Looney green tunes

Just when you thought our environmentalist friends couldn't become any more absurd, they have to go and outdo themselves. The editor of the Ecologist, Westminster and Oxford educated Oliver Tickell, son of the equally silly and equally posh Crispin Tickell (also Westminster and Oxford), has just written a post arguing that the Paris terrorist attacks were intended to disrupt the COP21 climate talks, driving up oil prices and putting petrodollars in the pockets of ISIS. Oh yes, and western oil interests were probably in on it too.

So, assuming - as seems probable at this stage - that the Paris outrage was carried out by or for ISIS, was it in any way motivated by a desire to scupper a strong climate agreement at COP21? And so maintain high demand for oil long into the future, together with a high oil price?

Let's just say that it could have been a factor, one of several, in the choice of target and of their timing. And of course ISIS was not necessarily acting entirely on its own. While not alleging direct collusion between ISIS and other oil producing nations and companies, it's not hard to see a coincidence of interests.

Blimey, he's so bonkers you half expect Paul Nurse to try to squeeze him into the Royal Society alongside Ehrlich.

Standard issue kit

Michael Yon is an American freelance journalist, currently embedded with British troops in Helmand.

I know the boys out there don't have enough helicopters, but from the look of Yon's photographs, there aren't even enough desert uniforms to go round. I mean, we've only been out there for eight years... What is going on out there?

Take a look.

Flown the coop?

The Spectator says that US Intelligence has located Osama bin Laden in the Karakoram.

Presumably we can conclude that he's not there any longer, either because he's flown the coop, or because the Americans have captured him already.

Nobody would be silly enough to let on that they knew where he was, before they'd caught him.

Would they? 

An Indian Muslim writes

A posting I chanced across the other day, from Lalbadshah, an Indian Muslim. It takes the form of an open letter to the failed Glasgow terrorists:

Dumb fuckers!! WTF were you thinking? Sardar shabashi dega?? That you'll go straight to heaven?? Man! Not only did you fuck yourselves, you've got the eternal curse from every foreign visa aspiring Muslim who actually wants to do well in life. And just when I was beginning to realise that as Indian Muslims, we are doing pretty well upholding our credentials as peaceful folk, you had to go and fuck it all up!!

 Read the whole thing.

T in the Park

The village's annual assault from the T in the Park festival is now upon us, bringing the delights of loud music, recreational drugs and alfresco urination to this quiet corner of rural Scotland.

The BBC covers the mud (which must be truly awe-inspiring after the summer we've been having) and the motorway tailbacks (seven hours if rumour is correct), but they may have missed something.

A spokesman for the festival said: "There have been major traffic queues due to the wet weather conditions which has made parking on site extremely difficult."

However, word in the pub last night was that the real reason for the tailbacks were that police were checking every single vehicle heading for the festival. No mention of this on the Beeb. Do the polis know something or is this just backside covering? 

Butthead bombers

Well it's pretty crazy - bombs in London last week, nutters in Glasgow today. Sky is reporting that Blackpool airport is closed and that there is a (pretty questionable IMHO) report on LGF of the evacuation of the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, where the perpetrators of the Glasgow attack were taken.

The recent attacks appear to have been more or less entirely incompetent - the current bunch appear to be rather less technically adept than the IRA of old. This suggests that the panicked reaction of the government is rather overdone.

Update:

I was wrong - the BBC is confirming the evacuation of the Royal Alex and says that a device was found there. (No story online yet - just a headline in the ticker).