Thursday, 7 April 2011

A distorted picture - by Richard... Thursday, April 07, 2011


Although the newspapers are full of hyperbole about the very welcome spring warmth, the have been almost completely silent about the ice drama in the Gulf of Finland, as indeed they were about the Okhotsk Sea entertainment.

But the current weather here and the exceptional conditions in Eastern Europe and Russia are not unrelated. The very fact that it is warm here and St. Petersburg is suffering a late spring is that the same system which are bringing the mild weather to the UK is also packing the ice into the Gulf.

The situation at the end of last month had so deteriorated that fruit and vegetable shipments to Russia were hindered by dangerous ice, and cargoes of potatoes were being spoiled because it was too cold and they were freezing. 


Even now, a week later and the Princess Anastasia ferry returned to St. Petersburg more than five hours late from its first trip to Stockholm (pictured above). The ferry was delayed due to thick ice that continues to cover the Gulf of Finland. Ten icebreakers, including a nuclear vessel, are still helping to free cargo vessels and passenger ferries. 

According to data from the administration of the St. Petersburg seaport, as of Monday, 76 ships remained trapped in the ice – and it is not yet over. The ice means that the schedule of the Princess Anastasia is subject to change. According to ferry staff, the journey to Stockholm could take up to 35 hours instead of the scheduled 23 hours.

And this is not just idle interest. The parochialism of the British media is such that those who rely on it are never given the big picture. The focus on a brief period of warm spring in Britain allows the myth of global warming to be sustained, whereas as the global temperatures is creeping down, and hot spots here and there can always be matched by cold spots elsewhere (and vice versa).

This distorted picture is a real problem when it comes to public perception. Memories are short, and when the global warmists come out to play, the fine weather undoubtedly influences sentiment. Yet there is rarely any serious attempt to counter their propaganda. Ice-bound in St. Petersburg doesn't cut it - but it should.

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It is happening - by Richard...

Portuguese (caretaker?) Prime Minister José Socrates has informed EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso of the intention to ask for "the activation of financial support mechanisms".

A spokesman for the commission has said the European Financial Stability Facility, the euro-zone's bailout fund, as well as a smaller fund fed by the EU budget, would be available to Portugal if it formally requested aid. "The president of the European Commission assured that this request will be processed in the swiftest possible manner, according to the rules applicable," said an official statement.

And so another one goes down the line. How many more, and when will it all end?

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Klepturition 2 - by Richard... Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Nice to see the bankers keeping up the standards.

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The fool rushes in - by Richard...

I am not quite sure where to start, on this latest piece of stupidity from Cameron (pictured - the thing to the left of the picture, by the way, is the Conservative Party Chairman).

Anyhow, this excuse for a British politician has told a group of Pakistani academics that Britain "is responsible for many of the world’s historic problems, including the conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan".

Of all the problems in the region, though, Britain is quite possibly least responsible for the situation in Kashmir, which remains to this day an occupied country, split between India, Pakistan and China.

This stupidity seems even to have stung Peter Oborne into a denunciation, which, considering his earlier, grovelling pieces about the Boy, is saying something. But here we have him writing about "David Cameron's sloppy and poorly informed remarks about the role played by the British Empire in creating the conditions for the contemporary conflict in Kashmir".

The Daily Mail, incidentally, is getting worked up about the amount of aid being paid for Pakistani schools – with £650million on offer at a time when the education budget at home is being cut. The paper notes what that amount of money could do to our own education budget ... 4,333 pupils being sent to Eton for a full secondary education, is one unfortunate example.

Seán Lang, a senior lecturer in History at Anglia Ruskin University, where he teaches British Imperial History, accuses the Boy of "touting for applause". "His comment was simplistic and trendy - more PC than PM. I certainly wouldn't accept such a sweeping generalisation from one of my own students", he says. "Perhaps the Prime Minister should spend a bit of time over Easter back at Eton, where the very strong history department could quickly put him right". That leaves 4,332 places.

One has to ask, though, whether there is any natural limit to the stupidly of this man, who seems to have the unerring instinct for saying the wrong things, at the wrong time, to the wrong people. It is hard to believe that Cameron could have acquired this level of perfection naturally. He must have been working on it for years, but it is now getting to the point where you even cringe at the thought of what he might say next.

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Talking of losing it - by Richard...


"It is important not to downgrade our response based on the location of the crime, or the value of the goods". This is Superintendent Gary Thompson, of the Gloucestershire Constabulary, defending the expenditure of £20,000 – deploying a helicopter, two vans, three patrol cars and two dog units – on arresting two men who stole 47p of scrap from a council recycling centre.

And while the boys in blue were making fools of themselves in Gloucester, thieves in Uddingston, South Lanarkshire have been doing the job for the Strathclyde police, breaking in to a police station to steal radios and uniforms. Burglars targeted a police station in, in the early hours of Tuesday morning and made off with the items. A spokeswoman for said: "Inquiries are ongoing to establish the full circumstances surrounding the break-in and to trace the person or people responsible".

Never let it be said though, that the police have run out of ideas, when it comes to wasting money. Just don't expect them to be able to do their jobs properly. 

In a similar vein, we see five fire engines despatched to deal with a cat stuck on a roof, at an estimated cost of £1,500. This comes at a time when, to save money, fire brigades have decided not send appliances as a first response to automatic fire alarms. The crews – two of which came from 30 miles away - scrambled to comply with EU "working at height" regulations to ensure the health and safety of firefighters, but union leaders have branded the response "crazy and overkill".

Then, to complete the triumvirate, we have the report of a a woman suffered serious brain injuries and a heart attack after she was forced to wait two hours for an ambulance - which was sitting 100 yards away.

Dr Caren Paterson, 33, collapsed in her flat in Islington, North London, before her boyfriend made three frantic 999 calls pleading for an ambulance to arrive. Her brain was starved of oxygen and she suffered a cardiac arrest almost two hours after she first fell ill.

Paramedics were required to have a police escort, which was not available at the time, because the address had been categorised "high risk". But the it is now believed that the grading might have related to a different flat or was placed on the property several years before Dr Paterson, a medical researcher at King's College Hospital, had moved in.

Meanwhile, we are told that doctors from the EU are twice as likely to be struck off as those who trained in Britain. They stand a much higher chance of being disciplined by the General Medical Council over serious concerns that they are putting patients’ lives at risk. Doctors who qualified outside Europe are also more likely to be struck off or suspended. 

The findings are further evidence that patient safety is being put in the hands of overseas doctors whose training is not up to scratch. But there are particular concerns over the standards of doctors from Europe, as EU law prevents them being tested on their competence or even ability to speak English as this would breach "freedom of movement" provisions of the treaties. 

Interestingly, the work on this was done by researchers from King's College, London, the same unit that employed Dr Caren Paterson, and would possibly still do so, had she not ended up brain-damaged as a result of the "care" she received from the London Ambulance Service.

We now have, it seems, the emergency services being run and managed by people who you would not judge safe enough to be allowed out on the streets by themselves, under a regime that would not be considered safe enough to care for stray dogs.

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Off the rails - by Richard...


It would be nice to think that doctors were so fully ahead of their game that they had time and energy to spare for garbage like this. For all the money they are (over) paid, though, the service offered is worse than ever, and that is just when you are trying to getting to see them.

From personal experience, I find that unless you are on the phone within 15 seconds of the booking line opening in the morning, you can forget a same-day appointment - or any time in the same week. Then to expect anything like a decent diagnosis and effective treatment – for anything other than the most basic of ailments – is going too far. Things are so bad that you must forget GPs. If you think there is anything serious, bypass the system and admit yourself to casualty.

Then to see this sort of stupidity, in a system that is already dysfunctional, tells you just how far so-called professionals have gone off the rails. You have two rear admirals and two professors of health, who have completely lost it, so much so that they are telling doctors to "use their position of trust in society to build support for action on climate change". 

"Although discussion is good", they say, "we can no longer delay implementing tough action that will make a difference, while quibbling over minor uncertainties (sic) in climate modelling . Unlike most recent natural disasters, this one is entirely predictable." 

"Doctors, often seen as authoritative, trusted, and independent by their communities, must make their voices heard in calling for such action." They must, says one of the four - Hugh Montgomery, professor of human health at UCL - "take up the climate challenge just as they did with the harm from tobacco".

We are back to "foxtrot oscar" time. The medical profession is having a hard enough time convincing me that they can deal with the issues for which they are paid. The very last thing I am interesting in hearing from them is their ill-informed views on climate change. To use their positions to push them would be an abuse of trust. And it is quite disturbing that these people can't even see that. 

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Lookee here - by Richard... Tuesday, April 05, 2011

You should not take the mick out of a poor child that is called Luciana Berger – she can't help it - except when she is shadow minister for climate change, is Labour and Co-operative MP for Liverpool Wavertree - selected under very dubious circumstances - and writes total tosh forThe Tribune.

Pictured left, with the son of a former prime minister, it is very, very hard to take this person seriously. That it should have become an MP and is now a shadow minister is as useful an indication as any of how far Parliament has deteriorated.

It also says a great deal for the democratic system that the people of Liverpool Wavertree actually voted for it, perhaps emphasising the oft' quoted saw that people get the elected representatives they deserve.

However, Ms Berger's drivel does serve a useful purpose, in underlining the unfortunate truth that there are things in life as bad as Tory MPs ... Labour MPs (we draw a discrete veil over the Lib-Dims). But how entertaining it is that this creature's piece has been recruited by the Referendum Campaign to advertise for people to sign the "pledge".

By ye friends shall ye be known.

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Money for gestures - by Richard...

This is what it comes down to when you are ruled by an alien élite which has neither sense nor wisdom: we see from the Evening Standard the headline, "Philip Hammond finds £5m to avoid EU pollution fines", hailing a story of how £5 million of our money is being given to the Greater London Authority to fix air quality measurements, so as to avoid fines from our supreme government of up to £300 million.

Please note: the money is not being used to improve air quality, per se. It is being used to reduce pollution around the air monitoring stations that we fund, in order to supply information to Brussels, so that it can check up on what we are doing, thus to reduce the recorded pollution and creep below the thresholds set by our masters.

And for those very few who might question the term "supreme government", what other term do you use when you have a minister of the Crown thrashing around with Boris Johnson, to fiddle the figures in order to avoid a fine (paid-for with our money)? 

Quite how Johnson has acquired his reputation is beyond me, but here he is indistinguishable from the rest of the political classes who permit this gross abuse of our money and trust - the money certainly ain't coming out of Johnson's well-lined pocket. And sure, it is only £5 million – but try telling that to the people who go short because they have to pay the taxes to finance this madness.

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This is piece of theatre - by Richard...



"You're just carrying the water for Obama". Delicious - obtained via Zero Hedge and the forum. The piece has more sense in just short of seven minutes than any of the torrent of broadcast fluff from the BBC and its allies. As for the print media, it is impossible to take the output seriously, and especially the reports of that fool  Cameron in Italy.

There is indeed a sense of unreality here. The British media, having treated the initial excursions with all the gravitas of a Boys Own comic, have consistently failed to understand the enormity of the error made by Cameron and his idiot ministers in dashing into a military venture for which he and his "allies" were ill-prepared and for which they had no end game.

Now, of course, the media are compromised, having in their own ways made themselves look as foolish as Cameron and his team. Thus, you are not going to get any rational analysis, or any intelligent discussion. They are all passengers of events which they do not understand and over which they have no control.

Needless to say, the political classes are the biggest failures of them all.  On such a foolhardy venture, the Labour opposition should be voluble and highly critical, demanding of the joke that passes for our government  an account of its stupidity. But, as is always the case now, opposition voices are muted and largely irrelevant.

The British public, therefore, bemused and badly informed, is left to pay the bill, and to deal with whatever the consequences that may accrue, without complaint of course, even if others are more strident. But, if that is on its way, the media and the politicians will not see it coming. And their mindless prattling will have so confused the issues that most people will have given up trying to follow it.

Come that time, this video, will stand out like a beacon. We, like the Americans, should not be there. We have no business being there - and we have neither the will nor the capabilities to bring the issue to a successful resolution. The only thing we have gained, and can gain, from this is further evidence - if any were needed - of the foolishness of the man masquerading as our prime minister.

Posted by Britannia Radio at 14:12