Tag Archives: financial crisis

Where next for climate change ?

Prof. Hal W. Lewis
resigns from the American Physical Society
Resignation letter cites fraud across the field
picture of Hal Lewis

… the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, … has corrupted so many scientists …  It is the greatest and most successful pseudo­scientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.  …

As regular visitors to these pages over recent months will know, it is rare for Pericles to say anything in a vehement tone.

To-day’s subject however is so important — to the well-being not only of residents of the British Isles but also to those in the far flung corners of the Earth, many of whom will have no access to a computer, many of whom will be largely illiterate — that he departs from his usual conciliatory demeanour.

To-day Pericles urges you to read Prof. Hal Lewis’s letter of resig­nation from the American Physical Society — an organization once thought of as amongst the greatest bodies (if not indeed the greatest) in the field of physics.

Prof. Lewis’s letter is set out in full at Pericles’s own site, together with his commentary.

Snooty Europhiles should eat dirt

The Bank of England

The continent is a collection of different languages and labour-market traditions and individual approaches to deficits and inflation. … Angela Merkel is plainly facing significant unrest from a growing constituency who see no reason to pay ever more in their taxes to finance … the periphery of Europe.

I think we deserve an apology.  By “we” I mean all the Euro-sceptics, Euro-pragmatists, Euro-realists and Euro-hysterics who were alarmed by some of the optimism that surrounded the birth of the single currency.  Do you remember the disdain with which we were treated?  We were told that we were boss-eyed Little Englanders.  They used to say we were a bunch of xenophobic, garlic-hating defenders of the pint and the yard and the good old bread-filled British banger.

Whenever we protested about any detail of the plan for monetary union, we were told that we were in danger of stopping the great European train, boat, bus, bicycle or whatever it was.  We were a blimpish embarrassment to our country, a bunch of idiot children who had to be shooshed while the grown-ups got on with their magnificent plans.

So it gives me a tingling pleasure to report that everywhere you look on the map of Europe we have been proved resoundingly and crushingly right.

Continue reading Snooty Europhiles should eat dirt

Tax rise a Shakespearean return to childhood

With record levels of debt, this Government returns to raising taxes echoing the: “….Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” (Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, Act II, Scene VII)

When you have to watch someone die, one of the most distressing things is the period that Shakespeare called a second childishness. As a patient enters the final stages, he may suddenly start speaking of mummy, babbling nursery rhymes or talking a foreign language that he forgot at the age of four. The patient may be suddenly rude, irrationally angry or jealous. It is as though all the decades of acquired behaviour and education are melting away, to reveal the juvenile instincts beneath. Continue reading Tax rise a Shakespearean return to childhood