How Can We Ever Escape?

But does it go anywhere?

Tyler was asked a very good question today. He was explaining to some normal taxpayers just how big the real National Debt has now become, when one of them put her finger on something very troubling. "But surely if the debt's that big" she said, "how can we ever hope to escape?"

Tyler's immediate response was to advise emigration. But can that be right?

Let's recap a few facts.

The official gross National Debt has just broken through the £1 trillion mark, around £40,000 for every single British household.

But as regular BOM readers will know, that official figure vastly understates the government's real debts (eg see this blog). By the time you've added in unfunded public sector pensions, accrued unfunded state pension liabilities, PFI, Network Rail, etc etc, the real National Debt stands at over £5 trillion. And that's without counting the liabilities of our bailed out nationalised banks, which currently stand at around £2.5 trillion.

Now given that our entire annual GDP is only around £1.5 trillion, the government has amassed debts of 4-6 times our annual income. You try borrowing that kind of multiple from your friendly high street bank - they'd laugh at you, knowing you would never ever be able to pay it off.

And neither will the government.

Moreover, even after all the cuts that George will be announcing on 20th October, and all the accompanying screams we'll hear, he still plans for our debts to go on increasing all the way through this current parliament. By 2015-16 our official gross National Debt will have increased to from £1 trillion to £1.5 trillion, and all the hidden debts will almost certainly be higher too.

So OK, you say, we don't necessarily have to pay off the debt. Maybe we could pay the annual debt servicing costs and just sort of run with it.

Hmm.

According to George's Office for Budget Responsibility, by 2015-16 the government's debt interest payments will have surged to £67bn pa, well over double what they were last year, and a bill of over £2500 pa for every British family.

And to that you have to add the annual cost of unfunded public sector pensions - £32 bn pa by 2015-16 - payments under PFI contracts - £10bn pa by 2015-16 - and unfunded state pensions payments which weigh in at an astonishing £79bn pa by 2015-16 (BSP plus SERPS plus S2P).

Add that lot together and the government's annual servicing bill on its real debts will be running at £188bn pa by 2015-16. Which will be an annual bill of £7500 for every single family, and still rising.

So what then?

More public spending cuts?

Yes, we'll need them. But after 5 years of serious cuts, will the government (of any complexion) have the stomach for yet more?

Tax rises?

Maybe. But tax rises would dent what may still be a sluggish recovery. And tax rises to fund debt servicing costs hardly sound like a vote winner.

The miracle cure of course would be faster GDP growth, painlessly lifting tax revenue and cutting welfare related spending. Which is why the government should bust a gut to stimulate that growth, by for example, canning the 50p tax rate soonest.

But failing a growth spurt, we're left with just one option - default, the traditional escape route for failing governments throughout the ages.

Default on the government's formal debt will be quite easy. Inflation is the key, and as we know, we're already running well above the 2% pa supposedly underwritten by the Bank of England. And with all that extra money the Bank printed still sloshing around, it should remain high for a good while yet.

But default via inflation only really works on the government's official debt. The much bigger unfunded pension debts will be trickier to deal with, since most of the pension payments are formally linked to the inflation index - higher inflation simply means higher payments. Denied a stealth default, the government will have to be much braver on those debts, including a faster and greater increase in the state pension age, and a big cut in public sector pension benefits (much bigger than John Hutton was prepared to let on yesterday).

So where does that leave us?

For the government, escape requires years of spending cuts followed by years of severe restraint. At the same time it requires much bolder action to stimulate sustainable growth (ie tax cuts, especially axing the 50p rate). And unfortunately, the inflation tax looks certain to make a contribution.

For the individual... yup, emigration really does seem the only surefire escape route.

PS Didn't he do well. Longtime readers will recall our previous encounters with Red Ed's right left hand man Sadiq Kahn. Kahn has now ascended to the giddy heights of Shadow Justice Secretary, even though as Guido recounts, he carries a weight of "controversial" baggage. We first clocked him back in 2007 when as a member of the Public Accounts Committee he ate a man in a canoe.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: debt, doom

Doomsday II - Growth Vs Debt

George may have defused it

Fed up with the Major's rant about overpaid nancy boys betraying the nation, Tyler sought relief in the doomsday machine. Post-George, is it still ticking?

As regular readers will know, the doomsday machine is set in motion when a government's debt interest bill gets so big that the government has to borrow increasing amounts just to pay it.

It's like having a credit card, where instead of paying off the interest each month, you borrow more to cover it. Then, even if you stop using the card to make further new purchases (ie no more new England shirts) the debt still gets bigger and bigger and bigger, right up to the moment when doomsday dawns (ie when the credit card company calls to repossess your children). That's the doomsday machine.

Now, for governments, the key debt total is less the absolute size of the debt in cash terms, and more its size in relation to GDP. That's because governments have the power to raise money from tax, and GDP is a broad measure of taxable capacity. So as long as debt isn't increasing in terms of that overall taxable capacity - the argument goes - everything is broadly under control (eg see this blog).

So for governments, what matters is whether GDP is growing faster than the rate at which debt interest is adding to their existing debt.

On that basis, how are things looking for HMG?

Over Labour's last 3 years things have been pretty grim. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), over the period 2007-08 to 2010-11, GDP growth averaged just 1.3% pa (in money terms - ie including both real growth and inflation). Against that, the average interest rate on our debt averaged 4.0%.

Which means that interest costs were increasing our debt by 2.7% pa faster than GDP growth - the government's debt was being increased faster than the taxable capacity of the economy, and the doomsday machine was up and running*.

Fortunately, the OBR now expects a big turnaround. Over the next 5 years it projects GDP growth will accelerate to 5.2% pa (in money terms), whereas the average interest rate on HMG's debt will only increase marginally to 4.1%. That 1.1% gap means that debt interest will no longer be driving up HMG's overall debt relative to GDP.

In a nick of time, the doomsday machine has been stopped.

Phew.

Well, phew except for one thing - these are no more than forecasts.

For one thing, they depend on real GDP growth returning to a pretty healthy 2.7% average rate. Sure, that's not as wildly optimistic as Darling's last bonkers forecast, but it's still pretty demanding in the face of a stuttering European recovery.

They also depend on the government's debt interest rate (gilt yields) staying well behaved, increasing only modestly from current levels. That could well happen, but only so long as markets remain unconcerned about inflation - one good sniff of inflationary finance and yields would shoot up.

And history is not altogether encouraging. Over the long haul (back to 1800), gilt yields tend to more or less track the growth rate of nominal GDP. But you don't have to go back very far to find periods where yields have remained above GDP growth for years (as was the case for most of the 80s and 90s).

All of which underlines the need for fiscal caution. George does seem to have stopped the doomsday machine, but one false move and the mechanism could soon trip back into action.

*Footnote. The relationship between GDP growth, gilt yields, and the government debt ratio is discussed further in the OBR's first pre-budget report here.  The Economist also has a couple of good articles on sovereign debt, and they have also updated their indebtedness league table, showing us in the second worst position after Spain (but note it's a 2010 snapshot and does not take account of George's budget):

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: debt, doom

Fire Up The Doomsday Machine - Brown Could Still Lie His Way Back

Somebody needs to look at this - fast

If he had the energy, and the sun wasn't shining, Tyler would deconstruct Brown's grossly misleading account of history on BBC R4 Today this morning.

Like all that stuff about "boom n bust" somehow only being the government's fault if it's accompanied by inflation - LIKE WHAT IT WAS UNDER THE EVIL TORIES - and how he's cut income tax (overlooking the fact that the basic rate of tax is only one element of the calculation - you also need to take into account the real value of allowances and rate bands, not to mention his increase in National Insurance contribution rates).

But meh... Tyler needs to get out into the sunshine.

So let's content ourselves with the latest sighting of the Doomsday Machine.

As BOM readers will recall, the D Machine is a four-wheel drive beast that can do 0-£5 trillion in well under a decade. At its heart is a turbocharged debt interest payment accelerator that works like this: the government spends far too much money and starts running a big deficit; debt builds up and interest costs start to rise; government revenues fail to keep pace, and there has to be more borrowing just to pay the debt interest; lenders take fright and raise their interest rates; the economy slows further, government revenues sag, there has to be even more borrowing to pay the interest costs, interest rates rise again, the economy sags some more, there has to be more borrowing to pay more interest; and the pressure goes on building up, right up to the moment when the turbocharger explodes, at which point the D Machine is engulfed in a fireball of hyper-inflation.

It couldn't happen here?

The Bank for International Settlements disagrees. In a recent paper on the international outlook for public debt, they point to the UK as being the worst placed of any major economy.

On current policies, they project that by 2040 government debt interest payments in the UK will have ballooned from their current level  under 3% of GDP up to nearly 30% - worse than any other country. The following chart shows public sector debt interest payments as a percent of GDP:

Or to put it another way, by 2040 the average family would be paying (in today's money) over £10 grand every year just to pay the government's debt interest bill.

And by 2040, the BIS estimates that our official public sector debt (ie excluding Enron items like public sector pensions) will be a staggering 550% of GDP (dotted red line):

Of course, this can't happen. Our credit will have been cut off long before we get to debt at that level. By then, we'll either living in a hyper-inflation bartar economy like Zim, or we'll have somehow somewhere found a bunch of politicos with the cojones to cut spending seriously.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: debt, doom

The Return Of Depression Economics

Stick to something lighter like this

Tyler has been listening on his trusty iPod to a rather depressing collection of ditties. They comprise three lectures given last year at the LSE by Prof Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate, left-leaning NY Times columnist, and author of The Return of Depression Economics. And if it's depression you want, this is for you.

Krugman is immensely well informed, and very persuasive. But his economic prescriptions are based on the never ending growth of Big Government.

One of his key messages is that the world as currently constituted has a structural glut of savings. China and most other points East save far too much, and unless someone else spends to fill the gap, the global economy will sink into the abyss of a new Great Depression.

Of course, until 2007, the gap was filled by high spending punters in the US, the UK, Ireland, Greece and all the other usual suspects. But their spending was fueled by wobbling unsustainable balloons of debt, and when the bubble burst, their spending collapsed.

So governments - essentially western governments - have had to step in. Keynesian deficit spending has been exhumed from the vault, dusted off, and put back to work. Government 1, Markets 0. And a good thing too, suggests Krugman.

But what about all the debt our governments are now accumulating? Isn't he worried about that?

Well, no, not really. Debts on the current scale are entirely manageable, and their interest costs small. Anyway one day, something will happen to get someone else to pick up the spending slack - say, a surge in green investment - and governments can start to reduce their debts. Kind of idea.

Hmm.

As we've blogged many times, the debt interest burden dropped onto us taxpayers by HMG is already starting to look ugly. From a bill of £31.5bn this year, the Treasury itself forecasts it will more than double to £71.5bn by 2014-15. Actually, the Treasury refused to divulge this alarming figure - even when formally requested to do so by the Treasury Select Committee - but the IFS has devised a cunning way to back out the Treasury's debt interest projections from the information that HMT does publish (see footnote 7 on page 192 of the IFS Green Budget).

Here's how it looks right from year zero - the moment Brown took the fiscal helm:

Now, in fairness, for his first decade debt interest costs remained pretty well behaved. Indeed, as Jeff Randall reminds us this morning, Prudence Brown positively used to crow about it. In 1998 he was lambasting his spendthrift Tory predecessors, telling Randall:

"Interest payments on the national debt are £25 billion a year. We're spending more on national debt repayment than on schools or law and order, and that is a situation I don't want as a hallmark of a Labour government... The public borrowing requirement was £23 billion last year. We plan to get it down very substantially."

But as time went by, the continued good behaviour of interest costs was less a reflection of Brown's prudence, and more an automatic response to the big fall in gilt yields since the 70s, 80s and early 90s. That fall meant that when old high coupon debt matured on Brown's watch, it could be refinanced at much lower rates, bringing down interest payments. And yes, Bank of England independence did help that process by reassuring the markets about future inflation, but the key driver was the worldwide fall in yields - partly driven of course by Krugman's global savings glut. It had little to do with Brown's prudence, let alone his financial acumen.

And just so we know, HMT's projected increase in annual debt interest costs of £40bn between now and 2014-15 is the equivalent of 10 pence on the standard rate of income tax. 10 PENCE.

Or to put it another way, it's another £1600 of additional taxes for every single household every single year.

And actually there's worse. The Treasury's debt interest forecast assumes that HMG's borrowing costs stay pretty much where they are now - around 4.5%. But in the real world, that's highly unlikely. Gilt yields (ie the interest rate the goverment has to pay) have already ratcheted up by around one percent from their lows last year, and look set to move higher:

So what happens if yields move higher than HMT is assuming?

According to their own forecasts they are going to borrow a net £700bn between now and 2014-15. Add in the need to refinance £200bn of maturing gilts, and they will be borrowing a gross £900bn. Which means that every one percentage point increase in the interest rate they have to pay will, by the end of the period, add £9bn pa to annual debt interest costs.

Now, of course nobody knows how much gilt yields may rise from their current 4.5%, but as we've mentioned before, during the last real funding crisis back in the 70s they got as high as 17.5%. And even if they only went up to half that level, Tyler's fag packet says debt interest costs would exceed £100bn pa by 2014-15. Which would be a £70bn pa increase from current levels, or an additional £2,800pa tax for every single family.

You see, that's the trouble with listening to Paul Krugman and his fellow Big Government economics laureates. They are so incredibly provocative that you end up being forced to examine the facts again. But all that does is to remind you just how grim our public finances are now looking. And how these guys now hold so much sway in the corridors of power, that we seem powerless to save ourselves before the whole wobbling blancmange implodes again.

Depression economics.

Tyler will be replacing Krugman with something more upbeat. Morrisey maybe. Or Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: debt, doom, melt-down

Profoundly Dangerous

Another warning from history

According to Climate Commissar Miliband:

"There are a whole variety of people who are sceptical, but who they are is less important than what they are saying, and what they are saying is profoundly dangerous. Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk."

It is the cry of commissars since the dawn of time - do what I say or risk destruction. It is the same profoundly dangerous arrogance that throughout history has unleashed on mankind famines, purges, wars, and even genocide.

Why can't this preposterous little man simply admit he may be mistaken? Surely the evidence is now crystal clear that the so-called settled science of climate change is nothing of the sort. The exaggerations and outright lies are becoming obvious to all. As is the fact that much of what we've been told about global warming has come from a deeply conflicted industry whose financial prospects depend entirely on scaring us all to death.

What we need more than anything is a grown-up discussion about all this. It's simply not good enough for the Commissars to demonise us sceptics as maniacal flat-earthers. And for Miliband to dismiss the excellent and expert Prof Stott as having his "head in the sand" (as he did today on the World This Weekend), is frankly ludicrous (and see Stott's latest post here).

As for the precautionary principle, if that was the no-brainer he claims, we'd all still be living in caves. Progress has always depended on people being prepared to take risks.

Sure, we could slash our carbon emissions by the 80% he has ordained, but - quite apart from the fact that our emissions comprise less than 2% of the world total so would make virtually no difference to global anything - the cost to our living standards would be catastrophic. As we blogged here, the TPA estimates that that existing "green" taxes and energy regulations already cost the average British family nearly £1,000 pa.

Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture provides a chilling example of where Miliband-style government leads. Despite intense opposition from bourgeois elements (aka the people who actually had to do the work) Stalin and the commissars were absolutely confident that collectivization would hugely expand food supply for the workers. Two years into the programme he boasted that they had "over fulfilled the five-year plan of collectivization by more than 100 per cent", and spoke of comrades being "dizzy with success". They had science and technology on their side, and they were right.

Unfortunately for the Soviet people, Stalin and the Commissars turned out to be wrong. The abolition of private farms led to a collapse in food production, and millions died from starvation. Even Stalin himself later admitted to 10 million deaths, and others put the number closer to 20 million.

That's what happens when commissars decide they're right and doubt is a treasonable act.

PS The rather scratchy vid above is from Russia's state funded English language TV news station, RT, and it's obviously got an axe. But the interesting thing is that RT's axe is to deny the 30s Ukranian famine was an instrument of premeditated genocide, as the Ukranians themselves apparently believe. What nobody denies is that collectivization was a commissar-made disaster of historic proportions.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: doom, profound dangers

Another Doomsday Overspend

There's always been a good living in doom

Now that Armageddon swine flu has proved to be yet another false commissariat scare story, precisely how much has the Simple Shopper blown on all those unwanted Swine Flu jabs?

As always, facts are scarce, but it seems to be up to £1bn. According to the World Health Organisation, the cost per dose is around $20 (see this blog), and it's believed the Shopper has ordered 90 million of the things. Since only 4 million of us (and I do mean us) have had the jab, that means 86 million are surplus to requirements. Which works out at just over £1bn.

So who's to blame?

Well, the Shopper obviously, for entering into yet another naive overpriced deal with Big Pharma (GlaxoSmithKline alone is reportedly on track for a £1bn swine flu windfall - and no, Tyler does not blame the drugs companies for the Shopper's inability to negotiate professionally).

Then, our Health Commissars for whipping up the scare - especially Chief Scaremaster Sir Liam Donaldson who hysterically announced that 65,000 Brits could die (actual deaths to date 203). As you will recall, the Scaremaster's previous triumphs include Bird Flu, which he predicted could kill up to 750,000 of us (actual deaths nil). And that followed the similarly wildly hyped scares over Sars and vCJD (predicted deaths 136,000; actual deaths 136).

Finally, there's the hopeless World Health Organisation, the chief promoter of global health scares.

The WHO is a wholly owned subsidiary of the expensive dysfunctional UN. It has an annual budget of $5bn, and is headed by a woman whose educational background is not medicine but home economics. And like most such organisations its funding and continued growth depend on whipping up demand for its services among bureaucrats and politicos in the rich countries. Which is why global pandemics and other health scares come in so handy.

Now, you might think there'd be a limit to the number of times these assorted conflicted commissars could cry wolf before we'd stop paying heed - and more importantly, stop paying their salaries. And maybe there is.

But the biggest such scam the world has ever seen still seems to be going strong. And unlike the global health industry, whose warnings of near-term pandemics can all too soon be proved wrong, the global warming industry has developed a 100 year pitch where we won't be able to tell if they're wrong until long after we're all dead. Genius.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: doom, simple shopper

Oink

With a cheep-cheep here, an oink-oink there, and a total confusion everywhere

For reasons we needn't go into, Tyler is what the NHS describes as immunocompromised. No, it's not what you think, but it does mean he received a call today from Sharon at his GP group practice.

Sharon informed Tyler he was in an at-risk group, and therefore needed to come in for the Swine Flu jab.

"Wha!" said Tyler. "The new experimental quatermass vaccine... but, but... is it safe?"

"Oh, yes," said Sharon, "it's under the government vaccination programme. It's all been tested and it's perfectly fine. And actually I see you haven't had the normal seasonal flu jab - we'd better do that at the same time."

So what to do?

Clearly, you'd be mad to say yes just because the government wants you to.

For one thing they're a bunch of serial incompetents, and for another, they are proven liars.

Why would they lie about the safety of swine flu vaccine? Well, because this is one of those public health issues: the more people they can get vaccinated, the less likely it is that we'll have an epidemic. And as we've blogged before, when it comes to public health, governments follow traditional Stalinist principles: "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic". In other words, they're not bothered if a few dozen Tylers go down under the needle, as long as the herd gains immunity.

This calls for an urgent consultation with Dr Google.

Now let me see... "swine flu vaccine"... yikes! Google immediately suggests "swine flu vaccine deaths" with 13.1 million results.

So... "Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America... The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health... tells neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal." (Daily Mail)

Gulp.

In Sweden there have been four vaccine-related deaths. Or is it six? Accounts seem to vary. And come to that, how do we know the deaths don't run into hundreds, and there's been a cover-up? The bodies could easily be stored in a cordoned-off frozen fish factory - they must have loads of them up there. Obviously they'd keep that pretty quiet, so how are we supposed to find out?

Or what about this in Time Magazine - Time Magazine! - "...the vaccine is tainted with antifreeze or Agent Orange, causes Gulf War syndrome, has killed U.S. Navy sailors... the vaccine is an "evil depopulation scheme."

Jeepers! That's it! No way is Tyler getting pumped full of Agent Orange.

Oh, wait. Time goes on to say "these claims are nearly pure bunk", and that "the crop of falsehoods about the H1N1 vaccine... are potentially... dangerous, since they encourage the credulous to avoid vaccination at all costs."

Hmm.

OK, so what does the NHS itself say about vaccine safety?

"The swine flu prototype vaccines have been clinically tested and shown to produce good immune system responses, and have an acceptable safety profile. The insertion of the H1N1 strain into the vaccine should not substantially affect the safety of the vaccine in the same way that annual modifications to the seasonal flu vaccine do not."

There they go again. What exactly is an "acceptable safety profile"? Acceptable to whom? Stalin's Commissar for Collectivised Health?

In a complete muck-sweat, Tyler finally turned to the one man he could trust to cut through the doublespeak - the good Dr Crippen. What should Tyler do?

Unfortunately, the Doc is himself now under heavy medication, having gone down with a nasty bout of H1NHS gravis.

Apparently he was exposed to a whole series of confusing and largely incomprehensible circulars from the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health, believed to have been triggered by the recent outbreak of swine flu vaccination fever.

So at the Doc's suggestion, and suitably masked up, Tyler examined the latest of these circulars, the one that gave the order for Sharon to ring Tyler. Under the Stalinesque identifier of Gateway 12870, it orders NHS operatives like the Doc "to maximise the level of uptake of the vaccine amongst the priority groups". Operatives are further instructed to access further vital campaign plans at Gateways 12241 and 12781.

Unfortunately, when you actually try to access those vital further Gateways, all you get is this:

"Error page

We are sorry but the page you are looking for cannot be found. It may have been removed, had its name changed or be temporarily unavailable."

Is it any wonder the Doc is a wreck. After months of trying to follow this kind of gibberish, the poor fellow's immune system is shot. Jabwise, he has no more idea what the Commissars are asking him to do than you or I. Only Sharon seems sure.

Although, now we come to think of it, what about Sharon? Is she going to have the jab herself? According to recent polls, roughly half of nurses (and GPs) are going to refuse. They obviously know something the rest of us haven't been told.

Which leaves Tyler in a quandary.

You see, although now immunocompromised, Tyler is old enough to have picked up some of the natural immunity oldies seem to have to this swine flu. For example, he got very ill in the 1957 Asian flu epidemic.

So is it worth risking a shot of Agent Orange now?

Tricky.

But one thing's for sure: all the guff so expensively pumped out by the Department of Health is not going to help him decide one jot.

PS What will the vaccine cost the NHS? Needless to say, the government refuses to tell us, but according to the World Health Organisation, the cost per dose is $20. So if, as the government apparently expects, three-quarters of us get the jab, it will cost $900m, or around £0.5bn.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: Department of Health, doom, nhs

Pilot Of The Future

Resistance is useless

Tyler was once an avid follower of Dan Dare, Pilot of The Future. And unless his arthritic memory banks have malfunctioned again, he's pretty sure Col Dare once had to tackle a dastardly plot hatched by a bunch of mad green-skinned scientists to destroy the earth with a giant sunshade.

The greenies planned to deploy their fiendish device between the earth and the sun, thus cutting off all natural light and warmth. And it was only in the nickiest nick of time that Dan and Digby managed to stop them.

Of course, that was back in the fifties. Back then The Future was still The Future, and deep down we sort of guessed Dan Dare wasn't actually for real. After you'd finished reading, you knew there was honey still for tea.

But now half a century on, we don't have that comfort. We're now in The Future. There is no honey still for tea because the honey bees have been struck down by a mysterious ray from outer space. And blow me down, we've now got another bunch of mad scientists working on the giant sunshade deal. According to their leader:

"Our research found that some geo-engineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems... its consequences are the price we have to pay for failure to act on climate change."

The price we have to pay. In other words, because we pathetic humans have failed to follow his orders to ditch our 4x4s and foreign holidays, he's going to punish us with the sunshade.

It is the ultimate vengeance weapon.

****

The Royal Society's paper on engineering our climate is called Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty. And let me admit straightaway I haven't read it. But a quick eyeballing reveals it's written by a whole bunch of emminent profs, and I presume they can't all be green and nutty.

So what's with their wild and whacky ideas for sunshades, cloudships, and artificial trees? Surely they realise a) we don't have the technology, b) we can't afford it, and c) it might go completely haywire finishing us all off.

The answer is that they almost certainly realise all of the above. None of their more eyecatching proposals are for real, in the sense of being feasible, affordable and safe. Their real game is to influence public opinion on global warming - ie unless we ditch the 4x4s etc we'll be forced to risk the sunshades.

In other words, it's more eco propaganda, just like the Stern Report and the outpourings of the IPCC.

Which is rather sad. The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific society still in existence. And for much of its life it was devoted to the pursuit of science rather than the manipulation of public opinion.

PS Talking of forecasting future technology (not), here's another clip from Alexander Korda's classic 1936 epic Things to Come. Those elastic band powered bombers are meant to be the future of aerial warfare. Somehow nobody predicted the jet engine, radar, or missile technology, even though they were just around the corner.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: doom

Free Tamiflu

Question 1 Do you feel lucky? Yes/No

So can anyone think of a good reason why millions of us will not hit the new NHS Tamiflu hotline and grab our personal supply while it's still available?

According to the BBC's health correspondent, you just go onto the new website, answer a few questions, and get your free Tamiflu voucher.

So given that there's not enough to go round, why wouldn't you do it on Day One?

The official answer from the Chief Veterinary Officer seems to be that doing that "wouldn't be right".

Er.... yesssss.

The only slightly more convincing answer given by Peter Holden, lead expert on swine flu for the British Medical Association is:

“There is a danger that we will give Tamiflu out too easily.” Tamiflu is associated with side-effects, including diarrhoea, vomiting and hallucinations, “so with just mild symptoms, very few people actually need it."

In other words, the drug is often worse than the disease, so I advise you to steer clear.

Except that if you're literally at death's door with swine flu, you're certainly going to risk the side effects of Tamiflu. So you're best bet is still to get some in before it runs out.

And even if you don't use it, you can always sell it online.

The current market price for a pack of 30 is $177.41. God knows if that's real Tamiflu, but as the epidemic spreads, desperate punters won't be asking too many questions. In fact, Tamiflu has already taken over from Viagra as the most spammed drug on the internet.

Of course, in reality you probably won't be able to do any of this. In reality, the Tamiflu hotline will be jammed with calls in seconds, and the website will fall over. You won't be able to get through.

The Tamiflu hotline - an NHS fiasco in the making.

Another one.

Update: The Doc has now delivered his definitive verdict: "I can prescribe Tamiflu, though as yet I have not. I would not take it, and I would not give it to my family, so why would I prescribe it for patients? What this means is that anyone with any vaguely viral symptom is going to get "treatment" for a condtion they probably do not have with a drug that is next to useless and may have hitherto unexpected side effects. Great!" So now we all know. Hope he's enjoying his hols and that he's staying away from the Welsh porkers.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: doom, nhs

Tribute To Gaia

So let's get this straight. On the very day our buckling economy delivers the biggest ever recorded fall in employment, the government imposes its latest tribute to Gaia.

It will work like this: all over our green and pleasant, and right across our silver seas, we will build 7000 giant religious statues known as "wind turbines". They will be a visible sign to Gaia that we miserable sinners repenteth our sins, and bow down before the one true god.

Yea, and the cost shall be without measure. A tythe of £150bn shall be levied on the rich men at the energy companies. And all the people shall contribute each according to his means whatever the sacrifice. And the pharisees shall treat with the envoys of Russianoligarchicus Caesar so that the people may have light. And darkness shall fall across the land.

As religious tributes go, wind turbines take some beating: they are huge and dominate the landscape; they are expensive; and they have no serious purpose other than worship.

As generators of reliable energy, they are next to useless. We blogged the facts here, but in summary:

• Supply is highly variable - because of wind variability, they operate at a small fraction of theoretical maximum capacity (Denmark's operate at an average 20%)
• You cannot store electricity (well you can to a very small extent, but it's massively expensive) - so you can't smooth out windpower peaks and troughs
• You therefore need back-up generation for virtually the entire peak load - either nuclear, Russian gas, or coal

Of course, if you rely on the BBC and C4 News for your facts, you won't know any of this. Last night's reports identified the main problem with the government's tribute as being that it doesn't go far enough. Gaia is seriously pissed, and we need to speed ourselves into the darkness even faster.

So how is this all going to play out?

Here on BOM, we are great believers in the ultimate wisdom of crowds. As the costs of these massive tributes become more visible, cash-strapped voters will make it perfectly clear they don't want it. Even Millipede Jnr can see "there's a job of political persuasion to be done".

There sure is Ed. The problem for him - and the BBC (see here for the outrageous BBC position) - is that although they keep talking about "the science", they've never actually convinced us of its validity.

More and more of us are coming to understand that this so-called "science" comprises little more than a set of flimsy computer models cranked up to produce 50 year weather forecasts - ie the forecasting error of the Met Office's five-day forecast multiplied by 3,650 (and I have a funny feeling stats theory says it's humongously more than that).

Religions depends on faith. Fair enough.

But when it comes to keeping our homes heated and our economy on the road, I'd prefer to rely on what we actually know. Most of us have no wish to render our futures unto Gaia.

PS Talking of BBC scare-mongering, on Tuesday night Newsnight told us that by next month 50 people a day will be dying from swine flu. They calculated that by multiplying Andy Burnham's "100,000 new cases a day by August" by Imperial College's estimate that 1-in-200 infected people will die. Wha!? we thought - that's a pretty worrying thought on which to head off to bed. So yesterday I took a quick look at the stats. So far, there have been some 90,000 reported cases worldwide, and just over 400 deaths - so about a 0.5% death rate. But of course, that's only among reported cases, and many people apparently don't report - indeed, many don't even realise they've got it. So given a vast range of reporting standards worldwide, how do we know the worldwide stats are any guide to our own death rate? Answer - we don't. So far in the UK (up to 8 July), there have been 9,718 reported cases in the UK; to date there have been 17 deaths - a death rate of 0.17%. Unless I missed it, Newsnight's Susan Watts didn't mention that.

Gudang grosir baju anak murah - harga pabrik !!
www.gudanggrosiran.com Categories: doom, eco taxes, eco-wibble