 I can empathise with this
Friday 27 April 2012
There is, we are told, a heavy police presence at the scene in Tottenham Court Road, where office buildings were evacuated after a man was reportedly seen carrying up to six canisters strapped to his back.
The man, apparently named as Michael Green, had walked into the offices of Advantage, a logistics company which offers HGV courses, and had threatened to blow himself up before taking four hostages, including the company director and three salesmen. It was claimed that Green had failed an LGV training course three times and stormed the building to demand his money back. A Scotland Yard spokesman said this was not considered a "serious" incident. "It appears at this stage that the man either has mental health problems or has a personal grievance against a company". Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, there are many times, in dealing with the corporates, especially at the end of a phone to one of their call centres, that I have fantasised about doing something similar, or worse. I wonder of the powers that be realise that they are gradually turning a quiescent population into a revenge-seeking, blood-thirsty generation of bombers, plotting to blow every corporate headquarters, call centre and "customer services department" into smithereens, along with just about every government office that you can think of. If people acted out only a fraction of their fantasies, London would look like the aftermath of the Blitz. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 27/04/2012 |
Nothing is real
Friday 27 April 2012
Andrew Gilligan has been, quite rightly been grumbling about the vandalism of the Cutty Sark in the name of conservation.
What so very few people are doing, though, is picking up on the way our aviation heritage is being destroyed. The two pictures below illustrate some of the vandalism being carried out. The first is the real thing, and RAF Tornado in Gulf War finish. The second (below that) is the museum version.   This one, immediately above, is from a museum in Dayton, Ohio, so the septics are at fault here. But you can see the tendency. The aircraft has been "preserved" to within an inch of its life, to a degree which never existed in the real life, turning a living exhibit into grotesque 1:1 Airfix kit. And that is what they are doing to our past. Cleaning, repairing, sanitising, painting and polishing warplanes to within an inch or their lives. Then they put them in "heritage" settings, which create an entirely artificial environment that bears no relation to the real thing. On a different scale, that is what they are doing to our history - cleaning, repairing, sanitising, painting and polishing it to within an inch of its life. Nothing is real any more. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 27/04/2012 |
Silly greenie money
Friday 27 April 2012
 And from Calgary, Alberta, we get news that TransAlta Corp has abandoned plans to build a C$1.4 billion ($1.42 billion) carbon capture and storage facility at an Alberta coal-fired electricity plant because it could find no buyers for the carbon dioxide and no way to sell emission-reduction credits. Yet the Green Boy is spending £60 million of our money for developing countries "to build carbon capture and storage (CCS) plants". The money, we are told, will go towards demonstrating the technology, "which involves burying carbon emissions from fossil fuel power stations", but has yet to be used at a large power station. Now, we haven't been able to get this system working yet, even with a billion on the table. And, with the billion-plus Canadian scheme falling apart, what is the £60 million supposed to do for developing countries? They might be able to get CCS up and running cheaper, but not that cheap. And the money is supposedly for plants (plural). Fortunately, no amount of money is likely to get this system running, and nor would we want it to. It increases fuel consumption (and electricity generation costs) by anything from 40-100 percent, which means it can't survive without subsidies, which we will have to pay. The madness of this is self-evident, investing money in order to increase the costs of production. And if we can't afford this, developing countries certainly can't. So the question remains. What is this £60 million for? You can't buy CCS for such a sum, and it wouldn't do any good if you could. So why is Cameron giving away £60 million of our money for such a fatuous project when, even if it was being sensibly spent, it couldn't achieve anything? As always, it seems, we are being taken for fools. This looks very much like token spending, just so the "Green Tosser" can look good at an international ministerial meeting which he is chairing in London. And I'm afraid that simply isn't good enough. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 27/04/2012 |
Damaged goods
Thursday 26 April 2012
Asked at the Leveson inquiry if he had initially found Cameron to be lightweight, Rupert Murdochreplied: "No. Not then".
This, according to Reuters, is Murdoch being "laconic", but this sort of one-liner is extremely dangerous. Mr Cameron is damaged goods. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 26/04/2012 |
He's running scared
Thursday 26 April 2012
 Now we now learn that Sarkozy has jumped on the bandwagon, and appears to be going one step further. If he wins a second term, he says, he'll give the people a referendum on the pact. As always, though, it is not that straightforward. What he's actually saying is that he is committed to getting that pact through, but if it is blocked by the left-dominated Senate, then – and only then, will go for a referendum. This seems more like a procedural move to by-pass the Senate, but it is being spun in such a way as to make out that Sarkozy is a man of the people, going one better than Hollande. In that small issue, one can surmise that the EU is a sensitive area in French politics, and the poison dwarf is having to make some concessions. But here, Hollande clearly has the edge, which suggests that Sarkozy is running scared. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 26/04/2012 |
Playing games
Wednesday 25 April 2012
This is going to run and run. But, illustrating how sensitive the EU commission is about an increased budget, it has produced a sort of rebuttal, claiming to be the good guys.
But what I particularly like here is item five, where the commission tells us that: we are wrong to assert that: "The EU budget is decided by Eurocrats without any democratic procedures". The annual EU budget, it tells us, is decided by electedpoliticians, in the European Parliament and in the Council that brings together the Member States. Thus, we are told, "The Commission only proposes the budget, and has to respect the ceilings set out for a period of time (currently 2007-2013) by these elected politicians". And there you have it … the fatal (but probably deliberate) mistake in assuming that elections necessarily, or at all, confer democracy. Of course, without a unified demos, you cannot have a meaningful election. It the demos has no power to assert its agenda, there is no democracy. More to the point, I have read numerous commission reports and study papers on the nature of democracy, and the so called "democratic deficit" within the EU. There is certainly no misunderstanding within the heart of the institution, and a full awareness that the Union is not democratic, and nor is its decision-making. One of the most important of those papers was the white paper on European Governance, with a critique here, actually written by myself (ghosted for Nigel Farage) but, rather bizarrely, attributed to Dr Cris Shore (now corrected, with commendable speed). When you see what they know, and what they actually say, it thus becomes evident that the Commission is playing games. As bad, they are insulting our intelligence. That is a very silly thing to do. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 25/04/2012 |
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