Letter to sister Jude

Dear Jude

What on earth was she (the petition organiser) doing bringing four children into the world at a time of living on the environmental knife edge (She wrote, "We are currently living on an environmental knife edge and this backward step will be damaging to our future.")  We have rising populations, decreasing/depleting sources of energy and renewables even being opposed by many that, anyway, will never be sufficient to meet an ever rising demand for elecy.  The UK's energy gap is an uncomfortable reality, as we now have to scrabble on world markets for depleting gas reserves.

People in Halesowen are still buying 150 watt incandescent bulbs in our local Smiths electrical shop!  The well lagged with clothing shop owner, right now, is pouring out electricity from fan heaters with his doors open wide with a bitterly cold east wind blowing in.  I got nowhere in a brief conversation, even when he knew people should not be buying very wasteful 'E' energy rated bulbs.  He refuses to no longer stock them to stop them buying the things.  He refuses to close his doors to boost his profits - insanity.  We live in a mad, mad world!  What on earth was our perfect God doing when he knew we humans would turn out so imperfectly - and all made in his image, too?!

I despair of the future and I am only too glad I am no younger than I am!

Remembering what went wrong over our so virtuous military intervention in Iraq

This is written ten years on since London was awash with 1-2 million opponents of our nation's intention to attack, invade and occupy Iraq.  "Britain's biggest ever political protest"  (Andrew Murray in the Guardian 15.2.2013).  This blog has partly relied on that article (here, in double quotation marks) to catalogue the many blunders of those who should have been men and women of integrity and honour.  Instead, I think, they became war criminals and terrorists.

1. Iraq is steeped in history.  It is the birthplace of civilisation.  Indeed, the birthplace of Abraham who was the father/founder of three world faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Even so, they are at loggerheads and, there is an absence of understanding or even respect amongst them.  Each faith believes that it alone has the Truth and Right on their side.
2. There was an over reliance on what the enemies of Saddam Hussein were saying about his weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  An over-reliance because he was no longer our friend but was our enemy by this time.
3. An under-reliance on finding the evidence for WMD before the attack commenced on the 19 February 2003.
4. Our crime of aggression in attacking Iraq seems to have been about finishing the job from the Gulf War of 1990/1, when we failed to remove Saddam Hussein and had been kicking ourselves ever since for not doing so.
5. Saddam was no friend of Al-Qaeda, not an Islamist or militant Muslim and, he governed a secular state.  Yet, it was widely believed that he was, in order to help justify attack, regime change and occupation by ourselves - and retribution for 9/11!
6. The UN inspectors were not allowed to finish the job before our premature and over-enthusiastic desire for the opening shock and awe attack.  Unseemly haste, sidelining, even dismissing our own, Western, weapons inspectors.  They didn't come up with what we wanted them to say, so we went ahead anyway before their final and definitive report confirming that there were almost certainly no WMD.
7. The UN did not "give the attack a patina of legality." Andrew Murray (patina = shallow covering or cosmetic gloss)
8. The war did not make the Christian West safer from terrorism.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  We saw martyrdom videos showing that the martyrs saw themselves as soldiers defending Islam from the Christian Western attackers and occupiers of holy Muslim soil.
9. The Iraqi people did not welcome the invaders as liberators.
10. "Tony Blair was motivated solely by his secret pledges to stand by President Bush come what may."
11. "Consideration of legality and British public opinion scarcely registered with him."
12. "The Iraqi people have paid a staggering price" for the unwarranted and unlawful eight year war.
13. "The war was justified by the dodgy dossier" and a student's dissertation.
14. Justified by: "The 45 mins Iraqi missile threat."
15. There was "Duplicitous diplomacy."
16. Saddam Hussein - a one time ally and excellent customer of our highly valued arms industry and traders.
17.  This man and many tens of thousands of his citizens were wiped off the face of the map without a trial for him or, UN support for such extra-judicial killing by ourselves.
18. Even after Saddam was removed from power and we were in total control throughout the country, still no WMD could be found.  In other words, we were completely fooled and our intelligence experts and politicians proved, yet again, to be in the wrong.  They were led up the garden path.  They are guilty and were gullible.  They are war criminals.

Bringing freedom, democracy and Western culture to those who don't know better

There is nothing wrong with us all (very nearly) voting for the war parties (doing it and fueling it) while our votes keep the war well away from our shores.  While we don't get killed, we must carry on supporting our heroes when they return in either body bags or upright, regardless of how many they have killed in defending us in foreign lands, on distant shores, thousands of miles away.

Let them carry on sorting out these weak, war torn and sorry countries so that they take on board our right and good way of doing things.

Of course, the West won the war against Western Nazism, next we won it against Soviet Communism and got them to introduce our capitalism.  We never beat Chinese communism but we just got them to introduce capitalism, anyway.  And, without bringing our capitalism down the barrel of a gun, like Mao tse Tung tried to do with his revolution!  Now we are winning the war against those Muslim terrorists who think they can challenge our Western, Christian presence on their holy Muslim soil.  We pay their masters good money for making much better use of their gas and oil than they would ever do!

It simply boils down to the fact that what we do - violent or not - is always morally right and our enemies violent opposition is always morally wrong.  We are the virtuous West against the Islamic terrorists.  The West just can't help being the winners, all along the way - at the expense of the rest of poor humanity!!

The West is simply best.

PROMPTED BY DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S 'AFRICA' - episode 6 - 'The Future”

His talk of climate change and more difficulties for wildlife and humans provoked incensed, vitriolic  comments on 'The Independent' blog site.

1)  Why do so many contributors use such weird and wonderful names?  Are they so ashamed of what they write that they cannot bear to stand by their comments using their real names?

2)  Why does no-one ever concede a point or even give credit to a valid point made by someone else in the discussion?

3)  Nothing that the climate scientists tell us, ever makes the slightest difference.  We all go our own sweet way, anyway.  We all carry on regardless with our fingers crossed, doing what we want to continue with our ever-rising and unsustainable material standards of living.

4)  Even if the climate scientists are wrong (I hope they are) and James Delingpole IS right about everything (I hope he is), is it not wise to take all the many positive, practical and helpful measures that will leave more finite resources for future generations?  Living more simply so that others may simply live is simply ethical and ecological.

1. The history of the planet is one of constant warming and cooling periods that is perfectly natural and normal. What we, so intelligent and sophisticated and clever humans are doing, is NOT – and, we are part of nature and NOT above it and that is the problem!

2. It seems to have started with the white European races burning and clear felling their forests for farming and building. Now, everyone is doing it. Next, the Europeans started on the fossil fuels – in earnest from the 18^th century – converting carbon into carbon dioxide. Now, everyone is at it. So far, we have got away with it. It may not be for ever, however.

3. Margaret Thatcher, in one of her three major speeches on the environment as Prime Minister, commenting on our industrialisation said, "we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.”

4.  This not too dissimilar from the more direct, "Either, we get our numbers and our activities into harmony with the powers of the earth to support life or, collapsing eco-systems will do the job for us." In other words, we either live within the rules of the way the planet works or, we get our come-uppance.  We respect and preserve and in harmony with eco-systems (life support systems) or, they collapse and our numbers and activities suffer.  We live within Nature's parameters or, Nature has the last word.

5.  The other unfortunate effect of ripping through our one-off geological inheritance is that we leave nothing for our children and grandchildren who will then be up against it. But, that doesn't matter because it will NEVER happen in OUR lifetime – and that's all that matters!

The potentially rich Falklands are OURS and OURS alone. Good-o!

Is there not a good comparison, here with N Ireland - and our other remnants of Empire?

The clear majority in N Ireland, want to remain in and with the UK and not become part of 

the Republic of Ireland that seems more logical and fair. Until that changes, these two tiny 

remnants of our glorious British Empire will remain for ever British. Just like Gibraltar, too. 

What other lands around the globe belong to us Brits, can someone tell me? All this,

thanks to our invading and occupying forces over the centuries.

"Grab and brag.  Occupy and fortify" - a Victorian sentiment quoted by Jeremy Paxman in  

his BBC TV series on the British Empire.

The Falkland islanders had better not change their mind, now with all the rich mineral 

resources around their islands that us Brits and us Brits, alone can make good use of in 

the years to come.

Our good, great and glorious Empire still has its uses to enrich us, still to this day. What a 

pity that N Ireland and Gibraltar don't have any oil reserves to enrich the homeland!