For sheer, bone-headed idiocy, I give you Caroline Spelman, the ‘Environment’ Secretary.
Climate change ‘could disrupt wi-fi and hit power supply’
Let’s see, wifi works in Moscow in the depths of winter. (Intense cold, arid.) Wifi works in Hong Kong at the height of summer. (Intense heat, humid.) Works everywhere else, too, as far as I am aware…
Let’s waste another 200 billion that we don’t have.
Although it is about the education system in the USA, it is equally applicable to the current situation in the UK – well, in England, at least.
Extract.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—”for free”—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.
Of course, the quality of public supermarkets would play a major role in families’ choices about where to live. Real-estate agents and chambers of commerce in prosperous neighborhoods would brag about the high quality of public supermarkets to which families in their cities and towns are assigned.
Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.
In my line of work, the I am usually asked to do a job because something is not working, or is not working as well as it should. Since I am in a specialised area of business, the job that needs to be done may not always have the wholehearted support of local management but have been imposed upon them from higher up the food chain. (There is another area of work which is generally of the same type wherever it may take place; work against smugglers and counterfeiters.) Being a contractor, it is often possible for me to come up with more radical or far-reaching solutions than would be possible from inside the organisation, since everyone can ‘blame’ me when I pack up my desk and take my cheque. Most of what I do involves change, and much of the time, managing change also, though I’m not going to get into that here; what I do want to talk about is; ‘Why change?’
There are two reasons to change something, whether it be a physical object or a process: it is broken, or there is a better alternative. The first case is easy to identify; if something isn’t working it is pretty damn obvious to all. The second case may not always be so clear. In what way is the alternative ‘better?’ It is necessary to demonstrate quite clearly to all concerned, (all ‘stakeholders,’ in the modern jargon,) why any proposed alternative to an existing thing or process, would be ‘better,’ than what is to be junked and replaced.
When making the case for change, there is a process which ought to be followed, maybe differing in petty detail from time to time, or place to place, but the same in broad outline and in the steps that make for a convincing argument. First, the reason(s) for making the change need to be clearly identified. Next the proposed change(s) need(s) to be clearly explained. If there is more than one alternative, each needs to have it’s merits and drawbacks clearly shown. Then a recommended change needs to be proposed. The change should be supported by arguments drawn out of the first two steps. Finally the costs – financial and organisational/social should be precisely and transparently demonstrated, ( including the costs of doing nothing.)
That’s how it goes. If change is proposed, make the case. If you can’t make the case, expect to be shredded.
Maria Damanaki, commissioner for fisheries, EUSSR.
EU unveils plans to pay fishermen to catch plastic
Trial project aims to provide fleets with an alternative income source income to reduce pressure on fish stocks
Erm, I don’t believe I am the only person devious enough to spot the flaw in this nutty proposal …
Approvingly, natch, posted in the Grauniad.
Since spring has finally sprung up here in the mountains, I shot these the other day. The first shot is my two grandchildren enjoying the great outdoors, George with his iPad and Tina with her iPod touch. (They were up for a ‘sleepover’ in the village. The general view shows all the space I have – a little more behind me, but mostly taken up by a double gate. The close-up shows a bit more detail. The copper thingy is an old fashioned <s>Turkish</s> Cyprus coffee maker. It’s a boiler thingy for hot water and the opening in the front is a heated sand-bed. You run hot water into the cups, spoon in the coffee then cook it in the sand till it boils – takes longer than gas, but produces the best coffee. I’ll take some shots when the roses bloom 🙂
Search me – lots of argument in the blogosphere.
He was paid $200,000 to promote Fieldforce, which did environmental audits of homes under the Government’s “green loans” scheme, which has since collapsed and been scrapped as useless and grotesquely expensive.
He also invested in Geodynamics, a company trying to exploit geothermal power with what Flannery claimed was “relatively straightforward” technology — pumping water on to hot rocks deep underground at Innamincka to produce steam for delightfully “green” power.
Straightforward? Geodynamics had to plug three of its shafts after an explosion, has been flooded by rains Flannery didn’t predict and is now years behind schedule with its share price in a decline too deep to hide.
The only thing “straightforward” about this troubled project was the $90 million grant Geodynamics extracted from the gullible Rudd government, which must have bought Flannery’s spin that geothermal power could be the power of our future.
He is now Australia’s $180,000-a-year Climate Commissioner – lucky, lucky you!
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/nosedive-moment-for-warm-mantra/story-e6frfifx-1226041787475
Whoever thought that Gordon Brown should head up the IMF. With his record?
David Cameron gets something right at last.
David Cameron blocks Gordon Brown as head of IMF
Mind, GB must come a close second to think that he would ever get the nomination out of Cameron.
The meeja are still at it, trying to parley the Fukushima crisis into a disaster and, in the process, handing the bedwetters and neo-luddites large wodges of convenient headlines with which to frighten the masses into the abandonment of the only clean, safe and reliable power generation source which will stop the lights going out as the current generation of power plants comes to the end of its working life. The latest scare tactic is the trumpeting of the fact that the Fukushima crisis has been up-graded to level 7, the highest level on the international scale used to measure these events. ‘It’s another Chernobyl,’ they whinny hysterically, running around in ever decreasing circles and waving their hands frantically in the air. Well, it’s not, nor can it be. It is a serious situation, and I’m not trying to downplay it, but it is contained and the omens, at the moment, are all good for it’s continuing containment. The hype and spin around Fukushima downplays the devastation caused by the actual disaster, a 1,000 year earthquake followed by a 1,000 year tsunami. The facts are…
PERTH – An SAS trooper collecting toys for children was stabbed when he helped
stop a suspected shoplifter in east Perth .
The ‘Toys-R-Us’ Store Manager told ‘The West Australian’ that man was seen on
surveillance cameras last Friday putting a laptop under his jacket at the store.
When confronted, the man became irate, knocked down an employee, pulled a knife
and ran toward the door.
Outside were four SAS Troopers collecting toys for the “Toys For Tots” program.
Smith said the Troopers stopped the man, but he stabbed one of them, in the back.
The cut did not appear to be severe. What happened next?
Boadicea's Chariot 
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