Break out the thermals, Ice Age on the way!

The party conference season has come and gone, the normal stage managed theatricals dispensed with for another year, and what did we learn?

Well "cat gate" highlighted the lunacy of the Human Rights Act for all to see, Ken Clarke highlighted his liberal credentials, (nothing new there), Ed Balls proved that he should not be allowed within a light year of the economy ever again, and Ed Milliband demonstrated what a completely useless leader he actually is. Apart from that it was all too predictable and pretty dull if I'm honest.

Perhaps the most interesting speech of the month was made by George Osborne, or as I call him my mate George. He made what I thought was a very measured speech about the state of the World, and especially Europe's economy, there is no doubt we are living through a potential catastrophe, I just hope our leaders understand the problems and can take the measures to guide us all through.

In his speech, he made what was perhaps a most fundamental point, which has gone largely un-reported in the press so far. He said that from now on the UK would row back on the commitment to cut CO2 emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, and by 20% by 2020 and would from now on only reduce emissions in line with the European average.

Since the Kyoto protocol and the subsequent Climate Change Act was passed by parliament in 2008, the climate change zealots have driven the agenda and forced the government to introduce measures such as charging companies for every tonne of carbon they produce. This carbon floor scheme added to other measures, has the effect of putting £404 billion on the cost of producing power, which is over £750 on the annual energy bill of every household in the country for the next 40 years.

It has led to the proliferation of wind turbines that blight our landscape and achieve nothing in the reduction of CO2. It takes over 20 years of operation at 25% efficiency to pay back the CO2 generated in the manufacture and servicing of these monsters, and though we are told the lifespan will be 25 years, I am hearing that most will be worn out long before then, and all that to produce power at three times the cost of a conventional power station. Guess who pays the bill for these acts of folly, WE ALL DO!

We are told that all new coal and gas power stations must be fitted with carbon capture technology so that the nasty CO2 can be trapped and then buried in the ground for thousands of years, the only problem is that carbon capture hasn't been proven yet, and it's predicted that it will never achieve the targets set for it!

As is usually the case, when new rules are made, this country jumps through hoops to make sure they are obeyed, no matter the consequences, while all the huge polluters of the world have done nothing. The USA, China, India etc haven't even signed up to the protocol, leave alone done anything to reduce emissions, and why, because they know it is economic suicide to do so.

In Europe they are still discussing the way forward towards a 2050 target, again no agreement so far, very little implementation of penalties for carbon producers, so all we have achieved so far is to put all of our major industries, such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals at a huge disadvantage with the rest of the world, no wonder so many are looking at re-locating in a more business friendly environment.

Then today, I read in the Sunday Times, that the Met office is now predicting that far from us all frying under increasingly hot conditions as global warming takes us on the road to Armageddon, we are in fact heading towards a mini ice age!

No doubt the climate change zealots will say that the ice age will be all our fault too, but as we have had many mini and maxi ice ages during the earth's history, and will no doubt have many more in the future, I think finally we may be finally moving into a world where we will not be dominated by the doom and gloom merchants.

This planet will eventually run out of oil and gas, so it makes sense to make the very best use of what we have, I'm also sure that technology will come up with novel solutions to the power supply issues as we go forward. Whether it is Hydrogen powered cars, or Cold Fusion power stations, science and technology will find the solution.

A geologist from Shell told me about 6 years ago that if you add up all the oil that we have used from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present time, it will make up less than 10% of the total oil that is left in the ground, so far we have only extracted the easy stuff, from now on it will get harder and more expensive, and at 30 dollars a barrel it would never happen, however at 100 dollars plus per barrel it certainly will.

In the meantime perhaps we can stop driving up energy bills un-necessarily and perhaps we can stop driving high energy consuming companies such as the North Wales aluminium smelter that has just re-located to South Africa taking hundreds of jobs with them, because of the cost of the carbon floor scheme

You never know, producing a bit more CO2 might even stave off the worst effects of the ice age that is coming?

Greek Lunacy

It appears the Greeks have been taking economic lessons from Ed Balls, he of "the only way to cut the deficit is to borrow more" school of economics.

I read today that the Greek government, in debt up to their eyebrows and beyond, with a supposed austerity drive being fought at every step by the disgruntled public, have ordered no less than 400 battle tanks from the USA to supplement their armed forces!

Now these tanks aren't any old cheap rubbish, they are M1 Abrams , top of the range jobs at a cool £1.3 billion for the job lot. In addition they have also ordered various armoured personnel carriers and artillery pieces taking the total to just over £2 billion.

In times of plenty it is wise for government's to update and expand their defence capability, however when you are likely to default on your debts to the tune of £2.4 billion, why on earth would you be spending another £2 billion on arms when there is not a war on?

Perhaps they intend manning the barricades when the worlds banks come knocking on the door for the money that they owe!!

I think this one has to go in the "you couldn't make it up pile".

Quitting the Euro - By Daniel Hannan - The Corner - National Review Online

Everyone should read this. Dan Hannan nearly always makes sense, this time he hits the nail firmly on the head.

Quitting the Euro - By Daniel Hannan - The Corner - National Review Online

Boundary Review: Massive changes for Somerset

The long awaited report from the Boundary Commission has been published today, I should be fishing in the Channel Islands and unable to comment, but Hurricane Katya has forced us to postpone for 24 hrs and so there is no escape!!!!

However, the afore mentioned report has thrown up quite a few changes to the local Parliamentary Constituencies, so I thought I would just comment on the proposals so far. As part of the coalition agreement to hold a referendum on the voting process earlier this year, leading to the resounding No vote against the Lib Dem Alternative Vote proposal, the government pledged to reduce the number of MP's in Parliament to 600 from the current 650 and at the same time even up the sizes of each constituency in terms of voter numbers.

The last Labour government had successfully gerrymandered the constituencies to the point where they had a 6% benefit in their favour, in other words, the Conservatives would have to get at least 6% more of the popular vote, just to remain level with Labour in terms of seats!!!
The new proposals eliminate this inbuilt bias in favour of Labour, and means that all seats, except those on the Isle of Wight, have an electorate in the 73,000 to 77,000 range. Previously some Labour strongholds only had 40,000 voters and some Conservative seats had over 100,000, hardly fair I think you would agree.

So what does this mean locally? Well overall, the number of seats in this immediate region remains the same at 10, the South West as a whole loses 2 seats. However the boundaries of the seats have changed radically.

The new "North East Somerset" seat includes Shepton Mallet, Frome, Midsomer Norton, Radstock and Paulton, which is in effect part of the old Wells seat, part of the Somerton and Frome seat, both in Mendip, and part of Jacob Rees Mogg's seat in Bath and North East Somerset (BANES).

The rest of the old Somerton and Frome seat is now in a new "Wincanton and Glastonbury" seat, which includes Somerton and Ilminster. Finally the old Wells seat has changed radically, losing both Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury/Street and gaining parts of North Somerset to compensate.

Further afield Taunton Deane loses many of its surrounding villages and is proposed to be renamed Taunton, Bridgwater will be amalgamated with parts of West Somerset, leaving very little as it was.

These proposals are now subject to a 12 week consultation process, however, with the amount of work that has gone into this review, I would suspect and changes to boundaries will be fairly minor, though changes to Constituency names more likely. It will be interesting to see how our local MP's act over the coming months, if the complexion of the new seat doesn't look favourable, you will see a number trying to jump ship elsewhere.

Right that’s my lot until next week, The sign on the door says “Gone Fishin’ “and this time I mean it.

More woes for Labour.

Things have been far from well with Her Majesty’s Opposition for many years, lack of leadership, wrong leaders elected, thieving MP’s sent to prison, a new scandal gets added to the increasing list almost daily. Then there is the political positioning, having taken a gigantic lurch to the left with the appointment of Brown, followed by the hapless Milliband, they find themselves on the wrong side of just about every argument from the Economy, to Human Rights, to Education and this week Policing and Sentencing. The shadow Foreign Secretary managed to jump onto the wrong side of the Libiyan bandwagon and Milliband has the less than enviable ability to jump in with both feet on the wrong side on just about every occasion.

Then just when the Labour party thought it couldn’t get much worse, the former Chancellor and traitor, Alistair Darling, comes up with the obligatory book charting his time as puppet to Brown. The explosive revelations that Gordon Brown was a psychopathic bully and control freak won’t come as any surprise, but the internecine warfare going on within the party is now exposed for the rest of the world to see.

All the way through the financial crash, that was made much worse by the already profligate spending put in place by Brown when he was Chancellor under Blair, the Labour government were more interested in fighting each other than they were in trying to sort out the problems of the country.

There was absolutely no trust between PM and chancellor, to the extent that Brown’s chief bully boy’s wife was sent to the treasury to keep an eye on Darling, what a state of affairs. Smug thug Ed Balls, chief deficit denier, and his pernicious wife Yvette Cooper, spent most of their time scheming and plotting to oust Darling as chancellor, only to find that levering Balls into the position would have been so unpopular within the Labour ranks, it would have toppled the already mortally wounded Brown.

So they were left in a position where the Chancellor was too weak to introduce the measures that were desperately needed and a Prime Minister too weak to sack his chancellor, what a sorry state of affairs!!

The truth of the disastrous Labour years is beginning to emerge a piece at a time, Blair describing dealing with Brown as “like having a tooth extracted without anaesthetic”, the decision to make Brown PM was not taken because he was the best man for the job, but instead because he plotted and schemed against anyone that may have stood against him, with Balls foremost in the scheming stakes.

Then after choosing the wrong brother as leader, and an innumerate as Chancellor, we get Balls back at the helm once again, pulling the strings and getting his own way.

And what a tour de force he has been, in the few short months that he has been shadow Chancellor, Labour have reversed every policy that they had proposed to try to deal with the huge deficit that they left behind.  The last Darling plan was for the deficit to be halved over the lifetime of the parliament, the coalition plan is more ambitious than that; however the difference between the two plans is fairly marginal. For every £8 of savings promoted by the coalition, the former Labour plan would have saved £7, however now, Labour have no plan whatsoever to deal with the huge debt mountain that the country is struggling under, in the last week, the final proposed saving of 12% in the police has been dropped.

So Balls continues his “too far too fast “mantra about the coalition deficit reduction plan, without any sort of plan at all to deal with it. His course of no action would mean that this country would lose its credit rating, borrowing would be more expensive, and we would rapidly find ourselves in the same position as Greece and Portugal having to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bailout. The man has no shame and no ideas.

So where are we with the current Labour party, its donors have deserted it in droves, it is more or less bankrupt and only survives because the Unions pump money into it so that they can hold the strings of their puppet MP’s, they have no policies worth repeating, and the internecine warfare continues.  They now face a cap on donations, which if implemented by Parliament, will limit how much any Union can bribe their MP’s with. Each individual union member will have to donate separately, and we will easily see just how small their support is when that comes through.

Just to cap things off, we hear that former MP and Blair babe Jaqui Smith, possibly the worst Home Secretary in history, whose husband put porn films on her expenses, is not satisfied with fleecing the taxpayer to the tune of £116,000 by claiming that her sisters spare bedroom was her “main residence” so she could claim for all the expenses for her actual home in Redditch, has been found to have invited convicted felons into her home, whilst serving prison sentences, to carry out some light re-decoration, free of charge of course!

Perhaps they watched some of her husband's porn collection while they were there!