Greens Battle Tories in the Blogosphere

Ian Dale, one of the most read Bloggers, posted, a blog yeaterday, agreeing with mt point the other day that we need MPs from different places. I said most Tories have buisness experience but little empathy with ordinary people, Labour have more empathy but less buisness experience. And there are many barristers. He of course doesnt comment on the Tories but on Labour...

'A few years ago I calculated that fewer than ten Labour MPs, out of a (then) total of 416 had ever run a business. THIS story in today's Telegraph exemplifies the effects of what happens when politicians have no idea how businesses work. Ok, a school is not a business, but in this case acts like one. It builds up a capital sum over a number of years to spend on an expensive project - maybe a refurbishment, or a new classroom. Now the government comes along and says that it must hand over 5% of any end of year surplus to the local authority in some sort of new tithe system. All this does is penalise good schools who manage their assets properly, and encourage all schools to spend every single penny of their budget for fear of being penalised for not doing so. Typical socialist economics of the mad house.'


UPDATE on the blog Battle, I listed a few environmental disasters, thought I would post them here also.

Environmental disaster number 1. CFCs damaged the ozone layer, drastic action prevented it getting worse. The ozone layer is the main barrier between us and the hazardous ultraviolet radiation. Accumulated over the next century the overall effect of the temporary ozone dip may total 3 to 5 million additional cases in non-melanoma cancers in the U.S. alone.

2. Sellafield has been leaking radiation for decades. The 1957 accident at Windscale pile one, a military reactor on the Sellafield site used to make plutonium for bombs, released a radioactive cloud that spread contamination over England and Wales, with hotspots on the western coast of Cumbria. Discharges from Sellafield are the main source of artificial radioactivity in the UK marine environment. www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/radioact/radliquid.htm

3. Chernobyl sent a radioactive cloud that spread at least as far as the UK. People in Russia are still dying. There are lots of reasons were not building many nuclear power plants, first its expensive and private companies aren’t interested. Second storage of waste for thousands of years will be very expensive, third limited resources. Within a few years, uranium will become a scarce resource, since production from mines currently supplies only about half of the demand, and secondary supplies are expiring. www.wise-uranium.org/nfp.html Chernobyl has caused a quarter of a million cancers cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers. Not just the 50 dead you mention.

4. Three mile island. Escaping radiation poured into the surrounding countryside, quickly killing thousands of birds and insects. A plague of death, disease, malformation, stillbirth and spontaneous abortion followed among a host of nearby farm animals. In the ensuing months, infant death rates soared, followed by cancers and an epidemic of radiation-related diseases among the human population. In the ensuing years, more than 2,000 central Pennsylvania families filed suit for compensation. The heavily financed myth that "no one died at Three Mile Island" is high among the most lethal lies ever told by industry.

5. Bhopal, at least 50,000 people are too sick to work for a living, and a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed that the children of gas-affected parents are themselves afflicted by Carbide’s poison. Carbide is still killing in Bhopal. The chemicals that Carbide abandoned in and around their Bhopal factory have contaminated the drinking water of 20,000 people. Although Dow Chemical acquired Carbide’s liabilities when it purchased the company in 2001, it still refuses to address its liabilities in Bhopal - or even admit that they exist.

Union Carbide was obliged to install state-of-the-art technology in Bhopal, but instead used inferior and unproven technology and employed lax operating procedures and maintenance and safety standards compared to those used in its US 'sister-plant'.

6. Asbestos, predicted annual death toll 2,000 just in England.

7. A total of 167 people died in the Piper Alpha fire making it the world's worst offshore oil disaster.

8. Exxon Valdez killed marine and bird life, had a huge impact on residents. The clean up did damage as you say, but that was because of the disaster, not the environmentalists. Would you rather they didn’t bother?

9. There are more disasters; the death and decline of species. The At least 15 species have gone extinct in the past 20 years and another 12 survive only in captivity, the World Conservation Union said in a report that accompanies its annual "Red List." Current extinction rates are at least 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural rates found in the fossil record. The Yangtze River dolphin being the most recent to disappear. Orangutan numbers are declining due to increased consumption of palm oil, they may only last another 12 years.

To answer the claim that Greens have ‘killed more people than Hitler’.
You seem to think that greens have enormous power, as you claim we have ‘killed more people than Hitler’. If you site fiction writers as sources you can claim pretty much anything, Aliens are your gradmother perhaps? http://9percentgrowth.blogspot.com/2007/01/has-green-movement-killed-more-people.html
You claim that DDT is harmless, but DDT exposure really does cause prematurity, the insecticide could have accounted for 15 per cent of infant deaths in the US in the 1960. The United Nations Environment Program has identified DDT as a persistent organic pollutant that can cause environmental harm and lists it as one of a "dirty dozen" whose use is scheduled for worldwide reduction or elimination. Indeed in many places, DDT failed to eradicate malaria not because of environmentalist restrictions on its use but because it simply stopped working. You haven’t yet succeeded in pointing out a single green policy that is wrong. Infectious diseases kill over 13 million year, why not promote clean water and hygiene for developing countries as Greens do.

And you still haven’t answered my question, what’s the point of having three ‘grey’ parties? The three big parties are all in the centre and copy each others policies. In practise, the Greens are the only opposition in much of the country.


UPDATE 23 Oct 2007
After being attacked again, called a murderer a liar and an eco fascist, Ive done another response.

What an interesting way you have of arguing, rather than disputing facts or providing references you resort to insult. You call me a fascist 4 times, and a murdered once. You dispute my qualifications, though I can prove them. Are you trying to get me a sympathy vote?

1. Scientists predicted deaths due to the ozone layer depletion. At www.cbc.ca/health/story/2003/09/16/ozone030916.html. ‘Children are at high risk of developing skin cancers because of the decline in the Earth's protective ozone layer, the World Health Organization warned. The UN Environmental Program and the WHO issued the warning as they launched a campaign to limit the time children and teenagers stay in direct sunlight’.

2. Sellafield linked to cancer deaths see www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1341635

3. Who are you attacking? Sometimes you site organisations like WHO as a source, sometimes you blame them for causing deaths along with green groups. You seem to like them when they agree with you. The report you like says ‘It is impossible to assess reliably, with any precision, numbers of fatal cancers caused by radiation exposure due to Chernobyl'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4917526.stm says the number dead may be 200,000. The UN figure - of between 4,000 and 9,000 extra cancer deaths - came from a report by the UN-led Chernobyl Forum. Not 50 as you state.

4. Why don’t you try and prove that no one died at three mile island. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics showed that there were "242 [infant] deaths above the normally expected number in Pennsylvania and a total of 430 in the northeastern area of the United States. Very lucky it wasnt many more.

5. I proved that Union Carbide cut corners in safety at Bhopal with fatal consequences. Your telling me that Greens haven’t said that before? Why do those deaths somehow not count to you.

6. Asbestos was banned in the UK around 1985, before I was involved in Green issues. It isn’t banned around the world yet, and Greens call for that. Do you?

7. You may think the deaths at Piper Alpha are not significant, I disagree. In November 1990 Lord Cullen's report into the disaster severely criticised safety procedures on the rig. So not an accident.

8. If there had been no effort to clean up after the Exxon Valdez the damage would have been far worse. Again you credit every mistake made by the authorities as the fault of the greens, none with the responsible bodies at the time who were probably doing there best with technology available. I accept that you seem biased, you don’t seem concerned at the bird and marine damage done in that disaster, only with attempting to score cheap points.

9. You accept species extinction so I win the argument. You’ve also stopped citing fiction writers as sources of science fact, well done.

10. DDT your website link proves me correct, Some mosquitoes became resistant to DDT. It was banned in the USA in the 70’s, not the rest of the world, so how do you claim so many deaths from it? Quite the opposite is true, since DDT continued to see heavy use in India and Sri Lanka, and Malaria increased as mosquitos became resistant.

Malaria did skyrocket in India in the 70s, but not because they cut back on DDT spraying because of pressure from environmentalists. The graph shows that they didn’t cut back on DDT, but dramatically increased its use. So how come malaria increased? Well, the increase in DDT use was in agriculture. This caused the insects to become resistant, so they had to use more DDT to get the same effect. This caused more resistance, so even more DDT was used and so on. The end result was that in the areas where DDT was used in agriculture, the mosquitoes became completely resistant and DDT no longer stopped them from spreading malaria, with the disastrous results.

As stated on by blog, I’m a member of RedR, engineers for disaster relief, I am interested in helping developing countries improve. My Masters degree was in Development Engneering, specialised in Water Supply and Sanitation for developing countries. I’ve worked in Tanzania and Guyana on building a primary school and improving water treatment. I don’t expect an apology however, you will probably now call me a mass murderer because I didnt stop Voldermort stealing the one ring and killing carrots, or something.