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What I would like to draw you chaps attention to, is the notion of Democracy.
Do you believe in Democracy, meaning one adult one vote?
In a Democratic country, every person should be able to have a voice.
That does not mean that the essentially uneducated, like myself, know what they are talking about but that peasant, should not be silenced because they are not educated.
If twenty percent of the population are highly educated, you might expect that they hold down important jobs, like in government or the Civil Service but in a Democracy, it should not be the case that only their voices can be heard.
If people that are working class, who have only had a modest education, are not permitted to have a voice, then I would contend that, that Democracy, is a sham.Michael, I regard democracy in Britain as a sham.
As to you not being permitted a voice, you keep saying that net zero is impossible, unnecessary and too expensive. Well, the Leader of the Opposition keeps saying that too, as does Reform, the political party currently highest in the opinion polls, and they both get extensive media coverage. So you personally may only get to say those things here, but you have powerful people projecting the message you want heard. The trouble with this is that all three criticisms are factually false (see below).
There are many ways democracy can be a sham. Everyone can have a vote, but all the political parties with any chance of winning may have nearly identical policies. Or the party that wins may have been lying about the policies it said it would implement; Kier Starmer reversed all of his “Ten Pledges”.
People also need information to decide which way to vote. If the media gives wrong or misleading information, or just doesn’t tell us certain important things, people end up voting against their best interests. The media might also undermine the public’s ability to think critically, making the public vulnerable to claims that sound convincing but which are entirely false.
Millions of British voters want immigration reduced. Immigration doesn’t bother me, but I think those voters are being denied a democratic means of achieving that; in 2019 they voted for Boris Johnson’s administration thinking that “getting Brexit done” would reduce immigration, but the government they’d voted in nearly tripled it. On the other hand, I’m one of millions of voters who want to stop the British government attacking other countries, and we’re denied a democratic means of achieving that; Starmer promised a vote on all foreign wars, but put RAF Akrotiri at the disposal of Israel for its genocide of Palestinians, and let USA refuelling tankers fly from Mildenhall for bombing Iran and Yemen.
And there’s another aspect to all this. Having a voice is one thing, but it’s useless unless people listen. We seem to be in an age where people don’t listen to each other; they all want to be the one talking, even though hardly anyone’s listening.
All of my examples above are drawn from my own experience of sham democracy in Britain; they all apply, the situation is a complete mess.
“……the situation is a complete mess.“
It was only a matter of time. I listened to Paul Holden on Politics Live yesterday describe the corruption and illegality of the Labour hierarchy – and their subservience to the Zionist lobby. His book is astonishing in its detail.
Link to his interview with Owen Jones below, who thankfully didn’t interrupt.
I think we are in a Dunkelflaute.
Every time for the last few days I have checked how our Electricity is being produced, it shows a huge volume of North Sea Gas/Methane being consumed, often fifty per cent or more of total Electricity production.,
As Clark has pointed out, we are in a time of low cloud and little wind. I expect the wind turbines are scooping up public money for being idle?
Today the BBC are explaining that The Dutch have moved away from Methane, it was them who first opened up a huge North Sea Gas Field, to mostly wind and Solar, they have really taken up battery car ownership, they might have over done the renewable thing, they are asking people to cut down on their home use of Electricity.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn40y9yxkgvo
Quote BBC
In a Dutch government TV campaign called “Flip the Switch” an actress warns viewers about their electricity usage.“When we all use electricity at the same time, our power grid gets overloaded,” she says. “This can cause malfunctions. So, use as little electricity as possible between four and nine.”
The Dutch may have taken up Net Zero too quickly, maybe a lesson for the U.K. to learn?
Quote BBC
“for homes and companies who want to scale-up their use of electricity with a new or larger grid connection, that, increasingly, is just not possible.“Often consumers want to install a heat pump, or charge their electric vehicle at home, but that requires a much bigger power connection, and increasingly they just cannot get it,” says Mr Kees-Jan Rameau.
He adds that it is worse for businesses. “Often they want to expand their operations, and they just cannot get extra capacity from the grid operators.
And it has got to the point where even new housing construction in the Netherlands is becoming increasingly difficult, because there’s just no capacity to connect those new neighbourhoods to the grid.”
At 9.42 on 16/10/2025 57% of our Electricity is being produced by Methane.– “The Dutch may have taken up Net Zero too quickly, maybe a lesson for the U.K. to learn?”
The Netherlands, like everywhere else, has been far too slow. Remember, global heating from emissions was proven in 1988, 37 years ago. The current panic and shambles is a result of not acting soon enough.
Imagine we’re stranded at sea in a lifeboat with limited supplies. The navigators says we’re a hundred days from land, we’re going to have to ration our food, but a few fat people say nonsense, we’ll make landfall in ten days, let’s eat as much as we like. The fatsos know nothing about navigation, but they insist on debate and a vote. No one wants to go hungry, eh?
The Netherlanders are looking at storing Carbon dioxide in their drying up wells.
CO2 storage
Exhausted gas fields can be used for the storage of CO2. The National Water Plan (NWP) specifies locations for the implementation of two pilots with this technology. In addition, in the NWP the entire Exclusive Economic Zone is designated as a search area for CO2 storage locations. The capture and storage of CO2 is an important mainstay of Dutch climate policy.
https://noordzeeloket.nl/en/functions-use/olie-gaswinning/#:~:text=The%20North%20Sea%20contains%20large,of%20the%20Dutch%20Continental%20Shelf.I thought CO2 was pumped into wells, to increase extraction rates?
If there is no apparent economic benefit to poring CO2 down old wells, who will be made to cough up?
Do you think it will be the public?If more than 50% of the World’s Coal burning is done in China, how can The Netherlands squirting some Carbon dioxide down old wells make any significant difference to the World’s Carbon balance?
Michael, do you wilfully and consistently drop litter? Because if you don’t, you’re a hypocrite.
I am sorry Clark but I do not understand your inference.
I never drop litter, ever.
I hate to see dumped crap/litter.
Let me set the stage for you.
I expect it is possible that humans are causing some extra Carbon dioxide to be released from the ground, such that Carbon dioxide enters the air/atmosphere.
In the Eocene, it has been postulated that there might have been about 1600 parts per million of CO2 in the air, about four times as much, as we have now, the Earth was GREEN/LUSH
Then something happened, that massively reduced how much Carbon dioxide was in the air.
The Ice Age was initiated in the Southern Ocean, probably because there was a landmass over the South Pole.
That Landmass, had been bigger, previously as India and Australia had “spun off”, India striking Asia and driving up the Himalaya.
As South America and India and Australia, moved away from Antarctica, the seas, swirled about the smaller continent of Antarctica, keeping the warm tropical currents from warming Antarctica.
The die, seems to have been cast.
The Ice Age,at least in the Southern ocean, had begun.
If our World was GREEN/LUSH 35,000,000 years ago at 1600 parts per million, what are we frightened of, as we surge towards 500 parts per million.
Yes, it will be a little more wet, yes it will be a little hotter.
Will it be the end of times.
No, it will not.After the budget and local elections the fear will grip every Labour MP.
Reform on course to sweep the board in England and Wales– “I am sorry Clark but I do not understand your inference.”
Really?
You repeatedly argue that Britain (and now the Netherlands) should emit carbon dioxide, because Chinese people emit similar quantities of carbon dioxide. Therefore you should drop litter because other people drop litter. Or else you’re a hypocrite.
You’re also arrogant enough to believe that you know better than the collective work of all the scientists who have ever studied Earth. You don’t even bother looking at the warnings their professional organisations have published or how they reached those conclusions, apparently dismissing the entire, centuries’ long effort as a woke conspiracy. You’re actually so arrogant that you expect your far-less-than-half-baked opinions be taken seriously.
You suggested that you wanted to discuss “the notion of Democracy”. So I tried that, but you were lying, you just went straight back to the same old tired propaganda.
You (somewhat incoherently) whined: “That does not mean that the essentially uneducated, like myself, know what they are talking about but that peasant, should not be silenced because they are not educated.” You haven’t been “silenced”, in fact you’ve been generously indulged, while you treated other commenters as if we were idiots. So stop playing the victim and cut the self-pity. FYI, the way to get listened to is to do enough homework to have something worth saying. That’s what scientists have to do to get published in a journal, not, as you fantasise (or, more likely, parrot) suck up to some left-wing board with their attitudes about gay marriage or whatever. Our society produces ever more technological miracles, all of which are founded upon underlying science. Oddly enough, whether or not a person will recite “I will call people by their preferred pronouns” in front of some Big Woke Boss is not an effective method of choosing who has the skills, talents and self-discipline to develop blue LEDs, communication satellites, scanning-tunnelling microscopes or any of the principles they are based on.
Hypocrisy, arrogance, dishonesty, contemptuousness; all character flaws that you could have addressed in your long life, not biological attributes you were born with and could do nothing about. I could go on, but I’ve wasted more than enough of my time already. In musical notation, FFF stands for Forte Forte Forte which means, basically, play as loud as you can:
Public Image Limited, YouTube, five and a half minutes.
These musicians have skill, talent and self-discipline. They practice and they listen to each other; that’s how they manage to play together. You’ll probably hate it (I do hope so) but it’s in time and in tune. It is competent, which is far more than can be said for your wittering.
– – – – –If you can accept that I might have some justification for my frustration and disappointment, that from my point of view I have simply wasted considerable time and effort on someone unwilling to treat me as an equal; if you can overcome your prejudices and develop a wee bit of humility, Potholer54 is a conservative you might learn something from:
http://www.youtube.com/@potholer54
All the errors and fakery from “Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth)”
Bye.
Hello Clark, well, just possibly the tide may be starting to move against Net Zero.
Donald Trump has already come out against, ever more Net Zero.
He claims it is a scam.
However, as we know, Net Zero removes employment from those lands that have a large working class population and hands those jobs to China.
Yes Clark, you are correct, China is in the process of construction – massive Hydro Power – construction may have been rushed, possibly resulting in a short life time – Three Gorges
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam
Huge wind farms and huge solar farms and huge battery farms.
They still burn slightly more that 50% of the Coal burnt in the World.
I am not sure how much they are reducing their Coal consumption?
In Northern Europe, there are political parties who have now said, they wish to tone down Net Zero, not because they wish the World to boil but because they understand that working class people are upset about having their living transported to China.
In the U.K. it is thought that Reform will be the largest party after the next General Election, whenever, that will come.
The Netherlands is about to have yet another General Election.
So, politics may at last be coming round to the idea, that it should serve the people and not be the masters of those people.
The Labour Party under Sir Keir Rodney Starmer have shown themselves in a ghastly light, they are indeed our masters, they seem to delight in upsetting almost all factions of society, apart from those who voted for them, those that did voted for them are starting to regret, that choice.
Big changes coming to Northern Europe soon, one of those changes will be to back-peddle on Net Zero, so, at least some jobs for working class people can be saved from going to China.Unexpected elections for The Netherlands
Early general elections will be held in the Netherlands on 29 October 2025 to elect the members of the House of Representatives. The elections had been expected to be held in 2028, but a snap election was called after the Schoof cabinet collapsed due to the Party for Freedom (PVV) withdrawing from the coalition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Dutch_general_electionAt the 2023 Elections the party of Geert Wilders
won the greatest number of seats but Geert could not become Prime ministers because potential co-alition partners
would not hear of it.
The previous long standing Prime minister is the current Head of Nato
and that person is keen for war with Russia, Geert is not keen for war with Russia.
In France macron is keen for war with Russia but Le Pen and her party are not keen for war with Russia.
So, in the near future, there will be meaningful election, war and Net Zero of peace and jobs.Michael, I am a little bit too inebriated to give my fullest attention to all of the above. You keep telling us about events that have happened or are happening in local/UK/European/USA/Russia/China/The world as if we are not able to access that information too. I can read too. You never give us the premise for your interpretation of those events. Saying “Net Zero” all the time doesn’t give us any insight into the premise on which you base your opinion. If you want to pontificate then keep doing what you are doing. If you want to engage then agrue your point without referring us to what other people say. Plough your own furrow. More applied detail please.
I’ll answer in time, but please be aware that considered answers take considerable time to craft.
@Clark
I’ll raise you an “alternative ulater.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlGmYetiCjA&list=RDPlGmYetiCjA&start_radio=1Would the mods be ok with a thread with links to everyone’s favourite music tracks?
Clark October 15, 2025 at 22:21
“Michael, I regard democracy in Britain as a sham”I hate to admit it Clark but I also think that. Traditionally we have been proud of our democracy in Britain, even calling our legislature “The Mother of Parliaments”
I think a highlight was when David Cameron kept a promise to the Nation and we were allowed to have our say on Brexit.
To me it was astonishing that the Deep State let this go and we sort of have Brexited. Perhaps the terrible unhappiness with modern politics followed the 2008 Crash. The awfulness came into stark reality with the Covid Crisis, that awfulness hasn’t really been got over, yet.
Maybe 14 years of the Conservative Party in power was too long. But this present group of idiots is beyond my worse imaginings.“There has been significant political opposition to the Rosebank field. In March 2023, the former leader of the opposition and shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband publicly opposed the field and said that the Conservative government were ignoring the science by refusing to do the same.”
Rosebank Oil and Gas Field lies in the North Atlantic Ocean, West of Shetland
estimates of 1/4 billion barrels of Oil & Gas.
Ed Milliband is starting to change his tune on Rosebank.Michael
A humble suggestion. Why don’t you spare us all your political, economic, environmental musings from now on. By your own admission, you’re not an academic, intellectual, deductive sort of bloke, which is painfully apparent when you opine on any of the above.
But you do have an interesting life otherwise. Maybe some posts about your allotment, family life, your old boy groups – you know, normal everyday stuff? You’d likely get more interest and engagement. Write some poetry or songs or something about your childhood and growing up.
Yes?
Shibboleth, thank you for your humble suggestion.
Perhaps I could tell you about countless caving, S.R.T.ing/bolting and cave digging trips?
Without being prompted, probably I could only recall the smallest fraction of those memories.
At watched a good film, yesterday, Foinaven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foinaven_oilfield
Interesting that a submarine carrying ship from the U.S.S.R. was extensively adapted for this escapade.A vessel that started life as the Soviet era Anadyr, a submarine tender. With bow and stern upgraded and attached to a new mid-section of a double-skinned hull, she is now a Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading (FPSO) vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage of oil.
She is permanently stationed in the Foinaven field and the crude oil is exported by shuttle tankers, primarily to the Flotta oil terminal in Orkney.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzLzErkVMwc
I thought it was noteworthy, that Ed. Milliband is changing his tune, public/political expediency, Jeremy Clarkson is thinking of Standing in Doncaster North. This is where Jeremy Clarkson was born.
I am assuming that Global Warming, means the whole Earth and not just the U.K.
The U.K. no longer burns Coal to make Electricity.
China consumes slightly more than half of total World Coal consumption.
In the U.K. we are now told that we have the highest energy costs in the developed World.
This is leading to massive job losses in the U.K.
The traditional steel industries are shut or about to wind down, the traditional chemical and refinery industries are shut or are winding down, however we can buy our steel/chemicals from China.
China uses Coal to make steel and Solar panels and much else.
British and European jobs and industries are collapsing but we can still buy crap from China?
Does our change in economic circumstance, reduce Carbon dioxide from entering the air?
I would suggest that the U.K. and the E.U. reducing traditional energy sources to outsource our jobs to China, does not reduce World outgassing of Carbon dioxide.
