Poll shows public 'Scepticism' on climate

An Ipsos Mori poll has found that the UK public were suspicious that the threat of man made global warming was being exaggerated to make money.

Phil Downing of Ipsos Mori said that people: "are alive to climate change and very few people actually reject out of hand the idea the climate is changing, or that humans have had at least some part to play in this,"

"However, a significant number have many doubts about exactly how serious it really is and believe it has been over hyped."

It is hardly surprising that the public should have suspicions any possible impact of climate change is being hyped, when even leading ‘climate scientists’ such as Dr Hans Von Storch, a fervent believer in global warming, is concerned that the effects of climate change are being exaggerated.

ADDITION

Possibly entirely by coincidence, there again possibly not. Just after a survey is published suggesting the public have less than absolute faith in the more alarmist predictions of the global warming camp.

What should happen but that Sky News should do a piece on Greenland.

There was a correspondent, on location, telling us all how global warming was making the glaciers move faster - and that could result in sea level rising faster.

And who should they trot out? None other than the champion of the democratic process himself, Jose Manuel (check your wallets folks) Barroso.

So would that be sea level rising faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) dodgy figures fiddled to fit a sinking tide gauge in Hong Kong perhaps?

Psst! Don’t mention the treaty to the Brits

How do these people ever expect anyone to actually believe their word? Just like Blair - Brown is insisting Britain's negotiating ‘red lines’ were not crossed at last month's summit, so that no referendum is needed. This despite the fact that Nu-Lab promised in it’s 2005 election manifesto that it would hold a referendum on the constitution.

Whatever else Mr Brown may be he is an intelligent man - and is fully aware that this treaty is the rejected constitution in a rather thin disguise. Yet with no apparent sense of shame, or embarrassment, he makes the barefaced claim that no referendum is needed.

But in fact the new European Union ‘Constitutional’ treaty will mean "transfers of sovereignty" from Britain and Gordon Brown is
absolutely right to conceal it from the UK electorate according to Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's premier He said, speaking to Le Soir, a Belgium Newspaper:

"one can always explain that what is in the interest of Europe is in the interests of our countries,"

"Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"

"There is a single legal personality for the EU, the primacy of European law, a new architecture for foreign and security policy, there is an enormous extension in the fields of the EU's powers, there is Charter of Fundamental Rights,"

These are all core elements of the Rejected Constitution.

You have to ask yourself - Why is it that the European elite are always so keen that what they are doing should be concealed from the UK electorate? Also why are our supposed representatives apparently willing to oblige them it this.

Lord Leach of Fairford, speaking to The Daily Telegraph said:

"Gordon Brown should think twice before going back on his party's manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on a treaty that is the EU constitution in all but name.”

"If he is serious about wanting to 'listen and learn' he should let the people have a say."

An ICM/Open Europe poll recently found that 86 per cent of voters want a referendum on the treaty and if Mr Brown refuses one it could damage his electoral chances.

Babies taken into care more than double since adoption targets set

The UK Government's obsession with targets seems to have allowed the law of unintended consequences lead to a sinister development.

Nu-Lab set targets to be achieved for adoptions in 2000. No doubt in the laudable hope of reducing the number of orphans in state care. Queue music and Pause for rosy picture of a young child opening Christmas presents round a tree with their loving new family.

What happened instead? Well problem teenagers are not all that an attractive prospect for adoption, especially after they have been in the hands of the authorities for a while. Cute Babies on the other hand…

It’s a bit like rescue animals. No so many are willing to take on an infirm old moggy who needs medical attention and pukes up on the carpet at random every now and then, but a cute kitten on the other hand, much easier to find a home for.

Now if you are crudely setting targets like the number of adoptions no bureaucratic mind is going to bother about the profile of the adoptions.

Once you start to measure one particular facet of something everything that is not measured no longer particularly counts and is often then, either ignored, or bent to improve what is measured.

Babies are easier to find homes for, the younger the better. They are what boost the figures and presumably helps performance related civil servant pay – so if you had more of them to shift, then the figures would look even better…

After targets were set in 2000 the figures for very young children being adopted really took off.

By a staggering coincidence, according to figures obtained the Telegraph the total number of children aged under a year taken into council care in England, before being adopted has also rose, by a similar ratio, from 970 in 1996 to 2,120 last year.

These decisions are made in secret closed courts. A mother whose child is taken from her actually commits an offence if she tells anyone outside a tiny, approved list of people. Under the current law, reporters and members of the public are not allowed to attend family court hearings, verify documentary evidence, review evidence or even obtain copies of judgments.

John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley, who wants more openness in family courts, said of the latest adoption figures: "We are seeing a massive growth in the forced removal of newborns from their natural parents. Babies are being taken into care merely to satisfy government adoption targets."

A solicitor, Sarah Harman, who has specialised in family law for nearly 30 years said: "Social services are the only department other than MI5 who undertake their work in complete secrecy. It's not the welfare of the child that is being protected, it is the welfare of social workers. This cannot be justified.

If this is true, as it appears, it is bureaucratic and faceless, but never-the-less actual evil. No individual will ever take responsibility for it, or is ever likely to face anything, other than reward for it.

The Government should address it immediately, seeing as they have inadvertently created the conditions that caused it - and do not appear to have properly monitored the actual outcomes of the changes they introduced.

White lines work better than speed cameras

It seems, based on research, that white lines are actually much more effective at reducing road accidents than speed cameras. Improved road markings can save up to eight times as many lives as a speed trap.

One obvious problem with this approach for the authorities is that, whilst new or renewed road markings do have the merit of being cheap, they do not generate an income of a billion pounds a year.

The UK has around 6,000 speed traps. Research suggests that speed traps can lead to around a 10% fall in four common types of collision; head-on crashes, side-impacts at junctions, collisions with trees and lampposts and accidents involving cyclists or pedestrians hit by cars.

Dr Joanne Hill, the head of research at the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP), has stated that dedicated lanes for turning right, or left, reduce side-impacts by as much as 80%. Anti-skid surfaces can produce a 65 % reduction in RTAs (Road Traffic Accidents) across the board, new signage up to 40% across the board and renewing road markings cuts RTAs by up to 35 per cent.

So in fact speed cameras are actually the least effective measure.

Dr Hill said: "A pot of paint doesn't cost a lot of money but the rate of return is phenomenal. A highways authority could typically save 20 fatal, or serious injury accidents, over three years just by re-lining a junction. A speed camera shouldn't be the only measure installed."

It would appear, based on cost and actual effectiveness, rather than earning potential, speed traps (‘safety cameras’) should only be the final measure installed, and then only if required on actual safety grounds.

Official self congratulation at English smoking ban

Don’t tell a small lie, no one will believe you – but tell a big one…

Trade union leaders have applauded the smoking ban in England as a step forward for workplace safety - describing passive smoking as the "third biggest cause of deaths at work".

This is absolute patent drivel. How many work places actually allowed smoking anywhere, other than in very limited smoking rooms? As we can all attest not many.

Most employers effectively banned smoking on various grounds such as fire safety years ago. It has been banned for years on public transport and in most offices. I don’t know of any factories where it is allowed.

So, even if we accept the ever inflating claims of the passive smoking brigade, this ban will have virtually zero impact in reducing so-called passive smoking, except in environments where smoking was still actually allowed like pubs and clubs.

These days? ‘Third biggest cause of deaths at work’? Indeed...

Alan Johnson the UK Health Secretary lauded the smoking ban in England as the: "single most important public health legislation for a generation". Suggesting the ban on smoking in enclosed public places, would improve the health of hundreds of thousands of people.

It is only likely to really improve the health of ‘hundreds of thousands of people” if it makes smoking so much bother that hundreds of thousands of people were to give up smoking as a result of the ban.

He might have done better, with out setting a dubious authoritarian precedent, by offering a substantial cash bounty, as a one off, to those who gave up smoking for over a year. To be paid back with interest if they took it up again.

Anti smoking figs for death by passive smoking in the UK vary between 1,000 and 4,500 pa. Given the amount of pollutants around how can they tell with any certainty if these are due to cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, or in the case of older people all the muck from coal fires and smog?

Bishop says UK floods are the wrath of God

Apparently Senior Church of England Bishops are claiming recent flooding in the UK as evidence of the wrath of God. The Bishop of Carlisle suggested new legislation in favour of homosexuals may have provoked God.

He said that whilst this actually affected innocent victims the flooding was a result of Western civilisations decision to ignore biblical teachings. The Bishop of Liverpool and the Right Reverend Dow, also seem to feel we are reaping what we are sowing.

One wonders why they have such a low opinion of God that he could not manage to flood the Palace of Westminster, it being on fairly low ground, right by the Thames, or strike it with lightening maybe. Parliament would, after all, be the logical target - and the better clearer ‘message’, if it really were an act of God, rather than the overwrought imagination of the Bishop.

If I were actually inclined to believe God was small minded I would be more likely to believe it was a judgement on voting for Tony Blair, the man, who with such a cavalier attitude to the democratic process, signed the EU constitutional Treaty as his last act as PM.

Maybe, like the terrorists, the Bishop feels God prefers a ‘softer’ target like Sheffield.

Or do they perhaps feel God, like some maiden aunt at a church fete coconut shy, is not quite up to it - and accidentally gets the stall holder instead? Some may recall immediately after the installation of the rather ‘controversial’ clergyman the Rt Rev David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham in 1984, York Minster was severely damaged by lightening strikes around midnight. This hints at a fairly good aim.

Have they been paying too much attention to some of the pronouncements of the more obviously ‘reasonableness challenged’ Imams?

Then one wonders, what about the people of New Orleans? I have no doubt many of those affected were devout Christians, would the Bishops suggest that it was another ‘soft target’ chosen because of the Administration in Washington DC. Again, given that Washington was effectively built on a swamp, one would have felt he could have managed something a little more direct, more obvious.

Or the people of the sate of Victoria in Australia. Droughts and now floods, what have they done?

All a bit too ‘Western’ maybe?

Then, as a random example, what had the Bangladeshis done to irritate, when 30 million of them were flooded out in July 2004’s monsoon? Wilfully being largely non-Christian perhaps?

No I don’t think that God uses the earth as his personal coconut shy. One suspects the explanation is more prosaic. Simply put - Shit happens.

Woman unwilling to remove hijab in UK court

A Moslem woman who appeared in Magistrates court yesterday, charged with Criminal Damage, in Manchester wearing a hijab was unwilling to remove it.

Zoobia Hussain, 32, of Crumpsall, Manchester was unwilling to remove the hijab, so the Magistrate, Ian Murray, a Taxi Driver, walked out. He now understandably faces an inquiry.

It seems perfectly reasonable to insist that a defendant in court appear without a face covering. There is something deeply counter to the whole concept of British justice for the defendant to conceal themselves from the court in such a way. Quite frankly it is difficult to conceive of an instance where it would be reasonable for a defendant to do so.

Never-the-less Mr Murray went about the matter the wrong way. He should have first asked that she remove it, considered dealing with the matter by way of contempt of court, or at least adjourned the case. Now he has managed to make himself look foolish and unreasonable when his actual objection was perfectly reasonable.

Miss Hawkins, Zoobia Hussain’s legal representative, said yesterday the Defendant, ”remains shocked and distressed. She suffered hurt feelings and felt intimidated and deeply embarrassed by the treatment she received at court.”

Yes – By coincidence she also stands a pretty good chance of getting off now as well one suspects.

Apparently: "She is angry that, as a result of the ensuing publicity, she has now had to explain to her children what happened."

Well people who end up in court charged with criminal damage sometimes have to do that, don’t they - covering or no covering, especially if they get publicity, or get sent down.

If she didn’t want publicity a reasonable person might draw the conclusion she would have been wise not to court it ;-) by turning up in the hijab, or an even more effective strategy - avoid being charged with criminal damage in the first place...

It would seem you do not have the right to remain silent

You know you always thought that you couldn’t be forced to incriminate yourself under English law – Well maybe you used to be right, but not any more... 'Cos that was then and this is now - Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Two anti speed camera campaigners, Idris Francis and Gerard O'Halloran, argued that the centuries-old right to silence should allow drivers to refuse to confirm to police who was at the wheel, as they would be being forced incriminating themselves.

They trustingly took their case to the European Court for Human Rights...

Unfortunately for them - and more worryingly, the rest of us - Judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg voted by 15-2 to reject their case.

The court said: "The court did not accept the applicants' argument that the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself were absolute rights,"

Mr Francis said "In my view it is a perverse decision" "I am shocked and amazed."

"The fight for freedom goes on. We can't allow the tyrants, who are taking away our rights, to succeed. They have to be stopped."

Now if, as the court says, they are not rights in this case - will it be any different for other offences?

So maybe the pair should now sue the government under the Trade Descriptions Act. The police and Criminal Evidence Act lays down the following modern interpretation of the ‘right to silence’ also known as the "caution":

"You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention now something you later rely on in court, Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

This is obviously now complete rubbish. It should read something more like:

”You do not have the right to silence and failing to disclose anything we want to know could result in your receiving a harsher sentence - if we can manage to find a jail cell for you.”

Probably wouldn’t work though, the court would probably argue it was naive to the point of idiocy to believe anything a politician promised you.

Now for the moment we shan’t even start to look at the erosion of the principal of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ lurking in the law relating to UK road tax brought in by Nu-Lab…

Government 'barking up wrong tree' with speed cameras

Sometimes the UK Government are so full of sh ‘it’ it just makes you want to weep! (Though this response will be by no means limited to just the UK government)

Paul Smith, of the Safe Speed Road Safety Campaign in the UK, started an e-petition to scrap so-called ‘road safety cameras’ - speed cameras or stealth taxation machines, to the average motorist.

It attracted over 28,000 signatures.

Nu-Labs response? Well basically they are not interested. You can read it all for yourself here.

They spin it like this say (pause for low-key dramatic music) ,“The facts are stark. If a child pedestrian is hit at 30mph they stand an 80% chance of surviving. But if they are hit at 40mph they stand an 80% chance of dying. That is why the Government is committed to achieving appropriate vehicle speeds on the roads as part of its integrated road safety strategy. “

OhKaaay… So how come so many of these ‘tax boxes’ are tucked in places that are difficult to spot on multi carriage 'A' roads and Motorways, where the speed limit is not 30 and where no one would be crossing and there would be no ‘if you hit me at 40’ little girls, or anyone else walking. They look, to the objective observer, rather more as if they have been placed to net as much money as possible.

Another point they are anxious to make is that: ”Safety cameras provide a valuable and cost-effective method of preventing, detecting and enforcing speed and traffic light offences. Very cost effective indeed - more like a massively profitable money spinning scheme! They net the state more than one billion pounds a year. They need to make up the loss of income on tobacco sales from somewhere.

Note the way they gratuitously lump the entirely different traffic light cameras in there because most people don’t have a quarrel with them - so you would have to be a bad irresponsible person who should be ashamed of themselves to object to them and they are ‘safety cameras’ too.

They go on: "Their use is based on solid evidence. All reliable research from around the world clearly demonstrates that cameras reduce speeds and save lives."

Not according to the governments own figures they don’t . Statistics released by the Department for Transport covering 2006 have led to serious questions about just how effective speed cameras’ really are, especially when figures for deaths were separated from serious injury.

Figures released yesterday show a 20 per cent increase in the number of children killed on the UK’s roads. These figures are based on police stats, which have generally dropped. If you look at hospital data it suggests road accident figures may be worse.

Paul Smith is suggesting that the Government have not been sophisticated enough in how they measured and interpreted the data. He believes they have actually been measuring improvement in vehicle safety, believing it to be because of the speed cameras - and lets face it they have a billion reasons to want it to be true.

He said: "The underlying story of the new road casualty figures is that we have received part of the benefit of improved car technology,"

He pointed out we should be seeing a more dramatic casualty reduction, in a different pattern - if the Government’s policies were actually based on accurate theory and really working as advertised.

"Road safety policy appears to have made matters worse because the only gains are in car occupant deaths.

"The problem is pedestrian, child and motorcyclist deaths are up. If the Government's policy was really working all these figures should have been coming down."

All this is being driven by yet another one of the Government's interminable ‘targets’, that end up distorting everything around them. In this case a pledge to reduce the number killed and seriously injured on the roads to 60% of the 1994 to 98 average by 2010.