Reader's Letter Of The Day

From today's Metro:

Cynic as I undoubtedly am in matters relating to government bodies and the political correctness that now prevails, I still find it disgusting that the wishes of the tax-paying majority were ignored in favour of a non-taxpaying minority - in this case, oversexed salmon.

The people of Cockermouth which has suffered terrible flooding (Metro, Mon) had asked that the River Derwent be dug deeper to prevent this crisis but were turned down by government bodies because of the rights of salmon to procreate where they choose.

I would ask two questions. Firstly, how much money was spent by government agencies in protecting these over-libidinous salmon? Secondly, how much money was not spent on the basic maintenance of these bridges?

Sue Hudson, London W2"
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Not wishing to take anything at face value, I did a quick Google and find that this story was in The Daily Mail two days ago, and would appear to be true. From the article:

Jacqui White, Gote Road, Cockermouth, said: 'I attended a meeting with Natural England earlier this year when we told them we wanted to dig 10ft deeper so that the waters wouldn't flood and alleviate any flooding. But the officials there stood up and told the meeting that the salmon in the river were more important.'

Natural England have form for this. Bastards.
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UPDATE: if you have another half a minute to spare, please follow the link which Banned left in the comments.

Daily Politics covers the climate change fraud emails

Another ten minutes on yesterday's Daily Politics with Professors Bob "[temperatures have risen by] about 0.75° Celsius over the last one hundred and fifty years" Watson and Fred "why hasn't there been warming over the last ten years" Singer, interviewed by Andrew "[since 1998] temperatures have ... been static or in a modest decline" Neill.

All textbook stuff. What's particularly amusing is that Watson chose a hundred and fifty years ago as a random starting point even after Singer had explained that there was a Little Ice Age three hundred years ago since when temperatures have bounced back.

Thanks to John Page for the tip-off.

Newsnight covers the climate change fraud emails

A rather lengthier piece (12 and a half minutes) starting at 1 min 12 secconds on yesterday's programme. Unlike Channel 4, they interviewed a sceptic, Fred "the models are useless ... we conclude that the cause of climate change is primarily natural" Singer, as well as a warmenist.

H/t Dearieme. The girl is indeed very plain.

Channel 4 News covers the climate change fraud emails

At 18 minutes 18 seconds into part 3 of this evening's news.

They usually invite two people to give opposing views, but this time they just allowed some 'climate change scientist' to deny all charges. They did mention that Nigel Lawson has called for an enquiry into all this nonsense, we'll see what comes of that.

Fun Online Poll Results: value for taxpayers' money

Thanks to everybody who voted in last week's Fun Online Poll. Responses to the question "Who is better value for taxpayers' money?" (bearing in mind they appear to cost about the same amount of money) were:

The Royal Family - 67%
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission - 4%
Neither - 29%

Which is pretty much as I expected. FWIW, I am mildly pro-Royal family, because they are fairly cheap to run (I was once handed a Communist Party leaflet that said they cost each UK citizen 60p a year!), they bring in a lot of tourists, and more to the point, whatever we replaced them with would probably be far worse/more expensive.
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Continuing in the same vein, I found out last week that the UK has, per capita, nearly twice as many public sector employees as the Republic of Ireland (or perhaps it's one-and-a-half times as many, but certainly a lot more). I've never been to Ireland, but from talking to people who have, I've never been given the impression that public services there are noticeably worse than in the UK.

So I'd be grateful if all you jet setters and globe trotters could give me a steer on how public services compare on either side of the Irish Sea. Vote here or use the widget in the side-bar.

No, I think you mean Switzerland.

From The Metro: UK must be at heart of Europe - PM.

As an aside, I note that the petition demanding that politicians say "European Union" when they mean "European Union" and "Europe" when they mean "Europe" is not going too well ...

Modest Ambition Of The Week

Borders' UK bookstores look for buyer

I wonder if they'll roll out the red carpet for me if I pop in to buy a book on the way home?

"Angry kangaroo slashes man in underwater dog attack"

Animal attacks being taken to new levels in today's Metro.

Is that what it was all about?

From the BBC:

... the capital of Afghanistan is experiencing a boom in real estate prices which defies the downward trend for property in many other parts of the world. According to local estate agents, prices in some parts of Kabul have risen by 75% in the past year.

Part of this increase is due to the prices that international agencies are willing to pay to acquire properties in the best locations. But wealthy Afghans, who have seen their property portfolios in Dubai plummet over the past year, have also pulled their investments out of the Gulf to plough back into Kabul. Most of those Afghans earned their money from contracts they have with the military and construction projects, although some acquired it from proceeds of the drug trade and buying property provides them with a means of laundering illicit gains.

Comma confusion, Comment Only Sunday

B emailed me to say that the comma in my strapline was in the wrong place - the second sentence of the telegram should read "If not duffers, won't drown"

Hmm. I replied as follows:

Ah, seeing as the original was a telegram, there wasn't any punctuation at all, so we'll have to apply logic. I have always - for the past thirty five years - understood it to mean

Sentence 1:
"I don't want to have children who are duffers, so let them go sailing: if they drown, that proves they were duffers, in which case that's no great loss" (thus implying that he doesn't think they are duffers, obviously, he's not that heartless.)

Sentence 2:
"If my assumption that they will drown if they are duffers is incorrect, then obviously duffers don't drown" i.e. I'll have to find some other way of [sorting out the wheat from the chaff].

To be quite honest, if you put the comma where you put it (and a quick Google shows that most other people put it there as well) then both sentences mean exactly the same thing. Seeing as he was sending a telegram where every word costs money, it appears unlikely that Captain Walker would just repeat himself.

I can't find my copy of the book right now, but the kids discuss it and they come to the same conclusion as I do - i.e. the first sentence is a bit harsh, so he adds the second sentence to console their mum. And seeing as Arthur Ransome wrote the telegram AND put words in the kids' mouths, that's good enough for me.

Thoughts?

OK, I'm busy today, so shall restrict myself to leaving comments elsewhere for light relief. If you have time to spare, then why not have a crack at JH's Maths At Nine?