Lock your doors, the Council man is coming!

Wrote this before seeing Richard's post below, but decided that they complemented one another, so, onward!

Listened to a cross-section of the news this a.m., and thought I’d share a few thoughts on this slice with you! Ranging from the fact that council officials (nosey-parker busybodies) can now propose to legally enter your home for the purposes of checking what improvements you’ve made, and charging you for them; through the deeply-saddening ongoing reports of the corruption, carnage and death which came from Basra, to the really disturbing item about the proposals by the LIB-Dem council of Richmond. This involved the proposed increase in permit parking charges to reflect the so-called Carbon Impact or Green-house gases emitted by the vehicle which you drive! So if you have an electric car, you park for free, but if you drive (heaven forfend) a 4 x 4 vehicle (described by the council and the BBC as a GAS-GUZZLER), you will pay three times the present value of the parking permit! So Richmond Council, having decided that they live in the centre of the Carbon-emitting culture of Great Britain, they are going to start by penalising everyone who has decided, in this so-called free country of ours, that they should drive a large, comfortable car!

Yup; There’ll always be an England, but a subtly different one to that once sung about!

Comments

[Fanny]

Peter T, I'm not a Texan but an Englishwoman, and furthermore one who isn't easily upset.

I'm so glad you drive a small car. My own is of medium size (1.6cc engine) but it sure ain't an all-polluting van.

As a retired biomedical chemist you'll doubtless appreciate the following little fable....

At 8.00 am, the pool attendant has completed the filling of the pool.

At 9.03, the first group of children enter the pool. Several cannot hold their water; others can, but don't.

At 10.06, a second group of kids enter the pool. And another. Several more little bladders are relieved.

The day wears on.

At 6.01 pm, the final group of children exit the pool.

"Yuk, it's pull of pee!" complains one small boy. "It stinks!" Another agrees.

"That's impossible," the attendant tells a parent. "The filters are cleaning the water all the time."

"But it still smells," says a little girl. "Yukkety yuk-yuk!"

"It's your imagination," says the attendant. "The filters never lie."

© 2006, Fanny's Fab Fables.

[Fanny]

Should read "full of pee" of course. The little boy had a speech defect :)

[notme]

Fanny: In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote a best selling book called "The Population Bomb." It predicted mass starvation in the 1980's. In 1975 the magazine "Newsweek" wrote an article called "The Cooling World" This article presented a doomsday scenario of growing ice caps and of course, starvation. To its credit, Newsweek did not blame mankind; it admitted that climate change was largely a mystery. Just this month, Newsweek came out and said their 1975 article was incorrect; their new (!) article, though, on Global Warming, is correct. (la plus ca change) Also, the "hockey stick" - the chief measuring device for global warming - has been discredited by scientists.

I'm not saying that we should mindlessly, selfishly and carelessly pollute our global environment. This would be very foolish and short-sighted. But, unfortunately, radical advocates of environmentalism and anti-American anti-globilization sentiments have managed to morph an important debate into an hysterical rant blaming mankind - reflecting a wierd self-hatred that seems to wish man would largely just disappear, so the planet (Gaia) could carry on in her innocent perfection. Some sort of "return to Paradise" fantasy.

Peter: Interesting to note that the US is often blamed for most of the global warming. What about China? Or for that matter, what about volcanoes? Global warming is used as just another plank with which to hit America - the great Satan - over the head. If that's your point, OK - but don't kid yourself that it's scientific.

[Fanny]

"I'm not saying that we should mindlessly, selfishly and carelessly pollute our global environment."

Good for you, Peter T. If more thought that way, we wouldn't have a problem. We have.

I say: Ban the Van.

[Peter]

Notme: If you'd clicked on the link you'd have seen that China's right up there. Stop thinking this is a crusade against Uncle Sam.

Peter T posted:
"satellite temperature measurements of the troposphere have shown no warming of the southern hemisphere for the last 25 years"

So is that why Antarctica has warmed by 2 degrees celsius in the last 50 years?

[David Vance]

Fanny,

So long as it's NOT "Ban the Van(ce)"!!

[jaun]

fanny,
you do realise the medium you are using now to entertain yourself also causes carbon emission ? Yet you wish to ban a genuine labour devise of the working classes vital for their productive input to society and their remuneration......
taking stand starts at home, turn your computer off, ditch the TV and the fridge, stop using automotive transport of any nature, refrain from flushing your toilet lose the dust bin or creating any non bridgeable waste of any nature, and then maybe you can speak about your right to deny people a living for the good of the environment.
its easier to preach than to practice but when you preach the practise of removing livelihoods for the good of the environment, while you practice the preaching on an environmentally unsound medium, its just silly.

[jaun]

pardon,
bridgeable - bio-degradable

[notme]

Peter: I did click on the link. China is a fast growing economy with few environmental controls. I'm not a scientist, nor am I following the global warming hysteria very carefully. I have read enough from various scientific publications to know that it is not as cut and dry as activists (who do tend to be anti-American) would like us to believe. This issue has become heavily politicized.

[Peter]

DV

In answer to your point about CO2:

"Based on direct analysis of gases found trapped in cores of polar ice, it is known that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide for several thousands of years before 1750 was about 280 parts per million. Between 1750 and 2000, during which industrialisation has occurred, the concentration rose by about 31% to 368 parts per million. The IPCC report noted that the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has not been exceeded during the past 420,000 years and that “the rate of increase over the past century is unprecedented, at least during the past 20,000 years”.

It has been claimed that the rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide is actually a consequence of climate change, rather than a cause. The IPCC report pointed out that chemical analyses of the carbon dioxide show that the increase in the atmosphere, and an accompanying decrease in oxygen concentrations, are primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Although some carbon dioxide taken up and released by oceans or land, it stressed that the average rate of increase in concentrations in the atmosphere since 1980 has been about 0.4% per year and that this is due to emissions. It stated “Most of the emissions during the past 20 years are due to fossil fuel burning, the rest (10 to 30%) is predominantly due to land-use change, especially deforestation”.

Taken from a Royal Society paper entitled Facts and Fictions about Climate Change

Obviously the Royal Society has joined the commie conspirators!

[mahons]

What ever happened to An Englishman's Home is his Castle? Surely having defeated the Spanish Armada and various attempts by the French and Germans, you will not be overcome by some bureaucrats. To the Ramparts!

[Peter]

Notme

Try the Royal Society paper I linked to at 4.26 pm.

[Fanny]

Jaun, you're being sillier than is strictly necessary.

I didn't say Bar the Car, but Ban the Van.

Nice one, David Van(ce) :)

[daytripper]

Lock your doors, im on my way back to belfast today.

im going to miss my colt 45 and the sunny weather of florida :(
aileen will be happy tho. ;)

[aileen]

Daytripper.

I hope Mrs daytripper is drinking lots of water. It's in all our interests that she doesn't have a headache. ;o)

For those who haven't been following the exchange, Daytripper is not flying to Belfast to make me happy, well not directly anyway!

[jaun]

fanny,
yes it seems your right, when I read, "ban the van", I thought you meant, well, vans....
had I read "They're vans with windows" - I would have cottoned on that you were using a euphemism from a previous post. oh well.
the fact still remains that you are advocating a serious bit of totalitarianism that would cost manufacturers jobs and restrict the logistical abilities of large scale agriculturalists, people in remote regions and folks like medicine sans frontiers etc.. again ultimately hurting people for practises (co2 emission) I see you still engaging in just for fun

[David Vance]

Peter,

Would that be the same Royal Society that is lobbying government for more funding?

Mm...tenured scientists, fat salaries...

[mahons]

Daytripper: I am sure everyone in Florida was sad to see you go. I imagine Disney World will get someone else to play Goofy.

Have a safe flight.

[Fanny]

Jaun, my apologies for labelling you "silly" :)

Sure, banning the Van might cost jobs. There again, we've seen the demise of the steamroller, the Cadillac with the delightful tailfins, the clockwork television (OK I made that one up), so why not bid adieu to the Van?

Some of us here may recall the oil crisis of the 70s, when the aforementioned Caddy gave way to the subcompact. If financial consideration can breed a better car then surely vital and societal considerations can give us a better alternative to the Van.

[Peter]

David

Did you read the Royal Society document?

[David Vance]

Peter,

Did you check to see if they are lobbying for more government backing...?

[Peter T]

Peter, once again you refer to the Antartic as warming and the link you provide refers to the Antartic Peninsula which is indeed warming by around 2 degrees C as I have previously stated. However, the Eastern Ice Sheet does not exhibit the same warming trend whilst the much larger Western Ice Sheet is, in fact, cooling. Why this is so is not known although the suggestion has been made that as the Western Ice Sheet is based upon a rock foundation other factors may apply.

As for the Royal Society - are you aware of the controversy surrounding this august body following their Presidents letter to the media in which he requested them not to report any sceptical viewpoint as the climate debate was, in his opinion, closed.

[David Vance]

"Perhaps the most telling (& undoubtedly the most cynical) summation of the whole Global Warming roadshow was made by Matt Ridley in the Sunday Telegraph on December 10th, 1995:

“Imagine that you have been toiling away at atmospheric physics for 30 years and suddenly along comes global warming. Next thing you know the United Nations is paying you hundreds of pounds a day to sit in Madrid sampling room service and appearing on Newsnight. Would you admit that the whole thing was nothing to worry about?”

Honestly????

David posted:

"Did you check to see if they are lobbying for more government backing"

So that makes their science rubbish? Maybe they should get funding from Exxon? LOL!

Peter T posted:

"As for the Royal Society - are you aware of the controversy surrounding this august body following their Presidents letter to the media in which he requested them not to report any sceptical viewpoint as the climate debate was, in his opinion, closed."

Please supply a link to support this assertion.

Obviously neither of you have bothered to READ the Royal Society document which I linked to earlier. So much easier to snipe cynically from the sidelines, isn't it?

Matt Ridley's remark is the ultimate in self-serving cynicism. In his world EVERYONE has to have the basest of motives. I wonder why?

[Peter]

That was me at 8.59.