Why I am very concerned about fracking ...

Of course we can see the argument for getting away from being supplied by potentially hostile and/or unstable countries. However there are major -and I mean major- problems with the whole enterprise.
Most importantly it doesn't help address our need (indeed duty) to decarbonise our economy. So unless it were accompanied by a very rigorous set of mechanisms to make sure that our exploitation of these fossil carbons did not contribute to increasing the net amount of carbon and other greenhouse gasses, we should not even be considering this. This is one of the things driving a fairly furious response from members of the public and unless this is taken seriously we could have Twyford Down style protesting going on and given recent revelations about policing such things, a potential for even more bitter civil liberties issues arising. Will the costs of handling civil discurbancc also be including in the licenses? I suspect they won't; and that will mean effectively a hidden taxpayer subsidy. Better surely not to create that situation in the first place.

Secondly are the fairly major concerns about more immediate enviromental impacts. The fears about earth quakes would appear to be well founded at the moment. As do concerns about contamination of water tables and the effects on crops (I note the recent case in East Yorkshire). Again, failure to take such concerns seriously is likely to risk civil discurbance and raises the question of who will pay for policing, court cases, etc.

Thirdly, it's hard to work out why the energy security issues cannot better be met by pursuing even more rigourously the non-carbon paths already beginning to be explored and which show considerable and accelerating promise. Given this alternative strategy shows every chance of furthering several good outcomes (decarbonising, local jobs, regional jobs, potential for Britain to rejoin global leadership in related areas of tech ...).

Add that for many of us there is a big suspicion that the present government are too fond of  doing things that work well for informally influential friends and moneyed interests but are not necessarily helpful to the welfare of the wider population and for which our grandchildren will curse us heartily, and you have a recipe for a much less happy nation and huge costs in the short to medium term and stacking up exponentially as climate change accelerates.

See some further views here.
You might also 'enjoy' this news piece:

Ice-cream van music used to calm Belfast riot

This sounded to me like a nice use of initiative, not least because it appears to have been a non-violent solution which would change the mood of a crowd: "'An officer used the vehicle's tannoy system to play music to the youths in an effort to use humour to defuse the situation. The youths stopped throwing the bottles." sounds brilliant to me and the kind of action that we could do with training officers in! But not everyone thinks so: "However, police accept that this was not an appropriate action."
Why not? Readers of this blog are invited to explore further or share any further info. However, the reason for the reprimand don't appear to be good to me: a Sinn Fein official is reported to have commented: ""The PSNI are put on the streets to do a serious job and that is to keep order on the streets and face down antisocial elements. This is like a sick joke."
Iow: only violent or aggressive or 'serious' methods are allowed. Things that might defuse the situation are not serious. I think the official should remember who picks up the bill; community policing with the grain of the culture seems like a good idea to me. Since when did aggression and facing down do anything but ramp up the temperature and breed resentment and very likely add to the bill through continued vandalism and hospital bills?
The officer deserves a medal and commendation for quick strategic thinking.
Of course the main downside is that they probably can't repeat it. It's the creativity of it that worked.
WWJD?

Hope And History: Making Peace in Ireland
The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland

Pareto principle and crime

The pareto principle may well apply to crime prevention too: "“Billions of dollars in criminal justice costs are wasted each year on people and places with almost no risk of serious violent crime,” said Sherman, “while the high-risk targets receive far too little attention.” Citing rising homicide rates in Philadelphia since 2002, his research shows how more rehabilitation for a tiny number of offenders may have been able to prevent many of the murders."
I predict some changes in governmental policy following a period of debate in criminological circles.
Less Is More When Fighting Crime:

Don't tase me, bro

For a change, it's the British press that seems to have missed a big controversy, to which the title phrase makes reference. "the Monday arrest and tasering of Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student. Meyer barged in line to harangue Massachusetts senator John Kerry during a campus talk that day. The student refused to pipe down after being asked to by the forum's organizers, and after he carried on pressing Kerry for answers, police hauled him off. They forced him to the ground, and tasered him."
And that's the shocking (pun not intended, but kept) thing: that the guy is not formally arrested, read his rights and when subdued, apparently, has a taser applied to his chest. He may have been behaving in a less than dignified manner, but given that people have been known to die from tasers, he shouldn't have been handled like this. Scary.

Of course, on a less 'political' note, the birth of new verb should be noted. Normally a verb created from a noun simply keeps form and changes function: so we would expect "Don't taser me ...", so to have a verb 'retrofitted' from a noun on the basis, presumably, of its '-er' ending is noteworthy.

I think that 'taser' was based on 'laser', which itself in an acronym. But maybe some reader can supply further info on that.
Threat Level - Wired Blogs:

Oh dear ... 90 days interment

Brown has disappointed already: macho posturing which is dangerous for civil liberties: interment in Northern Ireland while I was growing up actually made things worse as it increased the 'gripe' against British rule among the nationalist community. Now, there does appear to be a justification, however, there is an acknowledgement that there are civil liberties issues and so ...

The Chancellor believes it is possible to win support for increasing the 28-day limit if there is stronger judicial oversight of any decisions to extend an individual's detention on a week-by-week basis and an annual report to parliament on the use of the powers. But Brown believes there is a need to extend detention because of the volume of international evidence which accrues in such investigations, most of which can be difficult to obtain from computers.

Personally I think that it might concentrate minds if part of the proposal was to compensate suspects for loss of earnings and esteem and to do so from the wages/salaries of the officers in charge and government ministers in oversight if they are subsequently released without charge -or that those responsible have to serve time in detention (or better: hours of service to the community of the suspect) equivalent to the loss of liberty.

Brown sets out plan for tough new terror laws | Politics | The Observer

Terrorism -a fuller story

Definitely food for thought, how come we hear a lot about Islamist terrorism and so little about the higher threat levels implied by these figures?

figures from Europol, the European police agency, reveal that Islamist terror attacks in Europe constituted 0.2% or all 'terrorism' throughout the continent in 2006.* Unsurprisingly, there has been little in the media about this interesting figure in the month since it was published. In their first report of this nature - European Terrorism Situation and trend Report 2007 - reports that across the EU there were 498 terrorist attacks in 2006. These include: 424 'ethno-nationalist and separatist' (mostly in France and Spain)
55 'left-wing and anarchist' (mainly Greece , Italy, Spain and Germany)
1 failed Islamist terrorist attack (in Germany, plus two more attempts allegedly foiled in Denmark and the UK)
1 right-wing terrorist attack (in Poland)
The figures appear to over report left and anarchist 'terror' by categorising some political demonstrations which result in damage to property as 'terrorism'.

Do note the imbalance, based on semantics of left and right wing groups, but even so ...
Spinwatch - The statistical invisibility of Islamist 'terrorism' in Europe

Technorati Tags: terrorism, Islam, figures

Police chief agin NIR

A UK police chief has expressed skepticism about ID cards.

"In creating a national database you are creating a gold standard for ID [authentication]. It will be worth whatever it costs to hack it, to mirror it and subvert it. ... We are at risk from insider threats and card cloning. The idea the card can be used to fight terrorism is completely fatuous. This scheme is convenient for government, but not for citizens. .. " The police chief said that, if hackers can break into Nasa, then there is no such thing as total security, and that the cost of the scheme (£5.7bn) is "a huge cost to subject people to".

Police chief criticises ID cards scheme - ZDNet UK

Technorati Tags: ID_cards, police, UK, security, NIR