Artful Dodger: As in a Baldrick cunning plan?

Artful Dodger: Part of his cunning plan?? ;)

I feel the use of the word 'gate' here in recent posts is over used compared to 'Watergate'. There again.. If JFK and the rest of the family were today held upto the spotlight regarding Marilyn Monroe.. ..

..kinda like the use of 7/7 by the UK gov in light of 9/11... the scale and events of 9/11 make me feel the use of 7/7 as being disrespectful to the 9/11 victims.

It's not as if the UK hasn't been targeted by terrorists before. The IRA groups were much more organised then those who now use the brand name of Al Qaeda.

Yes.. Al Qaeda is now a brand name rather than an active organisation. Just like Coca Cola and Mac D's...

Strange though that Coca Cola and Mac D's and the like are linked to more deaths and illness in one year, than Al Qaeda in all the years.

.. apart from the time they were killing Russians possibly.

They were Freedom Fighters of course back then.

Iamon lyme: Aye... ball of yarn is part of improbability.

They are kinda like the Tea Party for the UK's Conservatives.

UKIP has become the new darling for Daily Mail readers.

... less controversial then voting for the BNP!! eheheheheh

Iamon lyme: Yes. Not to be confused with the infinite improbability drive.

You've never heard of the ship "Heart of Gold"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive#Infinite_Improbability_Drive

Iamon lyme: Yep... right there next to a finite improbability machine.

Great for parties!! ;)

The Col: Nooooo, but I can drive a reach forklift ;)

The Col: He's not heard of cherry pickers!!

Funny.... all the papers in the UK who took part in phone hacking and other media related scandals are objecting to the new media royal charter.

.... because they were not allowed to interfere with the set up of the charter, and the laws and rules that they will have to abide by.

Awwwwwwwwwwww did ums!!

Iamon lyme: So Rick Perry walks around with lead weights in his shoes, or does he need quantum weighting??? ;P

"Two Harvard economists on Wednesday acknowledged errors in a study that has been cited by policymakers around the world as justification for government austerity campaigns, but said the "central message" of their research was still valid.

The 2010 study by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff found economic growth throughout modern history has slowed dramatically when a government's debt exceeds 90 percent of a country's annual economic output.

But in a study made public this week, researchers from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found spreadsheet coding errors in Reinhart and Rogoff's work.

The two Harvard economists said the mistake was an accident.

Speaking to Today business presenter Simon Jack, Professor Robert Pollin explained that research methods become more inaccurate the more recently you apply their test.

"The relationship evaporates entirely," he said. "

Mistakes that mean....

"First off, the researchers made a major error in their Excel spreadsheet's formula: they skipped 5 rows of data. Oops.

Second, they inexplicably (or maybe intentionally - no explanation has been presented) excluded post-WWII data for countries whose growth was positive while debt was above 90% of GDP from the spreadsheet.

Third, if a country had positive growth for multiple years while debt was above 90% of GDP, they averaged all those positive years together into a single number, then gave the multi-year aggregate result the exact same weight as a single year from a country that had negative growth.

The flawed (faked?) study concluded that economic growth in countries with debt greater than 90% of GDP is always negative at -0.1%.

But if you include the data that was left out of the spreadsheet, add in the rows of data that were skipped, and give each year's data the same weight, the actual historic growth rate when the debt exceeds 90% of GDP is 2.2%. "

http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/diary/9855/austerity-study-was-100-completely-and-totally-wrong.

Artful Dodger: No. She messed up lots. As someone said she had to wear the trousers of a man to be PM.... but she wore them roughly. Certain policies she made, while to a degree they were right... She was crass about how they were enacted.

She deliberately used a boom and bust economic policy that did make the country look great until the bubble burst.

And then there is Hillsborough. You know 'The Sun' paper is boycotted by most in the city of Liverpool because of it's reporting on the disaster.

The Col: No... because it was like that before hand, but I think people only paid 90% if they had no advice from a good accountant.

The Col: Not quite true. She dropped the highest rate from 83% to 60% in her governments first budget of 1980.

While the lowest earners got a 3% rate cut in the same year from 33% to 30%

... Regardless, most of the top earners while being British officially live in tax haven countries to avoid paying UK income tax. Or if they are rich enough like the Barclay brothers... buy an island. In their case the island of Brecqhou just off Sark (one of the channel islands).

Artful Dodger: She was so great her party dumped her, as her popularity within the UK had dropped to a level where she could not be a PM to lead her party through another General election.

She destroyed communities and helped the police cover up the Hillsborough mess. Plus many suspect she knew about Jimmy Saville and how much of a paedophile he was. It's very unlikely that all the rumours about him did not reach her.

... but he was a 'hero' at the time.

"Ding Dong the Witch is dead" got to number two in the charts yesterday!!

Iamon lyme: More or less than when when you keep on going on about how democrats and liberals are destroying the USA?

Seriously, CO2 is just one of the gasses as I have stated. It is a relatively easy one for us to control the output off by man... that's all.

"You want to know why the global warming chant is still touted as a threat, even though we are more likely to endure global cooling as a result of CO2? No one needed to tell me this either because it's kind of obvious. Care to guess?"

No. Just who is stating it's gonna happen apart from some wrong scientists from the 80's... or about that time who's views were used by the press to sell papers.

Iamon lyme: Uhhhh no. Just you've been told they are. For decades they have been fighting against deforestation. The removal of great areas of the likes of the Amazon Rain Forest.. Such is, that toilet paper makers proudly present that they plant new trees.

CO2 is just one of the gases. The real nasty ones will start to 'melt' from perma frost if temps keep rising.

"and more vegetation gives off more of the CO2 gas."

CO2 they absorb during daylight and give off O. At night they absorb O and give off CO2.

Two parts to the photosynthesis equation... apart from sunlight, nitrogen and other bits.

.... never eat vegetation near a radioactive leak, it absorbs the heavy elements easily.

"Animals and insects only take in oxygen and give off CO2"

A certain percentage of oxygen. We don't absorb it all, that's why CPR works. ;P

In memory of Maggie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g9ysArxCdk

Some in the UK are sad she's gone.. others have held street parties.

Iamon lyme: Without going through tons of reports and stats... I can make this general statement.

... Every new power development in the UK is getting help from HM Gov. Nuclear, renewable, etc.. they all are. Plus various universities are through mixed investment looking into developing more tech and improving on what is already known.

"When are scientists going to stand up and admit carbon is good for the planet? And 'too much' of it in the atmosphere would actually cause global cooling, not global warming."

?? are you sure? I know the sulphur gasses given out by volcano's 'reflects' sunlight.

Iamon lyme: Do they.... Not always I have to say has to be held up as being as true as 'they do'.

Looking back at some one the 'wins' it's a good way to get some 'weight' behind a petition.

should have read...

Looking back at some of the 'wins', it's a good way to get some 'weight' behind a petition.

Artful Dodger: Just follow the instructions.

I like this system. Looking back at some one the 'wins' it's a good way to get some 'weight' behind a petition.

Artful Dodger: Such as Iain Duncan Smith are finding out not to be an idiot while being recorded.

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week

Just over 35,000 more people need to sign it. ;P

"A free market is a market structure in which the distribution and costs of goods and services, along with the structure and hierarchy between capital and consumer goods, are coordinated by supply and demand unhindered by external regulation or control by government or monopolies."

We don't have that. Even if governments were not involved... we'd still have monopolies, as we do now manipulating the market, bribing suppliers to reject competitors.

Iamon lyme: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177022147138.htm

"..... Since 2002, Germany has doubled its capacity to generate wind power and has 21,000 turbines producing 7.5% of the nation's electricity. That compares with only about 1% in the U.S. The use of wind has lowered wholesale electricity prices in Germany by as much as 5 billion euros some years, says a study by Poeyry, a Helsinki-based consultant. Spanish prices fell at an annualized rate of 26% in the first quarter due to surging wind and hydroelectric production.

Since October 2008, the abundance of wind power has led to periods where German customers were paid rates that sometimes reached 500.02 euros ($665) a megawatt-hour, or about as much power as used by a small factory or 1,000 homes in 60 minutes.

One solution: Tying power markets together, allowing temporary surpluses in one area to flow toward electricity-poor zones. That's now done between the Netherlands, France, and Belgium; Germany plans to join them on Sept. 7.

Storing electricity may be another fix. In Scandinavia, Danish wind power pumps water into Norwegian and Swedish reservoirs; the water is later released to drive hydroelectric plants. Until there's more integration like that and better transmission grids, expect more Germans to sleep with the lights on... ."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18979330
"The measures should also reduce the impact on household energy bills, it said, saving £5-£6 a year on average. Under the current arrangements £44 of the average household bill would go towards renewables in 2013-14, rising to £50 in 2016-17. Under the new subsidy levels, that will be £6 less in 2013-4, £5 less in 2014-5, but will be £1 higher in 2015-6 and £3 higher in 2016-7.

Energy firms pass on the cost of investing in new cleaner generation to consumers, and MPs on the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee warned earlier this month that cutting subsidies too fast could increase bills. "

Our government is subsidising the energy firms to keep them from passing on the costs to bill payers as, a cut in stock prices is too much for them to handle???

Or...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/20/coalition-u-turn-nuclear-energy-subsidies

".....The government is already facing a crisis over its hopes for a fleet of new reactors to replace ageing generators. This week French company GDF Suez warned it would need increased financial incentives, including a strengthened price on carbon dioxide, to go ahead with its building plans. This followed the shock cancellation by German companies E.ON and RWE npower, partners in the Horizon consortium, of their plans to build new plants at Wylfa, Wales and Oldbury, Gloucestershire.

Ministers apparently plan to argue that the proposed support system is not a direct subsidy and does not favour nuclear but puts it on the same footing as other forms of low-carbon energy – chiefly renewables, which will also receive a feed-in tariff. A top official from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) told the Guardian: "We have made it very clear that this is about low-carbon energy in total. This is not a subsidy for nuclear power."

But the plans are likely to come under severe attack in the European parliament. The Guardian understands that the Greens in Europe are preparing to take legal action against the government, arguing that the plans amount to state aid for nuclear...."

Nuclear is being subsidised by renewable energy... sorry, "low carbon".

My point from the Guardian story. There are no clear figures.

Iamon lyme: But we don't have a 'free' market.

Iamon lyme: No... to the cost of manufacture of solar charging points and the installation of them. One bad corporation does not mean they are all bad and can't work. It's like the difference between Amazon (big tax dodger) and a UK based business who pays their way.

"....It used a much larger converter of course..."

So it looks like a many smaller cell conversion system being fed by a main water tank could work for a standard sized vehicle. ;P

"You do realise the downside to this though, don't you? Now we will be fighting wars for distilled water and baking soda."

Not for the water at least.. it's not hard to do at home. Moonshiner's have been doing it for... well, a long time.

Iamon lyme: Your saying no private business is willing to entertain financing them? Yes, they are not free to build.. but that was not the point.

"If a car could run only on the hydrogen from it's own water supply, and channel the water by product back into that water supply"

I'm not sure that is possible yet as a street level device.

"for gathering hydrogen from water is about as effective as extracting a little bit of power from the cars own intertia and feeding that back into the electrical system."

No, the gasses fed to the engine are changed. Our atmosphere is mainly nitrogen and does not burn. HHO being two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen means the gasses are more reactive, hence more power for the same amount of fuel.

"without ever having to fill a hydrogen tank from time to time, then you would essentially have a perpetual motion machine."

No, the water would need topping up and the electrodes will only last so long.

"Wow, it's legit!"

.... Just say I believe you V ;P

Artful Dodger: I think he was an idiot well before he became a democrat!! lol

Artful Dodger: So would I. If police officials are stating it works......

But... imo, it'd just turn into "lets bring up Al Gore time" :/

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week

This petition calls for Iain Duncan Smith, the current Work and Pensions Secretary, to prove his claim of being able to live on £7.57 a day, or £53 a week.

On Monday's Today Programme David Bennett, a market trader, said that after his housing benefit had been cut, he lives on £53 per week. The next interviewee was Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who was defending the changes. The interviewer then asked him if he could live on this amount. He replied: "If I had to, I would."

This petition calls on Iain Duncan Smith to live on this budget for at least one year. This would help realise the conservative party`s current mantra that "We are all in this together".

This would mean a 97% reduction in his current income, which is £1,581.02 a week or £225 a day after tax* [Source: The Telegraph]

Please join me.

>>>>>> Currently over 427,000 signatures with only 500,000 needed.

Iamon lyme: .... The cars carried the water in jars with the necessary electricity coming from the cars own power system to create HHO. No need for a tank to carry the gases.. it's an on demand system.... the videos showed that!!

"but last time I checked you have to pay for that power. No one is going to give it away for free"

Some are. New solar powered charging stations for electric cars are popping up in various places.

... you could use a manure powered battery to charge your cars battery.
... Dynamo attached to a bike can charge.
... small windmill (same as used to pump water on farms) could generate power.
... focused reflector system..
... etc.

;P

Iamon lyme: Like the 12V system used to run the lights, stereo, air con, etc that's attached to the car battery?

"Government interferes in this process in an effort to speed up what would naturally occur anyway, and in effect can (unintentionally) cause technological advancement to slow down."

... yes.... can. Sometimes not though. Concorde was a government run project.

Artful Dodger: But that would be classed by many in the USA as government interference... wouldn't it!!

"I suspect that hidden in the secrets of science are a vast number of ways to produce clean energy (or cleaner energy) and we ought to be exploring some of these claims on a grand scale."

Grand scale manure batteries supplying cheap energy to remote towns who have lots of cattle near. :P

They do work, but I think the thought of it for some is toooo retro.

Iamon lyme: No they are not enough... But with other stuff, they can reduce our reliance on it. When you see your countrymen fitting hydrogen converters to their cars, which are powered by water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5nld6HzEjM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUgUF5M3FTI

Iamon lyme: Wrong...

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5615

"As Jaffe explains, the commonly heard phase “air pollution knows no boundaries” takes on a new meaning when we start to understand how pollution is travelling around the globe. The pollutants pumped out into the air never disappear into thin air, as we might like to believe.

Typical westerly wind flows across the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere mean air pollution from China is often carried over the Pacific Ocean. If the weather conditions are right, contaminants including mercury, ozone, sulphur and nitrogen oxides, black carbon and desert dust, can reach the west coast of the US within days.

The most visible recent examples were the giant dust storms originating from the Gobi desert in 1998 and 2001, which carried significant levels of pollutants across to the US. At the time, researchers feared this could be the start of an era of Chinese pollution dumping itself on the US. However, a similar large event has not occurred since, although smaller dust storms are still frequent.

Far more common, says Jaffe, have been the ozone events. These are not visible in the same way as giant dust storms, so haven´t garnered the same level of interest, but have proven to be damaging to public health and air quality standards. Levels of ozone detected at the mountaintop research centre have been "creeping up" over the past decade, according to data collected at the site, a result linked to, among factors, rapidly increasing vehicle emissions from Asia."

..........."Ironically, the US could also be contributing to its own mercury pollution too if it pushes through plans to scale up the export of coal to China.

US coal is already being exported to China through Canada. Just south of the west coast port city of Vancouver, the Westshore Coal Terminal ships 22 million tonnes of coal a year, of which 59% goes to China. There are now plans to build dozens of new terminals in the states of Washington and Oregon, on the west coast of the US, and export 150 million tonnes of coal a year to Asia.

"It's a classic jobs versus environment," says Jaffe, who lives in Washington state, which is phasing out its only coal-burning power station. "It's a dumb idea. We ship coal to China, they burn it and we get the pollution back.""

Iamon lyme: More to the point. Your air quality.... or is it just yours.... Asian pollution is impacting on your West coast, much of that pollution is from manufacturing plants contracted (as the labour is cheaper and regs less bothersome) to make your stuff for you... so, added onto your own home grown crap is stuff from Asia.

There is a nice island of plastic forming in the Pacific ocean.

Correction...

"No they are not, you are just using '''liberals''' as a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in the USA."

Should read...

"No they are not, you are just using '''liberals''' as a scapegoat for everything that you think is wrong with the USA.

Iamon lyme: It is?? The New York Times says any such increase is temporary and that US domestic production is up 10%

"No it isn't."

Yes it is. You think all those toppled governments by the CIA were just for the good of the people whose country it was?

"Yes they are."

No they are not, you are just using '''liberals''' as a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in the USA.

"Yeah, and the US is also responsible for everything that happens in the UK. Seriously, grow up."

Seriously, that was just an avoidance answer. 0 points for that. I'll give points if you can tell me what new man made island exists? Or what state is reporting pollutants from China via the Jet Stream?

Iamon lyme: You didn't at the time.

"We don't go to war to gain control over someone elses oil, but just for the sake of argument let's assume this is true."

It is true.

"what is the liberal's explanation for effectively making us dependent on foreign oil? Liberals in this country are responsible for stopping oil companies from drilling."

Are they?

"The US has one of the best if not the best records for clean air and water standards of any other nation."

Do you? Including or excluding pollution from China based firms manufacturing goods for American companies to sell to the world??

"We weren't arguing about religion... we were laughing at liberals."

I was laughing at both conservatives and liberals in the USA on this one... It's just alll stoooopid imo. :)

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

Artful Dodger: I think you guys need to stop arguing about religion so much in the USA.

It's like a long Greek tragedy, where at stake is the answer to the question of the current position of the electrons around a single molecule of water held on the end of a feather balanced on the end of a pin in a vacuum, under a glass dome.

Artful Dodger: Yeah... What would Iran be like if the Imperial forces of the west (in this case the USA and UK) hadn't deposed a democratically elected good guy and placed their puppet the Shah of Persia in his place... for the sake of oil that was not theirs.

But someone had signed a piece of paper that it was, and not the people of Iran.

60 years on and people of Iran are still getting killed over this decision.

Is it because BP is British you say Liberals screw everything.. Iran.. The Gulf of Mexico.

After all... they are defined as being people too, companies that is... to be correct an artificial person. Not a Natural person though... that is reserved for humans only.

Hot Cross Bun anyone?

.... and there you have a contradiction.

The UK is supposed to be more 'liberal' and/or 'socialist'.... Yet everyone says "Happy Easter"... schools.. no problem. Displays... no problem. Churches advertising Easter service or activities thereof to help keep the kids entertained.... no problem.

And it's Easter Holiday and end of the spring term at the same time Art here!! ;P

Artful Dodger: ... A school in the UK banned triangular shaped flapjack after a kid got hit in the eye during a food fight. They say that it's point is more dangerous than the corners on square or rectangular flapjack.

..... what everyone else is saying.. don't be ridiculous, and maybe you should look at how this food fight was allowed to start instead of blaming the injury on triangular flapjack.

A company spokesman declared that it cannot communicate with a regional office in the matter of transferring paperwork.

.... they were reminded that there is a postal service in the UK, soon after the paperwork appeared.

.... Honey, has a best before date.

Iamon lyme: Well..... I don't see you doing anything than making straw man arguments.

Iamon lyme: Meaningless.