I
Keir Starmer’s greatest achievement to date is that he invented the phrase “Heineken phrase”.
He did this in an interview following a speech. First, the speech; then, the interview.
In the speech he gave on January 5th 2023 he used a familiar phrase, “Take Back Control”. He said he would turn Take Back Control “from a slogan to a solution” (this is from about 35 minutes in):
It’s not unreasonable for us to recognise the desire of communities to stand on their own feet. It’s what Take Back Control meant. The control people want is control over their lives and their communities. So we will embrace the Take Back Control message, but we’ll turn it from a slogan into a solution, from a catchphrase into change. We’ll spread control out of Westminster: devolve new powers over employment support, transport, energy, climate change, housing, culture, childcare provision, and how councils run their finances, and we’ll give communities a right to request powers that go beyond even that. All this will be in a Take Back Control Bill, a centrepiece of our first King’s Speech. That bill will deliver on the demands for a new Britain, a new approach to politics and democracy, a new approach to growth and our economy. [Applause.]
People are always complaining about political speeches, but apart from the poor word ‘deliver’, this is reasonably fluent and certainly clear, though full of doubleunstuckthinkery. As we saw last month, Starmer is still rather fond of this bad old Brexit phrase. “Take Back Control is a Labour Argument,” he said, at the Labour Party Conference. But back in 2023, some of his supporters were appalled or at least surprised that he had stolen the phrase appointed by Dominic Cummings to be the slogan of Vote Leave. So Starmer went to Sky News to explain himself to Sophy Ridge. He said:
What I said in my speech is something I’ve said actually many, many times. I voted for Remain and I campaigned for Remain and we lost the referendum. But deeper than that, beyond the technical question should we be in the EU or not, I felt that bound up in that referendum was a big question about change. People desperately wanted change. That’s why I think Take Back Control was such a powerful slogan in a way. It was a Heineken phrase, it got inside people. If you can’t make your household budget balance, you don’t think you’ve got control. If you don’t feel that you can send your child to a school that’s excellent in your area because there isn’t a school that’s excellent you don’t have control. If you feel that antisocial behaviour means you can’t go out in your neighbourhood after dark you don’t have control.
Mostly boring, except for the phrase ‘Heineken phrase’. Of course, later we’ll probably find out that his political advisors might have suggested not only the stealing of Take Back Control but also the defence of it as a Heineken phrase. For the moment, however, let us exult in the possibility that Starmer is a man of wit and originated it himself.
II
What does ‘Heineken phrase’ mean? Well, as Starmer intended it, I think it meant, simply, ‘memorable phrase’, where the word ‘memorable’ was replaced by the even more memorable word ‘Heineken’. And ain’t politics now full of memorable phrases.
- Get Brexit Done.
- Brexit means Brexit.
- Strong and Stable.
- For the many, not the few.
- Flatten the Curve.
- Stay home. Save lives.
- Hands. Face. Space.
- Black Lives Matter.
- Take the Knee.
- Just Stop Oil.
- Net Zero.
In fact our entire world is now a Scrabble board of miscellaneous phrases. Tipping Point. Virtue-Signalling. Echo Chamber. Overton Window. Far Right. Climate Crisis. Proportionate Response. Black Swan Event. Wouldn’t we all like to contribute such a mite to the English language? Shakespeare, or the Earl of Oxford, or his scriptorium, invented words. But it is left to us now, mostly, to invent phrases by the suggestive combination of words, or, the formation of Frankenstein words. Niall Ferguson is quite fond of Frankenstein words: Anglobalisation and Chimerica are his. I wonder if I have ever tried to invent words. I once used ‘interseguate’ and the editor of a book changed it to ‘relate’, a much weaker word (amusingly, after having checked whether such a word existed, and finding that it did not except in my chapter). Here, in the Sceptic I tried out “Bullshit-19” – I thought that might be taken up – and “Nice Totalitarianism”. I seem to remember trying to use ‘thunberg’ as a verb: though I didn’t define it for the public. I suppose the definition would be
thunberg
verb
1. make an emotional scene about an impending disaster which is tolerated by the public because of one’s privileged status as a child.
noun
1. (joc.) the clogging of public discourse achieved by such an emotional scene: by analogy with fatberg.
As usual, excuse the digression.
Why did Starmer say “Heineken” and not merely memorable? Starmer said that the phrase Take Back Control “got inside heads”. A phrase went inside the head and – refreshed the parts that other phrases could not reach.
I hope you notice the allusion.
III
What was the original Heineken phrase? Here, ironies abound. The most famous Heineken phrase was, of course, “Reaches the parts that other beers cannot reach”. It was coined by an advertising copywriter called Terry Lovelock in 1973, and was used by Heineken until the 1990s. I found the information about this in a list of 20 of the best slogans, including appalling bits of doggerel such as: “Beanz means Heinz”, “Just do it”, “Does exactly what it says on the tin”, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité“, “Snap, Crackle, Pop”, etc. Heineken comes in at number 19. Number 20 is Millwall: “No one likes us, we don’t care”.
So Terry Lovelock invented theHeineken phrase, but Keir Starmer invented the phrase “Heineken phrase”. When I first saw “Heineken phrase” I actually got it wrong. I thought he was referring to the Carlsberg phrase, which is, obviously for me, more of a Heineken phrase than the Heineken phrase. Something was in the water, or in the lager, in 1973. For in the same year that Heineken acquired its catchphrase, so Carlsberg acquired its catchphrase, “Probably the best lager in the world“. It was coined by one Tony Bodinetz, also an advertising copywriter. I didn’t know until now that it was Orson Welles who provided the voice for the Carlsberg advertisements, including the Ice Cold in Alex one, where John Mills downs a glass of lager in black-and-white after crossing the North African desert, and says “Worth waiting for”. (Did they have Carlsberg glasses in Alexandria during the Second World War?) As spoken by Welles, who was a talented man, the phrase is deliciously ironic: even down to the way he pronounces “world”.
These phrases, the Heineken phrase and the Carlsberg phrase, conjure up a happy time of “Soft, strong and very, very long” (why didn’t Blair use this?) and also, “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet”, though it was the juxtaposition of mishap, smoke and Bach’s Air on a G String that gave that particular advertisement its glory. Both of them, and the original Heineken and Carlsberg phrases are very far away from the Arbeit macht frei atmospherics of Take Back Control: in fact, Arbeit macht frei is rather genial as compared to Take Back Control, since it is in the indicative, and not the imperative, mood. The Nazis weren’t ordering you to work: they were just suggesting about what happened if one did work. Whereas Dominic Cummings used the imperative mood: “Take!” Just as Klaus Schwab and friends used the imperative mood in “Build Back Better”: “Build!”
Alright, boss – as people used to say, ironically, in Middlesbrough in the 1980s.
IV
A few words about “Take Back Control” and “Build Back Better”.
First, they are imperative.
Second, they are reactionary. This may seem a bit odd to say, but they don’t seem very progressive. Both of them have “back” as the second word. Not ‘forward’. An’t you goin’ for’ard, Keir? Goin’ back’ard, are ye? Perhaps this word, sounding restorative rather than progressive, is designed to appeal to 18th century Tories. But we should be on our guard. This “back” is not Burke’s ‘back’ or Salisbury’s ‘back’. Nay, it is a paradoxical, shapeshifting ‘back’. It is a Back to the Future ‘back’.
Build Back Better is around 20 years old. Wikipedia says it was coined in 2005 in a World Bank document: and then went everywhere. But I asked Google ngram which says it is even older than that, emerging around 2000. It was used by Bill Clinton at the UN in 2005, then by the World Economic Forum in a report of 2011, again in 2016, 2019 and in 2020, after COVID-19, just before Joe Biden announced a Build Back Better Plan as a sort of new New Deal. Finally, it was adopted – rapturous slow applause – by Her Majesty’s Treasury in May 2021 in a report ‘Build Back Better: Our Plan For Growth’. I checked this exciting document, which was presented to Parliament: but it is a repulsive pamphlet full of lesser slogans such as “Levelling Up” and “Net Zero”. For some reason the NHS is not only called “our NHS” as is customary but, astonishingly, by Boris Johnson, in his cheery preface, “our fantastic NHS”, hallowed be its hellish name. Doesn’t this make you ill?
It is human genius and ingenuity that is beating Covid and it is by unlocking that genius and ingenuity across our whole country that we will build back better.
There is Boris, a humorous Aladdin, fumblingly trying to open a lamp with a key, to produce an improbable genie.
Take Back Control, according to Wikipedia again, was apparently coined by Dominic Cummings and first used in February 2016 by Vote Leave. But, again, Google ngram suggests that it is older: a phrase which got going in the 1970s and has risen in our consciousness since, with no obvious acceleration in 2016.
Take Back Control and Build Back Better are very strange counter-revolutionary phrases. The logic of Take Back Control and Build Back Better is that something has gone wrong. Oh, and we can do something about it. And, of course, that we are not doing this for the first time. It is reactionary language used in a disconcertingly stupid, fanciful, hopeful, alarming, potentially totalitarian way.
So, third, these are tricky busybody phrases. Starmer commented in 2023 that he would turn Take Back Control from a slogan into a solution. Solution! Do you need to be reminded, dear readers, that – and, again, I owe this argument to Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book Pure Theory of Politics – politics is about settlements not solutions? This is because politics is gritty: it is sand, not salt, and does not dissolve. In politics, we should never talk of solutions. Anyone who does is making a category error.
But here is Keir Starmer, not a humorous Aladdin, but a plucky Sorcerer’s Apprentice, stirring his political problems in a crucible, adding sulphur and mercury, and hoping that everything will dissolve leaving only gold behind.
Both of these slogans are unironic, but iron fisted, as well as ham fisted, portents of the house that mad geniuses like Dominic Cummings and boring lawyers like Keir Starmer would like to build and take, build and take, build and take…
V
It seems to me that, in stricto sensu, a Heineken phrase, like a Carlsberg phrase, is fundamentally ironic. (Overt overstatement amounting to understatement.) It tells us something that is not true: but thinkable, and a bit mischievous, and amusing when asserted. “This is not true, but isn’t it amusing to suppose that it is true, and don’t want you want to drink a drink that is associated with this delicious, relaxed sensibility?”
And that, emphatically, is not the logic of Starmer’s Heineken phrase. He says, after all, that his Heineken phrase is a “Labour argument”. Well! Labour arguments are leaden, wooden, woolly, worthy, earnest and dull. Not much Heineken there. (At least, I don’t know. I haven’t drunk it for a while.) Perhaps Starmer should have said it was a Rubber Glove Iron Fist phrase: hygienic and useful, good for ‘service’, but also relentless and determined. Tastes of soap, hurts the jaw.
“Probably the best lager in the world” is subtle: i.e., a joke, i.e., not the best lager in the world, objectively, but because of this advertisement, and its wit, subjectively. No blonde tarts here: at Carlsberg we associate ourselves with words. Heineken too: refreshing the parts other beers cannot reach, namely, the parts that like playing with words. But these phrases are memorable without being decisive. Dominic Cummings did not coin the phrase Probably Take Back Control. Klaus Schwab has never been caught saying Build Back Better the bits that other globalist institutions cannot reach. Obama did not say “No. We. Can’t.” with a twinkle in his eye.
If only these phrases had been Heineken phrases. A Heineken phrase, in Starmer’s mind, is a memorable phrase, a great bit of advertising: it makes people think and hence drink, or, in his case, he hopes, do what he wants – accept kontrol. Yes. But a Heineken phrase is also something which is not true, and which only works because it is ironic.
Here’s to more Heineken phrases in politics!
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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We’ve known for decades that this is a scam.
We don’t need any further evidence.
‘We’ dont need further evidence but many others looking at this site do.
Yep: as the meme runs: is that the truth – or did you hear it on the BBC?
Isn’t it kinda strange that the ‘answer’ to the pandemic that never was, and the climate crisis that doesnt exist, is a world wide communist dictatorship run by, and for, the elite?
I dunno a pbout the last ten years, but I’ e experienced 65 years’ worth of West Wales summers and, with a few freak exceptions (e.g. 1959, 1975) they’ve always been exactly the same: cold, wet and windy, with the occasional good week if you’re lucky.
Of course, climate change was always a con
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am – ignore the Covid Con make friends & keep sane
Wokingham – Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
First it was Climate Cooling, then it was Climate Warming, and now it’s been rebranded as Climate Change. Soon they’ll be using the scary term Climate Inertia.
Next one will be ‘climate disease pandemic’. Well, they have to blame the bioweapon mortality on something.
Maybe we could call that disease “climate mange”?
Climate non change total bollox giz your fucking money
Or the Covid Winter.
The Covid Winter.
That has book title written all over it.
Laura Dodsworth?
anyone who tries to claim “the science is settled” has never done science.
Precisely. Also, those that think that scientific findings can magically put matters beyond debate also don’t understand that such debate is right at the heart of true science.
My abiding hope is that once the public realise how utterly deceived they were over Covid it will be the lightbulb moment when they realise the same people have also been lying about Climate Change.
I knew Covid was a scam from day one (in fact, based on my experience as a journalist covering Bird Flu and Swine Flu I knew it was a scam that was coming even before it happened), but must admit I had been taken in by the climate scam like many others. In fact, one of my early concerns about the lies around Covid was that it might make people distrustful of science and therefore not accept what I thought, at the time, was the real risk of climate change.
However on a personal level what it did was make me start to question even my most firmly held beliefs if those beliefs had come about as a result of information from particular sources. And I looked again at the data around climate change, with a more critical eye, and came to realise that it was exactly the same sleight-of-hand con trick as Covid: amplifying a threat and using fear to enact change that benefits a small and powerful group at the expense of everyone else.
So hats off to Covid for showing me the light in this one; and I suspect when we’ve overturned the narrative in Covid we’ll have another hard job going after that. But at least we will have a, hopefully, much more cynical public to deal with then.
The covid-fear-narrative/propaganda is also what opened my eyes to the climate change brainwashing. I had had a sceptical period back in the early 2000s on reading a Crichton book ( “state of fear” ) and then that Swedish( ?) economist’ sceptical analysis, but was convinced back into the fold by a family member working in the environment section of the EU bureaucracy. Now I have *really* taken whichever pill it is, and I don’t think that I believe the official story about the twin towers any more either.
How can you believe anything anymore? If a small group of powerful people can get thousands of politicians and millions of other influential people to lie for them, then anything is possible.
Have a look at Michael Schellenberg’s book, Apocalypse Never.
He destroys all this crap including that the planet is overpopulated and cannot feed everyone. It’s all absolute BS.
His latest, San Fran Sicko is also great – cuts right through to the absolute moral bankruptcy of the “elites”….
Thank you.
I agree that this is an important book that anyone with an open mind should read, even though Schellenberg says that he believes that humans are causing a slight warming of the planet but it isn’t going to lead to the catastrophy that many environmentalists say is coming.
I think this proves the point that most people are right about some things and wrong about others, but some people are right more often than not and some people are wrong more often than not. Every claim made by an individual should be considered on it’s own merit regardless of anything else that person has said.
I dont know how you could see though the covid hoax, yet remain blissfully unaware of the climate scam.
Or 911, 7,7, JFK, Moon etal.
See how the politicians and media blatantly lie on a vast scale day in day out? Well the picture they paint is what will be recorded in the history books and future generations will be trained to believe all the lies are a true record of events. Now apply that scenario to other pivitol events in history. Still believe what they tell you is true?
Because I was on the frontline of reporting Bird and Swine Flu and was horrified by the disconnect between what was clear and obvious from the data and the narrative that we in the media were trying to spin out of it. I was even more alarmed by the way I was shut down when I tried to make the case for balanced reporting.
With climate change I guess I didn’t have as much personal involvement and so hadn’t really studied the data in the same way.
We wouldn’t be in the mess we are in if everyone’s default thinking was cynical.I will never understand those who just follow the MSM propaganda blindly.
That could/should read “if everyone’s default thinking was cyclical”.
Climate changes in cycles i.e. sometimes it gets warmer or wetter etc. sometimes it gets cooler, drier etc. regardless of what humans do. Similarly sometimes covid cases increase, sometimes they decrease regardless of lockdowns, mask mandates etc.
The mistake, hubris or deliberate deception promoted by modellers of climate change and covid is to assume that short term trends will continue into the future, and that mere humans can control these natural phenomina.
And all sceptics should be cynical, by default. Maybe most of us are.
More stuff you won’t see on the BBC.
The covid debacle has made me think more about climate change. Pre covid I would say I ‘accepted’ climate change in that I broadly bought into the mainstream view that man made climate change was a thing and the debate was all but over. The last 24 months has made me reconsider. Essentially I’ve lost faith in the scientific process – If Ferguson can be treated as a respectable and serious scientist despite his continuous and glaring errors then I shudder to think what nonsense is passing as science in the climate debate.
Climate ‘science’ is the model deployed by covidians. Government and corporations recruit and fund only those who support the pre-ordained narrative. Scientists who challenge the narrative are censored, deplatformed, defunded, sacked and in some cases subjected to death threats. This is how they manufacture their infamous “97% of scientists agree……”yarn.
Think back to David Bellamy for an example of how long al-Beeb has been pushing the anti-scientific, anti-logic warble gloaming agenda.
There will be no more David Bellamys. They are all screened out at school. If any slip through the net, university gets rid of them. That way, everyone entering into positions of influence are guaranteed to be a safe pair of hands.
Yes, just Harrabins Rowlatts and McGraths allowed
Spot on. One of my first posts on here (it seems like an age ago now, back when it was Lockdown Sceptics), was to point this out.
Some will recall when Neil Ferguson briefly engaged with this site and sang the praises of Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook, two global warming acolytes behind the totally bogus “97% of scientists agree” nonsense.
The moment debate is over is the point at which it ceases to be science.
For the layman here does that graph show a 1.5c increase in 100 years?
It does, and push the timescale back a few hundred years and you would see a decrease.
Why would anyone give you a thumbs down for an honest observation? Have a thumbs up on me….
The global temperature has been rising, along with sea levels, since the last Ice Age when much of the UK was covered in ice a kilometre thick and people could walk from here to what is now France. That is a fact. Another fact is that there is no correlation whatsoever between atmoshperic Co2 levels and global temperature. A lesser known fact is that communism wont stop the climate doing what it has always done – change.
Plus plants live on CO2 and shit oxygen that we live on.
Can you say “Doggerland”
Is that where you go at night?
I thought that was some weird place Dahn Sarf near the Isle of Dogs.
All “models” are nonsense when produced to further agendas, and those who produce them are fools, charlatans or bought and paid for.
The only good models are Airfix, without glue fingerprints, nice paintwork and the decals right way up. All else is balls, crystal or otherwise.
. . . and the only good system is a sound system.
Lol and a fair few Japanese ones.
British statistician George Box once said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. I don’t think he envisaged the exact kind of usefulness some models have these days.
The only good models are Airfix! Brilliant!!
In the northern hemisphere, 21,000 years ago (circa 19000 B.C.) an Ice Cap stretched down as far as the south of England.
In 18000 B.C. this Ice Cap began to retreat northwards. Which is a clear indicator that at this time the planet started to get warmer. It’s fair to say that human activity played no part in the planet warming up at this time.
Projections based on clear historical evidence show that the planet will continue to get warmer, and that by A.D. 3000 the Ice Cap will have retreated ever further north.
The climate nuts churn out tales about polar bears and how they are being devastated. Which is a provable lie.
What’s actually happening with polar bears as the Ice Cap naturally retreats northwards is that they are meeting and breeding with black and brown bears. The offspring of these couplings gain genes from both parents, which gives them the ability to live and prosper both in iced over environments, and in green temperate zones.
The black and brown bears, as they currently are genetically, cannot survive in completely iced over environments, whereas polar bears can. Likewise, polar bears, as they currently are genetically, cannot survive in a totally green temperate zone.
But when these different breeds cross with each other, the offspring are experts at hunting and feeding in both environments.
Bear ( see what I did there) in mind there has been a lot of fluctuation in the ice cap extent as well, during Holocene, roman, medieval etc climate optimums.( Wonder why they’re referred to as optimums
)
Either that or those pesky neolithic hunters used to go round burying treestumps under the ice so we’d be fooled into thinking there were forests there during previous climate optimums.
How many people know that camels used to roam the Artic!!!!
Equally, how many people have worked out that polar bears managed to survive the previous climate optimums just fine i.e
they didn’t go extinct, even if they did have to roam the forests of Greenland for a while.
The Net Zero project will survive until sufficient CONservative MPs fear for their Constituencies and remove Johnson and Nut Nuts from Downing St …… or give him a massive kick up the arris which he will feel for the next decade.
J and his princess only adopted it out of tactical reasons, to make inroads into the young urban metro electorate who would otherwise have voted green or left green.
It was a smart political move at the time but completely shortsighted.
Therefore soon, those chicken will come home to roost.
No, you are reading this wrong. This climate crap is tied in to Agenda 2030.
Or some kind soul uses a big axe to good effect.
I thought one theory was that if global warming does occur, the UK would get colder due to impact on gulf stream?
The idea (and that’s all it is) is that increasing CO2 will cause the Artic ice to melt reducing the salinity of the Atlantic ocean, in turn causing the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation [AMOC] to switch off. As a result our winters will be like the winters of Newfoundland. That’s the idea. I see no evidence, only computer modelling. The AMOC has only been measured since 2004 so it’s all conjecture.
Cheers! Yep that tallies with my understanding
Thanks for explaining that – really helpful.
Ordinarily my tolerance for listening to/reading any of the “reports” doesn’t get past “modelling”
Perhaps that’s why I took no notice of the PANDEMIC on day one
It is theoretical. It’s certainly true that we benefit from the existence of the gulf stream at our latitude in the UK. However, in the real world, the significant performer is the jet stream, and thus which air mass we end up in for a while – such as a couple of days ago, with > 12 °C overnight on 1/1/2022, and the short term effect it has on levels of rainfall, and ground temperature. Apart from actual rain, the amount of cloud cover during daylight hours matters a lot too – both for the plants and the modern kit for power generation (solar photovoltaic (PV) ).
I’m used to this, with some kit on my house since 2014. Here’s the last 5 years output graph.
Gotta cover all bases!
It’s all a question of scale….
Just in case there is someone here who has not yet signed this petition which has taken flight re Blair: (climate change scaremonger, war monger coronavirus fear porn promoter and so on):
Petition · Tony Blair to have his “Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter” rescinded · Change.org
Yes, it might not achieve all it hopes but it will achieve at least a warning shot over the bows. And with coming up for 300K signing you merge with a very large crowd.
Yep, just a gesture, but nice to mark one’s disgust – with Bliar, Bozo and even Queenie!
It might be as many as protested the Iraq war –
they didn’t take any notice of that either , but it will be good to prove to the arrogant twat that it has not been forgiven or forgotten
301 k now
I’ve been living by the sea for years. I can see it from my house. It doesn’t look any different now to what it did when I first moved here, and the beaches are no more engulfed by the sea now than they were in old photos and paintings from many decades ago.
Perhaps there are some differences that are not obvious to the casual observer, but before words like “crisis”, “catastrophe” and “emergency” could be remotely appropriate – all common parlance amongst the doomsayers, and government policy – there surely ought to be something far more devastating happening than what I am seeing during this typical British winter.
This is empirical observation, of a basic sort admittedly, but apparently more reliable than the modelled garbage leading to completely bogus public policy, backed by hysterical propaganda, which wastes trillions of pounds we don’t have. The peddlers of this pseudo scientific tripe are despicable religious nutters.
Agreed, though your last sentence needs to add the nuance that Jesus is displeased with their anti-humanism, and utter distrust of the creation, both of which are outstandingly alien to him.
Yes, I find it rather amusing that the land area of Tuvalu (you know, the island whose prime minister stood in a bucket of water at COP26 asking for money) has actually been INCREASING!
Likewise the Maldives, supposed to have sunk years ago. Instead, beach-side hotels with those attractive boardwalks, buiklt before the predictions were made 40 years ago, are still open for business. And they’re building new oners, and several airports.
I hope he caught a chill
But, but, but maybe it is getting much deeper under the surface!! (Lol)
I noticed recently one of the tricks the BBC regularly uses to imply things are warmer than ‘normal’. Their forecast maps only show city temperatures (which are of course typically a couple of degrees warmer than the countryside) and then compare these maps with average temperatures for the time of year – average temperatures which will of course be much closer to those in the much larger area of the countryside!
Al-beeb keeps pushing all the wah Covid, warble gloaming, NHS, wacism mantras though.
At least they are so consistent in validating the conspiracy theorists that there is a shortage.
Having done extensive reading about covid and then about climate change (well, I’ve had plenty of time on my hands lately) I decided quite some time ago that the wool was being well and truly pulled over my eyes about both. I stopped worrying about our house disappearing underwater and just decided to enjoy what is left of my life -totalinarianism permitting. What I can’t forgive is the fear that children are being indoctrinated with on a daily basis – that their world is going to vanish. When I was a kid it was bay of pigs/nuclear armaggedon, now they are all going to expire in uncontrollable heating. Why do we have to constantly frighten generation after generation this way? Well, I think I know why, it’s that ubiquitous Orwellian boot yet again, isn’t it?
It’s not Global Warming or Global Cooling … it’s Global Staying the Same.
So, yes, by all means, we better ban the internal combustion engine.
Bozo:
“Can somebody turn the fuckin heating up? I’m starting to look a right nob head with stories like this coming out.”
Am I alone in not caring what type of world future generations ‘inherit’? If it’s not to their liking then let them sort it out. There is no real parallel with WW1 & WW2 analogies, people were conscripted and didn’t have the opportunity to critically decide if the fight & sacrifices were worth it – harsh I know but probably true?
I’m with you. I will drive my V12, eat as much meat as i like, burp, fart, pick my nose and recycle nothing. It’s my life.
For those of a technical disposition it is worth noting that the data used for the above graph is based on modelling extrapolated across the whole country from the comparatively few measuring stations, if my reading of their site is correct.
So just like global temperatures that are based on even sparser data, there is an awful lot of speculation involvedm and yet just like with Covid, an awful lot of government decisions are being based on very questionable science.
“Across the planet, warming ran out of steam some time ago”
The graph at the head of the article shows this to be nonsense. Currently there is a plateau. That is all that can be said.
Sorry, but I’m a real sceptic.
Hi folks – what I’m about to suggest may be painful and beyond comprehension. But watch the BBC long range weather forecast on iplayer today (one of my odd sins – getting weather updates from this ugh ….). The emphasis on how temperatures dropping from their current highs to where they would be NORMALLY be ….! God forbid that the current highs are not a portent of global warming! Sure you’ll pick up on what this conveys.
The Great Global warming scam – exposed the hour!
It was reported last year that an Australian MP and climate alarmist, claimed that when growing up he had never experienced so many heatwaves and bushfires. Little wonder … he grew up in Scotland.
Great article. I thought it was a bit suspicious that the Today programme was talking about one warm day rather than last year being the hottest ever!
When they say the ‘hottest day ever’ they usually omit the information that they are referring to a specific data set (often the one coming from satelites) that were only operational from the late 1980s onwards.
I sent this article to someone who is an occasional reader of DS.
He has very detailed knowledge of climate science but has no vested interests.
He has been a long-term critic of extreme arguments on both sides of the debate.
A summary of his views in a conversation we just had:
Global warming is happening and does need addressing.
Carbon dioxide is a factor but there is a complex inter-relationship with many other factors e.g. methane and water vapour.
There are significant natural cycles in play but these are generally subsidiary to the man-made factors.
He believes that Chris Morrison’s paper contains many misleading opinions and incorrect assumptions e.g. he suggests that the timescales of the data used has been cherry-picked (not dissimilar to the way COVID data has been cherry-picked by the authorities and is criticised by DS) and that the questioning of some of the Met Office data is invalid.
I will not go into more of the detail but provide some views of my own.
I fear that this article has not helped further the concerns being aired by the Daily Sceptic.
The historical differences of opinion and interpretation between the various parties engaged in the climate change debate will not be resolved here.
What I think DS should continue to do is to take an objective view of the messages being put in the public domain and particularly the appropriateness and viability of measures that are being taken – especially when the politics overrides the science. One particular concern of mine has been the introduction of E10 fuel and it would be great to see an objective article on the pros and cons of that measure.
How does the someone “with a detailed knowledge of climate science” square the Mediaeval Warming period with the paucity of man made factors? How detailed is the someone’s knowledge?
The only reason we haven’t all died from the warming is the vaccine (and the NHS).
Tony Heller is very good at showing how the likes of NASA and others alter the data to produce the climate records they want – I think he is still on youtube – he’ll be kicked off soon.
When they can’t even cheat and get the results they want you know they are fucked.