´óÏó´«Ã½

My advice is stick with that data story and the election down in Oz.

I take exception to the ridiculous assertion that we in Scotland bear
any responsibility whatsoever for
the quality of football management
in England.

And nobody up here is stupid enough to travel via Heathrow. We are now in Europe - Schiphol, Frankfurt or Charles De Gaulle serve us better.

Out now ..
Gordon Brown's "Christmas CD"
The Finale this duet with Alistair Darling
£9.99 includes postage & packing ..

I should have changed my stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I had known for just one second
you'd be back to bother me

Go on now go walk out the door
just turn around now

'cause you're not welcome anymore'

With regard to British management performance. You might check out an excellent ´óÏó´«Ã½ World programme called, Formula For Success. I have a feeling that tonight's item will be a bashing session and a blame game! Formula For Success, may add a little balance.

Arghhhhhh I hate football, and now its going to be on newsnight. Arghhhhh it's so dull- a load of over-payed (expletives) who are the worst in the world anyway.

The data story has just entered into popular culture: I've just seen the Graham Norton show trailer on ´óÏó´«Ã½ -
he opens a disk and says "What's this? Child Benefit details - Secret?" Politically devastating.

And where is Gordon Brown? Well,
he is on his way to Uganda which
means that he is starting to catch up with David Cameron in terms of days spent in Africa. Cameron was in Rwanda you will recall when England flooded - but prior to departure was
seen in welly boots in his local area long before Brown took to a helicopter to fly over the scene.

Cameron was heavily criticised by Labour for being in Africa - which
was in the view of many very unfair.
Brown makes great play of his own role as the Continent's saviour but
prior to his current Ugandan visit,
he has in fact only made three trips to the Continent: a 24 hour visit to Cape Town for a Finance Ministers' meeting; a 24 hour visit to Abuja for the same reason; and then that ridiculous photo-shoot in the runup to G8 during which he visited four countries (Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Mozambique) in six days with a plane-full of press people and got in the can the key photos
of him with Mandela and him with schoolkids in his wife's primary school in Tanzania for future use.

He later went on to 'do India' in four days - fielding questions on
Shilpa Shetty when tackled by the world's press in Mumbai - and 'did' China in a couple of days thereafter.

With regard to the Heathrow debate, the government is presenting Heathrow as the only option for expansion and avoiding the clear issues: it is in fact not the only option but if there current proposal does go through it has serious implications for everyone living in London. For example regardless of capacity issues, the idea is increase the number of flights, not simply resolve existing issues. The number of flights increases almost 2 fold (280 to 700, or 800 depending on different news reports) so will the carbon footprint, the noise pollution will increase dramatically as the government is also proposing to remove runway alternation - this will result is a constant noise for 19 hours a day for anyone impacted by the flight path. The results from the noise pollution study conducted stated noise levels have increased, The annoying thing is that there are other options which could be considered. Many of the other major airports consider sites which are not located directly next to the city they serve - for example Hong Kong's solution was to build an airport in the sea to avoid noise pollution - a proposal has been put forward for an airport in the thames estuary which seemed to make sense for all interested parties. As for the business angle and impact of the economy, a couple of immediate facts which seem not to be discussed are: 1) doesn't a spanish company own BAA and makes the profit from the airport acting as an international hub - acting as hub is one of the reason Heathrow is busy, not individuals stopping to visit London and the UK, 2) the domestic flights out of Heathrow actually seem to be in direct competition with other airports such as City Airport which gets more traffic from the city and financial district - something which is being missed in todays news. Many domestic flights from Heathrow are as little as one third full (fact) - if the Government optimised which flights used Heathrow versus other airports, spare capacity would created without expansion. Another area which should be looked into, as well as the Governments clear strategy to ignore the entire west London population, is the claim that 170,000 people work/affected by Heathrow - the needs to be questioned as it has had a significant increase since the last time dubious stats where used to defend the government ignoring the public over commerce. Finally it is interesting to note the anti-expansion movements set up by the public (such as HACAN) are charities which need to generate their own money for campaigns while pro growth bodies are supported by public and commerce money e.g. www.flyingmatters.org - it's going to be very hard to fight that sort of PR budget and spend. Not being in PR or having days to prep these thoughts, my apologies for the first draft nature of them, however, there does appear to be holes in the key themes presented by the department of transport. The scariest message from the report however was the ministers unwillingness to answer the question about how many people need to objective before the government takes not of the publics view - who works for who?

You informed viewers on Wednesday the Dow Jones was 210 points down. It was a mistake to tell them it was down 210 on Thursday - as Ed Iglehart states the US Markets were closed on Thursday (for the start of The Thanksgiving Holiday).

Why does it take so long to update the NN website with the latest TV show?

Other ´óÏó´«Ã½ websites seem to manage just fine.

"´óÏó´«Ã½ World Update" had an interesting piece yesterday about the contradiction between expanding Heathrow and growing air travel on the one hand and the commitments at reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions on the other. It was made clear you can't have both and even if every plane were grounded, the two new coal fired power plants each week China is firing up would negate all that reduction in about 3 months. This is why the US rejected Kyoto and will reject another treaty just like it. There are those who say they won't do anything to reduce their CO2 emissions, China and India, those who say they will but don't, the EU, and everyone looks to the US to fix the whole thing by falling on its sword. Personally....having seen the handwriting on the wall and....I've already moved to higher ground.

"´óÏó´«Ã½ World Update" had an interesting piece yesterday about the contradiction between expanding Heathrow and growing air travel on the one hand and the commitments at reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions on the other. It was made clear you can't have both and even if every plane were grounded, the two new coal fired power plants each week China is firing up would negate all that reduction in about 3 months. This is why the US rejected Kyoto and will reject another treaty just like it. There are those who say they won't do anything to reduce their CO2 emissions, China and India, those who say they will but don't, the EU, and everyone looks to the US to fix the whole thing by falling on its sword. Personally....having seen the handwriting on the wall and....I've already moved to higher ground.

So how does Brown get out of this mess? How about a quick move into
football management: swapping his
Number 10 shirt for chairmanship of
the board of Celtic - whose new boss
Dr John Reid MP might swap jerseys?!

Thought Stuart's post (no.9) was terrific - it puts all the best arguments swiftly and with an amazing flow, like a mini-essay, with the most important remark at the end - government riding roughshod over all reasoned argument.

When government does this, you get people like brossen99 (no.14) who loathe "eco-fascists" actually longing for one to come on the programme.

Not sure exactly what brossen means by "eco-fascists", obviously green action has to be imposed by a superior force because there are too many people - including most governments - who daily use money to destroy the planet instead of abandoning money to save it. We all go along with this destruction actually, because however much we want to break free we can't unless our whole country, together with lots of other countries, breaks free.

That superior force will probably be a series of "natural" disasters coupled with recession. Meantime, I was intrigued to read in Newsweek recently that many fires in the Wild West of the USA are started by eco-terrorists calling themselves the Earth Liberation Front, or at one time Earth First. They torch new developments which take too much water from the Colorado for instance (though actually it is too late to save the Colorado). Several have just been jailed for arson, though no lives were lost, but firemen are of course put at severe risk by all this. I suppose you could call them "fascists" but they are labelled "extreme left" in the States. They have no political power - they are outlaws. The best-informed report I have found about them is by the FBI (www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/jarboe021202.htm) which indentifies eco-terrorism as the primary domestic terror threat, having overtaken the far right in recent years. There is a British ELF but this is described as non-violent to date, unlike the American one. However it may well be much larger than people realise - it has no corporate identity and no membership as such, in order to keep under the radar. The grapevine is a powerful thing, and not dependent on the Internet - just as well as the Internet is becoming overloaded too. The last have a way of coming first when the chips are down.

It is likely that many law-abiding citizens who are not stupid would, whilst deploring violence, recognise that only guerrilla tactics can have any impact on the relentless drive to "pave paradise and put up a parking lot" which they saw coming in the States long before us. Though they would not take direct action themselves, many people can see that there are increasing numbers of people in this country who have so little left to lose that they have no option but to take direct action, and nothing holding them back from it. Such perceptive citizens ought to include government advisors, who would advise our government (whatever party, they are all basically the same) in the strongest possible terms to pay heed before everything gets very nasty indeed.

P.S. If the FBI are that concerned, isn't it time for a Newsnight report on the subject? They seem to see it as the number one threat to national security after Al Qaeda. News to me - and I thought I was reasonably well informed.

brossen99 (19+20) -

Thanks so much for your very lucid answers, I suspect these set out the position of large numbers of people. You have moved from fact to opinion, which is fine, so I will give mine which I think may also represent large numbers of people.

My opinion really coincides with that of Francis Bacon in 1597, in his essay "Of Seditions and Troubles" - "... for the surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them. For if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire. The matter of seditions is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment."

He discusses causes and motives of seditions in the most beautiful English ever written (he was primarily a scientist by the way), and says "Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and moneys in a state be not gathered in a few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread. This is done chiefly by suppressing or at least keeping a strait hand upon the devouring trades of usury, ingrossing great pastures, and the like."

Before that, he has taken care to point out that too many new taxes will cause sedition, but it is the "Above all things ..." that concerns me most at this time because those great ills are rampant now, and must be addressed first, then the others might go away automatically.

The whole short essay is on the internet - you will see in it many of your concerns, as well as my overarching one. A very great man indeed.

hi ed -

But Science would have been fine if it had not been hijacked by "the devouring trades of usury" and put to making great piles of steaming money for a few, out of the labour of 300,000 little girls working 12 hours a day in cotton mills etc. As you yourself prove with your marvellous ideas about how to harness Science in small, useful, and sustainable way.

Paine is terrific, but 3 people were more practical: Cobbett, Abe Lincoln, and Francis Bacon. Cobbett dug up Paine's bones from an unmarked grave in America (even the Quakers had refused to give him a proper burial) and tried to find them a place in England for which he was much ridiculed (he also could not get anyone to give Paine a grave). However Cobbett knew in 1797 that the problem was what he called "The Thing" - the City and its banking system. Bacon knew the same in 1597. And Abe Lincoln had come to realise it too by the mid-nineteenth century, watching the carpetbaggers after the Civil War and then seeing them turn up in Congress in suits. He said wryly "The Wolf and the Sheep are not agreed, upon a definition of the word Liberty.". This is still a deeply shocking and revolutionary remark to this day, with everyone from the far right to the far left worshipping at the shrine of Liberty to do exactly as they please. Lincoln was assassinated; Cobbett was jailed once and then repeatedly arrested for sedition; Bacon would have been hung drawn and quartered had he not happened to be Viscount of St Albans, but he was destroyed by a false accusation of fraud in the end.

If they could see the size of the piles of money today created out of money, amassed and hoarded in tax havens in order to create more of the same, they would wonder why they bothered - but they would also say, See, what did I tell you? as they watch some of the horrors that unfold daily on our news screens.

hi ed -

But Science would have been fine if it had not been hijacked by "the devouring trades of usury" and put to making great piles of steaming money for a few, out of the labour of little girls working 12 hours a day in cotton mills etc. As you yourself demonstrate in your description of how to generate electricity in a small scale way causing the least possible damage.

Paine is terrific, Cobbett brought his bones back to England from an umarked grave in America (even the Quakers would not give Paine a proper grave). Cobbett got ridiculed and failed to find anywhere in Britain either.

But Cobbett was more wary of Liberty than Paine, as was Abe Lincoln ("The Wolf and the Sheep are not agreed, upon a definition of the word Liberty"). Cobbett was enraged by the City of London which he called The Thing - clearly he thought it should not be at liberty, for it was taking liberties, and lives. Bacon was not quite so rude as Cobbett - but "devouring trades of usury" is pretty rude for a Viscount.

In the same vein, Lincoln's main objection to slavery was simply that he thought it wrong for one man to use the labour of many men to enrich himself. He thought everyone should do their own work so far as possible. Therefore when giving the speech about the Wolf and the Sheep in Baltimore in 1864, he prefaced what is now a well-known (and often misused) quote by making it clear that he was talking about freeing slaves and getting howls of rage from slave-owning wolves who said he was destroying THEIR liberty. He thanked the people of Maryland for destroying the wolves' dictionary, which defined liberty (for slaves) as tyranny (for them).

Nowadays there are a lot of wolves claiming to be sheep in order to get round Lincoln's torpedo through the heart of their howls about loss of freedom - it is necessary to be quite alert to see through this sheep's clothing sometimes. The poor poor people who are denied an efficient airport, frequent cheap flights, etc., and the poor multinationals denied the opportunity to ratchet up even more offshore midden heaps of money. Oh dear, we must not let the hippie wolves destroy their liberty for personal gain (what personal gain?). Or the wolves living near flight paths, or the wolves in villages scheduled for removal.

By extension, it is wicked fundamentalist wolves who dare to sit on an oil gush and prevent the pleasant clever sheep from accessing it for gain. Or dare to sit on anything and prevent pleasant clever sheep from accessing it for gain. Everything must be open and available to the lovely lovely sheep. Etc. Somehow this last para reminds me of that sturdy Scot standing in the way of Trump's golf complex - it is an age-old story of course, and the same people always seem to lose after putting up a fight. But it is definitely better to go down fighting - more entertaining for others, for a start.