More evidence that there are two laws!

Once again the actions of the government prove that there are two different laws, one for the rich and one for the poor.

Firstly, the directors of the failed banks escape justice from the Official Receiver and the Bankruptcy Courts that would have banned them from being executives of any company for a number of years and consequently from holding any form of public office.

But now other government officials get to resign rather than being sacked. They are therefore free to move to another job to continue their destruction of the things that British people used to hold in some kind of respect.

To make matters worse we force the resignation of really valuable people, like the Head of the Anti-terrorist Division of the Police, for trivial mistakes. Yes, I do mean trivial, by simply re-organising the schedule of their planned actions very little real harm was done and I imagine that he had a great deal of control over that re-organisation anyway. OK, he probably could not ave stayed in his current role but he should have been simply transferred to another and we, the British people, would not have lost his years of experience and the massive investment that we have made in his career. I imagine that the embarrassment he caused to himself was sufficient punishment without the need for anything else being done, but then he was not a politician and thus exempt from being kicked out.

Anyway a single Downing Street advisor can abuse his position and bring about total distrust of the entire government especially the office of the Prime Minister and all that happens if he is allowed to resign. I imagine that he will have a better paid job with a newspaper or such like within a few days.

If this person had been employed by a normal company he would have got the sack, probably lost pension and other benefit rights and been on the scrap heap as far as further employment is concerned. There would also have been the possibility of legal action for bringing his employer into disrepute or even prosecution under the Misuse of Computers Act. I trust that Downing Street does have an IT Policy that all of its staff is required to sign or am I just kidding myself why should the government follow their own recommendations?

King Canute II

New Flood Risk Map

The Environment Agency has just released a new flood risk map for the United Kingdom highlighting all the areas at serious risk of flooding, not just from coastal or river flooding but also from flash flooding.

Flash Flooding is that which can be caused just about anywhere as a result of torrential rain. Although this can occur anywhere there are areas at much greater risk than others as shown on the new map.

Great, so now that we have spent a fortune making the map, will anyone take any notice of it?

Stop building in flood risk areas
The scientists keep telling us of the increased likelihood of extreme weather conditions as Global Warming takes effect. So why don't the government pass legislation to stop all building and development of these flood risk areas?

What confidence can anyone have in politicians who ignore warnings about things we know about being able to deal with things we don't? No doubt we'll have to deal with the mess that will inevitably occur when the floods devastate the homes of 1,000's of people probably sadly with some loss of life too. The cost to our economy will be once again enormous adding to the already stretched public borrowing when all it needs now is the stroke of a pen!

"I think". Oh really!

Politicians that think, that's a novelty.

Listening to the BBC Politics Show this morning my attention was drawn to the fact the all the politicians that were interviewed prefixed almost all their statements with the words "I think". It reminded me of the TV show "The Apprentice" and I wonder what Sir Alan Sugar would say to an apprentice that said that. Something like "You think, why? don't you bl**dy know? - YOU'RE FIRED!"

We don't need to be governed by people who think, people who think should only be advisors. We need to be governed by people who know and if they don't know they should not be in government. If this were the case we would be in a better situation than we are now because the decisions that got us here were made by people who thought - WRONGLY!

Politicians, especially ministers, should be subject to the same rules as a small business owner - one mistake and you're out!

Government needs to be reactive, ours certainly is not. It takes years to come up with any decision because all the decisions are too big. Things should not be suddenly radically altered on the scale they are now, they should be constantly tweaked and adjusted to suit the prevailing conditions. If one radically alters too much at once it makes it almost impossible to determine what it is that is causing the issues if problems arise.

At the moment we wait until things fail dramtically before anyone does anything about them. In business one has to constantly monitor cause and effect and if you want to do anything new you need to produce a detailed cost/benefit analysis with very clear statements as to what the measures of success are and if the project is approved then whomever is managing it has to frequently produce updates documenting the achievement of project milestones, the state of the budget and whether or not the project is achieving its goals.

The government of our nation and the creation of legislation needs to be tackled in a more professional manner. What we don't need are these endless committees trying, after the fact, to determine what went wrong.

Welfare and Benefits Reform Bill

Tomorrow the government publishes the new Welfare and Benefits Reform Bill. Here we go again, let's take something which is not working and completely mess it up. One day we will learn a new approach to slowly change things until they achieve the results we are looking for. One can be absolutely sure, because I KNOW, that this reform bill will not solve our welfare and benefit problems and we'll be reforming the reforms again before too long.

THE RIGHT TO PROTEST

I would be the first in the queue to protect our right to protest as I am doing it right now!

But I wonder if Celtic Supporters would get permission to protest at the same place and at the same time as Rangers Supporters?

OR

Would the pro-nuclear lobby be able to protest in Parliament Square at the same time as the anti-nuclear lobby?

Highly unlikely, no, just plain NO!

What am I going on about? - Luton!

Yesterday are heroic soldiers of the Anglian Regiment exercised their right to parade through the town of Luton behind their colours and a fine sight they were too. But how on Earth did a handful of fanatics get permission to demonstrate in the same place at the same time when as I have pointed out above no one else would?

OK, they can protest BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME. Let's have some fairness in the mad world of political correctness and can our authorities apply the same rules to everyone. Equal rights for all, so why were the rights of the Anglian Regiment pushed aside by a small group of fanatics?

THE RISING TIDE

Yesterday the scientists announced that sea-level was rising much faster than previously predicted. It was estimated that sea-level would rise about 50cm by the end of the century (2100) hoever due to the increased speed of climate change they now recalculate those figures to at least 1 meter by 2100 with some predicting in excess of 1.2m

Hang on a minute, that is more than TWICE AS HIGH as was originally thought!

So bad things are going to happen twice as quickly than we thought...

The Thames Barrier

The Thames Barrier was expected to be able to cope until around 2060 with the original prediction but what now? It took 8 years to build the barrier and if it were to be replaced the second one would have to be much biger in comparison and therefore will take much longer to build. The suggestion being that a new barrier would need to run from Sheerness to Southend, a distance of 16Km. It is also interesting to note that the think tank for the Thames Barrier was set up in 1953 and it took until 1970 before any serious work was begun!

Low lying coastal areas

But there are many other low lying coastal areas that are already suffering from the effects of coastal erosion. These areas are now going to be under greater threat than first thought. Areas of East Anglia, around the Humber Estuary, the Medway and between Folkestone and Hastings are at greatest risk and some of these areas are densely populated.

The UK Government is scheduled to publish a draft bill on flooding and coastal erosion this year, which means most of it is already written. Obviously in the light of the new sea-level rise figures they will need to go back to the drawing board because what ever it proposes is unlikely to be big enough or actioned quickly enough to do any good.

The next best guess...

I would think it would be a good bet to say that the current estimates for sea level rise are wrong and that in a short while they will once again be amended and I would also think it is a good bet to say it will be in an upwards direction.

My personal view is that the rate of sea level rise is increasing exponentially. What this means is that the speed of sea level rise is increasing at an increasing rate, what is 10mm per year this year will be 13mm per year next year and so on. It is because we do not yet know what this logarithmic formula is, we keep getting updated predictions.

Ya what?

Sustainable - like hell it is!
I was watching a programme on the telly last night about a National Trust property where the old walled garden on the property was being put back in to use to grow produce for sale and use in the visitor restaurant. That in itself is laudable - maybe! But then it went on with lots of waffling on about the sustainable locally ecologically grown organic produce and then..., they showed us the two new POLY TUNNELS!!!!!!

Where do they think polythene comes from?

So the whole idea is about as sustainable as an ice cream on a sunny day and ecological as a land fill.

Petroleum By-products
But it got me thinking. Polythene is a by-product of petroleum, so when the oil runs out we loose polythene - At last no more plastic bags! - I wonder what else we get from oil?

Well apart from the obvious fuels, there are less obvious things at each end of the oil spectrum like benzine or tar. So what are we going to make roads with when we don't have tar?

But the list is huge; nylon, acetate, ethylene, polyesters, detergents, polyurethane, PVC, glycol (anti-freeze), even paraffin wax and many, many more items. So when the oil runs out we don't just have to worry about not having a car we're going to loose thousands of other things at the same time.

Just think:

1. Nearly all children's toys are made from plastic. Not for very much longer.
2. Planning on using a candle when the power goes off - Nope, no wax!
3. Many medicines and cosmetics will vanish
4. No oil based paints, glues and solvents
5. Much fewer synthetic (hard wearing) cloths and materials
6. No more oil based food preservatives
7. No more oil based detergents, cleaners and disinfectants
8. And just in case your not in a state of panic yet, no more bicycle tyres. They're not just rubber they are nylon too and nylon comes from oil.
9. If you wish to see a more comprehensive list of the products we will loose when oil runs out follow this link Ranken Energy
   

I did a search on Google for "organic replacements for petroleum based products" and guess what, it says "NO RESULTS FOUND". Which just about sums up the effort being made to cope with the major problems we have waiting for us just around the corner!

TRANSPORT AND ENERGY POLICY 2

Protect the Permanent Way

One thing I missed out in my previous post was the need to protect what remains of the Permanent Way. This may mean nothing to most folks but to railway people they know what I am talking about, the Permanent Way is the trackbed upon which railways run or used to run.

All that is left of the Permanent Way not currently in use should be immediately protected against development, in fill or an other damage how so ever arising. The Victorians and Edwardians moved millions of tonnes of rock and earth making tunnels, cuttings and embankments for the railway system they used to have. We may need these routes again at some point in the near future and we don't want to have to do it all over again.

Come on politicians put your brains into gear and think past just today.

TRANSPORT AND ENERGY POLICY

In the century to come these two subject will become merged into one policy because without energy you'll have no transport.

What should we be doing?

Firstly look around us and see what's going on in the long term:

• Global Warming
• Sea Level Rising
• Running out of Oil and Natural Gas

Well then this is simple, we have some of the highest tides in the world so build barrages across the entrances of all our major rivers to generate tidal power creating huge fresh water reservoirs in the process. In one stoke we protect our major cities from inundation, solve the fresh water problem for a while and make a large contribution to alternative energy.

This will also make all our major rivers into large safe harbours. We'll need large safe harbours for the thousands of sailing ships that will be needed to replace the massive oil powered ships that we have today. A large sailing ship can carry about 500 tonnes of cargo, so we'll need quite a few to deal with the 300 million tonnes of natural resources we import each year but I imagine that figure will drop dramatically once the fuel runs out.

Other large reservoirs could be constucted above sea level to which water could be pumped from behind the marine barrages at times when we have lots of wind power. This water could then be released back to flow by gravity the other way generating power like the generating station at Dinorwig in Wales but on a vastly larger scale.

At the moment most of the UK's imports come in to ports like Felixstowe on the east coast and then are moved by HGV across country to the western cities like Liverpool and Manchester. This will have to stop as it will become a lot cheaper to move heavy things by sea, even if it is by sailing ship. There is however a problem, we've filled in all the old docks and places like Liverpool - whoops! - we've filled in the docks in London too! If you have bought an apartment at Canary Wharf don't plan on leaving it to your children because Canary Wharf will be docks again before your life is over. The only way of sustaining our cities will be via river transport, that's why all cities were built on rivers in the first place.

But what about the rest of the country?

We used to have a fabulous system of canals and railways. At least we have kept many of the canals but they are far too narrow to handle the kind of traffic that we will require of them. We should start an immediate programme of widening the main canals whilst we still have fuel to do it. If we don't then prepare to use a wheelbarrow and spade because that is how we will eventually be forced to do it.

If we do manage to solve the problems of generating sustainable electricity then railways and tramways will be an option however railways also require vast quantities of steel and only time will tell whether that is a sustainable option in itself.

Personal Transport

Without oil, personal transport is likely to become a thing of history viable electric cars or ones powered by alternative fuels are still a long way off and you still need to be able to generate affordable electricity or other fuel. Already we have learned to our cost that growing crops like oil seed rape for alternative fuel causes reductions in the World's food supply, it is hardly an alternative - drive and starve or walk and eat! - and this is under circumstances when we have fuel to power the tractors and combine harvesters to get the crops in and out of the ground.

Action is needed now!

The government should appoint a permanent cross party executive committee to manage our long term Transport and Energy Policy and they should come up with some ground breaking ideas that are swiftly put into action to see us into the next century. If we don't do something like this and NOW, we are not going to make it.

FUEL POVERTY FOR ALL JUST ROUND THE CORNER.

What are we going to do when the fuel runs out?

Goodstein, author of the book "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil" stated "The oil will run out, the only question is exactly when," but continues, "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime this century, when the fuel runs out". So we probably have a lot less than 90 years.

When do we panic then?

According to Stanford University geophysicist Amos Nur. "The point of panic has already taken place. There is a huge conflict that might already be emerging"

So what exactly are we going to do?

The UK government is contemplating the building a wind farms, that's really going to help. To power 25 million homes you'll need 7,000 working turbines, that's one for every half a mile of coastline and we're not talking about powering our industry and transport. The Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Dr Sue Ion, said that wind power could only provide about 20% of the country's electricity to preserve grid stability.

"Laudable though the targets are, we urge government to think about the practicalities of deploying these technologies; the engineering effort to build 7,000 large offshore turbines by 2020 would be enormous, unprecedented and is probably underestimated," she said.

To achieve the governments target it has to build 14 turbines a week for the next ten years and they're still just talking about it.

No one has explained what they are going to do when there's no wind!

OK, so we'll go nuclear.

Building one new nuclear power station takes decades and one will not be enough and anyway from where are we going to get the Uranium to make it work. Uranium is not exactly going to be readily available or cheap once the oil starts to run out. Oh! by the way, Russia is the largest exporter of Uranium followed possibly by Australia and the USA. To top it all there's only about enough for the next 100 years anyway, it's not exactly a common element.

So what are we really going to do?

Nothing, as usual, Goodstein says "Governments do not have the political will to prepare for the end of oil."

When has our government planned for the future? We are World leaders in wind turbine technology but are we seriously using it? No! As a result of the credit crunch President Obama has announced a huge investment in alternative energy sources in the US so we won't be the world leaders for much longer. But don't I remember we were once World leaders in nuclear energy too!

It's amazing how the Bank of England can find £75,000,000,000 yesterday to pump up the economy, why don't they spend it on something useful?

Websites for only £???

Don't fall into this trap!

Getting or building a website is the easy bit, a child can do that. Getting people to visit it is hard and getting people to buy anything from it is even harder.

If you have a website built for you then you must make sure that the deal includes some element of marketing it for you and at the very least getting it into the Google index. Make sure you don't have to pay a thing UNTIL your site appears in the Google index and what's more it stays there. If you don't you, will likely to be sold a chocolate teapot.

Be aware also that most new sites are included in the Google index for a few weeks and then totally disappear from it. This is called "the Honeymoon" period. Google appears to give most new sites the benefit of the doubt and includes them for a short while to see how they do and to see hoe many other site are linked to them. If it turns out the content is hopeless and no one else links to the site then it is moved (rapidly) down the index and if you are not on page one or two or the search then you may well not exist. If your site does not stay in the index for at least six months make sure you can get your money back.

Social Responsibility

All forms of the media, including blogs such as this, are constantly on the lookout for a good story and the best ones of those are when we find someone to blame for something. But perhaps it is time to take a step back and look at what we do ourselves.

Perhaps it is not the bankers who are to blame for the current financial situation. It is more likely our fault. We are the ones whose ceaseless demands for cheaper this, that, or the other, has caused the problem in the first place. We have not stopped for one moment to calculate the effects of our insatiable demands.

Why do we blame the banks for letting us have mortgages we could not pay for or credit that costs us a fortune and why do we complain about the huge salaries and benefit pakages that some of the directors and executives of these banks receive, hang on a moment are we not in most cases the shareholders of these institutions in one way or another?

We blame the supermarkets for destroying our high streets and clearing our market towns of the independent stores that used to make them a delight to visit. Everyone I speak to says they don't like or don't use Tesco's or the other huge supermarkets but why then are their car parks full and why are they still in business? I wonder too how many supermarket shares are owned by our own pension funds? So collectively we are responsible for them too.

We sit in our cars and complain about the traffic and that fact there is no where to park when we get to our destination and if we do find somewhere to park it costs the Earth. The usual excuse is that there is no alternative, how lame!

We complain that our nation has lost its industrial and manufacuring base and all the jobs and wealth that these businesses used to provide. Why? It was us that stopped buying the products that they made!

Well, the bill has finally arrived and we're all having to tighten our belts but that is not going to be good enough we're going to have to change our habits. There is no magic wand that is going to wave this situation away, the World is not going to go back to how it was before this crash - ever! It is no good waiting for the politicians to "sort it out", we need to take a deep breath and start in a different direction and that would be better if it is one of our own choice.

Me, I'm taking the bus into town, having lunch (and a few beers, no need to worry about drinking and driving or parking for that matter) and then doing some shopping in my local shops for some, in the most part, locally grown organic produce and if I end up with too much to carry I will get a local taxi to bring me home. What are your doing?