The shame - by Richard... Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The shame - by Richard... Wednesday, June 15, 2011

I am extremely reluctant to get misty-eyed about the demise of the Harrier. It was great fun to watch at air shows but, as a modern tactical aircraft, it has limited range and endurance, limited capability and was extremely expensive to operate.

Despite its Falklands fame – where the real star of the show was the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile - its real utility now was that it could operate off our pretend aircraft carriers, giving the impression that we still had a credible naval aviation capability. I'd sooner see Tucano B-1s flying off the deck – if they were able.

However, even that little offered by the Harriers was better than nothing – hence The Mail rubbing in how bereft we are, picturing the Invincible being scrapped in a Turkish breakers. We can't even scrap our own ships these days, it seems.

Somehow, becoming a "development superpower" and keeping Bill Gates happy doesn't really cut it. The Cleggerons have a lot to answer for.

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Revolting Greeks ... again - by Richard...

Another day, another riot - but the police seem to have the measure of it. It may be a "general strike", but the uniforms are still out to play, around 5,000 of them, including hundreds of riot and motorcycle police.

So far, they are preventing the encirclement of parliament, the demonstrators having attempted to prevent the politicos voting on the "austerity" measures. Meanwhile, the Finmins can't agree and the euro is "weakening".

Still, though, much of the media is reporting this as "economic" news and relegating it to the business news, even as the contagion begins to spread, with Moody's having placed three large French banks on negative review based on their exposure to Greek debt.

The big joke, though, is that our lot think their strikes are going to save their pensions. They need to lift their eyes over the horizon and see what is coming. When the storm breaks, they will be lucky if they can even save their jobs.

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Dhimmitude 1940 - by Richard...

It's been going on a long time ... here we have a proposal, on 18 October 1940 (click to enlarge), to donate up to £100,000 (£10 million in today's money) towards building a mosque in central London. At the height of the Blitz, with the bombed-out homeless struggling for survival, it was considered by the War Cabinet in 24 October, and approved in principle. This is how the Regents Park Mosque came into being.

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Up their own fundaments - by Richard...

Richard Kemp, Vice Chairman of the Local Government Association, said councils will never go back to weekly bin collections. He added that the new policy will mean more councils move over to fortnightly collections, with weekly collections for food waste only. This means households have to collect food waste separately in a "kitchen caddy".

He said: "Weekly rubbish collection is dead and finished. I'm delighted reason has prevailed. It's not what most local people want, it's not what most local councils want and it's certainly not what the advisers want. What local people want is a system that helps maximise recycling and helps to promote healthy living."

Then we have the idiot masquerading as an environment minister – the deadly Spelperson ... Stupidity-Я-Us. Having spent half a decade telling us how useless Labour has been over collecting rubbish, she suddenly discovers new religion.

Weekly collections are a matter of money, she bleats. "In Opposition you don’t have a chance to see the Government’s books. You don't see how much the Government is overspent. When we came in we found the situation was worse than we thought. I think people will understand that".

Even though we are unable to plumb the Olympic depths of stupidity attained by the Spelperson, we do understand that, noting her claim that bringing back weekly collections would cost £132.5million a year.

But we also note that this is about compliance with EU law. Putting a fleet of recycling vehicles on the roads and all the other compliance costs are adding at least £10 billion to our overall costs – and tripling the annual cost of collection and disposal. As Raedwald points out, something has to give.

Thus does this ghastly lot of second-raters demonstrate once again that elections are no longer about changing governments. All we get is different idiot faces leering at us from behind EU policies.

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Hitting the switch - by Richard...

It is not so much that the man pretending to be our prime minister looks a complete horse's hind - the great PR "expert" who can't even manage his own shoot – but that the media is so unrestrained in showing him in his natural light.

Looking at the recent publicity the boy has been attracting, it is fair to say that he must be hitting that infamous "switch" – that political phenomenon where, on one side you can do no wrong but, on the other, you can do no right.

It took Blair about six years for this to happen to him, although many will argue the precise point. But, if the Boy has reached the turning point, it must be one of the fastest times in living memory. Then, when you have such a facile, vacuous, young gentleman, this should hardly come as a surprise.

However, after so many years of calling a soil displacement implement a spade, it makes a pleasant change to be able to sit back and watch the MSM make the running for a change. Watching this man crash and burn is going to be truly enjoyable.

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Double domed - by Richard... Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Relayed via WUWT, it looks as if we're headed for a solar minimum - with the original press release reproduced here. And with a degree of understatement that one would usually have associated with the British of days long gone by, we are told, "the implications could be far-reaching".

The good news, of course, is that this stuffs the warmists – so comprehensively that their back teeth will be aching. The bad news is that, after generations of policy failure in the energy department and decades of warmism, we are stuffed as well.

Taking what comfort we can from this – if we are looking at a Maunder minimum, then we are already into the cycle and the effects should be measurable and indisputable within the decade. It will start to bite just in time to coincide with the power cuts. One wonders whether Cameron and his fuzzy-wuzzy warmists really have any idea what is going to hit them.

It really ain't going to be pretty.

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Cutting back - by Richard...

Overheard ...

"So what's the size of the Army now?"
"Dunno – about 105,000".
"And what size does David Cameron want to cut it down to?"
"About 85".
"85,000?"
"Nah ... 85".

He's got to pay for that foreign aid somehow. Needless to say, though, Guardian's content partnerapproves of all this largesse.

Then, of course, there's this: the Commonwealth Development Corporation is looking for an expert in banking or private equity to invest £2.5billion of taxpayers' money in an "anti-poverty" drive in developing countries.

The move follows the announcement that existing chief executive Richard Laing will step down early next year. He made headlines after pocketing almost £1million in salary and bonuses in 2007. Fellow executives at the organisation – owned by the Department for International Development – earned an average £435,000.

Well, it sure as hell sorted out their poverty.

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They don't get it either - by Richard...

I am not going to take the view that public sector workers are the embodiment of evil, while the private sector is all sweetness and light - think Crapita. But you really do have to wonder whether they think money grows on trees.

Of course, if a serious effort was made to cut back the burgeoning cost of greenery and other government waste, there might be a little more left in the pot to reduce the deficit. But even then we have a long way to go before the current public sector pension bill is affordable. Thus, not only don't they get it – they ain't going to get it. At least striking reduces the wage bill.