Gerald Warner: Weathering the true lies of global warming Newspeak - Scotsman.com News

A really great piece of journalism from Gerald Warner writing in The Scotsman on Boxing day 2010. There is so much cutting and satirical commentary on the now discredited Climate Change lobby it is hard to find a favourite part and you should read the whole article. But if I had to pick one it would be:

“Of the fragile construct of global warming mythology there is hardly a domino left standing. Declining polar bear population? Since 1970 the world population of polar bears has 'declined' from 5,000 to 25,000.”

Isn’t that wonderful? There is also an insight into the bias of the Met Office:

“Last week the Met Office was forced to issue a press release stating it "categorically denies forecasting a 'mild winter' ". In fact, in October, its long-range probability map predicted an 80 per cent probability of warmer than average temperatures from November to January in Scotland. It claimed Scotland, along with Northern Ireland, the eastern half of England and Cornwall, would experience temperatures above the 3.7°C average, more than 2°C higher than last winter.”

And this picture of the so-called melting ice-caps:

“The suggestion of a connection between "man-made" global warming and hurricanes has now been rejected by the scientist who first advanced it, Professor Kerry Emanuel, after further research. Melting ice-caps? When Lewis Pugh tried to paddle a kayak to the "ice-free" North Pole he had to stop 600 miles south of his destination and 100 miles short of where a canoeist had reached a century before. Even the IPCC has been forced to revise its forecasts of rises in sea level dramatically downwards. Global average temperatures reached a peak in 1998 and have been declining since.”

Maybe we should make a New-Year’s Resolution to find the facts and follow the evidence and perhaps insist governments stop wasting our taxes on impractical and unworkable “solutions” to a problem that doesn’t exist according to the man who first suggested it might.

Gerald Warner: Weathering the true lies of global warming Newspeak - Scotsman.com News

BBC News - Ministers accused of free book funding 'partial U-turn'

Happy Christmas kids. Don’t worry,  we’ll get you later.

Love

Dave and Nick

“The government has been accused of performing a partial U-turn over funding for a charity that gives free books to children.

Booktrust had been told it would lose all £13m funding for its bookgifting programmes in England, but ministers now say funding will continue.”

BBC News - Ministers accused of free book funding 'partial U-turn'

BBC News - Why US exceptionalism is not exceptional

A thoughtful and insightful commentary on American exceptionalism by an American. Worth a read.

“When I moved to London a quarter of a century ago I certainly felt "exceptional". I could see what the problems facing British society were and thought, like many fellow American expats, that we could fix up Britain in about a month with a combination of American pragmatism and work ethic.

Get a written constitution in, abolish the House of Lords, pry the executive function of government out of the legislature - so that the prime minister was more like a president. Then do away with the symbols of the old class system and inherited privilege so that everyone felt that no matter how humble their circumstances at birth, they could become, if not the monarch, at least the prime minister.

Then embrace immigration, refresh the society with incomers who wanted to work hard and better themselves. In other words, make Britain more like America and Bob's your uncle.”

BBC News - Why US exceptionalism is not exceptional

Warning of anarchy if death row Christian woman is pardoned | Christian News on Christian Today

“In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful...” Isn’t that how Muslims pray? So where is the benefit, where is the mercy when a rabid crowd seeks bloodthirsty revenge against a woman who is reported to have said something blasphemous? Why is vengeance and not mercy an instinct in Muslims? Why is death and not life the focus of their days? Why is killing and not charity the driving force of their lives?

Why, when some of the richest countries in the world are Muslim oil states, are so many Muslims living in poverty and ignorance, superstitious and driven by a sense of anger and vengefulness? The injustices of their lives are of their own religion and culture’s making so why blame Christians?

If they assuage their blood-lust it will be a momentary relief, for them and for the rest of us who must share this world with them. If they succeed in killing another Christian because of some imagined sleight their lives will be not one iota better. Lives are improved and enriched by the very mercy and charity they eschew with their empty prayers.

 

Hundreds of Muslims took to the streets of Lahore on Friday to demonstrate their anger as the Pakistani government makes its mind up over whether or not to pardon a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy.

Muslims in the country are outraged at the prospect of Asia Bibi’s death sentence being overturned. According to Agence France Presse, the rally was organised by a subsidiary of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a banned charity that the UN believes has terrorist links.

Warning of anarchy if death row Christian woman is pardoned | Christian News on Christian Today

BBC News - Saudi school lessons in UK concern government

This barbaric stuff is being taught to children in the UK. This is what they learn about the world at their mother’s knee, at the mosque and in their schools. Summary, violent solutions to life’s problems and grotesque caricatures of the “other.” Do you think it is just the Jews, just the gay community they despise and demonise?

Even while they benefit from our civilised, Christian-based, liberal democracy they despise our culture and our “Western ways.” A so-called moderate Muslim is one who has been influenced by those ways and a fundamentalist Muslim, who regards the moderate as apostate, is one who has been influenced by the teachings of Islam through schools like this.

“One of the text books asks children to list the "reprehensible" qualities of Jewish people. A text for younger children asks what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam - the answer given in the text book is "hellfire".

Another text describes the punishment for gay sex as death and states a difference of opinion about whether it should be carried out by stoning, burning with fire or throwing the person over a cliff.

In a book for 14-year-olds, Sharia law and its punishment for theft are explained, including detailed diagrams about how hands and feet of thieves are amputated.”

This is not a radical twisting of Islam – it is Islam. It is not, as the Saudis insist, shocking because it is taken out of context. The acceptable face if Islam we too readily buy into in the UK is out of context and this is Islam. It is ironic that the Saudis, who maintain oversight in these schools, should be anxious to distance themselves from this since they enforce and export Whahhabism, one of the most extreme, fundamentalist expressions of Islam.

BBC News - Saudi school lessons in UK concern government

Fire brigade cuts Christian references from Remembrance service - Telegraph

I am so sorry that those big, butch brave boys in the Norfolk fire service are so sensitive and tender-hearted that the very idea of religion offends their little sensibilities.

"A fire brigade has removed all religious references from its remembrance service after complaints from staff.

The Church said it was “a big step” to take but the decision was welcomed by the National Secular Society, which said religion had no place in the annual commemorations.

Norfolk’s fire service said it had taken the decision because some staff felt excluded in previous years by the Christian references during Remembrance Day.”

Although, it has to be said, their aversion to religion seems incredibly selective. Isn’t this the same fire service that sent a great big, kissy-kissy “Happy Eid” greeting to Muslims on September 10th?

They eschew the Christian faith that gave us the values for which those we remember fought so bravely and send good wishes to the faith that burns a giant poppy on the stroke of eleven to coincide with the two minutes silence to mark the Armistice. Of course, the National Secular Society is doing its usual high-minded gloating. Does this mindless ingratitude and rank hypocrisy take your breath away? It does mine.

Fire brigade cuts Christian references from Remembrance service - Telegraph

Proclaiming Jesus from the Roof Tops | Christian Concern

An excellent comment on the increasing restrictions on Christian activity in the UK and the difference between freedom to worship and freedom of religion.

“What kind of freedom of religion do we want to see in the UK? The freedom to worship in private, unseen and behind closed doors - or the freedom to practice and boldly proclaim our faith in public?”

Proclaiming Jesus from the Roof Tops | Christian Concern