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The thoughts of Roy
Quote of the month Nothing to do with
mining, but relevant in the context of my weekly visits to Wales in connection
with the (hopefully) useful work that I do there. Basically, this means that in
common with thousands of other visitors to Wales I have to run the gauntlet of
official muggers who man the speed camera vans. Just before the last NAMHO I was
caught just leaving Llangollen at an alleged 36 miles per hour. Basically, my
attention wondered from by speedometer to the road ahead and I paid the price.
Tell me that this has anything at all to do with road safety. This quote sums it
up in a few choice words:"Speed camera prosecutions have
become a ridiculous game of cat and mouse with camera partnerships attempting to
catch motorists and motorists attempting to evade capture. The tragedy is that
everyone has forgotten the original objective - safer roads."
Paul Smith, Safe Speed Road Safety Campaign
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/
News Article
To make matters worse, there has just been an article published in the Mail
on Sunday which clearly demonstrates the huge scam that it really is. Its
totally sickening, follow this link for a reproduction of the article
Undercover probe reveals the 'buckets of money'
made from speed cameras
November 2007
I have just read with glee that Meredith Hughes the ACPO speed camera tsar
has been done himself, for no less that 90 m.p.h. on the 60 m.p.h. single
carriageway section of the A5 near Llangollen. He
is the man who vowed to throw the best lawyers at people who try to use
loopholes etc to wriggle off the hook.
I like it!
December 5th Update.
Convicted and disqualified for 42 days.
Kinda, well..., makes you start believing that there is maybe a God out
there.
Politically Incorrect Facts
I was down Cornwall this Easter as usual, and visited yet again one of my
favourite places, Cot Valley, St Just. The seaward end, Porth Nanven, is a site
of special scientific interest. The cliffs her are of enormous geological
interest, and there is an interpretation board there for the benefit of
visitors.
"The effects of global warming and climate change stretching back for 120,000
years". Err isn't this something that we are supposed to have caused, with our
cars and all that?
There is a documentary that was shown on Channel 4 "The Great Global Warming
Swindle", which kind of took the lid off all this. Its interesting viewing.
If you save the above image to your hard drive you will be able to open it in
Windows and use the zoom to read what is says. The white mark is a footprint
where someone has tried to damage it, the actual truth that "man made climate
change" is a load of pure tosh causes some people to go hysterical.
Update 2008
Its
gone! Smashed up! I wonder why?
Whoever
did it is wasting their time anyway as it will be the weather itself that has
the last word. We can all see where that's going, April this year saw the lowest
average temperature ever recorded in Cornwall. Spring holiday Monday was the
worst I have ever seen, I had a gortex outdoor coat on, the real McCoy, and I
was shivering. More and more people are now regarding the whole thing with
increasing scepticism, and there is jack that 'they' can do about it!
I have to apologise for going off the mining subject but in all honesty I
believe that "man made climate change" is not only the biggest load of pure tosh,
but the biggest con trick of all times. At the end of the day, its OUR money.
There is a book that has just been published that kind of lifts the lid of the
whole saga, and it also comes right on top of the WAG TV documentary, "The Great
Global Warming Swindle". Here are the details.
SCARED TO DEATH: From BSE to Global Warming - How Scares Are Costing Us The
Earth
By Christopher Booker and Richard North
512 pages £16.99 Hardback
Published November 10th 2007
For author interviews or further information your media contact is Jeff
Scott at PLATYPUS PR phone him on 01273 692215 or email
jeff@platypuspr.com -
alternatively please call Sarah Patel on 0207 922 0938 or email her at
spatel@continuumbooks.com
AUTHOR’S STATEMENT
Christopher Booker has released the following statement to coincide with the
publication of this book co-authored with Richard North:
"What our book 'Scared to Death' tries to show is how, in the past 20 years, an
endless succession of supposedly science-based ‘scares’ have become one of the
most damaging features of our modern world - and that these all follow a
startlingly consistent pattern.
What we should really be scared of is the ease with which bogus science and
media hype are being allowed to inflict immense damage on us all by promoting
scares which eventually turn out to be largely or wholly baseless - when we do
have all sorts of genuine problems to worry about. Indeed, as scary as anything
these days is the near-complete breakdown of trust in our politicians and their
seeming inability to understand what those real problems are.
Scared to Death focuses on all those peculiarly modern scares which rely on
fraudulent science. We begin with the notorious food scares, such as Edwina
Currie’s panic over eggs and the hysteria over BSE, which ended up costing
Britain £7 billion for nothing. We then move on to a wide range of more general
scares, focussed round topics as diverse as the Millennium Bug, lead in petrol,
speeding, passive smoking, asbestos, ‘Satanic child abuse’ and many more.
These were all panics originally based on misreading the evidence, aggressively
promoted by interest groups and emotive sound bites into a received ‘narrative’
that bore no relation to the actual facts.
Finally, most damaging of all, is the way again and again we have seen our
political rulers, in Westminster and Brussels. reacting to these scares by
dreaming up ill-conceived new laws for which we all pay a colossal price -
amounting to billions, even in some cases hundreds of billions of pounds."
Nothing has better illustrated the thesis of our book than the one-sided
manipulation of scientific evidence used to promote the belief in man-made
global warming, accompanied by the absurdly unrealistic measures our gullible
politicians are now proposing in response to it. The latest scientific evidence
shows that, while CO2 levels are still rising, global temperatures are at a
lower level than ten years ago and may even be falling. This could just turn
out to be one of the most damaging confidence tricks the human race has ever
played on itself."
"Even those not yet sceptical about the great crusade to ‘save the planet’ from
global warming might be shocked to see just how many parallels it presents to
the pattern of other scares before it, so many of which have now been
discredited."
About the Authors
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER was one of the founders of Private Eye and its first editor,
to which he is still a regular contributor. He has a weekly column in the
Sunday Telegraph and often writes on political issues for the Daily Mail. He
has published several books on contemporary history and storytelling.
RICHARD NORTH, a political analyst, has been a research director in the
European Parliament, and was formerly a nationally known consultant on food
safety.
"This brilliant exposé of some of the most destructive delusions of our time
should be compulsory reading for everyone (particularly journalists and
politicians)"
James Delingpole
"Booker and North turn an intellectual searchlight on the dark corners of our
society¹s irrational terrors and emotional outbursts in the face of media scare
stories. Meticulously documented and intellectually rigorous, Scared to Death
deflates and demythologises a long list of recent misreported and mismanaged
panics. One of those 'must read' books that is also a pleasure to read."
Anthony Jay, Co-author of Yes Minister
Scared To Death for the first time tells the inside story of many of the major
scares which have exploded into the headlines of the past two decades. Drawing
on thousands of scientific and other sources, it analyses the crucial role
played in each case by scientists who have misread or manipulated the evidence;
by the media and lobbyists who eagerly promote the scare without regard to the
facts; and finally by the politicians and officials who come up with a mass of
misconceived legislation which is no more than a ‘sledgehammer to miss the
nut’, for which we all pay an astronomic price.
Contents
========
Part One: The Food Scares
Prologue
Chapter One: Countdown to an Explosion: How Scares Became A Disaster Waiting To
Happen, 1981-8
Chapter Two: ‘Killer Eggs¹: The Great Salmonella Scare 1988-9
Chapter Three: Enter the Hygiene Police: Paying The Price 1990-4
Chapter Four: ‘Listeria Hysteria’: The Lanark Blue Case 1995
Chapter Five: Mad Cows and Madder Politicians: The BSE/CJD Scare 1996-9
Chapter Six: Officials Can Kill: Meat, Cheese and E coli 1998
Chapter Seven: The £1 Billion Blunder: The Belgian Dioxins Debacle 1999
Epilogue to Part One: The Rise of the ‘Health and Safety Culture’.
Part Two: General Scares
Prologue to Part Two: The Millennium Bug.
Chapter Eight: Sledgehammers To Miss Nuts: A Wider Look At The Scare
Phenomenon (DDT, Nitrate, Vitamin B6, Cockles).
Chapter Nine: The Modern Witch Craze: Ritualised Child Abuse
Chapter Ten: ‘Speed Kills’: A Safety Scare That Cost Lives.
Chapter Eleven: ‘We Love Unleaded’: How Confusion Over Lead Cost Billions
Chapter Twelve: Smoke and Mirrors: How They Turned ‘Passive Smoking’ into a
killer
Chapter Thirteen: ‘One Fibre Can Kill’: The Great Asbestos Scam.
Chapter Fourteen: ‘Saving The Planet’: The New Secular Religion
Chapter Fifteen: ‘Licensed To Kill’: The Scare That Never Was
Epilogue: A New Age of Superstition.
'Junk ' Phone Calls
We all get tormented with these , selling everything from double glazing to
life insurance. If you run a business, however small, you get more of them.
Well I have just had the best one yet, and I swear that its true
"Can I speak to the person responsible for the maintenance of your franking
machines"
I kid you not.
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