England's England

The silly god-bothering dictator

2012-01-28T00:05:00.000Z

Who is this god-bothering silly man John Sentamu? Why does he feel the need to control other people having sex? Yes, I know that he makes his very profitable living by working for one of the churches spouting the dying religion called Christianity, but his homophobia is surely something he should keep to himself.

(Hilarious painting of man in fancy dress)

He appears to feel he has the right to pick just some of the words and phrases from his religion's guide book (Why do all the Middle-Eastern originating religions have these silly guide books and why are they never updated?) called the Bible, and ignore the rest. By selecting to ignore other parts that don't suit his dictatorial purpose (like, for example, all the bits about the acceptable face of slavery and killing people who work on a Sunday, etc.), and only picking out those that for some reason enhance bigotry, cruelty and prejudice, he is able to hide his homophobia as being part of his "god's will".

Sentamu cries that Prime Minister Cameron is a 'dictator' by allowing gay couples to marry. And there was me thinking that a dictator made rules that people had no option but to follow.

Cameron isn't forcing loving gay couples to marry, yet Sentamu wants them to be treated differently to straight couples, to sit at the back of the bus as it were in an apartheid system which favours straights over gays, to force them to stop doing what they want to do.

Wanting this unchallenged level of control over other human beings makes Sentamu the evil dictator; nothing more nothing less.

The beauty of this modern and far more enlightened country is that gay people just don't need to worry about whatever it might be that prejudiced dress-wearing god-botherers with very silly hats have to say about them. Well, apart from when they block them from getting married, of course.

Sentamu is full of prejudices, and not backward with coming forward about other things like his upset about the lack of black people following his branch of god-bothering. Well, maybe it's because they've all grown up, gotten a lot more sensible and don't need to be lectured by such a silly man any more!

No gay sex for me yet

2012-01-27T00:05:00.000Z

My lack of having had sex with a man tells me that it is probably not to be. Never say never, of course, but if it was going to happen I guess it would have happened by now. Instead, I seem to have had sex with women. This must lead to me concluding that I'm heterosexual. Fair enough. It wouldn't bother me if I was bisexual or homosexual, as long as I was me.

(Love is wearing matching underpants)

Likewise, it doesn't bother me what your orientation might be. As long as you are happy, have given informed consent, and those you are having sex with are happy and have given informed consent, what's it got to do with me? Why should I take any interest whatsoever? I shouldn't.

I mean, you might like to play Connect 4 or have a rabid interest in collecting porcelain fish. Why would I want to make rules about you and control your Connect 4-ing or tut-tut about your porcelain fish? I wouldn't. Even if you pinned me against the wall at a party and decided to tell the tale of every porcelain fish you've collected, then, yes I might want you to shut the fuck up, or I might even want to feed you your damn porcelain fish to shut you up, but outside of that, what's it got to do with me?

Yet, there are people, mainly those controlled by very obscure and irrelevant religions, who seem to think that what you do sexually is somehow something to do with them. Even though they don't know you, they believe that you must only have 'straight' sex with somebody of the opposite sex to whom you are married.

Why?

What's it got to do with them?

They get uncomfortable with any kind of sex, but they seem to get the most uncomfortable with homosexuality. They act as if it somehow threatens them directly.

Even though they don't know you and have never met you, they judge you and want to control you, and, if it was up to them, they would forbid you from having sex, even if that sex was within a long term loving relationship.

Why?

What's it got to do with them?

It is a mystery to me that one of the major things that religion and religious people try to control is sex. It's almost like some kind of fetish or part of the BDSM scene, because if it isn't it makes no logical sense. It's even a little bit insane.

I mean, if somebody kept obsessing about a neighbour's collection of porcelain fish, really going on and on and tut-tutting and saying it was immoral, you'd want to get them Sectioned and locked up, wouldn't you?

So, isn't it about time we rounded up all those who are obsessed in this way with other people's sexual activity, and kept them locked away from the public?

A Christian/Muslim dies...

2012-01-26T00:05:00.001Z

I am an equal opportunities atheist, and I like to laugh and point at both Christians and Muslims at the same time.

Sooo...

If you are Christian, read only the sentences highlighted in pink.

If you are a Muslim, read only the sentences highlighted in blue.

A Christian dies and finds himself before the Pearly Gates.

A Muslim dies and finds himself before the Pearly Gates.

He is very excited, as all his life he has longed to meet the saviour, Jesus Christ.

He is very excited, as all his life he has longed to meet the Prophet Mohammed.

Having arrived at the Gates of Heaven, he meets a man with a beard.

"Are you Jesus?" he asks.

"Are you Mohammed?" he asks.

"No, my son. I am Peter. Jesus is higher up." And he points to a ladder that rises into the clouds.

"No, my son. I am Peter. Mohammed is higher up." And he points to a ladder that rises into the clouds.

Delighted that Jesus should be higher than Peter, he climbs the ladder in great strides, climbs through the clouds coming to a room where he meets another bearded man.

Delighted that Mohammed should be higher than Peter, he climbs the ladder in great strides, climbs through the clouds coming to a room where he meets another bearded man.

He asks again, "Are you Jesus?"

He asks again, "Are you Mohammed?"

"No, I am Moses. Jesus is higher still."

"No, I am Moses. Mohammed is higher still."

Exhausted, but with a heart full of joy he continues to climb the ladder and, yet again, he discovers an even larger room where he meets another man with a beard.

Full of hope, he asks again, "Are you Jesus?"

Full of hope, he asks again, "Are you Mohammed?"

"No, I am Mohammed... You will find Jesus higher up."

"No, I am Jesus... You will find Mohammed higher up."

Jesus higher than Mohammed!

Mohammed higher than Jesus!

The poor man can hardly contain his delight and climbs and climbs, ever higher.

Once again he reaches a larger room where he meets a man with a beard and repeats his question:

"Are you Jesus?" he gasps as he is, by now, totally out of breath from all his climbing.

"Are you Mohammed?" he gasps as he is, by now, totally out of breath from all his climbing.

"No my son.....I am God.. But you look exhausted. Would you like a coffee?"

"Yes, please, my Lord."

God looks behind him, claps his hands and calls out:

"Hey Jesus, two coffees !!!!"

"Hey Mohammed, two coffees !!!!"

Creative multi-tasking for men?

2012-01-25T00:05:00.000Z

Apart from being a living breathing enigma, I am an incredibly talented person. I am a 'creative'.

Being a 'creative' means I am burdened with the task of being an ideas man, a futurologist, a person with his finger on the pulse of the, er, future, a trend predictor, a sooth-sayer, a prophet, and, to be modest, all but a decision making god to those who look to me for leadership and inspiration.

My head is constantly filled with scenarios. I am always watching, learning and applying my superior knowledge to any situation, computing the outcome, working out what would be best. As a director of huge box office hit movies I wouldn't need to storyboard. It would be in my head. I can visualise an entire edit sequence and know exactly how scenes need to be shot.

However, in balance, for all of this greatness, I have to humble myself and admit that I do have failings.

I can't seem to bloody multi-task when dealing with things of a very similar nature.

As an example, supposing I had to write something absolutely brilliant for this very blog and at the same time write something absolutely brilliant for work. For some reason, I can't seem to do both. My head will fixate about one and not the other.

Case in point. I'm writing a large collection of completely fabricated lies associated with a business proposal. I'm thinking about them. Dreaming about them. Working on them whilst I'm asleep. Editing them, visualising them, and all consumed by them. Then I realise I really need to write something for here, but my brain won't let me.

I study my list of bullet points I have had for ages, ready to pick one and flesh out a big long bla-de-bla for your entertainment, annoyance or excitement. Nothing happens.

If I try to write, all I can write is bits relating to the work thing.

Have I always been like this? Is it some mental decay I was unaware until just now is happening to me? Is it possible the women can multi-task whilst men can't?

I.

Well, I mean, I.

Erm, I.

Look, I don't know how to finish this, but I've got some damn fine ideas for that work thing, must rush...

The Virgin gets Gored with the Pole

2012-01-24T00:05:00.000Z

I like the concept of Richard Branson, the Virgin man. Of the multi-Billionaires that have stashed away far more personal wealth than entire countries have to spend on food, I can forgive Branson because he's odd. Odd and cool. If he has a bizarre agenda, it's well hidden. He just seems fair minded and normal. Eccentric and normal. All in all, a man with a collection of reasons why he's the acceptable face of entrepreneurialism. Most importantly, he rarely wears a tie. No tie means no lie, so you can trust a person without a tie.

So, it was a bit concerning to discover that he seems to have fallen for the Al Gore lie about Global Warming, and is joining a multi-Billionaires' jolly to Antarctica this week.

Others along for the ride include various prominent 'climate scientists' who have crossed over from scientific reason and investigation into the human-hating political world, becoming strong proponents of the various schemes the New World Order-esque United Nations want to impose on countries in order to tax them to buggery to punish them for emitting the much needed plant food, carbon dioxide.

The publicity material for this event towards the South Pole explains how out of touch with reality these people are. It discusses how they are making their expedition 'this winter'. Well, of course, it's 'this winter' in the northern hemisphere, where we find the United States of America, and their pesky outpost, Europe, but in the southern hemisphere it's 'this summer'.

Indeed, the multi-Billionaires and their 'climate scientist' pals will no doubt be witnessing the natural late summer melts when they reach Antarctica. What's the betting this will provide plenty of alarmist footage for how terrible global warming is, and of course, how we are all to blame and must give them loads of money for our sins.

Will they mention how rapidly the Antarctic winter sea ice is increasing year on year and how it is at a 30 year high? Of course not! They only need to tell us 'facts' that support their human-hatred and demand we flash the cash.

You'd think these multi-Billionaires could reduce their personal wealth by even 50% and not even notice it, and maybe, just maybe, put their own money into saving the world instead of demanding ordinary people pay.

Fearne's phone fears

2012-01-23T00:05:00.000Z

An interesting side comment by Fearne Cotton on her radio show led to a barrage of texts and emails agreeing with her. She revealed in conversation that she spent most of her life communicating with everybody from the outside world via text or email. Messaging was always preferable to actual talking.

In fact, she admitted, she feels a little on edge and doesn't like it when her phone actually rings. She added that she doesn't actually like phone conversations and somehow finds them intimidating. They make her panic.

Listeners in their hundreds then revealed a similar 'fear' (if it is a 'fear') and it does seem that generations are now growing up preferring to communicate via text rather than actually speaking.

In America, which has always been behind Europe when it comes to the texting craze, the early version was Blackberry Messenger, a sort of texting club for Blackberry users only. Even when texting was restricted to Blackberrys, the craze was the same. These days they have caught up and texting is for every phone and every network and everybody.

Pretty much the whole world is now texting and avoiding actually speaking.

Costs aside, and indeed the price of exchanging 160 character sentences to complete a conversation can far exceed that of a minute's voice conversation during which a thousand times as many characters can be used, there is much more that can be offered during a 'duplex' conversation. There's the added dimension of inflection and interruption, and a very rapid exchange of views and information. Nevertheless, people are electing to use this 'simplex' method of communicating.

'Duplex' is where both parties can 'talk' to each other at exactly the same time, whilst 'simplex' means that it's one then the other. The earliest forms of communication over long distances were simplex, of course. The letter is a bunch of words gathered together and bundled off to a distant person who will then respond with a bunch of words in return. There is no interruption or immediacy.

Eventually this communication method speeded up with the invention of the telegraph and then radio. Even so, with amateur radio ('hams') for the techies and then CB (Citizen's Band) for normal people, conversations were still taking place in a simplex manner. Anybody who has had the misfortune to tune in to a conversation between 'hams' will know how awful it is. Each will take it in turn to huff and bluster away about nothing for at least 2 or 3 minutes whilst the other pretends they are listening. Then the roles reverse. The dispatches are like the letters of old, requiring no interaction.

Despite the invention of the mobile phone, 'hams' will still prefer to use the simplex method of communication.

In other words, something definitely draws people to engage in simplex communication rather than duplex (or 'real') conversation. What is it?

I suspect it might be a bit about being in control. A 'ham' rattling on and on about the most trivial of things isn't going to be interrupted by the snoring of the person who should be listening. There is no immediate judgement or allowing the interruption of the thoughts that are manifesting themselves in the monologue. By the time the 'conversation' has flipped over to the other party, he will have long forgotten to honestly comment on any of the content of the previous dispatch.

In the modern world, I guess dumping a girlfriend by text is a bit more efficient than trying to say the words directly to their face ... or ear. The dumper is able to formulate exactly what needs to be said in multiples of 160 characters, and not hear the sobbing of the dumpee. So, maybe it's about not being able to cope with direct and 'live' communication any more.

I was recently watching a stage production, and was taken by how 'good' the audience was compared to those in a cinema. Film goers regularly chatter and laugh and joke amongst themselves as if the film isn't actually on, and they are sitting in a pub. Theatre goers have a little more respect, but they do continue to furiously text away whilst the actors are trying their best to capture their imagination and lift their eyes away from their mobiles. They text others, or write on Facebook and Twitter, "I'm in the theatre, Fred Blogs is a brilliant actor" not able to wait and enjoy the production first before telling others. And how can they ever know how brilliant Fred Blogs is when they are so busy pounding away at their phone?

They don't send letters to each other any more, but da yoof sure do still seem to need to live a simplex life. But why?

Pastures new, passions old

2012-01-22T00:05:00.000Z

An extract from my latest novel, which was originally written in Welsh for obvious reasons:

We met in a secluded field, the sun almost kissing the horizon. The warm breeze was full of that earthy, musky scent, that only those fortunate to live outside the urban rat race know, and the quiet whispering of leaves in the weeping willow overhead added the final touch to the most romantic scene.

We lay there, both naked. I knew that I had to have her, and have her now.

Without a word being spoken, I moved into a position of dominance. I could feel instantly that this was what she was waiting for, as she frantically thrust her pelvis at my approaching organ. I moved slowly at first, inch by inch, until I was fully inside her.

Then, as the tension rose, we threw caution to the wind, and abandoned ourselves to the moment.

Although inexperienced, she approached every change of position with enthusiasm, moaning with dispair, every time I withdrew to prevent myself from ending it all too soon.

As the sexual tension heightened towards the inevitable, mind-blowing climax, it was all I could do to hold out any longer. Finally, the moment that we had been building towards was upon us, and passed all too quickly.

Breathlessly we rolled together in the now damp grass. As the last deep orange glow of the long setting sun melted into the darkness of approaching night, we lay there still entwined in an amorous embrace. I kissed her long and lovingly, and whispered reassurance of how good she had been.

She tenderly and sensuously licked my inner ear, then whispered, "Baaaaaaaa" and rejoined the flock.

Incompetency based Competency testing

2012-01-21T00:05:00.001Z

Imagine, if you will, that you can sing.

You want to take this further and so you apply to the X Factor. The day of your audition arrives and you are standing on stage in front of Simon Cowell and his team. You are there to prove that your voice has the X Factor and that you can croon a good tune worthy of the public buying your records and coming to your concerts.

You walk nervously onto the X marked on the stage and then get asked to draw your 'family shield' onto a flip chart and then spend 3 or 4 minutes presenting the shield to the audience, explaining all the different pictures you've nervously drawn that supposedly encapsulate and explain your life.

Next, having been herded into a group with a dozen or so other hopefuls, you are given a joint exercise to complete. Your imaginary task is the marketing a CD of songs to the public. The fact that none of you have any marketing experience doesn't matter. Nor does it matter that all of you are only there to apply for a nice job that only involves singing and performing for the public. Instead, this is your task, and the judges are watching you. Oh, how they are watching you. Looking for every hesitation, every word you speak. They are scoring your every move on your ability to do something other than the job you are applying for.

After your allotted team deliberation time, and, armed with a whiteboard and a flip chart, your new team have to prepare to make a presentation to the judges about how you will be imaginarily marketing the imaginary CD. Once again the judges are making furious notes as you work together to prepare the presentation, writing down every time each individual contributes to the collective task. Not intimidating at all!

Between you, somehow, the presentation is muddled through, with the judges then interrogating the team making impossible to satisfy objections and comments about the pros and cons of the thrown together strategy you invented during the ten minutes you were allowed to prepare.

Still not having demonstrated your ability to sing or perform, you are then shepherded individually into a room and asked a number of every day questions like, "Tell me of a time when your objectives couldn't be met in time and how you re-organised your processes in order to deal with the missed deadline."

Following this you are presented with a 25 page long document full of words. You have only 2 minutes to circle the words that best describe you, your grandparents or your relationship with your pets.

Back out on the stage somewhat dazed and confused you are advised it is finally time to sing but you have to sing for only ten seconds and only in a manner which will overcome the noise of a pneumatic drill being deliberately operated next to you on the stage, forcing you into a situation that strains your voice and completely misrepresents your actual abilities.

Inbetween all these stages of the, ahem, 'competition' process, Simon Cowell and his Company Executives have mind-bombed you and the other contestants with a huge quantity of corporate information, including the structure of the company, how it began, what its five year strategy is for branching off into Latvia, and an extensive almost day-by-day blow-by-blow description of the more mundane of the aspects of the routine the eventual winner will be involved in. You are marked down for not asking intelligent and relevant questions about all the information you have been fed.

A buffet lunch is provided, during which you are also being monitored and marked for your ability to interact with the other contestants.

By the end of the long stressful day you leave confused and not really having been able to demonstrate your simple yet unique ability to sing or perform, which is ultimately the 'talent' you applied to the X Factor to be given a chance to use on a daily bass.

Stupid or what? Ridiculous. Cruel.

However, take this away from being an application for the X Factor and imagine it is the application process for a large organisation, maybe a bank, local Government, or any corporate organisation that has been stupidly conned into believing that 'Competency based Assessment' can in some way bring them the right employees.

Imagine if you will, that the job being applied for is that of a cleaner. At no point is the applicant's ability to perform day-to-day cleaning actually examined. Decisions are being made on their ability to successfully survive through irrelevant mumbo jumbo rather than do the job they have applied for.

This mumbo-jumbo is slowly being rolled out to more and more organisations by the aggressive recruitment consultancy business who are able to perpetrate the lie that competency based interviewing and assessing somehow raises the quality of those employed. It doesn't.

Statistically of course, wastage (people leaving) remains the same or slightly worse in companies recruiting in this way compared to companies recruiting in a more realistic way. Company loyalty isn't increased, individuality is non-existent and there is nobody employed who can shine or bring something new to the table. In fact, there appears to be absolutely nothing gained by the ritual humiliation of potential employees in this way.

Well, nothing gained by the potential employer. A lot to be gained by those who sell-in and manage the ridiculous process, yes of course. And, that's what it's all about. It's the usual "creating a solution to a non-problem" and then pretending there is a problem, technique. That always works when presented to corporate fools near the top of an organisation who have no thoughts of their own and are usually confusing and strangling the success or efficiency of the company in the first place.

They conveniently neglect to say that the mumbo-jumbo methodology is highly discrimatory, possibly even against the law. If we forget for a moment that the potential employee is not actually being tested on their ability to perform the actual job they are applying for, whether that be cleaning, answering the phone, or fixing the plumbing we have to look at the bigger picture. There are members of our society who, despite being a brilliant cleaner, phone operator, or plumber, might appear slow and on the outside of any 'team-working' exercise. Foreign language, partial sight, hard of hearing, a different age to the rest of the team being assessed; all will force an under-performance compared to other candidates, and so exclude them from employment in a role they are perfectly confident and capable of excelling within.

To me, if I am interviewing a cleaner, I only need them to show me that they can clean. A phone operator only needs to show me they can talk on the phone, and a plumber only needs to show me he can look after pipes. End of story. Their abilities when it comes to answering competency based questions, or performing stupid pretend group tasks that have no relevance to their job are all irrelevant and completely bogus.

Asking them to try to perform outrageously bogus activities in this way is insulting and degrading.

This really must stop before it infects everywhere. It is time all of this mumbo-jumbo was exposed for what it really is and the increasing number of corporate bodies stupid enough to implement it need to be prosecuted for their acts of discrimination.

They still blame Margaret Thatcher

2012-01-20T00:05:00.000Z

It's been another week of "I blame Margaret Thatcher" up here in the actual anus of the UK, the Tory-free backward-thinking North-West.

Apparently, Mrs Thatcher, who stopped being a Prime Minister in 1990, that's 21 years ago folks, is still to blame for all the riots and the looting and the unemployment and the evils of the country. Thatcher, at her most effective over 25 years ago, is still to blame for it all. Amazing.

Sticks at the ready to beat anybody daring to go to work

Yep, it must have been her that imported the way of the escalatingly out of control American gang culture over here, changed our street and school language, popularised and idolised the gun and the knife and drip fed the idea that you can take take take what you want when you want with no consequence, and without a care if there are victims.

It was probably her that stripped the Courts of their powers to give proper sentences that might actually mean something.

She was to blame for the changing of our society in the 1990s into one that forgets or prosecutes the victim whilst rewarding and protecting the criminal.

I blame Thatcher for the removing from teaching staff of any powers to get and hold order and attention in the classroom, and making parents fear trying to discipline or control their children.

Yep, definitely she was the one that taught the kids to get pregnant and scream and stamp until given a nice free house, complete with free heating and lighting, all paid for by those that actually work so the self-centred inhabitants don't have to.

It was definitely Thatcher who in the Blair/Brown years sold all our assets, especially loads of our gold, maxed out the credit cards, and bowed down to the pressures of the politically correct middle class bleeding-heart liberal do-gooders who infected society and made up the majority of those who hand down the pointless and out-dated ineffective rules and laws from the European Union.

Oh, hang on, no it wasn't.

It was Blair and Brown wot dunnit!

Thatcher came to power in 1979 after decades of the rule and control of society through the climate of fear that was controlled by the Unions and their mainly Northern bullies and thugs who, with exactly the same selfish arrogance and disinterest in right and wrong as the recent rioters, thought there was nothing wrong with dropping paving slabs onto workers to kill them rather than allow them to go in to work.

It was in the 1970s that these thugs brought everything to a halt by starving the country of electricity, forcing rolling black-outs and the complete destruction of industry. Their pre-Thatcher 1970s thuggery was identical to that we experienced from the 2011 rioters and looters. They both did it because they could, it was a laugh, and they knew there would be no consequences.

They didn't like it when Thatcher came to power and made sure that their actions did have consequences. That's why they still moan about Thatcher and blame her for everything 25 years later. Bullies always want to get back at those who have stood up to them and said no.

The rioters and looters will be moaning in exactly the same way in 25 years from now, some will be blaming Cameron, but you know who they'll mainly be blaming, don't you? Yep, Margaret Thatcher.

Hey, what's the betting the morons up here in the North-West, most of whom conspired to kill off their manufacturing industry in the 1970s, will even blame Margaret Thatcher for David Cameron!

I blame Margaret Thatcher

2012-01-19T00:05:00.000Z

Lefties, especially the wealthy middle class ones, are creatures of habit. One of their habits is to blame Margaret Thatcher for everything they consider that's bad about society.

Indeed, the unforgiving Scouse, apart from taking only two sentences before somehow incorporating the word 'Scouse', three sentences before mentioning they hate 'The Sun', and four before talking about the glorious 1970s, will work into their rant, "I blame Margaret Thatcher".

In the latter of Mrs Thatcher's years of ruling over us, part of the anti-Conservative campaign was to constantly swipe and snipe about Thatcher and her policies. One load of leftie idiots spent a fortune on "Ditch the Bitch" badges and posters and going around spreading the word by graffiti on walls (this is pre-Facebook walls) before being screamed at by another load of leftie idiots that such a phrase was sexist and derogatory to women. Quickly they rounded-up all the badges and posters, and anybody who hadn't heard the latest edict and was inadvertently still proudly sporting a 'Ditch the Bitch' badge was shuffled into a dark corner to have their head re-programmed with enlightenment, whilst the badge was removed and thrown away (this was before the lefties imposed recycling on us).

It became part of my act, at work or in my home, even decades after Mrs Thatcher left Number 10 that when I, on occasions, found myself in a disaster - The ceiling's just collapsed on my head, spilling the huge bucket of urine that I was carrying, which immediately ignited and burned the place down - I would wait for a pause in the disaster and say, "I blame Margaret Thatcher". It was hilarious. Erm, well, maybe the first time. Got up late, missed the train? "I blame Margaret Thatcher". Ha ha ha.

Ok, it was a bit of a tedious catchphrase, and it slowly died. Then suddenly I found myself no longer surrounded by the glories of the deep South, but in Liverpool, a place where everybody thinks they are still in the 1970s and 1980s. In conversation, or on radio phone-ins, or within pieces written in my regional (leftie, naturally) paper, when it comes to "Don't know what the world's coming to," type rants, they have to include, "I blame Margaret Thatcher." It appears to be the law.

Obviously when I first started to hear this phrase I was reminded of my hilarious years of using it as an annoying catchphrase, but then I listened further to what the 'Scousers' (bear in mind I know they are Scousers because it's mandatory to mention it within two sentences when speaking) blame Margaret Thatcher for. Well, of course, she is to blame for everything, apparently, but mainly she is to blame for our greedy society they say.

Hmmm. So, Thatcher invented our greedy take-take-take society did she? How conveniently Scousers and the non-Ditch The Bitch badge wearing right-on lefties forget that pre-Thatcher we had already developed a pretty mean and cut-throat greedy take-take-take society. It was controlled by whoever it was at the time that controlled the greedy Union bosses. Some say they were controlled by dark forces from the USSR.

Greedy Union bosses were usually earning 20 to 30 times what the workers they represented earned, and didn't lose a penny when they called for strike action, yet the membership couldn't see this might be wrong. The Unions controlled the less greedy workforce's minds and flexed them like a muscle in order to create a three-day working week and rolling power-cuts across the country. There were no negotiations. Just a society driven by violence and intimidation, and the greed for control and money.

All of this happened a long decade before Margaret Thatcher came to power. We had already become a very greed driven society. All that happened when Thatcher took control is that those who were feeding their greed changed. She didn't make people greedy, they already were. All she was guilty of was not dealing with the tendency to be greedy. Maybe she or her Government of the day should have. Nobody addressed the problem, and for that I blame Margaret Thatcher.

Yet, you try to explain this to Scousers and they respond by punching you in the face and stealing your wallet.

The decline in radio studio operational standards

2012-01-18T00:05:00.000Z

When I was a lad in radio I was taught that your headphones were the most important tool you had. Not only would you hear if some audio was playing that shouldn’t be playing, or if something wasn’t playing that should be playing, but by actually ‘listening’ you could hear if your voice was too quiet compared to the music, or even if the music itself was too quiet or too loud, and so, back in the ‘manual adjustment’ days, you could adjust the volume level accordingly to ensure that the output of the desk was more or less running at the same ‘flat’ level.

I guess driving a desk in this way is a bit like driving a car. You don’t keep looking at the speedo to help you decide when to change gear, you listen to the engine. Yep, the meters are there to help you make fine adjustments or to ‘confirm’ what you already know from ‘listening’.

So, a while ago I was watching this video on Facebook (yes, I was on Facebook) which was showing a travel reporter presenting his travel bulletin. He is wearing headphones. The DJ/desk operator has control and is fading up his mic, etc., but for some reason accidentally fades up the wrong channel, effectively leaving the travel monkey’s mic off. However, the travel monkey just burbles away reading his script, unaware that he’s not going to air, until the DJ notices and gives him a cue to start again and opens his mic correctly this time.

Tony Blackburn knows how to 'listen' to himself

Now my point here is to ask what’s the point? As in why is the travel monkey wearing headphones if he can’t ‘hear’ that his mic isn’t on?

What is it that he can hear? Why isn't he 'listening' to what is going on (or, in this case, not going on) in his headphones?

Surely if he’s not going to take any audio cues from the lack of hearing his own voice in his cans he might just as well have not been wearing them. He's rendered them completely redundant.

Is this really how radio people are trained (or not trained) in these modern times? It’s bad enough that nobody cares about getting levels right these days, thinking the processing will sort it all for them (and then they wonder why nobody can hear a word they are saying as they are drowned out by the music). It’s so bad sometimes that on the same station that this event occurred on, the old supposedly highly experienced afternoon drive-time presenter is quite often impossible to hear above the music.

Years ago part of the pride of putting a radio show together was to ‘listen’ to it as it is being created and make everything mix correctly along the way to produce a single ‘orchestra’ of sound, with a good DJ/engineer almost ‘playing’ the desk like an instrument whilst undertaking his role of ‘conductor’ to produce the finished masterpiece to delight the listeners’ ears. Not any more.

The presentation techniques are boring and dull and now it seems the technical techniques have all but gone. And the industry wonders why radio is no longer taken seriously by the general public? Jeez.

More or less no global warming

2012-01-17T00:05:00.000Z

Statistically, not a huge number of people listen to a BBC Radio 4 programme called 'More or Less'.

Presented by Tim Harford and produced in association with the Open University, it is a generally inoffensive programme that gets to the bottom of statistics and the numbers people in the public eye might use to back-up whatever claim they might be making.

Last Friday was the final in the current series, and so that's probably why they were editorially a little bit daring and went 'off message' on the subject of man-made Global Warming. It is usually the requirement that editorially any BBC broadcast must preach the trinity of terrors that the world is warming, it's all our fault and we're all doomed.

It seems that four years ago, the programme instigated a £100 bet between Doctor James Annan, a climatologist who one could label a 'warmer' as he is convinced that man-made catastrophic warming is currently in place, and Doctor David Whitehouse, a scientific advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (of Britain), a broadly sceptical organisation currently unconvinced that what little warming there is has anything to do with any human activity.

The bet, made in 2008, was that there would be no further 'warm' records broken by 2011. And, according to the 'Hadcrut3' data set from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, there weren't.

Because of the nature of the current cooling to non-warming period we have entered actually being controlled by solar activity, with the trend since 1998 having been downwards or stationary because of the inactivity on our sun, in tandem with other natural oceanic factors meant that the 'sceptic' won the bet.

However, I'd wager that this news will be played down by those touched by the Global Warming religion.

Modestly, Dr Whitehouse explained that all he did was 'listen' to the data and was able to say with confidence that there would be no further 'records' broken between 2008 and 2011.

The data does not present the alarmist view of catastrophic climate change unless you convince yourself otherwise and design predictive models to make it so do. Realistic climate models show we are in for some serious cold trends over the next decade or so. That's why it's ever so daft that we appear to be preparing for much warmer trends, and want to tax emitters of carbon dioxide for causing it!

They'll be sacrificing all our first born on an altar next!

Did you hear about Diogenes?

2012-01-16T00:05:00.000Z

Keep this in mind the next time you are about to repeat a rumour or spread gossip.

In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom.

One day an acquaintance ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about Diogenes?"

"Wait a moment," Socrates replied, "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."

'Triple filter?" asked the acquaintance.

"That's right," Socrates continued, "Before you talk to me about Diogenes let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

"No," the man said, "Actually I just heard about it."

"All right," said Socrates, "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about Diogenes something good?"

"No, on the contrary..."

"So," Socrates continued, "You want to tell me something about Diogenes that may be bad, even though you're not certain it's true?"

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued, "You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter, the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about Diogenes going to be useful to me?"

"No, not really."

"Well," concluded Socrates, "If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even useful, why tell it to me or anyone at all?"

The man was bewildered and ashamed. This is an example of why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why Socrates never found out that Diogenes was shagging his wife.

Goodbye to the local freebie paper man

2012-01-15T00:05:00.000Z

There is this rather old gentleman I spy from my office window who shuffles about the streets of North Liverpool.

He is always over-laden with a shoulder bag, from which he delivers door-to-door the weekly free local paper. I watch him from my vantage point as he shuffles out from one street, along the main road a bit and then disappears into the next street and back out again a bit further down.

I fully suspect he gets next to nothing for his efforts.

Liverpool itself used to have two main daily 'regional' papers plus a collection of thriving local area papers. The two regional papers got swallowed up into one of those huge publishing houses that owns almost everything regionally, and considerably powerful national titles.

The smaller local area papers were a long time ago swallowed up by the same company and for decades have served only as an advert for the main regional papers and comprised of 95% advertising and 5% actual news or locally oriented articles. I'm sure there's an identical model regularly being stuffed through your very own letterbox wherever you live.

As newsprint died, and I don't really have a big problem with it dying, the publishing house reduced its costs by centralising the printing of the regional papers and the local freebies in a place where other regions were also printed. Gone was the 'local' printworks.

Restructuring meant that the same Liverpool based news team now dealt with producing copy for both regional papers, as well as the freebies. Gone were the self-contained editorial teams for each paper.

The two regional papers had slightly different audiences at one stage. One specialised in financial and business issues, the other on more down-market general news about who had shot who and which major drug dealers were getting a few months in jail this week. Each was a daily, seven days a week.

To cut costs they became six days a week, and now the business and finance one has given up and is only being published once a week on a Thursday instead of daily.

The more tabloidy one continues to be published six days a week for now, and every Tuesday those versions delivered to shops within inner city areas will now include a pull-out version of what used to be the local freebie weekly. How long before it's no longer a pull-out but just a few pages with 'localised' content on it? Indeed, how long before the separate business and finance newspaper appears as a Thursday pull-out? Or a few pages within the main tabloidy title?

This means that quite quietly and without a fuss the local freebie newspaper has now gone.

It also means the old fella who shuffles around delivering them is now out of a job, a job he's been doing week in week out for ten or fifteen years.

Of course when the belly-aching over-paid journalists rant on about how the papers they write for are disappearing, their self-centred rants will forget to mention the little shuffling man who come wind, rain, hail or snow, continued to shuffle door to door without fail to make sure the local freebie was carefully delivered. No doubt he did this in exchange for less weekly pocket money than the average teenager gets.

He's now got to hang-up his reflective bag for the very last time, and his hands will start to recover from the over-exposure to the permanent filth transferred from the newsprint. I wonder what will become of him.

Tidy desk? - Nothing to do

2012-01-14T00:05:00.000Z

Not me, not my desk, not even slightly similar. Honest.

I like my desk untidy.

It's MY desk with MY things on it and nobody else uses it.

I know where everything is.

It doesn’t distract from the way I function.

It’s how I function.

Ah, but.

Somebody else prefers her desk tidy.

It's HER desk with HER things on it and nobody else uses it.

I guess she knows where everything is.

I guess it doesn’t distract from how she functions.

I guess it’s how she functions.

Yet, she’s always tidying up my desk (to the point where I can’t find anything), and apparently that’s acceptable.

However, it was totally unacceptable when I decided to untidy her desk in return. Blimey, she went crazy at me.

Why?

I told her that in my opinion, if she had time to not only tidy her own desk but to then also keep tidying mine, she obviously didn't have enough work to do!

She sulked for three days and got out a voodoo doll of me and stuck pins in it very neatly.

But, I'm right aren't I? Why do people with tidy fetishes assume they should impose their tidy OCD on others? They can't take it when the roll reverses. Don't they know that the brain (even theirs) works by random access filing that is certainly not even slightly tidy, ever? Pah!

I'm not on Twitter, I have a life

2012-01-13T00:05:00.000Z

Now then, those who regularly read this England's England place and take an interest in my spoutage will know that I'm an early adopter of social networks. As soon as one comes along, there I am camping outside overnight waiting to gain entry so's I can, well, explore and fiddle before anybody else.

Strangely though, at the end of the day I actually don't really use social networks for much communication and interaction. I use them, well mainly Facebook, for stalking and snooping, and, mainly Twitter, for crowdsourcing and real 'news'. I then use them to tease people to come here to read whatever latest load of rubbish I've ejaculated all over the page.

In theory I should use them to 'talk' to other people. I suppose I do a bit, but it's all a bit superficial and they are usually people I don't actually know, just share some vague common ground with. In contrast, I note even the most cynical of folks are hammering away day and night, stopping only for short periods of sleep, on Facebook or Twitter. They actually live their lives on social networks with an addiction that I'm sure isn't healthy.

I think I last saw this level of addiction to social networking when CB radio was popular in the late 1970s. People would live their lives around their CB sets much as people seem to live their lives around soaps on TV.

For me, as a person who was highly addicted to CB, and even used it to source a marriage partner, I'm not saying I'm above social networking, just saying I don't find too much satisfaction from internet based social networks, despite fiddling with them and understanding them.

In many ways modern social networking has gone further away from the days of CB. In those days you heard the actual voice of the person you were talking to, and they were usually not that far away. These days social networking has moved backwards to be based on the written word, and, like in the days of having pen-pals, the person on the other end can be anywhere on the planet.

For most users of Facebook, the experience is far more like the old CB experience. People are communicating with others that they will also meet up with in real life. It'll be their long term friends and current family or work colleagues that dominate rather than friends or relatives who have moved overseas or have lost touch.

Facebook has become an extension of actually socialising with people, such that having gotten home from work or the pub, people will typically carry on communicating with those who were there for real at work or in the pub, only this time via their mobiles attached to Facebook.

To be fair, there are similar dependencies playing out via Twitter, although that network doesn't lend itself to deep and extended conversations with just the same people. It is, however, excellent for 'broadcasting' information to the whole planet, rather than just keeping in touch with close mates.

Anyway, the other day I was snooping into a conversation on Facebook during which one long term addict who was now finally on Twitter, was singing the praises of Twitter as a campaigning tool and suggesting that because of Twitter, the population had managed to sway decisions being made in the House of Lords (yeah, whatever!).

A rather disgruntled Facebook addict, who uses the social network to talk about his relationship problems, to communicate with his other half, to discuss everything he possible can with his work colleagues, and, well basically live his entire life via Facebook, was not happy at being encouraged to join Twitter. Indeed, he refuses to use the proper name and calls it 'Twatter' or 'Tw@tter", and always seems so negative when Facebook discussions turn to what people might have seen on Twitter.

His killer outburst was, "I'm not on Tw@tter, I have a life".

Ha ha ha ha. How I laughed out loud. A life eh? Spending all day and night on Facebook is a life? You couldn't make it up! But it is funny how people like him can't see themselves for what they actually are, and how the one major thing lacking from their experiences actually is a 'life'.

I'm the man without a past

2012-01-12T00:05:00.000Z

So, having basked in a recent article from Steve Conway (here) that basically went on about how in touch with tomorrow I am, I thought I'd best mention the cost of my childlike excitement with today and the future. Yes, it comes at a cost.

Well, to me it doesn't come at a cost, because what I know is all I know, I've never experienced anything else, never known anything else. It's my normality.

Ok, this is how it works: I have a very limited long term memory except for certain aspects of certain major events. And music, I can remember music. Roughly speaking I have a memory that goes back about 10 years from whenever 'now' is. That means that, roughly speaking, anything that happened in my life before 2002 gets into either a haze, a muddle, or just isn't there. I can re-train myself to keep recalling and, I guess, re-writing into my brain, certain events or certain people, and there are some events and people that seem to always be there, but all the rest just isn't. It's gone.

This seems to be in stark contrast to most people of my age who are stuck replaying events of 30 or 40 years ago in their head, but haven't got a clue what happened yesterday. Huh. Were I to try to look back at 30 years ago, 1982, I'd be mainly lost if attempting to remember anything about events from that year. I can, mainly by calculation, tell you where I lived, and give some vague descriptions of maybe 2 or 3 people I knew back then. But I will recall a lot of the music from that year, strangely, and usually with absolute horror, because it won't bloody well go away. I'm sure this compounds my pathological hatred of oldies.

One thing it probably does do is explain why my mind is receptive to tomorrow's technology today, as highlighted by Steve Conway (whoever he is [Joking]). I have to struggle hard to remember old school ways of doing things, but excitedly look at what's available now and coming up and try to work out how people will respond to what's available. I suspect that having no prejudices from the past is what gives teenagers that freedom to enjoy what's happening here and now, and this is why I'm very much like them when it comes to lacking maturity.

Conversations with people my age are almost impossible. More so if they have known me for a few decades. They will constantly recycle words or phrases from my peer group from, say, 40 years ago, roll around with laughter, whilst I sit there having absolutely no idea what's going on. And, yes, it's true, things from 40 years ago just aren't funny, ok? I find myself having to ask for explanations, and the explanations leave me with those, 'had to be there' feelings. Ok, I was there, but I just don't remember being there. Meanwhile, I will talk about today and tomorrow. I will anorak on about current and new things like I'm a teenager, so we really have no common ground. In fact, I identify far more with people around a third of my age than I do with people my actual age. I can engage in actual conversations with them. But not the older folk.

When Facebook came along I used it for memory re-training. I started to hook up with, well 'Friend', people I once knew. Sometimes I couldn't remember knowing them, but since people on Facebook obligingly share their life stories with the world, I was able to re-fresh and re-train my brain, and to re-put into my past these people. Again, of course via Facebook they'd be mentioning catchphases or events that we'd shared in real life, and I wouldn't have a clue what they were going on about. But, I pretended I did so as not to offend.

I find that by stalking people via Facebook I can keep refreshing fading memories about who they once were to me, but even going through my relatively modest collection of 'Friends' I am at a loss as to who the majority actually are. Mind you, that might not just be an issue I suffer from!

I think I only really became aware of only having a 10 year span of long term memory in the mid 1990s, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't decreased (or increased) in length. I guess a worry (for me) might be if it gets smaller. Only having a short term memory must be weird. But to me, not as weird as only having a long term memory and being stuck in the Groundhog Day it must bring with it.

The day Steve Conway realised he was one of THEM

2012-01-11T00:05:00.000Z

I've spoken before about my Steve Conway Envy (here). From the results of a search across England's England it would appear that I obesses about Mr Conway from time to time. Well, it's true that I do constantly watch him on the 'net to see what he's up to even though I couldn't actually stand to be in the same room as him for more than 1 second (only kidding).

So, it was with quite a pleasant surprise that I discovered myself featuring very often in his latest blog article, and in a good way.Since his article talks about me with almost the same tone and fever that I usually talk about myself, and with apologies for the few sentences when he doesn't talk about me but about himself, it would be rude not to steal and republish (without his permission) his article from here and re-print it here:

Steve Conway contemplates for 10 minutes the value of saving a drowning Christopher England

Steve Conway writes:

I was always on the rebel side.

It was Us versus Them, the forces of rock and roll and musical freedom struggling against the older generation, those in power, the corporate and musical estblishment whose music was of a bygone age. I was always on the side of “Us” and would never change. Or so I thought . .

Of course, my friend and onetime Caroline colleague Christopher England would tell me differently. Chris has many hobby horses, and one of them is a dislike of “oldie music” and a disdain for how quickly the new young thrusting generation become oldies themselves, despising newer music from a younger generation, and believing that theirs was the only true generation of revolution. Chris talks about this a lot, but it was not Chris who brought me to see the error of my ways, though funnily enough my moment of realisation did come when I was in his company, sitting beside him in a darkened theatre in central London, waiting for a tech launch.

Chris is my tech mentor in life you see. Even though I have been involved in IT for more than 30 years, and have worked either directly or on projects for the biggest names in the business - Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Compaq, HP – Chris has always been at least two steps ahead of me when it comes to living in the future.

My first ever mobile phone? Reccomended and procured for me by Chris (who had earlier got me into that great yuppie trend of the late 80s, the pager).

It was Chris who told me about the Orange network, which had this unique new geeky feature not available on any other network, the facility to send short SMS text messages. My first messages were to and from Chris.

When, at a technology exhibition in Earls Court in 1992 I tried out a very early video-phone on the BT stand, it was Chris who was the blocky, pixellated face at the other end, jerking around at a rate of about 2 or 3 frames per second (or that’s what it seemed like anyway). Skype was far, far in the future in those days.

It was Chris who first mentioned some weird tech start up called Twitter, long before it was anything other than a curiosity, and at least two years before it became mainstream.

Not all of his playthings went on to success however. I vividly remember a huge, multi-caller, interactive premium-rate phoneline called “The Villa” which he was an administrator of, into which you could dial if you wanted to meet and interact with people. By pressing commands on the phone you could go into different areas of the villa, meet different people in different rooms, play games, chat etc. It was woefully clunky and terribly expensive, but I can’t help thinking back to it when I see some of the interactions on Facebook.

And so it was that when Microsoft were launching their huge step forward that was Windows 95, it was Chris that I was sitting beside in a large theatre or other such place somewhere in central London. I can’t remember the exact date, but a look back at the launch schedule for Windows 95 tells me that this must have been sometime around, or just before, August 1995.

As we sat waiting for the show to begin, I was very pleased to hear a Rolling Stones track “Start Me Up” being played. (of course, prior to the launch we would not have known that this was a planned part of the whole Win95 theme, in reference to the “Start” menu).

I remember thinking that, after years of big corporate giants being very conservative and oldies focussed in their music for events like this, that it was great that finally they were moving forward, and recognising the value of “our” generation’s music, being young and rebellious, rather than middle aged. Maybe we were winning our battles after all!

And then it hit me, and that one single moment changed my whole worldview on music. This was not big business recognising the value of youthful rebellious music. This was my generation, and our music having been around for long enough that people of my age were now moving up into positions of corporate and government responsibility. This was my generation’s music, in effect, becoming the new “safe” choice, favoured by people drifting towards middle age. This was the moment that I realised that, without so much as a whisper of warning, time had played the cruellest trick of all, and now “we” were becoming “them”.

And sure enough, the signs were there. A new generation of music bubbling under that was not really listened to by my generation, the fact that our music was now increasingly playlisted on mainstream radio . .

From that day on, I could see the truth in Christopher England’s polemic about how closed people’s minds became to everything new over time, and I resolved to think and act differently myself. And this was a good time to do it, as around about the same time as Microsoft was launching Windows 95 another giant was rethinking its strategy, as the BBC started a revemp of Radio 1, to howls of protest from established presenters and audience, that would see a new generation of presenters coming on board, bringing with them the new wave of dance, rock and alternative sounds that had been there, but ignored for quite some time.

Later I was to end up at Phantom FM in Dublin, where for 11 years I was constantly fed a diet of new bands and live gigs. That really helped me to stay up to date, and I couldn’t help but smile when, on the station’s message board in the mid noughties, I saw listeners complaining about how the new music it was playing now was not the same as the new music it had been playing five years earlier.

“They are playing crap aimed at 16 year olds” these 21 year olds would complain,“not like when we were 16, the music was much better then”.

Having recently left Phantom to strike out on my own, I’m working harder than ever to keep up to date on new music, and try to feature a minimum of 50% new material on my shows each week on Radio Seagull. I don’t have the dislike of oldies that Chris has, but on the other hand I don’t have the dislike of modern music that so many of my contemporaries seem to have grown into.

And, though it is itself an “oldie” now in computing terms, that’s as good a reason to be thankful for Windows 95 as any.

Steve

Much more wit, wisdom and words from the legendary Steve Conway at steveconway.wordpress.com

How useless is a sandpaper dildo?

2012-01-10T00:05:00.000Z

I'm not actually sure how useless a sandpaper dildo is. I mean, for those who partake of a little BDSM in their lives, I'd have thought a sandpaper dildo ranked pretty highly in the 'useful' department.

Painful, yes, but not useless.

Anyway, I ask because I've been watching the activities of some raving mad middle class leftie woman in the public eye with far too much time on her hands. I think she has some 'women's problem' making her extremely odd and subject to bizarre angry outbursts, and she obviously has an obsession with, well, dildos.

Her latest hilarious claim to fame is that she's been pictured holding a placard with a child-like mainly illegible scrawl declaring "Andrew Lansley is as useful as a sandpaper dildo."

She even had a page or a group on Facebook with the same phrase, but I think it's gone.

Her major interest appears to be the NHS, and the recent NHS cuts or talk of cuts or changes or whatever. She seems particularly obsessed about getting free healthcare and appears to have a large number of mental and physical health problems, poor thing.

However, she and a not tiny number of cronies are truly obsessed with wanting actual harm to come to members of the current Government. This occupies most of their postings. Over the season of goodwill she was discussing the 'hope' that named members of the Conservative party manage to fall into a bucket of acid slowly. Indeed, she relished the idea of subsequently straining the bucket in order to ensure no fragments remain.

She is a member of all sorts of very fringe Facebook pages. My favourite is the one that barks out "One Million Strong For The Return Of A Labour Government" and has only had just over 1,000 'likes'. Snigger.

But, the overall point I was alluding to was the one of how aggressive and violent are her wishes for others who don't agree with her point of view. Of course, were some right wing nutter to wish similar things on others they'd be arrested or sectioned. Yet, all of this is perfectly normal for those on the left. They are so messed up in their heads (well, you'd have to be pretty messed-up to be a Labour supporter!) that they live in a violent fantasy world full of imagery of death and massacre that would have shocked the Nazis and the SS.

Again, it's far more vitriolic and venomous than you hear from even the most right wing racists and haters. It's certainly not a very good advert for the type of totalitarian socialism people of her calibre would like to impose on us.

If anything, it's quite a positive advert for the 'normality' of the Conservative party and right of centre thinking.

Living amongst real racists in Liverpool

2012-01-09T00:05:00.000Z

I'm only a slight racist. Everybody's at the very least a slight racist, even though people will protest loudly with the phrase, "I'm not a racist, some of my friends are Black," or some such other nonsense declaration.

Of course they are racists! Everybody is.

It's what you do with your racism that's important. It's how you control it.

Look, racism, just as speciesism, is natural. It's how we survive. It's nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, right let's examine ourselves.

Imagine there is only one life-saving operation available but there are two candidates. The one who gets the operation will live, the other will die.

One candidate is your mother, the other is somebody you don't know. Obviously, you will want your mother to have the operation and not the other person.

This, in its raw core is the illogical favouring of one person over another, even though there may be circumstances which would logically say that your mother should be the one allowed to die.

The tendency to favour 'one's own kind' is natural, and extends outwards from immediate blood relatives to extended family. In other countries it extends such that the rulers will all be from one family, and the most hated and tortured will be those who are the most different to that family. It's all racism, even though at the more connected level it's 'familyism'. The greater the degrees of separation from 'family', the more it becomes obvious it is a 'race' thing, the greater still, the more it becomes a 'species' thing.

We can't help it, but we grade everything and label it after comparing it to our own familiarities.

So, as I've demonstrated, racism is perfectly natural, part of our survival, and in itself isn't something we should be ashamed of or pretend is not part of us.

The real key, however, is how to control that racism as we become a more integrated society rather than the inbreeding villages of the UK of yesteryear or the Asian sub-continent of today. The more isolated we've been, the harder it is to control.

Having lived in London for most of my adult life, I have always been part of a forced multi-culturalism, living and working alongside people from all different backgrounds, colours, race, religious beliefs, and experiences. On many an occasion my English White heritage has made me the ethnic minority or disadvantaged, but for the most part I, as with so many others, have just gotten on with my life just accepting the differences to the point where I've not even noticed them after a while.

To quote the cliché, many of my friends were from other races. Also, there was a new set of 'hybrid' or 'mixed-race' second or third generation who were basically from no single racial heritage, but, excitingly, they were creating their own.

Racism in London exists, of course, and it has historically gotten quite heavy. However, for the vast majority of folk, the living of parallel lives or the acceptance of those we interact with regardless of their racial, ethnic or religious badge is by far the greater way of life.

However, for a few years now I've lived in Liverpool. There are spots or areas where people are not the heritage population of inbreeds, but for the most part the level of overt racism is quite shocking and sometimes distressing. By far the majority of the population are not only long term English Whites, but also, the vast majority are only from this area, or the 'North-West'.

It was a great shock for me that my London, or Southern English accent caused racist reactions from the inbred Scousers. They will still to this day pounce on it and discuss with me how I'm an outsider or ask when I'm going back 'down South' as if I shouldn't be here. Very commonly, they will try to engage me in quite awful discussions about how they hate 'immigrants' (which apparently means Blacks, Asians, and Eastern Europeans more than it means people from the South) and it must have been terrible for me in London because London is full of 'them'.

Racism is very open here. Mind you, the community is either of Catholic heritage or Protestant heritage and traditionally hate each other anyway, with the recent troubles in Northern Ireland opening many a heated discussion too.

The fact that I work with a lot of people who are here from Poland causes me no end of grief. Now then, my policy is that a job is a job is a job, and should a person come to me asking for a job I assess their ability to do the job, then their ability to be not too disruptive within the organisation (as in, get along or tolerate co-workers, not rip the company off, and generally just fit in and get on with it and vice versa), and if they pass they pass. Their sex, age, race, religion, or shoe size is irrelevant. Although I would not discriminate against a local inbreed, the fact is that they rarely apply for the jobs. The Polish people, whilst having their bad apples, are generally hard working, cheerful, and honest workers. They all tend to know each other, even as distant cousins, and so they 'self-police'. They also are on a mission. They want to work hard to earn money and then get back home. There's an honesty there. Good for them.

Hold on a second. See what I'm guilty of? Yep, even more racism. I have stereotyped the Polish 'race' and given them a glowing appraisement. Well, that's because I'm slightly racist, as I said at the beginning. And the fact is that one can generalise about racial traits. It's what one does next that's important.

I wouldn't deliberately employ a Polish person over a local inbreed. To do so would be the unacceptable face of one's racism. Neither do I have to fight any desire to be 'fair' in that respect. Equally, I cannot join in with the petty-level slagging-off of non-Scousers that the inbreds engage in constantly.

They openly hate other races. Even the mother of a girl who was potentially going to be employed as an office cleaner rang to say she had concerns that her daughter had said to her she'd be working alongside 'foreigners'. She wanted an assurance that her daughter would be safe. Yep, that's the mentality of the average Scouser. It's like taking a step back to the 1950s compared to life in London.

Scousers, from the very young to the very old, will liberally use terms like 'Paki' and 'Nigger' and speak so negatively about those they've just name-called. Nothing seems to be being done to address this in the schools or in their local society.

As long as I don't open my mouth and so expose myself as a foreigner, I can sit or walk amongst these inbreds listening to their conversations, or their sharp intakes of breath and bad language when they spot a woman wearing Muslim clothing in the distance in a supermarket, or their drunken conversations about how the Polish have taken all their jobs.

It's the way it is in Liverpool. I don't like it.

The cuts won't affect Liverpool's skunk industry

2012-01-08T00:05:00.000Z

Despite the vast majority of the occupants in the Anfield area of North Liverpool having never actually worked, quite a number can be very enterprising and have made themselves extremely rich through a cottage industry. Well, not so much a cottage industry as a derelict house industry.

For some reason, large areas of Liverpool, especially in the inner city parts, have street after street of houses completely boarded up. They were probably scheduled to be demolished or something but the money ran out. So, they are just left.

One of the local sports is of course for the Scally scum to set fire to them.

The more enterprising will warn off the 6 and 7 years olds who are lighting the fires, and instead use them as crack houses. A collection of addicts will congregate inside one of the houses that has had its reinforced steel doors prised off and a party of skunk and crack consumption, vomiting and then sleeping will be undertaken.

The far more enterprising will actually turn the houses into skunk farms. By breaking in via the roof of one house, knocking through walls to get to another, no sign of forced entry is immediately detectable to the casual passing policeman. Whole rooms can be equipped with the plants and the heat and light needed to grow them.

Electricity isn't a problem, as the street lights outside are still functioning even though the supply is disconnected from the terraced row of derelict houses themselves. Street lights are simple to tap into and a mains lead can easily be run to provide all the free power needed to feed the farm. Skunk is grown using power paid for by the Council Tax. Since nobody really works, the Council Tax is mainly paid for by the Government, who are effectively paying to grow North Liverpool's skunk.

Skunk is an essential need of almost everybody living in North Liverpool. It helps keep them paranoid and slightly tame, and is part of a pyramid sales scheme that almost all locals are involved in.

It is impossible to walk the streets without smelling it. The tell-tale smell of old lady's wee on people as it comes back out of their pores, or its distinctive smell as it burns is everywhere. Skunk here is a part of life, and stealing from houses or robbing local shops at gun point (most of the kids have access to guns) helps those at the bottom of the skunk selling pyramid to pay for it.

That's the way it is here, and I don't see it changing any time soon.

No prosecuting of racist Diane Abbot again

2012-01-07T00:05:00.000Z

When Diane Abbott showed her true, er, colours, with her latest racist outburst, what struck me most was how she actually had no idea how racist she actually is. She just doesn't get it.

The unacceptable face of racism in Britain

Much in the same way as some of the very older generations of the White population might use inappropriate words when describing non-Whites, so too with Abbott is there an entrenched embedded ignorance behind her racism. These types of racists just don't realise they are doing it.

Until only a few years ago I lived and worked in London. London just is multi-cultural, full-stop. It is almost impossible to find a workplace in London with all workers coming from the same place, let alone the same race. London is an uninhabited island into which people commute daily from extremely diverse and different geographical areas. At night everybody goes home, back to the 'four corners' of the world from which they came. Were people to be travelling from their homes to visits co-workers in their homes, it might take them two hours.

So, already used to all coming from different areas on the outskirts of London, workers are primed and ready to accept co-workers from different ethnic backgrounds.

Ok, it's not that simple and it's not been that easy. But, it has been easier than elsewhere in the UK.

Coming to Liverpool, which is populated by a predominantly White race that lacks mobility and so everybody knows everybody and has lived where they live forever and nobody lives more that half an hour away from each other, I was surprised by the level of racism I encountered.

Still ringing in my ears is the voice of the mother of an 18 year old about to be employed as a cleaner who told me she was concerned by all the foreigners in the place her daughter might be working. When challenged, she told me that they were "Polish and Eastern Europeans" (in fact, at the time they were 70% Polish, 36% English, 4% Irish) who were "Well known for kidnapping and raping young girls". This statement completely floored me.

Like Diane Abbott, the mother had absolutely no idea that what she was saying was wrong. It was beyond her comprehension that negative stereotyping a whole race with an outrageous claim might be wrong.

Abbott is of course a professional bigot. She has made a good living out of the division in our society based on race.

Indeed, the 'race relations' industry is a multi-million Pound industry that has lined the pockets of many racists over the decades. The whole scam of legitimised racism under the banner 'positive discrimination' still brings memories of a time when people were not judged fit for employment by their ability but by the colour of their skin.

That can never be right, and it never fosters good relations or breaks down barriers. It is actually carefully designed to increase the division and unrest needed in order to fuel the race relations industry.

But, my final thought about Abbot is one of despair. She's an intelligent woman. Well, we are told. Yet to be completely unaware that she is a racist seems unbelievable in this modern age.

Why hasn't she been sent on the diversity awareness training that all the rest of us have?

More importantly, why hasn't she resigned and been prosecuted for her remarks?

Is it because she's Black?

Admitting to Fat Bastard Syndrome

2012-01-06T00:05:00.001Z

I'm don't drink alcohol, and when I say I don't drink alcohol, almost everybody assumes I must be a recovering alcoholic. I'm not, I just don't get on with alcohol. It's a control thing.

However, I do know recovering alcoholics, and they have discussed with me the various steps they have to go through to face their addiction and do something about it. Initially, alcoholics will lie to themselves and others about the amount they are drinking, and they won't see themselves as habitual drunks. Their self-image is of anything but this. Admitting it and seeing themselves for who they are is the major battle. In fact, when talking at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting one of the first things they say is "I am an alcoholic".

Really and truthfully there is little difference between an alcoholic and a fat bastard. Fat bastards feel a similar shame and lack of self-worth, and will happily blame everything around them for their condition. They will lie about the amount they eat, and won't actually believe that the huge greasy multiple-chinned body they see in photos is actually what they really look like, preferring to blame the camera, the light, the angle.

I recall a doctor friend of mine telling me about a woman who punched him because, after calculating her Body Mass Index (BMI), he delicately showing her on a graph that she was technically clinically obese. "I ain't fuckin' obese you insulting little c*nt!" she shouted before waddling out of his surgery.

See, the problem is that fat bastards just won't admit they are fat bastards. Those that do, then dissolve into depression, self-loathing and angst and comfort eat in order to deal with it. Again, the parallels with alcoholism are identical.

So, my message to fat bastards is that there is no shame in saying out loud that you are a fat bastard. The only way to start to fix it is to admit it and feel at ease with it, at ease with who you are. Everybody else knows you are a fat bastard even if they are kind and don't mention it, or say how you're not 'that fat'. Look, the truth is you are a fat bastard, but it's ok.

Now, some fat bastards who are at ease with their fatness don't do anything about it. They accept they are fat and just live with it. Although this is not the best idea, at least they're not beating themselves up about it.

Ideally, a fat bastard should be able to say that they are a fat bastard, and feel no guilt or shame. It is a problem needing to be fixed. It is no different to a broken leg. If I broke my leg, I would have no shame about having a broken leg and needing to go through the process of fixing it and doing whatever therapies and exercise was needed in order to bring myself back to normal. I'd have no shame or guilt when discussing my recuperation with others who don't have broken legs. So, why should I feel shame or guilt when I've stood up and faced my fat bastardness and have started the process of dealing with it? I shouldn't.

Nobody should. There really is no shame and no guilt about admitting there's a problem and trying to be less fat.

I'm a fat bastard, and I know why I'm a fat bastard. It's because I eat far too much and do far too little. Every fat bastard is exactly the same, there are no other excuses. There are only two ways to fix it. One is to eat less. The other is to do more. Or maybe a combination of the two. Those are the only facts. They are the same facts regardless of who the fat bastard is. The sooner a fat bastard takes control of this thought, admits it and acts on it, the sooner he or she can start their journey away from being a fat bastard, if that's what they really want.

Driving test needed every 10 years

2012-01-05T00:05:00.000Z

They've finally moved the trophy smashed up car that was driven a few hundred metres into a house following a row and a stabbing in said house on New Year's Eve, a few roads from my office. Although it wouldn't have applied, it got me thinking about the whole thing of dangerous driving. Dangerous driving is the norm round these parts, and the ideas of bothering to stop when a light is red, or to indicate when turning, are alien.

So, here are my suggestions for a radical reform of the whole road user culture.

First, a driving re-test should have to be taken every 10 years. A driving licence should only be valid for 10 years at a time, and to get it extended for a further ten years, during the final year a re-test should be taken. It doesn't need to be as comprehensive as the original test, but it should consist of an examiner sitting in whilst the driver completes a given route. The examiner should be watching for bad habits and should have the ability to fail the driver if a safe standard isn't reached, instantly reducing the driver to 'Learner' status instead of having a full licence. He should also give advice about what he observed and what the driver needs to be wary of, even if he passes. A few random test questions should be asked relating to the Highway Code, including highlighting any new or changed roadsigns or procedures that have happened in the last ten years.

It is utter madness that a person can be tested once when they are a teenager, and are then licensed to drive until they are 70. That's a long time during which the driver's abilities can be seriously impaired or change. Quite frankly, it's dangerous having people on the road who took a test so long ago. We need to be tested every 10 years, and licences should only run for 10 years!

Second, here's something I really love. The Co-op does a Young Driver insurance scheme whereby for a reduced premium they install a tracker into a Young Driver's car and monitor the driving. The driving is given a score which goes down whenever the speed limit is broken, or care doesn't seem to be being taken on certain roads.

The lower the score the more the driver has to pay for the next month's insurance payment. The higher the score, the less the driver has to pay.

This is a completely brilliant idea. It should be rolled out to every car and for all ages and it should be compulsory as part of any person's insurance. Quite simply it would mean that careful and considerate drivers would find their insurance premiums going down dramatically, whilst those who are more reckless and erratic would find their premiums going up to huge amounts, and should they consistently and persistently drive badly, the insurance company could refuse their cover, ultimately forcing them to stop driving.

Overall, the roads would be safer. 2,000 people die on the roads each year in the UK (that's five a day), with the same again being maimed and injured. Most usually this is due to bad drivers. If this number of people were dying each year due to a pandemic bird flu we would be panicked into taking drastic action, and there would be uproar if that figure didn't start to reduce.

There are things we can do to make the roads safer, and that is to adopt the compulsory re-test and the tracking of driving speeds I've suggested. It's time to campaign for change!

Christopher England fights Fat Bastard Syndrome

2012-01-04T00:05:00.000Z

The first few weeks of January must be terrible for gym owners.

Ok, yes, there might be new business from those idiots setting themselves ridiculous New Year's resolutions about shedding a few kilos, but the main annoying issue is that lots of people keep turning up.

By February, things settle back down into it being just the regular Lycra-fannies and gay men. Everybody else stops turning up, but continues with their £14-99 through to £49-99 monthly direct debit being taken out of their bank account each month. By paying for a gym whilst never bothering to turn up, these morons believe they are in some way keeping fit and in trim.

Being a sufferer from Fat Bastard Syndrome myself, some years ago I too joined the Gym. It was located about 2 kilometres away from where I lived, and, as I have previously mentioned, my love of walking meant that it was an easy trot (or shuffle) to and from it.

On arrival for my first ever session, I noticed how the car-park was full to capacity with cars. Eh? Why would people trying to get fit drive to the gym? Crazy. Maybe it was their laziness and over reliance on their car to get everywhere that was their problem in the first place! If they walked more, they wouldn't have to be here.

Now, I should maybe stop and say two main things at this point. Firstly, for 99% of my life I have thought that gyms were the work of the Devil and where complete tossers hang out. I have laughed and pointed at them and their vanity. Secondly, it doesn't make any sense to me to be doing all the work of, say, riding a pretend bicycle and all that energy going to waste. I mean, surely such gym machines should be generating electricity for which you get paid at the end of a hard cycling session, otherwise what's the point?

I mean, were I to open a gym, I'd make sure I fitted every machine up to feed the National Grid, and I'd make a fortune from, er, 'renewable' energy. Well, it can't generate any less than a wind-farm surely?

Anyway, on arriving for my first ever session, I was already filled with a lifetime's suspicion and irrepressible loathing. Now, it appears to be a rule that the first ever time you turn up you have to spend time with an instructor or personal trainer. He has to assess your likelihood of death and design a regime which suits your needs, and then explain how to use the machines. I had pre-paid for a package of sessions because the website had convinced me this was what I needed, which meant that for the first x sessions he'd be watching me and talking to me in an encouraging way as well as helping me warm up and cool down.

Now, the first thing I'd noticed was that everybody using the gym didn't really need to be there. They were not fat. Most were exceedingly fit. Also, all the men seemed to be gay. Maybe they weren't all gay, but they certainly looked it. The women that were there were sexy. Very sexy. Most were Lycra-fannies. Lycra-fannies are excessively fit and toned ladies wearing figure hugging Lycra that constantly shows in perfect vivid detail the outline of their, erm, well, their vaginas. This is exciting it itself, but when heavy breathing from their work out and beads of sweat are added to make everything moist and glistening, this is voyeuristic heaven. Voyeurism is so easy, considering every wall seemed to be a full-length mirror, so there is no need for direct staring at the mounds of Venus pouting out for visual consumption. It is also probably the only reason why I kept going back.

So, after a full discussion with my trainer about what I needed to work on, and being issued with an electronic key that identified me and made each machine change its settings to 'pathetic' and record my progress accordingly, and having been shown how to properly use everything, that was it. I had nothing left to do, no more faffing about, no more excuses, but I had to just work-out on the machines. I appeared to suit a treadmill, a cycle, a thing you rotate with your hands, a pretend ski and a thing that was like walking up stairs that never went anywhere.

Looking around the room for the first time I noticed that I was the only actual fat bastard there. With the trainer keeping an eye on me, I remember huffing and puffing to get the cycling machine working. It was painful and exhausting and within minutes my legs were crying out in pain. I couldn't admit this as the trainer guy was watching. After a further few moments of hell he came over to 'calibrate' the machine to my initial needs. Each machine is designed to give a resistance according to your needs, and as you get used to it, session by session, it automatically either makes it harder or easier depending on what is needed to make you put in the same amount of effort.

"Hey, it's got no resistance set up at all. My bad. Sorry about that, mate. You won't get any benefit from zero resistance. Here let me sort it," he mused as he pressed the buttons to make my hell even more hellish.

My regime was to be three days a week, using the machines for set time targets rather than distance or energy targets, all adding up to about an hour and a quarter of total work-out.

At the end of the first day I got a cab home and fell asleep.

After a few weeks I realised that, despite being the token fat bastard, and despite having completely sussed the exact right time to be there to get the fittest Lycra-fannies in my eyeline, I was actually feeling a benefit. Sure, I was just shuffling along on my treadmill whilst the Lycra-fanny next to me was running at about 300 kilometres an hour, but I was feeling ok, and the Lycra-fanny looked damn good.

My gym experience was short-lived though. About six months after I joined it caught fire and closed down.

Things often catch fire when they run out of money, but I think this was a real fire, and wasn't anything to do with me, honest. However, it was the excuse I needed to stop going.

It was at this point that I decided to take to walking more often. It is a lot cheaper than a gym and far more natural, even if it does lack in the Lycra-fanny department.

The world ended in 2011

2012-01-03T00:05:00.000Z

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rose by a record amount over the past year. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply. Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear the trend could be the first sign of runaway global warming.
Runaway Global Warming promises to literally burn-up agricultural areas into dust worldwide by 2012, causing global famine, anarchy, diseases, and war on a global scale as military powers including the U.S., Russia, and China, fight for control of the Earth's remaining resources.
Over 4.5 billion people could die from Global Warming related causes by 2012, as planet Earth accelarates into a greed-driven horrific catastrophe.

Those paragraphs were published five years ago in January 2007. They predict that by 2012 terrible things will have happened to the humanity they hate so much.

The good news is that it's 2012 and nothing has happened. Not even slightly.

The paragraphs appeared in a publication called 'The Canadian' and remain unchallenged in the online archive to this very day. In 2007, two years before the 'Climategate' emails proved that all was not as cut and dried in climate science as 'they' wanted us to believe, we were at the height of the scare stories and predictions of the end of the world and it all being our fault.

The sooth-sayers, whose only pleasure in life is telling us that we are to blame for everything and we are all going to die horribly because of whatever it is we are currently to blame for, were red hot with their various predictions, and this one was being regularly peddled.

However, five years hence and nothing's happened. Least of all any apology, explanation, retraction, or revision.

I really think it is time that people who model themselves on Harold Camping - the man who convinced tens of thousands of very gullible Christians that the 'rapture' / judgement day / end of the word was coming, complete with mass fire balls of death and devastation - need to be called to account for causing distress to people.

I mean, whoever the original author was, of what was quite happily and smugly published in The Canadian, must have single-handedly caused anxiety and extreme worry for those who read and 'believed', yet their article comes with no scientific references to any research that agrees with their sooth-saying, and no subsequent apology for being completely and absolutely wrong.

Lucky for us, and thanks to the Climategate emails, most of us are a lot wiser than we were in 2007. Sure, people will get fooled again, just as a hard core will get fooled by Harold Camping should he come out with another round of equally bizarre predictions, but these days by far the greater majority of us have learned to be far more sceptical and, much to their horror, ask to see the science behind their obscure predictions.

Steve Conway fights Fat Bastard Syndrome

2012-01-02T00:05:00.001Z

One of the first things I noticed, following my eviction from London, and arrival in Liverpool, was how everybody smokes.

The second was that every older person suffers from Fat Bastard Syndrome (FBS). Meanwhile, da yoof, usually due to an over use of Class A drugs, are skeletal.

The older generations, without the aid of the Class A drugs, live on a diet of beer and bleached food. Usually this is potato based, sometimes rice, and comes from a retail outlet specialising in using very old fat and oil in which the product is deep fried. For them the height of taste-bud excitement is having a half portion of chips with a half portion of rice and then covering this with a made from powder 'gravy'. The really experimental in Liverpool will not have 'gravy' but instead have 'curry'.

Now, where I come from, 'curry' usually means a clever concoction of meats and vegetables cooked or served in a delicate and complimentary sauce carefully prepared from scratch. Meanwhile, 'curry' in Liverpool means a runny sauce made from a powder to have a consistency of tomato ketchup.

So, 'curry rice and chips' to a southerner sounds a fairly naughty but balanced meal. In reality for a northerner it's just chips and rice with a curry-flavoured gravy. And it's an extravagant experimental meal for the average Liverpudlian. It contributes to their abundance of obesity.

When I lived in London, I suffered from Fat Bastard Syndrome. Indeed, compared to the average around me, I was extremely fat and well over the average. I was noticeably fatter than almost everybody I worked or played with.

In Liverpool, however, I was actually slightly less fat than the average around me. Most people, apart from the Class A druggies, were a lot fatter than me.

In some ways this was comforting, as I was able to feel 'normal'. But, being fat was still wrong and likely to cause premature death. Thus, I set about trying to examine how to deal with it.

Now, I don't drink alcohol and I don't smoke. My one vice is food. I love food. Not bland rubbish food like 'curry rice and chips' but rich and experimental and tasty food. However, I do have a clinical problem which causes me to get fat.

I'm not sure what the medical term is, but my mouth can open a lot wider than my anus. Hence I can shovel stuff in faster than it can come out. It has to go somewhere, so it stays within me, making me fat.

But seriously, I eat a lot and find it near impossible to reduce my intake. Trying to reduce or live on celery and dust doesn't work for me. I become constantly hungry, obsessed and miserable. So, trying to reduce my food intake doesn't work.

Now, the human being is quite a simple machine really. It requires fuel in order to do things. Like a car. You put petrol in a car and it will be able to travel a certain distance. If you don't travel anywhere the petrol just waits to be used. If it were possible and designed like a human being, and you regularly fed a car with petrol but didn't really drive anywhere, pretty soon the tank would be full, and overflowing into, for example, special expanding tanks taking up the passenger seats, and eventually squeezing against you the driver. The only way to deal with this would be to regularly drive to places in order to use up the excess petrol.

And so it is with humans. If you give it too much fuel it will store it making the human, well, fat. The more fuel the human uses the less it will store.

So, it hit me that rather than try to control the quantities of food I was putting into my body, I needed to use it up more efficiently.

Now, I don't do much, and have a rather 'sedentary' life as they classify it. I'm not doing any manual labour and spend most of my day in an office.

However, I've always enjoyed walking. For years I'd do it a bit, especially when it was far too hot and stuffy to be stuck indoors. Now I do it a lot.

I walk through urban areas looking in through windows, a bit like a robber sizing up his next potential break-in, and can be found enjoying walking on beaches, in the countryside, or through 'the sights', and so on. I'm not a fast walker, not a power walker, more an old style rambler or bumbler. I can happily shuffle for a good ten kilometres at a time with no ill effects, and quite often stroll into town from the more suburban areas.

So it was with some interest that I noted that the legendary author, broadcaster, lover of strange music, buses and iPhone anorak Steve Conway had revealed his uptake of walking as part of his healthier regime.

I hope he keeps it up, as walking is a natural and healthy way of using up the fuel we refuse to cut down on taking in. It also keeps the joints and muscles healthy and functioning, plus gives one time to think, breathe and observe stuff around us. It is something that has multiple layers of well-being attached to it. It is not painful nor stressful like jogging, and doesn't make you look stupid and near death. It doesn't destroy your feet or wear away knee joints. Nobody gets pains from walking.

Some people do get bored though. I hope Steve won't get bored with it. I suspect he won't, the more he sees and appreciates the kind of things that I see and appreciate when I'm walking.

And for anybody else looking for a healthier 2012, forget the gym and all the silly diets. Just go for a walk every day.

Tribalism is destroying Britain

2012-01-01T00:05:00.000Z

What are the main problems of this human species?

Humans!

We are our own enemies, our own predators. But why?

Tribalism; the idea that we should huddle together in groups fearing change and looking suspiciously at other groups. From the child originating violent and hating 'gangs' based on the few streets or estate on which one lives, through to tribes based on a religious belief, we seem to have a problem.

A real problem that's getting worse.

I'm always suspicious of those who declare themselves to be against racism with one breath and then supportive of breaking down society into tribes with another breath, and I think we might be in grave danger if it doesn't stop soon. These people need to have their double standards highlighted for all to see the damage they are causing.

In its extreme we've seen how tribalism within our own country will lead to members of one tribe quite happily suicide bombing other tribes within our own country. Such is the erosion of a united identity and pride.

Looking across the world what we see is country after country divided and fighting internally because of its tribalism and the encouragement of separatism.

We are told that multiculturalism is good for Britain. If this meant humans disregarding their different tribes of origin ("heritage") in favour of living and working together in one geographical area, then yes it would be good. However, all that happens is that tribes live parallel lives in the same geographical area, not speaking to each other, not interacting, not sharing, not trusting and certainly not really tolerating or even understanding the differences. This leads to suspicion and fear and war. Already within Britain we are at war with each other and its going to get worse unless we address it head on instead of pussy-footing around.

What was once a United Kingdom is becoming extremely and dangerously disunited in a way that is constantly being encouraged. Even by dissolving power into Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland we are encouraging further division and separatism rather than encouraging unity. Indeed, with the Welsh language being actively encouraged and growing in use as a defiant act of tribalism we are moving towards a situation where we won't even be able to understand each other and enter into dialogue any more. The same is happening in Scotland. Had it not been blocked by public opinion revolting against it, England itself would have commenced being broken down into separate parts by now.

All of this is in stark contrast to the European Union move towards a single purpose and unity. Paradoxically it is also the European Union that is the primary instigator of the encouragement to division and separatism. Ultimately this can all only lead to further European disunity and prejudice.

Looking around the world the countries with internal unrest and civil war we see are the ones erupting as a result of extended periods of encouraged division and tribalism. Countries embracing the differences by teaching and acting with equality and a sense of unity across all are the places of peace and greater understanding.

Here in Britain we look with despair at the mistrust and turf wars that play out within the teenage population, leading to shootings and stabbings, and we seem puzzled that it is happening. We shouldn't be. Our policies of encouraging tribalism, separatism and anything but a single united common pride and purpose are to blame.

We are killing our children, and the killing won't stop until we change our message.

Sadly, changing the message might interfere with the bigger picture and greater agenda of those who wish the division to continue for more sinister reasons. What hope is there for the UNITED Kingdom or Planet Earth?

A powerful image of 2011

2011-12-31T00:05:00.006Z

Of all the images available from 2011, some of them of dramatic natural disasters, revolutions, mass jubilation, probably this one stands out for its simplicity and humanity. Robert Peraza, who lost his son Robert David Peraza, pauses at his son’s name at the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial. A very private public moment.

Motivate to Metric NOW

2011-12-30T00:05:00.000Z

Good to hear that Ireland has removed all the silly imperial roadsigns spouting stuff like 'miles per hour' speed limits and has properly replaced them with metric signs showing 'kilometres per hour'.

So, whatever happened to our move in the UK to metric measurements?

We were slowly phasing out that old fashioned confusing imperial rubbish, but it seems to have come to a screaming halt. For a while on TV, news reporters would carefully make sure they spoke in modern measurements "I'm standing just 50 metres from where…" and all was right with the world.

But, the confusing imperial system is slipping back in. Badly.

When I lived in London, 'down me local market' (you had to speak like that) things were again being sold in "payands" weight, and on TV there seems to be a conscious effort to go back to the old fashioned ways too. "I'm standing just 50 yards from where…" keeps happening.

Look. We no longer have people talking about the price of a gallon of petrol, but correctly, people think in price per litre. This is because we swapped over to one system and stopped bothering with the old one. Equally, when I see something that costs 27p I don't sit there with a calculator trying to find out that it's the equivalent of 5 shillings and 8 old pennies and a farthing. Neither do I try to express it in groats. I just think, feel and know what 27p is, buys, and looks like. No doubt if we were still running dual currency in the UK we'd all be constantly confused with the conversions back and forth and back again.

This is why things are so confused generally. We should get rid of all forms of old fashioned imperial measurement and then just think, breath and believe in metric. Ireland seems to be leading the way in so many things, where once we looked on them as some pathetic simple potato loving bums that envied the UK, it's actually time for the rolls to reverse.

All the time people indulge the old system alongside the metric system, we will never teach people to think in kilometres per hour, or kilograms when they weigh themselves. It's time to take action!

The Christian fear of sexuality continues...

2011-12-29T00:05:00.000Z

My Christmas tree fear

2011-12-28T00:05:00.000Z

Phew! Christmas is over for another year, and my eyes can stop watering.

Now, you know people have phobias? Some people run screaming and wet themselves when something a million times smaller then them walks into the room, like a mouse or spider or earwig. I've never understood this. I mean, I don't particularly like the idea of looking down and suddenly seeing anything walking up my leg, but that's more to do with the surprise and unexpected aspect. Ok, if it was Kylie, it would also be a very very pleasant surprise. Sigh. Pause for an opportunity to picture the scene.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. See, it's not logical to have a phobia about something like a spider unless it's one of those spiders that bites you and you die. I can sort of understand that kind of phobia, but not a phobia about something that can't harm you. For example, I don't have an actual phobia about hungry lions, but a logical reason why I'd avoid them and would be somewhat more than nervous finding one walking up my leg.

So, were a mouse to make its way into my living room, you wouldn't find me standing on a stool screaming.

However, I can reveal a phobia that I have tried to get to the bottom of. My parents can give me no clues. There doesn't seem to have been a childhood incident to explain it. But, it's a phobia of Christmas trees.

This is genuinely true.

Designed to kill Mr England?

Stop laughing.

It's not real Christmas trees. It's the metal ones with a core of branches based on the twisted metal that looks like cheap coat-hangers. As soon as one of these is in the same room as me, my eyes start itching or streaming. I can't sit next to one without becoming extremely agitated. Honest, I'm not making this up. Oddly, real Christmas trees make me think of metal Christmas trees, and so they can annoy me slightly by association when I'm trapped in a room with them.

Analysing the phobia more fully, it seems to be based on somehow assuming the metal Christmas tree is going to leap at me and stab me in my eyes. Again, logically this should trace back to an incident when I was a baby or toddler and attacked by a metal Christmas tree, but there is no record of such an event. There should be a memory of running into one, or it toppling over onto me. Yes, it's possible that the trauma of being attacked by a metal Christmas tree has been erased from my mind, as apparently happens as part of post traumatic shock syndrome. My family could also be denying it in order to protect me, of course.

Over the years, fake Christmas trees have moved from being the silver tinsel covered ones that look like a bunch of petrified metal coat-hangers, to ones which have a sort of green plastic finish with what looks like almost real branches. These have caused less grief, which again points to the problem being fairly and squarely in the hands, or branches, of the coat-hanger ones.

I have to stop writing now. I can't see properly. Even the thought of metal Christmas trees is making my eyes water.

If ever I am captured behind enemy lines and they start to interrogate me, I'll be fine through the torture with parts of my body being crushed, or being subjected to the bamboo under the fingernails, electric shocks on the testicles, the mask with the hungry rats eating my face, and so on. They'll not get the secrets out of me. Unless they bring on the metal Christmas trees. Then I'll squawk like a baby.

Real man's Engineering Guide

2011-12-27T00:05:00.001Z

The domestic violence of Christmas

2011-12-26T00:05:00.000Z

A repeat article from last Christmas to help us pause for thought: Having ingested four times more than a single human's portion of food on Christmas Day from the meal out and away from the pressures of being trapped at somebody's home with loads of people (see here), we decided to make our way to a vantage point from which to stare down like golden eagles onto Liverpool.

I realise that people across the River Mersey in an area named "Wirral" stare jealously at the exciting Liverpool skyline, but us Liverpudlians from Liverpool rarely see the great city we are proud to be part of.

There is a good vantage point to the north, Everton Park. This offers a drive-in viewing platform, kinda, in a parking area way up high on the hill that is Everton Park, looking down onto Liverpool. Spectacular and extended sunsets can be seen from here by looking out to sea beyond the mouth of the Mersey. Not that the locals fully appreciate this, as the viewing area tends to be used as a place to drive to when it's time to ingest copious quantities of skunk. The down side is that the whole area tends to stink of old lady's wee (the same way skunk users always seem to smell).

However, this was not the case on Christmas Day. It was quiet and peaceful. The slopes of the park were still rich with snow and were calling out to be used and abused. Having not brought a sled (or even owning one), the only options were to try to slide down on one's bottom (the snow was too thick and lumpy) or to go roly-poly down taking care to avoid any 'brown snow' lumps left by Liverpool's favourite pet, the attack dog.

Well, after a while it became obvious that we were a long way down and we needed to get a long way back up. However, we were exhausted. Having spied a conveniently open on Christmas Day convenience shop which would no doubt sell the soft drinks and chocolate that we now needed, we headed towards it. Within a few metres of it we were passing a row of terraced houses (minding our own business), when suddenly an upper floor window was flung open and a television was launched from it, crashing into the tiny paved-over front garden below and smashing into a gazillion pieces.

At first we wondered if this was somebody reacting badly to the Queen's Speech, but with the window now open we could hear a child crying and a male and a female adult screaming at each other in 'Extreme Scouse'.

'Extreme Scouse' requires the speaker to be letting out a rapid stream of abuse some five octaves higher than normal speaking tones, and all parties involved in an 'Extreme Scouse' exchange to be firing abuse at the same time.

They were very upset with each other, and both seemed to be blaming each other for the fact that the poor child was crying. That poor child will grow up to dread Christmas Day, poor thing.

We stopped in our tracks to listen, as you do, and were able to gather that both were drunk and had decided to trash whatever room they were in, as part of an argument that I would suspect neither can remember the start of or cause.

I truly hope the room wasn't the kid's bedroom. How awful to have your sanctuary trashed by your parents.

Further debris was jettisoned accompanied by, "What do you think you're doing?" repeated over and over by both of them with a pitch that could only really be heard by dogs. I can only guess that each was trying to out do the other with what they threw out into the garden.

"Look what you've done to him!" worried me as did, "You did it, you did it!" but we surmised this wasn't a physical injury they were blaming each other for, just the fact that their child was now sobbing his heart out. At least I hope that's what it was.

Things got quieter as they seemed to go deeper into the house away from the room being used as a launch pad for random possessions. Fear of them possibly coming out to retrieve their stuff and seeing us and then, as Northerners so often do, starting on us, we decided to trot onwards to the shop.

I've never experienced a Christmas that bad myself, but I do remember my mother and step-father fighting at random times (not related to Christmas) when I was a child and finding it extremely frightening, upsetting and destabilising. I can only guess what that poor child in the house we'd just passed was feeling, and the long term damage those two selfish adults, I assume his parents, had inflicted with their awful drunken abuse of the spirit of Christmas.

What a world of difference from the happy experience that we'd witnessed the excited children having alongside their stress free parents in the place we'd all been enjoying our Christmas Dinner without all the domestic pressures.

Maybe the poor child we'd heard crying would eventually get taken into care and then end up with foster parents that actually cared for and about him.

I do worry that a much crueller fate may be waiting for him.

So this is Christmas...

2011-12-25T00:05:00.000Z

It's Christmas Day.

For a majority of the planet today is just another day. However, for most of the English speaking and 'western' world it's a confused holiday.

It's merged an old traditional festival designed to make the sun not go away (shortest day, winter solstice, whatever) which itself was then used by the Pagans, along with a celebration of the birth of a religious prophet or god or whatever he is depicted as.

This confusion could be to blame for the confusion that actually happens on Christmas Day!

What happens is a mad mixture of happiness and sadness. People try to do the family thing and be happy, but they end up fighting and screaming at each other.

So, like I said, Christmas Day is a very confused holiday. Wear a crash-helmet!

What's Christmas?

2011-12-24T00:05:00.000Z

Christmas shoppers are nutters

2011-12-23T00:05:00.001Z

Rush rush rush.

It's Christmas.

Panic Panic Panic.

Are Christmas shoppers raving mad?

Apart from the slightly odd thing that shops are selling stuff for Christmas some months before, there is a fever that hits folk such that they spend each day more and more desperately walking around shops with their eyes wide, fixed and staring, marching shoulder to shoulder with others equally panicked and desperate.

Why?

What are they searching for? Are the ice caps about to melt and they are trying to fight against other hopefuls for a chance to stock up with some of the limited supplies for their shelter?

Is it survival of the fittest?

Nope, it's only bloody Christmas, innit.

The madness of shopping, first for 'presents' that people don't actually want, and then for food that people don't normally eat, makes it impossible for normal people to enter a shop for the weeks leading up to Christmas Eve.

Those affected by the drug that forces them to go 'Christmas Shopping' are exhausted and near a nervous breakdown by Christmas Eve. After all the hustle and bustle is all over, they spend Christmas Day not shopping. Instead they argue and pass judgements on the gifts and food purchased during their Christmas shopping frenzy. The food is either 'wonderful' or 'perfect' or 'disappointing' or even burnt and overdone. Whatever. It is very important that a judgement call is made on it, for that is the purpose of Christmas Day. It can't just be treated like the non-judged ordinary evening meal on any other day. Likewise, gifts are either 'just what I wanted' for real or 'just what I wanted' with gritted teeth.

Having survived the horrors of Christmas Day, the next day the sales start. So, what do people do? They rush out and crowd the shops all over again, reaching fever pitch as they look for whatever it might be they are looking for. They usually haven't a clue what they actually are looking for. Didn't they learn from the exhaustion of the pre-Christmas marching around shops that almost killed them, that it might be time to kick the habit? It's not normal.

Finally, the bit I've never understood. Where do they put everything? The excess food they panic purchased before Christmas Day. Where is it? Unless a small starving nation is coming round for Christmas dinner, it doesn't actually get consumed.

Will Christmas shoppers ever learn?

The 'special personal attention mail' folder

2011-12-22T00:05:00.000Z

My life is sorted.

Thanks to some kind people who I didn't know before going through a folder in my email system called 'Spam', my life is sorted.

I can't think why I've never seen this folder before. I can only assume that 'Spam' stands for 'special personal attention mail', and the system sorts all the good stuff into it. I can't believe I've missed all the opportunities before today.

Anyway, I've replied to the Russian lady who likes to share pictures of her 'playing' with her girlfriend, saying yes I would be very happy to spend some time getting to know her. I did express surprise that she somehow knew I was looking for a nymphomaniac, but am happy to send her the money she needs in order to escape the cruel people who are keeping her in Russia. With my thousand Pounds she'll be able to buy those fake passports and documents and head this way.

I know it might seem a bit silly spending a thousand Pounds on this poor 18 year old girl, but I'm exceedingly rich!

I am in the middle of helping a Nigerian chap get several Million Dollars out of his country, and in exchange for my help I get to keep half. I thought that was exceedingly kind of him. I mean, I didn't have to do much, just give him my bank account details and some working capital in order for him to bribe some people in order to extract the huge sum of cash that's stuck inside a bank account over there. Any day now it'll appear in my own account.

So, like I said, my life is now sorted. Yes, I did have a bit of a scare with my bank, but I answered the email asking to confirm my password, and I'm guessing all is now ok.

Damn. Forgot the Viagra. Well, hey, I don't want to let down my new Russian girlfriend, do I? Luckily there's quite a few places offering very cheap deals, so I'm going to send my money off today.

Isn't like wonderful.

How a Greek Bailout works

2011-12-21T00:05:00.000Z

It is a slow day in a little Greek Village. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one room in which to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the taverna.

The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit.

The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.

The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich German will not suspect anything.

At that moment the German comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything - No one earned anything - However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

Going to a Carol Service

2011-12-20T00:05:00.001Z

It's weird being an outsider, y'know. But, I went to a Carol Service, 'cos it was Christmas, innit.

Ok, let's examine this: I didn't go because it was Christmas. It was to do stuff related to recording the service for an unspecified reason for a friend. And because it was Christmas, that's why the Carol Service was happening. But hey, I'm probably explaining stuff you already know.

Anyway, I don't ever do this religion stuff, so, as I say, I'm an outsider. Therefore seeing god-bothering in action is a novelty at best and very strange and unusual, maybe even scary, at worst.

I don't get exposed to people prostrating themselves at their god's feet on a daily basis. Well, I suppose, not ever really. So, this was a novelty for me.

The bit I found most fascinating is how 'real' it is for those under its spell. I thought it would be just a sing-song. However, at various random points a keyword would be said, and eyes would close or heads would bow and all would go silent and 'pray'. This is similar to watch to the state that those deeply hypnotised will drop into on command by a stage hypnotist for the amusement and entertainment of the rest of the un-hypnotised audience.

However, the un-hynotised audience for this Carol Service seemed to consist of one – me.

I appreciate that there are other religions that demand their drones fall into this type of trance 5 or 6 times a day rather than stop and question or free-think about what they are doing, so this particular religion with its Carol Service lets its followers off a bit.

I'm sure those attending went away feeling spiritually cleansed and rejuvenated, and I know that most can't exist without the addiction of the crutch that their religion gives them. However, shouldn't we be rehabilitating them and encouraging them to think for themselves? Or would it be dangerous having a world of free-thinkers?

Tallbloke's solicitor makes ready to sue

2011-12-19T00:05:00.001Z

A letter from Wilde & Co.

To:

All those who feel offended and/or threatened by the actions taken against innocent climate enthusiast Roger Tattersall aka ‘Tallbloke’ as a result of the unsought anonymous drop of data from the person or persons known as ‘FOIA’.

That data is clearly in the public interest by virtue of having relevance to the wisdom of certain global policy decisions relating to energy use, energy supply and possibly global rationing of energy sources and the direct or indirect taxation of every individual on the planet for the foreseeable future.

Roger has been publicly libelled and abused across the world to the detriment of his reputation and has suffered distress, inconvenience and damage to property. The worst such offender appears to have been a contributor at ‘Scienceblogs’.

His privacy has been invaded and he and his family have been intimidated.

It is possible that treatment of that nature could be meted out to any persons expressing sceptical views about the so called climate consensus.

A clear signal needs to be sent out that such treatment is an abuse of process and a negation of free speech and democratic freedoms.

It is proposed to investigate all options open to Roger for the obtaining of suitable redress within the law. In the event that legal actions are considered appropriate it will be necessary to appoint suitably experienced Counsel to represent his interests and in this matter Roger’s interests coincide with those of all of who find themselves unable to feebly acquiesce in the pressure that is being applied to prevent them from exercising their hard won freedoms.

To that end, an appeal fund is being launched in order to finance the necessary steps. Contributions can be made via Roger’s Paypal account as displayed on his site (http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/) and all funds received for that purpose are to be transferred to the Client Account of his solicitors Wilde & Company.

Any funds not eventually used for necessary legal expenses will be donated to a selection of climate sceptic organisations. Accounting procedures will be put in place in compliance with the requirements of the UK regulatory system governing the proper use of Client monies held by UK solicitors.

Stephen P R Wilde. LLB (Hons.), Solicitor.

Wilde & Co. Cheshire England

Facebookers make ready to jump off bridges

2011-12-18T00:05:00.001Z

The Facebork timelines have finally arrived for the prolls using Facebork.

(Oh dear.)

Blood before Christmas!

(Where's my popcorn?)

As a very important person, I've had a Facebork timeline for three or four months (I even 'anoraked' about them fairly favourably and gave some handy tips for their use here), and had almost forgotten that it had yet to be rolled out to the masses.

A few days ago the public roll-out finally started. It's still at that stage whereby the switching off of 'walls' and all the hundreds of pages and keystrokes you need to drive Facebork, and replacing the whole lot with a 'timeline' is a voluntary thing. It'll be voluntary for another week or so. Therefore those who hate change will be able to hide from it for just a little longer. Then, all hell will break loose!

I guess the idea is to try to ensure the loud wailing and moaning is not too loud.

Hilariously, I've already heard the, "Right, that's it, I'm off to Google+" mantras.

They, of course, are blissfully unaware of two things. One, that the Facebork timeline is very similar to the way that Google+ already works, just a little more content comprehensive, and two, that we on Google+ don't want Faceborkers invading our space thank you very much!

A few will of course migrate to Google+ and just sit there wondering why nothing's happening. It won't occur to them that if you move from England to Canada you have to make new friends! They'll eventually go back to Facebork when they realise that they'll never manage a quorum, and the small fixed set of people they always talk to are still on Facebork. They'll huff and puff for a few weeks, then settle back down with the same accepting attitude they had before some bastard knocked down their walls and put up that terribly modern timeline.

Speaking of timelines, personally I've never recorded any truths about me on Facebork, and Christopher England is not my real name anyway. So...inspired by the brilliant Joy of Tech comic (click through the pic for more), let's see what I think of to put on my timeline. Mwahahahaha!...

Greenie loonies libel the Tallbloke

2011-12-17T00:05:00.001Z

Years ago when women were accused by the religion of the day (usually Christianity) of being witches, the representatives of that religion couldn't wait to burn them. To them it was exciting and fun. To them it was also a way of ensuring that everybody else was compliant and sung from the same hymn-sheet, literally.

The same was, until very recently, true of how they would treat people who denied the existence of their god. In fact, in many countries this is still the case. The Catholic church is famous for how it punished those who went against the traditions and teachings that, for example, the world is flat.

Challenging the taught 'norm' was very dangerous.

One of today's greatest and highly intolerant religions is the Global Warming religion, the religion of the 'greenies'.

Those who 'believe' are as passionate about it as those who 'believe' any religion that went before it. Strangely, statistically, most 'greenies' are ex-Catholics or were brought up in a very religious household, and having rejected one church they have joined the new one.

This does mean however, that they bring with them their instinct to shout bile and hatred at anybody not conforming to their way of thinking. They would love nothing more than to be able to burn at the steak anybody not complying to 'greenie' rules. The number one rule is of course to believe without question that we are all doomed and that mankind is to blame for something, anything, and for now that's manifest itself as Global Warming.

Hence why there was all but dancing in the street as a response to police action against a climate sceptic blogger I reported here. Reading the 'greenie' blogs it was almost as if they were salivating from the stench of the burning flesh they so long for. They just couldn't contain themselves.

Some 'greenie' bloggers went over the top and badly libelled 'Tallbloke', the man who was visited at home. They suggested he was behind or in some way part of the removal of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia, as they continued on their virtual dance to the rhythm of a beating drum, chanting 'criminal' at him.

'Greenies' by their very nature aren't actually able to face the truth, hence why they believe what they want to believe and vilify the rest, and is why they were very happy to lie and distort the truth with regard to 'Tallbloke'. They do it with regard to the Global Warming religion, so it's to be expected of them to distort or misrepresent anything else, especially if it's relating to what's happened to a 'sceptic' of their religion.

Hey, years ago, they'd have been doing exactly the same about a poor old crone they'd decided was a witch, it's something they are hard-wired to do. The truth is irrelevant to them.

Indeed, as we all know the 'Climategate' emails showed the climate science in a very bad light, and the activities of the climate scientists and those non-scientists who were demanding 'on message' results only, were completely unforgivable.

The 'greenies' have a different take on this of course. They won't usually discuss the actual content of the emails. Instead they will emphasise with deliberately chosen syntax that they were 'stolen' by 'thieves'. This is a bit like shouting down anybody daring to ask a sceptical question with the frightening word 'Denier' with all its anti-Semitic meanings. Yes, 'greenies' chose their language very carefully. Hence why they swapped up from 'Global Warming' to the more sinister sounding 'Climate Change' as the title of their religion.

For the 'greenies' the emails are nothing, prove nothing, and indeed, they'd rather this 'stolen property' not be viewed or discussed by the general public, in the same way the Catholic church would much prefer to have just hushed up and had nobody utter in public a single word about the centuries of child abuse.

Don't talk about, don't acknowledge it, give the people something else to worry about by telling them they're going to die and it's all their fault, and you get away with whatever you want to get away with. This is the way of all organised, structured and intolerant religion, and so is the way of the 'greenies'.

But they do give us something to think about, and prove one simple point: If there are 'greenies' happy to lie, distort the truth about what happened and the motivation for the police visit, as well as actually libel a sceptical blogger, haven't they just proved that they also can't be trusted to tell the truth about anything else, least of all man's contribution to Climate Change?

Climate Change sceptic's home raided

2011-12-16T00:05:00.001Z

It isn't a good time to be a blogger in search of the truth.

Police have raided the home of a blogger in Norfolk, the home of the man behind Tallbloke's Talkshop. They removed two laptops and an adsl (broadband) router.

Ok, it was only 6, not 600 raiding Tallbloke's home!

Some might argue that his only crime was that of being a sceptic about Climate Change, but he is also 'blogger zero' when it comes to the recent tranche of 'Climategate' emails being released to the world.

The original emails were lifted in 2009 from a server at the University of East Anglia, and 1,000 of them were released which showed those involved in supposed climate research colluding together to silence others, and to fiddle with the figures until the required results were achieved. It is from this first set that the much coined phrase "Hide the decline" was derived, as hiding the decline in global warming was an essential part of ensuring the scare story remained, well, scary.

Then last month a further 5,000 emails were released. That's two years after the original 1,000. Even more horror was revealed, with conspiracy to silence papers that were being published with counter results to the science they wanted us to believe was 'settled', and attempts to get people fired so they could completely control the peer review process and squeeze out anything that wasn't 'on message' to what they dubbed 'the cause' were just a small part of the confusion the emails revealed. They were even being told by Government representatives exactly what was required. Unbelievable!

The method of bursting the new set of emails into the public domain was simple. The files were uploaded onto an anonymous Russian server. Then links from somebody calling themself "FOIA2011" were left in the comments sections of various climate sceptic blogs around the world.

'Tallbloke' was the first to break the news, we speculate because of the time the 'FOIA2011' links were left. It was the middle of the night for the bloggers based in America and Canada.

So, this makes 'Tallbloke' "blogger zero" for what we assume is the latest part of an investigation into finding out who grabbed the emails in the first place and who is distributing them.

'Tallbloke' hosts his blog via Wordpress.com and was notified by them some hours before, that they had given access to his data to the US authorities in response to a notice from the Department of Justice (the notice also wanted the same access to data relevant to the 'Climate Audit' blog and the 'No consensus / Air Vent' blog, both also hosted at Wordpress). Then in came the 6 policemen (3 locals and 3 up from the Met in London) with a search warrant and they seized his laptops and router (why take the router?), effectively putting him offline.

Now, of course it is possible that 'Tallbloke' is actually 'FOIA2011', but I very much doubt it. I wonder if that's what the police believe. 'Tallbloke' has said that he understands he'll get his property back just as soon as they've cloned his hard drives. Hmmm. I wonder how many long months that will take!

You will probably notice that mainstream news media, especially the BBC, will keep very quiet about this to ensure ordinary people don't get to find out what's going on.

One has to wonder why they are taking this action this time around. There seems to be an added urgency to solving this one.

Some are speculating that it is the as yet unrevealed contents of the third set of emails that are the most damning and causing the most panic. These have only been released into the blogging world as a highly encrypted zip file. Without the key, it could take a million years to break into the file.

The key is in the head of whoever 'FOIA2011' is. Should 'FOIA2011' meet with an 'accident', decide to 'commit suicide', or just go off the grid before he can reveal the key to anybody else, then of course, the secret of that third tranche of Climategate emails remains lost forever.

Now that wouldn't be good for the freedom of information and the pursuit of truth, would it?

Pants prove Global Warming

2011-12-15T00:05:00.000Z

Well, that's it then. No further arguments can counter this ultimate piece of evidence.

Are we ready for a frozen life when the Sun goes out?

2011-12-14T00:05:00.001Z

It's fairly obvious to anybody but the weirdest, that the primary driving force of the overall temperatures of the different hemispheres on this planet of ours is the Sun.

Some humans wish to elevate man's importance to that of the Sun, and have decided that the world is warming and it's all our fault.

However, the reality is that we are entering a period of extended cooling in the northern hemisphere. This has been forecast for a considerable period by those who study the Sun and have been wondering about its lacklustre performance of late. Further evidence has been published this month that indicates more strongly than before that we may be heading for a Grand Solar Minimum as deep as that of the Maunder Minimum which plummeted the UK and Europe into the extreme cold during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Back in the 1600s the Thames famously froze over and people were skating on it. We should expect similar to start happening from about 2020 onwards, with a slow gradual ramp from now heading towards that period.

However, with the politically motivated pre-occupation with the belief that we are facing Global Warming, all is geared to a response to completely the wrong set of inevitable events.

When most of the country is whited out and frozen, will we be able to produce enough energy and food to keep our population warm and fed?

We are already being forced into fuel poverty by the ridiculous carbon taxation that is there to subsidise energy produced by devices that certainly won't function at the prolonged sub-zero temperatures that we are about to endure. Frozen solid wind turbines, and ice locked hydro-electric plants, alongside land impossible to farm, and water impossible to deliver to the home will throw us into such severe shortages that mass death is inevitable.

In truth, rather than pay lip service to the pretend man-made climate change lobby, this country should be building and protecting its infrastructure in order to cope with what truly lays ahead.

We need a rapid programme of enhanced nuclear energy generation for sure, and to look at ways to protect our food production and distribution, and to ensure utility supplies to our homes and methods of protecting roads and other communications in order to give us some level of mobility during the many months each year of snow and freezing conditions.

However, we are too busy looking at exactly the opposite. We are stupidly concentrating on doing things which will actually make it so much harder to survive the inevitable effects of the coming Grand Solar Minimum.

We are on a serious path to self destruction, because, unlike during the last Grand Solar Minimum, we are no longer self-sufficient within a local community or local household. We rely on things being produced elsewhere and delivered to us, and 99% of city, town and village dwellers have no idea how to survive in that fashion in this modern era. Once those things we need can't get to us, we have no idea how to keep and slaughter our own animals or grow our own food, even if the resources were actually there. We won't have a clue how to keep ourselves warm and healthy. This will be especially difficult when there's not enough electricity to go round, and we are stuck in our homes with no heat and no food.

The current lack of response to the coming ice age is outrageous and suicidal. It is almost akin to a deliberate ploy to depopulate through starvation and freezing us to death.

Crosby has never been part of Liverpool

2011-12-13T00:05:00.001Z

Yes, I have complained before about outsiders pretending they are 'Scousers' or pretending have something to do with Liverpool (here). But, I'm about to complain some more.

Not a Scouser, just a Seftonite

The X Factor runner-up Marcus Collins comes from Crosby, not from Liverpool. So why was the Lord Mayor of Liverpool (in full chains of office) in the audience to gee him on? More importantly, why was the Mayor of Sefton nowhere to be seen?

Crosby is a town in Sefton. Decades ago it used to be part of Lancashire. It is not part of Liverpool. It has never been part of Liverpool. It is to the north of Liverpool. Liverpool is to the south of Sefton.

So, why on earth was an official from Liverpool in the crowds of the X Factor final at Wembley Arena, supposedly 'representing' his home town. The Marcus Collins home town is Crosby, in Sefton.

Sefton has its own Mayor. Where was he? Why wasn't he there supporting his local talent?

Isn't this all as bizarre as the Mayor of London attending a function to support somebody from Essex? London is not Essex. Essex is not London. Likewise Sefton is not Liverpool. Liverpool is not Sefton.

Indeed, bizarrely, during a 'home-coming' event in the week before the final, Collins performed to the crowds in the centre of Liverpool. Why wasn't he performing to crowds in Sefton, ideally in Crosby where he comes from?

Again, this is as bizarre as a contestant from Liverpool having a 'home-coming' event in Manchester.

Indeed, when Rebecca Ferguson was a contestant in 2010, she came from Anfield in Liverpool, and it was right and proper that she be hailed as from Liverpool. She is a true Scouser, not an outsider. It would have been very strange if they'd decided to stage her 'home-coming' event in Sefton. Even more bizarre if the Mayor of Sefton had attended X Factor in full chains of office to show his support.

Why are outsiders constantly trying to pretend they are from Liverpool? Yep, Sefton is part of 'Merseyside', Liverpool is part of 'Merseyside', and it would be acceptable for X Factor judges to have implored "the whole of Merseyside" or "the whole of the North-West" to vote for Collins. But, why pick on just Liverpool, asking us to vote for somebody who's nothing to do with Liverpool?

There are too many people pretending they are from Liverpool. It needs to stop, and it needs to stop now!

The concept radio show

2011-12-12T00:05:00.001Z

Maybe I don't realise it but I am potentially sounding like a long haired dinosaur rock enthusiast. Lovers of 'progressive rock' will lament the passing of the concept album. Concept albums were all but symphonic in their approach to how different songs would be presented as essential cogs in the single wheel of the experience of listening to an entire album.

Examples more well known to normal people that I can cite might include the early Pink Floyd stuff like Dark Side Of The Moon, or Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, or albums made by Yes or Vangelis. The idea of 'concept albums' is that whilst they may contain individually identifiable songs, which, if you really must, you can listen to on their own, the whole album was best consumed from start to finish.

A modern variance might by the 'mix' album where dj-trickery leads from one song neatly seguing into another. However, most albums are sold as a random disjointed collection of songs. Usually the songs have nothing to do with each other and are just 'there'. The only thing 'common' between them is that they are all by the same artist. These albums are not designed to be listened to from end to end. They are not concept albums. They are places were 'singles' are stored ready to be listened to individually and in any order. It doesn't matter if a song is missed out.

And so it is with today's music radio stations. No longer is their output designed to be listened to end to end. It is no longer a symphonic collection of individual good things that 'fit' together to enhance the whole they are forming, but just a collection of 'singles' designed to give the listener the opportunity to press their scan button as soon as one ends and the next begins when it doesn't fit their mood, and what might be on offer from another radio station might.

It would be really nice if radio stations went down the route of providing, at least at certain times, 'concept radio'.

Well over a decade ago, Radio 1 broadcast some late night 'concept radio' shows put together by Chris Morris. Chris Morris is probably better known for the satirical and controversial TV show 'Brass Eye' which seriously took the piss out of the way media was going.

But the series of 'concept radio' experiences he produced were called 'Blue Jam'.

How to explain 'Blue Jam'. Well, it was an hour of bizarre slightly off-the-wall discussions, verbal exchanges or 'situations' that would 'just happen' inbetween songs or instrumental pieces of music that somehow fitted the overall bizarre mood of the hour. Quite often it was a little disturbing or made no real sense, but it was a whole hour of 'mood' rather than something that was supposed to make conventional sense. It was brilliant.

It seems to me that if radio was to take a break from trying to imitate an iPod left playing on random, but to try to craft hours that were as compulsive as Blue Jam was at the time, that radio might redeem itself from the grave it so wishes to plunge into.

We have peaks and troughs of music radio playing 'love songs' in the evenings. It'll be different this time next year, but currently love songs infest late night radio again. These are programmed because nobody is bothering to listen, and the hope is that somebody might have left the radio on by the side of the bed they are having sex in.

In Liverpool, one of the radio stations has 'The Peaceful Hour'. Some of the songs played aren't necessarily that peaceful, just power ballads. The mood is broken by loud and out of tempo commercial breaks, so the whole show tends to be a bit pointless compared to what it could be had a bit of thought and effort gone into it.

Probably the last legal 'concept radio' shows left in this land are the ones put together to showcase a specific music genre. These of course are rapidly disappearing from the BBC local radio stations because of the cuts, and disappeared many years ago from the commercial sector who have slowly been able to convince an ineffectual Ofcom to allow them to only broadcast homogenised programming.

They are however available via the pirate radio sector. Pirate radio will play a specific genre and ensure that everything about it fits the mood. Pirate radio is the last 'concept radio'. Could that be why so many listen to them rather than to legal radio?

Climategate 2.0: Cameron's adviser is now sceptical

2011-12-11T00:05:00.000Z

So, if mainstream news media reports are to be believed, it appears that the UK Prime Minister's 'green guru' has sussed that the whole man made climate change scare is just man made.

Steve Hilton, the man behind the Conservative party 'Vote Blue and Go Green' slogan and director of strategy, supposedly shocked a meeting of the Energy Department, full of those indoctrinated by the Global Warming religion's propaganda, by saying that he didn't believe Climate Change was as cut and dried as the 'greenies' would like to force the rest of the world to 'believe'.

He is advising taking a far more relaxed approach to environmental issues, especially as the 'greenies' desire to force fuel poverty upon Britons is starting to bite. The real problem is that the country is bound by legislation to enact some of the 'greenie' religion's desires, and so it is proving harder than first imagined to work to protect the starving and shivering of the United Kingdom.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), much to the consternation of the various environmentalist pressure groups that usually dominate and try to control it, has already started to soften the level of alarmism by actually allowing this year's 'Climate Bible' to put doubt on the level of sensitivity our climate has.

With the Climategate 2.0 emails showing that the climate scientists were being directly told by the Labour Government of the day, exactly what to present to the public, requiring that it be 'on message' to 'the cause', with the Climategate 2.0 emails showing that any science papers that disagreed with the 'greenie' religion, were squashed, and the editors of associated scientific journals were hounded and 'punished', with the Climategate 2.0 emails showing the deep control over the editorial policies of the BBC to make all reporting biased, and with more climate scientists coming forward to join the thousands who are not convinced man has any real influence, the 'greenie' propaganda is beginning to fail.

All we true sceptics want is a halting of the dogma and 'faith' based greenie propaganda, and for it to be replaced by a dominance of evidence based science.

What are the wind turbines for?

2011-12-10T00:05:00.000Z

Now then, stop me if I'm wrong, but aren't wind turbines supposed to be furiously generating electricity when it's windy? I mean, that's their whole point, right?

The wind turbines are there in their nice little clusters turning wind into the most expensive energy we've ever gotten involved in, costing consumers a fortune as our energy bills soar in order to pay for them and pay the operators for the privilege of them existing. And all because the 'greenies' religion doesn't allow them to engage with cheaper and more realistic alternatives.

Anyway, it turns out that not only are wind farms generating little to no electricity most of the time because there's not enough wind, but when there is wind they have to be switched off to avoid damage.

What?

Yes, if there's even the slightest possibility that winds will exceed 80kph (50mph) then the turbines have to be switched off, locked down and forbidden from producing electricity.

Now, I somehow had the idea that with these huge winds buffeting Northern Britain, especially Scotland, the wind farms would be mad at it churning out huge supplies of electricity, enough to be stored to ensure the pensioners don't freeze to death this winter. No, not the case. It's the wrong kind of wind. Well, it's the wrong amount of wind.

In the first instance, the turbines can't actually operate in these strong gusts, and in the second, there's not really anywhere or any way to store overproduced electricity. It just goes to waste if the National Grid can't take it.

Compounded to this technical issue is the fact that the National Grid is forced to pay the wind farms for the fact it was unable to take their electricity. That gets passed on to us, the bill payers, and so we are effectively just being charged for windy days, not for actual electricity. The windier it is, the more we pay, even if we can't use the electricity being over-produced. Crazy. It's like being in a restaurant and being full, yet the waiter bringing you extra food you didn't ask for, just can't eat, and charging you for it even though you didn't ask for it and couldn't eat it.

In contrast of course, if the National Grid needs electricity and the wind farms are unable to supply it because there's no wind, or the turbines are frozen and unable to operate in sub-zero conditions, tough, they of course don't get 'fined' or face any financial penalty whatsoever. The 'greenies' religion has ensured they are above all that kind of thing.

So, when winds are forecast to reach over 80kph, even if they actually don't gust that high, farms shut down. The shutting down process consists of turning the blades side on to the wind and locking them in place so the wind passes over what appears to it to be the thinnest point with no resistance.

When things go wrong and a turbine isn't shut down then it goes mad and catches fire (pictured). The fire of course completely destroys the interior causing tens of thousands of Pounds worth of damage, which we then have to pay for, and of course, an extended period of no longer producing electricity.

During the winds across Scotland, which reached 265kph (165mph) not only did this turbine explode and catch fire, hurtling huge flaming sections down to earth, but also another one normally towering over 90 metres in the air, just fell over. Luckily nobody was killed in either incident, although some homes had to be evacuated.

The 'greenies', of course, just shrug the incidents off with a dismissive, "Oh well!" However, had a similar incident of a conventional fossil fuel or, heaven forbid, a nuclear reactor's turbine exploding occurred, they'd have been out there in their packs, scaling buildings to put their 'occupy' banners up, and the mainstream news media they control would have been all over it with super-graphics, talking heads, and a whole fever of doom and gloom. But, nothing.

I've nothing against wind farms, even though they are a bit dangerous. They are everywhere I look when I stare out to sea. I just wish they didn't cost me so much, and I worry for those that are being sent into fuel poverty by the unfair advantage they have over the far more efficient and reliable methods of producing electricity.

Charlie Brooker is annoying

2011-12-09T00:05:00.001Z

Charlie Brooker starts off as slightly annoying, but can get as far as very annoying.

Brooker looking annoyed

Charlie Brooker is not just annoying because he broke the unwritten covenant with every Blue Peter watching pre-pubescent boy by marrying the beautiful Konnie Huq, an action which, quite frankly, is all but unforgivable.

He's annoying because his observational humour is sometimes so dark it's thick with devil juice, despite being so right.

He annoyingly succeeds when pointing out how crass a lot of TV is in his Screenwipe and Newswipe shows, especially mainstream news media and reality shows, and his satire hits home when he annoyingly gets it all so right about how it is all so wrong.

Brooker is probably at his second most annoying (the first being the Konnie Huq thing) when he is writing stuff for TV.

One of his best was 'Dead Set' during which he turned the actual Big Brother set into a zombie fest of blood and gore and dead bodies. I know it's sort of like that most of the time, but this was real zombies and blood and gore, including Davina McCall turning into an out of control zombie. Yep, he annoyingly desecrated that perfect MILF, Davina.

He also annoyingly never addressed the great mystery of zombies that I've never understood; why it is that some victims turn into zombies whilst some victims get eaten. I mean, what's the pecking order?

But all of this annoyingly pales into insignificance compared to the premise he explored in episode one of his Black Mirror trilogy. Three different self-contained stories make up Black Mirror. The second one, '15 Million Merits' takes the X Factor show to the annoying next level, some might say, the ultimate level of reality TV shows that we are actually waiting for, and really needs to be viewed by those who 'believe in' reality TV.

A pig looking at its Prime...

However, episode one, 'The National Anthem', went with a perfectly rational idea. You are the Prime Minister and you wake up one morning to discover a senior member of the Royal Family has been kidnapped. The kidnappers have released a video via Youtube (so everybody sees it) that says that the Princess will be killed at 4pm unless the Prime Minister is shown on all TV channels across the UK, having sex with a pig.

Yep, the Prime Minister has to save the Princess by having sex with a pig, live on TV.

'The National Anthem' annoyed a few hundred viewers who huffed and puffed and complained, presumably because they are pigist or something, but for the rest of us with a brain this show was an extremely funny yet uncomfortable ride (sorry, that wasn't a pig reference). It's probably the best thing I've seen on TV (I'm still not talking about the pig) for a very long time. It was so wrong that it was right, whist also being so right that it was wrong.

Yes, that annoying Brooker had hit a perfect premise and played it out perfectly, damn him. If you missed it, I implore you to go online to 4OD and play it, or make sure you catch one of the Channel 4 repeats. It's truly the best thing that's been on TV for years, annoyingly.

Climategate 2.0: The greenie religion

2011-12-08T00:05:00.001Z

Followers of Science: When the people from CERN fired a neutrino or two and they arrived at a destination far faster than they should have according to the laws of physics and the theory of special relativity, they went public. They said they didn't understand how this was happening, or indeed if this was happening. They shared their data, and reached out for ideas and theories. They were happy to be shown they'd done something wrong. They were happy to discuss a new theory as to how it was possible. They were open. They were honest. And of course, out came a hundred different papers from others to either show how their experiment was faulty, or to explain what had happened and how it remained within the theory of relativity, or to replace the theory.

Followers of the old Religions: When Harold Camping decided that the world was going to end he was evasive and vague about how he just knew this would happen. He became angry at those who challenged him for a proper explanation and logical evidence, and said there was no 'plan B', no alternative to how he had said it would be. Many of course, blindly followed his pronouncements believing him completely, giving up all their worldly possessions, being convinced they would just float away as part of a 'rapture' so no longer need them. They didn't float away of course, and they are now living in poverty because they'd believed what they'd been told. Like those thousands who were regularly sexually abused by Catholic priests, they got no apology. Despite being constantly shown as fraudsters, happy to spend donations on prostitutes and fast living whilst preaching something else, the gullible will still have faith in the millionaire evangelists who spout hell and damnation in order to relieve the faithful of their cash.

The bottom line here is that the 'faithful' just want to believe. Nowhere inside them is there any space for logic or for sense. They've made up their minds, or had their minds made up for them from birth, and then they've found somebody to lead them. They then let them lead them without question. Theirs is a world of 'faith' rather than 'science'.

Followers of the Climate Religion: The easily led and those looking for a new religion to hang their hopes on, most having rejected their original strictly Christian upbringing, turn to the 'greenie religion'.

Having been brought up pre-indoctrinated to believe that mankind is evil, constantly sinning, and is to blame for everything, even when they reject the other premises of the theology that was rammed down their neck from birth, this mistrust of their own species remains as a residual paranoia within their brain. It's a paranoia often enhanced by the persistent regular use of recreational drugs known to alter perception and directly affect such emotions as paranoia. Greenies are most usually regular users.

It's a very hard thing to de-program a person from believing that humanity is evil. Removing the basic god delusion is one thing, removing issues associated with it is another completely. The mental damage remains, colouring the reality around them.

This is how they 'know' that man is 'bad'. Once upon a time they 'knew' he would blow up the planet with bombs and so we'd all die. Then they 'knew' that all the trees would disappear and so we'd all die. Then they 'knew' that nuclear power would get out of control and so we'd all die. Then they 'knew' there was a hole in the ozone layer and so we'd all die. And finally they 'knew' that the world was heading towards a new ice age and so we'd all die. Oh, then that changed to how they 'knew' that the world was warming and so we'd all die. The current thing that will kill us all as far as the 'greenies' are concerned is global warming, recently re-branded as 'climate change' since it's been discovered that it's currently cooling (again). In all cases, it's all man's fault, of course, and, just as it is in most brands of the Middle Eastern originating religions like Christianity, man is to blame for anything and everything and needs to constantly feel guilty and make recompense for his sins.

A greenie doesn't actually need hard scientific evidence, he just 'knows'. It's the residual effect of 'just knowing' any religious belief. Science doesn't have to be involved as far as a greenie is concerned.

However, the complex study of the climate should be a science. It should be a science no different to firing neutrinos from one place to another. What's gone wrong with the whole Climate Science thing, and has been exposed by the Climategate emails is just how so much of it is based on 'faith' or 'just knowing' rather than hard science. And where there is science, there are as many studies saying man has no important influence on the climate as there are saying he has. In other words, the science is actually anything but settled.

Sceptics have a habit of wanting a demonstration of the science. Science is normally open in the way that I mentioned that it is with CERN and its confusion over speedy neutrinos. But this is how science works by sharing the raw data and showing the workings and how conclusions have been arrived at. Sceptics are not suspicious of CERN, but excited to work with the data they've made freely available. That's science.

So when the sceptics started asking for the raw data from which declarations of man made global catastrophe were being pronounced, they were met with similar stonewalling techniques employed by Harold Camping. That's not science.

Requests to see the raw data has thrown those supposedly working on the science of climate and climate change on our behalf into panic. The emails expose how they were discussing refusing to, and advising each other to delete things. The emails expose how they were selecting the pieces of research and evidence that supported the premise that the world was warming and we were to blame and rejecting the research and evidence that said it wasn't. The emails expose how they were being told by people from the Government of the day what message was wanted. The emails expose how they've lost and muddled the original raw data they were working on and didn't know which bit of data came from where. And yet, they insisted we 'believe' what they are saying.

The emails expose that for us to risk everything on a belief that humans are forcing global warming/climate change and to take bizarre action because of it is as dangerous as it was for the followers of Harold Camping to risk everything on his theory about how the world was about to end.

What makes radio grate in Liverpool?

2011-12-07T00:05:00.000Z

Apparently there's a conference today in Liverpool, to discover what's 'great' about radio in Liverpool.

Well, of course, Liverpool only actually has five station based in it, and they, generally speaking try to broadcast to Merseyside and beyond rather than concentrate on 'Liverpool'. Three of those stations are owned by one company and their playout systems are all co-located. One station is the BBC's, and the last one is owned by a company with radio stations in other places.

Obviously, transmitters carry the programming of other stations receivable in Liverpool, including the regionalish Real Radio, national Smooth Radio, Classic, talkSPORT, and the BBC National services.

A good FM radio in Liverpool can receive most of the Greater Manchester stations, and can usually pick up smaller stations covering areas of the Wirral, or up the coast in Southport, parts of Lancashire, Wigan, etc. In that context, if people in Liverpool don't mind listening to stations not aimed at them, designed for other communities, or regional or country-wide programming, there is a kind of extended 'choice' available of mainly exactly the same thing, but maybe playing the same songs at slightly different times to each other.

So, back to Liverpool itself.

The three stations clumped together in one place and owned by Bauer consist of a part-time AM oldies service, Magic 1548, that mainly is automated, carrying networked programming, or might just as well. It is the usual unlistened to oldies service rotating round back to back old songs that everybody knows and everybody's heard a billion times.

Then there's Radio City 96.7, the heritage station. Providing a safe and typical standard commercial pop-radio delivery, it rotates through various daytime presentation formats, from the 'pop-with-a-pratt' style where an inane presenter tries to talk about trivial things, or make listeners laugh, usually with a female sidekick to giggle stupidly in the right places when she's not stumbling over the traffic report, through to the 'shut-the-fuck-up' style where the presenter pops in a couple of times an hour to make long drawn out essential announcements ahead of playing an extensively long number of commercials. Radio City is very commercial heavy. A bit like Capital Radio in London, it retains a large audience because it's always been there. If it were a brand new service it wouldn't stand a chance.

Finally, and also co-located in the 'tower' that is part of the landscape of Liverpool, is CityTalk 105.9.

Inappropriately, this station is mainly not talk. It's mainly a computer playing out unannounced songs, strangely not too dissimilar to those on Magic. During most of the day, a generic 5 to 10 minute news and sport bulletin is re-recorded every hour, and left to play out on repeat, with the gaps inbetween when it is not actually playing, being filled by unannounced songs. At peak times inbetween these, about three times an hour a 'presenter' will appear instead of music playing. He will woffle on about nothing, usually trailing the pre-recorded features coming up, or talking about football with others who just happen to be there because they work in the City tower. CityTalk, like Radio City has a phenomenal amount of commercials.

CityTalk is a lost opportunity. When it first started it had a most bizarre format of carefully put together programming that might rival a regional BBC service, alongside personality presenters who would take phone calls, interview locals, and generally provide a rather expensive talking radio format. The demographic it seemed to be aiming at was all over the place, with an output as varied as a very poor man's Radio 4 might ever be.

There was then a cull and a lot of the highly produced specialist programming disappeared to be replaced with strip talk formatting and music. This was the start of the move over to playing the oldies that are normally a reserve of the AM station.

And finally, all the personality presenters were culled and the automated news bulletin service with music took over. It's very sad that no attempt was ever made to go down the LBC in London format route. With a tiny bit of tinkering to make it Liverpoolish instead of Londonish, I think it would have won. Instead, there's just this ghost-ship left repeating the same news bulletin over and over again.

When it comes to local sport, then either or both of City and CityTalk will be thrown over to constant babble and match commentary. I'm told this is of a very high quality nature.

Away from the City tower we also have local match commentary on BBC Radio Merseyside 95.8. This is also of a high quality, comparing much more favourably to the standard BBC Merseyside output. Daytimes are aimed at the over 70 year olds, and are mainly staffed by people of a near similar age. A lot have been there since Marconi invented radio.

Everything about BBC Merseyside is very safe and comfortable, the songs are very old, and appear at regular points inbetween the elongated woffle of the presenters. The presenters will, from time to time, deal with local issues, especially when giving a free plug to one of the many highly arts grant funded projects who are always allowed to consume hours of BBC output promoting their evening of nose-flute dancing for lesbian whales, but is more usually talking about national issues. Evenings, until the cut-backs cause mass-culling, are the place for generic programming like a person coming in and playing his old folk records, that has no local relevance and no audience.

Finally, there's UTV's Juice FM 107.6. This is very youth oriented, although daytimes try to compete with Radio City. It's danceish oriented pop and newish music, but with the presenters and features actually sounding 'local'. In recent times it's been allowed an increase in transmitter power, and seems to be successfully, quarter on quarter, building a bigger audience. They claim they play more music than anybody else in Liverpool, which maybe they do, but it does mean that most of their output consists of back-to-back songs like somebody's left an iPod workout playlist just playing, with a presenter popping up to list what will be played in 20 minutes from now. In lots of ways it's a local version of the Capital network format.

Most of the Liverpool stations suffer from the pre-recorded constipated voice disease. This is where inbetween the songs a pre-recorded voice of the station name and strapline is 'dropped' on top of the beginning of a song. However, the effects used on the voice always make it sound like it was recorded whilst sitting on the loo straining with constipation. This always sounds completely out of place, but mainly so over on CityTalk, where the guy sounds in terrible pain!

Most of the Liverpool stations, in sync with commercial radio generally, are soulless and personality-less. They are designed to be iPods without skip buttons that apologise for running commercials, rather than radio stations with something unique about them that makes them satisfyingly different to an iPod.

With such a huge young audience dwelling in Liverpool because of the Universities, and the local population having such a high level of unemployed youth to add to that potential, it has always surprised me that Liverpool boasts no pirate radio stations.

It could happily support three of four pirates playing the latest music that kids are listening to, rather than the skimmed pop versions the legal stations grudgingly play.

Hopefully, that will also be the conclusion of those attending the conference. They will call for a pirate Radio Liverpool, and a proper talking radio station to satisfy the over-opinionated Scousers.

Heh, will they heck. They'll be completely unaware of the truth of what makes radio grate in Liverpool, far too busy staring into their nicely polished hand-held mirrors preening themselves, thinking of their mates giving them their next Sony award, and saying, "Who's a pretty boy then?"

Climategate 2.0: The BBC bias exposed

2011-12-06T00:05:00.000Z

It is traditional during times of conflict, that the state media be used to propagate a hatred of the enemy. It is important that those sent to war believe that the enemy is some kind of demon, rather than a person with alternative views to theirs. We demonise the enemy in order to stop a conscript saying, "Hang on a minute, this guy I'm being told to shoot dead has a wife and children and is simply trying his best to muddle through life, that's all". If the 'cannon fodder' of either side hasn't be subjected to the indoctrination, they stop being killing machines doing their leader's bidding and start asking questions.

The BBC has always willingly performed its bit for Queen and country in helping create and then spread this kind of propaganda. It was particularly good at it during the Second World War, and has been very good at broadcasting as it was told to in order that every country since World War II that we have randomly invaded, has had a completely demonised leader within.

But, it's not just the propaganda prepping us ahead of a war that the BBC is good at. It is good at following specific agendas with regard to politics and environmentalism. The people right at the top probably don't even realise this is happening. However, this has been talked about many times, and is described in scary detail in the retired newsreader Peter Sissons memories.

Basically, to work in the BBC you have to be a dedicated Guardian reader. That's why the BBC only really advertises job vacancies in the Guardian. Other political leanings are only allowed amongst those without influence or editorial input, like, maybe, the cleaners or technicians. However, those who decide what goes to air, those who prepare it, those who research it, and those who edit it, all have to be dedicated Guardian reading greenies. Ideally, they also have to hold strong views towing the party line on certain subjects. One of those subjects is environmentalism.

The core greenie take on the environment is that we are destroying it. This has always been their view, although across the decades their world view on how we are destroying it has adapted and changed as they've constantly created new bogeymen to worry children in schools with. In more recent times they settled on 'global warming', which then got renamed 'climate change' once it was discovered that the world's been cooling since 1998.

It is this agenda that dominates the BBC. Since they know nothing outside of their indoctrination, it is, in their eyes, a given that we are all doomed and it's all our fault. This is why they all but refuse to put to air any view that contradicts this.

Alex Kirby worked for the BBC up until 1998. Dangerously, he was the environmental correspondent for BBC TV and radio news, despite having absolutely no scientific training. His recently exposed (Climategate 2.0) email to Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit is very telling.

Kirby refers to those who hold alternative views to the doom and gloom scenario being pushed, as 'loonies', lamenting the fact that he has to let them on air, demonstrating how he has ensured that BBC coverage is not impartial (Note the 'ho ho' in his email about the pretence at impartiality):

"I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats."

He indicates and is quite happy to crow about how the coverage is deliberately weighted to tow the party line, and to continue biasing towards the closed and pre-decided propaganda intended to demonise humanity.

And as already discussed, the BBC have a tradition of successfully demonising whosoever they are influenced to, so demonising humanity is an easy one for them.

Will the BBC ever look into its bias on this subject? Will there be an investigation? Will they try to move to objectivity in the coverage of the Climate Change debate?

Of course not, they are far too busy subjectively towing the party line and creating the demon.

Gary Speed and suicide

2011-12-05T00:05:00.000Z

Sometimes we have to make assumptions. Not being a close member of the family, I of course don't know the true facts. I, like you, can only go on what's made public. The Inquest is still to be completed at the time of writing this, but it appears that Wales manager and footballing hero Gary Speed hung himself. We assume at this point he made the decision to commit suicide.

In the UK: 08457 909090

Now I have to be honest and say that until I heard the story in the news I had never heard of Gary Speed before. My lack of interest in football is a complete and genuine one, and so I really don't know any of the names or what they do or are famous for. So, I come at this without any personal pre-conceived ideas about Gary and how he was as a person.

It does appear that he was much loved, much liked, and had a very happy life. He appears to have not realistically been under any more stress than usual, hadn't been in a fight or argument with wife or family, and on the outside showed no signs, and no reason for choosing to end his life. He was always there for others and seemed happy and content.

So, when the news broke that his wife had found his body in their garage, nothing made sense to anybody who knew him. A lot of people from the sporting world were seriously upset.

As I said earlier, we have to make assumptions. We have to assume that Gary was suffering from depression. We have to assume that he had successfully been hiding his depression from everybody around him. Real depression is a mental illness, a disease that takes hold of anybody, no matter how jolly and fun the person might seem to others.

One way to deal with depression is to 'internalise' and pretend it's not there. Certainly sharing it with others the way one might share the fact that one has a cold or flu is not an option. There is nobody to reach out to. This is compounded if the sufferer's normal demeanour is to be jolly and friendly and 'there for everybody', and they are a proud person. There's nobody there for them. Or, that's how it feels. To reach out for somebody wouldn't feel right, and might not be taken seriously. Or, that's how it feels.

Hence why it seemed incomprehensible that Gary had decided to end his life.

Suicide is something I've never contemplated for myself, even in my darkest hours, and I've had a good few of those. I thought about suicide as a concept and mulled over my own views about it once a very long time ago, and came to the conclusion that life could never be that bad, so it would never be an option. Obviously, things can change, and nobody can say that rules they make as a teenager will still apply when they are old and grey, but so far those are my rules. I think I have always had a zest for life and want to experience it, even the bad bits, and I enjoy being me. I'm not looking forward to no longer existing. As an atheist I don't have anywhere to go after experiencing this life, so I want to keep experiencing it for as long as possible before absolutely everything just stops.

Luckily, I've not suffered from depression or suicidal thoughts. However, had I ever, I think I can fully appreciate feeling the need to not share them with others and to internalise. Sharing with others that one has a cold or flu is completely different to sharing with others something life threatening like having cancer. However, most people realise that you don't choose to have cancer. This isn't the case if one is feeling suicidal and depressed, which are equally out of the control of those afflicted. People think they can just snap sufferers out of it. There's a compulsion to almost dismissively say, "Come on lad, pull yourself together." Hence why suicidal despair just can't be shared and is hidden. On the surface everything is business as usual.

We are told that Gary was happily taking about future plans, had said he'd be at future meetings, and it had been business as usual with not a hint that he'd not be attending any of the things in his diary. This hurt and confused those left behind for whom Gary's suicide made even less sense.

However, I think I understand the problem faced by somebody contemplating suicide. The problem is how to avoid 'burdening' anybody. An aware and sensitive person thinking over their own suicide will feel the inescapable guilt of the cul-de-sac they are in. For whatever reason, they will believe that the 'answer' lies in killing themselves. However, nobody else will ever agree with this solution. Nobody will ever just 'accept' it.

Should somebody seriously turn to their friends and family and say they are about to commit suicide, then they know that there will be a phenomenal amount of turmoil, upset, emotional pressure and attempts to stop them and lay guilt on them. Unlike the person in the final stages of dying from cancer, there will never be an 'acceptance' of what's happening by loved ones and an opportunity to be there at the final stages of something that's outside of anybody's control. Instead, more guilt and more pressure will be thrown on top of whatever thoughts and hopelessness has led to the decision to end it all.

The world of the suicidal must be a living hell. They feel damned if they don't kill themselves, damned if they do. "But I don't want you to," will be the strong message from their partner and children, their friends and anybody who has ever been touched by them. The message will be accompanied by emotion and upset, once again compounding the guilt that must already be consuming the suicidal. The look on the face of his children would be unbearable. But, life itself is unbearable. There's no escape from the guilt and hurt felt at seeing others hurting and desperate to stop the suicide from happening.

That's why it's not something to share.

Going through the mind of the person about to commit suicide is the knowledge that those he leaves behind will be upset and hurt, but possibly it's a lesser hurt, a hurt more easily faced, than the hurt of watching them die when there was no need to. Again, a complete guilt ridden living hell in the mind of the suicidal.

I suppose we don't accept suicide as a legitimate option for others in this life unless maybe they are already terminally ill and suffering extreme pain. We don't accept that the conscious decision to die should be allowable other than under these pre-conditions. But, maybe we should.

All too easily we assume that suicide is an act of a person suffering from mental illness. We assume that we can stop the suicidal thoughts with chemicals and treatment. We assume we can 'fix' them. And in truth, we usually can.

But, what if a rational person without depression comes to a logical conclusion that they've done all they want to do in this life? They want to be in control of the point of the end of that life, and so have rationally and calmly decided to kill themselves. Should we just accept this? Should we comfort them and not judge them, not make them feel guilty, not put our own needs onto them, not throw guilt at them, and not make them feel they are doing anything wrong?

Maybe if we lifted the all-consuming need to tell the suicidal that they are wrong and that what they are doing is taboo, then more people would come forward and make their peace with friends and family before that act of making their peace with themselves.

Climategate 2.0: All our models are wrong

2011-12-04T00:05:00.000Z

Here's a brilliantly written piece by Andrew Orlowski, published here originally. Andrew is a regular writer on technology and environment for The Register, and all his articles can be found here. This was first published a few days after the release to the world of the latest tranche of damning emails between climate scientists and those who decide what their findings must be:

There was always an element of tragedy in the first “Climategate” emails, as scientists were under pressure to tell a story that the physical evidence couldn’t support – and that the scientists were reluctant to acknowledge in public. The new email archive, already dubbed “Climategate 2.0”, is much larger than the first, and provides an abundance of context for those earlier changes.

“I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story,” a civil servant wrote to Phil Jones in 2009. “They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.”

Having elevated global warming to the most dramatic, urgent and over-riding issue of the day, bureaucrats, NGOs, politicians and funding agencies demanded that the scientists must keep the whole bandwagon rolling. It had become too big to stop.

“The science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” laments one scientist, Peter Thorne. While Professor Jagadish Shukla, a lead IPCC author, IGES founder, and one of the most senior climate experts writes that, “It is inconceivable that policymakers will be willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.”

With the release of FOIA2011.zip, the cat’s now well and truly out of the bag.

To their credit, some of the climate scientists realised the dangers of the selective approach politicians demanded, which meant cherry-picking evidence to make it suitably dramatic, and quietly hiding caveats. “We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest,” pleads Thorne, in another email from 2005. Thorne noted that a telltale "signature" of greenhouse gas warming was absent. “Observations do not show risinhereg temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous.”

Elsewhere, discussing the homogeneity of temperature readings from different sources, Thorne mulls the need to “balance the text so this is not the message”, and expresses his discomfort with making claims that conceal the uncertainty. But such were the demands of activists, agencies and the political class, uncertainty was not on the menu.

This was why the first Climategate caused such repercussions. The revelations came as little surprise to those few who follow state of temperature reconstructions, but they rocked supporters who had put their trust in climate scientists. Clive Crook, a believer in the manmade global warming hypothesis and supporter of carbon reduction measures, expressed it like this:

“The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.”

Where the "intellectual corruption" is plain is that somehow these doubts and uncertainties, along with the limitations of using computer models as evidence, never made it into the “bible” of climate science, the reports produced by the United Nation Organisation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

“Basic problem is that all models are wrong,” writes Phil Jones, bluntly, “not got enough middle and low level clouds.”

If that’s the case, then why isn't this printed as a large health warning on the cover of the IPCC reports? Politicians who devised policy based on estimates of certainty by the IPCC now know they’ve been sold a pup.

In the short term, the issues raised by Climategate I, which subsequent inquiries failed to explore, are back with a vengeance. Parliament looked at several issues including transparency – withholding code and raw data to allow third parties to replicate CRU’s temperature work – corruption of the peer review process, poor quality programming, and the destruction of internal emails. Since CRU’s temperature work was at the heart of the IPCC, this is troubling. Climategate II finds Phil Jones telling the University of East Anglia’s FOIA climate officer that:

“I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent. There might be some bits of pieces of paper, but I’m not wasting my time going through these.”

And “I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.”

His colleague Keith Briffa – expressing doubts about “all temperature reconstructions” also appears to ensure such doubts are not on the public record:

“UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails] anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC task.”

Elsewhere Briffa adds: “But for GODS SAKE please respect the sensitivity here and destroy the file immediately when finished and please do not tell ANYBODY I sent this. Cheers Keith.”

Some context is worth remembering.

As with the first Climategate archive, much of the correspondence focuses on modern temperature trends and historical temperature reconstructions – not on the stuff we call hard physics: the behaviour of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. (Note also that the emails stop in 2009.)

The temperature work was only thrust into such a dramatic political role because of the state of the hard physics of climate. There’s broad agreement amongst supporters of the man made greenhouse gas theory, and ‘lukewarmers’, on what an increase in CO2 should do to the Earth’s energy budget – a modest increase in temperatures, before any feedbacks are taken into account. But speculation about runaway temperatures, while entirely legitimate, is for now, just that.

In the absence of telltale manmade global warming "fingerprints" (and there have been several candidates over the years, such as the tropospheric hotspot, or elusive ocean heat sinks) contemporary temperature readings and historical temperature reconstructions were freighted with immense significance.

So the mewling infant that we call Climate Science – a 40-year-young offshoot of meteorology – has been thrust into a political role long before it’s capable of supporting the claims made on its behalf. From the archives we can see the scientists know that too, and we can read their own reluctance to make those claims, too.

“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation?” muses one scientist. “They’ll kill us probably.”

That won’t be necessary.

Author: Andrew Orlowski, read more here.

Jeremy Clarkson, the last TV hero

2011-12-03T00:05:00.001Z

TV presenter, writer and personality, Jeremy Clarkson is probably the last living right-of-centre broadcaster allowed on British TV.

He probably only survives because the Top Gear show earns a fortune for the BBC through its sales and franchises around the world. If it wasn't for Top Gear, Clarkson would have been axed years ago, ensuring that the political bias of BBC TV's output was 100% liberal-left of centre.

It's not just the BBC that has succumbed to the all but complete eradication of anything but liberal wets expressing views as part of their output, but this is reflected across all programming on ITV as well. ITV will happily allow cruel left-wing rants from Paul O'Grady, but wouldn't ever contemplate a sniff of right-wing commentary.

Television media is in the control of readers and believers of anything written in the liberal-left Guardian. That's why Jeremy Clarkson doesn't really fit into their ideology and bucks the bias they prefer to be propagated to the viewing masses.

So, after he made some very funny observational jokes on BBC TV's The One Show, a small part of what he said was taking out of context and buzzed around Twitter as being an outrageous attack on striking public sector workers.

Mainstream news media followed, once again taking out of context only the tiny part of the whole of what he said, in order to build and maintain their story and add fuel to what they hoped was a funeral pyre.

Broadcast newsrooms these days are always left-wing biased as the job selection process doesn't allow for other views to exist within them. Hence why editors seized the opportunity to hype up the story and poke for angry quotes from anybody and everybody who'd not watched the original piece. Anything to 'rubbish' the last remaining person at the BBC with non liberal-left leanings. The ultimate plan being to sink Clarkson into obscurity and therefore to silence that last non-conforming voice.

On and on rattled the fury all day, with plenty of air-time being given to angry-by-proxy rent-a-spokespersons from Public Sector Unions, and none of course being given to either Clarkson defenders or anybody just pointing out the entire context of what was being said. That would have killed the story dead, and they wouldn't want that, would they?

The news became that Clarkson's actual views about the Public Sector strikers were that they should be shot, executed in front of their families. The liberal-left media carved this lone fact into stone, where it will stay forever.

In fact, this is the direct transcript of what was actually said in the piece:

Baker: Well Jeremy, schools, hospitals, airports, even driving tests, have all been affected. Do you think the strikes have been a good idea?

Clarkson: I think they have been fantastic. Absolutely. London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you can whizz about, restaurants are empty.

Jones: The traffic, actually, has been very good today.

Clarkson: Airports, people streaming through with no problems at all. And it's also like being back in the 70s. It makes me feel at home somehow.

Baker: Do you know anyone who has been on strike today?

Clarkson: Of course I don't, no. What, somebody public service? No, I don't. No, absolutely. But we have to balance this though, because this is the BBC.

Baker: Yes, exactly.

Clarkson: Frankly, I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?

Baker: Well, on that note of balancing an opinion, of course those are Jeremy's views.

Jones: Only Jeremy's views.

Clarkson: They're not. I've just given two views for you.

So, as you can clearly see, what Clarkson was actually commenting on was how his only real reaction to the strike was that travel had been easier, like it was back in the 1970s. In a way, this was a satirical non-committal piece responding to the somewhat inane initial question about the strike being 'a good idea', and just talking about the effects rather than getting involved in discussing the politics of the strike.

He then referred to the inane BBC need for supposed 'balance' and for him to be 'impartial' and so gave a second and counter outrageous yet obviously satirical view to 'balance' his original comments, which is when he said what he did about how the strikers should be shot. Indeed, he'd been primed by the producers of the show to say something outrageous, and that's what he did.

Any normal rational person, especially those involved in broadcasting, can see and understand both the context and the humour.

However, there are those that can't. And there are those that try to fuel those that can't.

That's why the Twitter and Facebook users who have a brain like a goldfish only capable of grasping a fraction of what's actually presented to them, only 'heard' the last few sentences and immediately starting lighting their torches ready to gather as part of a baying lynch mob.

Put in much simpler terms, imagine me saying, "If I'd have turned out to be gay in the 1960s instead of straight, I don't think it would have been anything but truly horrible trying to tell my parents I was one of those homosexuals they so despised."

Imagine people only hearing, out of context, "truly horrible trying to tell my parents I was one of those homosexuals they so despised". There's a huge difference in the understanding of the meaning of what I'm actually saying.

By taking in the entire original sentence, you realise that I'm not saying anything about personally being gay, but I'm dealing with the prejudice against gays in the 1960s.

By only listening to the last part of the sentence, you mistakenly think I am gay and had problems coming out to my parents.

That's exactly the same way the goldfish-brained morons listening to Clarkson misinterpreted what he was saying and started spreading it via social media. It's also the only section of what he said that was constantly locked onto by the liberal-left wing news media trying to hype up hysteria about it.

Such is their desire to defame anybody not from the liberal-left, it will probably go down recorded in the version of history they control, recorded against Clarkson as a single suggestion on his part that striking Public Sector workers should be shot.

Sadly, we will never again see actual balance.

Climategate 2.0: The next tranche

2011-12-02T00:05:00.002Z

Last month, whoever 'stole' or 'liberated' the original emails from the server at the University of East Anglia, that were then circulated and back in 2009 became known as 'Climategate', decided to release a second tranche.

The original batch of emails showed the bullying and manipulation of climate scientists as they worked together to 'hide the decline' in global warming. Caring less about the science and more about trying to put across a theory that supported a political perspective, we got a glimpse into their rather unscientific world and how propagating the myth helped secure their funding.

Then we had to wait two years.

By 'FOIA' dropping a little hint in the comments section of the Tallbloke blog towards the end of last month, suddenly a huge batch of over 5,000 new emails were released.

These new emails continue from the first batch released in 2009 and are mainly of communications in 2007. They were obviously copied from the university server at the same time but held back for some dramatic reason, and released in time to be 'out there' ahead of the annual Climate Change conference.

Along with the batch of emails is a further zip file that is locked using a highly secure password. We assume that a third tranche of emails is within, possibly the most damning yet.

Maybe 'FOIA' has kept the third file locked as an insurance policy. Maybe it's a way of assuring that should he/she become compromised, then the final batch of emails won't, erm, 'go missing' when he 'goes missing'. The data's already out here, replicated and safely shared and stored. All we, the public, need is the password. That's going to be easier to give us when whoever wishes to silence him is closing in, than him having to try to release such a huge file to the world which could be intercepted by 'them' before it gets to 'us'.

However, with this second tranche he included a 'readme' file which makes some pretty poignant observations about how parts of the world are being forced into poverty by the carbon taxation policies that are being forced onto the world by those who want to control us and are using the bogeyman of 'climate change' in order to make us comply. His/her 'readme' file then goes on to extract small quotes from various of the emails, grouped into different sub-headings to show just how unsure everything truly is.

Indeed, it's immediately obvious how they are cobbling together only the supporting science that 'proves' the wild claims of global warming. They do this in aid of 'the cause' instead of in aid of 'the science'. The idea is to down play any 'noise' that might negate the central thrust of the global warming message. Again, this is just not science. It's propaganda. Propaganda being prepared and migrated by people who should be impartial scientists.

Impartial scientists should show us all the results, including those that don't fit snugly with 'the cause'. But no, they play politics for 'the cause'.

For your info, I've now reproduced the original 'readme' file from 'FOIA', making no changes other than to formatting. It gives you the background and some choice snippits.

The original emails are now sited in a searchable database here.

Now, to that very interesting 'readme' file:

/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such
as…
/// The IPCC Process ///

<1939> Thorne/MetO:
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary [...]

<3066> Thorne:
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

<1611> Carter:
It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by
a select core group.

<2884> Wigley:
Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]

<4755> Overpeck:
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s
included and what is left out.

<3456> Overpeck:
I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” [...] Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?

<1104> Wanner/NCCR:
In my [IPCC-TAR] review [...] I crit[i]cized [...] the Mann hockey[s]tick [...]
My review was classified “unsignificant” even I inquired several times. Now the
internationally well known newspaper SPIEGEL got the information about these
early statements because I expressed my opinion in several talks, mainly in
Germany, in 2002 and 2003. I just refused to give an exclusive interview to
SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.

<0414> Coe:
Hence the AR4 Section 2.7.1.1.2 dismissal of the ACRIM composite to be
instrumental rather than solar in origin is a bit controversial. Similarly IPCC
in their discussion on solar RF since the Maunder Minimum are very dependent on
the paper by Wang et al (which I have been unable to access) in the decision to
reduce the solar RF significantly despite the many papers to the contrary in
the ISSI workshop. All this leaves the IPCC almost entirely dependent on CO2
for the explanation of current global temperatures as in Fig 2.23. since
methane CFCs and aerosols are not increasing.

<2009> Briffa:
I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of
all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!

<2775> Jones:
I too don’t see why the schemes should be symmetrical. The temperature ones
certainly will not as we’re choosing the periods to show warming.

<1219> Trenberth:
[...] opposing some things said by people like Chris Landsea who has said all the
stuff going on is natural variability. In addition to the 4 hurricanes hitting
Florida, there has been a record number hit Japan 10?? and I saw a report
saying Japanese scientists had linked this to global warming. [...] I am leaning
toward the idea of getting a box on changes in hurricanes, perhaps written by a
Japanese.

<0890> Jones:
We can put a note in that something will be there in the next draft, or Kevin
or I will write something – it depends on whether and what we get from Japan.

<0170> Jones:
Kevin, Seems that this potential Nature paper may be worth citing, if it does
say that GW is having an effect on TC activity.

<0714> Jones:
Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about
the tornadoes group.

<3205> Jones:
Useful ones [for IPCC] might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on the solar/cloud
issue – on the right side, i.e anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be
have to involve him ?)

<4923> Stott/MetO:
My most immediate concern is to whether to leave this statement ["probably the
warmest of the last millennium"] in or whether I should remove it in the
anticipation that by the time of the 4th Assessment Report we’ll have withdrawn
this statement – Chris Folland at least seems to think this is possible.

/// Communicating Climate Change ///

<2495> Humphrey/DEFRA:
I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a
message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their
story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made
to look foolish.

<0813> Fox/Environment Agency:
if we loose the chance to make climate change a reality to people in the
regions we will have missed a major trick in REGIS.

<4716> Adams:
Somehow we have to leave the[m] thinking OK, climate change is extremely
complicated, BUT I accept the dominant view that people are affecting it, and
that impacts produces risk that needs careful and urgent attention.

<1790> Lorenzoni:
I agree with the importance of extreme events as foci for public and
governmental opinion [...] ‘climate change’ needs to be present in people’s
daily lives. They should be reminded that it is a continuously occurring and
evolving phenomenon

<3062> Jones:
We don’t really want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that Michael has written
[...] We’ll have to cut out some of his stuff.

<1485> Mann:
the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what
the site [Real Climate] is about.

<2428> Ashton/co2.org:
Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn
this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions – bad politics – to
one about the value of a stable climate – much better politics. [...] the most
valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as
possible

<3332> Kelly:
the current commitments, even with some strengthening, are little different
from what would have happened without a climate treaty.
[...] the way to pitch the analysis is to argue that precautionary action must be
taken now to protect reserves etc against the inevitable

<3655> Singer/WWF:
we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the
public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and
b) in order to get into the media the context between climate
extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and
energy

<0445> Torok/CSIRO:
[...] idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed
“global icons” [...] One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef [...]
It also became apparent that there was always a local “reason” for the
destruction – cyclones, starfish, fertilizers [...] A perception of an
“unchanging” environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral
loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of
systematic damage from long-term climatic/environmental change [...] Such a
project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate
change

<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:
In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public
relations problem with the media

Kjellen:

I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global
warming

Pierrehumbert:

What kind of circulation change could lock Europe into deadly summer heat waves
like that of last summer? That’s the sort of thing we need to think about.

/// The Medieval Warm Period ///

<5111> Pollack:
But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland.

<5039> Rahmstorf:
You chose to depict the one based on C14 solar data, which kind of stands out
in Medieval times. It would be much nicer to show the version driven by Be10
solar forcing

<5096> Cook:
A growing body of evidence clearly shows [2008] that hydroclimatic variability
during the putative MWP (more appropriately and inclusively called the
“Medieval Climate Anomaly” or MCA period) was more regionally extreme (mainly
in terms of the frequency and duration of megadroughts) than anything we have
seen in the 20th century, except perhaps for the Sahel. So in certain ways the
MCA period may have been more climatically extreme than in modern times.

/// The Settled Science ///

<0310> Warren:
The results for 400 ppm stabilization look odd in many cases [...] As it stands
we’ll have to delete the results from the paper if it is to be published.

<1682> Wils:
[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural
fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably [...]

<2267> Wilson:
Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially
since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models,
surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.
[...] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the
models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from
the sun alone.

<5289> Hoskins:
If the tropical near surface specific humidity over tropical land has not gone
up (Fig 5) presumably that could explain why the expected amplification of the
warming in the tropics with height has not really been detected.

<5315> Jenkins/MetO:
would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier
melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?

<2292> Jones:
[tropical glaciers] There is a small problem though with their retreat. They
have retreated a lot in the last 20 years yet the MSU2LT data would suggest
that temperatures haven’t increased at these levels.

<1788> Jones:
There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from "recent
extreme weather is due to global warming"] – at least not a climatologist.

<4693> Crowley:
I am not convinced that the “truth” is always worth reaching if it is at the
cost of damaged personal relationships

<2967> Briffa:
Also there is much published evidence for Europe (and France in particular) of
increasing net primary productivity in natural and managed woodlands that may
be associated either with nitrogen or increasing CO2 or both. Contrast this
with the still controversial question of large-scale acid-rain-related forest
decline? To what extent is this issue now generally considered urgent, or even
real?

<2733> Crowley:
Phil, thanks for your thoughts – guarantee there will be no dirty laundry in
the open.

<2095> Steig:
He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he
thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the
supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.

<0953> Jones:
This will reduce the 1940-1970 cooling in NH temps. Explaining the cooling with
sulphates won’t be quite as necessary.

<4944> Haimberger:
It is interesting to see the lower tropospheric warming minimum in the tropics
in all three plots, which I cannot explain. I believe it is spurious but it is
remarkably robust against my adjustment efforts.

<4262> Klein/LLNL:
Does anybody have an explanation why there is a relative minimum (and some
negative trends) between 500 and 700 hPa? No models with significant surface
warming do this

<2461> Osborn:
This is an excellent idea, Mike, IN PRINCIPLE at least. In practise, however,
it raises some interesting results [...] the analysis will not likely lie near to
the middle of the cloud of published series and explaining the reasons behind
this etc. will obscure the message of a short EOS piece.

<4470> Norwegian Meteorological Institute:
In Norway and Spitsbergen, it is possible to explain most of the warming after
the 1960s by changes in the atmospheric circulation. The warming prior to 1940
cannot be explained in this way.

/// The Urban Heat Effect ///

<4938> Jenkins/MetO:
By coincidence I also got recently a paper from Rob which says “London’s UHI
has indeed become more intense since the 1960s esp during spring and summer”.

<0896> Jones:
I think the urban-related warming should be smaller than this, but I can’t
think of a good way to argue this. I am hopeful of finding something in the
data that makes by their Figure 3.

<0044> Rean:
[...] we found the [urban warming] effect is pretty big in the areas we analyzed.
This is a little different from the result you obtained in 1990.
[...] We have published a few of papers on this topic in Chinese. Unfortunately,
when we sent our comments to the IPCC AR4, they were mostly rejected.

<4789> Wigley:
there are some nitpicky jerks who have criticized the Jones et al. data sets –
we don’t want one of those [EPRI/California Energy Commission meeting].

Jones:

The jerk you mention was called Good(e)rich who found urban warming at
all Californian sites.

<1601> Jones:
I think China is one of the few places that are affected [urban heat]. The
paper shows that London and Vienna (and also New York) are not affected in the
20th century.

<2939> Jones:
[...] every effort has been made to use data that are either rural and/or where
the urbanization effect has been removed as well as possible by statistical
means. There are 3 groups that have done this independently (CRU, NOAA and
GISS), and they end up with essentially the same results.
[...] Furthermore, the oceans have warmed at a rate consistent with the land.
There is no urban effect there.

/// Temperature Reconstructions ///

<1583> Wilson:
any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will
undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently
have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model
comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think.

<4165> Jones:
what he [Zwiers] has done comes to a different conclusion than Caspar and Gene!
I reckon this can be saved by careful wording.

<3994> Mitchell/MetO
Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems
to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no

<4241> Wilson:
I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I
could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.
[...] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is
precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.

<3373> Bradley:
I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should
never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

<4758> Osborn:
Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the
middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the
MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data
‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it!

<0886> Esper:
Now, you Keith complain about the way we introduced our result, while saying it
is an important one. [...] the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to
missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by
dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together. So, why
don’t you want to let the result into science?

<4369> Cook:
I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be
defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the
science move ahead.

<5055> Cook:
One problem is that he [Mann] will be using the RegEM method, which provides no
better diagnostics (e.g. betas) than his original method. So we will still not
know where his estimates are coming from.

/// Science and Religion ///

<2132> Wigley:
I heard that Zichichi has links with the Vatican. A number of other greenhouse
skeptics have extreme religious views.

<4394> Houghton [MetO, IPCC co-chair]
[...] we dont take seriously enough our God-given responsibility to care for the
Earth [...] 500 million people are expected to watch The Day After Tomorrow. We
must pray that they pick up that message.

<0999> Hulme:
My work is as Director of the national centre for climate change research, a
job which requires me to translate my Christian belief about stewardship of
God’s planet into research and action.

<3653> Hulme:
He [another Met scientist] is a Christian and would talk authoritatively about
the state of climate science from the sort of standpoint you are wanting.

/// Climate Models ///

<3111> Watson/UEA:
I’d agree probably 10 years away to go from weather forecasting to ~ annual
scale. But the “big climate picture” includes ocean feedbacks on all time
scales, carbon and other elemental cycles, etc. and it has to be several
decades before that is sorted out I would think. So I would guess that it will
not be models or theory, but observation that will provide the answer to the
question of how the climate will change in many decades time.

<5131> Shukla/IGES:
["Future of the IPCC", 2008] It is inconceivable that policymakers will be
willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the
projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and
simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.

<2423> Lanzante/NOAA:
While perhaps one could designate some subset of models as being poorer in a
lot of areas, there probably never will be a single universally superior model
or set of models. We should keep in mind that the climate system is complex, so
that it is difficult, if not impossible to define a metric that captures the
breath of physical processes relevant to even a narrow area of focus.

<1982> Santer:
there is no individual model that does well in all of the SST and water vapor
tests we’ve applied.

<0850> Barnett:
[IPCC AR5 models] clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the
modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer

<5066> Hegerl:
[IPCC AR5 models]
So using the 20th c for tuning is just doing what some people have long
suspected us of doing [...] and what the nonpublished diagram from NCAR showing
correlation between aerosol forcing and sensitivity also suggested.

<4443> Jones:
Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low
level clouds.

<4085> Jones:
GKSS is just one model and it is a model, so there is no need for it to be
correct.

/// The Cause ///

<3115> Mann:
By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year
reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that
reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

<3940> Mann:
They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic
example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted
upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a
bit.

<0810> Mann:
I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s
doing, but its not helping the cause

<3594> Berger:
Phil,
Many thanks for your paper and congratulations for reviving the global warming.

<0121> Jones:
[on temperature data adjustments] Upshot is that their trend will increase

<4184> Jones:
[to Hansen] Keep up the good work! [...] Even though it’s been a mild winter in
the UK, much of the rest of the world seems coolish – expected though given the
La Nina. Roll on the next El Nino!

<5294> Schneider:
Even though I am virtually certain we shall lose on McCain-Lieberman, they are
forcing Senators to go on record for for against sensible climate policy

/// Freedom of Information ///

<2440> Jones:
I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself
and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process

<2094> Briffa:
UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails]
anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC
task.

<2459> Osborn:
Keith and I have just searched through our emails for anything containing
“David Holland”. Everything we found was cc’d to you and/or Dave Palmer, which
you’ll already have.

<1473> McGarvie/UEA Director of Faculty Administration:
As we are testing EIR with the other climate audit org request relating to
communications with other academic colleagues, I think that we would weaken
that case if we supplied the information in this case. So I would suggest that
we decline this one (at the very end of the time period)

<1577> Jones:
[FOI, temperature data]
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we
get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US
Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original
station data.

A perspective on Climate Change

2011-12-01T00:05:00.000Z

Sometimes a simple graphic illustrates it all. Here we have two graphs that make that point very well.

When looking at the famous 'hockey-stick' graph you can understand why Climate Change believers might easily be panicked into thinking something massive and bad is going on.

However, looking at the second graph puts it all into perspective. A perspective, of course, that they just don't want to see and are hypnotised by their faith to ignore.

Nobody's fleeing Climate Change

2011-11-30T00:05:00.000Z

As the free thinking world wakes more and more to the whole Climate Change scam - the pretending that a) the Climate is in some way radically changing around us, and more importantly b) we are all to blame - those who wish us to believe it are starting to hide or change some of the original outlandish statements they made. Naughty!

The Climate Change religion, previously promoted as the Global Warming religion, is now old enough for some of the original outrageous scare predictions to have not come true.

It wasn't that long ago that we realists were laughing and pointing at the "climate scientists" who told us in 2000 that by 2010 children in our country would no longer experience snow. At the time, this horrific concept was surrounded by emotive concerns and discussion about how the poor loves would have to watch old movies about snow or travel to the North Pole to see it with their own wide eyes. And of course, we fell for it. It seemed shocking and scary. No more snow? That's Global Warming for you. I must believe!

Ten years later, of course, children certainly still experience snow. The predictions of this version of doom and gloom were, of course, completely wrong.

More recently The United Nations, one of the centres for the promotion of the fear of Global Warming / Climate Change, conducted a cover-up exercise across its websites trying to hide another failed prediction.

In 2005, promoted as recently as 2008, they predicted via the highly expensive to run 'United Nations Environment Programme' (UNEP), that by 2010 there would be "50 million climate refugees". These were described as those who would be fleeing from the more low lying islands and even parts of America, as sea-levels rose, hurricanes increased and food production was disrupted. In fact, some of the Pacific islands would completely disappear because of the sea-level rises.

Well, of course, in reality nothing happened. No islands have disappeared. Indeed, a study of the population levels in the areas that the inept UNEP outlined in order to validate their scare stories show an increase. Populations are growing. Whoops. Nobody is being forced to flee by the climate. How dare they not cooperate with the UNEP predictions!

Now then. This story of yet another failed Climate Change scare story first broke some weeks ago via an article on a website dealing with matters Asian. Within a day the handy map of where the doom and gloom was scheduled to hit, erm, 'disappeared' from the UNEP website it had been sitting on for many of those 5 years. It was obviously far too embarrassing.

Despite a UN General Assembly meeting being told in 2008 that it was definitely the end of the world by 2010, and indeed we would need "more efforts than ever before must be exerted to enable poor countries to prepare for impacts because it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010" nothing happened.

Having been caught with their trousers down the UN has not only withdrawn the original 2010 prediction maps but more recently revised the scare story target date to 2020. Of course, this nicely fed the doom and gloom hungry main stream media who reported it complete with shock-horror graphics of children drowning in 2020. The mainstream media didn't bother asking why this hadn't happened by 2010, of course.

Alarmism makes better news than retraction. No doubt by 2021 UNEP will lose the new story and revise it to 2030 for another attempt at terrifying people into following their religion.

Aren't these sorts of targets vaguely similar to the targets often given by followers of other religions? Over the centuries various colours of Christianity have constantly picked dates for Judgement day, the End of the World, Armageddon, and these dates have all come and gone with nothing whatsoever happening.

You'd think the Climate Change religion wouldn't fall into the same trap or follow the same scare model. But I guess a religion is a religion and it feeds off people's basic fears.

Even Polar Bears deny there's Global Warming

2011-11-29T00:05:00.000Z

In recent times the climate change debate has reached the news, with a far more hostile attack on those who are sceptical about the dogma that surrounds the religion.

I've seen this hostility before on other subjects and beliefs and I'm pretty sure it's the same as the agnostic or atheist people used to experience from those of a deeply religious persuasion. Indeed, throughout history the Catholic religion can be seen painfully executing the death sentence on women who it had decided were witches or didn't fit their definition of being allowed to live in their 'faith'.

To examine what's happening within the climate change debate, it's necessary to step back and see all the different groups of ideas and what those with like minds are called.

Propaganda in the classroom

First off, there are the Climate Warmists. These are people who have decided (regardless of the evidence) that the planet faces a catastrophe of man's making. To them, the planet is warming and we are to blame, and we're all doomed. They treat those who disagree with them as any religious zealot treats heretics. Many Warmists have ulterior motives as to why they wish the world to believe them, and are highly funded by the 'green' movement. Global Warming, like any religion, is making a chosen few extremely wealthy.

Next, the Climate Lukewarmists. These, with a tendency to more rational thought, mainly believe the planet is warming, think most of the evidence points to this, and that humans might have contributed to it. They are not as aggressive as Warmists.

Then we have Climate Sceptics. I guess these would be the agnostics of the climate science world. Usually they take the position that the predictive science and modelling is confused, muddled and not settled, and certainly even if the planet is warming (or cooling), it is neither proven that man is to blame, nor proven that anything we do will make the slightest difference. Most Sceptics are interested in knowing more. Most Sceptics get caught up in wonderment at the screaming banshee dances of the Warmists, and it is this that drives them further from any belief in man-made Global Warming. Without meaning to cherry-pick, they do and so fall into lots of different sub-groups that are maybe convinced of certain aspects but not others. The common hunger is to find-out more and maybe then come to an informed decision rather than close their minds and jump on a bandwagon that requires 'faith' rather than science.

Below these we have Climate Deniers. Given the unfortunate name 'Deniers' by the Warmists in order to make people think of them akin to Holocaust Deniers (people who don't believe 6 million Jews were ruthlessly butchered during World War II), and so to tar them with an 'evil' brush, Deniers believe the science is settled that there is no Global Warming, and certainly humanity has no effect on the climate. Or at least they'll dispute any science to counter their position. A bit like the Warmists, they tend to have made up their minds anyway regardless of the facts or anything that comes to light.

Let's talk about me.

I would say I come half way between a Sceptic and a Denier, flitting up and down, unsettled and waiting for more 'input' as Number Five once said.

I'm sceptical of everything by nature, and so this is how I approach climate science. I'd guess I'm not convinced it's warming, although I can see that when you homogenise temperature readings you can make it appear so. Even if there is warming, it is only by the most tiny part of a degree, and is fairly obviously part of a longer term cycle of warming and cooling. During the reign of humans on Earth, we've seen warm and cool. For example, during the Medieval Warm Period, Greenland was called Greenland because it was, well, green, and vines were being grown for wine. It was obviously extremely warm. What puzzles me is why the 'warmists' try to hide this period. Is it because it otherwise messes up their predictions, or is it because they keep adjusting the data until it is actually averaged out to a point of complete uselessness?

Now, talking of predictions, it was only ten years ago that the 'warmists' were telling us that by now children would not be experiencing snow, and would never get to see it. That's changed to how all the excessive snow we are now seeing (that should by now be a distant memory) is also because of Global Warming. That's got to be one of the biggest prediction Fails, surely? And with 'hockey-stick' graphs not coming true, time is on the side of the sceptics who are not convinced by the dogma spouted by the 'faithful'.

It seems that the more you try to look into the actual science, the more certain 'warmists' will block access to the data sets. This was highlighted in the leaked e-mails known as 'climategate' in 2009 during which prominent and influential climate scientists were caught discussing how to block research papers they disagreed with from being 'peer reviewed' and swapped from data that disagreed with their need to show warming trends (such as tree-ring data) to data that 'fitted' their models. They were so jiggling the figures around that they bore no resemblance to the original measurements. How can this be science?

Then, of course, there was the whole tone of the exchanges. Gone were the scientific conversations you'd expect full of testing and retesting hypothesises, but there was an air of dogma dominating everything. The desperation to 'hide the decline' and discount anything that might be pointing to alternative answers to climate questions was more in tune with a belief based on unscientific faith and irrational religious dogma rather than scientifically tested results and re-checks.

For me, as with so many others, 'climategate' was the turning point, a great eye-opener. We were supposed to be changing our lifestyles, sinking horrendous sums of money into greenerising everything, and all based on the ramblings of a very tiny number of people who seemed (from the e-mails) to be more pushing a fear designed to help them fund and build their empires than spreading the actual truth. If anything, the truth was still not known, and an awful lot of fiddling had to be done in order to homogenise data to make it toe the party line that the world was ending.

The deeper I dug, the more I realised that the whole Climate Change doom thing was as raving bonkers as Colonel Gaddafi's bizarre incomprehensible ranting. It made no real sense, and yet there were loyal followers who drank it up and strengthened their resolve to promote the fear of the end of the world that was already deeply within them.

The arrogance over the feeling of human self-importance that some humans have is amazing. They want desperately to believe that we have such influence that we are radically changing the world (for the worse) and have the ability to influence the larger aspects of the planet's destiny. These are the same people who irrationally believe that wearing 'lucky' socks will somehow completely change and influence the day's weather, or that the ritual sacrifice of other humans on an altar will somehow stop a volcano erupting.

This fear is so easy to manipulate. People want to believe we're all doomed. They don't care how we're all doomed, they just 'know' we are. These people are fodder for those who push the Global Warming religion. It's got lots of doom in it, and lots of how we are all to blame. It's a perfect religion for the doom-mongerers.

The more I looked, the more I saw how the louder the manipulators shouted "We're all doomed" the more money they got in order to measure how doomed we are. Then there was the whole concept of carbon trading and renewable energy. Big money. Huge money. Far more money than people realise.

No warming here!

So, with the confusion about whether or not the planet is actually warming (a lot of evidence suggests we are a few years into a cooling cycle), there is then the even more bizarre ideology that we are to blame. It's the CO2 we emit, so they say. Even though historical records show periods of warming 'lead' the higher concentrations of CO2 which always lag behind such that one could argue that warming causes higher levels of CO2, not the other way round, the amount of the increase is so tiny that it itself is also barely measurable as a percentage of our total atmosphere.

The fightback against the control of data and the fearmongering caused by those that control the peer review process has taken an interesting turn. It is in the blogosphere. Now, openly and in front of anybody (including me) the actual science is discussed and chewed over rather than being an elitist preserve. Not that I can always understand the depth to which certain elements are discussed, but I am thankful for the main places of scientific debate and discussion for helping me realise that the science is very far from being settled. This is in contrast to the desperation for funding in exchange for doom and gloom prophecy. That's extremely settled.

Climate lies: Even the children won't know what snow is!

2011-11-28T00:05:00.000Z

Whenever it suddenly gets cold/hot/wet/dry/windy/calm or snowy we act as if something new and unusual has happened.

Why?

Without distracting from how awful it must be for those affected by major weather events, they were all just a part of our regular cyclic pattern of weather that we should expect at each hemisphere. Every 'x' years places flood. Or they suffer from drought. Or there's heavy snow and freezing temperatures. Every 'x' years there are earthquakes. Every 'x' times a year there are tropical storms and cyclones.

It's really nothing new. Honest. Nothing's radically changing. It's just that our technology lets us actually see it these days.

However, it has given the Climate Change / Global Warming alarmists the opportunity to scream and shout as if it is new and has never happened before. The religion of Climate Change is so compelling that there are now nearly a thousand things it has been blamed for (check the ever increasing list at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm).

The climate is constantly changing of course, that's what it does or else it wouldn't function. Until very recently adverse weather was blamed on the gods we had displeased. History is full of sacrifices of animals or even humans in order to pacify the elements. Rain dances and superstitious rituals still abound as the more ignorant parts of the world believe they can somehow change things.

The need to blame other humans seems almost genetically hard wired into some amongst us. They feel a need to accuse other members of human society of wrong doing and blame. In the past, and indeed still today in the less developed parts of the world, they would blame adultery, homosexuality or whatever was the hot topic of the time for causing volcanoes to erupt because they were angry, or suggest earthquakes are some form of punishment for a human activity they'd decided was a wrongdoing.

As levels of knowledge and understanding increase throughout the more developed world, the primitive need to accuse humans doesn't seem to abate in these odd folk. Today the more obscure mumbo jumbo and superstitions of the past are replaced by a more pseudo-scientific explanation as to how humans are bad and to blame for the weather. This affliction still has a need to blame humans, and the current manifestation of blame is given the umbrella title of "Global Warming".

Actually, since globally it's not be warming but cooling for the last 15 years or so, they've renamed this to "Climate Change". This is now being slowly retitled "Global Climate Disruption" (GCD) because it sounds more scary.

Under the GCD title, fear mongering can be easily spread to encompass any weather event. People who live in areas visited by extreme weather events are fodder for the alarmists and so sign-up to the blame.

The alarmists have been preaching their woe for centuries. Indeed, with limited hard evidence that Anthropogenic (ie man-made) Global Warming (AGW) has any contribution to make to our climate, the alarmists spread their stories of Armageddon.

As an example in 2000, just over ten years ago the alarmists were telling us that temperatures would "increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century". They haven't.

In 2000 the alarmists sent out a representative from the now disgraced Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (the origin of the 'Climategate' e-mails which showed us just how books were being cooked and figures changed in order to achieve the readings required) to tell us that it was our fault that 'Global Warming' (as it was still called then) was making winters mild. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the CRU, within a few years winter snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event". It hasn't.

His 'killer' statement was, "Children just aren't going to know what snow is!" Naturally of course no evidence was actually offered up to support this statement, and with the complete benefit of hindsight we know it was a lie. However, the lie was then supported as if it was a genuine proposition and people like Professor Jarich Oosten, an anthropologist at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, came out with stuff about how even if we no longer see snow, it will remain culturally important.

Applying a non-scientific logic he added, "We don't really have wolves in Europe any more, but they are still an important part of our culture and everyone knows what they look like." All of this kind of mumbo-jumbo helps make the proposition appear to be real.

Back within the climate 'scientists', David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, is on record as saying that ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. "Via the internet", they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Madness. And all of it proven to be false and nothing more than part of their unscientific scaremongering and need to lay guilt on humanity for something over which it has no control, and is making no contribution, which in turn assisted them to further funding to continue their 'research'.

With the release of the 'Climategate' emails in 2009, those who had for years been unsuccessfully trying to use Freedom of Information Acts to take a look at the data had their worst fears confirmed. Slowly the rest of the world has started to fall in and as each year goes by less and less are scooped up in the false fears from these false prophets of doom.

It'll take a long time for it to finally disappear because of the way some humans are hard wired to go around shouting "We're all doomed!" plus the way others are hard wired as opportunists set to use a fear, any fear, to enhance their power or money. And of course, the global 'carbon neutral' industry is all about making money and taking control over poorer countries.

All of this, sadly, is a very long way away from what should be the simple and exciting science of studying the wonders of our planet's completely happy and self-regulating climate and its relationship with the Sun that influences it.

Repeal the pointless Climate Change Act

2011-11-27T00:05:00.000Z

Click through the above to reach the Facebook campaign page

There's not an awful lot that can be added to what has been written by the campaigners on the Facebook page I'm linking to. I hope that we are entering a period of sensible thinking, and that the British will lead the way in fighting back against this bizarre climate change / global warming religion, just as it tends to lead the way in fighting back against all ridiculous and dangerous religions.

For further reading, I'd highly recommend the excellent ClimateRealists.com which gives links to all sorts of articles, including those from the people who want us to believe in their bizarre Climate Change religion. Make up your own mind by examining the actual science and not the spin and unsupported conjecture, I say.

'Climate Change' is really about population control

2011-11-26T00:05:00.000Z

As the lies of those who want us to believe that we are facing man made climate change continue to unravel and the public slowly gets to see as near as they can what’s really going on, I thought it might be a good time to take stock, and maybe point to what’s really going on. It’s very very frightening.

Firstly, what’s my armchair pundit’s position? Ok, well obviously I’m not a climate scientist. But, I am a realist and can apply scientifically based ‘logical tests’ to evidence as presented. I am not a fan of ‘he said she said’ and prefer to go to the source. The bottom line for me is that I’d say two things are definite when it comes to global warming/cooling. Will I be arrested or hounded out of my home for saying this? Not yet, but for how long am I safe?

1) If there is any longer term warming/cooling it has not yet been proven to be anything beyond a natural cyclic event seen many times before on planet Earth.

2) If humans are in some way contributing to climate change, no evidence has yet been found or presented that satisfactorily demonstrates the linking of any of our emissions to actual climate change.

Secondly, the bizarre thing that has happened to this whole climate change “science” worries me beyond anything that has worried me before. It should worry us all if we want to remain as free as we can and out of the control of others.

Here’s the thing: We seem to have those who aren’t interested in the actual science, but just WANT to believe that we are heading to some man-made catastrophe. They want this far more than they wanted the world to end because of ‘Y2K’ or the ‘Millennium Bug’. They are so devoted to their climate catastrophe faith rather than looking at the actual and evolving science, that anybody who asks for more evidence, more debate, more research, or dares suggest the motion that man is changing climate is not yet carried, becomes tarred with the brush that labels them a “Climate Denier”.

Yep, asking for more proof or for the base research data or to go back to the origin of climate ‘facts’ is not allowed in the “believer’s” world. They want the “deniers” to repent and beg for forgiveness for their sins of not believing by shouting at or intimidating them. To this end, ‘facts’ and figures and research data is hidden from the public. Gangs of the “believers” will go through Wikipedia changing history to fit their motion, lobby peer review magazines to not publish articles that don’t adhere to the faith-line, and stifle any form of questioning or debate.

These people are not scientific. They have created a new religion. They have no interest in continued investigating or logical testing of the data. Their mind is already made up. And it’s all based on faith not science.

So what we now have is a religion masquerading as a science. Not too dissimilar to how Intelligent Design masqueraded as science. Many eco-loonies and enviro-wankers have complete faith in their faith and have now so tightly closed their mind to debate or the input of new or reviewed evidence that we can’t ‘save’ these people from their cult. They are as gone as are any other group with a major religious belief.

Now to the conspiracy bit. This is all about some small global elite making money, but hey, when isn’t a religion?

Remember, I am not normally a conspiracy theorist; I used to think they were fun and nothing more. Until now.

You see, globally, there is now a huge industry being created and growing at a massive wildfire rate that taxes and then sets limits on and buys and sells … carbon emissions. This is weird and bizarre. Think about it for a moment: It’s a mad as when, in the (original) Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, some new settlers to the planet Earth declared the leaf to be the currency, and set about a massive deforestation by fire exercise in order to limit and control the currency. It’s as laughable and doesn’t really make any sense, but it is happening and it is about ‘control’.

The carbon ‘control’ industry wants to dominate the world with rules about how and what we are allowed to do as countries, towns, villages or individuals. There are rumours about population control, keeping new birth numbers down in order to meet carbon emission targets - all of which can of course can be offset by carbon trading - in other words, money money money. Loads of money.

The whole climate change scam is now being shown as one big global conspiracy far removed from real science, but it is snowballing out of the realists’ ability to control or stop. It is big money. It is control over the developing world. It is keeping the poor poorer and lining the pockets of the few, but on a global scale.

Are we too late to stop this? Probably. Here’s why:

Legislation already forces me to have to ‘believe’ in all the enviro-nonsense. I’m not allowed free will, but will suffer penalties if I don’t recycle or spend my time sorting my waste into the relevant different piles and their relevant different bins for the relevant different collectors to come and pick up. Just like prayer in any religion helps to reinforce that faith, so does all this time in the kitchen sorting and sifting through my trash. Most from within a faith don’t question prayer or see ‘outside’ to the bigger picture of just how they are being controlled. Likewise, the majority of all the millions of us doing this pointless sorting and sifting exercise just ‘accept’ the new rules about sorting and sifting through all our used rubbish and do as they are told. And so the indoctrination continues.

Next stage will come more legislation about how much energy I can use, what car I can drive, what clothes I can wear, what food I can eat. Tighter and tighter the control will get. All in the name of climate change and helping save the environment.

How many children will I be allowed to have? Will they cut off the internet to stop us freely communicating and pretend it’s to stop us emitting so much carbon? Will my free-will soon be gone by legislation?

All of this control over us will be done by continuing to feed us bad science from bad scientists, controlling us (for our own good!) in what seems a very plausible way that we will just accept.

Unless the truth about the lies of climate science can properly come out and be freely shared to everybody everywhere, all we will be allowed to do is do as we are told and thank them for letting us be part of an imaginary saving of the world.

The Climate Change Religion wants us to believe

2011-11-25T00:05:00.000Z

Back in September 2010, I originally wrote this:

The Advertising Standards Authority quite correctly banned the Government’s scare-ads in the UK promoting fear of the imaginary ‘Climate Change’ (the re-badged “Global Warming” belief). The main reason for the ban was that the ads were not based on any actual scientific research into ‘Climate Change’. Not even stretching any of the IPCC’s faulty science could anybody predict any of the catastrophic mumbo-jumbo alluded to within the adverts. The UK Government wanted to indoctrinate the population so badly with their scare-ads that they lied to us. Again.

You’d think we’d be used to the Government’s habit of lying to us, what with all the rubbish they wanted us to believe ahead of invading Iraq, but I think we still get taken by surprise with each new lie.

So, why the scare-ads, and why the absolute desperation to want to make the population believe in all the lies bundled as ‘Climate Change’?

What’s equally amazing and questionable is that this whole episode isn’t being used by the other political parties as a major point scoring exercise. Strangely, only the British National Party appears to be challenging the nonsense of ‘climate change’. Are the normal people not caught up in all the hype supposed to vote BNP in order to avoid the parties believing and promoting all the climate change religion? Lordy, I hope not.

As the science fails to conclusively prove anything, people are still desperate to believe, and desperate to have you believe!

Why?

The science isn’t conclusive on whether or not there’s actually any ‘climate change’ worthy of us worrying about, beyond natural and normal cyclic patterns.

And the contribution that man may or may not make to climate change is certainly not proven by any actual research.

So why are they so desperate for us to ‘believe’ in the climate change religion?

What’s really going on?

Climategate 1.0

2011-11-24T00:05:00.001Z

Back in November 2009 after the first ever tranche of emails were released, I wrote the following:

So then. Somebody hacks into one of the mailservers of the University of East Anglia and downloads huge chunks of data including all the mail from the last few years. Once released into the public domain and protected by being replicated and distributed around the internet planet we discover that in truth the whole climate change global warming industry is founded on a lie.

Global Warming is man-made, yep, MAN-MADE-UP!

Emails not only reveal how very prominent ‘scientists’ are swapping and changing data in order to make it work to support the idea that a) there is global warming and b) it is as a result of human activity, but they reveal how a concerted campaign of denigration and abuse along with deliberate pressure is being waged against any scientists publishing models from the data that show no warming. There’s even crowing and celebration when one of their opponents dies. There’s also evidence of cover-ups with commands that emails be deleted (to avoid it being available under the Freedom of Information Act). Plus, of course, they refuse to share the raw data from which they have made-up their alarmist figures.

Considering that the whole climate change industry is costing the planet a fortune to fund and that we have been so indoctrinated with this complete lie, you’d think that it would be a scandal far greater than revelation of what bogus expenses were being claimed by MPs and that the media would be all over it.

But, and here’s where it’s all a bit weird, all the BBC News website has about it is little bits of ‘how terrible that this server was hacked and emails were stolen’, skirting completely over what the earth shattering contents reveal of the global warming conspiracy and lie.

Why?

Who has so much control over the media that they are trying and succeeding to kill this story? Whoever it is they are far more powerful than the MPs, most of whom were exposed for their dodgy dealings. If the silencing of the BBC came from the ‘House’ then none of the MP expenses row would have got to air. So who is more powerful than the Government of this country that they’ve managed to stop the BBC reporting this more fully?

I think we should be told!

But wait. Another burning question is why the lie?

Money. Big huge money.

It’s about money. Firstly, the ‘scientists’ need money in order to continue to propagate the scare stories and apportion blame at the feet of humanity. By altering the data to comply with this, they of course secure their own futures. And of course, their money comes from the massive climate change industry, which in turn comes from us.

Some people see this as a massive global conspiracy the size of a ‘New World Order’. Is it? Would that be why the BBC and ‘British Media’ are being very silent?

I think we should be told!

The ‘scientists’ that strongly oppose the ‘warmists’ are also usually being paid for by the oil companies and powers-that-be that find their (financial) existence threatened by the green lobby, so they can be just as bad as those making us think the world is about to end, but are they the ones silencing the BBC?

Nope.

So, who the heck can we trust with this data? We really are at the mercy of the camp that shouts the loudest or seems the most convincing, rather than provides the real truth.

It would seem that at best nothing is happening to our climate other than whatever cycles it goes through anyway; at worst something might be happening but we’re far far away from identifying what it might be and why. To even start to blame humanity is even further away. Yet, some people love to think humanity is to blame. They love to hit themselves with birch twigs and wail about how terrible we are as a species.

Ordinary people say, “Ah, well it’s plain to see that climate is changing. Look at what we see on the news.”

Hmmmm. Don’t forget you have not observed any of this first hand. All you have access to now is far more instant and accurate reporting of ‘events’ than people ever had even 50 years ago, let alone 5,000 years ago.

It is possible the events are much as they always were, but just previously unrecorded or not very accurately recorded by humans. Weather patterns have always shifted and swapped about. At one time there were centuries of heat and correspondingly grapes being grown on the Thames, at another time it would freeze over and people could have parties on it.

However, from our media we are drip fed ‘conclusions’ along with high definition close-ups of these more recent events, so what you think you see might not actually be what you think you see.

What’s the real truth?

I really really think we should be told!

Stop these bastard Segues

2011-11-23T00:05:00.000Z

The 'segue' (pronounced 'seg-way') when applied to songs on the radio used to mean carefully playing one song after another with them intermingling as one came to a close and the other started. (Yes, it's also the name of a stand-up bike thing, but that's not what I'm lamenting here.)

It used to mean that it was appropriate to 'segue' the two songs as they fitted seamlessly, either extending or slowly lifting the mood, and with musical elements that somehow interlocked. In the days of the 'radio DJ', the segue was an art. It was the radio DJ showing his art.

In fact in the early days of pop music radio the segue was a real exception rather than the rule. Segues weren't the norm.

Today on pop music radio with have the bastard child of the segue.

This is where songs are always played in twos or threes regardless of how jarring the transition from one to the other might be.

Jarring transitions rule because humans are no longer making decisions about what plays after what. Instead, badly programmed computers are, and they have no idea what might comfortably fit because essentially they are just shuffling the songs around like a deck of cards with only the most ridiculous of 'rules' as to what may be played after what. Rules the listeners just don't care about like not having a female vocalist song follow a female vocalist song seem far more important than whether the 'segue' might actually sound pleasing.

Once they realised this process of using the 'bastard child of the segue' could be a jarring experience to listen to, they programmed the shouting words of a man or a woman with effects over their voices that usually made them sound like they'd recorded themselves sitting on the toilet with constipation. This 'imaging' of constipated voices now shouts the station straplines inbetween the 'bastard child of the segue' seguing the songs.

Except of course, they were now no longer even slightly 'seguing' in the traditional sense. They were just playing the songs one after the other with an overlapping constipated shouty voice. This 'bastard child of the segue' is now sadly all that's known as the segue. Today's listeners and even those loading the playout computers, are completely unaware of the real segue and how it engenders loyalty from longer listening.

Listeners don't seem to care any more anyway, and just accept that pop music radio is exactly the same as an iPod but with shouty constipated voices inbetween the songs. It's become the norm with all creativity having departed from pop music radio as it attempts to rival the iPod rather than carve a new niche for itself by doing something intelligently that a dumb iPod cannot do.

Indeed, pop music radio is now so desperate to imitate and rival the iPod, that the radio DJ, as was, is not allowed to do anything beyond fulfilling a contractual obligation to Ofcom, the people who licence the radio stations, of having somebody in the studio. No longer can he have sung jingles declaring his name 'Bobby Bobbinson' loud and proud. He's now just 'Bob' when he's allowed to actually mention his name almost apologetically, which is usually no more than once an hour. His job is to just sit there and wait. A couple of times an hour the computer will tell him he's allowed to speak and will count him down to finish. He has to use a similar factual and unemotional voice to the platform announcer at a railway station, except he doesn't speak as often, and he reads out all the stuff he's told to read out that usually promotes some non-radio related event the radio station has attached itself to in order to appear cool and in touch, whilst also being paid handsomely for the promotion.

The radio DJ is now just an 'announcer', filling in the occasional gaps he's told to, and the public recognise the shouty constipated voices more than they recognise his.

The computer does absolutely everything else apart from the live announcements, but since nobody programming it is carefully shuffling the songs in order to make them segue with a pleasing continuity, the actual art of seguing, along with the personality of pop music radio is slowly dying as the desperation to be an iPod continues.

Old radio anoraks are not dying fast enough

2011-11-22T00:05:00.000Z

I can't help it. There's a devil inside me. It forces me to poke old radio anoraks with a stick. I really can't help it.

My only excuse is that old radio anoraks are, putting it politely and extremely fairly, fucking stupid wankers. They also all share the annoying habit of still being alive. True, they are dropping like flies, disappearing from the internet radar either through finally stopping breathing or through slipping into their pre-death vegetative state and being wheeled into god's waiting room at the home their children have selected for them. So there are a pleasingly smaller number of them each month. However, there's still enough of them to give a good poke for being fucking stupid wankers, and this is what I did via my recent article about a Radio Caroline here.

The 'jet-setting' sophisticated girl Radio Caroline is for

Now then, I gave loads of hints as to its origin within my article (like a picture of a t-shirt with 'New Balls Please' written on it), but I pointed to an audio stream identifying as Radio Caroline. After a few days this was picked up on by the old radio anoraks who were then 'activated'. My stick poking had worked.

They immediately started foaming at the mouth and blurted out their howls of derision about how dare anybody use the Caroline name, and how it was all a plot to bring the real Radio Caroline into disrepute, despite it not sounding like Radio Caroline in any way.

Straight away they started posting on a message board normally infected with their racist ejaculations, with all the obvious conspiracy theories and baying at the moon and then for blood. Some even started posting to re-quote parts of christopherengland.com using my glorious name, they were so wound-up. Yep, that's a true sign of a successful poke with a stick.

So, what exactly is the 'fake' Radio Caroline? Anybody listening for more than a few songs will hear quite clearly that it is a music stream for fans of the beautiful 21 year old Caroline Wozniacki, the number one WTA tennis player. Caroline, strangely an avid Liverpool FC fan, has also made the news recently by complaining about the 'grunt' noise some female players make, pointing out that she never 'grunts'. (F'narr.)

Her fans can listen to the music she likes to listen to via this stream named after her and sent out to the world from servers in her home country of Danmark (in English that's 'Denmark'!).

Being 21 she likes modern dance-oriented pop music, as do nearly all 21 year old girls. Apparently, although I've not seen it myself, the stream is a feed to a mobile phone app all about Caroline. Also, when she is playing matches it provides commentary or results rather than continuous music.

Pre-recorded snippets of Caroline's voice mentions her fans on the stream, and asks them to make requests, trails a competition during which you can win tickets to see her at a forthcoming match, and hopes everybody is enjoying the music she loves. Apart from Caroline, there is the usual shouty constipated voice-over man all over the 'imaging' that plays between the songs.

Overall it does sound rather good. Most of the music is up-tempo and the slower chart ballads are not used. This compares favourably with a lot of the modern British hit music format stations who also play the slow crap. It's also something worth listening to at the gym working out or whilst jogging.

In the 1960s, Queen magazine had a profile of a pretend 'jet-setting' sophisticated girl in her early 20s called 'Caroline' who was their target reader. The original Radio Caroline was then named after this, and was supposed to be playing all the music that this imaginary Caroline would want to stay tuned to.

In this sense, history has repeated itself and this Danish Radio Caroline is once again reflecting the tastes of a 'jet-setting' sophisticated girl in her early 20s called Caroline! Only, this time it's a real girl.

I like it, this Radio Caroline. It's actually fun like the real Radio Caroline was back in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Horses for course of course, but even though the old radio anoraks much prefer a Radio Caroline aimed at a crinkly and miserable 70 year old grandmother rather than the young girl, there is a need for this kind of fun bubblegum radio.

Not that old radio anoraks would ever understand all this. That's why they got so angry about the young and vibrant Caroline Wozniacki's personal radio station, and why it was so fun poking them with a stick so they could spurt out their prejudices yet again.

The Pluses of the Google Plus public house

2011-11-21T00:05:00.000Z

Yes, I know I am a Google obsessive, ok. But, surely you've just got to love a company with bouncy balls, slides and playrooms in their offices? I mean, there they are, the cradle of everything creative and fun, so what's not to love?

One of their many products that I use is Google+. Now, this is a social networking facility like Facebook. I use the phrase 'like Facebook' but it's actually nothing like Facebook at all.

Over the years I've been an early adopter of most new social networking sites. Heck I remember 'anoraking' about Twitter to somebody who said it sounded like just a re-hashed version of 'Instant Relay Chat' and how it would never catch on!

I have fond memories of the now 'rested' Jaiku, and I was a lover and great user of Plurk even though their 'Karma' facility used to wind me up. (The more you write, or the more friends you get, or the more people click to 'like' your posts, the more Karma you get. Cool! The more Karma you get, the more things you can do, and the more you're a big fish in a small pond. However, spend a day not posting or being inactive and your Karma starts to drop. Not cool!)

Despite feeling like a man out to groom teenagers as sex slaves, I've also enjoyed Habo Hotel, completely not managed to gel with Second Life or Linked-in (although that was more when it was just a CV on line, rather than having a proper social element), quite liked Quora, flirted with and tried out many different services that have come and gone along the way, and then I have this love-hate relationship with Facebook.

The point that's missed by people is that each social network is different. Each has a different set of users. Each has a different usp.

Safe and familiar pub

I guess you could visualise social networking platforms as pubs. It would be absolutely horrible if every single pub was exactly the same. Spooky if every single pub had exactly the same people in it. Knowing that a pub up the road looked the same, smelt the same, had an identical layout, served exactly the same beers, as the one round the corner, gives no incentive to head to it.

The reason people go on a pub crawl is so that they can visit different places, maybe with different beers, and different entertainment, different decor, different people, and different experiences.

It's the same with social media. You don't want all the same people following you to other places. You want new experiences, new people, new ideas, freshness and differences. That is usually what you get, yet with some crossing over and maybe appearing in more than one place. Again, this is not unlike going to new pubs.

Some pubs do contain the same people night after night. They fall in through the door as soon as it opens and they sit there supping the same beer, with the same closed group of people, either staring straight ahead or drunkenly exchanging exactly the same stories they've exchanged for the last 30 years, puffing and panting about whatever is in the paper, or staring zombie-like at the TV that's blaring away the latest sporting action. These folk don't want or need anything else. They are perfectly happy being stuck in their closed group day after day, never venturing out to pastures new, sitting there until death do them part. These people are like the majority of folk using Facebook.

Just as, short of pulling a pub down, getting these folk to move 'en bloc' to a different pub is impossible, and arguably totally pointless, so too is it daft to think that the majority of Facebook users will suddenly start using other platforms, 'en bloc'. And why should they? If they are happy where they are, why is it thought of as an either/or situation?

New social media really isn't for them, they are comfortable where they are. So be it. Not everybody wants to explore brave new worlds, most are happy just about keeping in touch with the tried and trusted closed world they know and love.

Sadly though, they justify their not moving from their current pub with statements like, "That pub up the road is shit. I went in there t'other day and there was nobody I knew in there, so it's shit. It's not as good as this pub." They then become very protective of 'their' pub, even though in reality it might be more expensive, have unclean and broken toilets, and worse decor than 'up the road'. It's all they know and it's good enough for them.

They like the familiar. That's when they start the rumours about how the pub up the road is closing down or failing compared to this pub. Their heads can't deal with different pubs being for different people. Theirs is the only pub, and that's it.

Scary unfamiliar pub

Yep, these are the people on Facebook. The latest 'pub up the road' is of course Google+. Google+ does everything Facebook does, and does it better. It is seamlessly integrated into all the other Google products, and so is just a natural bonding extension of the Google experience. It isn't Facebook. And thank goodness it isn't!

It is ideal for those who are mentally integrated into using Google's approach to, well, everything. If you like, it's a pub for Google users. It's not a pub for Facebook users.

That's why it will seem uncomfortable and alien to those who are not extensive Google users. There are those to whom Google is only a search engine you go to when looking for something. Maybe their life is based around Bing or Yahoo. There is now a whole generation that live breath and consume Facebook. For them there is nothing outside of it, Facebook is the internet. These are the people entrenched in their local pub and not likely to move whatever happens.

On the whole, Facebook users do seem to have accepted that there is this other social media platform called Twitter. They don't understand it, but they accept it's there rather than slag it off with one voice. I suspect that eventually they'll do this with Google+. Facebook users, like those stuck in their local pub, fear change and it takes them out of their comfort zone, so when a new pub opens 'up the road' they will start rumours and hate campaigns before eventually just accepting it exists but just isn't for them.

Scouse eggs

2011-11-20T00:05:00.000Z

Two Scousers are riding along the M62 from Liverpool to Manchester on a motorbike.

They break down and start hitching a lift. A friendly trucker stops to see if he can help and the Scousers ask him for a lift. He tells them that he has no room in the truck as he is carrying 20,000 bowling balls but will take a look at the bike for them.

He tries everything he knows but is unable to repair it. Time is getting on now and he's late for his delivery so he tells the Scousers he has to leave.

The Scousers plead with the driver asking that if they can manage to fit themselves into the back with the 20,000 bowling balls, that he will take them, so he agrees. They manage to squeeze themselves and their motorbike into the back of the truck so the driver shuts the doors and gets off on his way.

By this time he is really late and so puts his foot down.

Sure enough PC Plod of Greater Manchester Police pulls him up for speeding. The good officer asks the driver what he is carrying to which he replies with sarcasm, "Scouse eggs".

The policeman obviously doesn't believe this so wants to take a look. He opens the back door, gasps, and quickly shuts and locks it again.

He rushes back to his police car and gets onto his radio. He calls for immediate backup from as many officers as possible.

The dispatcher asks what emergency he has that he requires so many officers.

"I've got a truck with 20,000 Scouse eggs in it - 2 have already hatched and the fuckers have managed to nick a motorbike already."

Too many pretend Scousers out there

2011-11-19T00:05:00.000Z

Everybody's heard of 'Irish Stew', right?

Most have heard of 'Lancashire Hot Pot'.

In Liverpool, the land of one syllable, a variation on this stew of leftover meat and vegetables is called 'Scouse'. The word fits perfectly within the vocabulary of Liverpudlians as they pronounce their 'c's as a kind of clearing flem from the throat noise and their 'se's as a shrill elongated whistle. But most importantly it's really just a single syllable. Liverpudlians don't like using more than one.

Historically, defined by the eating of this favourite local stew, Liverpudlians like to refer to themselves as 'Scousers'. Well, 'Liverpudlian' is far too much effort to say. Far too many syllables.

So, Scousers are Liverpudlians, yet for some strange reason there are pockets of neighbouring areas that are trying to steal the label. This is very noticeable on television too.

I hate to refer to the X Factor, but last year a contestant Rebecca Ferguson came from the Anfield area of Liverpool. Yep, she actually was a Scouser, and so it was right for the show bosses to script the judges to encourage 'the whole of Liverpool' to vote for her. Well, that's all assuming that encouraging voting based on 'race' or 'neighbourhood' rather than talent is a good thing.

However, this year, two contestants were being labelled by the show as 'Scousers'. Winner Marcus Collins actually comes from Crosby in Sefton, up the coast a bit from Liverpool. The crooning ex-biscuit factory worker Craig Colton who was voted out before the semi-finals actually comes from Kirby in Knowsley, to the North-East of Liverpool.

Neither comes from Liverpool, yet both have been referred to as 'Scousers' and both have had the usual thing of the scripts encouraging 'the whole of Liverpool' to vote for them.

But why should Liverpudlians vote for non-Liverpudlians just because they come from neighbouring areas over voting for any of the other non-Liverpudlians?

There is a bizarre habit of people wanting to be Scousers. I suppose it's complementary, but it is as odd as somebody from North-West London wanting to be called a 'Cockney'. They just aren't.

To the South of Liverpool there's the River Mersey. South of that, there's 'the' Wirral. Some of them call themselves Scousers. To the North of Liverpool is an area called Bootle. Some of them call themselves Scousers.

Yet none of them are. They are not from Liverpool.

If they are not from Liverpool, they are not Scousers, end of. They are trying to dilute and steal the Scouse identity. It's time that true Scousers rose up against these pretend Scousers and said, "Noooooo!". It's time to protect the local identity and to stop it being eroded and stolen. It's time to rise up and ... Ok, who just said, "Calm down! Calm down, lad!"? You better have been a real Scouser.

Radio Caroline plays the hits

2011-11-18T00:05:00.000Z

I've mentioned before how confused and angry radio anoraks get. Well, the older ones mainly. They spontaneously combust if they are faced with anything modern. They explode with messy consequences if anybody says, does, or thinks anything other than they themselves do with regard to radio, which, incidentally, they believe should sound like they imagine it sounded back in the 1960s. Indeed, they will even tell you with the monotony of an old lady who has cornered you in the supermarket and wants to tell you how old she is, that they have listened to Radio Caroline non-stop since Easter 1964.

This is why today's version of Radio Caroline in the UK is an oldies station. It dare not play anything modern, for fear of random explosions littering the south-east. Strangely, at the top of every hour a modernised announcement is played that has a very modern beat clunkily grafted onto it. This might be designed to anger the standard listeners, yet not be long enough to make their heads actually explode. However, the idea of playing modern songs hasn't been tried since a brief period in the late 1980s, oh, and of course, in the 1960s.

So, it was with a snigger that I noted an audio stream claiming a 'New balls' format and using the callsign 'Radio Caroline'. I just know that as soon as confused radio anoraks find it they will immediately reach an advanced bilious state. This version of Radio Caroline plays modern bubble gum pop.

Shock horror!

Yes, a Radio Caroline for young people. Its format is identical to any standard 'hot hits' format, like the local one I occasionally enjoy from Liverpool, Juice FM, or the Capital Radio network. So, really and truly it's not doing anything fantastically different or new, just playing the faster moving pop hits segued with, inbetween them, a pre-recorded constipated shouting man saying Radio Caroline and cliché straplines.

As soon as the anoraks hear of this station stream, I can see their keyboards on fire as they spew out their conspiracy theories and consider it to be an attack on 'the real' Radio Caroline. They will blame anybody who has been declared the demon of the month, and will start on about how dare they do such a thing. Sadly, they no longer seem to accuse me of being behind anything they don't understand. The last person to do that was some mental bloke who lives in America and spends his sad and lonely time obsessively recording Radio Caroline and storing all its shows on a gigantic server for a reason that's not ever been made clear, but I assume was an activity suggested by his therapist. So, it's been a while since I was bad boy number one.

Should I at this junction say that this new balls Radio Caroline is organised by me? I mean some innocent is going to get crucified by a herd of slipper shuffling anoraks aren't they?

Is it something to do with me? Well, what can I say?

Actually, extended listening to the station should hint to anybody about the background to this modern Radio Caroline, what it's for, where it is, and why it uses the Caroline name, but I won't spoil the anorak conspiracy theories.

Listen to 'Radio Caroline' here: http://87.104.239.26:8050