Would Stings Like This Be Allowed Here?
The BBC has a piece this morning about the rise of the FBI sting. IT would appear that Christopher Tappin, a man with previous good character might have got caught in one and he’s now in a prison in the United States.
I suspect that if the British police used similar techniques, the evidence wouldn’t stand up in a court.
But then our justice system is about justice, whereas the one in the United States is about vengeance.
More Beggaring Belief!
When I wrote the post, This Story Beggars Belief, I just thought it was a one-off, by a total stupido in the US military.
But no! They also managed to lose some of the bodies from the September 11th attack on the Pentagon, according to this story. No-one seems to know where they ended up.
This Story Beggars Belief
The man who ordered this book-burning in Afghanistan has a functioning brain as poor as that of Dominique Strauss-Khan. Surely, he should have known that to burn anything slightly sensitive would have caused a riot. And of course it did!
Today, the day after the Times has leader entitled, Flaming Idiocy, on the subject.
Un-American Activities
The Times devotes its second leading article to their process of shipping people halfway across the world to stand trial without the evidence being tested in a court of law, where the accused has had the opportunity of testing the evidence.
The article finishes with this paragraph.
The national interest of the US lies in living up to its own rhetoric, and demonstrating that, wherever someone lives, the American promise of freedom under the law extends to them. Arresting people and shipping them half way across the world without a fair trial is the sort of thing that the founding fathers made it their life’s work to prevent.
The sooner we call time on this law the better.
What worries me is that I have a common name, which is probably one of the most common in the English-speaking world. Suppose the United States said say, that I was behind some notorious Internet hack, would I get the justice of having the evidence tested in a British Court. Possibly not, because Tony Blair signed my rights away, just as he did to everybody other British citizen, who lives peaceably within the law in the UK.
Could Fracking Be The Saviour of the North?
I can remember a documentary on the BBC in probably the 1960s about how a Scottish company extracted oil from shale rock. I don’t know whether they still do. I have just found this museum to the industry and it says it closed in 1962.
According to today’s Sunday Times, there is enough shale gas in the shale deposits mostly in the north of England to last 70 years.
Now I know extracting shale gas is controversial, especially, where the process of fracking is used. There was controversy in the Blackpool are, as fracking was blamed for a couple of small earthquakes. Read about it here.
But then there was controversy, when horseless carriages first arrived on British roads and they had to be preceded by a man with a red flag.
I’m not saying there is no risk from fracking, but I do think, that with proper research fracking will be safe to use in many places in the world.
And eventually, it will be used in many places in the UK, when the problems are sorted out. After all, we mined coal for years, despite the subsidence risk nearby.
And remember that for the same amount of energy coal produces forty-percent more CO2! This is because coal is pure carbon, whereas natural gas is a mixture of Hydrogen H2 and Methane, CH4, so it produces a large proportion of water when it burns.
Hopefully, I’ll know more later in the week, when I have gone to the Geological Society of London to hear a lecture.
The other thing about shale gas in the UK, is that it is located where we need jobs; in the north of England. So it becomes a vote winner for whoever wants to play the shale gas card.
Any extraction of shale gas, should be linked to two measures.
1. A local extraction tax, that goes directly to the local authorities over the extraction. This was proposed in the seventies, by someone I knew, as a means of pursuing oil extraction in places like Surrey, which in his knowledgeable view was one of the most likely places to find oil in the UK. Imagine the fuss it would create if large quantities of oil were found under say Epsom. But if Surrey got enough money to build everything they needed, the reaction of some might be different.
2. Full insurance for any buildings damaged by extraction process.
Politicians and the press will see it as a simple black and white issue. Most will be against! I see it as a multi-coloured jigsaw, that must be based on sound technology.
I would start by setting up an well–funded Institute of Fracking, at a university that has the reputation to recruit some of the best researchers in the world. It may prove that fracking is a dead end but if it showed that it was economically viable in the UK, we would reap the benefit in spades.
I have just found this article from the American Consumer Institute. It makes a lot of interesting points. Note that the United States has a local extraction tax in some or all states and this seems to push opinion in various directions.
I think the worst thing we could do is ban fracking, with the second worst being to ignore it.
Whatever we do, because we have so much of this gas, we should set up some form of research institute.
There is also a page of expert opinion to the Qradilla report on the links between fracking and earthquakes at Blackpool.
US’s Legacy To German Pharmacist
Obviously, it a day for German stories, this one was on the BBC.
But at least it proves there’s nothing wrong with American lard, no matter how old it is.
Newt Gingrich Faces His Biggest Fight
Newt Gingrich seems to have one of the biggest requirements for a Republican Presidential Candidate; stupidity.
According to this piece in the Guardian , he has now started to use Eye of the Tiger, the theme song from Rocky III as his campaign song. But Newt didn’t ask permission from the copyright holder.
I suppose Newt could fight Sylvester Stallone for the right to use it. Now that would be a fight worth seeing, but it would be rather pointless, as I think Sly doesn’t actually own the rights.
So helpful Guardian readers have provided some suitable alternatives for Newt.
D.I.V.O.R.C.E
Space Oddity
Frontier Psychiatrist
Tragedy
When Two Fools Collide
Stupid White Men
You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly
Etc. Etc.
But the two I like are Born to Lose by Ray Charles and Go Now by The Moody Blues.
The Americans Don’t Have A Sense of Humour
It’s all here.
I rest my case!
Now we have even more reasons to not visit the Land of the Hi-tech Death Penalty!
Why Does My Computer Call Me Jim?
I know I’m called James, although not everybody who reads this blog knows that.
But why does this computer sometimes call me Jim. No-one does that. In fact it was my father’s nickname, so I wouldn’t have used it would I?
Does anybody know how to change this American rediculousness?
Incidentally, if anybody calls me Jim on the phone, I immediately put it down, as it is probably a scam.
The Anonymous Widower 