Posted by webcameronator on Monday, 08 January 2007 22:19:23

There's no content at http://sort-it.co.uk; all this hype for ten minutes work: seven, not particularly well chosen links and so far unused opportunity to post "cowboys", the intended purpose of which isn't very clear.

The opposition should be in the business of offering an alternative to the government's policies not producing gimmicky websites.

Posted by David2 on Wednesday, 10 January 2007 12:42:49

In the interests of moderating the very high cost of living in this country, I would suggest being very wary of becoming too strongly adhered to the climate change bandwagon, because most of those who have are demonstrably shockingly innumerate.
Sky News are currently including a ticker in their items on climate change, which shows that the UK is currently emitting 36 tonnes of CO2 per second, which is 1.1353 billion tonnes per year.
The UK's emissions are 2% of the global total, which is therefore 56.765 billion tonnes per year.
The global temperature is rising at 0,25 degrees C per decade, or 0.025 (one fortieth) of a degree C per year.
One degree C rise in the global temperature therefore requires 40 times 56.765 billion tonnes, ie 2270.6 billion tonnes or 2.2706 trillion tonnes of CO2 using the current nomenclature.
Now for the best bit. Commenting on the Stern Report on October 30th 2006, Gordon Brown said that Labour's "Climate Change Levy" would reduce the UK's CO2 emissions by 6 million tonnes, one third of the total reduction of 18 million tonnes, by 2010.
That would produce a drop in the global temperature of 18 million divided by 2.2706 trillion degrees C, or less than 8 millionths of a degree C - and at what a cost in pointlessly higher taxes!
It is indeed unfortunate that Gordon Brown has not had time to work this out for himself. After all, the aim of science is precise definition and quantification. In the real world he would probably be prosecuted for fraud and misrepresentation.
In temperate latitudes there are frequently seasonal variations in temperature amounting to 40 degrees C.

Posted by David2 on Wednesday, 10 January 2007 18:14:30

A small correction to the above - a more accurate estimate of the total global CO2 emissions per year is currently only 28 billion tonnes per year, not 56.765 billion tonnes as I had estimated from the Sky News ticker. The discrepancy is presumably due to daily and seasonal fluctuations in the rate of emission.
This means that Gordon Brown's saving of 18 million tonnes per year now brings about a global cooling of 18 million divided by 1.12 trillion degrees C, or about 16 millionths of a degree C.
This is still a totally useless result, since it is far too small to be measured, let alone to have any perceptible effect.

Posted by robinsharp on Thursday, 11 January 2007 21:17:53

Great to hear you talking about Gordon Brown giving the Bank of England (BofE) the wrong inflation target to chase, rather than the real cost of living in the UK.

When you think about it what he has really done is to get the BofE to try to control "developing-world-export-prices" for things like TV's and fridges. The BofE never were controlling inflation, other Governments were doing that - inflation in the UK economy has not been in control of the BofE for the past 10 years. The real inflation in the UK has been kept in check by outsourcing and immigration and I suspect Gordon knew that all along because it's hard to understand why anybody would put up with the bad consequences of letting them run out of control.

We now have the spector of imported inflation from the developing world, and again the BofE won't be able to control that. They will be chasing a paper tiger trying to keep the cost of imported TV's down. The success of the BoE has been a statistical correlate with the success of introducing job competition for overseas. It's funny how just as macro-economists think they have cracked the nut the problem always moves on to something else.

Gordon Brown's economic miracle is a statistical mirage.

Posted by MarkH on Saturday, 13 January 2007 14:50:56

I really like the idea of a website initiative. Sadly however if you visit http://sorted.co.uk, it is currently a single, static page inviting businesses to participate. (as at 14:50, 13/01/06)

Posted by canvas on Sunday, 14 January 2007 12:35:05

http://www.sort-it.co.uk/

Posted by potatoehead64 on Sunday, 21 January 2007 19:54:43

Couldn't agree more about the cost of living. I think the bubble has now burst for Labour and the economy. It's going to get worse with Brown's obsession with upping tax all the time.