Government Advisor: “Save the Planet – Have More Abortions”

Jonathon Porritt thinks the best way to save the planet is to kill the people. And it probably wouldn’t matter what Jonathon Porritt thinks, except that he’s the chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, which advises the British Government on environmental issues.

Porritt thinks the Health Service is not spending its limited money in the right way. The environment would be better off if they put less money into curing illnesses and more into abortion services and contraception. “We still have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe and we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth, often among women who are not convinced they want to become mothers.”

We have a high level of pregnancies going to birth! Even with one of the highest abortion rates in the world, we aren’t doing enough. Too many pregnant women have the audacity to give birth.

He also says that families with more than two children are irresponsible. “I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate. I think we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible.”

And what do you do with irresponsible people? You have to bring the power of the State to bear to force them into responsibility. That is the implication of what he is saying. We are asking now. We are working to public policy.

Nancy Pelosi wants to limit children so they aren’t a burden on the public purse. Jonathon Porritt wants to limit them so they won’t be a burden on the environment. The message of the Left is loud and clear. Children are a burden, not a blessing. If you won’t unburden the rest of us with fewer children, eventually the State will step in and do it for you.

The New Stasi

In the former Soviet Bloc, everyone had to be very careful, because no one ever knew if their neighbour was spying on them to report them to the government. Miss those good ol’ days? Welcome to Gordon Brown’s Britain.

As reported today in the Daily Telegraph, if you live in the UK, your neighbours may have been recruited by the local council to report on you. They may be your very young neighbours.

Children as young as eight have been recruited by councils to “snoop” on their neighbours and report petty offences such as littering, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The youngsters are among almost 5,000 residents who in some cases are being offered £500 rewards if they provide evidence of minor infractions.

One in six councils contacted by the Telegraph said they had signed up teams of “environment volunteers” who are being encouraged to photograph or video neighbours guilty of dog fouling, littering or “bin crimes”.

The “covert human intelligence sources”, as some local authorities describe them, are also being asked to pass on the names of neighbours they believe to be responsible, or take down their number-plates.

Ealing Council in West London said: “There are hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged 8-10 years old, who are trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues such as graffiti and fly-tipping.”

Hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers. That’s just the ones working for one council.

Don’t confuse this with a neighborhood crime watch program. This is paying people to look into your garden to see if you have put your rubbish bins in the right place.

This comes at the same time that many councils are only collecting rubbish on a fortnightly basis, because they can not longer afford a weekly service, even though they are still collecting the same amount in council tax. Of course if rubbish has to be stored for twice as long, it is twice as likely that it will result in an infraction of local regulations – more money for the eight-year-old spies climbing over the fence for a peek.

This escalation in Britain’s growing surveillance state follows an outcry about the way councils are using powers originally designed to combat terrorism and organised crime to spy on residents. In one case, a family was followed by council staff for almost three weeks after being wrongly accused of breaking rules on school catchment areas.

It also emerged last month that around 1,400 security guards, car park attendants and town hall staff have been given police-style powers including the right to issue on-the-spot fines for littering, cycling on the pavement and other offences.

Big Brother really is watching.

Truth in Reporting

Last year, Channel 4 ran a programme called The Great Global Warming Swindle. As you might expect, it presented the other side of the doom and gloom carbon footprinted gospel of Al Gore. Actually “gospel” means “good news”. What would be the Greek-derived word meaning “bad news”?  Hmm. . . I digress . . .

As you also might expect, the environuts were not well pleased. They filed complaints with the government broadcasting regulator, Ofcom. (In case you weren’t aware, we have lots of government regulatory bodies that start with “Of”, always pronounced “off” – Ofcom, Ofqual [see the previous article], Ofgem [energy], Ofwat [water], Oftel [telephone], and Ofsted [the school inspectors] for example.) Ofcom has upheld some of the complaints and dismissed some.

They are censuring Channel 4 because some of the proponents of global warming weren’t told that the programme was primarily designed to show the other point of view. It would seem they either would not have participated or would have said things differently.  However, Ofcom couldn’t find the evidence to censure Channel 4 for inaccuracy. This is despite a 131-point 270-page complaint.

The global warming scientific community is very angry that they are just not convincing the general population of their arguments. A recent poll showed that 60% of the British public  believe “many scientific experts still question if human beings are contributing to climate change”. This is despite the Government being behind the global warming message and like it’s American counterpart only providing funding for scientists who support this viewpoint. It is also being promoted very actively in schools, even though I know a number of science teachers who have not bought into the propaganda.

Taking Lazy to a Whole New Level

I was just over at Asda (a wholly owned subsidary of Wal-Mart) to buy a lightbulb for the bedside table of an unnamed woman. I wandered over the electronics, as I am sometimes wont to do.

It was there that I discovered the Standby Buster. The proud owner of a Standby Buster is clearly making a statement. No, not, “See how much I care about the environment!” Rather he is saying, “I am so lazy that I can’t bother to push the button on the telly on the way up to bed.” I mean, how much effort does this really take?

The company that developed the Standby Buster encourages users to plug all of their entertainment appliances into one four-way plug and plug that into their product so all the devices can be shut off at once. That includes the Sky or digital box. These are devices that are designed to be left on, as they re-set when the power goes off and lose programming information.

Missing the Point of Lent

I sat down to write something else, but I checked my email and an saw one of the most ridiculous things in the history of Christianity. I say that realising that there have been some pretty ridiculous things.

The Anglican bishops of Liverpool and London have decided that it is not enough to give up chocolate for Lent. That Anglicans give up chocolate for Lent should tell you something about how far they’ve drifted from Holy Tradition, but I suppose they’re a step better than those who have given up Lent altogether. So maybe you are thinking the good bishops are moving in a positive direction. Wrong.

The Rt Revs James Jones and Richard Chartres want us to give up carbon. Not all carbon, mind you, given that we are carbon-based life-forms. And not actually the eating of carbon – or anything else for that matter. No, it’s much more convoluted than that. They want us to give up a light bulb. Here’s how it works: Light bulbs require electricty; electricity has to be produced; producing eletricity result in the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; Al Gore says that’s bad.

Put differently, the Bishop of Liverpool’s logic is this, “It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change. To carry on regardless of their plight is to fly in the face of Christian teaching.” The poor are suffering the effect of climate change? Seems to me the warmer weather makes it easier to sleep rough. People in substandard housing with poor insulation are paying less for heating. How are the poor suffering?

I’m not particular good at doing Lent (which for Orthodox Christians doesn’t start until March 10), but I won’t be using it for making a political statement based upon specious science. I hope you won’t either.

The Wall

There are so many things in the news it is hard to decide what deserves comment, or more accurately what comments might draw readership. When I moved from my previous blog location for privacy reasons, it appears to have worked too well. Even people who are supposed to remember where I’ve gone seemed to have forgotten.

If I were to write about local events, it would be the flooding. It hasn’t affected us too much directly, but once again Britain seems to be under water. We are only affected because the local Asda store was granted permission to build on a flood plain. To do so, they had to pay about £10 million toward local flood defenses. The only thing that seems to be defended is the Asda store. Otherwise, there are houses that have never flooded before that are now in danger.

Don’t tell this to the Evironment Agency, of course. They have actual gone around to people’s homes and told them where the flooding reaches in their gardens. The people who live there tell the civil servants that they are wrong, but the residents are rebuffed because the computer projections show otherwise. There’s no arguing with a bureaucrat.
The only direct effect on us is that our view has been ruined temporarily by heavy machinery, mounds of earth, and blocked drains, and permanently by mounds of earth and a six-foot concrete wall where there was once a hedge. Oh, and they had to chop down a significant number of trees that were several hundred years old. All of this was to build a wall no one wanted, to stop flooding that has only become a problem since they built the wall.

Now with the recession in the housing market, it’s not like we need something ugly like this to bring down property values.

Paper Everywhere

The Year 11 reports are printed. I was late home tonight because after I dislodged some paper from my printer, it refused to work. This happened just after the computer tech went home and I couldn’t figure out how to network to a different printer. So I fiddled and fiddled with it, until for no apparent reason, it decided to start printing again.

I have doubts as to how many parents are actually going to read my reports. After all, if parents took my subject more seriously, some of the kids probably would, too. But no matter, reports are what we write.

We were told on our INSET day that PSE (Personal and Social Education) is moving toward an assessed model. Since we all teach PSE to our forms, there was a general outcry about more marking, especially marking that is very dubious in value. But everybody seemed to agree that if there was paperwork to be done, the Government would find more of it for us to do. We are an “eco school”, but even the students openly wonder how this can be when we go through so much paper. And every piece of it goes across a teacher’s desk.

Then there’s the post. Every day I get anything from a few to a stack of offers for every possible resource or course. Sometimes I get the same thing twice on the same day. It all goes in the bin.

I try to re-use worksheets and handouts. Nonetheless, my copies are slowly destroyed as they get used by three or four sets of pupils, and they supply has to be continually replenished.

My recycling bin is in constant overflow. But not with reports. Those end up in someone else’s bin.