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at 22:12
I just picked this up on a BBC news piece. There's a new website by a group called Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) which has what it calls a pretty comprehensive database of power stations and power companies from across the world showing CO2 outputs right down to individual power station levels.
It's worth a play with. I was astonished to see Australia has the worst record in terms of CO2 output per capita from power generation. Interesting too to note that France is way down the list with the greenest output of industrialized nations because of its preponderance of nuclear generation, and Brazil is way down because of its heavy use of hydro power.
More locally - Drax is rated as the 23rd most CO2 producing power station on the planet, but Didcot is about as clean as they come powered by fossil fuels:
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at 12:06
...who makes it quite impossible for me to even think about joining or voting for the Tory party. Paul Walter today quotes from Ben Bradshaw on Davis:
Liberal Burblings: Davis: "Libertarianism" that is extremely narrow
Today, Ben Bradshaw points out Davis' far from libertarian approach to equal rights:
The notion that David Davis is a libertarian will provoke hollow laughter from Britain's gays and lesbians. Davis has opposed every freedom extended to gay and lesbian people, from the freedom to register one's partnership to the freedom to serve one's country. He has one of the worst voting records in the Commons on such matters. Like most Conservatives, Davis is very selective about whose liberties are worthy of support.
However well they might be doing, however their policies on other issues may be right, when they finally develop them, I would rather cut off my right arm or emigrate than countenance the election of reactionaries who, frankly, do not recognize me, as a gay man, as equal in rights and dignity as any other person.
Now, I know gay people in the Tory party who seem to be quite happy. I know stories, even of David Davis himself about how "some of their best friends are gay" and they are supportive of them. But there seem to be still an awful lot of them whose public policy agenda appears to want to diminish a bit of my humanity, and I can't hack that.
I think I understand the Libertarian Alliance position as explained a bit more by Sean Gabb over the weekend. But for me, there's no way I could vote for Davis or his party regardless of whether the entire election is somehow run solely on the basis of his stand on 42 days and the like. It may sound selfish but it's really not. I care less that his social conservatism focuses on gay people than I do about the fact in my mind that this means he chooses for himself what people are entitled to equality and who aren't - and nobody has that right as far as I am concerned.
Indeed, the Human Rights Act, whilst I personally don't like the way it works and would like to see most of it enshrined in a constitution and bill of rights instead, seems to me to be our sole bastion against such antediluvian attitudes amongst our "rulers".
If I still lived in the constituency of my birth I think I am being told by both Lib Dem and Libertarian leaderships that I should be grateful this man is standing up for some of my rights and they have no better candidate to offer.
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at 22:00
Not on his/her blogroll, but s/he's clearly reading - again links to my Europe post. A useful roundup of others' political blogging though.
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at 18:07
Over at the Social Affairs unit you can read the whole of a no doubt fictitious letter from Gordon Brown to Tony Blair pleading with him not to take the Euro-prez job...here's just a snippet from the end:
I know that you feel that you have outgrown national politics and in the post-modern post-democratic world we live in the old conventions don’t apply. But I also know that you have always been concerned about your place in history. If eurosceptic opinion in this country hardens in the coming years many will view your role as that of a Quisling. It is the destiny of prophets to be reviled in their own country even while acclaimed in others, but a false prophet runs the risk of universal opprobrium.
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at 20:57
Rob Knight's blog
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