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Barroso on Biofuels

Aaargh, aaargh, make it stop, please!

Mr Barroso called for international agreement on the types of biofuels that should be allowed but insisted that the EU targets would increase their sustainability. “The only alternative we have for biofuels today is oil. And there is no question, the impact on the environment of oil is much greater than for biofuels.”

No, you pint sized Portugee moron!

We know that biofuels lead to greater emissions than the use of fossil fuels.

You\’re insisting that we all go off to make the problem worse.

Look, please, can you not simply admit that you\’ve all made a mistake, that biofuels are only the answer to the question "how do we cook the planet faster while making everyone poorer?"

I\’ll even draft the speech for you. You know, Keynes and all that. "New scientific evidence has come to light showing that the earlier decision was based on incomplete information. As the late great Lord Keynes once said, "When the facts change I change my mind. Pray, what do you do Sir?".

Or is that too difficult?

Can we leave yet?

Erm, Guys, Macro, Macro

Drinkers and drivers were hit in the pocket yesterday as Alistair Darling used them and a borrowing surge to try to steer Britain away from recession and through global financial storms.

I bloody well hope that\’s not what Darling is trying to do. The borrowing makes sense in Keynsian terms. If there\’s a recession coming along then deficit spending is a reasonable thing to do (although there\’s a lot to be said fo the idea that we\’ve already got enouh natural such spending  built into the system).

But raising taxes is, under the same rubric, entirely the wrong thing to do. Because, er, the aim of deficit spending is to boost spending, see, not just move it from the drinker\’s pocket to the public sector\’s.

iPlayer

This was always going to happen, wasn\’t it?

Hackers have managed to circumvent the BBC\’s anti-piracy systems to gain unrestricted access to the programmes on the corporation\’s iPlayer internet TV service……..

However, the backdoor in the iPlayer allows users to completely bypass those protections and download unprotected versions of any show on the website.

One of the hackers responsible said it took him only 12 minutes to find the loophole and make it work – but that such a simple hack potentially opened up every programme on iPlayer for unlimited downloading.

"The BBC accidentally opened the floodgates and gave the world DRM-free downloads," said one hacker with knowledge of the breach. "If only it were down to something other than poor design, decisions and ineptitude."

As you will know, I\’m resolutely non-technical, but the impression I\’ve had from reading the rest of you is that the original decision, to develop this technology in house rather than to pick up an already developed piece of code was where it all went wrong.

Yes?

Classic Protectionism

Last October, Ski Republic, a French-owned chain, promised a "new dawn for ski lovers" at a high-profile launch in London, in which Danielle Lloyd, a former Miss England, posed in a bikini with skis and boots.

But its aggressive marketing tactics and offer of two pairs of skis for the price of one for online bookings received more than just a frosty reception when it opened 23 shops in the Alps for this season.

Within weeks, furious locals had tried to set fire to one store in Sainte-Foye-Tarentaise, broken the front windows of three more in Tignes, Val d\’Isère and Menuires and threatened several managers and the company boss.

In one night, five of Ski Republic\’s vehicles had their tyres slashed and plastic roof covers punctured, while several shop had glue poured into their front door locks.

Richard Chin from Blairgowrie, Perthshire, the manager of the shop that suffered an arson attack, said he was warned by a neighbouring ski shop that something would happen to Ski Republic and he "shouldn\’t be around when it does".

While there\’s obviously a difference in law there\’s no difference in intent between this and lobbying for tariff barriers. Both are an attempt to protect the producers\’ profits at the expense of the pocketbooks of the consumers.

Fra Matthew Festing

The Knights of Malta have just chosen another Englishman to succeed Fra. Andrew Bertie as Grand Master.

As I\’ve said before, Bertie was at Worth when I ws in the prep school there. Used to walk down to breakfast from his lodgings past the dorms, singing th Lord\’s Prayer in Arabic: always, but always, five minutes before the bell went. A wake up call if you like.

So that\’s two in a row from Ampleforth, one of them also had that connection to Worth.

Hmm, Downside next time around?

Jan Moir

Eh?

And while we may have a good road safety record in comparison to other European countries, I suspect this is because there are so many skilled drivers out there, compensating for the wilful blunders of the lunatic fringe. Every day, hundreds of accidents are averted by the sharp responses of careful, alert drivers; the unsung guardians of our national road network. Yet despite their good efforts, the carnage goes on.

This is hardly Clarkson\’s fault, but there is a difficulty about Top Gear that cannot be denied. Its core audience is exactly the kind of young male drivers who are statistically likely to cause most serious accidents, which makes the programme\’s celebration of speed for speed\’s sake particularly uncomfortable.

Top Gear\’s naughty because it encourages the lunatic fringe, while the country that watches Top Gear has a good safety record as opposed to those that don\’t?

Yes, It\’s Cheltenham Week

And the horsey metaphors are all over the place. Congratulations to Jeff Randall for managing to write an entire piece about Darling and his problems using just such.

As Imperial College\’s Professor Nick Bosanquet concludes in a report for Reform, the independent think tank, "the fiscal consequences of [Brown\’s] spending and the absence of [public sector] reform leaves the UK much worse placed to face the challenges of the coming years… much of the spending has resulted in doing the same thing at a higher cost".

That\’s one of the very few paragraphs which doesn\’t use such….and also perhaps the most descriptive of exactly where Gordon Brown did go wrong.

ID Cards and Fraud

You know how ID cards are supposed to lower the levels of fraud?

But there was also a six per cent increase in card fraud losses in Britain, which was largely driven by fraudsters using stolen details to make purchases over the telephone or internet, or by mail order.

This "card not present" fraud soared by 37 per cent to £290.5 million, possibly as criminals frustrated by chip and pin security looked for alternative scams.

Simply not going t help this fast growing form of fraud, are they?

Ooops!

The co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has been accused of offering to edit an entry on the online encyclopaedia site in return for a donation.

Of course, it\’s denied, point blank.

But I really wouldn\’t be surprised if such things went on (whether by Wales or others). A Wikipedia entry can be worth good money, affect a reputation. So there\’s an obvious incentive to pay to get it as good as it can be.

Look at all those Govt departments whose civil servants have been editing entries. That\’s the expenditure of resources to alter entries.

The only possible method of stopping such is reliance upon the good will of those doing the editing. Something which might, err, be a tad hopeful.

Truly egregious entries will be found and changed, but shading and glossing will, I would submit, always go on and simply because there is the incentive to do so at least some people will be paid to do it.

Yup, Absolutely.

My first concern is honesty. Since ID cards manifestly cannot fulfil any of the functions for which government ostensibly desires them – prevention of terrorism and organised crime seem the most childishly simple to debunk since terrorists and organised criminals with access to planes, guns, bombs and currency laundering will just as surely access fake IDs with complete impunity – I would appreciate my government telling me honestly what it really wants these cards for. My suspicion is that it just wants them, and that rather as it is the nature of bees to collect pollen and the nature of teenage boys to collect fictitious tales of their sexual adventures it is the nature of government to collect information about citizens. If they cannot advance any sensible reason for wanting these things then we must conclude that they are driven merely by a compulsion, and should be treated like smokers or heroin addicts – with compassion, certainly, but without going so far as to indulge their craving.

Second I would like some admission on the part of the project\’s instigators that they are familiar with the concept of a sunk costs fallacy, or at least have become so since the Concorde project. That a lot of money has already been wasted on the project is really no argument to continue spending more money now. If there is no good cause to keep plugging away at the thing they can, and should, write the costs off now.

Spot On.