Friday, 11 February 2011

Sucking it in - by Richard... Friday, February 11, 2011


Despite Mubarak having resigned and handed over to the Army, and now reported having left the capital and travelled to his residence in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheik, the Egyptian situation is still only an echo of the 2008 food riots.

And reported by Bloomberg today is another such echo. The EU is considering taking emergency action on feed grains and sugar, to hold down surging prices and ease shortages. Its initial plan is to suspend some cereal-import duties and take administrative measure on sugar stocks which will also ease the supply situation. This is exactly what was happening in 2008, although then the Commission went further by also reducing set-aside requirements releasing more land to food production.

What is spooking the EU is that food prices rose to a record in January, with grains up 44 percent in the past year and sugar 12 percent higher, setting a new record. Thus, the Commission hopes to suck imports into the EU-27 area, a stratagem it hopes will help stabilise prices.

This is very much a beggar-your-neighbour policy, as it has prevented developing countries accessing the lucrative European market in the good times, while now threatening to suck supplies from those same markets. Since European prices in the protected market are in many instances higher than world price, the net effect may be to add to upwards pressures on the global market.

As always though, the EU commission is focused inwards, concerned only with reducing tensions on the European markets. The boarder policy issues of no immediate concern to it. It special concern is the European pig industry, where the meat market is "struggling".

Similarly, sugar users "are desperate for cheaper sugar" and want extra volume to stop the market from overheating. EU sugar stocks for food use in the domestic market may tumble to a "historical low". The overall situation has, of course, been developing from some time and, as in 2008, is not helped by the push for biofuels here, in the United States and elsewhere, to meet mandatory renewables quotas. Not for the first time, major policies are in conflict.

What is for sure though, is that food mountains are distant memories and are likely to remain so. What will not change is the EU's inept production and stock management system, which seems to be able to square the magic circle of impoverishing farmers while ensuring that there are shortages of key supplies while prices are getting higher.

And, as any economist will tell you, it takes real genius to do that - a level of genius that, despite the jubilation in Egypt, is going to make sure things do not get much better there. What we are seeing is merely the froth.

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Scraping the barrel - by Richard...


It's always fun to see the MSM make stupid mistakes on their website, for no other reason that they are soooooo superior about their editing and fact-checking, and so anal about us lowly blogs.

However, the headline could well be a Freudian slip, as it's one of those hardy perennials about stopping the two-ring circus of the EU Parliament, and consigning the Strasbourg operation to history. Perhaps this is Bruno Waterfield's subliminal protest at having to produce a garbage story, featuring the lowlife, Edward McMillan-Scott, for the ever-failing Daily Failygraph.

Still, it does no harm to remind ourselves that this totally unnecessary monthly trek costs £150m a year, of which the British taxpayer coughs up £28 million. That is yet another reason why we should be having nothing to do with the EU, especially as there is nothing at all we can do about it – apart from leave.

I wonder though, how philosophically, you legitimise the extortion of tax for a purpose for which no-one approves, which cannot be justified and which nobody wants to pay. And to refuse payment would be?

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Wise choice - by Richard... Thursday, February 10, 2011

In anticipation of the Barnsley by-election contest, after the seat was suddenly vacated by the latest in a long line of crooks, Euroslime Dave has asked Darren Gough, the former England cricketer, to stand for the Conservatives. Apparently, Euroslime made a personal telephone call to the man, who quite sensibly thought it was a prank and hung up. A hapless Tory MP had to call Gough back and tell him it was the real thing.

However, the former Yorkshire and England cricket sat star, and the man who won TV's Strictly Come Dancing in 2005, finds that he has too many commitments for him to waste his life being a Tory MP - not that he would actually get elected. A donkey with a red rosette would stand a better chance in Barnsley - although one understands that there aren't too many donkeys willing to stand either.

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And now if you want to weep - by Richard...

Go and read Mary Ellen Synon about Euroslime Dave's little games with the ECHR. They are games, and Mary Ellen is spot on in her analysis. Young Dave is indulging in his usual sport of micturition, using us plebs as targets.

If I had time, I would do my own analysis, but it wouldn't look much different – so we need not reinvent the wheel. But don't get angry ... that's bad for the blood pressure. Get even. That's going to take a little time, but remember also that revenge is a dish best eaten cold. My plate gets colder by the day.

BTW: the quality of her writing is delicious ... on the sale of HuffPuff to AoL: "Really, AOL could have got any of that for a lot less than $315m. It's all free on almost any lavatory wall in any Detroit bus station." I wish I'd written that.

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The face of the enemy - by Richard...


Discussing with Dellers yesterday, the idiot child of the Queen, I hadn't realised until then that his name (the child's that is) only had four letter. It still starts with a "c" of course, although some may argue about relative utilities.

The great Dellers thus makes a few observations, but even he is too gentle. What we have is the man attacking those who "corrode" the EU's environmental policies by denying "the vast body of scientific evidence" that climate change is caused by industrial activity.

This I had not fully appreciated, but here we have the heir to the throne decamping to Brussels to consort with an alien power, endorsing and defending its policies, which over-ride our own as a supposedly sovereign power, of which he aspires to be head. This man has not only joined the enemy. He is the enemy.

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Other people's money - by Richard...

The trouble with Hendry is that he is so stupid that he doesn't have enough brains to realise it. It is a pity, though, that his mummy didn't tell him that money doesn't grow on trees – so where does he think (if he can aspire to such a noble activity) – the money is going to come from to bribe communities to accept his accursed windmills?

Perhaps the fatuous fool might look out of the window of his chauffeur-driven car next time he passes Reading, Then he will see one of England’s best known wind turbines, also one of its most useless -according to the Daily Mail. According to latest figures, this 280ft pile of junk delivered a load factor of 15.4 percent last year. It tells the story: electricity generated worth an estimated £100,000 - subsidies extracted: £130,000 through the Renewables Obligation Certificate scheme.

Since it was switched on in 2005, this 2MW cash machine has extracted £600,000 from unwitting electricity consumers. But then even the fatuous Hendry has warned developers it was wrong for "inefficient" wind turbines to get "significant" public subsidies. What he does not seem to realise is that, while this may be an extreme example, it is only a matter of degree. There is no such thing as an "efficient" windmill.

This stupid thing, though, is somewhat of an embarrassment, as it sits on a ‘green’ business park and is owned by the leading subsidy farmer Ecotricity. Supposedly, it is one of England’s "flagship" turbines, visited by 20,000 schoolchildren a year and used as a focus to fill the poor little darlings with greenie propaganda.

The little Hendry, when he isn't bribing people to have these stupid things sitting on their doorsteps, is now looking for the subsidy farmers to move their contraptions out to sea, where he has justgiven permission for another lot of shysters to raid our pockets. And this is on top of Vestas stacking up increased profits ... all of which has come from the subsidy, without which they would be bankrupt.

The announcement of the new offshore wind development came as the stupid Hendry co-chaired the "Offshore Wind Developers Forum" in London, which had been convened to discuss with subsidy farmers how the government's proposals for "reforming" the electricity market "might help remove barriers to investment". For "remove barriers to investment" read: "steal more of our money". Not only are they thieves, they debase our language as well. By comparison, burglars are honest.

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Mad days - by Richard...

Slightly less of a panic pertained by the end of play yesterday – which was actually in the early hours of this morning. Intensive editing carved 4,000 words out of the manuscript, suggesting that the task is doable in the time. The process now is not so much writing the book, as unwriting it.

That is how Booker and I wrote The Great Deception. We assembled all the material in a vast, chronological narrative, stitched it altogether, and then trimmed it to size. Progress each day is measured by words lost, and I have to carve out about 50,000.

I suppose this is the Michael Angelo technique. His statues were in the block of stone – all he had to do was remove the stone around them to reveal the form. I've got a book tucked in my computer file, I guess. All I have to do is remove the right words and the masterpiece will be done - I wish.

Anyhow, I'm going to call it a night – too exhausted even to crawl through Google News. After two mad days, I'll be back to a sensible rhythm in the morning, and pick up where I left off.

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The words begin with - by Richard... Wednesday, February 09, 2011


... and end with? I really am getting rather fed up with this self-opinionated douche. Anyone's is entitled to an opinion, even that idiot, but when he starts pontificating about what others should do ... and think ... then I reach for my gun.

I never thought that I could be anything other than a royalist. This man is living proof that it is quite possible to change even deeply entrenched beliefs.

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One born every minute - by Richard...


The little Louise of the Daily Failygraph has gone so far down the line towards insanity that even the polar bears are having problems containing their mirth (pictured). Fortunately, I don't buy her rag any more, and as long as it is devoting its pages to greenie puffs, there is no need to.

Furthermore, knowing Louise's weakness for greenie zealots, one did not have to look very far to find the WWF fingerprints, with the lead "researcher", Andrew Derocher, up to his armpits in WWF money. Why the Failygraph should act as the PR agent for WWF, however, is anyone's guess, but at least we don't have to pay for it any more.

A better piece on this "puff" is, in any event, is here, where you can count the conditionals, demonstrating that this is yet another speculative offering. And to think that newspapers once went through the pretence of printing news.

The douches who created the so-called research do of course have form. Last year, in another WWF-sponsored puff, they were telling us that polar bears in Hudson Bay were going to die out in 30 years. Now, they're all going to die ... everywhere ... which makes you wonder what next they will come up with.

So far though, cuddly polar bears are such a nice little earner that you can't see them giving up the scare stories in a hurry. And, like little Louise, there's one born every minute.

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The death of satire - by Richard...

A state of near panic grips the power behind EU Referendum as the deadline beckons for the latest book and I realise how much more work there is to do. Measuring work rate over the last couple of weeks, and applying that to the reminder, the task is not going to be finished unless speed is dramatically increased. Hence the low rate of blogging yesterday.

But there is also a sense of the surreal, as I look at the newspapers and other sources of news. I wonder whether much of what I am reading is real, or one vast practical joke, as if 1 April has been extended indefinitely. In this topsy-turvy world, one supposes that there will be one day a year – or half-day – when the stories are true, and we are not being taken for fools. Will they call it "April non-fool's day" or will someone come up with a better title?

That we are descending into the abyss is evidenced by this particular story, although there are many more. This one tells us, the author no doubt keeping an absolutely straight face, that "the only way for the UK renewable energy market to grow to a respectable size comparable with Germany is for it to have the full support of the incumbent government".

We are then told that the fact that large-scale solar PV farms are beginning to appear in the English countryside should be celebrated as a success of the government's Feed in Tariffs (FIT) policy. And then we hear the lament that the scheme is being portrayed as an enemy to microgeneration, with little regard for the fact that large-scale solar PV helps companies to achieve lower costs that can then be passed on to domestic installations.

Here, the opening premise is so barking mad that I have difficulty dealing with it. In fact, I am not sure that I can. Had this appeared on 1 April, I would have smiled knowingly and said to myself, "nice try" – but so obvious that the joke was too transparent to be funny. But this writer is serious – either that, or I've been in a coma for fifty days and no one thought to tell me. That actually could be more plausible than some of the stuff I am reading.

The point, of course is that, as we wrote the day before yesterday, just as German is pulling out of solar subsidies as fast as she can, we have this commentator, with an IQ that is probably lower than the figure on my fridge thermometer, holding Germany up as the shining beacon which we should be striving to emulate.

But it isn't only solar which is having the same effect on writers' brains as would sticking their heads in buckets of liquid nitrogen. There is also the question of wind. Now, you've all heard the term, "soldier's soldier", usually spoken with approval of some wandering brown job. Well, this is the "moron's moron" speaking, Charles Hendry (pictured), to whom the task of differentiating the orifice positioned between the gluteus maximus and the ginglymus would be one of Herculean proportions.

This is the man – if it really is a human being, which is open to debate – that has told MPs that governments have spent £2.2 billion supporting wind power over eight years. Yet with that experience he finds it impossible to predict when windmills will prove profitable without grants.

Here, the one word "never" should be simple enough even for this mental midget to understand, a creature to whom the status of "retard" is a hopelessly unattainable objective. And, if "never" is the answer, then the whole policy falls apart, as the unfortunates who pay the burgeoning electricity bills will be quick to attest.

Despite this, we have in Mr Hendry, the supporter of a notion that we should pay for the erection of up to 20,000 more windmills – as well as putting millions of electric cars on the roads. Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers would make more sense, and would have the added merit of being less visually intrusive.

This now is the land where satire, and especially political satire, is dead. We have bred a whole new generation of self-satirising politicians, a group for whom no endeavour is so wild, or so utterly mad that they could not embrace it as their most dearly-held aspiration. Swift, thou shouldest live now ... if only for you to discover that there are limits to your creative genius, which have long been exceeded.

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The retreat continues - by Richard... Tuesday, February 08, 2011


Britain is to abandon its warship patrols of the Caribbean for the first time since the second world war because of the navy's funding crisis, The Guardian tells us. The withdrawal means the navy will no longer provide a warship for anti-narcotic operations in the region, and will have to reduce its role in disaster relief work.

I bet there are an awful lot of people who were cursing Brown over his "meanness" on defence spending, and went rushing to the polls to vote Tory in order to get a better deal for the Forces, are now beginning to wonder why they bothered. Euroslime Dave looks set to abolish the military completely.

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Blog - by Richard... Monday, February 07, 2011

I decided not to sell it. The money wasn't good enough. And who wants to work for AoL anyway?

(PS: this joke is made of 100% recycled material. The carbon signature is zero and no animals were harmed during its creation.)

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The whores of Failygraph - by Richard...


Place the ads, and follow the money. How much did the Failygraph whores get paid for this, one wonders. It was called "horizontal collaboration", I believe, although in this case, you just bend over.

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Camoronics? - by Richard...

You give us £1trillion by 2020 and we'll deliver energy savings worth £180billion. That's Euroslime Dave's latest "get rich quick" scheme that he wants us to buy into ... almost as good as his solar power deal.

What do we call this? How about Camoronics?

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Posted by Britannia Radio at 21:33