Can he be that stupid? - by Richard... Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Can he be that stupid? - by Richard... Tuesday, March 23, 2010

"An average of 500 jobs will be created every month until 2020 in sectors ranging from offshore wind power to carbon capture technology," writes The Scotsman, heralding a report which supposedly highlights how Scotland can capitalise on its natural advantages to make the most of the potential economic benefits of green business.

The report was "unveiled" yesterday by Scottish finance secretary John Swinney, who, without batting an eyelid, proclaims the opportunities as "vast". "Scotland's future," he says, "lies in low-carbon technologies and greener business." And what is more, "8,000 jobs will be provided by environmental management opportunities, such as consultancy work or pollution control."

All you now need to know is that Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, welcomed the report. But, if there is any doubt, Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, says the paper is a "big step forward for Scotland". "We have long argued that greater investment and support for the environment could be good for jobs too," he adds.

Both are speaking of a territorial area which likes to think itself as a country but which is an impoverished Euro-region, kept solvent by the charity of English taxpayers, who are forced to tolerate this high-level stupidity for no other reason than it is the Scottish vote which keeps the current government in power.

With the limited powers afforded it, this self-important Scottish "government" seems determined to drive its peoples further into poverty and dependency, frittering away its natural wealth over a mad obsession, wholly unable to understand that its raft of non-jobs are simply another drag on an already over-burdened economy.

All one can hope for is that, when the money finally runs out, the 8,000 environmental managers and consultants turn on their masters and slaughter them, curing us once and for all of that terminal disease afflicting our political classes – an unredeemable and incurable stupidity.

"Can he be that stupid?", I ask. On the basis of the evidence, this hardly requires an answer. But, like the contagion it is, the disease in not confined to Scotland - otherwise we could simply quarantine this benighted province. From England to the USA, to Australia and India, the disease is afflicting the political classes throughout the world. Drastic, the disease is. The cure is going to have to be similarly drastic.

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Bloweth the wind - by Richard... Monday, March 22, 2010

The wind may not make the bird choppers go round as fast as the greenies would like, but it does move the ice in the Arctic. That, at last, Geoffrey Lean is conceding, catching upwith the rest of us.

Meanwhile, from an excellent report on the wind experience in Ontario, it seems that the bird choppers there are just as useless as they are here – which does not exactly come as a surprise. Once again, also, we see the familiar refrain about the need for back-up, thus duplicating the network at huge expense.

Another death knell for this useless fantasy comes with the news on developments in coal-bed methane (CBM), which is now being taken so seriously that Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina have purchased technology pioneers Arrow Energy for £2.1 billion.

With coal seams that stretch from the Pennines to the Irish Sea rich in methane gas, work is also in progress to exploit this resource in the UK, with suggestions that there is enough gas to generate electricity to supply seven percent of UK domestic needs for 15 years. A pilot plant already operating at a site between Widnes and Warrington. 

With shale gas, this technology is another "game changer" which will take the edge off energy shortage problems – at the very least buying enough time to get the much-delayed nuclear estate renewal in hand. The crisis that might be is very much beginning to take on the mantle of the crisis that never was.

As always though, it takes non-specialists a while to catch up – and the greenies even longer, who must hate the idea that their doom-laden projections of energy shortages are not going to materialise. And, as new supplies flow, renewable energies becomes less and less attractive. The wind not only bloweth, but changeth. The bird choppers are doomed (or would be if the politicians had any sense).

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They've been on a rampage - by Richard...

There's no getting away from the fact that those who are deniers of climate change have been lying in wait, having been organising themselves, and the moment this opportunity arose they've decided to strike and since then they've been on a rampage.

See the rest here.

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A condition of membership - by Richard...

Although adored by the claque and many others besides, we have always taken the view of Boris Johnson that, behind the amiable front of a jovial buffoon, there is ... a jovial buffoon – although hold the "jovial". The man is an unrepentant idiot.

No more so does this show than today when this over-paid columnist holds forth in an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph, railing against the influx of some 62,000 students from other EU countries into British universities, displacing indigenous candidates who would otherwise have found places.

The dismal Boris thus asks why we should pay to educate French and Latvian students, noting that these students take advantage of our system – a traffic that is almost entirely one-way.

Had he enough brain cells for there to be a chance collision, producing the semblance of intelligence, our Boris would know several things. Firstly, British universities are uniquely popular with our European brethren for one very good reason – they teach in English, the lingua franca of the educated classes, much to the disgust of the French.

Secondly, when it comes to accepting these students, and the charging system which means that the fees are essentially unrecoverable, under EU law we have no choice but to continue with it. Under the freedom of movement and non-discrimination provisions of the basic treaty – the Treaty of Rome – the UK must apply exactly the same deal that it gives UK students. 

Furthermore, applicants from EU member states must be treated in exactly the same way as UK citizens. Universities are not allowed, again under EU law, to discriminate on the grounds of nationality, giving preference to British domiciled applicants.

The point here is that this is not new – it came with the basic treaty that we signed up to in 1972, under a Conservative government, but has come to a head only relatively recently as the word has got out that we are a soft touch. The only way we could avoid the problem is to charge fees up-front, which would cause havoc with our own students.

Thus, we are stuck with the system – for as long as we are members of the EU. It is inherent in our membership, part of the treaty, and cannot be changed by the UK. And since Boris the Buffoon is a member of a political party that wants to remain in the EU, there is actually no prospect of any change. 

None of that, however, will stop the idiot writing fatuous op-ed pieces, printed by a newspaper that should know better, for want of a simple explanation of the facts of life that apply as a condition of our membership of the evil empire.

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