Wind farms - the continued debate

I saw another article about wind energy and interesting reading it made too: here.
It is always the comments that interest me. There are far too many armchair experts who not only voice, let us say, healthy pessimism or support but who spit out massively dogmatic statements that to be frank are misplaced.
For instance, the author of the article says that the claim that the new wind energy site will supply 180,000 houses is misleading since this would be only if the windmills supplied the electricity, if they were to supply all the energy required, the figure would be more like 35,000 homes. That is very correct, a common spin technique exposed for what it is. That didn't stop the comments though about how the government never 'claimed' it would supply all the energy to the homes but of course that is exactly what people read and presumably what was intended.
It still agitates me that people spout such nonsense in what will end up being a debate based in nothing more than spin, rhetoric and witch-doctoring instead of pragmatic economics and science which it should.
One of the comments was along the lines of, "anti-green rubbish, presumably you are suggesting we use fossil fuels until they run out". What an idiotic statement. So pointing out the errors in a system is the same as ignoring the problem? Nope.
Someone else starts a tirade about the costs of "tropical storm damage and freak weather events" which is of course not only conjecture but again misses the point that the problem is not in question, just the wisdom of the solution.
Then other people start saying we should all be using peat or wood burners and then the problem would be OK. Yeah nice idea, can't see it working in an office block in Central London though!
It would be nice if the government employed more pragmatic people to shovel all this BS out the way to make room for the real arguments and then let the public know that they know what they are doing. We can only dream....

Performance Bonuses

I was reading that Iain Coucher of Network rail has decided to forego his performance bonus this year to avoid any criticism of NRs performance. I've suddenly thought how ridiculous the idea of bonuses is, certainly above a certain bar. In some ways I can understand the idea of a bit of money at Christmas etc because the company did well but why do we pay people for doing what they should be doing anyway? If I employ a Chief Executive and she spots some waste in the company and sorts it out, that is what she should do and what I pay her for. Why do I then give her extra money for this which implies that if I didn't, she wouldn't bother.
These people sometimes get a few hundred thousand pounds per year to manage large companies. Fair enough. Giving them extra - forget about it, let's change our culture back to one of hard work, honesty and proficiency and forget this nonsense we have introduced.

Sleep walking into the ID Card State

I was reading with continued disbelief today that the government are still pressing in with the ID card scheme amongst their totally unfounded claims on the benefits: That they will help prevent terrorism and keep illegal immigration under control as well as preventing fraud.
Why is it that our system of government doesn't allow somebody to tell them to stop lying and have a ruling that means they can no longer make misleading statements without independently having them verified. For instance, despite a lot of academic work, many creationists are considered charlatans and misleaders and they have done a million times more homework than the government. How can they be allowed to make statements based on opinion or biased reports, have we not learnt anything? We will sleep walk into ID cards despite the lies unless we make more effort to tell our MPs what we think of their hair-brained schemes.
Terrorism? Well I believe all the people who have committed serious terrorist offences in the UK either have permission to be in the UK or are known to police already. ID cards no use there. Illegal Immigration? Well even without ID cards it is easy to find these people with enough staff and willing, Oh yeah and the ability to deport when caught, none of which is actually true. ID cards make no difference there. Fraud? Well seeing as you will be able to get them made at thousands of high-street places, how on earth do you prevent somebody from doing a little sideline in dodgy ID cards? There is absolutely no way to prevent it. Legal deterrents as we all know do not stop everyone from committing crime, it might persuade a few people if they knew the sentence would actually be passed.
Criminal!!

Selfish Mobile Using Drivers

I reckon I see on average 2 drivers every day driving while using mobile phones on the 25 minute journey from home to work. Usually more in the morning than the evening but still on both journeys.
These include van drivers (DHL, I've seen you twice), skip lorries, luton vans even articulated lorry drivers and this morning, a tractor driver, as well as car drivers! In fact, I think it is only bus and coach drivers I have never seen using them although I don't see many buses and coaches anyway.
The police are hopelessly ineffective in this regard otherwise people wouldn't do it. Usually you can see the police a mile away in their helpfully reflective cars so plenty of time to hide the phone or hang up. Commercial vehicle drivers face a fine of up to £3000 since their vehicles are much more dangerous in a crash.
I'm now trying to work out if I can fit a hidden camera to my car and starting to name and shame people.
A hands free costs a few pounds there really is NO excuse for using the mobile so be warned. Stop now or have the police visit when they see your photo and number plate on this blog!!