Political Thoughts - the magazine

Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990.  She is remembered by the Left as a villain and by most of the rest of the population as a good Prime Minister.  The case made by the Left is that she devastated British industry, especially coal,  and created mass unemployment.  She also publicly despised the Left. Did Thatcher devastate British industry?  Coal had been in decline in the UK for decades before 1979. During the 1970s various governments had been held to ransom by miner's leaders who demanded that either money was diverted from the rest of the economy to coal mining or they would strike and cripple UK energy supplies.  The "Three Day Week" that resulted from the miners strike of 1974 demonstrated that the miners could indeed shut down the economy by striking.  Bread queues during the 3 day week in 1974 The capitulation of the Governments of the 1970s to the miners caused a steadying of the decline in production of coal but turned the coal ind

New Scientist magazine hopes that the UK will be saved from the "Culture Wars" and the BBC mentions "Culture Wars" several times in one day.  The "Culture Wars" are supposed to begin with attitudes to issues such as sexual orientation and race. This is where we should start to get puzzled.  A very small percentage of the population is gay, lesbian or bisexual: Most people in the UK have accepted equal rights for gay, lesbian and bisexual people.   Hard though it may be for Londoners to believe, a very small percentage of the population of England and Wales is black, where black means black African or black Caribbean origin. "Amongst the 56 million residents in England and Wales, 86% were White, 8% were Asian/Asian British and 3% were Black/African/Caribbean/Black British." ( 2011 census ).   2011 Census Data Within the black population only about a sixth have ancestors who underwent slavery in the British Empire over 200 years or more ago becau

Raw materials prices are rising.  Why? Will this continue? Cotton and natural rubber prices have experienced a sharp rise: World Bank Blog Notice that China is the main consumer. Iron ore prices are high:  And China is the main importer: Copper prices are up: The failure of the price of copper production to keep pace with consumption is due to shortages of copper ore.  It is not just copper reserves that appear too small to satisfy China. Phosphorus, an essential ingredient of agricultural fertilisers, is in short supply and has doubled in price over the past year. Index Mundi It will be no surprise to discover who is consuming the phosphorus: The pattern is the same over most commodities. Index Mundi Commodity prices are now highly unstable and their rise is due to demand from China. Notice that everything except agricultural products has risen steeply over the past year. This rise in raw materials prices has a knock on effect on inflation.  The Producer Price Index for the UK has bee

The observant reader will realize that this article is biased from the start.  I am living quite happily with a wonderful wife and children, faithful dog, beautiful walks in the countryside and enough cash for our needs.  I mainly bought an electric car because it was incredibly cheap and technically amusing. So what disaster?   I am quite old and can remember open fields where cities now lie and bright green leaves where the green leaves are now rather dark and dusty and the trees are topped with dead twigs.  On the other hand if I were in my twenties I would definitely be excited about mining nickel or neodymium from S-Type asteroids .  Despite any damage we have done, humanity is at the apogee of its power and potential. However, I do care about nature, culture and the English landscape.  They are sacred because they are reality.  During my lifetime the world has scored zero points on these three sacred ideals. The origin of all the damage done to the world is population growth and

Why is the origin of COVID being suppressed in the media?  There is clearly a joint effort by China and the US National Institute of Health (NIH) to stop a full exposé of how COVID was made in a laboratory.  Why are they shutting down this issue?  The immediate answer is that Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance , commissioned the Wuhan Institute of Virology to work on the genetic engineering of coronaviruses and the US National Institute of Health under Dr Anthony Faucci funded EcoHealth Alliance .   The main business of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the collection and genetic engineering of coronaviruses (see Note 1).  The chance that an outbreak of COVID caught from animals happened in the same city as hosts the most active research centre for coronaviruses in the world is less than 1 in a 100.  Why did COVID start in Wuhan? Why not Beijing or Shanghai or even Taipei or Hanoi?  The obvious conclusion is a lab escape occurred, especially given that no animal host has

Last night's interview between Laura Kuenssberg and Dominic Cummings was like watching a man disintegrating in public.  Undoubtedly Cummings had numerous problems in the past that led to him being a remarkably arrogant man but what we have witnessed recently verges on mania and what we saw last night was the end. The pro-EU publicity machine has a story that the Remain campaign was winning the EU Referendum until just before the vote when it was pipped at the post by the Leave campaign.  To achieve this victory the Leave campaign prostrated itself before the evil genius of Cummings and Johnson who introduced shocking devices that turned the nation's head such as a slogan on the side of a bus.  The mass media all supported Remain so we still get this story fed to us.  The truth was far simpler: Remain almost won, converting an almost insurmountable Leave lead into a narrow of victory for independence. Remain had a chance after 2015, hence the Referendum. The steady pressure from