RIP Pete Seeger

Died yesterday.

The Horrors of Climate change Made Clear

This is awful:

An underweight hedgehog found wandering around a garden during the daytime is a sign that the animals are being lured out of hibernation too early, says a wildlife charity. Care for the Wild, in Brighton Road, Horsham, have taken in the little hog after he was found in a Crawley garden, then taken to Harvest Vets in Maidenbower. Care for the Wild’s wildlife carer Tarnya Knight said: “This little fella is just 300 grams so he definitely wouldn’t have made it through the winter, and if a cold snap comes that would have finished him off. But we’ll feed him up and he should be okay to be released in the spring. “The mild weather we’ve had is leading to hedgehogs coming out of hibernation too early. Most of them will be the right weight, but there isn’t much natural food for them around at the moment. So if you get hedgehogs in your garden please leave out some food and water to see if they’re around. And of course, if you see one during the daytime, please either contact us or take it to the vet.”

Increasing warming, decreasing hedgehogs. Will Britain be Britain without the humble hedgepig snuffling about? One is vaguely - very vaguely - reminded of George Orwell's Some Thoughts On The Common Toad:

At any rate, spring is here, even in London N.1, and they can't stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

Having failed to control the simple delights of watching little figments of nature going about their business, and not being able to tax it efficiently, the dictator and bureaucrats, it seems, have decided to drive everything endearing and untamed to extinction.

Or maybe not.  But there is a smidgeon of a serious point here - climate change is not The Day After Tommorrow dramatic nonsense.  Climate change is British hedgehogs dying out because the conditions that let them thrive no longer apply.  And if the loveable hedgehog is being challenged by climate change, what else will struggle to adapt?

 Doubtless this is one of the benefits Owen Paterson discerns in a warming world.  He has pointed out that human beings are great adaptors - failing to add that adaption is usually accompanied by significant unpleasantness (the Saxons adapted to climate change 1500 years ago by sailing to Britain and killing lots of people).  Hedgehogs, probably, are less capable of adapting to a changing world.

Odd. They seem to have plenty of money

... ... to donate to political parties.

[The Telegraph] has published a letter from 24 business leaders declaring that Labour's pledge to reintroduce the 50p tax rate is "a backwards step which would put the economic recovery at risk and would very quickly lead to the loss of jobs in Britain" ... Of the 24 signatories, eight have donated a total of £776,111 to the Tories. 

Here, courtesy of the Electoral Commission, are the full details of their donations. 

Richard Caring - £222,000.75 

Neil Clifford, Chief Executive, Kurt Geiger - £12,000 

Peter Cullum, Executive Chairman, Towergate - £15,000 from Towergate to the Conservative 1922 Committee 

Michael Gutman, Chief Executive, Westfield Group - £211,570 from Westfield; Gutman has attended Conservative Leader's Group dinners 

Mike Lynch, Chairman, Invoke Capital; Founder, Autonomy - £50,000 

Tim Oliver, Founder and Chairman, Hampden - £12,940 from Oliver, £54,600 from Hampden 

Paul Walsh - £10,000 

Will Wyatt, CEO, Caledonia - £188,000 from Caledonia to Conservative associations/candidates

Total: £776,110.75 

Here

Perhaps if they stopped squandering their cash on trying to buy politicians ensuring the continuance of personally favourable political trends, a slightly higher tax rate on the very toppermost bit of their already considerable incomes wouldn't seem so outrageous.

And given they have invested so much in such a worthless enterprise as the Tory party - unable to attain a majority in spite of 12 years of Labour incumbency, the Iraq invasion, economic collapse and Gordon Brown - we should stop worshipping the very rich and indeed cease listening to them at all.  Talk about a bad investment.

They clearly aren't any cleverer than the rest of us.

Giant Eagle Terrorises Yorkshire

Indeed, 'tis true!

Chris O’Donnell lost Nikita, a Steller’s sea eagle, after training in windy conditions near Brackenbottom, North Yorks, and believes the 10-year-old eagle may have been blown off course. Police today stated the bird was not dangerous to the public, but yesterday tweeted a warning to pet owners to keep small animals indoors. Nikita's trainer said yesterday: “She’s massive – like a small glider,” but reassured people the eagle was harmless. Mr O’Donnell believes the bird will be found a few miles away, adding: “It’ll be sitting in a field wishing it was back home.” Steller's sea eagles are native to eastern Russia, and migrate to Japan each winter where they are now revered.

If it is a threat to small animals, it is endangering most of the intelligent life in Yorkshire.

Fiddling while Britain drowns

The 'Greenest government ever' has slashed spending on climate change mitigation:

Figures released under freedom of information rules show annual spending falling from £29.1m in 2012-13 to £17.2m in 2013-14. The drop in funding follows a previous slashing of staff working on the issue from 38 to six in May 2013. The adaptation funding at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is spent on finding ways to cope with the increased floods, droughts and heatwaves expected in the UK due to global warming. It had risen by almost 20% under Paterson's predecessor, Caroline Spelman, but fell 41% after Paterson replaced her in September 2012. Some was also spent on cutting greenhouse gas emissions but the Department of Energy and Climate Change takes the lead on that issue.

The only good news here is that one does not have to blame Environment Secretary Owen Paterson for this, as cuts inevitably lead back to Gideon 'Call me George' Osborne in Number 11. So we get to Boo! and Hiss! two for the price of one. Meanwhile, Cameron - who campaigned hard on his green credentials - has just gleefully announced that the few bits of Britain not underwater will be concreted over by cut price, unregulated developers, following his 'Bonfire of the Green regulations':

Addressing the Federation of Small Businesses conference, Cameron will argue that the new rules will make it "vastly cheaper" for businesses to comply with their environmental obligations. The government also plans to scrap many building standards relating to things such as the size of windows and demands for renewable energy sources, saving builders about £500 for each new home.

The Conservatives, of course, complained about too much regulation in the financial markets, right up to the moment that they collapsed in 2008. Good to see they, in Cameron's own words, "have learned absolutely nothing" from that notable experiment in deregulation, and how it does not always work as intended. Small minded, stupid men. In charge of one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. With nuclear missiles.

Cameron - stupid, blind, or both?

From The Guardian:

"I think these people who seem to have learned absolutely nothing from what went wrong with our economy, that the problems were based on too much borrowing, too much spending, too much debt, and they're really saying: 'If you gave us the key to the car, we would drive it in exactly the same way into exactly the same wall'." 

Cameron also gave an upbeat assessment of the economy before publication of Tuesday's figures on growth. He said there was no need to be too gloomy about poor balance-of-payment figures and suggestions the upturn is fuelled by higher consumer spending.

Cameron unwittingly describes his own stupidly 'relaxed' attitude to the hints that the economy is about to stagger back into crisis. Having spent most of the recovery trash talking Britain, he's now talking the the recovery up, wilfully ignoring the warning signs. To borrow his own metaphor, having watched Labour crash the car into the wall, he's jumped into his own vehicle and is driving at it as well. Sorry, Dave, who did you say learned nothing?

Coalition scorecard

Looking back over the various credits and debits, I note I've failed to account for Michael Gove.

-1 ... Michael Gove.
-1 ... Free schools.

OVERALL: -4/10. A combination of imbecility and ideology in education drives the coalition down, down, down into the depths.