Euro denial poster boy

Move over Nigel Lawson and Christopher Monckton, there's a new boy in town for the climate change Cult of Denial to pin their hopes on. Introducing Nick Griffin, BNP leader, who will be joining the EU delegation to the climate change talks at Copenhagen. Griffin, who already has form for his denialist tendencies over the holocaust, has hopes of challenging what he considers to be dodgy science in an attempt to suggest to the electorate that his party isn't only about racist bigotry, but that it's also a party of ingnorant anti science Luddites.

Now the top ten Tory bloggers who deny climate change, and our own local Curly, have someone in Europe to represent their views.

Stupido schools

South Tyneside is today celebrating being the focus of a grand modern experiment based on Victorian educational values, where those who are considered too thick to work in traditional North East industries like call centres and hairdressers will be given an opportunity to learn valuable career skills like filling out job centre applications.

The modern new South Tyneside Stupido will be based in a state of the art out of date run down school building.

Local councillor Bob Foreskin welcomed the initiative:

"The recession means that traditional cheap immigrant labour is leaving the UK for higher pay in countries like Latvia and Zimbabwe. The Stupido concept means we can plug the market with cheap high quality unskilled kids that no one gives a flying fuck for. And as they're not proper schools, we won't have Ofsted whingeing that the kids can't read."

The new schools, already affectionately known as 'chav academies' will seek to train those children the mainstream system has failed, in useful trades such as basket weaving, chimney sweeping, asbestos reclamation and chemical tank cleaning.

Schools minister Ted Gonads said:

"We need to manage the aspirations of North East children, and children from other downtrodden areas we couldn't give a shit about, to meet the lower expectations we have in order to focus investment in key swing voter areas like the South East. Not everyone can be gifted enough to be on the X Factor, but even X Factor stars need someone to collect their bins."

Local fat cats also backed the idea. A spokesman said:

"We couldn't believe our luck when the government announced the Stupido system. Not only do we get the tax payer to foot the bill for our training, we also get to employ daft kids at cut price rates. It's a win win situation. For us rich folks, that is."

Local Tory candidate Kat Anal commended:

"We are excited that there is a real opportunity be able to alienate another generation of losers from the North East, and welcome Labour's support in bringing back good old Conservative values of profiteering and exploitation of oik kids. Err, and grammar schools. Or something."

The South Tyneside Stupido school will join other Stupidos from around the country in areas the government has decided aren't worth bothering much about except for cheap populist stunts.

The Rat Race Ale House

The Little Pub with a big heart

I've just spent a very enjoyable evening in a new pub. Bucking the trend of pubs closing, The Rat Race Ale House at Hartlepool railway station has opened with a very clear aim: good beer, good cheer.

I used to work with the pub's landlord Pete Morgan a while back programming old skool IBM RPG, but when he was made redundant from his job as an IT manager he decided to use his redundancy money to provide himself with a future he could enjoy.

Beer.

A long time and lifetime member of CAMRA, Pete's love of all that is beer has found life in the Rat Race. He runs a free house so he's not tied to anyone or obliged to stock anyone's beers. That means no alcopops, overgassed lagers or insipid identikit beers. Pete is one of those guys for whom the phrase larger than life was invented for, and it comes through in his determination to provide a real pub experience. Many of the ales he stocks and plans to stock are beers he likes and from brewers he knows personally, and he is open to suggestions from customers for future guest ales.

The pub is unique - it doesn't have a bar. You enter and orders are taken at the table and you're introduced to the other customers. Once you have your drinks Pete moves among his customers like a host at a party. This is helped by the fact that the pub is small - it was once the Victorian station's waiting room and holds no more than 20 customers - so the atmosphere is intimate and friendly. The Rat Race is focussed on the beer; there's no jukebox, no bandit or quiz machine. If you do need distraction, there's two boxes of dominoes.

The main show is the beer and it's great. The temperature is perfect - many large real ale pubs and big chains don't get such a simple thing right. I enjoyed a couple of pints of the Kirby Lonsdale Jubilee Stout, about as perfect as a hand pulled stout can get. The Yorkshire Askrigg Ale was very popular and for good reason. The Jarrow Brewery's Rivet Catcher was also on the menu, but as it seems many of the customers were already familiar with Rivet Catcher the unfamiliar ales were getting all the attention. Although the pub's hours are short, the Rat Race also sells the beer in refillable cartons to take away to enjoy at home.

So if you're in Hartlepool, and looking for time to kill before catching the train, join the Rat Race.

Teh noob speaketh

There's a number of things which are guaranteed to make you look like a complete cock. One is to base your understanding of science on documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. Another is to be a mayor and get snapped doing the X Factor cross with your arms.

A great way to look like a total nobend is to wind yourself up into massive moral outrage mode to criticise a console or computer game whilst at the same time have absolutely no clue about it, or gaming culture in general.

Cue Mark Bryant, the Bishop of Jarrow.

The bish, whose religion's core feature is the worship of a man who came back from the dead after a gruesome death, is complaining about a game essentially about people coming back from the dead after a gruesome death. True, Resident Evil's revenant baddies get whacked with extreme prejudice, normally by strong kick ass female characters, who despatch said resurrectants and assorted biologically mutated bad guys created by an evil multinational corporation.

But it isn't all about innocently shooting zombies in the face the bishop says:

"If people spend a lot of time in the company of games that are about the occult, then those influences are bound to rub off."

Wow. The occult. Believing in the supernatural. It's only right that a self respecting man of the cloth would challenge dabbling with spirits, the dead and the undead along with myths of mystical planes of existence. Oh sweet irony.

pwned.


PS - an adult using l33t is a bit nobbish too.

Origins, Climate, Science and Ignorance

Today marks 150 years since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The model of evolution through the process of natural selection was laid down so definitively within that book that the core principles are as firm now as they were then. The quality of that work set standards for scientific rigour and principle. Continuing research builds upon a huge body of knowledge.

However, since then those who have felt threatened by Darwin's work have desperately tried to discredit Darwin and his theory by cherry picking writings in letters and books which seemed to confirm their own evolution denial bias, a bias usually informed by dogma. Evolution deniers have ranged from claiming Darwin admitted God did it to Darwin was responsible for the holocaust. Even a story about a death bed recantation did the rounds.

So it's with some sense of ironic timing that the CRU email leak has the climate change deniers drooling. I haven't by any means read all the emails (frankly some of it was boring, some of it way above my head), but to me it seems like a storm in a teacup.

Admittedly there's no doubt that the leak is damaging to the perception of climate science, as the Cult of Denial has already started cherry picking quotes out of context as evidence of either a dastardly conspiracy to falsify the evidence to satisfy evil lefty political masters in their machinations to tax us all to penury, or of money grubbing Ferrari driving playboy scientists chasing after the next research grant to fund their lavish lifestyles.

Oddly though, most of blogland's Cult of Denial acolytes haven't actually referred to scientific evidence or even challenged it, instead the right wing blog hive mind seems to have decided to cross link to each other's rehashing of emails in a kind of free market fundamentalist mutual masturbation.

As with Darwin's theory, the deniers are cherry picking emails and phrases out of context to confirm their own wacky theories. Free thought and objectivity don't get a look in.

Let's face it, if any of the data produced by the CRU had been falsified, then a keen-eyed denial cultist would have spotted it long before now.

Sure, there's some personal score settling in some of the emails which is less than professional, but not particularly out of the ordinary, or as bad as some the current commentary on the right wing denial blogs. Most seriously though are the apparent attempts to silence sceptic research, which on the face of it is troubling. However, we haven't heard from the scientists themselves yet so any judgement on this issue is premature. That doesn't seem to stop some bloggers triumphantly cracking one off though.

It would have been great news if the emails contained definitive evidence that climate change science had been debunked, but the leaked emails are not the killer blow to climate science the deniers are wetting themselves about. Not even so much as a lightly smoking gun. Other than the damage from the media frenzy fed by the right wing deniers (and partially by a panicky and obtuse George Monbiot), the reputations of some scientists will have been soiled, their methodology will get a kick up the backside and their material re-examined.

So on the face of it, the Cult of Denial's inquisitors, despite their self righteous whooping, are so far burning only straw men. Unfortunately many will not see this and the emails will be permanently carved into their mythology of climate denial, and like their mindless hockey stick criticisms will continue to be a pain in the backside of those with respect for objective free thought.

The science is still strong but it doesn't stand still. Like all science, the current knowledge about our climate and our impact on it will continue to change as new research becomes available and new and better conclusions are sought. Like evolution, climate science moves on with advances in our understanding of the world.

The Cult of Denial can't accept that, instead loudly shouting down change, trying to drown out the rational voices of the science heretics who threaten their cosy dogma.

It's been 150 years since Darwin published his landmark work, and it's still an achievement to be celebrated. But 150 years later we are still facing the closed minds of anti scientific ignorance.

Geek hedonism

Work commitments over the last week have meant that I couldn't stray far from home for long, never mind enjoy the fruit of the vine and the grain. But this last week hasn't been a disaster. Far from it, I've been in geek heaven.

First, last Tuesday saw the release of the long anticipated console and PC game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Despite what gobshite Keith Vaz says, it's a fun way to pass a few hours, and not the moral quagmire the Vazman reckons it is. The section of the game in question is a key part of the plot, driving the context of what's to follow, and not playing it would be like skipping the cock scene in The Crying Game.

Admittedly, the offline campaign is straightforward and short, and whilst the story brought back some old friends, it's the online mode which most people have been waiting for.

A first person shooter addict, I've been a fan of Infinity Ward's Call of Duty games since the first one on PC in 2003. 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare saw me move from PC to console gaming as the graphic demands of newer games started to outstrip my wallet's ability to support the latest graphics cards.

New to the COD: Modern Warfare franchise is a 'Special Ops' co-operative mode, which is good for a short blast of fun with your friends against bot bad guys, but not as satisfying as say Rainbow Six 2's co-op mode, or playing with and against real people online, where kills mean points and points mean ranking up and weapons upgrades. Already at level 20 after four hours online play, I foresee some of my life sucked away working up the ranks.

Then yesterday, my preordered Blu-Ray version of the new Star Trek movie hit the doormat. Not only did it come in all it's high definition Blu-Ray surround sound glory (thank goodness I don't have neighbours), it also came with a 'digital copy' dvd, with a version you can copy to your iPod or onto Windows Media Player. This is a model I hope to see more of in future as it expands the flexibility of options to view your movie without having to jump through (or bend) digital rights management hoops to copy your purchase to other formats.

And the film was pretty awesome too.

Lastly, today saw an Xbox update with some new toys: Zune (Microsoft's media player), LastFM, Twitter and Facebook. Admittedly, most of these are little more than apps that tech heads have already seen on their iPod and iPhone, but it indicates that Microsoft have seen which way the wind is blowing. Sony should take note for the Playstation 3 or risk being left behind.

A quick test of LastFM revealed a stable and fast application (faster than the PC version) with a cleaner and more useful interface than its sibling iPod/iPhone app. Facebook was also competent, despite the lack of keyboard requiring some deft controller work. Once you've joined your Facebook account to your Xbox gamer tag, whenever you're on Xbox Live it shows your gamertag on your Facebook profile page. However, it is disappointing that you can't update your Facebook status with your recent game achievements (or at least I can't find an option to do this) in the same manner as the native Facebook games status update on the PC. Hopefully this will follow.

I'll have a play with Zune sometime, but I'm not sure I'll bother with Twitter yet as it's not something which has grabbed me. Maybe I'll set up an account to see what the fuss is about.

As long as it doesn't eat into the serious business of gaming.

Spooky goings on in the Alliance

Wooo!

Okay, I know I've missed Halloween, but I had a funny feeling come over me when reading the Alliance's announcement of their new prospective council candidate for Cleadon Park, Andrew Farrow. I'm not sure I would risk a bet on a Scooby snack, but is the local Rotary Club President also the same Andrew Farrow who was hexed by the evil spirits over cursed board game Ghosts?

Mail nailed

The Daily Mail published an article by columnist Jan Moir, which no doubt the Mail's editorial team felt reflected the views of its readership. Tasteless, vile and homophobic, the Mail and Moir are facing outrage and condemnation. And rightly so.

I'm barely aware of Gately's existence, so beyond the little empathy borne from simple common decency I find it difficult to really care. But the Daily Mail has taken advantage of this man's untimely death, and used the fact that he was gay, spiced it up with some moralising bullshit to imply impropriety - all in an attempt to normalise naked homophobia.

That the Mail's editorial team thought such shit is suitable for publication almost says as much about its readership as it does about the value of its moral framework. Zero.

Respect to Charlie Brooker for putting it much better than I ever could.

Round three to Singh

It looks like Simon Singh's defence against the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association has taken a turn for the better for him. His grant to appeal after the ridiculous judgement over the interpretation and context of Singh's original Guardian article by libel judge Eady has been successful. For now anyway.

There's some comfort in that Lord Justice Laws found Eady's judgment "legally erroneous", although to me it seems like a typically understated legal description of an outrageous affront to free expression.

The fact that practioners of treatments which are unproven can sue a critic seems insane, and an indictment of the easy tool that our libel laws are for wealthy interests to silence criticism. The BCA claims that its treatments can help children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying. Imagine if a church decided to sue over someone describing the uselessness of praying or touching a box of holy bones.

This case should never have hit the courts. In countries like the USA where freedom of speech and public interest have much more weight in law (constitution people!) Singh would already have won the case.

The case is far from over, but hopefully Singh will win out - and at the same time shine a light on the BCA's use of illiberal libel laws instead of countering Singh's criticisms with proof.

More on the case at the excellent Jack of Kent blog.

Move along, no free speech here

Obviously our government has learned from Beijing on how to use oppressive policies to keep an olympic event running smoothly and free from inconvenient things like free speech. Well, bill posters at least. Obviously not happy with giving the police all the fun, it looks like private boot boys can join in on the action too.

Apparently it's not to protect us from terrorists, it's to protect the likes of Budweiser and Coca Cola from other advertisers from muscling in on their olympic advert territory. So police, council workers and traffic wardens can smash in doors to seize any material deemed by those in power to be offensive to official olympic advertisers. It's a true UK Plc law.

Who said that this Labour government were the bitches of big business?

Wind loss

Despite enjoying the most bountiful wind resources in Europe, as a nation the UK is really poor at wind power. If this facility is allowed to fail, whilst our money is being pumped into a motor industry to fund business as usual, we'll see how green this government really wants to be.

Save Vestas

Cops stop chop hop

I really make an effort to see the good side in policing, then shit like this happens.

It's bad enough that they fucked up big time in going into mega overkill mode to stop some poor guy's birthday barbecue bash, but then they defended their blitzkrieg by describing it as an appropriate response. Lucky there were no Brazilian electricians about.

Bobble topped fuckwits.

Suffer little children

Sts Peter & Paul
St Aloysius
St Bedes
St Gregorys
St James
St Joseph's
St Mary's
St Matthews
St Oswalds
St Wilfrids

These are all schools in South Tyneside. These schools have a relationship with a corrupt foreign regime that meddles in the politics of states around the world. A regime with blood on it's hands. A regime that covers up child abuse in it's ranks.

Whilst we worry over the kids being sent off to Islamic madrassas in the Middle East and Pakistan, here at home we have schools aligned with a religion for which hate is hidden behind words like love and forgiveness and comforting phrases like 'gospel values'.

Hyberbolic? Perhaps. But this story of a 9 year-old Brazilian girl who became pregnant after being raped by her stepfather, and the response of the Roman Catholic Church is a sickening indictment of a religious authority which puts it's warped bronze age morality before humanity.

Punishing the people who saved this little girl's life with excommunication is pretty cold and heartless. To most of us, being excommunicated is no big deal. But if you believe in such shit, it's serious juju. Eternal torture in the fiery bowels of hell. How's that for a loving, forgiving deity?

The Roman Catholic Church defended it's inhumane decision as a 'doctrine of faith'. Well that's alright then.

Apart from allowing their children to be subject to the indoctrination of a hateful ideology, I wonder how many parents who send their children to these Roman Catholic schools know of this example of what the church which they trust to guide their childrens' religious schooling really thinks about children.

How many would really care?

How do they feel that a policy made by old men in dresses comes before the care of a child?


Word to The Well-Timed Period.

Flight Club

The First rule of Flight Club is: Aviation doesn't pull it's weight in the fight to reduce CO2 emissions.

The Second rule of Flight Club is: Aviation doesn't pull it's weight in the fight to reduce CO2 emissions.

Those are the rules according to the Miliband brothers.

Mili the Younger

Where I disagree with other people on aviation is if you did 80% cuts across the board, as some people have called for on aviation, you would go back to 1974 levels of flying. I don't want to have a situation where only rich people can afford to fly.

Mili the Elder

if we're going to fly more we've got to do much less of something else. Because what counts in the end is not whether emissions come from cars or homes or aeroplanes - what counts is that our carbon emissions are reduced.

So, what sector do the bros want to cut so folk can fly to Prague for a piss up and a shag? Health? Keeping houses warm?

Apparently, according to these guys flying is some kind of grand egalatarian right and deserves the state's protection. Most flights are populated by the well off or used to fly in kumquats (they are a fruit BNP readers), whilst being subsidised by everyone else through aviation's fuel tax breaks, money export and job losses abroad, not to mention the unaccounted externalities of climate change.

Protecting aviation is not about saving flights for the poor, it's about lining in the pockets of people like Willie Walsh and Michael O'Leary, whilst the poor around the world will be the first and worst hit by the unstable climate ushered in by short sighted policies like the ones the Milibands support.

9 out of 10 cats

...think their owners are morons.

I've got to admit that I tend to agree. This might cause outrage amongst fans of the feline form, but I've long held a theory that cat owners who swooningly claim their pet moggies are intelligent are actually conceding that their cats are more intelligent than they are. Whenever I voice my 'stupid human cat owners theory', I have faced either an almost holy righteous indignance or a deadly silence.

Now science has come to back my theory/prejudice, in the form of research carried out at the University of Sussex. The boffins have discovered that pussies use purr power to press their owners' buttons.

The evidence is in. These folk should drop their fascination with the manipulative bird murdering vermin.

And get a dog.

Dumber than a sack of hammers

That's Sarah Palin. Don't believe me? Read it here.

She clearly doesn't have a clue about supply-side economics.

Thought for the Day

I appreciate secular values, but I'm not sure about this one. I listen to Thought for the Day most mornings during the Today Programme, but I find it largely irrelevant and out of place in a news programme, despite it sometimes providing some early morning amusement at some of the eccentricities being espoused as considered religious thought.

There's an argument that if a publicly funded body is giving exposure to religiously influenced opinions, then it should also fairly give space not just to all religions, but to non religious positions too.

I think the best approach for a supposedly objective news service is not to promote any particular political or ideological viewpoint at all.

However, that's not going to happen anytime soon, so I think I'd rather that TFTD, whether including secular and humanist viewpoints or not, should be scheduled just before or just after the Today Programme, out of the way of the serious business of news.

Power politics

Given that Ed Miliband has been whoring himself to the CBI's energy wishlist over the weekend, should we pretend surprise when the government's new white paper comes out giving the CBI exactly what it demanded?

Scoundrel days

Reading Gordon Brown's sickening twaddle about Afghanistan today I was reminded of Samuel Johnson's famous quote:

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Brown's statement had me filling with rage that he had the shameless gall to say it:

This is a patriotic duty. Of course people want to know if the action we are taking is the right action. It comes back to terrorism on the streets of Britain. If we were to allow the Taliban to be back in power in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda then to have the freedom of manoeuvre it had before 2001, then we would be less safe as a country.

There is a line of terror - what you might call a chain of terror - that links what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain.

A patriotic duty. Isn't that what desperate politicians demand of others?

That 'line of terror' hasn't been followed to it's source. It's not Afghanistan or Pakistan; they are just recruiting and training proxies for a much bigger and influential player.

There's a memorable line in the movie All the President's Men: follow the money. The line of terror money can be followed to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis supplied the money and the hardline Wahabi fundamentalism through sham Islamic charities to replace the indigenous Islam in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This has spread to some of Britain's mosques and helped breed the so called 'homegrown' Islamic terrorists. The July 7th bombers may have been British, but their radicalisation was born in Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudis are untouchable. Tony Blair stepping in to stop an investigation into bribery in the Al Yamamah deal, and Saudi billionaires using our anti free speech libel laws to shut down criticism - all examples of a culture of protection anyone for importance within the Saudi power structure. With Al Yamamah, we are unlikely to know where that slush money went.

We are in grip with Saudi Arabia - they supply oil, we supply weapons. Saudi buys US currency to keep it's value, the USA uses it's military might against anyone who might threaten OPEC's fragile status quo.

Gordon Brown conjures up patriotism to justify British deaths on foreign soil, fighting a proxy war against a proxy enemy. If Brown wants to be really patriotic and not the scumbag scoundrel we know he is, he should be cutting the mutually parasitic relationship we have with Saudi Arabia.

Electoral frauds

I've been following Craig Murray's election campaign in the Norwich North by-election and it has become a catalogue of attempts by various public bodies to silence him. The BBC has ignored him, the Post Office has dragged it's feet over delivering his election media (a dvd - that's a first I think) and local schools have tried to deny him a platform on the hustings.

If you didn't know, Craig Murray is a former British ambassador, and has been calling the government out over it's record on colluding with tyranical regimes abroad to torture people on behalf of the British Government, and has made some people in parliament (including our local MP David Miliband) very uncomfortable with the evidence he has collected.

The BBC's claim to be detached and objective is rendered laughable. Why are these bodies attempting to corrupt the democratice process?