You may gather from the timing of this post that I am not attending a wild party this evening. The positive is that I won't be ending up like the rest of you ...

Motorcycles, politics, literature, music, philosophy, humour, miscellany, custard
A plan to allow popular online petitions to be debated in Parliament within a year has been given the go ahead by the government.Petitions will be hosted on the direct.gov website, and those gaining the most support will be debated in Parliament. Notice that this does not mean that 'Jeremy Clarkson for PM' will become law; merely that if the idea finds enough support, and passes certain criteria for eligibility, it will be debated by MPs. It may not succeed, but it will get a hearing. Predictably, Labour are up in arms:
But Labour said the plans would mean "crazy ideas" being discussed by MPs.By 'crazy ideas', they mean ideas which have not come through the establishment policy mill: well- (or ill-) intentioned, tempered by party considerations, muted by political correctness, brushed and groomed and polished by the men in suits to make sure that, whatever is debated, nothing will be allowed to change. Ideas which ordinary people have, for making their lives better. The ordinary people that Labour (in their left-wing days) used to say could be trusted, before the people went disobediently off-message over things like immigration and Europe. Paul Flynn leads the charge:
This seems to be an attractive idea to those who haven't seen how useless this has been in other parts of the world when it's tried.
"If you ask people the question 'do you want to pay less tax?', they vote yes.
If we get the e-petitions in there will be some asking for Jeremy Clarkson to be prime minister, for Jedi and Darth Vader to be the religions of the country.
"The blogosphere is not an area that is open to sensible debate; it is dominated by the obsessed and the fanatical and we will get crazy ideas coming forward."
BBC News political correspondent Ross Hawkins said that allowing petitions to beSince when was that ever a problem for the raft of intrusive and controlling legislation that Labour foisted on us all?
drafted as parliamentary bills would be more difficult and would take longer to put in place.
"The strapline 'odds on for a barbeque summer' was created by the operations and communications teams to reflect the probability of a good summer. Concern over the use of the strapline and its relationship to the scientific information available was expressed by the scientific community, who were not consulted prior to the media release."And the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) have an observation:
The GWPF is drawing attention to a map published on the Met Office website in October which indicated that the UK was likely to experience above-normal temperatures in the ensuing three-month period.A picture emerges: scientists working in the background, trying to provide a reliable outlook for the weather, based on probabilities which no-one else understands, and a PR wing, who are determined to turn the scientific advice into catchy, black-and-white memorable phrases which follow the required political agenda.
For the GPWF, which is sceptical of the Met Office and other mainstream analysis of global warming, this is evidence of a Met Office tendency to under-predict cold weather and over-predict mild winters.
Of course, when it's hotter than average, it's 'climate' - when it's colder than average, it's 'weather.'
Sheridan facing three-in-a-bed sex sessions whether he likes it or notPriceless. Read it.
TOMMY Sheridan was last night facing the prospect of endless three-in-a-bed sex sessions with a variety of eager new friends.
...
Bill McKay, chief bitch on the perjurers' wing, said: "I don't want to disappoint him so I shall be practising like mad over the next few weeks.
"I imagine this is how an amateur golfer must feel when they're offered the chance to play 18 holes with Ian Woosnam."
And a new, must-see website, Xmas Is Evil. Heh.Fanatics from a banned Islamic hate group have launched a nationwide poster campaign denouncing Christmas as evil.
Organisers plan to put up thousands of placards around the UK claiming the season of goodwill is responsible for rape, teenage pregnancies, abortion, promiscuity, crime and paedophilia.
They hope the campaign will help 'destroy Christmas' in this country and lead to Britons converting to Islam instead.
When you see meYoung's lyrics are never clear, and don't slap you in the face with a 'meaning'. They are more associative and suggestive, and any meaning you find is something that was probably in your head anyway. Listening to this song in my own quiet moment, I found it both melancholy and very moving. Young's thin and plaintive voice matches the words perfectly.
Fly away without you
Shadow on the things you know
Feathers fall around you
And show you the way to go
It's over.
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the pastYes, I know weather isn't climate, but we've had a lot of weather these last two winters. Good to see the CRU beating the drum. Meanwhile, most of Britain is under two feet of 'decline'.
Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".
"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.
What else are we to make of the demand by Women Against Rape, no less, that the rape allegations against Mr Assange must not be investigated and the great hero immediately freed?One response:
This happens because the Left has prejudices rather than principles.Spot on, justice4rinka.
Lefties favour groups or not according to where they stand in its internal heirarchy. So its most favoured clients are blacks, Muslims, gays, whales, criminals, polar bears, gypsies, Marxist terrorists, and so on; and its most hated groups are Americans, white middle class males, Christians, married parents, members of the British armed forces, white farmers, and so on.
This works up to a point. A lefty never has a problem deciding whom to side with in a dispute between a black criminal and the police, or gays and Christians, or Marxist terrorists and white farmers (whether in 1930s Russia or noughties Zimbabwe). Their prejudices instruct them unerringly.
Where it gets a bit dodgy is when there's a showdown between client groups that are both at the top of the favour list. So the left goes into a HAL9000-esque paranoid fugue when Muslim clerics advocate beating up women, or when black reggae singers urge that homosexuals be shot in the head. The left has literally no idea what to do because in theory both sides should be equally immune from criticism. It does not compute.
Here we have the latest instance of this determined non-thinking. Assange correctly hates Americans but may be a rapist, so leftist agitprop outfits like Women Against Rape have to decide which cause is more important: opposing rape versus hating America. It looks like hating America has won. This tells you that WAR is not about rape at all but about using whatever stick is handy to beat people they hate. Accusing all men of being rapists was a great way of dehumanising them so they could be stripped of their rights and property, which is the real cause. Women being raped? Who cares.
The Left looks stupid on these occasions not because it's stupid but because it is vicious, nasty, envious, hypocritical, morally incompetent and thoroughly spiteful.
There were protesters on the concourse handing out pamphlets on the evils of Britain .
I politely declined to take one. An elderly woman behind me was getting off the escalator and a young (20-ish) female protester offered her a pamphlet, which she politely declined.
The young protester put her hand on the woman's shoulder as a gesture of friendship and in a very soft voice said, 'Madam, don't you care about the children of Iraq ?'
The elderly woman looked up at her and said, 'My dear, my father died in France during World War II, I lost my husband in Korea and my grandson in Afghanistan . All three died so you could have the right to stand here and bad mouth our country. If you touch me again, I'll stick this umbrella up your arse and open it.'
"I talked to him and went through his arguments and countered all of them theologically and he accepted it. I thought that was the end of it but he carried on.and
"So one day, before the end of Ramadan, when the mosque was full I directly challenged all his misinterpretations of Islam.
"He just stood up and stormed out. We never saw him again - but I heard he'd gone to the Islamic Society at the university and continued to preach his extremist views."
Mr Baksh said it was very rare for the Luton centre, which incorporates a mosque on its premises, to expel any members.It's a start, and I am mildly encouraged. Well done, that man.
He said when people expressed ideas which were extreme "it's a matter of dealing with them, challenging their theological basis, and making them realise this is not the Islamic point of view, and is not the way we look at life and the situation of Muslims around the world."
In all cases, they had succeeded in persuading them not to further their ideas - "except in this particular one," he said, referring to Abdaly.
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?Going from the freedom of permanent opposition into the gruelling pit of government at a time of huge financial crisis will certainly have presented new facts and new perspectives to the incoming Lib Dem cabinet, and if that has caused them to change their minds à la Keynes, then I can respect them for that. The price is the anger of all those who supported you, and a brick through your window if you are Norman Baker, so changing your mind is not cost-free. That makes it all the more admirable, in my book.
"It’s only a fucking song."This, from a "Working-Class Hero".
I came across this somewhere recently. Lennon was, apparently, being visited in New York by a friend from Liverpool. Seeing Yoko Ono’s walk-in chiller for storing fur coats, the friend said, “Imagine no possessions, eh, John?”
John replied as above.
But there is an arrogance at the heart of our politics that is going to make it difficult to really understand why we lost. It is an arrogance that says that we alone own morality and that we alone want the best for people. It says that our instincts and our motives alone are pure. It’s an arrogance that belittles others’ fears and concerns as “isms” whilst raising ours as righteous. We then mistakenly define ourselves as being distinctive from our opponents because we are morally superior rather than because we have different diagnoses and solutions. It is lazy, wrong and politically dangerous.Well worth a read. And don't forget the comments, some of which take missing the point to an art form.
You want a £37 million pound theatre in Barry, Wales? You pay for it, you run it, you make it pay, you negotiate with the employees, you deliver the content, you pay the pensions and running costs by producing what free people will pay hard earned money to see, not by demanding by force that a fork lift truck driver on night shift in Newcastle "supports" your "desire" to bring "arts" to the "unemployed" of rural Wales.And
There is no such thing as free milk and honey. Ask a bear.
By hosting the World Cup, at vast cost, the Qataris are giving not just football
but global secular culture the greatest possible plug. They are encouraging not
just their own people, but all the inhabitants of that tumultuous region -
Iraqis, Iranians, Saudis, Syrians - to plough their restless energy into a
harmless game. And away from terrorism, fundamentalism and dreams of global
jihad.
What a pity it is that the BBC should have disgraced our bid with that Panorama programme on Monday.I commented:
An investigation into bribery and corruption is "disgraceful"? That's a new one.Dale replied:
The timing was disgraceful. They should have screened it after the bid.He seems to be arguing that the BBC should have withheld any broadcast of their corruption investigation until after the successful bid had been announced. The obvious implication is that the BBC have annoyed FIFA (if the allegations are false, why would that be a problem?) and made them less likely to choose England. Would Mr Dale also agree that newspapers should avoid allegations of corruption against a politician until after an election, in case it affected the result?
This goes against a 150-year tradition of keeping politics out of policing. It raises the very real prospect of a politician telling a chief constable how to do their job.Ed, let me tell you a secret. Policing has always been political. Politics is all about how we choose to organise our society, and policing has always been part of that. In the Victorian era, the police were pretty much the servants of the ruling class, employed to keep the workers and poor on their best behaviour. Under New Labour, however, the Police became more aligned with the governing party than ever before. Remember how they lobbied for government policy over the detention without trial issue? Remember how ACPO statements used to uncannily reflect Labour thinking? Ed, to suggest that Labour have disinterestedly kept politics out of policing shows some fucking nerve.
New police commissioners 'could cost more than £136m'Yep, standard procedure - get the negatives out fast, before people have even read the story.
The cost of introducing police and crime commissioners could reach more than £136m over 10 years, government documents show.
If they said 'We'll fund students from all over the EU, except Poland', there would be hell to pay.Story here.
Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.A quick look at Google Earth reveals that the Arctic Ocean is in a basin, surrounded by land on all sides - Greenland, northern Canada, Siberia, northern Europe, and so on. So if volcanoes are erupting explosively in such a basin, and pumping out vast quantities of molten lava beneath the sea, and that sea is covered with an ice-cap, what do we think might happen to the ice-cap? I would imagine it would start to melt around the edges: which is precisely what is happening.
The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.
Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.
But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.
What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth's mantle onto the ocean floor.
Denbighshire teacher banned for emotional abuseMr Hughes was also found guilty of:
A teacher found to have emotionally abused pupils has been banned from the profession.
John Hughes called children at Garth Primary School in Trevor, Denbighshire, names such as dumbo and twit, a disciplinary hearing was told.
We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that's not very sensible.Labour have called the comments "shameful" and said they showed how "out of touch" the Tories are, and Plaid Cymru have called them "disgraceful". Brendan Barber, of the in-touch-with-the-people's-mood TUC, said that Flight was "an insensitive throwback to the worst of 1980s politics". Man-of-the-people Eric Pickles has said that he found the comments "personally repugnant". David Cameron was clear that he didn't agree with the remarks, and was sure that Mr Flight would want to apologise. Which, after a brief interlude, he has. Shame.
Quote by Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government."Strangely enough, the most significant of these quotations for me are the two referring to nuclear fusion:
Quote by Gordon Brown, former British prime minister: "A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis."
Quote by David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
Quote by Club of Rome: “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention....and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself....believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or….one invented for the purpose.”
Quote by Maurice Strong, a wealthy elitist and primary power behind UN throne: “Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Quote by David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!: “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
Quote by Robert Muller, former UN Assistant Secretary General: “In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.”
Quote by James Lovelock, known as founder of 'Gaia' concept: “I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”
Quote by Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation: “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Quote by Ted Turner, billionaire, founder of CNN and major UN donor: “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Quote by John Holdren, President Obama's science czar: "There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."
Quote by UK's Keith Farnish, environmental writer, philosopher and activist: "The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization...Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine."
Quote by Club of Rome: "Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time."
Quote by Michael Oppenheimer, major environmentalist: "The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."
Quote by emeritus professor Daniel Botkin :"The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe."
Quote by Stephen Schneider, Stanford Univ., environmentalist: "That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have."
Quote from Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
Quote by Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Quote by Timoth Wirth, U.S./UN functionary, former elected Democrat: “We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Quote by Richard Benedik, former U.S./UN bureaucrat: "A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."
Quote by David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University: “Rather than seeing models as describing literal truth, we ought to see them as convenient fictions which try to provide something useful.”
Quote by Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation: “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”I had always assumed that the Green objection to energy use, and specifically nuclear energy, was that it was environmentally damaging, and then when a clean and cheap source of energy was developed (and for my generation that has always been fusion), everyone would welcome it and be happy that all the world could share the advantages of plentiful energy that we have had for some time. Apparently not. Plentiful energy, it seems, is a Bad Thing per se, even if it does no harm to the planet. That revelation is frankly shocking to me. I can't see why anyone would object to lots of clean, cheap energy, unless they hate the human race - and that, I'm sorry to say, seems to be a constant theme of the discourse.
Quote by Amory Lovins, scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute: "Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it."