Ta ta Tata? - by Richard... Thursday, June 16, 2011

Ta ta Tata? - by Richard... Thursday, June 16, 2011

One thing that might almost make one want to switch sides to the warmistas is the stridency ofTata Steel, which is bitching about energy costs and the effects of inadequate policy-making. 

This is a corporate of a particular kind, which means it has only one interest in life – making money, and it is not at all fussy how it does it. Nor is it particularly bothered about producing steel or any other product, if it can use its weight and total lack of ethics to turn a buck.

When it thus complains that producing steel in the UK may become uneconomical, therefore, that cannot be taken at face value. If it was heading that way, this international company would already be making plans to ship out. More likely, the company has not yet been able to rig the regulatory system to its complete satisfaction, or it senses weakness on the part of the regulators, and thus sees a profit opportunity in screwing them down a bit more.

There is a sense of this in its most recent statement, calling for "European governments" to create incentives to help the steel industry reduce emissions instead of raising taxes. "Taxing energy-intensive industries on their emissions is neither business-friendly nor an effective solution", it says.

The company then goes on to say that "The steel industry in Europe is already investing in the expensive and time-consuming process of developing breakthrough technologies, without which the best environmental performers here cannot significantly reduce their emissions further".

The company is not arguing against the stupidity of "low carbon" technologies which are unnecessarily jacking up costs. This it could do to some effect simply by threatening to walk away. It is quite happy to work in a a high cost environment, as long as it can milk the system for tax funding in order to maintain the optimum level of profitability.

This, then, is special pleading – the corporate seeking to pad its own balance sheet at the expense of the taxpayer. The company has bought into the global warming miasma, and is a willing cheerleader - but it now wants someone else, i.e., British taxpayers - to bear the costs. The only honest response would have us saying "ta ta Tata". Check your wallets.

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By your advisors shall ye be known - by Richard...

A good politician has good advisors ... to the extent that the ability to judge character and appoint the right advisors is a fairly accurate measure of the competence and strength of a politician. Which means that this tells you a great deal about Boris Johnson – not that you didn't know it already.

Therein lies the problem with our democratic system. The original choice was between Ken Livingstone and the idiot. Some choice ... the idiot won. 

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You're still going to die - by Richard...

The Dellers is a little bit happy about the coming ice-age, offering his devoted readers ten reasons for rejoicing. Actually, one reason is good enough – seeing all those warmists eat crow ... except that they won't. First, they willdeny it is happening. Then they will say it is a temporary, abnormal effect, or that the coolingis not enough to offset the warming.

Then, when the cooling turns to colding, and has set in so deeply that even the warmistas cannot avoid noticing it, they will simply argue that the quiet sun is masking the underlying warming. But for the baseline warming, they will say, it would have been even colder, and when the sun wakes up we will then get runaway global warming.

Thus – and you can see it now – the colder it gets, the more strident the warmistas will become, telling us that the failing drive to reduce emissions must be intensified, or you're still going to die. There is nothing quite like faith, in the context of an organised religion, for driving an agenda.

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Adult news values - by Richard...

Much as one loathes The Guardian, one also has to concede that it occasionally acts like a proper newspaper, displaying intelligent, adult news values. This morning is such an occasion for, as the rest of the MSM plays, it leads on the Greek crisis.

The point about Greece, of course, is that it is not a faraway country of which we know little, but a member of the European Union.

Its ruling élites are part of our supreme government and, although the UK is not a member of the single currency, we are part of the same international financial system, and responsible – through the IMF and other institutions – for maintaining the financial integrity of the nation.

Thus, when the Greek government is on the brink of collapse, its economy in tatters, with pitched battles on its streets and world stocks tumbling as EU leaders squabbled over whether and how to launch a second bailout, this is actually news – important news.

From early yesterday, when the players were just warming up, George Papandreou, the prime minister – who likes to be called a socialist – seems to have offered to dissolve his government and form a national unity coalition.

However, even in this endeavour he has so far failed, not having managed to persuade the opposition conservatives to join him. Thus, battle recommences today, with Papandreou setting out form a new government and ask for a vote of confidence.

The opposition, however, is calling for Papandreou's resignation and a renegotiation of the bailout terms with the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund as the price for its assent to a national coalition.

And all that is against the background of riot police smacking into tens of thousands of demonstrators in the capital who are protesting against the radical austerity measures being imposed in an attempt to convince the "colleagues" that they should throw more money down the drain.

What is extremely heartening to hear from The Guardian is that a "sense of siege" has descended on Brussels as the Greek drama appeared to be heading towards a denouement. The ECB warned that a Greek default could spark "contagion" across Europe, causing Greek banks to implode and inflicting major damage on the big banks in France and Germany.

"It looks like a week of chaos," said a European official in Brussels. The bailout experiment for Greece has failed. Ireland and Portugal have since also needed to be rescued from national insolvency. 

"The euro area faces a very challenging situation that comes mostly from the interconnection of the sovereign debt crisis and the situation of the banking sector", the ECB says. "Greece could have a contagion effect," adds Vitor Constancio, an ECB vice-president.

The whole thing now has perhaps a month to run, before the Greek economy implodes, and the euro starts to slide inexorably into the abyss – although the parallel is perhaps more like a black hole. Once you are in the gravity field, there is no escape.

As the crisis pans out, there is not going to be a single person in Europe unaffected by it, with the distinct possibility that it precipitates a depression as bad as, or worse than the 1920-30s, triggering multiple government collapses and dangerous instability. And we all know where that led.

This, therefore, is a story that is going to run and run, and if there was a residue of adult news values in the MSM, this would be an issue, as in the day's Guardian, that would rarely be off the front pages.

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