Lady Thatcher, a politician towering above the rest

When historians look back on the last century, there will be two UK prime ministers who stand out from the rest. Churchill for his wartime leadership, and Margaret Thatcher for her resolute stand against those who would subvert democracy. Rampant unions who despised their membership, military juntas bent on subjugation, Soviet war mongerers, and European bureaucratisation, were all targets who she had been told were untameable, and it was better that we simply lay down and do what they want. She faced up to them and won.

There were detractors, in a very small and vociferous minority. It is not surprising that this minority protested loudly, for they were those whose unwarranted power, special privileges, and belief in perpetual state funded lucrative sinecures, were under threat. For the majority, the prospect of the end of industrial strife, the unswerving opposition to Soviet hegemony, the chance to own our homes, and the freedom from state monopolies, was the reason for electing our first female prime minister, three times.

It is ironic that the Labour party only made itself electable when they adopted her policies. They have neither repealed nor amended any of her key policies in their thirteen year tenure. It is further ironic that the issue which most vexed the Labour party in the nineteen eighties, tbe closure of some of the coal mines under a Conservative government, is going to be overshadowed this century by the closure of all of the coal mines by the Labour government’s Climate Change Act, and by the minister responsible, Ed Miliband.

Steven

Except that not crossing the dreaded threshold the money would never be offered.
Farage and his like are elected members not salaried employees.

Ashton has never had a single vote cast for her at any election. Her political record is abysmal – from Wikipedia.

In February 2010, it emerged that Ashton had been heavily criticised within the EU community for a number of actions, including her failure to visit Haiti in the wake of the earthquake and her lack of leadership abilities during ministerial meetings and policy briefings. Senior officials within her team complained that she speaks only in “generalities”. She was also criticised for a lack of commitment to the job, allegedly switching off her phone after 8 pm every day. Ashton came under further criticism, including explicit criticism from national defence ministers Hervé Morin, Carme Chacón, Jack de Vries, and EU minister Pierre Lellouche, for her failure to attend the European Defence Summit in Majorca.

In February 2011, Baroness Ashton received the lowest grade in a survey rating the performance of European Commissioners. The survey, carried out by lobbying and PR company Burson-Marsteller, asked 324 Brussels policy-makers to rate the European Commissioners with a grade A to E (A being the highest). Lady Ashton, a commission vice-president as well as the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, scored an E for her performance. She was the only Commissioner to receive a grade below D.

So not good value for the money then.

Steven

Mafia in on the Climate Change deceit

Italian police say they have confiscated mafia assets of €1.4billion – the biggest seizure of its kind in history. Italy’s renewable energy sector has been heavily infiltrated by the mafia because of once-generous state subsidies and lax controls, as well as the availability of land in areas of southern Italy with a strong mafia presence.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-03/clean-energy-developer-targeted-over-mafia-links/4608208

The multi billion-dollar haul included the seizure of 43 wind and solar energy companies, 98 properties and 66 bank accounts belonging to Vito Nicastri, a businessman described by authorities as a frontman for the Sicilian Mafia. Three years ago, investigators found the mafia was engaged in a massive eco-scam, claiming generous grants for investment in wind-power and environmentally- friendly businesses.

Steven

It is extraordinary the lengths that AGW supporters will go to, in order to maintain their grants and sinecures.

Leading the AGW troughers is Sir Brian Hoskins on the Climate Committee, who is also director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2301757/Governments-climate-watchdog-launches-astonishing-attack-Mail-Sunday–revealing-global-warming-science-wrong.html

The dispute revolves around a graph that appeared in the DM, which shows that the climate computer models have failed to show the steady global temperatures of the last sixteen years, and wrongly predicted an increase. Moreover the graph produced by the Climate Committee was misleading;

The Committee on Climate Change claims such forecasts must be right because world temperatures have previously matched computer models’ ‘outputs’ for most of the past 60 years. Yet as this newspaper pointed out, for almost all of that 60-year period the models were not making predictions – because they did not yet exist.

What the CC Committe produced.

What they really meant.

In other words, the first true computer predictions of the CCC were wrong, despite over sixty years of input data.

Steven

Snowdon will be a thing of the past….or not….

BBC News, December 2004
The data collected by experts from the university [of Bangor] suggests that a white Christmas on Snowdon – the tallest mountain in England and Wales – may one day become no more than a memory.
The figures indicated that this winter Snowdon is on track to have less snow than any of the last 10 years.
The results appear to back the growing body of evidence to support climate change.

BBC News, March 2013
Snowdon Mountain Railway will be shut over the Easter weekend after it was hit by 30ft (9.1m) snow drifts.
Workers using two excavators tried but failed to clear the 4.7 mile(7.5km) track.
The railway resumed operations from Llanberis last week after the winter break but they were suspended within days after heavy snow on the mountain.

This contrast would make a good article for Newsnight, on why BBC could be wrong on AGW. I look forward to it, when they are not on strike.

Steven

There was a lot of research done on open rotors, contra-rotating and variable pitch turbofans, in the 1980’s and 1990’s. They all showed good improvements in fuel efficiencies. Rear fan open rotors like those in your link have been around since the mid 1940’s, see Metropolitan Vickers F.3 and F.5.

So this is an idea which keeps getting reinvented. The reason that open rotors are not likely to be used is that they are noisy both outside and inside the aircraft, and they give rise to vibration. Also, they have no containment in the event of blade failure.

More likely to be used are the contra-rotating and variable pitch ducted front turbofans, in my opinion. The best chances of this happening are if the airframe manufacturers also break with tradition and introduce a matching efficient design, to capitalise on the broader characteristics of the new engine, such as the blended wing approach. The engines will most likely be embedded fully or partially, not open mounted.

Engine and airframe developers would need to get together on thus, as one group doing it by itself would not achieve the maximum benefit.

(Your first link does not work)

Steven

The Met Office has admitted that it does not get its longer range forecasts right. With this apology for last year’s completely wrong forecast that the drought would continue.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9961052/Met-Office-apologises-for-warning-of-dry-spell-before-wettest-April-on-record.html

Apparently they are ‘helpful’ with these forecasts 65% of the time. Note that 50% is equivalent to pure guesswork!

Steven