Does it look like there's some sort of a relationship there? Looks to me as if money can't buy you love, but unless you are willing to get down and dirty then you're just seen as goody two-shoes.
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You need to see this. (From here.)
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The answer is that they are all places we have paid for the RSPB to send its people to work in the last financial year.
Now I can twitch with the best of them, but an organisation that has an income of over £100m per year doesn't actually need taxpayer funding and certainly not to send its staff to exotic parts of the world on booze-ups jollies conservation trips. I mean there are plenty of twitchers who would pay to do this kind of thing.
According to fakecharities.org the RSPB gets £20m a year from you and me, so that's £20m we can save next year at the stroke of a pen. We can't afford it any longer.
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Anthony Watts caught the US Environmental Protection Agency suppressing dissenting voices on global warming.
Remember all those stories about climate change refugees flooding the developed world? It's now admitted that that they were exaggerated.
The UK's Meteorological Office has had its climate change research budget slashed.
The US Climate Change bill, seen by all outside the green fringe as howling mad, looked likely to stumble in the House of Representatives, with Democrats admitting they needed more support.
Global sea ice levels remain around their long-term average. Forecasters are saying the September minimum will be in line with last year.
The Antarctic ice shelf also seems to be rather more stable than we were previously lead to believe.
Steve McIntyre found that the trend in the UK's temperature record for Hawaii differs from the US's by approximately two degrees per century. Of course one would like to check what adjustment CRU makes to its data, but it's a secret.
Alert readers noticed that one of the graphs in the Copenhagen Synthesis Report had been "adjusted" so that recent temperatures looked a bit cooler.
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Obviously I'm against the former, but it has to be said that I do think there's an issue that shouldn't be ignored.
The problem is that there are vast numbers of people who feel threatened and alienated by people parading the streets in what amounts to a disguise. They don't like it.
I don't take any particular view on whether they are right to dislike burqas or not, but the fact is that they are not allowed to express their dislike, even in non-violent or non-agressive ways. People are banned from discriminating against the burqa-wearers. They can't turn them away from their shops and businesses, saying "I'm sorry I'm not serving you while you are wearing a disguise". Society, in its wisdom, has decreed that these are crimes, and hate crimes to boot.
The ability to discriminate gives the host culture the ability to gently apply a cost to the wearing of burqa. You will probably still get served in the bank, but you might just have to go a bit further to find one that would rather have your money than enforce a burqa-free clientele. You might have to give up swimming because the pool won't take you. Perhaps the garage won't fix your car if you refuse to show your face.
I've blogged before about how the introduction of authoritarian laws often leads to a spiral of authoritarianism, with all sorts of unpleasant spin offs. The anti-discrimination laws are a direct affront to freedom of association and have encouraged emigrants to refuse to integrate and to develop a kind of apartheid, demanding, for example, muslim-women-only swimming sessions. When this cultural apartheid becomes resented by the host culture, politicians respond the only way they know how, with more authoritarianism - banning burqas and so on. This will no doubt be followed by bans on nuns' habits, no doubt in the interests of even-handedness, but just adding to the downward spiral of resentment.
But won't this lead to signs outside guest houses saying "No moslems" or "No burqas"? Possibly it will, and that would be ugly for sure. But the current approach is ugly too and the result, a downward spiral of apartheid and authoritarianism is vile in the extreme. Better to have an ugly approach with a happy ending than more and more ugliness.
Politicians' responses to the problem will lead only to resentment from Moslems banned from wearing burqas (there are apparently some who do so willingly) or from the host culture, forced to accept and deal with people with whom they want no dealings. Politicians can't solve this problem. They can only stand back and allow society to solve it on its own.
]]>Climate research should be as open and transparent as possible
Bwahahahahahahah!!!!! ROFLMAO!!!!!
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Fosters £2.10
Guinness £2.20
You can't help but wonder if this generous pricing policy is the cause of the quality of the legislation they send our way.
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Does it look like there's some sort of a relationship there? Looks to me as if money can't buy you love, but unless you are willing to get down and dirty then you're just seen as goody two-shoes.
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The man who had the largest additional costs allowance claims in parliament in pretty much every year since he was elected.
They just don't get it, do they?
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