History as Propaganda

On his blog, James Bartholomew describes a visit to St Pauls - a leading boys' independent school in London.

The sixth form boys had very little idea of the reality of life before today's welfare state, greatly underrating health and education provision in the past, and with little conception of past generations' independence, a partial view fed by their highly left-wing teachers.

As Bartholomew says, if it is like this even in private schools, what sort of message is being promoted in state secondary schools?

No wonder people find it so hard to consider moving beyond the welfare state.

Abuse of Terror Act

An 82 year old man, Walter Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Labour Party member since 1948, was yesterday ejected from the Labour party conference for heckling. According to the Telegraph:

When he tried to re-enter the secure zone, he was stopped by a police officer citing the Terrorism Act.

... At first Sussex police denied that Mr Wolfgang had been detained or searched but a spokesman later admitted that he had been issued with a section 44 stop and search form under the Terrorism Act.

Another example of a law passed for one purpose but used for another - moral: never trust the state.

And if the Sussex police denial was made knowing its falsity, an example of self-serving lack of integrity.

Blair U-Turn on Kyoto?

Those of us who failed to pick up the great scoop from James Pinkerton at Tech Central Station on 15th September 2005 are only now learning from the MSM of Blair's change on Kyoto. The Sunday Times reports Blair saying:

“The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem. To be honest, I don’t think people are going, at least in the short term, to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”

... In his comments, Blair suggested he no longer had faith in global agreements as a way of reversing rising greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he appeared to place his faith in science, technology and the free market ...

Perhaps he'll tell his 'scientific' advisers now, and we'll have to endure less of the sanctimonious claptrap we've been getting from the likes of Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, reported by the Telegraph saying:

... the intensity of the hurricanes was caused by water in the Gulf of Mexico being warmer than usual and was consistent with the latest scientific predictions of how the climate will behave as a result of man-made warming.

"If this makes the climate loonies in the States realize we've got a problem, something good will come out of this situation," said Sir John.

And yet Sir John had only to look at the US National Hurricane Center's statistics on hurricane strikes on the US mainland over the past 150 years to see that while there is a lot of variation, there is no pattern of increasing frequency or intensity in recent years.

As I've said before, and maybe Blair is coming round to this too, if there is global warming we are better off adapting to climate change than trying to control the weather, which is still subject to greater natural forces than we can deal with.