A new low

As this month proves to be the coldest December for a century, the temperature in England is set to drop to a record low.

Last night, the temperature in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, fell to -19.6°C. A combination of snow-covered ground, clear skies and the shortest day of the year could produce a sub -26°C thermometer reading tomorrow. The previous record low, -26.1°C set in Shropshire in January 1982, could be eclipsed at an inland area that does not benefit from the warming effect of the sea.

And still the warmists argue that the cold weather "may" be the result of global warming. But then, it could be a Dalton Minimum. Somebody's been using Vim on the sun - it's spotless.

COMMENT THREAD

I'm so sorreee

As the chaos at Heathrow intensifies, and it transpires that only £500,000 has been spent on snow clearing kit for the season, a grovelling apology for his crap performance comes from Colin Matthews, CEO of BAA. Delivered on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he bleats, "I'm really disappointed to have disrupted so many thousands of people's Christmas plans," adding:

It's absolutely distressing and heart-breaking to have been in the terminals and confronted with individuals, each with their stories of really sad and disappointing outcomes. I couldn't be more sorry, that's the case.

Matthews then warbles, "We are going to have to crawl over the details of what's happened over the last few days as soon as we've got the time to do that." Hey ho! Another fatuous "lessons learned" in the making, a precursor to yet another mess. And will even deputy heads roll?

The point is, of course, that even the born-again climate sceptic Boris Johnson has been able to leaven his enthusiasm for warming with a bit of timely populism. Even last February Boris was writing this garbage:

Our climate is changing, with London already experiencing warmer, wetter winters, hotter, drier summers and higher incidences of more extreme weather. To preserve and enhance our quality of life and maintain our status as a leading global city, we must adapt to manage these climatic shifts, which will result in increasing risk of floods, drought and heat waves.Climate change is no distant threat ...

If Boris can change his tune, you might have expected the CEO of the UK's largest airport to have seen this crisis coming.

Nor is dealing with the snow a matter of money. Readers will recall in February, just when Boris was trilling about climate change and the "warmer, wetter winters", we reported that cash-strapped Gordon Brown was buying £60,000,000-worth of "carbon credits" for Whitehall and other government offices in the UK, as well as British Nato bases in Europe.

Then I wrote that, while the rest of the country shivers in the cold, with householders wondering whether they can afford their mounting heating bills – inflated by hidden "carbon taxes" to pay for the carbon emissions produced - bureaucrats in their centrally-heated government offices can keep producing "greenhouse gasses", their emissions paid-for by British taxpayers.

This is the sort thing that should have us marching on Whitehall, stringing up these morons from the nearest lamp posts. £60 million would buy about 400,000 tons of rock salt. As a sum of money, it is more than any one of us will earn in a lifetime, extorted from taxpayers and frittered away.

Yet, no one is responsible. No one is sacked. No one loses their pension. The plebs have a hard time of it, but then they are only plebs - when they've finished suffering, they can pay the bills. Boris the mouth gets a few quid on top of his bunce as Mayor for writing a balls-aching piece in the Daily Failygraph, just to give Louise Gray a break, and the paper writes a soft little whinge. Then everything in the garden is rosy for the slime.

Until the mob kills them.

COMMENT THREAD

"Us" and "Them"

While we are set for some more serious cold, last Saturday, we saw Charles Moore remark that our politics has become more like that of a court than of a Parliament. When electors ask, "Who is our friend at court?", he says, they cannot find an answer.

The man, even from his elevated "above the line" position, is astute enough to recognise the growing divide between "Us" and "Them", although he does not have the wit to understand that Cameron is not going to be part of the solution. He is very much part of the problem.

Another one of "Them" is Nick Clegg, he of student fees fame, who we learn has just been bought at the taxpayers' expense a £300k "bombproof" armoured Jaguar XJ (pictured) to protect him from protesters.

Given the esteem with which politicians are generally held, this is probably an extremely wise decision, although Clegg will find that, eventually, he will have to come from behind the armour and the screen of state-paid gunmen. And people have long memories.

Another man who is soon going to need an armoured limousine is Philip Hammond, the largely inoffensive transport secretary, but now in the front line having to explain why the government is so unprepared for a severe winter that everyone outside the Met Office loop could see coming.

Of course, with his warmist boss and the idiot Huhne in the cabinet, this means that Hammond is hopelessly compromised. He cannot give the real reasons why the system has failed to cope. Instead, rather lamely, he tells us that the government is consulting its chief scientific officer over whether major long-term investment is required. All that does, though, is make him look shifty.

Just how severe the conditions are is illustrated by the experience of Suffolk County Council whose gritters have spread nearly as much salt since November as they used throughout last winter. The county council has used 12,000 tons on the roads since the cold weather began. Yet last year, which was bad enough, they used 14,000 tons. For this year though, their total stocks were only 18,000 tons and with no break in the weather forecast, stocks are perilously low.

Suffolk are not the only ones running out of supplies. Elsewhere, highway authorities are having to cut back on gritting to keep some stocks available for "strategic routes", allowing ministers' armoured limousines to reach their destinations.

The only way you could get your planning this wrong is if you had completely discounted the idea that this winter was going to be significantly worse than last – and that has been precisely what has been happening. These morons have been listening to the Met Office, then predictably getting it wrong.

Thus do ministers need to retreat behind their walls of armour and gunmen, to protect them from the consequences of their own mistakes and stupidity. Thereby do they increase even more the divide between "Us" and "Them". Perversely, it is us who then have to pay for their protection, and so the disaffection and the divide grows still further.

In the end, they might have found it easier and safer to have done their jobs properly - although whether any of them have the capability so to do is another question.

UPDATE: And guess what is the "most viewed" on The Independent!

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

Chickens … home … roost

As news pours in of the misery experienced by the travelling public as a result of the bad weather, alongside increasing evidence of the lack of preparedness of the authorities, we can only observe that the situation is very much of chickens coming home to roost.

There can be absolutely no dispute that the billions spent on global warming dwarfs the pitiful amount of money spent on preparing for adverse winter conditions. As importantly, with the Met Office and the government looking in the wrong direction, there has been insufficient planning for the eventuality of a bad winter.

One can, however, have little sympathy with those suffering the inadequacies of our rulers and administrators. Spending on winter preparedness is essentially a political decision – which makes this a serious political issue. This is the stuff of real politics.

But in this trivial, fundamentally unserious nation of ours, people have grown up with the idea that they can opt out of politics and leave them to the professionals. Well, it has been said that you either take an interest in politics, or it will take an interest in you. I have been known to say that democracy is not a spectator sport.

Many people over the past few days and the days to come are now going to suffer not only from the politicians' neglect, but their own. Chickens are indeed coming home to roost, but from some unexpected directions as well.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

A dark and cold Britain

Booker, as you would expect, is doing the Huhne energy "plan" in this week's column. Ironically, therefore, we are getting the deadly duo of Chris Paul-Huhne and David "Euroslime" Cameron seeking to protect us from global warming on one of the coldest weeks in recent memory, something which Booker is quick to note.

But the 131-page blueprint they have on offer promises only to inflict on Britain a social and economic catastrophe unique in the world, Booker writes. They chose this moment to announce what Huhne called "a seismic shift" in Britain's energy policy, the purpose of which, according to Mr Cameron, is to replace our "clapped out" electricity supplies by making Britain "the greenest economy in the world".

As always, the chief driving force of the policy is the EU's requirements, and Booker is one of the few that is prepared to say so. Within ten years, 30 percent of our electricity must come from renewables – provided mainly through thousands more wind turbines.

This, as we know, is one of the most expensive (although not the most expensive) ways of generating electricity. This means the government has concluded that the only way it can be made competitive is by massively rigging the market against any form of electricity derived from fossil fuels such as the coal and gas, which were last week supplying more than 80 percent of our electricity.

That, then, is to be the nub of Huhne's "seismic shift". By a complex new system of regulations, including what in effect will be a tax of £27 a ton on CO2 emissions, the government aims to increase the cost of conventionally-produced electricity. By this means, renewables will become "competitive" with conventional power.

Even though this is barking mad, it is by no means the full extent of the horror. In addition, it will in effect make it impossible to renew the coal-fired capacity which is to be knocked out in the next few years by the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive. There is, however, to be a hidden nuclear subsidy, which the government describes as "a credible alternative that could enable the electricity sector to meet the government’s decarbonisation and security of supply objectives."

Since the EU does not count carbon-free nuclear power as "renewable", we are still uncertain whether this will fall foul of its ban on state aid, although the government is also talking about a "low carbon obligation" as a means of giving nuclear generators a premium price. Again, there are no indications as to whether this would be allowable under EU law.

With all that, Huhne is assuring us that there will be only a modest rise of £160 a year in the average household energy bill, the effect of his plan in the long run being to make electricity cheaper than if he had not intervened. This is supported by a series of incomprehensible figures which, Booker remarks, are so riddled with wishful thinking and contradictions are these proposals that one scarcely knows where to begin.

For a start, even if we could hope to build enough windmills to provide, say, 25 percent of our electricity (10 times the current proportion and still less than the EU renewables requirement), this would require not the 10,000 turbines the Government talks of, but more like 25,000, costing well over £200 billion. Then there could be another £100 billion to connect them up to the grid.

At least the Government admits for the first time that the wind doesn't always blow; so it proposes a Capacity Mechanism to subsidise the building of dozens of gas fired power stations, to be kept running all the time, emitting CO2, just to provide instant back-up for when the wind drops.

More than once on these recent cold, windless days, the contribution of wind to our electricity needs has been as low as 0.1 per cent – so the back-up to all those turbines will cost billions more, doing much to negate any CO2 savings from the turbines when they work. It does not take long to estimate that the capital cost of Huhne's new energy policy could well be more than £300 billion over 10 years, or £30 billion a year. Since the total wholesale cost of the electricity we used last year was only around £19 billion, this alone would be well on the way to tripling our bills by 2020.

Thus, when Cameron talks of wanting to replace our "clapped out" power supplies, what he should have had in mind was the need to meet the terrifying shortfall due in a few years time when we lose those older nuclear and coal-fired power stations. The latter currently supply 40 percent of our needs and sometimes slightly more.

In a sane world, the government would be planning to get that infrastructure replaced as a matter of the highest national priority, at a cost of around £100 billion. Instead, it puts forward an incoherent farrago of policies which, even if they could be put into practice, would cost three times as much.  Then, sneakily, they have to be paid for by all of us through our already soaring energy bills which are and will increasingly be padded by undeclared taxes and levies.

Crucially, Huhne's plans include no practical proposals to meet that fast-looming energy gap, without which, within five years, we face the prospect of wholesale power cuts, bringing much of Britain's economy to a halt. This really is the greatest indictment of this excuse for a secretary of state. Many time, and especially in a series of posts in 2008, such as here on 10 September and here on 3 August, we argued that the Conservatives must treat energy policy with the utmost of urgency. Seven months into their new administration, all we get is this.

No other country in the world has an energy policy so utterly mad and unworkable, not least because "decarbonisation" rather than energy security or cost seems to be the primary concern. Yet all our major political parties are equally locked into the same self-deceiving bubble of unreality. With that, Booker concludes, any final hope that we might be saved from this absurdly unnecessary disaster seemed last week to vanish, even as the ice and the snow closed in.

COMMENT THREAD

Afore we go

We cannot leave the Moonbat saga without drawing your attention to this superb piece, which points out that the ghastly man is playing games of his own.* Despite his protestations, however, and his false assertions about this site, it is interesting to note that Guardian moderators have deleted every substantive post from "nopressure" and have done the same with the posts from North Jr.  Above and below are a selection of the posts.

The Guardian's idea of free speech, therefore, is to permit its columnists to mount ad hominem attacks and then prohibit any response. This is the same newspaper which is championing Assange and his Wikileaks, and is up front about the right to leak sensitive material. As always, any direct contact with this newspaper and its writers leaves one feeling soiled.

As for the moronic Moonbat, we have been sent this little note from him, published in the Guardian on 14 February 2005:

It is now mid-February, and already I have sown eleven species of vegetable. I know, though the seed packets tell me otherwise, that they will flourish. Everything in this country - daffodils, primroses, almond trees, bumblebees, nesting birds - is a month ahead of schedule. And it feels wonderful. Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are - unless the Gulf Stream stops - unlikely to recur. Our summers will be long and warm. Across most of the upper northern hemisphere, climate change, so far, has been kind to us.

Now, of course, as the snow lies deep and crisp and even, the warmists are shrieking "weather", while shutting down discourse, and Moonbat's moderators protect him from his own stupidity. But at least we now know how much the The Guardian really values free speech.

As a mirror-image of the same phenomenon, we have a piece from Monckton today, and very quickly we see the comments section infested by exactly the same group of trolls who so consistently attack Booker. The pattern of their frequent appearances and their relentless pursuit of wrecking tactics look contrived, and it is quite clear that the trolls are working in concert.

This amounts to another attack on free speech as, left to themselves, the trolls will drive other commentators off sites and then populate them with their own views.

The tenacity and predictability of the warmists, however, tells its own story. A failing cult, insecure, embattled and incoherent, is losing the plot – and thus making up in stridency what it lacks in credibility. As the snow lies, this is their "Battle of the Bulge" – useless but still deadly.

* UPDATE: Needless to say, a link posted on George Monbiot's comments by its author has been removed by the moderators. Dozens of other comments have also been removed, reflecting the Guardian's determination to prevent anyone responding to Monbiot's charges. The comment thread ends up being absurd, with huge holes in it, marked by the serial deletions. There are some seriously sick minds at work here.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

It came again

In my whole life, I've only ever seen conditions like these perhaps a couple of times – where we've had soft, slushy snow which has then frozen hard and got another layer on top. This makes it exceedingly dangerous, the most dangerous sort of snow imaginable, where you have soft snow on top of sheet ice. A lot of people are going to be hurt over the next few days. Some are going to die, and some are dying already.

The jokes about "global warming" were funny to start with, then they acquired an ironic edge. Now they are not funny at all. And, while the "forecast" splits Britain into a north-south divide, suggesting the snow will fall well south of here, already tonight we are seeing that soft, sticky, deadly layer getting thicker by the hour. So much for the forecast.

And the warmists just don't get it. Or perhaps they do, which could explain the vicious edge to their attacks. Their mantras are not going to survive this winter, and the politicians who continue to promote this lunacy are going to be howled down, ridiculed and rejected. They haven't realised it yet, but this while stuff falling from the skies is a powerful game-changer, a political event of considerable magnitude.

COMMENT THREAD

A family affair

The last word from the Norths on the Moonbat site comes not from this writer, but from Peter, who writes in the following terms:

I can't speak for the old man but I can tell you why I have ceased to self-censor. I am bored of the racism debate and the label of racism being flung around with reckless abandon in order to silence opposition. Accusing someone of racism these days is almost on a level with crying rape. Dirt sticks.

So as South Park has reclaimed the words fag and gay for other meanings, I have reclaimed "jungle bunny" to mean primitive African savages who show zero respect for the sanctity of life (a label they well deserve), similarly the word "nigger" now means, in the immortal words of The Boondocks, "ignorant motherf*cker".

We are not going to pander to thought police any more. We have to stop being afraid of words, only their intent. Examine peoples deeds not their words.

My dad, Dr North, while serving as a key member of UKIP, was instrumental in fielding two of the first Asian candidates for UKIP and nobody worked harder for them, even in the face of death threats by local muslim cadidates standing for the other parties. Google it if you want. You might find it in the Bradford T&A archives.

Believe what you want to believe. I, and readers of Eureferendum, know the truth about him. But when it comes to tweaking the self-righteous, it's open season and there are no walls in our minds, no barriers in our language.

Our family is from the crap end of Bradford, West Yorkshire. We know racism, we have seen it, and we have experienced the other side of it. We deplore racism in all its forms. But we also do not allow ourselves to be blinkered from realities or to be bullied into not stating that which the thought police have made people afraid to say.

And in my own experience, those who bandy the word racism around do so to hide their own insecurities about their own inner ugliness. I am a seasoned button pusher like my father and I promise you, over a long enough debate, by pressing the right buttons, I can get self defined anti-fascist activists to spew out the most rancid anti-Semitic hate speech you ever heard. It has been my experience that the hypocrisy of the left knows no bounds. It wasn't so long ago we saw climate activists and leftists marching side by side with Islamic fundamentalists.

When I see any kind of moral and intellectual consistency from the left I may pay attention, but I will not hold my breath. Even in the last two weeks, in the wake of the Assange affair, we have seen that those who "demand to be told the truth" and allegedly "do not trust government" are the same people who seem perfectly happy to accept the governments complete glossing over the climategate leaks. Truth is only true when it is convenient to you people.

And here we have King of the Moonbats resorting to thought police tactics in the absence of a spine. So in that respect I imagine the old man is rather pleased with himself tonight. Game set and match, North.

As a footnote, you lot quoting computer models with reference to climate change, and those of you who question my fathers scientific credentials, his PhD is in epidemiological surveillance. That in itself qualifies him as a scientist.

And those of you interested enough to know who you are dealing with, take a look at what the computer models were saying about BSE (the disease that would kill tens of thousands allegedly) and FMD while you are at it. Then look for the man who was saying it's all a bunch of horse manure. Don't be surprised if the name Dr Richard North pops up once or twice; the source of much research the great Moonbat himself has been the beneficiary of. Dunno about you, but I make a point of listening to scientists with a track record of being right.

Makes you proud, that.

Update: It gawn... "This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted."

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Kallaste december på 135 år

Coldest December in 135 years says SvD, the cheery Swedish newspaper – announcing still more global warming. How do we know it's global warming? Easy … everything is global warming – be it hot, be it cold, be it wet or dry, windy or calm. It is all, always, global warming.

This, of course, used to be a huge joke. But we didn't know we were going to have to die laughing.

Meanwhile, British global warming continues apace with the Daily Mail telling us that the cost to the economy so far this winter is £4.8 billion … and a further £8 billion to come if more snow materialises. I don't know where they get these factoids from but, if the figures are correct, then the warmists have been looking in the wrong direction. Now there's a surprise.

Talking of warmists, the moronic Moonbat is back in town, spraying indignation about this blog around like it was global warming. How touching it is that he cares so much.

Interestingly, there was at least one of the commentariat who jeered about the lack of comments supporting North. However, there was one, from a poster with the username "No Pressure". It said:

It is quite interesting how the Holy George gets all worked up about North using the term "jungle bunnies" but was so silent about the 10:10 campaign which depicted blowing up schoolchildren because they did not believe in the global warming campaign.

Had the HG explored the issues a little further, and got his head round them, he might have been aware that the 10:10 campaign was being deliberately provocative, aiming to shock as a way of getting the message through. This was thought (by the 10:10 campaign) to be a perfectly acceptable way of doing things.

HG then might have stop to think whether North is doing exactly the same thing. If there is one thing that gets the left-wing groupescules worked up, it is perceptions of racism - although, interestingly, only in the white man. Jungle Bunnies are perfectly in order when they display the most severe form of racism and indulge in ethnic genocide. That is OK ... as indeed is depicting the blowing up of schoolchildren.

The great irony (and we know that warmists don't "do" irony - it is above their pay grade) is that, if this was North's intention, he has succeeded. As one of the few truly independent bloggers, without a newspaper to hide behind, his hit-rate is not only respectably high but increasing.

Moonbat blog readers, however, will not be able to respond to this comment. It has been deleted ... although it has now re-appeared under the username "mrfleming". It will be interesting to see how long that lasts ... which turns about to be not very long. However, another replacement appears.

And, after several other deletions of other posts by the site moderators, this further comment has been posted by "nopressure":

DougL @ 17 December 2010 9:47PM

Richard North could come to CiF and tell us what his intention was with his original jungle bunny comment, and then we'd know. Given that his website edited the first article to remove the phrase I guess (and North jnr confirms above) that they realised it was not an appropriate phrase to us.

It would not really matter what North said on this site, so it would be best for him not to bother. In any case, his username, Spacedout, is subject to premoderation. Life is too short to play those games with the moderators. As it is, it is largely a waste of time trying to make a sensible contribution to this site as any really telling points are invariably deleted by the moderators. As I said, life is too short.

In answer to your comment, as so often you make assumptions (guesses), and as so often your assumptions are unfounded. North Jr suggested removal of the first reference to Jungle Bunnies in order to avoid having to deal with the unpleasantness of the warmist lobby. This, as he rightly says, was done before any awareness of the LFF post, which - given their triumphalism - again demonstrates how easy it is to make unfounded assumptions and to base false accusations on them.

However, my understanding is that, having researched the meanings and origins of the phrase "Jungle Bunny", it was felt that there was sufficient evidence of usage to sustain an argument that it could be applied in a non-racist sense, not least the evidence that the term has a history of use by blacks against other blacks. Also, given the etymology of the word of the word "jungle" - particularly the sanskrit derivation - and its moral dimension - it was also felt that it could be applied in the context without necessarily taking on a racist meaning.

On that basis, and in the expectation that it would be mis-represented by the warmist lobby, it was quite deliberately used as bait ... hooking a far bigger prize than expected. You can infer what you like from that, and dispute what you like. As North Jr indicates, neither he nor North Snr give a toss what you or any of the other warmists on this site think. But they know that Moonbat has been well and truly had, confirming himself as a small-minded idiot, relying on ad hominem while decrying its use.

The comment is not expected to survive the attentions of Moonbat's faithful moderators, who are doing their best to protect him from the consequences of his own stupidity. Thus, if it illustrates anything, it confirms once again that it is impossible to argue sensibly with warmists.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

A third world country

Tucked away safely in their comfortable offices in London, our political slime might be able to convince themselves that they are running an advanced, progressive country. But the test – or one of them – is not soaring ambitions or the rhetoric, but the capacity to secure the basics, ensuring that the nuts and bolts of society are provided and kept on track. And here, as we learn, they can't even do that.

Huhne, as climate change and energy secretary, is soooo full of himself and his energy revolution but he and his department can't even ensure that the estimated two million homes, schools and hospitals which rely on oil for their heating are going to get supplies over Christmas.

Most of these, of course, are in remote areas, where there is little choice of fuel, and as many as 60 percent of families in Northern Ireland – some 505,000 homes – are reliant on heating oil and now face rationing.

Yet this fatuous excuse for an energy secretary is so obsessed with his plans to increase the costs of energy and deliver "low carbon" electricity that he has let a supply crisis build up under his very nose, and is completely unprepared to deal with it. This – as with so many things in modern government – is where the fault lines lie. These "clever" people are so buoyed up with their own importance and ambitions that they completely fail to address the basics.

Much of this is about ensuring that roads are cleared and properly gritted, so that delivery tankers can get through – something local authorities are manifestly failing to do. But it is also about being prepared for the unexpected and ensuring that the utilities, suppliers and users are given warnings in good time.

Possibly, though, the bigger problem is that our politicians are so self-obsessed that they do not even realise – or care – where they are going wrong. But, as their ambitions soar, through their actual endeavours they are increasingly presiding over a third world country.

COMMENT THREAD

Just another lie

"European judges kill off British law that curbed sham marriages", was the news yesterday - a bizarre ruling from the Court of Human rights in Strasbourg.

Today, we get another equally bizarre ruling, this one that gives Mohammed Ibrahim, a Kurdish asylum seeker (pictured), the right to stay in the UK, even after running down 12-year-old Amy Houston, leaving her trapped and dying under the wheels of his car – which he was driving after having already been banned.

And now we have the same court ruling that the Irish abortion ban violates human rights – riding rough-shod over Irish law and the results of a 1983 referendum which asserted that the unborn child is an Irish citizen with full rights.

That ruling is going to cause ructions in Ireland, but patience is also wearing thin in the UK as we get a succession of these cases. Of course, there was a certain David Cameron who did actually promise to repeal the Human Rights Act. But from the mouths of lying political scum we expect and will get nothing but lies.

Euroslime Dave had no intention of doing anything at all about this – his promise was just another lie.

COMMENT THREAD

The world goes white

It started this morning at 09:26 precisely. We can be so definite because the noise of the snow lashing at the window alerted us to the moment when the global warming hit us again. Within minutes, the ground and the roofs were white. Now the snow has settled down to a light, persistent downfall, from leaden skies, leaving a wet, slushy reside, intensifying as I write (12:10), with the snow on the ground deepening by the minute.

How ironic it is that this is the day that that idiot Huhne (pictured below) launches his new energy plan – the one designed to save us from global warming. But then, morons such as Huhne don't do irony. It is beyond their capabilities.

As to how much it is going to cost us all, no one really knows. One newspaper says about £500 a year, the BBC says otherwise and the Financial Times says something different. Biased BBC has sussed it. The details are so vague that you can shape them to convey whatever message is required. Obfuscation is the name of the game.

Generally speaking, it seems that the agreed figure needed by way of investment is £200 billion - about twice what would actually be needed sensibly to renew the estate with conventional capacity.

And from what we know of Huhne's mad ideas, it would appear that the Renewables Obligation is to go, replaced by graded feed-in tariffs, which will include nuclear. How that gets past the EU's prohibition on state aid is unclear and, given the lacklustre performance of the modern civil service, you cannot guarantee they've got it right.

Secondly, there is going to be a "capacity payment" to bribe suppliers to build back-up plant – mainly gas-fuelled power stations – to deal with the majority of occasions when wind does not deliver. This is where we pay twice for the same thing, duplicating capacity that would not otherwise be needed.

Then we are to have madness itself, a minimum price for "carbon" – i.e., carbon dioxide – a tax by any other name, which will penalise CO2 emitters and further jack up our energy bills. This will be skewed to make sure that back-up plant is only used for back-up, which means our electricity is going to be very expensive indeed.

The fourth Huhne madness is an "Emissions Performance Standard". This is supposed to impose tough emissions regulations on new power plants, effectively banning the construction of new coal plant without CCS. Again, how that impinges on EU law is not made clear.

The thing that is very clear though is that, outside, it is very cold and very white. Needless to say, that will not have the least effect on the warmists. They will go to their graves insisting that this is the warmest year since dinosaurs first inhabited that planet. WUWT explains why they are mistaken, but again that will have no effect on dyed-in-the-wool warmists.

People are not stupid though, and energy prices are the stuff of politics – an issue that the so-called "political" sites are largely ignoring this morning. The MPs ignore it at their peril though - as the hammering Huhne is getting on the Daily Telegraph comments will attest. When people are cold and are having to pay even more for their basic needs, taking home reduced pay and pensions, while paying more taxes, you have a recipe for some very unhappy bunnies.

And unhappy bunnies bite.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

A Fox is shot

We were gutted to learn from The Guardian that Fox News isn't objective on climate change – and has been caught out ordering its journalists to cast doubt on well-founded warmist claims that we are about to fry. Who could possibly have thought that this broadcaster had an agenda – unlike the totally objective BBC and Guardian? We are well and truly shocked.

This news has been so upsetting that we had to avert our gaze from the news of blizzards in the US Midwest, for fear that we too might start thinking like a Fox journalist. That is scary.

Instead, we focused on the heroic James Hansen who came all the way from snow-bound USA to defend those valiant green warriors who have now been wrongly convicted for wanting to close down Britain's second-largest coal fired power station. We think it is absolutely terrific that an American civil servant should come all the way here to defend their actions, even if they have been now been found guilty of a criminal conspiracy.

Just because newspapers like the … er … Guardian are speculating that the winter here might be the worst since 1963 - and they are planning cycle lanes on the Thames (pictured) - this is no reason whatsoever for suggesting that Fox News might be right. One must be vigilant at all times to ensure that we maintain the correct perspective.

This is especially so when one of The Guardian commentariat thinks that when the results of global warming become apparent in the next decade or so, the public mood toward denialists is going to turn very ugly. He wouldn't be surprised if we saw Nuremberg-style trials of prominent denialist propagandists.

According to The Guardian, these could even include the likes of Chris Huhne, and every single Tory who ever lived, for the "disaster" that is the "scaled-down green investment bank". This terrible insult to greenery also finally lays to rest any pretence that this will be "the greenest government ever".

One just cannot be too careful on these things.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

Bye-bye Harrier

Noisy, expensive, dangerous to fly, and well past its sell-by date, the Harrier took its final bow today.

And even if it served us well in its time, did we need to see all sixteen of the last aircraft fly today, for no purpose other than nostalgia? For sure, all the actual costs amounted to were the fuel and disposables, and we get some interesting photographs, but for that money we could have kept an MEP on the gravy train for at least a week.

That's the trouble with this country … a completely distorted sense of priorities.

COMMENT THREAD

An Italian job

I am taken to task, in a very friendly and informative way by one of our Italian readers for repeating the MSM description of Berlusconi as "scandal-ridden". I might have known that anything the MSM takes as read should be treated with the utmost caution.

Without passing judgement on the man, it is fair to say that Berlusconi has been very successful in his business and political career. But he is an outsider and as such hated by most politicians. And, due to the nature of the Italian political system, he has always had to form coalitions in order to win the elections.

Most Italian political leaders, I am informed, "are of course idiots." I would be the last one in the world to dispute such a claim, but the upshot is that they think that they can make alliances with Berlusconi, use him for winning the elections, and then get rid of him by trickery or court cases and then retain power.

However, it seems that, being the idiots they are, they have always underestimated Berlusconi. As a successful businessman of proven worth, he is anything but an idiot – and also one of those very rare businessmen who have made the successful transition into politics.

So far, therefore, the idiots have lost their battles. Gianfranco Fini President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and leader of the Future and Freedom party, is the latest in a long line of those who thought he could get rid of Berlusconi without going to the country. And none of the established politicians want elections, because Berlusconi would win by a large margin.

As far as being "scandal ridden", this is as much a reflection of the legal system, as anything. Unable to beat him in the ballot box, Berlusconi's rivals are resorting to legal challenges in a system which is, to say the very least, skewed.

The magistrates, who are at the centre of the challenges, are almost all leftists. At least a quarter, by their own admission, are active leftist militants and can be usually seen at rallies and demonstrations of the left and extreme left. They make no secret of the fact that their ultimate goal is to remove Berlusconi from power, no matter how. They openly declare so in books and interviews.

Nevertheless, these magistrates have huge power and privileges. Career (and salary) is automatic and you can reach the maximum grade while doing small claims in a small village. Prosecutors and judges are part of the same career path. Thus, a judge can become prosecutor, and then return to being a judge. This means that the judge who convicts someone in a lower court can be the prosecutor in the appeal trial. It also means that judges usually do not contradict each other. Arrest or search warrants are never denied.

The upshot is that judges are not accountable, and do not respond to any other authority. They are left to themselves. Their salaries are linked to those of MPs and the system is totally self-referential. There is a sort of "mini parliament" responsible for appointments and punishments but this is staffed exclusively by judges. It is regarded as a joke.

What currently gives them their leverage is that, following a referendum, parliamentary immunity has been removed from the constitution. Thus, the justice system can control the legislators. On this basis, the magistrates have gone to war against Berlusconi, currently launching an investigation against him for "corruption" on the basis that he was looking for votes for the confidence vote. According to the prosecutors, he was promising favours in exchange for support - something surely unheard of in parliaments? That, we are told, gives the idea of the state of madness of the Italian political system.

Berlusconi has made several attempts to change the laws that regulate judges activity. This is described by the media as an attempt to obtain total power. In reality, it is an attempt to put a limit to the limitless power of justice system against legislative power.

The trouble is, though, that parliament comprises two symmetrical chambers. It means every law that is amended in one chamber must go to the other and so on for an endless ping-pong; laws can be stalled forever this way and Berlusconi's attempts to reform the system have been blocked.

Thus, multiple courts in Italy are pursuing still pursuing Berlusconi, but most cases against him are groundless. But with the justice system in the hands of the hard left, it is being used for political purposes. Berlusconi and his companies have been at the receiving end of more than 500 search warrants. They have had to spend over €100 million in defence lawyers.

As to the demonstrations in Rome, these are the usual urban warfare launched by the leftist armies every time there is the promise of a government spending cuts (or promises of a somewhat smaller increase). But this – as here - is the reaction of the privileged when some privileges are going to disappear.

Our informant is in complete agreement with us about the state of the opposition. It is more or less dead, he tells us. Its leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, is a relic of the past, a pathetic figure who is detested and derided by its own people. Thus, incredibly, rather than address the real issues, Italian politicians fritter away their time on their petty power fights, forgetting that they were elected and are paid handsomely to govern the country, at least in the little space left by the EU.

If there are crimes for which Berlusconi is responsible, they are the ratification of the Lisbon treaty and the obedience to any EU demand. Also, the finance minister Giulio Tremonti has gone mad and fallen for the EU project and that would be enough to justify a firing squad for high treason.

And, although Berlusconi is no socialist, the reality is that the power of bureaucracies, of the state apparatus, of the justice system, of the trade unions and ultimately of the EU is such that even the most hardcore libertarian would be unable to change anything in Italy.

As a result, the Berlusconi parliament and government as a whole is only a milligram less socialist than the socialist themselves - not by ideology but by convenience and by culture. Fini is a fascist, or ex-fascist, and despite looking very hard, there seems to be very little difference between a fascist and a socialist.

COMMENT: VACUUM OF POWER THREAD

Greeks on the boil

Not content with allowing the Italians to grab all the limelight, the Greeks are back in the news with an entertaining riot of their own. But what is particularly interesting to see is a former transport minister being recognised and stoned as he left parliament. Too often, the politicians skulk behind their barricades and armed guards, while the police take the heavy stuff.

In this case, abut 200 leftist protesters chased Kostis Hatzidakis as he left parliament, shouting: "Thieves! Shame on you!" They threw stones and beat him with sticks, until he took flight into a nearby building. With Charlie boy in this country now resorting to his armoured Bentley, we are not far from the day when even the lowliest MP will need an armoured vehicle for transport.

Reviewing the general footage of the Greek "demonstration", it is interesting to see the widespread use of petrol bombs or "Molotov cocktails" (top), and these certainly seem to be one of the more effective tools in the protesters' armoury. But we also seen the Italians using their placards to effect (above) – rather akin to the Roman Legion "tortoise", which is rather appropriate.

This is what the idiot police (is there any other sort?) and the cowardly politicians do not seem to realise – that if there are real grievances, cracking down on protest simply leads to an escalation on both sides. One expects, soon enough, to see these Continental tactics at play in the UK, and this is how it all starts.

Meanwhile, Conservative Home is on the ball, as always. Or, as the man says, "never knowingly fails to disappoint".

COMMENT THREAD

Stop feeding the filth

We have today yet another graphic example of the inability of leader writers to join the dots. In a flatulent piece by The Daily Telegraph, we have a dissertation on the thieving filth in the EU parliament who, as we noted earlier, are robbing us blind.

But, instead of drawing the obvious and only sensible conclusion, weak as ditch water we have the leader writer bleat that: "The time has now come for party leaders in the UK to order their representatives in Europe to be as open with the taxpayer as national MPs are expected to be and to publish their expenses online."

The piece then concludes, "We have a right to know where our money goes" – as if we didn't know already and as if knowing in detail where it is spent would make any difference. When will these lame-brains realise that we are sick to the back teeth of this filth stealing our money, and the only answer is to stop giving them any?

COMMENT THREAD

It gets worse

The global warming reaches critical level. But with California warm, that means the average temperature is fine … so no problem.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

A vacuum of power

Riots and demonstrations broke out in Rome and across Italy yesterday after Silvio Berlusconi won back-to-back votes of confidence. Police fired tear gas at opponents of the scandal-plagued prime minister in the capital – while Berlusconi himself enjoyed a joke with his colleagues (below).

He is, however, seriously weakened by this series of votes, although his strength continues to lie in the weakness and unpopularity of the opposition. There, it seems to me, is an illustration of the broader malaise throughout Europe – and elsewhere. Not only are we troubled by poor governments, we also suffer from inept oppositions.

And, while there will always be the Daily Mail tendency which gets all precious when violence breaks out on the streets, the editorial writers – and the politicians themselves – need to realise that nature abhors a vacuum – no more s/o when it comes to the exercise of power. If they fail to do their jobs properly, other people will step in and do it for them.

Berlusconi is a modern miracle. Before him, the Italian political system used up prime ministers faster than toilet rolls, with roughly the same effect. But now, Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, is saying that Berlusconi's government is "clinically dead". He may be right, in which case Italy is in for troubled times.

Back in this country though, we have no cause to feel superior. We suffer from exactly the same problems – a weak, inadequate government and a weak opposition. The scenes we see in Rome could now very easily be replicated in London.

COMMENT THREAD

Serious global warming

Military and emergency services personnel are on the ground and in the air rescuing stranded motorists from their vehicles in southwestern Ontario where snow squalls have crippled traffic and sparked a state of emergency, reports the regional newspaper.

At least 11 people have been killed by the same storm in the United States and there has been a race on all day to rescue more than 70 motorists trapped by snow in Indiana. And the system shows no signs of slowing down as it moves east, with travel chaos over the Christmas period expected.

Meanwhile, this side of the Atlantic, the myth of ruthlessly efficient Germany, always battling the elements so much better than Britain, has been smashed by a new cold weather front. Says The Daily Mail. Not a single train ran without delays in the whole of the country. Even international airports like Dusseldorf had to shut down on Monday night as the snow blew in.

Actually, it isn't a myth – and the commentariat is protesting that things are running pretty normally. Despite that, there is the moronic tendency over in Germany that falls for the same warmist crap that afflicts our brain-dead officialdom. And, like so many, your average Kraut is losing his snow-driving skills. In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the west there were some 700 accidents on the autobahns during 12 hours of snowfall.

And the forecast here is dire. The big freeze is due to return tomorrow and the predictions are that it's going to last for a month, putting the country on course for a repeat of the notorious winter of 1962-3, when the sea froze over at Whitstable (pictured above) - as well as in 1940 ... what is it about the sea at Whitstable?.

Nevertheless, this global warming is getting serious.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

An assertion

What is to be done? This is a question my former co-editor poses over on her blog. But she is doing no more than the dozens of people I talk to every week – the same as is being done by hundreds and thousands, and even millions.

Helen's first response is to suggest that we harness the power of the internet – the blogosphere and the social media. In so doing, she takes a sideswipe at the "perestroika organizations" like Open Europe or the Taxpayers' Alliance. They are – in my words, not hers - "Uncle Tom" organisations, which soak up money and neuter dissent, diverting it into harmless channels. Concentrate on the main issues, Helen advises, and assume your audience is capable of understanding them.

That might get us somewhere, but Helen then goes on to ask whether anyone has any better ideas. For many, the answer is that we need a demonstration. But, in my view, that is the last thing we need. That is playing The Man's game – asking "pretty please" if we can come down with our placards, to be corralled or "kettled" in approved areas, and then ignored.

What we actually need, therefore, is not so much a demonstration as an assertion - an assertion of power. Upon this rests the simple constitutional principle that sovereignty, and thus power, rests with the people. That principle, however, has been steadily diluted to the extent that those who purport to represent us have now assumed that power and believe it to be their own.

Thus, what we need to do is assert our power – hence the assertion. We need to remind those who would seek to rule rather than govern us where the power resides. In appearance, there would be little to distinguish between a demonstration and an assertion. But the principle is very different. In an assertion, we go where we please and when we please. The role of the police – as our servants - is to assist us.

To make this work, only one thing is needed. Determination. If enough people want to make it happen it will happen. And that means putting, at the very least, a million people on the streets – we call them already a Million Angry People.

Timing, of course, is crucial. There is to be a general election in 2015. December 2014 therefore, is a good time to put a million people in Parliament Square, enough to make it very clear to those who will be seeking election that they will be there on license. A condition of that license will be a commitment to the immediate removal of the UK from the European Union. And that is just for starters.

But for us to start, we have to organise. A thousand people are needed. They recruit ten each. Those recruit ten. They recruit ten. We have our million and their corps of leaders. Then we march. This is no fantasy. It is about our survival as a free nation. We roll over, or we march. Simples. Unless, as Helen says, anyone has a better idea.

COMMENT THREAD

This stinks

Remember this? Well, it gets worse. That is the thing about these filth. They can ignore us because we have no direct means of holding them to account.

I remember lessons in religious studies as a lad, when under the direction of a Jesuit priest we discussed such concepts as mortal sin, and the nature of the acts covered by it - not least murder. That led to discussions about the various exemptions, where we had to consider circumstances when homicide was justified.

I suspect that, had these circumstances been foreseen, where we are being ripped off so contemptuously, our priest might have had a little difficulty in advising us as to the correct line to take. For my own part however, my personal moral code would have no difficulty dealing with the situation - and it would be unlikely that it would mesh with the legal code.

COMMENT THREAD

Heatballs fail

We wrote recently about what appeared to be an ingenious attempt by a German entrepreneur, Siegfried Rotthäuser, to circumvent the ban on selling incandescent light bulbs. His answer was to market them as personal heating devices, on the grounds that 95 percent of the electricity used is converted into heat, with the product branded as the "Heatball".

However, a brief report tells us that the attempt has failed and Rotthäuser is to lose his stock. German customs are to seize and destroy 40,000 bulbs imported by him, and they will then be destroyed.

Delighted though we were by the original initiative, we were also puzzled by it. Although the law, as in Commission Regulation (EC) No 245/2009, does prohibit the use of these bulbs for household purposes, they can still be bought and used for industrial purposes. As such, it is not illegal to import them or sell them.

We have not seen the German judgement, but looking at the Heatball concept from a UK perspective, we could see problems. All light bulbs have to have a CE approval and if they are imported and sold as lighting for industrial purposes, then the CE approval remains valid.

On the other hand, if they are sold as heating devices, this would invalidate the CE approval. They would have to be re-certified as heating devices, at considerable expense. Trading Standards would - if they cared to make an issue of it - have a field day, with prosecutions for selling uncertified products, if they were imported under the current certification.

The point, though, is that the bulbs can still be bought – either by internet or from local distributors. There is no need to go to the trouble of marketing heatballs in order to put two fingers up to the EU.

COMMENT THREAD

More global warming

Seriously folks, this really is evidence of global warming. Thus, when we get fears of flooding in the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert and nearly four feet of snow falls in the area of Mount Hermon, with light snow in Jerusalem, it has to be global warming.

When you get heavy snow in Damascus (pictured above), it can only mean one thing ... global warming. Equally, the collapse of the inflatable roof of the Metrodome sports stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after an "old fashioned winter blizzard" when 17 inches of snow fell on the city, can only mean one thing ... more global warming.

Even as China braces itself for a blast of icy weather, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning have already been affected by the cold air, with drops in temperatures ranging from 4-10°C in places over the weekend.

With Britain awaiting a similar fate, and the US still cleaning up the mess from last time, this too can only mean that more global warming is on its way. Of course, you would expect snow in Moscow this time of the year (above), but two years ago they were having to import it, so this current crop must be indicative of global waming.

In the warmist mind, everything is evidence of global warming – it has to be. After all, if global warming is a given, if it is real and it is happening, any weather anomaly of any nature must be evidence of global warming. And if there is evidence of global warming, then it must be real and it must be happening. It really is that simple. 

That is why we have to pay £18.3 billion a year to finance the Climate Change Act - you know it makes sense.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Free degrees?

Salmond says he's planning to make this the main plank of the SNP's Holyrood election campaign - a commitment to keep university education free for Scottish students.

It could be, though, that we misheard. I thought "free degrees" was a pop group (above) ... or a global warming target. Mind you, if we stopped paying £14 billion annual subs to the EU, the £9 billion on international aid and the additional £2.9 billion for the Jungle Bunny Climate Bribe, then we too could afford the free degrees.

COMMENT THREAD

David Cameron "satisfied"

David Cameron, we are told by the fair Louise, has expressed his "satisfaction" at the climate change package agreed at the Cancun climate change summit. And the proximate cause of this satisfaction is that it "will see the rich world committed to forking out billions of pounds every year to stop global warming, but delay plans to cut carbon emissions".

Although the sums are not specified, we already know that this will amount to £2.9 billion in the short-term, on top of the £18.3 billion annually that the Climate Change Act is set to cost us.

Had we not already plenty of reasons to loathe him, the fact that this creepy, smug little man is "satisfied" at developments would be sufficient unto itself. But the strange thing is how he can possibly sustain any support at all for his political programme when he is throwing away such large sums on such a contentious and increasingly unpopular cause.

"We are all in this together," the man would have us believe. But we are not, and with this crass statement, the divide just got bigger.

COMMENT THREAD