A Place to Stand

David Lindsay has what I found to be an informative article on the rise without trace of Miliband

He bought a baby on the Internet. But nobody is mentioning that. He only got into Oxford because his super-posh school was nominally part of ILEA, which had a special access scheme effectively controlled by his father. But nobody is mentioning that. His father then got him into the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, clearly at the beck and call of a pro-Soviet fanatic. But nobody is mentioning that.

He has never worked outside politics. But nobody is mentioning that. His predecessor at South Shields was ennobled at the last minute in order that he could be imposed on that safe seat without reference to the Constituency

.....I repeatedly heard the heavy gasps from Labour and Fabian audiences full of teachers as he displayed just how spectacularly ignorant and incompetent he was, all the while assuming that he was uttering axioms and truisms),

And on no subject is his ignorance & incompetence better demonstrated than in his devotion to the coming populist issue of the day, as he believes, global warming. His friends in the eco-fascist movement have kindly collected some of his inanities for public edification including

...the science is getting worse faster than the politics is getting better though I suppose that could be taken 2 ways

......climate change is the greatest long-term threat faced by humanity. It could cause more human and financial suffering than the two world wars and the great depression put together

.....by 2050 we need all activities outside agriculture to be near zero carbon emitting

,,,,,,The scale of this threat... means that this simply must be our top priority

,,,,,,[destroying ourselves} so too will China and India if they follow the same path of economic development as us

So Labour's future is to depend on this idiot being right about the catastrophic temperature rises that he is so obviously wholly wrong about. To be fair a lot of other idiots appear on that site too.

He also has his own blog, which stirred a bit of controversy some time ago when it turned out the taxpayer was paying $60,000 a year for it. Visiting it for the first time in a couple of years I find he has a lying platitude about Karadzic on it. Fortunately most allowed comments are unconvinced - whether mine will appear will become clear.

Regretably he sems to be almost a perfect example of the amoral ignorant, officious. murderous, inbred, cossetted fascists who form Britain's political class. He naturally gets much support from the BBC & other organs of that class.

Barry George was cleared at the Old Bailey today after eight years of trying to prove he did not kill television presenter Jill Dando.
George, 48, was found not guilty of murder after his second trial and two appeals.
George, an epileptic with mental disability, was originally found guilty of murder in 2001.

Some significant progress in the fight against Alzheimer's.

UK scientists have developed a drug which may halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
Trials of the drug, known as Rember, in 321 patients showed an 81% difference in rate of mental decline compared with those not taking the treatment.
The Aberdeen University researchers said the drug targeted the build-up of a specific protein in the brain.
Alzheimer's experts were optimistic about the results, but said larger trials were now needed.

Nor is this the only advance "Researchers from the University of Melbourne believe they're on the right track, with a study they've presented overnight at an international conference in Chicago" As a rule of thumb when there are more than one way of possibly achieving something it becomes highly likely that at least 1 will work.

I suspect most of us know of somebody who does, or did, suffer from this. By comparison mere death is a clean option.

Apparently it will take 4 years for all the government safety testing of this. The obvious problem is that there are human costs to such delays. I am certain that there are a lot of people whose minds are currently disappearing who would very happily take the risk if it meant they continue to have a life. Indeed the radio is saying that the university have been "inundated" with people phoning up begging to be used in the trials. It is wrong for government to deprive them of that right. There is a place for government testing of drugs but there is no reason why adults should not be able to choose to take non-tested drugs if they choose. Like all bureaucracies government drug testing has grown & grown, more to the benefit of those running it than those who are officially being protected. The law should be changed immediately to allow this.

I suspect we will see this drug being available more quickly in the far east & thus also bought across the internet, whatever the legalities.

I certainly hope so.

Scottish government report on growth

*GDP rose by 2.1 per cent annually and increased by 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 (seasonally adjusted).
*In the year to end-March 2008, the Scottish service sector grew by 3.2 per cent, the production sector fell by 0.4 per cent and the construction sector fell by 2.9 per cent.
*In the first quarter of 2008, the service sector grew by 0.5 per cent, the production sector declined by 0.1 per cent and the construction sector fell by 0.4 per cent.

UK Figures:
*The UK figures show that GDP rose by 2.8 per cent in the year to end-March 2008 and by 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2008.
*Over the year, the UK experienced 3.5 per cent growth in services, 0.5 per cent growth in production and the construction sector grew by 2.4 per cent.
*In the first quarter of 2008, the UK service sector grew by 0.3 per cent, the production sector declined by 0.2 per cent and the construction sector grew by 0.4 per cent.

So we are still behind the UK average though arguably only by more than 1/2% rather than a full 1%. Wow. Worse than that, while services including government spending, are growing faster than average, there has not only been a slight fall in manufacturing but a major fall in building. This may explain why Scots house prices are still rising when UK ones are falling. Since construction is almost entirely constrained by "planning" regulations it is clear that, while the bits of the economy dependent on government spending are growing the bit destroyed by government regulation is doing particularly badly.

By comparison, in 1990, a year after Ireland started its economic reforms its growth rate was up to 4%

Still no sunpsots.

There are still 2 pages of world news reports in the last hour on alleged global warming - and 5 pages on "climate change".

A series of disastrous election defeats have plunged Britain's Labour government into disarray. As Prime Minister Gordon Brown fights for survival, a political drama with momentous consequences is unfolding before our eyes. One of the last centre-left governments in Europe looks set to fall.

Many analysts of Labour's disintegration attribute the collapse of support to the current economic downturn, a perfect storm of global credit crunch combined with falling house and rising oil prices. In reality, the defeats Labour has suffered in recent elections mirror the deepening crisis now affecting almost every social democratic party in Europe. New Labour's pledge to evade the burden of high taxation has been broken. In recent years, almost all of Europe's social democratic parties have lost in national elections. The collapse of support for Brown and his policies reveals a general decline of Europe's social democracy as a whole.

There are many good reasons for the deterioration of the centre-left's political influence and power. But perhaps one of the most crucial is the abandonment of their traditional core value of progressive optimism. After all, the left used to derive large amounts of its popular appeal from a firm belief in social and technological advancement, a political philosophy of societal optimism and hope. During the last couple of decades, however, it has eagerly adopted a green ideology that has replaced its confidence in future progress with the ever more intimidating prediction of climate catastrophe and environmental disaster, culminating in calls for economic sacrifices and collective belt-tightening.

In short, Britain's Labour Party has discarded its "progressive" principles for environmental fear-mongering and salvationist rhetoric in the expectation that voters would accept that only government control, central planning and higher taxes could prevent global disaster. At the core of Labour's environmental philosophy and polity-making stands the notion that people in Britain and other industrialized countries consume too much energy derived from the burning of fossil fuels. For many years, Labour has chanted the green mantra that in order to prevent disastrous climate change caused by excessive energy consumption, Britons must make personal sacrifices in their lifestyle and behaviour. No other government in the world has employed the spectre of climate catastrophe as forcefully as Britain; no other administration has saddled taxpayers with a heavier burden of green taxation.
Eighteen months ago, Labour's David Miliband proposed the introduction of carbon "credit cards" that would be issued as part of a nationwide carbon-rationing scheme. He suggested the allocation of an annual allowance for basic needs such as travel, energy or food. Two days after Labour's disastrous defeat in the local elections, the whole scheme was hastily abandoned. Motorists in the UK are paying the highest fuel taxes in Europe, an average of almost £900 [$1800] annually. In the name of climate change mitigation, the government has progressively increased fuel, road and car taxes. It has burdened companies with a so-called Climate Change Levy and introduced an emissions trading scheme -- costly policies that have had damaging effects on British competitiveness, energy prices and living standards. As a direct result, a record number of people, particularly Britain's poorest, oldest and most vulnerable, are increasingly falling on hard times. As many as five million households, more than 20% of the UK's population, are today living in "fuel poverty."

It is estimated that the economic burden of green taxes in Britain accounts for more than £20-billion annually this obviouslyincludes nothing for the growth foregone over previoud decaded -N. British companies have lost one million manufacturing jobs since the levy was introduced in 2001. And a recent government report has warned that any attempt to meet Britain's renewable energy targets would cost taxpayers some £75-billion, a price tag that would mean extra costs of more than £3,000 for every family in the UK.

Fundamental to the multi-billion government subsidies for solar and wind energy companies is a direct transfer of wealth and money from the poor to the well-off. By subsidizing green companies and their uncompetitive products, ordinary taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for green gadgets that have little if any effect on the climate but are making green businessmen richer at the expense of ordinary families.

Labour's foolhardy policies are shaped by the conviction that, in the words of Miliband, tackling climate change is "the mass mobilizing movement of our age." The principles of fairness and equality used to stand at the heart of centre-left governments. Protecting the interests of poor and disadvantaged members of society was essential to the popular appeal of left and labour parties. Those parties have substituted these ideals with an environmental program in which saving the planet for the generations of the future has taken priority over the principle of liberating the underprivileged and disadvantaged from poverty and restitution
today. In effect, the Labour Party is gradually pricing the working and lower-middle classes out of their comfort zone. With these core voters counting the rising cost of green taxes, tariffs and restrictions, the Labour Party's chances of re-election are dwindling.

Labour's fundamental miscalculation has been to bank on the strength of the environmental movement and climate change anxiety in an attempt to "modernize" its agenda Cameron's Tories & the LibDems too - N. Labour's climate policy, however, is now backfiring, turning into one of its biggest political liabilities. A recent survey suggests that more than 70% of British voters are no longer willing to pay higher taxes to fund climate change initiatives. In fact, twothirds of those surveyed believe that the green agenda has been exploited in order to increase taxes. Britain's Labour government may believe that its climate policies are saving the planet. But in the process they are destroying the foundations of the party.
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This is an article by Benny Peiser of CCNet published in the Financial Post, but no longer available there. Everything that he said about Labour could apply to an even greater desgree about the LibDems who have given up any connection to traditional liberalism in exchange for Ludditism & the nanny state.