"and is it really *freedom* that's under attack?"

When Labour comes in later this year, because Rishi and the other spineless midgets have done such a bang up job of giving them Number 10, youre going to see just how much freedom will be under attack.

Think of Ireland and Canada but multiple by a gazillion! You will not be able to question anyones claim they are a woman as Labour has no idea what a woman is, seemingly.

tomo,
Thanks for filling me in on ICL. I knew they proudly flew the flag (metaphorically), but hadn't realised they were a government creation. Echoes of British Leyland.

I don't think ICLs were common here. I only needed to deal with one (allowing access to its mainframe database from our unix-workstation application). Seemed fairly conventional, though CAFS struck me as a clever idea, albeit about ten years past its time (ca. 1990).

Didn't realise Fujitsu had little tendrils reaching everywhere. I am aware of some peculiarities about big business in Japan (some of which seem admirable, others very weird). Perhaps the Japanese have long been doing what has only come of age in the west over the last 20 years or so — business not so much for money as for influence.

Quangos and NDPBs while conjured into existence by politicians can't be "unconjured"

Are you sure of this? Is there some "moving finger wrties and having writ moves on" clause in the UK Constitution? Something more reliable than a politician saying "Sorry, my hands are tied"?

Drax thing is an abomination.

Quite relevant to it is this one from Cadogan on a wood-burning generator which charges a battery so you can recharge your e-earthmoving equipment. Particularly fun when he works out that burning enough wood to charge (IIRC) 3 e-bulldozers would emit as much CO2 as 300+ bulldozers burning diesel. It's utter madness.

Thanks too for the Phelim McAleer links. Some fireworks to enjoy.

Ross Lea,
Thanks for linking the Lindzen What is Climate article. Nitpicking, I'd say it doesn't really answer its own title. More pertinent questions are how did climate change from average weather into average temperature? or what use is a global climate.

I do like the temperature anomalies graph. It illustrates what I'm always banging on about. *ALL* the useful information is in the black circles. If you reduced it to just the orange squares (as the alarmists like to do) all you get is this "global average" trending upwards (and awooga, awooga cries of alarm). As Lindzen points out, when you eyeball the black circles, you see that the hot extremes aren't any warmer, it's that the cold extremes are moderating. So much for the awoogas.

.,
Good article on Britain's interconnector traffic. Key quote:

The ideal is for the flows to be neutral overall in terms of both the flows of power and of money.

Emphasis particularly on the *money* side of that equation. Paying France to take your excess wind power and paying them again to make up for your shortage of wind power at other times is idiotic.

Listened to a couple of John Anderson podcasts at the weekend. One was Jacob Rees-Mogg, which went pretty much as you'd expect. The other (which doesn't appear on that page at the moment) was with Matt Goodwin on the decline of the Tories. I thought this was an interesting view:

The foundations of politics have increasingly moved away from debates about economic freedom to debates about cultural freedom .... unfortunately, in Britain, the Tories, there are two things going on: One is they instinctively look to Margaret Thatcher for the answers ... The second thing is the British Tories are notoriously status driven; they view these cultural questions as being beneath them.

Hadn't thought of it with that clarity. It does seem that the front has shifted away from economics. Not all that comfortable with the word "culture" though — almost anything can be packed into it — and is it really *freedom* that's under attack? A while back I pointed out Lord Moulton's talk on Law and Manners. His desire was to keep the law away from matters of good manners, using the ideal of obedience to the unenforceable. Seems to me that the push is now to enforce the unenforceable.

https://archive.is/aouHh

This from the worlds leading real climate scientist (Prof. Richard Lindzen) h/t to Paul Homewood.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/01/19/what-is-climate-richard-lindzen/

Agree about the inherent corrupion in "independent" authorities. They're of the same kind, but probably more evil than the EU. Both provide ways for politicians to dodge blame saying my hands are tied.

Besides starving them of funds, politicians can shut them down (it's politicians that create them after all), but I doubt they feel motivated to do so.

That article about Blair having been informed cleared one thing up for me. I've been a little puzzled why Fujitsu would be involved in this purely British system, with reporters talking about "no comment from Japan", etc. This part of Fujitsu is a result of a buyout of ICL who were the original developers of the software. The software's conception and some portion of its gestation is British. That strengthens some possible problems, e.g. disgruntled staff or Japan vs. UK office politics. There might even have been one or two ex-ICL => PO employee/bureaucrat transformations.