We read:
" An English couple who were the subject of a police hate probe after complaining about the town's pro-gay policies will be paid $20,000 to end a discrimination suit alleging their civil rights had been violated.
After the Wyre Borough Council launched a diversity program to train its staff about LGBT issues and started a Lancashire wide scheme to promote gay friendly businesses and organizations Joe and Helen Roberts sent a letter to the council calling homosexuality "immoral".... Council officials turned the letter over to police who began a probe to determine if it violated British hate laws.....
In June the Roberts filed suit against the council. The couple claimed that Wyre Council and Lancashire Constabulary interfered with their human rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion under the Human Rights Act.
The case was to have gone to court in January but in an out of court settlement the couple agreed to drop the lawsuit in return for a public apology from the police and council and a cash settlement of $20,000 which Joe Roberts said would be given to a conservative Christian group that opposes homosexuality.
Source
Nice to see that one of Britain's wacky laws can sometimes do something useful.
BRITISH WINDFARM FOLLIES
A recipe for blackouts
Nature seems to like her little ironies, like the cold weather that pursues Big Al round the world as he promotes his global warming scare. So she provided a stationary high, of the sort mentioned in the opening paragraphs of this page, at the very moment that the new gigantic monstrosity on the Thames Estuary was announced. If all those white elephants were in position now they would be providing no power at all, just when the country is immersed in freezing fog and needing it. This letter in the Telegraph almost says it all:
Sir - Once again the public are being misled by the wind industry. These windfarms, which are going to cover over 100 square miles of the approaches to the Thames Estuary, will never power one third of London homes.
If as suggested the installed capacity of the 400-plus turbines is 1.3 Gw (1300Mw) then even with a generous load factor of 30 per cent the average output will only be 390Mw. This would in fact be enough to provide 5Kw to 78,000 homes, about enough to power an electric kettle and a toaster. If, as there frequently is, a high pressure system is sitting over south-east England , then there will be zero output from these windfarms. The claims about carbon dioxide savings are equally dishonest. Using widely accepted data the annual, theoretical savings of CO2 for these turbines would be approximately 1.46 Mt and would reduce global levels by a farcical 0.005 per cent
What your readers really need to know is that these windfarms will receive approximately œ160 million per year in subsidies, paid for by them. This windfarm scandal has gone on long enough and needs to be exposed for what is. We are destroying our landscapes and now our seascapes for nothing more than green tokenism, and are being expected to pay for it as well.
Bob Graham, Chairman, Highlands Against Windfarms, Orton, Moray
Unfortunately it rather understates the case. Time averages are of no significance in this application. The point is that for about 80% of the time these machines would produce no power at all. Fossil fuel generators would have to provide the missing power and then be switched to warm standby while the wind is blowing. Even if CO2 were a significant factor in global warming, the fraction saved would be derisory.
It was a particularly irksome time to read this nonsense, as the announcement of the latest hike in electricity bills came through the letter box on the same day. Ordinary punters have no idea how much they are paying for these religious observances and they cannot see the connection with the front page headline on the same day.
Pity the poor grid controller when the wind drops suddenly: by the time his call for extra fossil power has been answered, the cascade of failures across the network will already have begun to propagate.
From Numberwatch - Post of Dec 22
Tony Blair versus Tony Blair: "On this page a few weeks ago, Tony Blair set out his case for the ID card scheme that his Government is preparing to foist upon the British people over the next eight years or so. This was, presumably, a different Tony Blair from the one whose thoughts I stumbled across at the weekend while digging out books for the local Christmas fair. New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country, published in 1996, was a collection of newspaper articles and speeches that encapsulated Mr Blair's Third Way political philosophy, the prospectus on which he would be elected to office the following year. On the cover, he said: "When we make a promise, we must be sure we can keep it. That is page one, line one of a new contract between the Government and the citizen." So what did he think of ID cards? The answer was on page 68: "Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards, let that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local community." So much for Mr Blair's new contract."
Pathetic British Tories: "Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are conspicuous by their absence in a list of 12 great Britons who created the institutions that shaped the country's history, compiled by the Conservatives and eminent historians. The ranking was prompted as part of the Tory party's review of the teaching of history in schools and comes after surveys showing that many children lack a basic knowledge of history."
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