A Place to Stand

This item which I found via Tim Wortall should be treated seriously:

British commanders in Afghanistan have recommended that their men receive almost 180 awards for gallantry, including "several" Victoria Crosses, following the most intense fighting since the Korean War......


Describing the range of actions, a senior Whitehall source said: "You are talking about bayonet and grenade actions, Chinooks landing troops while being raked by gunfire and 105mm guns in direct fire mode."

The latter comment refers to light field guns being used with their barrels horizontal due to the proximity of the enemy — something not seen since Korea. "We're talking Waterloo stuff here," a source told The Daily Telegraph.

Officers are thought to have recommended about half a dozen VCs, mainly for the troops of 16 Air Assault Brigade. The airborne forces last received the ultimate award for bravery in such quantity during the disastrous Arnhem operation in September 1944.

The recommendations follow three months of vicious fighting in Helmand.

The scale of the awards suggests a conflict out of all proportion to the security operation first outlined by the Government.....

This is very serious.

Britain has no reserves because they are all in Iraq etc. Without reserves we are heading for a military defeat & a unit getting wiped out.

When that happens it will make massive headlines which will do no good - it should be reported now while we may still have some options, however unpalatable.

The Afghan war was the one legitimate one we have been involved in lately - we cannot allow al Quaeda to win this.

The other NATO countries have made it quite clear that they will send troops to Afghanistan only if they go to places where ther is no chance of them getting hurt.

I must confess thatIi do not know what to do here. It might be possible to get some of the warlords off by negotiating with them & backing off a bit on our wish to reshape Afghanistan as a feminist liberal democracy. I would happily pull troops out of Iraq to reinforce here - Iraq is a pointless mess but al Quaeda is a real enemy we have undertaken to defeat. However it goesIi think we must steel ourselves for some very bad news & give the troops everything they need - they are putting their bodies in harm's way for us.

The Scotsman have published the first paragraph of a letter from me today on an ongoing discussion of the proposal to spend £600 million on a rail link to Turnhouse airport:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1432432006#new

The SNP's objection does not appear to be to a rail link to Turnhouse airport in principle (letters 26th sept) but to the Executive's desire to spend £600 million on a tunnel under the runway when it would be perfectly possible to build a station on the main line to Glasgow (possibly the Aberdeen line as well) connected to the airport by a moving walkway for probably only a few hundred thousand pounds.
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Unfortunately they decided not to publish the remaining parts or to name my new persona (9% Growth Party), which is a little surprising since they have regularly mentioned Ian Irodie's Scottish Enterprise Party which is not noticeably larger. My addition has been put on the comments section. A slightly different version of the full letter was yesterday sent ot som other Scottish papers.
__________________________________

Recently the executive decided to spend £200+million on a rail link to Glasgow airport despite having a proposal to build a a monorail to Paisley Gilmour St for £20 million (there being trains from Paisley to Glasgow & indeed Prestwick every few minutes). I happen to know this because, as, at the time, a member of the Liberal Democrats I was invited to find some company interested in quoting for a monorail (or arguably brushed off with that suggestion) & when I did so was informed they didn't really mean it & such a proposal would have to come from the party leadership. Such a monorail would also have improved access between Glasgow & Prestwick airports allowing them to act somewhat as a hub.

Equally on several occasions your columns have featured proposals from Roy Pedersen & others to build a tunnel under the Forth at between a half & a quarter of the £1 billion expected for a bridge. This has also been rejected by the Executive for no clearly defined reason.

Like Adam Smith I am in favour of government being willing to invest in our infrastructure but it should be done on sensible terms not always going for the ridiculously expensive option.

The energy output from the Sun has increased significantly during the 20th century, according to a new study.

Many studies have attempted to determine whether there is an upward trend in the average magnitude of sunspots and solar flares over time, but few firm conclusions have been reached.

Now, an international team of researchers led by Ilya Usoskin of the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory at the University of Oulu, Finland, may have the answer. They examined meteorites that had fallen to Earth over the past 240 years. By analyzing the amount of titanium 44, a radioactive isotope, the team found a significant increase in the Sun's radioactive output during the 20th century.

Over the past few decades, however, they found the solar activity has stabilized at this higher-than-historic level.

Prior research relied on measurements of certain radioactive elements within tree rings and in the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, which can be altered by terrestrial processes, not just by solar activity. The isotope measured in the new study is not affected by conditions on Earth.

The results, detailed in this week's issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, "confirm that there was indeed an increase in solar activity over the last 100 years or so," Usoskin told SPACE.com.

The average global temperature at Earth's surface has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880 ......

I don't know if this will pan out though it seems to be weel investigated. If it does then any warming over the last century will be explained. What can be said with certainty is that, with this & other explanations involving increased methane release from plants, more cows etc., is that the warming effect is so small & the degree of uncertainty over everything is so great that it cannot possibly be honestly said that the anthropogenic warming, let alone catastrophic anthropogenic warming is anywhere close to being proven, or even a clear prime hypothesis.

On April 12 1999, a huge haul of arms and ammunition, destined for the KLA,
was found in the Italian port of Ancona aboard trucks leased by Caritas.
[11] The cargo had officially been declared as a German Caritas humanitarian
aid shipment for Kosovo refugees. [12] The trucks were loaded at the Caritas
center in Sarajevo. [13]



The customs officials, who searched the trucks, found 30 tons of war
material, including anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers
and machine guns. [14]



Most of the arms were of Russian or East European origin, but many bore NATO
markings. More than 1,000 mortars said to have been "stolen" from a NATO
arsenal in Germany were found onboard the trucks. [15]



There was some legitimate humanitarian aid onboard the trucks, but it was of
poor quality, much of the food had already passed its expiration date. [16]



Italian customs officials arrested three drivers, Robert Buellesbach, Sead
Klakar, and Drasco Kovacevic. [17]



The Italian authorities claimed that Buellesbach had links to German
intelligence. [18] On that basis one could speculate that he's the one who
"stole" the mortars from the German NATO base.



The 15-meter-long trucks had been rebuilt to transport illegal cargo. [19]
One truck was fitted with a double floor, while another one had a secret
closet behind the driver's cabin big enough for six people [20].



Italian authorities said that the arms were destined for a training camp of
the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Scutari in northern Albania. [21]



The name of the consignee on the export documents, was one Father Luciano
Augustino, a parish priest in Scutari. [22]



General Alberto D'Amico, the military commander in charge of customs for the
region that includes Ancona, confirmed claims by Italian security sources
that it was impossible that British and American intelligence could have
been unaware of the smuggling. [23]



A NATO spokesman said that while the Alliance had no contact with the KLA.
"Some individual countries which are member countries of NATO may have some
contacts. Of course that is not a guarantee that such things are not
happening, smuggling and so on." [24]



Caritas denied that it had any role in the arms smuggling. It issued a
statement saying, "These trucks are not from Caritas, even if the logo (on
the trucks) is the same." [25]




CONCLUSION




The trucks were leased by Caritas, and loaded at the Caritas center in
Sarajevo, and we're supposed to believe Caritas when it says that it had
nothing to do with this? Just like were supposed to believe that somebody
managed to walk onto a German NATO instillation and steal over 1,000
mortars?



The conclusion is obvious. The Vatican was using its Caritas "charity" to
provide a cover for NATO, or at least German, arms smuggling to the KLA.
They may also have provided Iran, the world's leading terrorist state, with
the same cover in Bosnia when Omerbasic led the Caritas convoy to Vitez.



The Vatican's goals are the same now as they were when Stepinac founded the
Croatian branch of Caritas, and had it forcibly convert Serb inmates held in
Croatian concentration camps to Roman Catholicism.



Pope John Paul II, rather than distancing the Catholic Church from Stepinac,
did the opposite. The Pope beatified Stepinac on October 3, 1998. [26]

Footnotes ; [11] Agence France Presse - "Arms, munitions seized from Caritas shipment: report" - May 03, 1999
[12] Deutsche Presse-Agentur - "Italian police seize arms shipment designed
for Kosovo separatists" - May 3, 1999
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Scotland on Sunday - "NATO Linked to KLA Weapons Smuggling" - May 9,
1999
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Deutsche Presse-Agentur - "Italian police seize arms shipment designed
for Kosovo separatists" - May 3, 1999
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Scotland on Sunday - "NATO Linked to KLA Weapons Smuggling" - May 9,
1999
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Agence France Presse - "Arms, munitions seized from Caritas shipment:
report" - May 03, 1999
-------------------------------------------------------------

I have decided to repost this story (the original article contains more) here because in a Google search for it I had considerable difficulty finding it, moreso than previously.

Notwithstanding the Scotland on Sunday report (in 1999) it is quite obvious that the fact that the Catholic Church was caught red handed smuggling guns, mortars & anti-aircraft missiles to Moslem terrorists, recognised at the time as terrorists & openly proclaiming their commitment to genocide, is a matter that is being deleted from history. Whether this also proves that NATO were deliberately supplying the weapons is one of only 2 possibilities. The only alternate theory being that a crack Vatican commando squad broke into a NATO base & carried off tons of weaponry without anybody noticeing.

I think this is an important matter which goes to the heart of the question of whether either, or both, NATO & the Papacy are wholly corrupt racist & Nazi organisations, or jointly controlled by such people (eg the Bilderburgers). It should not be allowed to disappear.

The bit at the end about God's self-styled representative on earth knowingly supporting the genocide of the WW2 & current Croatian Nazi regimes should also be recognised.

The Points section (1 paragraph letters) of the Scotsman had a couple of letters on the Lib Dem conference & why they should support the SNP in a referendum on independence & 1 on broccoli. This is the latter letter & the follow up comments

Broccoli When I was a wee lassie (I am now 78) broccoli mercifully didn't seem to exist. We had cauliflower, cabbage, neeps, but no broccoli. So when did this green menace creep on to our vegetable shelves? I have never liked it, but would occasionally cook it for my reluctant family on the basis that it is "good for you". However, I can now happily ignore it and blame it on the genes.

Isobel Robertson Dundee

1. Kenny G / 2:10am 23 Sep 2006 Does anybody care that Isobel doesn't like broccoli?

2. Duncan, Newington, Edinburgh / 10:28am 23 Sep 2006 Kenny, I hope you'll join me in calling for Isobel to write in again and tell us her views on carrots, sweetcorn and onions. Perhaps in a later series she can move on to the more exotic ranges - artichokes, butternut squash, the sweet potato? I'll bet these crazy foods weren't even invented when she was a wee lassie! Whit a world we live in!

3. Rod, Edinburgh / 10:54am 23 Sep 2006 #1 "Does anybody care that Isobel doesn't like broccoli?"

Yes, I do 'cos I don't like it either. Anyway, how can any right thinking person eat something with a name more aking to a disease or skin condition?
;-)

4. Tabman / 2:59pm 23 Sep 2006 Rod.
What? Like artichoke?

5. Frank, Preston / 3:47pm 23 Sep 2006 Are not the Lib-Dems a unionist party?
Why on earth would they wish to join in a coalition with The Separatist party who have only one policy?

6. Neil, 9% GROWTH Party / 6:26pm 23 Sep 2006 "I have never liked it, but would occasionally cook it for my reluctant family on the basis that it is "good for you".

Isobel my advice is that if you & all the members of your family don't like it then don't eat it. Ignore Jack McConnell when he decideds to introduce broccoli subsidies & social worker inspectors to come round & check how much broccoli you are eating. Eat your other greens in public places if you wish - enjoying your food is much better for you than doing what politicos who know no more than you say is good for you.

The same applies to entering pacts & voting for referenda you don't like.

7. Duncan, Newington, Edinburgh / 7:26pm 23 Sep 2006 Neil, I find your attitude to vegetables very refreshing in the current political climate, and despite disagreeing with you about broccoli I would like to hear more. Do you have a pamphlet or a newsletter to which I could subscribe?

8. Graham / 11:04pm 23 Sep 2006 I like to hide broccoli inside Big Macs for my children. I also dry it and mix it with their packets of tobacco so they get plenty of iron in their spliffs.

Some things just work.

I do not argue with the accuracy of the Pope's saying that Islam is a warlike religion. Islam was spread, from the period when Mohammed, in Medina, started making war on Mecca to the time, a couple of generations later, when Islam ruled from Spain to Pakistan. This was achieved almost entirely by military conquest so making war is at the heart of Islam. On the other hand the Pope's religion has a not much less history of war & a considerably worse one of atrocity. Islam has generally exerted only limited pressure on to convert as long as they paid their taxes & were obedient whereas Christians have massacred whole populations to save their souls.

Pots, kettles & black come to mind.

I suspect his holiness knew exactly what he was saying - the use of a quote from an ancient source is a literary trick very useful for diverting criticism. However in all the outrage about his statements here it is worth noting that there was comparatively little when his predecessor said Buddhism was

"atheistic", "negative"
and indifferent to the world.", "The enlightenment
experienced by the Buddha comes down to the conviction that the world is bad", "To save oneself means, above all, to free oneself from evil by becoming
indifferent to the world.", "doctrine of
salvation in Buddhism and Christianity are opposed", "fundamentally contrary to the development of both man
himself and the world"

I may be biased in that I accept Buddhism is atheistic, or at least doesn't require the belief inn a God, and don't consider that a bad thing, but it is undeniable that in material terms Buddhism is not remotely a militaristic, aggressive or threatening religion.

It is disappointing that the media leap so much more readily to denounce attacks on a religion so obviously willing to defend itself than one which is truly peaceful.

My position is similar to that of H Beam Piper who said that monotheism was intrinsically aggressive. Once you say that there is only one God then the followers of all others are automatically wrong & oppressing them becomes "God's will", then those who worship God but disagree as to forms, or whether he wishes prayed to in Latin or Arabic must be wrong & thus engaged in blasphemy and so on. This unwillingness to compromise may have been why the Judaic religions have done so well (Judaism, Christianity & Islam all being viewed as variants of the same religion) but they have been involved in almost all the world's truly religious wars & pogroms.

Up to £100 million

22) Make a 5 hour DVD of Scotland's history. Hire somebody, not part of Scotland's small media, probably from Discovery Channel, to put it together, print up 200 million (at 10p a shot), give it out in Scots newagents & post 1 to every household in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealnd & the USA. Produce a permanent online
library of Scots history articles & programmes acceesible free & with links provided on the DVD.

23) Automate the Glasgow-Edinburgh train on the lines previously discussed with the Glasgow Underground. While the computerisation should still be fairly cheap, in some ways cheaper because rolling stock which cannot be updated could still be transferred to other lines, an impractical operation on the Underground. However if the trains are to be run on the basis of single carriages roughly once a minute some redesigning of platforms would be required. This would not be as fast as a bullet train but, because carriages would leave every minute rather than every 15 it would save an average of 7 minutes. Unlike the Bullet Train it would still be able to stop at Falkirk & Haymarket from which half of current journeys either start or end(alternately only some carriages need do so allowing through carriages to cut times further). It could also be easily linked to Turnhouse Airport by a connecting line. In practice, a much cheaper 24 hour automated system should carry many more people between Glasgow & Edinburgh than a bullet train.

24) Build an automated overhead monorail from the far side of the Forth Rail Bridge to Prince's St in Edinburgh. Use the fact that the rail bridge was, because of the Tay Bridge disaster, a heavily overengineered structure & should be easily able to bear the load of a monorail above the rail tracks. An overhead monorail into Edinburgh would not be subject to traffic jams as trolleys are & have the same cost savings as other automated rail.

25) Provide an automated walkway from Turnhouse airport to stations on both adjoining lines or, if the Glasgow/Edinburgh link is built build a loop to the main terminal.

£100 million to £1 billion

26) Widen the M8 & connect it as motorway to the Edinburgh bypass.

27) Build a deep ocean thermal differential power generator & use it to build a permanent sea base owned by Scotland. (See http://www.4literature.net/story/2002/7/28/115247/145 ). 23

28) Provide bursaries of £10,000 per person & £30,000 per school for the top thousand Higher results in maths & hard sciences. (£40 million a year, £400 in 10 years)

Over £1 billion

29) Automate all of Scotland's train services. This can be done over a period of years. Scotland has a relatively limited rail track & this is something in which we could easily become a world leader. A particular line for upgrading would be the West Highland Line from Glasgow low level to Loch Lomond, Oban & ultimately Fort William. This line has only very few trains per day & thus has relatively little effect in making the Highlands accesable. If run by an automated system it would be possible to run carriages regularly all 24 hours making it fully accessable from central scotland & vice versa. Another advantage of an automated system is that it would make movement of containers in single units practical making them fully competitive with roads.

30) Establish an X-Prize commission giving the full Moon landing & solar power satelite prizes proposed by www.jerrypournelle.com but only applicable to fully Scots programmes (which in practice means nobody will win them & the cost thus be zero). Offer to make this an international prize compatible with any other country or federative state (eg US states) willing to join the fund & contribute proportionately to their GNP. Initially this can be funded by devoting any increase in the Scots Lottery profits plus £49 million (equivalent of our ESA contribution plus any private donations matched by an equal government contribution.



My estimate is that all of these put together, excluding 30, would cost about £3 billion, the expected cost the bullet train alone is estimated at, & that all would have a significant net benefit to the economy.

John Ray of Australia has produced yet another new blog (he must have discoverd the 25 hour day). This one, however, is to collate examples of politically correct nonsense in Britain which I think a very useful thing:

Eye on Britain http://eye-uk.blogspot.com/

John also produces

GREENIE WATCH

DISSECTING LEFTISM

PC WATCH

TONGUE TIED

EDUCATION WATCH

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

LEFTIST ELITISM

MARX & ENGELS

SCRIPTURE COMMENTARY

RECIPES

OF INTEREST

OF INTEREST (2)

Of Interest 3
Alt. Dissecting Leftism site
Longer Academic Papers

I have started up a new blog for the Classic Liberals for 9% GROWTH Party which currently consists of me, an ex-Lib Dem called Andy Nimmo, a couple of others & a significant list of people interested enough to give me their emails. It is my intention to stand for next May's Scottish election on a pro-growth, pro-nuclear, pro-progress agenda. If seven people have said they want to stand for Labour deputy leader I think my chances of winning a Scottish seat must be better than most of their's.

Since that site is for publicity for stuff relevant to the Scottish election I will be concentrating on that rather than the more personal stuff here. I will also not feel the same obligation I have here to put up all non-offensive posts (though I would be willing to engage in an online debate with, say, the Lib Dems if they were prepared to allow it to be equally posted on their site - consider that an offer Norman).

At the very least I intend to put such things as improving our abysmal economic performance, vis a vis Ireland etc, that nuclear is the cheapest, most reliable method of generating significant power & that without it we WILL have massive blackouts & that, rather than banning everything government would be more usefully employed encouraging technological innovation by X-Prizes all on the political agenda.

Perhaps somebody will come up with some sensible reason why people shouldn't vote for that but I doubt it. Whether that means there will be a significant number actually interested in improving our country is a different matter.

Classic Liberals for 9% GROWTH Party

I was sent this from somebody who used to be part of the Rutherglen Branch of the Lib Dems. It may be argued that it is unimportant that the Smoking Ban motion was improperly set up in this constituency's name since the Policy Committee could easily have done it in their own names. I take the opposite view. The very fact that the rules were so cavalierly broken when it was not necessary (Robert Brown who is the local MSP is also senior apparatchik on the PC) shows how much contempt the leadership have for their own constitution. As a lawyer Mr Brown should have known better.

I have commented previously on the fact that all the motions but 2 at the recent spring conference did not come from constituencies & there had always been a suspicion that, even then, MSPs had used their constituencies to provide cover for Executive policies but I must admit I had not suspected that this was being done without the approval of the constituency in whose name it was done.

It makes the decision by "Maryhill branch" (actually held at a very special meeting miles outside Maryhill) that my Enterprise motion was "too right wing" to debate look even more corrupt than previously.

The Lib Dem adoption of No Smoking as policy back when Paddy Ashdown was leader was also illegal as it was put to the LibDem Conference as coming from the Rutherglen Constituency who had not in fact ever heard of the proposal until the Conference agenda was issued and the LibDem Constitution states that proposals shall not be put forward until or unless they have first been agreed by constituency members. That simply didn't happen. We had discussed and put forward a proposal for health, but it didn't mention smoking. Our whole proposal was 'mislaid' and the no smoking proposal put in its place without reference even to the constituency committee of which I was secretary at the time. It was because of this that I resigned. The LibDems then got Charles Kennedy who as an avid smoker himself didn't countenance a ban, so I guess Labour had to wait until the LibDems got rid of Charles and brought in Ming before they could get full pact agreement for their ban.



If a single MSP had been truly liberal the possibility of having smoke-free and smoking pubs would have been proposed as that way anyone who didn't like smoking could go to a non-smoking pub while smokers could still have been sheltered from Scottish winter weather but this was not even mentioned in the debate instead the MSPs decided to pander to their own petty personal prejudices and to hell with the voters.

I have just had a guy from the Scottish Daily Mail taking a photo (well actually about 50 photos) of me to go with the lead letter they are planning on Friday.

This letter is largely the one on radiation hormesis (the evidence that, except in high doses, radioactivity actually improves health) which is shown in my November 04 archive & which I have been trying to get published, in any form, on dead trees ever since.

This was mentioned in a recent BBC Horizon which I thought might make it no longer an un-subject & sent it out to most serious Scottish & UK newspapers & yesterday got a call from the Mail that they wanted a photo as it was going to be the lead letter. It may be cynical to note that the BBC's belated mention of some of the undeniable facts proving hormesis follows the government's decision that nuclear is no longer an "unattractive option".

The Scottish Mail have now repeatedly published letters which I had considered extremely controversial (on Yugoslavia & the Milosevic murder) & which other newspapers, with whom I have a track record of publication declined to touch. It may well be that they are strongly influenced by the desire that their Scottish edition has letters overwhelmingly from Scotland but they (& the Morning Star) have shown a degree of liberal free thinking noticeably absent from the entirety of the rest.

I will put in the letter as an addendum but only on Saturday after it has been published.

ADDENDUM

With a recent Horizon episode (13th July) on the pointed failure of radiation released at Chernobyl to produce a 10s of thousands of deaths predicted & indeed the possible benefit of low & intermediate level radiation (an effect known as hormesis) perhaps your readers would be interested in an even more clear cut case.

In 1983 a group of 180 apartment buildings was completed in Taiwan. Somebody had made a serious mistake. They had mixed into the concrete a considerable amount of highly radioactive cobalt 60. This meant that ultimately 10,000 people lived in buildings for from 9 to 20 years so radioactive that they received an average of 74 mSv of radiation per year in 1983, declining thereafter as cobalt 60 has a half life of 5 ½ years. This compares with a rate of 0.5 mSv above background which is the normal maximum exposure for radiation workers & total of 15 mSv maximum safe limit for land fit for habitation according to US government standards. According to the linear no threshold (LNT) theory currently in use world-wide for assessing nuclear risks there is no lower limit to the level at which radioactivity kills (hence the term "no threshold") & this, inhabited for a decade & a half before the radioactivity was traced & measured, should be the site of a truly massive cancer death rate. It isn't.

A thorough & methodical tracing of all the 4,000 families by a team led by W. L Chen of Taiwan's Director of Medical Radiation Technology of Taiwan's National Yang-Ming University (the full report is available in English on http://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf ) has resulted in an unequivocal & spectacular result. Cancer rates in that highly radioactive building are down to 3.6% of prevailing Taiwanese rates.

For many years there has been an unfashionable alternative to the LNT theory called hormesis. This is an effect, long observed in plants & cultures, whereby intermediate level radioactivity actually improves health. Nonetheless, such has been our fear of all things nuclear that the LNT theory has been absolutely accepted despite the fact that there has NEVER been any actual evidence for it. This study, however, is so detailed, has such well-defined boundary conditions & in proving a reduction in cancers of 96.4% has such a clear result that there can no longer be any intellectual doubt whatsoever. Radioactivity, up to 50mSv, is good for us.

They also gave it a sizeable headline & my photo.

I read this in Scirntific American.

For 10 years, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has been assembling data on the 40,000 civilians who disappeared in the wars that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Its archaeologists help to locate burial sites and assist in exhumation. Then Katzmarzyk and other forensic anthropologists work with molecular biologists to apply state-of-the-art techniques to reassociate and identify remains. It is a daunting assignment: The bodies, mostly men of about the same age, have been buried for years. Decomposing pieces of one person could be spread into five different graves and commingled with other parts.

The quest to identify victims began in 1992, when the United Nations asked forensic adviser William Haglund and a team from Physicians for Human Rights to investigate a mass grave in Croatia. Four years later they returned to document war crimes in the Srebrenica region and collect data to match missing people with exhumed bodies there. Early on, families resisted, insisting their relatives were alive, Haglund recalls. The investigators had to build trust and, before asking for a blood sample, have a potential identity in hand. But that led to delays in collecting DNA for shipment overseas and lots of mistaken probable identifications. In massacre situations, up to 40 percent of circumstantial matches turn out to be wrong, according to one recent study in Kosovo.

Furthermore, the original investigation's primary purpose was prosecution, not identification. The G7 Summit nations voted in 1996 to fund an international laboratory that would focus on the missing and could analyze DNA on-site. Many were skeptical, though, that the newly formed ICMP would succeed. "This was based on a sincere concern that the DNA-identification program could create expectations on the part of families and would be unable to deliver," recalls Eric Stover, who directs the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and was on the forensic team in Croatia. Now, he says, the ICMP's work has become a blueprint for similar efforts elsewhere.

Progress was indeed slow until six years ago, when the ICMP shifted to blind DNA matching. Now, instead of starting with family interviews and anthropological forensics, scientists begin with genetic analysis of the remains. Technicians painstakingly recover whatever DNA they can from a bone, then compare 16 markers against a database of DNA profiles from 80,000 survivors who lost a family member during the war. "We're now at our highest efficiency ever," says ICMP forensics director Tom Parsons. In early July, just after its 10th anniversary, the ICMP identified its 10,000th person. Parsons expects results to soon reach 5,000 a year.

The figure of 40,000 missing civilains clearly is limited to missing Moslems which very strongly suggests that there has been no attempt to check these bodies against the relatives of local Serbs who are 2missing". I sent the following letter to scirntific american & will add an addendum & link if they publish it. since SA have rather a reputation for not publishing letters from global warming sceptics even where they point out indisputable factual inaccuracies I suspect they may take a similarly politically correct but scientifically incorrect attitude here.

Dear Editor,
Your report on the search, using DNA, for the identity of the bodies recovered from Bosnia seems to show a lack of rigour which is unlikely to persuade those who believe that what is going on is a perversion of science to fit a story of good Moslems & evil Serbs which the media have promoted for years.

I was particularly concerned that what has been advertised as a DNA search instead turns out to be based not on identifying the whole DNA of the victim with that of parents but merely finding "16 markers" in common.

This proves nothing. Out of 10s of thousands of DNA links it is a certainty that I & any member of your staff will share many more markers, though we live on different continents.. Indeed we will share that many with any chimpanzee. Since, despite opinions on both sides, the Moslems of Bosnia are not largely Turkish immigrants but drawn from the historic population such markers are bound to repeat extensively. This process should be the start of a DNA search not the end of it, allowing the researchers to identify individuals to whom a full DNA examination would be worthwhile. If somebody's DNA has not been fitted in full to either their own body samples or their parent's they cannot be said to have been positively identified.

I note also that, in discussing the bodies found around Srebrenica, there was no mention of checking the DNA of local Serbs against the "16 points" of comparison. It is a matter of record that the Moslem militia of Srebrenica had, prior to the Serbs attack, been responsible for the genocide of thousands (3,800 have been identified) of civilians from surrounding villages. This was attested to not only by the local Serbian administration, but also, under oath at the Milosevic "trial", by General Marillon, the ranking NATO officer present at the time. Since the bodies under examination were not found in the "mass graves" identified at the time of the alleged massacre of this Moslem militia (they were empty) but close to the villages where the militia under their commander Nasir Oric engaged in his genocide, surely the default position would be to check the DNA of surviving Serbian family members first, yet, despite descriptions of interviews with Moslem families, this goes unmentioned.

The article mentions the slow pace of identification until this dubious process of identification was introduced . This must leave the suspicion that the bodies are actually the otherwise undiscovered bodies of Serb civilians & that far from being an impartial scientific examination what is going on is an attempt to use the name of science to airbrush the genocide of 3,800 Serb civilians & justify NATO's support of the anti-Yugoslav side (all of whom had leaders who, perhaps coincidentally, served Hitler as well as NATO). The fact that one of the directors of the western funded laboratory is Wim Kok, who was PM of the Netherlands at the time when Dutch troops had officially disarmed Mr Oric's troops & were officially manning a cease fire zone around Srebrenica at the when Oric's troops were regularly raiding local villages & shooting, & to be fair beheading their populations. This must strain Mr Kok's ability to oversee an impartial investigation.
Yours Sincerely
Neil Craig

£5 million to £20 million

18) Give a £20 million X-Prize for the first Scots probe soft landing on an asteroid.

19) Build an automated monorail from Glasgow Airport to Paisley Gilnmour St station thus providing speedy access to both Glasgow Central & Prestwick Airport. An offer to quote for this at about £20 million has already been made by Ultra but the Scottish Executive have decided that they would rather have a conventional rail link direct to Central at £200 million. The reason given being that since their option
would avoid transferring from one system to another it is worth the extra money.

20) Fully automate Glasgow's Underground. Docklands Light Rail is able to work without drivers & running such a system is very easily within the capacity of modern computer systems. Such systems are even being considered for running road traffic which involves many orders of magnitude more decisions. A fully automated system would be able would allow many more carriages to run & 24 hour running because not limited by driver availability. It would thus also have considerably higher carrying capacity & lower running costs.

21) Build a Glasgow monorail. Minimum from Central to Queen St, maximum - from Buchanan St opposite Queen St on up to Sauchiehall St out to the west end, Byres Rd & either Partick station, or along Gt Western Rd toAnniesland or to Maryhill shopping centre.

Up to £100 million

22) Make a 5 hour DVD of Scotland's history. Hire somebody, not part of Scotland's small media, probably from Discovery Channel, to put it together, print up 200 million (at 10p a shot), give it out in Scots newagents & post 1 to every household in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealnd & the USA. Produce a permanent online
library of Scots history articles & programmes acceesible free & with links provided on the DVD.

23) Automate the Glasgow-Edinburgh train on the lines previously discussed with the Glasgow Underground. While the computerisation should still be fairly cheap, in some ways cheaper because rolling stock which cannot be updated could still be transferred to other lines, an impractical operation on the Underground. However if the trains are to be run on the basis of single carriages roughly once a minute some redesigning of platforms would be required. This would not be as fast as a bullet train but, because carriages would leave every minute rather than every 15 it would save an average of 7 minutes. Unlike the Bullet Train it would still be able to stop at Falkirk & Haymarket from which half of current journeys either start or en(alternately only some carriages need do so allowing through carriages to cut times further). It could also be easily linked to Turnhouse Airport by a connecting line. In practice, a much cheaper 24 hour automated system should carry many more people between Glasgow & Edinburgh than a bullet train.

24) Build an automated overhead monorail from the far side of the Forth Rail Bridge to Prince's St in Edinburgh. Use the fact that the rail bridge was, because of the Tay Bridge disaster, a heavily overengineered structure & should be easily able to bear the load of a monorail above the rail tracks. An overhead monorail into Edinburgh would not be subject to traffic jams as trolleys are & have the same cost savings as other automated rail.

25) Provide an automated walkway from Turnhouse airport to stations on both adjoining lines or, if the Glasgow/Edinburgh link is built build a loop to the main terminal.

The full wisdom is here. It was originally published in Heinlein's book Time Enough for Love. Go there & see the lot. Here are a few of my favourites:

A generation which ignores history has no past -- and no future.

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate -- and quickly.

An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck".

What are the facts? Again and again and again -- what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" -- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

Everybody lies about sex.

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid.)

Under £1 million

7) Add a glass bridge between the 2 towers of Kelvingrove Museum. This was actually proposed but turned down on the grounds that it was not in keeping with the Victorian architecture of the building. I personally think that maintaining Victorian traditions, in architecture or otherwise, is part of our problem. I also
think walking such a semi-invisible bridge would be an experience well worth having.

If, since the revamp of Kelvin Gallery is already complete, this cannot be done there may be other projects which could similarly be made memorable.

8) Put online video cameras on the top 100 sites of scenic or historic interest in Scotland.

9) Organise & put up prize money for an annual Road from The Isles hovercraft race - starting from Portree in Skye & going by sea to Blackwater reservoir, Loch Rannoch, Loch Tummell to end at Pitlochry. I personally think such a race, apart from encouraging individual engineering & Highland tourism has the potential to be
more exciting than Grand prix racing.

£1 million to £5 million

10) Establish an International Space Law Institute with regular conferences. The objective being to work out
rules which will enable private enterprise to work in outer space.

11) Build a copy of the Skylon in George Square (The Skylon was a 300 ft needle held in place by suspension wires built for the Festival of Britain & demolished in an act of political malice & vandalism by the incoming Tory government - it is perhaps the only truly "iconic" building which has been demolished - it should be possible to replace it in even more modern materials held up by carbon nanotubes for a
relatively small cost.

12) Replace the TV tower at livinston with a taller tower up to 3,000ft above sea level with a a lift going up to reinforced glass platform, or platforms from which you would be able to see most of Scotland up to the Highlands. Put a major visitors centre at the base with interactive exhibits & around a map of Scotland in the floor illustrated by photos taken from the platform.

13) Put a lasar in central Edinburgh & another in Glasgow & 1 hour after sunset to 1 hour before dawn have their beams cross about 5 miles up midway between purely for the fun of it. (This will require health & Safety approval).

14) Build a Buckydome cover to McCaig's folly in Oban, make it watertight & add floors, provide a moving staircase to it & turn it into a visitors centre for the history of the lordship of the Isles, with a view of the islands from the dome. For this to be able to achieve the necessary popularity it will be neccessary to have already automated the rail line.

15) Roof over the pedestrian area of Glasgow. Sauchiehall ST, Buchanan St, Gordon St, Argyll st possibly also providing walkways at first floor level. Thus giving thewhole area many of the benefits of mall shopping withoutdestroying the traditional appearance.

16) Establish an equivalent to the Nobel prizes in subjects not covered by the Nobels because they didn't exist back then. eg Computer programming, space engineering, nanotechnology, genetic design

17) Provide legal aid to individual inventors to register patents worldwide(repayable if the patent proves sufficiently profitable).

This is an interview with the former PM of Singapore. Mr lee is, or at least at his peak was the most successful & very probably the smartest political leader in the world. He lead Singapore From Third World to First (the title of his autobiography). To get your country from the standard of living of Calcutta to above the UK's is as successful as you get. Singapore has, since he quit the top job, fallen back behind the UK in per capita GDP, while Hong Kong forges ahead & I may later look into why. Nonetheless any opinion he has is worth listening to even though his style of government is less democratic than what he would call Confucian & we consider paternalistic. You should read the whole thing but here are some excerpts:
On Chinese growth

I saw it coming from the late 1980s. Deng Xiaoping started this in 1978. He visited Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in November 1978. I think that visit shocked him because he expected three backward cities. Instead he saw three modern cities and he knew that communism -- the politics of the iron rice bowl -- did not work. So, at the end of December, he announced his open door policy. He started free trade zones and from there, they extended it and extended it. Now they have joined the WTO and the whole country is a free trade zone.

I wish our leaders appreciated this. Jack McConnell & Nicol Stephen could learn a lot from this - or at least smarter versions of them could.

On Singapore's future options

We have to move to areas where they cannot move.

SPIEGEL: Such as?

Mr. Lee: Such as where the rule of law, intellectual property and security of production systems are required, because for them to establish that, it will take 20 to 30 years. We are concentrating on bio medicine, pharmaceuticals and all products requiring protection of intellectual property rights.

Meanwhile we are busily doing everything possible to help the Greens prevent the GM industry establishing itself here.

And more on the future

Look at the numbers and quality of the engineers and scientists they produce and you know that this is where the R&D will be done. The Chinese have a space programme, they're going to put a man on the Moon and nobody sold them that technology.

What he doesn't mention is that since Space Adventures moved to Singapore they also have a Space programme. Its just us who don't.

On Europe's future

When you look to Western Europe, do you see a possible collapse of the society because of the overwhelming forces of globalization?

Mr. Lee: No. I see ten bitter years. In the end, the workers, whether they like it or not, will realize, that the cosy European world which they created after the war has come to an end.

SPIEGEL: How so?

Mr. Lee: The social contract that led to workers sitting on the boards of companies and everybody being happy rested on this condition: I work hard, I restore Germany's prosperity, and you, the state, you have to look after me. I'm entitled to go to Baden Baden for spa recuperation one month every year. This old system was gone in the blink of an eye when two to three billion people joined the race -- one billion in China, one billion in India and over half-a-billion in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

SPIEGEL: The question is: How do you answer that challenge?

Mr. Lee: Chancellor Kohl tried to do it. He did it halfway then he had to pause. Schroeder tried to do it, now he's in a jam and has called an election. Merkel will go in and push, then she will get hammered before she can finish the job, but each time, they will push the restructuring a bit forward.

SPIEGEL: You think it's too slow?

Mr. Lee: It is painful because it is so slow. If your workers were rational they would say, yes, this is going to happen anyway, let's do the necessary things in one go. Instead of one month at the spa, take one week at the spa, work harder and longer for the same pay, compete with the East Europeans, invent in new technology, put more money into your R&D, keep ahead of the Chinese and the Indians.

Let me say that I don't really agree that working longer hours is a main part of the answer. I think that what is required is just for government not to waste workers time. Nobody ever accused the Irish of being to hard working it is just that Irish businesses get rewarded with profits & ours get rewarded with more regulations. The entire world is getting wealthier which implies that we can get away with less work as long as it is not wasted.

Why China is not a military threat (& the US implicitly is)

About eight years ago, I met Liu Huaqing, the man who built the Chinese Navy. Mao personally sent him to Leningrad to learn to build ships. I said to him, "The Russians made very rough, crude weapons". He replied, "You are wrong. They made first-class weapons, equal to the Americans." The Russian mistake was that they put so much into military expenditure and so little into civilian technology. So their economy collapsed. I believe the Chinese leadership have learnt: If you compete with America in armaments, you will lose. You will bankrupt yourself. So, avoid it, keep your head down, and smile, for 40 or 50 years.

On why the western aggression against Yugoslavia has made the world a much more dangerous place

Can the Chinese convince their North Korean ally Kim Jong-Il to get rid of his nuclear program?

Mr. Lee: North Korea is a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. The leaders in North Korea believe that their survival depends upon having a bomb -- at least one nuclear bomb. Otherwise, sooner or later, they will collapse and the leaders will be put on trial like Milosevic for all the crimes that they have committed. And they have no intention of letting that happen.

Lee does not say that Milosevic was innocent, nor that he was guilty though you have to read him carefully to spot it, but since I can see no way in which saying in a German magazine that the western powers engaged in war crimes would benefit Singapore I don't think he could have been expected to go further.

I agree with him that so long as as the western powers have no respect for the rule of law (ie that Clinton, Kohl, Blair etc are not brought to trial) any nation (even one as semi-allied to NATO as Yugoslavia was in the 1980s) will ultimately need a Bomb. Stopping proliferation depends on our integrity not our threats.

What China has been doing while the US has been wasting its wealth in a "war on terror" in Iraq.

The Chinese are very conscious of being encircled by allies of America. But they are very good in countering those moves. South Korea today has the largest number of foreign students in China. They see their future in China. So, the only country that's openly on America's side is Japan. All the others are either neutral or friendly to China.

On western democracy

I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that...

& Protestants would vote for Protestants & Hispanics for Hispanics & Germans would blame Jews. Though I am not convinced that he has an inate enthusiasm for democracy he has put his finger on the greatest problem it faces.

On Tuesday the Scotsman had an article about a Professor complaining that Gordon Brown isn't acting worried about a global warming caused hurricane hitting Britain.

Only hurricane will wake Brown to climate - expert

The interesting part of this nonsense is that of 14 comments from the public only 3 take it seriously. Now granted this is not a statisticly balanced sample & granted I am one of the other 11 which makes it even less balanced but if 80% of respondents in a public debate are removing the urine over this particular scare it may have about run its course.

Next year the BBC will be back to telling us that climate change/global dimming is bringing on an ice age again & the solution is to end modern technology plus more taxes.

"Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization & wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they have to do is enjoy what they can understand of it - luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What have they got a government for?.....

"And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they're going to grab the controls"
from Space Viking by H Beam Piper c 1963*


This clearly applies to Tommy Sheriden of the Judean People's Liberation Front & to his opponents of the People's Liberation Front of Judea**. However it also applies to Greens & many respectable & mainstream politicians. The ones who believe, or claim to believe, that windmills & wishing will keep the lights on & insist that scientists will just have to invent "innovative new renewable" energy sources for them to judge. David Cameron, Ming Campbell, Michael Meecher (former environment Minister!) etc either are or (which would be worse) are deliberately acting like barbarians.

Note that I would not apply this term to people like Lenin & Trotsky who, at the very least, were not hitchhikers & were trying to build a civilization in very difficult circumstances (& tools that didn't work). It might not even apply to Stalin.

The current generation of "socialists" such as Sheriden, who, to quote the SSP's European election candidate believe "The SSP exist to destroy all the economic progress that has been made in the last 200 years because it was achieved by capitalism" (stated at an EU hustings meeting, albeit one run by environmentalists - I later, during audience questions described this as obscene)*** should remember that nobody had a greater appreciation of industrial civilization than early Marxists**** on whose metaphorical graves the eco-Marxists are trampling.

*Despite the title, designed for the audience available to early science fiction, this is a deeply thought out piece of politics that would not dishonour the writing of Machiavelli, who did write some fiction of the same kind (except without spaceships). Most of his other stuff is not greatly inferior.

**For non-Scots readers the charismatic Tommy Sheriden, leader of our populist socialist party committed, to a minimum wage of £8 per hour, has managed, though sexualshenaniganss to split his small party (his own section, without deliberate irony being called Solidarity) in the manner lampooned in the film Life of Brian.

*** As partially described in my Scotsman letter of 31/5/4

****Leninn said that communism would be achieved by "Soviet power & the electrification of the whole country" which,naivee though it may sound, is infinitely more sensible than the policy of closing electricity generators pursued by "Marxist, Liberal Democrat & Conservative" politicians.

So Ian Huntley the murderer of the Soham girls has attempted suicide in jail.

"This morning at 1.19am Ian Huntley was found unconscious in his cell in the healthcare wing at HMP Wakefield. Resuscitation was attempted and an ambulance was called immediately. The ambulance took him to hospital.

"He is now being held in a state of heavy sedation whilst he receives treatment for what is believed to be an overdose."

Huntley was jailed for life in December 2003 for killing Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, ten-year-olds who attended a school in Soham, Cambridgeshire, where he worked as a caretaker

What exactly is the point of "saving" him?

If you believe in the death penalty (I do) then obviously he would be nane the waur o' a guid hanging.

However if you believe that executing people is a cruel & unusual punishment then surely to keep him alive when de doesn't want to while imprisoned for the rest of his life (minimum sentence is 40 years) is even more cruel. The normal purpose of prison is to rehabilitate but rehabilitation into society cannot be the purpose here.

We are doubtless going to have somebody from the anti-death penalty side coming on the box explaining that keeping him alive is more cruel that execution & that is why they support it. If I really believed such claims I would have to conclude that the people saying it were unutterably cruel. In fact I think they are just desperately looking for a defence to an indefensible policy. Apart from the cost (£23,000 a year for at least 40 years) what conceivable good does such torture do. Far better a clean kill than this.

I believe that the right to die ought to be a fundamental human right. What can be more fundamental to any life than the right to get out of it. That in backing up society's moral cowardice in not taking the responsibility of execution as the ultimate punishment we are now imposing pointless cruelty out of further moral cowardice.

This table of GDP per head from the CIA World Fact Book should be of interest:

6 United States $ 41,800 2005 est.
7 Ireland $ 41,000 2005 est.
15 Hong Kong $ 32,900 2005 est.
.......
25 United Kingdom $ 30,300 2005 est.

The whole table is worth reading (the first 5 are micro states with oil or financial institutions. The point I am making is that Ireland, a country that 17 years ago had a per capita income 2/3s of ours was in 2005 onlt 2% behind the USA, which means it is probably marginally ahead this year. Granted such figures should not be treated as exact - the fact that Ireland's taxes are so low encourages multinational's accountants to add as much of their value as possible there, on the other hand the fact that the dollar is the world's currency certainly gives the US an edge. However the trend is indisputable.

So do we have something to learn from them? Obviously not if you notice the amount of coverage Ireland doesn't get in our media.

This is something I have been pottering with. Many of them are ideas I have mentioned here before. Most of them could be adapted elsewhere. There are 30 in all.

Zero or negative cost

1) Instead of paying for the Red Road flats to be demolished give them to their occupants, on condition they
sign up to a good factoring agreement. Any unoccupied flats or where the occupants choose to be rehoused rather
tha ownership to be offered free to neighbours or sold at auction. These flats used to be Europe's highest
& are still impressive. It would be interesting to see if private owners & private enterprise can run them
more succesfully than the Council or GHA. Require the same ofer to be made for any other blocks of flats
which GHA wish to demolish.

2) Paint a big orange line along the pavement between Glasgow Central & Queen St stations with the distance in
metres written so that strangers know the way.

3) Immediately allow First the right to run a hovercraft across the Forth to Edinburgh - skip planning controls,
environmental impact statements, inspections, long lunches discussing it etc etc. 16

Under £100,000 (administratiion costs only)

4) Run a public competition for proposals to showcase technology projects costing under £1 million.

5) Invite tenders for the building of an arcology (a town enclosed as a single building) of 10,000 homes
somewhere in the Highlands or Borders with a low population. Such an arcology not to be subject to any planning
permission but must carry long term building insurance.

6) Pass a motion in Holyrood stating that we have a national goal that Scots should be at the cutting edge of
scientific achievement & Scotland should, proportionately to our size, contribute to space development at
least as much as any nation even Singapore.

SPEECH TO LIB DEM CONF 2/10/04
On motion to ban smoking in public places
Section (a) of this motion calls on us to support it only if the case is clearly proven. It isn't. A BMJ statistical analysis found only slight statistical significance when 48 studies were combined. Looked at separately only seven showed significant excesses of lung cancer meaning 41 did not.Further the combined risk was merely 24 percent, also called a "relative risk" of 1.24. Such tiny relative risks are considered meaningless, given the myriad pitfalls in epidemiological studies. "As a general rule of thumb" says the editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine Marcia Angell, "we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more" before even accepting a paper for publication.According to the National Cancer Institute "Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small & are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias or the effect of some other not evident." The main exception to that rule comes when the study is extremely large, but such was not the case with the BMJ analysis. The studies showing excess disease comprised only 1,388 people in total. By contrast a recent study implicating obesity as a cause of early death contained more than three hundred & twenty THOUSAND subjects.

So where does this leave us? Do we know passive smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. No. But we do know that either it does not, or that if it does the risk is so tiny as to be unmeasureable. Does this mean that passive smoking poses no health risks? No. It makes sense that it would aggravate asthma if nothing else. Does it mean that just because smokers arn't murdering other people, they're not still engaged in a nasty, expensive habit that greatly increases their own chances of sickness & premature death? Definitely not. But it does mean that we cannot legitimately limit people's freedom on the basis of this alleged risk to others. Over the next few years Ireland & New York will be able to produce substantial statistical populations & they may prove the banner's case. Or they may disprove it. Or & this is my bet, modern air extraction systems, which can remove 96% of smoke, may be proven effective. We shall see.

Some years ago, to the obvious embarassment of the leadership, the federal party voted to examine lightening the criminal burden on cannabis users. I remember a TV news programme immediately after in which a Mr Michael Howard said we were wrong because nobody should ever, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever even think about thinking about any sort of reform. With it's well known commitment to balance the BBC then interviewed his shadow, Mr Jack Straw who said his opinion was a little more hardline than that.(pause for laughter - none came - this is a tough audience) He has clearly changed his mind.I was very proud of our party that day. It seemed to me that we were acting in the best traditions of classic Liberalism. Having been the first to call for some decriminalisation of cannabis, despite some dubious medical claims, I would be sorry to see us leading the way towards the effective criminalisation of tobacco.Thus I urge you to reject this motion.
..............................
(they passed it by a large majority - we will see)(I would like to acknowledge that the section "A BMJ ......... Definitely not" was listed almost verbatim from http://www.sepp.org/reality/pseudosci.htmla site I reccomend to anybody who believes themselves a free thinker on environmental subjects)________________________________________________

This is also reprinted from my November 2004 archive to be made more accessible. Since then, of course, the ban has been brought in. Less is now said about passive smoking as a proven major health risk & more about the "right" of non-smokers not to be in the vicinity of smokers, without having to stand outside, or indeed in a pub that chooses to go non-smoking.

Success in this venture is entirely measured in terms of enforcement rather than in whether the promised 1,000 lives a year are being saved. There has been no mention of investigations, if any, into whether there has been a great reduction in passive smoking deaths in New York or Ireland.

To be fair to the SLD it is worth pointing out that though I was the only person who spoke directly against the ban but that a number of others spoke for a partial ban on, I suspect, a tactical basis.

SPEECH TO LIB-DEM CONFERENCE 27/10/1 NEIL CRAIG

I wish to speak specifically against the amendment to this motion. Unlike the motion itself which gives reasons for its case, the amendment simply states as a matter of doctrine that nuclear energy must be disposed of. Since this means the loss of 40% of Scotland's electricity within 10 or, with a certain amount of juggling, 15 years I think we are owed a solid justification. Since the main motion hopes for an increase from 11 to 21% of our wind, water & solar capacity this still leaves an overall reduction of 30% on our current capacity. Assuming that over the next 10 years the economy will grow at 2.5% we will have a shortfall of nearly 60% of current capacity. The only option other than rationing is a massive programme of building coal, gas & oil generators & which would obviously involve tearing up the Koyoto Treaty. For the Scottish Liberal Democrats to vote for such a policy would be, & would be seen to be, grossly irresponsible. The example of California should be a warning. There the richest part of the richest society in the world is suffering regular power blackouts because for the last 20 years political considerations have prevented the building of generating capacity.

At the slight risk of being burned at the stake as a heretic I now intend to speak in favour of nuclear power.It has been calculated by Professor Cohen of Pittsburgh that, even if there were no other source, uranium particles recovered from seawater could keep our present nuclear power industry going for 5 billion years, whereas the sun is expected to explode in five & a half. It must therefore be considered as pretty sustainable. In general terms nuclear energy is competitive with coal & significantly cheaper than oil or gas. The French are currently generating 77% of their power atomically. They are also profitably selling power to all their neighbours, including us.

The basic arguments used against following their example are the risk caused by accidents, waste disposal & leakage of low level radiation. They are all wrong. The worst accident was at Chernobyl in 1986 caused by the Soviet notorious neglect of safety. As a result 10/20,000 deaths were predicted. Despite the most minute tracking of variations in cancer rates the total currently stands at 45. By comparison in another Soviet accident, in 1989, 570 people on a train died in a gas pipeline explosion. The total of deaths in the following 15 years is 2, in Japan. Bearing in mind that we are talking about creating nearly 20% of all humanity's energy for that period this is a safety record not even approached by any other industry in human history. At the same time to mine coal we tolerate the deaths of hundreds of thousands annually worldwide from black lung & an unquantified but large number from emphysema when we burn it. Waste disposal is truly a non-problem. Reactor waste is very nasty stuff but there is no technical difficulty in turning it into glass producing an entire cubic metre per reactor year. This can be stored in a very deep hole where it will be safe for millions of years. This is not even a problem for our remote descendants since a highly radioactive material is, by definition, one with a relatively short half-life. After 10 years reactor waste radioactivity is reduced a thousandfold. After 500 it is less radioactive than the ore originally mined. This is also why decommissioning reactors is normally unnecessary. Just lock the door & leave it. Recent research on radiation has shown it is not the threat we thought. Classically estimates of the danger of low level radiation have been based on the theory that there was a linear progression from say 5000milliSieverts (a level which will kill 50% of people within a month) to zero with no safe limit in between. Purely because it was a very conservative assumption it was proper to use it when we had no better model. We do now. Following the failure of Chernobyl to satisfy the theoretical predictions statistical examinations have been made of victims of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombs, people who worked with radium & most importantly hundreds of thousands of tests of radon in homes. The results have consistently shown that at low levels, below 150 milliSvs radiation has no bad effect. Indeed the radon tests have actually shown a negative correlation between radioactivity & cancer. This is not as strange as it seems. Many things are dangerous in large dose but beneficial in small. 1 aspirin may cure you but 1000 will kill. By comparison you & I will normally have a dose of 2mSvs a year, nuclear workers & uranium miners get 2.5 & airline pilots, because they work at high altitude, get about 6.

In conclusion it is clear that the only thing we have to fear from nuclear electricity is fear itself. This is not a good reason to prepare ourselves for blackouts. The human race has an unlimited future if we will only reach out for it.Anyone who wants to check what I have said should surf www.world-nuclear.org or www.formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ nuclear
--------------------------------------------

This is the speech I made some years ago to the Lib Dems against an Executive amendment dismissing any use of nuclear power. It went over fairly well - the 5 billion year line got a laugh - & despitr Jim Wallace, then leader, saying in his main speech that he didn't see how any Liberal could support nuclear & Ross Finnie being drafted in at the end to do a speech ignoring any technical questions & asking us not to "embarass" the leadership 1/3rd of the members voted my way.

In the intervening years the closure of Torness has been put back a the early 2020s but the facts remain unaltered. Tony Blair, who at the time called nuclear an "unattractive option" may now be considered a follower of me.

This speesch was also in my original page - now part of the November 2004 archive - but I ahve reposted it here to make it more accessible.