AIRSTRIP ONE

In my own lifetime I’ve seen my country and in particular London, the city where I live, change in ways that would not have been thought possible forty years ago and whilst some of that change has been for the better much of it is responsible for having redefined British culture and values into something that is alien to me now. I feel as though my own country has been stolen from me.

Whilst the causes of the change are complex and hard to define a big factor has undoubtedly been the swamping of one culture by influences from so many others. Because of the way in which I was brought up I am experiencing a mild sense of guilt even as I write these words and I’m fully aware that I must tread carefully to avoid being automatically dismissed as a racist by my readers.

When I was about ten years old my mother explained to me with pride that Britain was a free country and that the British people gave a home to so many people from all over the world who were oppressed in their own countries. In those days we called these people “refugees”, never realising that before long it would become a dirty word. I remember collecting milk bottle tops enthusiastically for one of the Blue Peter appeals to help Chinese boat people and thought of Britain as a safe haven; an island jewel of sanity in a messed-up world.

We are now living in a looking-glass world. One where the flood-gates have been opened for economic migrants who could perfectly well carve out a safe lives for themselves in their own countries without fear of persecution if they wanted to and one where genuine refugees are sent back to their own countries to face prison and certain death. A government prediction that Eastern Europeans numbering in the many hundreds of thousands would return home after a short stint of harvesting has turned out to be wrong. It now transpires that the numbers were wildly deflated in the first place and that most of these people now want to stay in Britain. It also looks as if a very large proportion of them are fit, young and rapidly procreating. We have school classrooms full with kids that do not speak English and a large proportion of many PCT budgets is now spent on translating services needed to facilitate communications between doctors and their patients at GPs’ surgeries.

The influx of people from India and Pakistan is constant and many are given homes and full British citizenship after only a few years simply on the basis that they know someone who knows someone who lives in Britain whilst at the same time Gurkhas who fought for Britain in the Falkland War and who have in many instances served with the British army for over twenty years are now being deported.

Melanie Phillips has touched upon some of  these home truths in her latest article entitled “Britain’s Broken Heart“. It is well worth the read but although her usual plain-speech analysis is both entertaining and enlightening I feel that her naive conclusion that Cameron and the Tory Party might be able to save Britain if they put their minds to it is surprising for a woman of her calibre. I just don’t have that sort of faith.

Call me a cynic but I see all Britain’s political parties as much of a sameness. All seem to see increased control as a mechanism with which to instigate change and I’m afraid I just don’t believe this. I see the database state mentality as a large part of the problem rather than any part of a possible solution.

I have nothing against a move towards a more pluralist and essentially a coffee-coloured world. All men are created equal and all peoples have certain inalienable rights. This truth is intelligently described in the American Constitution as “self-evident”. Any other view is pure foolishness. However, the sum of a people is more than the colour of its members’ skin. A group of people is defined by its culture and values and if these are lost or changed beyond recognition then that group of people changes.

Britain’s multicultural experiment has gone very askew and it is not hard to predict her future now. In twenty years time we will be a broken nation with pockets or “tribes” of people who share little in common with their neighbours. The recent suggestion by the Archbishop of Canterbury that parts of Sharia law might be comfortably incorporated into British law is frightening and that the subject can be seriously debated is disturbing.

True British values have traditionally come about as a result of a naturally progressive historical development. It has taken hundreds of years for this to happen and the point reached by a process of gradual movement from a partitive chaos towards an organised unity is now under threat. To throw away all that now by committing Cultural suicide is not only madness, it is no way to pay homage to all those who, throughout the centuries, have argued, fought and won the freedoms that we now enjoy.

Myth 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.
Fact: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures.
Average ground station readings do show a mild warming over the last 100 years, but well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (”heat islands”) which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (”land use effects”).

Myth 2: The “hockey stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.
Fact: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17th Century the “average” global temperature has been rising at a rate of 0.6 to 0.8 degrees Celsius per 100 years; although from 1940–1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare. The “hockey stick”, a poster boy of both the UN’s IPCC and Canada’s Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well.

Myth 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.
Fact: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. The CO2 increase was only 0.4% over the last 50 years, rather than the 5% per 100 years quoted by Kyoto. However, as measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this. There is solid evidence that as temperatures rise naturally and cyclically, the earth’s oceans expel more CO2 as a result.

Myth 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.
Fact: Water vapour or clouds, which makes up on average about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and — according to several researchers — about 60% by effect, is the major greenhouse gas. 97% of greenhouse gases are water vapour by volume. Moreover, because of its molecular weight and absorptive capacity, water vapour is 3000 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention this important fact.

Myth 5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
Fact: Unfortunately, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of including the effects of the sun and the clouds. Further, the main cause of temperature variation is the sun. Its radiation changes all the time, partly in cyclical fashion. The number of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which is CO2.

Myth 6: The UN proved that man-made CO2 causes global warming.
Fact: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to….man-made causes.”
There is simply no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming.

Myth 7: CO2 is a pollutant.
Fact: This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is. However, CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously.

Myth 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.
Fact: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.

Myth 9: Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.
Fact: Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating.
It’s normal.

Myth 10: The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.
Fact: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling.

I loved the film but from a sheer quantity p.o.v. M*A*S*H (the TV series) kicks the Lama’s Ass.

I watched every episode I could watch every morning after working a 10-hour night shift in a restaurant in Toronto from 1980 to 1983. Since then I must have seen the whole lot at least three times. It is quite simply the best American sit-com ever made.

So a big thank you to the whole cast, writers and crew for adding so much to my life. I’d just like to say that I love the result of all the hard work that all of you put into the making of this great show. An extra-special thank-you goes out to Marcia Strassman who is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever had the pleasure to see as well as so many of the 50s-styled short-haired and well-built nurses who added a good dose of sex (which is never a bad thing) to a very funny show. Funny and beautiful. How can you go wrong?

With 256 episodes in all, I must have spent at least 16 days of my life laughing at the show.

There is so much to be said about the greatness of MASH but it has all been said before so I’m just going to shut-up and move on to the next subject now.