Saturday, March 23, 2013
Iraq War, Immigration & UKIP - Scotsman Letter
Very gratifying that this letter went in and unedited.
Jack Kilpatrick's letter about foreign students of nuclear engineering (22 March) reminded me of a lateral thinking alternative to the trillion dollar invasion of Iraq.
Offer citizenship in Western countries to the few dozen leading nuclear and chemical scientists in Iraq with their immediate families.
This is the sort of limited immigration of people who would be of value to the host nation that Ukip supports, rather than that of unlimited people from the poorest countries in Europe and beyond, which we don’t.
The lack of even so few people would have made it impossible for Iraq to produce weapons of mass destruction, even had it been trying to, without all the death and destruction that actually happened.
The option was rejected, which is one of a number of reasons to think those parties pushing for war (Ukip specifically not being among them) did not actually believe their own scare story about WMDs.
Neil Craig
Secretary
UKIP Glasgow branch
Even including my UKIP membership in the signature. I was surprised because, though I thought it raised an interesting bit of history, it was so clearly UKIP supportive and I had so recently had a letter in the Scotsman that it would not be chosen. Clearly I was wrong and the Scotsman are making an effort to be balanced to UKIP. This is the sort of thing that shows UKIP are not "right wing" or "left wing". The only sense in which we can be considered consistently right is that the old parties make a policy of being consistently wrong, indeed inane.
This article gives details of the Iraqi Scientists Immigration Act.
The leading letter today is also remarkably good. It is about something I have tried to get published repeatedly - that cheap energy is the route to getting out of recession and that our political leaders should stop trying to make it more expensive or as is increasingly like - unavailable.
We are not saving the planet by coating our countryside in turbines or from introducing carbon prices or any other of the regulations that will continue to send electricity, that vital commodity for civilised life, spiralling upwards in price.
Instead it looks increasingly like the ultimate economic suicide note while others round the world take full advantage of cheap fuel and the economic activity and employment that goes with it.
Worldwide emissions have continued to burgeon and will do so for the foreseeable future.
If we had shut everything here it would have had no discernible effect for unambiguously distinguishing natural variation from mankind’s contribution.
What is needed now is politicians with the courage to admit errors and abandon policies that inflict direct damage on the people they represent.
We need cheap, reliable electricity, however it may be got, not political or green fundamentalist hubris about unrealistic targets.
.
The climatologists’
models for which so much was claimed have proven poor predictors of future change and should never have been taken so easily at face value. Jack Kilpatrick's letter about foreign students of nuclear engineering (22 March) reminded me of a lateral thinking alternative to the trillion dollar invasion of Iraq.
Offer citizenship in Western countries to the few dozen leading nuclear and chemical scientists in Iraq with their immediate families.
This is the sort of limited immigration of people who would be of value to the host nation that Ukip supports, rather than that of unlimited people from the poorest countries in Europe and beyond, which we don’t.
The lack of even so few people would have made it impossible for Iraq to produce weapons of mass destruction, even had it been trying to, without all the death and destruction that actually happened.
The option was rejected, which is one of a number of reasons to think those parties pushing for war (Ukip specifically not being among them) did not actually believe their own scare story about WMDs.
Neil Craig
Secretary
UKIP Glasgow branch
Even including my UKIP membership in the signature. I was surprised because, though I thought it raised an interesting bit of history, it was so clearly UKIP supportive and I had so recently had a letter in the Scotsman that it would not be chosen. Clearly I was wrong and the Scotsman are making an effort to be balanced to UKIP. This is the sort of thing that shows UKIP are not "right wing" or "left wing". The only sense in which we can be considered consistently right is that the old parties make a policy of being consistently wrong, indeed inane.
This article gives details of the Iraqi Scientists Immigration Act.
The leading letter today is also remarkably good. It is about something I have tried to get published repeatedly - that cheap energy is the route to getting out of recession and that our political leaders should stop trying to make it more expensive or as is increasingly like - unavailable.
We are not saving the planet by coating our countryside in turbines or from introducing carbon prices or any other of the regulations that will continue to send electricity, that vital commodity for civilised life, spiralling upwards in price.
Instead it looks increasingly like the ultimate economic suicide note while others round the world take full advantage of cheap fuel and the economic activity and employment that goes with it.
Worldwide emissions have continued to burgeon and will do so for the foreseeable future.
If we had shut everything here it would have had no discernible effect for unambiguously distinguishing natural variation from mankind’s contribution.
What is needed now is politicians with the courage to admit errors and abandon policies that inflict direct damage on the people they represent.
We need cheap, reliable electricity, however it may be got, not political or green fundamentalist hubris about unrealistic targets.
.
(Prof) Tony Trewavas FRS FRSE
Scientific Alliance Scotland
Labels: International politics, letters, UKIP
