Failure in Copenhagen

So the Copenhagen Climate Conference is at an end. I expected it to achieve very little but the final days have exceeded my expectations. Vast numbers of people have attended a conference that generated tonnes of CO2, cost buckets of money, was attended by the media from every country in the world - all 192 of them - and, finally, the politicians have collectively achieved absolutely nothing. Many of our leaders have feet of clay - that's why we get into so many great difficulties - but this fiasco proves that all of them taken together couldn't run a jumble sale. They were there to save the planet. At the end all they were interested in was producing a document that saved their skins and one that could be passed around to be paraded as a document of substance when in reality it is no more than fish & chip wrapping paper.

The numbers attending from the start guaranteed that next to nothing would be achieved - based on the old adage that the amount achieved at any meeting is inversely proportional to the numbers attending. But we have to ask, what do the idiots think global warming actually means? Do they think that they can make a few extra corrections later on if they get it wrong - and before the next election in any democracy so that they can hoodwink the electorate into voting for them?

This conference has been on the horizon for ages and 2 years have been spent on preparatory work and yet they have achieved so little that many newspapers and the BBC could find nothing to say. It seems that this conference has been a shambles throughout with the UN and the Danes unable even to organise the catering. What happens now?

Environmentalist George Monbiot has been in Copenhagen and his comments on his blog should be read in full at http://www.monbiot.com Under "Scramble for the Atmosphere" read just how appalling this total waste of time has been. As I said, I am not surprised by the outcome but I am still disgusted. I wanted the politicians to prove me wrong but, no, they performed to type demonstrating only their representation of the short term self-interest of the lobbyists. Throughout much of the history of the human race it is commerce and the rich that have controlled everything to the detriment of ordinary people. Now they have gone to the final countdown selling off the human race for their own selfish greed.

I don't know how bad the effects of climate change will be but I am glad that I won't be around to find out. Perhaps this is what motivates the politicians to behave in the way that they do?

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Photography Is A Criminal Offence

Have you tried taking a photograph recently? It seems that under section 44 of the Terrorism Act the police have powers to willy-nilly search anyone they like without there being any evidence to suppose that an offence is about to be committed. They can only do this in areas that have been designated as ones where such searches should - for reasons of anti-terrorism - take place. An area will be designated only if the person making the designation believes that there are grounds for doing so. In yet another Kafkaesque scenario dreamt up by the useless Blair government, the designated areas are kept secret. So any individual can be stopped and searched without their knowing that they are in a designated area. In the London area these stop and search powers are being used to stop people from taking photographs - presumably on the grounds that such photographers are surveying the area prior to organising a bombing or similar incident. The over-zealous police seem ill-advised on the limitations of the act and are using the powers indiscriminately. A photographer taking a picture of Mikes Plaice - a fish and chip shop in Chatham, Kent - was approached and ordered to delete the said photograph. The situation is quite absurd - yet no-one in government seems to realise this. Presumably, any individual who objected to being questioned and searched in an area that may or may not have been designated could be arrested and imprisoned without charge for 42 days without either him or his lawyers being told why?

How is it decided who should be stopped and searched? It seems that they have stopped and searched Lord West, the Security Minister. Was this a stunt, a piece of lunacy or is the whole thing just crackers? At least Lord West was not carrying a camera or he could have been in real trouble.

What are the qualifications for being a minister these days?

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Rain in Cumbria

It's a Saturday night and it's pouring down. There is nothing unusual in this. Rain is always the foundation of the British obsession with weather. In truth, the average rainfall is not that great and here in the south-east amounts to no more than 25 inches in a whole year. For the most part, of course, rain falls with such a lack of commitment that the rain often progresses only as far as drizzle and serves merely to make walking the streets uncomfortable. But now it has been pouring down on every day for about the last three weeks. Everywhere is sodden and it is conceivable that we may struggle through next summer without a hose-pipe ban. November has entered the record books as the wettest November since records began. These official records only began in 1917 so this is not quite as spectacular as it sounds. Nevertheless, last month was definitely wet with twice as much rain as normal falling across the land. The forces of the weather were by no means equitable in their distribution of the precipitation since some parts actually had less than the normal rainfall. These dry zones were matched by others where the rain fell with a vengeance. There seems to have been a particular divine animosity directed against Cumbria which saw the low clouds tumbling over the Lake District Peaks depositing water like the torrents over Niagara. Borrowdale, the valley that runs down from Seathwaite to Keswick along the shore of Derwent Water is always wet as more than 100 inches of rain fall there every year. The River Derwent starts as a dozen streams in the foothills of Scafell, then runs through Borrowdale collecting more water streaming down from the mountains to become a raging calamity, a deluge elevated from its normal status as a minor river. Last month Borrowdale received a soaking, the like of which soft Londoners could never have imagined. The River Derwent surged along the valley into Derwent Water like a fury, with a ruthless venom and destructive intent as it swept through the lake and turned west towards Cockermouth. Here on one fateful day 12 inches of rain fell in 24 hours - a statistic unequalled in our weather records - and poured more water into the bloated river. As the Derwent passes through Cockermouth, it joins the River Cocker and together these two Cumbrian flows produced a surge of water that flooded the town and its surroundings and swept away all the bridges down to Workington as it rushed out into the Irish Sea.
There were floods in many parts of the country. Tewkesbury flooded as it always does when the water in the Severn rose by an inch or two and places in the flats of East Anglia and the ill-drained corners of Dorset were inundated. But it was Cockermouth that took the worst of it. Of course, the media rushed up there to provide us with pictures, statistics and evidence of the Dunkirk spirit. The army installed a foot bridge at Workington so that the two halves of the town could at least be joined and Network Rail ran extra trains, opening a new railway station, Workington North. Construction of the station began on the night of 24th/25th November; by 28th November the station with footbridge was completed and it opened on 30th November. If only all other projects could be completed so speedily.
We are suffering more extreme weather than we are used to. We have had gales and on Tuesday the night temperatures fell to -7 deg C and we had frozen roads. Then the temperature rose and more rain fell. These variations may be due to nothing more sinister than climate cycles but these are probably being made more extreme by climate changes instigated by Man.
What will deep mid-winter bring?
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The Parking Taliban

I have been much diverted during the second half of November so I have not had the chance to comment on current affairs. But there has been much nonsense and insanity that I have observed and in the next few days I will try to catch up.

First a simple story about a doctor and his 125cc "Liberty" scooter. This saga is Kafkaesque in its complexity and irrationality. We are indebted to the Daily Mail for providing the details of this extraordinary story. Look at the picture above of an almost sleepy street in London that appeared in that newspaper on Wednesday 2nd December. Two years ago, Dr Richard Dawood who has an office in Central London, collected a parking ticket on the scooter left in the position shown above. The good doctor travels to and from his appointments and his clinic around the congested streets and the congestion charging zone using that small petrol engined scooter. When he is in his office he parks the scooter as shown on the land owned by him - a strip of concrete in front of the office. It is included on the deeds of his property. As you can see, this land - about 1½m wide - stands alongside the pavement and the parking fascists of Camden Council have decided that as the strip of concrete is attached to the pavement without any dividing fence, it is part of that pavement and is, therefore, a public right of way. In these circumstances Doctor Dawood cannot park there and he has received a whole box full of parking tickets. He has telephoned the council offices, written to them and generally complained without any success and he decided to go to court. Solicitors were advised and barristers were briefed but as they prepared to go into the court, Camden Council cancelled the tickets. This happened repeatedly and so he went with his barrister to a parking tribunal - I didn't even know that such existed. The adjudicator, quite overcome by the principles involved, reserved his judgement. But later he gave his decision based on a previous case and the definition of an "urban road" and decided in the council's favour. It seems that the case of White vs the City of Westminster Council has been dredged up for all cases of this type. Dr Dawood tried to get a judicial review but his request was rejected by the Court of Appeal. This bizarre consideration by Lord Justice Sedley explained that while Dr Dawood undoubtedly owned the land, this referred to the sub-soil. The concrete or tarmac surface above was subject to public access and since there was no physical barrier - a fence - parking restrictions did apply. A key factor seemed to be the definition of a road. The council takes full rights over this area outside the doctor's office but, since it is not their land, quite reasonably, it does not have to maintain it.
The logic - in so far as this piece of nonsense has any logic at all - leads to the conclusion that any vehicle parked on a piece of land attached to the road and that is not separated by a fence can be subject to parking restrictions - and this includes your own driveway outside your house. No doubt, in the fullness of time, we will read of some individual being pursued through the courts for parking illegally on his own drive.
Dr Dawood has realised that of course the local council in the Borough of Camden is not concerned by protecting the public from the tribulations of reckless parking so much as collecting as much money as possible to waste on any politically correct yet madcap scheme that their bureaucratic brains can devise.
In the insane world of New Labour anything can become possible.
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