Friday, 2 November 2018

It's Getting Warmer... and we're all Satan. Or Some Such Bollocks.

In this report, the BBC comment on a report by the Met Office about how the current climate is warmer than previous decades.

Now you know at some point, the AGW argument is going to be thrown in  to propagandise the "people are Satan" argument.

So, let's read on...

They compared data between 1961 and 1990 between data between 2008 and 2010. Now colour me suspicious, but why not just report on each decade in turn? What happened to the years between 1991 and 2007?

Could it be that by cherry picking for isnatnce the very cold winters of the 1960s (especially the very cold winter of 1962) against the later dataset that the maximum warming figure could be achieved? That comparing any other pair of 10 year periods between each other that the warming wouldn't be as pronounced?

Anyway, lets see what that maximum figure the Met Office massaged out of the datasets: 1 degree Centigrade. Yep, they cherry picked decades to get a maximum warming figure and the maximum they can manipulate is one whole degree. Actually I'm being generous: the actual figure is 0.8 of a degree.

Now that's 1 degree warmer between 1961 and 2010, five whole decades.

So days are 0.8 of a degree warmer in the summer, whoopee do. When the temperature can get up to 30 degress, less than a degree is a fraction of a percent. Certainly not something you'd notice.

The article goes on to show graphs which basically show London and Essex to be the areas that have warmed up the most over the decades. I may be a bit cynical, but those are the most highly populated areas in the country and the East cCoast Main line runs through the wrming area of Essex, which just happens to be one of the areas most highly conurbated by the spread of commuters over the decades.

The urbanisation of Essex farmland might have something to do with the warming phenomenon. Something entirely local and not related in any way to global wrming other than to skew any local figures for the global dataset.

Still surprisingly the artical doesn't push the AGW agenda just yet. Instead it heads into victimhood territory: indicating people will suffer more because they won't get any respite from the heat. Aparrently a big risk for elderly people. Well it is, if you don't fund them well enough to run air conditioning in summer and heat in winter.

Finally, at the end of the article, it can't help but blame humans. Which in essence are to blame, for building in what was once rural counties. Howver, the article and the Met Office report  leave it open and don't specifically mention it as a local and entirely predictable and identifiable phenomenon. Instead the article eventually links the local warming to AGW in the final paragraph.

See, it had to go there. It's all humanity's fault. Rather than explain how AGW data can be skewed by comparing apples and eggs and the temperature of what was once a rural area with a newly urbanised area, it just plonks the steaming AGW turd on the carpet. Proudly. And then smiles at you, proudly.

The Death of Progress.

Remember when the Word "Progress" was used by Politicians and people in Education and Science?

Remember when it was commonly used and it signified that the West was striding forward, making progress and making the future better for everyone?

Have you heard it recently, expecially in that context? No, neither have I.

Despite not acknowledging the fact directly, Politicians and Scientists and Educators have all subconciously stopped using the word, because there is no progress. Not any more.

There are many reasons, the movement of wealth Eastwards to the oil-rich nations and then to China is a good example of Western money moving Eastwards, but also the greed of the 1%, who have seen their wealth increase massively over the last decade. It's also an indication of the end of altruism. Since the "greed is good" time in the Eighties, those with wealth tend to hang onto it.

For the first time in history, future generations will have less than the previous generation.

I have seen, in my lifetime the death of progress.

Friday, 26 October 2018

Wage Depression Over the Decades

Many people of my age (mid-Fifties) can still remember a time when a single parent could earn enough to run a family and have the mother stay at home.

Then in the seventies thanks to inflation, if you wanted nice things the second partner had to go out and get a part-time job. The imability of wages to support a family had started.

In the eighties, if you wanted to run a car, have a VCR, etc the second partner needed to go out and get a job. The rise of non-parental childcare in the form of child minders boomed.

In the Nineties, the two parents started to struggle to support a family. When Labour came into power in the late Nineties, they decided that the family needed help and in 2003 introduced tax credits for working families.

All the while, in the background you had non-working families fully supported by the state in the form of very generous benefits.

Over the decades wage stagnation has caused wages to depress so much that now even two people working full time cannot support a family and the government has to chip in with in-work benefits like tax credits. But that's taking money from people without kids and give it to families just because employers won't or can't pay proper wages if they wish to stay competitive. i.e. we all suffer wage deflation, even if we don't have a family.

At the same time, benefits eventually became so generous, there was no incentive to work. The differential is still pretty big. Stay unemployed and you get everything paid for: rent, council tax, National Insurance, prescriptions.... The moment you step into work, the full reality of competing in a global market hits home.Thanks to globalism you are competeing with someone in Vietnam whos housing costs amount to a tin shack with no electricity, water or sewage system. They don't have to pay for any of the utilities that western workers have to pay for.

I've yet to formulate a plan as to how to equalise the playing field. Of course as that Vietnamese worker's life style improves, pressures will increase on his wages so that eventually he will be demanding similar wages to a wesstern worker.

In the meantime the disparity is being exploited by the global corporations. It's this disparity that is causing the rise of populism in the West. The global corporates and western governments have failed to effectively manage the issue and have largely ignored the poor working class in the west. There's a lot of people at the bottom of the pyramid and they are getting increasingly angry and connected by technology.

The poor working class see mass immigration as another attempt to further depress wages, not the advantage or benefit that the elites would have us believe immigrants are.

40 years of wage depression and the various attacks on the ability to raise a family in the West from all side has created an atmosphere in the West amongst the poor that enough is enough. We're already seeing workers on zero hours contracts, workers living in tents, trailers and shacks. The workers of the West can see a future where their families live in Shacks like the Vietnamese guy and the rich get even richer.

There is an overwhelming feeling amongst the poor working class that a red line has been crossed. Especially after the financial crisis where billions of pounds of taxpayer's money was used to bail out the banks rather than allow them to fail, in the process inflating the wallets of the richest 1% of the country. There's also a growing realisation that "climate change" taxes are not being used for the purpose of mitigating the effects, but instead again lining the pockets of the mega-rich.

The past decade has seen the biggest and fastest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in history. Quite rightly the poor are unimpressed, and angry.