OK, it’s the mid 1970′s, and this is what was topping the charts. Scotland, you have much to answer for… check out the fashion!!

I see that the British media have picked up on the news that the mayor of New York and multi-billionaire businessman, Michael Bloomberg, is pushing ahead with plans to throw himself into the US presidential contest as an independent candidate this spring. Bloomberg, who has a personal fortune that would allow him to mount the most expensive campaign in US political history, could seriously damage the chances of the Democratic candidate. Let’s hope Michael’s ego continues to get the better of him!

It’s been one of THOSE days when all I have had to contend with is problems – mostly of the technological kind! (Hence the lighter blogging) So here’s a song for a Friday evening from one of Scotland’s finest….

I hope all you foreigners out there are paying close attention to me when I reveal that Britain has solved the problem with Islamic terrorism. Yes, after all these years since 9/11, Britain can now step forward and show the rest of the world how to resolve the problem.

In future, the British government will define all Islamic terrorism as…. anti-Islamic terrorism.

Read the details here if you think I am kidding.

As you know, last year Britain signalled it was abandoning the expression “the war on terror” and this is what it has come up with an alternative. So, the next time some ardent followers of the ROP detonate themselves in one of our major cities you can relax, confident that this is in fact anti-Islamic terrorism and that Islam is really the VICTIM here. God help us with these dhimmis in power.

Here’s something to chuckle over with your grandmother while she decides whether to feed herself or put the heating on:

Sir – On Tuesday night, the House of Commons passed the European Communities Finance Bill. This committed the British taxpayer, according to Treasury figures, to contribute more than £100 billion between now and 2013 to the EU – enough money to run the National Health Service for a year. One might have thought this took detailed, lengthy and considered debate. One would be wrong. The Government imposed a guillotine on the Bill and debate lasted only 208 minutes. This is equivalent to spending £481 million a minute.

MPs were severely restricted in the time they could speak and scrutinise the Bill. Clearly the Government wanted this measure to slip through unnoticed, so that the appalling deal done by ministers in negotiating away part of our EU rebate would go unnoticed. The Government claims the deal is good for Britain, yet our net contributions to the EU will increase from an already horrendously large £4.7 billion to £6.8 billion in 2011.

Yet this is the same Government that won’t honour the police pay review.

 - Peter Bone MP (Con), London SW1

A former New York gang member has been speaking to children in East London to warn them against gun and knife crime. And a New York police officer has warned London that unless serious action is taken over gang violence it could soon reach the same levels as in his city.   

At an assembly in a church, ex gang member Mr Argueta told pupils from St Bonaventure’s Roman Catholic School in Forest Gate that gang culture was not the glamorous lifestyle portrayed in popular culture. 

"In the US we lose more young kids to gun violence than in any other industrialised country," he said.  A serious looking Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum from Ulster County in New York State said youth crime and gang culture were not being tackled early enough in the US and this had led to no-go areas in his county. "The message I’m trying to get across is that you have problems in the UK now and you have to get on top of them before it is too late"

 What they both have to say is well worth a listen.  Although i’m not so sure we feed gang criminals ‘through cages’. Or that poverty is an influencing factor.  Is it a sense of purposeless? Probably. But it’s also just as likely to be down to the lifestyle that affords them a status and respect they would not get elsewhere so easily.  It is indeed a ‘glamourous lifestyle’ that is virtually revered – fashion, language, music are inextricably linked thanks largely to Hollywood exports and I cannot see that changing anytime soon.

And honestly if the US, with a tougher sentencing system, lower welfare and all the privileges the West embodies, cannot get a grip on this issue, how on earth will we.

Yes, another musical reference from me, but it relates to the Northern Ireland version of Question Time, called "Let’s Talk." I watch it for the laughs, although the joke normally turns sour after about 20mins of watching the bilge served up as coherent political debate.

The panel was the usual dross. We had Sir Reg Empey, the noble knight who leads the chronically dysfunctional Ulster Unionists. Then we had IRA/Sinn Fein apologist Pat Doherty, a grumpy looking old man. For balance, and providing the female voice, we had "I’m a celebrity get me out of here" contestant Lauren Booth (Half-sister to Cherie Blair) and finally Sam Smyth, a journalist based in Dublin. What a line up. The audience appeared to be mostly the political first years from the local University!

To call the programme a debate is not quite right. It is more an extended yawn.

There was a discussion on what should be done about Ian Paisley Jnr’s lobbying. The consensus seemed to be wait and see and it took the journalist to point out that this was a government without opposition hence the silence for a scalp.

There was a discussion on the US election – everyone was agreeing that there was a real choice – Obama or Hillary! A more BIASED view of the US I have not heard in a long time. (The journalist pointed out that Americans were "hated" all around the world because of G.W Bush…)

Then there was a discussion on the age of consent and the only real sensible contribution came from a member of the audience who pointed out that parental responsibility was the key issue here, and I agree.

All in all, this programme is a little liberal love-in each month. The quality of comments from the panel is poor, and the BBC seems determined to keep it that way. Why I don’t know since surely more real debare would engage the viewers AND audience?

The NHS is more of a threat to our mortality than that posed by Islamic terrorism, road accidents or general crime!

Yes, that so-called “envy of the world” (Pluto?) kills  around 17,000 people a year in the UK due to poor NHS performance, campaigners say. The Taxpayers’ Alliance compared World Health Organization data for five leading European countries. It found the NHS had 17,157 extra deaths in 2004 compared with the other countries’ average when taking into account age and burden of disease. They looked at “mortality amenable to healthcare” – the number of deaths from certain conditions and at certain ages that healthcare can reasonably be expected to avert. The rate in the UK was 135 per 100,000 people, compared with an average of 107 across the five countries. France had the best rate at 91. The report said if the difference between the UK figure and average was applied to the whole population, it would equate to 17,157 deaths – five times the number that die in road accidents.

ATW contributor Alison has frequently argued here in terms of the superiority of the French health system and in terms of keeping people alive, a key determinant in the efficacy of ANY health service, these facts rather prove her point. I don’t think the NHS sets out to kill people, of course, but political interference has destroyed this health service, just like it has destroyed our education system. The NHS is a national disgrace, but I don’t blame the medical staff who try to do their best, but it is neo-Stalinist bureaucratic monstrosity and it really does represent a threat to your health if you end up having to use it.

The al-Goracle cult, otherwise known as the Religion of Environmentalism, has many devotees within the corridors of the European Commission and European Parliament.

That is, until a known eeeeevil – reality – jumped up and bit ‘em on the ass.

EU Members Lobby against ‘Harmful’ Climate Plan
European countries and businesses have criticized a climate change action plan that COMINTERN the European Commission is scheduled to unveil next week. Their concerns about competition and carbon trading could undermine the EU’s commitment to confront climate change.

As the European Commission puts the finishing touches on a sweeping climate change policy package to be unveiled on Jan. 23, politicians and business leaders from the EU’s richest member states are lobbying to revamp draft policies that they believe could harm them in Europe and abroad.

Among the critics of the bill are France, which wants to protect its nuclear investments, Germany, which is worried about its renewable energy sector, and major European auto and steelmakers, who are concerned that Europe could lose its competitive edge.

But the Commission says it will not be bullied into diluting the climate change package. To back down, Commission President José Manuel Barroso told Reuters, would be an international embarrassment after the EU worked to promote itself as the international leader in addressing climate change. “We knew from the very beginning that transforming Europe into a low-carbon economy is not an easy task,” said Barroso. “But this is the moment to be serious, responsible and coherent with our commitment.”

In other words, Barroso believes that saving face is more important than the economic health and well-being of European Union member states. Nice to see that the consummate tax tick has his priorities straight.

Barroso was responding to complaints that include a letter from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in which Sarkozy objected to a policy that would raise the share of energy that Europe derives from renewable sources from 8.5 percent currently to 20 percent by 2020. He said the policy “unnecessarily penalizes the prospects of growth.” France wants to have its huge nuclear energy program counted in the mandatory contribution it will be asked to make toward the EU goal, but atomic power, which produces toxic waste, is not considered a form of renewable energy.

Germany and Spain are protesting another proposed policy. Ministers in Berlin and Madrid sent a letter this week to the Commission criticizing a system [that] would encourage companies in Europe to trade renewable energy across borders. They are worried that an EU-wide system would undermine their existing national systems. “This will put a very successful development of renewables at risk, which is not acceptable to our governments,” read the letter in part. It was the second time this week that German officials criticized the forthcoming policies, after Bavarian politicians condemned (more…) a proposal to cap the amount of carbon dioxide that new automobiles produce per kilometer they are driven.

In an interview with the German magazine Capital published Tuesday, the EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, denied that a new renewable energy trading system would infringe upon existing “feed-in” systems in Germany and Spain. “Don’t worry,” said Dimas. “We will ensure that Germany can keep its system without restrictions in (the) future and … we will construct it in such a way that it doesn’t hinder national promotion systems in Germany and other countries — that’s a promise.”

A politician making a promise. ROTFLMAO .

Private sector leaders also criticized the forthcoming policy package, saying strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions will hit major industrial polluters unfairly and encourage them to relocate outside of Europe. BusinessEurope, a lobby group that represents most of the Continent’s largest companies, said it had learned that the Commission will require industrial polluters to cut emissions to 21 percent below 2005 carbon emission levels by 2020.

EU officials explained that 2005 was chosen because it is the first year in which data includes the impact of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme; BusinessEurope says it is unfair because it does not take into account efforts to reduce emissions that companies made between 1990 and 2005. In a letter to Commission President Barroso, the group also objected to broader plans to strengthen the continent’s carbon trading scheme.

Many of the permits that a company must hold to emit carbon are currently distributed for free, but the Commission is proposing to auction those permits to the highest bidder by 2020. To offset the impact that might have on the competitiveness of a European business, the Commission is considering a carbon tariff (more…) on imports from outside the EU that were not produced within a carbon trading market. Still, BusinessEurope calls the prospect of an auction-based trading scheme “extremely worrying.”

The lobbying in Brussels this week is in sharp contrast to the proud tones in which European leaders announced last March their joint agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and make major investments in renewable energy and biofuels. As the Commission drafts policies that will make those goals a reality, Europe’s richer countries are frustrated that they will be asked to bear the brunt of the collective goal.

EU officials told Reuters this week that the Commission wants to allow the EU’s poorest member states to actually increase their emissions, by up to 20 percent above 2005 levels. That would help poor states like Romania and Bulgaria grow their economies – but could spell trouble for the strong European countries charged with making up the difference.

Via der Spiegel Online

See also Moonbats and Economics.

Also at JWF.

As per Scrappleface, here they are:

 1. Most parents were educated in the underfunded public school system, and so are not smart enough to homeschool their own children.

2. Children who receive one-on-one homeschooling will learn more than others, giving them an unfair advantage in the marketplace. This is undemocratic.

3. How can children learn to defend themselves unless they have to fight off bullies on a daily basis?

4. Ridicule from other children is important to the socialization process.

5. Children in public schools can get more practice “Just Saying No” to drugs, cigarettes and alcohol.

6. Fluorescent lighting may have significant health benefits.

7. Publicly asking permission to go to the bathroom teaches young people their place in society.

8. The fashion industry depends upon the peer pressure that only public schools can generate.

9. Public schools foster cultural literacy, passing on important traditions like the singing of “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg…”

10.Homeschooled children may not learn important office career skills, like how to sit still for six hours.

As you may know, my girls have both expressed interest in attending traditional school. We are going to go for it starting 2008/2009 school year. I’m fairly comfortable with the little school that we are considering. I predict that they will have no problem facing bullies down, or standing up for what they believe is right. The things that will trip them up are: Eating in a short amount of time and not being able to go to the bathroom whenever they want. I am very curious to see how long it will take before they are begging to be homeschooled again.