Happy New Year

Greetings of the night to all here. The toast is 'Long live Liberty and to Hell with the bloody Socialists. Roll on the General Election!'

Apart from that, peace and love.

Just for the record

Labour’s vote will evaporate like never before, a combo of stay-at-home (various reasons) and massive defections to LD and Others.

Tory Blairites, vote-strikers, Kippers and fainthearts will vote Tory in record numbers to ensure that there is (i) a stake driven through Brown’s heart and (ii) no ‘king chance whatsoever of NOM.

A strong Tory turnout will boost the choice of Cameron/Tory by genuine Undecideds, some of whom will vote Tory as their default against Five More Years and/or in favour of Give The Other Lot a Chance and Cameron Looks OK I Guess.

Undecideds who vote Other will split the Labour vote, to the Tories’ advantage.

Labour will be down to the low 20s if they’re lucky. Massive Tory landslide - as I may have mentioned before.

The highlight of election night will be watching Michael White explaining it to us. (I may have mentioned that before, too.) Apart from “Balls Drop!”, obviously.

I am long on bunting.

A comment I posted on PB.com

Dear Ed,

I found your list. Guess it fell out of your Campaign Lexicon folder as you dashed off. BTW, I have Damian and Derek on standby to trawl Roget for more of the same for your (inspired, may I say) Terrifying Toff Bastards file.

Red Lion, later - K?

Alastair.

_________________________

Cruel

Brutal

Savage

Ferocious

Inhuman

Barbarous

Butcher

Diabolical

Malevolent

Hellish

Vile

Menace

Threaten

Sinister

Villainous

Vindictive

Exclude

Privilege

Privatise

Antisocial

Barbaric

Brutalise

Icy

Unfeeling

Unsympathetic

Alienation

Malicious

Obnoxious

Hateful

Abhorrent

Odious

Repulsive

Shocking

Loathsome

Disgusting

Affront

Resentment

Rabid

Swivel-eyed

Implacable

Ruthless

Remorseless

Cold

Spiteful

Blood suckers

Lofty

Rich

Wealthy

Privileged

Fairness

Inequitable

Immoral

Unjust

Disenfranchise

Indefensible

Inexcusable

Guilty

Bully

Merciless

Ambitious

Greed

Supercilious

Disdainful

Haughty

Contemptuous

Scornful

Cavalier

Contemptible

Criminal

Unpardonable

Vile

Betrayal

Two-faced

Unprincipled

Heartless

Unconscionable

Corrupt

Unreconstructed (Thatcherite)

Fear

Worry

Jeopardise

Anxiety

Dread

Horror

Dismay

Obsessed

Consternation

Despair (consign to)

Be afraid, be very afraid

I'm all right, Jack

Alarming

Irresponsible

Inexperienced

Hair-raising (prospect)

Note to self: need more similar. Ask Al.

Rage

The poisoned chalice grasped by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 is very similar though not identical to that awaiting David Cameron. Even before he begins to deal with the colossal problems ahead, Cameron knows that election victory will provoke an even more vitriolic response from the Left than during the years following 1979.

The hard and violent Left know that they will never, ever win power by the ballot box which they therefore scorn. They prefer to agitate and harass, through a large number of disparate, single-issue pressure groups. (The green ones are quite successful - have you noticed?) They make live as unpleasant as possible for the greatest number of innocent people in the hope of blaming it all on the wicked 'right wing government' and leaving sour memories of the Tory years. And when the electoral cycle brings Labour back to power, the Conservatives' years in opposition echo to the Left's non-stop chant about the last, long-gone Conservative government, with the intention that the electorate should fear the return of the wicked Tories. No matter what damage Labour in office wreaks, it is masked by the chants blaming the Tories.

Thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher dared to question what had come to be thought of as the post-1945 welfare state consensus which, even by 1979, was draining the very lifeblood of the British economy while transferring power from the people to the state bureaucracy and trade union moguls, in the process infantilising the citizenry even as it impoverished them, paralysing the country even as it bankrupted it. But listen to the recordings of the Left's howling (literally) rage as Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street for the first time. And that was before she actually had done anything. The mere prospect of anyone challenging their right to determine the course of British history according to their dogmas caused outrage.

The mantra of the Left, from Gordon 'Bonkers' Brown and Billy 'Loveable Leftie' Bragg to Bob 'Sod the Voters' Crow contains the word 'Thatcher' in every verse, almost twenty years after her departure. Why? Because her sheer effrontery appalled them. They have never got over it. She shattered their 'historical inevitability'. How dare a Conservative challenge their Long March? 35 years after Attlee, a Tory woman with starched hair and a posh voice and married to a filthy capitalist oil millionaire, is elected to power by the stupid electorate who still don't get it - still don't get that the revolution is not to be denied or overturned even by a majority vote. Thatcher's victory was intolerable and the memory of the outrage must never die. Please to remember, etc., like Guy Fawkes.

Pretty soon after Thatcher's ascent to power, the recidivist Left took to the streets, just as they are threatening to do now. They became violent and targeted private property and the police, orchestrated by people with no concern whatever for the welfare of the British people.

New Labour was no more to the liking of the Hard Left than Margaret Thatcher, although they held their fire for fear of bringing down a nominally 'Labour' administration. Nevertheless, they have steadily continued in the same direction, marshalling ever larger gangs (remember the G8 'anti-globalisation' destruction) using various names and flourishing a variety of red, green and rainbow banners. Amusing how people espousing an internationalist creed march under a banner saying 'anti-globalisation.

Recently, with another Tory government on the horizon, the Left have been flexing their muscles and getting up to fighting weight. Their pent up energies and frustrations will be vented on David Cameron. The unions have a £25 million war chest with which 'to unleash hell' on a Tory government. So much for elections and democracy. Not much has changed on the Hard Left since Lenin, has it?

The past twelve years have been a good time for the Left which nevertheless has felt constrained to utter the odd random bleat about the Blair/Brown government being 'right wing', which convinced no-one except possibly Will Hutton, David Aaronovitch and a few of the more barking bloggers.

The Labour government of which the fantasist Gordon Brown was chief architect made sure its golden geese were well fed. Labour sought union permission for government policies through the 'Warwick Agreement'. It gave them a lot of taxpayers money. It swelled the ranks of the index-linked pensioners on the public payroll, whose salaries outstripped those in the wealth-creating sector as the unions took hold in a way they no longer can outside Labour's state apparat. (Well, apart from Bob Crow.)

Culturally and politically, Britain during the Blair-Brown years has succumbed further to the Gramscian 'long march through the institutions' which are now largely captive to the well-entrenched Left. Even if Cameron gains a landslide mandate they will fight him tooth and claw on the assumption that the Tory years are no more than a temporary hitch in the Long March to historically inevitable Socialism. They mean to cling like limpets so that come the glorious day they will be in place to carry on where they left off. So to speak.

Freedom of thought and speech in our universities are a thing of the past. Our secular and religious history, our high culture and our national memory are almost entirely erased from the school curriculum and public discourse. Preference for our own culture as against anyone else's is, in some aspects, actually outlawed now, by Labour. Our electorate has been sedated by welfare and rendered supine and disconnected from the political system by which the political elite gains power. The Left is not going to allow any government to alter that, election or no election.

Our wealth-creators have had to export many of their functions, including manufacturing, to countries like India and China in order to remain profitable, creating domestic unemployment which Brown dealt with by the simple expedient of creating more state jobs and declaring the growing numbers of unemployed 'unemployable' due to mysterious forms of 'incapacity', requiring yet more welfare payments.

And now the enemy is on the march. A Tory government is about to be given power by a very angry electorate, whose pensions and savings have been stolen by Labour to shore up its leader's position and allow him to continue savaging Britain's social stability, national identity and economy in the name of his and their anti-natural idea of 'equality at any cost'. And of course the cost is liberty for, as Hayek demonstrated, a society may have liberty or equality but not both. The Left chooses equality at the cost of your liberty, and there is to be no discussion.

But now the nation is too sick of Labour to give them another term in power, and the only recourse for the Left is to try to scare the voters away from the Tories. Team Brown is whipping them all up with the familiar chants of 'The 1930s!' and 'Thatcher!'

It will avail Labour nothing.

Cameron will take over and begin to govern and the Left will strike up its familiar, enraged howling even before he does anything at all.

The Conservative Party has no legitimacy in the mind of the left, simply because they are Conservative. Elections are irrelevant. It will be war. Dealing with Labour's malign scorched-earth legacy will mean pain (although Brown even at this late hour is lying about that because he can - he will not be around to be proved wrong) and the Left will do its damnedest to exculpate the Labour Party and pin the blame on the Tories. We have lived through it all before.

Ongoing recession, high unemployment, falling house prices, large spending cuts, and discontent with the war will lead to wildcat strikes and large-scale marches that turn into riots in the autumn.

Brown will be watching from his retirement sinecure when the petrol bombs are thrown - and he will smile.

People will get hurt. Cameron will need broad shoulders. He will be seen to have them.

But brace yourselves. Marches, demonstrations, riots, large scale civil disorder... we are about to find ourselves living in interesting times. And all because we as a nation are about to vote against the Left. That sort of disobedience is not something they are prepared to tolerate.

You see, we delude ourselves if we think we are free to choose our rulers. The Left will do that for us and we must be re-educated so that in time we will all accept the historical inevitability of that. In the meantime, if we defy them, they will punish us. Isn't that right, Mr Crow? Mr Livingstone? Mr Umunna? Mr Hundal?

Oh, dear.

Rod Liddle's going to be in a LOT of trouble for this.

I suppose, in a spirit of diversity and tolerance, we could set up training camps somewhere in the Pennines suicidal Muslims could learn to blow themselves up and then, in a final, glorious coming out parade, actually do so, perhaps watched admiringly by the Home Secretary or a minor royal. It would be a bit like those citizenship tests, except with a less equivocal conclusion.

Or maybe not.

My Ten Best Lists of 2009

1. Shopping list

2. Useless plants to dig up and kill list

3. Things to tell the garage about the car list

4. Things to tell the vet about the cat list

5. To-do about the house list

6. CDs and videos to take to the charity shop list

7. Wines I want to try in 2010 list

8. Books I should have read by now and haven’t list

9. People I will put up against the wall when I rule the world list

10. Er, that’s it.

Labour's class war - victory no. 94

Brown and Balls are lying when they say the Tories IHT policy won't help anyone who earns less than the average wage. I am a divorced single mother with two sons. I work 30 hours a week in the public sector and earn rather less than the average wage. I live in the South East.

13 years ago, following my divorce I bought a relatively cheap (for my area) ex-local authority house and have 'gone without' in order to pay off the mortgage. At that time, the house cost substantially less than the IHT threshold. Now, thanks to Gordon Brown's debt-based housing inflation, the value of my house alone takes me over the current IHT threshold. It's the same property (plus minor improvements). So 13 years ago, on the strength of my house, I was classified as relatively poor and under the IHT threshold. Now, as far as Labour is concerned, living in the same property, I am considered wealthy.

Because I'm single, I can't divide the value between two individuals as Labour proposes. That means, if I meet an untimely end, my sons will have to pay IHT on the strength of their home and some money I recently inherited.

Since when has a divorced single mother, living in an ex local authority house and working in the public sector been considered appropriate to pay IHT? Since Labour came to power and inflated the housing market.

Comment from here.

Every one a winner, Balls. Keep it up.

Genius, gent, libertarian

I have been told that David Hockney declined the offer of the presidency of his alma mater, the Royal College of Art, saying that he might reconsider if they recommenced the teaching of drawing. It was hearing that which made me take a good look at his work. I cursed myself for coming so tardily to his altar.

Hockney is a very great artist indeed, a timeless eye working with modern sensibilities but firmly in the tradition of the Olympians whom he has studied all his life and takes as his mentors. He is as wonderfully defiant as the best of them were in defence of both his genius (lit.) and his freedom. He has a fine sense of the ridiculous and seems constantly to be laughing at the pomposity and fakery around him.

One does not have to like an artist whose work invades one's soul. I do not know Hockney personally and for all I know he is a shit in private but I strongly doubt it. What I see of the man, I like - a lot. He has the rare gift of genuine charm, and he knows it, and he uses it shamelessly for his own amusement. But charm he has, and one can forgive much in a truly charming man. He loves his dogs and he loved his parents. Few painters can actually paint love as he can.

David Hockney's painting of his parents.

Hockney was the guest editor on Today, today. With his chuckling, easy manner, his determined editorial onslaught obliged even David Blunkett, the most casually brutal dictator of all the New Labour freaks, to admit some merit in the argument that there are too many laws. Of course Blunkett stood firm against those he called 'libertarians of left and right' which merely reminded one of his CV as a a marxoid commissar.

But back to the great man. Thus David Hockney, great artist, defender of liberty - and smoker.

'I think all this green law stuff is mostly about politicians wanting to control you. I will fight it.'

'Force landladies to take gay couples? No, not necessarily.' (Hockney is famously gay.)

'They banned smoking and Wall Street went insane. Gordon Brown should smoke a pipe and ponder, instead of trying to jog.'

'I'll vote for almost anybody to get this mean-spirited authoritarian lot out.'

By no means your stage northerner, your Hockney. But actually English, and actually Yorkshire. A gentle, smiling defender of liberty as well as an artistic genius.

What? I mean, WHAT? Oh, it's you, Alice.

Just how surreal the business of "carbon trading" has become is illustrated by [ a ] project [...] which involves the plan by a Tata subsidiary to build one of the world's largest coal-fired power stations in the state of Gujarat. Nearly $1 billion needed to build the 4 gigawatt Mundra plant is being supplied in cheap "green loans" (WTF?) by the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank (to both of which Dr Pachauri acts as an adviser), because the plant will emit CO2 at a "lower intensity" than older power stations in India. For the same reason, the plant will also qualify for a potential $560 million in "carbon credits" under the UN's CDM scheme, which can then be sold on the world market.

If our own Government allows E.on to build a similar but much smaller coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, however, we shall have to pay out millions of pounds through our electricity bills to buy those same "credits" which in India the UN hands out free – to help Tata build a plant which will be responsible for emitting 26 million tonnes a year of CO2, well over twice as much as Kingsnorth.

Booker

My emphasis.

Brown's crime sheet

Here. Right hand column.

What he said

SeanT at PB.com (437):

The Class War stuff is utterly disastrous for Labour, and the various Ministers who are said to be freaked by it (Mandy et al) are right to be worried.

Basically, as I now see it, Labour’s position is: Yes we have f*cked up the country, Yes we are useless, No we don’t have any idea how to fix things, No we have no good reasons for you to vote for us, however you should still vote for us… Because… Well, Because We Still Hate Rich People.

Vote Labour, Vote Hatred!

Given that at least 70% of the country is either quite well off or at least aspires to be doing OK financially, then Labour are reducing themselves to the 30% of people who have no hope or ambition, and who are immiserated in bitterness and envy.

And most of them don’t vote.

Please carry on, Gordon.

As if anyone could give a toss

My top ten blogs of 2009

1. Politicalbetting

2. CoffeeHouse

3. Mr Eugenides

4. Guido Fawkes

5. Devil's Kitchen

6. Tim Worstall

7. ConservativeHome

8. John Redwood

9. Paul Waugh

10. Tax Payers Alliance

Consolation Prize: Iain Dale's Diary, because he's a decent sort, tries hard and gives me the odd link in his Daley Dozen. (Yeah, I know. Collect your refund on the way out.)

Special Award for the Defence of Science: shared by Watts Up With That, EU Referendum, Bishop Hill and Devil's Kitchen.

Special Comedy Awards: The Daily Mash and Liberal Conspiracy.

Wish List

This goes straight on it:

I'm going to try and shake everything up again before the May general election with my new book Silent State. It moves on from MPs to look at the courts, the police, local government and this weird situation we're in now where the state knows so much about the private citizen and the private citizen knows almost nothing about the public officials running the state. The recent privacy laws have been hijacked by public officials to protect them from public accountability.

Heather Brooke.

Bitch

A Radio 3 critic described a recent recording as 'conspicuously conducted'.

Ouch.

This is why Parris is the tops

Tony Blair (in the careful words used by Noël Coward of the simpering entertainer, Liberace) did what he did remarkably well; indeed Mr Blair was the Liberace of modern British politics. Mr Brown is just a talentless bully.

Balls U-turn on family values

What a farcehole.

It stunts your growth

Fraser Nelson muses on the '1970s Moscow' mindset of Balls and his gang.

It's no mystery, Fraze. Moving as you do in adult intellectual circles among free thinkers of all sorts, I daresay you have been spared the unpleasant necessity of close acquaintance with the compulsive political masturbators of the Bullyingonanist Club or you would know that arrested development is a common symptom on the Left.

Take the current Labour leadership. A tight little, um, circle, who have inhabited their private intellectual comfort bubble ever since that first teenage political surge ('I joined the Labour Party at 16') when there was no-one but their mates to turn to for mutual gratification.

Egging each other on (a less offensive term than the one that springs to mind) these frustrated, aggressive, sport-obsessed, hormone-driven, permanently-teenage political gangsters have grown older without developing the normal sensitivity to the protocols of polite society. Indeed, they think it perfectly acceptable to 'moon' at those they scorn as 'middle class', the majority who do not have to rely on their Bullyingonanist Club brethren for fulfilment but engage in normal adult political intercourse.

Older now but no wiser, the political adolescents of the left know they know everything. They occasionally attract posh totty who hang around giggling and squirming naughtily at the sort of dirty-politics talk which would shock the High Mistress. And don't get me started on high mistresses.

Though vain, the Bullyingonanists are not actually the least self-aware. They pleasure each other in public, blind to the the revulsion on the faces of the voters and deaf to hoots of derision. Yes, political masturbation makes you deaf, too, to all but the loudest of electoral explosions.

But then, one can sympathise, in a way. I mean, why grow up and face cold political reality when mutual gratification is assured just as long as you stick (oh, yes - sorry) together to keep the grown-ups and the rival gang out of the room and carry on pleasuring each other so deliciously?

And if stunted intellectual growth is your only problem, no worries. You will be Leaders (if only of an army of other deluded political dwarves). You are The Brothers. You know that it is historically inevitable that it is your destiny, as the Bullyingonanist Club, to rule the world, bonded for life by ties going right back to the best years of your lives.

It is a proud heritage and if they are challenged they simply flourish their beloved Red Flag. With the other hand.

Radical Christianityist tries to bomb US plane

What? Oh, you mean he was a Buddhist? A Baha'i then? No? You mean he was a... noooo! Seriously?

Merry Christmas and a capitalist New Year

Here's a little seasonal gift from Prodicus: a chance to do some real good in the tougher parts of the world without contributing a penny to the already-vast Dictators Pension Find.

Don't give to some fake charity. Instead, lend a little to a real-life, named, photographed, low-income, bottom-of-the-heap capitalist entrepreneur with a microfinance loan. You'll get it back (without interest - that's the gift bit) when she or he makes a little profit and then you can lend them some more or recycle the money to another worthy soul who does not want your charity - just a bit of help to get started. Then they in turn can help their family and their neighbours.

Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than Marxism ever could or ever will. Mugabe can verify that. Or could if he weren't so busy killing his compatriots and taking their money off them like the good Marxist he is.

This Christmas, be a good little capitalist and do your bit to prove it by helping someone else prove it too, to the great benefit of themselves, their family, their friends, neighbours and nation.

The Gordon Brown Management Technique

"Cup with the left, grip firmly with the right, then...

"I am told that Nick and Peter have developed some rather effective refinements of their own but I don't ask for details. Deniability is essential for a Prime Minister, as Tony will confirm."

'Insiders'? Bah, humbug.

The Fink draws attention to the top bananas list compiled by PoliticsHome's Insiders.

All the insiders' chatter is so much piss and wind. They are too close and too inbred (so to speak) to see the picture as it looks from out here in Pleb Land.

The polls don't tell the half of it, and the punters at PB.com are in dialogue with those pollsters who will mostly be wrong all the way although perhaps with YouGov getting it less wrong the closer we get.

The 'insiders' are not even close when it comes to measuring the still-mounting raging hatred of the public for Brown and the Labour Party. The people have not spoken yet.

When the people finally get their ached-for chance to deliver a fatal hammer-blow to failed tyrant Brown, the 'insiders' will be shocked to the core at the magnitude of the landslide the electorate will hand Dave, if only to be sure of humiliating the Brown Ruiner.

To the bewilderment of the 'insiders' (I can't wait to see Michael White explaining it to us) there will be national rejoicing on election night as, by its concerted will, the country finally destroys the Labour Party, live on television, for wrecking our country on the altar of its political dogma through its patented combination of delusional vanity, hate, ruthlessness, historical ignorance, corruption of public ethics and morals, cultural vandalism and cosmic fucking incompetence.

Never again.

So there is SOME hope, Sir Humphrey?

In the fag-end months of this disastrous, mendacious administration no civil servant is lifting a finger to implement their scorched-earth policies.

Thus a commenter @11:04 at the 'Graph.

Just because

I watched the Shrek Christmas film. Why? For the creative genius behind Puss in Boots, of course.

It kept on and on about Christmas being 'a special time'. Why?

It emphasised that Christmas is the 'special time of year for Family'. Why?

It moralised about Christmas being about generosity and hospitality and not about oneself and selfishness. But why?

It didn’t say.

Nope. I can't better this.

Given enough time, even a half-bonkers old chap like Warner occasionally crafts the perfect paragraph.

When they crawled out from under that stone in 1997 they had just one ambition: to impose their will, their prejudices, their squalid vision of the world on the entire nation. That is always the badge of the inadequate, the owners of inferiority complexes, epitomised by the nail-biting, grimacing weirdo in Number 10.

Aha!

h/t Tractor Stats via OH.

Stat pr0n. Kind of.

Here's a tip for all bloggers with pathetically low profiles. Like this one. Not that I care yada yada yada.

If you are fortunate enough to get a link from Iain Dale to a Eurosceptic blogpost you wrote, saying how ghastly the German politikmeisters/Berlaymont commissars are (you might want to throw in a snarl at the French énarchs) and how they are really the World Domination League (for those who remember E L Wisty), your daily visitor numbers will treble in a matter of minutes.

Which tells us something about the clout of Iain Dale's Diary and the delightfully intransigent Euroleanings of the denizens of the UK blogosphere.

It's a rather good feeling, knowing there are so many like minds out there. Thank you, Mrs Dale and readers. (His and mine.)

Is it me or is it hot in here?

Warble gloaming latest: it was MINUS 31 degrees Celsius in Dusseldorf, Germany, yesterday.

Just saying.

Earth calling Charlie Whelan, wherever you are

Doesn't he know there's a war general election on?

I dunno. Is he losing his touch? British Airways (FAIL). Now an all-out Tube power strike from tomorrow night until after Christmas. Mysterious.

Or maybe... maybe it isn't up to Charlie any more. Maybe his day is over, what with his now impotent patron being on the skids with no way back up.

Maybe the Brothers have completely written off Gordon, his friends and the dying Parliamentary Labour Party.

Maybe power has already drained away to the union bosses.

Maybe it's going to be every tribal leader man for himself now, in the Labour 'movement'. Aw.

But anyway, sod the British public, as usual. Especially now that they're going to chuck Labour out for a generation. Fuck 'em, eh, Charlie? Derek? Bob?

Merry Christmas, Londoners.

Vote Labour.

Cameron to debate with Brown and Clegg?

A very courageous decision, Shadow Prime Minister.

And sod the British people, obviously

The following is extracted from a longer article on German Foreign Policy which is must-read stuff for any British citizen concerned about the encroachment on this country of the EU.

The full document is stored here as a PDF and here as a screen-grab/JPG in case it dieappears from the web.

Thanks to @BrkingSpider and Fausty's Libertarian Blog.

PLEASE TWEET THIS. __________________________

In a chilling article about how Germany intends that the EU shall get future British Prime Minister David Cameron onside and marginalise British sceptics, the intent is cold-bloodedly clear. And fuck the known majority will of the British people, obviously. They are to be ignored because only the ruling politicians are of interest, as Mandelson will confirm.

Interesting paragraphs include these:

The main reason for British EU-skepticism remains the fear that in the future the EU could usurp the sovereignty of the nation-states and blatantly rule the member states, even Great Britain from abroad, bypassing the elected national parliaments. That this fear is justifiable can be seen in the recent developments in Greece. Greece's national debt has reached about 120 percent of its BNP, which is twice what is allowed under the EU's Stability and Growth Pact. Several EU states, including Germany, are exerting strong pressure on Athens to reduce the level of debts at all costs. Whether this is a justified demand, is a matter of dispute. The Prime Minister of Luxemburg, Jean-Claude Juncker considers "the perspective being painted by some, as if Greece is on the brink of national bankruptcy, is at variance with my observations."[2] Axel Weber, President of the German Federal Bank, on the other hand, demands that Athens impose a rigid austerity policy, that would also drastically cut salaries.[3]

Still Independent (sic)

The German chancellor is demanding that Brussels should be granted new rights of intervention into central areas of national sovereignty, for such cases. If, for example, an elected parliament refuses to enact substantial cuts in wages, Brussels must have the power to order these cuts against their will. "National parliaments do not like to have things imposed," observes Angela Merkel and demands "we have to discuss this type of problem."[4] The extent of this sort of intervention, particularly affecting the smaller EU nations, placing them under de facto direct control of the EU hegemonic powers,

To trash: verb.

Brogan reports that the class war is about to go live, with Bozza debating PR with Postman Pat next month.

The postman slags off the Conservative Party for being led by blokes who, as kids, got legless and trashed two restaurants. (The postman clearly never experienced student life.) Yawn. And this from a member of the ruling claque of the party which has trashed this country's entire economy and constitution.

So let's see. Who would I rather vote for?

- A party favouring the defence of my liberties under a sound constitution, sound defences, sound money, the rule of law under the British Constitution, and good education for all - a handful of whose leaders got drunk as students and trashed a couple of restaurants and then grew up, or

- A party of knee-jerk professional haters who have never outgrown their adolescent habits of mind; who know fuck all about economics; who have trashed our education system because they want all our children to learn no more than the thickest can cope with; who have trashed the economy; who have trashed the constitution; who have trashed our civil liberties and created a massive state bureaucracy to document the citizen's every move; who have trashed the self-respect and life chances of millions of welfare slaves; who have trashed a civil service which was the envy of the world and replaced them with their party henchmen; who have trashed the nation's sense of identity and its natural cohesion by deliberately and without a mandate importing millions of (they intend) new Labour voters from countries where only members of the ruling elite stand a decent chance of growing up or growing old; who have trashed our historical and religious traditions while outlawing criticism of an imported religion whose more advanced thinkers shout on our streets that they will destroy this country and all its inhabitants who will not conform to the sort of oppressive dark ages laws which our ancestors shed their blood to abolish but which this Labour party is gradually reinstating, piece by piece?

Hm. Tough one.

THIS, more than anything else, is why I HATE this Labour government

Tim Worstall:

The government can charge you with something….oooooh, let’s say something nice and complex like VAT fraud…..and when found not guilty you’re still bankrupted by your legal costs.

They seem to have been copying the worst parts of the worst legal systems over the years: your assets can and will be confiscated if you’re found not guilty, your assets can and sometimes are frozen so that you cannot pay for your own defence and now this.

There was something which we’d largely got right. Took us near a thousand years to do so with a number of revolutions, civil wars, bloody rebellions and all, but we got there. You couldn’t be tried twice for the same crime, we thought it far worse to imprison the innocent than to let some guilty go free, you had a right to a fair trial and so on….presumption of innocence, see the evidence against you, no punishment without trial and so rumpety pumpety on. Now the major building blocks of that system of civil liberties seem to have been destroyed in only 12 short years.

There’s only one word for it I’m afraid.

Cunts.

Yes.

And why isn't this all over the front page of the Sun, the Mirror, the Mail, the Guardian... the lot of them?

Why aren't the citizenry besieging Westminster in their millions, pitchforks in hand?

Because this fucking 'government' has so brainwashed the media that they haven't even noticed the things which really matter and so they haven't told anyone.

As well as destroying our economy, the traitorous, fascistic fucking Labour Party has dismantled and destroyed the very foundations of British constitutional democracy.

AND NOBODY HAS EVEN FUCKING NOTICED?

WHEN DOES THE REVOLUTION START, DAVE? Dave? Hello?

Riddle-me-ree

Why do moonbats and bent scientists condemn Big Oil and all its shills on the one hand while, on the other, bigging up Big Carbon and all its shills when they are are more or less the same people? Plus multimillionaire capitalist L Ron Gore, of course.

No, I really don't get it. I mean, seriously, why would all the lefty moonbats want to force us all to accept a new world order which will only make Big Oil capitalists (and multimillionaire capitalist L Ron Gore) more powerful and richer by trillions? (Yes, trillions.) ?

Seems the ecowankers are missing something. Or are they... ?

Nah. it's much more likely that being a moonbat means you're not qualified to offer 'the bleeding obvious' as your specialist subject on Mastermind.

Best read of the day

Max Hastings in the Financial Times.

Indeed, madam, indeed

I have had a great career and there is plenty more to come. I will make the most of being in the Lords.

And so she has.

Thus Irene Adams, near-invisible 'working' 'Baroness' and hereditary stalwart of the totally corrupt Glasgow Labour Party machine beyond which she is entirely unknown although it turns out we have all been contributing to her very nice and not so little earner.

In 1995, 'Lady' Adams, lifelong Socialist, came into her assured and lucrative reward for services to the Scottish Labour Party machine which inflicted her friends Gordon Brown and Gorbals Mick on Britain's Parliament and people, both of which they have despised, abused and broken, perhaps beyond repair.

Her lifelong contempt for the Upper House was set aside swiftly once she was in receipt of the chit for a seat of her own therein. She duly took her place at the side of the trough reserved for those wielding power without the inconvenience of having to ask the electorate for a mandate.

Since then, nary a sound has been heard from the Noble Lady save the occasional swish of rented ermine as she pushed to the front of the herd struggling to get their snouts in the trough, and of course the disgusting sound of greedy snuffling.

Global warming - latest

Record snowfalls in the USA, with 16" of snow in Washington DC.

Germany's main airports closed by blizzards.

Terrifying experiences for hundreds in undersea train tunnels when trains halted by extraordinarily low temperatures.

Er, we've been snowed in for two days here in East Anglia.

Is Gaia trying to tell us something?

2010 TV highlights: Big Brother's 'Mock the Wounded Tommy' special

Trixy saith:

[The Big Brother producers have] contacted a particular charity who assist vulnerable veterans suffering from homelessness, drink and drug abuse asking for 'case studies' to contact.

Men and women who have bravely served their country and fallen on hard times or dealt badly with the transition from the Armed Forces to civvy street are now ideal people to be under continual observation and media scrutiny, are they?

How fucking heartless do you have to be to think that putting a homeless person in a house where they face a weekly eviction vote is a good idea?

Fuck Big Brother and fuck Endemol (which has just devoured Tiger Aspect).

When you stop fulminating, why not send a tenner to these good people:

'Hello clouds, hello sky' - dependable scientific rigour at Wikipedia

Via Watts Up With That:

Lawrence Solomon at the National Post [focuses on] RealClimate.org co-founder William Connolley, who has “touched” 5,428 Wikipedia articles with his unique brand of RC centric editing:

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand.

When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings.

In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy:

"The IPCC Third Assessment Report from 2001 summarises this research, saying "…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries".[4] Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early- and mid-20th century"

And here's another Wikibully:

Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of skeptics.

I soon found others who had the same experience: They would try to squeeze in any dissent, or even correct an obvious slander against a dissenter, and Petersen or some other censor would immediately snuff them out. National Review

Competition: Guess the source of this quote

"Your paper, after all, is the one you should be able to trust to tell you everything you need to know."

Too easy, huh?

“We cannot account for what is happening in the climate system”

Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado [observed in] an email dated October 12, 2009 [...] that the planet’s average temp An IPCC spokemanerature over the past 10 years seemed to have been static and wrote: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of global warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Two days later he reiterated: “We cannot account for what is happening in the climate system.” October 2009 Source

An IPCC spokesman yesterday The consensus is that there is no consensus.

That will not, however, stop the chant from those on the warble gloaming* gravy train that those of us (including thousands of eminent scientists) who are demanding credible scientific evidence for their assertions - not to mention justification for their mass-murderous economic proposals - are 'irrational'.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world on the other side of the looking-glass.

In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!' Lewis Carroll

________________________________

* Lovely, eh? I nicked it as soon as I saw it. Feel free.

Follow the money

This is going to be fun.

Wrong. So wrong.

Brogan, Oborne, Ashley and Richards on Radio 4's The Week in Westminster, all chorus: 'Hung Parliament or small Tory majority'.

They're all wrong.

Tory landslide.

You heard it here first. Or here if you follow me on Twitter.

The other elephant

source

Genius

Absolutely brilliant faux-Shakespeare poke at Gordon Brown over at the Economist.

Best snort-out-loud line so far (haven't finished it yet):

Enter MANDELSON, a manipulator, by yacht

"Just give us the bloody money"

That, I am unreliably informed, is to be the sub-title of the next edition of a book by Sir Crispin Tickell, environmental campaigner, of which

the first edition called for public funds to be made available to prevent global cooling while the second edition called for public funds to be made available to prevent global warming.

Hat tip to Christopher Monckton who has written an incendiary (putting it mildly) open letter to the chairman of the IPCC, disproving the cardinal 'scientific' assertion of the IPCC and accusing its chairman, in terms, of, inter alia

• having numerous substantial direct or indirect vested financial and commercial interests profiting from the emissions reduction processes that the documents produced by the IPCC under his chairmanship have triggered
• knowingly and repeatedly publishing false data
• knowingly and repeatedly permitting his tax-payer funded associates' distortion of the scientific peer-review process.

... among other things. Allegedly. And all on the public, I mean, PUBLIC record.

Monckton ends by threatening to prosecute Pachauri and his associates:

We should be grateful for your response within 48 hours, failing which we shall be entitled to presume that you, the IPCC and the EPA – to whose administrator we are copying this letter – intend to conspire, and are conspiring, to obtain a pecuniary advantage by deceiving the public as to the nature, degree, and significance of the global surface temperature trend. In that event, conspiracy to defraud taxpayers would be evident, and we should be compelled to place this letter in the hands of the relevant investigating and prosecuting authorities.

Blimey. I mean, phew. Cats. Lots of cats. Pigeons. Gonna be feathers everywhere, right?

Sheesh, I am so looking forward to the BBC's 'environmental analyst', Roger Harrabin, broadcasting his authoritative take on all this.

What? Oh.

Hat tip to Plato.

Analyse this

When China’s leaders talk about effective global governance, there is another flicker of hope.

The choice now is between a world in which powerful states are held in check by co-operative multilaterism; or one that is riven by the clash of narrow nationalisms. During the present decade everything changed. The next will be described by whether the great powers – old and rising – prove themselves masters or victims of a new global order.

Philip Stephens in the FT. What is it about that piece which makes me shudder?

Where's Charlie?

Iain Martin would like to know.

Charlie Whelan's in the back room at Unite guarding the large pile of cash he's saved by cutting off campaign funds from his electorally doomed comrade, Jonah Brown. That money is for AFTER the election, not before it.

Unite are Labour's bankers. Once Brown is gone, do you think Whelan and the Comrades will accept a Conservative government? No, they will wreak vengeance upon government and electorate. (This means you.) They will fight every inch of the way.

These people do not give a toss for Parliamentary democracy. You only have to consider Gordon Brown's contempt for the House of Commons (where YOU are represented) to know the truth of that. They are concerned only with power. They want it, and once they have it, they will not give it up. If it is prised from their grip, they will try to take it back no matter what the cost.

The Left will have small strikes all over the place to begin with and a General Strike as soon as they identify the critical moment. That's why Charlie Whelan and the Brothers have £25 million in the bank but won't sign any cheques for Brown.

The conditions are ripe.

• Parliamentary democracy is cracking under the strain of Labour's system of corrupt patronage and the international socialism of the EU.
• Social cohesion is paper-thin: Gordon Brown has seen to that by undermining family structures, setting public employees against the wealth-creating sector and setting racial groups against each other through uncontrolled immigration and appeasement of militant Islamists, compounded by patronising and insulting the white working class.
• Following the example of every Labour government Britain has ever had, Brown has bankrupted the national economy leaving a scorched-earth legacy for the next government of massive public and private debt, shattered pension funds, higher taxes and reduced public services.
• The formerly United Kingdom is disunited. Our ancient constitution has been dismantled and most of it abolished by Labour's ceding our lawmaking to the unelected officials of Brussels and the judges of Strasbourg.
• Today we get insane 'climate change' commitments to reduce our standard of living by 30 per cent at about the time the lights will go out anyway because Labour refused to build new power stations under pressure from its own left wing.
• The police have never been stronger or more intrusive upon the private citizen.
• Our armed forces, whom the Left so revile when the citizenry is not listening, have never been weaker: air cover absent, ships being mothballed, RAF stations closing, even as we are fighting a vicious war of attrition in the murderous Afghan hills.

Yes, the conditions are in place. Labour-in-government has done its job. Now it's time to hand the country over to Charlie Whelan and the Brothers.

Remember the seventies? The Winter of Discontent, the streets foul with rubbish uncollected for months, ambulances leaving stroke victims untended and council workers leaving the dead unburied? Remember the poll tax riots? The miner's strike? Whelan does.

And Whelan's organisation, Unite-the-Uber-Union?

Unite is the general union, created in 2007and representing employees in manufacturing, engineering, energy, construction, IT, defence aerospace, motor industry, civil aviation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, steel and metals, shipbuilding, scientists, technologists, professional and managerial staff, electronics and telecommunications, tobacco, food and drink, textiles, ceramics, paper, printing, professional staff in universities, commercial sales, the voluntary sector, banking and financial services, and the National Health Service, administrative, clerical, technical and supervisory; agriculture; building, construction and civil engineering; chemical, oil and rubber manufacture; civil air transport; docks and waterways; food, drink and tobacco; general workers; passenger services; power and engineering; public services; road transport commercial; textiles; vehicle building and automotive.

Sooner rather than later, we may have to think about which of those sectors we can do without for a while.

Fasten your seatbelts.

Conspiracy theorist - moi? Only... just... follow the money

UPDATE: The great Delingpole himself also thinks this is worth a wide airing and has now reposted it himself on his blog as a full post.

ABSTRACT: This thing would not need thousands of scientists to be involved. All that was need was for one or two people in perhaps five or six countries to adjust the raw data. Anyone using the data when making a comparison to CO2 would find the results that had been seeded into the data. The scientists would not be aware that they were being played. They would honestly think that their conclusions were correct. Only none of their predictions would ever be confirmed.

All the papers that used the data, and all the papers that used those papers for support, would therefore be invalid. In the vast majority of the cases I would expect that the authors are without blame, they made no mistake. The mistake was encoded into the base data before they even started.

Well, so much we can agree on. Nothing to see here, move along.

The above by the way, is from a very long comment by Andrew30 @ Dec 18th, 2009 at 12:52 pm at the excellent James Delingpole's Telegraph blog.

Now brace yourself, because I am going to post the whole of his comment. If the Telegraph wants to give me some hassle and make me take it down, they can go ahead.

It's a stonker. Here goes.

_______________________________________

Why would a Middle Eastern kingdom be funding a British Climate research business?

Oman has just completed a massive investment in LNG, and developed and installed new CO2 removal technology in their process; this lowers the carbon footprint of their gas. So using their gas to drive electricity generation will be less costly once CO2 is taxed.

They have no problem with this whole thing.

Saudi Arabia, who have oil and not so much gas, are in a different position, they have a problem with this whole thing.

Just an observation; a 4 degree rise in temperature in the Sultanate of Oman or Saudi Arabia would change it from really hot to really hot.

Maybe it is just good business.

http://www.omanlng.com/

Oman LNG L.L.C

Formed: Set up by Royal Decree in February 1994.

Location: Head office: Muscat; Plant: Qalhat near Sur (approx 340 km from Muscat)

Products: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

Shareholders: Government of Oman 51 %, Royal Dutch/Shell Group 30%, Total Elf Fina 5.54%, KOLNG 5%, Partex 2% Mitsubishi 2.77%, Mitsui 2.77%, ltochu 0.92%.

The Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the UK was set up in 1971 with funding from Shell and BP as is described in the book: “The history of the University of East Anglia, Norwich; Page 285)” By Michael Sanderson. The CRU was still being funded in 2008 by Shell, BP, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and UK Nirex LTD (the nuclear waste people in the UK)

This is important to know, for two reasons.

Firstly, the key institution providing support for Global Warming theories and the basis for the IPCC findings receives funding from “Big Oil” and the nuclear power industry.

Secondly, the research from the institution which is perceived to be independent publicly funded research, is actually beholden to soft money, CRU is in fact a business.

The funders of the CRU are on the bottom of this page from their website:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080627194858/http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/

So, there a business set up in the early 1970’s, so what?

I thought that this might explain a bit about how we got to where we are. I am not a conspiracy theorist but to me it looks like this may have been a very, very long term plan. Of course it could all just be coincidental, but it does seem to fit the observable information.

A few weeks ago I explained the apparent CRU fraud to a friend of mine, a believer in AGW; he said ‘Why would they do it?’ I indicated the Jones had received 22 million, etc, but he countered, ‘For a fraud this large, going on for this long, there would have to be billions of dollars to be made, not millions’. That made sense.

So I looked into it a bit. First this is no short term thing, it covers two or three decades, involves many countries and government on both sides of the isle, the US alone has had 4 different presidents and the UK a similar number of prime ministers, Canada the same. So is it not political in the partisan sense of the word.

If, and this is a big if, you make the assumption that the objectives were:

1. Provide a smooth replacement of the use of oil in power generation and transportation, so as to avoid a panic over Peak Oil.

2. Get people to buy into Nuclear Power so that base load electrical power generation would not consume the available fossil fuel supply.

3. Get the people to really want to pay for it all.

Note: The IEA put a date on peak oil production THIS WEEK, so if the CO2 scare does not pan out they are already starting to put the ‘Peak Oil’ story into play. It is also the 2020 date, why am I not surprised.

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15065719

Then the following is not unbelievable.

The newer scrubber technology for coal fired plants was moving along well back then, and in fact today their scrubbers can remove pretty much everything except CO2. However there is really not much money in coal, it is abundant, easy to handle, local in most instance to the base load demand for electricity, and a coal fired power plant is not much more complicated, or expensive, then a good steam engine.

Since there was not enough money in coal it would not be financially rewarding to simply try to promote coal as a replacement for oil.

So they looked at the situation and realized that the difference between the different technologies to replace base load power generation was the amount of CO2 per kilowatt/hour.

At that point CO2 became the target. That happened sometime between 1985 and 1988.

Now, the environmental movement is comprised mostly of followers, you can look up ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ (water), on many occasions at environmental conferences comedians and light news organizations have managed to get lots of environmentalists to sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide. So apparently they do not do a lot of independent analysis before making a conclusion, they are mostly followers.

So if you need a large number of followers, there is a ready supply, but you need people, a few leaders, to tell the followers what to think. The followers do not need to, or perhaps even want to, know the reason or the facts; they just need something or someone to follow.

Now you gain control of a climate research business, and begin the task of demonizing CO2, you realize that it will take years but that is OK, there are billions of dollars waiting at the end. Slowly over time you manage to get control of the worlds climate data and begin adjusting it, you use what you have been told by the marketing people to present the information needed in as clear and scary manager as is possible. Remember the two biggest motivators are fear and greed, and in this case, because of the number of followers greed will not work. There are simply too many followers to pay them all off.

So there we have it, a campaign of fear, based on non-science emanating from a few leaders that ultimately drive the followers to do something that would just not have been possible after Three Mile Island.

They are marching in the streets of Copenhagen in support of nuclear power. They do not know this of course, but that is what the plan on the table says. Check it out, look at exactly what are the big technologies being pushed at the summit. I will give you a hint, it is not windmills.

They are also marching in Copenhagen against big business, while supporting one of the biggest businesses possible, the World Bank. Is it not strange that the Dutch Text looks to have the World Bank control the trillions being put on the table? So they are marching against exactly what they are supporting, they are simply followers.

Perhaps you can fill in the blanks between the possible objectives I mentioned earlier and where we find ourselves today. Fill in the blanks, connect the dots and follow the money. Look at the funders, how many are involved in delivery, support, financing and maintenance of the movement of liquid energy and the generation of nuclear power.

I do not think this was ever about the environment.

There are lots of other things that may tie into this, like GE buying and now selling a

TV network, they needed then but do not need it now, a bit of a stretch perhaps but GE is a big player in gas and nuclear power generation. Look around, there are others.

That said; I do believe that the world does need to move to nuclear power for base load power generation, and I do believe that the Peak Oil problem is a real threat to stability.

So I agree with the objectives and encourage the outcome, I just do not like them messing with the science and trying, nay succeeding, in conning the masses to agree to it all.

Perhaps there was someone inside the CRU that felt the same way; the means were wrong regardless of the merits of the objectives, so they let slip the package in the hope that someone could figure out what they could not just come out and say publicly.

This thing would not need thousands of scientists to be involved. All that was need was for one or two people in perhaps five or six countries to adjust the raw data. Anyone using the data when making a comparison to CO2 would find the results that had been seeded into the data. The scientists would not be aware that they were being played. They would honestly think that their conclusions were correct. Only none of their predictions would ever be confirmed.

All the papers that used the data, and all the papers that used those papers for support, would therefore be invalid. In the vast majority of the cases I would expect that the authors are without blame, they made no mistake. The mistake was encoded into the base data before they even started.

Only the ones that actually were in control of the raw data and making the ‘adjustments’ needed to know of the exact requirements of the adjustment needed to seed the outcome into the data. When a scientist begins to say things like “the data must be wrong”, or “our monitoring is deficient”, perhaps they might not have been in on the ‘adjustments’ and they are likely frustrated because their model ‘works’ for the past and recent past. Think “We can’t explain the lack of warming”, perhaps the author of that email could not, but perhaps someone else could.

It would only have taken a dozen people in just the right places, and remember it took years to pull this off.

So who might have put these people in just the right place all those years ago, and why?