DEFRA washes its hand of mercury light bulb disposal?

Anyone reading my site knows that I have an issue with energy saving compact fluorescent light bulbs. I don't have a problem with them on energy efficiency grounds, but more the issue of the mercury each bulb contains and the fact that whilst the EU is proposing to ban old style lght bulbs and force us all to use CFLs no one seems to be asking about safe disposal. They can neither be recycled or put in landfill.

Yesterday in the Commons, the Tory MP for the Vale of York, Anne McIntosh asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Miliband what the manufacturing and more importantly the disposal cost of CFLs were over traditional incandescents. The answer from Ian Pearson was indeed telling. Basically, DEFRA have no idea how much it costs to dispose of a CFL because it's nothing to do with them but is a commercial consideration held by commerical companies.

On the basis it's fair to assume that DEFRA haven't considered the mercury content of the light bulbs and it's impact on the environment at all. If they had they would have a good idea of the requirements and impact cost to Government of disposal at both national and local level. So DEFRA now joins the Home Office in not being "fit for purpose" but I think most people knew that anyway.

Fifty reasons to love the EU?

This morning's Indy has been very clever, it's front page (pictured) has fifty reasons to love the EU, where number fifty is "Lists like this drive the Eurosceptics mad". Now, as a sceptic of both rampant europhilia and rampant euroscepticism I have to say there is another reason that lists like that drive people mad. It is, quite simply, because chucking a mismatch of subjective and often factually inaccurate stuff on the front page of what claims to be newspaper is bollocks.

Take for example the number one spot on the list, "The end of war between European nations". The European Union didn't do that at all. It was American aid, through the Marshall Plan, and the strength of the strategic alliance of NATO that brought peace and stability to Western Europe. What's more the statement should be caveatted with the words "so far". You can't predict the future.

Number four of the lists say "The creation of the world's largest internal trading market". The important word in that sentence is "internal". What it actually did was create the single largest protectionist trading bloc on the planet which is killing Africa's ability to trade on an equal footing whilst subsidising inefficient European farming.

And let's not spend to much time considering the rather amusing and inherent inherent contradiction between number 16, "Europe is helping to save the planet with regulatory cuts in CO2" and number 23, "Europe's single market has brought cheap flights to the masses, and new prosperity for forgotten cities".

Anyways, I'm not going to fisk the list (which would be very easy) because that will just get me labelled as a eurosceptic and europhiles will point at number fifty and say "see!", I can leave the fisking to DK and Trixy. What I wonder is when will the Independents' habit of palming off op-ed as news on it's front page end?

Hugo's Budget Blog!

Hugo Rifkind, People columnist at the Times has only gone and got himself a special Hugo tracks Gordon's Last Budget blog. I'm sure he'll have some live wit and sarky humour for us all tomorrow, but in the meantime he's begun early with a Bralin portrait!



Image originally by The Spine

The Ted Nugent medal

Danny Finkelstein over at the Times Comment Central has a new competition looking for centre-right music. I have submitted my entry which is a hymn to family stability by The Vandals called Too Much Drama. Here is the live version, I like to drive too it.

Evil cow goes on rampage in Miami

I'm telling you all that the end times are coming and the bovine are planning their moves. Yet again we have another rampaging cow incident, this time in Miami, Florida.

What's more, the sheer EVIL has been caught on camera. When will our leaders stand up and do something about this impending doom I ask? Sod climate change and nuclear proliferation. It's the cows! Maybe Norman Baker MP will say something about this global bovine conspiracy before we face Apocolypse Cow?

For more on EVIL COWS see here and here.

ECHELON, the Wilson Doctrine and an MP's question

An interesting set of questions from Oliver Heald have appeared this morning regarding the Wilson Doctrine. Heald asked Blair whether the doctrine "applies to the use of the ECHELON by the UKUSA Community."

Now technically ECHELON doesn't exist, but most people - certainly in the technology community - know that it does. The real question is how advanced it really is a part of signals intelligence.

Anyway, Blair's answer was interesting as he simply referred back to a written statement he made on the doctrine back in March 2006. That statement made no mention of the doctrine being applied to ECHELON and UKUSA signals intelligence, so I guess it's fair to assume that the doctrine doesn't apply.

To be honest i wouldn't expect it would apply anyway, and I think it's a fairly safe assumption that listening goes on in ECHELON big five community. The real question for me is why did Heald ask? Was he just causing trouble and looking for some shift in positioning, who does he have suspicion that some MPs have been tapped?

Lib Dem MP starts his questioning about the "David Kelly conspiracy"

It looks like the Lib Dem MP Norman Baker wasn't kidding when he said he was convinced that Dr David Kelly was murdered rather than having committed suicide.

In yesterday's Hansard he has begun his digging of the matter by starting with the Oxfordshire coroner. The implication in his questions is that the Government leaned on the coroner to hold the inquest quickly and avoid the surfacing of disputed evidence.

I should note I'm not endorsing his conspiracy theory, I'm just noting that he's started his investigative questioning. I expect many more questions will be made in the coming weeks as he's quite a tenacious bugger.

Party Animals in danger!

Have just spotted a rather amusing question in Hansard about when the roof terrace at parliament will be re-opened to researchers (and presumably MPs). Should anyone be wondering why it was closed int he first place, it was because of Health and Safety - as ever.

What were the risks? Well based on the answer which said "work on the roof terrace has been limited to providing temporary fencing to prevent access to areas where people can and have put themselves at risk" I'm going to presume it was to stop the researcher jumping off the edge.

I guess the real reason the question is being asked though is blind panic about the smoking ban coming into force in July. All those party animals need their nicotine fixes! In the name of health and safety they came, and now they are going to let them up there to kill themselves slowly instead. Oh the irony!

Polar opposites?

As I read the news this morning I couldn't help but doing a double-take when I read the tale of a rather cute polar bear cub in Germany called Knut (pictured). Knut was born in captivity and abandoned with his sibling by the mother. The sibling died, but he has survived thanks to hand-rearing.

Why the double-take? Well apparently, animal rights activists in Germany are demanding the cub be given a lethal injection because showing compassion and hand-rearing it is an act against nature and the cub will grow up not to be a proper bear.

Seriously, the "animal rights" people think the best thing to do is kill the thing, because, presumably, it's right to be a wild animal are being oppressed, therefore it's better off dead. Frank Albrecht, an animal rights campaigners is quoted as saying

"Hand-feeding is not appropriate to the species and is a grave violation of the animal protection laws.... Legally speaking, the zoo should kill the baby bear. Otherwise it is condemning the bear to a dysfunctional life and that too is a breach of the law.... It is not correct to bottle-feed a small polar bear. He will always be fixated on his keeper and will never grow to be a proper polar bear....One should have had the courage to kill him much earlier."

Again I find myself searching for "you couldn't make it up" key on my keyboard. If you kill an animal the animal rights campaigners moan, when you show compassion and save an animal they moan that you should've killed it.

The thing is, this bear was born in captivity, will be brought up in captivity, and will live it's entire life in captivity, so why dopes it need to be killed just because it has a good relationship with a human being? The tabula rasa is just that, it is not an oppression of it's rights for it not to be allowed to exist in the other way, but surely, if one believes in its rights, killing the fluffy little bugger is an oppression of its right to life?

The Stalinist Détente?

Every now again you get a great juxtaposition in the newspapers. Not only does it provide an interesting situation but it allows you to say juxtaposition without sounding like a YBA. I'm going to use today's Times as my example source but frankly I could equally use the Indy or probably the other papers had I read them.

Splashed across most of the papers somewhere is the news that Lord Turnbull has given an interview to the Financial Times in which he said of Gordon Brown, and it's worth noting,

"[Gordon Brown] cannot allow [Cabinet members] any serious discussion about priorities. His view is that it is just not worth it and ‘they will get what I decide’. And that is a very insulting process.

Do those ends justify the means? It has enhanced Treasury control, but at the expense of any government cohesion and any assessment of strategy. You can choose whether you are impressed or depressed by that, but you cannot help admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessness of it all."

The chancellor has a Macavity quality. He is not there when there is dirty work to be done."

Pretty savage stuff you have to admit, nothing to surprising either I'd say. It is a commonly held view that in the control-freak stakes Brown is probably even worse than Blair. I enjoyed seeing the Macavity reference, although I am not for one moment suggesting that Lord Turnbull nicked it from me.

Skip on through the pages of the Times though and we come to the news that Brown backs Blair over public service reform. This is the public service reform agenda that they've now been banging on about for ten years without actually delivering, but let's put aside that detail for a moment. We then have Peter Riddell on the same pages saying that "Brownites and Blairites are starting to work together", we are, says Riddell, experiencing mood music tantamount to rapprochement.

At this point I find myself thinking my favourite word in the whole world.... bollocks. On the one hand we have apparent easing of tensions between the two men at the top, and on the other we have a peer (admittedly crossbench), who was Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service who holds his position through Blair's patronage. A peer who also just happens to be a paid senior advisor to the consultancy firm that has received over £100m of public money for helping to draw up the Blairite "Pension Transformation" reforms.

Whilst some commentators make allusions to rapprochement and a thawing of the Cold War at the top, I'd rather make allusions to that being an illusion. It's interesting that Stalin should be invoked because frankly, it looks like a very Stalinist, ergo Soviet, détente.