Global warming is real - by Richard... Monday, April 25, 2011

Global warming is real - by Richard... Monday, April 25, 2011

Truly, honestly, Guv! Would I lie to you?

The pic was taken in 1926! The original caption read: "30 degree heat! The Office in the water! A businessman has fled as a result of the intense heat in the water with his secretary and dictated his letters there".

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Oh! The genius of it all! - by Richard...

Just when you thought your admiration for the superb conduct of the military operation in Afghanistan could not get any higher, we learn that the coalition boys and goils are now heavily engaged in a massive new operation – to hunt down nearly 500 Taliban prisoners who have escaped from the main jail in Kandahar.

If we are to believe what we are told – always a bit dodgy, that – the prisoners dug a 1,000ft tunnel, taking five months to do it, and no one actually noticed. Nor did anyone notice anything amiss while the entire political wing of the prison emptied of inmates in an operation lasting four and a half hours, the escapees being ferried off to "secure destinations" by a fleet of cars the Taliban had organised – which no one noticed either.

With such military genius at the helm of coalition operations, it can only be a matter of time before our heroic boys and goils can pat themselves on their backs for a "job well done", jump on a passing Ryanair Jet (following the abolition of the RAF), and come toddling off home for a round of victory parades and street parties – as long as they've done the health 'n' safety training to manage the street closures.

With a bit of luck, they'll be home just in time to take over the prisons here, after the warders havegone on strike, hopefully with slightly better results – although the usual policy now is to open the doors and give the inmates welfare cheques, to save them the trouble of doing any honest digging.

In the meantime, we await news from the Swiss border, as guards have been instructed to be on the lookout for motorcycle riders acting in an unusual fashion.

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Questions on Bristol - by Richard...

In contrast to the lacklustre reporting from The Sunday Times, we are seeing The Independent take the issue seriously.

Kerry McCarthy, the MP for Bristol East, is cited, saying: "What I can't understand is why, if the police wanted to arrest four people, they need dogs and more than 10 riot vans? If you come in with such a show of strength into a peaceful area of Bristol where the majority of people were sitting on the road with bongos and bicycles, of course it's going to spark antagonism.

"It would be interesting to see exactly what intelligence the police were acting upon that required such a fierce response. I have met with the chief constable and voiced my concerns."

Sam Barnard, 21, a student who was in Stokes Croft during the riots, said: "The police handling of the situation was overly aggressive and totally unclear. Police made the case of petrol bombs in a bid to evict the squatters but no one has been charged, and we are yet to see any evidence that petrol bombs even existed."

Predictably, Stephen Pollard in The Daily Telegraph, is pathetic. Long on rhetoric and short on facts, this is the MSM at its worst: idle, vapid and superficial – a total waste of space.

What is interesting here, though, is the gullibility of the readers on the comment thread. Pollard just has to do his "man-in-pub" routine and they all pile in, without the first thought as to whether the underlying premise is correct. One is reminded of the Grand Old Duke of York. How easy it is to march the sheeple up to the top of the hill and down again.

And therein is an illustration of the problem. The riot was only marginally about the Tesco supermarket, but the narrative is now focused on that issue, to the exclusion of others. Only rarely does one see the slightest trace of scepticism or any attempt to break away from the pre-defined agenda. Thus can the "crowd" be manipulated, coralled, constrained - led down a particualar path and steered clear of territory where thought and analysis is not wanted.

The exercise demonstrates how it is that politicians can prosper - they lead, they define the agenda and people are only too happy to follow. Far too many of them believe exactly what they are told, without question.They think what they are told to think and do not stray outside their pre-set boundaries.

The sheeple will inherit the earth. They are the masses, the majority, the ones who will lead us via the ballot boxes to the sunlit uplands - or the Tesco superstore. This is deomcracy in action. We should be so proud.

COMMENT: BRISTOL THREAD

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A last word - by Richard...

On top of our comments on The Sunday Telegraph piece, Biased BBC has waded into the debate:

I don't want to be churlish, and I am pleased that the Telegraph is finally looking at the rat's nest of establishment money-down-the-drain activity that supports climate change hysteria. But if investigative ace Jason Lewis properly read blogs such as EU Referendum and B-BBC, he'd truly be ahead of the pack. The real scandal here is that the BBC is not only involved in COMplus, but also directly part of a huge related network of climate change activism.

I've taken a little flak for my own comments – which is fair enough – but I do believe there are underlying issues here, so humour me. I've added a comment to the Telegraph site, endorsing Biased BBC, and noting the following:

The activity of the Sunday Telegraph is to be welcomed, but as B-BBC points out, if instead of reinventing the wheel and pretending it owed it, Mr Lewis had looked at the other work, he could have taken the story on further, instead of just offering a weak rehash of the salient issues.

This "dog-in-the-manger" attitude of The Sunday Telegraph typifies the attitude of the MSM to the alternative media. They are happy for us to link to them, and benefit hugely from the enhanced hit-rate they gain as a result, and they are happy to steal our work. But then to pretend that we do not exist is not only offensive, but stupid.

This is not a zero-sum game. The infosphere is effectively unlimited, but by trying to colonise a tiny corner of it and pretend it is all yours is to cut yourself off and restrict your own opportunities to expand. It is for this reason, probably more than anything, that the MSM is a failing industry. It does not understand the net, and will not listen to the people who do.

The physical and emotional investment we have in the blog is evident for anyone who reads it. I feel passionately about the role of the media and the "new media" in the functioning of democracy, and am convinced that the MSM is no longer pulling its weight.

What the media does (or does not do) is still important. For instance, if the police continue to go off the rails, it will not be the politicians that come to our rescue, but the media – so garbage like thisis actually quite worrying.

Hence, when the media is not performing, I believe it is a valid and necessary function of a blog such as ours to point it out. We have enough problems without adding to our list, but if the media continues on its death spiral, we all lose. It may be beyond saving, but it is worth a little effort.

COMMENT: HAIL THE MSM THREAD