Flooding in Perthshire 'Retrospective' Update

The Courier has reported that the WWF has recommended that alternative methods be used to ease flood problems in Perthshire other than the building of concrete flood defenses. These include restoring flood plains and wetlands, going for a more sustainable approach to flood management.

It is unclear why the WWF has gone public on this or why the Courier has reported it as news. This method was known about 25 years ago to my knowledge and experience. In consultations for DEFRA in 2002, in the post FMD epidemic shake up of farming and land use, and in work I did for the Cabinet Office, these were changes I strongly argued for. This contributed to changes in the Common Agricultural Policy, which were pushed through with strong support by PM Tony Blair.

Really the Courier and the WWF should be looking at the reason for the unsustainable 'concrete solution' always having pre-eminence when flooding is mentioned. Is it anything to do that when a report is commissioned, it is very often done by concrete loving civil engineers?

The situation also raises the problem solving approach to environmental challenges. Far too often a technocentric approach is taken over the more appropriate ecocentric solution. The situation of flood prevention is a good example of where the media and headline makers should report on the most advanced perspectives on a subject area and not rely on reporting as news things which were current 25 years ago.

All Perth and Kinross Councillors had access to the Perthshire Flood Damage article of 17th January 2007 so for many yesterday's report told them nothing new. One benefit of the internet is that the most accurate and up to date information can be supplied to those who require it. A Benefit for all of society and the planet.

Perthshire SNP MP Pete Wishart has since written to me and informed me that his is waiting for a reply from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Though I have no doubt that any reply may fall short of the truth at least it is another point from which we can start asking questions from as to why when the Government had the solutions to flood problems in Perthshire in 2001 they chose to ignore them.

Michael Meacher Labour Leadership: 10 Nil

Having given an early assessment on David Miliband, Miliband v Brown: Just What is it? and his potential bid for the Labour leadership up pops Michael Meacher for a crack at the title.

The only time I have seen Meacher speak in person was at the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House a few years back when he was still Minister for the Environment, he was part of a panel discussing the UKs follow up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. Due to a defeat in the Lords over a Foot and Mouth connected matter, Meacher was delayed in Downing Street and the meeting had to start without him.

About 25 minutes late Meacher arrived took his place on the panel and jumped straight in. Without notes or any briefing he was a man at the top of his game and with the command of his subject. Without any notes he was able to comment on the debate he had missed when asked and was completely fluent in any question or topic presented. To say he was impressive would be an understatement.

It was noticeable that when he was later sacked from his Ministerial post there was a current of disenchantment with the decision from within the environmental movement.

Just hearing the news that Meacher was to stand against Gordon Brown was interesting. In any leadership contest with a general move of the agenda putting environment at the centre Meacher would have to be strong influence.

So what of Meacher’s bid. Well his knowledge of the environment is impressive, certainly it would be an environmentally and ecologically better world with Meacher having more control in that area. Nationalisation of the railways? Well personally having been brought in from the ‘outside’ and given a team to set up the site of one of the biggest civil engineering projects in Europe for Network Rail, I suffered from severe culture shock.

There are many things not right with the set-up. These seem to stem from it’s genotype at the birth of Railtrack. The way it’s legal and commercial frame work was constructed has very little to do with efficient delivery of projects and more to do with other agendas. Working within the organisation is a conflict between common sense and institutionalised stupidity. Throwing in a word like nationalisation does not address the situation and more likely to distance people away from the idea of creating a better rail system.

£7.00 minimum wage, well were is this going to come from? OK I can see a situation if somebody is being paid the £5.00 plus while working for a firm paying the massive bonuses in the city or for a supermarket making £ billions in profits. The money is there it is just not being distributed equitably. What about the small corner shop existing on tight margins that has to open 16 hours a day just to survive. They might need to have someone there all the time. Pushing up a wage bill by £2.00 an hour with the extra NI is an extra £225 a week on top of the existing overheads. That is a lot of money. They close, instead of walking to the local shop people drive to the supermarket. A local job lost , you are feeding your climate change inferno and removing a community resource.

So what is all this left of centre politics, just moving side to side on the old political spectrum. If you were making a bid couldn’t you have produced something more imaginative and relevant to the present and future political landscape. I admit you know more than Miliband on the environment, but at least he’s got ‘bold labour not old Labour’.

Don’t try and hide it, I read your 911 conspiracy theory. I have lots of questions about it, at the moment I am on the hypothesis (not yet a theory) that the terrorists (if we are allowed to call them that) got lucky, very lucky. So lucky there may well be some other explanation for it. Having said that I still don’t buy your theories yet. That takes more organisation and opportunities for things going wrong or the plot to be uncovered than the simple, terrorist hijack planes and fly them into buildings.
Michael Meacher has fantastic, awesome and impressive knowledge and insights into the global ecological and environmental challenges. He just seems to keep his intellect in separate little boxes and does allow the connections between them to be made to present a workable whole challenge. Michael Meacher’s political brain is it's own political football match, Environment 10 The Rest 0.

Meacher’s involvement in the leadership adds interest and could be of benefit as he could stir up the environment agenda, but his overall presentation is so disconnected you could drive a bus from a public transport policy through it.

Besides when I wrote to him, despite his PA (Monica) saying he would reply, he didn’t.

YouScotland The Morning After

After yesterdays review of the launch of YouScotland, this morning had a visit to see how they were progressing. With about 20 more general posts on their welcome forum there had been some activity.

Nicely they have apologised for the technical problems they had encountered. Launching a web based democracy movement with a dodgy site may well have resulted in late night arse kicking competition. Other forums have been added for discussion. If you enter the one on Xenophobia it appears compulsory to have a line about warrior princesses, a bit like discussing the MSC Napoli without mentioning it's academic qualifications.

Anyway there are bits on Trident 2, Cash for Peerages etc. I started with a post on the Trident forum and replied to one on environmental concerns for Scotland in the any other ideas part.

The technical problems probably won't affect the site in the long term as they might have not got all that many visitors to notice them. It stuck me this morning that if you are trying to attract people disenchanted with the political establishment, then perhaps the Politics Show, The Herald, Scotsman and Guardian weren't the ideal places to market the site. These are part of the established political set up.

Anyway good fortune may be their way. Not many people visited a technically flawed site. Which is far better than million going there. Now they will have the chance to improve the site in balance with hopefully more visitors. All in all worked out OK for them.

YouScotland

Saw The Politics Show piece about participatory democracy and YouScotland, revolution in cyberspace and thought that was interesting. Somehow was the first to their blog site to post, though didn't know what I was posting to. The subject was only added later, Dragons Den, which is why no ones post made any sense to the subject for those going there now.

Then I found the forum, which took an age to register for. Thought that I would never get a post with the expected rush straight after the TV programme. Then found out when posted I was only about the 20th post having already been in the blog as well. In my post to add support to the cause I had added a hyperlink, unfortunately when it published it turned everything into a hyperlink, so was useless. Tried to edit my post 3 times without success. So posted a brief comment without hyperlink, having to point out the software was dodgy.

There are many deserving projects and initiatives that could and would create a better future that are starved of the publicity they deserve to help them evolve because they do not have friends or contacts in the media. YouScotland got the publicity, but didn't back it up with the heart of a site to match. Only bloggers would have the patience and knowledge to work through it, but they don't need such a site, they have the whole 'blogsphere' to roam, post and discuss in. The non bloggers disenchanted by the present political establishment should have been the target for YouScotland, unfortunately such a user unfriendly site would loose them straight away.

The site was supposed to be accessible for those with the minimum of computer experience. Not so, it was very unintuitive, links did not work, the site was unfinished for a launch and very difficult to navigate. Some posts noted the lack of response re the number of posts. It would be interesting to know how many hits it had, and how many tried to or wanted to make a comment and were put off or failed.

The idea was laudable, but if you are going to try to create a revolution in cyberspace, the first priority should be your site and software is at least basically up to the job. This Google blogger set up was better, as in easier to use for a visitor, than their revolutionary cyberspace offering.

The sad thing is they got so much media coverage, probably due to their connections, on TV and in the papers, then let the whole project down with the most important aspect, a sloppy site set up. It's not even though they can say well you try it. I haven't done it with websites, but with concerts. when you are doing large open air concerts you cannot have a rehearsal. Everything comes together on the day, it is the preplanning that ensures when you have a sea of thousands watching, when it starts, it is perfect and is perfect in every way through the event. You owe that to your audience who have made the effort to turn up.

Part of the proposal to use the Millennium Dome as a global environmental management centre relied very heavily on internet and advanced interactive communications so the YouScotland initiative was very interesting to me as an example of how some of those ideas could be implemented. The difference with the Millennium Dome proposal was though it contained most of the solutions to climate change and many other environmental challenges as well as being able to save many lives and stop the extinctions of lots of animals and plants, and create £billions of revenue per year, the media had no interest in it.

Probably it would have been better for YouScotland to have run the site for a while before having the big media launch, iron out the bugs and got some feedback on how to get it ready for a big hype launch. It will be interesting to see how many do return to the site in spite of the first day let down. I have volunteered to moderate or run their ecology or environment forums, it remains to be seen if they will contact me over that. If they have only a low level of participation though my time is better spent on this site and other projects which will have a bigger impact for a better future than YouScotland will have in it's present form and if it doesn't evolve. At present it is no threat to the political establishment. Even taking the whole of Scotland, it still lost it's deposit. In political terms it is yet not even a Kilroy-Silk.

Devon and Cornwall Viewpoint: Good and bad news on MSC Napoli

Devon and Cornwall Viewpoint: Good and bad news on MSC Napoli

Climate Change Technology

Richard Branson has offered a prize of $25 million for someone to develop technology to combat climate change.

Over at NASA they are looking at different ideas as well, 5 Ways to Save the World will be shown on 19 February at 9pm, I really don't know why I even wasted cyberspace mentioning it, I won't be watching. Why? Three words, they won't work.

The technology already exists. It was developed in 1982 as a solution to climate change. Even 10 Downing Street accepts it exists, but nothing can be done as that would amount to a commercial endorsement, better to let 5 billion people die.

911 Conspiracy

I saw the planes hit the twin towers and I watched the news reports since of the biggest emergency to hit the United States. Now there is one question I have wanted to ask, that I have never seen or heard the answer to.

911 is also the American emergency telephone number.


Is there such a thing as an ironic terrorist?

Lord Tebbit and David Miliband in Bizarre Connection

On Question Time BBC 1 15th February 2007, Lord Tebbit in an answer to a question about high bonuses paid to some who work in the City, referred to the large amounts of money also paid to people like David Beckham for just kicking a leather ball about.

Defra head man David Miliband has put forward the idea for personal carbon credits. Here is a contribution to a Defra consultation from 2004. Probably written in a cynical 'can we get serious' mood on climate change the concept of personal carbon credits was replaced by climate change death equivalents. (Metal Bands looking for a name please apply for permission).

The nice lads from Defra had it posted for a few days before losing their bottle and contacted me to ask if it was all right to change a 'few things'. Of course I didn't mind, Defra had let me get away with so much prior to that, I was surprised they still let me on the site anyway.

Here is Lord Tebbit and David Miliband connected in spirit. You might think I meant !*$"/ *!£%*/, I couldn't possibly comment.

Sustainable Development: The UK Government's Approach

Date posted: 06/10/04 19:32:00

Author: Roger Thomas

Message: The unsustainable media and popular unsustainable culture seems to consider the (Some Sportspeople) as role models.

Now (Some Sportspeople) contribution to society seems to be kicking a bag of air up a field. He works in Spain but as his wife wants the kids to be educated in the UK he commutes by jet between the two countries.

Tens of 1000's of miles many by private jet. He just contributes above the norm to climate change. Those islands that are going to be flooded, those starving through drought, making penguins homeless.

What we need is some sort of lifestyle indicator, such as CCDE, climate change death equivalents. Similar is employed in the nuclear industry to measure the affects of a radio active escape.

As well as having a high CCDE due to a selfish and uncaring attitude to the rest of the planet, (Some Sportspeople) also thinks its good to show off and persuade others to indulge in his lifestyle of shallow materialism, 10 cars etc.

His attitude is insulting to many people who care about the planet and others by recycling, saving energy etc.

(Some Sportspeople) is a bad influence on society especially young people and should be banned. If your choice in life is just to kick a bag of wind, then live near the football ground with your family so you can walk to work and not undo the good work others are trying to do to make the world a better place.

Roger Thomas

MP2 Applied Planetary Engineering

Happy Valentine Snow Girl!

Miliband v Brown: Just What is It?

Benedict Brogan, Political Editor Daily Mail, asks the question "Just what is Miliband up to?", in his blog of 12th February. As someone caught in the connections of Miliband, Stern, Brown, sustainable development and a few other things as well, the question intrigued me. Brogan seems to be implying that Miliband "harbours persistent doubts about the pm-to-be".

So it was straight off to Environment Minister David Miliband’s DEFRA blog. After a few seconds pondering where to go, familiarity struck. There on the left of his blog was a little section headed "Worth a visit". Only six links and the top one was "What is a sustainable community?" For those that don’t know the number of people who have written more in DEFRAs consultations and reports than myself this century is probably less than the number of fingers of a couple of leaves of Dave’s favourite botanical specimen.

I turned up at a conference a couple of years ago and after the formalities the lads from DEFRA asked my why I hadn’t responded to a consultation paper on sustainable development. Well I had to go on one, my little rant how everything I had done on economic growth had been virtually ignored the last time. I have this thing about DEFRA wanting ‘blue sky thinking’ but prefixing nearly every question or inserting somewhere high and stable levels of economic growth and the need for etc, in some form or another. Now the Treasury was well represented as well. If anyone wants to know who was there, just Google, Roger Thomas Sustainable Development.

Well Miliband tempted me, I clicked his in your face, worth a look top link, What is a sustainable community? I was ready for the usual flawed Defra presentation. The page opened and I read and read. Yes economic was hardly mentioned, even when it was it had words like viable, support, prosperity, integrating or development around or near it. It wasn’t shouting like some lunatic as the basic meaning for the totality of existence, high and stable levels of economic growth every other line. I’d given up with DEFRA and sustainable development. Every time they wrote "high and stable levels of economic growth" I’d write "why", to which the reply would always be "because we need high and stable levels of economic growth".

I could write a book on ‘why’, but in fact I am and that’s going to be part of it. If we have a theoretical economy of £1000 billion per annum, and environmental degradation costs £200 billion of it. If by a change in attitude and action we reduce that to £100 billion. Then the theoretical economy is only £900 billion. The economy has deceased, quality of life could go up, the environment is improved, so why always always always say we need high and stable levels of economic growth.

Miliband had directed me to a vision without the bloody stupid meaningless phrase "high and stable levels of economic growth".

Well Benedict wants the answer to what doubts Miliband has of Brown. To judge like for like, and on a level playing field Gordon Brown should be assessed on his most famous speech on the environment. At the World Bank 20th April 2006.

I gave up counting, Gordon Brown has a type of Tourettes Syndrome, it doesn’t matter what he says, he has an obsession with adding economic growth. At one point after outlining the threat of climate change, he gleefully sees that preventing it could contribute to economic growth

.

OK we could be looking at 5 billion people dying, 40% of the world’s species of animals and plants becoming extinct and Gordon Brown sees it as an opportunity of increasing economic growth. Horse, cart; chicken, egg; armpits, crocodiles, drain swamp: whatever.

Perhaps there is a difference in views, a cleavage in policy. There were mutterings around Davos of a ‘new development model’. Is Gordon Brown going to try and fix today's and tomorrow's challenges with yesterday’s model, which never really worked properly then.

Half a dozen of us stood talking. Someone from the Treasury asked me how I got into ecology and what influenced me. I said I was always into the natural world, I was completely hooked on Jacques Cousteau as a child, so much I got myself to read so I could read his books. All six of us had read the same book at the same age.

Milibands doubts, as a start this v that. An obsession with economic growth and not the whole integrated planetary system. What’s that phrase, one trick pony.

Cameron Smokes Dope

Not a potential future post election tabloid headline should "call me Dave" oust the next Labour leader, but a reference to this mornings reports that Conservative leader smoked cannabis while at Eton.


Dave Cameron later gave a brief statement outside his house not denying the news merely saying politicians have a right to a life before they entered politics. Quite rightly he also made a lot of sense. Bizarrely he then said as a politician the media could stick a camera up his nose, carrying on to say they could even film him cooking the Sunday dinner, then almost did a waffle about why there might be a number of reasons why that might not be a good idea, but somehow lost what he was going to say in an attack of vagueness, seemingly experiencing 'short term memory loss'. Was Dave just having a bit of fun at the expense of the not full awake Sunday morning media?


What is the betting that some of those reporters who wrote the Sunday morning splash of 'Dave's had a spliff', haven't had one themselves at sometime even if not the night before. So what if he has partaken of the wacky baccy, is he going to be held up as an example of failure, only ever so far in his life been elected leader of the Conservative Party. Probably the Tory election machine is now calculating have more people smoked cannabis than voted Labour at the last election.


So why should he have to admit he 'done it' but now 'regretted it'. Do we as a society refuse to listen to records by the Beetles, Pink Floyd, U2 etc because they might have smoked a joint? Do we make sure any author has not taken any form of drug before we read their book? Are films banned because directors or actors may have indulged in the 'erb of the field'? (Song of Solomon, the Bible?). Should Bob Marley's Exodus be removed from the list of 100 all time best albums? Bugger me I've just dropped myself in it realising the Exodus CD is right now in my player. Does society remove from it's memory any great scientific discovery because the researcher might have had a little help from a five leafed friend?


No the spliff is an acceptable part of our culture. So why is politics singled out as the one area where it is unacceptable? Look at the mess the world is in war, terror, ecological destruction, disease and chaos. All the product from the 'mind of man', politicians who have never or refuse to admit they've smoked a joint. One definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Perhaps we should try out only politicians who admit they've sampled the Ganja. Seems to work in the other cultural fields.


Drugs may not be a drug problem, but societies. Why has evolution put receptors in the brain which only respond to cannabis? Evolution tends to be efficient and doesn't do things if they haven't a use or have been in the past, remember Darwin that process of natural selection thing. I looked up the research in Scientific American but you either need a subscription or it's outside of the digital online database. Unfortunately the New Scientist data base has crashed, probably due to all those Sunday morning journos researching. Here are some references from the Cannabis Campaign.


While we're there some confessions from other politicians. The Dave 'roll me another one just like the other one' Cameron story isn't going to go away, so we'll just have to keeping coming back for an update.

Bird Flu 3: Are You Sure

"Well it's been spread by wild birds."

"We think it has been infected by partly processed turkey from Hungary."

"There is no problem with the food chain being contaminated."

"We might have to recall and remove turkey products from the supermarket shelves."

Government aren't really sure what they are doing.

Just to make sure, let's get all the turkey products that might be contaminated. Throw them in the bin. These can be disposed of at the tip. The seagulls can eat the refuse, and then we'll be really certain that the wild bird populations are infected. Problem solved no more Government uncertainty.

Help I'm Having a Homer TV Moment

or let's get there before Harry Hill


BBC News 24's Fiona Trott reporting from Leeds 10 February


"Well it's absolutely freezing here as you can see by some of the ice in the lake, but the snow isn't going to last because it's all melting".

You Might Think the Government is Rubbish.

I couldn't possibly comment.

RIP

Ian Richardson

Seen Out Lunching Together: Friday 9th February

Bernard Matthews and Jade Goody.


Believed to be discussing a joint venture surplus stock storage scheme.

TV Review and Predictions: Hannah Peckham Pop the Q

Well when it's late at night and browsing the free view sometimes you end up with TMF after midnight. Well I knew on The Mint one of the top ten associated with Elvis had to be toilet, but I couldn't get through. So I never went back or entered another quiz again.

But sometimes I end up at POP the Q at TMF, and this young lady appeared. Hannah Peckham.

The first thing that struck me was that if Steve Tyler from Aerosmith had another daugther other than Liv ( Armageddon, Pearl Harbour) then this could be her. I don't have to say she's pretty, this camera hasn't lied. On top of that she is flirty, chatty, flowing and occasionally shows flashes of a deeper intelligence than she is using here. Probably a girl to watch out for, for bigger things in the future. A true late night, minority channel star. I suppose if anyone wants to book her, they can get in touch with her agent Sue Terry Voices. Which is where the photo came from.

Probably someone worth looking out for in the future.

Perthshire View: Snow

It snowed today in England. Roads closed, no schools, chaos, stay at home, warning, dangerous conditions.


It snowed today in Perthshire.

Bird Flu 2

This ended up being discussed over at The Slant and very interesting it turned out.
http://www.theslant.co.uk/2007/02/06/bird-flu-outbreak-on-suffolk-turkey-farm/

Also for QED

http://broganblog.dailymail.co.uk/2007/02/bad_news_for_be.html

From Scotland to Greenwich via Westminster: Flood, Domes and Jeers

While over in Millennium Dome land Greenwich Watch, Cllr Nigel Fletcher and Iain Dale expose the secret congestion charge, the Daily Mail report on the big secret facing Greenwich and the rest of London. Thames to Flood in 8 Years, a little warning from Sir Nicholas Stern.

Has somebody been asking questions? Letter to Greenwich MPs and Councillors, let the political representatives of Greenwich know the Government were told about the flood threat to London and had the solutions in April 2001. Behind all this SNP MP Pete Wishart has written to Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, regarding the criteria of assessment in the Millennium Dome competition. That’s SNP, the same political party that started the ‘cash for peerages’ investigation.

Back to the Daily Mail and political editor Benedict Brogan reveals more of the tit for tat, between Chancellor Gordon Brown and Sir Nicholas, in Stern’s Revenge. You can tell that ecology has become the political mainstream when ‘in-jokes’ are made about it.

Perthshire View

The frost was hard in the shadows, sun chased it away in the open. A wasp buzzed around me while out walking with Ruskin the Dog. Landing on my chest hitched a ride for a while, before flying down to the wall. Frost and wasps.

Millennium Dome/Global Environmental Management Latest: Perthshire MP Writes to Minister

Having obtained the competition criteria for the 2001 Millennium Dome competition from Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Perthshire SNP MP Pete Wishart has now written back on behalf of Millennium Project Two.



The competition criteria would seem to indicate that the competition should have been won by Millennium Project Two, as a global environmental management centre, and not AEG with it's venue, and now failed casino complex.



The call by President Chirac of France for the setting up of a global environmental management body, nearly the same proposal that was submitted for the Millennium Dome, 6 years before, has only reinforced the view that there may have been "oversights" in the running of the competition.

See
Millennium Dome: Isn't it iconic
Millennium Dome: The 2001 Proposal the Government's Consultants Wanted to Support
Millennium Dome Loss in Climate Change Chaos
Perthshire Flood Damage: A Case Against the Government?

The Bird Flu Analysis Part 1: From Prime Minister Tony Blair and Government Approved Source for FMD

MRSA is a hospital Superbug. When you go to the Post Office to tax your car, do you catch MRSA? When you go to the pub or the night club, do you catch MRSA? When you are sitting at home watching Dancing on Ice or whatever floats your boat, do you catch MRSA? The answer is no. How do you know? The answer is because the government does not send out teams of ‘Bio-Security’ personnel to isolate and disinfect all these areas of your life to stop MRSA and all the other life threatening superbugs in our hospitals. Bio-security is ‘highlighted’ in irony because it is one of the buzzwords of the week.

A hospital is a relatively sealed structure, with a high density of living organisms contained within it ie people and a high use of antibiotics and other drugs used there .Unfortunately in a hospital is where you have a potentially higher chance of dying from MRSA or other superbug. This is the reason why you are not warned about the dangers of catching MRSA by the government in a post office, in a pub, or while walking on a Sunday in the countryside is because it doesn’t happen. Outside of a hospital you are in the ‘wild’.

So Bird Flu has occurred in the UK again. Where has it occurred? In a sealed ‘bio-secure’, turkey farm. A intensive poultry unit has high concentrations of living organisms, in a sealed unit and high usage of antibiotics and other drugs. Exactly the same conditions as a hospital.

Yet the ‘scientists’ and government are pointing the finger at wild bird populations for the source of the H51N superbug. Whenever have you heard the NHS or the government point the finger for deaths in hospitals from MRSA to the local post office or pub? Never.

Now I live in Perthshire Scotland. If you don’t know Perthshire it is difficult to explain. Try God made Perthshire, then with the remnants, offcuts and waste he made the rest of the planet. We are on the M25 of migration routes. I probably see in one day more wild birds than many people see in a life time. What I never see is dead unexplained ‘wild birds’. OK I see ones a fox or a cat may have had, I see ones hit by a car, I see young fallen out of a nest. It is not just me. I have a girlfriend doing a degree in environmental and earth sciences, she misses nothing. I have a dog who will tell me if they find anything dead or out of place. Now I watch the news and the ‘pundits’ expect me to believe that a wild bird suffering from Bird Flu, what is the probability of that, flew down a ventilation shaft of an intensive turkey farm, what is the probability of that, and infected a150,000 turkeys. You must be joking, insane or taking far to many drugs to suffer such improbable delusions.

What is an ventilation vent in open surface area, we will measure it in square inches, so the only bird with Flu chose that out of the millions of square miles available, to fly down. Oh really.

So someone having a night out in a pub in Barnsley is reponsible for all the cases of MRSA in the UK. To stop MRSA in hospitals do the government disinfect all post offices and working mens clubs in Yorkshire.

Outside of the turkey farm the wild bird population is happily going about it’s business as it has done for millions of years. Free range chickens are shown are on TV healthily pecking about all day.

So what does the government advise. You get the free range birds and lock them up in intense conditions, inside sealed buildings. Yes take your healthy free range birds and put them in conditions which exactly recreate the conditions the only place where Bird Flu has been found.

Brilliant.

With that I will leave Bird Flu for tonight, but this subject will be back tomorrow. Please if you have any comments, please leave them.

If you are wondering about the title. It was me who sorted out Foot and Mouth for the Prime Minister and the Government. Good of him to send me a letter acknowledging, and for his Ministers to quote word for word from my work. Work which is and has been for a while in the science libraries of the biggest organisations involved with the 2001 FMD epidemic.

Letter to Greenwich MPs and Councillors

Dear Greenwich Political Representative


I have used the press release by Greenwich Councillor Nigel Fletcher in the following post on Milennium Project Two, Googles No 1 blog search and resource for the Millennium Dome.


http://millenniumprojecttwo.blogspot.com/2007/02/millennium-dome-loss-in-climate-change.html


Do you not think it would have been in the public interest for the UK, London or at the least Greenwich to have been informed that in 2001 the Governments consultants, in letters considered the establishment of a global environmental centre at Greenwich "good" and "interesting", that in emails confirmed it had been moved forward in the competition ie shortlisted and in private discussions was the proposal they wanted to support. Time and world events also proving this was the best proposal for the Dome. Which was why it was entered.


How ironic that in the week that global environmental management is the top global news story, all the coverage Greenwich got was that it didn't get a casino.


Imagine if the competition criteria had been followed Greenwich this week would have been getting a a £ mutli billion cheque from the IMF, World Bank and the UN. Every single news media in the world would be in Greenwich reporting on how the Dome was the leading global resource in resolving climate change and all other environmental challenges. Bird Flu in Suffolk, flooding in Indonesia and that is on an average Sunday morning.


Do you think Greenwich has been sold down the river, especially when sea level rise takes hold. Oh yes the proposal did specifically mention flooding in London and it's solutions. It may be of some consolation that when London does flood with the £10s if not £100s of billions that will be incurred in cost and damage, the Government did have the solutions all along. They just 'forgot' to tell anybody.


Yours sincerely


Roger Thomas
Millennium Project Two

Millennium Dome Loss in Climate Change Chaos

The 2001 proposal to give the Millennium Dome ‘iconic status’ as a centre of global environmental management, 30th January, Millennium Dome: The 2001 Proposal the Government's Consultants Wanted To Support has now involved the Dome in a new and perhaps the most bizarre twist so far. Following the publication of the United Nations Environmental Programme report on climate change on Friday 2nd February, President Chirac of France has called for nations to support his idea of a ‘global environmental management’ body.

Exactly the same words and exactly the same concept as the proposal the Government's consultants Jones Lang LaSalle wanted to support to take over the running of the Millennium Dome 6 years ago.

Greenwich Councillor Nigel Fletcher recently referred to the ‘curse of the dome’, if the press reports are true then this is it’s ultimate damnation. If the Government had followed the criteria of the competition for the Dome the winner in 2001 would have been the global environmental management centre.

In 2001 the Labour Government turned down the equivalent sized project as NASA, Microsoft and U2 all moving their centre of operations to Greenwich for the chance of gambling they might get a casino there instead. This latest instalment now moves into the realm of the only imaginable, or unimaginable, depending on how much you can imagine.

Imagine going back a few hundred years. The Government gather Joshia Wedgwood, Abraham Darby, George Stephenson, James Watt, Hargreaves et al all into a room. The Government of the day tells them they have decided they are not going to have an industrial revolution and they must all stop what they are doing. The Government having decided they are going to base the future development and economy of the UK on bear dancing and gin palaces.

Just try to imagine how much of the total economic wealth of the UK has been generated from the last few hundred years of the industrial revolution. Imagine that the Government has decided that they didn’t want that wealth and development creating. Everything the UK had created from the industrial revolution never ever existed.

Well that is what Prime Minister Tony Blair’s New Labour Government has done to Britain's future in the global ecological revolution. David Miliband, Minister for Environment has had the front to make a vacuous and pathetic ‘call to action’ over climate change. Nothing more than a smokescreen for an incompetent Government to hide behind while giving the global ecological revolution away, because they wanted a casino instead. Why don’t they resign, I do not want my life, my family’s life, my friends lives or this planet endangered any longer by their complete and total stupidity.

Climate change is serious, so stop gambling and playing games with our lives!

So now France has taken a 6 years lead straight off the UK. I leave that for Al Murray’s Pub Landlord to comment on. Makes more sense than a New Labour Government.

Millennium Dome: Isn't it iconic

Mild mannered Greenwich Conservative Councillor Nigel Fletcher, when not being Shadow Education Special Advisor, raised the question of whether the AEG casino bid was ‘tainted’, with the connections to Deputy PM John Prescott. A point picked up on by the ever watchful Greenwich Watch.

Meanwhile over at The Business, Fraser Nelson also puts the spotlight on the hapless Prescott.

How ironic.

Tags and memes, tracking information flow through systems. If I had a pound for every journalist and comment that calls the Millennium Dome ‘iconic’, I would buy AEG out with an offer they couldn’t refuse. So where did ‘iconic’ come from. An internet search has so far has revealed no connection between the words ‘iconic’ and ‘Millennium Dome’ prior to Lord Falconers announcement of what was to become AEG winning the bid to take over running the Dome on 18th December 2001. There are plenty of references to that date and speech, for example and at random, this one.

How ‘ironic’ that the new buzz word, ‘iconic’, to describe the Millennium Dome was never used in public in the previous 5 or 6 years. Now why and how did it suddenly appear on Lord Falconer’s lips while announcing the winner of the Dome competition.

Lord Falconer and most since like to use the word in the sense of an ‘iconic building’ Somehow this seems strained. The word hangs unfulfilled by the premier wordmiths of our culture. Marilyn Monroe is iconic.......as a blond Hollywood sex symbol. The Pentagon is iconic........as a world recognised centre of defence. See how iconic likes to be followed by it’s association. Perhaps a definition could help: icon, a symbol resembling or analogous to the thing it represents. Lets add ....ic: relating matters to a particular subject.

Is this why Lord Falconer’s and everybody else's use of the word ‘iconic’ seems false, strained or unfulfilled. To use the word iconic in it’s full beautiful context, should also entail to what it is associated with. The Millennium Dome is iconic, is not enough. Though I have to admit it is a lovely word.

So the word to describe the Dome has only been used in public since 18th December 2001 when Lord Falconer used it in announcing AEG had won the competition, and it has never been used in it’s full context.

Now in the posting of 30th January Millennium Dome: The 2001 Proposal the Government’s Consultant’s Wanted to Support, what appears in this, supplied in April 2001 to Jones Lang LaSalle, 8 months before Lord Falconer announces AEG as the winner of the ‘iconic building’, oh, a little phrase and concept.

‘The Millennium Dome would have ‘iconic status’ as a centre for global environmental management’. Wow. The first time ever the word ‘iconic’ has been used to describe the Dome, and as a bonus in it’s proper full usage.

Anyone with any suspicions over the Governments involvement with AEG might be tempted to consider that the Government supported the AEG proposal by using the marketing strategy from another proposal.

Perhaps the other proposal was so good and was so attention grabbing, that parts may have been lifted from it, that given a proper open competition it may have even won. There again when has an outsider ever won anything connected to the Dome?

Perhaps this was the reason askFT, the advisory arm of the Financial Times called it "a truly exciting and innovative project".

Well who would have wanted an extra £50 billion coming into the UK economy via Greenwich, the problems of climate change more or less sorted, many of those killed in the SE Asia Tsunami, hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters now alive, with it’s one size fits all global environmental monitoring and alert system. Etc Etc, as Yul Brynner may have said.

Well no one when you could have had a bling bling do nothing casino. Well lets put those suspicions aside right now. I mean, while the competition was running, Lord Falconer wouldn’t have been having meetings with one competitor, showing unfair bias, would he? There are no suspicions that somehow Blair's aides may be involved, are there?

See what you could’ve won. ............ Isn't it ironic.