What If Our World Is Their Heaven?

Do you ever wonder when you hear about the poor or underprivileged at home, what it actually means in relationship to the world’s population as a whole?

What I’m trying to get at (I think) is that our view of poverty is benchmarked against the average wealth of the surrounding society. In many societies poverty is so ingrained, so intense that it’s almost in the blood.

In Africa for example: one in six African children dies before the age of five (source: World Vision). Nearly 2 million children under 14 years old are HIV positive (source: WHO). 43% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have safe, accessible drinking water (source: UNICEF).

Now that’s poverty, isn’t it? Agreed, it’s poverty more often than not born of corruption, greed and mismanagement. For Africa, let’s face it, could be one of the richest continents in the world. Instead it is one of the poorest.

Mr. Amoakohene Dennis, of Ghana has this to say on the subject:

“All the ministers and those in the higher positions have swimming pools in their homes. They waste water, whereas the poor people don’t even have access to clean drinking water..”

In the UK we tend to talk about poverty in terms of income:

“Over the last decade, the poorest tenth of the population have, on average, seen a fall in their real incomes after deducting housing costs. In other words, after adjusting for inflation, their incomes are, on average, slightly lower than a decade ago. This is in sharp contrast with the rest of the income distribution, which, on average, has seen substantial rises in their real incomes.”

This might be another way of saying the rich get richer, the poor poorer?

But what does this poverty mean in the UK? Well, according to the UK Poverty Site:

“Many people on low incomes say that they cannot afford selected essential items or activities – but so do quite a lot of people on average incomes; regular holidays are by far the most common ‘essential’ item that children in low-income households lack because their parents say that they cannot afford them; the essential items that are mostly commonly lacking are those which are directly money-related.”

The report then goes on to itemise select “essential items”:

Possessing two pairs of all weather shoes for each adult (as opposed to one pair).
Hobby Activities.
Having friends round for a drink each month.
Holidays away from home one per year.
Money to spend on yourself as opposed to the family.
Being able to afford house contents insurance.
Money for the maintenance of home, internal and external.

(see HERE)

“The UK has a higher proportion of its children living in workless households than any other EU country. It is almost twice that of both the EU average and that in France and Germany.”

We are talking about 1.9 million children in total, two thirds of which are in lone parent households. Nine out of ten lone parent families are headed by women, and nearly half of lone mothers are single (never been married).

The Housing Act, places a statutory duty on local authorities to provide assistance to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness and fall within a priority need group. Included in these priority need groups are pregnant women and people with dependent children. Consequently homeless families, including lone parents, are considered one of the highest priority groups for social housing.

Of the 15,000 households in England accepted as homeless in the first quarter of 2008, half were lone parent households. Of these, 46 per cent were headed by a female and 4 per cent by a male. In the same period in England, 45 per cent of households in temporary accommodation were female lone parent households with dependent children (Source: General Household Survey (Longitudinal), Office for National Statistics; Communities and Local Government).

There is a body of anecdotal evidence in the UK to suggest that a number of single mothers conceived in order to obtain housing and improved state benefits…can that possibly be true, do you think?

So then I read THIS and while I sympathise (I really do), I have to say it’s easy to see why the Aussies nicknamed us “Whinging Poms”. There is in the UK this attitude that Government (really the tax payer) should sort out all life’s problems. Years ago as a young man with a wife and one child, there were NO benefits. No child benefit (it started with a second child in those days). No statutory duty on local authorities to provide a roof over our heads. Nothing. You worked. You paid your way. No credit cards. There was HP (hire purchase) which was too expensive. No housing credits or benefits.

I was lucky I guess because there was work about. I did one fulltime job and two part time jobs, one in the early hours of the morning cleaning in the local school; the other in the evening five nights per week, 7pm to 11pm, with a local pub.

Obviously, there was no minimum wage back then; you were paid what the boss felt you were worth (never a lot as it happens). And I didn’t get to spend a huge amount of time with my family. But I didn’t think of myself as poor – just not well off. Nor did I whinge because I felt the world owed me a bloody living. It didn’t and I accepted that. I stood on my own two feet, owing nothing to nobody.

But time has changed this. We seem to have produced a society that thinks it’s hard done by…

“This isn’t sink or swim economics. I don’t have the choice of sinking. I exist. And so does my daughter. But I don’t have the choice to swim either. If I work, I am in poverty. If I can get work. If I don’t, I am in poverty. My daughter is in poverty. Unless she goes to live with her dad. The poverty could be eased by moving away from the community we are part of, or finding a relationship which will bring financial security.”

Welcome to the real world. One wonders how much daddy contributes to this single parent family? If nothing, why not? And it may come as a bit of a shock but a vast number of people have to cope with this sort of situation – and far worse.

“The only difference between a single mother, and a married one, is a partner. Another adult to earn money, or take responsibility for some of the domestic.”

Exactly. So daddy should put his hand in his pocket and help pay his child’s way. This isn’t poverty. This is Life. And yes, it isn’t easy. In fact it can be bloody hard.

But poverty, to my mind, is where people have to survive on a dollar or less a day, where many children starve or die because of easily treatable diseases, where every year more than six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday…

As young parents my wife left her work to look after our child – so we effectively became a single parent family (as far as income is concerned). The huge initial reduction in income coupled with a robust increase in outgoings wasn’t easy to manage, or afford. But we scraped by, as did everyone else. Children grow up. With luck, life eventually becomes a little easier…

Without wishing to denigrate those living on or near the “poverty line” in the UK, I can’t help but feel many of those Africans who are busy burying their dead children or worrying about where their next meal is coming from, might look on their UK counterparts with intense envy…

In fact Our World might be Their idea of Heaven?

Volcanoes, Banking, and Crime – the Big three…

Oh, Lor, planes across Europe are grounded! Because of the Icelandic Volcano…or more accurately, the ash from same, expelled forcefully into the atmosphere – perhaps, like the dinosaurs we’ll all die out, become extinct?

No doubt these clouds of volcanic ash will block the sun’s rays, cause temperatures to plummet. Soon the World Government EU will be appealing for us all to burn more fossil fuels to warm things up…

What a world we live in. The Banks perform like morons, lend money that can never be repaid, throwing good cash after bad – then, who can really honestly say why, we give ‘em shitloads of cash as the economy goes to hell in a handcart.

Well, it we didn’t bailout the banks, sez accepted wisdom, they would have collapsed. It would have been chaos. It would have undermined faith in our financial services sector.

Is that right?

Does that mean our banks have the “right” – like a God-given right – to act as if they were total fukwits? Not only that. But having lost shitloads of cash, the taxpayers underwrite those losses, and the tossers all slap ‘emselves on the back, and payout bonuses all round!!

Who are the real idiots, do you think?

Going back to poor old Iceland. They’ve recently released a report on the collapse of their three major banks. This has revealed a number of cases of “potential illegality and acts of ‘gross negligence’ within government preceded their demise”.

Ummm. The report alleges there “was possible share price manipulation and exaggeration of asset values within the Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbanki banks.” It also suggests that the three banks were controlled by five investors who had ‘unlimited influence’ and pressured the banks to make loans to their companies and friendly clients…”

Doesn’t seem possible, does it?

“Among those alleged to have received ‘excessive’ loans were property entrepreneur Robert Tchenguiz who received £1.4 billion, retail tycoon Jon Asgeir Joannesson and former chairman of Landsbanki Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson. The report said: ‘We consider that Kaupthing’s loans to Robert Tchenguiz and companies have been in excess of that which could reasonably be considered a commercial assumption. Rules on large exposures were not followed.’ The report goes on to accuse Iceland’s former prime minister Geir Haarde of acting with ‘gross negligence’ and claims former Icelandic central bank manager David Oddsson refused help from Bank of England governor Mervyn King.”

But there are bigger problems highlighted by this crisis worldwide:

Well, I know coz of the ash spewing from Eyjafjöll I can’t fly off anywhere today, but I can consol myself with the knowledge that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks (worldwide) on the brink of collapse in 2008. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result of the worldwide banking crisis…

Bit hard on the Colombian drug cartels, eh, what? Still, we should realise from all of this, it’s organised crime generates these hundreds of billions of £s and $s and €s – and as we all know, it’s money makes this world go around. Crime is also one of the biggest growth areas in wealth generation…

Man selling his son online…

“A US man tried to sell his son online for $5,000.

The unnamed man – who left an advert on Craigslist, a local classifieds website – said he was putting his four-year-old son up for sale because he had run out of child care options.

The Spokane County Sheriff Department in Washington believes the advertisement is real and are currently trying to track down the father who set an asking price of $5,000.

See HERE.

Contestants torture each other in TV show…

Oh, well, I guess it was only a matter of time…“Game show contestants turn torturers in a new psychological experiment for French television, zapping a man with electricity until he cries for mercy — then zapping him again until he seems to drop dead.”

“The Game of Death” has all the trappings of a traditional television quiz show, with a roaring crowd and a glamorous and well-known hostess urging the players on under gaudy studio lights.

Read more HERE.

What I’ve learned from Television…

Some fuss about the BBC’s decision to cut back on sports and popular programmes. There’s the ominous feeling that this is the first step towards removing programmes from the schedules altogether. This would effectively mean they’d collect their licence fee annually but leave the nation’s screens blank while all the execs go out for a bloody good piss up on the proceeds.

The ITV, of course, are moaning. Times are tough and they’re a little short of the readies. They see the BBC as MAJOR competition (Ha ha ha ha!!), which only goes to show just how bad ITV’s programmes must be!

SKY are whining, too, about the huge wad of dosh the BBC gets without really trying. Not fair, Boo, Humbug and all that. My own view is that SKY and “culture” are just soooo incompatible! They fill multiple channels twenty-four seven with pooh. Not only that, but millions of idiots sit round watching it! Worse, they pay for the bloody privilege to do so!

Probably both ITV and SKY would like to see the BBC making minority interest programmes, like “Fifty unexpected uses for Aunt Mabel’s prosthetic limbs”, or “How to make storage cases for your X-box games out of Kleenex packaging”? That way the “commercial” channels would get better viewing figures for their reality programmes, like “Zip Buster – when penis plastic surgery goes wrong” or “Big Dyke” a show where a dozen females cohabitate in a “studio” house with three large, butch, sex-starved lesbians…

Not that I’m against the BBC making programmes for a minority viewership: modern drama, for example, (I don’t mean a bloody punch-up on Eastenders, either). Arts programmes, music – live Jazz, for example.

It’s possible that a change in direction by the BBC and a resurgence by the “commercial” companies in their acquisition of even more crap shows from the States, could just result in a new wave of techno-fetishism as all but the most mentally damaged individuals turn to the internet for entertainment?

Meanwhile the Beeb will be turning out programmes ever more bland, ever more banal because they won’t want to upset the “commercial” mob or the hoard of emotional cripples who have nothing better to do in their lives than write letters of complaint about the content of Beeb shows – “That documentary last week, the one on Queen Victoria, showed her in her boudoir in underthings – I was disgusted. My children were in the room. My little boy of sixteen has been emotionally scarred by this unexpected exposure! What could you be think of, to show such a thing on my telly screen? ”

Whatever the final outcome may be, I do hope they leave Dr Who alone!

Oh, well, whatever. The one thing I’ve definitely learned watching TV, you need a good stock of films on DVD!

Alice, Lewis Carroll, and those “ambiguous photographs”…

Fancy a party? You could join the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse and March Hare – who no doubt will offer you wine, then tell you there isn’t any – just as they did to poor sweet Alice…

“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” she says to them, prior to an argument about whose behaviour is worse!

Ah, I was going to write something about Lewis Carroll on the anniversary of his birthday (at the end of January) but forgot, or was doing something else – impossibly intoxicated, probably, who can now say? Anyway, having seen this cool but very disturbing picture (see HERE) I thought straight away of Alice, you know? With the Queen angrily shouting: “Off with her head!”

I first encountered Alice at five years of age. I have a particularly vivid memory of that time. I was ill, with a soaring temperature, and a bed had been made up for me in the living room, for ease of access during the day. The doctors wanted me in hospital, but then decided the risk of moving me was too great. I would live or die in that living room. And as a concession to the seriousness of the situation, my father would read to me (an event almost unheard of under normal circumstances) from “Treasure Island” or “Coral Island”, both books I loved; and then, one evening, he commenced reading Alice in Wonderland to me…

What can I say about it? Already afflicted by high temperatures, I was feverish to say the least, at times delirious, and Carroll’s prose was confining…yes, confining: claustrophobic, a trap in which there was little or no room to move. The story was like the worse possible nightmare you could have.

One night after listening to Alice’s adventures down the rabbit hole I had a dream where, confronted by an eighteenth century footman in full panoply (I mean, of course, livery), I declined to surrender my brand new grey overcoat to his care. I did not trust him. Something about the eyes, and that powdered wig was deeply disturbing to me. That same night, apparently, I tiptoed to my parents bedroom where I opened the wardrobe and tried to hang-up my glass of water on a coat hanger – my mother’s dresses were soaked by the resulting spillage, of course. Totally oblivious, I was bundled up and rushed back to bed – and all the while, I’d believed I was secreting my overcoat in a place where that damned footman would never find it!

Needless to add, that for many years after, Carroll’s Alice filled me with unaccountable dread. Not until my early teens and the chance discovery of the HUNTING OF THE SNARK, did I find courage enough to return and finally face Alice and her claustrophobic wonderland.

Enough of these personal anecdotes. Let’s get back to Carroll, a.k.a Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, one of the first post modernists – his influence on James Joyce is all too apparent: FINEGANS WAKE is literally awash with allusions to Carroll’s works. And Nabokov – yes, certainly, there are a number of references to Carroll/Dodgson’s work in LOLITA, despite Nabokov’s claim: “some odd scruple prevented me from alluding in LOLITA to his wretched perversion and to those ambiguous photographs he took in dim rooms. He got away with it, as so many other Victorians got away with pederasty and nympholepsy. His were sad scrawny little nymphets, bedraggled and half-undressed, or rather semi-undraped, as if participating in some dusty and dreadful charade.”

Well, to give but one example, look at chapter 29: the line “A breeze from wonderland” is most obviously a reference to Alice, and there are many others. Nabokov, for whatever reason, wasn’t being honest with us.

He translated Alice into Russian while in Berlin (1923). With his usual modesty he recalled “it wasn’t the first translation, but it was the best…”

References to Alice also occur in other Nabokov works: THE REAL LIFE OF SEBASTIAN KNIGHT and in ADA, for example. In fact, Sebastian Knight’s book shelf contains copies of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, side-by-side with ULYSSES. Certainly no coincidence.

One might also argue that allusion to Carroll in LOLITA continues through photography: it’s Quilty’s hobby, after all; he makes those unspeakable films, too, of nymphets.

Tim Burton’s film of Alice reminds us of the continuing life in Carroll’s creations (though I’m not sure if people still give Alice books as gifts to children – I’d have thought not?).

For my part I remember well the 1966 television adaptation directed by Jonathan Miller which cast Leo McKern as the Ugly Duchess, Michael Redgrave as the Caterpillar and, unforgettably, Malcolm Muggeridge and John Gielgud as the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. Delightful. I seem to recall viewing a film adaptation, too, Czech I believe it was, which showed off Alice’s black cotton knickers at every possible opportunity…not quite the thing, really. Too Freudian, too blatant. My Victorian Granny would have had apoplexy at sight of it…and I feel certain Dodgson would have been very disapproving, too.

Returning to his books, are they really for children? They are complicated books, aren’t they? Full of “abstruse philosophical ideas and learned vocabulary”. For sure, the ideas and logic (or non-logic) in the books, as well as many of the allusions, “sail right over children’s heads. Probably not one reader in 10,000 now recognises what any of the many poems are parodying.” The appeal to kids, I’d guess, is the totally “disrespectful attitude to anything resembling authority”. Alice, for her time, was a child with attitude. A Victorian punk.

But what of Dodgson? Was he a “wretched” pervert? Did he get away with it?

We can never know with full certainty. I’m sure that in our world he’d be on a sex offenders register by now – especially after photographing so many of his young “friends” in the nude, even if he did have their parents’ permission to do so. Obviously, he must have had doubts about his actions. If not, why did he destroy all the “nude” studies and their negatives? The three or four nude photographs (all hand coloured) that have survived (copies given to the parents of the young models) are totally sexless, not particularly notable as photographs or works of art, yet disturbing just the same. That Dodgson was in “love” with Alice Liddell, I feel is a certainty. The modern argument that his affection for Alice was a cover for his affair with her mother is, for me, unconvincing. I’m not even sure if Dodgson was capable of a “sexual” relationship, in the modern sense of the world. Other than the questionable photographs, his behaviour with his young “friends” was always beyond reproach; they in their turn regarded him with nothing but respect and admiration.

So, living as we do in the age of Guantánamo Bay, of widespread use of CCTV, of identity cards and bludgeoning police powers, with a corresponding decline in individual rights and freedoms, the Queen of Hearts’ instruction: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards” perhaps seems less evidently nonsensical today in comparison to 100 years ago? It may be these books still have something to teach us…?

End of the World News

Oh, dear, more confusion on the “climate” front:

“More mistakes about Himalayan glaciers seem to have been uncovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report, further threatening its credibility and undermining the position of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri” (see HERE)

This article HERE explains:

“I can report a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed “Glaciergate” – the international row surrounding the revelation that the latest report on global warming by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a wildly alarmist, unfounded claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a “poor application” of IPCC procedures.

“What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general. Furthermore, the claim – now disowned by Dr Pachauri as chairman of the IPCC – has helped TERI to win a substantial share of a $500,000 grant from one of America’s leading charities, along with a share in a three million euro research study funded by the EU.”

Surely there can be no connection between the $500,000 grant and the “mistakes” in the IPCC report on global warming?

But then there’s this HERE:

“The United Nations’ climate science panel is facing further embarrassment after claims it incorrectly linked global warming to a rise in natural disasters.”

Oh, dear me. Some more little mistakes.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed in 2007 that the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather related events since the 1970s”, suggesting that part of the increase was down to global warming.”

But it wasn’t!

“The claim formed a central argument at the climate change conference, where African nations demanded £62 billion in compensation from rich nations responsible for the highest amount of carbon emissions.”

Tut tut tut.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, says: “All the literature published before and since the IPCC report shows that rising disaster losses can be explained entirely by social change. People have looked hard for evidence that global warming plays a part but can’t find it. The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost because of climate change is completely misleading.”

No what?

The dilemma of science

“Science has the answers to all mankind’s problems.”

Do you believe this? Scientists make lots of mistakes, don’t they? For example:

The Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson overestimated the number of people who’d contract Swine Flu; he estimated 65,000 would die. Consequently, we as taxpayers, purchased 29 million doses of Swine Flu vaccine from two drug companies, but only used four million doses. Now we’re going to give away millions of doses of vaccine at a potential cost of one billion pounds sterling.

Science is often inexact – or, rather, the pontifications of those high priests of science, the scientists themselves, are often inexact. So we had a “barbecue summer” predicted in the UK this year and a mild winter: the summer weather was wishy-washy at best and parts of Britain were colder than the South Pole this winter.

In fact the Met Office people have predicted mild winters for the past three years in the UK. We didn’t get them. Last winter’s abnormal cold pushed Britain’s death rate up to 40,000 above the average. This winter it’ll be far, far higher.

Scientists advised the Highways Agency and Local Authorities there’d no longer be a need for large stockpiles of salt for frozen roads. The world, after all, is warming. The Transport Minister, Lord Adonis then admits as a nation we entered this latest cold snap with only six days supply of grit! Crazy. But it has been claimed some councils have more “Climate Change Officials” than gritters.

Obviously climate change is something that needs to be studied over hundreds and even thousands of years. There’s been a scientific explanation from the met office about the current cold snap: “regional” phenomenon, due to “natural” factors. Yet it’s affecting the whole northern hemisphere; 1,200 places in the US last week reported record snow, and freezing low temperatures.

In part the advice of Climate Scientists helped dig the graves of those 40,000 people last winter; these would be the elderly, the infirm, the vulnerable. The “scientific” advice given, of course, was incorrect. While scientists talk about “warmer winters” government will take no action to defend against freezing arctic cold, or fuel poverty which is rife in Britain today.

Okay, enough about climate. What other mistakes have scientists made?

Well, what about Thalidomide? Remember that one, do you?

The introduction of the Cane Toad to the sugar cane fields of Queensland Australia to control pests – the Toads went out of control and are killing native wildlife as far away as the Northern Territory. And the Toads are still spreading.

What about DDT?

Ummm.

Scientific errors and controversies inevitably occur in the absence, ignorance, or dismissal of good data, and the promotion of bad data or analyses. We like to quote scientists as experts. We have put them high up on a pedestal. We forget they are human, too.

Take a step back in time and the first scientists, alchemists, believed it’d be possible to turn led into gold. They were wrong. Johann Joachim Becher in the mid 16th century was convinced there was another element beside air, fire, earth and water which he called “Phlogiston”. Most scientists of his time were convinced he was correct in this judgment. He wasn’t. Up until the nineteenth century most scientists accepted the claim that the earth was only 6,000 years old. They were so, so wrong. Until the nineteenth century, doctors didn’t see the need to wash their hands before surgery. They were wrong, too. The huge number of cases of gangrene that resulted were universally thought to be due to “bad air”! Again, they were mistaken in their analysis of the problem.

The list could go on and on and on.

The scientific method is a tool to help people progress toward the truth despite their all-too-human susceptibility to confirmation bias and other errors. It’s the bias and errors we need to watch out for: one day they may prove the death of us all.

In the meantime it would be as well to remember scientists are human. They aren’t omnipotent beings, Gods for the 21st century. They are individuals seeking funding for their projects and ideas. They have all the inconsistencies and frailties of other human beings. They do make mistakes. They do get it wrong. Sometimes spectacularly so.

Copenhagen and the end of the world

Well, we had ten minutes to save the planet at Copenhagen according to those in the know. But we didn’t manage it. Instead, next year, the world’s great and good will meet again: they’ll have another ten minutes to save the planet. Al Gore, David Suzuki and oh so many others in the climate change industry, inform us that Global Warming (which is “man made”) will bring about the deaths of 300,000 people over the course of the next twenty years.

Ummm. That’s serious. No wonder all the world’s leaders are so concerned. Yet according to Julian Morris, the economist who is Executive Director, International Policy Network:

“Every year, at the moment, about 10 million children die of preventable and curable diseases, and yet we’re concerned that some time far in the future, a few hundred thousand people, maybe a few million people, at most, might suffer in some unknown way as a result of climate change.”

Really! That’s dreadful, isn’t it? Are the world’s leaders aware of this? They can’t be, surely…?

Each and every day on this little planet of ours 50,000 people die from the diseases of poverty. Around 42 million of the world’s population are infected with HIV, and it’s projected there’ll be 68 million deaths because of it by 2020 – that’s on top of the 20 million who have already died.

Well, surely all this got a mention at Copenhagen, didn’t it?

No it didn’t. Not really. The only concern expressed was for those 300,000 victims of “global warming”. It seems the rest didn’t matter.

But a billion people on this planet have no clean water. Wasn’t that discussed, a solution sort for?

Ummm. No.

In excess of half-a-billion individuals go to sleep hungry at night, and over thirty-two thousand of them never wake up again next morning. They talked about that, didn’t they?

Not really. No.

Over a third of the planet has no access to electricity – that must have been discussed, surely?

Ahhh, now that’s a big YES. We’ve got to be very careful how these people get access to a supply of electricity – it mustn’t contribute to “global warming”. Best not let them have any, not yet awhile, anyway.

So Copenhagen has maintained the status que. Nothing more. Not really. The developed world will spend many billions of £’s and $’s between now and 2100 in order to reduce carbon emissions, while during that same time span over one billion (1,000,000,000) people will die of starvation. Even a disease like malaria, easily eradicated with the use of the right pesticides and reasonable medical assistance, will claim the lives of over one hundred million people between now and 2100.

Oh, well. The poor will always be with us, so they say. Better to look into the more distant future and do something about those 300,000 “global warming” deaths. The rest will just have to look after themselves, won’t they?