Scraprod - by Richard... Thursday, December 09, 2010

Scraprod - by Richard... Thursday, December 09, 2010

Not the Nimrod MR4 any more, but £3.6 billions-worth of scrap. And who made this glorious cock-up? Well, the contract for the design, development and production of the Nimrod MR4 was signed in December 1996. That seems to have been on the Tory watch - Mr Portaloo, I believe.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Are they incompetent? - by Richard...

Or just incompetent? The choice is yours but, it turns out, that is the only one you get.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Forum - by Richard...

The forum is now closed for new registrations. I'll open it again briefly next week.

My apologies for this ridiculous situation, but we have something akin here to a constant denial of service attack. The moment I open the board, I get dozens, hundreds and then thousands of automated, spam-bot applications, which swamp the board. Hence my asking you to e-mail me specifically, with details of your username - after you have registered. And it is no good doing it some hours after the event. By that time, I've either deleted your application, or it is lost in the mass of false applications.

Those who managed to get in - you are all very welcome. I am, however, limiting the forum number to 1,000 - so we're currently operating a one in, one out regime. Gradually, I am weeding out members who do not post, and will maintain the board on that basis. Currently, if you have not posted for two years, or more, you are likely to find your account deleted without notice.

If pressure on applications continues, that period will shorten and, in any event, new members who do not post within a month of joining are likely to find their accounts deleted.

Happy posting.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

No way back - by Richard...

Doubtless, the focus of the London-based political wonks and media is currently the tuition fee controversy. But, in the long run, this will turn out to be of marginal and transitory importance. By far the more important issue is the weather and, in particular, the news that the Scottish government is considering calling in the Army to deal with the crisis.

This is after the recent snowfall in Edinburgh, the heaviest the city has seen for about 50 years, with temperatures expected to stay resolutely below freezing throughout Scotland - and elsewhere in England where we have just experienced the coldest period since records began in 1659.

The warmists may have an explanation for this which satisfies their own acolytes and which looks vaguely plausible from a scientific point of view. But most people are not scientists, and their trust in the warmist dogma has reached record lows, matched only by the low temperatures. It might be said that there are no atheists in the trenches, but there are certainly no warmists in the snowdrifts. And with Cancun also suffering record lows three days in a row, global warming as a credible concept is shot to pieces.

The politics and media wonks, however, have never really understood how intensely political warmist theology is. Obsessed with their own narrow concerns, they will therefore fail to recognise this turning point for what it is. But from this point onwards you will see a stiffening of resistance to the burdens imposed by the politicians in the name of saving the planet, together with increasing hostility to the warmist message and its supporters.

Thus, what we are seeing currently is not just bad weather but a uniquely political event, the effects of which will be as profound as they are unrecognised. Yet, even as one forecast suggestsan intensification of conditions, we have that suicidal idiot Lord Stern wanting to levy an annual £15 billion Green Tax - costing an average £600 per household - to buy windmills and solar panels for jungle bunnies.

It is not going to go away in a hurry. There is too much money in the scare. But, with this sort of idiocy rampant, there is no way back for the warmists. We need "Dexter" on an industrial scale (a meaningless reference unless you've seen the series).

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Print ready

Forum - by Richard... Wednesday, December 08, 2010

The forum is open for new registrations ... I will keep it open until midnight GMT. You will not get an automatic acknowledgement so, when you have registered, please e-mail me to let me know your username. Then I can pick it out from the spammers and activate your account.

Print ready

A perfect storm - by Richard...

Scottish first minister Alex Salmond admitted his government had been "caught out" by a "perfect storm" of heavy snow and bitter cold.

But if Mr Salmond had spent a fraction of the time spent on his fatuous climate change agenda on cold weather contingency planning, he and his government perhaps would not have been caught out so badly. His problem, therefore, is this not so much a "perfect storm" of heavy snow and bitter cold as a "perfect storm" of stupidity.

And that is a perfect model for the broader policy issues. While he and his likes fritter away their time and our money on "saving the planet", our electricity supplies are allowed to deteriorate for want of intelligent planning.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

A tale of two I-lands - by Richard...

Ambrose looks at the latest situation and offers this:

Yet the underlying tale of Ireland and Iceland, and the tale of the 1930s, is that a devaluation shock may cause a violent crisis – that looks and feels terrible while it happens – but the slow-burn of policy austerity and debt deflation does more damage in the end.

Did the prime minister of Iceland lose his job, and is Cowen still in power? Just. Does that explain anything?

COMMENT: IRISH THREAD

Print ready

A winter of discontent - by Richard...

Workers at National Grid, we are told, will be voting today on whether to take industrial action in a row over pay. The result is due on 5 January. So far, they have rejected a three-year offer worth 2.5 percent from 1 July this year, and 2.25 percent for each of the following years. The starter sum, they say, is less half the inflation rate of 5.1 percent for 2010.

Says Emily Boase, national officer for Prospect – one of the three unions involved - "Members think that's unfair, since National Grid has seen a 12 percent increase in pre-tax profits and an eight percent increase in dividends. That's thanks to dedication and hard work by staff, who feel affronted to be so undervalued."

The clincher though is the treatment of National Grid's directors. Five of them five feature in the Labour Research Department's league table of the ten highest paid directors in the UK.

That this should be used as an excuse, though, is entirely unreasonable. Just because chief executive Steve Holliday took home a package worth £2.27 million for the year 2010, and the "five" took home between them £7.26 million is neither here nor there. The plebs should know their place.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Different planets - by Richard...

There is a sort of unreality about current politics – and just about everything else, especially what we see in the media which seems to belong to a completely different world.

The reality for millions of people in the UK is the global warming lying thick on the ground – in particular in Scotland. There, hundreds of thousands of people have gone through 24 hours of misery, so much so that Scottish politicians are bickering about the lack of preparedness, while theMet Office is trying to dodge the blame for getting its forecast wrong. That reality is expressed by aGuardian comment:

I'm really angry that they weren't better prepared for the snowfall. The roads hadn't been gritted and I never once saw a snowplough.

I was stuck on a bus from Glasgow to Hamilton. 3hrs queuing at the bus depot, then 9hrs on the bus with a three year old and a baby. We were told there were some delays, but no one thought to mention that it would be so long! Thankfully people on the bus had milk in their groceries and people were coming out there houses with biscuits handing them round cars. My couple hour trip into Glasgow turned into a 28hr trip in total.

People shouldn't have to sleep in their cars, go without food, water, or toilet facilities, because the roads weren't gritted.

The further reality is that the Daily Mail and others are warning that we can expect the global warming to move south by morning, where we are similarly unprepared. A lot of people are going to be trying to carry on with their lives, yet will be struggling to deal with the collapse in the transport infrastructure that happens every time the temperature falls.

Yet none of this registers on the political horizon – still less the prospect of massive energy bills being stacked up, with the UK drawing down record amounts of power, the system increasingly at risk of failure. As far as the politicians go, this makes no one whit of difference to what passes as their thinking as they sit idly by as we are poised to run us out of electricity and money. Their reality is the prattle in the press.

Also failing to register with the impact it deserves are the rumblings coming out of Germany about the euro, and the budget situation in Ireland. There, the Irish government has won the first parliament vote on its 2011 austerity budget, but the drama is far from over. It is going to be until Thursday evening before we see the shape of things to come and, according to some sources, the process is not expected to be wrapped up until early next year.

The distance between "our" reality and what the media and the politicians are trying to tell us are important is now so great that it is getting harder and harder to relate to what they are telling us. This is seriously and disturbingly bizarre.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Some would like to think - by Richard... Tuesday, December 07, 2010

... that this was deliberate, where police officers on their way to an EDL demo "thought they were going to die" after eating contaminated chicken and tuna sandwiches.

But it can't have been that bad. From my recollection, in the first stage of Staph aureus food poisoning you are worried that you are going to die. But, in the next stage of a really bad dose, your real worry is that you're not. Better luck next time.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Dirty deeds - by Richard...

It looks as if we are in for interesting times with the Irish budget. Dirty deeds are afoot - and memories are long.

COMMENT: IRISH THREAD