Bank of England warns "There's NOTHING we can do ...er .... right ....." Part 2

As a public service on the monthly anniversary, we are happy to re-post this post which first appeared just a month ago. Happily coinciding with the announcement that Consumer prices rose 4.4 percent from a year earlier, breaching the government's 3% upper limit for a third month and the most since comparable records began in 1997(The 0.6 % increase is the largest jump since the series began in 1997. Based on a constructed index using retail-price data, it was the largest gain since 1991, the ONS said), the Office for National Statistics said today. That exceeds the 4.2 % median forecast of 38 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

This means of course that miserable Mervyn will have to pop his 3rd third letter of explanation to the government in the Post Office (assuming he can find one still open) - that is unless inflation slows to 3 % in August - which about as unlikely as Northern Wreck turning a profit this side of Armageddon.

Anway here is last month's cheery tale of rank incompetence, woe, grief and downright misery.



This is what Lord King Chairman of the Bank of England said in his annual speech to the great and the good of the City of London at the Mansion House just over one year ago on the 16th June 2007...

"Our central view remains that inflation will fall back this year as the rises in domestic gas and electricity prices last year drop out of the annual comparison, and the recent cuts in prices feed through to household bills."

PS : Mervyn has a pension pot of £4.8million, which should be worth nearly £180,000 a year on retirement...which cannot come too soon.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday and more bad news for the UK - shortages of gas and scientists

Department of Trade and Industry Energy Trends and Quarterly Energy Prices Trends 28th June 2007 For the 1st Qtr of 2007

GAS: QUARTER 1 2007

- Total indigenous UK production of natural gas in the first quarter of 2007 was 16.8 % down on Q1 2006.
- Compared with Q1 2006, exports of natural gas in Q1 2007 increased by 44.1 per cent and imports increased by 50.6 per cent.
- Demand for gas in Q1 2007 was 3.4 % lower than in Q1 of 2006.
- Gas use for electricity generation increased by 34.2 % and domestic consumption fell 12.9% public administration, commerce and agriculture consumption fell by 11.2 % and in the industrial sector by 12.3 %.

Sunday Express helps chart industrial decline
Now in the grip of greedy pornographer Desmond the Uxpress Group has a good history, especially of financial reporting. 2 Stories in the Sunday Edition today are noteworthy
1. Tracey Boles the Deputy Business Editor -" Half our Gas to be foreign by 2009" injects a raw xenophobic touch to the realisation that indigenous gas supplies are declinig lickety split. Apparently British Gas (whose parent Centrica reports this week) have provided the headline by telling her that imports could provide 50% of UK gas demand by 2009. "Industry forecasts" had previously indicated 2010/11 for this milestone - see the figures above - complete figures from the report here - show the level of decline - which has been accelerated by (litle reported) damage to the North Sea Central Area Transmission System (CATS) gas pipeline,which shut on July 1 after its concrete casing was damaged by a ship's anchor near Teesside port. Divers are inspecting the damage and operators BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward also told a news conference that it would be a number of weeks before repairs would be complete.As gas cannot be extracted this also affects oil production.

The 404 Km seabed CATS pipeline brigs gas ashore at Teesside from the Armada, Seymour, North Everest, Banff, Eastern Trough Area Project, J-Block, Lomond and Erskine fields U.K. gas network operator National Grid PLC NGG. The pipe has previously been delivering gas at a rate of just over 40 Mn cubic metres a week.

Naturally this will also affect North Sea Oil production but nobody is publicly putting any numbers to reduced gas and oil production as a result of the incident. It will not be small or insignificant... can't blame God this time either.

2. FCUKED, the Forthcoming United Kingdom Energy Deficit has been campaigning since 1999 about the loss of indigenous energy resource, and it's impact on the import / export gap and consequent fiscal costs - and consequences.

To remedy this we have promoted the need to build new nuclear power facilities and managed to get Tony Blair to discuss it for the first time in Manchester just prior to the 2005 election.

Building nuclear power station is now official Government policy (although they are consulting Ho.Ho.Ho.) , the shortage of nuclear engineers, (no UK Unversity runs a course) let alone a sufficient number to build the ten stations required is a major resource problem.

This was identified in 1999 by the drop in students sitting A levels in the basic sciences plus Mathematics and IT who would be the seed corn for engineers we would hope to be 5/6 years into their professional career today.

Therefore the lament by Sir John Rose CEO of Rolls Royce about "his biggest headache is finding experienced engineers in the UK" after producing stunning results. Tracey Boles again reports, 1 Mn jobs gone in the last decade in manufacturing industry and too many pupils are abandoning sciences for the humanities.

Therefore it is not surprising ,that with a bulging Order book for the massively successful Trent engine series for the Airbus 380, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the possibility (if it ever is built) for supplying the A350 presents Sir John and Rolls Royce are faced with the difficulty of actually making them.

Rolls Royce is gearing up to build it's first overseas manufacturing and test site Tracey exlains and are looking at the US (where subsidiary Allison operates in Indianapolis ***) and Singapore. With Asia and the Middle East accounting for 44% of the order book, and the US$50 Bn, aero engine market opening up in China, it doesn't need much skill in human resouces to consider the streams of young engineers flowing out of Singapore / Malaysia / Universities to decide where to go. (not to mention S.Korea and Japan).

FCUKED's money is on a bit more land in Singapore harbour.

*** Mitch Daniels the Republican Governor of Indiana and ex member fo the G Bush Administration (Office of Budget Management who helped plan the illegal invasion of Iraq) would bend over backwards for Allison to develop their plant(s?) as the GM manufacturing plants in Indiana fade away.

Pic shows Sir Ralph Robbins, former Cairman of Rolls Royce, Sir Frank Whittle's son Ian and Chales Blundell PR Bullshit supremo art RR help celebrate (with a large lunch) on 4th July the birth 100 years ago on June 1st of Sir Frank Whittle who designed the first jet engine (his first patent was in 1930) which everyone ignored until it was too late.

"To travel to Australia used to take 200 days and because of Sir Frank it takes 22 hours," said Cllr Charlie FraserFleming, a trustee of the Sir Frank Whittle Commemorative Trust.

"It was a huge effort to get the turbojet engine made all those years ago. A lot of people didn’t believe it would work and he didn’t get a lot of support from the government."

Very good at glorifying past failures of Governments to listen to scientists - a brilliant engineer and far sighted man he only died 11 years ago. A 9 foot statue was also undraped in the Millennium Park in Coventry where he was born.

Like Radar, jet engines were another innovation given to the US during WWII who quickly and superbly exploited the technology (see Bell XP59A Airacomet US's first jet 1942) to become world leaders.

RSPB & ASDA bring you the birdbrains - who don't know their birds from their bees

In the absence of a handy sauce bottle label to read, a copy of the ASDA House magazine for June 2007 fell open at a double page spread pages 22-23


Asda (the UK arm of the world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart) have "teamed up with the Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) " to promote "bird friendly farms".

Facts about the RSPB - from their website

* Over a million members, including nearly 150,000 youth members.
* A staff of over 1,300 people and over 13,000 volunteers.
* An income of over £50 million per year.
* 200 nature reserves covering 130,000 hectares home to 80% of our rarest or most threatened bird species.
* A UK headquarters, three national offices and nine regional offices.
* A local network of 175 local groups and more than 110 youth groups.
* At least 9 volunteers for every paid member of staff.

If you want to know which UK bird species pollinate plants - including food producing crops you should perhaps call RSPB Wildlife enquiries Hotline : 01767 693 690 (office hours) if you think ASDA magazine could do with someone who knew , even vaguely about flower pollination and how this is done, contact either a 6 year old child or Ali Carswell described as the Editor of ASDA magazine can be contacted at asda.editor@asdamagazine.co.uk

Ali dear, here's a clue about plant pollinators in the UK.

Further clue, honey bees have 4 wings and 6 legs, birds have 2 wings and 2 legs.

The Death of Civilisation - led it appears by Ronald Plasterk, Dutch Minister of Education, Science and Culture

In the dying minutes of the Dutch, "The Big Donorshow" it was revealed to the gawping and brain dead couch potatoes watching, that this much publicised and criticised "reality television show", in which a supposedly dying woman had to pick one of 3 eager and terminally ill "contestants" to whom she would donate a kidney, was revealed as an cheap and nasty publicity stunt (the term used by the programme makers was "an elaborate hoax ") .

It simply demonstrates the intellectual nullity of the morons who make "reality television", the gullibility of the bovine and credulous masses who feed on this pap and the incurious and dishonest journalists who willingly broadcast this supposed entertainment.

Dutch Minister of Education, Science and Culture Ronald Plasterk hailed the show as a "fantastic stunt" and an intelligent way to draw attention to the shortage of donor organs.

If this is the way that Governments have to educate and inform ,it suggests that the educational system is producing a sub class of people to whom rational debate, and honest discussion is beyond their ability.

It will of course help to generate even more anxiety amongst those who need organs and upon whom the amoral and dishonest medical services prey and profit.

Presumably public hangings where contestants compete to pull the lever are in the works.

It was only on the 22nd February that Ronald Plasterk succeeded Maria van der Hoeven as Minister of Education, Science and Culture who advocated Intelligent design to be taught in Dutch Schools He is a highly regarded developmental geneticist with with a string of academic posts and is a Professor at Utrecht University leading a team who are doing leading work in studying microRNA's.

He has a column in the Dutch paper de Volkskrant who report with some jubilation this stupidity. "Het BNN programma de Grote Donor Show is een promotiestunt om meer donoren te werven." - the BNN programme "The Great Donor Show" is a promotion stunt more bring in organ donors.

Simply apalling...acting as a fine counterpoint to the mawkishness and emotional kitsch of the McCann Caravanserai.