Fun Online Polls: Titanic & subsidies for renewables

Well done to the 91% of respondents who chose any direction other than North West and thus avoided steering the Titanic into the iceberg. I trust that none of you cheated by breaking open the cupboard which had the binoculars in it?
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The BBC reported this morning that "More Britons than not regard subsidies for wind power development as a good deal, an opinion poll suggests".

Ho hum. Let's see what real people think.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Stuff in today's Daily Mail which made me smile

1. Al Qaeda terrorist who plotted to blow up subway commuters says he wants a second chance

A second chance at what? Blowing up the subway?

2. Taliban commander turns himself in to Americans... to claim $100 reward on his own 'wanted' poster

'Clearly, the man is an imbecile,' U.S. official says

3. Pranksters 'desecrate' grave of Titanic lookout...

The pranskters took away a wreath which had been laid, which is very disrespectful, but they left some binoculars with the following note:

Dear Fred, sorry for bringing these 100 years too late but better late than never! You said if you had these, you would have had time enough to get Titanic away from the iceberg, so here they are! Luv Francis

Fun Online Polls: Tory-Labour policies & The Titanic

The overall response to last week's Fun Online Poll, with 120 taking part, was as follows:

Which Labour policies did the Tories oppose while in opposition but enact once in government?
Tobacco display ban - 104 votes
Minimum alcohol pricing - 97 votes
Quantitative Easing - 88 votes
Subsidies for first time buyers - 78 votes
2% National Insurance increase - 70 votes
Big Society Bank - 67 votes
Other, please specify - 13 votes*
None. The Tories and Labour are very different - 0 votes.

It was a bit of a trick question actually, because these are all policies first proposed by Labour (or implemented in the case of QE) but not actually implemented until the Tories were in government, so I'm a bit disappointed at how many people had forgotten about the 2% National Insurance increase or the Big Society Bank (which would have been called something else, but it was to be funded by 'raiding' dormant bank accounts).

* Benj submitted "Tuition fees", I'd forgotten that one. I don't think the Tories really wanted to do this, it was just a spur of the moment thing to completely discredit the Lib-Dems in the run-up to the AV referendum.
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Just in case there's anybody who hasn't had enough Titanic-related tomfoolery yet, this week's FOP is a little game.

Pick a direction (not to scale or historically accurate) in the widget in the sidebar and see if you hit the iceberg.

"World's Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg"

From The Onion:

Representation of man's hubris sinks in North Atlantic: 1,500 Dead in symbolic tragedy

Officials of the White Star Line have confirmed the sinking, during her maiden voyage, of the RMS Titanic, the world's largest symbol of man's mortality and vulnerability.

At 4.23 Greenwich Standard Time, the following message was received from the rescue ship Carpathia: TITANIC STRUCK BY ICY REPRESENTATION OF NATURE'S SUPREMACY STOP INSUFFICIENT LIFEBOATS DUE TO POMPOUS CERTAINTY OF MAN'S INFALLIBILITY STOP MICROCOSM OF LARGER SOCIETY STOP

"Let us take a step back from the horror of the tragedy," said Lord Peter Hothcrofte, a British naval historian, "and view it in terms of its grander significance. Simply put, the Titanic was more than a crystallization of the accumulated triumphs of 200 years of Western industrialization wedded to the firm but icy hand of science triumphant. It was a ship larger than any ship need be, which therefore also makes it somewhat of a hyperbole."

"Cameron sinks to new depths"

From the BBC:

British PM David Cameron has returned to the surface after plunging nearly €300,000 (£250,000) down to the deepest place in politics, the Cash For Questions Trench in the west end of London.He made the solo descent in a submarine called "Deep Pocket Challenger", taking over two years to reach the bottom. His party treasurer spent more than half an hour exploring the possibility of a large donation, before a speedy sacking once news reached the surface.

Undercover journalists were kitted out with cameras and lights so they could film the depths to which politicians will stoop. This is the first manned expedition into the murky depths of graft since journalists from the same newspaper tried to trap the then leader of UKIP with similar leading questions and journalists from the BBC caught out three Labour politicians - which took place in 2010.

Before the dive, the Prime Minister told the BBC that making the descent was "the fulfilment of a dream".

He said: "I grew up on a steady diet of sleaze at a time when politicians were living a totally corrupt reality. Peerages were being sold and the entire EU Commission has to resign for corruption. And that's what I grew up with, what I valued from my childhood."

Titanic: The True Story

They showed this documentary on Channel Five just now, in which the world's leading authority in ship-iceberg-related-incidents Dr Robert Gagnon (not to be confused with the fundamentalist Christian nutter), who actually crashes ships into icebergs for 'research purposes', confirmed what I had always suspected, i.e. if the Titanic hadn't tried to steer past the iceberg and instead just hit the damn' thing head-on, it wouldn't have torn a 300 ft gash down the side of the ship, causing five compartments to fill with water and hence causing the ship to sink.

He said there were plenty of examples of ships hitting icebergs head-on, for sure, the front compartment or two were split wide open and filled with water, but the rest of the compartments stayed water tight, he showed pictures of one or two such ships which had limped back into harbour.

Glad we've got that one cleared up, although it's still a tricky problem: do you try and steer round the iceberg; in which case you might miss it completely (best outcome) but risk hitting it sideways and sinking (worst outcome); OR do you just go full steam astern, accept the fact that you will hit the iceberg head-on and hope for the best (embarrassing and expensive to repair, but few fatalities)? Hmmmm.

NIMBYs On The Titanic

A couple of British home owners manage to push their way to the front of the life boat queue and are the first aboard. Once HO2 is aboard, HO1 casts off the lines and pushes the boat away from the sinking Titanic and starts rowing madly.

HO2; "Aren't there supposed to be 24 people in this boat?"

HO1: "No, there's only room for two, one at the front, on at the back. Shut up and get rowing."

HO2; "But if we leave now, then some of those people will drown."

HO1: "No they won't, there are plenty of life boats to go round, surely the White Star Line will have seen to that."

HO2: "No there aren't. I overheard to Captain admitting as much to Kate Winslett. And even if there were, they'd have budgeted for twenty four people in a boat."

H01: "Exactly. So some people are going to drown anyway, what do a few more matter? And look at it this way, we've paid for our ticket and our cruise holiday is ruined. I think the least we can expect is a bit of extra food while we wait to be rescued."

H02: "Oh look, there are some people in the water, just ahead of us, they seem to be in pain. Shall we not stop to pick them up, or else they'll surely drown?"

HO1: "Good grief, what are you thinking? Hard a-port or the blighters will scramble on board! Did I plant that iceberg? Did I ask them to jump in the water? No! So it's up to them to help themselves. They should have got into the queue in time."

HO2: "To be fair, we did push our way to the front a little bit, didn't we? There was that one little boy you pushed overboard."

H01: "Serves his feckless mother right for bringing children in to the world that she's not going to look after him properly. What was the slattern thinking of allowing a young child to run about at midnight? He should have been in bed."

H02: "True... it is an overcrowded planet. This younger generation is just so selfish, isn't it? But look, should we not stop to pick up a few survivors?"

H01: "No certainly not. Do you realise how crowded it is back in England? There's no room for any more people, not since all those Irish navvies came over, stealing our jobs and eating our food. Look at it this way - we're doing the rest of England a favour by thinning out the population. Think how much our food security will improve if there are a few thousand fewer people demanding that houses be built?"

H02: "If you put it like that... and I suppose it's nice to have a bit of space here in the boat. Do you fancy a biscuit? Plenty to go round!"