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"Australia heatwave: All-time temperature record broken again"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-50837025

"Officials predict that 2019, on the temperatures recorded so far, will be among the four warmest years on record."

[So, hot individual days, but not the hottest year, by any means. Great for the alarmists, though. At least 3 BBC headlines so far this week].


"Climate change: Met Office says warming trend will continue in 2020
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50839974

[This headline gives me great hope. In my experience, pretty much every long-range Met Office forecast is wrong].

"According to the Met Office, 2020 will likely be 1.11C warmer than the average between 1850-1900,"

[Why select an earlier 50 year average for comparison, when 30 years are the usual norm? I assume it involves some helpful cherry-picking].


"How the scramble for sand is destroying the Mekong"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50629100

[Didn't the BBC last week tell us it was because of climate change?]

Dec 19, 2019 at 8:34 AM | Unregistered CommenterMark Hodgson

"M Courtney

It's the rest of the Labour Party that are weak. Perhaps if they had indulged in a mass defection before nominations closed they might not have lost so many seats. It would have taken joining the Remain Alliance. They're still weak if they can't shed Corbyn and Momentum. Do that and perhaps they can resurrect themselves.

Dec 19, 2019 at 2:59 AM It doesn't add up..."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/18/labour-party-staff-angry-at-handling-of-possible-redundancies

George Orwell would recognise this behaviour from "Animal Farm", I recognise Militant and Kinnock from 1985.

Tony Blair has realised that someone needs to do a Kinnock
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/18/tony-blair-urges-labour-to-ditch-jeremy-corbyn-misguided-ideology

"Tony Blair has called on Labour members to abandon the policies and political leanings of Jeremy Corbyn to ensure the survival of the party. In a provocative intervention, the three-time election-winning former prime minister said that if Corbyn’s wing of the party remains in charge, then Labour will be finished as a political force."

Blair and Blairites have a tarnished reputation, but it is difficult to argue with Tony Blair's recent speech. Eric Arthur Blair got it correct too.

Dec 19, 2019 at 6:06 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

M Courtney

It's the rest of the Labour Party that are weak. Perhaps if they had indulged in a mass defection before nominations closed they might not have lost so many seats. It would have taken joining the Remain Alliance. They're still weak if they can't shed Corbyn and Momentum. Do that and perhaps they can resurrect themselves.

Dec 19, 2019 at 2:59 AM | Unregistered CommenterIt doesn't add up...

Mark Hodgson, You are right about Corbyn not standing on his principles over Brexit.
That was because he was weak. And so must go.

It wasn't because he was wrong.

He just feared half the Parliamentary Labour Party joining the LibDems during the election campaign. He should have faced them down.
Weak.

Labour's manifesto with 'Leave, but not the Customs Union' could have been achieved in a year. It was already agreed by the rump EU.
Boris has no plan to get Brexit done in the foreseeable future.
With that offer and no "confirmatory" referendum Labour could have won.

On reflection they could have got a hung Parliament.

Dec 19, 2019 at 12:37 AM | Registered CommenterM Courtney

Dec 18, 2019 at 11:35 PM michael hart
I was at University during the Miners Strike. It dominated Student Union politics, without ever benefitting the education of any student, whether left, right or centre.

It did teach me to be cynical about ALL politicians, but some more frequently than others. Seeing political history repeating itself, again, is sad/funny/depressing/hilarious etc all at the same time.

I have never been politically active, or supported any Party. BoJo will always be in debt to Corbyn for gifting him a big Election majority and BREXIT.

Corbyn is now paving the way for further carnage in the May Local Elections that will follow a series of cash flow crises that have already started with their pre Christmas austerity budgeting and sackings.

The UK has a Leader of the Opposition, but no one that can lead opposition to BoJo. Right now, that does not bother me, but it might in a week, month, year or five or more.

The UK does need steering through BREXIT and beyond. It is genuinely "uncharted waters" because no Country or Leader has ever been this way before.

Dec 19, 2019 at 12:25 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

Excellent news in The Guardian! Hopefully funny AND true

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/17/far-side-creator-gary-larson-launches-website-with-promise-of-new-work

Dec 18, 2019 at 11:37 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

GC, I see the boy Blair has come out and told them a few home truths.
Probably even more important is that they need to recognise just how important Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell really were. Before them, Saatchi and Saatchi + Bernard Ingham brought professionalism to the Conservative Party.

Dec 18, 2019 at 11:35 PM | Unregistered Commentermichael hart

What about sand eels? Puffins want to know!

Dec 18, 2019 at 8:24 PM It doesn't add up...

We need to get BRITISH Fishermen to catch sand eels, this would save the Carbon footprints on all the waves across the North Sea. Britain could then grow unchlorinated chicken McNuggets, and children could feed those to puffins during trips to the seaside, to stop seagulls getting obese from nicking their chips.

https://www.seashepherd.org.uk/news-and-commentary/commentary/there-is-something-very-rotten-in-denmark.html
"The massive Danish industrialized fishing industry is scouring the North Sea clean of sand eels, the tiny fish that are the staple for the comical puffins. The sand eels are ground into cheap fish meal to feed factory farmed chickens in Denmark. If the puffin goes extinct then Denmark will bear the greatest burden of the blame for the tragedy of trading the beautiful and lively puffin for a few chicken McNuggets."

Dec 18, 2019 at 11:11 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

"Labour gifted Boris Johnson his ‘Brexit election’. We can’t be so inept again"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/18/boris-johnson-labour-brexit-election-emily-thornberry

"I find it extraordinary that one of the 4 leading members of the Shadow Cabinet, who was part of the ineptitude about which she complains, can now seek to disassociate herself from it and claim the right to be leader of the party." Mark Hodgson

" I took the fight to him every day, and pummelled him every week. Each time, the mask slipped, and we saw the real man – a mendacious, lazy, dangerous charlatan, unable to hide behind the tiresome smokescreen of bluster he usually relies on. He hated it, especially coming from a woman."

I expected BoJo was just bored with her waffling about subjects she didn't understand. Someone else he would be pleased to see Leading the Opposition.

Dec 18, 2019 at 10:42 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/18/labour-party-staff-angry-at-handling-of-possible-redundancies
Dec 18, 2019 at 8:11 PM Mark Hodgson

"Labour’s communications director, Seumas Milne, and one of the party’s election directors, Karie Murphy, remain in their posts despite the party’s worst showing since the 1930s."

Sack the workers and reward those that plotted the financial chaos.? Sounds familiar, a bit like this?

“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, mis-placed, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council - hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers". Neil Kinnock 1985

Dec 18, 2019 at 10:30 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

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