He took the hint - by Richard... Saturday, January 22, 2011

He took the hint - by Richard... Saturday, January 22, 2011

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has resigned as leader of the ruling Fiánna Fail party. He stays on as head of government until the election on 11 March. Then he is sooooooo history, the Holy Grail will be more visible.

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Sucking at the public teat - by Richard...

Autonomous Mind (from whom the graphic is "borrowed") picks up on the Peter Sissons article inThe Daily Mail today, repeating his comment that:

In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told "it's all in there".

In the comments to the Mail piece, we then have our own Jonathan Stuart-Brown, who also makes some pertinent observations:

The Guardian sells only 250,000 copies a day (and falling). Take away the bulk buying by libraries, quangos, unions, universities, charities, and BBC and the real figure is 50,000 genuine purchasers mostly in West London. Yet The Guardianhas a monopoly on BBC recruitment adverts (many millions each year from licence fees) which subsidise it and drive the genuine purchases (looking at the jobs). Why will no MP and certainly not Jeremy Hunt Culture secretary challenge this?

This raises a very interesting issue. It is not as if the BBC actually needs The Guardian to help it fill its vacancies. There is the extremely expensive BBC website and its own jobs portal, which is more than adequate for the purpose. There, incidentally, it tells us that: "At the BBC we respect each other and celebrate our diversity so that everyone gives their best." I feel slightly nauseous.

Nevertheless, the issue here is that the BBC – alongside government, national and local, with its job adverts - is subsidising The Guardian to the extent that, without the input, it would most certainly cease to exist as a newspaper.

The real reason, we suspect, is that the newspaper is a loss-making enterprise. And with its parent group reporting £171 million losses last year, it could hardly survive still further losses. Nor indeed is this a successful enterprise in other respects. Its December circulation of 264,819 shows an 11.89 percent drop on the same time the year previously.

In all measurable respects, this is a failing business. But that it should be so heavily subsidised by the BBC is unconscionable – its financial dependence effectively makes it the BBC's pet poodle and its staff magazine.

What the subsidy also does is deprive The Guardian of any moral (or actual) authority. Without being able to pay its own way, and reliant on public "charity", this is just another entity sucking at the teat of public money. Its staff – and especially the likes of George Monbiot (aka Moonbat, although "ocean-going shit" will do) – left to the rigours of the real world, would be on the dole.

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Hope springs eternal - by Richard...

The long-running Okhotsk Sea crisis is turning into a marathon soap opera, with the latest instalment from TASS today. As expected, the storm has slackened and the snow abated, but apparently this is only a temporary break. The snow is expected back tomorrow, although the force of the depression which has dominated the region is gradually subsiding.

With that seems to come yet another plan change – or perhaps a reversion to the original plan. We are told that the two icebreakers now intend to lead the Bereg Nadezhdy ("Coast of Hope") fish carrier into clear water. Once there, they will refuel from the tanker Victoria and return, once again, in a bid to pull the Sodruzhestvo factory ship from the ice.

This time, TASS is telling us that the ships have about 30 miles ahead to reach the clear water. Estimates of distance, though, have varied wildly throughout this crisis. Figures of up to 100 miles have been mentioned. And nor is the location of the ice edge static, nor even clearly defined as the wind-driven floes continue to accumulate. It should be remembered that April is the peak month for ice extent.

Further, immediately prior to the last storm, the convoy had only made two miles in a single 24 hour period, so distance gives no indication whatsoever as to when the ships might be freed, if ever. However, as they say, "hope springs eternal" or, in this case, hope springs the "Coast of Hope" – we hope.

Meanwhile, the rest of the media, bizarrely, continue to ignore the drama, with the attention remaining on the assumed – but far from proven – adverse effect of Russian oil and gas exploitation in the Okhotsk Sea on the supposedly dwindling population of grey whales.

Latest recruit to this cause is The Tehran Times, which has copied out a Reuters report, based on a WWF press effort. Interestingly, the copy bears remarkable similarities to an earlier report byGeoffrey Lean, the Daily Telegraph's environment editor. So it is that the media are entirely indifferent to the great drama being played out in real life, preferring instead to promote the fears, real or imagined, of a conservation NGO.

But then, after the greens have so assiduously promoted the loss of drift ice in the Okhotsk Sea as evidence of global warming, the last thing they, or a warmist-biased media, would want to do is highlight a rescue drama that features abnormally severe weather conditions and a rapidly expanding ice pack. Instead, there seems a determination amongst the warmist to downplay the drama - "move on, nothing to see here," seems to be their anxious refrain.

There is also an element here of the anti-human bias. The fate of the whales is important to these people. The potential loss of hundreds of people, on a much more immediate timescale, is of no interest. That prospect, to some, is even welcome.

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It was always going to happen - by Richard...

The ability to stand apart gives a sense of perspective which simple cannot be achieved when you are in the thick of things. And, with that perspective, it wasalways obvious that Coulson was going to have to go. He was what they call in the trade a wrong 'un.

However, what perhaps matters more than the loss of a rather seedy person from the not-the-Conservative Party team is the judgement of the people who appointed him in the first place, and sustained him. Step forward George Osborne and David "Euroslime" Cameron.

Actually, Euroslime Dave hasn't had that good a week. After a tawdry row with the mother of a severely disabled girl over respite care, and his dust up with Saeeda Warsi over her idiotic remarks on Islamophobia, the gilt is rather beginning to wear off the Golden Boy. If it hadn't been for the shock resignation of shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, he would be looking a tad exposed at the moment.

The bigger problem for the Boy, though, is actually how few care, beyond a passing recognition that the political classes are washing their dirty linen in public again – and what very unsavoury washing it is. Beyond that, there are far more important things happening. But surely the laugh of the week is Taoiseach Brian Cowen saying he will lead his party into the General Election and beyond. This comes to mind.

Some might think that was always going to happen as well. Some people just don't know when to give up.

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Stormy weather - by Richard... Friday, January 21, 2011

It would appear that the Russian are developing the same taste for understatement as the British (although we seem to be forgetting the art), in reporting "bad weather" on the island of Sakhalin.

High winds and blizzard conditions, brought by a deep depression to the southeast (synoptic chart pictured – see bottom right quadrant), have disrupted the ferry service linking the island with the mainland and closed roads in the north of the island. Visibility in snowstorms is down to less than 200 feet and in the Tatar Strait between Sakhalin and the mainland, where ice-free water remains, wave heights are over 12 feet.

The particular relevance of this, of course, is that this is the same region where the two Russian ships and their icebreaker escorts are trapped, in the Okhotsk Sea, where yesterday, we reported that rescue attempts had been temporarily abandoned.

This is the most recent intimation of just quite how bad conditions are but, from observation of the chart, the wind patterns and strength are now creating the worst conditions imaginable for the trapped ships.

The problem arises from the peculiar geography of the Okhotsk Sea, with its shallow continental shelf along the northwestern coastal area. Because the sea is shallow, the water temperature can quickly cool down to freezing, allowing ice to form. With a constant offshore wind, the ice is carried away offshore continuously. Therefore, the waters tend to be always open adjacent to that part of the coast.

This open water is called a polynia, where ice is constantly produced, turning the area into what amounts to an ice factory, the total production of which is sufficient to cover the entire Okhotsk Sea. With the wind now from the northeast, the loose ice is being driven into Sakhalin Bay, where the ships are trapped, adding significantly to the ice depth and extent.

Under pressure from wind and currents, the ice driven into the bay tends to lift and buckle, forming pressure ridges and hummocks, some to as much as 20 feet depth or more. And that is what is happening right now. By the time the current storm has abated, the ice may be so thick and dense that the trapped ships cannot be extracted.

Meanwhile, the media has suddenly woken up to the Okhotsk Sea, but not to the ongoing drama. Apparently prompted by the WWF, they are recording concerns that Russian plans, in partnership with BP, to exploit oil and gas reserves in the region (above) might adversely affect a small population of rare Grey Whales.

In the manner of the anti-human greens, like Geoffrey Lean in his current blog, they are entirely oblivious to the current drama. While they are happy to emote about whales, human beings at risk are of no consequence.


Tourism meltdown, Climate change causes drift ice lost from UNUChannel on Vimeo.

Perversely, it is global warming which is improving the exploitation potential or the region, supposedly causing the reduction of the "poster-child drift ice" (pictured above) - about which the greenies were complaining in 2008 and again in 2009, with an additional interview here. But, if the run of bad weather becomes a trend, exploitation of the region might be far more difficult.


Sunset view from Notsuke nature center in Betsukai, Hokkaido on 8th, Jan 2011 from motohiro SUNOUCHI on Vimeo.

Then, at least, the greenies are getting some ice back (pictured 8 January this year), even if the people of Sakhalin and sailors trapped in the Okhotsk Sea are not wholly appreciative. When you think about it, for the greenies, global cooling in the region is a "win-win". They might even get rid of a few hundred humans. What's there not to like?

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You can hide - by Richard...

The questions over the Queensland floods raised by Booker in his column last week are now increasingly being asked by the Australian media.

With state premier Anna Bligh having appointed a formal inquiry headed by Justice Cate Holmes, it is now certain that these issues will be raised in a formal venue and be fully explored.

The inquiry, which has the status of a Royal Commission, will be assisted by former Queensland police commissioner Jim O'Sullivan and international dam expert Phil Cummins who have agreed to serve as deputy commissioners. An interim report on flood preparedness issues is due by 1 August and the final report is expected by 17 January next year.

Particularly active at the moment, in raising questions, is The Australian which has obtained evidence of what it believes are failures in the water management system, published in a piece headed: "Engineer's emails reveal Wivenhoe Dam releases too little, too late."

Leaked e-mail communications from a Wivenhoe Dam engineering officer, it tells us, "underline concerns that the Brisbane River flood was mostly caused by massive releases from the dam after it had held on to water too long over a crucial 72 hours before the severe rainfall that hit the region last week."

These emails, which become increasingly urgent in tone as the situation became critical as the dam's levels rise rapidly, were provided to The Australian by a source who said the stream of data had convinced him the river flood of Brisbane could have been largely avoided if the dam's operators had taken action much earlier.

A further article in The Australian tells us that river height data measured every few minutes shows the operators of Wivenhoe Dam let its levels rise back above the height at which the spillway gates were raised a day earlier in a bid to urgently dump a huge volume of water that largely caused Brisbane's flood.

Engineers who are closely studying the data are claiming that the water management company, SEQWater, now realises it had unnecessarily released too much water at the worst possible time in the late afternoon and early evening of Tuesday, January 11.

Outside this loop and thus slightly on the back foot and it reacts to the Australian's "exclusive", theSydney Morning Herald is taking what appears to be a different line with the headline: "Dam releases 'could not curb floods'".

However, this tendentious piece actually says that the dam operator could not have curbed the floods that ravaged Brisbane without breaking established procedure and outguessing the freak rain storm. That would have required overriding the guidelines released by the Queensland government.

Working in accordance with the approved manual, the operator followed a flood mitigation strategy "based on a reasonable expectation that drastic releases would not be necessary because dam levels would not threaten an emergency spillway".

This is entirely compatible with our earlier assertions and particularly those concerning the dam. What has yet to be addressed, though, is why the operational parameters were set up the way they were, and the extent to which green ideology influenced them.

For the moment, though, Anna Bligh and the others who may have been responsible for the flooding disaster are hiding behind the inquiry, particularly Bligh, who says the operational issues are "... matters for the commission of inquiry." She does not, she says, "intend to speculate on technical engineering questions that the inquiry has all the expertise required to answer."

The intense media scrutiny under way, though, is not going to go away. Ms Bligh may be finding that she can hide, but she cannot run.

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Shale gas - by Richard...

I see people are getting excited about a posting on shale gas and other unconventional fuels. This makes me wonder whether there is any great advantage in being too far ahead of the game. For instance, we wrote about this issue in August 2008 and again in September 2008. I had a good look at it in March 2010 - here, here and here. I returned to it briefly in April 2010 and again earlier this month. Fleetingly, only fleetingly, I sometimes wonder why I bother. Then I get back and write another piece.

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The "finality" of an election - by Richard...

"This country and its people have gone through hell and fire over the last number of years … We need to restore hope and confidence in this country and fix a system that has been manifestly broken," says Irish Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, on hearing that Cowen has finally caved in and named the election day - 11 March.

For a record of the quite extraordinary events that led to this, read the report in The Irish Times. I can't do better than this, and I'm not even going to try. As a taster: writes Miriam Lord, "One word kept surfacing, uttered by all sides: delusional...". Then click though to the links especially this one, and pick up the story from there. We have here a repository of journalism as it should be, writing the first draft of history. Savour it.

Also to savour is the delicious prospect of Cowen being thrown out on his ear, shunned by his own party and ministerial colleagues, who are treating him like the modern-day plague on their road to electoral oblivion. So says the English Daily Mail doing a catch-up, making it very clear that 11 March is a fire sale - not a date picked by Cowan for his own tactical advantage.

One early casualty, to join the Taoiseach, is the Climate Change Bill. The Greens, who were instrumental in precipitating the election, are to lose their "baby" - the only thing they had been holding out for. It, like Cowan, is toast.

The cartoon, taken from here, is two days old - marking the turn of events and the terrifying speed of the transition of fortunes. From victor of an artfully crafted vote of confidence, we get this wonderful picture of the wreckage of a political career. Nemesis will out - nemesis always follows, even if it takes much longer than most of us would like. We await the day when Euroslime Dave meets his.

For him and Cowan, though, here is a little aphorism to ponder over: "You can piss off some of the people all of the time, you can piss off all of the people some of the time, but you can't piss off all of the people all of the time". Yours will come eventually Dave.

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