Rants ‘n’ Raves
Rave: Ezio Gig
Photo Credit: © 2007 Gavin Ireland .
Last night, Gavin and I went over to the Halfmoon in Putney to see Ezio live.
The Halfmoon is a unique music venue. With a history of nearly 50 years of live music, it has a proud history of promoting new talent and bands. This is where Kate Bush made her debut, where Elvis Costello was resident before signing a record deal and where U2 had their first sold-out British gig.
+20Rant: Jail Paris Hilton!
It seems that an e-petition to keep the the rich slapper Paris Hilton out of jail has been started.
The petition itself states that: “Paris Hilton did not hurt, injure, or kill anyone or anything, and yet she must do jail time.”
It also claims “She provides hope for young people all over the U.S. and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to our otherwise mundane lives.”
What the…?!
+21Rave: Spain unveils new green power station design
PS10 (Planta Solar 10) is a highly innovative new power station prototype which is being trialled near Seville in Southern Spain.
The futuristic-looking tower that is surrounded by over 600 giant mirrors is able to convert solar energy to geothermal energy, which in turn drives electrical turbines to produce electricity. The Beeb has a video tour of the tower which is well worth a look.
+21Rant: One rule for us and another for THEM!
Norman Baker – Hero of the HourHeartening news on the Beeb today; Former Conservative chief whip David Maclean tried – and FAILED – to introduce a private members bill to exempt MP’s from the Freedom of Information act.
Thankfully, the bill was effectively thrown out during initial debates (many thanks to Lib Dem MP Norman Baker and a handful of MPs from all parties who managed to talk out the planned bill by making sure the debate continued for five hours, ensuring that the bill now goes to the bottom of the pile of private member’s bills.)
+21Trident Followup
Well – yesterday’s vote on Trident went as expected, despite rebellion from 95 Labour MP’s.
The labour rebels can at least hold their heads high this morning. Even a political cynic like me (who always assumes that there is a fair degree of self-interest involved when MP’s rebel against the party line like this), can see that on this issue these men and women voted their conscience. Many thanks and well done.
Conversely, the Tory party support of the Government’s weak position clearly shows that all Cameron’s modernist rhetoric is just that – bullshit rhetoric. The Tories haven’t changed one bit since they were last in power. They are largely still the same bunch of fat gits in nasty pinstripe suits. And given their previous record in power all we could ever expect from them would be a long list of Quangos, several perjury trials, a couple of sex scandals and a huge amount of personal nest feathering (probably with a cones hotline for good measure).
No wonder voter turnout is so bloody low…
+19Rant: Trident (What a bloody waste!)
OK – just give me a moment to get this straight…
- The Cold War is now over and we’re on reasonable terms with the Russians and most of their eastern bloc colleagues. What’s more we have been for over a DECADE and the odds of previous hostilities resuming are longer than the odds of winning any state lottery (even ours!).
- Unilateral disarmament speeches (including from the current Labour cabinet and our “Prime Minister” himself) are a regular feature in the long-running farce that is UK politics for well over TWO decades.
+23Rant: Time for a Rainforest Tax?
Recently, I watched a video of an old episode of Equinox, recorded about 18 months ago.
Called “The day the oceans burned” the documentary discussed the issues of global warming and concentrated on an aspect of the process which is often overlooked…the impact of large scale deforestation by the timber companies and beef farmers in Brazil.
The Brazilian rainforest not only represents the largest carbon “sink” on the planet, it is also helping to slow the greenhouse effect by extracting an increasing amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. For the non biologically inclined amongst you, plants absorb and breakdown CO2 as part of the process of photosynthesis; the carbon is used to construct cells and the oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.
+21