A Place to Stand

  On Tuesday UKIP representative Robert Malyn was a speaker at a 4 a side Strathclyde Uni debate.

  We lost. Oh well, thats student politics and the one thing 7 of the speakers seems to agree on was that UKIP is dreadful.

On the pro-EU side:

1st, Jade Holdin is a coming LibDem woman and was full of assertions that because the EU has a policy on poverty it must be reducing poverty, ditto unemployment, crime, catastrophic warming rtc and must thus be beneficial. Obviously no evidence of achieving the beneficial effects was presented. We also got the old "we can't have a say on running the EU from the outside", though why we should then need to was unanswered.

    The most amusing moment of the night was during questions when she produced a printout of UKIP arguments against the EU, proclaiming she had written disproofs them all and then refused to say what they were.

  Not quite grasping the concept of debare.

2nd, Joe Brown is a competent speaker capable of dramatic gestures and confidence who has been successful on the uni's debate team. He declared he was going to rebut "19 lies" told by sceptics, all of which came down to assertion and opinion. He  told us that if we quit it would be so damaging to the EU that they would hate us and, in spite, cut off all trade with us. This does not suggest it is a union of friends but also seems improbable considering that they export more to us than they import.

  In questions he took on my challenge to any of them to dispute that the EU economy had fallen dramatically as a proportion of world output by saying I was wrong to claim it had fallen in absolute terms (I hadn't and it hasn't until recently) and that it was inevitable that China would grow & we thus decline as a proportion since they are starting poorer. Why starting poorer inevitably means faster growth was not explained and is contrary to the historic record.

4th, John McKee, another technically good student debater explained that only as part of a massive 500 million person group can we negotiate good trading deals. Poor Singapore, mired in endless poverty because it is too small to trade.

3rd, Christopher Stephens, who has now been chosen for the SNP EU election list was perhaps the most interesting. There were claims the Scotland within the EU would get a much better deal than the UK does.

However where our minds met was in question time where he said that the real division between supporters and opponents of the EU is on the divide between those who want less and those who want more regulation. If that is the divide I know which side I am on.

  He quite openly wants much more than even the current EU provides, taking time off to complain about how the Tory cuts have meant a reduction in Glasgow council inspectors. His day job is a Glasgow council inspector.

  That reminded me of a previous debate where the Green party leader explained that the reason his party had changed into EU supporters was because it was only through ever increasing EU regulation that our the "continuous economic expansion " we were (back then) suffering from could be ended. I don't think Christopher wants a nation of more regulators and consequently fewer producers for "environmental" reasons but simply for its own sake, but the confluence of primary interest is interesting.

   We were never going to win but an informative experience nonetheless.

   I am told that this letter (probably an edited version) is in today's Metro free paper of which I have spoken very favourably. That is pretty cool since the Metro letter page doesn't many letters, let alone many political ones.

  I'm sure Swift would have been able to do it with more subtle irony.

I see the heartwarming news that the island of Muck is getting full time electricty, from "cheap" windmills and solar power. A mere £978,840.


The population of Muck is 30. That makes it £30,000 per person, or over £100,000 per household. A 4 kw diesel generator (much more than windmillers assume households use when they report that such and such new windfarm can supply X many homes) can be bought for £1,000.

I hope the people of Muck retain their old 10 kw generator as well, just in case of some unprecedented moment when the wind is not blowing quite fast enough to produce power and it is night time and the electricity thus ceases to be "full time".

However I am pleased to see the "renewables" industry continuing to provide jobs with their normal level of efficiency and fiscal prudence. Lets hope Britain never gets into a recession and finds such generosity difficult to afford.

Neil Craig

generators for sale http://www.generatorsales.com/diesel-generators.asp     This was inspired by by a news item in the Scotsman and I initially sent them a slightly longer version which they didn't use. No complaints since I had just had 2 letters published and my original was more directly sarcastic about the Scotsman failing to report the obvious comparison between cost and population involved, but it is good to become a Metro regular. This version went out to all and sundry.      This is the original article. My thanks to Dr GM Lindsay for bringing it to my attention.

  On Friday night Britain was struck by a wave of catastrophic global warming in the form of cold and snow. In Scotland there were 3 areas where there were extensive blackouts as snow brought down power lines. Wigtonshire, the island of Arran and beyond that, the peninsula of Kintyre.

Around 3,500 homes on Kintyre and 1,500 on Arran are still waiting to be reconnected.

A further 300 homes remain without electricity in Dumfries and Galloway.
Engineers' efforts to restore supplies have been hampered by a weekend of snow, blizzards and heavy winds.

Residents in parts of Arran fear they will remain off the national grid until Friday as areas of Scotland continue to be hit by severe weather. In some areas there were 15ft snow drifts.
Heavy snow and ice brought down power lines in Kintyre on Friday which blacked out a huge area over the weekend. At the peak of the problems around 18,000 homes were without power.

  As the BBC said a couple of days ago. In fact they seem to be slightly ahead of schedule and only 450 homes remain unconnected, all on Arran or Kintyre.

  What is noticeable is that the area to which it is possible to easily drive, Wigtonshire, got put back online quickly and the bit that is isolated by being an island or 200 miles away, by a round a bout route. Not surprising but worth reporting.

   Which reminds me that I first proposed the Scottish Tunnel Project, which would have meant dual carriageway connectionn to Kintyre via tunnels and further tunnel connection to Arran, - back in 2006.

   Not one single MSP even replied to the proposal.

   Then in 2011 the Scotsman published my article on the subject and only a handful even answered.

   Arran and Kintyre could and should now be a short drive from central Scotland. Repaires could anfd should be able to drive there very quickly to make repairs.

   But nobody anywhere in the Scottish government has ever shown the remotest interest in doing anything at all - not even enough interest to suggest that there are any reasons why it is not as easy as it has been for the Norwegian tunnel programme.

   And if that is not a condemnation of the total uselessness of the Holyrood numptocracy and their constant demands that they could run Scotland competently if only they were given a few more powers, I'm not sure what would be.
 
A total of 973,000 people died due to winter weather from 1982/83 to 2011/12, Office of National Statistics data for England and Wales shows.
Pensioner organisations warned the current colder-than-average winter will kill more than 26,000 people by the end of March – as Britain’s winter death toll reaches a million in just 30 years.

  Expect that to be greater this year, both because of this and because of the ever and unnecessarily rising cost of power..

  New article now up on ThinkScotland. Please put any comments there.
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   It isn't so much a massive conspiracy to control the press as interlocking conspiracies and special interests.

   It started when Rupert Murdoch asked for permission to buy up all of Sky with a view to enlarging it and making it a full competitor to the BBC.

   The BBC and its print arm, the Guardian, went into action. They took a very minor story, hardly news since in no way new, that reporters had used illegal avenues to get information. This is something that newspapers not only have done since the first typesetting but something they SHOULD be willing to do. The Guardian itself has previously publicly boasted of doing so.

   The alternative is that no paper would/will ever be able to report something that those involved don't want known - reducing papers in whole, rather than, as now, in very large part, to rewriters of PR press releases.

    They used their media monopoly to make this non-news the first, main and occasionally virtually only, news item in their main evening "news" programmes. And invited any politician who wants favourable airtime to help the story run. The foreign media expressed amazement at how importantly this non-story was being treated but it is hardly a new way of setting the agenda.

    Look at the way that "catastrophic global warming" a story with no factual base gets treated as more serious than the related deaths of 25,000 British citizens from fuel poverty annually. Which is at least 1,000 times more important? Which gets at least 1,000 times more coverage?

    When they had nothing to horrify people, however hard they pushed, they simply turned to lying. The claim that the NOTW had not only accessed Milly Dowler's phone but had deleted messages, convincing the police and family she must still be alive was simply a lie. The Guardian even apologised for producing it along with 40 odd others - months later, when it no longer mattered - far less prominently than the initial lie.

   Then a bunch of rich rascals and media celebrities, whose agents hadn't been able to keep all their scandals under wraps, set up Hacked Off to try and make sure the press always did what they wanted. For once this seems to be a genuine organisation rather than the normal government funded fakecharity. This is strong evidence that it is not one massive conspiracy.

   The Labour party naturally willing to do anything for favourable airtime and Cameron panicked, setting up a lawyerly enquiry without fist squaring the judge to make sure he wouldn't propose anything non-token. Naturally if you pay a courtful of people £5.6 million and counting they must be expected to come up with some proposals, useful or not - otherwise they will look as if they weren't worth the money.

   So Leveson inevitably came up with a scheme to regulate the press. Labour, being totalitarian and the Pseudo-Liberals being wholly opposed to liberal principles adopted them. And Cameron, despite clearly knowing they were dangerous, but having no trace of moral courage, adopted them. Or as the BBC dishonestly said "the 3 main parties" stitched it up, only the 3rd party being opposed and they weren't asked.

    We have seen generations of broadcasting media largely owned by the state (the rest being state regulated) with promises in their charter of honesty and impartiality. So much so that it is now, with 28 gate, literally impossible for anybody who is both informed and honest, to deny that the state broadcaster will lie, slant, select and censor any sort of dissent, to an extent no Russian broadcaster would dream of doing. And that they will do so to promote a form of dictatorial bureaucratic, parasitic big state socialism no Russian broadcaster would dream of supporting.

     It is noticeable that the people running this Royal Charter will be drawn, not from either those who know anything about the press, nor from politicians. This leaves the "great and good" of the civil service and judiciary" - not like the bad old days when trials were conducted by juries of ordinary citizens. That is to say exactly the same class who run the corrupted BBC monopoly.

    And next the blogsphere.


   Graphic from a highly recommended article by the Daily Mail, the only newspaper trying to stay in the gutter where the press belongs.
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  Also Jerry Pournelle, a must read for anybody interested in politics or human progress, used this link I sent him:

Dinosaur Killer Likely To Be A Comet Not Asteroid
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21709229
In which case we can’t predict when the next one will turn up..
It is by no means certain which it was but this shifts the odds
Neil Craig

  In the recent budget George Osborne called for a tax rebate to parents to ameliorate the cost of child care. I did previously say in passing that i assumed 3/4s of childcare costs in the UK are state parasitism but this is perhaps the time to look more closely.

  Here is a list of childcare costs around the OECD countries, calibrated in terms of average wages which I think is a good comparison because, with little technology required, that really should be what makes up childcare costs.

SOURCE: OECD

Switzerland 77.7
UK  40.9
Ireland 45.2
USA 38.1
New Zealand 28.6
Canada 29.5
Japan 28.1
Australia 22.5
Slovenia 19.9
OECD, all 18.
Austria 16.8
Germany 14.1
Israel 18.3
Norway 10.8
France 16.5
Netherlands 13.2
Denmark 11.2
Korea  8.5
Finland 12.2
Czech Republic 10.6
Luxembourg 8.7
Iceland  7.9
Portugal 7.7
Poland 7.1
Spain 8.2
Belgium 5.8 
Sweden 7.1 
Hungary 6.2
Slovak Republic 7.4 
Estonia  6.6
Greece  4.9

  That is what I call a wide disparity. Note that Sweden, Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg and Finland are all countries as wealthy as us or slightly more and all countries with good welfare systems so it is not credible that they are keeping costs down by allowing ill-treatement - even if the state were not to notice the parents would.

  Note also that all of least expensive 13 except Iceland are EU members so, for once, the EU regulatory regime cannot be to blame.   

   The basic rule here is that if something is being done abroad at a certain price it is possible to do it at that price and if it isn't being done here it must, other things being equal, be that our government is more restrictive than abroad's. This applies with costs of nuclear plants, housing, building projects, tunnelling. It must also apply yo childcare.

  The cost of the last 13 averages 7.7% of average income. With Britain at 40.9%, that must mean the level of state parasitism is 81% of the total cost.

  Obviously not only is this cruel to parents it produces a strong discouragement to the birth of children, particularly among the middle class, who are neither rich enough to afford it, nor poor enough to be due it for free. It is difficult to think of something more likely to, over generations, destroy our nation. And  keeping a significant proportion of parents out of the workforce has major economic effects. And there is the extra money Osborne is paying in government tax deductions to ameliorate the costs of government regulation.

  How to solve it:

  Rather than spend a lot of time fighting over each regulation and slowly hacking away at the bureaucracy, why not simply introduce a new class of child care. Say that anybody is allowed to set up as a "Childminder" (as o[pposed to Childcarer) so lang as all their advertising includes "not government regulated" and that such childminders are allowed to include any sort of liability waiver. I assume liability law is why the US costs are almost as high as Britain's. Any parents are free to choose. Current law on everybody includes the need for public liability insurance and that would remain and might well become the basis of free market, if not regulation, at least quality listings, just as France avoids most of our housing regulation by requiring builder's insurance on all new housing.

Note also that in Scotland, almost all regulatory powers are held by Holyrood. Thus this reform could be carried out here without any interfernece from either Westminster or Brussels. 

  The Climate Change Act 2008 has been called the most expensive piece of legislation the British Parliament has ever produced - according to the Government's own figures, will cost us up to £18 billion every year until 2050 ie £765 billion.

    Peanuts.

   Most of the cost is in foregone economic growth. Britain's long run economic growth has been about 2.5%. Currently it is zero, or less, depending on time scale.

    So, assuming the long run 2.5 rate, by 2050 our economy would have grown 2.83 times by 2050.

    With GDP now at £1,650 billion (& the same or actually marginally more in today's terms in 2008), that is £4,674 billion.

   But we aren't achieving any growth and since the correlation between growth in electricity use and inn GDP is precise, we won't for the next 37 years.

       So that means the cost in 2050 will be £3 trillion.

      Correlated over 42 years the cost of the Climate Change Act comes to £38 trillion + the money the government spends - call it £39 trillion

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       How much has it cost already. Well, if it were repealed tomorrow, all the parasitism ended, and we got back to the normal 2.5% growth we would still have wasted 5 years. That means GDP by 2050 would be £4,114 billion - a loss of £560 billion. Since this is also an example of geometric growth this still comes to about £7 trillion by then.

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    Now for the fun bits - suppose instead of being run by Luddites deliberately opposed to growth we were run by a progressive party able to achieve Chinese levels of growth ie (10%), starting now, by 2050 our GDP, in today's money, will be £56 trillion (comfortably exceeding current world GDP of $70 trillion - £47 bn).

    If we had started back in 2008 it would have been £90 trillion.

   Of course I have previously said that the Chinese are not doing everything right and that, since the historic record shows richer countries tend to grow faster, we should be able to exceed the Chinese growth rate if out government was really trying. Possibly by a lot. 23.8% would be £440 trillion - I do not remotely expect that but I do believe in maths and if anybody wants to try and disprove the maths I would be interested.

    We have suffered fools, thieves, parasites and fascists to rule and impoverish us but we still have an almost unlimited potential to achieve anything we want.

The climatologists’ 
models for which so much was claimed have proven poor predictors of future change and should never have been taken so easily at face value.

(Prof) Tony Trewavas FRS FRSE
Scientific Alliance 
Scotland

 Minimum sunspots, like during the Maunder Minimum.

Don't worry, unless the LabNatConDems & beeboids are wholly dishonest the Sun has almost no influence on weather compared to a 1 in 10,000 CO2 increase. Otherwise we wouldn't be experiencinjg catastrophic warming.
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  Japan making progress in extracting methane hydrates. In case we run out of shale gas in 1,500 years. More proof that the age of plentiful energy is here as soon as the parasites get out of the way.
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 House of Lords report demolishes the case for mass immigration. Once again news from the Daily Mail, not reported by the approved media.
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On the increase in extreme weather which, if every single beeboid isn't a corrupt fascist animal, we must be experiencing.


  So we aren't.
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  Listing the history of Lord Rennard's gropings of women, about which all 6 LIB Dem women have been silent. This is young, ignorant, loudmouthed, high flying LD MP Jo Swinson, now the party's junior Equality Minister. (I met her when I was in the LDs & she was one of a number of such)

2004
CLAIM: Jo Swinson, who became the party’s youngest MP and is now equalities minister, allegedly tells a female colleague there have been problems with Rennard, who had ‘an issue with women’ but that ‘you have to put up with it if you want to get on in the party.
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  Russia calls for world meteor defence
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Another Forbes piece from James Conca about radiation's LNT theory being bogus.
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Estimate that electricity bills will go up from  their curent £1,400 to £3,500. Note (A) that the could be between £400 & £90 & (B) that only 1/3rd of electricity is used in the home but that the cost of that used elsewhere still, ultimately, gets passed on to us.

 £273 or £10,500. How do we get out of recession with that?
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The EU bidget may have been marginally reduced but they still have E£200 billion to fund ecofascist groups.
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Automated killer drones at 17,000 feet
. From an altitude of 17,500 feet a drone with a 1.8 gigapixel video camera can monitor half of Manhattan and they can zoom in and see a person waving or a bird flying. The interface shows the wide field of view all at once but 65 windows can be opened up showing zoom in views of different spots. They can see things as small as 6 inches like birds. They can make out people waving from the ground and what they are wearing. The software analyzes and tracks everything that is moving.

All of the images is archived from every UAV. The persistent monitoring means that any past time can be selected for a monitored area and what happened at that time can be played as if you were watching it live. The current system has 1.8 gigapixel video but DARPA has another project that will soon have 50 gigapixels of resolution and mass production will drive the cost to about $1000. 50 gigapixels would mean increasing resolution to make out 1 inch objects from 17500 feet or viewing a larger area at the 6 inch resolution. A live and historical feed of everything in Manhattan down to 1 inch resolution from one drone.

. German scientists are seriously developing a laser based system of weed control in order to be more "environmentally friendly" than using chemical poisons. Laser armed Robots and drones cheap enough weed control of large scale agriculture and they will have artificial intelligence algorithms and high resolution cameras to be able to tell plants from weeds. They would have the goal of having this on a large scale for better "organic farming". The laser system is currently being tested in a greenhouse. Drones or small robotic planes would fly over the fields.
 The goal of the DARPA HELLADS (High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System) program is to develop a 150 kilowatt (kW) laser weapon system that is ten times smaller and lighter than current lasers of similar power, enabling integration onto tactical aircraft to defend against and defeat ground threats.

   Last night I had the honour of being in the audience of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow when Martin Rees the Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College & Lord spoke.

    The lecture ranged from Man's future in space, to the possibilities of life elsewhere in the universe to the age, origin, size, future of the universe and to the multiverse. I was impressed not so much on what he said, which I generally agreed with, but of his willingness to say how much we simply don't know.

Some remarks:

"Space flight exposes the difference between what could be done and what has been" - we could be settling Mars now if the political will had been there - supersonic transport is another example.

This picture

  It is Saturn eclipsing the Sun.

   With each advance in robotics the technical argument for human beings in space grows weaker. However the philosophical one remains overwhelming.

    "It is better to read first rate science fiction than 2nd rate science"

    There are arguments over the theories that life must be common or that we really are alone in the universe. We do not yet have enough information to hold a sensible view, but it could be that we are alone as intelligent life.

   Perhaps the difficult step is not from non-life but to intelligence. Intelligence may be an evolutionary dead end.

  We are currently about 40% of the way through the life of the Earth. Whatever exists by then may be as far removed from us as we are from microbes, perhaps moreso since we can now take charge of our own evolution.

  "Not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity" quoting Darwin

  "99.9% of the population have one thing in common - they live their lives on Earth. The rest are astronomers."

  "Fred Hoyle my predecessor at Cambridge"

  "We are the ashes of long dead stars" (ie carbon, oxygen and the other complex atoms were all formed in stars)

   We now know that most stars have planets.

   Some of these planets have been found by private citizens using data online.

   We will probably send fleets of robotic fabricators ahead before we travel to other star systems.


   Beyond the range of what our telescopes can see (ie more than 13 billion light years away) there will be billions of galaxies.

   There may be a multiverse of other Big Bang bubbles with their own universes.

============================

  I asked a question - You mentioned that the European Extremely Large Telescope [(real name :-) ] with a 30 metre mirror will be able to see planets in nearby star systems, if only as dots. This is about the maximum that can work on Earth because of the atmosphere and more importantly because of the gravity field. Like you I believe humanity will have a spacegoing civilisation, though it may well be Chinese. Are there any limits to the possible size of telescopes we will be able to make when we have such a civilisation.

   "The E-ELT uses magnetism to hold the mirror stable. Gravity much more than the atmosphere is the limiting factor. I think we will build such telescopes in orbit rather than on the Moon and I know of no limits to their potential size."

    I said I looked forward to seeing the day when we would have telescopes a kilometre across and could see extrasolar planets in detail and he said we would need longevity for that. I hope he is wrong on the last, but that entirely depends on the politicians allowing us to start doing what is technologically possible. But he seemed unfazed - this guy thinks in billions of years.

 

  This, from Next Big Future, scares me:

At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points.

In the 90s, China started to do widespread prenatal testing for birth defects with ultrasound, and more recently, they've spent a lot of money researching human genetics to figure out which genes make people smarter.


When does Geoffrey think the embryo analysis might be implemented on a large scale?

Actual use of the technology to do embryo screening might take five to ten years, but it could be just a few years. It depends on how motivated they are.

   This letter about the George Square rip off (though the project has been essentially cancelled the £15 million budget is still going into some friends of Glasgow Labour's pockets) was in the Scotsman, our Edinburgh based "quality" paper, indeed it was literally highlighted.They even included mention of my UKIP membership.

  On Thursday, councillors are going to “consider” the new two-stage plan for George Square in Glasgow.

The first stage is to spend £500,000 replacing the ­tarmac with a less hideous colour.

The second stage, of which we know nothing, will be to spend the rest of the £14.5 million allocated to the original project.

If they are “considering” what the second stage of the plan is, they know what it is.

Personally, I think they could have repainted the tarmac for a few thousand, but what do I know about spending other people’s money?

Neil Craig
(Secretary Ukip Glasgow branch)
Glasgow

   It went out across the Scottish media. Of note is the fact that the  ever diminishing Herald, Glasgow's "quality" paper, decided £15 million wasted by the council in the centre of the city, wasn't worth publishing a letter about.

   Far less important to Glasgow citizens than an ecofascist whine about a group of beekeepers refusing to support their call for banning a pesticide.

   The Herald have previously decided to censor letters from me on this subject, just as they censor any reply to the numerous letters from governmenmt funded PR people attacking UKIP, and as they have even censored online comments on both.

   This is the same Herald which made a grovelling apology for having reported that the Labour council leader here had become ill with euphemistic "liver disease". Others said it was cocaine and alcohol addiction and he certainly went into a detox centre, but "liver disease was not quite far enough from the truth to satisfy.  The Herald could certainly have defended their report but told the PCC they were apologising to maintain good relations.

    Of course a large proportion of newspaper advertising comes from state organisations, including councils and the thin pagecount of the herald is not so likely to attract readers and thus commercial advertisers.

   No doubt Lord Leveson would entirely approve of the Herald as the sort of "responsible" journalists, willing to apologise, that he wants the entire press to be.

   Still I don't see that it is possible for this new censorship to take the press even halfway to being a state propaganda poodle since it is clearly more than halfway there already.

UPDATE Last night I found that this same letter had been published, in box, by the Metro, slightly shortened. I'm sure the metro has a far higher circulation than the Scotsman, which in turn must be significantly more than the Scotsman.  This double publication is very pleasing.

   I also sent the above article to the Herald to ask if they thought any part of what I said was off the mark but clearly they didn't.

   John Redwood's latest discusses the effect of increased government spending during the Labour years, in particular (ie Labour) constituenceies and contains a remark I have put into inverted commas and given my answer to.

“Why didn’t the large expenditure of money in the poorer areas lead them to catch up with the richer areas? Why did inequalities expand rather than contract? Why did London continue to outperform the areas attracting the most public spending?”



A very good question. If government spending produces real net growth, not just more real growth than would be achieved by cutting taxes commensurately BUT ANY REAL GROWTH AT ALL there should be measurable convergence between areas getting increased government spending and those not getting it. In fact there seems to be a slight divergence, suggesting excess government spending may even have a net negative effect on growth.

  This does appear to me to be serious evidence that all the "stimulus" spending is not likely to have any positive effect on growth.

    This does not mean that a stimulus of reducing taxes would not work. I think that to some extent it would but whether the gain would be worth the long term extra debt repayment is open to question.

    Nor does it mean that all government spending - eg X-Prizes - could not produce growth, only that the sort of spending government currently chooses to do wouldn't.

   Nor, on the other hand, does it alter the undisputed evidence that money spent on regulation not only doesn't help the economy but costs the economy 20 times more than it costs the government to do. This means that the net effect of government on the economy is negative, currently reducing the economy by a minimum of 50%, probably 75% of what it could be.

   Nor, on the 3rd hand, does it mean society should never spend money on welfare. The argument for welfare is that we really ought to help those who cannot help themselves. It merely means that one cannot honestly support the welfare spending argumenmt with any claim that it will help the economy. In itself is likely to have no effect and by diverting these resources from the real economy is virtually certain to have a net negative effect.

   On Monday I wrote of my new ThinkScotland article which explains how 7/8ths of the budget of Scottish government projects goes "missing". I said that one obvious explanation is corruption - either straight theft, "preferred bidder status being bought by backhanders, deliberate "hiring" of friends of those in charge to do no productive work etc. etc.

   I also said that if there was any other explanation our Holyrood politicians would be able, and would clearly want, to provide it. The same applies also to our newspapers and broadcasters.

   I have to say, having contacted both, that not one single MSP nor one single Scots journalist has felt there is any other explanation any of them feel able to make of how all these billions of pounds can be disappearing other than their fraud and theft. The MSPs and Executive are legally and morally responsible.

  By comparison with Russia I previously said how the Telegraph reported that the fact that roadbuilding in Russia cost 2.5 times more there than in the EU (£7 mill against £2.9 mill per mile) was due to both theft and bureaucratic parasitism in Russia. Suggesting fraud cost £4.2 mill per mile. The Aberdeen bypass was £23.3 million per mile, suggesting fraud in Scotland takes £20.4 million, meaning corruption is 5 times more serious a problem here than there.

   The Scottish budget is £30 billion. I still believe it is likely that significant parts of it are not subject to being 87% theft.

  How much does government spend on propagandising the case for more and bigger government. Omitting the BBC budget.

   Not the sort of information made widely available so this will only be an estimate but this from  the Sock Puppet Report gives a pointer:

Between 1997 and 2005, the combined income of Britain’s charities nearly doubled, from £19.8


billion to £37.9 billion, with the biggest growth coming in grants and contracts from government

departments (Smith and Whittington, 2006, p. 1). According to the Centre for Policy Studies, state

funding rose by 38 per cent in the first years of the twenty-first century while private donations rose

by just seven per cent (ibid.).   1997 Charitable giving + Sock puppetry = £19.8bn 2005 Charitable x 1.07 + Sock puppetry x 1.38 = 37.9bn   Taking off the initial genuine charitable giving from both equations means that 30% of state donations would be £17 billion and total state donations as of 2005 £77 bn, which is clearly mathematically impossible.   So I am just going to assume all the giving in 1997 was genuine and that it rose 7% as declared to £21.2 bn by 2005. Which means the rest - government sock puppetry - came to £16.7 billion.   If the state were already financing any "charities" in 1997, such as the Terrance Higgins AIDS Trust which it was, the real figure would be higher. Lets assume 20%.   If we include the 70% of all "environmental charities" except Greenpeace paid out of the 20% of the EU budget devoted to promoting "environmental" scares it would be bigger than that. Say 20% of the UK government spend.    If there has been an increase, proportionate to inflation, over the last 9 years that would be 20% higher.   Then government departments and quangos spend a lot of money themselves, indeed they are more profligate than charities in doing so. My guess is that they spend in house at least the same as what they hand over to others to spend.   Which comes to £58 billion. That seems extraordinarily high but I have minimised each of the escalators.   £58 Billion As A credible Minimum Of What The Government Spends Persuading Us We Need more Government   End all that and the government's deficit is halved - to a sustainable level of about £60 million where the national debt climbs in line with normal national growth + inflation.   All we need is to make it a firing offence for any official or minister to authorise giving any money to a charity, quango, local authjority or their own press officer or themselves who spend any money on advertising or propagandising, including donaating money to outside parties to do so.    The NHS was not set up to be a self advertising organisation.   This appears to be a signpost of Pournelle's Law that any bureaucracy comes to be controlled by those intent on enhancing the size and power of the organisation, rather than doing what the organisation was nominally set up to do.   (I would also make knowing of making payment for a gagging clause in anybody's golden parachute, as the current NHS boss did to hide the 1.200+ Somerset Hospital deaths)   Or lets go a little further. If UKIP get a share of power make it a requirement that that 0.5% annually of the money spent over the previous 5 years on advertising for big government and Luddism, be required to be donated to charities whose purpose is to propagandise for small government and human progress and against nannystatist totalitarianism. £2.5 billion a year.   I think that would do a lot of good. It would also provide an incentive for the bureaucrats to stop pushing and after 10 years there would be no money being spent on either side. Hopefully.

  Some time ago I wrote of how I had come up with a theory that King Arthur was probably not merely a Roman officer called Artorius but that he could be identified as coming from the area then and previously known as Etrusca centring on the current city of Modena, where the first known visual representation of King Arthur exists above the doors of the city cathedral.

    Here is what I think is another piece of the Arthur story and how it delineates British culture on a deeper level than previously understood.

   Last Sunday Channel 4 did a programme on new archaeological discoveries at Stonehenge.

   It centred on the post holes that make up an outer circle around the famous stone circle and predates it

The results of his latest investigation:


reveal that the first stones at Stonehenge were put up 500 years earlier than previously thought at around 3000 BC. The monument we see today was not the original Stonehenge;

prove that Stonehenge as it looks today was built 200 years earlier than previously thought, around 2500 BC;

explain the choice of the site on Salisbury Plain;

prove that Stonehenge was once the site of vast communal feasts attended by some 4000 people, a substantial proportion of the British population (then estimated at only tens of thousands), with people coming from as far afield as highland Scotland to celebrate the solstice.

Professor Parker Pearson believes his findings provide compelling evidence that Stonehenge once united the people of Britain. And his analysis of the bodies and grave goods found on and around the site and around it also offers an answer to the mystery of Stonehenge’s decline.

  The 3,000 BC Stonehenge was the outer circle with 53 "bluestones" marking the graves of high status people from all over Britain. Ignore all the modern stuff in the middle - it wasn't there when the place really was an annual winter (Yuletide) celebration site for a large proportion of the entirety of Britain. The bones of animals eaten in the feasting came fom across the British Isles, as far away as Orkney, but not from across the Channel, proving a political or at least cultural unity even 5,000 years ago.

   What the central stones, added 500 years later show is that this site was remembered as being important long after, after the intervening  arrival of the Beaker People in Britain. In many ways very like the way the written record of Arthur in the 12thC is far greater than that of the 5thC but the reality happened in the 5thC.

   When I saw the layout of 53 separate graves round what is now the outer edge of Stonehenge I immediately said "Round Table".and subsequent thought fits with the idea.

   The point about the round table was that it has no head and thus nobody there has the formal leadership role.

   The concept of rulership by a group of people seated in such a way that they are all of equal rights fits this old Stonehenge. In fact it fits it better than in the Arthurian legend because Arthur was the leader (though he was the war leader not a king and certainly not the sort of Feudal king that existed at the time the legend was written down). Round Table as symbol of governance is indeed the complete antithesis of the sort of Feudal monarch Arthur was eventually writtin into being.

   Was there a real round table in the centre of the open space that was/is Stonehenge or was it a metaphorical device? We cannot know because it is long gone but I suspect it is no metaphor and there actually was. Historians have a long record of assuming something was a metaphor when it wasn't - Atlantis, Agamemnon's crown and Troy. The remains of ones ancestors are of great importance in many cultures and common evidence of rights. If there was a central table each of these descendants of the original grave occupiers would be able to sit in front of their own ancestor asserting their hereditary right to be there and acknowledging that of all the others. That is as good a way of maintaining order as I can imagine for any political confederation of that level of technology.

   The Round Table is not mentioned in Geoffrey of Monmouth's original book about Arthur of about 1236. It appears in Wace's Norman-French version of 1155 and is expanded by Laymon.

    Wace says Arthur created the Round Table to prevent quarrels among his barons, none of whom would accept a lower place than the others.^[1] Layamon added to the story when he adapted Wace's work into the Middle English Brut in the early 13th century, saying that the quarrel between Arthur's vassals led to violence at a Yuletide feast. In response a Cornish carpenter built an enormous but easily transportable Round Table to prevent further dispute.^[1] Wace claims he was not the source of the Round Table; both he and Layamon credit it instead to the Bretons....

There is some similarity between the chroniclers' description of the Round Table and a custom recorded in Celtic stories, in which warriors sit in a circle around the king or lead warrior, in some cases feuding over the order of precedence as in Layamon.^[1]

   The Bretons who settled Brittany had come from Britain when the Saxons were overrunning the country. It is thus in no way surprising that they would know ancient British lore as well as, or perhaps better than the inhabitants of England, who were as Saxon as they were ancient British. Geoffrey might not have heard of it but if Wace was in the process of transforming the Arthur legend from a mythic version of a historic person to an origin myth of the British people that is exactly when we might expect the addition of a Round Table myth (mythic only in the way that Troy used to be mythic) which was and had been for 4,000 years, central to the origin of the British people.

     Many modern people may find it impropable that, without books, a historic story could be preserved for that many generations of bardic retelling. The Iliad was probably written within 1,000 tears of the events described but that is a much shorter time. The Epic of Gilgamesh survives but because it was written. Older stories, such as the Garden of Eden referring to either the Climate Optimum of about 5,000 BC or the flooding of the Black Sea are uncertain.

   But there is something almost that old. The earliest written record of Merlin, written about the time of the historic Arthur, refers to him as having flown the Stones that make up the "modern" Stonehenge from Ireland. Obviously they weren't flown, but floated, and they came from Wales not Ireland, which in both cases can mean - from a little known land far away to the west.  But the fact that they had been brought from such a distance, even by non-magical means, is not a random assumption. Clearly some memory of Stonehenge had been repeated down the millennia.

   In which case a non-magical Round Table is no more difficult to remember.

   With Arthur, finding that his name originated near Modena, where his first visualisation was, gave corroboration.

   In the same way finding Laymon's unanticipated assertion that the Round Table was built to preserve peace at a mid-winter feast, when we know the main use of the early Stonehenge was around a mid-winter feast, seems to me to provide as much corroboration as we can currently expect.

     If culture is important to social stability and progress and there is strong evidence that it is, finding part of a common egalitarian British political culture that has lasted 5,000 years is no small matter.

   Latest ThinkScotland article up. I don't actually use the word "fraud" to describe how Holyrood, almost unanimously, chose to take £460 from every voter for what they knew to be a useless white elephant and ensured that £402 of that ended up in the hands of friends who had not earned it.

   As an openly scandalous misuse of our money this £2,300 useless project goes way beyond the Scottish Parliament building (£430 million) or the tram project (probably £1,000 before it is over) in both cost and uselessness of the original project.

 

I was impressed by this summation from Newt Gingrich

during the past few years the American people have:
Developed desktop 3D-printers which can manufacture almost any object you can imagine within a few minutes. You can buy these devices for roughly the cost of a laptop and print out, in plastic, anything you can design on your computer, or any 3D models from an online library. You can then send away to a website like Shapeways to have the design printed in stainless steel, silver, or ceramic. People are only beginning to understand the enormous possibilities for industry, logistics, education, science and medicine. This video provides is a great short explanation.

Carried regenerative medicine to the point of growing people new organs using their own cells. In fact, we will be able to 3D-print new organs using live cells within the foreseeable future. In this video Dr. Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine explains how they are growing replacement bladders in incubators using patients’ own cells.
Created intelligent, autonomous drones for civilian use. You might have heard of drone military aircraft (especially after Senator Rand Paul’s impressive filibuster this week) but soon civilians will have access to drones of all sizes as well. The potential for cargo shipping, transportation, public safety and more is extraordinary. This video of a University of Pennsylvania lab shows a whole swarm of personal drones.
Pioneered the development of a driverless car. In addition to autonomous aircraft, Americans might soon travel in cars controlled completely by artificial intelligence. Sebastian Thrun at Google leads a team that created a car which has driven hundreds of thousands of miles autonomously on California roads. The implications for safety and quality of life are incalculable. He explains the project in this video. This Audi already parks itself automatically.
Launched private spacecraft, without NASA. Sir Richard Branson and others have independently developed private spacecraft which are prepared to carry paying customers on suborbital flights and beyond. Last week, SpaceX became the first private company to resupply the International Space Station. Branson discusses Virgin Galactic in this video.
Made a high quality education available to everyone online, for free. Salman Khan, a former hedge fund analyst, has recorded thousands of hours of free lessons on everything from basic biology to calculus, in a project that started as a way to help his younger cousins catch up in school. Today, his ever-expanding collection of lessons is known as Khan Academy. They have been viewed more than 244 million times. In some schools, teachers now assign students to take the lessons at home and to do their homework in class — where the teacher can help kids if they get stumped. Salman Khan talks about project in this video.

Several of these developments may be at least as important as the computer revolution of the past two decades.

  I would also add shale gas fraccing and the development of algae able to grow oil.

It coalesces well with my feeling that technology, being the foundation of progress, expanding faster than at any time in human history, means that we could achieve economic progress also faster than at any time in human history, if allowed. Particularly because the UK is surpassed in scientific citations per capita only by Switzerland (& Scotland surpasses the UK average).

    Also worth pointing out that 2 of the 5, driverless cars and commercial space development, owe a lot to X-Prizes.

    "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things"
The corollary being that a wealthy state can be reduced to poverty, or in the current state of 5% world growth, can be kept in minor recession until the lowest and most barbaric catch up, by politicians actively trying to do so - as present circumstances prove.


Alex Salmond knows that:

"“The skills, ingenuity, training and expertise of the human capital that you develop will determine the long-term prosperity of the economy, and indeed will determine the long-term prosperity of the world,”

Which means that his deliberate stifling of energy technology in Scotland is not the action of an ignorant fool but of somebody deliberately and treasonously trying to keep us in recession.

    The same applies to David Cameron who has also unquestionably lied that he want's growth while absolutely refusing to do what he knows would achieve it.

   Back in my 9% Growth Party days I opted for (you guessed it) around 9% growth. It could certainly have been achieved. I have shown how, in theory and with some luck, if each point on the programme could add 1% to growth (in some cases that is by far an underestimate) growth would be 24% a year. and it isn't even disputed by any of these parasites that according to all the science of economics, this is the case.

    No wonder UKIP, despite still being censored by the state broadcaster, is now on 17% (63% of the Tory polling) even according to the Observer, and still rising and perhaps even more importantly 56% believe governemnt policies (almost indistinguishable from Labour ones) are harming the economy. The people have rimbeled the thieves and parasites and it is only reqyured for UKIP to close the deal and convince we not only coull (they all could) but would get the economy into world class growth.

Sent to the Scottish press & broadcasters.
Sir,


UKIP Glasgow would like to thank the Glasgow Feminist Collective for their street theatre demonstration of the threat free speech is under.
On Saturday we had a stall, one of several in Buchanan Street on different issues. Early in the day we were approached by a young Unite member who remonstrated with us, on no particular policy issues.
Then in the afternoon a roving demo of the Glasgow Feminist Collective marched up to us en masse and started shouting at us and passers-by about the vital feminist issue of promoting unlimited immigration. The young Uniter was well to the rear pulling strings.
Since the issue we were campaigning on, on that bitterly cold day, was that, in the name of fighting catastrophic global warming, the LabNatConDemGreen cartel have quite deliberately and unnecessarily pushed up our electricity prices to be among the world's highest, putting 900,000 Scots households into fuel poverty, killed 25,000 pensioners annually (& aiming for more), are xclosing down 10% of electricity generating capacity bt April and, by making our industry uncompetitive, produced the recession, their response seemed inappropriate and making blackouts highly probable.

I have no antagonism to the excitable young lady who attacked me grabbing my leaflets on the subject. Hopefully, with time for a change of mood, she will recognise that she was being used.
Nonetheless the general impression given was that this group is, in the manner of historic fascists, opposed to peaceful free speech.
In the interests of better relations we offer to engage in a public debate on either why they believe promoting massive subsidy of windmills and the consequences or the promotion of unlimited immigration, are massive feminist issues on which they are right and we wrong.
Since the entire LabNatConDemGreen cartel, including every single MSP, have previously refused to peacefully and publicly debate the Catastrophic Warming story they could thereby prove themselves more reasonable and temperate than the professionals.

-------------------------
PS Looking at their Facebook page it seems the Glasgow Feminists have just split with the Socialist Worlers Party. Splitters.

Lord Lawson sent this to Sir Paul Nurse, head of the Royal Society

Sir Paul Nurse


President

The Royal Society
Dear Sir Paul,
My attention has been drawn to a speech you gave last month at Melbourne University, in which you chose to criticise me by name in terms which bear no relation to the truth. In the interests of accuracy, I have obtained a full transcript. I recognise that, as a distinguished geneticist, you are not a climate scientist, and may therefore feel ill at ease discussing the complex issue of climate policy. But that is no excuse for wanton misrepresentation both of the issues involved and of my own position.
So far as the latter is concerned, you claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie. I have always made clear that there was a modest degree of recorded global warming during the 20th century (see, for example, my book An Appeal to Reason, which you have clearly not taken the trouble to read). However, so far from choosing any arbitrary ‘two points’, I was drawing attention to the fact that this warming trend appears to have ceased, since – contrary to the predictions of what you describe as “consensus scientific opinion” – there has been no further recorded global warming at all for at least the past 15 years, as even the IPCC Chairman, Dr Pachauri, has now conceded. Whatever the precise reason for this, it cannot simply be dismissed or denied.

and so on. He wrote this several weeks ago. Clearly a former Chancellor and member of the House of Lords does not lightly call anybody a liar, at the very least circuimlocutions would be normal.

  I past days this is the sort of thing that would have had people challenging duels. I am certain that Lord Lawson will have at least run this past his solicitor.

  Nor is this calling any ordinary mortal a liar. Science as a profession cannot exist without the "scientist" being above reproach as to their honesty, at least when discussing scientific matters. To call a scientist a liar is like saying a hudge auctions off verdicts or a footballer has no legs. If true they simply cannot carry out their professional duties.

  Nor is Sir Paul an ordinary scientist - he is the head of what was once the most respected scientific instition in the world & a Nobel winner..

   Which is why Sir Paul, for the sake of his reputation and any lingering self respect was forced to sue Lord Lawson.

   Er no

    Which is why the Royal Society, to avoid being seen as a corrupt lying propaganda organisation with its collective tongue wedged up the government's arse, was forced to ask the undisputed liar to step down from any position in the RS.

  Er no.

    Which is why the Royal Society are no longer, in any way, even one of the world's least reputable scientific organisations but simply a corrupt, lying, propaganda arm of the government, and its members simply whores. Not whores like the ladies of the night or rent-boys who honestly hire themselves out for pleasure - they are professionals behaving honestly. The members of the Royal Society and every other "scientist" who lies in the same way are in no way scientists, they are simply a much lower sort of whore.

   On the other hand, since the RS gets £50 million a year to  lie for the state, it is also more lucrative than being being a rent boy.

Dear Hillhead Police,
                                I was recently cautioned on an allegation that I had put up posters claiming that the BBC and staff members thereof were corrupt, liars, thieves, child rapists, fascist propagandists etc. No suggestion was made that this was anything less than factual. The BBC's objection was, I was told, because the lampposts in question were BBC property.

   It is clear from this FoI (their ref RF120130191) that this claim by the BBC was wholly and completely dishonest.

"No street lamps or lighting fixtures in the areas adjacent to the BBC Pacific Quay building are the property of the BBC. I take your reference to ‘street furniture’ to mean benches and the like. No such furniture in the area adjacent to the Pacific Quay building is the property of the BBC.

I hope this response answers your questions....

Ian Small"

    While some people may find it surprising that the BBC as an organisation and all those involved in making the complaint have proven to be completely corrupt I would remind you that making false statements to induce the police to caution or charge people is, at best, the criminal offence of wasting police time and at worst an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

     Please let me know when these corrupt frauds have been charged.

   I also confirm not yet having heard about what must be the imminent arrest of the BBC's Head of Radio, Helen Boaden and others for perjury (and in theory all those superior for her for conspiracy to get her to commit perjury) in relation to her lies to the court over the 28 gate fraud (namely that she claimed the 28 who supported the BBC in slanting, lying and censoring dissent in breach of their charter were 28 of the world's leading scientists holding a diversity of views when in fact they were all paid global warming or other activists, 93% non-scientists). Please let me know how this criminal investigation is going.

----------------------------

   In the same line I was at the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow lecture by BBC boss Lord Patten (along with 2 BBC minders) chairman of the BBC, former EU Commissioner and serial collector of all the quangos and gongs the establishment has to offer. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to ask a question.

    His lecture was not about the BBC, indeed we were asked not to ask anything about Savile "because it is sub judice" (I had intended to ask about 28 gate). Instead it was about the state of the world, particularly the rise of China and India, about which he has a large stock of anecdotes and a great degree of ignorance.

  Among his pearls were

-  that we have seen "brilliant reporting the BBC has been doing in Syria" (in promoting our al Quaeda allies in their massacring).

- that world "GDP grew between 2000-2007 more than at any time for 40 years" (it actually grew more than it ever has and is still growing fast, the "world recession" the BBC so often blame our troubles on being a lie)   - of the EU that "I'm not allowed to speak on Europe" clearly meaning that a condition of his pension and all other EU pensioners is that they not speak negatively about the EU because he was able to speak positively about their attempts at ever closer union saying "its very difficult to persuade people to give up their nationality".  

    Anybody who sees the inherent corruption in having the boss of the state broadcaster paid by a foreign organisation specifically on condition that they only propagandise in the organisation's favour is not alone. Indeed the appointment of somebody so paid is clearly a breach of the BBC's Charter duty of balance.      

 And that China's rise is bound to end for 4 reasons:  

1; because of corruption. In fact comparing public projects here and in China - they build roads at 4% of what we do (Russia is 28%) means either that corruption is not a serious problem there or that we have 25/3.5 times more here than in either China or Russia, or a combination thereof  

2; The high level of investment in China which is "unsustainable" because it impoverishes to people. The truth is that though investment spending has risen so has GDP and the Chinese are much better off than they used to be, unlike Britain.  

3; Environmental reasons. This parasite was also once the environment minister. An asserting without supporting evidence as is common with ecofascists.  

4; In the long term if the party encourages free enterprise it undermines its own dictatorial authority so at some stage it will stop. In fact the Chinese government have already given up communism and as the Singapore experience shows a government can remain popular for generations if it is clearly committed to the nation's good. 

 His words actually say much more about the British scene, where all the BBC approved parties have clearly given up support for free enterprise, despite knowing it produces wealth, because they want to enhance their own dictatorial authority. And who is better placed in the British establishment to understand the attraction of this policy than Patten?

U.K. stores of natural gas, pushed to record lows by a dearth of tanker imports, will be exhausted in about two weeks unless temperatures rise, reducing demand for the heating fuel.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows inventories at Rough, the U.K.’s largest gas-storage facility, are at the lowest level on record for the time of year. There were 6,490 gigawatt-hours of gas in storage yesterday, which will be depleted in 15 days if the average rate of withdrawal over the past two weeks continues, according to National Grid Plc (NG/) data.

U.K. gas prices, a benchmark for Europe’s 800 billion-euro ($1 trillion) market, are susceptible to sudden moves after imports of liquefied natural gas slumped by 53 percent in the five months through February from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gas for same-day delivery jumped 64 percent to a seven-year high of 115 pence a therm yesterday as unplanned maintenance cut supplies from Norway.

“We’ll probably run out of storage in just over two weeks if stocks continue to be drawn down at this rate,” Craig Lowrey, a consultant at The Utilities Exchange Ltd., said yesterday by telephone from Ipswich, England. “With very little LNG coming to the U.K. there are fewer alternative sources of gas and that increases the risks if we do get to that point.”

   They are probably slightly overstating since the low point in gas reserves is always about early March so we should get past this dip and into summer unles the weather is particularly bad. On the other hand we have had a year by year decline in reserves so even if we get through the next few weeks running out several weeks earlier (ie last week) next winter becomes a probability.

   This does not appear to be "newsworthy" according to our state controlled media. Though the BBC is busy supportively reporting that Parliament is discussing increasing bills by upping the bio-fuels subsidy.

   Britain has better shale gas resources per square mile than anywhere else in the world The only thing stopping us having had use of it for several years is doing so being banned by our political class.

    Meanwhile windmills are providing only 0.1% of our power this week, gas powered "back-up" generators keeping the lights on.

   People are dying from the cold. Far more will if/when the lights go out.Say what you will about Pol Pot, but say it about Cameron, Miliband and Clegg too. 

  C4 have a "factcheck" section - in this instance they "factchecked" UKIP's manifesto and claimed to find it was full of lies. I posted this with the expectation that it would be simply censored, as the BBC do, so was somewhat suprised that it appeared:

To take one example C4 “factcheck” bases their claims on the alleged “fact” that “it would also be naive to think that there would be no economic cost” of quotting the EU.
That is not a statement that any remptely honest organisation could claim as an unambiguous “fact”.

The evidence is that, excluding the money we hand over, membership of the EU’s regulatory system destrpys 5.5% of GDP ((£90 bn). This has even been publicly acjnowledged by the EU’s “rnterprise” commissioner so C4 cannot honestly say that the net effect of membership is economically the opposite.

Clerarly were C4 in any slightest way honest, or anything other than a fascist propaganda organisation they will have published similarly slanted libels against the officially approved parties. Loohing at, for example, the LibDems they didn’t do a prior “factcheck” but did do this http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/have-the-lib-dems-kept-their-promises/5980 post event leaning over backwards to pretend the LDs had only minimally broken their promises and laud whay they had allegedly 2achieved in government”..
Factchecking C4 it is proven that they are corrupt, lying parasitic propagandists in…

and drew a reply

Martin
“The evidence is that, excluding the money we hand over, membership of the EU’s regulatory system destrpys 5.5% of GDP ((£90 bn)”
What evidence is that, then? You haven’t provided any.

By the way, love how you call C4 News a “fascist organisation” just because they have an opposing viewpoint to yours which they can support with pesky facts.

Still, UKIP would know all about fascists, given that their MEPs sit with them in the EU Parliament ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8550698.stm ) and they expel their own members for having differing viewpoints to their Leader ( http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/exclusive-so-much-for-the-libertarians-how-ukip-sacked-me-after-i-said-i-support-equal-marriage-8444121.html )

to which I replied
 Neil Craig

Martin
“Günter Verheugen, EU Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, announced in 2006 that EU regulations were costing the European economy some €600bn a year (this was almost twice as high as previous estimates). €600bn is about 5.5% of total EU GDP”
http://www.global-vision.net/facts/fact7_1.asp
This information, without which it is impossible for the public to make an informed estimate of the value or otherwise of membership, and which is in direct contradicition to C4′s “factchecked” claims, has obviously been censored for over 6 years by our media or you would not be ignorant of it.
And if that is not proof that C4, the BBC & most papers are corrupt lying fascist propagandist parasites I would be interested to know what you would need?

pworrall (C4's watchman)

Neil:
The claim about Mr Verheugen was made in this Financial Times article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/101cf670-57fb-11db-be9f-0000779e2340.html#axzz2MZocSymS).
You’re right to say that it wasn’t picked up by Channel 4, the BBC or most newspapers. There may be a good reason for this. See this report by Open Europe: (http://www.openeurope.org.uk/Content/documents/Pdfs/stilloutofcontrol.pdf)

Quote: “This figure has been widely misunderstood, for three reasons: a) the estimate captures the administrative burden only (i.e. not policy costs or knock-on effects b) it describes the cost of EU regulations and domestic regulations combined (so not only EU regulation) and c)crucially, Verheugen probably never mentioned the figure in the first place. What Verheugen actually said in the interview about reducing regulation, was that “I’ve said that in my view it must be possible to get a 25 percent reduction, and that means a productivity gain of €150bn.” The Financial Times’ journalist appears to have taken this to mean that

€150bn represented 25 percent of the total cost of regulation. However, Verheugen’s office has subsequently confirmed that the €150 billion figure referred to the extra benefits that would be generated (as opposed to saved) through various dynamic effects by a 25 percent cut in the administrative burden of EU and domestic regulations combined.”
Since you have ignored my request not to post insulting, rather than critical, comments (“corrupt, lying fascist propagandist parasites”), I am no longer accepting comments from you and have blocked you.

This reply censored

pworrall had C4, the BBC & co actually reported the case, even if giving significant space to the OpenEurope rebuttal and counter rebuttals on all sides, my assessment would have been clearly falsified.
By censoring me you merely verify it.   And this to a further attack on me after I had been barred   don't need those sort of "favours".
Note that though I am censored for saying C4 are -------, despite being able to say, from the historic definition of ------- why it is true, there is no objection to Martin coming on here and accusing supporters of UKIP of being both idiots and liars, without even attempting to support such insults with facts.

Which says as much as necessary about whether C4's censorship is either ------- & aimed against a particular party, or "impartial, balanced & truthful" reportage as they and their government masters pretend to.    We also had this email exchange

Neil – I’m not censoring you because of your opinions. If you look at other comments across the blog, you’ll see that we always print comments no matter how violently people disagree with what we write. But I draw the line at personal abuse. You must be able to appreciate how unpleasant it is to be called a corrupt fascist parasite etc etc.
I’m not sure why pointing out that there has never been a definitive cost/benefit analysis of EU membership is an example of fascism, or what you mean by “corrupt”. Do you think the EU is sending me brown envelopes stuffed with euros to defend its existence?
This may be the internet, but you have to understand that words like this are not meaningless – they are insulting. And I am a real person, not a computer.
If you had stopped short of using language like that I would have been happy to let you continue posting.
Patrick (C4News FactCheck)

see. So “the facts” as you see them are the views of Tim Congdon, a UKIP leadership candidate, as opposed to non-party political sources I have quoted: NIESR, Professor Iain Begg, the Institute of Directors – and these are somehow “government approved” (Why so?)
You say: “The initial factcheck did not say that there was no proven cost benefit ratio, but the contrary, that there must be net costs of leaving.”
But what I wrote was: “There was no expert concensus as to a net gain or loss.”
The initial FactCheck, which I link back to from the piece on the Ukip manifesto, is here: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-what-happens-to-the-economy-if-we-pull-out-of-the-eu/8376
This is the verdict: “A cloud of uncertainty hangs over the whole question of whether Britain loses or gains economically by its continued membership of the EU. Some of the world’s top economists disagree about the numbers, and it’s impossible to say what the ultimate political costs of pulling out could be.”
And you think that personally calling me a fascist in a string of emails is the same as the party you support being insulted on television.
What all this has to do with climate change, I really can’t imagine, but if anyone has compared you to a child rapist for doubting climate change, I sympathise with you. Hyperbole like that is an unfortunate example of the childishness to which internet forum debate can sink.
It is entirely inappropriate to throw around insults like that, given the seriousness of child abuse, just as it is wrong to use very serious words like fascist against people who don’t agree with you.
Perhaps it’s best that we leave this conversation here, Neil. I don’t think I’m ever going to convince you that we’re not stooges of the government or whatever it is you imagine we are, although I would have thought that the existence of a million-odd FactChecks in which we criticise the government would suggest that this fails the common sense test.
Patrick
I'm not sure what you mean by "definitive". Tim Congdon's assessment, which you have "not censored but not reported" seems pretty definitve. Or do you mean "government approved" by "definitive which is rather my point. Moreover the initial "factcheck" did not say that there was no proven cost benefit ratio, but the contrary, that there must be net costs of leaving, which even you now seem to accept as untrue.
I do indeed appreciate that gratuitous rudeness is unpleasant. As a supporter of UKIP I have been described on national TV as a loony & closet racist and as somebody who doubts we are experiencing catastrophic global warming as being the moral equivalent of a child rapist. Without, of course, being given the opportunity to reply you have (or the opposrtunity to censor you uset). Do let me know when C$ is willing either to either censor either Cameron or those who gratuitously insult scientific sceptics as you insist those who criticse you should be. Even let me know when you are prepared to allow those insulted to rebut.
The difference is, of course, that when challenged I am able and willing to prove every word I say whereas the state broadcasting propagandists, being unable to do so, simply censor. If you knew the meaning of fascism you would not object to my saying that people who do that are fascists.
Or are there any circumstances whatsoever under which C4 would be willing to allow a free debate on any important subject? We both know that C4 have already made it clear the answer is no. Or are there any circumstances under which C4 "factchecking" would be done with reference to the facts rather than pushing the state propaganda line? Again this "factcheck" gives the answer.
If I am in any way whatsoever wrong C4 will be pleased to accept my challenge to broadcast a formal debate (with both sides equally represented, something I should not have to explain) on the cost/benefits of the EU or alleged CAGW.
No. Thought not. Case proven.

Neil Craig

"I sympathise with you. Hyperbole like that is an unfortunate example of the childishness to which internet forum debate can sink."


Not an internet forum - I have had worse than that from "Greens" on them. That was the BBC state broadcaster Thought for the Day.
Obviously were it true or even arguably true the BBC would have provided their evidence.

Obviously were it a lie and our state broadcasters in any slightest way honest, rather than wholly corrupt fascists they would have retracted it.

Obviously, the standard of state broadcasting being what it is, as you will have guessed, they did neither.
The initial factcheck did, as I said and you confirmed, start from the wholly false assertion that there would be net economic costs of leaving rather than a £150 bn benefit.
I have given you 2 bits of evidence, from violently separated sources, for the EU being massively expensive. Both news items you, as a state broadcaster, have decided to censor/not report for unexplained reasons. Tim Congdon is an economist of great repute. If supporting UKIP makes him unfit to comment on his own specialty then there must be, if you are being impartial, a large majority of the population not allowed to appear on C4 news. I have not noticed this.
I await your confirmation of any circumstances whatsoever under which C4 would be willing to demonstrate its alleged occasional non-Fascist leanings by ever allowing broadcast of the free debate I suggested on this or any similar important subject.
Neil Craig   I got this support, which surprisingly has not been deleted

Author: Alex Williams


Comment:

TBH, I reckon you couldn't fact check your way out of a paper bag. You've just blocked someone, for being insulting and offensive, because he included words in his post that you didn't like. He wasn't swearing, nor was he particularly being aggressive.
If you don't like people thinking your views may be of a certain political persuasion, perhaps you shouldn't be reporting on political things?   Author: pworrall
There's a simple policy, Alex: criticism and disagreement yes, insults no.

then

Martin
Clearly you have a problem, and that problem manifests itself as trying to shoot the messenger when he brings you bad news.
It's not C4 News' fault that one of UKIP's useful idiots presents 'facts' that are nothing of the sort, and is rude when airing his conspiracy theories and accusing ITN of being complicit.
Mr Worrall has done Neil Craig a favour, because Craig doesn't have to come back here and apologise for posting misinformation about the cost of EU regulation that even the eurosceptic Open Forum says is rubbish.

to which my reply as and remains censored

The point seems to be that my use of the word "fascist" is impermissable. But it is a perfectly proper description of a specific political ideal, which includes that thjose in power should control the media to promote approved views and denigrate minority ones. This was because the fascisti believed society was stronger with everybody held in line, hence the use of the fasces, a bundle of batons tied together, as their symbol.

This is precisely what C4's slanted and indeed false "factcheck" was doing.

When setting this up I also noted that Martin had been allowed to criticise UKIP for being associated with what he, in my opinion falsely, described as Fascists, without any threat that such a claim was impermissable. Nothing to do with factual accuracy or I wouldn't have been censored. Nothing to do with balance either or we would both have been.

I willingly admit that this is not the unrestrained unquestioning fascism of the BBC, who censor without any compunction, but a watered down version which shows some questioning of its role.

But nonetheless Channel 4 is displaying an ideaological commitment to both dishonest reporting and censorship in the state cause, which is, by definition, fascism.

If C4 can lie and then censor my disagreement then what other term is more factual? The other part of my title question was is it wiser to tone down one's dissent to permissable levels so that it may be permitted, even though it inherently puts you at a disadvantage, and to that I do not have a certain answer.

  Note, However, that Patrick doesn't even make an attempt to pretend that Channel 4 is ever going to allow real debate on anything, which again seems to prove my point.