The Ill-liberal.
When I was growing up I was always reading in newspapers and magazines that everyone could remember exactly where they were and exactly what they were doing the day President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, in 1963. Although alive, I cannot recall my whereabouts at all. This was because I was only a child. I’m now increasingly elderly and one of the generations who remark that they can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing in 2001, when the news that an aeroplane had inexplicably collided with the World Trade Center in New York City came through.
My teenage years were riddled by ongoing controversy about who shot Kennedy and how, and even why. The official report – the Warren Commission – was both widely reported and widely derided in the mass media, and it seemed as if everyone and their mother had a book out, detailing their pet theory of whodunnit. There were even theories that Kennedy was not actually dead. It took around ten years before the release of the Zapruder film put paid to that notion.
I’ve wondered recently what would have happened to the liberal dream that Kennedy and his Camelot appeared to create, if he had not died that day in Dallas. Could it have survived the Marilyn Monroe Sex Allegations? His brother appeared to survive the Chappaquiddick Incident, so maybe the liberals would have felt compelled to hide JFK in plain sight too. The furore over President Clinton proved inconclusive as to what might have happened, but he was never impeached was he, whereas Nixon had had to go, mostly it seemed because he was revealed to be a foul-mouthed curser.
Growing up in Britain in the Sixties, America was very much the British dream. My grand-parents may have remarked the Yanks were overpaid, over-sexed and over here, but to my generation they were the folks from the lucky country. Gradually we began to turn our small nation into what we hoped would be a perfect miniature version of that promised land.
As a young teenager my ‘political’ life was of course dominated by “the Cold War”. Communism versus Capitalism. I was late to the argument, and it had passed it’s Red Scare moments but still retained a certain virility. My more prosaic daily political reality was Labour versus Conservatives. Liberals scarcely existed in Britain at the time. Neither of the two main UK sides actually prescribed Communism since both sides aspired to the American Dream and America was resolutely anti-Communist. Labour was resolutely Socialist however and there seemed little in that for me to argue with. When you own next to nothing, sharing seems a super idea. One luxury I did grow up with though, and that was being able to watch someone else’s war every tea time on the black & white TV. Vietnam was probably the first war in over a century that the British could watch but not have to fight in. When you watch a war that you have no part in fighting, then you see the true madness of it much more readily, and of course we had Harold Wilson and Labour to thank for that too.
Unfortunately for the rose-coloured future, the 1970’s came along, and things began to go horribly wrong. I guessed it was all connected with those strange days when I was still little and we had been told the £1 in our pocket was still worth the same, even though half a crown was no longer worth half a dollar. Back then none of us went abroad for holidays so 2/6d did remain worth the same in our own little Britain. In the 1970’s we decimalised our money and the half-crown became 121p. The Shilling became a tiny 5p. If money talks, we were all now speaking a brand new language, and it had a tiny American twang: 100p in £1, 100 cents in $1. We were perhaps edging towards the Promised Land. Were we? Well no we weren’t actually. Instead, a further change of government to the Conservative Party of Edward Heath marched us up a different hill and when we marched down again we found ourselves in Europe, and our American Dream suddenly seemed further away than ever before.
British society in the 1970’s gradually morphed into it’s own strange private civil war and for a while it was difficult to see any winners emerging as a game of pin-ball politics developed, with Labour and Conservatives bouncing us lower and lower down the stairs, and eventually the lights went out. We had arrived in a dark cellar, and working three days a week was a problem rather than a culmination of a promise that we would all have more leisure one day.
Then IT happened, the culmination of a decade of Women’s Liberation (another American invention) brought WOMAN to the pinnacle of British Power; the Thatcher Revolution began.
By the mid-1980’s we were once again in hot pursuit of the American Dream. Red Ford Escorts sped along the new motorways (as we quaintly called our miniature Interstates) and those same Red Escorts and Vauxhall Nova’s overflowed the car-parks of the Shopping Malls sprouting on the outskirts of our towns. We were fast becoming the USA again in our minds. The dream was not dead! Shopping became a leisure pursuit and McDonald’s a gourmet experience. Anyone still harbouring any doubts about which was the side to be on in the Cold War was convinced. Even my mum, who in 1968 had complained about the rioting around the US Embassy in London with the caustic, “They don’t have all this trouble in Russia!” became convinced. Thatcher and Reagan became the double-act that, without firing a shot, finally deposed the “Evil Empire”. We had won.
Having won the Cold War, Britain followed the same instincts it had had after the hot one in 1945, and the successful leader was deposed. Everyone expected the Welsh firebrand Neil Kinnock to sweep Labour back into power next (especially Neil Kinnock himself). Labour’s pre-ballot Sheffield Victory Rally proved his undoing however and quite unexpectedly the quiet man of UK politics who had stepped into the shoes of the immortal Thatcher was returned to power. It may have been Major’s comforting Anglo-American military expedition to liberate Kuwait that led us to see him as having a depth, if not a frightfully exciting surface. Whatever the reasons, Labour needed another plan. They had no politics any longer. Communism was a dead duck. So they went for sex. It pushed all the right buttons. Sleazy Sex and Conservatism became synonymous. A final thrust for victory was all that was needed. The death of John Smith was another lucky break they needed. Labour was wound up and New Labour was invented. The new improved version that washes even whiter. Things could only get better; and in a blur of history and illicit sex they did.
Having sold its soul for victory however, New Labour was no longer to be the moral force it had always been. For all of my life the politics of Britain had been akin to two half-brothers running the household. Cain and Abel perhaps. Cain was cold and practical, perhaps even cruel at times whilst Abel was dreamy, but Abel made up for that with compassion and heart and in the household arguments Cain had learned to listen to Abel, even copy him sometimes. Cain had found that aping his half-brother could make him not only more likeable but wise. This often puzzled Cain who found his half-brother half-witted at times, but Cain also realized that his sisters preferred Abel to him.
Like any dreamer with an artistic bent, Abel had never before copied his practical but often ruthless brother; Abel had remained unbending on certain issues, usually to do with guilt and innocence and crime and punishment. Cain had often had to allow his annoying fuss-pot of a brother to run the household his own way, in order that Cain could concentrate on ploughing the fields and collecting next year’s seed. But now everything was changed even though none of us fully realized this at the time. In truth Cain was probably worn out anyway, and besides every way he turned, another ex-girlfriend stepped out of a door to confront his family, and especially his sisters, with stories of Cain’s alleged immorality. Sometimes, embarrassingly, the stories were true. The matriarch and sisters were not impressed with Cain’s work hard but play harder philosophy. Time for Abel to run things again.
“Tough on Crime. Tough on the Causes of Crime.” Cain had heard Abel say, as his once-dreamy brother took over the household. Cain had sulkily withdrew, angry and hurt that suddenly all his work counted for nothing with his sisters. If he had not been sulking perhaps he would have realized that what Abel had actually said was, “Tough on Crime. Tough on the Causers of Crime.” This was a new and very different Abel. Tired of serving as the conscience of the household, now he was determined that Cain would never become pre-eminent ever again. Abel would be the new daddy, never mind brother. He became especially determined to keep the family dream alive though. The American Dream.
And so it was that I found myself no longer watching somebody else’s war on my TV screen. As New Labour became the scoundrel whose last resort was Patriotism, I began to feel as if I was an extra in Attenborough’s 1960’s movie, Oh! What a Lovely War! It was a Looking Glass World where Cain had not slain Abel, but rather Abel had become Cain, and in Abel’s determination to outdo Cain Abel became even more Cain than Cain was. He became crueller and more determined to have his own way than Cain had ever been.
When the next family upset came, as was inevitable in this family; Labour was shocked. The Conservatives took it as a matter of normal business being resumed and happily took the plough back into their hands, sharpening the rusting blades, oiling the leather and cracking the whip over the horses pulling it, mostly to wake them up, so unexercised had they become. Abel had wearied of the tedium of the ploughing after all the years of exciting war games with those new American friends who had helped him in pursuit of the popular British Dream of being America’s miniMe.
New Labour was so shocked by the turn of events that it seemed to undergo a brief but complete nervous breakdown. It dropped the word New and retreated into the past, and as the paranoia mounted, the wish to hurt and break things became stronger; the hate burned hotter. After a terrible weekend when Abel had run amok, smashing all the plates in the kitchen and setting fire to the garden shed, Cain had to take stringent action to contain his increasingly maniacal sibling, but as can happen with anyone confined and trapped and suffering from mental collapse, Abel looked within himself and found the solution inside his own spinning, angry mind, the lever that could once again give him pre-eminence over his now hated brother, the spawn of that bitch Thatcher, not from the womb of his own Mummy.
“Mummy and Daddy!” Abel’s voice was loud and the whole household drew near. Cain stood opposite his feverish half-brother, wondering at the fire that was burning hotly in those formerly calf-like eyes. The matriarch and patriarch drew near and the family stepped back respectfully as the legal guardians bent over their poorly son.
“What is it Abel”, the matriarch asked kindly.
“Mummy!!” Abel’s eyes squeezed tears, “Cain has been touching my willy since I was child!”
The family gasped and stared at Cain, whose mouth had dropped open. Abel continued, pointing at several of his sisters, who stood in a suspicious cluster.
“And Mummy. Cain made the girls perform sex on him ever since they were little!!”
Cain staggered back against the doorpost as the family began to surround him, shouting questions, not listening to his attempts at answering. He was completely flummoxed and unable to think clearly. Behind him, some members of the family began collecting wood, to make a scaffold and a fire.
Abel sat on his bed, grinning slyly and winked at his special sisters. What a great idea this had been. Sex had worked last time too.
Moor Larkin
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October 21, 2014 at 10:55 am -
“New Labour was no longer to be the moral force it had always been”
Labour was a ‘moral force’?!?! Not in my lifetime. Always been intent on the destruction of the economy and jobs- no I haven’t forgiven for them for taking the tv off air during the Winter Of Discount Tents (these things are important when you’re a kid). ‘bitch Thatcher’ ?- only in the sense she was a Hell Hound who savaged the miners and saved this country from the Unions.
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October 21, 2014 at 11:04 am -
October 21, 2014 at 11:17 am -
Politicians do seem to have morphed into one indistinguishable shower in the last twenty or thirty years; it used to be tarts with the Conservatives, money fiddles with Labour, now they are all at everything.
Abel is about due his comeuppance, the whiny bollocks and unprovable allegations trick is about worn out.-
October 21, 2014 at 12:01 pm -
One day people will look back and accept this as fact – that when the public elected Tony & his gang in 1997, they elected a team of cynics funded by ‘Big Business’ with the mission to remove all ‘power’ from the politicians that followed. Think about their accomplishments, they include:
– Infantilising future generations by dumbing down the education system. Proven.
– Making sure Britain was fully ‘on board’ the credit-driven suicidal ‘Boom & Bust’
– Ensuring Britain was at the epicentre of an ‘eternal war’ by any means necessary.
– Ridding the nation of the notions of ‘forgiveness’ by implementing insidious policies of ‘politically correct’ (in reality barbaric) radical feminism throughout the media. Combined with the meaningless nonsense infantilisation brought, we now have a nation of lemmings.Tony clocked his 10 years in power & went, passing the baton to Gormless Gordon. Then what was there on offer for the UK electorate?
Traditionally called ‘The Conservative Party’ we now have ‘The Nasty Party’ – a bunch of Old Etonians playing a role of pantomime villains.
‘The Labour Party’ are now ‘The Nice Party’ (or, if Keir Starmer has his was ‘The Victims Party’)
UKIP, the ‘protest vote’ a slapstick Light Entertainment variant of ‘The Nasty Party’
ill-Liberal Democrats dead, buried and irrelevant despite being part of the present Government.The SAME PEOPLE are in ‘power’ that were there in late 90’s. The only difference is the hapless electorate has no say in this.
Whilst there is ‘Nasty’ business to be done – the demolition of the Rule Of Law, further damage to the NHS, no pay rises for the minions, “overhauling” the social insecurity system – a ‘Nasty’ party will be playing the role of phantom government. Those really in power ensured this, even to the point of installing a hapless imbecile as ‘Nice Party’ leader to ensure they are unelectable – once the ‘job is done’ they’ll install someone who will appeal to the Modern Voters. Possibly reality TV idiot ‘Joey Essex’.-
October 21, 2014 at 10:29 pm -
Chris, sounds about right.
I like the way many workers have had no pay rises for so many years, yet Cameron’s buddies in the bank still get huge bonuses. And what about the £12.7 billion of tax payers money thrown away in aid by “Dave” each year ?
As for Milliband he was the green zealot which introduced the Climate Change Act basically drawn up by a green activist ,unelected of course,. We jumped of the financial cliff with this one but few other countries did. The cost of this parliamentary folly is enormous .
Clegg is about as much use as a dose of herpes in a brothel, aided and abetted by his environmental lawyer wife.
All aboard the green gravy train and bu@@er the working people.I reckon Anna for pm!
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October 21, 2014 at 1:06 pm -
9/11, feminism, a microchipped population.
I just googled : Aaron Russo Nick Rockefeller & found something I’d forgotten I’d posted.
Nick Rockefeller predicted 9/11 to his pal Russo a year before it happened.We need to get away from the Labour v Tory mentality. It’s a false paradigm fed to us to keep us diverted & under control, to give us the illusion of participation in our false democracy.
Since the banksters caused the meltdown of 2008, were deemed too big to fail, & their debts dumped on the small taxpayers ‘ backs, it has become rather obvious that we no longer function under a capitalist system, where companies fail if they are inefficient or crooked.
Our so-called “main” parties no longer achieve majorities. Turnouts are dismal, because most have realised there is only a fagpapers worth of difference between them & they never do what they promise. We no longer have a functioning democracy.I now think of the UK ( & the US ), as crony-corporate states, run by & for the benefit of the major corporations, such as the banks, & therefore as effectively Fascist states.
Put crudely, the Banksters are the dog, the politicians, the tail. & a dog can function without a tail.
The situation has been deteriorating since the Banksters put the Dutch General, William Stradholder on the throne of England, 1689.
Book : Pawns in the Game, by William Guy Carr.
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October 21, 2014 at 1:37 pm -
I rate how far this country has fallen by the fact that when we had real money in my younger days, five bob was a dollar, ie 4 dollars to the pound. Now there is about 1.6 dollars to the pound. However you look at it, we’ve failed to keep up with the United States.
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October 21, 2014 at 1:42 pm -
The nation is in an unhappy state and the public are sick and tired of politicians. UKIP could have a clear run and I don’t see them doing any worse than the three main parties. We can only hope they can do better and begin to turn this country around. They shall get my vote.
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October 21, 2014 at 1:54 pm -
On a lighter note : my wife was born August 1964 so we liked teasing her mum that we knew what she was doing when she heard Kennedy had been shot.
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October 21, 2014 at 2:14 pm -
A wonderful potted history, thanks Moor.
Two points:
1. Minor typo – “In the 1970’s we decimalised our money and the half-crown became 121p.” – 12.5p
2. Here’s the history to music with lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m50p-XScreM
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October 21, 2014 at 2:19 pm -
the 1970’s came along, and things began to go horribly wrong
Your article makes interesting reading, especially alongside today’s obituary to Gough Whitlam. He seems to have introduced quite a few liberal policies in Australia in just three years in the 1970s and to be held in high regard even by Cains.-
October 21, 2014 at 5:08 pm -
And then the Queen sacked him.
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October 22, 2014 at 10:58 am -
I never understood how come Australia never rose up in revolution after that. It wasn’t even the Queen, it was “the Guv’nor”. I read up on it once and I still don’t really understand it. I suppose in some ways though, it was the same as the Tory Party de-selecting Maggie and thus removing her from power in the same way.
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October 21, 2014 at 2:53 pm -
Astute, and beautifully written ML
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October 21, 2014 at 8:30 pm -
Thankyou Gildas. Someplace in my Jungian Unconscious I feel very sure that your frequent essays in here have helped stimulate this small effort of mine to descry the moor recent past……..
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October 21, 2014 at 3:10 pm -
There’s another lot of blinkered problem-causers, too. Environmentalists.
My first job after leaving university in the early 1980s was in the nuclear industry, which at the time was under sustained attack by Environ-mentalists. As time has gone on, they’ve had to admit that they got it wrong; nuclear power has proved itself both safe and cost effective. However, there is a bitter legacy of their lunacy. In the 1990s when we should have been starting to replace the first generation nuclear stations, government of the day had a collective fear of doing so, sowed by the pernicious lies told by the environ-mentalists. Had we done as we should at that time and begun building the next generation of nuclear stations, we would not today be in the perilous position we are with regard to energy capacity.
We now have a linked, but even worse situation being created by the Great Climate Scandal. How much that will cost and inconvenience the ordinary person before the environ-mentalists are shown to be scaremongering remains to be seen.
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October 21, 2014 at 6:46 pm -
Erm – given that as yet no nuclear reactor has been fully decommissioned, we still don’t have any good ideas on keeping the waste contained for the thousands of years needed, and it still isn’t proved that nuclear plants generate more energy than they use in their entire life cycle (including construction and decommissioning), I think the environmentalists had a point.
As to climate change, you have to outright deny a whole swathe of science if you want to claim that the climate ISN’T changing, and ignore a whole bunch more research linking the changes to human activity. How long before the climate changes into something that modern civilisation cannot operate within is only a matter of time if nothing is done – how much that will “inconvenience” the ordinary person is becoming clearer day by day as we see more drought, more extreme rainfall, more crop failures, more losses of land to rising seas etc etc.
I expect more from a so-called Engineer – basic research and a reliance on facts not fantasy would do for a start.-
October 21, 2014 at 7:11 pm -
Right. No good ideas on keeping waste contained for thousands of years – wrong. We know exactly how to do it (and have done for about two-and-a-half decades) – deep repository in a suitably stable geological formation. Both the Americans and the Finns are already doing this, the only reason we aren’t in the UK is down to political indecision. Once the government (of whatever stripe) actually makes a decision about where, the industry is poised to get on with it. In the meantime, we’re spending millions building even more interim stores at Sellafield.
It isn’t proved that nuclear plants generate more energy than they use in their life cycle – oh, really? Who says? Bloody Greenpeace again? I spent about two decades of my life listening to their lies on nuclear power, and their visceral and implacable objection to ‘subsidies’ as applied to nuclear. They now wholeheartedly embrace ‘subsidies’ for renewables – notably wind power, in which the question of whether they generate more energy than they use IS a valid question.
On climate – I note you twist the argument. At no point have I suggested that climate isn’t changing. Whether those changes are natural or man-made is another matter. The science is most definitely not settled. If it was, we would know in detail how the climate functions, and we do not. We have a lot of speculation, and some computer models making predictions – predictions which have so far turned out to be wrong.
As for being a ‘so-called Engineer’ – my statements are based on research, experience, and – guess what? Facts.
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October 21, 2014 at 7:58 pm -
Thanks Engineer for having the energy to rebut the certainty instantly trotted out like a mantra by contributors like Rowan. He/She/They make this contribution every time Climate Change gets a mention. I no longer have the energy to beat my head against the brick wall that is their certainty, so respect to those who do.
If they spent a little less time strutting around belittling everyone who questions their religion and a little more energy in criticizing the huge fraud that is the AGW industry falsely claiming, at huge cost, to be doing something constructive to counter the alleged danger, one could perhaps tolerate their arrogance. As it is they continue the lie that those of us who, whilst acting lawfully in every way demanded to meet their fantasy targets, are somehow to blame for the failure of their policies because we question the conclusions they have drawn from their apparently cherry picked data. I have read huge amounts of material which claim AGW and increasing amounts which seek to challenge it, do they only read the material which supports their faith?
Of course it just means we pay twice. Once to satisfy the AGW demands and again to prepare for the onset of a mini ice age which appears to be at least as likely. But since the science isn’t settled and can’t be until it becomes fact, what choice do we have? I submit, none.
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October 21, 2014 at 8:40 pm -
It’s a very good illustration of exactly the point Moor Larkin was making in his article, though. Just change, “He touched my willy” into “You’re changing the climate” and you have the same cause and effect. Public panic over what is basically a lie.
In the end, truth will out. How much poorer most of the population will be by then is a matter for speculation, though.
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October 21, 2014 at 8:43 pm -
True, if it is settled it isn’t science, true science is always a quest and often changes over time.
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October 21, 2014 at 9:05 pm -
At one time 99% of respected scientists declared that the earth was flat. Who was right ?
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October 27, 2014 at 1:00 am -
Actually, they didn’t. Ever.
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October 21, 2014 at 10:35 pm -
Well said Engineer Agw is a lovely scam with nice jobs for the Boyz & Girlz
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October 22, 2014 at 11:48 am -
Info about the Finnish solution is here
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/waste/finlands-crazy-plan-to-make-nuclear-waste-disappear-8732655At a cost of $3bn, taking 18 years to build, sited on an island with no natural resources and no fresh water to tempt future humans to settle there, the Finnish depository will eventually store 5,500 tons of waste.
Humanity produces 12,000 tons of nuclear waste a year to add to the 300,000 tons already in existence.
Where exactly did you want to build the other 50 sites for the backlog and the extra 2 per year for the new waste???????I think your solution is not exactly a solution……
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October 22, 2014 at 8:30 pm -
Your figures for nuclear waste arisings are somewhat skewed. The quantity of waste needing deep geological disposal (the highly active and intermediate active wastes) are a very small proportion of that, and almost all of it arises at Sellafield, with a small addition from scrap medical radiological sources and industrial NDT and general research sources. The bulk of it is very low level stuff, such as suspect active clothing, rubber gloves, and paper waste from nuclear licenced sites, hospital X-ray and radiological treatment units, industrial NDT uses, and the like. That can be safely disposed of in surface landfill (it is at Drigg, for example).
The scale of the problem is far smaller than you make out. It is currently managed by interim storage of HA and MA wastes (the former in vitrified form, the latter encapulated in cement-grouted containers) at Sellafield, pending construction of a deep repository. The LA waste goes to Drigg or to the one other licensed surface landfill site in the UK.
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October 21, 2014 at 7:19 pm -
I didn’t see Engineer decry climate change – he referred to the Climate scandal. This is a scam whereby those with fingers in a very lucrative pie lie about global warming and produce bent data to support their untruths. When they were found out they simply changed their lie header to “climate change” and carried on lying while their grasping fingers continued to pluck the fruit from the pie. Climate change? Of course there’s climate change and always has been; a bairn wi’ a sore arse could tell you that free.
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October 21, 2014 at 9:03 pm -
2nd go, must be me.
Rowan,
The world has, during the life of man, been through much greater environmental change than that currently forecast as a result of human activity; forecasts which are in any case based on considerable speculation.
When there have been demonstrable environmental risks, action has been taken; not immediately, but taken, nonetheless. From my own experience I think of lead in fuel & in food cans, asbestos, hydrocarbon solvents, and I particularly recall joining the aerosol business in 1987. Remember CFCs & the Montreal Convention?
There’s no doubt we are affecting the environment, but surely the problem is the number of us. Our survival in such numbers through any of the major events of recent tens of millennia is unlikely. It may well be a good thing to get the Germans to stop burning so much lignite, but the suggestion that this, windmills and solar panels will be our salvation is pure fantasy.
just a view. -
October 21, 2014 at 9:40 pm -
Who are you going to believe Rowan? Engineer or Ed Milliband /camoron/ department for energy and climate change? Sane energy policy or seat-of-the-pants appeasment to nutters who believe eighteen years of no temperature rise signifys a terrible future of climate imbalance, even though higher temperatures were implied in the past and civilization seemed to have survived quite well.
This is the unmentionned problem missing from moor larkin’s synopsis, the population seem to have reviewed the last seventy years of failure from all parties and is now willing to listen to ordinary citizens proposing sensible solutions, not for the loudest and most shrill of lobbyists but for the benefit of the majority. The three major parties are thrashing around trying to understand how they can justify their 70 years of ineptitude. Old-tired-and-union dependent Liebour may indeed try to implicate the conmen in an unsavoury sex scandal as Moor implies, after all “a good defence is offence” and liebour has been caught red-handed with sex scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale, Manchester and a coke-snorting co-op bank chairman consorting with gay rentboys while financing Ed Ball and many other liebour MPs.
Just today, three reports relating to the very core of what governments are elected to do tell the UK that there is no reduction in government spending as hoped, the NHS Wales is a titanic disaster deserving of the national death service moniker and pensioners should wear a sweater and socks and only heat one room this winter-that sounds very much like 1974, without the miners to blame.
Every one of those issues is a major failure of government, yet you would have us believe that failed predictions of climate trends should pre-occupy government. When sensible ideas are propounded you sneer to justify your juvenile beliefs. You are the very essence of UK’s current problems.
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October 21, 2014 at 11:04 pm -
@ Rowan 6:46pm
The climate has always changed; the question is – is mankinds’ impact adversely affecting it?
It would seem not – See this graph of how the increase in plant food added to our atmosphere has had no statistically significant impact on global temperature.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c017ee9f9c395970d-pi
There’s been no Global warming for over 18 years, despite EVERY (human programmed) model used by IPCC predicting (sometimes catastrophic) anthropogenic global warming.
Perhaps take your own advice for “basic research and a reliance on facts not fantasy would do for a start.”
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October 22, 2014 at 11:34 am -
sorry Ms Raccoon for kicking the ants nest and causing a mess on your blog.
I’ll only post the one link (though I have thousands) and that’s to http://www.skepticalscience.com where the enquiring mind can find all sorts of posts complete with links to hundreds of climate science journal papers documenting millions of lines of evidence that the climate is changing dangerously fast and it really, really, really is time to start cutting CO2 emissions. All the climate-science-denier memes seen above have been thoroughly debunked, some several times over.If humanity does nothing and the evidence thus far and all the climate models are wrong – hooray
If humanity acts and the evidence thus far and all the climate models are wrong – hey, our energy is now cleaner and our pollution is now less
If humanity acts and the evidence thus far and all the climate models are right – phew, disaster averted
If humanity does nothing and the evidence thus far and all the climate models are right – OOPS
You have to gamble your children’s lives by picking one of the four options above. Thus far it seems humanity is set on deciding it WILL BE option 1 no matter what and will ignore or shriek at anyone who dares to suggest that it may not be.-
October 22, 2014 at 8:08 pm -
Skepticalscience is a well-known ‘alarmist’ site. Have a read of Wattsupwiththat for the alternative view, if reading climate blogs is your thing. I intend to read neither. The only one that would really interest me is a site describing in detail exactly how the climate works. There isn’t one, because mankind doesn’t know how the climate works. There are lots of hypotheses, some debunked, some still neither proven nor unproven, but the bottom line is – I repeat – we don’t know how the climate works.
The climate has been changing, warming and cooling, for as long as the Earth has had a climate. It’s been both far warmer, and far colder than it is now, and the Earth’s still chugging along. Carbon dioxide levels have been both far higher, and far lower than they are now, and the Earth is still chugging along. It is not proven that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are a significant driver of changes to the climate; indeed it is now thought that the reverse is the case.
There is a school of thought that has siezed upon partial interpretations of some (not all) scientific investigation to support it’s political beliefs. It is partial in the science it quotes, and it has a history of exaggerating claims and rejecting science that doesn’t fit it’s agenda. That’s not ‘science’, that’s politics. I’ll stick with proper science, thank you very much. That science is most definitely not settled (if it was, you’d be able to tell me in detail exactly how climate is driven – and you can’t without lying).
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October 22, 2014 at 8:16 pm -
Thank you for setting out the watermelon manifesto so clearly.
Your various scenarios roughly approximate to this-If we spend money on non-existent problems, well at least we employed some university chum(p)s playing around with expensive computing equipment and sending them on jollies to Bali and Brazil.-hooray. And we diverted money to the rent-seekers-hooray, and invested money in sixteenth century technology that our forefathers were sensible enough to allow to decay-hooray.
Meanwhile trillions of dollars and billions of pounds that could have been usefully applied to the deficit have been wasted-would not want to ease the tax load on future generations that watermelons pretend to care for. Alternately, those billions might have been applied to improving the NHS, which Milliband and camoron pretend to care about. Or given Engineers issue, that wasteful expense could have been applied to proven energy production projects to avoid future discomfort and penury of the old.
In short the watermelons are selfish and ill-informed, but are now too embarrassed to accept actual weather data, clinging still to their faulty computer projections, every one of which has been shown to be incorrect.
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October 21, 2014 at 3:38 pm -
And then there is the role of the floor managers, as played by the mass media.
Once these were industrious people, moving among the audience, learning interesting snippets about audience members to share with the assembly. Over time they found certain catch phrases would particularly stir up the audience: this made their job easier, who needed to send scouts into the audience any more? All that was needed was to shout out a catch phrase and tell the audience whether to cheer or boo, just like on a TV talent show.
NHS – CHEER
Bankers – BOO
Reality TV person falls over and flashes her knickers – CHEER
Foreigners – BOO
UKIP person who doesn’t like foreigners – CHEER, no BOO, no .., hang on.I wonder whether the political classes detached themselves from the population, or the population detached themselves from thinking about political issues, like the sheep in Animal Farm.
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October 21, 2014 at 4:43 pm -
I used to be a real political junkie, studied it at university and even briefly joined a party for a few years. Now it takes me all my time to vote, the utter cynicism of the Blair/Brown years destroyed politics for me and I see no chance of reversing this as the current lot are only a little better. Apart from the expenses scandal there seems to be no real investigative journalism. We are losing our freedoms bit by bit driven by unelected quangocrats from smoking, drinking, eating to so called climate change we are told how to live. Sometimes I am glad I am getting old, you can’t trust the police, lawyers and hardly anyone in authority it is frightening. I couldn’t care less about sex scandals if they involve consenting adults.
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October 21, 2014 at 10:36 pm -
Well said Carol and nicely summed up
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October 22, 2014 at 1:52 am -
It should be remembered that the expenses scandal was exposed by an American (USA born) journalist.
And that expense scandals will no longer be reported to the public, because it just is not good for democracy.
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October 21, 2014 at 5:22 pm -
Good summary of a half century that most of us here recall.
Stepping away from the immediate local politics, there seems to be a world-wide ‘rebellion’ now evident against whatever is perceived as the status quo. You can argue that the SNP does that in Scotland, UKIP does it in England, Front Nationale in France, AfD in Germany, Beppe Grilloo in Italy, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Tea Party in the USA, Catalans in Spain etc. On the wider stage, even ISIS can be seen as a ‘rebellion’ against the separate nations of the Middle East and even against its own base religion of Islam, just as Boko Haram does in West Africa. The current protests in Hong Kong are challenging their ruling power, the conflict in Ukraine features rebels against power. The earlier Arab Spring, which has yet to resolve into summer, was the same on a number of national fronts.
The common factor is where a population considers that its rulers are not listening to or responding to their needs, it has discovered the capacity to take action, sometimes in democratic forms, other times in more violent methods, but all forms represent an outpouring of frustration at the holders of power across the globe. The coincidence of all these, apparently separate, rebellions with the emergence of e-communication may not be a coincidence – would they have arisen without the e-world, would they have been strangled at local birth ? We may never know, but it’s a trend to watch carefully, which I’m sure all ruling powers everywhere are doing.
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October 21, 2014 at 8:53 pm -
What people seem to have forgotten is that Harold Wilson was a prototype for Tony Blair. All the emphasis on presentation rather than substance started then.
It is a very long time since the Labour Party had any integrity.
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October 21, 2014 at 9:09 pm -
A tad unfair to attach that only to the Labour Party – I’m struggling to find a shred of genuine integrity in any of them. For the record, my observations suggest that the ‘cuddly’ Lib Dems make the Labour Party look like a model of propriety.
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October 21, 2014 at 9:18 pm -
A great potted history Moor, however as a veteran of one of the many “hot” eruptions of the “cold” war, this is not quite true.
“Thatcher and Reagan became the double-act that, without firing a shot, finally deposed the “Evil Empire””
Containment and the ability to force them to spend money they didn’t have propping up like minded regimes, got them in the end.
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October 22, 2014 at 10:06 am -
It was also and to a very large extent the superiority of America in the high tech game. The Russians equally had cruise missiles, but not the advanced radars on their front line fighters (look down-shoot down) to combat them. American fighters could go twice as long without major maintenance, American tanks were fewer but had heavier more accurate guns, America had superior helicopters and anti-submarine systems. American spy planes and satellites had no Russian equivalent (no SR 71ski) and the final blow, America had developed systems (meteor burst communication) to allow unit operation AFTER a nuclear attack, the H bomb didn’t end it anymore.
Russia couldn’t keep up without going bankrupt
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October 21, 2014 at 9:46 pm -
My impression that there is a big difference between the British right and the American right. Could any one imagine a Republican Alan Clark? The latter are still by and large old time moralists (at least in public) whereas the British Conservatives have pretty much given up on such posturing. In fact it is the British left that has managed to channel old style moralism into more contemporary poses. It still in a sense stays true to its preachy Methodist roots, the Roundhead revolutionaries, where the Conservatives are happily the party of the Cavaliers.
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October 22, 2014 at 7:47 am -
I’d like to know where the political left is nowadays. It sure ain’t Labour. They occupy the authoritarian right of centre, only slightly left of the Tory’s. I’m surprised the unions still give them the time of day.
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October 22, 2014 at 10:11 am -
Perhaps the Unions are in the same place. They were never famous for their welcoming attitudes to non-members.
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October 21, 2014 at 10:01 pm -
A superb piece of writing, Mr Larkin.
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October 24, 2014 at 11:57 am -
I would say a lot of effective statesmen were/are high on testosterone, one in particular in the sixties, other substances as well, according to a book I have just plodded through on ethics and morals down the millenia. Just as the old kings had quacks bleeding them dry with leeches and lances, so do some modern statesmen/celebrities have their own paid medics who poison them with dubious medications. Some get found to have died ‘alone’ from overdosing others get shot. Under the recent rule of younger men, as said above, our freedoms are being steadily eroded. Can’t smoke or even eat without a glance around. Can’t say what we used to say without censure, or being hair driered by judgemental twitterers. Can’t take what we like on a plane, like liquids. Can’t be fat without being got at. Or old cos we cost the NHS too much. Yet still being taxed to the hilt after about 64 years. Yet there is talk of legalising cannabis, which can be a cruel mind altering substance for some lad/ettes. I agree there are too many of us for our own good. So nature has a go with Ebola, TB, Cancer, AIDS and awesome bad weather events, plus wars.
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