Nick Griffin mash-up

Give up meat to save the planet?

The Times splashes on Lord Stern's contention that we should all become vegetarian in a bid to save the planet.
He says: 'Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.'
Combined with the news that McDonalds is pulling out of Iceland could this spell an end to our love affair with meat?
A firm of architects has even worked out the carbon footprint of the family dog. Apparently it's twice that of a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year.
What about other measures.
The Kyoto Protocol is 'a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), aimed at combating global warming. The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty with the goal of achieving "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."'
The map shows participation in the Kyoto Protocol, where dark green indicates countries that have signed and ratified the treaty, yellow is signed, but not yet ratified, grey is not yet decided and red is no intention of ratifying.
Surely we would be better off putting pressure on the big red country to sign up to this before we put down our bacon butties and eat the dog.

Career advice for seven-year-olds

This looks like a wind-up but isn't.
Somebody please tell me what purpose this serves.
I've no objection to more funding for education but this seems like the worst kind of window-dressing.

Father Ted Karadzic

Radovan Karadzic is back in the news today, boycotting his trial for war crimes.
When ever I see him my thoughts turn to Craggy Island and the dearly departed Father Ted.

Jimmy Carr - a defence

Jimmy Carr's jokes are always a bit close to the mark and his audience knows that.
His latest 'transgression of taste' is debatable but within the context of one of his shows it IS forgiveable.
For the record he said: 'Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a f****** good Paralympic team in 2012.'
Most of the ex-servicemen I know have pretty black senses of humour and I'm sure they would find this funny.
One of the things they do not find funny is the shabby way the frontline troops are treated in terms of equipment deficiencies and the levels of compensation payments for the wounded.
Am I the only one who finds it a bit rich that defence secretary Bob Ainsworth says, 'our brave Armed Forces put their lives on the line for all of us and deserve the utmost respect,' when he's the one responsible for far greater displays of disrespect?
His leap on to the fickle bandwagon of public opinion is yet another example of this government's lack of taste.

Here's some vintage Jimmy Carr to take your mind off it.

BNP's BBC disaster

Every time BNP leader Nick Griffin opened his mouth he sounded like an idiot.
He came across like a street-corner alcoholic desperate to make his point.



I'd say put him on TV every day but that would be cruel.
How did he get any votes?
Well the answer seems to lie with our reaction to hardship. If anything goes wrong we look to blame someone. Bad economy, it's too many immigrants, bad health service, immigrants, bad roads, immigrants etc.
And here in The Daily Telegraph is the 'respectable' view of immigration. But is it any less dangerous than the views of Nick Griffin?

Brown's missed the post

The PM has urged union leaders and Royal Mail bosses to end the postal strike.
Hold on a minute. Does he think we're idiots?
This shameless piece of political posturing is a transparent piece of pseudo-statesmanship.
He should have got involved much earlier to force a resolution.
All he's doing now is surfing a wave of public opinion - it's pathetic and too late.