Boris has a new slogan, “Move on”, which he deployed repeatedly today in his appearance before the House of Commons Liaison Committee. Remembering short slogans is fairly well the extent of his political skills, and he contrived to look pleased with hmself for remembering this one. The public, he solemnly informed those watching, now wanted the narrative to “Move on” from the Dominic Cummings debacle.
The problem with this slogan is it does not have a good history. The aged among us will remember that after the disaster of the Iraq war, it was constantly repeated by Tony Blair. OK, millions of people were dead. But it was time to “move on” from that. Only he could not. The dead of Iraq have haunted him ever since, they enabled Brown to depose him and Blair has the look of a man who believes the dead will be waiting to speak against him in the next life. No matter how much the Guardian still tries constantly to rehabilitate him, he will always have to be protected from the British public, a stinking rich, morally bankrupt pariah.
One of the first articles published in this blog spoke of Blair and his “Move on” mantra. On 21 April 2005 I published from the Blackburn parliamentary election:
Two months ago I arrived here alone, standing forlornly with my rucksack on Blackburn railway station, in the midnight snow. I wanted to make a stand on principle against illegal war, and against Jack Straw’s decision that we should use intelligence obtained under torture. I wanted to get some national publicity for these issues during the campaign, to counter Tony Blair’s mantra: “Let’s move on” from the war.
(Am I the only one to find this mantra insulting? I think I’ll rob a bank to get some campaign funds. When the police come to take me away, I’ll say, “Hey, let’s move on. OK, so I robbed a bank. Whatever the rights and wrongs, that phase is over. What is important is that we all come together now and get behind the really great things I’m going to do with the money.”)
When a politician is desperate enough to use the “move on” slogan, you know they have done something very wrong indeed and are in big trouble.
“And now we must move on from Watergate to the business of the people”
said President Richard Nixon on August 25 1973.
Like Johnson, Nixon made the claim it was “the people” who want to move on. This is the standard mantra for politicians who have done something very illegal: the public do not care, are not interested in justice being visited on politicians. It is always the public who are urging the guilty politicians to “move on” and ignore the trivial detail of their own guilt.
“No decision I have ever made in politics has been as divisive as the decision to go to war to in Iraq. It remains deeply divisive today. I know a large part of the public want to move on.”
“Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long and I take my responsibility for my part in all of this,” he said. “That is all I can do. Now is the time — in fact, it is past time — to move on. . . . And so tonight I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.”
Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinsky affair, August 17th 1998.
We now know it would have been a good deal better if America had not “moved on” but had taken a much deeper interest in Clinton’s appalling history of predatory sexual behaviour.
I presume you see the pattern here. If a politician tells you to “move on” from a subject, it is a gigantic red flag that you should do precisely the opposite. I tried to discover some examples of politicians telling us to “move on” from an issue, where hindsight does not show the politician to have been a massive crook. No examples were readily apparent.
Ladies and gentlemen, I add to this list of shame:
“It is now time to move on… the country wants to move on.”
Boris Johnson 27 May 2020 on the Cummings Scandal.
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What we all need to ‘move on’ from is believing that the Westminster system will ever produce a government representing the people.
It has clearly not represented the people since 1997 and probably never ever represented the people where foreign policy was concerned, outside the narrow window of 1939-45.
The Westminster system is corrupt to the core, the MPs as a rule are on-the-make, on-the-take shysters who spin wideboy bollocks to a credulous undiscerning voter population.
They are fully backed up by the media, who are paid 300% more to lie to the billionaires’ tune. Even the BBC take orders from Rupert Murdoch, in effect. But we pay for them. Whatever happened to ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’, eh?
Keir Starmer is up to his neck in corrupt legal decisions when he was at the CPS. He is no saviour, he was appointed precisely because he was controllable, corrupt and ambitious. Those are always the traits chosen by the puppetmasters.
See what happens if you set up a Scottish ‘groat’, not through a national sovereign bank, but as a local currency used by small traders in Scotland. As a means to keep local money circulating locally, not being funnelled down to shareholders in London or wherever.
I guarantee you that both Labour and the SNP will find ways to criminalise you.
They always criminalise independence of action….
Dont look at the Tories in other words. I get it.
While the British Glovenment checks its colonial foetuses, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and Libya to see if they are getting ripe for colonial rape, the EU is proposing a Green Investment programme out of the covid 19 crisis, which if Corbyn had been allowed to win the last selection in December would have been exactly in line with his election promises.
Not only would his mildly adaptive Norway + proposals for Brexit have been extremely easy to ratify this year, but this green policies are 100% in tune with our closest allies in Europe.
I read in voltairenet that pressure from the Islamophobe right wing in Germany had now forced Mrs Merkel to disconnect with the Muslim Brotherhood that she was formerly trying impose on Syria and the Middle East. Surely this is proof that democracy is always a good thing, even if extreme measures must sometimes be opposed by extreme counter- measures.
What the fixing Tories have done AGAIN, having rigged the 2010 election through Clegg and the 2019 election through Clever computing, is skanked the course of European history AGAIN towards stealing oil from its neighbours , instead of investing in Green energy.
This is unfortunately the disgusting mindset of the failed British Empire. They force us, the British people, by means of flouting democracy , into a road we never, ever wanted to go. At least Trump decided he wanted the US to be loved. By contrast , the British deep state only wants this country to be hated, and make Empire2 in the image of Queen Victoria’s dark satanic mills.
Of course , Julan Assange and Craig Murray, must be persecuted and imprisoned for exposing and opposing the British state’s trashing of democracy, it’s own people, and trashing of other countries it wants to target ” above its weight “.
As if life was just a pit bull fight or boxing match.
Giyane, what does “investing in Green energy”, really mean?
It seems a political fig leaf / ‘investor story time myth’ unless we include nuclear power as green, which it is, because wind and solar power are entirely dependant on big fossil for build out, maintenance, necessary grid upgrades, and finally smoothing intermittency, let alone the orders of magnitude mining – colonial extractivism i.e. lithium & cobalt etc. – needed to build the required storage i.e. batteries.
Because nuclear power is orders of magnitude more dense an energy source than wind & solar & water power, and has plant lifetimes several times longer, nuclear needs far less land mining and fossil fuels for its build out & maintenance.
And there is similarly little scope – i.e. suitable land – for expanding water power / storage in the UK.
Until we solve wind, water & solar power’s HUGE demand for raw materials and land – far outstripping global supplies – the only truly “green energy” that has any chance of replacing fossil fuels in the UK and allowing some very moderate increase in wind & solar, and perhaps kick starting the much vaunted hydrogen / synth fuel future is nuclear power.
Also, once we’ve burnt all the existing nuclear waste & warheads in gen4 reactors, rending it safe as background in 300 years, instead of 300,000 years, seawater has enough uranium (etc.) dissolved in equilibrium with seabed rocks to last until the sun goes supernova.
https://www.thegwpf.org/new-paper-decarbonisation-plans-fail-engineering-reality-check/
https://archive.org/details/atomichumanismthecasefornuclearpowerv1
Natasha
Germany will not build any more nuclear power stations after seeing Fukushima
Nor will Switzerland, nor Austria, nor Italy,
they just do not want the risk.
Because Austria and Switzerland are likely to experience a tsunami?
Germany still produces around 35% of it’s electricity from lignite, hard coal and biomass plus another 15% from gas. Most of the coal and lignite is imported from China and Australia.
How much CO2, NOX and particulates that lot is producing I wouldn’t like to say but I bet it’s killing more people every year than died at Fukushima.
Kempe: CO2 doesn’t kill anybody*, so it should be omitted from your list of killers. Burning natural gas produces only CO2 and water. Nuclear power stations require large quantities of easily accessible cooling water, so generally have to be built on the coast, like Fukushima, or on the banks of lakes or rivers. While accidental emissions of radioactive materials on the coast can to some extent be dispersed and diluted by tides and winds, this is not possible on a river, where an accident could contaminate the entire downstream course of the river. Most of German.nuclear power stations use (or used) river water for cooling. The Rhine flows from Germany across the densely populated Netherlands, while the Danube flows through six more countries after it leaves Germany, A serious nuclear accident on either of these rivers or on one of their tributaries would be catastrophic, and not just for Germany.
Germans are still worried about the elderly (opened in 1977 and still operative in 2020, with the oldest reactors in France) nuclear power station at Fessenheim on the French bank of the Rhine, but all they can do is keep their fingers crossed and trust to the high standards of the French operators and staff.
*except in exceptionally high concentrations as may accidentally occur when brewery vats are emptied for cleaning.
Oh dear, off-topic again! Sorry.
Natasha
When fossil fuels were plentiful , plumbers decided that the housewife would only accept water temperature over 60 degrees. All I want from a tap is gentle warm , under the breeding temperature for legionnaires disease.
But until the day fossil fuels run out or get too expensive, the imaginary housewife will always demand piping hot water that burns your hands. My boiler refuses to make hot water unless you are running the tap nearly at full pressure.
We don’t need any more vast quantities of raw materials than are already being used. What we need is the vast 20th Century unionised industrial machine to decide what people actually need.
But in the top down , snob class system we live in in the UK, the nobdogs refuse to talk to mere manual workers, who therefore decide to make only what makes money for them and breaks down often so they can charge for repairs.
What will never happen under a Tory government is that people with ideas will be allowed to speak to money people , longer than the few seconds it takes to explain their ideas.
Then the profit urge takes over and they pass the idea to the union dinosaurs , who tell them you can’t do that because the housewife won’t accept it .
This is the disease of class. The same disease that propels Mr Nasty himself Devil incarnate, Dominic Cummings to prioritise a covid 29 virus before it has been invented. The capitalist system is completely incapable of the necessary change to meet climate change.
That’s why they rig the election, to avoid what they are completely unable to solve.
Coping mechanisms don’t work . Tories are dinosaurs.
We get this nonsense from a regular poser here. They said at the time, and since, that the last lot of nuclear power stations, still cracking and creaking along, discharging into the atmosphere and the water sources all the time, a nanosecond from meltdowns which no human and no computer could ever arrest, were safe, fail-safe infact, and clean, lovely things, too cheap-to-meter, when they certainly were not and never could be, they’ve instead assured life on earth will end with a whimper. Bomb factories for the pentagon Benn, at one time the responsible minister, who authorised if necessary the shooting of pickets to assure delivery of supplies of CO2 to AGR reactors with endemically leaky primary cooling circuits. Now it’s the same old story, we heard before about these moonshine new ones. Gen4 walk-away, failsafe my throbbing foot, the same crap glib assurances. They’re certain death to the human race, as well as all living things, except maybe cockroaches, in any form, new improved, whiter than white included.
It has been a revealing few months on this forum, the hidden and not so well hidden agenda of so many posters, some establishing their bogus bona-fides elsewhere too, have bubbled to the surface, like oily scum on the surface of water. Shills for deadly nuke-power, killing us slowly or quickly or bathing our cells, immune systems, nervous systems and brains, in penetrating microwave frequency electromagnetic radiation. The world has taken a turn for the worse, the precautionary principle abandoned for the pursuit of profit and wholesale misanthropy.
In case you green fools were unaware, there’s already a solution for CO2, if it ever became a problematical which I doubt is the case, it’s called photosynthesis, plants absorb CO2, and with the mere addition of sunlight and water and some trace elements produce 02, releasing back only a small portion of the CO2 in darkness, the rest stored in the plant. A field of hemp would absorb more CO2 in a year than the same area planted with young trees would absorb in thirty years. If you’re seriously green and not the pretend sort, gulled by slogans and corporate rebranding, and it’s not gangrene that’s afflicting your noggin, then get planting stuff instead of shilling for certain extermination of all living things so you can charge your latest mobile infantilising excresance.
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Last year humankind emitted about 36 billion tonnes of CO2. If you used hemp (which is about the best crop to use) to try to sequester most of it (30 gigatonnes) you will need approximately 2.6 million square miles, assuming two harvests a year. This represents about half the land we already use to grow crops in the world.
The second problem, after we have annihilated either our food supply or most remaining wild places, is what to do with the hemp so that it doesn’t release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. Probably the best idea is biochar and bury, but this alone would become one of the biggest industries on the planet considering the huge amount of material we have.
For example the world produces 4 billion tonnes of concrete a year, we mine a similar amount of coal per year.
The same logic suggests that sequestering CO2 directly from fossil fuel power stations is also a bad idea. There is so much CO2 generated that it costs a huge amount to move it around and bury it.
The two steps that need to happen to have any chance of addressing human caused climate change due to excess CO2 emissions is replace almost all energy generation with low carbon alternatives. The second is to reduce our consumption with more efficient usage. Growing biofuels, trees or some other plant to help can only be a minor part of this without causing massive land use problems.
Hemp is the most versatile natural product ever
you can build houses from it insulate, make fuel, use it to stop soil erosion after clearfelling, the old normal practise, makes denominations, hemp paper, clothes, and, very important, medicine for a variety of serious ailments.
Hemp grows on poor soils as well as on rich soils, its seeds are highly nutritious and we have made it illegal to use at our own peril.
Nuclear boffins should have built molten salt reactors from the start, to have the means to reuse the inefficient operational waste of pressurised reactors. We have a plethora of alternative energies and its time to put solar panels on every roof in the country, rather than use agricultural land? which even got redesignated to poor just to get a field covered with subsidised solar (past). Simple solutions are staring us in the face and we are arguing about a nuclear free for all bankers and lawyers feast.
Time to reveal some plans, Tories…stop arguing about some old bad solutions.
I have no idea what the solution to global warming is, but it may not lie with planting trees. See: https://slate.com/technology/2020/05/trees-dont-stop-climate-change.html
Natasha
I’m a bit bored by your use of the big word thermodynamics without understanding its meaning .
Let me explain in plain English.
Any energy you derive from solar or wind or from a heat pump reduces the energy you might need from dangerous sources like fossil fuels and nuclear.
It’s not down to other countries to supply our deficit in energy supplies for free because they have been bombed to smithereens by us.
We have got to learn to pay the full price of energy because only then will we apply our mi d how to conserve it.
I am an air conditioning engineer and one of the things that has got to change very quickly is the idea of processing all our office space’s air at vast cost instead of opening windows.
Hospitals have been built that cannot be afforded simply because of the vast energy costs built into the design of the plant rooms.
We are a small country without an empire and we need all the energy God gives us naturally.
What we don’t need is the world to detest us for trashing their countries and stealing their resources. Tories are despots and dinosaurs.
One, interconnectors like HVDC between Kvilldal, Norway to Blythe England. Off-shore wind turbines will join to this.
Two, Wind Turbines both off-shore and on shore as wind farms.
Three, Solar farms and solar roof on buildings, later graphene windows.
Four, hydro power, including small scale turbines in rivers and estuaries.
Five, geothermal.
Six, battery storage units.
No need for dangerously poisonous nuclear power.
michael norton and Giyane, Perhaps you haven’t yet read the maths & engineering & mining data in the links I gave?
Let me summarise: THERMODYNAMICS prevents your imaginary wish list of wind water solar & geothermal technology being built, michael norton.
It’s thermodynamically IMPOSSIBLE to replace high energy sources like fossil & nuclear with build-out of low energy density sources like wind water solar & geothermal, even if you could get global domination of raw materials, there still wouldn’t be enough even just for the UK to meet its zero emissions targets.
It’s not a case of political or financial will, nor a case of class war, nor labour being misdirected, nor whether the capitalist system is completely incapable or not of the necessary change to meet climate change, which are somehow conspiring to block wind water solar & geothermal even beginning to replace fossil.
Big Fossil now accounts for more than 87% of global energy consumption and rising (in 2018 by 2.3% – its fastest pace in ten years – with only 30% of that increase due to renewables and nuclear). Only about 2% of global energy consumption is accounted for by Wind & Solar, with 2% by Nuclear power and 3% hydroelectric. Apart from traditional bio-mass 8%, per unit of energy generated, burning fossil coal, oil and gas kills and disables tens of thousands times more than all other energy sources combined, with Nuclear power having the lowest mortality and injury rate of all, close to zero. Building wind water solar & geothermal will burn many tens of times more fossil fuels than building out nuclear per GW capacity.
Germany’s experiment closing its Nuclear electricity plants has not reduced its carbon emissions, which are set to rise, as are other pollutants. Compared to France it produces ten times the emissions at twice the end user price per unit of energy because France receives 75% of its electricity from nuclear. Same in California. Strong evidence its nearly impossible to replace fossil without Nuclear.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/10/why-arent-renewables-decreasing-germanys-carbon-emissions/#4fb4645868e1
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/ministry-projections-highlight-risk-germany-missing-emissions-goal
Plus, electricity generation accounts for only 9% to 15% of global energy consumption, which means to replace fossil fuels we need to electrify nearly 90% of global industrial and domestic consumption processes, not just the supply side. And all that new infrastructure will have to also be built powered by fossil fuels, because the energy pay back is so low from low energy density sources, such as wind water solar & geothermal.
This is the sort of ‘moving on’ Boris and his Tory goons meant I think, back to the depopulation agenda, unleash the shill armies, set the internet ablaze, then the planet to follow, the slow, slow, quick quick death, the last one a bit of a damp squib except in selected places, but those unattenuated forms didn’t break out beyond their primary targets. Sod public health, there’s money to be made with a goodly share of it ripe for trousering by the political classes, wealthy enough to have an escape from the hell they create for the people they lord it over. The catch is nowhere is safe, but clever as they are at amassing wealth, they’ve never managed to digest that simple fact, there’s nowhere to run to, even for them, but they’ll be counting their loot, cackling with glee, as their hair and teeth are falling out, prone to the lowliest viral and bacterial infections, and can’t keep their grub down. Those who can’t accept their inevitable mortality, so they’d rather take every one down with them, for all time.
Natasha
With all due respect, I was complaining about Tories dropping bombs and sending proxy terrorists which devastate the people who live in oil rich countries
Why has our problem of excessive luxury and waste got to be dropped on their shoulders? If we had to pay the proper price for commodities from bananas to uranium, they would be rich and healthy and we would also be rich and healthy instead of them being poor or dead and us being excessively wealthy at their expense.
Are you one of those who believe that all oil belongs to us and they would only waste it?
Giyane “Are you one of those who believe that all oil belongs to us and they would only waste it?” No. I say leave as much fossil fuels in the ground as possible, by not wasting it trying to expand low density wind water & solar build out, meanwhile build out nuclear and electrification tech such as CO2 neutral synth-fuel / hydrogen as fast as possible.
“It’s thermodynamically IMPOSSIBLE to replace high energy sources like fossil & nuclear with build-out of low energy density sources like wind water solar & geothermal, even if you could get global domination of raw materials, there still wouldn’t be enough even just for the UK to meet its zero emissions targets.”
That is just wrong. First of, thermodynamics has nothing to do with it. Second, who cares about density? True putting solar panels or wind turbines on a car isn’t going to work very well but you can place them out to sea or on rooftops. The UK has say 675 GW of economically buildable offshore wind power.
https://energypost.eu/britain-just-beginning-exploit-vast-resources-offshore-wind/
Six times our electricity consumption and more than 80% of primary energy use (accounting for wind’s capacity factor). The figure will only increase as wind energy becomes even cheaper, it is one of the cheapest already and as we become better at building massive turbines out at sea.
Going low carbon generation is possible, technically and economically, definitely not easy. It is something which requires decades of build up to. Though it is a pity that we have lagged behind in what we should be doing scientifically and also the Governments own goals.
Once we get there it will be normal and people will wonder why we ever burnt so much fuel and released so much pollution. Having an energy supply each country is in control of, using raw materials which can be mostly recycled after use.
Could massive Green generation affected the climate?
I mean you are taking energy out of the environment whether it’s kinetic energy from the wind and tide or light. Has anyone ever worked out that it’s safe to do on the scale required?
When the wind stops you do what exactly, Mightydrunken, blow against the turbines yourself?
The only country and her scientists that have common sense are the China and the Chinese men of science, the highest investment in coal extraction out of ay other country. Even if carbon capture takes few more years to evolve it’s coming just as diesel’s now incomparably cleaner than before.
Here’s a guess: It won’t take long we will come back to coal also, how are we to mine the energy stored under our feet that can last us for centuries at a fraction of what we pay is hard to say, but use it we will.
Mightydrunken, Giyane, Tony M, Nevermind,
Thanks for your relies. I responded here to Giyane’s comment that “the course of European history AGAIN [has been perverted by the Tory’s in fact all western governments since oil & gas were first discovered and consumed] towards stealing oil from its neighbours , instead of investing in Green energy.” And “With all due respect, I was complaining about Tories dropping bombs and sending proxy terrorists which devastate the people who live in oil rich countries.”
My aim is to disabuse the assumption that “green” means it is even remotely possible to replace 87% of global energy consumption with wind water & solar power with no nuclear power.
I too wore CND badges and shouted at people in the 60s & 70s against these abuses by the ‘west’. But the anti-nuclear power thing just didn’t add up, if we are remotely interested in challenging our global abuses war and violence in the name of controlling Big Fossil.
50+ years later, still only about 2% of global energy consumption is accounted for by Wind & Solar, with 2% by Nuclear power and 3% hydroelectric, and traditional bio-mass 8% (geothermal is negligible and will always be so).
Now in disguise, the Tory’s and Labour, have taken up the Green’s 100% renewables only message as have indeed much of the so called neo-liberal political / economic / cultural mainstream establishment. Without question they fully support ‘Green investor story time myths’ promoting wind and solar dreams propped up academics and others riddled with the same ‘ring fence’ biased analytical errors as their dominant neoliberal economics academics & politicians and compliant ignorant media.
Why? Because short term they can make killing on the markets selling the public politically and financially very lucrative ‘renewables’ dream. Until the engineering / whole systems analysis ‘penny’ drops: 100% renewables (even 10% would be a push, let alone the nuclear industries bid for only 25% share in its ‘Harmony’ program) is a thermodynamically impossible dream.
Do you own homework. I have. I’ve written it up for you to learn (links above).
I agree with Nevermind that “solutions are staring us in the face and we are arguing about a nuclear free for all bankers and lawyers feast. Time to reveal some plans, Tories…stop arguing about some old bad solutions.” And Nevermind also correctly asks where to grow hemp on the UK’s 250,000Km2, of which 57% is farm, 35% natural, 3% green urban, and 6% built on, and still be food secure not living on an island reduced to intensively factory farmed, solar cell infested wasteland?
Tony M., perhaps you too also couldn’t be bothered to read my bio in the link I gave above, before implying I’m one of the “Shills for deadly nuke-power”? But I take it as a sort of complement on the high quality of my arguments writing and research !
But Tony M, why cling to myths when facts will do? For example, many more people fall and die building windmills, installing solar roof panels, and flooding people out their homes building water dams, than all civilian nuclear accidents combined. Plus the tens of thousands of lives saved by nuclear not burning fossil and bio-mass… etc.
More seriously, many of the above comments exposes a reluctance to, without bias, review, digests, process, hypothesise, and then conclude what ‘whole systems’ energy data is telling us. We must all do this so we can avoid artificial ring fencing – i.e. appeals to infinite externalities and ignoring the social and environmental costs of extractivism – both favourite tactic of private interests.
For example, Mightydrunken’s above muddled thinking ask us “who cares about [energy] density?” whilst telling us “thermodynamics has nothing to do with it” i.e the present discussion on what type of power station infrastructure a ‘Green New Deal’ should be tasked with building in the UK !
But then in support of these dismissals of basic energy science, Mightydrunken links to a study by Simon Watson, Professor of Wind Energy at Loughborough University, who’s CV states he studies ‘fluid dynamics’ which intersects with ‘thermodynamics’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_fluids
What gives, Mightydrunken? Please tell us how a power station works? Are they built with good intentions and fuelled with rhetoric? Or maybe engineers and scientist who design and build power stations care about basic science and engineering and maths, even if they make ring fencing mistakes, like Prof Watson, and his silent mentor Jacobson et al. ? I give comprehensive references to rebuttals (e.g. Clack et. al.) of Watson & Jacobson etc. in the links I give above, for wildly underestimating material and land / sea usage, artificially ring fencing grid upgrades back-up and storage requirements, let alone consumption side infrastructure upheavals and systemic instabilities.
https://www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Backgrounder_Clacketal_June2017.pdf
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/06/renewable-energy-national-academy-sciences-christopher-t-m-clack-refutes-mark-jacobson/
Remember balsa wood model airplanes? Well it seems that it was also the ideal material to hang the weight in a grandfather clock, good strength and very light weight. The same attributes attracted the wind turbine manufacturers for use in the laminates in their blades. With the latest being the height of the Eiffel Tower they use quite a lot. Only trouble, although the tree is fast growing there is not enough of it potentially causing production bottlenecks.
CO2 is not the be all and end all of environmental concerns, it has become an unhealthy obsession for some to the exclusion of all else. Human life will survive all over this planet, for as near as in perpetuity, whatever the climate throws at us. What we will not survive is the deadly cumulative dosage of any further irradiation of the planet, from the legacy of terrestrial, atmospheric testing, of even underground bomb-tests which vent, bomb tests, and the risk of their usage on large or smaller scales, from frequent accidental and necessitated by design releases from the whole nuclear power cycle and their operation, from enrichment, for weapons purposes, mining, and highly risk-prone reprocessing and short, medium storage and the impossibility of safe long-term storage in an unpredicatable world, from the plants vulnerability to terrorism, or other external acts, from planes or other projectiles, from brush fires, to floods, to high winds, from the far too frequent, given that one is enough, catastrophic events, the true death tolls of which are in the millions, long slow deaths and greatly reduced lifespans for the rest. That alone or in combination with even mild climate variation will finish us all of, which climate change if it happens, from causes having far more impact than anything the sum of all human activitity could ever have, by itself is survivable by us as a species. Survival with our human essence intact such that healthy babaies can continue to be born and societies can continue functioning, life goes on. CO2 levels are of little importance, there’s far worse we can do to irrevocably contaminate the soil, water and air, our life-support system, this earth.
Give this CO2 obsession a rest, it hardly figures at all in the far more dangerous world we live in, where it’s not the sum of all humanity’s actions, but the craziness of individuals given or usurping undue terrifying power and with that the power to destroy, everything and every one, by nuclear, chemical and biological, and other means still budding. The four horsemen, the means to kill en-masse have grown in number, till there’s an abundance of threat, of which CO2 levels are the least of our worries. The Nuclear industry of far graver concern and one of the biggest problems, biggest risks to humanity, to life on this planet, as the solution to a relatively minor issue, is the very definition of madness. The world is unsustainably over-populated. Nuclear power could never satisfy the demand for power on our current trajectory, nothing else can either, but that is the worst possible option, the answer is not to make the planet uninhabitable and to end cast-iron with certainty, the possibility of life itself, for all.
Tony M,
The BIGGEST issue for humanity is: how do we secure long term (centuries / millennia) energy supply?
Focussing on reducing CO2 / Green House Gas emissions completely misses this point. It also admits the false austerity rhetoric – ‘reducing’ – a classic NLP [im]propaganda manipulation technique. There’s enough of everything for everyone on planet earth. Unequal distribution controlled by the 1% of us who are psychopaths is the problem: ‘Move on Johnson’, and all the rest of the shits who’ve grabbed the reins: all public office holders, that we are asked to vote for must now be forced to annually publish their Hare psychopathy test results, same one prisoner have to.
On the scale of civilisations’ comings and goings CO2 / GHG emissions are further obviously irrelevant when fossil fuels are going to run out sooner than later. Global population may well be slashed to a fraction of what it is now, but humans are unlikely to go extinct on account of burning fossil fuels in and of themselves at least not in our life times.
Focussing debate on CO2 / GHG reductions, (rather than energy supply) is thus clearly a convenient – for those who $£profit from short term manipulations – distraction.
Meanwhile, as if you actually want this to happen, you write irrational invalid straw man assertions on the nature of nuclear technology stating that what “we will not survive is the deadly cumulative dosage of any further irradiation of the planet.”
In fact nuclear technology has not caused any of the things you so painfully list.
For example, you can sit down on a park bench an buy a cup of tea at ground zero Nagasaki / Hiroshima. Go visit the few hundred refuseniks still living into old age next to Chenobyl all with far better long term health metrics than the forced evacuees. And farmers have returned to Fukishima. Even the BBC admit these facts!
Would you also ban radiation and radioactive compounds safely used in medicine too?
And it simply isn’t true that “Nuclear power could never satisfy the demand for power on our current trajectory, nothing else can either”.
In fact enough high energy density uranium is dissolved in seawater in equilibrium with seabed rocks to last until the planet is consumed by the sun going supernova. Chinese and US scientists are already filtering it out now. For this reason alone, it is absolutely certain that nuclear fission energy will be powering human civilisations far into the far future – until we work out how to do fusion – all other factors being equal.
Go read some epidemiology and study statistics, then take a cold hard look at the fear-based irrational mental health damaging doom-rhetoric you so dearly cling to, and reject it forthwith.
Regards, Natasha
Err…that’s Blyth…
Giyane
Corbyn was the only MP to ask questions about the role of British Mercaneries in Nicaragua. No wonder he didn’t get to be PM.
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue79.php see Keenie Meanie book review by
John Newsinger.
I do not understand why the narrative about Dominic Cummings keeps getting sidetracked to his concerns as a father. Those are beside the point.
He was sent home to isolate himself because he had been exposed to someone who tested positive with a Level Three pathogen.
At home he found his wife already had symptoms of the virus.
The point of isolating is to save other people, to keep the infection from spreading further.
He instead chose to drive 264 miles to Durham, with his family, despite the fact that by this time he already had symptoms as well.
So, he knows he is a carrier of the disease. He knows his wife is also a carrier of the disease. He sits in on the highest-level health advisory council in the nation. So he has no excuse whatsoever for his decision to carry the virus into six (or more?) counties.
It may be possible to make a 4 hr 43 minute car journey without stopping. It is far less likely if you are sick, and practically impossible if you are traveling with a four-year old. How many stops did that family make? How many restrooms did he and his wife walk into, knowing that the virus hangs in the air for three hours (we know now that it’s upwards of 16 hours, but he knew at the time it was three), thus risking everyone who came into the restrooms after them.
Has he been asked to detail his stops, so that tracking and tracing can be done for the people he or his wife may have infected? No. Because he’s government.
He made this journey, he says, because he was worried that if he and his wife both became incapacitated, there would be no one to care for his son. But this is a flat out lie. The UK is still a socialist country. If Cummings and his partner had become incapacitated, someone would have been at their door within minutes, to take his son into care. His son would have been cared for, and eventually delivered to his grandparents. That’s one of the benefits of socialism. There is no possible circumstance under which his son would not have been cared for. For anyone else, being incapacitated, the children being taken into care may have taken some hours. But Cummings, being government, would have been checked on every hour of every day. For his son, the response time would have been minutes. So this has nothing to do with his being a worried father.
So, Cummings’s completely irresponsible trek across the country was simply an exercise in gross selfishness, which may have contributed to the spread of the disease, and the illness and death of people he spread his germs to on his way.
And he is still in his job.
MoveOn.org started as a social group opposed to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Tony Blair also said (in self absolution): “I only know what I believe.”
So the Isle of Wight “contact tracing app” was a failure then.
Cost?
Anybody sacked yet for the advice they gave?
Any memory of it in the media?
Opposition leaders making any points about it?
That’s the sh*thouse kind of country we live in.
N
I think they tried it out on an isolated population to see if it would work.
As it has not worked in Isle of Wight
it is dead in the Solent.
Boris Johnson is looking more pathetic by the minute trying to defend the indefensible and even BBC reporters are beginning to ask the question put by Simon McCoy the other day, “What has he got over you?” The bizarrely desperate antics of Boris Johnson with his silencing of press questions and reinventing the Lockdown restriction to make a special exception for keeping Dominic Cummings in post, should arouse serious suspicious. What are his motivations and what are the Tories so desperate to hide? As I have written over the last few days in the “Elections Aftermath Discussion Forum I continue to believe that Dominic Cummings is threatening to spill the beans on the Covert 2019 Rigged Election if he is fired from his post.
Cummings is not a Conservative; he has no personal political allegiance to the Tory Party, but I believe that when he predicted an 80 seat win it was because he knew exactly how to deliver that win and it involved industrial scale corruption using PsyOps and stolen postal votes. I doubt he will have trusted that Johnson would retain him out of loyalty, so he would have prepared a back-up plan just in case the PM tried to throw him under the bus. He will have carefully distanced himself from any direct involvement in the most obvious criminality while using his VICS program to determine exactly where votes were needed, how many were needed and the potential ballots that could be stolen while relying on IDOX, under the direction of a select few Tory MPs, to implement the fraud.
Cummings has all the dirt necessary to completely take down this Tory Government if he comes forward as a Whistleblower and exposes the truth about the Covert 2019 Rigged Election; the PM and senior Tory ministers know that and they defend Cummings out of fear over what he might do. The long sought after nationwide Investigation I launched a petition to demand, urgently needs the hard evidence that Cummings may well be threatening to reveal. If Cummings is fired all of his own personal goals and warped ambitions for clandestine control of Government evaporate as he will no longer be in control. Taking down the Tories by exposing their stolen Election is just payback for betrayal. If we continue to put extreme pressure on the PM to sack Cummings he may at some point think Cummings will not seek revenge, but I believe he will so please – DO NOT MOVE ON – Ramp up the pressure!
We cannot change a solitary thing about the shambolic handling of the Covid 19 crisis or any of the other unjust or reckless policy decisions made by this Tory Government unless we remove them from office. Following their truly unfathomable fake 2019 “Tory Landslide Victory” that handed them a massive majority in Parliament they have been marching us in the direction of dictatorship. If Cummings is ousted and comes forward to expose the evidence of industrial scale Election fraud this Tory Government will lose their legitimacy and be forced out. That is the single most important thing that could potentially restore democracy to this country. We must get Dominic Cummings fired so that he has a really strong motivation to take out the Tories. We can remove this Tory Government and we must because too many innocent lives are now at stake!
Please visit our Discussion Forum: Elections Aftermath: Was our 2019 Vote & the EU Referendum Rigged? https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/elections-aftermath-was-our-2019-vote-the-eu-referendum-rigged-toryrig2019/page/5/#post-54368 Also Please read, sign, share and Link to this Petition: 2019 TORY LANDSLIDE VICTORY DEMANDS URGENT NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION – https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/crown_prosecution_service_special_crime_division_b_2019_tory_landslide_victory_demands_urgent_nationwide_investigation_/
And replace them with what Starmer’s New New Labour, or the third divison of the the Tory Party? I just get what all the brou-ha-ha is all about if the government, aren’t “key-workers” (already an over-wide description) then they bloody well should be and if there’s nothing of importance they ought to be doing then I suggest making most of them redundant. Around here cutting of the communal grass areas is deemed as essential (to the council and the contractors they hived it off to, who travel 90 miles here to do it), they’re at it every two-weeks, never giving it even a chance to grow, they’re burning fuel, emitting co2 and lots more, while cutting down, a number one all over, the very thing that absorbs the co2 they produce. There’s hardly been more than a spit of rain here since February, but in spite that the grass was lovely and green and lush, now it’s again cut to the bone, dry and parched. Surely governing is more important than that, but then witch-hunts once they get going are kind of hard to stop. Keep Boris and crew in Office, any alternative imaginable is far, far worse. In Scotland the Sturgeon Party is far, far worse, they’re New Labour all over again, doubling-down on the legacy of appallingly bad legislation they inherited from them in 2007. Giving their public-sector Graun-reading cheerleaders unconscionable powers on top of the already monstrous powers over every minutia over people’s lives than those they already were given when Blair was Queen. If only Scotland had Boris (perhaps moustachioed), we’d gladly trade a Sturgeon, Yousaf and several other ship-mates more for him.
Tony M
The people voted for Corbyn to win, and he would have won if the Tories did not control the voting system. He would not have resigned if he had won.
I do not think so they will buy him off or he will foul dead .
With much anguish, dysphoria, and tribulation I revisited war criminal Tony Blair’s response to Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry to call attention to his attempt at contrition with a spectacle of remorse. From that show I highlight here what I call Blair’s eulogy:
If he’d [Saddam Hussein] been left in power in 2003, then I believe he would have once again have threatened world peace and when the Arab ‘revolutions’ of 2011 began, he would have clung to power with the same deadly consequences that we see with the carnage in SYRIA today, whereas at least in Iraq, for all its challenges, we have today a government that is selected elected, is recognised as internationally legitimate and, is fighting terrorism with the force of the international community…
Comparing Cummings with the Iraq war is more than silly. Can Craig Murray seriously believe otherwise?
The Cummings business is largely another Remainer melt-down, which is why The Fraudian is at the very forefront of the hissy fit. Given the gargantuan challenges ahead, it really is time to move on.
The global lockdown is a slow-motion genocide that is going to kill millions of poor people. Hundreds of millions have lost the one thing that keeps them from disaster, and many will not get it back. But no! Let’s harp on about a government advisor who bent the rules!
Talk about First World Problems!
“The global lockdown is a slow-motion genocide that is going to kill millions of poor people. Hundreds of millions have lost the one thing that keeps them from disaster, and many will not get it back.”
I presume that you are talking about unemployment. And that your argument is that without ‘jobs’ people must starve. This is nonsense: people do not eat employment but food. Society is obliged to ensure that nobody starves and nobody goes without clothing or shelter. These were established principles before the first poor laws. They are the basic rules of our society, the foundation of the notional contract which brings us together for self protection.
As to the ‘global lockdown’ (which does not exist and never has done) if society decides, as it often does during epidemics, to quarantine the infected and to isolate them in order to protect itself, it pledges itself to ensure that those obeying its rules will not suffer because of it . The logic of a ‘lockdown’ necessitates a regime of support for all who need it, sick or well.
Basic rules of our society? It’s the British gift to the world, this notion that property rights must remain sacrosanct even in the face of mass starvation.
“The newly constructed railroads, lauded as institutional safeguards against famine, were instead used by merchants to ship grain inventories from outlying drought-stricken districts to central depots for hoarding….
…In Madras city, overwhelmed by 100,000 drought refugees, famished peasants dropped dead in front of the troops guarding pyramids of imported rice.”
–Mike Davis, “Late Victorian Holocausts”
And on the subject of eating employment rather than food:
“On the command of the Viceroy to develop a famine policy, he drew up a series of irrigation and other projects, most so far from the famine-stricken tracts that emaciated victims had to walk a hundred miles and more to them.”
–Eric Stokes
. . . . . and that’s only India.
Add to that the Acadians; the Maoris; the Aboriginals: the Zulus and the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland.
Let’s move on, indeed.
The only reason that you and Yalt above you are moved to put finger to keyboard is that the examples you give are exceptions to the general rule. If they were not, if the idea of society looking after the less fortunate was not generally accepted, here would be no need to mention them in the same way that the newspaper headline is “Man robs bank”, not “10,000 citizens did not commit a crime yesterday”.
@Bevin – @Glasshopper can answer for himself, but I would have thought if he’d meant that it was only unemployment that would cause starvation he’d have said so. A fat lot of good a salary in a bank account will do anyone when there’s no food in the shops. This bit of what you say is very naive: “Society is obliged to ensure that nobody starves and nobody goes without clothing or shelter.” The reality is that the economy is a house of cards.
As for your assertion that “(t)hese were established principles before the first poor laws”, I suspect you may not know when the first poor laws were introduced, because it is a fact that many died of starvation in England after that time.
Glasshopper
That’s rather a good idea. If Blair had listened to hins own weapons adviser instead of bumping him off, the war on Iraq would not have happened and then Libya would not have happened and Syria would not have happened and then Yemen would not have happened and also Brexit would not have happened
Compound interest on not listening to good advice.
If people now decide to ignore the self-preservation of staying at home just because Dominic Cummings has a chip on his shoulder about being Northern and won’t do what he’s told by a team of world class medics, it’s highly likely the eventual uk death toll will be over 100,000.
All that is required is a little patience and a lot of respect for China, and in a few weeks China will repay its folly of having wet markets 1 million times.
Compound interest on saving lives.
China has a cure for this disease, but no the tossers in the Tory party want to make money out of their own pharma scams.
How anybody can manufacture an 80 strong parliamentary majority and then lose it for the sake of one man with psychological problems is difficult to understand. But smell the coffee. This will bring this government down. We will not move on.
This story says a lot: “Durham chief constable faces probe into her handling of investigation into Dominic Cummings'[s] trip“.
Looks like he’s going to punish her. That is real power, that is. That tells everybody who’s in any remotely comparable position that they should think twice before they mess with the Boss.
For example…who’d want to be in the shoes of the person at IPSO responsible for “investigating” Mary Wakefield’s “emerging into London lockdown” article in the Spectator. If they put a foot wrong, they may find they’re out of a job.
Remember how Cummings sacked the Chancellor of the Exchequer:
DC: “Your advisers now answer to me.”
Sajid Javid: “No they bloody don’t.”
DC: “You heard me.”
SJ: “Bu-u-u-t… the Budget.”
DC: “Not yours any more. There’s the door.”
Javid dropped the word “comings” into his resignation speech in the Commons, but that’s about all he’s done. He hasn’t as far as I know said a peep about Durhamgate or Glaxogate or whatever we want to call it.
The working hypothesis remains that an accurate assessment of Cummings’s position is “semi-dictator”.
A Glaxo vs Astra Zeneca angle remains a possibility.
What’s really going on with “contact tracing” and “vaccines”? Seriously, who actually knows?” There is no real independent media in this country that has any significant reach.
Vengeance is being meted out not only against the Durham chief constable, but now also against Robin Lees who identified Dominic Cummings in Barnard Castle. The Heil is screaming its lungs out against Cummings’s accusers.
Apparently Mr Lees “also” broke lockdown. Except first, he is not a public official; second, it wasn’t lockdown that Cummings has been accused of breaking but quarantine; and third, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for believing that Mr Lees did anything of the kind.
Meanwhile somebody called Tim Matthews of whom I hadn’t previously heard has apparently “admitted” stating as a “joke” that he spotted Cummings in the north on 19 April.
“Tim Matthews, a keen runner, admitted that he doctored the details on the Strava app, used by joggers and athletes to record routes and times, to make it look as if he had seen Mr Cummings on the afternoon of April 19 – five days after the Prime Minister’s aide returned to London.”
But wait…the 19th April sighting is not the only one, because Mr Matthews is also quoted as saying:
“Ask him whether he was walking along the riverbanks in Durham city on (or around) 02 April – and if so who he was walking with. “Yes” & “My parents” would be a good start. Then ask him why?’”
Now there’s an interesting allegation…and it adds to my suspicion that a Cummings double was used on 19 April and probably not only on that date.
Mr Matthews may or may not be a funny. I wonder where he has “run”? Not on tabs up the Brecon Beacons with the regiment by any chance?
According to the Heil one of the people who received and passed on allegations about Cummings was none other than “Baroness” Hilary Armstrong. The Heil don’t mention it, but she is a former government chief whip (a job you can’t get without being trusted by MI5), Africa hand, user of “strongarm tactics” against Labour MPs who opposed Britain militarily attacking Afghanistan – in short, she’s a woman whom it is reasonable to assume is not exactly unfriendly with officials in an agency based in Vauxhall Cross. She’s also a Labour Friend of Israel.
Her husband Paul Corrigan was high up in the NHS and a “health” adviser to prime minister Tony Blair, and so it is reasonable to suppose he is not exactly unknowledgeable about multi-billion knicker “health” contracts.
What f*cking web is being woven here?
This is increasingly looking like a cover-up in the true sense of the word, and on top of the above the possibility that at least one Cummings double was used suggests that the Glaxo Town meeting was “deniable”, again in the true sense of the word. (Deniability and coverup are closely related.) It sounds like it was a damned important meeting.
Back to Mr Lees…
It doesn’t seem that he actually broke any laws or guidance at all, but the information required for forming that impression is buried way down in the Heil’s piece:
“Asked if he had driven to Ascot, (Mr Lees) replied: ‘I did, but that was after the regulations changed. My daughter self-isolated in London for seven or eight weeks. I waited until we were told we could drive anywhere in the country.”
Basically the Heil are getting at his family.
“He added: ‘I tell the truth and I do not like this intrusion into my family and this is absolutely nothing to do with them. I did not break any lockdown rules.’ Mr Lees refused to say exactly when he made the journey to collect his daughter, but insisted that it was after May 11. Elizabeth was seen outside the house last Thursday morning. He said: ‘I do object to my family being involved. This is nothing to do with my family, right? I have had a lot of stuff on Twitter. ‘I gave my name for something I saw which has been lied about. Total lies, follow that up. Nothing to do with me. I have kept to the rules throughout, I have walked once a day.’ When asked what lies he was referring to, Mr Lees said: ‘That he came here to test his eyesight, everybody knows that.’”
“Insisted” and “refused” are classic scumbag “journalist” words.
You can’t “refuse” to do what you are asked, although you may “decline” to do it. You can only “refuse” to do what you are told. And there is no reason why Mr Lees should follow orders given to him by the Heil.
The Heil say “A No 10 official admitted that the PM ‘unsurprisingly had more than a few words to say to Dom behind the scenes’. Another said: ‘I don’t expect there will be any blog posts or media appearances by Dom for a very long time. ‘He’s been firmly put in his place.’”
Bullsh*t. It’s the opponents of “the project” who are being put in “their place” – or anyone who gets in the way, whether they’re Chancellor of the Exchequer or a chief constable or whoever.
Craig,
I have seen no discussion about the powers and scope of the newly established ‘Joint Biosecurity Centre’ (https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/joint-biosecurity-centre). The appointment of a UK spook, Tom Hurd (son of Douglas) to head it up seems suspicious. Especially since he is in line to become the head of MI6.
The JBC will gather massive data through test and trace and will effectively replace SAGE when it comes to advising the government on all biosecurity matters. An expansion of the intelligence community more deeply into our everyday lives.
Any thoughts?
If you have super-powers be very afraid. If you’ve got Covid19 you will be ‘quarantained’. If you have no super powers and or Covid19’s you can go shopping in your mask. Other than that, it’s up to you. Within the remit of responsible citizenry.
Tom Hurd. Imagine growing up with that name if you loved word games. “Oh look, Tom Hurd!” Yes, he’s always listening. To the past.
Tom Hurd, and now he’s heard enough. Tom Hurd and told mother. Tom Hurd and rewound the tape. Word games! Spies love them, at least that’s what Tom Hurd.
Having grown up with a similar name and looking back, I am surprised how rarely anyone made that kind of silly pun.
Nicholas Moore
I like the ” joint ” slogan, like Blair ‘ s ” international ” recognition of the Iraqi government mentioned above. Thick as thieves , comes to mind , to make sure that the right government advice is given to ensure the right pockets get lined. Every week the BBC find another quango to give their opinion , as if these quangos were not all on exactly the same fascist Tory page.
One quango collects data from marketing companies like facebook , one quango got info from the home office, one quango got a joint of roast beef and another little quango got none.
I suppose this little quango will post little squirts of novichok onto the doorknobs of left leaning thought criminals, who voted for Corbyn
The mention of the name ‘Hurd’ rang this bell.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/05/catherine-hurd/
Tom Hurd is another Old Etonian like his father Douglas Hurd.
He was at both Eton and Oxford with Boris Johnson.
Was he in the Bullingdon Club? (Owain Parry asks the same question and wonders whether Tom Hurd was the as yet unidentified “member #6” in the famous photo.)
Got to wonder if at some point down the line the Bullingdon Club at Oxford will have its own “Cambridge Apostles” moment – hahaha! Can you imagine being in MI5 or in MI6 counterintelligence and it occurring to you that say Russian or Chinese intelligence may have penetrated the crap out of the Bullingdon Club the same way the KGB (NKVD) did with the Apostles? Seriously who would you talk to about your suspicions?
So…
Steve Hsu, a physicist who is much admired by Dominic Cummings, including for his journalism (for what else can we call it?) in fields that any sane person knows are outside of physics, such as financial crashes and social structures,…
works as the scientific adviser to…
the Beijing Genomics Institute, now known as “BGI”, which has worked on sequencing and detecting the SARS coronavirus…
Surrey University has strong ties to China. I believe that there is an offshoot in China.
https://www.surrey.ac.uk/about/global/china-collaboration-sii-dufe
The President and Vice Chancellor is Chinese Australian, Max Lu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Lu
‘Much of the controversy surrounding Hsu stems from a recent Vice article alleging Hsu’s cognitive genomics project is ultimately helping China engineer “genius babies.”
“At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence,” the piece reads. “Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation’s intelligence by five to 15 IQ points.”
The article is based on an interview with Geoffrey Miller, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico, who donated DNA to the study.’
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/29/wake-controversy-over-harvard-dissertation-race-and-iq-scrutiny-michigan-state
Have Messrs Cummings and Johnson donated their DNA samples yet?
Simplest way to improve IQ is to stop poisoning their brains with adjuvanted vaccines.
There are relatively few comparisons but those that do exist have shown that the unvaccinated are healthier, and that include brain health.
We need to resist the false logic of assuming everything to do with China/Russia is bad, that’s not the case, and collaboration and working with people is a much better approach than the alternative involving war, bombs and innocent deaths.
If we had a level playing field we also might question relationships with other countries. The rising tide of political shite needs to be resisted by people using their brains rather than just acting as lemmings for the 1%.
News from Minneapolis is that tanks are now on its streets. It seems the US is invading itself. Next step is to bomb some democracy into these unruly citizens. So we may not need a vaccine, just a body bag.
What an awful business to be involved with. Mortuary supplies. But I suppose someone’s got to do it.
https://www.mortuaryequipmentdirect.co.uk/mortuary-body-bags
When the looting starts the shooting starts said POTUS Donald Trump referring to the unrest in Minneapolis. The phrase has racial undertones have been previously used by the notoriously violent Miami police chief Walter E Headley in the 1960’s.
Headley was renowned for his use of force on black folk in America, Headley was once quoted saying, we (the police) don’t mind being accused of police brutality. Black folk in America are still mostly treated as second class citizens in my opinion. Trump’s tasteless quote only helps to inflame the situation in Minneapolis he also accused it mayor of being a weak leftist radical.
Yeah, let’s move on …. but sign this first.
https://www.change.org/p/uk-parliament-dominic-cummings-must-be-sacked?utm_source=brand_gb
The lockdown has inevitably resulted in locked up emotion and energy now looking for displacement. In America the death of Floyd is a very powerful focus of that anger, which is fuelled by the pent up emotions. Here in the UK Dominic Cummings is the focus. These are dangerous times because people are going to be more willing or primed to express complaint.
Looked at that like we ought to be grateful that we are simply angry about Cummings’ road trips, but behind that people are pissed off about having to be locked up at home.
In the US black deaths in police custody is an ongoing complaint but lockdown turns it to tinder.
It’s not just that people have not been able to attend funerals or visit relatives, but it is the whole thing constraining all activities is like a Jack in the Box.
Everyone should have a part of them which keeps check on their own volatility and on that of the group. Otherwise there are likely to be unwanted consequences. Energy can change things but as so many teachings tell us it is the donkey, the mule, the ox or buffalo which has to be ridden, or else it rides us.
Now here’s a surprise, courtesy of the Independent;
Coronavirus: British Army called in to help quash online conspiracy theories
The 77th Brigade, which has previously been used against Isis, has been advising the government on how to tackle claims about Covid-19….
Cummings has done wonders for tourism in Barnard Castle.
‘Dominic Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle results in searches for accommodation in the market town surging by 160%’
D Mail
I never particularly cared for Blair’s political style or his personality but nevertheless, all in all, he may well be the best Prime Minister we ever had. It saddens me that he chose to dig in over the Iraq debacle and accept the role of patsy for what was basically an American war of imperial plunder, based on atrocious lies from Washington. I guess Blair has his family to think of.
As for Clinton and Nixon, while it is true both had unsavoury traits, they were highly intelligent ‘detail’ men, which became too difficult for the powerbrokers in the ‘deep state’, therefore ways had to be found to nobble or shame them.
There is a common link here. That even in the case of elected leaders with a strong political power base, they are largely frontmen who are ousted or disgraced as soon as they upset the sinister people behind the curtain. Look at Prime Ministers and party leaders in the UK in the last 40 years and notice how many were ousted suddenly or made fallguys after leaving the office – including the present Prime Minister.
…’.based on atrocious lies from Washington’. I think you’ll find the bulk of the atrocious lies originated from British intelligence.
@ Tom74 May 31, 2020 at 08:26
;…I guess Blair has his family to think of…’
Gee, you could be right there. Oddly enough I had never looked at it like that…
P’r’aps we should give him another try?
But now this crowd is going to make us the 51st State, perhaps we could have the losing POTUS candidate as Governor?
There is a lot of info emerging about the part Cummings (et al)played in the Vote Leave campaign.
Who Were Vote Leave’s Mysterious Data Scientists?
May 15, 2018
http://www.brexitshambles.com/who-were-vote-leaves-mysterious-data-scientists/
Ian Blackford MP SNP yesterday in the House of Commons on the Cummings debacle. Hancock responded.
‘I am standing in today for my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who is excluded from taking part, given the removal of the hybrid Parliament—for now. There are growing concerns that this Tory Government is taking a cavalier approach on coronavirus, by rushing to ease lockdown measures despite warnings from public health experts. There are serious questions to answer on the political decisions the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary have taken, which could increase the rate of infection and put lives at risk—or even cause a second wave of covid-19. The Government claim to follow the science, so why have they ignored the experts who have advised against opening schools or easing lockdown further, without pausing to evaluate each step? On what basis were the decisions made to allow groups of people from six different houses to meet in England, to tell 2.2 million people in the shielded group that they can go outside and to send people back to work in England on 11 May without a functioning test, trace and isolate system in place? The results from the Deloitte regional test centres are still not being reported to local public health teams. How does the Secretary of State plan to fix this, and by when? What financial support will be put in place for those called on to isolate as asymptomatic contacts, especially as this could happen more than once?
With test and trace depending on people being willing to isolate if told to do so by a contact tracer, does the Secretary of State not regret that he and his Cabinet colleagues have completely shredded their own lockdown rules to protect a man who thought he was above the rules? In refusing to sack Dominic Cummings for travelling 260 miles with his wife, who was symptomatic, the Prime Minister has destroyed his own “Stay home and save lives” message. We know that the Dominic Cummings scandal has undermined efforts to tackle the virus by eroding trust in the UK Government and its public health guidelines, and we have seen that people are breaking the rules as a result. Does the Secretary of State not recognise that the scandal has already undermined lockdown and could lead to more infections and even more deaths in the future? This is about leadership and responsibility. Dominic Cummings should go, and he should go now.’
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response
The Government have been telling us they have been guided by the science.
But the SAGE minutes have been released.
They only recommended lockdown for over 70’s
No nationwide lockdown if the young healthy population and resulting closure of most businesses.
https://www.gov.uk/search/transparency-and-freedom-of-information-releases?keywords=sage&order=relevance
13 March – ‘That household isolation and protecting older and more vulnerable people should happen “soon”
16 March The risk of one person within a household passing the infection to others within the
household is estimated to increase during household isolation, from 50% to 70%.
The last minutes before lockdown no UK lockdown from SAGE
18 March
5. Social distancing based on a) places of leisure (restaurants, bars, entertainment and public spaces) and b) indoor workplaces depend on compliance with the guidance issued earlier in the week. We do not yet have reliable compliance data and therefore collecting reliable compliance data should be a priority
“While critics have slated the Johnson government for not following the science, the real problem seems to be that he did. {?} As a special report by Stephen Grey and Andrew MacAskill at Reuters explains: . . . ”
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/05/14/behavioural-errors
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[ MOD: Above link “sanitised” to remove facebook identifier ]
“Coronavirus: Boris Johnson and civil service chief Sir Mark …
http://www.thetimes.co.uk › article › coronavirus-boris-johnson…
17 May 2020 – ‘Who is in charge of implementing this plan? Is it you?’ Boris Johnson asked Sir Mark Sedwill. He replied: ‘No, I think it’s you, prime minister’.”
https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk01VbxpN_4_JwYg7AFadrNtWDBfPCw%3A1591180393762&source=hp&ei=aXzXXu_wKorXgQbZ2o24Cg&q=when+asked+who+was+in+boris+johnson+pointed+to+a+senior+civil+servant&oq=when+asked+who+was+in+boris+johnson+pointed+to+a+senior+civil+servant&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzoECCMQJzoHCAAQgwEQQzoECAAQQzoFCAAQsQM6BQgAEJECOgUIABCDAToCCAA6BggAEBYQHjoICCEQFhAdEB46BQghEKABOgQIIRAKOgcIIRAKEKABOgQIIRAVOgYIIRAKEBVQ0QpY0bsCYNHJAmgAcAB4AIABggmIAa6UAZIBETQuMzIuMTAuOS4zLjcuMi4ymAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwivyY_xuOXpAhWKa8AKHVltA6cQ4dUDCAg&uact=5
B.J. has ‘pulled back the curtain’?
He has implicitly admitted that he ‘knows’ that the Prime Minister is not ‘in charge’?
He is just the puppet whose strings are being pulled?
The Labour leadership is pathetic. Most NHS hospital services are still shut, and they look as though they will stay shut for the foreseeable future.
Stop the cuts!
Tomorrow Johnson is hosting the GAVI Conference, virtually. That is the Global Vaccine Summit, 2020.
https://www.gavi.org/investing-gavi/resource-mobilisation-process/gavis-3rd-donor-pledging-conference-june-2020
GSK to the fore? Ms Walmsley, the CEP of GSK is on video on there.
One knows it’s a scam as soon as one reads “Global Vaccine Summit”. Today Johnson said “humanity must unite” in hunt for a vaccine. Or in the words of the Eton Boating Song, “all pull together”…for Big Pharma. Meanwhile most of what used to the state health service remains SHUT. And we’re all supposed to clap! Get me out of here!
When Blair came on the radio I always stuck my fingers in my ears, having at first thought the whole “New Labour” act was satirical.
Brown and Cameron and May only talked boring pap – a little annoying but not that annoying, rather like a fly buzzing.
Now in 2020 I can’t listen to the radio any more because of the Covid scam, but I still read what Johnson says. “Humanity must unite” is his latest. The man is like Thatcher: one doesn’t merely want to ignore him, or turn away; one feels an overriding need to make him STFU.
What is ‘moderate Covid-19?’
June 01, 2020
Gilead Announces Results From Phase 3 Trial of Remdesivir in Patients With Moderate COVID-19
— Study Demonstrates 5-Day Treatment Course of Remdesivir Resulted in Significantly Greater Clinical Improvement Versus Treatment with Standard of Care Alone —
— Data Add to Body of Evidence from Prior Studies Demonstrating Benefit of Remdesivir in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 —
https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2020/6/gilead-announces-results-from-phase-3-trial-of-remdesivir-in-patients-with-moderate-covid-19
Today I saw a roadside poster saying “NHS” with heart signs, probably made by a child, and outside somebody’s house I saw a flag saying “NHS” with bunting also saying “NHS”.
How f***ing stupid can people be? Most of the NHS has shut down, while much of what remains is running on makework such as extra cleaning of ambulances now they aren’t attending to so many ill people. NHS = No Help for the Sick.
Where is the left? Tory murderers have closed down most of what used to be called the NHS. But we mustn’t say it. We’re supposed to be ritually clapping the nationalist effort instead. As Tory leaders wrap themselves in the Union Jack, the moronic “little people” are supposed to provide a chorus celebrating the “protection” of the “NHϟ”.
The left is absolutely nowhere. You wonder how many of them realise that food comes out of the ground in the autumn in a labour-intensive process that doesn’t happen online, and if the process can’t happen then people starve.
Pollsters have asked punters whether MPs should vote by walking along or clicking on a keyboard. Who gives a flying toss how those suckers vote? Why not ask whether, now that the trend for “deaths with coronavirus” has fallen in Britain for SIX WEEKS, all the NHS services that were shut down indefinitely should be reopened immediately or not?
You’re not trying to pretend you represent the Left, surely.
Is that what they call a tweet? I may disagree with most of the “actually existing” left on one or two issues but none of those issues appear here, so yes, I am.
Who is “they”? And WTF have “tweets” got to do with anything, besides your blowing smoke?
And since when did “the left” start beating down on minority groups and besmirching the NHS in the way you do – which would make the Daily Mail proud, I should add.
No, you do not represent “the left” at all. If you wanted to make a start, you could stop with your Trumpian denialism of C-19, running interference for these Tories and their shamefully inadequate response to it.
Someone should list countries by how unbearably strong the coronavirus bullsh*t is, the extent to which the rulers have been successful in taking society into the coronafascist epoch. Then some of us can try to move to a country lower down the list than the country we’re in.
Britain would be near the top of the list I think. The change can be compared to the election of Trump in the US but it is MUCH worse, and it goes much deeper. In Britain there seem no two ways about it: we are in the early stage of coronafascism and that’s it, that’s all you get, either clap clap clap for the government or do nothing.
As somebody accurately wrote on a wall in Spain (a country where some people understand about fascism):
Covid1984.
Even you should be able to see how decent, liberal democracies have fared with C-19 compared with authoritarian, right-wing technocratic regimes.
The only “unbelievable BS” about C-19 comes from you and your fellow travelers, who for reasons best known to yourselves like to minimise and deny C-19 and the danger it represents.
“1984”. Oh well, the game’s up then, isn’t it? Well and truly rumbled. Absolute genius.
People in Spain also understood that a lockdown was meant to be taken seriously, and they haven’t been as stupid as Cummings – who’s behaviour you probably admire – so now they have single per day deaths from C-19 instead of hundreds or thousands.
Ever thought of …. scratch that, you wouldn’t have.
In fact the more I think of it, Covid19-84 equals GloboTrump. It’s hypocritical to be anti-Trump and at the same time pro what big business and its government, scientists, and media are forcing upon us with the flu-scare health shutdown and the festival of submission and stupidity called “Corona”. That would be like opposing Little Planet Stupid while cheering on Big Planet Stupid. Coronafascism will last much longer than Trump’s administration. And it appears there is no going back – we are in a new epoch, or the first stage of one. “They Shall Not Pass” was the right attitude, but few took it and it may well now be too late, especially in a country such as Britain.
All of the above would have been obvious to some on the left 30 years ago. Many on the left for example analysed the changes capital imposed in the 1970s in terms of the bosses’ “strategy” of an “energy crisis”. There is no such lucidity now.
You’re equating Trump and science! OMG, you really are a hoot, N.
You’re writing like Trump now!
Is there a realistic path to the end of 2020 in Britain that doesn’t involve widespread food shortages? I don’t think so. There needs to be one single coordinated serious government plan to make sure the harvest is brought in – and there isn’t one. And it’s June already. It isn’t to do with toilet paper, and it won’t be solved by Boris bikes. Nor will it be solved by middle class types acting the way they did after the 2011 gang riots with their brooms. The left should be demanding that the army be given preparation for going to the fields, and that the government order the large-scale call-up of reservists, but unfortunately the left hasn’t got a clue. Taking the major supermarket chains under state administration, preferably with some khaki in the boardroom, would also be a step in the right direction. This isn’t a joke, but it’s going to make the current “corona conga line” period look like one.
Food shortages are already at an extremely serious level not just in Venezuela (where the economy collapsed pre-Covid) but also in Cuba, in parts of Africa, and probably in several other countries too where the position may not be being reported much internationally. Many in Venezuela and Cuba are on the brink of starvation, undergoing heavy bodyweight loss and eating a meal once every two days if they’re lucky. Various governments have cut food exports, although food exports from many countries (including Britain) are falling even without government orders to that effect. Reminder: Britain imports half its food. This will be very ugly indeed.
Craig, I have always felt uncomfortable with these words, ‘move on’ , another way of saying, ‘let’s forget’, ‘down the memory hole’ and so on.
A move away from reality and the discomfort of the present moment. Nothing gets solved, nothing gets better, no reflection/ dignity.
What a thing to teach our children.