Under Wessex Skies
According to reports in the media the founder of BLM in America Patrisse Cullors paid her baby's father $970,000 for 'creative services', her brother $840,000 for security, and a fellow director $2.1m.
Money well spent, I'm sure.
I tell you what though, race baiting is a lucrative money spinner.
What did you expect? The world's economy stopped for the best part of 2 years. Did you not think there would be consequences?
The UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021, otherwise known as COP26 runs until the 12th November. The stated aim of the conference is to
Secure global net zero and keep 1.5 degrees within reach.
The document COP26 Explained states that;
If we continue as we are, temperatures will carry on rising, bringing even more catastrophic flooding, bush fires, extreme weather and destruction of species
To help ameliorate the effects of global warning, the UK government has pledged we will as a nation be carbon neutral by 2050. The government has already closed down the coal fired power stations, replacing them with wind turbines and solar farms. Other measures include banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040, replacing domestic gas boilers with heat pumps, and compelling businesses to decarbonize.
The Office for BudgetResponsibility has calculated that in order to hit the net zero target it will cost the UK economy a staggering £1.4 trillion by 2050.
I'll repeat that. £1,400,000,000,000.
We are told that there is no choice, all scientists agree global warming is happening, that it is driven by human activity, and this is the price we will have to pay to achieve net zero.
However, consider this article produced by Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Ph.D. at the Center for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. He states that;
In the last 800,000 years there have been 8 ice ages, each lasting approximately 100,000 years, separated by interglacial periods of between 10,000 and 35,000 years.
Both hemispheres are affected by this ice age cycle. We can also see that the CO2 level varies with the ice ages: When it is cold there is less CO2 and when it is warmer the level is higher. We believe, that this CO2 feedback has significance as even small changes in solar radiation have had great effects. CO2 works as an intensifier.
Ice cores from both Antarctica and Greenland show that the last ice age started to become milder 19,000 years ago, completely in accordance with increased solar radiation from the earth’s favourable orientation in its orbit around the sun.
He goes on the discuss climate ripples and dramatic fluctuations in climate, and how they are caused by an interaction between the atmosphere and ocean currents.
As Dr Steffensen says, humanity had nothing to do with the end of the last Ice Age. The climate of the Earth has continued to change since that time, and will continue to do so forever more as a result of factors including solar energy, ocean currents and plate tectonics. I don't doubt that the climate is changing; the Earth is a living organism and it is only natural that it will. I also accept it is possible that human activity may have contributed to recent changes.
One person who takes this view is Dr Roy W Spencer Ph.D. He has been branded a climate denier, but if you read his articles, you will realise he is anything but. In his article, he explains that he believes the climate system has warmed and that CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning contributes to that warming. Where he disagrees with the alarmists however is their insistence that we are in the midst of a crisis. He does not accept that we should immediately embrace expensive and ineffective sources of alternative energy. He takes the view that;
It will be much worse for humanity if we abandon fossil fuels before alternative technologies are abundant, affordable, and practical. Human flourishing requires access to affordable energy, which is required for almost all human activities.
It is immoral to deny fossil-fuelled electricity to the world’s poor, and its replacement in even the richest countries still destroys prosperity, especially for the poor.
Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, recently wrote to one of his constituents to make the same point. In his letter he argues that attempting to achieve net zero would be
Utterly futile, virtue signalling, gesture politics which would also bankrupt the country along with many families. The estimated cost of getting from less than one per cent of global carbon emissions to net zero is estimated to be £1 trillion in the UK – that is money the country and many of my constituents can ill afford.
It would be much more sensible to spend money on adapting to changes in the climate rather than an unrealistic view that we are going to change the world's climate.
He's quite right. It would be immoral to push ahead with the net zero. policy when there is no cheap alternative to fossil fuels, and when the cost of pursuing such a policy would consign so many of us to economic and fuel poverty.
Boris Johnson may enjoy virtue signalling at COP26, but he should not forget the hard working, hard pressed people of this country. Come the next election if all he can offer is net zero and declining living standards he will soon see his 80 seat majority disappear.
Vladimir Putin told the Russian people today that he would protect them from Western cancel culture. As trolling goes his comment is up there with the best.
The Russians are the masters of cancel culture; they don't though waste their time with Twitter pile ons, they go straight in for the kill. Literally. It's not so very different from the days of the Soviet Union when dissidents were routinely assassinated or shipped to the Gulags, they and their work airbrushed from history.
So if you've been sitting there thinking maybe Putin has a point, just remember the lessons of history and be careful what you wish for.
23rd October 2021
Social media is akin to being one of a multitude in a cavern, all screaming, all demanding to be heard. No one voice can be discerned above the deafening cacophony. Wanting so desperately to be heard each voice gets louder and louder, but to no avail. Nothing is achieved, save to leave the participants angry, as they begin to realise the pointlessness of their efforts, as they begin to realise no one really cares what they have to say.
7th October 2021
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, or so goes the old adage. All the while your country's government is benign, I suppose that may be true, but when it adopts an altogether more authoritarian stripe, what then?
I ask having just read an article at BBC News reporting that Apple will be introducing technology allowing them to scan pictures being uploaded to iCloud. The technology is to be used with the very best of intentions, attempting as it does to prevent the circulation of illegal and sickening images.
The worry however is how such technology will be used in the future. If Apple's scanning system works there will be a good many governments who will insist the technology is made available to them, to allow them monitor their own populations. China is an obvious example of a country that would adopt such a system when it becomes available (assuming they're not already doing so), but one does not have to look too far to find other countries that would find this technology useful.
Take Scotland for example. In March 2021 the devolved government passed the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. The Bill creates a new crime of stirring up hatred against certain protected groups, which is defined as behaving in a threatening or abusive manner, or communicating threatening or abusive material to another person.
It has been argued that the definition of stirring up hatred is too vague and open to interpretation and will have a chilling effect on free speech.
Furthermore, offences can now be committed even in private, and there are many who believe this is an example of interference in private and family life. To quote from the BBC article,
Why should any government, they ask, decide what can and can't be said in the privacy of one's home?
Rather than having to rely on friends and family to dob in transgressors, how much easier would it be for the government to monitor your computers and mobiles, constantly scanning for hate crime.
In such circumstances, and fearing one could be accused of stirring up hate, no one would dare speak out against the prevailing left-wing orthodoxies. That really would be the end of critical thought and free speech.
19th August 2021
According to a report from the BBC the Education Select Committee have concluded that;
Poorer white children underachieve and have been “let down and neglected”.
The Committee's comments have been reported widely, but is this really news? This is after all, an issue that we have known about for years. As mentioned in my earlier post, Whose Lives Matter, as long ago as 2010 Nick Clegg, the then deputy Prime Minister, produced the report Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers: A Strategy for Social Mobility, where it was revealed that 20% of children received free school meals (FSM), and yet this group represented just 1% of Oxbridge students. This disparity affected children across all ethnic groups.
A further report completed for the Department of Education in 2015, Ethnicity, deprivation and educational achievement at age 16 in England, contains the following;
Among those entitled to free school meals (FSM) all ethnic minority groups achieve greater success than White British pupils. In 2013 relative to White British students the odds for Chinese pupils achieving 5 good GCSE's including maths and English (5EM) were 6.9 times greater, for Indian students 3.4 times greater, for Bangladeshi 3.0 times, for White other 1.6 times, for Black Caribbean 1.5 times and even for the lowest achieving minority group, Mixed White & Black Caribbean students, the odds of achieving 5EM were 1.26 times (26%) higher than for White British students.
The latest report from the Education Select Committee simply emphasises the point that children from deprived backgrounds continue to under achieve, that nothing has changed in the last decade. Furthermore, it is also quite apparent that white children from deprived areas are not privileged, anymore than the skin colour of a child from an ethnic background is akin to a disability. The arrant nonsense espoused by Critical Race Theory should immediately be banned from schools, and instead all children, regardless of their ethnic background, should be given the training and encouragement they need to make the very best of their lives.
22nd June 2021
The constant lecturing on race is becoming tiresome. The failure to even engage with the arguments raised by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities is dispiriting. Why can its critics not even countenance the possibility that racism is not the sole explanation for the different outcomes between those of differing ethnic groups?
For example, where coronavirus is concerned, the data indicates that black and Asian people are affected worse than white. Is this racism? Black people suffer with sickle cell disease in far higher numbers than do people of other races. Many people from the Indian sub-continent are lactose intolerant. Could ones reaction to coronavirus, and the differing outcomes, in fact arise from genetics or customs?
Black women are reported to suffer disproportionality high levels of complications during pregnancy compared with white women. When the NHS is staffed in disproportionality high numbers by doctors and nurses of back and Asian heritage can racism really be the only possible explanation for the differences?
As for the point raised by the report that some poor white children are in a worse position than their black neighbours, for some that is simply heresy. The critics find it so much easier to attack the authors of the report than to accept that the authors may have a point.
As I have said before, the race baiters are only interested in fanning the flames. They have no interest in trying to heal the divisions.
21st April 2021
Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.
No, not a recent headline, but a quote from the Bible, referring to God's infallibility. The same quote could however, be applied to a certain Royal couple, and their recent interview. There is something akin to religious fervour in the way their supporters accept as gospel every word they utter. Of course, once they invoked the magical words racism and mental health, who would dare question them?
Once those words were uttered all discussion on the matter was brought to an end. The words are the truth and one cannot dispute them. Her truth is the truth. Any attempt to question what has been uttered, and one is caste out into the wilderness, a pariah, a non-believer to be shunned.
The situation is utterly ridiculous. There are always (at least) two sides to any disagreement. If she had suffered racist abuse or mental health problems, then she has every right to seek help and assistance. However if in making those allegations she impugns the character of individuals and institutions, then one has every right to raise questions. Can you imagine a situation if the same standards were applied to Boris Johnson or Mike Hancock when questioned about their handling of the pandemic? Would we simply accept their word as truth?
11th March 2021
A busy time of late, which might explain why I have been so quiet. Just one thought for the moment, concerning the ongoing dispute between Sturgeon and Salmond in Scotland. A government which has been in power too long will, whatever their stripe, become bloated, self serving and corrupt. The SNP is no different, their primary concern being to hold onto power rather than working for the good of the people.
I know there isn't much in the way of opposition in Scottish politics. One could say Scotland is a one party state. The current farrago illustrates the fact that too much power is vested in the hands of the one party, which cannot be good for democracy. It is probably too much to hope that come the next election, Scottish voters will give the SNP a good kicking, and a reminder of where their duty lies.
28th February 2021