… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: politics

  • Climate Change: It’s not business as usual, there’s no neglecting climate change any longer

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    This blog will be featuring the Climate Emergency, the catastrophy of Climate Change far more in future. While I have to get upto speed with the arguments, I find the arguments of the climate change deniers very weak. You can hardly deny the established fact of catastrophic climate change when big oil was aware of it and had modelled it as early as the early eighties.

    It’s not business as usual on Climate Change any more. Politicians will have to address climate change or they will simply not be elected. There is a very strong association between conservatives and insane climate change denial which is even more marked with the rabid Brexiteers.

  • In support of Extinction Rebellion and school student activists

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    In support of Extinction Rebellion and school student climate activists this blog is recognising a Climate Emergency.

    Climate Emergency

    …

    At the end of 2018, the UN Secretary General warned us:

    • Humanity and life on Earth now face a ‘direct existential threat’
    • The world must act swiftly and robustly to keep global warming under 1.5°C and try to avoid utterly catastrophic impacts to life on Earth.

    Human activity is causing irreparable harm to the life on this world. A mass extinction event, only the sixth in roughly 540 million years, is underway. Many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.

    The air we breathe, the water we drink, the earth we plant in, the food we eat, and the beauty and diversity of nature that nourishes our psychological well-being, all are being corrupted and compromised by the political and economic systems that promote and support our modern, consumer-focussed lifestyles.

    We must act while we still can. What we are seeing now is nothing compared to what could come.  

    …

  • While I have your attention …

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    I’d like to know about the legal order that is applied to me. Super-injunction, hyper-injunction, DA-notice? WTF is it?

    It appears that there is a fantastically restrictive legal order in place e.g restricting divulging my name. How on Earth can such a restrictive order be made without consulting or informing me? I object and should be given the opportunity to challenge it formally.

    Super-injunctions are usually about keeping celebrities or rich businesmen’s extra-marital affairs secret. The point about super-injunctions is that the very existence of the injunction itself can’t be reported. It is therefore very difficult to find out anything about them.

    I am keen to breach this injunction which I’ve never been advised of. Please send me the legal notice telling me not to.

    It seems that this or similar legal orders have been in force for some considerable time. Decades ago I learned that ordinary PNC requests resulted in a visit from MI5 – which explains why very extreme measures were taken to identify me. Journalists would avoid me while campaigning in 2002/3.

    There seem to be consequences so that I cannot plead not guilty at criminal trials. It follows that if I cannot have a fair hearing, then I should not be arrested.

    There were efforts to detain me – I am not saying arrest since no rights would be afforded to me – on 6 July 2005. What effects would the order have on that?

    12/4/19 It wasn’t me that hid this post. I wonder if it will stay up over the weekend …

  • Lions led by Donkeys

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    The campaign group Led by Donkeys has registered the Brexit Party url.

    Nobody is more responsible than Farage for the diminished state of our nation. Now he’s seeking to exploit the turmoil he himself created to get re-elected to Brussels on the 23rd May.

    Register to vote by May 7th to stop him.

    Farage has unintentionally given birth to the biggest, most passionate pro-European movement this continent has ever seen. This is our moment. This is your vote. Use it.

  • Dizzy Deep’s Rough Guide to Imperial Currency

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    Brexiteers are overwhelmingly older while Remainers are overwhelmingly younger with the 50/50 or half (1/2) / half (1/2) split being at age 45 at the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016 so 47/48 now.

    Many Brexiteers are familiar with fractional Imperial currency in UK and this is no doubt a part of the Great British Empire that they want to return to since everything British is so far superior to anything “bloody foreigners” do. Here is my rough guide to imperial currency in case we do Brexit.

    Decimalisation – the conversion from imperial to decimal currency that we are now familiar with – occured in 1971 while the partial transition to decimal weights and distances occured in UK in 1995. I was 5 in 1971 (1971 – 5 = 1964, a leap year). I was born at home which was probably the norm back then with a midwife only attending for half an hour or so if at all or if there were complications. The vast majority of houses would have one cold water tap in the kitchen, coal fires, a tin bath that would be filled with hot water heated on a gas stove and used by the whole family once a week and an outside toilet at the bottom of the garden. Racism and discrimination was part of everyday life – common, accepted and expected. Foreign holidays started in the 70s but there was very little tolerance of that “foreign muck” – garlic, pizza, spaghetti and probably even lager. 

    Great British Empire currency and weights and measures was based on fractions. I can remember the coinage and notes and I was taught fractions and decimals at the many primary schools I attended.

    There were 12 pennies (d) to a shilling (s), 20 shillings to a pound (£). There was also a half-penny, a ‘hapenny’. The notation was £/s/d so that prices might appear as £/2/11 or 2s/11. There was also a guinea which was 21 shillings – don’t know if there was a guinea note –  that I think was only used for buying and selling horses. You would have ‘thrupence’ and 2 and half d coins. [Correction. There wasn’t a 2 and 1/2d coin 6d had the value of 2 and 1/2 new pence in the conversion to decimalisation. 2.5 new pence really but decimals weren’t really understood then.] Shillings were known as bobs so two shillings would be ‘two bob’. There was currency to the value of £2, probably a £2 note. Notes were huge back then and paper.

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