Wednesday 17 April 2013

RANDOM THOUGHTS


This from the Facebook Page of YES to an Independent Scotland:

I do believe that the "No" campaign might have been trying to mislead us as I recently found some strange anomalies in their argument during a recent trip to Belgium and France.

1) I sailed to Zeebrugge on a ship that was called the "Pride of York". It was built in Govan, but was owned by P&O not the MoD. The NO people told me that Govan can only survive if it gets MoD contracts, but they apparently build ship for other people too.

2) I travelled from Belgium to France on a motorway and there were no border controls, just a sign. The NO people said Scotland and England would have border passport checks. Could they be lying about this too?

3) I visited Brugge which is in a small country called Belgium with a population of ~11 million. They use the Euro for currency, but they seemed to have a vibrant economy and I didn't see any closed shops unlike my hometown of Ayr where they use the Pound and have lots of closed shops.

4) On the way into Brugge I saw lots of Wind Turbines, but the city was full of tourists. The No people tell me that tourists hate wind turbines and that wind turbines destroy tourism. This didn't seem to be the case in Belgium.

5) When in Belgium I visited a WW1 cemetery where the vast majority of graves were of soldiers from Scottish regiments. I read that 1 in 4 Scots soldiers died in WW1 where as 1 in 10 was the average fatality rate for other UK soldiers. This seemed strange as the "No" people tell me we are "Better Together", but it seems that we suffered 60% more fatalities than we should have done if we had the same fatality rate as the rest of the UK.

I am now confused and suspect that I may have been deceived by the "Better Together" campaign and the British media.


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According to the Daily Mail: 

"Now, as the shifting sands of UK oil duty settle into place, the industry is expecting several years of lacklustre investment to give way to a mini-boom."

"Barring unforeseen disasters, the life of Britain's most valuable natural resource may yet last decades longer than ever seemed possible."

"Nearly 40 years after production began in 1975, there are about 20bn barrels of oil left under the North Sea. A hefty chunk of Britain's finances will depend on the oil industry's success in finding and extracting them."


Alex Salmond told the Andrew Marr Show that the industry forecast for the next 40 years was for a greater income than the last 40 years. 

Eddy Mair retorted with..."ah, but it won't last forever".

... What can you say to that, except "Good old dependable BBC. They may put you down but they never let you down".

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Johann Lamont has been criticised by Labour MPs over her plans for further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament.
MPs claim that they were not consulted about the plans and one MP described them as ‘barking’. Scotland on Sunday also claimed that Lamont hadn't  bothered to discuss her proposals with Ed Balls.
Why is it that Johann never seems to manage to pull all the parts of the party, of which she is supposedly leader, together, before she makes monumental changes to Labour Party policy, apparently working from notes made of the back of a fag packet? Who is advising this woman?

19 comments:

  1. Excellent, more power to your pc.

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  2. Thanks, Will C... Sometimes, given the internet speeds in Dundee, I say the same thing.

    :)

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  3. Oops!
    I thought I was the only one getting lied to by the (not so) Better Together crowd, guess I was wrong........AGAIN! :-)

    Funny that there is a SMALL: country somewhere in EUROPE that is managing to do quite nicely thank you very much whilst doing things exactly OPPOSITE to what the (not so) Better Together crowd tell US can NOT be done! Glad you were able to find this SMALL country in EUROPE and DISPROVE these terrible terrible LIES that the (not so) Better Together gang have been spreading!

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  4. I saw the comment about wind turbines, and I just can't resist a comment. Wind turbines are a blot on the landscape, whereas a properly constructed and maintained nuclear power plant is, by comparison, relatively unobtrusive, relatively safe, and greenhouse-gas-emission free. The French have gotten it right.

    On the nuclear subject, it would be inappropriate for me to opine on defense (defence) policy. But absent a change in geopolitics and human nature, great powers (if they want to remain both free and alive at the same time) must have nuclear weapons. But the issue of Trident is not a nuclear safety issue. Nuclear submarines, and for that matter thermonuclear weapons, do not offer environmental or safety hazards beyond conventional military hardware of comparable size. So if the English are refusing to base the Tridents in England because of proximity to large population centers, then the issue seems simply political. It's certainly not a public safety issue.

    On the other hand, if you fire thermonuclear weapons, they are REALLY dangerous. ;))

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    Replies
    1. greenhouse-gas-emission free.

      Nuclear Is NOT a Low-Carbon Source of Energy

      Nuclear energy is not the “clean” energy its backers proclaim. For more than 50 years, nuclear energy has been quietly polluting our air, land, water and bodies—while also contributing to Global Warming through the CO2 emissions from its construction, mining, and manufacturing operations. Every aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle—mining, milling, shipping, processing, power generation, waste disposal and storage—releases greenhouse gases, radioactive particles and toxic materials that poison the air, water and land. Nuclear power plants routinely expel low-level radionuclides into the air in the course of daily operations. While exposure to high levels of radiation can kill within a matter of days or weeks, exposure to low levels on a prolonged basis can damage bones and tissue and result in genetic damage, crippling long-term injuries, disease and death.

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  5. No Arbroath, there are many small countries in Europe that are doing quite nicely. Off the top of my head I can think of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria.

    I think we have to resign ourselves to the fact that if you have no good argument for your stance, you have to invent one.

    The reason Labour politicians want us to stay together is that THEY are better off together, what with their knighthoods and seats in the Lords and pensions and power playi8ng and all the crap that goes with being a pretend superpower. So super in power that you have to starve your sick to death to pay for it.

    That doesn't matter to millionaires like Miliband and Camerfool. They'll never be poor.

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  6. Thought so! :-)

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  7. Well Danny, if someone asked me whether I'd rather have a windmill at the bottom of my garden, or a nuclear power station, I know what I'd choose.

    Nuclear power stations may be safe, but the number of times that unsafe radioactivity is found in waters and land in the UK (and the authorities do nothing much about it) is pretty disgusting.

    This of course could be because of the duplicity that surrounds these matters in the UK establishment. I know all the lies they told about Windscale. I know about what is important to these people.

    And the safety of the population isn't that far up the scale.

    In the UK everything that is done, except those things that are done for the upper classes, is second rate, cheap crap. The funeral of Thatcher cost a fortune, so it was well done. No money was spared. Most things done by the state here are second rate. The gilt wears off after the first week; cheap materials and corner cutting. We know that is what happened at Windscale. And because of cost cutting and penny pinching they nearly blew Cumbria off the face of the earth, along with all the people in it.

    I wouldn't trust Cameron with anything like that. Not in our country. And I wouldn't trust Miliband either, because he's turned out to be cut from the same unappealing cloth as Etonboy.

    When it comes to the weapons, you can never guarantee that they will be properly maintained either.

    We have an expression in Scotland "Fur coat and nae knickers"... indicating someone who is all show and no substance.

    That's the UK. We don't REALLY have an independent nuclear deterrent. It belongs to America. We pay for it, but it requires navigational codes before it can be fired, and we are not considered trustworthy enough (god knows, I don't blame America for that) to have these codes.

    So we pretend we have nuclear weapons (and get to sit at the pinnacle of the world as a result thereof) while our populations are denied decent medical care, schools, transport and roads that you could actually drive along without falling into potholes.

    The weapons may be safe, of course, but if someone drops a bomb on them, I suppose they will take most of Glasgow with them. Whilst I can understand that that would mean little to David Cameron (except that he'd have to buy new nuclear weapons), you would have thought that Labour would have cared a bit about the loss of so many working class voters.

    But who can tell with these politicians. The latest batch seem not only to be self obsessed, they also appear to be particularly thick.

    I prefer to be without them, and I prefer a few windmills to the constant threat of a nuclear explosion or meltdown 50 miles up the road. After all our countryside has been blighted with pylons for 70 years, and that didn't stop tourists coming. As for Trump, he can take his golf course and go home if he doesn't like the view.

    The costs of nuclear power generation appear to be enormous, and of course none of the power companies in England want to take the financial risk, so they are holding the government to a deal that will guarantee them big profits, with the government picking up the cost of decommissioning, and storage for 10,000 years.

    In France they probably have regulations about safety, but I'd not trust Brits with it.

    Bound to end in tears.

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  8. Tris, you make a valid point about a nuclear weapons base. YOUR weapons are safe enough to store there, but there could be a problem if ANOTHER country decides to bomb them. But that's not supposed to happen, since the other guy knows you'll then bomb HIM. Now what could POSSIBLY go wrong with that? LOL.

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  9. PS: BTW, American nukes are the safest in the world. They have sophisticated safing mechanisms which prevent them from going off without the codes. Another country bombing them, for example, will not make them explode. So if an attack is to take out Glasgow, it will be the other guy's nukes that do it. Yours will remain safe.....except of course for the nuclear material contamination that will occur if they are physically blown open. Weapons grade Plutonium used in nukes is only dangerous for about 10,000 years.

    I'm pleased to put your mind at ease over this.

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  10. Oh well, that's fine then Danny. Towards the end of my 10,000 year life, I may be able to come out of the bunker which the British government has so kindly provided for... oh no, wait a minute. The bunker is only for royals and senior UK cabinet members... Bugger!

    Oh well, back to the drawing board on that one.

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  11. Thanks Arbroath... erm... I've got a really gripping murder mystery to solve at bedtime... and a book to read LOL

    You have done rather a lot of research here...

    I know Dounreay was a sieve... the water between the mainland and Orkney was has cooked fish, with 4 heads!!!

    I believe the Irish government has had to complain about high levels of radioactivity in their waters, which are traced back to Cumbria.

    I don't doubt that nuclear can be safe. The Japanese seem to have a really good record (until the tsunami), and I have to say that I've not heard much in the way of problems in France, but this load of corner cutting cheaparses aren't fit to be let out with a box of matches.

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  12. I've not heard much in the way of problems in France,

    It might be something to do with it being largely government owned! Just saying.

    'Hundreds of problems' at EU nuclear plants

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  13. AH, CH... I should clearly research before I say these things...

    Soon Scotland will be the only safe place to be... unless one of our hydro dams bursts....

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  14. Ahhhh Tris...you've spotted the danger of hydroelectric power. Here is the Teton Dam in eastern Idaho on June 5, 1976.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEdM6Ys6spA

    So nothing is safe. Compared with a hydroelectric plant, (or the belching fumes of a coal powered plant,) a nuclear power plant is a piece of cake from a safety standpoint.

    As for the dangers of wind power. Sooner or later, one of those ugly wind turbines will fall over on a group of hikers. ;)))

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  15. I'm thinking it might be better to get some candles in, and a nice thick blanket... and do without all this power stuff.

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