Rumours unlimited

No regrets

The local newspaper the Argus sounds a bit miffed.

Their defence is that they were just ‘doing their job’ by printing baseless rumours. I have sent them this letter. In the past they have cut outs bits they do not like.

"You were blamed Argus not for ‘doing your job’ but for spreading a false rumour that alarmed 350 local families unnecessarily.

Even the Tory MP who contacted you said that he expected you to check before rushing into print. You ran the scare for two days before checking with the local MPs who knew the truth.

You reported ‘a secret plan’ to ‘close Newport Passport Office’. Balderdash.  There was no plan. One phone call to either Jessica Morden or myself would have scotched that falsehood immediately.

Our city has been a very successful magnet for attracting and retaining civil service jobs. Crying wolf on job losses is demoralizing and feeds the antagonism against relocating jobs in Newport that is prevalent in London.  The Office for National Statistics jobs came here in spite of a concerted anti-Newport campaign.

Spreading gloomy false rumours does not help. Let’s hope the lesson is learned"

The Tory MP David Davies e-mailed me and said “I suggested to the Argus, who had also heard about this, that they speak to the Home Office to get a comment before going to print. I am not sure if this happened.’

There was no a hint of any regrets in the Argus Editorial that there is anything wrong is running screaming headlines that spread rumours where there is not a scintilla of evidence.

There are other people with a vested interest in stirring up jobs panic in Newport. I will not name them. Suffice to say they have done the same thing before.

Blogged-out

It’s a problem lots of bloggers would like to have, but I must draw a halt.

There have been 114 comments and 2,000 extra hits on my blog on the smoking ban.  Most of the contributions are detailed, thoughtful and reasonably if ferociously argued. (See the 29th June Posting and follow the small chevrons).

They were similar explosion of comments from the Climate Change Deniers, the Evangelical Christians in the recent past. The Freedom2Change people are all deeply into the arguments that they have probably used many times before. There is no chance of any political party reversing the ban. What they are seeking is changes in the numbers of smoking areas when the ban is assessed in 2010.

As I recall it, it was felt when the ban was introduced, was that any concessions of this kind would drive a coach horse through the ban and undermine it. The simple overall ban left no room for doubt. It has been widely accepted.

There is some desperation in the arguments against the ban. Including putting the blame on the ban for the murder of a nurse who left a hospital to smoke. That was before the ban was introduced. Allow smoking in hospitals?

Inevitably some blame the Government. Why not?. They blame the Government for everything else. The ban has been introduced successfully throughout many countries and is here to stay.

Reluctantly, I must  stop answering the comments. There is not enough time. Some valiant bloggers have brilliantly presented the case for a ban.  100 plus comments have squeezed this  subject bone dry.

Ardderchog

Great excitement at the prospect of days at the Eisteddfod next week.

It’s chance to meet friends, old and new and wallow in the Welsh atmosphere. The first one I attended was in 1953 as a starry-eyed sixth former. It was the longest journey I had ever undertaken to exotic Rhyl.

I was in a group of Welsh Language scholars, one each from every education authority in Wales. Among the group was a girl who was later to become the mother of Guto Harri.

There will be some politics and gossip this week. But the best part of the week will be plunging deeply into the joys of Welsh literature and music.

Can’t wait.

STOP PRESS

Sellafield has public 'blank cheque'

By Michael Savage

Monday, 4 August 2008

The consortium with a £20bn contract to clean up Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant has been handed a blank cheque by the Government to pay for future accidents there.

Taxpayers would pick up a tab for hundreds of millions of pounds in the event of a serious security breach at the Cumbria facility. One estimate puts the cost of Britain's previous nuclear clean-ups at around £83bn.

The winner of the contract, which will last for up to 17 years, is a consortium led by the troubled French firm Areva. It will be responsible for clearing 60 years' worth of highly toxic nuclear waste. The consortium expects to earn around £50m a year from the deal.

Areva has been under siege in France after two uranium leaks were discovered this summer. A leak last month at its nuclear site at Tricastin, southern France, led to an official inquiry. Uranium was subsequently found escaping from a ruptured pipe at a second plant.

A parliamentary answer by the Energy minister Malcolm Wicks, given just before Parliament broke for the summer recess, reveals that the Government has no limit on the risk to the taxpayer. His answer has not appeared on the online version of Hansard, the parliamentary record, as is usually the custom.

Mr Wicks said: "Whilst the impact of any call on the proposed nuclear indemnity could be very high, there is only an extremely small possibility of the indemnity ever being used ... There is no commercially available insurance."

The government agency that runs Sellafield, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), offered all four bidders for the contract an indemnity as part of the deal, protecting the private firms from footing the full cost of an incident at the facility.

The NDA, awarding the contract, claimed that, in line with a long-established convention, all companies involved in the bidding process had to insure themselves against the first £140m of the costs of an accident.

For MPs and environmentalists opposed to the use of nuclear power, the government guarantees to the private bidders was further evidence that it was "obsessed" with nuclear power.

Paul Flynn, the MP for Newport West, who asked the parliamentary question of Mr Wicks, said: "It is just the latest sign that the Government has been totally seduced by the Pied Piper of the nuclear industry. The Government is putting its faith in nuclear power, literally at any price."

Comments

[Basil Brown]

I'm not a member of F2C btw, but I did belong to the Labour Party once. Back before they started going in for social-engineering, wars, national-databases, Workfare, broken-promises etc.

[paulflynn]

Not complaining, are you?

'Brain-dead nutters' is a perfectly fair description of the comments that litter many blogs. They are racist, obscene and cretinous. This blog is for thinking people.

Even without the loubmouths, there are more than 100 comments and replies. That is more than enough for a full debate.

[Jolly Roger]

Once again Paul, you cause offence,
In your latest attempt at a defence.
Why use the term 'brain dead nutter'?
It's enough to make me stop and splutter.
This pejorative term re: mental illness,
Is enough to disturb my late night stillness.
My poor late Wife, who rests with the worms,
Was sometimes referred to, in those terms.

It causes offence. Do you get it yet?
There's many an alternative epithet,
That you could use to plead your case.
The use of the 'n' word is YOUR disgrace.
I daresay the mentally ill of your Ward.
Will not be best pleased by your disregard,
For the suffering that this word certainly brings.
Please be assured Paul, it certainly stings.

I'm sure that your lexicon is not so depleted.
That your crude cruel term needs to be repeated.
This simply offensive and lowdown tautology,
Is certainly deserving of contrite apology.
Or is this just more of New Labour.
Attacking the vulnerable, even your neighbour.
So withdraw the words, just be discreet.
If not, I'll remind you, next time we meet.

[paulflynn]

We have missed you Jolly Roger. I have removed the expression as it has been generally misunderstood. Welcome back.
The term is a tempting one to use about the humourless, racist, foul-mouthed lifeforms that inhabit the comment section of many blogs.

As I pointed out the vast majority of my correspondents are thoughtful and courteous. It's the bottom feeders of the blogosphere that have deleted.

Hope the muse will contined to visit you.

[Paul Flynn]

No More Please Stewart Cowan. You have written to this blog about 20 times in the past 2 weeks putting forward your anti-Satan theories. There is no reason why this blog should be used as a platform for your strange views. I suggest you try to attract people to your own blog in future where you write:-

"God’s people are being tempted into sin by occult organisations. Sex is being promoted ad nauseum as a means of diverting attention away from God, and this includes serious efforts by the U.K. Government and many others. Children are being pressurised into performing sex for this reason. The “safer sex” message is not to limit disease or teenage pregnancy; it is a means of control. The promotion of contraception encourages sexual activity and only increases problems. T What dictatorship wants to encourage this?

The elite knows that Christ is real - but they follow the Antichrist. Think of the implications of that!! They are members of Freemasonry and other secret societies. They participate in occult ceremonies at Bohemian Grove in California. The last U.S. election was between George W. Bush and John Kerry – both members of Skull and Bones – a Luciferian cult based at Yale University that admits just fifteen members per year. They really do have an organised control grid."

Enough said?

[greg]

As much as I hesitate to quote the Sunday Express at you, there was an interesting article which quoted Professor Ian Fells concerning the apparently huge energy gap which is going to open up by 2015.

To cut and paste a few of the most interesting paragraphs:

**************************
Ultimately, Britain’s energy crisis is a game of numbers. According to some estimates we need 30 gigawatts (30 x 1 billion watts) new capacity within the next 10 years to meet population growth and replace the 22.5 gigawatts (about 40 per cent of total output) that will be lost by shutting down older coal and gas plants which fail to meet the latest EU environmental standards.

Even if all current plans come to fruition, they will produce only 15 gigawatts, half what is needed.

With nuclear power now on the backburner once more we may be forced to rely on coal and gas.
******************************************************************

Assuming you do actually need those extra 15-30 gigawatts of electricity, and assuming nuclear doesn't happen, also assuming you want to avoid fossil fuels, can renewables really give you those sort of numbers?

'Energy Independence' is shaping up to play a huge role in the US presidential elections; as I type this, Republicans are staging a 'sit in' during the recess so they can highlight the case for offshore and ANWAR drilling for oil. When North Sea resources run out, what's the plan for keeping people warm in winter? Russian gas?

Regards

Greg

[Basil Brown]

Hey Paul, it's your blog and you can retrospectively self-edit as much as you like, but I am slightly miffed at having my initial contribution to this thread edited to remove the first para in which I chided you for using such terms as "brain-dead nutters" and "deniers".

Labour politicians tend to like imposing linguistic-constraints on others when it is deemed that certain expressions may cause offence to some, so I don't find it consistent with my notion of "respect for one's opponents" that you wish to ridicule and diminish people's contributions by using stereotypical characterisations against them.

[John]

My thoughts about the future and how to handle our energy needs will probably make you think I've lost it...

First we will not be able to sustain the economic growth that we have now and are in for a long period of difficult adjustment where people will not be able to use there cars or power in the home like they do now. I foresee rationing of both power and petrol in the not too distant future.

The bitter pill that no politician is able to swallow is the simple fact that there are too many of us on this planet. We need to introduce tax incentives for families to limit themselves to one child. In 40 years we will have halved the population. Half the cars on the road (if we have any petrol left to run them) over capacity in the Health service and so many other benefits will accrue if this takes place. If we don't it will be forced on us by climate change, water/food/energy wars.
The elderly will all have to do there bit if well enough to contribute to the economy then they will have to be encouraged.
There will be less service/manufacturing work to do more people will have to work on the land to provide food that we can no longer import due to energy constaints.

We can either make this transition easy by taking action now or difficult by it being forced on us by circumstances. Most politicians have their heads up their backsides and don't see furthur than the next election this is tragic. We need expert reviews to suggest ways that we can tackle the rest of this century and for politicians to put this into policy. I don't have much hope that this will occur look at how succesive Governments have handled our future energy security we are really getting nowhere and time is running out fast.If renewables are going to be the only safe way then we will have an economy that needs to run at half the demand it is now. as that is what renewables will only be able to provide..back to population again