Thursday 2nd February 2006

6pm update: BNP 'not guilty' of race hate (BBCi)

BLOGS

ToryDiary: 'Will the Tories support Blair on nuclear power?' and David Willetts argues that modernisation is a Tory tradition.

MY NAME IS GEORGE, AND I'M AN OIL-AHOLIC

Telegraph leader: "On Tuesday, Mr Bush announced a 22 per cent increase in spending at the Department of Energy on research into two areas.  The first aims to boost the contribution of zero-emission coal-fired plants, solar and wind technology and nuclear energy in powering homes and offices. The second will investigate alternative sources of fuel for cars - lithium batteries, hydrogen and ethanol produced not just from maize, but also wood chips and stalks, and switch grass."

Times leader: "Mr Bush is right that the solution will require advances on all fronts, from safe nuclear energy to zero-emission coal-fired plants, wind and solar technologies and cleaner, more efficient ethanol. On Tuesday night he talked only of carrots. The lessons of California’s environmental advances, though, are that fiscal sticks need to be deployed. Unless we are all encouraged to reduce fossil fuel use, there will be only a limited market for new fuels. Mr Bush has taken the first important step of admitting the problem. But as any addict will attest, there is no gain without pain."

Competitive Enterprise Institute: "In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush took a big step toward returning the United States to the disastrous energy policies of the Nixon and Carter years, warns the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  “The president's dangerous rhetoric that we are addicted to oil is an indication that the administration is addicted to confused thinking about energy policies,” says Myron Ebell, CEI’s director of energy policy. “As bad as the policies proposed by President Bush are, the addiction rhetoric is much worse. President Bush might as well have said, ‘we're addicted to prosperity, comfort, and mobility, and I've got the policies to do something about it.’"

LORD ASHCROFT'S £425,000 DONATION TO AUSTRALIA'S CONSERVATIVES

FT: "Lord Ashcroft, Conservative party deputy chairman and prominent businessman, has sparked a political furore in Australia after it emerged he had donated A$1m (£425,000) to the country’s ruling centre-right Liberal party.  News of the amount – believed to be the largest individual donation in Australian political history – helped to fuel an angry war of words between the government and opposition.  Alan Griffin, Labor spokesman on party funding, told the Financial Times: “This interference in Australian politics should be denounced by the Liberals.” Unlike the UK, Australia has no restrictions on donations from overseas nationals."

£1 MILLION SURPRISE FOR MR & MRS CAMERON (SENIOR)

The Sun: "The parents of Tory leader David Cameron have flogged a pair of paintings for £1MILLION.  Ian, 73, and Mary, 70, were stunned when the pictures sold for a seven—figure sum at auction.  The paintings, by 18th century French Old Master Jean Baptiste Greuze, had been hanging in the family home for years. "

OTHER CONSERVATIVE NEWS & COMMENTARY

Independent: "Tony Blair has been embarrassed by a letter from one of his junior environment ministers saying the closure of four eco laboratories involved in climate change research did "not make sense"."

HUHNE DOES A HAGUE

Times: "CHRIS HUHNE, the dark horse for the Liberal Democrat leadership, faces accusations of betraying his collegues by reneging on a deal not to run in the contest.  The Times has learnt that Mr Huhne, who entered Parliament at the last election, promised in a private meeting with Sir Menzies Campbell that he would not enter the race.  Mr Huhne, a former MEP who is barely known outside Westminster, promised to support Sir Menzies and sealed the deal with a handshake after a 50-minute meeting shortly after the resignation of Charles Kennedy. But barely one hour later Mr Huhne, a Treasury spokesman, returned to Sir Menzies’s office in the Commons to declare that he had changed his mind."

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Comments

[Basil Blogger]

Editor, no mention of the religious hatred bill getting defeated in parliament, or the cartoons published in Danish press and now doing the rounds in most European press depicting Mohammed as a terrorist and the reaction of the Islamic world to these cartoons. I wonder if the reactions of Muslims over this helped some MPs to make their minds up to vote against this bill.

One MP asked if the following facts be considered as defamation or freedom of speech?

1. Mohammed married a 6 year old girl.
2. Islam considers homosexuality as an abomination.
3. In Sharia Law adultresses and homosexuals are stoned to death.
4. In Sharia Law thieves must have their arms amputated.
5. In Sharia Law women must cover up from nose to toe.

[Mark Fulford]

One of my colleagues directed me to Thatcher faced disaster over son's business dealings at The Guardian.

If Labour had pressed the attack home, would 'Thatcherism' have come about?

[Sam Coates]

The Religious Hatred Bill was covered yesterday.

[R UK]

Bush is going a greenish hue - all to save the planet? the US economy? or to sidetrack the news away from other stories?

The American consumer is in fact getting pretty excited about one way to fuel a car - and that's with electricity. They have hybrids in graet numbers already and they like them - the accessibility of fast power, the silence, the cleanness and the convenience. Once the American consumer has decided what he/she wants, he is unlikely to be persuaded by Bush or anyone else to want something different.

So forget ethanol, coconut oil, and other biotechnology to make fuels for cars. Put BP/Shell out of business. Just get electricity into cars as cheaply and environmentally as possible. And get the batteries up a few levels - lithium or whatever.

It may also be of interest to people that fuel cell power generators are for sale in the UK already at the 1 megawatt scale producing economically and environmentally clean - see Rolls Royce website. Would any British politician dare to mention that yet again in these technologies as in so many others Britain leads the world?

While on about the USA, why is it not reported that Bush is signing bilateral free trade agreements with a series of Asian countries to create a vast free trading area which will in time include most of the world bar the EU? Is it because it's a little embarrassing for Blair and other EUrophiles to admit that we're stuck on a banana boat while the world is surging ahead without us.

Why doesn't Cameron get up to speed on his international position? We need out of the EU - before the others disappear over the horizon.

[oliver king]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,,1700535,00.html

[Yet]

Bush is going a greenish hue - all to save the planet? the US economy? or to sidetrack the news away from other stories?
It's a genuine move, the White House has realised that National Security and Environmental priorities coincide on this issue and that there is a good chance of getting the US voters on side.

The fact is that warmer climates will result in malaria and plagues of bugs and insects moving up into the Southern USA from Mexico.

Then there is the fact that the USA is heavily dependant on the rest of the world for energy especially many countries in unstable parts of Asia and Africa, a dependance in Energy policy can result in a warping of Foreign Policy to secure Energy supplies - greater use of renewable Energy Sources (There are huge open plains in the USA in which Rapeseed can be grown) and of Nuclear power (Uranium being abundant in parts of the USA), it is now dawning on politicians in this country that the dash for gas and running down of Nuclear Power was a mistake - renewables especially Wind, Solar power and Rapeseed Oil as an alternative fuel source, encouraging use of mass transit systems have to be encouraged but in the short term as France has done given that most of the renewable sources are still far below neccessary capacity, there have to be extensions of the life of existing nuclear plants and new nuclear plants built.

[Yet another Anon]

>>>>>In Sharia Law thieves must have their arms amputated.<<<<<<
Hard Labour and being starved and locked up in solitary confinement is a far better solution, charge convicts the cost of their being kept in prison as they do in Texas - bring back Debtors Prisons where prisoners work off the debts run up during their sentences.

[thompson cigar humidor]

I can't be bothered with anything recently. I haven't been up to anything. I don't care. I haven't gotten much done lately. Not that it matters.

[boat house lake norris sale]

Women are not, are fairly portrayed in the media

[cedar springs christian book store]

People should be allowed to go naked in certain recreational areas only - Or specify those areas and you have another persuasive speech topic

[candy retro wholesale]

My life's been completely unremarkable recently. I haven't been up to anything. I just don't have much to say. I've just been letting everything pass me by. Shrug. I don't care.

[bill consolidate medical]

Tobacco billboards are wrong

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alguem sabe me dizer se e possivel rotacionar uma imagem com angulo de 30?, 45?, ... (em css, javascript, sei la, qualquer