My VE Day Memories

 

“We Would Have Got Away With It If Not For Those Pesky ‘Vested Interests’..! ”

A leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a “mud-slinging” PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation. The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world’s growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown?

And what conclusions that we'd all otherwise have been fine about except for a PR campaign did it come up with?

The report recommended that if global red meat eating was cut by 50%, the “planetary health diet” would provide nutritious food to all while tackling the harms caused by animal agriculture, which accounts for over 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It suggested individuals – particularly in wealthy countries – should increase their consumption of nuts, pulses and other plant-based foods while cutting meat and sugar from their diets.

Well, clearly, we'd all be muching on carrots and telling each other we never really liked steak if not for those meddling 'vested interests', eh? 

It may have seemed like a fairly straightforward proposal but the backlash was ferocious, with researchers receiving personal threats and insults. Thousands of negative posts were shared on Twitter (now X), and more than 500 articles were published criticising the report.

Yes, and the ones I saw were spot on.  

A leaked document seen by the climate website DeSmog reveals that helping to fuel this backlash was a PR firm, Red Flag, which represented the Animal Agriculture Alliance, a meat and dairy industry coalition set up to protect the sector against “emerging threats”, and which has staff from Cargill and Smithfield Foods – two of the world’s five largest meat companies – on its board. DeSmog has seen a document from the PR firm which states: “In the two weeks following publication of the Eat-Lancet report, this campaign’s messages have continued to demonstrate remarkable success. Key stories returned time and again in traditional and social media to reach major online influencers, particularly highlighting the radical nature of the Eat-Lancet diet and hypocrisy criticisms levelled at the Eat founders.”

As Tim points out, these 'vested interests' were pushing on a very wide open door, so let them crow all they want. One of his commenters had their number: 

QED, eh, Reader?

The real problem with Reform is Head Office

This is already up on X, I’ll now run it at OoL, Unherdables and Jstack.

Full text of Donna’s letter but not the receipts which she did show on X:

There have been continued suggestions by pro Reform political area pundits, always this vague suspicion, that Nigel Farage and mate Richard Tice are in fact in thrall to the Uniparty, to ensure that whichever party he heads will always come in a valiant second, after putting the frighteners on the “Establishment”.

Just look at us calling this out … vilified by sections of Reform, urged on by those three, because we took exception at how they dump people they don’t like, making actionable accusations such as senility etc.

Our own friends and colleagues are not happy we did not “get behind Nige”, whilst we did get behind the rank and file. Why do these three want a budding party split two ways before we’ve even started?  Think about it.

ELECTRICITY needs INERTIA

 

I just wonder if Loony Ed Milliband has ever heard of the ‘Spinning Grid’. Our entire National Grid Electricity Generating system was built around 500 ton turbine driven alternators, spinning at exactly 3,000 r.p.m. Originally, all our Power Stations had coal-fired boilers generating masses of superheated steam which then fed into massive spinning Turbines; which were connected directly to those huge Alternators: from whence came the electrical power to feed the Nation’s lights, businesses, homes, cities. The one thing which all these Power Stations had in common was ‘Inertia’. Just imagine the force, the delicate balancing of 500-ton rotating Alternator Rotors to spin at exactly 3,000 r.p.m. But once you have achieved that speed, it takes an awful lot of force to slow that ‘spinning’ rotor down from the magic 3,000 r.p.m. So, your Alternators are generating electricity at 50 Hertz (or Cycles per Second). The Grid Engineers knew that they could rely upon their ‘Spinning’ Power systems to deliver exactly what they were designed for,

But, in this magic industrialised land we used to inhabit, change is always necessary. Engineers were able to swap oil for coal in the nation’s Power Station boilers, and coal became less popular, although still necessary as a last standby source. Power stations with boilers fuelled entirely by oil became the new standard; and after North Sea Gas was discovered around our very own shores, the huge boilers were made redundant, as Gas-Fired Turbines were found to be both economical and extremely trustworthy. An extra benefit was found to be that the huge amounts of heat generated by the Gas Turbines could also be utilised as a secondary power source by piping that heat towards Steam Turbines which also drove more ‘Spinning Alternators’.

The reason why the ‘Spinning Grid’ has remained as the bedrock policy of power generation for nearly 80 years is because Electrical and Mechanical Engineers appreciate that the Electricity Supply to GB&NI is at 50 Hertz (or Cycles per Second). That is known in engineering terms as the frequency. If the engineers of the National Grid wish to bring on to the Grid another Power Station’s output, they know that the new Station’s engineers will have brought their new Generators up to speed and hence ‘Frequency’ and all the Grid engineers have to do is match the new ‘Power’ to the existing Grid ‘Power’; close the massive circuit breakers: and ‘Voila’, extra Power is instantly available if, say, its winter time, and people are cooking dinners, or switching lights or electric fires on, and the extra Power is seamlessly absorbed.

But there is always a ‘But’. Some well-meaning pseudo-scientists cam up with the lunatic idea of ‘Climate Change’, or blaming an apparent planet-wide temperature increase on mankind’s pumping Carbon Dioxide (or CO2) into the atmosphere from coal, oil and gas-fired Power Stations; and persuaded some gullible politicians that their theories were correct, that all this extra (apparent) heat was melting glaciers, and melting Arctic ice fields; thus meaning that all the ice would melt, and drive floods into our coastal cities, and: well, I don’t really need to go on, do I?

But, (there’s that ‘But) again; we still need electricity. Modern day life could not run without electric power. So those same pseudo-scientists came up with an idea: “What if we generate power from the wind?. Suddenly, a new Industry was born, making ever larger three-bladed wind generating sets, plant them on huge towers on hillsides where the wind is known to blow most of the time, and use THAT electricity instead of all that nasty Coal, Oil and Gas-Fired Electricity, which, in the new ‘Religion’ was not very nice to the planet. So they got politicians from all over to agree that CO2 wasn’t a ‘Nice thing’, and they should all build these wonderful new ‘Renewable’ wind turbines all over the landscape: oh, and just by-the-way; these Renewables are very costly to build and install, so the people who actually USE this wonderful Wind Power have to pay either three or four times the normal cost of Electricity, because its “SAVING THE PLANET” So these politicians of all colours huddled amongst themselves, and decided that they would simply MAKE people understand that it was simply necessary to have this really pricey ‘Renewable Electricity” because it was all about ‘Saving the Planet’ and stopping any more heat escaping; which over time became known as ‘NET ZERO’. 

The ONE thing which politicians forgot, or possibly didn’t know was needed was that vital INERTIA. If a wind turbine, or even a field of turbines, has to switch itself off because ‘THE WIND IS TOO STRONG’, then there is nothing to take the place of the ‘Inertia’ which has suddenly disappeared.When a turbine-alternator string has to go offline, it is still there, spinning at 3,000 r.p.m. ready the be switched back into circuit. The problem with reliance on wind was demonstrated just few days ago when all of Spain, along with about half of Portugal, suffered massive blackouts is because Spain is now almost totally reliant upon wind energy for all their generation needs. It sounds similar to the South Australian blackout of 2016. Once a few wind or solar generators trip out for some reason, the voltage or frequency shocks in the system cause other generators to drop out and interconnectors to disconnect. There is no inherent stability in the system because they lack the heavy spinning turbines. Our entire national grids were designed around heavy 500 ton turbines which spin at 3,000 revolutions per minute (or 3,600 RPM in the USA). That’s an awesome amount of inertia, and all that stability was “free” — it was just part of the grid. But the subsidized market, and the pagan fixation on “renewables”, because they supposedly stop storms next century, guarantees that reliable turbines get pushed out of the market. The crazy-balloon has filled the room.

There were other avenues for electricity generation, such as nuclear power, but although the nuclear route could also be said ‘clean’ or ‘renewable’ the costs of such stations, and the super-expensive electricity generated therein, makes them unrealistic for future planning. There are also ‘Solar’ panels, which convert the sun’s heat into electricity, but they are mainly sourced from China, made with slave labour, and only popular with Loon Ed Milliband because the CO2 produced in their manufacture is made in China, and therefore they only take up vast acres of farmland, and Farmers don’t count anymore.

So here we are in England, with a Labour Party in Government, with all these truly expensive ‘Climate Change going on, and the Local Council Elections have just shown that if Sir Two-Tier Kier Starmer had ever thought that he and his Labour Party would govern on and on, the Reform UK Party have just demonstrated just how unpopular they really are. But will he change? Starmer isn’t daft, but is he wedded to the paths he has planned? The policies he and his Cabinet have decided upon are the most unpopular in decades, and the most unpopular are those which condemn British people to pay the highest prices for Electricity in the world. Loony Ed Milliband is in his element, a demagogue of the first water; but does Starmer have the courage to sack him, loosen the bonds on Oil and Gas exploration, allow Fracking for the trillions locked up in gas beneath our own land, and get Britain back on to a firm path towards a cheaper, warmer future? 

My trusty Worcester is the only option imho

This of course must be stopped:

Admittedly, my situation is unusual in that I severely restrict lekky and gas usage, which enabled heat on timer through winter, even now at night. Total cost for abode about £1.60 per day in lekky, far more with gas.

The Worcester boiler is on "Eco" setting, which does strange things.  The entire bedroom unit stopped working the other night but all others kept heating. Oh noes, search for leaks, thoughts of bleeding the wall unit etc., even calling in an engineer at ruinous cost.

Last evening, it decided to turn itself on again ... go figure, as our cross-pond cousins might say.  Obviously, there's some thermostat thingy working in each room, not just the boiler thermostat ... who am I to argue?

What I do know is it does not like being off 24/7, much happier with timed bursts through the 24 hours, which we can still do, temp-wise.

Now, swap this Worcester, for all its vicissitudes, with this WEF nightmare?  No way known, thank you very much all the same.  Question is ... how to stop these bstds forcing the change? Maybe not initially ... but eventually?

But Activists Are Happy For Children To Experience All This IRL

“Deeply disturbing” research exposes how easy it is for children to encounter inappropriate content and interact unsupervised with adults on the gaming platform Roblox.

While the company said it “deeply sympathised” with parents whose children came to harm on the platform, it said “tens of millions of people have a positive, enriching and safe experience on Roblox every day”.

OK, this does sound horribly like 'Look, all our other ships made it to New York!' said the CEO of the White Star Line' but it's also not wrong... and how many of the people clutching their pearls over virtual perversion are at all concernced with its real life counterpart?

The report also found the avatar belonging to the 10-year-old’s account could access “highly suggestive environments”. These included a hotel space where they could view a female avatar wearing fishnet stockings gyrating on a bed and other avatars lying on top of each other in sexually suggestive poses, and a public bathroom space where characters were urinating and avatars could choose fetish accessories to dress up in.

Blimey, sounds almost as bad as Drag Queen Story Hour, doesn't it! 

Researchers found that their test avatars overheard conversations between other players verbalising sexual activity, as well as repeated slurping, kissing and grunting noises, when using the voice chat function.

Well, so what? They'll have heard worse if they'd ever attended something like this. 

Damon De Ionno, the research director of Revealing Reality, said: “The new safety features announced by Roblox last week don’t go far enough. Children can still chat with strangers not on their friends list, and with 6 million experiences [on the platform], often with inaccurate descriptions and ratings, how can parents be expected to moderate?”

If that sounds too much like 'How can parents be expected to do the bare minimum of what it is to be a parent?' then I suspect that's no coincidence. 

How to bore the boys and annoy the girls

Sun’s out, chaps and chapesses … time to get beach body ready, ha ha.  Also:

Remember When Universities Were Where The Smart People Went?

A ruling by the higher education regulator for England on freedom of speech breaches at the University of Sussex has sparked anxiety in the sector, as vice-chancellors scramble to review their policies to avoid potential violations. Two weeks after the Office for Students (OfS) handed out a record £585,000 fine, many university leaders are still not clear what it means in practice.

It seems crystal clear to me, but maybe that's because I never went to university? 

One of the few vice-chancellors willing to speak out condemned the OfS ruling as “a lesson in authoritarianism, with threats of more to come”.

No doubt they are from one of the universities featured in David Thompson's roll-call of authoritarian left-wing agenda pushers...  

Prof David Green, University of Worcester vice-chancellor and chief executive, said: “Using coercive powers of the state risks terrifying university leaders into a culture of compliance which is the very opposite of the democratic and free culture for which we should be working.”

The rise of no-platforming and speech codes in universities give the lie to that, Dave... 

Many university leaders have turned to lawyers, in some cases spending tens of thousands of pounds, to review not just transgender and non-binary equality policy, which was at the heart of the Sussex case, but a range of university statements, documents and policies. “I wouldn’t say that they were in a state of panic,” said one lawyer who did not want to be named, “but I think there is genuine anxiety they don’t know what they need to do to get this right.”

What are they paid their huge salaries for? 

University leaders are struggling to find the right balance between freedom of speech duties and a legal requirement to protect students and academics from abuse and harassment, and feel they have not been given enough clarity by the OfS.

You could always start by telling those fragile snowflakes that infest modern universities that stating biological fact isn't 'harassment' or 'abuse' and if they are at university, they shouldn't need protecting from it... 

Grandad

There aren’t many bloggers posting about their departing of this world so when you find one … pay attention:

For the young and/or uninitiated, it reads as if Grandad’s not there yet but see for yourselves.

Right, should I be criticising? I would have thought that philosophising is the last thing to be doing … rather, making one’s quietus with the triune God is the prime imperative … John 3:16. It’s all about faith in the end, more than the nitty gritty of life this side of the Styx.

As for the afterlife, there’s a 2000 year old, gradually collected series of books readily available in two testaments … the fierce opposition towards this paragraph out there is off the scale. Why?

I’m posting this in two places … also at Orphans. I’m also concerned for his wife but there is family around. Stay tuned at his place.

Employment Tribunals Again...

A counter-terror police officer who was sacked after he forgot his headphones was unfairly dismissed, an employment tribunal has ruled. Colin Bastin had been given a private room by a librarian to dial in to a call which he had been unable to take from home because of 'noisy' building works. He claimed there were no police stations 'within easy access of his home' where he could go for the meeting, the tribunal heard.

What about the police station he was assigned to? In other words, his office...? 

The National Counter Terrorism Security Office worker reportedly made a number of other mistakes during his probationary period, including accidentally booking a 'top secret' security level room for a team meeting which would have excluded one of the delegates.

Maybe the cops should look into getting a professional in?  

In April 2024, Mr Bastin was told he was facing dismissal and was invited to a meeting.

I wonder if he attended in person, or asked to do that from the library? 

He gathered evidence to show his performance had improved, but was told managers would only be considering his performance up to the end of the extended probationary period, which ended in early 2023. After taking his employer to an employment tribunal, a judge ruled his original dismissal was unfair because it was based on 'out-of-date information'.

Well, it would be. What's this judge's issue with that? 

'Mr Bastin's performance, which was the reason for dismissal, had been assessed over a fixed period that had ended over a year before the decision was taken,' the judge said. 'It was unfair not to allow him to bring evidence of his recent improvement. 'In conclusion, I find that the dismissal was unfair and outside the band of reasonable responses.'

The probationary period is just that - you're on probation. You'd think a judge of all people would understand the term...