A perverse set of priorities - by Richard... Sunday, August 08, 2010

A perverse set of priorities - by Richard... Sunday, August 08, 2010

Recent landslides in China, triggered by prolonged rainfall, have - according to diverse reports killed at least 127 people. Furthermore, the death toll in the massive landslide in northwest China's Gansu province is expected to rise rapidly as over 2,000 people are missing.

"It's very hard to locate the people washed away by floods. It's hard to say what their chances of survival are," He Youxin, an officer of People's Armed Police Force, said. Rescuers had to use spades and bare hands because heavy machinery and excavators could not reach the site covered with sludge, some as thick as six feet.

On top of the Pakistani floods – which have, incidentally, also been affecting the Indian-held sectors Jammu and Kashmir – we have also seen extreme weather events in Korea, Korea Japan and elsewhere.

This, of course, is just weather, but still the warmists pursue their dire creed, on which Booker today passes comment. Interestingly, it was back in June that we got the most honest comment about extreme weather events in a certain locality, the candour matched only by the complete lack of interest in the Western media.

By the same token, we get plenty of coverage about the Russian heatwave, but got very little about the coldest winter in 130 years ... in Russia. Thus, the whole subject is wide open to cherry-picking, which distorts even accurate reports of isolated events. Without an appreciation of the whole picture, and a longer-term perspective, there is nothing that can be properly inferred from these events.

The real news, therefore, is not of climate, but of human tragedy and suffering. That we can do something about, and a fraction of the billions spent on "climate change" would go a long way to reducing the impact.

But as long as we are in the grip of the climate zealots, those being killed by the weather now are less important that the lucrative funding opportunities arising from predicting future disasters. How perverse it is that potential deaths in the future get more money than real deaths now – a sad reflection on human priorities.

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Virtual democracy - by Richard...

In direct proportion to the degree of detachment from the democratic process, the various institutions which lay claim to be part of our government are expending our money on simulating the very process they are so keen to destroy.

Thus, as Booker remarks in today's column , the EU parliament has commissioned an online role-playing game called Citzalia which allows "citizens" to imagine they are participating in the parliament's "important work".

Citzalia is proclaimed as "a world you inhabit and help to create. Using your avatar, you can walk around, network, debate issues of the day, propose legislation."

Not least of the fatuity of this is that the EU parliament does not propose legislation. It is an absolutely fundamental characteristic of the EU that the commission has the monopoly of proposal, one which actually guarantees its laws are "democracy proof". To remove a law requires another law, which only the commission can propose, thus ensuring that no democratic institution can over-ride it.

For want of real democracy, therefore, all we get is "virtual democracy", much the same as we are already getting from the Cleggerons in Westminster. One of its first acts – as you may recall, says Booker - was to open a website on which voters could propose new laws and policies. Last week it was reported that every one of the hundreds of proposals from members of the public had been rejected or ignored.

It is not only democracy that has gone "virtual", however. So has governance in the widest sense. The Cleggeron corpus, Cameron and Cleggy – two prize "C"s who have acquired the label the "Brokeback Two" - have sent a letter round to their Cabinet colleagues reminding them of the need to reduce the public spending deficit.

This was "the most urgent issue facing Britain today", they said, even though during last May's election campaign, Booker listed several hugely important issues which none of the parties wished to talk about. First amongst them was the terrifying size of the government deficit.

This was already increasing, as Booker reported, at £446 million every day, so that by 2014 the national debt would have doubled to £1.4 trillion. The interest alone on that debt would equate to £60 a week for every household in the land.

Since then, of course, the new "virtual government" has been only too happy to come out of purdah on the deficit it inherited, and to talk up all the "tough" measures and drastic cuts needed to reduce it.

Nevertheless, when little Georgie Osborne introduced his budget in June, the small print still projected public expenditure continuing to hurtle upwards, from £668 billion this year to £737 billion in five years' time. In other words, there is little sign that the deficit will reduce by very much.

Not content with this, though, we get Willy Hague's admission that "there is a profound disconnect between the British people and what has been done in their name by British governments". As Foreign Secretary, he was referring in particular to our relations with the EU (without mentioning, of course, the failure of the three main parties to keep their manifesto promises of a referendum on the EU Constitution, aka the Lisbon Treaty).

Another government boast last week was that, for each new regulation, an old one would be repealed. Of course, it added hastily that this would not apply to EU regulations passing into UK law – but in terms of cost and damage to the economy, it is these that make up more than three-quarters of the regulations that matter.

Thus our "virtual democracy" leads to an ever more "profound disconnect" between government and people, says Booker. We "walk around, network, debate issues of the day", even "propose legislation". But as with that computer game, it is an empty charade.

"Behind their hands, our rulers must really be laughing at us", Booker concludes – but then he is writing for a family newspaper. The reality is much more stark, to the extent that people are increasingly opting out of the political process altogether. But when there is no prospect of influencing that process, and the sole contribution of the political classes is display contempt for their voters, there is absolutely no point in wasting life energy on them.

All we can hope for is that they eventually disappear up their own virtual democracy and we can then get back to real politics, where democracy might have some meaning. Until then, I really am not alone in not wanting to know. They can put their virtual politics where the sun doesn't shine.

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Day 29 - Battle of Britain - by Richard... Saturday, August 07, 2010

A convoy off Cromer is attacked – a detail that makes it into few chronological narratives on a day that was widely regarded as "quiet". The convoy is probably FS 244 – six vessels on the run that stretches from Methil, the sheltered anchorage in Largo Bay in the Forth Estuary, all the way to Southend. This one is due on 8 August. From there, the vessels will either join another convoy or make their way independently to the Port of London, or another destination close by.

Sometimes the convoys start on the Tyne, as this one did – most having done so from September 1939 up to the end of August 1940. From then onwards, the starting point is Largo Bay, watched over by the RAF as it becomes a prime target for the Luftwaffe (pictured, a No. 602 Sqn Spitfire on patrol over the bay).

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