A Place to Stand

Guido has this graph suggesting that the Conservatives are being squeezed by their voters going to UKIP. However this is false as I commented.

34neilfutureboy says:

Now that is a dishonest presentation of a graph. By baselining the graph at 16% it shows the 17% who moved from Labour as 1/6th of those who moved from the Tories whereas in fact it is 16/22nds (73%). It thereby falsely enhances the Conservative claim that their collapse is due to UKIP “splitting” the vote and tries to frighten people into voting Tory to “keep out the other rascals”.

In fact all 3 parties have been treated with justified contempt

This matters because if UKIP can win across the board then the "don't vote for them or you'll let the other lot in" argument falls. The other lots voters are equally (or at least 73% as much) disenchanted.

Both Tories and LibDems had a 14% swing against them which would wipe both out. The Libs merely won by default which conceals that it was as much of a disaster for them as for the Tories.
The really good news is not just UKIP's rising vote but that it is fairly equally distributed among ex Tory, Pseudo-liberal, Labour and no-shows. Thus the Conservatives are losing not because they are losing a constant "right wing" vote to UKIP but simply because they are crap, while the total "right wing" vote is actually rising significantly.   In those terms I have to remind readers of the definition of "right wing" put by SNP MSP John Mason and one of our "environmentalist" allies that to be right wing is to believe that there is a place for the free market to achieve growth & to be against unlimited 3rd world immigration; and that it is to "not like paying taxes" respectively.   Which shows how much we need a government which shares the values of ordinary people

    Assuming that the LibDems lost people to Labour who were naturally Labour voters who voted LD to keep out the Tories (the normal phenomenon across southern England) Labour must, in turn have haemorrhaged the same number of people to UKIP.

    Thus UKIP have picked up votes from every part of the LabConDem cartel.

    The Pseudo-Liberals dropped from 46% to 32%. The only kept the seat because it is now a 3 way marginal. During the BBC coverage last night Paul Nuttall was in the studio but got very little chance to speak - Andrew neil spent to vast majority of time speaking to the Labour, Tory spokesmen, ie the 3rd and 4th parties. It was so egregious that on one occasion when Paul spoke his voice was very quiet for several seconds - it was clear the BBC had turned off his microphone, a tactic I have heard of before but one they have always denied doing.

   However he did get to say that the postal votes (17,000 sent out and returned before the campaign was under way) had split 40/30/30 for the LDs. That means 1,700 excess LD votes. Thus neck and neck in terms of votes cast on the day. Paddy Ashdown was also quoted as having said that if the campaign had lasted another week the trend would have given it to UKIP so the LDs were right to make it the shortest possible campaign.

I put this comment on John Redwood in response to his blaming UKIP for being splitters, which he has unusually chosen to censor.

"Cameron broke the "cast iron" previous promise of an EU referendum.

Cameron gratuitously insulted UKIP voters.

Cameron would clearly prefer a Labour government to one which was sceptical of the EU, CAGW & unlimited immigration

UKIP have obviously picked up votes from all parties. Even if the leaders were insane enough to offer their support to the current Tories it must be obvious that those voters would not go.

If the Conservative membership want to avoid splitting the vote it is time to act.

The Conservatives support an openly corrupt electoral system which disenfranchises voters for small parties (in this case the Conservatives). This was an immoral argument, but an effective one when they were the majority but, using only that, rather than trying to argue against UKIP policies, leaves you morally bankrupt when you are the minority."

I also put this on Delingpole in reply to his listing of the reasons not to vote Tory.

"I would make the vital things much earlier.



That all but 3 MPs (all Tories but still only 3) voted for Miliband's insane Climate Change Act, which is costing us at least $800 BILLION aa well as putting us in recession.


Cameron breaking his "cast iron" earlier promise of an EU referendum.


There are a large number of other policies on which UKIP is superior to the Tories - indeed almost all of them * - but these are issues on which, even without UKIP, the Tories would have proved they are unfit for government.


* I note that both Boris and Toby Young were calling on those who prefer UKIP in Eastleigh to vote Tory anyway to prevent splitting the vote. Even when true it is an immoral argument since the Tories support this corrupt unrepresentative electoral system and are thus blackmailing voters. However in this instance both owe the voters a public apology and acknowledgement that if they don't want splitting they will now advise even Tories to vote UKIP.


It is noticeable that neither they nor anybody else has felt able to tell people to vote Tory because their policies are better than UKIP's thereby giving away any moral argument for their party."
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  I also have a new article on ThinkScotland on adding vitamin D to staple foods in Scotland. Please put comments there.

http://www.thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics/articles.html?read_full=11979&article=www.thinkscotland.org

  It mainly consists of stuff here before but I have added this politically incorrect bit of evolutionary promotion of Scotsmen.

"It is somewhat politically incorrect to point out that evolving in an area with a particular evolutionary cost cannot have entirely failed to have some effect. If most of Scotland's evolutionary heritage comes from people who, over the last 10,000 years, were particularly stressed on such issues we would be expected to be evolved to be slightly tougher than other nations, slightly more able to carry on in situations of stress and depression and also slightly more subject to sunburn if our peely wally skin is exposed to more equatorial sunlight. I don't think anybody would dispute the last. Even today the go-getting Scotsman is recognised as a cliche worldwide and cliches only become such if there is something to create them.

UPDATE John Redwood has put up this post saying that while he sometimes eliminates posts because they make assertions of fact that hr does not know to be factual and not libelous he does not remove them merely because he disagrees. I  have resubmited a new version of my post.

  From Dennis Tito's Inspiration Mars site:

In 2018, the planets will literally align, offering a unique orbit opportunity to travel to Mars and back to Earth in only 501 days. Inspiration Mars is committed to sending a two-person American crew – a man and a woman – on an historic journey to fly within 100 miles around the Red Planet and return to Earth safely.
The mission’s target launch date is Jan. 5, 2018. This exceptionally quick, free-return orbit opportunity occurs twice every 15 years. ..... It will be financed primarily through philanthropic donations, with some potential support from government sources.
This mission will be a flyby passing within 100 miles of the surface of Mars. Additional maneuvers will be minor course corrections only, using the gravitational influence of Mars to “slingshot” the vehicle onto a return course to Earth. An inflatable habitat module will be deployed after launch and detached prior to re-entry.

Investments in human space exploration technologies and operations by NASA and the space industry are converging in time to make such a mission achievable. The mission is being designed based on proven Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) systems and technologies that are available on the market today....
The beauty of this mission is its simplicity. The flyby architecture lowers risk, with no critical propulsive maneuvers, no entry into the Mars atmosphere, and no rendezvous and docking. It also represents the shortest duration roundtrip mission to Mars

    That site doesn't give a cost but unofficially it is being estimated at $1 bn (£600 million) which is remarkable, when you consider Obama cancelled NASA's Mars mission when a review had concluded that it would cost on the order of $150 billion. NASA has already spent many billions on feasibilty studies without going anywhere.

    This does seem to confirm the view that, though government has far more money than any individual, if we want the money actually used usefully it is going to be through private enterprises.

    It also confirms that there is money available for use and investment in space. The other projects I have previously discussed in this vein are investments. Actually of the 2 choices I favour investment since that alone makes space development sustainable in the long term. But if Tito does this it will certainly encourage normal investment, probably some of it by him. Tito is the billionaire who spent $20 million to be a "tourist" on a Russian space flight.

   Personally I think the way to go is with some form of nuclear rocket. The simplest is the original Orion - with lift off and voyage powered by atomic bombs.

    This from the Register;

if concerns over nuclear power could be assuaged, small dustbin-sized fission reactors of the type used in submarines could be employed. Chang-Díaz reckons that such a ship could do the Earth-Mars run in just 39 days.
In 2002, he wrote (pdf):
While a human Mars mission based on solar power is technically feasible, it is operationally fragile. Beyond Mars, the use of solar power for transporting and supporting human life would not be possible ... As their robotic precursors have done, future human interplanetary spacecraft will rely on nuclear power to explore the far reaches of the solar system and beyond.

If the human race is ever going beyond Mars, or ever going to see anything more of the universe than our own planetary backyard - if any of the more adventurous science fiction is ever going to become true - we're going to need nuclear power, it would seem. And lots of it.

     I have also written of small nuclear reactors which could do the job too. The advantage of such craft is that while they may not be able to achieve the sort of high thrust needed for take off they can provide a lower thrust for very long periods and low acceleration maintained continuously is all that is needed for settlement of the entire solar system. This article explains  

at an acceleration of 1 G. Distance travelled drops with the square root of the acceleration and goes up with the square of the time spent accelerating ) so a rocket. Pluto is 29 AU so at a constant acceleration of 0.1 G it is ( root of 29/12.2 x root of 10) 4.9 weeks, less than an ocean voyage to Australia.
   Of course this depends on false government promoted concerns over nuclear power being "assuaged". So that is what the governmental role in space development now comes down to - trying to invent reasons not to do it.

    But this means that, by definition, once individuals have got to space and government have proven unable to do so, the individuals are literally beyond the reach of parasitic government. When that happens nothing is impossible. And that may be the most important part of Tito going to Mars in 2018 when NASA's ever receding date was no earlier than the 2030s.

   This letter has just gone out to 55 papers across Britain and elsewhere so it isn't technically censored yet. I'm betting. In the unlikely event that that the MSM don't prove, yet again to be corrupt censoring scum I will, of course, apologise to them.

Any side bets. This brings it up to 756 letters sent out on 28 gate (admittedly mostly duplicates) without any dead tree publication.

Sir,


Red Nose Day certainly raises a lot of money for good causes, as it ought to with the effort the BBC puts into promoting it. But where does it go?

Some of that money went to the International Broadcasting Trust which, while hardly composed of starving kids, sounds like it might be a worthy cause.

As it turns out the IBT was the organisation the BBC turned to set up the symposium of what for 6 years they have repeatedly described as "28 leading scientists", who advised them that the science was so settled over the catastrophic global warming alarmism that they were perfectly right to ignore their legal duty of balance, slanting the news and censoring dissent to push this scare story.

The BBC hired teams of barristers and induced Helen Boaden, suspended due to her role in the Savile scandal, now been appointed Head of Radio, to testify on oath that they were not only all scientists but "scientists with contrasting views” in their attempt to stop a Freedom of Information request for names.

When this broke, reported under the name "28 gate" by about 100 million blog sites we found out who the IBT had laid on. 2 scientists, a large number of government funded alarmists (including the 2 scientists), some renewable salespeople, to ensure the support of higher authority, somebody from the Church of England and another from the US embassy and a collection of foreign aid activists. The testified scientists with multiple views were non-existent.


IBT started off, with red nose money, as a lobbyist for foreign aid activity before adding warming alarmist lobbying to its portfolio. Our charity money at work.


Neil Craig

Ref Boaden's testimony http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/20-28-gate-bbc-crisis-deepens-in-exposure-of-rigged-and-unlawful-climate-policy.html

28 gate and the IBT http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/climate28_named_wtf/
 
   And incidentally the Scotsman has cocked a snook at integrity by inviting Alex Orr, discussed before, who is a paid, through his company, PR flack for the windmill industry and is presumably also paid for his constant flacking for the EU & the SNP to write a "personal" opinion piece today.

This links to the Telegraph's collection of worldwide Earthlights - nightime photos from orbit.
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James Delingpole on Why we fight the EcoFascists
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The Holyrood Magazine interview with Nigel Farage. Nigel even gets a few words in though obviously not as many as the interviewer.
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Westminster Parliamentary candidate suspended for pointing out that Hitler was a National Socialist, leader of the Socialist Workers Party of Germany. The party that suspended her for thus bringing down the good name of socialism was the Conservatives.

    Hayek also wrote a considerable amount about how the Nazis and Fascists were an offshoot of socialism - many of their leaders and followers being "ex-socialists" and both committed to centralised state control of the economy in the interests of their own supporters. His point was that the socialists promoted the interests of the industrial workers whereas the Fascists promoted those of the lower middle classes, particularly the bureaucracy, and thus had a somewhat stronger base. Thus when the socialists had made state control popular their displacement by others also wanting the state run for their benefit is the inevitable consequence. Looking at the current Labour party, in which there are no working class people to be seen bow that Prescott has gone, who could disagree? As he pointed out it is only classic liberalism that is diametrically opposed to fascism, though nowadays even the name liberal has been corrupted by its foes using the word but meaning the opposite.

   I presume Hayek's writings have also been barred by the Tory party.
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  For anybody who thinks there could be even a smidgen of truth in the various ecofascist claims about us exceeding the earth's carrying capacity comes this http://www.cesaremarchetti.org/archive/scan/MARCHETTI-076.pdf . It works out what is the true capacity, with current or near current technology, the carrying capacity actually is. It comes to a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000 (170 times current) with an average standard of living matching that of those on about £100,000 a year now ($100,000 a couple of decades ago).

   This is without any space development at all. Thus I see this as very much a minimum.
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  Just when you think the British press must be the world's most corrupt Jerry Pournelle links to this article in the Daily Mail as the best reporting of the truth behind Obama's actions, or rather lack thereof, during the Benghazi attack.
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“I doubt that we will be investing the kind of money we have been investing unless there are propositions which attract not only us but also enable other capital lenders to come into the market place.



“The UK government needs to understand that capital is a scarce resource.” Ministers say £110bn of investment in new power plants is needed to keep the lights on over the next decade

     What a delightful world Ministers live in where money is no problem and they can artificially push up the cost of power stations to £110 billion without worrying.
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You can see why they like the EU then

Brussels out of control - E200 billion Green subsidies

   Enjoyed this article from the Von Mises Institute. The list speaks for itself.

"1. Prevent or delay liquidation


“Lend money to shaky businesses, call on banks to lend further, etc.” [Done. Tarp, auto bailouts, and the Fed’s mondustrial policy. See recently John B. Taylor in the Wall Street Journal: “The low rates also make it possible for banks to roll over rather than write off bad loans, locking up unproductive assets.”]

2. Inflate further


“Further inflation blocks the necessary fall in prices, thus delaying adjustment and prolonging depression. Further credit expansion creates more malinvestments, which, in their turn, will have to be liquidated in some later depression. A government ‘easy money’ policy prevents the market's return to the necessary higher interest rates.” [Done in spades.]

3. Keep wage rates up

“Artificial maintenance of wage rates in a depression insures permanent mass unemployment. Furthermore, in a deflation, when prices are falling, keeping the same rate of money wages means that real wage rates have been pushed higher. In the face of falling business demand, this greatly aggravates the unemployment problem.”

4. Keep prices up

“Keeping prices above their free-market levels will create unsalable surpluses, and prevent a return to prosperity.” [3 and 4 are both direct results of current Fed actions, including price inflation targets near 2%.]

5. Stimulate consumption and discourage saving


“We have seen that more saving and less consumption would speed recovery; more consumption and less saving aggravate the shortage of saved-capital even further. Government can encourage consumption by ‘food stamp plans’ and relief payments. It can discourage savings and investment by higher taxes, particularly on the wealthy and on corporations and estates. As a matter of fact, any increase of taxes and government spending will discourage saving and investment and stimulate consumption, since government spending is all consumption. Some of the private funds would have been saved and invested; all of the government funds are consumed. Any increase in the relative size of government in the economy, therefore, shifts the societal consumption-investment ratio in favor of consumption, and prolongs the depression.” [The federal government has expanded from a bloated 18–20% of the economy to 23–25% of the economy under the current administration. The Bush fiscal stimulus in 2008 and the majority of the 2009 Obama stimulus supported consumption relative to investment as did the ineffective recently repealed temporary payroll tax cut.]


6. Subsidise unemployment

“Any subsidisation of unemployment (via unemployment ‘insurance,’ relief, etc.) will prolong unemployment indefinitely, and delay the shift of workers to the fields where jobs are available.” [Does anything need added here?]


#5 here seems to be the entire Labour/LibDim policy and most of the current Tory policy. To be fair I think Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms are keeping the present government free of #6, which is probably most of the reason unemployment is actually falling despite the recession continuing.

Of course none of the Institute founders ever imagined a government so insane that it would actually deliberately force us into recession by cutting the energy supply.

  Back on the 1st of February, having already spent some time reporting to the UK's Attorney general's office, I contacted the Glasgow police to report the perjury in court of Helen Boaden. then BBC head of News, now Head of Radio, and possibly others.

   Having seen the police spending about £2 million prosecuting Tommy Sheriden for the samer crime but in less simple and blatant cirumstances I and trusting to justice being delivered in a politically impartial way I expected them to immediately act. The fact that I immediately received an email promising a response within  48 hours confirmed this view.

    On the 4th email I got bacj a reply saying that the police hed tried to phone and visit me "numerous" times, at my shop but it had been closed. Why none of these occasions was when shops are open was not explained.

    Then on Thursday I got a phone call the circunstances of which are clear from this replu I then emailed.

"Dear Constable Graham,


Thank you for your telephone call today (21st Feb). Since you specifically refused to put in writing (letter or email) what you said please confirm if I have got anything wrong.


You confirmed that perjury is a serious crime which the police are duty bound to investigate.


You confirmed that I had been misinformed by the Attorney General's office (whether this was due to lack of knowledge of the law by them or a deliberate & corrupt attempt to waste time or for some other reason I can only speculate) in them telling me that this case should be reported to my local police force.


You initially confirmed that you would pass this up to your Intelligence Unit who could find out what the plocal police authority responsible was and pass that on. Then you asked me to say where the trials in which Ms Helen Boaden apparently perjured herself., probably along with others..

Then, since I didn't know the court site you reversed yourself and said the intelligence unit would not pass on the information until that was done.

I trust this will help. I don't know where the earlier cases were seen but I assume the court records will show
.http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/715.html


Neutral Citation Number: [2010] EWCA Civ 715

Case No CO/7618/2006

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE C1/2009/2326
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION) ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION, ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
The Hon Mr Justice Irwin
Case No CO/7618/2006
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
23/6/2010
B e f o r e :
THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS
LORD JUSTICE MOSES
and
LORD JUSTICE MUNBY
____________________
Between:
STEVEN SUGAR
Appellant
- and -
(1)THE BRITISH BROADCASTING COMMISSION
(2) THE INFORMATION COMMISSIONER


So I assume that would be the Met

I trust, you will make a point of saying how much effort the Scottish police put into the Sheriden case and that unless the Met are wholly corruopt or can produce an unimpeachable reason, they must use their best efforts to prosecute the various BBC perjuries. I would also like an email confirmation from them on their progress.


Bearing in mind that the police have been willing to spend approx £2 million, correctly, prosecuting Mr Tommy Sheriden, in a case which was not remotely as clear cut or blatant as the BBC & their employee's lies (& for which there were clearly far more mitigating circumstances) , I trust I have not put the authjorities to any comparable inconvenience.


Thanks for the response, which, according to the original email acknowledgement, should have come within 48 hours, to the report first made to you on the 1st of February and which I have had to repeat several times."

   The officer has not contacted ne to dispute that my record of the phone call is accurate. So far, neither has the Met.

   However nobody has disputed that there is a clear prima facie case that Ms Boaden is indeed guilty of prejury, possibly along with others or indeed the entire BBC organisation, in claiming not only that the 28 gate attendees were scientists but going beyond that and saying the represented a diversity of views.

   Doubtless the Met will exercise the sort of due diligence on which a free societry depends. I will report.
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  Incidentally in the intervening period I have been cautioned by the police for allegedly putting up posters, whose accuracy was not disputed, on lamp standards around the BBC Scotland building. The BBC complained about this claiming that the lamp standards are BBC property. I have put in an FoI to them to ask where the division between BBC lamp standards and those publicly owned is.