Counting Cats in Zanzibar

Final post redux

May 17th, 2012

And a new beginning.

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things.

Well, I suspect I have spoken of shoes and ships, and cabbages and kings, but I am damned if I can think of any occasion when I discussed sealing wax. I mean, why would I?

Ok, like all evil colonialists over the centuries, I eventually pack up and leave this far flung corner of empire and return to Blighty. I suppose I could settle into the home counties and slowly transmogrify into the Blimpish figure of ‘Disgusted’ of Tunbridge Wells, boring my ever diminishing group of companions with stories of African adventures while gin ‘n tonicing myself into red nosed oblivion at the local Conservative club.

Is that me?

Well, yes, yes it is, but that to one side. After all, even after taking leave of the luscious forests and beautiful dusky maidens – even if no longer maidens after my acquaintance - of the Afric world for the pallid and and graceless charms of the modern day English, why should I abandon the work I love so well?

Therefore, I would like to announce I will be settling elsewhere, the home counties are not for me. I have accepted a position with the Zanzibar Gazette, and will henceforth be reporting on Counting Cats in Somerset, although this may be subject to change.

All my trademark convoluted sentences and five dollar words, used when the two bit variety would do very nicely thank you, will be there for your edification.

That Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, ~~Punxsutawney Phil~~, oops, Ian B, has indicated an interest in becoming a gentleman from the Gazette, although whether as a staffer or a roving correspondent is yet to be settled.

It is with these words, and some small regret, I am handing over to my friend, NickM, full control of our station in Zanzibar, but I wish him and other Zanzibaran Kitty Kounters all the best, both now and in the future.

Posted in: Cats himself.

Boris Broadcasting Company

May 15th, 2012

by Lynne.

11 comments

Boris Johnson - another politician that simply doesn’t “get it“.

So what do you think, eh?” I turned to the BBC’s art critic, the brilliant, bulging Professor Branestawm lookalike Will Gompertz. We were standing on the top of the ArcelorMittal Orbit in Stratford; London was spread beneath us like a land of dreams – was that France I could see in the distance? – and yet I was nervous.

London is a land of dreams but only in the la-la sense. Ground zero being centred on Westminster, of course.

This sculpture is a masterpiece, far better and more rewarding up close than it appears at a distance. The steel loops are an arterial red, writhing and shifting against each other beneath the blue sky. Anish Kapoor already has many fans, but he has excelled himself with this vast fallopian ampersand, this enigmatic hubble bubble, this proud vertical invitation to London 2012.

This blessed plot, this, earth, this realm, this England? Give me a break! That heap of junk would have the Bard himself frothing into his beard. Let’s hope that it gets nicked, weighed in and shipped off to China. It would be a mercy.

The Orbit is a decisive assertion of the city’s status as the world capital of culture and the arts. That’s my view, anyway, and I am sticking to it, though I am conscious that not everyone agrees.

First we get that ridiculous Olympic 2012 logo foisted upon the event and now this? Do you really want to associate London’s credibility status in the cultural arts on that tortured miscreation, Boris? The only way that “sculpture” could be worse is if Tracey Emin had been commissioned to tie used femidoms all over it.

There are plenty of people who absolutely hate the thing, just as most Parisians initially despised the Eiffel Tower (and didn’t Charles Dickens campaign against the building of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster?).

Boris, Boris, Boris. You can’t go around comparing architectural wonders with a high rise scrap yard. It just isn’t the done thing, old bean.

I have heard it compared to a catastrophic collision between two cranes, a mutant helter-skelter, a mangled trombone, and worse. So of course I waited with bated breath for the verdict of the BBC.

Why? Haven’t you got something better to do with your time? Like mayoral stuff or riding your bike or something?

Did Gompertz like it as much as I did?

Who gives a flying fig?

My friends, he did not.

Diddums!

Or at least, he liked it, but he had two complaints. “It’s not big enough,” he said, “and surely it should be free.” Not big enough! Free! There you have everything that is wrong with the BBC and with this country.

At which point Boris departs from this reality and signs up as a jockey for the Megalodon Steeplechase.

The thing is already colossal – about twice the height of Nelson’s column. If we went much higher we would have to re-route the planes out of City airport. And yes, it costs something to go up – though less than it costs to go up the London Eye – but what is the alternative? The alternative is that the whole operation would have to be subsidised by the taxpayer when it is one of the (many) saving graces of this structure that it has been very largely financed by private sponsorship.

It’s colossal all right. A colossal eyesore. And how largely subsidised by private sponsorship is very largely subsidised? Boris doesn’t say. It goes without saying that the rest of the money was wrested from the public purse. So let’s set Boris’ semantics aside and be truthful. Joe and Joan public have picked up part of the tab for this epic tower of cultural mutilation.

In his criticisms, Gompertz was revealing not the instincts of an art critic – but the mentality of the BBC man. Unlike the zany eccentric ArcelorMittal Orbit, the zany eccentric Gompertz is almost entirely publicly funded. It is up to you whether or not to go up the Orbit – though I thoroughly recommend it. You have no choice about funding Gompertz. Everyone who possesses a TV has to pay more than £145 to put him on air.

So the taxpayers who dug into their pockets to make up the lack of 100% private sponsorship were given a choice, were they?

The BBC is unlike any other media organisation in the free world, in that it levies billions from British households whether they want to watch it or not. No wonder its employees have an innocent belief that everything in life should be “free”. No wonder – and I speak as one who has just fought a campaign in which I sometimes felt that my chief opponent was the local BBC news – the prevailing view of Beeb newsrooms is, with honourable exceptions, statist, corporatist, defeatist, anti-business, Europhile and, above all, overwhelmingly biased to the Left.

Of course they are: the whole lot of them are funded by the taxpayer. Eurosceptic views are still treated as if they were vaguely mad and unpleasant, even though the Eurosceptic analysis has been proved overwhelmingly right.

And the different between the Beeboids and post normal Toryism Cameroonism is…?

In all its lavish coverage of Murdoch, hacking and BSkyB, the BBC never properly explains the reasons why other media organisations – including the BBC – want to shaft a free-market competitor (and this basic dishonesty is spotted by the electorate; it’s one of the reasons real people are so apathetic about the Leveson business).

It’s that same dishonesty so prevalent in party politics that has been spotted by the electorate, Boris. People have also grown wearily apathetic to the LibLabCons. Aren’t you aware of the similarities? Or are you willfully blind to them?

Well, folks, we have a potential solution. In a short while we must appoint a new director-general, to succeed Mark Thompson. If we are really going ahead with Lords reform (why?), then the Lib Dems should allow the Government to appoint someone to run the BBC who is free-market, pro-business and understands the depths of the problems this country faces. We need someone who knows about the work ethic, and cutting costs. We need a Tory, and no mucking around. If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country.

That isn’t a solution, Boris. Labour bias, Tory bias, what’s the difference? We’ll still get bias! The solution is to scrap the telly licence, remove the BBC from the public teet and let market forces prevail. Who then will give two hoots what bias the BBC has because we won’t be paying for it. And who gives a kipper’s dangly bits what the Lib Dems will allow or not. They lost the last election, Boris. L. O. S. T. lost! Stupendously! iDave seems to have sold his soul to Clegg in order to get his greasy mitts on the crowbar of power only to find it was actually a teaspoon, one that only stirs to the left! Was it worth it? Apparently so.

Boris, I like you as a bloke. You are affable and amusing. You make interesting documentaries. However, there is no way, in the seven screaming hells of Wattalottaflanul, I would ever accept you as potential Prime Ministerial material.

Posted in: Anglosphere, Art, Blue State Values, Jumped the Shark.

My last post

May 15th, 2012

by CountingCats.

9 comments

That makes me calling Ian B a cunt (which he is) into the start of WWI!

No, that was a border skirmish.

Now, I will agree that it was inappropriate for Ian to call your wife an idiot, but don’t forget this is an abuse site, not least through your own contribution, and has been for a long time.

If you didn’t want to expose Mrs Nick to the possibility of abuse you shouldn’t have:

1, Exposed her on this site.
Or
2, Helped create this as an abuse site.

You come across as believing that abuse is all fine and dandy, unless it is directed at you and yours. Well, you reap what you sow. At least Ian didn’t lace his words with obscenities and violent sexual imagery, calling someone an idiot is as mild as it gets. If you object to that then consider what else is written here, and how objectionable it can be.

Why did FT make his ugly comment the other day? Because he thought that was the way we speak on this site, that’s why. I was ashamed.

Now, when I posted my first comment on this I was possibly a tad intemperate, but by that time verbal daggers had already been both drawn and used. I merely entered into the pre-existing tone.

What caused WWI here was:

A, Telling Ian to “fuck off”

The reasons you told him to follow this course of action? Being rude to Mrs Nick, and his repetition, or focus, on certain core issues. Well, on the one hand you were defending your wife, good for you. Absolutely the right thing to do, but you were defending her from a situation you helped create, as I pointed out earlier.

As to Ian’s supposed repetition? Have you examined your own past writing lately? You return again and again to certain themes, phrases, metaphors and images. Ian is not alone in repetition.

Why have I never mentioned this before? Because I don’t care. I am aware of it, but fine, you can be a bit repetitive, but it’s your choice. Why is it an issue now? Because in criticising Ian you chose to make it so. In fact, when it comes to this, the metaphor is not pots and kettles, but rather his mote and your beam.

B, On my raising the issue of the abuse, obscenities and extreme sexual imagery we use you responded, in part, with “The pigeon-chested abatoir creeping basement tin-foil-hatter wanking his miniscule cock to destruction in a Primark sock in some fucking shit-hole and considering himself the sage of the age.”.

I am aware you were talking about someone else, but the words were nonetheless directed at me, and my concerns, demonstrating your contempt for what I had to say.

If you speak to your mother like that, fine, your choice. If she wants to put up with it, then again fine, her choice, but no one speaks to me in that manner, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason.

Now, frankly, Ian owes both Mrs Nick and you separate apologies, true, but you damn well owe him one as well. In my opinion, a grovelling one.

Now, I think we can agree that I have put my point across here, clearly if not always elegantly. I have demonstrated your hypocrisy and have otherwise (mildly violent metaphor alert) nailed your hide to the wall, not once having found it necessary to abuse you, use an obscenity, or elicit a single sexual image, extreme or otherwise.

The shame of it is, you are a far more inventive, nuanced and eloquent wordsmith than I can ever hope to be.

Oops, I said damn.

Posted in: Cats himself.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

May 15th, 2012

by RAB.

14 comments

Well it’s my birthday today folks. Happy? Not especially. It’s another year gone and closer to the grim reaper. But it’s one of those big number ones, 60.

Yikes how the flipperty flip flops did that happen? A minute ago I was a callow youth of 18 who knew nothing, now I am a callow old git who knows nothing. I was going to run down memory lane with you all, describing my life and times from coal fires to first class air travel, from black and white 2 channel telly to the Internet, from countries far away that we know little, to having been there twice and scarfed the menu. But I’m too bloody depressed to be arsed, given the tomfoolery that has occurred round here today.

“Sometimes the light’s all shining on me, other times I can barely see” oh yes indeed, wise words written by my old friend Bob Hunter. An indication of our triumphs and failures, hopes and despairs. If I dropped dead tomorrow I would have deemed myself to have had a very happy and interesting life. Was I a success? In who’s evaluation? I had fun, I earned a good living and have the love of family and friends, and hope to be around another 30 years at least to entertain you all if you will permit me. So I will leave you with something I feel is the best thing in the world, Music.

Yes I will keep on Truckin…

and this, and this .

Posted in: RAB himself.

Sunday Night Blues…

May 14th, 2012

by NickM.

2 comments

Last night I watched “Match of the Day”. Of course I did because this has been a great football season. Am I the only person who believes Alan “Woeful” Hansen is a self parody? Is there some prophecy on Merseyside that if he ever smiles the Liver Building collapses or something? Alan Shearer* looked like Ian Wright in comparison. At least they didn’t have Hansen’s gloomy side-kick Mark “Droopy” Lawrenson. They also interviewed Kenny Dalglish who is almost as dour. Of course that unholy trinity of profound miserablists played together for the highly successful Liverpool side of the ’80s. They won a lot. I guess a lot of fences got creosoted in the Lancashire/Cheshire area round then. The show wound-up with the goal of the season (deservedly won by Cisse of Newcastle) and Hansen looked physically pained. Because this was about celebrating glorious attacking play and not lamenting “schoolboy errors” or the lack of “tracking back”. Hansen of course was a defender and dear gods do you not get to know that. Just cheer up you multi-millionaire sporting “heroes” already!

Anyway, great for Mancini’s lads (who at least looked like they were enjoying themselves) and Manchester (and I guess Europa league for the Geordies isn’t too dusty). By the way the idea that there are no United fans in Manchester is a myth. There are also fans of Stockport County (twinned with Ibrox) heaven help them! Apparently my take-over of the blue side of Glasgow is almost complete because I managed to find a groat down the back of the sofa and a few lads down the pub who’ll “have a go” if I get in a crate of Stella and some sarnies. My training regime will involve the DVD of Braveheart, “You might tek us via an offside trap but you’ll never tek us seriously!”. Scottish football, eh? It makes Macbeth look like a screwball comedy. Maybe that is why Hansen is such a profound miserablist.

*Random quote from his ghost written autobiography from a few years back, “I saw we were twelve points clear so celebrated by going out and creosoting the fence”.

Posted in: BBC, Sport.

Bored to Death II - pre-watershed edition

May 13th, 2012

by Lynne.

42 comments

I have seen the face of brainwashed youth post normal science zealotry and it is worn by a pretty, eleven year old schoolgirl. And you know what? It bothers the hell out of me. How many more kids are like her?

The schoolgirl in question is a lass called Tara Choudhury and she attends Millfield school which styles itself as a Science and Performing Arts college. The school is based in Thornton, near Blackpool. Tara has recently returned from Brussels where she met and spoke to MEPs about her prizewinning anti-fracking video.

Now before I begin you need to know one thing. This is not a rant against a child. She is guilty of nothing other than reacting to what she has been taught by a figure of authority her parents have entrusted with their daughter’s education. It is a post against the falsified propaganda she has been exposed to. It is a post against the bastards who are shaping her outlook on the world and forecasting a future full of nightmares unless she does something about it. She has been turned into a passionate activist at a time she should be enjoying her childhood and learning about the world and its wonders through the prism of an unbiased education.

In the short video Tara quotes the greenie bible, chapter and verse. She could be reading directly from a Greenpeace propaganda sheet and you wouldn’t notice the difference. This keen and fertile mind has been seeded with the weeds of climate fear. I am going to quote her from the interview she did with the Blackpool Evening Gazette last week.

I first heard about fracking when I spotted the equipment being built in the fields near my house.

This statement is puzzling. Tara lives at Carleton and Preece Hall is four or five miles away depending on which part of Carleton she lives. The rig isn’t easy to spot from the road if you are unaware of its presence because it is situated in a field surrounded by trees. Blink and you’d miss it. It is unlikely an uninformed individual would be aware of the construction site until the tower was erected. Tara must have amazing eyesight if she can see it from “fields near my house” in Carleton. I’m not calling the child a liar but I know that kids are suggestible, even smart as a button eleven year olds. Another puzzling discrepancy is that the Preece Hall site was constructed a long time before she could have seen “equipment being built” and queried the teacher of a school she had not been old enough to attend at the time. The uniform she is wearing in her video is that of Millfield College and nothing she says leads me to believe she was indoctrinated in primary school. The account she gives just doesn’t add up.

I wondered what it was all about and asked my teacher at school.

She didn’t ask a parent, she asked a teacher. A particular teacher since she does not mention teachers plural. I’m not going to speculate what drew Tara’s attention to the rig but there are discrepancies and voids in her account that beg several questions. She couldn’t have been quoting from actual experience because the timeline is wrong. If she is eleven now then the earthquakes happened before she left primary school which means the rig was in use well before she attended Millfield and asked her teacher about “equipment being built in a field”. So who or what was she quoting? And how come no one else has questioned this discrepancy?

He gave me a video explaining about fracking and the effect it had over in America.

Having watched her YouTube clip it is obvious that the film her teacher handed her to view was the infamous Gasland. It was a fortunate coincidence the teacher she chose to ask about the Preece Hall rig possessed a copy to hand out to inquiring pupils. Sadly he didn’t make Tara aware of a YouTube clip of Gasland’s maker, Josh Fox, being asked awkward questions by Irish journalist and filmmaker, Phelim McAleer. It certainly would have been available at the time to give Tara a more balanced view.

It really concerned me so when I heard about this competition I decided to make a short film about the prospect of shale gas mining and the impact it could have on the local community.

And thus a new recruit for the greenie cause is created. Isn’t indoctrination education wonderful?

I was really shocked when I found out I had won, it had been quite a long time since I submitted my video and I had forgotten about it really.

She made the video, posted it on YouTube and forgot about it? I’ll accept that as childish modesty. As for creating the winning entry, if not Tara it would have been some other innocent child whose head has been stuffed with post normal nonsense. At risk of sounding uncharitable I suspect there were other factors at play in that she ticked other politically correct boxes - female, ethnic, enthusiastically naive. The fact that Tara is also telegenic and comes across as sincere (which I am sure she is) probably didn’t go amiss.

When she was in Brussels she didn’t meet the winner of the Have Your Say on Maintaining Energy Security contest by any chance did she? Oh, there wasn’t one? Srsly? Aren’t MEPs concerned about keep the light on then? Do we pay them to waste time being lectured on anti-technology by eleven year kids that, quite possibly, the greenies have chosen and groomed for the purpose? Pay attention, listen to the little girl talk and, whatever you do, think of the chiiiiiiildren!

In her presentation, Tara said fracking could affect UK water supplies as large amounts need to be pumped underground and their is a risk of contamination.

Of course she did. It’s a familiar anti-fracking refrain we’ve come across time and time again. Always concentrate on the potential risks; downplay and demonise the actual benefits.

She added: “The Committee on Climate Change said the consumption and extraction of shale gas go against our World climate goals – can we break a promise as important as that?

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is a statutory public body created as a result of the Climate Change Act 2008. It purports to be an independent body that advises the government on the reduction of carbon emissions and how to tackle climate change (!). Basically it’s a greenie think tank created by a government obsessed with CAGW and promoting renewable energy to “advise” said government on these same matters. Something of an incestuous relationship in my opinion, listened to only when government sees an advantage in it. Its chairman (soon to step down) is Lord Turner - a banker. He was appointed to the post in 2008 and at the same time was also chairman of the Financial Services Authority. In his spare time (?) he’s a part-time lecturer at the London School of Economics. So, a very busy man with a thumb is several large pies. As FSA chairman he presided over the collapse of HBOS. Perhaps he was wearing his CCC that that day. Despite his troubling track record (which you can research for yourselves) Turner remains a darling of our political effete. I’m at a complete loss as to why a banker, especially one dogged by failure and misfortune, should be considered an expert on climate change but then, on reflection, nothing the LibLabCons do makes any sense whatsoever. It’s what I’ve come to expect from the bunch of treacherous, incompetent muppets.

I’m not sure what promise Tara thinks CCC have made since CCC is supposed to be a government advisory body, not a campaigning anti-CAGW advocacy like Greenpeace. To be honest the term world climate goals reeks of watermelon. Key those words into a search engine and then try to spot a non-greenie link. It’s not a phrase an eleven year old is likely to make up and, if it’s a phrase appearing on the CCC site (which Tara might actually have read but I have my doubts), I haven’t spotted it. So she got it from somewhere else. I’m guessing it wasn’t from the keep the lights burning you blithering idiots lobby. Does Tara even understand what “consumption and extraction of shale gas go against our World climate goals” means? I doubt it. Do you think she’ll understand when there is suddenly no power to run her computer when the energy crisis created by our suicidal pursuit of renewables finally hits the UK like it’s about to in Germany? By that time it might be too late, certainly for vulnerable people who face the choice of starvation or hypothermia because people like her teacher are ignorant of the crisis they are causing or simply don’t care.

Most of the UK is in drought…

No, Tara, it isn’t. Don’t your teachers teach you to think for yourself and not believe everything you read and are told? Oh…

…won’t this process put pressure on our precious water supply, as well as potentially contaminating it with toxic chemicals.

If it’s contaminating the water supply with toxic chemicals that worries Tara might I suggest she makes a video campaigning against the threat to mass medicate the nation’s potable water because some parents are too lazy to teach their children how to brush their teeth?

Tara’s mum, Sophie, said she was very proud of her daughter.

And she has a right to be. Tara is a bright and vivacious girl.

She said: “She feels very strongly about fracking and was pleased to have the chance to speak out about it.

But did Tara’s mum ask her daughter if she felt strongly about fracking before she was shown the scary and grossly misleading Gasland by her teacher?

The comment section contains the outpourings of the usual mixture of the horrified citizens ignorant of the full facts, hysterical wingnuts and philosophical rationalists. The comment that gets the Bugnutz Crazy award comes from jessiej:

How can we get in contact with Tara to show our support? The last time fracking took place in the fylde, paving stones dropped in the house and there was a markedly strong smell like fuelkerosine and also effluence. We live in Lytham and felt the earthquakes. We don’t care how ‘cheap’ or how ‘relatively labour unintensive’ this is, or how it allegedly reduces our dependancy on imported fuels. If it causes damage to, devalues or in the worst case scenario destroys our home, why would we want it here. We have no faith that Cuadrilla will care about local residents, all you get from MP Menzies is a ‘fob off’ , mass produced letter full of platitudes.

Lytham is roughly seventeen miles distance from Preece Hall. If people who live in Singleton, the village closest to the drill site, didn’t feel any earth tremors then neither did jessiej. Methane has no smell and couldn’t possibly have migrated seventeen miles through unfracked rock, rise more than eight thousand feet to the surface and “drop” paving stones in her house. If she can smell effluence then of course her MP can’t help. She could, however, contact United Utilities and get her drains and sewer pipes checked because subsidence caused by water leakage can and does “drop” paving stones and lots of other things. And it stinks like hell.

But hey, there’s good news on the horizon for people concerned about the huge amount of water fracking consumes. There is now non-hydraulic (waterless) fracking method using a gel made from liquid propane gas (LPG). This latest innovation has obviously grabbed the attention of the Church of Green usual suspects who have immediately opposed the new method.

Deb Nardone, from the Sierra Club, said that given the risk of explosions, “it is clear that propane fracking just substitutes one set of problems for another set of even more dangerous problems.

There’s no pleasing greenies, is there…

Posted in: Education, Evil, Propaganda.

Is it time to be Spartacus?

May 12th, 2012

by CountingCats.

52 comments

Here we go again.

The Archbishop Cranmer has been reported by some number of small minded bigots to the Advertising Standards Authority. These people apparently object to any opinion with which they disagree being broadcast to the general public, in this case an advertisement which supports the belief “that marriage is a life-long union between one man and one woman, in accordance with the teaching of the Established Church, the beliefs of its Supreme Governor, and the law of the land."

The ASA, in their wisdom, have had the bare faced gall to demand his Eminence justify his political opinion, and his open support for the law and the teachings of The Church Established.

Personally, I don’t give a toss about gay marriage, one way or the other. Seriously, I just plain don’t care. However, I do object to agents, or pseudo agents, of the state demanding a freeborn Englishman justify his political views under threat of violence and sanction. So feel free to enjoy the advertisement.

Who the hell do these people think they are?

H/T Samizdata

Update: Just to keep the memories fresh, here’s Ezra again, in full flow.

Posted in: Britain, Civilisation.

Calling for info

May 12th, 2012

by CountingCats.

3 comments

I need some information about social networking software. Now, I will admit to having a facebook page, but whenever I have cause to access it I am hit with a feeling of the most intense ennui, and the words ‘why, why, WHY’ become a refrain running through my mind.

Seriously, I just can’t see the point.

Anyway, that to one side, I have a project. I need to set up a social networking site, and I need to do it soon. I have had a quick look, but given my interests I am probably not the right person to make the complete judgement on what software to use. I just don’t know what features are most popular or useful, nor would I normally care…..

I have kinda settled in my mind on one of Jomsocial, Elgg or Buddypress, only because, well, I don’t know, they just seem to be the major choices. I knocked Dolphin off the list because I saw a report it was bug ridden and the developers prioritise new features over bug fixes.

Anyone who knows more about this topic want to offer advise or a recommendation? Platform preferences are FreeBSD, Linux and A N Other O/S in that order.

Posted in: Cats himself.

Bored to Death…

May 12th, 2012

by Lynne.

7 comments

…at least that’s what the grass roots pressure group Residents Action on Fylde Fracking want you to believe. They list their concerns.

Lack of regulations – this is a self-regulating industry

Prevarication. The shale gas industry is governed by the same regulations that all other oil, gas and water extraction operations in the UK are.

Potential health risks from air and water pollution.

Those same risks exist if you live next to a dairy farm of which there are many in the Fylde and Wyre areas. Perhaps cows should be made to not fart or produce slurry. Maybe farmers should be prevented from using chemical fertilisers because nitrates leaching into surface water cause problems to wildlife.

There will be an increase in traffic with 500 trucks per well and up to 800 wells across Lancashire – that’s a lot of trucks on our roads.

But let’s not mention the fact that, up until recently, there were trucks from all over the UK and Europe heading to and from the nearby container port at Fleetwood. Hundreds of lorries drove past the Preece Hall Site, which is situated a few hundreds of yards from the main road that links to the M55 exit at Kirkham, on a daily basis. I don’t know where RAFF got its figures from because there is no link to support the claim. The Preece Hall site is small and 500 trucks required to remove what I presume is flowback water seems excessive. The only reference to an actual figure I can find is the RAFF website itself. Other than that there are the usual vague claims on greenie sites of massive use of tankers servicing shale gas wells 24/7. If anyone can shed light or statistics on the claim I’ll be grateful.

The process uses vast amounts of water – millions of gallons per well.

Perhaps so. Maybe RAFF should be more concerned about petitioning United Utilities, who are supplying the water, to repair or replace the unfit for use infrastructure that pisses away billions of litres of water through leakage every year.

There is potentially huge impact on the environment particularly through chemical spills.

Potentially - one of the most abused words in the greenie dictionary. It forms a weird, jingoistic dimension with words like denier, modelling, renewables and sustainability. As for the chemical spills, I’d be more impressed with facts and figures. If the engineering and fracking process is prone to failure I want to know about it. You know, all that nasty complicated stuff greenies rarely bother with - evidence. Rhetoric and regurgitated greenie mantra propaganda neither counts nor convinces.

The contaminated water will be transported by road to Davyhulme treatment plant, Manchester – what if there is an accident?

Fracking fluid is 90% water, 9.5% sand and 0.5% chemical additives. Common chemical additives consist of sodium chloride (which goes nicely with chips), ethylene glycol (used in household cleaners), borate salts (used in cosmetics), sodium/potassium carbonate (used in detergents), guar gum (used in ice cream) and isopropanol (used in deodorant). I’m assuming that there are also other additives that might not be so palatable but not all fracking fluids are the same. It is known that fracking fluid contains a combination of radioactive tracers (to monitor injection profiles and locate fractures caused by high pressure fluid injection) of which the most commonly used one is Iodine-131 with a half life of just over eight days. The oil and gas industries have been using radioactive tracers since the 1940s. If this procedure is so damaging to the envioronment where are all the irradiated bodies?

There are far more hazardous concentrated chemicals being tankered the length and breadth of the UK every single day of the week. What if there was an accident? It will be dealt with just like any other chemical spill.

We have already had two earthquakes which have been linked to fracking nearby. What more is to come?

A number twenty eight bus? There is more ground vibration generated by traffic than that generated by the recent Preece Hall earthquakes.

There is a risk of additional land subsidence.

Not all fracking fluid flows back. Some of it replaces the gas that is released from the shale deposit. If it’s subsidence the locals are worried about then perhaps they should refrain from extracting groundwater via boreholes.

All resulting in a negative impact on our property prices.

Ah, the perennial cry of the Daily Mail reader. And here was I thinking they were coming across like Guardianistas. I live ten or so minutes drive from Preece Hall and I am not worried about property prices or the remote risk of property damage from fracking induced earthquakes in the least. Energy security is my major concern as is affordable energy. A mismanaged economy has a greater impact on property prices and the rig at Preece Hall is a temporary inconvenience at best. Once wells are exhausted the boreholes will be capped and the rigs will relocate elsewhere.

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Posted in: Anglosphere, Control Freaks, Fuck off out of our lives, Lefties, Total Mentalists.

Shane Jenkins

May 11th, 2012

by NickM.

17 comments

There are cunts. And there are terrible cunts and then there are unmitigated cunts. Christ or Buddha might be able to grant absolution to Shane Jenkins but I can’t. Not that is the point really. Shane Jenkins has been sentenced to life (minimum five years!) for gouging his girlfriend’s eyes out. The investigating copper said he wouldn’t be in the community for some time. Preferably in my view the only way that fucker ought to ever get back into the community is wearing a pine overcoat. There are things so beyond the pale there is a reason they invented oubliettes.

Evil exists. He may be barking mad but evil and insanity are not mutually exclusive.

Posted in: Britain, Cunts, Evil, Law, Total Mentalists.

Economics 101

May 11th, 2012

by NickM.

62 comments

This is my take on what commentator mark has to say here.

If a government can just print money then there is no absolute requirement for them to get their revenue from taxes, or for them to borrow money from anyone. I take it you agree with this - the problem is the fear of generating inflation.

No it isn’t like that. Neither is their any strict limitation on me going to the local corner shop with the contents of The Monopoly box. Sayeed will tell me to fuck off but strictly speaking… Why am I reminded of the Ark-ship B here from Hitch-hikers? You know they define leaves as currency and when massive inflation hits they embark on a scheme of disastrous deforestation.

But what is the mechanism by which inflation will increase? If the market mechanism is functioning, price increases when demand for a product increases more than supply (or supply declines). Money does not have a magic property whereby its mere existence increases the price of goods - people have to spend it to make this happen. I take it you agree with this also.

A year ago Sayeed sold Coca Cola for 10p less a tin than he does now. Is this because the Cola Mines of Atlanta are running low? No. This is due to inflation which is caused by the government not even pretending to print money (or grow leaves). Let’s look at this scarily for a moment. If I wanted to buy a reasonable house in a nice area I would need a quarter of a million quid. A hundred years ago I could do it for 500 quid. If scarcity is the driver then please explain how come a rough doubling of population has led to a 500-fold increase in property prices? No the driver was inflation and what Mark Wadsworth calls “Home Ownerism”. How does that work? It works like this. I think we can all agree that say a holiday in Acapulco is a luxury but food in the belly and a roof over your head and a sources of heat, light and water are absolute basics. Mr Ugg the caveman would agree with that one. Now when the price of all basics other than housing rises the likes of the Daily Mail and the Express go rightly mental. House prices going-up to silly levels is though seen as “a good thing”. It’s like when they go on about abandoning collective bargaining for salaries across the country so say a nurse in London is paid more than a nurse in the Orkneys you just make the situation worse because you might as well write cheques drawn on the public purse directly to Rachman. Or another way of looking is this. If we need to bend the market out of shape to allow a nurse (essentially a graduate job these days) to afford a modest roof over his or her head in London then isn’t something deeply structurally wrong?

In this case producing more money will increase production, because a man who was doing nothing will instead be making aircraft and a factory which was sitting idle will be producing missiles. We are increasing demand for aircraft and since there is idle supply, it is unlikely that the price of aircraft will increase by much. As a worst case scenario, the price of aircraft will increase a lot - but this is still unrelated to the price of stadiums, the price of coca cola or anything else unless demand for those increases also.

A Mk14 Spitfire cost twelve grand. An F-35 costs the thick-end of a hundred million. The Typhoons over Libya cost us 80 grand an hour -operating costs -not capital. Aircraft do cost more. We only don’t notice it because airlines are vicious because they have to be - razor-edge economics. And your argument is pure Keynesian nonsense. You might as well say we can cause economic growth by paying Fred to dig a hole and Dave to fill it in again. If people want it and are allowed it will happen. Your example of missiles is curious. Think on that.

If demand for a certain product is too high, the government could reduce demand by lowering spending or increasing taxes upon it.

Which is why the government increases taxes annually on addictive substances and things you can’t get around like fuel. Oh, but you don’t have a car? Don’t matter. Even if you walk to the shops someone had to deliver their stuff. There is a way round it. Living in a yurt on sunshine and eating shit off the trees in some Allah forsaken ’stan.

But this is a very different story from “reducing spending on aircraft is neccesary to make a stadium” - that simply isn’t true.

Let’s say you have a twenty. You could go to the movies with your date or have a takeaway with him or her. Not both. To say otherwise is the economics of magic beans.

The sad thing is that right wingers are very happy to oppose the idea of aggregate demand when it suits them, but are still prepared to use the very same idea to argue against government intervention.
And I am amazed that you think people need to be taught the bog-standard, intuitive views which you have expressed. Where do you think you learned these ideas? I think I remember seeing a similar view of inflation on an episode of Duck Tales once…

Why do intuitive views need to be taught? They are like intuitive and frequently wrong. Here is an intuitive idea for you all. In my mother’s house in Gateshead there is a Monopoly set. As a small child I used a Biro to add zeros to my notes. Now at some level I knew this didn’t work but I did it because I was a kid and everyone games Monopoly anyway. If I had kids I would rather they watched “Anal Angels XV” than play that game for it is wicked. It really brings out the worst in people. The only other game I ever saw that lead almost to the Rozzers being called was Risk and that “incident” wasn’t strictly speaking game-related. That was because after copious libations a bloke wearing a Soviet general’s hat and mirror-shades, drunk and affecting a Libyan accent (he was from Sussex) urinated in a Scouser’s sink. Crazy student days! Damn fool! He’d taken North America which is the key to the whole game. My point is QE or whatever is exactly what I knew was wrong with what I did with Monopoly money when I was eight. Gideon Osborne has a lot of catch-up to do. Yeah, I said it. I trust small children from the early eighties (like me!) more than Oxford PPE graduates. Or Nottingham University chemistry students (almost as bad as medics) playing board games and causing fisticuffs. They never played Risk again.

It is important to tie our ideas of money to what is happening in terms of real products and services.

If only that were true! But you need to define “real” here. And that is tricky. That is why there is a market. For example let us say a hip-replacement operation costs 10 grand. Now I don’t like hospital food or being taken apart by doctors (I have lived with medical students) and I don’t have a gammy leg so that isn’t a ten grand value to me. It would be if I was walking like Dr Strangelove. 10 grand though would buy a nice little motor -now that could be useful. I now have to get my Dick out. My Philip K Dick. His long short story Paycheck has a lot to say about value.

Dick said of the story: “How much is a key to a bus locker worth? One day it’s worth 25 cents, the next day thousands of dollars. In this story I got to thinking that there are times in our lives when having a dime to make a phone call spells the difference between life and death. Keys, small change, maybe a theater ticket - how about a parking receipt for a Jaguar? All I had to do was link this idea up with time travel to see how the small and useless, under the wise eyes of a time traveler, might signify a great deal more. He would know when that dime might save your life. And, back in the past again, he might prefer that dime to any amount of money, no matter how large.”

Thornavis,

If you are familiar with th idea of opportunity cost, answer me this. What is the opportunity cost of a stadium? In what way is it a aircraft except in the sense that we have chosen it to be?

The opportunity cost of anything is the cost of what else you could do with the money. To put it simply a fairly wealthy soul might buy a Porsche but that means he or she has chosen their form of German metal and they can’t then buy the Mercedes too. That is opportunity cost. Either/or.

Posted in: Economics, The Reflected Sound As Of Underground Spirits.

Clint Eastwood QOTD

May 11th, 2012

by NickM.

10 comments

Clint Eastwood is a long-standing libertarian and the coolest man who ever drew a pistol.

H/T Ian (not that one) B.

This is Eastwood at his finest…

That movie made me a libertarian even if I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I mean that is truly majestic.

Because it is very easy. Men can live together, not governments. Yes, I appreciate the context might be odd in the circs. But the point remains. Josey Wales and Ten Bears contract an agreement in blood that means more than anything the government could provide. We can live together and do incredible things together on one basic principle. I won’t tell you how to live your life and all I ask in return is you give me the same in return. Fair exchange?

Posted in: QOTD.

Fails.

May 10th, 2012

by NickM.

19 comments

Every morning I have a shower and a tea and watch the BBC News Channel (I probably would watch Sky News except the editorial is identical and they have adverts and all I want is to discover the basics. It is currently on about the Olympics because they are lighting the torch. According to the BBC wonkette sent to Olympus for no apparent reason other than her jollies if lighting it from the Sun doesn’t work they have a “back-up” or a box of matches. The BBC wonkette is now interviewing a woman who has lived in Olympia for ten years. Like Wow! Apparently there are many VIPs there. Well, I guess the local prostitutes need employment as much as the next person. Which brings to mind something I saw earlier this morning. According to the BBC News we are facing “Pubic Sector Strikes”. Public Sector I can cope with but if the pubic sector goes we is fucked (or rather not). They are reading a poem now. In Greek. Now I appreciate the Bubbles are the cradle of Western Civilization but to paraphrase Tsiolokovsky (or Goddard or Von Braun or any of the rest…)

Some Greek fucker is now wittering on about peace and how he reckons we can keep the flame burning - he ought to go to Syria. Well, yeah if Putin doesn’t turn the gas off.

And moreover how the bastarding fuck does this promote peace? Some bugger is now saying spending a fortune on a sacred flame is saving Greece. No it isn’t. Not having blown squillions up the wall would have been better for a nation on it’s arse. Greece is on it’s absolute arse and we are getting there.

Now Seb Coe is talking about how twats stealing money from ordinary folks promotes peace. Not in my head it don’t. Seb Coe is standing on the original running track in Olympia. I bet that didn’t cost 20 billion quid. I’m really annoyed now. Peace and Friendship and all! Just learned something. The lighting of the flame is “strictly for the VIPs”. Well, it would be wouldn’t it?

Posted in: Beyond Belief, Civilisation, Going to the Dogs, Government, Jumped the Shark, Kultcha, Mainstream Media, Propaganda, Sport, twats.

Custer’s Revenge.

May 9th, 2012

by NickM.

18 comments

From Wikipedia…

Custer’s Revenge (also known as Westward Ho and The White Man Came) is a controversial video game made for the Atari 2600 by Mystique, a company that produced a number of adult video game titles for the system. The player character is based on General George Armstrong Custer. The game was first released on October 13, 1982, and has received significant criticism because of its crude simulation of a rape of a Native American woman.

Like a sophisticated rape would have been better?

In the game, the player controls the character of Custer, depicted as a man wearing nothing but a cavalry hat, boots and a bandana, sporting a visible erection. Custer has to overcome arrow attacks [is it just me or if people are firing arrows the very last thing I want is to be is cock out!] to reach the other side of the screen. His goal is to have sex with a naked Native American woman tied to a pole.

To be fair the graphics are so pants quite how one tells she is either Amerindian or indeed even a woman is beyond me.

Custer’s Revenge quickly gained notoriety upon its release. Sold in a sealed package labeled “NOT FOR SALE TO MINORS” and selling for $49.95, it acknowledged that children might nonetheless see the game. The game’s literature stated “if the kids catch you and should ask, tell them Custer and the maiden are just dancing.” The makers elected to preview the game for women’s and Native American groups, an act which some thought was a publicity stunt.

Now I have via the magic of the emu played “Custer’s Revenge” (I had to try it - God curse me!) and it is dreadful. Fifty bucks for that back when that was a lot of money! But clearly the marketing was genius. It occurs to me that if the women’s and Native American groups hadn’t made such a fuss the game would have just died a death and would not be the most notorious thing ever set on silicon. I like old videogames. Around the same time (actually a year before) Warlords came out for the Atari VCS and that is a great game - to this day I play it and I can beat anyone of you at it even post-pub. It has things like game-play and tactics and stuff. The thing is Warlords is fun. Incidentally (and thirty years after my first go) that was coded by a woman. With like real tits and everything. Unlike the piss-poor low-rez object of “Custer’s Revenge”. Which is the point isn’t it? Who defines what is pornographic? “Custer’s Revenge” is only so if you think it so. That’s what I mean about the marketing genius. A dreadful game and not even pornographic (the graphics are crude in the sense of blocky rather than in the sense of obscene*) raised to the heights because it offended**. I would argue it was only bought (it has no other redeeming features) because people wanted to be naughty and they were told this was naughty. It wasn’t. It was merely dreadful.

I mean if you get off on visuals that blocky you are perma-banned from my Lego box.

I guess ultimately what I am trying to say was “Custer’s Revenge” was not incidentally obscene or even pornographic (it was sold in ‘82 - video porn - possibly including Native Americans existed and they had curvaceous tits unlike the block lady) but was deliberately obscene because it had nothing else to offer and it was made so because it would be taken seriously becaause people who would object which was precisely what the company behind it ($50 in ‘82 recall) wanted. If the feminist and Amerindian groups had just been “That’s a terrible game” and not an obscenity it would have been stetted (good games need tactics). But people always want an obscenity (”the Human Centipede”) and obscenity is always created by those that campaign against it.

I don’t think it is obscene (as such) myself. I have said it is a dreadful game but what really gets me is that games like that only exist because people think pr0n dodgy which means numpties will buy it because despite it being a truly dreadful game (and computer and video games are our greatest art-form if done right) it is given a surly dirtiness by the likes of Mary Whitehouse and that is the only reason it was ever saleable. As I said, Pr0n is entirely made by the prod-noses. It would generally be considered risible if it wasn’t vaguely banned. Although I don’t know! As Woody Allen put it, “Sex is only good if it is dirty”.

*A pornographic game that isn’t even obscene is truly shocking. It makes me think of the “Royal Nonsuch” in Huck Finn.

**And yes it was grotesquely offensive. Off course it was. It had to be because it wasn’t any good.

Posted in: Civilisation, Control Freaks, Fuck off out of our lives, Going to the Dogs, Government, Guilty Until Proven Innocent, Jumped the Shark, Kultcha, Libertarianism, Mainstream Media, Neo-Puritanism, Privacy, Sanctimonious Dogooders, Sexual politics, censorship.