Monday, October 30, 2006

Aaaargh!!!

So, council tax inspectors will be able to come round your house and take photographs inside and out and, if you refuse them entry, you’ll be subject to a £1000 fine. Prior to this we’ve had this idea that if you do any of the electrics in your house you must have them inspected. Councils are bugging people’s waste bins. If you live in a ‘desirable area’ you may soon have to pay more council tax for the privilege, even though all the service costs will be less (Where do the police spend most of their time? Either behind a desk or in sink estates). The coming revaluation of council tax is going to penalize those who don’t live in Labour controlled areas, like where I live in Essex.

I said, quite some time ago (because I could see where this bunch of control freaks was going) that my home will remain my castle and no fucking government toad gets inside.
Frankly, if a council inspector comes to my house demanding entry with his camera, he is going to require surgical intervention to remove it from that place where the sun don’t shine. Also, if I start getting hassle from my council about what I put in my bin bag the hassle will certainly cease because there won’t be a bin bag outside my house – I’ll be dumping it on council property.

But it’s all increasing totalitarianism. The latest pile of shit has come from Milliband with a whole raft of ‘green’ taxes. Everyone is going to be hit, hard, and what a huge difference it’ll make when Britain produces less than 2% of the world’s human carbon emissions (just a little note here: human-caused CO2 is a mere 3.5% of the total). It’s just fascist state control. In the end, as I have said before, you’ll need Government permission and a risk assessment for farting in public.

At the first opportunity I am going to leave this wank-hole of a country.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

where do you plan to move to?

everywhere sucks now, but if you know somewhere good, let us all know so that we can move there too!

Anonymous said...

I'm with you there, I've been checking out online estate agents in Australia, N.Z. and the U.S. for a year or 2 now. Only thing stopping me right now is the pets and the kids (in that order).

As soon as they are no longer an issue we are gone.

BTW, ever had a chat with a greenie about ice ages, I tried to have one the other day, I asked what were the probable causes for ice ages and how he would explain the process of global warming that happened to end each ice age. I got nowhere fast, he said that that was a natural process totally different to the "impending disaster". Then basically admitted he knew nothing about his specialist subject. At one point he even tried to tell me ice ages might never have happened, no proof he said. I left to get a drink at that point.

Anonymous said...

You do realise that the current greenie debate has absolutely jack all to do with global warming at all, don't you?

All this blew up because A certain Tony Blair is due to bugger off into the political sunset soon, along with his gang the Useless Mob, and they all want one last fanfare of greatness.

So, they don't want to be "Those useless fuckers who taxes us to death and pissed it away", and they certainly don't want to be "Those morons who were actually stupider than George W. Bush and believed his Iraq bollocks".

No, they would much rather be "Those enlightened modern politicians who saved the entire world from Global Whateveritis"...



...by taxing everybody so much that all the industries left, all the rich people left and all the chavs starved to death when nobody was left to pay their benefits.

This isn't a Green issue. It never has been. All it can be is Tony having one last trumpet and minute in the limelight, with a chorus line of all the useless Blairite muppets whom Brown will permanently relegate to the back benches when he gets in.

The muppets know this is it so they're up for it too; one last round of fame then the black pit of oblivion awaits. Hell they might even have to get real jobs next, come the next election.

Anonymous said...

You do realise that the current greenie debate has absolutely jack all to do with global warming at all, don't you?

All this blew up because A certain Tony Blair is due to bugger off into the political sunset soon, along with his gang the Useless Mob, and they all want one last fanfare of greatness.

So, they don't want to be "Those useless fuckers who taxes us to death and pissed it away", and they certainly don't want to be "Those morons who were actually stupider than George W. Bush and believed his Iraq bollocks".

No, they would much rather be "Those enlightened modern politicians who saved the entire world from Global Whateveritis"...



...by taxing everybody so much that all the industries left, all the rich people left and all the chavs starved to death when nobody was left to pay their benefits.

This isn't a Green issue. It never has been. All it can be is Tony having one last trumpet and minute in the limelight, with a chorus line of all the useless Blairite muppets whom Brown will permanently relegate to the back benches when he gets in.

The muppets know this is it so they're up for it too; one last round of fame then the black pit of oblivion awaits. Hell they might even have to get real jobs next, come the next election.

Anonymous said...

Well, most places are cheaper than Britain, a lot of them are sunnier and, really, I don't have to be in Britain to write books. This country is becoming increasingly totalitarian and with the vast amounts of our wealth this government has wasted and the debt it's creating, I can see a big crash coming within the next few years. What's more, all the able people are buggering off anyway, so there'll be no one left to fix things. We'll have a country wholly occupied by public sector and welfare parasites. Thing's will be bad, and you can guarantee that the goverment will say, "We'll make things better, but to that end you need to lose more of your freedoms and do what we tell you." Political Officers for every ten citizens, lists of permitted words and permitted behaviour, jobs sorting recylable waste for offenders. A fleet of Zils for government officials and green Commissars.

Anonymous said...

"remember, remember, the 5th of november..."

thailand, baby, thailand. we could get a couple of sweet bungalows on the west side of koi samui, *cheap*. one of us may have to marry a thai citizen to qualify for ownership, but i'm willing to make that sacrifice.

just tell me when. ;p

Anonymous said...

We went to a fireworks display and bonfire on Saturday night. I was looking at the misshapen guy and wondering why we burn that effigy. The guy was a public servant and one we could do with right now. He should be carried around in a sedan chair and we should make offerings of food and drink or some such. What we need on the fire are effigies of Blair, Prescott, Brown and the rest of those wankers, though preferable would be the real thing. I'd love to see the fat boiling from Prescott's hide, to hear Blair shrieking "WMD! WMD!" while his toes crisp, and to see Brown burning on a stack of tax returns. Ah it would be worth the Co2 output.

Anonymous said...

"Fawkes was the only man to ever enter parliament with honourable intentions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

Anonymous said...

Hey Neal..

I guess you won't be thinking about migrating to Canada :-)
The winters aren't that bad here in Edmonton (see yesterdays blog photo)

We've got the fastest growing economy in the world here in Alberta. But a word of caution don't come to Alberta unless you have a place to stay. It's that bad here.Or good depending on your POV.

Jim

Anonymous said...

Well the Oz Prime Miniature John Howard is still in complete denial about climate change / global warming / whatever it is so if you came out here, Neal, you might have a few years grace before the totalitarianism catches up to current UK levels. But I fear we are heading in the same direction eventually.

You should come out for a while and check the place out. :) I'll happily buy you a few beers if you make it here to Canberra.

Anonymous said...

Neal,

Relax and find your happy place.

Get your lazy ass back to your desk and carry on writing. No reading this stuff on the web is bad for and only makes you grumpy ;)

Skar

Anonymous said...

Yes the public produces the least CO2 waste etc.

But public change, tends to influence business change. Since its all about PR.

You would never have had sainsburys and the like change some of their packaging to bio degrable if they didn't think they will sell a few more x y and z.

Skar.

Anonymous said...

Come to Australia. Atleast that way I can get my books signed;)

Brisbane's a good spot. Not to cold and not to hot.

Anonymous said...

I am sure a "Book" signing trip to austrailia could be classed as a business trip.

You would obviously need an assistant (Wife) and since the major costs are flight and accomodation.

Obviously you don't want to do to many signings (Book Signing Fatigue), Brisbane, Sydney etc and pop over to New Zealand.

Anonymous said...

Wonť tell that everything is good, bloody cold in last years, mafian politics, etc. but in most situations no one force you to do somenthing what you don'want to do, maybe high taxes, but nothing is perfect and I really love Czech Republic

Anonymous said...

I would like to spend time moaning about taxes however I am too busy working to pay for the tax to fund blair adventures in ignomy.

Anonymous said...

... like things will be so much different under NuTory with "Boy Blunder" Cameron. :rolls eyes:

I'm neither left nor right, but this country has been in a steady decline since 1979 - it's just under the dictatorship of Blair, this decline has been accentuated.

Personally, I see Davey-boy Cameron making the country worse.

The man's a twat.

Anonymous said...

Chris, I thoroughly agree. Every time I see his face I want to slap it. If I ever vote again it'll be UKIP, but on the whole I want to vote with my feet. I don't think it is about left and right now - more to do with a political class of disconnected-from-reality liberals in both major parties.

Anonymous said...

Hi Neal,

It is true that human emissions only make up 5% of the total amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere. It's also worth remembering that until the Industrial Revolution the amount of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis and carbonate formation was more or less equal to the amount being added through vulcanism, decay and respiration.

CO2 levels in ice cores are remarkably constant for a long period up until the middle of the 18th Century, after which they've been rising inexorably. In the last 200 years we've managed to add about 20% more CO2 to the atmosphere than existed in pre-industrial times and that CO2 must be having some effect on the climate.

Now 20% might not sound like much, but (to use an analogy) putting 20% more weight on one end of a see-saw is enough to tilt it irrevocably in one direction. We just don't know precisely where the tipping points lie, a problem complicated by the complexity of the recent (I'm a geologist - anything less than a million years is 'recent') past.
Just to take threee very recent complications - the 18th Century, when we got to burning coal in anger was the tail end of the Little Ice Age when the Northern Hemisphere was enduring unusually low temperatures. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an upsurge in large-scale vulcanism which put huge amounts of cooling sulphur into the atmosphere; and throughout, industrialisation resulted in ever increasing amounts of cooling soot and sulphur.

Which is why we've been turning to supercomputer models; not just running them forward to see how the climate might change, but also backwards to see how their results compare with actual measurements. And the models are good - not perfect, they never will be, but they're producing ballpark answers. None of the computer models can explain the curently observed rate of warming without including anthropogenic CO2.

Whilst we're still quite some way from the heights of the Little Climatic Optimum between 900 and 1200AD, we ARE warming at a rate unprecedented in human history and that's going to cause problems enough. If we get to temperatures much above the Little Climatic Optimum we enter a whole new world of hurt.

And to answer bascule's question about the causes of ice ages. It's too simple to say 'cause'; more like 'causes'. One of the most important are a series of fluctuations in the Earth's orbit around the sun, the axial tilt of the Earth and the precession of the equinoxes known as Milankovich Cycles. These have the effect of very slightly changing the amount of heat reaching the polar regions; a series of positive feedback loops ensure that a very slight cooling quickly becomes amplified - as snow accumulates it reflects more heat into space, the planet cools - more snow falls and so on. Milankovich Cycles on their own probably don't cause ice ages, but when combined with slight fluctuations in the Sun's energy output and changes in the Earth's atmosphere caused by massive volcanic eruptions; they can probably drive the Earth into an ice age.

It was analysis of Milankovich Cycles in the 1970s that led many climatologists to conclude the Earth would begin to cool towards a new ice age. Left untouched we should be cooling very slowly (but nowhere near an ice age), instead we've been warming - probably because of all that CO2 we've been producing.

Oh and to wrap this one up if you're looking for a place to live away from the UK. As long as you don't mind scorching summers, freezing winters and no city life then you can't beat Montana. I was there this summer and it blew me away -staggering landscapes, great people, fabulous horses and no government in sight. If I could, I'd be over there like a shot.