Labour Hypocrisy

I was not really surprised at the assertion of a Labour supporter on Twitter, that the following two posters reproduced from The Straight Choice were considered  "Frankly Disgraceful", yet when I suggested to her that Labour's cancer mail shot which can only have resulted from using protected data (probably medical records) was pretty diabolical, the resulting silence was........................ er deafening.

I do of course refer to s7 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (1998 c 29) wherein an individual is entitled to be informed of the circumstances of where and to whom his or her data is being disclosed.

So whilst the posters may be distasteful they are not illegal.  However identifying cancer sufferers from medical records (unless it was a massive lucky guess) is a contravention of the 1998 Act.  I'd almost recommend those people who were targeted by Labour's disgraceful action, take their case to the European Court of Human rights.

No matter what happens in the General Election the despicable ingrates who perpetrated this opportunist electioneering scam should be locked up.

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ET Phone home

So here's the deal.  You're a grown man living in the modern world.  A world that you've seen change a few times admittedly, but still here you are.  Trouble is you're the leader of the political party that is actually governing one of the most strategically important countries in the world.  As leader of that party you are also the leader of that country and you've spent the past three years effectively blaming the rest of the world for making your life difficult.  On top of that, you've sold off all of that country's gold reserves.  But it doesn't stop there.

You are called to an enquiry to explain why the army that your then leader sent to a foreign land to fight for oil,  you didn't give them the necessary cash to buy the proper equipment.  Your explanation is that nobody told you it was a problem and you increased the budget anyway. To use a well worn phrase, tell that to the army.

So you are coming to the end of your tenure and an election is near, although only you can call it and so far you've missed two opportunities.  In fact today you are in Afghanistan to see those troops you mentioned yesterday as having all the equipment their generals said they needed.  Then today on twitter, we are told that you've given an interview to the Tesco magazine about your mother.

Now if very sadly your mother is no longer with us, I offer my condolences.  However with us or not, what do you take us, the voters, for?  Do you really think we are daft enough to believe that the perpetrator (or should that be perpeTRAITOR) of the acts of selling England by the pound, killing our soldiers by reducing funding and wasting the country's remaining funds on saving the banks (which as we knew then was totally unnecessary), has actually got a semblance of heart.

Well, I'm sure you do but as the doyen of afternoon TV would say.  Goodbye Gordon Brown, you are the weakest link.  And I would add that if you had a semblance of backbone you walk now.

Anyone Else Smell a Rat? (Not I'm A Celebrity).

So as I understand it the Royal Bank of Scotland owns a substantial portion of a total of 167 Billion pounds Sterling, yup quite a large lunch that, in overseas, mostly toxic, debt. But what is interesting about this story (as opposed to downright depressing) is this snippet "Similarly striking is the fact that in almost all of the asset classes, the majority of the loans now being supported by the taxpayer were made only very recently, some of them in 2008, only months before the bank was semi-nationalised."

Now you may call me a cynic but considering this is the Royal Bank of Scotland and as we know senior members of our government (for want of a better word) hail from that, actually very pleasant, part of the UK, doesn't it seem mildly coincidental that a lot of these debts were ramped up by the bank, just before it rolled over and swallowed all that lovely taxpayer funding?

Likewise isn't it nice to know that whilst Lloyds Banking Group has returned a large portion of wonga to the Treasury, the Royal Bank of Scotland, is paying it back. When would of course be nice to know, but I doubt we'll find that out during this parliament.

If it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, it probably is a rat.

Think before pressing send

You know that feeling you get when you've just texted your wife or girlfriend (or both?) and told her in explicit detail exactly what you're going to do her when you get home, then just as you press "send" you realise its gone to your mum's number? Then there's the moment when you've just written a wonderfully bile filled e mail to your boss and instead of pressing "save in drafts" you press "send........................."?

Well I'm guessing a bit here but those extremely clever peeps at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) may just be having feelings somewhat similar to those I describe above. For it seems that the arguments for Climate Change may not be as compelling as the experts and Al Gore would have us believe. Take a look at this website where a number of e mails between climate change researchers have been hacked and published. It's a fairly extensive library which unfortunately includes examples of manipulation of findings in order to exaggerate the effects of climate change as we understand it to be. We are told that this information is really of little consequence and of course has been taken out of context. Oookay then. This release of information, whether it be out of context or not, is not what governments want to see for if there is contrary evidence to the scaremongering then it may well dent their ability to charge us for the use of our cars, central heating/air conditioning (delete as appropriate) etc. Of course you may call me a cynic but green taxes are not there to reduce consumption, they are there to make easy money for governments. Ergo there is little governmental energy devoted to actual reduction of usage because that would have a negative effect on the tax revenues.

But let us not be one sided or possibly cynical here because of course pumping CO2 and other substances such as unspent hydrocarbons into the atmosphere quite probably does have a bit of a negative effect on our lives. And of course we don't want to end those lives back in mud huts with no electricity but a nice view of the rapidly rising seas. So efficient use of resources may be a better answer than carbon credits (how do they work?) etc.

Some might say that motorsport is one of the worst forms of sport for burning hydrocarbans. It just will never be green. I tend to agree, however before people look towards motorsport for a relief from Climate Change I suggest they look towards the various governments who take our money but instead of making life more efficient, spend it on civil services and quangos, both of which in the UK are too big or too many or both! Surely if that cash was spent on transport systems there'd be a lot less unburnt hydrocarbons in the atmosphere because there'd be less traffic jams and therefore fuel efficiency would rise? And on that subject of course a racing car uses its fuel as efficiently as it can because it does not sit for hours in traffic jams!

So, I have a theory about Climate Change, which as we know can only be determined since records began (in around 1910 I believe) and my theory is this. The climate changes, live with it.

Holidays (or Vacations to our friends in the "colonies").

Sooooo, what's been happening in the world whilst I've been partying, eating, lazing on a beach (yes even in the UK), testing and racing my racing car?
The Tories lost an important election. Nope not the EU elections which only served to demonstrate the sheer contempt that the Labour Government is deservedly held in by the British populace. Nope this is the election that the Labour party should have held to remove their prime minister (I use no capitals because he is a small minded individual of little import). Yep the Tories lost it because instead of encouraging the Labour ministers and MPs to do something they ignored it and preferred to gloat (albeit justifiably) about the lack of support and the increase in control that each party has respectively achieved in the local elections.

Brown you are the weakest link. Go now for goodness' sake. And no kissing Anne Robinson either!

However on to more important things. I went to Jersey, that's an island in what we like to call the English channel, where we had great weather for a few days and then English weather for a few days and I gained about three kilos eating and drinking great food and wine. The eating the food and drinking the wine of course. Eating wine tends to hurt when the glass breaks. Anyway I highly recommend the place, it has cliffs, waves, fishing, walks, greenery, and of course restaurants and bars. Go, you won't be disappointed.

Right now I ache a bit. I'm sitting in the BA lounge in Heathrow, waiting for the delayed flight to Doha. I'm aching because I raced my car yesterday and for 45mins in a pretty hot cockpit I fought a monster that was trying desperately to throw itself at the scenery! This was a bit of a shame because prior to yesterday I tested the car and it was brilliant! Going quicker and needing less effort to make it go! Anyway aching or not I went faster than before at the circuit, Kept it on the island and netted a second place pot. As you know real men come second, so that's all right.