Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Inconvenient redundancies

Like many other self-perpetuating contrivances of those who have traded objectivity and common sense for a comfy job in the nanny state's many hysteria industries, environmentalists thrive on subjective scaremongering. There's been a very nice reward for those willing to go along with the absurdities of the PC persuasion, and don the peaked cap and uniform of our angst and surveillance society. So why would they declare their work done, and go and find a proper job?

An increasingly possible but inconvenient truth is that that climate change will be capped because we will have run out of oil to waste before the polar bears get their paws wet. It will be those much derided features of capitalism - markets and economics - that actually sort it out.

The speed at which energy saving devices like LED lighting is developing is impressive. Not only can we now get a replacement for a 50W GU10 halogen ceiling lamp that consumes around 3W for £5, it is supposed to last 30-50k hours - 15-30 times as long. And the prospect of viable processes for the liberation of hydrogen for fuel cells (or even combustion) from renewable resources, is not fanciful.

The most serious and potentially intractable issue we face is that of overpopulation: the population of a countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh has increased 6 fold in 60 years (from 30m to 180m). But nature also has a very brutal way of dealing with that problem as well, in extremis.

Speed cameras - a sad loss

The possible end of the speed camera industry is an interesting moment for our risk-obsessed society - yet curiously the biggest losers are likely to be those insurance companies that automatically stick £50-100 a year on the premiums of vicims (regardless of record ...grrr) for the life of the endorsement. 

Speed cameras were introduced by the Tories in 1992, and we'd guess that the amount of cash mugged off motorists by City insurers vastly exceeds the amount taken in fines. 

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

It's simpler than we thought

Lord Mandelson, aka The Pink Baron, has indeed revealed all about New Labour. The chief challenge appears to have been that they were/are all fundamentally not very clever. In detailing the inner dysfunction of the Blair/Brown years, Mandelson himself comes across as a considerable idiot. So how come it's taken 13 years to suss this out? The notion that Mandeslson was somehow a towering intellect has been blown wide own, and the proof that he is merely a scheming chancer in penned by his own oleaginous hand.

If you accept that Blair/Brown and the rest of the Labour politicians were/are actually big on animal cunning and scheming, but low on intellect and intelligence, just about everything can be explained. Cameron, thus far, has begun to remind us again what it is like to have a presentable, properly determined and ruthless leader in charge once again; and one who doesn't need to do it for the cash. It's been a while.

He's even manage to properly neuter the Libdems in the process, and force the Labour party to parade a collection of yet more embarrassing misfits as prospective leaders.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

The invasion of the mind snatchers

When ever TMP looks through any "social media" it is plain that the vast majority of those present enjoy a normal and healthy sense of perspective and humour. Spades are called spades, cynicism is rife and healthy, and the pompous are exposed without quarter.

So what on earth is it about the effect of the presence of "the meedja" when these normal people feel obliged to abandon their innate common sense, and adopt the received wisdom of the knitted-muesli bearded PC classes, and start talking in the strange dialogue of those (relatively few) social inadequates who have decided that nanny state knows best.

These hard core folks have got vast numbers of (otherwise?) normal folks to ride bikes wearing absurd confections that a party balloon bender might create; they have banned smoking yet bend over backwards to try and understand and accommodate addicts of the sort of drugs that are blamed for 50% of all theft crime. They want to bring back people carrying red flags to precede cars in urban streets.

When interviewed just now on "Look East" a fireman who has just extinguished a blaze in a junk yard wibbled on about "protecting the environment" from oil seepage, when the (in)correct/right response was "these pikey dickheads were dismantling cars with petrol in the tanks using acetylene cutters - what a bunch of compete twats..."

Is the industry that denies Darwin his just desserts still so far out of control that some normal people are starting to actually absorb and believe this claptrap..?

James Mays had it right. Never mind dreaming up thousands of wittering laws designed to create work for the nanny client state industry: just "don't be an arse".