windfarms

A rocket explodes soon after launch
Can you remember the high spots in the 'space race'? A recent article with the title Yuri Gagarin: Waste of space? brought back memories and summed it all up very well. The space race, was a rather exclusive affair, dominated by the Russians and the USA, few other countries took part. The Chinese had a satellite that, we were told, weighed one ton. This made us laugh as there is a soup with a similar name, Wun Tun, sold in all Chinese restaurants. Also this satellite had a wooden heat shield, well we all have to start somewhere. But it was the French who, as usual, allowed their Gallic pride to take over. Alas in the search for la gloire their satellites went pop on a regular basis and so became a frequent item on news broadcasts. But then the stupid EU allowed the French to create an EU based Space Agency and so the costs of this vanity project where shared buy the whole of the EU and not just the delusional parts.

Bad policy, dropped
The big society. It's hard to know where to start. For example, is it the Big Society? Is it capital letters to start the thing off; big letters for a big idea? It's fair to say that at the general election many people were desperate to get rid of Gordon Brown. Equally fair is to say there were not enough of them to give David Cameron an overall majority. This is important as the BSoc is now causing so much bother that it's right to wonder if, with more of a mandate, Cameron would have had the confidence to drop the thing. The Big Society was not a big noise on the run-up to the election, perhaps Cameron is holding onto it as a result of post-election dynamics. The Tory coalition with the Lib Dems has ruined more than it has created. The Lib Dems hang in shreds and the Tories are forced to act so carefully it looks more like dithering than care. With the Big Society policy the Tories can try to out-Lib the Lib Dems. Had the Tories got the mandate to act alone we can imagine it would be very different now, the Tory party would have 'moved on'.

Common sense tells us that Big Society is the opposite of Big State, but what else do we know? Well it does seem that size matters. For 'Small is Beautiful' was also once a very powerful creed.

we subsidise this cruelty
Alistair Darling mentions that wind power will play an important part of the regeneration of the UK and no-one questions this in the House of Commons. We are to spend hundreds of billions of pounds decapitating birds, ruining the countryside and outsourcing turbine production to provide very little energy. But this will tick some boxes in Brussels and sound good for the environment.

In the meantime the traditional UK dairy industry is in decline and the first 'titan' factory farm dairy is proposed, see Compassion in World Farming.