ecological catastrophe in the Amazon (above) and we also have an extra, full page onalarming seal-level rises. And yesterday, we had the tweeetie birds and how the poor little things are suffering from … climate change. Not a day goes by without such drivel.

One suspects that Hughes doesn't actually read his own newspaper. And if he doesn't, who can blame him?

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Tories jump ship

In a way, it is tactically quite astute for the Tories to choose this moment formally to leave the European Peoples Party.

Generally, it will have very little impact on public sentiment, most people being left stone cold about which EU parliament grouping to which the Tories belong. But those who do care about it care very much indeed. It has become a touchstone amongst soft Tory eurosceptics, a measure of Cameron's good faith on "Europe".

We are told that Mark Francois, Hague and Timothy Kirkhope have met the EPP chairman, Joseph Daul, in Strasbourg for an "amicable" meeting, during which the long-standing intention to leave the EPP was confirmed.

The Tories expect not to establish a new grouping in the EU parliament and are looking to members from the Czech Republic and Poland – plus others. They are, however, being slightly coy about who else they might get on board, as well they might.

The make-up of any new group will depend on the euro-election results and on the intense bartering and horse-trading that goes on after the elections and the different groups vie with each other to attract members. 

Come the day, they will be facing stiff competition and it remains to be seen whether they will succeed in forming a group at all. They need at least six other countries to join their ranks, and that is going to be a tad difficult.

The BBC's David Grossman has some interesting comments on the affair, noting that there is no issue more problematic, more likely to result in raised voices and raised blood pressure in the Conservative Party than "Europe". 

Grossman cites Daniel Hannan who tells us, "What we're proposing to do is to break the monopoly if you like…so that for the first time you'd have a group of respectable parties, governing parties or prospective governing parties positing a different kind of Europe". He's going a bit far declaring the Tories to be a "respectable" party, but you get his drift.

Carrying out the negotiations for Cameron is Geoffrey Van Orden MEP, who is quite a good egg – for a Tory. He will front the search for members of what is expected to be called "European Conservatives". 

On the home front, however, the Tories are going to find the election quite crowded, as my co-editor will explain. They are also going to find stiff competition from the BNP, who have most certainly gained a boost fromyesterday's outrage in Luton, and event which is likely to have far more influence on voting intentions than the Tories moves on a new group.

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Doomed Planet?

Almost entirely ignored by the British media, earlier this week there was the second Heartland Institute climate conference in New York, attended by over 700 with a galaxy of speakers including our own Christopher Booker. We will publish his speech over on EU Ref 2 shortly.

You may have gathered – if you did not already know – that the conference did not exactly support the warmist religion, proof of which comes from an extremely interesting contributor on the final day, Dr John Sununu, Chief of Staff for President George Bush Snr. between 1989 and 1992. From that unique perspective, we are told, he offered an "incisive commentary" on current environmental activism, including particularly that directed towards global warming.

Sununu's view is that the climate change issue will never go away, no matter how much the false alarmism of global warming is exposed. Global warming is not the real target, but just a convenient demon around which anti-growth and anti-development activism can be mounted. 

Early demons for the same cause after the second world war were, first, the declared "population crisis", and then the global cooling alarmism that became prevalent in the 1970s. In turn, climate cooling alarmism transmuted into the dangerous warming cult of the 1990s and beyond. 

The most significant tactical weapon that was developed along this historic path of anti-growth agitation was the use of virtual reality computer models to generate alarm. Thus the real predecessor to the present situation was the Club of Rome "we will run out of resources" exercise.

This was the first large-scale, environmental, computer modelling project to base its alarms not on empirical data, but on a computer model that was predestined to give a desired result. This same predestination applies to the current IPCC computer models, which are now far too complex to be checked or debated in the public forum, and which carry great authority. Accordingly, they have become a powerful weapon in the armoury of anti-growth environmental groups. 

Sununu recalls a White House briefing that he received from alarmist scientists around 1990, when only the first primitive climate models were available – which did not include ocean to atmosphere interactions. 

Ever since, development of these faulty, but now much more sophisticated, models has continued in order to drive a predetermined climate alarmism. In consequence, the modellers have captured major parts of the funding streams now directed into global warming research, which in the US alone may total as much as $10 billion/year. 

"Despite this", says Sununu, the current models remain "predestined …. and are extremely far away from being able to handle the reality of nature. Nature will respond to climate change in the future in a self-stabilising way, as it always has in the past". 

However, Sununu notes that the media stands in the way of better public understanding and thrives on reinforcing climate alarmism. It is both "biased and ignorant". Nonetheless, science must today be presented in non-technical ways which can be understood - "If we don't give the press sound bites, they won't use it" he says. Honest science, good science and valid science is the necessary basis for public policy. 

Unfortunately, we have neither – and one does get more than a little irritated at funding newspapers which have become little more than propaganda sheets for the warmists. Like politicians, newspapers in particular are going to have to recognise that they are out of touch with the majority of their readers on this topic. If they do not, their readers will go elsewhere, as in indeed they are doing.

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