The Credit Crunch could be a good IDea.

Yes, you read that correctly, the Credit Crunch does have an upside. The shortage of dosh is forcing the government to back down down from its ambitious spending plans and in particular, it desire to create yet another database to monitor all our emails, phone calls and faxes, This is allegedly because its not popular but in fact, its more likely to be because it can no longer afford it. Even the most optimistic forecasts, are saying we are now in such deep financial doo doo that we cannot hope to clear it till at least 2032 and that is thought to be ambitious by those who study these things. That of course assumes that nothing else goes wrong with our economy such as another oil price hike, (an unheard of possibility) or maybe even a pandemic flu virus ?

In The Independent today they are also splashing a scoop (although even the Mail seems to be speculating about it as well ) about the Gov pulling out of the entire ID cards and data base fiasco. Well in view of the fact that I and everyone with even a moderate handful of braincells can tell you that ID Cards dont prevent fraud or terrorism and cost a bloody fortune then this could be the first good and practical idea that this government has had for a very long time. My Doctor is far from impressed by the proposed, Medical database and even my american friends are amazed at the audacity of a Government that wants to take the finger prints of schoolkids and even put fluoride in the primary school milk without anyones wish or permission. As my friend from Austin, Texas put it. "In some ways, Britain is even further down the road to fascism than the USA." But following the money as our cousins across the pond say, all this could now be in jeopardy. I remember when millions of £.s was a lot of money but over the 8Os it became Billions that was the impressive word, now its Trillions and somehow, (maybe i have just got a bit blasee about it) even Trillions doesnt seem to impress. Maybe its because Trillions of Debt doesnt seem to have the gloss that a similar figure in black would have.

We should all hope now that that the ISPs such as BT, Virgin, et al will tell the government that they dont want to do Phone and Email snooping on their behalf and why dont you just bugger off. Well, the way poor old Gordy is going on, he may soon have to do just that. Clearly Tony Bliar, did prepare a Toxic cocktail for Gordon to drink and in no way could it be described as the elixir of life but possibly the opposite.

Personally, I am hoping that another toxic cocktail (fluoridated water) will also be abandoned, for like ID cards its a great deal of money to spend on something that just doesn't work and is very unpopular and even dangerous. I dont distrust Brown the way I did Blair and hes probably a sincere man but it would seem that the pundits are right and Brown was not the financial wiz at the treasury that he was reckoned to be and as he stumbles from one blunder to the next either with policies or strategies, he's not really up to it as Prime Minister. When he listens and confers with his colleagues its not to bad but when he cuts loose on You Tube he not only makes a bit of fool of himself but also infuriates those who are supposed to be his boys and girls.

Obviously Brown is not responsible for the world wide financial collapse, he would need to be a genius to achieve that but we do seem to be in a bigger mess than any other European country and our particular balls up does seem to closely resemble that of the USA. This is what you get when you hold on to the coat tails of W Bush and allow anything so long as it fills the gap and looks profitable whether political or monetary and, lets face it, hanging on to Tonys' coat tails was as close as you get to holding on to Bush without an actual three point landing.

We are now approaching the County and more importantly, the European Elections. The word on the street is that the Labour vote is going to hit the wall and little wonder with the reputation they have aquired on democratic issues, or at least the lack of them. The Tories are sure to take advantage of this and who can blame them. The most worrying thing though is that someone like Nick Griffen, a BNP candidate might gain a seat which will alarm many. As a believer in democracy, i still believe that PR is a better voting system than firs to the trough or whatever they currently call our system. True occasionally parties like the BNP can get seats but its important that our system actually reflects the realist out there. And anyway, most of the BNP councillors i have seen soon either resign or get kicked out when the electorate see how incompetent they really are and return to the main party fold. If Brown wants to win some votes then dumping wastefull ID and Fluoridation schemes and actually listening to people, Obama style might help him avoid total collapse.

DONT INCREASE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY TILL YOU REDUCE DEMAND

Although few people would deny that switching to alternative and sustainable sources of energy such as wind, wave and solar as the oil runs out makes a lot of sense, But we should first examine what energy demands we have before we do this and try to reduce this demand before we start wasting time and money on a vast scale and getting little back for our efforts. A few slightly boring but nonetheless up to date facts and figures gives us a good and realistic starting point.

The government seems to regard Nuclear power as "green".

I disagree of course for all the usual reasons that a fully fledged and veteran tree hugger could be expected to use, ie; expensive, slow to get online, dangerous, terrorist targets, dependence on dwindling uranium fuel from dodgy sources and waste impossible to dispose of safely or cheaply. 25 years of campaigning on Nukes has not convinced me one jot that it makes any economic sense. If we were to replace all our coal and oil burning power stations with nukes, it would take. (wait for it) 300 of them. According to American calculations this would cost £750BN and dont forget we still have no idea what safe disposal of all that waste would cause let alone where we would put it.

Current favourite with many but not me is Wind Power.

The Tory leader has a small windmill on his roof. Forwared thinking, setting a good example etc etc. Sadly no. His wind turbine will produce probably less than one percent of his electricity needs if he is a typical user, ie washing machine, TVs Hi Fi, computers, microwave, dishwasher and if he uses air conditioning or electrical heating his percentage supply is even less. If he was really radical, disposed of many of his gadgets, converted his house to 12 or 24 volt DC system with battery back up and converted his lighting to very low energy, LED sources, then he is in with a chance but in the meantime, a windmill on his (or your) roof is at best tokenistic.

But what about serious modern windfarms? Surely they provide much more energy. Sadly the truth is its not much better and expansion has a number of serious limitations. If for example we as a nation chose to replace our coal and oil power stations with not Nuke power but in stead, Wind Power, more than half the entire UK land mass would have to be covered in windmills. So half the country covered in windmills or 300 nuclear power stations and enormouse amouts of dangerous waste for half a million years. ....TBC

So what do we do then, well we could do the unheard of thing and actually reduce the demand by using low energy technologies.

COULD WHITE ROOFS AND ROADS, SAVE THE POLAR ICE SHEETS?

Most schoolkids have seen simple scientific experiments at school demonstrating that light coloured surfaces reflect light and heat whilst dark surfaces absorb it and get hotter. So would painting our roofs in our major cities white, actually help reduce the temperature of our major cities in summer and reduce some of the effects of global warming? The answer seems to be a straight forward "Yes".

Experiments carried out in California for example demonstrated that some houses with their roofs painted white, lowered the internal temperature so much that they were able to turn off the air conditioning. This not only reduced the residents power bills but also of course lowered their carbon foot prints and as we know, small carbon footprints are very sexy nowadays.

Our larger towns and cities are usualy a few degrees hotter than the surrounding country side during both summer and winter and major cities in the lower lattitudes can become insufferably hot during summer heatwaves. This can result in a high death toll for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and those with heart conditions as they discovered in Paris in the summer of 2003. It makes sense therfore, to do anything we can to reduce this danger and if it saves lives, global emissions, energy and expense in one fell swoop then this idea probably has legs.

It is estimated that if the 100 largest cities in the world replaced their dark roofs and their asphalt-based roads with concrete or other light-colored material, it could offset 44 metric gigatons (billion tons) of greenhouse gases. This is more greenhouse gas than the entire human population emits in a year. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, this could also offset the growth in carbon diooxide emissions for the next ten years.

The physicist Hashem Akbari, says that it takes about 10 square meters of white roof to offset 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide. and in warm climates, white roofs have the additional benefit of lowering the cost of air conditioning by up to 20% in hot months, By these means, cities could be cooler in summer and suffer less smog. It was these costs that prompted the state of California to require in 2005 that flat-roofed commercial buildings must have white roofs. In 2009, California will require that new and retrofitted residential and commercial buildings with both flat and sloped roofs, must be installed with heat-reflective roofing. These requirements are now part of California´s energy-efficient building code.

It would seem that this is a fairly low tech fix for several of our problems both local and global and if these ideas catch on in the worlds larger cities, their may still be hope for those glaciers and ice sheets at the Poles and the wildlife that depends upon it including millions of lives in coastal areas threatened by sea-level rises. For once we seem to have a problem for which Politicians do have some expertise, for after all, who better when it comes to whitewash. My message to our PM is therefore, cut the crap and grab a brush.

WHO IS ABOVE LAW AND ORDER ?

There must be something very wrong in the UK when we are confronted by a situation where all of us are regularly filmed and photographed by thousands of CCTV cams in the streets, the Bus and Rail Stations shops and stores and last but not least, by the police. All without our wish or permission but when the situation is reversed, even for perfectly innocent or justifiable reasons, we break the law and are sacked and/or prosecuted.

For example, as of February this year, we cannot legally photograph or film police officers, at any time whether they are allegedly using violence or not, if we do, we can be detained and our film confiscated even if we are a journalist or a blogger. What are we supposed to do if we witness an incident of police violence or brutality, and they do this? Prosecute them for withholding evidence ? And similarly if we see NHS patients or people in care homes being neglected or abused even if we are working in co-operation with the BBC we can lose our job and our future livelihood as one British nurse found out this week. If we are employed by the NHS and our filming is discovered or heaven forbid, we own up and blow our whistles with pride as we are supposedly encouraged to do, we are not only dismissed but are also then prevented from continuing nursing.

One could be forgiven for believing that we are supposed to be attacked or abused and further punished if we object or bring any evidence or proof of such activities despite laws which are supposed to protect us from reprisals. The NHS has now reached a position where it seems to consider itself above the law. The PCTs are a law unto themselves and take no notice of democracy or their own rules as the people of Southampton have found out this year in the so called "consultation" over fluoridation of drinking water.

As i write there are now more than 90 complaints against the Metropolitan police being investigated following the G20 and Climate Change Camp last week. Its true that some hotheads broke a few windows but generally the occasion was peaceful as had been planned. One begins to wonder are the stories of the actions of agent provocateurs often mentioned on the conspiracy theory websites, not so far from the Truth after all. As a long time protester against Pollution, Nuke Power, Grotesque Planning, Insane Road building and all kinds of environmental degradation I know that any violence or damage to property does not win either the argument or any beauty contests. In fact, get into a fight in front of the TV or CCTV cams and you have lost the sympathy of the very people you wished would join you in your protests. Moderate and civilised people do not really like brawling in the street, I know because I am one of them. (surely some mistake! Ed.)

In recent years because of Trade Union actions such as picketing and more recently the Terrorist outrages, lots of new, and often draconian new laws have been introduced allegedly to keep public order and protect property but the effects have actually stifled any kind of spontaneous action. You don't need a noisy mob to get yourself in trouble nowadays, even one woman reading out the names of those killed by the illegal war in Iraq is now illegal and can result in fines or detention and of course DNA samples which will be kept as long as they can get away with it. Even a silent Peace Vigil is likely to be filmed by police officers with telephoto lenses. When this kind of thing happens things have gone more than far enough and its time to protest against the laws themselves and the people who are introducing them. If we don't, we are in imminent danger of losing not just our democratic freedoms of expression but even our liberty.

We have been promised that cabinet papers from discussions about the Iraq war will be made public and that there will be a public enquiry but they keep coming up with excuses and even the MPs have not been allowed to see or discuss it. Meanwhile the Government pushes ahead with ID Cards, Biometrics, Retinal Scans and other technology which is not only very complex and extremely expensive but also completely useless in fighting fraud, ID theft and of course terrorism. What kind of plonker seriously believes that terror attacks will cease if terrorists have to carry ID Cards when its clear that such measures didn't prevent the 911 attacks in the USA. Even the much vaunted "chip and pin" technology is becoming increasingly unsafe as crook find new ways of circumventing it. Chief plonker must be Gordon Brown who still expresses confidence in ID Cards and of course there is a long line of Home Secs past and present who believe in fairy stories.

The usual excuse for all this bullshit is of course terrorism and public order but what about Government public order and honesty not to mention accountability. Clearly you can lie with impunity if you are an MP or a Government minister or at the very least think you can. You can subvert the expenses rules for MPs and have as many houses, real or illusory at the expense of the taxpayer. If we are to believe our eyes, its also OK for Police Officers to hit people with sticks and shields and to forget to carry any identification numbers on their uniforms. They can also corrale people into confined spaces for hours on end without water or toilet facilities irrespective of whether the people they round up are involved in the demonstration or not.

Do the commanders of the Met seriously believe that people will not photograph them, legally or otherwise when such offences are being committed. Offences they certainly are and wearing a police uniform should be no guarantee of immunity from prosecution for them. The police have more than enough laws to help them keep order without any more being introduced and they should start by obeying the laws themselves, all the way from the officer on the beat right up to the Chief Constables and Commanders. They are, like Civil Servants and elected members of Parliament, our servants after all and not our masters. We elect them, they must carry out the will of the people. If the people are not above the law then neither are they.

We are now living in a society that is ruled by people who never say sorry, never resign, assume they are always correct and seem to think that the people of the United Kingdom are as corrupt, dishonest and dangerous as they are. Some no doubt are but the vast majority of us are not and we are coming to resent they way we are being treated and the assumption that are being made about us. If they really want honesty and law and order, they need to show a little more trust otherwise our trust in them will finally run out.