Thursday, 2 June 2011

"Accurate forecasts ... not possible" - by Richard... Thursday, June 02, 2011



First we have this (top) and then we have this (immediately above). Weather forecasters today poured cold water on claims the nation was set to bake in June. A few days of relative sunshine led to headlines of "Flaming June" and sun cream warnings. But three different forecasters dampened suggestions the summer would be a classic leaving Britons bronzed.

What this all boils down to is that no one has the first idea what it is going to be like. As The Independent now concedes: "Accurate long forecasts are not possible". That also applies to predictions of climate – which use the same computer models, although it must be pretty obvious by now that the main reason for governmental enthusiasm for "global warming" is the tax-raising potential.

As always, though, there are enough rent-seekers out there to bolster the case, and make believe it is not about money. But, if you believe that, then you can believe we are in for a heat wave. Me? I'm learning how to knit.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

The corporate world - by Richard...


Tucked in to the uproar over the Winterbourne View, a residential hospital scandal are a few rather more unpleasant facts. It now appears that the agency responsible for enforcing standards, the Care Quality Commission, had been informed of serious problems at the hospital, and had failed to act.

It had been told by Terry Bryan, now a former nurse at the hospital, who had become increasingly concerned by the standard of care and complained to Jim Fazarally, the manager of the home, on 11 October last year. A lengthy email from Bryan detailed his concerns about the "confrontational and aggressive" approach of staff.

When his managers failed to address his concerns, Bryan resigned. He then complained to the Care Quality Commission in December, stating that serious abuse was taking place at Winterbourne and asking it to get in touch with him.

He received no response other than two automated emails. He subsequently called the commission, only to be told that the person dealing with his complaint was on holiday. Frustrated by the failure of the authorities to take his complaint seriously, Mr Bryan turned to Panorama.


The Care Quality Commission is the "independent regulator of health and social care in England". Thus, the failure of Winterbourne is also another failure of Chief Executive Cynthia Bower, she of Stafford Hospital fame.


Now, the egregious Bower is on a salary in the order of £215,000 – more than the prime minister. And, according to the annual report, she and her executive team rip off the Agency to the tune of over a million in annual salaries and benefits, yet when a serious issue arises, their Agency is found wanting.

And will Bower or any of her executive team resign from their well-paid jobs? You guessed.


But then, this is hardly surprising. The woman has no shame.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Five-a-day is up - by Richard...

The MF five-a-day is up on the Independent Political Bloggers site - and it's a really good selection. Meanwhile, I've put fifty blogs up on the blogroll. I'll now start work on the other fifty. And I'll add my own link here.

Autonomous Mind has done another superb, discursive piece about the nature of democracy and Cameron. It is a good, weighty piece, in which the blogosphere excels – making us the true inheritors of the 18th Centurypolitical leafleter tradition, setting the agenda on such issues.

We can, of course, dissipate our precious energies on trivia, like Mr N Sheep, and if I am being a little bit unfair to him, why should I be bothered? He's always been anal about linking to EURef (which is why, also I also ignore the Almighty Guido Fawkes), so he's getting free traffic. He should care less.

Talking of "referism", which we weren't, the Google count stands at 5,910 – up 1,400 on yesterday. The blog count is a magnificent 3,540 – up 2,000. And as for the MSM: "Your search - 'referism' - did not match any documents". How did we guess? Yet it gives us about 349 results for "sexymp" – on the ball as always.

Just three new blogs to list today - I've been a bit busy. The first two blogs listed might improve their chances if they put up a blogroll. Why anyone thinks they are going to get visited if they can't be bothered to put up links to other sites is one of those great mysteries of the universe.
The third blog is brand new and looks as if it is going to be a class act - although shorter paragraphs might be a good idea. If anyone has some more blogs, let me know and I'll add them to this list.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Creature comforts - by Richard...


More than 160,000 asylum seekers and their dependents have been granted an amnesty to stay in Britain by the UK Border Agency, says a Commons Home Affairs Committee report. This follows a rules change, which allowed officials to permit long-staying migrants to stay in the country.

The sleight of hand is part of an operation to clear a backlog of up to 450,000 cases at the Agency, which has been described as "still not fit for purpose". Less than ten percent of those making up the backlog have been removed from the country.

Officials have been unable to trace about 74,500 cases, which are now to be listed in as "concluded" – the dire officialise for failure. It is not known whether these people are still in Britain, have departed or are deceased.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is part of our all-embracing government that comes with its hands out for more and more of our money, and constantly tells us it is looking after our interests.

And in this department which is "still not fit for purpose", there will be handsomely paid officials, who earn far more than you and I, who will then benefit from pensions far more generous than anything to which you and I can aspire.

After years of corruption, laziness and inefficiency, these officials will rest comfortably on their laurels at our expense, while the apparatus of state will enforce the extraction of our money to pay for their creature comforts. Unless we all decide that we have had enough, and then decide to do something about it, this is how it will continue to be.

The choice is yours – and you do have a choice.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Bleating-Я-Us - by Richard...


Myrtle is excelling himself in his clog today, bleating about the depredations of the Common Fisheries Policy, while extolling the virtues of "Uncle Tom" campaigner, the "excellent" Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. He then offers us a dire video in which he blathers to an empty EU parliament chamber on the merits of "re-establishing national control" over fisheries.

Of course, that used to be Conservative policy until Hannan's leader decided to junk it - the wondrous Dave, over whom Myrtle gushed so. That was back in 2005, when the Party had produced an Opposition Green Paper, stating:
Fisheries cannot be managed successfully on a continental scale; they need local control. That is the reason why Michael Howard has stated that the Conservatives will return our fisheries to National and Local control. This accords completely with our instinct for small government. Issues should be tackled on an international basis only when justified, at a national level when appropriate and otherwise locally.
Ditching that policy was one of the very first things the Boy did, on assuming leadership of the Conservative Party, about which betrayal Hannan was silent - then and now. Now, more than six years after the Green Paper, the self-important person is bleating for the very thing his darling leader ditched all those years ago. Is there any wonder that words like "waste of space" come to mind?

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

The plunder continues - by Richard...


While the media concentrates on bread and circuses in an effort to keep the masses entertained, with The Daily Failygraph pitching for the Womens' Own audience, the Moody's rating agency has downgraded Greece's local and foreign currency bond ratings deeper into junk status. It cites an increased risk that the country will be unable to handle its debt problems without an eventual restructuring.

The immediate practical effect of was in Athens, where riot police had to escort MPs out of the parliament, after some 200 demonstrators heckled them as they left in their cars, some spitting at and kicking the vehicles (and do the muppets in Westminster think we feel any different?). Now the MPs are under constant guard, the deeply sinister photograph (above) showing the police in position outside the parliament.

And now, while the people are paying an ever increasing price for the profligacy of their rulers, we learn that José Manuel Barroso and his fellow apparatchiks racked up a €249,000 bill for private jets during the period he attended the 2009 UN convention on climate change. Furthermore, that was just a small part of €7.5m worth of trips on private jets chartered by EU commissioners over the last five years. A further €118,000 was paid for limousines to chauffeur commissioners between official engagements.

But this wholesale raiding of the public purse has been going on a long, long time. We broke the story in 2005 about how bent the commission president really is, only to have the issue ignored by member state governments (and the media).

To add to their current list of crimes, Barroso and 35 others spent €28,000 at the luxury Peninsula New York hotel during the visit to the UN climate change convention. Public money was used to fund a €75,000 cocktail party at a science conference – Discovery 09. This was "filled with wonder like no other ... with trendy cocktails, surprising performances and top DJs", as much of the EU was in the grip of recession.

In the same year, the commission also funded €300,000 worth of events described as cocktail parties. At least a further €1.2m was spent on hotel and conference costs in 2009, including stays in San Diego, Prague and Balmoral. An additional €20,000 was spent on gifts for commission guest speakers since 2008, including cufflinks, fountain pens and Tiffany jewellery.

Yet all this is the tip of a huge iceberg. The commission has made more than €42m of transfers to "natural persons" – individuals, whose names the commission keeps secret, and a further €381m has been spent on "confidential" activities, which the commission refuses to disclose "for security reasons".

This now is against the background of EU demands for an extra £200-a-year in stealth taxes from British families, while the commission is also proposing to cut back payments to the UK, returning even less of the £11.54 billion lifted from our wallets.

Yet, from Tory "eurosceptic" MP Douglas Carswell, we get the weak as ditchwater comment that the plans show that "Eurocrats simply don't get it". The people who don't get it, of course, are British MPs, through whose inertia this carve-up continues. This plunder is their responsibility because they permit it.

But throughout Europe, as well as in the UK, democracy has effectively ceased to exist. And here,Autonomous Mind is right, speaking for so many of us. In order to restore democracy, he writes, power must be taken back by the people.

The power our politicians possess is the ability to make decisions requiring them to determine how our money, collected through taxation, is spent. If people had the ability to veto decisions by refusing to allow their money to be spent, the power of the political class – supposedly our representatives and servants anyway – would be removed. Ordinary people would be calling the shots, which is as it should be.

We do not have a lot of time to do this, but determined we must be. Our rulers are ripping us off wholesale, and we cannot allow this to continue. As European Disunion notes, "Europe" is incompatible with democracy – and so is our own provincial government. The Demos must take the initiative, if we are to survive.

COMMENT THREAD

Posted by Britannia Radio at 20:50