Elsewhere on the web

Some pieces that I think might be of interest.

1. The Telegraph reports that another of the PIIGS countries is being pushed towards taking the EU's money and so losing more sovereignty.

2. Greta Wire has an interesting outlook on the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others.

3. The BBC reports that: 'Men and women have been banned from shaking hands in a district of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab.'

4. Max Atkinson has a low opinion of Ed Miliband's oratorial skills and wonders if there may be a link with Neil Kinnock.

5. Autonomous Mind has a suggestion as to what you could do if your bins were uncollected for some weeks.

6. Sky News reports that 'The Italian Job' was voted the best British film of all time in a Sky Movies HD poll.

7. Here's a link to a BBC report about a 'Democrat with sights on Obama's policies'. Puts the lie to the BBC/Democrat line that Republicans are somehow to blame for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others.

8. American Patriots Commission are also pretty p***ed at the liberal media's blaiming the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others on Republican rhetoric. They've found some instances of off-color Democrat rhetoric:

'** Obama: “They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun”
** Obama to His Followers: “Get in Their Faces!”
** Obama on ACORN Mobs: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!”
** Obama to His Mercenary Army: “Hit Back Twice As Hard”
** Obama on the private sector: “We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“
** Obama to voters: Republican victory would mean “hand to hand combat”
** Obama to lib supporters: “It’s time to Fight for it.”
** Obama to Latino supporters: “Punish your enemies.”
** Obama to democrats: “I’m itching for a fight.”'

 9. Agency Fusion wants us to 'Take a break from work and do the world a favor. Kill Comic Sans'

10.  Fox News reports the incredible news that 'Magnetic North Pole Shifts, Forces Runway Closures at Florida Airport'

The BBC protecting one of their team

Imagine it is 2006 and the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer is being interviewed by Sky News, he makes a mistake about the level of National Insurance contributions. Imagine the BBC's reaction... headline news, BBC pundits explaining how this shows how the Tories are out of touch and unfit to govern. Can you imagine  Paxman's sneers, Crick's snide asides, the general hilarity on The News Quiz?

Today shadow chancellor Alan Johnson got 'himself in a tangle over national insurance figures.' Watch it here, the interesting part is from 4:00...

The FT reports this as

'Alan Johnson caught out over National Insurance figure

Sky have published a clip from this morning of Alan Johnson appearing not to know the figure for the employer rate of National Insurance. It’s another moment that threatens to erode his public reputation after several weeks of low-level errors and stumbles.'

The BBC, however, only manage to report this at the end of a long piece headlined 'VAT rise to 20% will stay, Cameron hints'. In fact you have to read all the way down through the long article to the very end:

'But Mr Johnson was criticised after appearing to stumble over the current rate for employer's National Insurance contributions in an interview on Sky News.

Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams said it showed Labour was "completely clueless on basic economics".'

"... employee VAT"... 20% or 12.8%?!

So the BBC state that 'Mr Johnson was criticised after appearing to stumble'; 'appearing to stumble'; it is clear that he didn't know the rate. If he didn't know, he could have 'fessed up and said so but he tried to evade answering the question and then answered/guessed wrong. If this had been a Conservative shadow chancellor this would have been headline news, it was a Labour shadow chancellor so there is as close to no coverage as possible.

If one relied on the BBC for one's news then one would have no idea as to the real story. The BBC are guilty of protecting one of their team, the Labour team. The BBC have shown their bias, why should we pay for their propaganda?

Dear this, dear that.... Dear God!

Mrs NotaSheep reads RED magazine, not a crime (as such), and had drawn my attention to thxthxthx - A thank you note a day, here's an example...

I am not sure what I should say...

Is the UK Pound doomed?

KitCo believes so and it is an interesting read, here's an excerpt:

'Following in the footsteps of Greece and other basket-case sovereign debtors so adept at creative accounting, UK government accountants glossed over the Northern Rock bailout, the net effect of which made the deficit in 2007 look smaller. Convenient accounting like this cannot possibly instill confidence in UK government bondholders.

The bottom line is that the UK’s huge deficit is not sustainable. It will lead to ever greater amounts of so-called “quantitative easing” by the Bank of England, and inevitably this money printing – the turning of UK government debt into British pound currency – will sooner or later lead to hyperinflation.

I had always thought that the US dollar would hyperinflate and collapse before any other major currency. Lately, I am not so sure. Government spending and borrowing in the UK look even worse than the dire levels being reached in the US. Therefore, the dubious distinction of being the first currency to hyperinflate in the months ahead may end up going to the British pound.'

Interesting? Worrying?

Is there 'life on Mars'?

The Mail reports that NASA believes they found organic life on Mars 34 years ago but misidentified it...

Protesting Ukrainian style

Jamie Wearing Fool has the details.

Heidi the cross-eyed oppossum

A cross-eyed opossum has captivated hearts in Germany. Heidi, a resident of the Leipzig Zoo, has turned into a media darling. The Kösen toy manufacturing company has developed a prototype of stuffed Heidis, which they plan to sell in two sizes starting later this month.

Thanks to Der Spiegel for the pictures and quoted text.

Gyles Brandreth on Desert Island Discs

Gyles Brandreth is on today's BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs and I just know that his musical choices will be intelligent and witty, like the man himself:

1. Noel Coward - 'There are bad times just around the corner'

2. A French version of 'My heart went boom' - including a sheep impression, but no goat

3. Simon Cadell as Henry Higgins in 'My Fair Lady' - 'I've grown accusomed to her face'

4. Choir of St Pauls Cathedral - 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind'

5. Pupils from Godolphin and Latymer school in London from a musical called 'The Vackees' - 'Warning, man in Uniform'

6. Laurence Olivier - The speech to the Senate speech from Shakespeare's Othello

"As we move into the third hour of the programme"

7. A bit of Sondheim from a show 'Zipped' that I did go and see - 'With so little to be sure of'

8. John Reed - 'High aesthetic man'(?) from Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience'


His luxury choice Michelangelo's Pietà just beating a Cappuchino machine.


Possibly the most words spoken by a DID interviewee ever? What a raconteur Gyles Brandreth is!

Someone is shot in America, so the BBC try to lay some blame at Sarah palin's feet

The BBC report the terrible shooting of Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords and two others but include this rather odd passage in their report.

'She upset Arizona conservatives by supporting Mr Obama's healthcare reform bill last year.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a conservative Republican, placed Ms Giffords on a list of politicians she wanted to remove from office in mid-term elections last November.

Ms Palin has issued a statement offering her condolences to the families of Ms Giffords and the other victims of the attack.'

What I have read about Jared Loughner, seems to point to him being very disturbed young man with rather odd political views. His writings on MySpace and elsewhere and the recollections of his friends seem to point to him not being a Tea party supporter but a political radical. Not that the BBC will care, mud will be thrown at Sarah Palin in the hope that some of it sticks. The BBC's hatred for Sarah Palin would be quite amusing if it was not so dangerous for democracy.

Car 0 - Icy Hill 1

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

Checking the 'warmist' weather predictions

This Watts Up With That article is a must read and is just the sort of article that I believe we should see more of as 'warmist' predictions must be checkable over 10 years after the predictions were made.

The one hundred and thirteenth weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's winner is Jack Straw for his somewhat delayed realisation that:

'There is a specific problem about a very small minority of normally Pakistani heritage men who are targeting young, vulnerable white girls. It is somethingt which is abhorred by the Pakistani heritage community as much as anybody else, but it is an issue and its about how those young men think of women of their own ethnicity, who tend to be off limits, and what they think about white girls, and there’s no point pretending it’s not a problem, because it is.'

Some young Islamic men have been targetting young white women for sexual purposes - "No shit, Sherlock"

Labour's education legacy

One of the sneakiest policies that Labour introduced was that of making non-academic qualifications 'equivalent' to 5 GCSE's, albeit at grade D to E. This artificially raised the GCSE results this allowing Tony Blair to boast about rising educational standard s and Gordon Brown to justify his massively increased 'investment' in education. In reality the qualifications were often worthless and ridiculously easy to obtain. I don't remember anybody ever explaining why one NVQ was 'equivalent' to 5 GCSEs. What I do remember is that anybody who dared to point out this, or other aspects of the 'dumbing down' of Britain's education system, was attacked for not supporting hard working pupils and teachers.

So This Mail article that tells us that: 'Only one child in six gets five good GCSEs as pupils switch from academic subjects to 'soft' courses' comes as no great surprise.

'Only 15 per cent of children get five good grades in traditional subjects at GCSE.
The shocking figures – to be released next week – highlight the consequences of a shift toward ‘soft’ courses.
A Labour shake-up in 2004 gave pupils more scope to study non-academic GCSE equivalents – and these options have surged in popularity by 3,800 per cent.
They include certificates in personal effectiveness, salon services and preparation for working life.'

In contrast to Labour's addiction to ever increasing exam results however artificially inflated the results were, I note that Michael Gove has already raised the GCSE threshold for schools, thus increasing the number of schools that will be deemed to be 'under-performing'.

Seen elsewhere on the web

1. The Daily Express wants Britain Out of the EU.

2. The Mail reports that 'Islam now considered 'a threat' to national identity by almost half of French and Germans, according to new poll'

3. Why do so many animals masturbate?

4. The Telegraph reports claims that 'Eating heavily pigmented fruits such as carrots and plums could make you more attractive'

5. The Mail reports what many of us have suspected for years 'Prison? It’s just like a holiday camp: Animal rights terrorists gloat on website about ‘fantastically easy, blissful’ life behind bars'

BBC bias - it's insidious

BBC bias is insidious, it's always there. I turned on BBC 5Live this morning and caught 30 seconds of Alan Davies's show. It was about 10:35 and he had just introduced Jo Brand. Alan Davies said that he had read an excellent  review of Jo Brand's sitcom in The Telegraph, 'on-line' he hastened to add - presumably in case anyone might think he purchased such a newspaper. Jo Brand wondered if the good review was connected with her father working for The Telegraph... comedic pause... 'not that he does, I'd kill him if he did'.

'Oh that's just a joke, you're too sensitive, Mr NotaSheep' - Maybe, but then whereas BBC comedians make regular fun of Telegraph readers, Sun readers and especially Daily Mail readers, when was the last time you heard a comedian on the BBC poking fun at the views of Daily Mirror readers or Guardian readers?

The bias on the BBC is insidious and ever-present, it'sa form of brainwashing, it's evil and it must be stopped.

Actual video of Nancy Pelosi handing the official gavel over to John Boehner

Thanks to Nancy Pelosi

The warmest years ever?

'So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010. Thus, regardless of which year (1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list'

Thanks to Watts Up With That for the spot.

How many scientists think humans contribute to global warming?

I don't normally post whole articles but this one is too important not to. I am sick to death of people telling me that there is a scientific consensus about climate change; there isn't and this article is a great explanation; do read it all.

'How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.

To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered that they were mistaken – those 2500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.

The upshot? The punditry looked for and recently found an alternate number to tout — “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere have begun to claim.

This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers – in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.

The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth – out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers. That left the 10,257 scientists in disciplines like geology, oceanography, paleontology, and geochemistry that were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer – those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor – about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.

To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response –just 3146, or 30.7%, answered the two questions on the survey:

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

The questions were actually non-questions. From my discussions with literally hundreds of skeptical scientists over the past few years, I know of none who claims that the planet hasn’t warmed since the 1700s, and almost none who think that humans haven’t contributed in some way to the recent warming – quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that the creation of cities and the clearing of forests for agricultural lands have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say that human are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.

Surprisingly, just 90% of those who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen – I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 1000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period, generally thought to be warmer than today.

As for the second question, 82% of the earth scientists replied that that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe that human activity been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider a 10% or 15% or 35% increase to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t.

In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus – almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for subsets that would yield a higher percentage. They found it – almost — in those whose recent published peer-reviewed research fell primarily in the climate change field. But the percentage still fell short of the researchers’ ideal. So they made another cut, allowing only the research conducted by those earth scientists who identified themselves as climate scientists.

Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers were then satisfied with their findings. Are you?'

Black Panthers update

News Real Blog reports some interesting news that:

'Less than 24 hours after the start of the 112th Congress, new Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) has put Eric Holder on notice a new sheriff is in town. Jennifer Rubin blogging at the Washington Post obtained a copy of a five page letter from Smith to Eric Holder about lawless abuses by the voting section of the Department of Justice (DOJ).'

This may mean that the New Black Panthers may finally face justice.

Here comes UK inflation

Fraser Nelson in The Spectator asks 'How much bigger does Britain's inflation have to become before Mervyn King realises it’s a problem?' and explains why it is a problem. I have been a big fan of Fraser Nelson's writing for a while an this is a great one. Here's a short extract but do read it all:

'3. The Bank of England is fanning the flames of inflation with base rates at an absurdly low 0.5 percent. This implies that the British economy needs a fiscal life support machine. In fact, Britain’s economy is projected to grow by a very respectable 2 percent this year: our manufacturing sector reported the sharpest upswing in 16 years. Exports are doing pretty well. There is no justification in such low rates – especially with inflation so high. On the tube last night, I saw HSBC offering to lend me money at 2.3 percent a year. This is less than inflation; a real-terms negative interest rate. So, I’m being paid to borrow. They should plaster this sign at HSBC branches to tell robbers: it’s okay. You don’t need a gun. HSBC is offering people money for free. Precisely the craziness that landed us in the mess the last time.

...

5. Mervyn King seems to specialise in seeing no evil. The Governor did not notice that Britain was incubating a debt bubble the first time around, nor does he appear to notice a new one inflating. You’d think that he’d be making speeches galore about the limitations of inflation targeting, given that massive problem identified it in. By obsessing on CPI, he nurtured an asset bubble in Britain – and did so by needlessly fighting a benign deflationary shock. It is staggering just how little analysis there has been. As Johan Norberg argued last week in a powerful cover story, the crisis was caused by record-low mortgage rates, and debt-fuelled spending. To cure the crisis, the Bank of England has prescribed record-low borrowing rates, and debt-fuelled spending. The Bank seems not to have paused to consider that its ‘solutions’ are the same vices which caused the crisis in the first place. '

But the one that scares me the most is the one that I have been 'banging on about' for a while:

'7. If Mervyn King and the Bank of England is trying to inflate its way out of a debt crisis, we should be told. It’s a fairly well-establish tactic (especially in countries that finance government splurges by printing bank notes.) What happens is this: policymakers pretend to fight inflation, so feign surprise each month by how high inflation is. Then, they blame it on a short-term blip. But you soon lose your credibility – and, fatally, this is starting to happen to King. Already, the markets are beginning to price in the cost of inflation to gilts. From the Café Nero owner to the Japanese hedge fund manager, word is getting around: Britain is letting inflation rip. '

This could get bad, very bad, very bad indeed!

The BBC news based comedy programmes and David Chaytor

The BBC 'comedy' news programmes couldn't get enough of mentioning Lord Archer's jail sentence, you could hear one of them almost orgasming every time he was able to call him a perjurer. I wonder if Labour's David Chaytor will get anything like the same scorn and derision; the answer is - of course not. The BBC topical 'comedy' team is almost entirely composed of left of centre comedians with an agenda to push.

Let's start with tonight's BBC Radio 4 'News Quiz'...


UPDATE: Not a mention; quelle surprise!

UPDATE 2: I am informed that I am being a little harsh as the programme is recorded on a Thursday evening. Fair enough, I wonder if they will cover the story on next week's show or will it be old news by then?

The Eurozone

CNBC report that:

'Greece has become the world's riskiest borrower in the fourth quarter of 2010, surpassing Venezuela, while Spain, Portugal and Ireland were riskier than Iraq, according to data compiled by CMA, a provider of data on pricing of Credit Default Swaps (CDS).

The four euro zone countries, dubbed PIGS by economists, have been engulfed in a debt crisis sparked by fears early last year that Greece's bulging public debt means the country will have to restructure or default on its debt at some point.

More than half of the top 10 riskiest positions by CDS prices – that show the cost of insuring against default – traded in the over-the-counter market are from Europe, according to data released by CMA.

In the fourth quarter of last year Greek CDS widened so much that the country topped Venezuela as the world's riskiest sovereign, while Spain's cost of protection rose by 50 percent, pushing the country into the top 10 most risky, CMA said in a statement.'

This really does not look good for the EU/EuroZone; debr crises in Greece, Ireland & Portugal can be handled but not in Italy or Spain.

Global Warming and Australian rainfall

Andrew Bolt at News.com.au has done some digging:

'Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, September 2008:

There is a great deal of scientific advice about the impact of climate change on rainfall, particularly in southern Australia.
I’ll just give you a few examples. We know the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said by 2050 that Australia should expect around about a 25 per cent reduction in rainfall in the southern part of the Australia.
We also know that in the two years before our election, what we saw were the lowest inflows into the River Murray in history, 43 per cent lower than the previous lows… So there is a very, very sound body of evidence that indicates that climate change is and will have an impact on rainfall in the Murray-Darling Basin and in southern Australia.

Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, 2007:

Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming.

Flannery again, 2007:

We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, 2007:

Given the current uncertainty about the likely impact of climate change on rainfall patterns in (South Eastern Queensland) over coming years, it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower than usual rainfalls could eventuate.

The weather, 2010:

AUSTRALIA experienced its third-wettest year on record during 2010 and the La Nina conditions bringing heavy rains are likely to persist into autumn. The Bureau of Meteorology has reported that the second half of the year was the wettest on record for Australia as a 14-year “long dry” was broken by the rapid transition from El Nino to La Nina conditions.'

Did you spot the 'We know' and other certainties? Has anyone got back to Penny Wong, Tim Flannery and Peter Beattie to ask them how they feel about their previous comments in the light of reality?

Do looks matter in politics?

No nothing to do with John Prescott's new advertisement for GoCompare.com or Eric Pickles but Stumbling & Mumbling's piece which reports 'This new paper suggests an ... explanation:

We find that candidates on the right look better than candidates on the left. Second, we find a greater effect of good looks, in terms of more votes, for candidates on the right.'

All this and 'As Will said in The Greatest TV Show Ever Made: “I’m a man of strong principles, and one of those principles is that I’ll do anything a girl I fancy asks me to.”'

Accidental or deliberate?

This New York Post article set me wondering if the dumping of swept snow onto a Jewish graveyard thus destroying some gravestones was necessarily accidental or whether there may have been an anti-Semitic undertone to the act. Time may tell...

Our hard working EU Foreign Minister

The Telegraph reports that the never elected Baroness Ashton 'has failed to fully attend two thirds of European Commission meetings over the past year, leaving Britain without a voice in the most important forum for EU law making'

It seems that:

'Officials and diplomats have questioned her commitment to the job, which has a salary of more than £230,000 a year, and especially her reluctance to be away from her London-based family at weekends.

...


Lady Ashton has also been absent from 40 per cent of 42 meetings of the commission "college" in the past year, gatherings at which the EU's 27 commissioners – one for each member state – take critical legislative decisions on issues such as European regulation of the City of London.

...

n an additional 26 per cent of meetings, Lady Ashton left proceedings early, although, her aides insist that, in most cases she was there for the "meat" of the agenda. Her attendance record is the worst of the EU's 27 commissioners.

Her record, described by one senior Italian politician as "amazingly" poor, has led to renewed criticism of her suitability for the senior post and her reluctance to move to Brussels full-time combined with an unwillingness to travel or work abroad at weekends. '

People seem surprised that someone working for the EU might be less than totally diligent, why? As I have blogged over and over again once a politician works fir the EU they owe allegiance to the EU not their country of origin. Baroness Ashton is not a European Commissioner to represent the UK's interests to them, she's there to represent the EU to us.

It might also be more than a coincidence that the last two senior EU appointments have been of weak non-entities: Ashton and Herman van Rompuy, who do not have the skills to manage the forces that really control the EU.

The difference between public and private businesses

The Express amongst others reports that:

'The head of the government department responsible for promoting British business abroad asked officials to think of ways to spend up to £1 million to avoid a budget underspend, it was reported.

Sir Andrew Cahn, until this week head of UK Trade & Investment, said in an email to senior colleagues that the Foreign Office was "heading for an underspend and wants to get money out of the door", the Daily Mail reported.

He added: "If we can spend money in this financial year on a one-off basis, then we can have at least £1 million. Can you think what we might do with such money?"

One suggestion was to offer "business development visits" to the UK by staff based abroad.'

This is one of the differences between privately owned and publicly owned businesses; privately owned businesses try to underspend to save money, publicly owned businesses try to spend to their allocated limit so as to protect their budgets.

Now that IS a great Radio voice (update)

Further to this piece I am pleased to report that Ted Williams has been given work doing voiceovers.

Marcel the shell

MarshellMarcel the shell...



Thanks to Simon Pegg for the spot.

Why is the UK deficit so large?

Guido Fawkes reports that:

'Ed Miliband told the Times this morning that: “Labour is not to blame for Britain’s debt mountain and accuses David Cameron of peddling a “great deceit” about the previous Government’s record to pursue a damaging programme of cuts.”

He claims:

“What is this deceit? It is that the deficit was caused by chronic overspending rather than a global financial crisis that resulted in recession and a calamitous collapse in tax revenues.”

Last time he made such absurd claims the Spectator provided Red Ed with this (see top of this article) handy graph. Perhaps he could explain then why the last government was spending more than it was bringing in from 2002?'

If you'd like to hear Ed Miliband making the same points on the Jeremy Vine show and being taken apart by Jeremy Vine then you can here for the next 7 days. It is nice to hear a BBC presenter actually tackle a Labour politician about their economic policy past, present and future.

Some interesting posts elsewhere on the web

1. Conservative Home explain why small businesses really matter to the economy:

'Small business - SMEs - are businesses with less than 250 employees. Delving into the figures published by the Department for Business shows that SMEs account for 6 out of 10 private sector workers.

...

Since 1994 SMEs have become increasingly important in the employment arena, while big business employment numbers, having risen up to 2001-2002, have since fallen back towards 9m:

...

SMEs really matter. They account for most of the UK’s private sector jobs. They are responsible for half of the UK’s private sector turnover. And it can be seen from the jobs graph that SMEs have so far shown resilience in the face of the downturn. When it comes to increasing the structural growth rate of the UK, SMEs have a central role to play.'

The last Labour government's attitude to business stank; they helped their friends in large multi-nationals and ignored the needs of the more numerous and thus harder to control SMEs.


2. Alex Singleton in The Telegraph wonders whether a British parliament could ever end the NHS and decides that unfortunately not.


3. Darrell Goodliffe at Labour Uncut think that the Alternative Vote system is 'a sham'.


4. David Maclean has learnt that the left like to ambush Conservatives and don't always tell the truth; did he not realise this before?

'David Cameron visited Leicestershire and his first stop was at the LCB Depot in the city.

...

In the meantime I met Gary Garner, city council Unison man, and followed him through to a bustling room towards the rear of the main building out of curiosity.

In it were around 20-30 people, who suddenly surrounded me and demanded that I write a story about David Cameron “refusing to meet them”.

I tried to point out that he’s the Prime Minister on an official visit, not a councillor at a ward surgery at the local community centre. You can’t just pop along and ask for a chat. I wondered what on earth they were thinking? Where did they get the idea from? There wasn’t some halcyon period when Gordon Brown waved in all comers to discuss domestic policy. Why did they expect Cameron to?

Many were union members, a couple of them were homeless, and a couple were children.

The two primary school age youngsters were jabbed towards me. “They want to ask him why they can’t go to university anymore,” someone barked in my ear. I racked my brains, trying to recall the news story which stated that the coalition had now banned children from going to university. I failed.

...


I began to leave. A woman barked after me: “Corporate media. Look at him, he’s scared of us. Corporate media.” The assembled crowd murmured in agreement.

I wasn’t scared, but I was left stunned at the attitude of some of those present.'

Why should songwriters starve

The Register quoted Billy Bragg as asking 'Why should songwriters starve so that the Web 2.0 kids and tech VCs get rich?' Why indeed?

Here's what is claimed to be Billy 'left wing activist' Bragg's home in the pleasant Dorset town of Burton Bradstock...

Very nice Billy, every working class hero should have one!


Meanwhile The Daily Mash took a look at the story in its own way:

'

Billy Bragg has absolutely gigantic house

YOU would not believe the size of Billy Bragg's house, it emerged last night

As Bragg's neighbours received anonymous letters urging them to drive the hectoring socialist monster out of their sleepy Dorset village, everyone said who cares about that shit, look at the size of that bloody thing.

Bragg bought the house 11 years ago as a protest against living somewhere really pokey without a glorious view and an acre of expertly manicured left-wing garden.

Tom Logan, a man who thinks New England is quite good, said: "I always imagined he lived in a terrace in a moderately gentrified part of east London, surrounded by people from a variety of cultures that he would 'jam' with.

"And I assumed that he would keep just enough money to live a simple life and give the rest to poor people or small circulation magazines about struggles.

"I have to say that the sheer heft of Mr Bragg's house has come as something of a shock."

...

Bill McKay, a man who has not worked in 11 years because of Thatcher, stressed that he would have been willing to accept a very small percentage of the money Mr Bragg spent on his sprawling seaside mansion.

...

Last night Bragg said he would have given more money to poor people if it was not for the extension and the double glazing and confirmed that anyone who noticed the size of his house was just an 'old fashioned racist'.'

Priorities Mr President, priorities

I have read this on a few sites recently but this time it was on Three Beers Later:

'"... when Patrick Collins called the White House and asked to have President Obama call his ex-wife, Linda, to talk about their son... He was told that Obama did not regularly make phone calls to the families of fallen soldiers.


Later, Patrick Collins read a story about Obama’s phone call to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffery Lurie. Obama reportedly praised Lurie for giving quarterback Michael Vick a second chance to play football after serving time in prison for running a dog fighting ring.


“That burns,” Patrick Collins said Thursday.


“Any soldier that gets killed in action, you’d think the president would be calling someone in the family. There’s no politics in it. His predecessor did it,” Collins said.'

Hardworking Eurocrats

'1,962 of EU's most senior civil servants have been allowed to join a "flexitime" scheme, originally meant for lower paid secretarial staff, that gives an extra 24 days off work every year for those that put in an extra 45 minutes a day in the office.

The perk comes on top of annual holidays of 24 days as well as seven days off for public holidays, and in 2010, 11 "non-working" days out of the office when the Brussels institutions are closed in summer and at Christmas.

The allowances mean that last year many EU staff were entitle to 66 days or 13 weeks or a quarter of the year off work. '

The Telegraph has more details.

Are these two instances really identical?

The BBC report the woes of The Samaritans in Israel and the Palestinian Territories; it's an interesting article but I was struck by this opening section:

'On 8 November 2001, during the second intifada (uprising), Joseph Cohen, a 56-year-old Samaritan, was driving home from the Palestinian town of Nablus.

"When I was almost home, I came across two Palestinian boys and they shot me," he says. "The blood ran from me like water."

He lost control of his car and drove into an Israeli roadblock. The Israeli soldiers shouted at him to stop.

"But I couldn't stop the car. And so they also shot me."

There are probably few people in the world who have been shot by both Palestinians and Israelis within minutes of each other.'

Am I alone in spotting that whilst two Palestinian boys shot at him for no reason, the Israeli soldiers shot at a car that, to their eyes, refused to stop at a roadblock. Are the two cases really identical?


UPDATE:
Following comments from several anonymous users regarding my use of the word 'identical', I would like to say this:
Maybe I chose my words poorly. My point was that whilst this man was indeed shot by Palestinian 'boys' and Israeli 'soldiers' on the same day; the Palestinian 'boys' were carrying out an unprovoked attack whilst the Israeli soldiers were responding to what they perceived as a potential attack.

The original article does not say that these were identical and neither did the Samaritan, however it was the equating of an unprovoked shooting by Palestinians with a 'to them' provoked attack by Israelis that caught my eye.

In my defence I was very busy when I read the original article and then posted mine, maybe I could have worded it better.

Sundry news stories that I thought might be of interest

The Mail reports that:

'Police and social services were today accused of fuelling a culture of silence which has allowed hundreds of young white girls to be exploited by Asian men for sex.

New figures suggest that an alarmingly high proportion of prosecutions for on-street grooming of girls aged between 11 and 16 have involved men of Pakistani heritage.

Experts claim the statistics represent a mere fraction of a 'tidal wave' of offending in counties across the Midlands and the north of England which has been going on for more than a decade.

A senior officer at West Mercia police has called for an end to the 'damaging taboo' connecting on-street grooming with race.

Chief Inspector Alan Edwards said: 'These girls are being passed around and used as meat.

'To stop this type of crime you need to start everyone talking about it but everyone's been too scared to address the ethnicity factor.

'No one wants to stand up and say that Pakistani guys in some parts of the country are recruiting young white girls and passing them around their relatives for sex, but we need to stop being worried about the racial complication.'

In a briefing paper, researchers at University College London's Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science concurred that victims were typically white girls while 'most central offenders are Pakistani'.

The offenders were not viewed as paedophiles but had picked the girls 'because of their malleability'.

The report concluded that 'race is a delicate issue' that should be 'handled sensitively but not brushed under the carpet'.'

I know this has been covered before, including by me, but it is worthy of repetition.


Meanwhile Archbishop Cranmer has a wrinkle on the Coptic Christian story:

'There is now a general terrorist threat against Coptic Christians living throughout Europe.

Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Britain said they have been in touch with the Metropolitan Police and have made them aware of the threats.

The police informed the Bishop that they had not received reports of any threats.

Funny, that.

Because the authorities in the Netherlands, France and Germany have taken the threats seriously and issued heightened terror alerts, providing Copts and their churches with enhanced protection.

Do British Copts have to wait for 21 members of their church to be splattered on bloody walls before their plight is covered by the British media?

The threat emanates from Shumukh al Islam website, a radical Islamist site affiliated with al Qaeda. The person who posted the target list online urged followers to ‘blow up the churches during the Christmas celebration since it is the best time, where these churches are crowded’. The website specifically names 15 Copts to be murdered.

And then there is a hyperlink to a manual on how to make a bomb.

Very helpful.

...

And so we are at the point where Christians in the EU cannot celebrate Christmas for fear of Islamist terror attacks: it appears that a Muslim minority can now prevent Christian celebration in ostensibly Christian countries. Is the pusillanimity of the German government indicative of its non-Christian mentality or its Neo-Marxist pragmatism?

When Christians are reduced to dhimmitude in their own nations, the convulsion cannot be long delayed.'

I await the BBC's coverage of this story, I fear I will wait in vain.

Now that IS a great radio voice

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

The role of the British police

Three relevant cases have come to my attention in the past few days. The best known is probably that of Michael Thompson who whilst driving his car in Grimsby noticed a mobile speed camera and that many oncoming cars seemed to be speeding. He decided to flash those cars to warn them to slow down. As a result he found himself in court and found guilty of wilfully obstructing a police officer in the course of their duties.Now this strikes me as rather peculiar. Did any of the drivers flashed by Michael Thompson slow down? If they did then surely the road was safer as a result and thus Michael Thompson was providing a public good. So what offence did Michael Thompson actually commit? I cannot see how Michael Thompson stopped the speed trap from working or interfered with the work of the Police. Was the role of the police officers on that day to measure the speed of passing vehicles and to fine any that were driving faster than the legal speed limit? If so then Michael Thompson did not obstruct their work.If this was not their assigned role, then what was it?


If Michael Thompson was simply warning others to adjust their, then, future behaviour so as to reduce their exposure to criminal liability then how is this wilfully obstructing a police officer in the course of their duties? Surely the signs outside every office that Smoking is not permitted within this building is also preventing a crime from being committed, is not a sign in a town centre advertising that CCTV is in operation is also designed to prevent a crime from being committed. Why are some crimes worthy of being prevented but motoring offences must be captured and the drivers prosecuted or fined?

I believe that the Crown Prosecution Service's case explanation included the note that The Highway Code informs drivers to

'Only flash your headlights to let other road users know that you are there. Do not flash your headlights to convey any other message or intimidate other road users.'

It would seem that Michael Thompson clearly breached this part of The Highway Code; however a breach of the Highway Code is not necessarily a criminal offence and that was not what Michael Thompson was charged with.

So why has Michael Thompson now got a criminal record? Is it simply because he encouraged others to stay within the law and upset a police officer by so doing?
Is this what the 21st century British police think their role is?


In another story, The Mail reports that:

'A police officer escorted an expectant mother to hospital just minutes before she gave birth - then slapped her husband with a ticket for speeding.

John Coughlin was handed the penalty for driving 102mph in a 55mph zone as he rushed wife Angela to the delivery room of the Catholic Medical Centre in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The trooper waited outside as the couple’s baby boy Kyle was born, six minutes after their arrival at the hospital, then pounced on the excited new father as he emerged to call relatives.'

That story is from the United States but I wonder if you doubt it could happen in the UK. The cases of jobsworth police issuing tickets to people they know will pay the fine, rather than looking to catch burglars, muggers and vandals are legion.


Finally Kable reports that:

'Millions of people who reported crimes have had their details stored on police databases

The revelation has emerged from information provided in response to a freedom of information request from the Press Association. It shows that police forces in England and Wales have kept data about people who call 999 or non-emergency numbers to report their concerns or pass on information.

The study discovered that West Midlands Police has more than a million records on people who have reported offences over the past 12 years.

Other forces, including Lancashire, Cleveland, Avon and Somerset, Gloucestershire, West Mercia and North Wales, hold more than 150,000 each.

The Press Association said that senior officers admitted the information could be used against people as part of any future police investigation. However, they insisted gathering the data was necessary to fight crime, protect the vulnerable and ensure concerns were dealt with properly.'

To the modern British police and their political masters, every member of the public is likely to be guilty of something and so should be watched. The number of crimes on the statute book increases year after year so that the State could choose when to arrest any one of us, after all we are all likely to have infringed one law or other at some time.


Over two years ago I blogged that:

'These transgression taxes are easy to collect if middle-class, law-abiding people are the transgressors and that is why it is them rather than the violent or dangerous that are targeted. A 'street warden' will be more likely to issue a fine to a 50 year-old householder whose bin is overfull because they had a party or who has managed to include a piece of plastic wrapping in the paper recycling bin, than he/she would be to try and fine six youths who are throwing empty beer cans at a bin on the High Street, and missing. The householder is easier to identify, more likely to pay and much less likely to give the "street warden" a good kicking.

If Michael Thompson had heeded my words and stayed cowed rather than protesting when pulled over by the police maybe he would not have been charged, fined and found himself the owner of a criminal record.

I'm not bald, my hair is invisible

The BBC report that:

'Experts say they have discovered what they believe is the root cause of male pattern baldness.

It is not simply a lack of hair, but rather a problem with the new hair that is made.

A manufacturing defect means the hair produced is so small it appears invisible to the naked eye, giving the classic bald spot or receding hairline.'

Oddly this does not make me feel any happier, or hairier.

Then 7, 23, 29, 8, 12, 17, 4 & 6. Now 67, 235, 148, 32, 13, 82 & 189 - Who & What?

Last summer Alistair Cook scored 7, 23, 29, 8, 12, 17, 4 and 6 to average 13. This tour of Australia he has scored 67, 235, 148, 32, 13, 82 and 189 to average 127. Some difference!

Is your pension safe?

In 1997 Gordon Brown's raid on UK pensions netted his government many billions of pounds and ruined the retirement plans of many Britons. I warned over a year ago that more raids would be on the way along the lines of the Argentinians . Well today I read on CSMonitor that the Hungarian government ' made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.'
Meanwhile 'The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.'

But that's just the old Eastern Block countries, I hear you say. Not so,:

'Ireland. In 2001, the National Pension Reserve Fund was brought into existence for the purpose of supporting pensions of the Irish people in the years 2025-2050. The scheme was also supposed to provide for the pensions of some public sector employees (mainly university staff). However, in March 2009, the Irish government earmarked €4bn from this fund for rescuing banks. In November 2010, the remaining savings of €2.5bn was seized to support the bailout of the rest of the country.

The final example is France. In November, the French parliament decided to earmark €33bn from the national reserve pension fund FRR to reduce the short-term pension scheme deficit. In this way, the retirement savings intended for the years 2020-2040 will be used earlier, that is in the years 2011-2024, and the government will spend the saved up resources on other purposes.'

If we had a Labour government in power now then I would not be in the slightest bit surprised if they decided to conduct a similar raid on private and/or public pension pots. I doubt that a Conservative government would do this but desperate times... However can you be sure that a Labour government, red in tooth and claw, will not be elected soon? How safe is your pension?

A very worrying image, is there a Death Star nearby?

This Photoblog entry claims that this is a photo taken by Belgian astrophotographer Thierry Legault of Tuesday's partial solar eclipse and that it also shows the International Space Station passing over the sun's disk.

Is he and MSNBC sure that that is The International Space Station? It looks very much like a Tie Fighter to me! Is Darth Vader and his Imperial Death Star nearby?

Contrasting emotions on waking up

England in a very strong position in the final Test against Australia but Gerry Rafferty has died. England 488-7 with Prior 54 not out, Gerry Rafferty 63.

When is a survey important and when is it not?

Since the 2010 general election when a left-leaning think tank forecasts doom and gloom for the economy, the BBC lead with that story but it seems that when the Financial Times (FT) conducts an extensive survey of leading economists' and finds that 'most concluded that the austerity measures, including today's rise in the rate of value added tax to 20 per cent, were a big gamble but  one that was likely to pay off.' and contrastingly that 'Their biggest concerns were over Britain's stubbornly high inflation and the risk of am intensifying eurozone sovereign debt crisis imperilling economic recovery', the BBC choose not to report the story at all.

“recognizable Jews, orthodox Jews” ... children should emigrate from the Netherlands to Israel or the United States... “I see no future for them here because of anti-Semitism, above all among the Moroccan Dutch, whose numbers continue to grow.”

The New York Times reports the words of Frits Bolkestein, the former leader of the Liberal Party in the Netherlands, a party which now heads the Dutch government; he advised thus:

'“recognizable Jews, orthodox Jews” that their children should emigrate from the Netherlands to Israel or the United States. He said, “I see no future for them here because of anti-Semitism, above all among the Moroccan Dutch, whose numbers continue to grow.”'

I believe that I have in the past said the same about Dutch, French and indeed British Jews; the time for Jews to be able to live safely and openly in many European countries is coming to an end. Some will leave soon fearing what is coming, many will stay and hope matters do not deteriorate as feared, even more will stay until it is too late - Which camp do you fall into? Which camp do I fall into?

Islamic converts

The BBC have today been full of discussions about the rising number of white Britons converting to Islam. Comments from converts such as this have been much in evidence:

'"Islam caught my eye and I wanted to look further into it - the people, the culture - and I carried on studying it and studying it, even after school. Living in Birmingham, I was surrounded by the religion."

"Then when I became Muslim, I sort of calmed down. I wanted to stay at home studying on the internet or reading books. And I'm more happy than I was - I'm proud of who I am, I've got a certain identity."'

This article ends thus:

'"[Converts have] authentically belonged to two traditions and should act as a conduit to show each side that we share far more than we differ."'

I wonder if the BBC will run a similar piece about the experiences of those few brave souls who have managed to convert away from Islam and their experiences; somehow I doubt it as that would show another side of the 'Religion of Peace'.

Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?

It seems that turning it off and then back on again, or 'power-cycling the device' as I.T. professionals prefer to explain it, works for satellites as well. The Register reports that:

'Intelsat bird Galaxy 15 is responding to commands again, having exhausted its batteries over eight months of uncontrolled broadcasting, thus forcing an automatic reboot.'

Taking a photo of one's own killer

The BBC report the incident of a Philippine politician who accidentally took a photo of his killer. It seems that when Reynaldo Dagsa, a Manila district councillor, took a photo of his family outside their house on New Year's Day, his killer was also captured in the photo - gun in hand. Above is the cropped photo...

Speed Camera information to be made public

Kable are reporting that:

'The Department for Transport is proposing that councils and police will have to publish data about speed cameras.

The data could include accident rates at speed camera sites, vehicle speeds and the numbers of drivers prosecuted or offered training after offences recorded on camera.'

The legislation is scheduled for implementation in April, when we should be able to see how many lives are really saved by speed cameras. I wonder if we will also be able to compare accident rates before and after camera installation?

The BBC reporting Israel

It seems that every report on happenings in Israel have to include sentences that point out Israel's guilty 'occupation' of Palestinian land. The latest news report about the arrest of UK Consulate staff for planning a terrorist attack on an Israeli football stadium includes the following:

'East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory under international law. Israel took over the area in 1967, then annexed it in 1981 and sees it as its exclusive domain.

Israel claims the city as its eternal, undivided capital, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future Palestinian state.

The international community does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and most countries maintain embassies in Tel Aviv.'

Are any news reports on other countries similarly encumbered by biased explanations of the background, or is Israel always a special case?

The same news story starts rather oddly:

'Two Palestinian employees of the UK consulate general in East Jerusalem have been arrested over an alleged weapons plot, Israeli officials say.

The UK Foreign Office confirmed the arrests, allegedly linked to plans to fire a rocket at a football stadium.'

The first sentence follows the usual BBC line that Israel 'claims' or 'says' whilst Palestinian claims are taken as fact. As the UK Foreign Office have 'confirmed' the story then why include the phrase 'Israeli officials say' at all'; is it not superfluous?

Daily Mail fail (reprise)

The Mail's blank spot when it comes to reporting celebs on the Caribbean Island of St Barths continues. Last time it was misreporting the name of a hotel, this time it's a nightclub:

'Casual couple: A dressed down Fergie and husband Josh dined at the Ti St Barts restaurant'

That should be Le Ti StBarth.

Degree results have been dumbed down!

'Degree results obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show six out of 10 students were handed either a first or an upper second in 2010, compared with just one in three graduates in 1970. '

The Telegraph seemed shocked. Any intelligent person must surely have realised that with league tables come institutions who want to artificially boosttheir league positions and increasing their degree results is an obvious way. Under the last Labour government 'A' levels were made easier and easier, I hardly know of any child of a friend who has got less than a 'B' in any 'A' level for some years now, and degrees have followed the same path. This country is producing young adults with an exaggerated sense of their intelligence & worth and thus their possible career. It's not good for them and its not good for the Country but it helped Labour get re-elected twice, so I presume Blair, Brown, Blunkett and co thought it worthwhile.

"Iran uses mosques in the US and Europe to plot and finance terrorism"

Reza Khalili, ex Iranian Revolutionary Guard and US spy, tells what he says he knows.


Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

'June The Met Office predicts a hot, dry and sunny summer. Black ice causes thousands of accidents as temperatures plunge to unseasonable lows. The Met Office says it is due to unusual wind patterns from Siberia, and has probably been made worse by global warming.'

'June
The Met Office predicts a hot, dry and sunny summer. Black ice causes thousands of accidents as temperatures plunge to unseasonable lows. The Met Office says it is due to unusual wind patterns from Siberia, and has probably been made worse by global warming.

...

November
The Met Office announces that 2011 is “on track to be the hottest year ever”. The government orders local councils to stop road gritting because of the adverse environmental impact of spreading salt. Heavy snow falls cause transport chaos and close the M1.'

Adam Collyer predicts 2011...

Another result of the law of unintended consequences

'Another frozen chicken which came home to roost was the crisis confronting many of the eight million homes now heated by condensing boilers, made compulsory by John Prescott in 2005 as a way of reducing Britain’s carbon footprint. What Mr Prescott failed to do was impose, on this tightly regulated industry, any requirement that the pipes to take away the resulting water should not be placed on the outside of buildings. (Responsibility for this crucial system failure has since been passed to the Health and Safety Executive.) The result is that up to a million external pipes froze in December, shutting off the heating.'

More in this Telegraph article by Christopher Booker.

Should the BBC's Nick Robinson have been fired for this admission?

Back on 1 September 2010 Nick Robinson blogged that:

'I would like to apologise for my reporting of the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the years they were together in government. Some said it was tittle tattle, others that it was speculation, a few dared to suggest that it was fabrication.

I now accept that I made mistakes. Things were worse - much worse - than I reflected at the time. '

If Nick Robinson heard the rumours about what was really going on between Blair and Brown but chose not to report them then he is guilty of deliberately withholding information from the public. If he did not know, why didn't he; enough other people did?

Unless Nick Robinson's role as chief political correspondent for the BBC involves protecting senior Labour figures and the Labour party?

Live blogging The Archers...

Can you feel the tension on the New Years Day (plus 1) 60th aniversary 'special'?

My money is still on the two 'shocks' being one regarding the premature birth and death of Helen's baby and one of Nigel or Elizabeth dieing, with Nigel being slight favourite to leave our airwaves - just too nice recently...

Tea can be a deadly meal... or Tony's tractor could go wrong... No its taking the banner down from the roof!!!

Helen's looking well, but there's a midwife there!

Tony - Not much of a father, and not to be a grandfather yet?

Helen's got swollen ankles, not a good sign?

And a headache, and spots before the eyes... Go to the hospital now! Looks like one for one so far!

"They'll know what to do"

Would Tony not be faster in his MG?

Nigel being very understanding as usual, his time will come!

'Pre-eclampsia' - dangerous for both of them!

Deliver the baby six weeks early... Can you feel the tension?

'Perfectly safe'?!

It's like 'House'... No, not really!

Going up on the roof in the dark to take down the banners! Looks like my predictions were right... It's bye bye Nigel as well

Meanwhile Tony never had time to say what he wanted to Helen and now she might diw without knowing... Can you feel the despair?

Helen is alright... But what about the baby? It's a boy and he's fine! Was I wrong?

All OK, is that it? Maybe there will be developments, or is someone else for it?

Tony loves being a grandfather; will it last?

Should Nigel wipe down the surfaces or go on the roof? Which will he do?

Nigel opens 'the bubbly'; an accident with a champagne cork?

'A Happy ending'? Somehow I doubt it, unless we have all been sold a pup?

But David still wants to go up to the roof and despite Nigel's wanting to follow Lizzie's advice. Nigel will have plenty of time to deal with the champagne afterwards... I don't think so!

So how about Nigel and David both falling off the roof?

"10 tiny fingers, 10 tiny toes" - will Tony drop him?

Mrs NotaSheep thinks the baby will have a fit!

'I hadn't realised we'd be this high up... careful it's frosty... maybe Lizzie was right... I've been clamvering over these rooves since I was a child... showed me all the footholds... THIS WILL NOT END WELL ... Dear Daddy we had so much fun together... lucky to have two such fantastic women in my life... careful Nigel, I'm alright!... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Dum de Dum de Dum de Dum!!!

So I was right about Nigel but seemingly wrong about Helen and her baby; or was I?

Global warming or data splodging?

Watts Up With That has the story of George Monbiot's claim that:

'Last month’s (NASA GISS’s map generator) shows a deep blue splodge over Iceland, Spitsbergen, Scandanavia and the UK, and another over the western US and eastern Pacific. Temperatures in these regions were between 0.5C and 4C colder than the November average from 1951 and 1980. But on either side of these cool blue pools are raging fires of orange, red and maroon: the temperatures in western Greenland, northern Canada and Siberia were between 2C and 10C higher than usual. Nasa’s Arctic oscillations map for 3-10 December shows that parts of Baffin Island and central Greenland were 15C warmer than the average for 2002-9.'

Watts Up With That explains what data splodging is and also touches on heat islands, something I have blogged about before:

'All the sudden, those “raging fires of orange, red and maroon” don’t look so big, do they George? There’s no reds, oranges or yellows over northern Greenland, or Iceland, or the East Siberian Sea, or most of Africa, and much of Antarctica’s coastline and the southern ocean.

In fact, a lot of those isolated red and maroon splotches in Greenland, Canada, and Russia are single data points. Yep, GISS takes data from these stations and smears the effect writ large on the 1200KM smoothing map. Journalists like yourself often don’t notice, they simply see the issue in shades of smeared red.

And guess what George? In those remote locations like Nuuk, Greenland, (see arrow, under a red splotch in SW Greenland) what have we there? Remote pockets of humanity. Humanity building little cities of warmth in the cold Arctic, growing cities'

Watts Up with That should be a regular read for all climate change 'deniers' and 'warmists'.

The world of 3D manufacturing/printing - 3D Fabrication

3D Fabrication - a guide.

2010 the year of “civilizational jihad”

Creeping Sharia has the details and it is well worth a read.

Here's two examples:

'

• April: Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar Hajjaj leads prayers on Capitol Hill for congressional Muslim staffers. As part of an ongoing investigation into a long line of extremists invited to preach on Capitol Hill by the Congressional Muslim Staff Association (CMSA), I reported here exclusively about the appearance of Anwar Hajjaj as a speaker at CMSA’s Friday jummah prayers inside the U.S. Capitol. Hajjaj is the former head of the Taibah International Aid Association, which was listed by the U.S. government in May 2004 as a designated global terrorist organization for its financial support of al-Qaeda. A video essay by Roll Call recorded Hajjaj leading the April 16^th CMSA event. A subsequent report published by Fox News chronicled a long list of recent CMSA prayer leaders who cultivate terrorist ties, who have made statements in support of terrorism, and who are known foreign agents.
• May: White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan defends jihad as “legitimate tenet of Islam.” As documented in our Team B II report (p. 155), since the publication of the 9/11 Commission’s report, where “jihad” was invoked 126 times and Islam cited 322 times, both terms, along with “al-Qaeda,” “Hamas,” “Hezbollah,” “Caliph,” and “shariah” have been entirely purged from all recent national security documents at the request of Muslim Brotherhood-backed groups claiming that the use of such terms legitimizes terrorism. But White House counterterrorism czar John Brennan went a step further, claiming in a speech that jihad was a legitimate tenet of Islam. When questioned about his claim after reiterating it in a sit-down interview with the editors of the Washington Times, Brennan stormed out, saying, “I’m not going to go into this sort of history discussion here.”'

Why world temperatures might have increased from 1990

Note how average world temperatures rise as the number of data stations was reduced. One wonders what sort of change in temperature the discarded data stations might have shown...


More on this in the Weather Action slide presentation

'Nick Clegg attempted to widen his appeal to voters of Scotland’s minority parties by expressing a wish to one day go clubbing with Tommy Sheridan. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband raised eyebrows when he claimed that his favourite sporting memory was watching Kenny Dalglish slide the ball through Ray Clemence’s legs at the 1976 England v Scotland home international. It later transpired that the seven year old Miliband had actually been attending a meeting of the Woodcraft Folk at the time.'

'Nick Clegg attempted to widen his appeal to voters of Scotland’s minority parties by expressing a wish to one day go clubbing with Tommy Sheridan. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband raised eyebrows when he claimed that his favourite sporting memory was watching Kenny Dalglish slide the ball through Ray Clemence’s legs at the 1976 England v Scotland home international. It later transpired that the seven year old Miliband had actually been attending a meeting of the Woodcraft Folk at the time.'

from Labour Uncut's '2011: the year in review', take a read there's some more good stuff there, including these:

'Speaker John Bercow faced further questions from Conservative MPs about his impartiality after he leapt to his feet during one fiery pmqs exchange and cried, “Get in there, Ed”! The controversy was exacerbated when the Speaker’s wife was spotted taping “Vote Labour” posters to the windows of the Speaker’s apartments.

...

Away from Westminster, the “anti-consumer, pro-student, anti-police, pro-direct action, anti-monarchy, socialist-anarchic people’s grassroots popular alliance” plan to disrupt the royal wedding foundered when it emerged that parents of 76 of the 113-strong executive committee were on the official guest list. “Fighting the power’s all well and good”, said a spokesman, “but I’ve got my allowance to think about”.

...

On the international stage, president Obama became embroiled in the “Palingate” scandal, after allegations that he had been secretly channelling funds to the “Sarah Palin for president” exploratory committee. In a terse statement delivered in the White House rose garden, a clearly emotional president told reporters, “I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again. I did not have financial relations with that woman”.'

Smarter than the average bear!

Polar Bears vs Remote Control Cameras...

What is 'having sex'?

The Times of India reports on a Kinsey Institute opinion poll that has some interesting findings:

'95 per cent of respondents would consider penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) having had sex, but this rate drops to 89 per cent if there is no ejaculation.

81 per cent considered penile-anal intercourse having had sex, with the rate dropping to 77 per cent for men in the youngest age group (18-29), 50 per cent for men in the oldest age group (65 and up) and 67 per cent for women in the oldest age group.

71 per cent and 73 per cent considered oral contact with a partner's genitals (OG), either performing or receiving, as having had sex.

Men in the youngest and oldest age groups were less likely to answer 'yes' compared with the middle two age groups for when they performed OG.

Significantly fewer men in the oldest age group answered 'yes' for PVI (77 per cent). The study has been published in the international health journal Sexual Health.'

Was Bill Clinton asked  for his opinion?

Could this change the balance of economic power in the Middle East

Since Israel handed back the Sinai's oild fields in a 'land for peace' deal with Egypt, Israel has had to deal with the problem  of how to generate power when the raw materials are held by countries that hate israel. So I was intrigued to read that the small gas field find I reported a while back is actually somewhat larger:

'16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world's biggest deepwater gas find in a decade, with enough reserves to supply Israel's gas needs for 100 years.'

The Wall Street Journal  has more details.

Could these have to be the best defended gas platforms in the world?

Two sides of Katy Perry

More details at The Mail and it doesn't look good for Russell Brand!


Thanks to American Power Blog for the spot.

The dumbest comment of 2010

Business Insider's article  entitled 'Julian Assange Threatens To Name Arab Leaders With CIA Ties' received a most bizarre, nay dumb, comment:

'xenos mann on Dec 30, 6:44 PM said:
@Ben:
Ben you nailed this on the head. Frankly the cameras have been flipped & the folks in power are ppeved. Amen at that. 1984 hit us say 20 years later than the title of the Orson Wells book. Assange shows the hippocrites in power. We need to end the crap they do. This man is held in check on trumped up charges & we all know it. Sorry to say that I never once heard of "consensual sex=rape"! As well this shows folks in charge are desperate, even Sweden has peed on itself. We need more like Assange to open it up, no exceptions. Leaders who are scum, including the last 2 deserve to be loathed & mocked.'

Orson Wells wrote 1984? George Orwell will not be happy and for some reason that knowledge failure leads me to discount the veracity of the rest of xenos man's comment!

Android phone or iPhone?

I am in the process of choosing a new smartphone and am trying not to buy an Apple iPhone as a) I want a hardware keyboard and b) I am not an Apple fanboi. I was looking at Windows Mobile 7 but there are some key omissions from its feature list:
No threaded e-mail
No universal search
No Internet tethering
No Twitter integration
Alphabetical-only app list organization

So I was amused to note the latest news of os failures for Android and iPhone. The first relates to iPhones and seems to be a variant of the Clocks changing alarm bug, in this latest instance one off alarms set for 2011 will fail. There is a work around - simply create a recurring alarm at the time you need to be woken up and then disable it once you are awake. The Android bug seems less clear cut, but it is claimed that:

'For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact -- even contacts that you've never texted before.

...

More seriously, though, there's also an open issue in Android's bug tracking system -- inexplicably marked "medium" priority -- where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you've committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend -- make that former best friend -- texts you back.'

This Android bug seems potentially more serious to me but it has least made up my mind for me; I'll stock to WinMo 6.1 for the time being!

Is there where the expression 'blow it out of your arse' comes from?

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

Predictions for 2011

Eight UK political predictions for 2011:

1. Labour will make huge gains at the local elections in May, mostly at the expense of the Lib Dems.

2. Labour will use their gains to start to question the legitimacy of the Coalition to govern, the BBC will provide them with a platform

3. The Coalition will not last the whole year. The local election results will prove too much for many LibDems

4. At least one LibDem MP will join Labour

5. Following the Coalition split the Conservatives will govern as a minority government and will thus be blamed for all the economic woes of the country

6. The Conservative government will fall and at the subsequent general election Labour will be the largest single party. The resultant horse-trading will be very lengthy

7. David Cameron will not survive as Conservative leader beyond the general election

8. Nick Clegg will not survive as Lib Dem leader beyond the general election, he will be replaced by Simon Hughes



Three foreign political predictions for 2011:
1. Barack Obama's popularity will continue to wane but the US media will rally around

2. The Republicans in the US Congress will gather strength but Sarah Palin's increasing popularity will cause them problems with the media

3. The Irish general election will result in a large increase in votes for Sinn Fein

4. The South of Sudan will vote in the 9 January referendum to secede from Sudan; the result will be bloody



Five economic predictions for 2011:
1. The UK economy will worsen: unemployment up, inflation up, growth negative, debt up

2. The EuroZone economy will worsen: unemployment up, inflation up, growth negative, debt up

3. The US economy will worsen: unemployment up, inflation up, growth negative, debt up

4. The Pound, Euro and US Dollar will all weaken against the Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen and Chinese Yuan

5. Gold will increase in price to reach USD 2000 by the end of 2011


Five BBC related predictions for 2011:
1. The BBC will become ever more blatantly biased in favour of the Labour party, the Conservatives will finally realise how serious a problem this is but do nothing to address the problem

2. The BBC will continue to push for the withdrawal of British armed forces from Afghanistan

3. The BBC will continue to vilify Israel at every opportunity and revel in further attacks on Israel

4. The BBC will continue to favour Islam over any other religion

5. The BBC will continue to support Barack Obama and push his successes whilst minimising his setbacks


10 Miscellaneous predictions for 2011:
1. An Islamic jihadist attack in 'the West' will succeed and hundreds will die but still 'the West' will not acknowledge the reality of the threat from Islam

2. Iran will continue its move to become a nuclear power and the UN will take no significant action

3. The Man Made Climate Change religion adherents will become more vocal in their claims and will increase their hold on the western world's politics, despite the increasing evidence to the contrary

4. The Sun will reach Solar Max and some of the Earth's communication systems will be adversely affected

5. The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is disrupted by malcontents

6. Simon Cowell decides that he now has enough money, gives up his dreadful shows and retires; TV immediately gets more watchable (more of a hope than an expectation, this one)

7.

8. England will get to the final of the Rugby World Cup but lose there

9. Andy Murray will not win the Wimbledon title

10. NotaSheep will continue to blog