More Details on Global Warming Lies

Here is a more detailed discussion on why too much action on Global Warming is probably not a good thing. I realise that I risk Gordon Brown calling me a flat-earther by publishing this but hey I can bear it! See also Global Warming Article

Firstly within WRITTEN History there have been warm periods such as and possibly even warmer than the current 'peak' year of 1998. Yes thats right 1998 was the warmest year on direct scientific record and not any of the later years. this is because of glo9bal cooling (but we will come to that).

The ‘medieval warm period’ was a 350 year stretch of good weather that started around 1000AD. Writers at the time, and archeological evidence suggests that the globe was far warmer then than it is now.

The best and most documented two examples, supported by writers of the time and archeaology that show this are:

Red wine grapes were regularly grown all across Southern England. Yes we do have vinyards in Southern England now - just a few and in very sheltered spots. The grapes they grow are particularly hardy varieties which have only been in existance since the 17th century. Here we are talking about all varieties of grapes being grown all over the South, up as far as Watford. Try that now and you would get a withered stalk and no fruit, even with the more hardy varieties.

The Vikings were farming in Greenland and the Shetlands. Growing crops in areas that are now permafrost and and growing crops we find difficult on mainland Britain due to climate today. So at least we know for certain that Greenland was far warmer then than it has been since.

All this is very inconvenient to Global Warming believers because there were no cars or factories pumping out greenhouse gases in 1000AD yet the Earth still warmed. Confusingly some tree-ring data eliminates the medieval warmth altogether, while others reflect it.

Secondly the most powerful variable which is discounted by the IPCC computer models is the Solar output. Why is this disregarded? Simple - until we had satellites we had no way to measure it and trying to find an indicator that can archeaologically measure it (say in AD85) did not work. So we should just ignore it right?

No we cant. Tiny variations in many parameters input (down in the range of 0.0001%) have been shown to affect these computer models considerably. The Solar variations that we normally measure in the 11 year cycle are as high as 0.1% - thats 1000 times higher than the sensitivity threshhold of the model. There is historical evidence for much wider variation than this in sunspot records that have been kept by Solar observers since around 1650 AD.
The number of sunspots on the Sun’s surface is roughly proportional to total solar output. One well known dip in activity, the Maunder Minimum, occured from 1650–1700 and may have influenced Europe’s little ice age. Since then, sunspot number have risen and fallen in a regular 11-year cycle. An 11-year running average shows only the long-term variation, which shows a rise in total sunspot numbers from 1700 until today (ie the sun has grown more active).


Thirdly we have the vested interests of Governments and politicians. At the moment due to peak oil and oil availability issues it is likely that many, if not all of us, will have to give up on car use. Who wants to be the first politician to ban motoring? Send the army round to collect your Mercedes SLK and scrap it? Nobody.

How much nicer to say 'Look the Scientists say you should stop using your cars because we will all die and the seas will rise and a plague of frogs will infest your armpits.' This way you will give up your own cars willingly. Unfortunately it is another cynical con.

Fourthly Global Cooling. Yes thats right Cooling. The suppressed data that has emerged which was not included in the climate reports is a tree ring study, studying growth over 1950-2000 period which shows overall a remarkable DROP in the mean global temperature. So why are the polar cap ice packs melting? Well the other big variable climatologists ignore is the amount of wobble the earth has on its axis. This is another cyclical thing - the bigger the wobble the more of the earths ice caps gets exposed to the sun. You guessed it - we are on a peak value of wobble at the moment! In addition the propagandists have only focussed on one side of the issue.

Antarctic Ice Is Growing And Thickening! It has been consistently doing so for at least 30 years now. Western Antarctica has shed several ice shelves over time, but Eastern Antarctica has grown greatly in the same time. The climate propagandists ignore the East antarctic.

Fifthly the measurements made by the modern equipment is more unreliable than indirect methods such as Tree ring dating and Ice core sampling.

WHAT I hear you exclaim. Impossible. But no - the scientists shot themselves in the foot again.

The problem is that in fact readings from thermometers or electronic ‘thermistors’ are open to interpretation. This is because the sites of weather stations that were once open countryside become built up areas, so trapping heat, and the type of equipment used changes over time. These anomalies between readings need to be ‘adjusted’.

But can we trust the way such ‘adjustments’ are made?

Recently there was a re-analysis of the data from the past 130 years in Darwin, Australia. This suggested that average temperatures had risen there by about two degrees Celsius. However, the raw data had been ‘adjusted’ in a series of abrupt upward steps by exactly the same amount: without the adjustment, the Darwin temperature record would have stayed level.

In 2007 records across America were examined. It was found that between 1999 and 2007, the US equivalent of the Met Office had changed the way it adjusted old data. The result was to make the Thirties seem cooler, and the years since 1990 much warmer. Previously, the warmest year since records began in America had been 1934.

Sixthly the main Global Warming hypothesis rests only on the work of around 60 scientists and reviewers and not the 4000 often claimed. By contrast a petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it (but one presumes not President Obama).

So it looks like we should all be careful before we let the politicians pass the buck this time.

Death of a Special Relationship

It has just become apparent to those who watch such things that Britain has totally slipped off the US agenda.

In fact all the speeches Obama has made since becoming President - and in all the speeches he made when campaigning - neither Britain nor the special relationship have been mentioned once.

This despite Britain having been America's most staunch ally in both the Gulf Wars and the Afghan War. He would rather suck up to those European countries that now hold the power in Europe (France and Germany) but do nothing to support America.

Could this be anything to do with a fear that Britain may demand its share of Iraqi oil and Afghan mineral wealth? After all why else have we supported America? Did they help us in the Falklands war which was right on their doorstep? No. they they stayed neutral leaving us to fight a war 3000 miles away by ourselves. Next time America wish to play policeman let them ask the French and Germans for help and see what happens.

Public confidence in banks drops

It seems that many of us are keeping hold of £50 notes under mattresses and in home safes because we have lost confidence in banks it emerged yesterday.

The Bank of England said that due to 'quantative easing' the total value of its notes in circulation has soared while the use of high value notes in transactions is falling. The gap is huge - there are 40million more £50 notes in circulation than two years ago but the banks are actually seeing fewer of them back through the system. Pundits say say that this is prima facie evidence of a loss of faith in financial institutions.

I say that given the fact that many savings accounts now only offer less than 1% interest that we lose almost nothing by keeping our cash at home instead of in the bank. Banks have recently threatened to charge as much as £2.50 per cash machine transaction, this will only increase the number of people who wish to keep their money outside the banking system.

This could be the birth of a new trend, With cheques not accepted at so many places and people reluctant to use credit cards now that the laws have changed and the card agreements have 'real teeth' perhaps people will start to see banks as un-necessary luxuries. Maybe the new pattern will be to withdraw all cash not required to cover direct debits at the beginning of the month and spend cash throughout the month, tucking what is left into their piggy banks.

If this happens then the scope for banks to make profit from running current accounts will all but disappear hitting the bankers right where it hurts - in the wallet!

How we stole 40K from youf family ...and you never even realised it.

Every week there seem to be fresh new disturbing revelations about the original banking crisis. God knows what the new Dubai collapse will bring. the latest revelation is that the UK government in fact committed to a bail out of a massive 850 billion. That is £13800 for every adult in the UK - an average of £40K per family!

This was done without any consultation purely on Gordon Browns say so. Because the banking crisis was NOT in fact as bad as the bankers had led the government to believe the total cost of the bailout will be a mere 131 billion by the end of this year. So that will only be £6200 per family... phew well thats all right then!

The bad news is despite you spending your six grand each on the bankers this year they are still underperforming and being unwilling to lend. Both RBS and LLoyds are still unlikely to meet their business lending targets for this year, being too busy speculating on foreign currency deals to ensure staff bonuses are paid. Oh yes - the bankers pay is not going to be altered one bit by their failure. They are still going to be paid 'sucess bonuses' which in some cases are worth more than their salaries.

It has now been revealed that the treasury is also paying some leading bankers directly in addition to funds they receive from their employers! Why? Because they gave advice on how to save their own skins. You might think that this will not be much - but no its about half a nuclear submarine - £107 million to you and me. This includes millions of pounds in...aargh sucess bonuses ... and many contractors who raked in an astonishing 200K per month each for a few months at the start of the crisis. In other words the treasury did not know what to do (allow at least one of the banks to collapse and totally nationalise the others) and paid the bankers to save their own jobs (recommend the government guarantees them for up to 850 Billion and that will be all right then). A predictable outcome.

Why can the Treasury not do the job we pay them to do without having their hands held?

Bankers 62 billion in secret loans

I know I have written some articles already on Bankers - see trial and moron wankers - but the news just had me reaching for my keyboard in anger again.

It has just come to light that at the height of the banking crisis the government lent the RBS and Halifax banks an additional 62 billion pounds to prop them up. The government has come clean in a bid to avoid extra embarrassment just a scant few days before a regular audit would have unearthed the details anyway.

The loans, which were offered without any parliamentary sanction were repaid a few months later and the people loaning the banks this money - us the taxpayers - did not know we were doing it. This has to stop!

Lloyds shareholders should be fuming because they were asked to support the takeover of HBOS within this period with no knowledge of the gigantic loan stacked up that was awaiting pay back.

The whole business stinks. I still say RBS and Halifax should have been allowed to fold - its the only sensible option but there are too many in our parliament and government with vested interests in many institutions. Compare these two lists:

List of Banks that folded in UK due to the global meltdown:
Err... Errrm. None.

List of Banks that folded in America due to the global meltdown:
Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida
Pacific Coast National Bank
Orion Bank
Century Bank, F.S.B.
United Commercial Bank
Gateway Bank of St. Louis
Prosperan Bank
Home Federal Savings Bank
United Security Bank
North Houston Bank
Madisonville State Bank
Citizens National Bank
Park National Bank
Pacific National Bank
California National Bank
San Diego National Bank
Community Bank of Lemont
Bank USA, N.A.
First DuPage Bank
Riverview Community Bank
Bank of Elmwood
Flagship National Bank
Hillcrest Bank Florida
American United Bank
Partners Bank
San Joaquin Bank
Southern Colorado National Bank
Jennings State Bank
Warren Bank
Georgian Bank
Irwin Union Bank, F.S.B.
Irwin Union Bank and Trust Company
Venture Bank
Brickwell Community Bank
Corus Bank, N.A.
First State Bank
Platinum Community Bank
Vantus Bank
InBank
First Bank of Kansas City
Affinity Bank
Mainstreet Bank
Bradford Bank
Guaranty Bank
CapitalSouth Bank
First Coweta Bank
ebank
Community Bank of Nevada
Community Bank of Arizona
Union Bank, National Association
Colonial Bank
Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association
Community First Bank
Community National Bank of Sarasota County
First State Bank
Mutual Bank
First BankAmericano
Peoples Community Bank
Integrity Bank
First State Bank of Altus
Security Bank of Jones County
Security Bank of Houston County
Security Bank of Bibb County
Security Bank of North Metro
Security Bank of North Fulton
Security Bank of Gwinnett County
Waterford Village Bank
Temecula Valley Bank
Vineyard Bank
BankFirst
First Piedmont Bank
Bank of Wyoming
Founders Bank
Millennium State Bank of Texas
First National Bank of Danville
Elizabeth State Bank
Rock River Bank
First State Bank of Winchester
John Warner Bank
Mirae Bank
MetroPacific Bank
Horizon Bank
Neighborhood Community Bank
Community Bank of West Georgia
First National Bank of Anthony
Cooperative Bank
Southern Community Bank
Bank of Lincolnwood
Citizens National Bank
Strategic Capital Bank
BankUnited, FSB
Westsound Bank
America West Bank
Citizens Community Bank
Silverton Bank, NA
First Bank of Idaho
First Bank of Beverly Hills
Michigan Heritage Bank
American Southern Bank
Great Basin Bank of Nevada
American Sterling Bank
New Frontier Bank
Cape Fear Bank
Omni National Bank
TeamBank, NA
Colorado National Bank
FirstCity Bank
Freedom Bank of Georgia
Security Savings Bank
Heritage Community Bank
Silver Falls Bank
Pinnacle Bank of Oregon
Corn Belt Bank & Trust Co.
Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast
Sherman County Bank
County Bank
Alliance Bank
FirstBank Financial Services
Ocala National Bank
Suburban FSB
MagnetBank
1st Centennial Bank
Bank of Clark County
National Bank of Commerce
Sanderson State Bank
En Español
Haven Trust Bank
First Georgia Community Bank
PFF Bank & Trust
Downey Savings & Loan
Community Bank
Security Pacific Bank
Franklin Bank, SSB
Freedom Bank
Alpha Bank & Trust
Meridian Bank
Main Street Bank
Washington Mutual Bank
Washington Mutual Bank FSB
Ameribank
Silver State Bank
En Español
Integrity Bank
Columbian Bank & Trust
First Priority Bank
First Heritage Bank, NA
First National Bank of Nevada
IndyMac Bank
First Integrity Bank, NA
ANB Financial, NA
Hume Bank
Douglass National Bank
Miami Valley Bank
NetBank
Metropolitan Savings Bank
Bank of Ephraim
Reliance Bank
Guaranty National Bank
of Tallahassee
Dollar Savings Bank
Pulaski Savings Bank
First National Bank of Blanchardville
Southern Pacific Bank
Farmers Bank of Cheneyville
Bank of Alamo
AmTrade International Bank
En Español
Universal Federal Savings Bank
Connecticut Bank of Commerce
New Century Bank
Net 1st National Bank
NextBank, NA
Oakwood Deposit Bank Co.
Bank of Sierra Blanca
Hamilton Bank, NA
En Español
Sinclair National Bank
Superior Bank, FSB
Malta National Bank
First Alliance Bank & Trust Co.
National State Bank of Metropolis
Bank of Honolulu

It is clear that the American attitude to their private banking system is much saner than ours.

Climate Change Scientists caught Cooking the Books!

There has been an embarrassing lack of global warming over the last decade. Raw, unprocessed figures which were hidden by climate change scientists have come to light in freedom of information requests along with some rather incriminating documents.

US Climate expert Kevin Trenberth said on Mon 12 OCt 2009 "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of global warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we cant."

Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglias climate unit authored emails that were leaked and showed researchers collaborating to keep their grants safe by hiding evidence of global COOLING provided by tree ring growth data.

George Monbiot a leading environmentalist for the Climate Research Unit called for Proffessor Jones to resign saying "There appears to be evidence of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released and even to destroy material subject to freedom of information requests. Worse still some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics"

The thing is that nobody denies that climate change is real. However it has long been known that both long and short term climate fluctuations exist. For example during the 1600s in there was a mini ice age that lasted a decade or so. What is uncertain is how much (if any) of the current cycle of changes are due to mankind. Some certainly but compared to solar fluctuations, say sceptics, our input even including C02 and Methane is negligable.

All the heat input to the earth comes from the Sun, the suns output changes cyclically with the sunspot cycle (an 11 year cycle) but it is expected that other cycles exist and we know that short term increases in Solar radiation caused by solar flares also exist. Luckily all of the large solar flares we have observed have not been pointed in our direction. What a lot of people do not realise is that the Sun also has decades of lower than usual output and just how variable this previously presumed constant heat source has proven to be has caught many astronomers on the hop.

Many people believe that the climate change question is being used as a lever to stop people using so much oil energy and oil based products now that Peak Oil is upon us and the supplies of oil are getting harder for governments to procure and secure. See also Global Warming Lies article

Appalling Education creates new Sub-Class Plebians

Wake up Britain!

The standards in our schools is so bad that even shop owners are having to spend up to 4 weeks educating school leavers in reading, writing, and arithmetic before they can employ them!

One in five pupils leave education without achieving a single average C grade in any subject. By some strange coincidence one in five school leavers are also unemployed. I wonder if the figures by any chance are related?

One way of creating an ignorant slave class of workers is to remove education - and I am sure our political masters realise this. We must do our level best to see that education in Britain (until around 1965 the worlds best) reaches its former standards. Yes this will mean tougher A levels and fewer people at university but its better than a third of the young adults leaving school being thrown straight into unemployment.

Of course an ignorant population is a largely docile population and with the coming energy crises perhaps this is the idea.

I picked a group of youths hanging out on a corner, just a stones throw from my apartment and asked them some questions:

1. Is reading and writing important?
The majority think not. Its a handy skill to have but most signs nowadays are symbolic with few or no words on them, and there is TV and Video rather than the written word.
2. Is maths important?
Yeah you have to know how much you are making on your drugs deals and whether you is being ripped off.
3. What do you think of teachers?
They dont do nothing and just sit there. You only get a reaction if you piss them off.
4. Are you worried about finding a job when you leave school?
Nah. My parents dont work and they do just fine.
5. What do you think of politicians?
Dunno.

That last answer there shows exactly what is wrong. The politicians control our country, its laws and social dynamics. These young people know nothing of this and do not care. Will they vote? I dont think so. do they know how to protest or are they capable of organising a protest? I dont think so.

Perhaps this is the aim of dumbing down our education system?

British government kills 5000 citizens this year

A new cancer drug, Avastin, that could extend the life of many advanced Cancer Sufferers by two or more years is not to be offered on the NHS. A nine month course of treatment costs around £18000 so this seems to be the price of two years of a life in Britain today.

Compare that to the estimated £200,000 it would cost to keep that same person in prison for two years. Maybe we should kill all prisoners that are jailed for more than 18 months because it would be more cost effective?

Pirate Symptoms

Britain must wake up!

A royal navy ship, an auxiliary tanker named Wave Knight, stood by whilst a rag-tag crew of mostly unarmed Somalian pirates kidnapped Paul and Rachel chandler from their yacht the Lynn Rival.

Yes WARNING shots were fired from the Navy vessel with its hundred strong crew, two 30mm cannon and four machine guns, but the Pirates were happy to ignore this, if it were an American vessel would they have ignored it I wonder. Would the heavily armed tanker simply have stooged around waiting until the pirates had secured their prey and left? I think not.

To compound the cowardly inaction the government has said that it will not pay the ransom demanded by the pirates... well I am sorry but is this not exactly the same as putting their lives at risk? The official excuse for inaction was that the captain was worried about causing casualties to the hostages... now we are still inactive but that inaction is risking their lives!

This is a symptom of how weak Britain has become internationally that even a band of ill equipped hoodlums know for certain they have nothing to fear from our forces.

The official excuse was that the captain was worried about causing casualties to the hostages. Well sorry but if his men are such rubbish shots with their modern weaponry that they cannot blow the bow or stern off a shoddy pirate craft or hole her beneath the waterline, then stand off and watch her sink then they should be replaced with people who can and will.

What should have happened is the craft shopuld have been sunk from underneath both the pirates and hostages. Then they can all swim (try swimming holding a weapon for any length of time) until they are exhausted, or sharks appear, and the pirates are begging to be let aboard the RN ship.

This is just a symptom of the lack-lustre do-nothing attitude that has pervaded britain for the last 30 years.

I say the captain of the Wave Knight should face a Court Martial and the relatives of the hostages.

Farcical Sentencing

So the two girls and a boy who tortured a 14-year-old girl in a car park and filmed the attack on a mobile phone have each been sentenced to four years' detention followed by supervision for 5 years.

The attackers who "cannot be named for legal reasons." punched, kicked and hit their victim with stiletto heels for a 45 minute torture session.

Sorry but this sentence is so stupid. It is estimated it costs 60K to keep a place in a detention center for a year and 18K to police a supervision order. Thats £1.65 Million of our money they just spent on on three spoilt brats who enjoy torturing other people. Sorry but nine years working in Victorian conditions on a farm would be far more appropriate and infinitely cheaper! Similar sentencing should apply to anybody embracing or promoting 'Gangsta culture'.

The argument that they 'did not know what they were doing' does not stack up for a 45 minute torture session involving a victim screaming for mercy and dripping blood. They should be named and tattooed permanently but discretely with a 'v' for violent before release.

See my Legal System post.

Prices out of control - £1000 rail fare

This horrendous fare from Newquay, in Cornwall to Kyle of Lochalsh, in the Scottish Highlands was unearthed in a survey by rail expert Barry Doe, who said that the price of long-distance journeys had risen by up the three times the level of inflation since privatisation in the mid-1990s. Mr Doe said that the £1,002 ticket had been available for £486 as recently as September 2008.

Cross Country Trains, which sells the ticket, said a booked in advance fare was available for £561.

The price by Taxi? Nowhere near I should think!

You could hire a car for two days and pay the petrol for around £300!

Same Journey by coach? £160 with 3 changes.

It is time for the public to have a serious sense of humour failure with regards to public transport. What should happen is that the government should set a maximum price per mile (as measured town center to town center) in a straight line, with a sliding scale allowing longer journeys to be cheaper than shorter. Then this should be imposed as a maximum price on the rail operators.

Murder Case Banker Gets off Lightly

Lets look at this scenario.

A man is having an affair. He earns around $600,000-1M a year. He is terrified his wife is going to divorce him and worried he will lose a lot of money. One evening he has a violent quarrel with her and kills her. She suffers, during the course of the 55 minute argument, over 40 visible injuries before he eventually strangled her.

But its ok not only is he wealthy, but he is a banker so he must be respectable. So no life sentence for this crime that he was well motivated to commit. No. This banker with 3M savings by his own admission gets a mere 8 years which in the British penal system translates to around 5 years so long as he is reasonably well behaved.


Justice in the UK is all wrong. Some offenses are treated so leniently its a joke but others are treated in a most draconian manner. Its time for a complete review of the sentencing and penal system.

What should happen?

For starters a mandatory death penalty should be brought back for offenders over 18 for the following offenses in cases where the identity of the offender can be proved beyond a shadow of doubt via CCTV, DNA plus one other confirming forensic identifier (fingerprints, fibres etc).

Rape (hetero and homo), Murder, Manslaughter when the death of the victim could reasonably be foreseen by the attacker (ie if he is strangling her he knows she is going to die, if he pushes her and she hit her head then he may not have done).

Self defence should be an allowable defence where the deceased had a weapon, a history of violence against the attacker and came to seek the attacker with the objective of doing him or his family some harm.

The age of criminal responsibility for crimes carrying a custodial sentence should be reduced to 13. Why? Because a child should definitely know right from wrong by that age. If he is being hired as a drug runner by older drugs dealers this is not really an excuse where the publicity about drugs, fire-arms and knives is so prevalent. If he watches TV or even walks down the street and sees posters he or she has to know what they are doing is wrong.

The use of 'soft option' sentences for young offenders has to stop. Many youths sentenced to hundreds of hours community service simply fail to turn up and are not punished for doing this. All sentences should be lock-down type sentences, even if the prisoner is allowed to go home to sleep he or she should be in a known place during their sentence term.

Some driving offences that are really serious should carry mandatory custodial sentences as well. Driving without a licence, or whilst banned from driving should result in permanent ineligability for a licence and a short custodial sentence. Parking offences should also be revised to add a single point per offence to the driving licence and the number of points before a mandatory 12 month ban should be increased accordingly from 12 to 17 (allowing one parking offence per year plus the existing points system).


What to do with all these new custodial offenders? First we must classify them into violent and non-violent. Violent offenders have actually harmed people and not merely threatened to do so. I am really in favour of tattooing violent offenders in a non-obvious but visible place, such as the rear of the knees. Definitely rapists should have an R there to warn prospective girlfriends.



For the non-violent offenders there is a simple option. Let them work on the land. We now have a lot of idle farmland so lets give our farmers a new crop. Simply equip each prisoner with a GPS tag, put a reciever and computer on the farmstead and if the prisoner strays off the farm send him to a traditional lock down jail. Meanwhile while he is on the farm he can grow food and help[ preserve the countryside, lay hedges and so on. Hard manual labour. Persistant shirkers and anybody who causes real trouble can be simply passed on to the violent offenders system.

For the violent offenders American style prisons where they live behind multiple layers of barbed wire, outdoors with minimal shelter, rather than in air conditioned TV equipped luxury would seem to be the best answer. Place these prisons in the uninhabited and underpopulated places. Back this up with soundproof Japanese coffin-hotel style solitary confinement cells for those who are still problematic. The prisoner who serves two years with no real problems can step back onto the farm system which gives an incentive.

For the most violent offenders, they will undoubtedly eventually commit murder or homosexual rape which leads to the death penalty. All executions should be carried out within 14 days of sentencing with no appeal possible (since conviction will only be by secure technical evidence plus statement/admission). The method of execution should be cheap - perhaps a return to the methods used by the Germans during WW2 would be expedient.

This is an effective design of penal system that I believe gives a balanced system of deterrance at a reasonable cost whilst giving society a chance to rid itself of the really 'bad eggs'.

G20 Police Propaganda

So the police have now been forced to release details of the 34 police injuries sustained during the G20 Anti-banker riots.

These life threatening results of an attack by the forces of chaos included:

A complaint of neck pain after wearing a heavy protective helmet for a long period.
An officer who scalded his hand making a cup of tea.
Two were hurt in unspecified accidents
Two were hurt while holding on to other officers in police lines
One was injured after slipping on a fallen metal barrier.
A female officer fainted when she was crushed by police during a maneuver.
One officer was bitten by a dog.
The most serious injury was to an officer whose hand was broken when a piece of wood hit it, however he did not realize this until the day after.
The remaining 24 injuries were bruises and scrapes.

In short the police counted every single accident and mishap even when caused by themselves to the total of 34 'injuries' that they presented to the inquiry to try and justify the level of of violence they used. They gave the impression these injuries were all serious matters and caused by the protesters. Is it any wonder that the publics trust and confidence in the police is now Zero?

Police Hooligans Terrorize London

Can we compare this to:

One Death
Seven hospitalized
'Several dozen' treated by paramedics
Untold hundreds suffering from severe bruising.
Untold hundreds suffering from mild bruising (as per the polices 20 or so).

Sorry but the police need to be accountable for their actions and that goes right up the chain of command to the senior officers who decided to wade in rather than maintain a minimal security force whilst keeping a large reserve 'around the corner' if needed.

Moron Wankers -- Oops sorry More On Bankers

Its seems that even Larry Flynt of Porno/Hustler fame has taken to arms on this issue, see his editorial here. Its very true what he has to say about the history of banking.

Even now here in the UK the parliamentary report on banking has some interesting views not least: 'It (the government) should also review the wisdom of allowing a banking market to be dominated by firms whose balance sheets are larger than the national economy.'



Another interesting one was: 'We recommend that the FSA assess whether bank executives should possess relevant qualifications.' Aha so they failed their economics A levels then... Its nice to know that many of the people in charge of our money are unqualified louts but maybe we guessed that when six bankers ran up a £44,000 wine bill at Pétrus in 2002. They drank a 1982 Montrachet at £14,000 and followed with a 1945 Pétrus at £11,600, a 1946 Pétrus at £9,400, a 1947 Pétrus at £12,300, a 1900 Chateau d'Yquem at £9,200. The food was thrown in for free. Mind you even this pales into insignificance compared to the middle aged investment banker who spent £32,000 on a single bottle of whisky - a Dalmore 62-year-old malt - and drank it with friends in one night at a Surrey hotel in 2006.

The 'tough new measure to reform banking' decided on by Gordon Browns committee actually boils down to ... 'If they continue to gamble and pay huge bonuses then we may decide to restrict how much of their capital they can lend by a few percent.' Since banks typically are allowed to lend 10-15 times their capital this is hardly even a slap on the wrist so its business as usual.

Worse. We have now found that the tax payer has subsidized the generous final salary pension schemes enjoyed by many banking staff at the failed banks... in order to compensate for the slowing down of the economy... when are we going to stop supporting these parasites?

When are we going to learn?

Time To Leave This World Today

The evidence just keeps mounting. A few years ago Scientists were saying large object collisions with planets were few and far between. The odds against seeing one in your lifetime are billions to one they said. Well with the Shoemaker-Levy Comet collision with Jupiter, the recent object unknown collision with Jupiter and now evidence of a planet to planet collision in our own back-yard (100 light years away is our own backyard) we have to revise this opinion. Maybe the odds are quite high that we will see an extinction level event on earth before 2100AD.

Astronomers have detected the infrared signatures of Molten Rock and vapourising Rock from a planetary system in the Pavo constellation. Calculations suggest that a planet around the size of Mercury was struck by a smaller object which was moving at 22,400 mph.

And we just happened to be looking in that direction with the correct instruments at the right time....

As Terry Pratchett once said: 'Mathematicians have calculated that the odds of such a thing ocurring are a million to one. Unfortunately Wizards have observed that million to one chances come up nine times out of ten!'

Jack o' the Green

Full Size View of Jack o' the Green

I was wandering around Epping forest this weekend, visiting an Iron Age Fortification. I took a lot of pictures and while editing one my eyes hit upon this curious picture.

The green arrow points at the head of a strange goblin-like apparition holding his left hand up to his open mouth, he is looking right to left. I do hope you can see this Jack O Green as well and its not just my imagination! This image is not edited (other than by adding the arrow!) and is full size to the original data. I keep telling myself it is just the shade and sunlight on leaves but the proportions and detail is too good, even down to the gleam of light on the head, nose and cheeks!

The larger picture is the original but has been reduced to fit on blogger - the small section comes from the far right hand side.

Whole Picture (Reduced size)


Now at this point a lot of people will assume the picture is manipulated somehow but it has not. In an ideal world everybody should have an open enough mind to believe this is an unretouched picture of something strange. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world....

Political Systems... New Balls Please!

So what sort of political system should we have in this modern age? The original democratic system was based on each individual qualifying citizen having his say directly in the Senate at Athens. As cities became bigger we had to move to a system of representation.

All systems of representation are not truly representative of the thoughts of the populace. Now however for the first time since the Athenian age we can provide individual citizens the power to have their say via the Internet. This makes political parties and indeed politicians completely unnecessary!



Here is the type of system that I propose would make an ideal substitution for parliament.

1. Every year all eligable citizens would be issued with a unique 20 character identification, linked to their name. They can log into the peoples parliament site using their surname and the 20 character ID code.

2. Via a forum system on the site any citizen may sponsor a bill if they can get 100 votes from other citizens. The citizen writes the draft of the bill which is then passed to a civil service cleric for research into the practicalities of implementation and emerges no later than three months after submission as an official first draft.

3. The first draft is published for criticisms and people write notes on what they see as the good and bad points. After one month the bill is withdrawn for redrafting and republished as a final draft one month later.

4. The bill is voted on as a whole, people voting on the bill have to prove that they have read the bill by getting an 80% pass mark on a multiple choice test based on the bills contents.

5. If the bill is declined it cannot be resubmitted in any form for 12 months.

6. If the bill is passed it goes into the refinement stage. Every clause is similarly voted on to be good or bad. Clauses voted bad are subjected to revision as per 3 above and those judged to be good are passed to be included.

7. The final bill is now presented on the website for an adoption vote. People who dislike the bill may post articles on why they dislike it, people who are for the bill can post articles stating why it is a good idea. After one month these articles are frozen and 5 days of voting begins.
People voting on the bill have to prove that they have read the arguments by getting an 80% pass mark on a multiple choice test based on the contents of the pro and con arguments.

8. The bill goes into legislation or is demoted back to step 3 above.

In this way everybody can have their say on subjects they feel strongly about and hopefully a more correct legislation will result because people who feel strongly on an issue often have more knowledge.

Tattoo Removal (Laser tattoo removal and skin graft)

I guess I was lucky that in my teens and early twenties I avoided the horrors of the tattoo shop. Now many of my friends are in their forties and fifties they are thinking again about the wisdom of having a band logo tattooed on their arm or (in one case) Rude words across the knuckles. I have only one tattoo and that is a little dot that happened when somebody threw a drafting pen at me, I caught it and the nib stuck in... ouch!

Friend 1 who had an inappropriate tattoo of an ex boyfriends name on her arm did start out by suggesting that her husband change his name to Gary. He refused and so she headed for the laser tattoo clinic. It took 6 treatments to remove and each one was more painful than the last, however her tattoo is now just about invisible. When the healing process fades it will be gone completely her removal artist said. She testifies that laser tattoo removal is far more painful than getting the tattoo done to start with. She was lucky though - her tattoo was monochrome black/grey the easiest to remove.

Friend 2 had a botch job of a tattoo that was a kind of multi-colored splodge. It was once, he insists, a bunch of flowers but it spread because it was tattooed wrongly. The trouble with multi-colors is they do not take to laser treatment too well. After four sessions it still looked as awful as ever so he decided to go for the ultimate solution and have it surgically removed and a three inch circular area of skin grafted over the spot. Not only was this painful for weeks and incredibly expensive but now he has to avoid the sun since the new skin plus its scar tans unevenly.

Please think carefully before you have any sort of tattoo done. Think 'will I still want this when I am 85?' If the answer is yes then get a monochrome black/grey tattoo, at least they can be removed using a laser tattoo removal machine!

If anybody needs a reason to prioritise Space Exploration

Here is the perfect reason. This little black dot is actually slightly larger than the planet earth. This almost unimaginable Jupiterian disturbance was caused by an asteroid strike. An asteroid which had it struck the earth would have wiped us out. 100%.

I find it inconceivable that we can spent untold billions on global warming, which may or may not be actually happening, and which if it is happening might cause sea levels to rise 50 feet within the next 400 years. Compared to the absolute certain knowledge that all life on earth larger than a microbe will sooner or later be extinguished by a metorite and it could very well happen in 5 minutes time.

Why cant we put the same effort into the colonisation of space and stop putting all our eggs in one basket?

See also: Time to leave this world today

Weird Mars Stuff in todays email

Did anybody else have a wierd picture emailed to them today? I had an email from a bogus untraceable address with an IP that seems to be in Florida. The title was 'Mars anomaly Picture' and the body simply said 'This was airbrushed out of the published stills." As you can see the picture was rather provocative. Sigh. I wish these people would come out of the closet because if its not a fake then its worth millions!

Windows 7 is Tragic

Today we start getting all the usual hype you expect on a Windows pre-release. And hey you can pre-order it but nobody knows when it will be released. Thats odd. I always thought doing this was illegal in the UK and very against consumer law here.

Personally I dont understand how anybody would even consider windoze of any sort as an operating system. I was brought up on windows 3.1, managed the terrifying transitions via 95,98,ME,XP,XP Pro,Vista complete with data loss and hardware changes and then got extremely pissed off with it all.

Windows is a software/hardware treadmill. I bought (un-necessarily) 5 new PC's to try and keep some sort of speed in my computing life. Each upgrade slowed me down. Then Microsoft FORCED me onto Vista by releasing a mod for XP that completely screwed both it and my hard drive. Well sorry guys that was a bridge too far.

I bought Vista - yes. I installed it and after 3 months when things began to get slower somebody suggested 'Oh you need to get a better motherboard and processor, oh and another gig of memory would help'. Errm right. The onboard computer on the Apollo Moon Landings was basically about one thousandth the capacity of the machine needed to write a letter, send email and surf the net? No I dont think so.

I downloaded Ubuntu - a brilliant FREE linux desktop OS. Yes I still have vista on my main machine - but my preferred use is Ubuntu and its been 6 months since I used Vista. Guess what, after reading the hype about Windoze 7 I am going to uninstall vista - bet I dont miss it. After all using a program called Wine (also free) I can run all my serious PC applications under Ubuntu anyway and Openoffice (also free) handles all my old microsoft office files. Oh and the PC runs like greased lightning and never slows down.

Also I now have resurrected two of the OLD PC's I replaced and am running Ubuntu on them too. Hey thats not fair - my 5 year old pentium machine is now nearly as fast as my ten month old AMD Dual Core ... and they are all faster than Vista! Now I have a webserver of muy own running Apache and a spare machine as a backup...for FREE!

Free computing. Try it before you buy Windows 7 - you know it makes sense! My top tip is to download the latest version of ubuntu (it self-updates just like windows) and try it for one week. It comes complete with openoffice but you can load any other programs you need for free (from the Applications|Add Programs sub menu) and dont use windows for that whole week. Notice how much stress you are not getting? How the machine is much faster? How it now never crashes? How much easier things are? I doubt if Windows 7 will match it.

Mission to Mars 1

We hear that the astronauts have just emerged from 105 days locked into a simulated space module - and they did not kill each other! Whoopie doo. There is something very wrong with our entire attitude to the conquest of space. We seem to be determined that space exploration will result in near zero loss of life. Sorry but that is unrealistic. So is our attitude to exploration - sending people millions of miles to spend a few days somewhere then yanking them back.

Can you imagine if this were the attitude of explorers of the new world in the 15th century? We land a galleon (which can only sail during 6 months of the year) put ashore 5 people for a week, then sail back again. Sorry but we would still be exploring the swamps around what is now New York, the silver lining is that the Native American Indian and the Aztecs would still be around....

Folks, exploring new frontiers is a perilous business. Was America settled by scientists, Doctors and Air Force Pilots? Can you imagine what would happen if we tried that? Hmmm.

What is needed is PIONEERS not scientists. COLONISTS not visitors. Yes lives will be lost. When America was colonised lives were lost in their tens of thousands... we need not go that far but we are going about this the wrong way.

Here is what we need to do.

Firstly we need to consolidate our position on the moon.

Advertise for strong young colonists, male and female, minimum IQ of 120 and reasonable (not outstanding) physical fitness should be the only qualifications. Train these people in the use of the simplest space-suits we can design.

While this is going on we send payload after payload into earth orbit using dumb re-usable rockets. These payloads are picked up by space shuttle and have a small computer and booster rocket pack bolted to them, then they are sent on a lunar landing trajectory, coasting most of the way. They contain food and water, equipment to produce oxygen from lunar soil, solar panels, building and farming equipment, seeds, and so on. We aim to put down maybe 1-200 of these packages hard landed using similar inflatable ball technology to the Mars rover within a 12 mile radius of the most suitable apollo site.

The colonists are sent using a similar method but with a 'soft landing', a long slow ride that uses little fuel and lands maybe 40 people at a time, with some 'heavy' equipment and an inflateable shelter. THERE ARE NO PLANS TO RETURN.

The colonists make a permanent shelter by digging a tunnel into the side of a hill (something the moon is not short of) sealing the rock using a sprayed on polymer (like araldite) and erecting a prefabricated airlock and front door assembly. Gap filling foam can seal it to the rock around the edges. This process with the proper tools would take 30 people a month. The remaining ten are gathering the packages that were hard landed and ferrying them to the shelter.

Meanwhile of course more packages are being hard landed every week. When the shelter is finished the solar farm is set up and the air manufacturing plant started.
The inflateable shelter is now to be used for farming. 20 people work on growing plants, chickens and maybe sheep (pretty hardy) for food. 10 people work on extending the tunnel system and 10 people work on water extraction.

Any piece of space junk already in orbit that could be canibalised or used we bundle up, strap a booster pack on and aim it at the moon to land in a designated area.

After 3 months the process is repeated again, but this time less up front hardware is needed because the new arrivals will have the extended tunnel system to use as a shelter, so they will bring mostly farming and building equipment.

After another three months 40 more people arrive and now a second tunnel is started, for low Gee laboratories and factories..... I could continue.

Now once we have a viable colony on the moon that is self supporting (or very nearly) we can look at Mars. In some ways Mars will be easier than the Moon, it is more hospitable. In other ways more difficult (its a lot further).

Probably the best thing to do would be to build a really big spacecraft on the Moon in the 1/6th gravity. Haul pretty much a duplicate of everything that was required to set up the lunar colony plus any items that experience shows us should have been included. Launch from the moon, with its really low escape velocity.

This is the way to explore and conquer new worlds and I think there would be no lack of volunteers.

How the Banking Crisis Should have Been Dealt with

Well here we are, a couple of months on and what has changed? Very little as far as the bankers are concerned. After the Government has spent billions to bail them out the bankers are showing all the signs of getting up to their old tricks again. See Times Banking Article, how many bets they will be awarding themselves mega bonuses over christmas?

What we have done is sent the Fat Cat Bankers (oh how I long to swap a B for a W) entirely the wrong message. We have said that they are so important to us, that regardless of what they do, or what level of greed they espouse we will support them.

What complete tosh.

What we should have done is ALLOW the two major British banks concerned to become bankrupt. Move the accounts of all their investors to a new bank, with no member of it the same, and used the billions spent to prop up those banks to repay the investors capped at say a max of 500K or 80% of the account value whichever is the least. We must not forget the INVESTORS do need to learn a lesson as well as the bankers. It is these Investors and the bank shareholders who need to LEARN to be careful about investing their money and insist on proper controls.

Its not just the complacent bankers, it is also the investors and shareholders who turned a blind eye to the banks activities.

As it is nobody has learned a thing and I am saying that its odds on that we are in for a repeat performance in 5-10 years.