Thursday, 10 June 2010
Climate Science on Trial?
Interesting to note on Watts up with That? a piece identifying the fact that, under legal scrutiny, a number of flaws show up in the "proved" case for "Climate Science". A highly qualified Professor of Law has examined the climate science arguments and concludes that it would not stand up under cross examination in a court of law. His paper entitled Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination, makes interesting reading.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Paranoia Rules?
The trend in government – certainly in the UK – is to try to legislate for every eventuality. In recent years we have seen a plethora of legislation regulating aspects of our lives that a generation ago were considered matters of “common sense”. I’m not referring here to the rafts of “Health and Safety” legislation but to such things as the legality of driving and eating, or drinking water while driving, ownership or possession of “offensive weapons”, “rights” and let us not forget the avalanche of legislation governing any work with children. Then there are “vulnerable adults” whom we used to be allowed to say were below average intelligence, or suffered some disability, mental or otherwise, which precluded their being able to fend for themselves. Added top all that, there are or any number of things deemed “offensive” to minorities, Muslims or atheists, but, notably, nothing to protect Christians from offense by any of those groups.
Under this tendency, the usual safeguards of the law – that you were presumed innocent until proven guilty – have gone out of the window. It is now sufficient to be accused of one of a raft of offences related to children for you to be deemed guilty even if the state can’t prove it or you prove conclusively your innocence. “Registers” of offenders – particularly sexual – are now the norm and they have no expiry date. This affects even your children and their children since, being the child of someone on such a register means the authorities immediately assume that you are “at risk” of being a sexual offender yourself. Even if you are cleared of the offence and removed from the "register" - you go on another "register" that says you were on the first. The whole thing is driven by the paranoia whipped up and sustained by the Press and other media. Certainly there are some terrible people out there, but they are not the entire population which is what is now assumed in legislation.
This paranoia is blighting lives, communities and everyone associated with it is equally paranoid. I realised this after being “Criminal Records Bureau Checked” for the umpteenth time even though I had no regular contact with young people or “vulnerable adults”. I had to go through this performance simply because “I might have contact with these groups”. It made me realise that I was now vulnerable to the possibility of having my entire life, my reputation and my career destroyed by a single misinterpreted gesture. That, in turn, made me very wary of undertaking certain tasks and duties and I am relieved that I no longer have that threat hanging over me as I have now withdrawn from that ministry and work altogether. Years ago I was a Sea Scout and then a Scoutmaster, we had none of these legal constraints – in fact, aged 22, I was looking after seventy boys on my own for the most part – and had a huge amount of fun and never a single problem.
Recently I was approached to do this work again. One look at the “rules” and I decided there was no way I would place myself in such a position. Yes, you could say that I have become paranoid, and you would be right. But with reason, I have seen too many teachers – some of them friends – destroyed by false accusations made by malicious and undisciplined brats. Even when these have been proven false, the whispers and rumours – and the Education Authorities “rules” – have precluded a resumption of a career on too many occasions.
This is but one aspect of the problem. Health and Safety has become the major reason for curtailing activity, preventing change or even preventing progress. The threat of being sued terrifies managers, so they hide behind “policy” and “procedures” many of which, if followed, would mean the job could not be done. Again, the paranoia of the employer is driven by the paranoia of the politicians and their paymasters the Unions who are, for the most part, work-dodgers (At least in my profession!) who demand ever tighter restrictions on 'safety' grounds for any activity you care to name. In some Fire Services, the Officer (Sorry! Manager!) in charge must complete a WRITTEN “Dynamic” Risk Assessment of the event before committing his (or her) Firefighters. First of all, a written assessment is not dynamic. To be dynamic it needs to be under constant review – but having it on paper means that when things go wrong you can say “But my risk assessment covered that, and the men didn’t …”
Likewise, Chief Fire Officers now issue Standing Orders for fire crews insisting that they must wait until all despatched appliances are in attendance before committing anyone to any action other than writing your risk assessment. That tells me that these new managers are so lacking in experience that they do not understand the mood of the crowd who want to see action, not people standing around watching while things burn down. It also tells me that they do not understand the first principle of effective fire fighting, summed up neatly by William Shakespeare –
“A little fire may be quickly trodden out, which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.”
All too often small fires involving one room are engulfing the entire property now by the time the first arriving crews have complied with all the ’elf an’ safey procedures, meaning all that is required by Health and Safety Regulations. As a fire fighter in the bad old days, I can recall that we had a total of three people killed in my region in twenty years service. Two were stabbed by bystanders – put that in your risk assessment – and one (NOT in my Brigade) was crushed when huge rolls of paper broke loose during a fire in a warehouse. In the UK, where the average deaths in service was one per year, you might have thought that this was pretty good and needed to be addressed through further training or perhaps a thorough going review of what was actually to blame here. Instead, Blair, 'expertly' advised by civil servants with no qualifications in fire fighting, and the Union with their 'Anti-militarism' ideology, decided that the system of training which had, up to then, served us very well, needed to be replaced by a “clone the clones” system. This makes use of photocopiers, assessment centres which measure little or nothing about the actual work and focus entirely on such really important things as “racial attitudes”, “gender orientation”, “equality” and that blanket catch-all 'fairness'.
At the same time, of course, with reducing the practical experience of everyone in the service and allowing completely unqualified “managers” to parachute in at all levels, the quality of service and the death rates have climbed steeply. Deaths in service are no longer rare. Where is the paranoia about this?
It manifests in a number of different ways, such as managers employing legal advisers to vet, review and reword standing orders and procedures so that the victim can be blamed for his/her death. This manifests itself in many different ways in a range of other fields as well. Taking photographs of your children and allowing a “photolab” to process them has become a high risk strategy and one with the potential to get a visit from the police or the social worker (or both!) just in case the photos are potentially 1) for use by a child porn ring, 2.) child exploitation, or 3.) have other children in them, not your own, who may not have given their (or their parents) consent to be in the photograph.
The “Food Police” are another manifestation, with “inspectors” rushing about checking fridge temperatures in busy restaurants and hotels and then trying to prosecute the chef because his fridge, during rush hour, is one or two degrees above the “Code of Practice” temperature. Warning labels on food is another case in point. I fully accept that there are people who need to know what is in certain pre-prepared foods. Nut allergies, sensitivity to certain colourants and allergies to gluten are perhaps not so obvious, or as frequent as the media make out, and they are serious. But why do the major supermarkets then have to stick a label on a packet of nuts “May contain nuts”? For heaven’s sake, who, with a nut allergy, is going to pick one up and ask, “Does this contain nuts?” Frankly, if they were that stupid, they deserve what happens if they eat the damned things.
The same goes for “Best Before” dates on packages. I know people who get into a right old twist if they find a package in their cupboard two or even three days past the “best before” label. Anyone would think the Black Death had arrived for another round the way they carry on. Simple diseases which we all used to carry some immunity for are now labelled “killer” and panic and paranoia ensue. I am amused to see that in Germany all the milk I buy is homogenised. It stays fresh longer and it tastes as good on day one as it does on day five. Yet, in Britain, mention Homogenised and the Food Police go into mass cardiac arrest. According to them, homogenising allows the manufacturer to pass on out of date milk, or milk that might not be “pure” or “safe”. But the same idiot will happily drink “Long Life” sterilised milk, not realising that this is how the dairies use up the diseased and really out of date milk!
Food that has been frozen on the day it was bought does not need to be used by the “Best Before” date – the damned stuff will keep for as long as you like as long as it stays frozen solid. “Best Before” is a device for the shop manager to allow rotation of stock and the canny among us always root around at the back of the display for the really fresh stock! Watch Mrs Islington Coffee Circuit though, she will carefully examine and note every “Best Before” date in her basket and then make sure she uses it before the date. She’s also the one who will go to a restaurant and ask the waiter or the maitre d’hotel endless questions about the ingredients for everything on the menu before ordering. Utter paranoia, usually she doesn’t have a thing wrong with her, but is terrified that she might have.
This paranoia is fostered by the chattering classes that infest Islington and inner London, by the media who can sell more news this way by scaring the living daylights out of people who haven’t the brains to wonder how their forebears survived before all the super hygiene nutters got on the bandwagon and turned common sense into an industry. It’s really about control. If I can make you afraid of your own shadow, I can control how you think, what you eat and where you go. That is the bottom line.
I love the German butchers, bakers and grocers. They display their wares openly, handle them carefully and are always spotless – yet I can hear the UK Food Police screaming in horror every time I visit my local Schlachter for some Sulzer, Wurst, Schweinfleisch and the rest. I watch with pleasurable anticipation as the great slabs of meat are lifted from the display, carefully cut and wrapped and not a plastic glove in sight! The same at the baker and the grocer has his produce so “Frisch” it’s still wet and has earth attached. No one gets e-coli from it and no one suffers from listeria or any of the other “killer” bugs that the media and the Food Police tell us lurks in every mouthful. Of course these diseases are present and they occur, but not in anything like the numbers the media reports suggest.
Britain is a paranoid society and, sadly, I think its terminal.
Under this tendency, the usual safeguards of the law – that you were presumed innocent until proven guilty – have gone out of the window. It is now sufficient to be accused of one of a raft of offences related to children for you to be deemed guilty even if the state can’t prove it or you prove conclusively your innocence. “Registers” of offenders – particularly sexual – are now the norm and they have no expiry date. This affects even your children and their children since, being the child of someone on such a register means the authorities immediately assume that you are “at risk” of being a sexual offender yourself. Even if you are cleared of the offence and removed from the "register" - you go on another "register" that says you were on the first. The whole thing is driven by the paranoia whipped up and sustained by the Press and other media. Certainly there are some terrible people out there, but they are not the entire population which is what is now assumed in legislation.
This paranoia is blighting lives, communities and everyone associated with it is equally paranoid. I realised this after being “Criminal Records Bureau Checked” for the umpteenth time even though I had no regular contact with young people or “vulnerable adults”. I had to go through this performance simply because “I might have contact with these groups”. It made me realise that I was now vulnerable to the possibility of having my entire life, my reputation and my career destroyed by a single misinterpreted gesture. That, in turn, made me very wary of undertaking certain tasks and duties and I am relieved that I no longer have that threat hanging over me as I have now withdrawn from that ministry and work altogether. Years ago I was a Sea Scout and then a Scoutmaster, we had none of these legal constraints – in fact, aged 22, I was looking after seventy boys on my own for the most part – and had a huge amount of fun and never a single problem.
Recently I was approached to do this work again. One look at the “rules” and I decided there was no way I would place myself in such a position. Yes, you could say that I have become paranoid, and you would be right. But with reason, I have seen too many teachers – some of them friends – destroyed by false accusations made by malicious and undisciplined brats. Even when these have been proven false, the whispers and rumours – and the Education Authorities “rules” – have precluded a resumption of a career on too many occasions.
This is but one aspect of the problem. Health and Safety has become the major reason for curtailing activity, preventing change or even preventing progress. The threat of being sued terrifies managers, so they hide behind “policy” and “procedures” many of which, if followed, would mean the job could not be done. Again, the paranoia of the employer is driven by the paranoia of the politicians and their paymasters the Unions who are, for the most part, work-dodgers (At least in my profession!) who demand ever tighter restrictions on 'safety' grounds for any activity you care to name. In some Fire Services, the Officer (Sorry! Manager!) in charge must complete a WRITTEN “Dynamic” Risk Assessment of the event before committing his (or her) Firefighters. First of all, a written assessment is not dynamic. To be dynamic it needs to be under constant review – but having it on paper means that when things go wrong you can say “But my risk assessment covered that, and the men didn’t …”
Likewise, Chief Fire Officers now issue Standing Orders for fire crews insisting that they must wait until all despatched appliances are in attendance before committing anyone to any action other than writing your risk assessment. That tells me that these new managers are so lacking in experience that they do not understand the mood of the crowd who want to see action, not people standing around watching while things burn down. It also tells me that they do not understand the first principle of effective fire fighting, summed up neatly by William Shakespeare –
“A little fire may be quickly trodden out, which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.”
All too often small fires involving one room are engulfing the entire property now by the time the first arriving crews have complied with all the ’elf an’ safey procedures, meaning all that is required by Health and Safety Regulations. As a fire fighter in the bad old days, I can recall that we had a total of three people killed in my region in twenty years service. Two were stabbed by bystanders – put that in your risk assessment – and one (NOT in my Brigade) was crushed when huge rolls of paper broke loose during a fire in a warehouse. In the UK, where the average deaths in service was one per year, you might have thought that this was pretty good and needed to be addressed through further training or perhaps a thorough going review of what was actually to blame here. Instead, Blair, 'expertly' advised by civil servants with no qualifications in fire fighting, and the Union with their 'Anti-militarism' ideology, decided that the system of training which had, up to then, served us very well, needed to be replaced by a “clone the clones” system. This makes use of photocopiers, assessment centres which measure little or nothing about the actual work and focus entirely on such really important things as “racial attitudes”, “gender orientation”, “equality” and that blanket catch-all 'fairness'.
At the same time, of course, with reducing the practical experience of everyone in the service and allowing completely unqualified “managers” to parachute in at all levels, the quality of service and the death rates have climbed steeply. Deaths in service are no longer rare. Where is the paranoia about this?
It manifests in a number of different ways, such as managers employing legal advisers to vet, review and reword standing orders and procedures so that the victim can be blamed for his/her death. This manifests itself in many different ways in a range of other fields as well. Taking photographs of your children and allowing a “photolab” to process them has become a high risk strategy and one with the potential to get a visit from the police or the social worker (or both!) just in case the photos are potentially 1) for use by a child porn ring, 2.) child exploitation, or 3.) have other children in them, not your own, who may not have given their (or their parents) consent to be in the photograph.
The “Food Police” are another manifestation, with “inspectors” rushing about checking fridge temperatures in busy restaurants and hotels and then trying to prosecute the chef because his fridge, during rush hour, is one or two degrees above the “Code of Practice” temperature. Warning labels on food is another case in point. I fully accept that there are people who need to know what is in certain pre-prepared foods. Nut allergies, sensitivity to certain colourants and allergies to gluten are perhaps not so obvious, or as frequent as the media make out, and they are serious. But why do the major supermarkets then have to stick a label on a packet of nuts “May contain nuts”? For heaven’s sake, who, with a nut allergy, is going to pick one up and ask, “Does this contain nuts?” Frankly, if they were that stupid, they deserve what happens if they eat the damned things.
The same goes for “Best Before” dates on packages. I know people who get into a right old twist if they find a package in their cupboard two or even three days past the “best before” label. Anyone would think the Black Death had arrived for another round the way they carry on. Simple diseases which we all used to carry some immunity for are now labelled “killer” and panic and paranoia ensue. I am amused to see that in Germany all the milk I buy is homogenised. It stays fresh longer and it tastes as good on day one as it does on day five. Yet, in Britain, mention Homogenised and the Food Police go into mass cardiac arrest. According to them, homogenising allows the manufacturer to pass on out of date milk, or milk that might not be “pure” or “safe”. But the same idiot will happily drink “Long Life” sterilised milk, not realising that this is how the dairies use up the diseased and really out of date milk!
Food that has been frozen on the day it was bought does not need to be used by the “Best Before” date – the damned stuff will keep for as long as you like as long as it stays frozen solid. “Best Before” is a device for the shop manager to allow rotation of stock and the canny among us always root around at the back of the display for the really fresh stock! Watch Mrs Islington Coffee Circuit though, she will carefully examine and note every “Best Before” date in her basket and then make sure she uses it before the date. She’s also the one who will go to a restaurant and ask the waiter or the maitre d’hotel endless questions about the ingredients for everything on the menu before ordering. Utter paranoia, usually she doesn’t have a thing wrong with her, but is terrified that she might have.
This paranoia is fostered by the chattering classes that infest Islington and inner London, by the media who can sell more news this way by scaring the living daylights out of people who haven’t the brains to wonder how their forebears survived before all the super hygiene nutters got on the bandwagon and turned common sense into an industry. It’s really about control. If I can make you afraid of your own shadow, I can control how you think, what you eat and where you go. That is the bottom line.
I love the German butchers, bakers and grocers. They display their wares openly, handle them carefully and are always spotless – yet I can hear the UK Food Police screaming in horror every time I visit my local Schlachter for some Sulzer, Wurst, Schweinfleisch and the rest. I watch with pleasurable anticipation as the great slabs of meat are lifted from the display, carefully cut and wrapped and not a plastic glove in sight! The same at the baker and the grocer has his produce so “Frisch” it’s still wet and has earth attached. No one gets e-coli from it and no one suffers from listeria or any of the other “killer” bugs that the media and the Food Police tell us lurks in every mouthful. Of course these diseases are present and they occur, but not in anything like the numbers the media reports suggest.
Britain is a paranoid society and, sadly, I think its terminal.
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
History repeats itself ...
What Have We Learned in 2,065 Years?
Evidently nothing.
Ignoring history and failure to pay heed to its lessons is what condemns us, again and again, to repeating the mistakes...
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." - Cicero, 55 BC
Evidently nothing.
Ignoring history and failure to pay heed to its lessons is what condemns us, again and again, to repeating the mistakes...
Sunday, 6 June 2010
D-Day
Today marks the 66th anniversary of D-Day, the landings in Normandy that set in motion the freeing of Europe from the Nazi scourge. It marked the start of some desperate fighting, enormous sacrifices on both sides and tremendous suffering - but it also marked the beginning of the end for Hitler and his henchmen.
We should not forget those who gave their tomorrows, for our today.
We should not forget those who gave their tomorrows, for our today.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Summer is a comin' in...
Sat o the patio, music playing, digesting lunch and enjoying the beauty of the day. Birds singing, bees buzzing, cat sunbathing... What more could a man ask for? Self mowing grass? Maybe, that's the job waiting for me now and I'd better get going on it before the sun gets too warm.
Sorry cat, I'll have to disturb your sunbathing spot!
Sorry cat, I'll have to disturb your sunbathing spot!
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Corpus Christi
I'm not used to this being a holiday, it wasn't in SA and it certainly isn't in the UK, but here in Germany, it is. At least in Hessen it is. I rather like the fact that all these religious feasts are kept here, Ascension, Corpus Christi and all the major feasts are marked along with all the secular ones as well. Even better, by law, the shops don't open, there is no noisey gardening allowed and you can simply relax in the gazebo or the patio and enjoy the sounds of nature.
Our little mountain top village is too small to have a church, so the nearest are in Bleidenstadt or Born, about 4 km either way. So, we have settled our creepers, breakfasted in the gazebo and plan a short run to a nearby mountain top site where we should be able to get some stunning views across Wiesbaden to the Rhine. But that's for later. Right now there is a nice breeze and a lovely dose of sunshine to be had.
Lunch postponed to 17.00....
Our little mountain top village is too small to have a church, so the nearest are in Bleidenstadt or Born, about 4 km either way. So, we have settled our creepers, breakfasted in the gazebo and plan a short run to a nearby mountain top site where we should be able to get some stunning views across Wiesbaden to the Rhine. But that's for later. Right now there is a nice breeze and a lovely dose of sunshine to be had.
Lunch postponed to 17.00....
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Anniversaries
Yesterday marked the one hundredth anniversary of the Act of Union, not of Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland, but of the four "Provinces" that made up the former Union of South Africa. THe Union held from 1910 until 1961 when South Africa formally left the Comonwealth under the leadership (One could say dictatorship) of the Afrikaner Nationalists, and became a Republic. I doubt many people marked the occassion, certainly not many outside of South Africa would have remembered it and I think probably the British would have good reason to forget it, since that Act of Union, written in London by British Civil Servants and British Politicians, contained the seeds of Apartheid. It allowed for the "Tribesmen" to be represented by "Commissioners" and to not have a direct say in government. It was probably a reasonable and sensible approach in 1910 since it was the basis of such "Acts" all around the Globe in an Empire then at its zenith.
I find it fascinating that todays "liberal" generation sees only the outcome of such an important moment in the history of western civilisation. They see only the "suppression" and ignore the hardships and the heartbreak of the settlers who went to places like South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and the Americas seeking opportunities for themselves and their descendents denied them in their home countries - frequently by the forebears of the very same intelligentsia that today brands them "murderers, vandals, oppressors" and worse. They ignore the contribution these men and women and their descendents made to the wealth that allows Britain to give "free" health care, education and "benefits" to a population no longer interested in enterprise or in the freedoms their fathers and grandfathers fought so hard to gain. Just "gimme my giro and let's go get a skinful down the pub" for the largest part of the "working class" while the Islington "chattering classes" rewrite history, reinvent their own families and line their pockets on the wealth they calim the settlers "stole" from the "natives" elsewhere.
Today marks another anniversary that will probably go unnoticed by the masses and the media, but I would hope not by the successors of Nelson. Today is the anniversary of Lord Howe's great victory over the French at sea in 1794, just as yesterday was also the anniversary of the Battle of Jutland in 1916. What a shame to think that the fleet which served the British nation (and protected the very wealth the rewriters of our history now live off) is likely to be reduced to no more than a coastal defence force. The two great Aircraft carriers are ikely to be scrapped before they are even launched in the desperate scramble to "save" money so the Civil Service can continue to expand and waste it, the Fleet is likely to be reduced even further as the argument goes that "we can't afford it" simpy because the money is to be wasted on social engineering and the :arts" not on science and engineering.
Kiplings famous lines of 1897, his poem titled Recessional, was a prophetic piece of work, worthy of reading on dates such as these.
I find it fascinating that todays "liberal" generation sees only the outcome of such an important moment in the history of western civilisation. They see only the "suppression" and ignore the hardships and the heartbreak of the settlers who went to places like South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and the Americas seeking opportunities for themselves and their descendents denied them in their home countries - frequently by the forebears of the very same intelligentsia that today brands them "murderers, vandals, oppressors" and worse. They ignore the contribution these men and women and their descendents made to the wealth that allows Britain to give "free" health care, education and "benefits" to a population no longer interested in enterprise or in the freedoms their fathers and grandfathers fought so hard to gain. Just "gimme my giro and let's go get a skinful down the pub" for the largest part of the "working class" while the Islington "chattering classes" rewrite history, reinvent their own families and line their pockets on the wealth they calim the settlers "stole" from the "natives" elsewhere.
Today marks another anniversary that will probably go unnoticed by the masses and the media, but I would hope not by the successors of Nelson. Today is the anniversary of Lord Howe's great victory over the French at sea in 1794, just as yesterday was also the anniversary of the Battle of Jutland in 1916. What a shame to think that the fleet which served the British nation (and protected the very wealth the rewriters of our history now live off) is likely to be reduced to no more than a coastal defence force. The two great Aircraft carriers are ikely to be scrapped before they are even launched in the desperate scramble to "save" money so the Civil Service can continue to expand and waste it, the Fleet is likely to be reduced even further as the argument goes that "we can't afford it" simpy because the money is to be wasted on social engineering and the :arts" not on science and engineering.
Kiplings famous lines of 1897, his poem titled Recessional, was a prophetic piece of work, worthy of reading on dates such as these.
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