Just another lie - by Richard... Thursday, December 16, 2010

Just another lie - by Richard... Thursday, December 16, 2010

"European judges kill off British law that curbed sham marriages", was the news yesterday - a bizarre ruling from the Court of Human rights in Strasbourg.

Today, we get another equally bizarre ruling, this one that gives Mohammed Ibrahim, a Kurdish asylum seeker (pictured), the right to stay in the UK, even after running down 12-year-old Amy Houston, leaving her trapped and dying under the wheels of his car – which he was driving after having already been banned.

And now we have the same court ruling that the Irish abortion ban violates human rights – riding rough-shod over Irish law and the results of a 1983 referendum which asserted that the unborn child is an Irish citizen with full rights.

That ruling is going to cause ructions in Ireland, but patience is also wearing thin in the UK as we get a succession of these cases. Of course, there was a certain David Cameron who did actually promise to repeal the Human Rights Act. But from the mouths of lying political scum we expect and will get nothing but lies.

Euroslime Dave had no intention of doing anything at all about this – his promise was just another lie.

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The world goes white - by Richard...

It started this morning at 09:26 precisely. We can be so definite because the noise of the snow lashing at the window alerted us to the moment when the global warming hit us again. Within minutes, the ground and the roofs were white. Now the snow has settled down to a light, persistent downfall, from leaden skies, leaving a wet, slushy reside, intensifying as I write (12:10), with the snow on the ground deepening by the minute.

How ironic it is that this is the day that that idiot Huhne (pictured below) launches his new energy plan – the one designed to save us from global warming. But then, morons such as Huhne don't do irony. It is beyond their capabilities.

As to how much it is going to cost us all, no one really knows. One newspaper says about £500 a year, the BBC says otherwise and the Financial Times says something different. Biased BBC has sussed it. The details are so vague that you can shape them to convey whatever message is required. Obfuscation is the name of the game.

Generally speaking, it seems that the agreed figure needed by way of investment is £200 billion - about twice what would actually be needed sensibly to renew the estate with conventional capacity.

And from what we know of Huhne's mad ideas, it would appear that the Renewables Obligation is to go, replaced by graded feed-in tariffs, which will include nuclear. How that gets past the EU's prohibition on state aid is unclear and, given the lacklustre performance of the modern civil service, you cannot guarantee they've got it right.

Secondly, there is going to be a "capacity payment" to bribe suppliers to build back-up plant – mainly gas-fuelled power stations – to deal with the majority of occasions when wind does not deliver. This is where we pay twice for the same thing, duplicating capacity that would not otherwise be needed.

Then we are to have madness itself, a minimum price for "carbon" – i.e., carbon dioxide – a tax by any other name, which will penalise CO2 emitters and further jack up our energy bills. This will be skewed to make sure that back-up plant is only used for back-up, which means our electricity is going to be very expensive indeed.

The fourth Huhne madness is an "Emissions Performance Standard". This is supposed to impose tough emissions regulations on new power plants, effectively banning the construction of new coal plant without CCS. Again, how that impinges on EU law is not made clear.

The thing that is very clear though is that, outside, it is very cold and very white. Needless to say, that will not have the least effect on the warmists. They will go to their graves insisting that this is the warmest year since dinosaurs first inhabited that planet. WUWT explains why they are mistaken, but again that will have no effect on dyed-in-the-wool warmists.

People are not stupid though, and energy prices are the stuff of politics – an issue that the so-called "political" sites are largely ignoring this morning. The MPs ignore it at their peril though - as the hammering Huhne is getting on the Daily Telegraph comments will attest. When people are cold and are having to pay even more for their basic needs, taking home reduced pay and pensions, while paying more taxes, you have a recipe for some very unhappy bunnies.

And unhappy bunnies bite.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

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A Fox is shot - by Richard...

We were gutted to learn from The Guardian that Fox News isn't objective on climate change – and has been caught out ordering its journalists to cast doubt on well-founded warmist claims that we are about to fry. Who could possibly have thought that this broadcaster had an agenda – unlike the totally objective BBC and Guardian? We are well and truly shocked.

This news has been so upsetting that we had to avert our gaze from the news of blizzards in the US Midwest, for fear that we too might start thinking like a Fox journalist. That is scary.

Instead, we focused on the heroic James Hansen who came all the way from snow-bound USA to defend those valiant green warriors who have now been wrongly convicted for wanting to close down Britain's second-largest coal fired power station. We think it is absolutely terrific that an American civil servant should come all the way here to defend their actions, even if they have been now been found guilty of a criminal conspiracy.

Just because newspapers like the … er … Guardian are speculating that the winter here might be the worst since 1963 - and they are planning cycle lanes on the Thames (pictured) - this is no reason whatsoever for suggesting that Fox News might be right. One must be vigilant at all times to ensure that we maintain the correct perspective.

This is especially so when one of The Guardian commentariat thinks that when the results of global warming become apparent in the next decade or so, the public mood toward denialists is going to turn very ugly. He wouldn't be surprised if we saw Nuremberg-style trials of prominent denialist propagandists.

According to The Guardian, these could even include the likes of Chris Huhne, and every single Tory who ever lived, for the "disaster" that is the "scaled-down green investment bank". This terrible insult to greenery also finally lays to rest any pretence that this will be "the greenest government ever".

One just cannot be too careful on these things.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

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Bye-bye Harrier - by Richard... Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Noisy, expensive, dangerous to fly, and well past its sell-by date, the Harrier took its final bow today.

And even if it served us well in its time, did we need to see all sixteen of the last aircraft fly today, for no purpose other than nostalgia? For sure, all the actual costs amounted to were the fuel and disposables, and we get some interesting photographs, but for that money we could have kept an MEP on the gravy train for at least a week.

That's the trouble with this country … a completely distorted sense of priorities.

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An Italian job - by Richard...

I am taken to task, in a very friendly and informative way by one of our Italian readers for repeating the MSM description of Berlusconi as "scandal-ridden". I might have known that anything the MSM takes as read should be treated with the utmost caution.

Without passing judgement on the man, it is fair to say that Berlusconi has been very successful in his business and political career. But he is an outsider and as such hated by most politicians. And, due to the nature of the Italian political system, he has always had to form coalitions in order to win the elections.

Most Italian political leaders, I am informed, "are of course idiots." I would be the last one in the world to dispute such a claim, but the upshot is that they think that they can make alliances with Berlusconi, use him for winning the elections, and then get rid of him by trickery or court cases and then retain power.

However, it seems that, being the idiots they are, they have always underestimated Berlusconi. As a successful businessman of proven worth, he is anything but an idiot – and also one of those very rare businessmen who have made the successful transition into politics.

So far, therefore, the idiots have lost their battles. Gianfranco Fini President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and leader of the Future and Freedom party, is the latest in a long line of those who thought he could get rid of Berlusconi without going to the country. And none of the established politicians want elections, because Berlusconi would win by a large margin.

As far as being "scandal ridden", this is as much a reflection of the legal system, as anything. Unable to beat him in the ballot box, Berlusconi's rivals are resorting to legal challenges in a system which is, to say the very least, skewed.

The magistrates, who are at the centre of the challenges, are almost all leftists. At least a quarter, by their own admission, are active leftist militants and can be usually seen at rallies and demonstrations of the left and extreme left. They make no secret of the fact that their ultimate goal is to remove Berlusconi from power, no matter how. They openly declare so in books and interviews.

Nevertheless, these magistrates have huge power and privileges. Career (and salary) is automatic and you can reach the maximum grade while doing small claims in a small village. Prosecutors and judges are part of the same career path. Thus, a judge can become prosecutor, and then return to being a judge. This means that the judge who convicts someone in a lower court can be the prosecutor in the appeal trial. It also means that judges usually do not contradict each other. Arrest or search warrants are never denied.

The upshot is that judges are not accountable, and do not respond to any other authority. They are left to themselves. Their salaries are linked to those of MPs and the system is totally self-referential. There is a sort of "mini parliament" responsible for appointments and punishments but this is staffed exclusively by judges. It is regarded as a joke.

What currently gives them their leverage is that, following a referendum, parliamentary immunity has been removed from the constitution. Thus, the justice system can control the legislators. On this basis, the magistrates have gone to war against Berlusconi, currently launching an investigation against him for "corruption" on the basis that he was looking for votes for the confidence vote. According to the prosecutors, he was promising favours in exchange for support - something surely unheard of in parliaments? That, we are told, gives the idea of the state of madness of the Italian political system.

Berlusconi has made several attempts to change the laws that regulate judges activity. This is described by the media as an attempt to obtain total power. In reality, it is an attempt to put a limit to the limitless power of justice system against legislative power.

The trouble is, though, that parliament comprises two symmetrical chambers. It means every law that is amended in one chamber must go to the other and so on for an endless ping-pong; laws can be stalled forever this way and Berlusconi's attempts to reform the system have been blocked.

Thus, multiple courts in Italy are pursuing still pursuing Berlusconi, but most cases against him are groundless. But with the justice system in the hands of the hard left, it is being used for political purposes. Berlusconi and his companies have been at the receiving end of more than 500 search warrants. They have had to spend over €100 million in defence lawyers.

As to the demonstrations in Rome, these are the usual urban warfare launched by the leftist armies every time there is the promise of a government spending cuts (or promises of a somewhat smaller increase). But this – as here - is the reaction of the privileged when some privileges are going to disappear.

Our informant is in complete agreement with us about the state of the opposition. It is more or less dead, he tells us. Its leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, is a relic of the past, a pathetic figure who is detested and derided by its own people. Thus, incredibly, rather than address the real issues, Italian politicians fritter away their time on their petty power fights, forgetting that they were elected and are paid handsomely to govern the country, at least in the little space left by the EU.

If there are crimes for which Berlusconi is responsible, they are the ratification of the Lisbon treaty and the obedience to any EU demand. Also, the finance minister Giulio Tremonti has gone mad and fallen for the EU project and that would be enough to justify a firing squad for high treason.

And, although Berlusconi is no socialist, the reality is that the power of bureaucracies, of the state apparatus, of the justice system, of the trade unions and ultimately of the EU is such that even the most hardcore libertarian would be unable to change anything in Italy.

As a result, the Berlusconi parliament and government as a whole is only a milligram less socialist than the socialist themselves - not by ideology but by convenience and by culture. Fini is a fascist, or ex-fascist, and despite looking very hard, there seems to be very little difference between a fascist and a socialist.

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Greeks on the boil - by Richard...

Not content with allowing the Italians to grab all the limelight, the Greeks are back in the news with an entertaining riot of their own. But what is particularly interesting to see is a former transport minister being recognised and stoned as he left parliament. Too often, the politicians skulk behind their barricades and armed guards, while the police take the heavy stuff.

In this case, abut 200 leftist protesters chased Kostis Hatzidakis as he left parliament, shouting: "Thieves! Shame on you!" They threw stones and beat him with sticks, until he took flight into a nearby building. With Charlie boy in this country now resorting to his armoured Bentley, we are not far from the day when even the lowliest MP will need an armoured vehicle for transport.

Reviewing the general footage of the Greek "demonstration", it is interesting to see the widespread use of petrol bombs or "Molotov cocktails" (top), and these certainly seem to be one of the more effective tools in the protesters' armoury. But we also seen the Italians using their placards to effect (above) – rather akin to the Roman Legion "tortoise", which is rather appropriate.

This is what the idiot police (is there any other sort?) and the cowardly politicians do not seem to realise – that if there are real grievances, cracking down on protest simply leads to an escalation on both sides. One expects, soon enough, to see these Continental tactics at play in the UK, and this is how it all starts.

Meanwhile, Conservative Home is on the ball, as always. Or, as the man says, "never knowingly fails to disappoint".

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Stop feeding the filth - by Richard...

We have today yet another graphic example of the inability of leader writers to join the dots. In a flatulent piece by The Daily Telegraph, we have a dissertation on the thieving filth in the EU parliament who, as we noted earlier, are robbing us blind.

But, instead of drawing the obvious and only sensible conclusion, weak as ditch water we have the leader writer bleat that: "The time has now come for party leaders in the UK to order their representatives in Europe to be as open with the taxpayer as national MPs are expected to be and to publish their expenses online."

The piece then concludes, "We have a right to know where our money goes" – as if we didn't know already and as if knowing in detail where it is spent would make any difference. When will these lame-brains realise that we are sick to the back teeth of this filth stealing our money, and the only answer is to stop giving them any?

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It gets worse - by Richard...

The global warming reaches critical level. But with California warm, that means the average temperature is fine … so no problem.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

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A vacuum of power - by Richard...

Riots and demonstrations broke out in Rome and across Italy yesterday after Silvio Berlusconi won back-to-back votes of confidence. Police fired tear gas at opponents of the scandal-plagued prime minister in the capital – while Berlusconi himself enjoyed a joke with his colleagues (below).

He is, however, seriously weakened by this series of votes, although his strength continues to lie in the weakness and unpopularity of the opposition. There, it seems to me, is an illustration of the broader malaise throughout Europe – and elsewhere. Not only are we troubled by poor governments, we also suffer from inept oppositions.

And, while there will always be the Daily Mail tendency which gets all precious when violence breaks out on the streets, the editorial writers – and the politicians themselves – need to realise that nature abhors a vacuum – no more s/o when it comes to the exercise of power. If they fail to do their jobs properly, other people will step in and do it for them.

Berlusconi is a modern miracle. Before him, the Italian political system used up prime ministers faster than toilet rolls, with roughly the same effect. But now, Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, is saying that Berlusconi's government is "clinically dead". He may be right, in which case Italy is in for troubled times.

Back in this country though, we have no cause to feel superior. We suffer from exactly the same problems – a weak, inadequate government and a weak opposition. The scenes we see in Rome could now very easily be replicated in London.

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Serious global warming - by Richard... Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Military and emergency services personnel are on the ground and in the air rescuing stranded motorists from their vehicles in southwestern Ontario where snow squalls have crippled traffic and sparked a state of emergency, reports the regional newspaper.

At least 11 people have been killed by the same storm in the United States and there has been a race on all day to rescue more than 70 motorists trapped by snow in Indiana. And the system shows no signs of slowing down as it moves east, with travel chaos over the Christmas period expected.

Meanwhile, this side of the Atlantic, the myth of ruthlessly efficient Germany, always battling the elements so much better than Britain, has been smashed by a new cold weather front. Says The Daily Mail. Not a single train ran without delays in the whole of the country. Even international airports like Dusseldorf had to shut down on Monday night as the snow blew in.

Actually, it isn't a myth – and the commentariat is protesting that things are running pretty normally. Despite that, there is the moronic tendency over in Germany that falls for the same warmist crap that afflicts our brain-dead officialdom. And, like so many, your average Kraut is losing his snow-driving skills. In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the west there were some 700 accidents on the autobahns during 12 hours of snowfall.

And the forecast here is dire. The big freeze is due to return tomorrow and the predictions are that it's going to last for a month, putting the country on course for a repeat of the notorious winter of 1962-3, when the sea froze over at Whitstable (pictured above) - as well as in 1940 ... what is it about the sea at Whitstable?.

Nevertheless, this global warming is getting serious.

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