December 22, 2009
Tim Worstall cheers the collapse of the Copenhagen circus
As Tim Worstall points out, the collapse of the Copenhagen talks is good news all around, regardless of your position on AGW:
Copenhagen is dead. Hurrah! And I say that as someone convinced that climate change is happening, we’re causing it, and we need to do something about it. However, what we don’t need to do is the ghastly mess that was being cooked up in Denmark.
They’ve essentially agreed to, um, well, try — and they’ll think a little bit more about what they’re going to try sometime later. And that’s the best result we could have hoped for. We already know what needs to be done, as the economists have worked it out. It is true that economists are not exactly the flavour of the month right now, but they are still the experts here.
We are trying to change people’s behaviour, and long experience tells us that the way to do that is to change the incentives people face. We might make it illegal to burn coal, for example — as we largely have done in British cities — and the motivation people would have for doing so would be an incentive not to.
Yet observation of humans over the past couple of centuries has shown that the carrot tends to provide a better incentive than the stick. Being shot for failing the Five Year Plan should concentrate minds more than the alternatives of bankruptcy or hot and cold running lingerie models which our own system provides for failure or success, but which has been better at producing economic growth? Quite.
What many had hoped would result from the Copenhagen meetings was an embryo form of world government . . . and the idea that it was being snuck into the discussions under cover of environmental concerns was a feature, from the point of view of those who favour supra-national controls. No democratic leader arrived in town with a mandate to give up national sovereignty, but many attending hoped that they could “do a fast one” regardless.
December 17, 2009
Maurice Strong rides again
This time, he’s leading the charge to enable more mob intimidation of governments:
Maurice Strong, the self-confessed “world’s leading environmentalist,” recently wrote that “Our concept of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified.” This would be less of a concern if Mr. Strong had not also been instrumental in allowing NGOs inside the Rio/Kyoto/Copenhagen process.
Mr. Strong himself hasn’t been so prominent since the Iraqi oil-for-food fiasco, but he is involved in something called The Global Observatory, GO, an organization designed to act as “a catalyst, bridging the gap between those responsible for making the decisions at [Copenhagen] and the public.”
GO was set up by José Maria Figueres, a former President of Costa Rica. Exactly what Mr. Figueres has in mind when he talks about “bringing the public into negotiations” is clear from a clip available on YouTube, in which he frankly admits that the key to getting the “right” decisions is using NGOs to assemble mobs to pressure politicians. Mr. Figueres says that he’s not willing to leave the future of his children in the hands of the 1,500 negotiators at Copenhagen, so his plan was to set up a “tent” at the meeting in which there would be scientific experts (He mentions Mr. Hansen). If such scientists declared that, say, Costa Rica was “backtracking,” then GO would get on the phone to select NGOs, who could have a mob outside the presidential palace in 45 minutes. This would result in a call to the country’s environment minister in Copenhagen to change their position.
December 11, 2009
They don’t call it the original Nanny State for nothing
In case you think the constant stories from Britain of increasing state surveillance of the citizenry are just unrelated events, Shattered Paradigm has more unrelated events for you:
#1) The U.K. has more surveillance cameras per citizen than anywhere else in the world. In fact, according to one estimate, there are 4.8 million video cameras constantly watching every move citizens make.
#2) Government education inspectors in the U.K. have announced that the 40,000 parents who homeschool their own children must undergo criminal records checks.
#3) U.K. authorities are now admitting that every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens will be stored for one year and will be available for monitoring by government agencies.
#4) Officials in the U.K. have spent two years and massive amounts of money on a study they claim proves that 10-pin bowling is a health and safety hazard and should be banned.
#5) Parents at one school in the U.K. are being forced to undergo background checks to prove that they are not pedophiles before they are allowed to accompany their children to school Christmas carol events.
H/T to Radley Balko, who says that the title “‘Most oppressive Big Brother society on earth’ is a bit much.”
December 6, 2009
December 4, 2009
Britain lowers defences against alien invasion
It’s true . . . the British are now wide-open to invaders from Rigel: they’ve re-assigned their UFO investigation forces to other duties:
The Ministry of Defence has closed its UFO unit after more than 50 years of investigating reported UK sightings.
A hotline and e-mail address for the public to report possible sightings was shut on 1 December because it had no “defence value”, the MoD said.
The officer handling reports has moved to another post, saving £44,000 a year.
The MoD said the unit had received thousands of reports, although none had yielded proof of aliens or any security threat to the UK.
Well of course they’d say that, wouldn’t they? Expect the mothership to show up any day now . . .
November 25, 2009
Zygi Wilf goes guerilla in war for new Vikings facility
Having been rebuffed by state legislators and blackmailed by the Metrodome administrators, Vikings owner Zygi Wilf takes his case on the road:
Making his most expansive comments yet on the need for a new stadium, Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf chastised politicians Tuesday for dodging an issue that “doesn’t serve their political purposes” and said they should not “run away” from a project many Minnesotans want to see happen.
Calling himself not only the owner but the “guardian” of the state’s most popular sports franchise, Wilf posed for pictures with fans clad in Vikings jerseys, autographed footballs and, in general, took on a public persona he has largely avoided as the team’s principal owner.
For all that the Vikings are the top sports franchise in the state, not everyone in Minnesota is a fan. The habit of other NFL cities — handing out hundreds of millions of tax dollars to provide stadia for “their” teams — has not been a popular topic even before the recession started. The Wilf family is quite rich, perhaps not rich enough to build a new stadium all on their own, but they certainly could be majority owners in a consortium to build one.
The state has more than enough other things to pay attention to, so politicians of all stripes are unwilling to provide public money for a private undertaking . . . and they’re quite right. They were not elected to favour certain groups or individuals and they certainly weren’t elected to force all Minnesotans to support the sports interests of only some Minnesotans.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, as I’m a long distance Vikings fan and I’ve never set foot in the state. I’d be very sorry to see the team leave, and it might take me a while to adapt to the “Anaheim Vikings” or the “LA Vikings” or the “Toronto Vikings” (maybe less time for that one), but I’m sure I’d eventually cope with it. It’s not like other teams haven’t moved to new cities.
November 13, 2009
QotD: Quebec’s anti-royalist protest
Do we still have republicans in this country? Proper ones, I mean. Ones who care. I suppose we must, but I can’t imagine where you’d have to go to find them. They probably hold meetings in suburban church halls, rented on timeshare with other dimly remembered groups such as Mosleyites, and Flat-Earthers, and people still furious that the Jacobites got such a raw deal. Odd how republicanism isn’t even an esoteric political position in Britain these days. It’s barely even a political position at all.
Not so in Quebec. There, this week, 100 anti-monarchy protesters clashed with riot police when the Prince of Wales tried to visit a regimental hall. Imagine that. Imagine being that cross with Prince Charles. Not global capitalism, not the Afghanistan war, but him with the ears, who makes those biscuits.
I don’t really know where I am with the French Canadians, to be honest. Obviously one can only have the greatest of admiration for any group of people whose major cultural export throughout 300 years of history has been Céline Dion: The Essential Collection (disc one — disc two is kind of patchy) but still, I couldn’t pretend I know what makes them tick. I can understand, I suppose, how they might, on balance, reckon it’s a bit silly for them and us to still have the same monarch. But to actually riot about it? Baby, as Céline might say, this is getting serious.
Hugo Rifkind, “Protesting against Prince Charles? Bonkers: The people of Quebec must have something better to do”, The Times, 2009-11-13
Red light cameras are great . . . for increasing traffic fine revenues
For driver safety, not so much:
In Los Angeles the LAPD claims accidents are down after they installed cameras, but are they telling the whole truth or just trying to make money off motorists?
We crunched the numbers and the results may surprise you.
“Your data is shocking to me,” Sherman Ellison said.
Ellison is a ticket attorney and part time judge, who believes the cameras are there for one reason.
“No question. Purely a revenue generating device,” Ellison said.
Is it money or safety? We wanted to know actual numbers of accidents at red light camera intersections to see if they really went down.
When we asked, the LAPD became very defensive. The sergeant in charge told me in an e-mail, “The city would hope that it is the goal of KCBS/KCAL to discuss the positive aspects of the photo red light program.”
So we filed a public records request. The department charged us more than $500 for a computer run. When we got the numbers back, they told a different story.
We looked at every accident at every red light camera intersection for six months of data before the cameras were installed and six months after.
The final figures? Twenty of the 32 intersections show accidents up after the cameras were installed! Three remained the same and only nine intersections showed accidents decreasing.
If the reason for installing red light cameras was to increase public safety, they’re a failure. If, however, the real reason for installing them is to increase municipal revenue streams, they’re a slam-dunk success.
November 12, 2009
“If the cat wasn’t dead, I’d have killed it by now”
A real-life example of how even adults still play the game of “Telephone”:
Some 1,700 luminaries, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, were in the middle of dinner Tuesday night when smart phones throughout the room began to buzz with the news: “Lady Thatcher has passed away.”
Dinner chatter abruptly veered to expressions of shock and reminiscences of Margaret Thatcher, the 84-year-old former British prime minister, as news of her apparent passing spread like wildfire.
It eventually reached the ears of Harper, or someone close to him. Harper aide Dimitri Soudas, back in Ottawa, was dispatched to confirm the news and start preparing an official statement mourning the death of the Iron Lady, an icon to many in Harper’s Conservative party.
Of course, the rumour wasn’t true . . . the British Labour government hadn’t declared a week of celebrations . . .
Britain’s “choice” on Europe
James Delingpole has problems with the headline on his post:
Kenneth Clarke is right about Europe
[. . .]
Look, don’t think it didn’t hurt me writing that headline. Just typing it felt like having my eyelids snipped off by scorpions and my eyeballs chewed by fire ants. But it’s true. Clarke was absolutely right to say, as he did in that maddeningly patronising, brown-suede-shoe-wearing, jazz-endorsing way of his, that Cameron’s allegedly bold new policies on Europe are nothing of the kind.
We’re in. We’re stuck there for the foreseeable future. And if you think Asino the donkey is a waste, wait till you see the extravaganza Brussels is planning for its EU Constitution ratification party.
Think a chorus of white rhinos singing Ode To Joy.
Think schools of blue whales doing synchronised swimming in a fish tank the size of Andorra.
Think of 27 planets being spray painted gold so that they look a bit more like the EU flag.
Think of whatever money-wasting scheme you like. If you don’t, you can be sure that somewhere out there, some bright-eyed Euro Stagiere is busily working on it already.
