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The glue story was very funny last night.

Not surprised you shelved the alan johnson
obiesity campaign story after listening to the mad baroness on Channel 4 arguing
that 'deep fried Mars bars?' had a role to
play in sponsoring the obesity campaign!

England is going to get such a kicking from Glasgow East tomorrow ............................

This is what The Scottish Daily Mail had to say about the latest thinking on obesity in Scotland - an issue you may come back to:

"Obese Scots should be given taxpayer -funded 'bribes' to lose weight, a top government adviser claimed last night"

"Professor Annie Anderson, who advises UK and Scottish ministers on obesity, wants families to be given incentives - which could include cash, cars, gym memberships and holidays - for slimming. The 'rewards' which would be paid for by the NHS are aimed at tackling Scotland's obesity crisis."

Full story: front page and page 4 of The Scottish Daily Mail (Wed July 23, 2008)

Professor Annie Anderson leads Dundee University's Obesity Research Unit.

NB this website is not sponsored by Mars, Coca Cola or Channel Four!

HMMMMMMMMM.... REALLY?

"A very special ship sets sail for the Arctic today. Its six-week mission is to measure the growth of plankton in Arctic waters. From that they'll be able to tell just how fast global warming is changing the ecology of the world's oceans. We'll be following the mission from beginning to end, with regular updates from on board. Tonight our Science Editor Susan Watts tours the decks and waves them off to sea."



A few things you CAN count on:

1) One third of female graduates end up having NO children;

2) Education, education, education, facilitates differential fertility (smart people have less kids) by delaying parenthood relative to less smart people and;

3) we need smart people to manage the mess we create and to spot the nonsense spun by predators eager to exploit the vulnerable.

Please cover something more useful Newsnight.

Caroline Flint is absolutely wrong in saying that we are "lucky" that we have a house and a home to live.

My wife and I have worked long and hard since 1973 to obtain the property we currently have and enjoyed.

We have not relied on hand-outs or cheap "affordable" housing, we have got where we are by our own endeavour!!

The young have no divine right to live where they want.

Eco Town are a Government idealogy. The one I am opposing vigourously, "Pennbury", Leicestershire is proposed in wide open countryside amongst some of the county's most beautiful landscape. It is completely the wrong location yet the Proposer, Co-op Estates is determined to press ahead against wholesale and mounting opposition.

If, after they beating in recent Local and By-elections, the Government don't "listen and learn" from the public as promised they can expect the worst!!

David Hankey

Come on, let's get real about 'eco towns'. They have much more to do with building the worthy Ms Flint's career and allowing developers to bypass normal planning regulations, than creating environmentally friendly communities. For example, Hanley Grange in South Cambridgeshire is being proposed by Tesco, no less. Since when was Sir Terry Leahy bothered about building green houses! No, he wants to build a great big superstore (along with a nice captive market) in an area where he has already been refused planning permission. So Shelter bangs on about needing more housing. Well Cambridgeshire is already building tens of thousands of new houses, including a whole new town less than ten miles from Tesco's 'eco town'. But the Government don't seem to like that other new town. I wonder why not? I suggest Caroline Flint and Gordon Brown listen to what the LGA is telling them and start working with communities, rather than against them. But sorry, it will be very hard for this Labour Government to break a habit of the past ten years...

Susan Watts ended tonight's report asking, "Could this be the year that there's no ice left at the north pole?"

What!!!!???? No scientist, anywhere in the world believes arctic sea ice is going to disappear this year or next or the year after. Why do journalists feel they continually have to sensationalize the climate change story, each of them predicting some greater level of doom than the last. Of course if they didn't I suppose they don't think they'd have a story, but come on Newsnight. That has to go down as one of the most sensationalist, scare mongering, plain wrong things anyone has said all year and you should come out and disown it.

Too little, too late on Glasgow East.

Let's please have some preparation for the next by-election and some follow up re the MPs "on the sick". Perfect project for a summer intern.

Eco Towns


I live in London , I have no second home and I don't want the Gardens of England built over to satisfy Labour's insane immigration polices .

We know from migration watch calculations , using Governments own figures , which they have not disputed , that 50 % + of these new builds are for yet to arrive immigrants.

Or are we suppose to just accept what we are told by that Flint girl, that these 3 million new builds are for people close to here that do not have a roof over their heads.

What happened to the honest grown up immigration debates we were promised ?

Is what D.Blunkett said was policy a number of years ago still Government policy , "There is no upper limit to immigration.". If so when are we (The people) going to learn the true costs of such policies ?

We were told importing more people made us richer by this Government only to be contradicted by the House of Lords report 6 months later.

What is really going on ?

Personally I suspect it's got to do with EU voting %'s ,as that is directly related to the size of a countries population. If so thats another issue we have not had a chance to debate honestly about.

I try and take a interest in my country and it's politics , but given the deception (Spin), whats the bleeding point !

Ecce_Homo (#6) "Why do journalists feel they continually have to sensationalize the climate change story"

Because a) they're journalists and b) feminised (it's a very verbal business)?

They seem to think that they have to be dramatic to pull. A lot has been said about sex and the media in recent years, the 'eye-candy' factor being obvious.

It's got worse though - now the intonation is ever so dramatic too.

Great for the media.

yes the Haywain is an idol people worship. So what is missing from that picture. Poor and homeless people for one. The millionaire landowners who get 4 billion in public subsidy just for owning land etc

There is no such thing as rural. The govt do not have a definition for it. So its a mischief word.

What we do have is areas of low density population and areas of high density population. Both have their problems. The solution to low density problems is increasing the population so it supports more services.

Only 10% of the uk is built on. At current density if we build on 1% that means houses for another 6 million people.

Ecce_Homo.

The North Pole is not the whole Arctic Ocean.

Nobody is saying the Arctic Ocean Basin will be ice-free this year. People have been saying that there is a chance the North Pole will be open ocean.

Your reaction shows that you are not following the available data. Check out the Bremmen AMSRE images, or NSIDC's latest Arctic Sea Ice News (17/7/08).


As for the September ice area and whether this is relevant to the idea that we've hit a tipping point in the Arctic Ice - we will see.

1) Nghiem finds a reduction of 1 million km^2 from March 2007 to March 2008 that's on a March 2007 baseline of 2.6 million km^2. i.e. ~1.6 million km^2 in 3/2008 down from 4 million km^2 in 3/2002 (~5.6 in the '60s by drift-age model).

2) At present (from Cryosphere Today's regional area maps), without the weather of last year the lag behind last year's area is almost all due to the East Siberian and Laptev Seas. While Beaufort, Chucki and Central Arctic (also the Atlantic regions) are at or below last year.

3) Late July and August is the period where the most rapid ice retreat happens. Figure 4 of NSIDC Sea Ice News 17 July 2008 shows the reduction in ice thickness this year. It is significant.

The next 3 weeks may be very interesting.

By the way, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research consider the Arctic ice as already Tipped. Lyndsay and Zhang have proposed that the tipping point was in the 1990s.

#10
I was going to give my views to all your points , but I have restrained myself and just replied to one of your points.


"Only 10% of the UK is built on. At current density if we build on 1% that means houses for another 6 million people."

Yes this is the Governments figures too, but lets compare other European countries population density's per square meter shall we -
projected
1997 2007 2020
Germany 234 236 233
France 94 99 105
Spain 79 81 80
Italy 195 197 194
Sweden 21 22 22
Switzerland 180 190 194

UK 234 251 261

The trend is clear for everyone to see and I suspect this population growth is disproportional placed on England , rather than other countries within the Union.

Why is density of population a issue, because it relates directly to the quality of life and resources for it's citizens.

So I guess I am saying , I disagree with you on this issue.

Correction to my previous post # 12 -

"Yes this is the Governments figures too, but lets compare other European countries population density's per square meter shall we -"

Should be

"Yes this is the Governments figures too, but lets compare other European countries population density's per square kilometer shall we -"

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

CobblyWorlds (#11)

Hmm - City, great book. The destructive humans migrate from this world leaving it to the dogs, watched over by androids.

Not a bad idea. Pity about the ants.

PROJECTED LONDON POPULATION GROWTH

The population of London is projected to increase by 789,000 to 8.3 million by 2026, an increase of 10.5 per cent.

• Ninety-nine per cent of this population increase is expected to be from BAME ethnic
groups as a result of the younger age structure of this population. However, this
disguises the significant migrant churn of all ethnic groups that takes place in the capital.

• The White population is projected to increase by 0.2 per cent between 2006 and 2026, the Black Caribbean ethnic group is projected to increase by ten per cent.

• By 2026 38.5 per cent of London’s population is projected to be from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic group. (BAME). This compares with 32.1 per cent in 2006 and 28.9 per cent in 2001. As a comparison in 1991 the groups other than White were estimated to form 20.3 per cent of London’s
population. It is clear that while there is a significant increase in London’s BAME population the growth rate is not accelerating when viewed as a proportion of London’s population.

DMAG 2006-22
Ethnic Group Population Projections
GLA Ethnic Group Population Projections

Is any of this newsworthy given the link between the Black Caribbean ethnic group and crime rate? Furthermore, if Muslim Asians are encouraged to become secular, will that have any effect on their currently LOWER than White crime rate?

The truth is that nobody knows what the population of Britain will be because the government has given up all control over who can and cannot enter. It looks like Britain has been sold out to the Europe project as the EUSSR is now called. Doesn't anyone think to ask how can Britain decrease its CO2 output by 40% when its population will in the same time rise by maybe 15 or 20 million unless most of the nation goes back to bicycles and horse drawn carriages?

THE CONSEQUENCES OF A HIGH DIFFERENTIAL BUT LOW DEFERENTIAL BIRTH RATE

MarcusAureliusII (#17) Well put. However, the registration of births, and other measures of birth-rate are hard to hide/ignore. As I see it, whatever the ethnicity of the population growth, the differential birth-rate means that the future population will be less able on average than those of the past. New Labour and the other parties have sold the public anarchism if not anarchy, and the latter, being the 'children' that they are, keep voting for less government (more freedom) against their own longer term best interests. Such is the way of children and others of deferred/arrested intellectual development/high impulsivity. So long as the correlation between IQ and Total Fertility Rate is as high as -0.73, we can expect trouble so long as things stay the way they are. 20% of births are to mothers not born in the UK, that does not cover offspring of immigrants who were born here, or the fact that the birth rate amongst White below average IQ parents is higher than above average. New labour and friends have been breeding consumers and stealthily removing the 'bourgeoisie' who might try to stop them (hence all this PC censorship? Whether this is being done by accident or design is FAR less important in my book than whether the evidence shows that it IS in practice happening, and to the best of my knowledge, the demographic/psychometric evidence indicates that it IS happening (whether Bukovsky's warnings are sound or not). I think it's remarkable that so many of the UK's new immigrants have travelled so far across EU states in order to settle an reproduce in the 'liberal-democratic' SI-UK, and that the same demographic forces are changing the socio-economic-political balance in the USA (see ETS and 'America's Perfect Storm) with Political Correctness being used to censure anyone who dares state the obvious.

NewFazer,

Got it in one. :)
Need I say I think it's a great book? The name seemed apt as we see the death of the modernist dream, and a growing need for cobbly-worlds to which to emigrate.