Not incapacitated

Thirty-nine year-old Gian-Paul De Vito-Tracey (pictured), who has held a senior position at the Department for Work and Pensions, is seeking £300,000 damages from the government after falling off a newly issued swivel chair in 2008 and hitting his head on a wall.

This is almost twice as much as a soldier was given after suffering severe burns in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan, but Mr De Vito-Tracey is to claim he is left 80 percent disabled for life.

The injury, we are told, caused "downgrading of general intellectual functioning". Strangely, The Sun is less than impressed, showing the man holding two short planks (is this a veiled comment?).

Mr De Vito-Tracey has experienced "slowed speed of information processing, impaired executive function, severe verbal communication difficulty and mild to moderate word-finding difficulties". It will be asserted in his formal claim that all this has "left him at a severe disadvantage in the job market", hence the level of the compensation demanded.

This is very hard to take seriously. The features described would seem to make Mr De Vito-Tracey admirably qualified to be a senior civil servant, quango chief or politician. In fact, Mr De Vito-Tracey's misfortune is that some of his incapacity is only "moderate". Were it more severe, he could be qualified for the role of environmental correspondent for a media organisation, or even to write an environment column for The Guardian.

We could, of course, offer to improve his employment prospects. Our charges are very reasonable.

COMMENT THREAD

Continuing the smears

I suppose Moonbat was right, after a fashion. "Rajendra Pachauri innocent of financial misdealings but smears will continue," he wrote in a particularly idiotic piece which had his warmist claque all a twitter over the vile accusations that Booker and North had made about this saintly figure.

Well, the "smears" have continued, and leading the way is the Moonbat's spiritual home, The Guardian, with a headline "Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN climate change body, under pressure to resign".

The proximate cause of this apparent volte face is the report of the Inter-academy Council (113 pages PDF), helpfully summarised in a much shorter press release.

Nobody expected much from the Council, which has been looking at the IPCC and its procedures. And then head of the Pachauri fan club, the Hindustan Times, told us that "Pachauri escapes indictment". But it then added that the "embattled chief" of the IPCC, "escaped direct indictment in the UN’s review of his panel's assessments, only because he was not up for scrutiny personally."

There was enough in the panel's findings and recommendations, it goes on to say, "to suggest Pachauri runs a bad ship". The IPCC lacks transparency and, worst, "it relies on unsubstantiated scientific claims." Now, we may have made a point or two in that direction and while the Council only specifically mentions the "alarmist meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers" it quite clearly "errors" in the plural.

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

The IPCC's slow and inadequate response to revelations of errors in the last assessment, as well as complaints that its leaders have gone beyond IPCC's mandate to be "policy relevant, not policy prescriptive" in their public comments, have made communications a critical issue, the report says. Pachy can no longer play his silly, self-serving games ... he has been exposed for what he is, all in the nicest possible way.

The Daily Mail, however, isn't quite as nice. It interprets the "scathing report" as calling for the IPCC "to avoid politics and stick instead to predictions based on solid science." The probe, it says, "took a thinly-veiled swipe at Rajendra Pachauri."

Watts Up With That has a welcome go, and reprints the NYT comments. This paper, which has had the hots for Rajendera ever since he became chairman, is now stating that the scientists involved in producing the IPCC reports "need to be more open to alternative views and more transparent about their own possible conflicts of interest".

Amusingly, one wonders whether this can apply to Pachauri. The BBC seems to think not. Editorial Complaints Unit has just upheld a complaint about the reference to this Pachauri as "the UN's top climate scientist".

A viewer complained that this was inaccurate and misleading, as Dr Pachauri's scientific qualifications and credentials were in a field unrelated to climate science. This had the ECU agreeing that the implication that he was a climate scientist was "materially misleading".

The Editor of BBC News at 10, we are told, is reiterating to his team "the importance of accuracy in the introduction of our contributors." But then, I suppose, to suggest that Pachy isn't a climate scientist is just another of those "smears" about which the Moonbat was so rightly concerned.

But more smears are on their way, it seems. Korea in October is the place and time. We may see the back of the old charlatan then.

COMMENT THREAD

The new colonialists

In a new report, Friends of the Earth Europe is crying foul about the production of biofuels, claiming it is leading to a land grab in Africa.

In the best patronising style of the liberal neo-colonialists, it thinks the niggers should be using the land to grow subsistence crops instead of generating economic activity on the backs of gullible Europeans, which can then be taxed and used to foster independence from whitey and his NGOs (like Friends of the Earth).

As much to the point, the greenies and their supporters see better revenue earning opportunities in REDD, where they can turn the forests of Africa into carbon credits, freezing economic development and making the nigger totally dependent on whitey and his NGOs.

Thus, the report is far from what it seems. The very fact that it is produced by Friends of the Earth Europe – a publicly-funded body, heavily supported by the EU, tells you there is an agenda here.

But it also gets additional support from the EU Commission, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Isvara Foundation, a rather dubious German Catholic agency called MISEREOR and an advocacy group called GRAIN. The Netzwerk Africa-Deutschland and Markus Bier (a geographer from the University of Aachen) are also in there, plus Greenpeace.

This is an interesting if not untypical mix – the EU, Christian evangelicals, largely German greens and academia. These are the new colonists, spreading the word in the name of their religion of neo-environmentalism.

But it also shows up the stresses within the EU, where the German green faction is seeking to frustrate EU policy. As we get more of this, we will see the EU tearing itself apart with its own money (our money). The creed has nowhere to go but down.

COMMENT THREAD

Restoration

Love him or hate him, he's got something going here. "Something beyond imagination is happening". And the democraps hate it. I'm jealous. If only we could get something like that going here.

COMMENT THREAD

Stiched up

The film segment above is from the Why We Fight series, the fourth part which deals with the Battle of Britain.

Produced by the US Army Special Service Division, and directed by Frank Capra "Why We Fight" is a seven part propaganda/documentary series that traces the earliest beginnings of the second world war starting with Japan's invasion of China in 1931, to the Nazi's march across Europe.

And it is classic propaganda, stitching together unrelated clips of film to support a narrative which is fictional.

Crucially, when you watch the clip, 15 seconds in you will see a parachute. We know the date of this ... it is from the famous BBC Gardner report of 14 July 1940. It shows P/O Michael Mudie parachuting into the Dover Straits. He is eventually picked up from the sea by a Royal Navy vessel and transferred to Dover Hospital where, sadly, he dies from his wounds.

Further on, about 34 seconds into the clip, we see a Walrus flying boat roaring to the rescue, to pick up the smiling airman. But the Walrus was not issued to the RAF until late 1941 and that sequence was shot in the summer of 1942.

The time elapsed between the two sequences of the film is less than 20 seconds but in real life it is about two years. The impression presented is false. Yet such is the power of the imagery that many people, even to this day, believe it represents the truth.

When it comes towards the end of the clip, the claims made about the Germans are the exact opposite of the truth. With their air sea rescue service, it is the Luftwaffe pilot who is more likely to be rescued.

The camera cannot lie, of course. But people do, and here you see a particularly egregious example. Seeing is not (or should not be) believing.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Lest we forget

Booker has done a short piece on The Battle of Britain today, reminding people (those who need it) that it was a battle of the whole of Britain, and not just London and the Home Counties – with a "walk-on part" for the people of Coventry.

The piece is not as I would have preferred it but we had to cobble it together at the very last minute – literally in the wee small hours – after Booker had been told by the lawyers that the paper could not publish his piece on the "missing children".

Nevertheless, the point is made and will be made more forcibly in times to come. Over the last weeks I have been in touch with several regional authors, historians and publishers who have been involved in some way or another with charting the parts their localities had to play in the battle. And they are all of a mind that the account of the battle is far too London-centric.

Part of that is understandable. As I have remarked, very often the censor refused to allow the names of places outside London, hit by bombs, to be named. Further, given the rationing of newsprint and the limited avenues for publicity, many incidents were not centrally recorded. Until very much later when they were unearthed by local researchers, many simply do not exist on the record.

And then, of course, there is the propaganda element – nowadays it is called lying. For instance, officially, it was policy to talk down the effects of bombing raids. The Pembroke raid is a good example. Researchers unaware of this, and who take contemporary news accounts at face value, are likely to be gravely misled.

Then, in propaganda films and newsreels (if there is a difference) it became common to build clips out of several completely unrelated sequences, so much so that I have a clip purporting to be a single sequence, but is in fact a composite where the events shown are more than two years apart.

What is so very different now is that, with the growth and ease of self-publishing and of the internet (the two very much related), information which would have been inaccessible – or take inordinate time to research – is now increasingly there for the asking.

My problem is that, if you start collecting these data centrally – which does not seem to have been done – you start to get a completely different picture from the one painted by some of the classic textbooks.

By now, as you might imagine, I have built up a considerable library of standard texts on the battle – to add to my already fairly extensive library. But far from making things easier, some of the accounts make you really wonder. At times you being to think that they are describing not only a different battle as a different war. Then, cross-referencing different accounts, and you wonder whether the different authors were in the same war.

Add to that, some of the material and the detail is just plain wrong. I thought by now that some of the detail would be settled and could be taken as read, but at you get in deeper, you discover where the short-cuts have been made. A lot of the records, even on our own side, do not exist, and there has been reliance on second-hand accounts from witnesses, and some guesses, which are simply fiction.

Thus, although thousands of books have been written about the subject (Amazon lists over 5,000 which cover some or other aspects), the definitive textbook has yet to be written. Probably, it cannot be.

But of one thing I am certain, it was not how it is currently painted, not least because no one at the time actually knew it was the battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain as a "brand" was not, in fact, invented until the following year, based partly on deliberately constructed myths that have persevered to this day. And, while we need our myths, we also owe ourselves the truth. Booker made a small start today.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Serial spammers

Forum temporarily suspended

Now reinstated ... but we have had to remove the unregistered "guest" facility. This has allowed spam bots and other undesirables through, with the volume so great that we can't keep up with it. Add a warmist troll spamming all the threads and it is last straw time.

Registered members will now have normal access - the rest will not even be able to read the threads.

Those who wish to register can do so, but you MUST e-mail me with details of your username AFTER you have successfully registered, otherwise the application will be ignored.

Registration is a totally manual system as spammers have dregraded the automated systems to the extent that they are unusable. Thus, I am not going to wade through 200-plus spam applications a day, just to find the genuine applications.

COMMENT THREAD

The hypocritical environmentalists

The slime who pretend to be environmentalists, pouring out their venom at anyone who has the temerity to disagree with them, might garner a little credibility if they ever expressed some concern about the great CFC scam.

Booker has picked it up again in his column, noting that even [some] greenies have become so outraged by this ridiculous racket that the Environmental Investigation Agency has described it as the "biggest environment scandal in history".

Yet Monbiot and his claque, who are so strident in support of the likes of Pachauri who actually helped devise the obscene system which gives rise to this scam, are strangely silent when it comes to an abuse which has been going on for years.

These people are not environmentalists – they know nothing of and care nothing for the environment, and would accept any abuse if it fits in with their belief system. There is no real description for these people. They are the dregs, more so for their hypocrisy in pretending to care for something that they are actually helping to destroy.

COMMENT THREAD

Antarctic cold snap = climate change ... yay!!!!!

Nature magazine has finally noticed the unusual coldness of the southern hemisphere. And, with absolute, dreary predictability, it's climate change as "Cold empties Bolivian rivers of fish" and "Antarctic cold snap kills millions of aquatic animals in the Amazon."

At first it was funny ... whether it was hot, cold, wet, dry, windy, calm, it was always climate change. How lucky for the warmists that, at a very early stage, they dumped "global warming" in favour of this catch-all.

Frankly, though, it is now just boring. These people have nothing new to say, offer nothing of any interest and know nothing that matters. Their narrow, one-dimensional world view would be comedic if it wasn't so damn boring – not least the vitriol they pour out to anyone who has the temerity to disagree with them.

That is what is going to destroy their little game ... not the science, but the sheer boredom of it all. Climate change is boring, boring boring. Get a life people!

But the fact of a cold southern hemisphere is a little concerning. It was like that last year, and we had a cold winter. We've has the heating on here three time this month already, once during the day, it's been so cold – in August damn it! The signs are, therefore, that we could be looking at another cold winter.

But hey! That's climate change! Except that your average Joe will be telling the warmists to put it in their pipes and smoke it – or something to that effect. And when the Cleggerons have finished messing with the energy supply and the lights go off, we'll have to burn warmists to keep ourselves warm.

COMMENT THREAD

Faces of extremism

The future of the BNP may be in doubt says The Independent, while the newspaper also tells us that Bradford is braced for a visit from the EDL today.

Bradford is still very conscious of the Manningham riots of 7 July 2001, and the city is extremely nervous of a repeat. Local sentiment, therefore, is very much opposed to outsiders coming in to cause disruption. Certainly, the police are not in the mood for trouble and local reports suggest that over 2,000 have been drafted in. Anyone coming into Bradford today, therefore, will be looking for trouble – and is likely to find it.

However, somebody really should tell Chief Superintendent Alison Rose (pictured) that her job as plod is to "bring people to justice" and not to pre-empt any court findings or action. And why is that she can only talk in clichés?

COMMENT THREAD

The joys of research

I have just spent the best part of two days tracking down a piece of information that will, at best, form one paragraph in the forthcoming book.

I was originally alerted to the story by an online book, with minimal details. The search took me to New Zealand (by e-mail) with additional information, which turned out to be wrong in detail, but provided enough for me to find out what really happened.

That is why people take short-cuts. Unless you are prepared to spend years researching, for which no one is going to pay, you have to rely for much of the detail on the work of others. But that is also how the historical record gets so distorted.

There has to be an answer, but I'm not sure what it is. However, one thing for sure, the internet is turning out to be a partial remedy - the speed with which one can do research now is phenomenal.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

L'escroc lives

It seems almost another age when we were railing about the crookery of the French president, Chirac, who had been dubbed even by his own citizens as L'escroc. And indeed it has been some time since we last looked at him.

But all good things have to come to an end. Today we see confirmation from the city of Paris that Chirac and France's ruling UMP party will pay the city € 2.2 million euros to drop its fraud charges against the former president. €550,000 euros of the fine is to be paid by Chirac while the remaining €1.65 is to be paid by party of current President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The "reimbursement" relates to the thievery on a grand scale by Chirac and party, not least creating contracts for ghost jobs between 1977 and 1995 when he was the mayor of Paris, rewarding his political allies with the contracts. Rather than be up front about it, the current deal is a hole-in-the-corner affair, only recently uncovered by journalists. And the response from Chirac is entirely typical. He denies any wrongdoing.

"President Jacques Chirac has always denied having committed any crime whatsoever and maintains that the jobs at issue were legitimate and useful to the city of Paris and to Parisians," says Chirac's lawyer, Jean Veil.
"In order to remove a source of controversy harmful to the citizens of Paris… [ Chirac] hoped for an end to the civil litigation and that the city of Paris would simply be reimbursed for the money it sought to recoup through legal means."

It cannot be possible that even Chirac believes this level of bullshit, but the fact that his spokesman could bring himself to utter it tells you so very much about the ruling elites and their total contempt for the public.

Interestingly, there has been very little interest in the affair from the British media. There rarely is, despite the fact that the French government, quite evidently floating on a sea of corruption, is part of our own government through the mechanism of the European Union.

Despite this, one would like to think that our own government is free from taint but, given the machinations of president Blair. But this is extremely unlikely. We just do our corruption a different way over here, while our etiolated media concentrates on the fluff and trivia.

However, it is not yet over for Chirac. There is another corruption case scheduled to go to court for this autumn. The only real issue, though, is how this crook is once again going to evade justice.

Not once, though, is any thought given to the corrosive effect on public morality. If our leaders are "bent", and they are able to get away with the most henious crimes (and sharp practice), there is no premium in playing it straight.

More so than ever, it becomes a society where the elites simply grab what they can get, and a weary cynicism takes hold of the population. That is where we're at on this blog. For so many years, we have charted corruption, stupidity, incompetence and the rest, charting only a tiny fraction of what is going on.

The one constant, though, is that real crooks get away with it. The bigger the crooks, the more likely that is. And if there is one thing different from the past - as it was ever thuis - it is that occasionally the population used to rise up and slaughter their oppressors.

This is why this rich vein of historical allusion runs through this blog. I don't believe human nature has changed all that much. The elites can piss-take for so long, and then nature takes its course. It would be nice to see the French population take a lead, but I suspect they won't. Someone will though - you can bank on it.

COMMENT THREAD

The story so far

With the new parliament now in place, I am no longer earning most of my living as a parliamentary researcher and must find new sources of income. But I have been fortunate in gaining a commission from my publisher to write a new history of the Battle of Britain, and am planning other ventures based on this project ... hence the focus also on The Tales of Glory blog and the fall-off in writing on this blog.

The fall-off will only be temporary. It is "silly season" and there is a certain ennui in the air, so I am taking the opportunity to get ahead of the game in what will be a long and difficult project. At this point, I must repeat my appreciation for all those who have commented on the forum – everything is read and stored, and there is some incredibly useful stuff there.

Crucially, at the moment, I am working on the air-sea rescue issue, and have made significant advances. And one of the sources to which I was directed to on the forum was this:

One problem area which did arise was the Air Ministry's fault, and a lot of people got killed as a result. I refer to the non-existent air-sea rescue service; the system should have had one but it didn't. ... [A] lot of pilots were killed, either through shock or burns or just being dragged away by their parachutes and drowned, never to be seen again through lack of co-ordination.

Later in the war, in 1941, we formed the Air Sea Rescue (ASR) Service, and if anybody came down there was somebody on the spot almost before they had landed in the sea. But this didn't happen in 1940, and this is a black mark which the system had to endure right the way through the battle.

These are the thoughts of Derek Wood (or some of them), co-author of the seminal text on the Battle of Britain, The Narrow Margin, articulated at a symposium in Bracknall in 1990, sponsored jointly by the RAF Historical Society and the RAF Staff College Bracknall.

What I now have to do is set out the case for why the failure to provide an adequate (or any) ASR Service is still relevant 70 years later. And the most obvious point is that similar failures are happening in the here and now in Afghanistan, were happening five years earlier in Iraq and most certainly have been happening earlier elsewhere.

My feeling is that, had even the background of what I already know about the 1940s failures been part of the public domain when I started arguing in 2006 for the replacement of Snatch Land Rovers, it would have been much easier to get the message across that the military was, through neglect and other diverse reasons, allowing their troops to be killed.

What makes the Battle of Britain experience so valuable are the many different facets which put the current experience in context. Firstly, we see established a failure of the "system" to take measures to safeguard the safety and lives of military personnel, and not just any personnel – those who were the key to the whole battle and from which shortage the battle could have been lost.

This demonstrates that, even when the whole campaign and even – as is asserted to be the case here – the whole nation depends on preserving the lives of a few men, the "system" failed to step up to the plate. And if it could do it then, it most certainly could do it in the context of operations where the survival of the nation was not at stake.

Secondly, we see that it is a "system", not a political failure. Although the problems were known at high level within the RAF – and therefore within the Air Ministry – not one of the critics even begins to suggest that prime minister Winston Churchill might have been responsible, or bore any responsibility at all for the resultant deaths. I am still doing the arithmetic but, over the whole period the system failed, we are talking thousands rather than hundreds of deaths.

The point here, of course, is the contrast with modern times, where the prime minister Gordon Brown has been blamed for equipment failures and the military high command effectively absolved from any responsibility – by the popular press, at least.

Thirdly, we see the effect of censorship, secrecy and lack of scrutiny. The combination ensured that, even when the problems were known, very little timely action was taken other than, to ensure the guilty persons were not censured, an extensive, multi-layered cover-up was embarked upon, which survives to this day.

So pervasive is this that Wood believes that Dowding managed to "pinch" twelve Lysanders and base them around the coast so that they could drop dinghies to anybody they could find. But, while this is supposed to have happened in the July 1940, it seems more likely that the aircraft were available from late September only, and in smaller numbers.

But, what is also fascinating is that the use of amphibious aircraft in the form of the Walrus (pictured above) was proven on a small scale during the months of July and August 1940, the lessons were not applied until late 1941 and amphibians were not fully integrated into the system until 1942 – when the Germans had been using dedicated seaplanes for ASR since 1935.

The story is far too long to tell in the framework of one post, and although I have already told some of it, there still much more to research. But I will build the story gradually on the other blog and keep you appraised of developments as they materialise.

Perversely - but rather predictably - some of the most useful starting points for learning about the inadequacies of the system come not British sources, but from New Zealand and the United States. This report here, for instance, gives a good overview. Originally "confidential", it has now been declassified, and even the fairly anodyne language makes it clear how hugely inadequate the system was.

What is so important though is that the British military establishment went to quite considerable pains to conceal its neglect and paint an entirely false picture of what was actually provided and its effectiveness. It really does tell us something about an establishment which is keen to applaud the exploits of "the few" for its own purposes, while allowing airmen to die needlessly in their hundreds and thousands.

Anyhow, I'll get back to near normal on this blog shortly, and thanks for bearing with me.

Comment: Battle of Britain thread

What little we know

Most people will remember the Buncefield fuel storage depot explosion and fire of December 2005. It was rated to be the largest in peacetime Europe, involving eight million gallons, mainly of petrol and aviation fuel. Some three million gallons were lost.

To my own shame, however, I had no idea where and when the biggest all-time (non-military) explosion and fire occurred, in Britain at least. This was actually started on 19 August, in the Admiralty oil tanks at Llanreath, Pembroke Dock. It became the largest "single-seat" fire the UK has ever known, consuming 33 million gallons of fuel oil and lasting three weeks before it was finally extinguished.

Recalled here, despite the bad weather on the 19th, round about 15:15hrs, two or maybe three Ju 88s bombed the depot. Two tanks received direct hits and eight tanks of the fifteen total exploded and burst into a flaming inferno.

Vernon Scott, a local journalist and author, described the immediate chaos nearby: "Shrieking mothers, some hysterical, were frantically looking for children" and terrified pigs fled squealing down Military Road. Firemen, soon on the scene, found "jet black smoke churning across the carriageway in such dense clouds it was impossible to see ... The blaze was creating a deafening roaring noise". Fire fighters had to "shield their faces from the scorching heat".

The embattled fire fighters started to bring the blaze under control by 00:30hrs on 20 August but another German aircraft bombed the site in the mid-afternoon. Two further attacks seem to have been made on the next day, at 01:40 hrs and again at 11:55hrs, with the fatal results for five Cardiff firemen.

They were killed in an explosion which followed the bombing. After the send-off illustrated above, they were buried in Pembroke Municipal Cemetery (the "hearse" is the fire truck in the distance, after the cortège).

Twenty-eight are also injured. The fire rages through the dock area, destroying 11 of the 17 oil tanks before finally being brought under control. For a fortnight, the towering pall of black smoke could be seen for 100 miles around.

The late Pembrokeshire historian Vernon Scott, who wrote two books about the attacks on Pembroke Dock (now sadly out of print), said people in the town have never had the credit they deserved for enduring such hardship during the war. "For a town of its size – it had a population of 10,000 – Pembroke was one of the most heavily bombed communities in the British Isles during World War II," he said.

The 70th anniversary of these events was a good opportunity to make amends for omissions brought about by wartime censorship and the indifference of subsequent commentators and historians. Forgive me if I indulge an obsession and do precisely that.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

You're all gonna die!!!

"Anthropologists from the National Automonous University of Mexico think that the body was placed in the cave in a funeral ceremony performed late in the Pleistocene epoch when the sea level was around 488 feet lower than it is today," says The Daily Mail.

So, somewhere between 12,000 and 2.5 million years ago, the sea level was 488 feet lower (exactly 488 feet?). If we apply warmist logic to that and extrapolate the trend, in another 12,000 to 2.5 million year, my house will be on its way to becoming a beachside property.

Do you realise what that means? Put it in your diaries. You're all gonna die!!! Not me of course, I'm above the water line.

COMMENT THREAD

Those defence cuts again

The Russians, it seems are to invest heavily in inflatable tanks (above) and other "blow-up" hardware copies, all to deceive her enemies as to how many toys the military actually has. Even missile launchers can be purchased (below) and, not to be outdone, the Septics have whole squadrons of dummy F-16s (belower).

There is a good precedent for this. During WWII, we made good use of decoys, even going to the extent of making whole airfields and towns. In total, there were approximately 630 Decoy Sites in the UK, of which, 230 were airfields and 400 were towns, marshalling yards steelworks, foundry and factory complexes.

At the end of the war, it was claimed that the dummy airfields had been bombed 443 times, against the real thing being bombed a mere 434 times. The decoy towns were bombed about 100 times, drawing some five percent of the ordnance intended for real towns and cities. Official figures declared that decoy sites saved an estimated 2,500 lives and avoided 3,000 injuries.

Some might argue that this is the answer to our pressing need to save money on defence. We can get rid of all our Challies and buy in the rubber stuff, saving ourselves a fortune.

But a better thought occurs. If we really want to save money, we can get rid of all our MPs and buy in rubber decoys to stuff the House of Commons. These can be bought "off the shelf", so to speak – one of the cheaper models illustrated below.

For a little bit more, you can even acquire ones that look nearly real ... not that one needs to go that far. As long as some of the seats in the House are filled, the detail doesn't matter that much.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 46 - Battle of Britain

The weather finally cleared, sufficient to permit a relatively high level of air operations, although a morning haze delayed flying in some areas. It did not stop an early raid on Great Yarmouth, though. Missed by radar, it was picked up by the Observer Corps but too late for any effective interception. The force dumped about 20 HE bombs west of the harbour, affecting public services for a while. By the time a section of No. 66 Sqn Spitfires got there from Coltishall, the raiders were long gone.

Shortly afterwards, two forces of some strength were detected building up behind Cap Gris Nez. Squadrons were acrambled to protect the forward airfields. By 08:15hrs the forces were being tacked as they crossed the Channel, by which time more forces were building up, although these showed no indications that they were about to follow. Nevertheless, more RAF squadrons were sent aloft, building the defending force to six squadrons and two flights.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

A scam on hold – and another one behind

The UN's CDM Executive Body is to review a request from a Chinese plant destroying HCF-23 to generate carbon credits. This follows on from its action in blocking four similar requests "in a bid to ensure that the plants do not deliberately boost their greenhouse gas emissions" – exactly the scam we discussed in December 2009 and again last June.

The Chinese plants are requesting millions of Certified Emissions Reduction Units (CERs) for destroying HCF-23, a potent greenhouse gas that is a by-product of manufacturing the refrigerant gas HCF-22. The credits are generated under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which "allows" industrialised countries to offset a part of their emissions by funding reductions in developing countries.

The whole thing, as we explained in our earlier pieces, is a gigantic multi-million dollar scam. Furthermore, it has been going on for years, ignored by the greenies over here and especially the media. And even now, the World Bank is seeking to defend the indefensible.

Its involvement here is interesting, accused by CDM watch of "defending its investments", illustrating precisely the conflict which occurs when financial institutions get mixed up with environmentalism. And it is the same World Bank which is so interested in REDD, that even The Observer is concerned about - but is otherwise being ignored.

Yet it is the pursuit of REDD which is driving the climate negotiations to the point where it is set to become the dominant feature of the negotiations at Cancun. We are thus likely to see not so much the abolition of one CDM scam but its replacement with another – the replacement of a million-dollar scam with a billion-dollar scam.

Actually, the reality is not millions and billions, but billions and trillions, as this headline makes clear, putting the current market at $2.7 billion. At least the Philipine Star is on the ball, which really does tell you so much, when it seems to be the only journal which is currently covering the issue.

COMMENT THREAD

Lives at risk

The Daily Express has picked up the story we discussed yesterday.

Lives are at risk, it claims and it is almost certainly right. Now contrast this with the piece below and the point I made yesterday has some force. Seventy years ago, "foreigners" were trying to kill us. Today, largely the same bunch of foreigners are still trying to kill us. And it really does not matter whether it is a bomb or an ill-trained nurse. You are just as dead.

Those seventy years ago, it was perfectly acceptable for Churchill to call Germans "Huns" and worse. Our parents were then calling our European enemies all manner of insults, and that was perfectly acceptable. That is the other point I was making. Fifty years of European political integration is not uniting us – it is dividing us, turning us back into enemies.

As Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Spaniards and the rest, they are our friends and allies, and deserve our respect. As "Europeans", they are Frogs, Huns, Ities, Dagos and the rest. They become our enemies and rivals. They get our enmity.

The "colleagues" need to wake up to this before it is too late. Leave us be, without trespassing on the "nooks and crannies" of our daily life and we are friends. Interfere and threaten us, and we are enemies. And they really don't want that. Look what happened last time.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 45 - Battle of Britain

Explosive and incendiary bombs, it is claimed, are dropped for the first time in the London area. There is some confusion about this, as claims are also made for the previous day. Furthermore, there is some argument about whether the area bombed was technically in London as it fell outside the capital's administrative area.

The fact of a raid, however, was reported in the late city edition of the New York Times and the newspaper is unequivocal about the bombs falling in a residential area.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Roll on the day

Seventy years ago, they were sending semi-obsolescent aircraft over in their hundreds doing their very best to kill us. And they're still trying to do the same thing, this time through the mechanism of cocking up our controls over nurses' competence.

We refer, of course to the 1000-year Reich, now morphed into the grandiose motor of European integration, along with the Frogs who rolled over and gave up in 1940, through sheer incompetence and lack of moral fortitude, only then to cosy up to the Nazis until the time came to milk the US for its dollars.

It was this stunning pair which conceived the 1957 treaty which embodied the principle of "freedom of establishment". It was this that allowed the Frogs and the Hun to live in each others' pockets without having to go to the trouble and expense of invading each other – not that they were particularly good at the latter, usually requiring one side or other to give up first or to have allies pave the way at their own expense.

But what was conceived by this deadly duo was adopted by our craven and mendacious politicians in the 60s and 70s, Macmillan and "Traitor" Heath – good Conservatives both.

And from their actions we now end up in a position where thousands of foreign EU nurses are allowed to work in Britain without safety checks because the tests could be deemed discriminatory under European Union law.

Up until now the Nursing and Midwifery Council - which previously controlled who can be employed here – has insisted that new recruits must have worked at least 450 hours in the last three years or go on a refresher course. But now all they will need is a diploma from their country showing they are qualified.

Of course, Frog/Hun axis will graciously allow us to test our own, and our kith and kin from New Zealand, Australia and Canada, but so much as put a sheet of paper demanding any more details than date of birth and preferred salary in front of your friendly, non English-speaking Roma, Dago, Itie, or the rest of the euro-luvvies, and the ECJ will have us up in front of the bench in no time at all, ready to fine us trillions of euro-buttons.

And there, to represent our interests is another good Conservative - Bill Hague, our much revered foreign secretary, seen here out for a stroll with his 25-year-old very special advisor. Doubtless, we can be confident that his gravitas, knowledge and determination will ensure that the British interest is given due consideration. After all, gay Bill doesn't want us to be in Europe and not ruled by Europe, does he?

Of course, 50 years of European integration, and the benefit of the wondrous rules which the "colleagues" have crafted, should by now – according to theory – have made us feel all warm and fuzzy about the continentals.

Perhaps without it, we would have come to accept the Germans, the French and the Italians for what they are - jolly decent and sensible members of the human race. Instead, the more and more they stuff their euro-crap down our gullets, the more and more are are inclined to think of a reincarnated Reich and look forward to a replay of the events 70 years ago.

This comes into even sharper focus when Bruno tells us that we are to pay £1bn on pensions for retired eurocrats in 2010. That certainly brings us closer to the day when even our somnambulant and apathetic lot rise up and slaughter the whole damn lot of them.

The day cannot come soon enough.

COMMENT THREAD

It never rains

The Daily Mail is amongst the many newspapers remarking about the sudden turn of bad weather. Remember those balmy days back in June?" it asks us, then telling us to cherish the memory. With the holiday season in full swing, what remains of the summer seems likely to be washed away.

Large parts of the country were braced for a deluge last night as forecasters issued a severe weather warning for heavy rain and flash flooding. As much as 3in of rain was predicted across southern England, East Anglia and the southern Midlands, falling on saturated ground and raising the likelihood of flash floods.

Of course, the warmists will be quivering with delight at the prospect, able once again to tell us that this "peculiar" weather is yet more evidence of global warming. But this is not so.

One of the delights of doing the current narrative on the Battle of Britain is that each day, 70 years ago, I have access to comprehensive weather reports. And, solidly from 19-23 August, there was a run of bad weather, with heavy rain, which virtually shut down the air war. The summer of 1940, contrary to myth was far from good. Only the Indian summer through September redeemed it.

Interestingly, we would know more about the weather in 1940 then the people at the time. Weather forecasts were state secrets and the media was prohibited from publishing them, or referring to the weather for the past ten days. It was felt that this would give too much information to the Luftwaffe.

However, when the Germans had invaded France and were sitting in Calais 21 miles from England, it was pointed out that it was a bit stupid prohibiting any mention of the weather there, as all the Germans had to do was look out of their windows.

A compromise was eventually reached, with the media allowed to mention the weather in the Channel but nowhere else. Historians not in the know may be puzzled at the inordinate interest taken by the population at the time in the weather conditions in the Channel.

But then, it was a question of it raining in the Channel – and nowhere else. The previous January, there had been record cold snap, and the censor had to give a special dispensation to allow the media even to mention that fact. The publication of photographs (such as this street scene in Liverpool in January 1940) was not permitted until after the war.

Nothing ever changes, it seems, except that now the media does not publish voluntarily, because the material does not suit the warmist agenda.

COMMENT THREAD

A non-apology

Readers of The Sunday Telegraph (hard copy and online) may be surprised to see what appears to be an apology in the current edition, relating to Rajendra Pachauri (illustrated above).

As far as the paper goes, however, it is actually a non-apology – as a careful study of the words will reveal to anyone with a modicum of intelligence (a dwindling band, one fears).

The text starts off by saying that we (i.e., The Sunday Telegraph) published an article about Pachauri and his business interests – as written by Booker and myself. Needless to say, the article was sound, all the substantive facts are correct and the paper stands by them.

However, this is not the name of the game. Pachauri wants an "apology", in so many words. The detail is irrelevant. All he wants is something he can tout around to his friends and supportive media, which he can project as a retraction.

Using the biggest crooks in the libel business, known to Private Eye readers as Carter Fuck, Pachauri has done a "no-win, no-fee" deal which, with a special insurance scheme introduced under the last administration, enables these sharks to go to law and stack up colossal fees. Recently, they represented a minor celebrity in a libel case, gaining £15,000 in damages – for which they then charged £350,000 costs.

The difficulty facing the paper is that, when having to deal with an unethical law firm which has been given a writ to stack up open-ended costs, going to law to fight even a good case can be perilous and expensive. Even a win stands to cost several hundred thousand pounds, in your own costs. If you lose, the costs can run to millions.

Faced with this blackmail, it is easier for the newspapers to give a "non-apology" and cut their losses. So far, Carter Fuck have stacked up £100,000 in costs and are seeking recovery from the paper. No damages have been claimed or offered, so the only financial beneficiaries are the lawyers

Now look at the "non-apology". The paper says: "It was not intended to suggest that Dr Pachauri was corrupt or abusing his position as head of the IPCC". That is true ... so true that the paper did not actually suggest that Pachauri "was corrupt or abusing his position as head of the IPCC".

Booker and I might have intended to do so, and I certainly did on this blog – and more. I called the man a liar, and stand by that. But we are not the paper. And it is the paper that is taking the rap as the publisher. It "legalled" the piece and it was libel-proof, so much so that Carter Fuck has not sustained any of Pachauri's original complaint – dismissed as a "rant".

Nevertheless, these gold-diggers keep coming back, and back and back, each time stacking up the costs. To get rid of them, the paper can say that it "did not intend ... ", etc., without any problem. It neither intended nor did so in fact. It can also say, without a problem, that: "we accept KPMG found Dr Pachauri had not made 'millions of dollars' in recent years."

The paper can do so because KPMG "finding" that "Dr Pachauri had not made 'millions of dollars'" is a matter of fact. KPMG did so find. If you wish too believe that means Pachauri didn't make millions of dollars, that is your affair. But the crucial thing is that the paper has not apologised for accusing Pachauri of making millions of dollars. That accusation stands uncorrected. The paper simply accepts that KPMG has a claims in this respect.

So, the paper ends up making two statements of fact, on which basis it then "apologises" to Pachauri "for any embarrassment caused," an anodyne phrasing that does not even admit to having caused any embarrassment. This is pure, meaningless bullshit.

But the game is to play. Already the Pauchauri-supporting Hindustani Times has made its play. Thus you can see how the game actually works. And this sort of thing will go on for as long as the papers allow it – rolling over instead of fighting. If the papers got together and demanded a change of law, they would probably get it. This might even happen, as patience is running out.

In the meantime, Pachauri, his claque and the warmist fellow-travellers will be making hay. But if that is what they need to do to "prove" their case and protect their man, it tells you all you need to know about them. My only regret is that the lawyers are claiming about two hundred times more for stitching up the paper than I was paid for the piece. That should also tell you something.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 42 - Battle of Britain

The afternoon saw the prime minister deliver a speech to the House of Commons, to which he referred to the "great air battle which has been in progress over this Island for the last few weeks" which, he said, "has recently attained a high intensity.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

They fool only themselves ... again

Let me see if I have got this right, writes G M Lindsay in a letter to The Scotsman (no link). In February 2010, the UK Carbon Trust awarded a £4m grant to Norway's Hammerfest Strom to build and test a 1MW tidal power device off Orkney.

In August 2010, Alex Salmond visits Norway and announces that Hammerfest Strom plans to "invest £4m in Scottish businesses" to build a tidal power device off Orkney and claims this is "a massive vote of confidence in the talent, expertise and infrastructure in Scotland".

"How exactly does this funding circle display a Norwegian vote of confidence?" Mr Lindsay concludes.

And the obvious – transparently obvious – answer is that it does not. Salmond who 20 years ago was quite an astute Westminster politician has now so lost it that he now believes his own propaganda, and also believes that we are stupid enough to believe it as well.

Politicians can, in fact, rely on a certain amount of inertia and a certain amount of inherent stupidity in a goodly segment of the electorate – after all, he did get voted into office. But no politician is wise assume that his electorate is uniformly stupid, or anywhere as near stupid as the politicians they vote for.

Most importantly, even if a distressing proportion of the electorate does struggle to maintain a quorum of brain cells, no one likes being taken for a fool – even (or especially) fools ... aka Salmond voters.

It may still take a little time, but eventually this man will find that he is only fooling himself. In due course, this discovery will be shared by the rest of his contemptible class. Preferably, this will not be early enough to save their bacon.

COMMENT THREAD

One of our hemispheres is missing

An interesting reflection on how the media only seems to be reporting weather in the northern hemisphere now. This might have something to do with the fact that it is winter south of the equator, and some very odd things are happening.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 41 - Battle of Britain

A frontal system is moving in from the Atlantic, across the British Isles and into Europe. The bad weather that closed down operations in the early evening yesterday is going to dominate for some days. There is going to be no serious flying for a while. Stocktaking and retrenchment was in order while the civilians clear up the mess on the battlefield.

The picture above is interesting in this context. An HE 111 from KG55, it was shot down on 16 August during the attack on Feltham, near London. Gunfire from Sqn Ldr Pemberton's No. 1 Sqn Hurricane damaged the oil cooling system causing failure of the engines. The pilot, Ob Wilhelm Wieland, brought the Heinkel down to a good landing at Annington Farm in Bramber, Sussex.

Gordon James took this photo at Oakhill, Bursledon, Hampshire, as the remains were transported to a scrapyard. It was against the law to take such photos, so Mr James kept his camera hidden until after the war, when he finally had the film developed.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Compare and contrast

"It might also be assumed that all German crews who were in aircraft brought down during the Battle were permanently lost to the Luftwaffe because the fighting took place on our side of the Channel. Such an assumption would not be literally true, because the Germans succeeded in rescuing a proportion of their crews from the sea by means of rescue boats, floats and aircraft which will be later described."

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh C. T. Dowding, G.C.B., G.C.V.O., C.M.G., A.D.C., Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Fighter Command, Royal Air Force. September, 1946.

"While the Luftwaffe at the very least would have twenty and more generally fifty or a hundred miles to fly before becoming to grips with its enemy, Fighter Command could engage as soon as its aircraft reached operational height. That conserved not only fuel – crucial when a Messerschmitt 109's operational range was a mere 125 miles – but also ensured that the pilots of damaged aircraft could bale out over friendly soil or, on occasion, bring them to earth. The Luftwaffe's parachuting pilots or crash-landed aircraft would, by contrast, be lost for good; many German pilots, parachuting into the Channel, would be doomed to drown."

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan O.B.E., F.R.S.L. 1989.

Battle of Britain thread

It should be recorded

... that the last US combat formation has left Iraq. Here, the clever-dicks here are more interested in the death of that troubled spirit, David Kelly, which says something about who we are and the nature of our society.

Of course, British interest in Iraq effectively ceased the moment our troops were so ignominiously kicked out, as indeed they will be in Afghanistan in due course. Then, under the benevolent guidance of the Cleggerons, we can devote our energies to securing sexual and gender equality within the European Army – things really worth dying for.

COMMENT THREAD

A serious blow to its credibility

With some element of hilarity, we note that the photograph of a wind turbine factory, chosen to illustrate the plight of Vesta Wind Systems, accompanies an article headed: "Green Job Growth Outpacing Other Industries".

The same factory, which so proudly heralded this news now accompanies a report headed: "Vestas Plunges as Wind-Turbine Maker Cuts Forecasts Blaming Delayed Orders". The company which manufactures the blade illustrated lost almost a quarter of its value in Copenhagen trading after reporting a larger-than-expected loss and cut forecasts. It blames "delayed orders."

At a time when this greenie firm should be enjoying strengthening demand and multiplying profits, it has instead suffered its biggest one-day drop in its share price since November 2002 after posting a second-quarter loss of €119 million. And what makes this particularly significant is that the average estimate, from a survey of 15 analysts was a €7.3 million loss.

"Right now it's just a shock, and Vestas has suffered a serious blow to its credibility," says Teea Reijonen, a London-based analyst with Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. "Analysts are going to take a very dim view of margins for 2011 given what’s happened this year."

Vesta has now cut its sales forecast for this year to €6 billion from €7 billion on delays in expected orders in the US, Spain and Germany. The credit crisis has prompted banks to restrict loans to wind-park developers that buy turbines from Vestas and its competitors. Not yet has the bubble burst, though, as the company is still talking about delays. And the company has signed at least eight orders the past month, including its biggest ever in the US and its largest in Australia.

There are still some mugs around, and still too much money in this game ... but the writing looks as if it could be on the wall.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 40 - Battle of Britain

Having been given the day off, Fighter Command was back in harness, confronting the godless Nazis who did not seem to believe in the concept of Sunday as a day of rest. After a few morning reconnaissance flights, one of which Spitfires from No. 54 Sqn managed to shoot down, it was a day of massed formations. But on this day, such was the intensity of attacks that at one time every serviceable Spitfire and Hurricane was either flying or at readiness.

As before, the principal targets were airfields and the first wave of attacks was focused on Biggin Hill and Kenley. German tactics were challenging, comprising simultaneous high and low-level attacks, the former escorted by Me 109s to draw away the RAF fighters.

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The green hypocrite

Julie Burchill doesn't like the son and heir, calling him the "green hypocrite". She also notes that "Green" is the first socio-political movement in which every single leader and spokesperson is filthy rich.

That is a bit rich coming from The Independent which as a newspaper has espoused the green cause more than most. But there might be some hope here if the left-winging Julie is beginning to realise that "green" is all about very rich people telling those less well off what they should do with their money.

COMMENT THREAD

A certain inconsistency

There would be some very great sense in tightening the qualifying criteria for winter fuel payments, as this administration is considering doing, if at the same time efforts were being made to keep fuel costs down.

However, it should be remembered that the core policy of the Cleggerons – as it was with the previous administration – is to increase the costs of home heating, so to promote fuel economy and thereby reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The winter fuel payments, in this context, are a mechanism for mitigating the inevitable effects of increased fuel poverty and the concomitant increase in the death rate amongst the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable to hypothermia.

Not least of the problem here though is that the Cleggerons have such a limited grasp of the effects of their own policies. They are unable to link the effects of two diverse actions.

But then, such an activity would require them entertaining two separate ideas in their foetid little minds at the same time – something entirely beyond the capability of our current rulers. Unfortunately for the soon to die prematurely, the consequences of the linkage are going to be all too apparent.

COMMENT THREAD

Shared values and enduring ties

President Obama, we are told, is to attend a "summit" with EU leaders in Lisbon in November, planning specifically to meet European Council president Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso.

The US "has no stronger partner than Europe in advancing security and prosperity around the world", says the White House, while an EU statement declares: "The transatlantic relationship is vital to global prosperity, and both sides are committed to co-operate in order to promote growth and jobs in their economies."

When we see the US government and the EU starting to stitch things up between them, then it really is time to worry, as no good can come of it – if it pans out. However, given Obama's propensity for rubbing the Euro-weenies up the wrong way, "full and frank" discussions could have both sides not talking to each other for months afterwards.

The thing is though is that you know it is all BS when the White House also says: "The United States and the European Union are continually working together to advance a broad agenda based on a common history, shared values, and enduring ties."

The picture shows what happened last time the Americans tried to share values with the Germans.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 39 - Battle of Britain

If the "few" are in the making, there is a much smaller band who are also plying their deadly trade, but in this case deadly only to themselves. These are the bomb disposal teams, clearing up the ordnance that has failed to explode or where delayed action fuzes are fitted, sometimes in a deliberate attempt to kill those trying to deal with them.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Another milestone?

In the life of any political party, a change of leader is always a milestone – even if some are bigger than others. And we have just seen "one of they", with the resignation of The Lord Pearson as leader of UKIP because, in his own words, he is "not much good at party politics".

At least one must applaud Pearson as a man of honesty and good sense – in this department at least. It is also a wise man who knows his limitations and acts accordingly.

Pearson will be best remembered (by some) as a leader who, during the general election, went out to bat for the other side – much to the dismay and distress of the UKIP candidates who had invested huge amounts of their own money in their campaigns.

Where this now leaves UKIP is anyone's guess. Farage has not ruled out returning as leader and, given the dross left in the higher reaches of the party, he is still able to stand head and shoulder above his own internal opposition and look the best bet.

That, in fact is a measure of both Farage's success and his failure. His success is evident, in turning UKIP into a one-man party and his own personal cash cow. That he has driven out so many people and is left as the only person with any credibility as leader is the other side of the same coin.

But there is something more profound going on here. Farage may have wrecked the only credible anti-EU party, but he has not done it on his own. Euroscepticism is going through its own crisis. It has never developed beyond its anti-Maastricht days, it has never developed into a "movement" and it has never matured.

That Pearson should now depart, therefore, is undoubtedly a milestone, but the fear is that it is also the tombstone – for Euroscepticism. There should be no rejoicing in the establishment though – the replacement will be something they like even less.

COMMENT THREAD

Looks up

... gazes around and sees this. Dives sharply for cover.

You don't have to be an expert to know this is funny money – and it's going to go belly up. In fact – as always – the only people who don't know are the experts.

COMMENT THREAD

Day 38 - Battle of Britain

Mason, in his Battle over Britain, writes of this day that the scale and frequency of the German assaults - including the increasing use of the nerve-racking Stuka - engender "a new grimness in the character of the British".

The growing toll of enemy aircraft which fell over the English countryside, the increasing number of German airman bailing out amongst a population keyed up to meet an imminent invasion, the disruption of long-established amenities by enemy raids - all these pressures upon the English "now quite suddenly give birth to a startling and perhaps frightening atmosphere of hatred for the German people as a whole," he declares.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY