Hmmm...

Why is there only one Competition Commission?

And so it darkens...

Each year about this time it starts getting darker earlier and gets light later. I don't like it, it can make me gloomy. A mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder maybe. I have a light next to the bed that comes on gradually in the mornings to make my brain think the Sun's coming up achieving full brightness as the alarm goes off (negating any feelings of well being instantly...). My wife says it's made a huge difference - we've had the light a few years now, and she's the expert on my demeanour!

I think of Spring already with anticipation. And its only October.

So, if you should see me wearing some sort of miner's lamp pointing a brightly shining full spectrum bulb at my face, you'll know why. Humph.


(Oh, in this room I do have a full spectrum bulb - the photos show the effect it has on my mood.)

Flintstones Winston Cigarette TV Commercial - 1962

Ah, happy days!!

OK, I give up.

Nobel Peace Prize? Al Gore??? Words fail me. It's now too late for sensible discussion so I think I'll stop blogging about climate change. I have lost the will...

An inconvenient hyperbole...

Hurray and hurrah! A Judge has pointed out "errors" in Al Gore's film, "An inconvenient truth". At last!

From the paper today the errors include:

· The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring

· It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down

· Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"

· Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established

· The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"

· Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"

· Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm"

· The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult"

These are not minor points - Al Gore used these "errors" to give hugely powerful but unproven impressions of the situation. How many times have we seen footage of Katrina embedded in pieces about Global Warming? Many. The viewer is being conned (not even that cleverly) by the film makers.

At least now a Judge has flagged up the great bias in this film.

(I gotta say, the Polar Bears one is simply fantastic! Did he just make it up? Think folks, every time you start that car, another bear drowns!!!!!!!)

Big Day For Me Today :-)

Today was the day that our youngest of our four kids went to school for THE WHOLE DAY!!! It's been sooooooooooo many weeks since the start of term. First she had two and a half hours on a Friday. Then the next week off. Then a week of mornings but not lunch (Apart from the Monday when the reception staff had a training day (?)). Then a week of mornings with lunch. Then, ta ta da daaaaaaaaaaaaaa FULL TIME SCHOOLING. I was starting to think she'd be in Year 3 before it happened. Still, we are now there and it feels grrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat! My next life season has officially begun...

(I try to get through the school year without reading any letters. Hence I took the boys down to school at the start of term and their school was shut. I also took our youngest down on that day her Year was shut too. I make my bed...)