Business as Usual - Winter Floods 2015

The  SUN and the Daily Mail are squawking about Sir Philip Dilley being on holiday at Christmas ...  not an unusual thing - but....

£100,000 (+++) a year
a 3 day week (does he actually "put in" 156 days?)
figurehead of one of the biggest quangos
yet another flood crisis

It isn't unreasonable for him to jet back and earn some of that money defending his organisation and explaining some home truths about floods to people (he is purportedly an engineer)

It is notable that no other senior management have ventured outside the lavishly appointed PR bunker with 350++  stout defenders manning the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram barricades.

Apparently one can take a picture from a certain angle that makes Bristol Council House unicorn appear to be on top of The Environment Agency HQ building - which seems entirely appropriate since the flooding is being blamed on unicorns by many commentators...

Sir Philip Dilley is reputedly an engineer (Arup Partners) - it would be refreshing (but extremely unlikely) to hear him say some engineer-y things about the floods.

I think we all know the unicorn will get the blame.

UPDATE:  He's back!! 



.

There can be little doubt

that this example of waste from The Ministry of Justice is simply unacceptable.

The department has at least 33 times more licences for Oracle software as it has actual computer users ....

That's 2.3 million licences.....  one does not we suspect need any expertise in IT to see that something is grossly out of kilter at the MoJ in this matter. 

 More at The Register

We are confident that the Environment Agency's IT can top that ....  any readers with inside dope please use the comments  :-)

Greece - what isn't talked about.....

yet another "crisis"....  bored stiff.... round and around ...

There are some pivotal features of what has happened in Greece and to a certain extent Cyprus that simply have not made it into UK newspapers or broadcast media.

The sums of money (undoubtedly some of it yours) are simply enormous / staggering and the scope of the skullduggery would be fantastical - if it were not a fact that criminal antics on wholesale scale are pivotal to events in Greece and are consequently impacting banks (and your wellbeing) across Europe and beyond.

If you are even mildly curious I urge you to take a look at

 THIS

it will change how you look at a few things....

It would be remiss of me not to include the video below from an independent production unit (afaics) for the BBC - who never knowingly drop any Brussels bureaucrats in the sh...

There are some proverbs / sayings that stand the test of time

Non diu latent scelera

Summer Issue

h/t Bishop Hill  Snowfall in July in the Scottish Highlands!

Long term followers of this blog might wonder - as I do - about the almost complete lack of media coverage about a failing hydro electric scheme in a prominent location. That curiosity was recently reinforced when the BBC covered the travails of two schemes in Wales  which have environmental impact and  technical issues that Avoncliff does not suffer from.

See (or rather... hear here)

and in other news....

New Zealanders are now able to run their cars on BEER!

Technical Interlude

Computers! ... the post about CO2 in the atmosphere disappeared into digital smithereens - and its loss serves as a lesson about composing content on-line :-/ (I do know better but sloppiness about keeping copies sometimes is irresistible)

It'll be re-posted (after being re-composed off-line!)

In the meantime - the tedious and increasingly bonkers and dishonest parade of  climate claims fills our media in the run up to the Paris Climate COP21 conference.

Here's my contribution for this week:

Arctic Sea Ice is at the greatest extent for a decade

Click the image to visit The Danish Meterological Institute page

That's something you will NOT read in the newspapers of hear from our broadcasters....

Some - (Hello... BBC , Guardian, Independent) repeatedly said Arctic sea ice was at tipping point where the reduced albedo would start rapidly warming the planet which would in turn rapidly melt the last of the Arctic ice = calamity. Mother Nature seems to have it another way.....

Other news that might not make it into the "mainstream"
Bill Gates says renewable energy as presently promoted is worse than useless

A "Sustainable" Wood Burner ??

A bit off-territory for this blog - but - I have mentioned it before.  This does seem daft at best and at worst - well, read David Rose's article and perhaps do a little research and make your own mind up.

I have mentioned Drax before - and I will keep mentioning Drax - because it's a very prominent example of how innumerate (and utterly gormless) most of our public servants are - and how greedy, short sighted and subsidy hungry the large bureaucratic power utility companies are. As to the "environmentalists" who anoint this sort of folly with "Saving the Planet" - well..... they should be ashamed of themselves.

As I've mentioned before - the insane subsidy for burning wood to "save the planet" has actually driven up the price of construction timber - that simply does not seem right. This looks like Tulip mania.

Read it HERE

EDIT: yet another waste facility has gone up in yet another major conflagration (fuel for waste recycling ??) - as Andrew Montford says: "with recyclers turning to ash at an alarming rate of knots you have to wonder if such pyrotechnics are not actually a bug, but instead are a feature of a system that bribes people to process low-value materials at high cost."

Oh yes...  about two weeks to go.....  

Windmills and their consequences

Windmills have their place.... It's easy to call people who resist these subsidy garnering items NIMBYs - but look at the video and ... 

honestly - would you like your environment filled like that?

Bear in mind that each and every one of these items needs a fossil / nuclear fuelled backup generator running constantly - in case the wind stops. The electricity produced is actually more damaging to the environment than having a highly optimised gas turbine running at it's optimum efficiency...

Not a blot on the landscape and a folly of epic proportions?

Yes it's April 1st !!

and no....  this is not an April Fool gag!

From BBC Points West 31st March 2015

Bureaucrat Bonkers Part MCMXLVII

Phew! - somebody does something wrong and erm... breaks the law...

The Serious Fraud Office (a branch of government bureaucracy) has been adjudged guilty of wrongdoing / lawbreaking and erm...  fined £180,000 by The Information Commissioner's Office (another branch of government bureaucracy) - and the BBC (yet another branch of government bureaucracy) files a story under "Health"

Crikey! - you'd have to have some imagination to make that up!

I don't have the imagination and I didn't make that up! 

Whoah! The Environment Agency haven't quite topped that - despite trying hard for over 4 years - but then again - they didn't release information - they deliberately hid it!

No doubt lessons have been learnt eh?  I can't help thinking that there's a world of difference between "an accident" and culpable negligence or worse = strategic leaking by officials designed to undermine the position of another party....

No government officials suffered any personal sanction in all this as far as I can see....  Daft pooches chasing their own tails is one thing - but I think - we'd all like to think? - that humans were above this sort of stupidity.

Ian Liddell-Grainger letter to George Eustace

Dear George

Here's a quote for you: "It's absolutely critical that maintenance dredging continues."

Who, do you suppose, might have offered this sage observation on the current state of play on the Somerset Levels? I will tell you, George: a senior Environment Agency official.That being the same Environment Agency, of course, which sold off all its dredging equipment because it declared that dredging the rivers Parrett and Tone was no longer necessary; that dredging wouldn't make a scrap of difference to the flood threat; and, indeed –as it tried to convince me – rivers that are half-clogged with silt are capable of draining away floodwater as much as those which have had the silt removed as a matter of routine.

Never, George, can there have been such a diametric switch of opinion in quite such a short space of time, though we do know why: it's because the evidence is irrefutable. Despite two small floods on the Levels this winter there was no huge problem because even though there was only a limited dredging programme last year the rivers did their job properly and got rid of the water.

Hence the assertion from the Environment Agency that we absolutely must have more of the same. Yes indeed: dredging is back in fashion. It's the new must-have, must-do. Except, of course, the Environment Agency won't be doing it because, it seems, it hasn't got any money. Well if it chooses to squander twenty or so million quid on a nature reserve that's hardly surprising.

What we should be hearing now, of course George, is some sort of apology for its failings, for its attempt to cover them up by creative interpretation of rainfall figures, and for driving scores of people from their homes – homes which now carry such enormous flood risk premiums that most of them can't even afford to take out cover (though on the other hand now the cause of the flooding has been identified and partly dealt with, they should as remain dry for more decades).

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, George, but it has to be said that if it were eventually proved that the halting of the dredging programme was in some way connected with an unwritten Natural England agenda to turn the whole of the Levels back into the kind of swamp not seen since the 14th century I wouldn't be surprised, particularly given the way some of Natural England's other policy decisions have fouled up parts of my constituency further west.

My last missive before we go into suspended animation, George, but I'm glad to have a positive report to make. All we need now is some decent Easter weather so people can get out and about and start spending money to help the tourism sector make up some of the ground it lost this time last year.

Yours ever

Ian

Read more: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Environment-Agency-accepted-need-dredging/story-26243831-detail/story.html

@anon in the comments:  It looks like some West Somerset council folk aren't on Ian's Xmas card list either - and I'd say that's actually quite healthy - do all public sector folk have to present a united front regardless of the way they behave?

Biomass More Polluting Than Coal Burning

nope...  - its not us saying that - much as I think that importing American hardwood from clear-felling forests is bonkers - this comes from an organisation that's part of the Green Blob - The EcoWatch environmental web site and from actual pollution measurements...

Click pic to read EcoWatch Story

In other news - the reputedly most efficient gas turbine power generators in the world (Vorsprung durch and all that) are being shut down because they can't run economically as they're only allowed to run at erratic times at punishment tariffs - when massively subsidised wind and solar plants are not  doing their erratic subsidy sucking  power production thing.

Pierre Gosselin in Germany has the story.

Our energy policy is simply insane and seemingly run by a bunch of fools, many of whom have way too much financial interest in looting taxpayers and energy consumers money and providing a service that simply is NOT fit for purpose.


Where is our U.K. ministry of energy?  -oh, yes- doing photo-opportunities for WWF !!!

Click to see WWF branding.. cropped out of main twitter pic - disingenuous?

A Debate Continues ....

To a certain extent we have a horse in this race - since the subsidy for electricity produced from renewable sources would contribute to income from any hydro-electric scheme installed at Avoncliff.

 Some people have put together a film. 

Heres's a trailer.

What we do know is that being told loudly, vehemently and in the absence of evidence to "suck it up" and that the "debate is over " usually means that there's more to it!

In the meantime - things are moving behind the scenes at Avoncliff.......

Hmmm...

Things have been quite quiet hereabouts for a while -but we've  just seen a dramatic spike in traffic and wonder what our chums at Horizon House and Millbank Tower are up to...

Gathering more tales of unfairness and they're being nasty to us!!!  to be trotted out to enhance victimhood status and  so forth at some unspecified meeting or as PR ammunition?

Nah... they wouldn't - would they?  We aren't the NSA but we like to know who's visiting the blog

And something that restores a bit of faith in the capacity of people in positions of responsibility to do the right thing - a company secretary who fought for other people sees justice done ... after it has to be said .....   17 years!!!

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