Stupid, stupid everywhere, and no-one stops to think.

Bugger it being a big weekend for sport, this has been one of the biggest weekends for idiocy I can remember in a long time. Let's start with sport though;

Iran has indicated it will attend the 2012 Olympics in London, despite complaining that the Games logo resembles the word "Zion".

I couldn't help but chuckle when the story of a proposed boycott broke, but it would appear that perhaps it isn't that important to them after all.

They objected on the grounds that its resemblance to the word Zion - a Biblical term for Israel - was racist.

But now the Iranian-backed Press TV has quoted an official as saying Iranians will "participate gloriously".

Will they? Oh, that's nice. It's not often I agree with Cameron but he hits the nail on the head here:

In an interview with the London-based paper Jewish News, Mr Cameron said: "It's completely paranoid. If the Iranians don't want to come, don't come - we won't miss you.

I think Iran may have one or two more important things to worry about. Boycott the Olympics because the logo is a Zionist insult to Islam? Really? I can understand you boycotting the Olmypics because the logo is crap and a PR catastrophe, but this?

William Hague isn't about to quit, and hasn't lost his mojo and has the full support of the PM. That makes me think there'll be a new Foreign Secretary before the month is out. It seems that Baldy Bill hasn't learned from his mistakes of the past:

“So there’s a certain irony,” he adds. “People tell me there’s a newspaper article saying I lack energy, presumably written by some lounge lizard who’s rolled up at 11am and wondered what to write about (without being rude about journalists!) when I’m already on my second country that day. We’ve put a huge amount of new energy into British foreign policy.”

How many pints at how many pubs on the dray round? 'When I'm already on my second country that day'? I have visions of Hague sat at a table, with the tablecloth tucked into his collar, knife and fork in hand.

What is it with politicians and willy waving? What is it with politicians and making laws, then deciding that the laws they've made don't apply to them because they're too important? EU law especially. I forget who it was who made the point in the House over the prisoner votes debate about the danger of governments picking and choosing which laws they abide by, and the SNP are masters of this.

Plans to introduce minimum drink pricing in Scotland will be revived if the SNP wins May's Holyrood election.

If, although given the low regard the big three are held in at present, May probably can't come quick enough for the SNP.

But they [the plans] were opposed by Labour, the Lib Dems and Tories, who said minimum pricing would penalise responsible drinkers and was probably illegal.

It doesn't matter if it's illegal though, because a politician wants to do it. The thing with politicians (especially Socialists) is that the rule of law is absolutely sacrosant, right up until the point where it is obstructive or inconvenient for them, then it must be ignored.

But addressing delegates, Ms Sturgeon, also the Scottish health secretary, will say the SNP acted like a government, while opponents acted disgracefully.

Oh, how telling. She's right though, by completely disregarding a law they don't like, the SNP have indeed acted just like I would expect a government to act. The disgraceful actions of the opposition must only refer to their saying 'but that's against the law, we can't do that', if so, I have no desire to be a disgrace, does this give me carte-blanche to ignore all laws? Because I'm game.

As Counting Cats pointed out the Ecoloons are already starting to make capital out of the quake and tsunami in Japan. He has some arseclown putting it all down to homeless polar bears, or something. Meanwhile in Germany. . .

The nuclear accident in Japan has sparked a discussion about atomic power in Germany, where a massive anti-nuclear protest was already planned for Saturday. A senior Green Party politician has said that some German plants are vulnerable to the same kind of failure as happened at Fukushima 1.

Riiiiiight. Vulnerable to the same kind of failure?

According to the US Geological Survey, the last earthquake in Germany was as recent as February 14th this year, it came in at a jaw dropping 3.9 on the Richter Scale. 3.9 is labelled as 'often felt, but rarely causes damage'. The difference between 3.9 in Germany and 8.9 in Japan is akin to the difference between dropping teaspoon on your kitchen floor and dropping a reinforced concrete box full of lead and elephants on your floor.

I can find no records of a tsunami in either the Baltic or the North Sea. So when you say that 'some German plants are vulnerable to the same kind of failure as happened at Fukushima 1', you mean that after an earthquake of unbelievable power and then being hit by a bloody great tsunami it still hasn't blown up and made the east coast of Japan uninhabitable for the next four generations, I think I'd be tempted to take my chances. I wonder how many Japanese wind turbines are standing after the quake and tsunami. I'm betting not many, but then I'd be surprised if there were that many to start with, because the Japanese have more sense and realise that a functioning country is more important than making offerings to some green god.

It looks like 10,000 people in one town, half the town's population, has been wiped out. It makes Aberfan look like a stubbed toe, and you have the gall to make capital out of it for your own self-importance and political agenda? The Greens really are some of the least attractive people about, there is no depth to which they will not stoop.

This couldn't have come at a worse time.

I'll let you in to a little secret. I don't like petrol and diesel. It is dirty, dangerous, expensive and props up some pretty horrible regimes. It is also finite, the world economy is hitched to a resource which has a limited life. To be so dependent on one commodity is madness.

So when I see this, it gives me cause for hope:

British scientists 'invent artificial petrol' that could cost just 90p per GALLON (and there's no carbon).

Great stuff. Nice to see we're still good at something in this country. It is possible that this could have a groundshaking effect on our way of life.

Artificial petrol that costs 19p per litre could be on forecourts in as little as three years.

British scientists are refining the recipe for a hydrogen-based fuel that will run in existing cars and engines at the fraction of the cost of conventional petrol.

With hydrogen at its heart rather than carbon, it will not produce any harmful emissions when burnt, making it better for the environment, as well as easier on the wallet.

The first road tests are due next year and, if all goes well, the cut-price ‘petrol’ could be on sale in three to five years.

It really would be fantastic news for most people. The benefits to the individual's pocket are obvious, for industry, the reduction in costs is just as beneficial. It will bring prices down at the point of delivery of raw materials, it will do the same for transporting the finished goods from factory to the marketplace. It will reduce prices at the marketplace, but will allow an increase in profit margin once those savings have been factored in. Lower petrol prices are good news for everyone, except the petrol producers. That is another benefit, the production of a viable synthetic alternative to oil based fuels will break the chokehold that OPEC has on the world.

Even the greens will be happy.

Or will they?

For true environmentalists this has surely got to be a bit of welcome news. For the normal member of the public who is a Friends of the Earth member, for example, they will no doubt be delighted at the reduction of carbon emissions. I don't buy into the whole AGW theory, but many do, and if this satisfies those people, then it satisfies me.

But for the big ecoloons, the ones who lobby governments and influence policy, this is very bad news as the public are about to learn the truth.

The reason petrol and diesel is so expensive in the UK at the moment is not because of the base cost per litre, but because of the tax, and the tax on that tax, that is imposed by the government. We are told that one of the main reasons for this tax is because of the damage to the environment which using petrol and diesel causes.


Quite how handing large amounts of un-ringfenced cash to a wasteful, inefficient and duplicitous State apparatus is supposed to save polar bears has never been made entirely clear. One thing that will become clear is this, once (if) the use of this fuel takes off, the government will have no option but to tax it to the same eye-watering levels as they do now.

Then the gig will be up, the public will realise that they've been played and that the ecological reasoning behind the taxation on fuel has been an excuse, and the government (of whatever colour when this stuff hits the forecourt) will blow their green credentials out of the water as they continue to harvest huge amounts of unjustified cash from the alternative to petrol that we've all been told needs to come. Meanwhile, the ecoloons will spin against and defame the new fuel, dreaming up reasons as to why it is just as evil as what went before, lest the government cut their funding. They will continue to demand the government hands over wads of our cash so they can then lobby that same government.

Oh, it may drop the price by 15p or so a litre, but more importantly than that, it will help turn the spotlight on the people who view us as revenue cows ripe for the milking.

All Hail the Green Hero.

Yes, good old Genghis, terror of Asia. Here was a man good at his job. He (I'm assuming with a little help from his mates) managed to off an estimated 40 million people. Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Hah, novices compared to old Gen.

We'll never see his like again. Hopefully.

Well, I say hopefully, but for some it seems that isn't the case. It isn't just in Mongolia for reasons of national pride.

You see;

Genghis Khan's Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.

But surely that's a bad thing, right?

Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol invasion cooled the planet, effectively scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

Still a bad thing. Does that mean he was responsible for the mini-ice age then? What a bastard.

In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere.

Really?

Well, I suppose we're all told we can make a difference individually. If you buy the theory of AGW. I'm not sure I do.

But the message here is clear, genocide is fine because it stops global warming.

Give me strength.

And the difference is this.

The whole 10:10 video thing has been running rampant around the intermong for the last couple of days, Leg-Iron has waded in, and has well and truly sunk the battleship. Even Pravda haven't been able to resist reporting it, although of course their whole article is pretty much a regurgitation of the copy in the Groan, and appeared on their front news page for only a short while.

The inescapable fact is that this video went far too far. Now in a normal world, those responsible would withdraw the video and apologise, not because they were backed into a corner, but because they realised that what they had done was wrong, and that would be that. However, this is the Righteous we're talking about here, so normal rules don't apply.

10:10 have apologised and withdrawn the video, not because they realised that what they had done was wrong, but because they've been backed into a corner. That is that. But that is that, because they have decided it is so.

This is how the Righteous work. They are almost never wrong, on the odd occasion when their error is plain for all to see, everything is dealt with on their own terms.

What do I mean? Well, once again, in a normal world, as far as I'm concerned, someone makes a horlicks of something, and apologises, I'll accept that. Nobody is perfect, and we all drop a bollock from time to time. I understand that these people believe very passionately in their cause, I don't agree with them, but that's life. However, to suggest that people should be exploded for not agreeing is a shocking thing to do. No matter, it has been apologised for, and that is that. All over.

Except.

Let's reverse positions for a moment. Let us suppose that a famous British filmmaker and a handful of slebs and jobbing actors make a film about the dangers of swallowing bad science without question and whatever the cost. Let's take the first portion of the first scene in the video, the kids listen to their teacher and go home and start nagging their father about reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And nag, and nag, and nag. In the last portion of the scene, the father draws a pistol and shoots his child in the head.

The uproar would be deafening. Of course the culprit would apologise, having been pilloried in the 'left wing' blogosphere, on the BBC news (headline, natch) and the Grauniad, and the video would be withdrawn. And that would be an end to it, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it?

No. Of course not.

The Righteous would hunt them down. No doubt the police would get involved. Those responsible for the video would be painted in deepest black, abusers of children, apologists for violence, supporters of terrorism and gun ownership, deniers of the orthodoxy. Crowds would assemble outside the houses and places of work of those involved, faces twisted in rage and hate. Questions would be asked in the House. Something would have to be done.

That is the difference between the Righteous and I. That is why I hate them, not because of their devotion to the cause. Not even because they suggest that people who disagree with them should be killed in cold blood, although the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sauce be upon him) knows I should, but because they demand that  they be treated above everyone else, and they will bully, harrass and insinuate to ensure that it is so.

They must be resisted at every turn.

But hey, it's your choice, no pressure.