Stormy Seas and Empire Building

The Tavern was a  candle-lit haven for weary Volunteers the other night as an unusual and very heavy storm hit. Roads were blocked and made impassable by fallen trees and rivers of mud, which stopped the usual crowd of revellers coming in - but the rescue fellows made for good company.  

The rolling thunder followed the lightning in seconds: the rain sheeted sideways as the wind hit 100 kmph.  And it persisted. For hours.  Trees uprooted. Power lines were brought down. Windows rattled in the dark as entire suburbs lost power.  The occasional power failure here usually lasts for an hour  or so before they are fixed. This one lasted 18 hours. The City suffered more than the solid stones of this sheltered place. 

Street and buildings were flooded. The deluge loosed refuse and wreckage which clogged the usual pristine marinas that line our shores. 

Cars were abandoned in the streets and washed along by the instant rivers as the deluge poured down the high Mountain that sits behind and above the city.

Like many 'rural' places around the world, people here are reliant upon Volunteers when such troubles fall upon us. They are the ones who tackle the bushfires that beset us from time to time in this hilly, forested region. 

And go out to sea to find and rescue those caught in the storms or by their own ineptitude. Yet this island State does not have the invaluable services that Great Britain has had for so long. The RNLI. I shall come to them shortly. 

Here was have the SES - the State Emergency Services, and while there are some full-time, paid folk to man and woman the offices and do the planning and coordinating when the sun is bright, it is ordinary men from all walks of life that turn out in their hundreds, donning wet-weather gear and taking up their chain saws when disasters strike.

Thank God for sound men, with Charitable souls, who are prepared to help out where others flee.

The Volunteers.

Now you would think that those in Authority as well as the hoi poloi would be so very thankful that men would risk their lives, do the hard work that most people would prefer to avoid, and all without pay. But it isn't the case. 

You see, there is a right way and a wrong way, it seems, to do such Charitable work. And that right way leans increasingly to the Left. 

Think for a moment. What could possibly go wrong?

Here in Oz for instance, you have to have a chit from the Police to say that you can do your volunteering when children are present. No chit: no volunteering. 

It is mostly men, you see, and we all know that men are not to be trusted around children. Best a kiddie drown than a non-authorised man who has failed to pay his volunteering licence fee be let anywhere near with his helping hand. 

The epitome of Volunteering in that other Island nation, the once-Great Britain is the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. It has seen better days in its near 200 years by all accounts. Never better financially, or in resources, or in expertise, but far better previously in management and its managerial gratitude.

‘Like many big charities, the RNLI has become an empire builder’s dream,’ is how one fundraiser put it.
‘There are whole departments making up ridiculous health and safety protocols or human resources codes of conduct. It drives crews up the wall.’

Yes, the pencilnecks, lefty PCers and wimmin's rights crew are threatening the volunteers and treating grown men, experienced, courageous, generous men, like children.

I pulled a pint for Guy Adams and his mate Richard Marsden while they told our weary chaps just what a fiasco of Politically Correct ingratitude has infected the RNLI.

Mayday! Britain’s heroic lifeboat volunteers are drowning in a sea of political correctness 

imposed by highly-paid pen pushers... 

one (of many) rescuer sacked after 34 years.

• They have saved scores of lives, and are pillars of their seafaring community

• But lifeboat crews are embroiled in public disputes with RNLI leadership 

• Many brave lifeboatmen hope for a major change in the management culture 

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5719757/Britains-heroic-lifeboat-volunteers-drowning-sea-political-correctness.html

When Andy Hibbs isn’t hauling lobster pots aboard his fishing boat Matauri Bay, he devotes himself to helping those who, as the hymn goes, find themselves in peril on the sea.

The son of a lifeboatman, he joined the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) at the age of 21 and has spent his adult life serving at its station in his hometown St Helier, the capital of Jersey.

For doing this skilled, time-consuming, and often dangerous job, the 45-year-old father of one hasn’t earned a penny (like almost all RNLI crew members, he’s an unpaid volunteer). But it offers other rewards.

The entire crew of an RNLI station in Jersey has quit after coxswain Andy Hibbs, 50, left. Friends claim he was 'bullied into resignation' after he allegedly launched a lifeboat without permission from the RNLI

His crew have saved countless lives, becoming pillars of their seafaring community.

One morning in 1995, to cite perhaps their greatest triumph, Hibbs was part of a team which helped a catamaran carrying 300 passengers that had hit rocks off the coast of Jersey, and was sinking.

With disregard for their safety, they got alongside the vessel, which was listing dangerously, and plucked off men, women and children.

‘It was a real eye-opener,’ he recalls. ‘It brought home how serious the job was, and the responsibility in our hands.’

More recently, Hibbs was coxswain (the effective captain of a lifeboat) when his 25-strong crew featured in an ITV News item about the ‘brilliant’ and ‘capable’ RNLI teams in the Channel Islands.

Yet this summer, one aspect of their job will be different.

When they motor out of St Helier harbour to save lives, they won’t fly the RNLI flag. They are no longer associated with the famous charity.

It follows an extraordinarily bitter row, initially centring on an alleged breach of a health and safety procedure, which has placed the island’s lifeboatmen in conflict with the wealthy maritime charity’s headquarters in Poole.

The dispute — which led to allegations of bullying, intimidation and mendacity on both sides — rumbled on for more than a year. It has seen public demonstrations and rumours of corruption and cover-ups.

Matters culminated before Christmas with the entire St Helier lifeboat crew resigning.

Hibbs and his team have relaunched as an independent operation, the Jersey Lifeboat Association, and will soon take delivery of their first vessel.

‘I’m sad that it has come to this, but the RNLI caused this mess,’ Hibbs says. ‘They have been unpleasant and confrontational, and 

treated us volunteers with contempt.’

But first, an important point: the lifeboatmen of Jersey are not alone.

Two other crews are embroiled in public disputes with RNLI leadership.

One, in Whitby, North Yorkshire, revolves around jokey Christmas gifts exchanged by lifeboatmen, including a mug with a picture of a naked woman on it and one of the crew’s faces superimposed on to the model’s head.

A female superior found the mugs in a cupboard and the pair were sacked.

The offending items were either saucy or obscene, depending on your point of view. The RNLI insists they were ‘pornographic’.

Either way, an investigation talked of ‘safeguarding’ issues and found the images on the mugs ‘could have been seen by visiting schoolchildren’.

It also uncovered ‘conduct issues’ related to the crew’s social media use, which compromised the station’s status as a ‘safe and inclusive environment’.

In protest at the men’s sacking, four crew members resigned. 

Some 11,000 people have signed a petition demanding their reinstatement.

Down the coast in Scarborough, the Mail this week revealed that RNLI coxswain Tom Clark has been sacked, after 34 years of service, for allegedly breaking health and safety guidelines by going on a sea exercise with unauthorised passengers on his lifeboat.

He accused the RNLI of ‘bullying and intimidation’, saying that volunteer lifeboatmen were being ‘bombarded’ with ‘new rules, forms, acronyms and health and safety’.

A petition to reinstate him has 5,000 signatures.

Drowning sailors are, of course, unlikely to care whether their rescuer owns an inappropriate item of crockery, or once set sail with unauthorised passengers.

Yet the RNLI insists its actions are warranted, arguing that it’s duty-bound to protect staff from bullying and harassment, and must enforce its safety protocols.

It protects staff from bullying and harassment in the time-honoured Lefty way of bullying and harassing them first. Officially, you understand. They have a chit. 

This clash, between what one might call traditional lifeboat culture and the forces of political correctness, turns out to be the source of heated conflict in RNLI stations nationwide.

Before Christmas, Coxswain Tommy Yule, of the Scottish fishing port of Arbroath, was sacked after an incident at a party where visiting Dutch lifeboatmen were entertained.

Reports of what happened vary. But it appears to have involved a prank known as a ‘three-man lift’, in which a crew member exposed his backside. 

Yule was seemingly fired after failing to intervene.

Fellow crewman Jamie Robertson also went.

A third man, Alan Russell, who served the RNLI for two decades, quit in protest, saying it was just ‘a practical joke’.

As a result of their departure, Arbroath went without a lifeboat for months. 

Meanwhile, in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, two senior helmsmen lost their jobs after allegedly taking incorrectly trained staff on a rescue.

In Moelfre, on Anglesey, a cancer-stricken Coxswain was sacked (and an ally resigned) in 2016 after a mysterious ‘personnel issue’. 

In New Brighton, Merseyside, 12 crew members were sacked that same year after falling out with RNLI management over the sacking of a former colleague.

Thanks to the latter rebellion, the station had a restricted service, or was ‘off watch’ on more than 70 occasions over the next 12 months.

To have mass resignations at one lifeboat station might be considered unfortunate, but to suffer at least seven such cases in a period of around 18 months is somewhat more worrying.

One possible explanation to the situation is, ironically, that the RNLI has become too popular for its own good — at least when it comes to fundraising.

The charity has enjoyed near-universal support since its foundation in 1824. In addition to substantial public donations, sailing enthusiasts often leave the organisation a large bequest when they die.

Its most recent published accounts, for 2016, show income of £191 million, including £130 million from legacies — more than the £177 million it takes to run its 238 stations.

Overall assets (including property and boats) have grown to £712 million, of which £271 million is now held in ‘investments’.

In the past, the charity’s cash pile has spawned controversy. In 2001, a group of campaigning accountants called ‘Ethical Audit’ criticised it for having £200 million tucked away, arguing that many donors would not give if they knew the scale of its wealth.

Could not pull in a fish but can sink the boat.

For lifeboat crews, the biggest recent change (and a key factor in squabbles) has been a ‘restructuring’ of middle management last year by a senior executive called Leesa Harwood, formerly of Save The Children, who was hired as the RNLI’s ‘community lifesaving and fundraising director’ on a salary of about £95,000

Remember, the volunteers are paid nothing. 

The Charity Commission agreed that the figures were ‘on the high side’ and asked the RNLI to reduce them. So the charity came up with a way to dispose of cash: changing its historic remit from rescuing people at sea and on inland waterways to a role including ‘drowning prevention’.

The Times reported that the charity was ‘awash with so much money that it has decided to introduce Baywatch-style beach lifeguards, inland waterway patrols and a fleet of hovercraft’.

Seventeen years later, the RNLI employs 523 lifeguards in Britain. It has invested in a £25 million HQ at Poole with a roof in the shape of a wave and windows that resemble portholes — which was opened by the Queen in 2004.

Crucially, RNLI’s payroll has risen dramatically in other areas, too. 

In 1999, it had 750 employees, but within five years it had 1,000. By 2016 there were 2,366, with 35 senior executives earning more than £60,000, overseen by chief executive Paul Boissier, on a total package of £162,705.

Its French equivalent employs just 75 and 1,200 managerial roles are filled by volunteers.

Viva La bloomin' Frenchies. 

Speak to disgruntled lifeboatmen and supporters, large numbers of whom contacted Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn after he highlighted the Whitby scandal last week, and you’ll hear a simple answer: 

many head office staff have become pointless jobsworths.

‘Like many big charities, the RNLI has become an empire builder’s dream,’ is how one fundraiser put it.

‘There are whole departments making up ridiculous health and safety protocols or human resources codes of conduct. It drives crews up the wall.’

They added that many are ‘third-sector careerists with no knowledge of the sea, or what makes lifeboats tick, 

who try to import Left-wing values.

‘Lifeboatmen, who are often working-class lads, won’t buy it.’

Evidence of this apparent trend — typical of the way the Left has taken hold of so many public bodies — can perhaps be seen in the RNLI’s annual report.

Though it used to limit its operations to the UK and Ireland, the RNLI now boasts of running ‘drowning prevention programmes’ in Tanzania, Zanzibar, Bangladesh, Ghana and Lesbos. (The latter refers to helping migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean in unseaworthy boats.) It talks of trying to ‘influence policy makers and partners’ and lobbying the UN to reduce deaths at sea.

They want the World ! All paid for by British people's donations, of course.

It has a ‘new national team of health, safety and environment advisers’ winning ‘health and safety’ awards, speaks of creating a ‘diversity leadership group’ among staff and supporting the ‘International Day Against Homophobia.’

Posts currently advertised include a ‘safeguarding officer’ earning up to £41,926 — a job that generally involves responsibility for ‘health, safety and wellbeing’.

The restructuring exercise created 42 ‘area lifesaving managers’ to supervise half a dozen lifeboat stations each.

As a result, there have been dramatic changes in the relationship between crews and RNLI HQ.

In the past, ‘regional managers’ responsible for dozens of stations would visit every six months. Under the new regime, local volunteers are inspected monthly or even weekly. That often causes friction.

According to Tom Clark, who was sacked after 34 years of service: ‘Too many area managers, including the one who got rid of me, are young graduates who have never been to sea, and have no idea of the skill and effort required to be a lifeboatman. 

The RNLI has run slap bang into 'Price's Law.'. 65% or more of its managers will contribute zero or even a nett negative value. Boy has that happened. And some managerial disasters can ruin the entire organisation.

They rely on forms and procedures to make up for their lack of experience.’ As a result, volunteers such as Clark — nominated for an MBE by the RNLI in 2016 — complain of disciplinary investigations over breaches of protocol which, they say, would in previous years have been dealt with informally, if at all.

‘We are having our hands held by politically correct busybodies,’ is how one puts it.

Mild fellow. I call them wreckers. They are doing more damage than a force 10 wind. 

In Clark’s case, one element that led to his sacking were claims that he swore at a colleague — an apparent breach of the RNLI’s code of conduct (‘Yes, I swore. It’s a rufty-tufty place at sea and people do swear,’ he admits). Other lifeboatmen say this new culture of micro-management means basic operations are preceded by risk assessments and team briefings.

 ‘Even to go out into the local bay to pick up some kid who’s floated away on a lilo, you need to use a flip chart and talk about contingency plans,’ complains one. 

‘In the past, we just got the job done.

‘Now, coxswains must fill out forms confirming there’s a navigator and mechanic on board, and there has been a health and safety briefing. It’s all crazy box-ticking.’

At a Channel Islands lifeboat station, a volunteer medic upset his bosses by refusing to spend five days of his own time on a basic first aid course. As a local GP trained in acute care, he felt it unnecessary and resigned in protest.

To be fair to the RNLI, the number of crews known to be in conflict with HQ represents a small proportion of their overall total.

But it doesn’t explain the sheer nastiness of these disputes.

Which brings us back to Andy Hibbs, of Jersey, who fell foul of RNLI high command last year after a formal investigation into allegations that he’d launched a lifeboat without permission.

The claim was found to be untrue: Hibbs proved he was elsewhere on the day in question. But he was furious that the RNLI would not tell him who filed the original complaint.

And isn't this the typical lefty way. Accusers, false accusers, do not get named. 

In April, he angrily emailed an RNLI manager saying ‘the whole thing was b*llocks’ and was sacked for breaking the charity’s ‘code of conduct’.

Public protests followed. Hibbs appealed against the sacking, and it was duly overturned — only for the RNLI to insist that a full-time employee from HQ had to be stationed in St Helier to oversee him.

After months of friction, in November the crew resigned.

It has since emerged, in internal RNLI documents, that the original complaint against Hibbs was made to RNLI chief executive Paul Boissier by Phil Buckley, then the harbour master at St Helier.

And this triggered more ill-feeling as Buckley and Boissier are longstanding acquaintances, who served together on Royal Navy submarines.

Meanwhile, the RNLI executive who presided over much of Mr Hibb’s treatment was Leesa Harwood, the community lifesaving and fundraising director responsible for the unpopular management restructuring. 

She announced her resignation the other day, though the charity says this was not related to recent events.

Nonetheless, many of our nation’s brave lifeboatmen dearly hope for a major change in the management culture at a much loved organisation which seems increasingly to find itself in choppy waters.

Volunteers do not seek payment. 

But they quite rightly demand Respect.

They risk their lives. Their expertise is won in battle against the elemental forces at sea. 

They have EARNED respect.

But post in, 'above' them,  some Lefty tampon who knows absolutely nothing of the job and with absolutly no similar risk and earned respect, and what do we expect?

It is a disgrace.

I raise my tankard to the men who 'do the job'. 

I hope you will join me. 

The Tavern has the lights on again.

Pax

The Ruination of Women

There are so many fine, good women in the world, and like the many fine and good men, they generally stay quietly living their lives and raising the families instead of knitting beside the Guillotine. That is where in the past we found “les tricoteuses de laGuillotine” and Madam Defarge. She didn't go away. The evil woman has never gone away. There are some women, many women who love death. The more gruesome the better.

Yes, I know. We could mention all the evil men who seem always to be in the way too, but today we heard a voice from the deep giving thought to the womenfolk of old and new who are taken by evil. 

Possessed, one might say.

Women possess emotions. It is the conventional wisdom that women are more emotional than men. I doubt that, m'self, but there we go. Women possess the wide range palette of emotions and display them readily.

But the wicked women have a 'Limited Range'. 

And I heard about it while down in the crypt. 

I occasionally let someone look through the door, but generally it is a place where I go to Worship. To Pray. Alone. But this time I had invited a chap to sit and talk down there instead of in the bar. His words spoke of important matters. Spiritual as well as down to earth. 

Michael Matt sat in the quietness and dark and took a hard look at the George Soros-backed Women's March in D.C., New York, London, Rome and all around the world-- and asks the question: What are they really protesting and what does it mean for our countries and for all of us? 

And what's with the little reddish hats? Do these not harken back to "les bonnet rouges"--the red "liberty hats" worn by the terrorists who beheaded Catholic France back in 1789? What's the connection? 

Why do these women hate us? 

Why do they hate pro-lifers? 

What does their rabid defence of partial-birth abortion reveal about the end of our civilization? 

Men can be wicked. Women can be wicked. 

Both are of great interest to satan. He wants all human beings. He tries to get all. He wants those too who try to be good. 

He fears man and he fears woman.

He has a Limited Range of emotions.

His are limited to Fear, Anger, Hatred and.... Spite.

He fears and hates man because Christ chose to become man. 

He fears and hates woman because Mary, Mother of Christ, will crush his head. It is she who will command the army that wipes him and his evil from the world. 

It is in his interest to destroy women, womanhood, their ability to bring life into the world. 

He hates the Compassion and Love of women: he hates their Nurturing; their Empathy. These he will take every opportunity to destroy. 

It is at the root of Feminism. Its 'cause'.

The very Good woman is especially hated.

And feared.

Almost the last evil of that time and the one horror that ended the French Revolution was the judicial mob-murder of the Carmelite Nuns. 

They were as innocent of sin as the babies in the womb that our modern evil women hate and fear. And kill.

Those women, those Nuns, did not fear: they were not angry; they did not hate. They had no spite.

I had much to pray about.

You can find more about and by Michael at http://www.theremnantunderground.org

And then I had Ale to pull and pour.

And to listen to others. So up the steps I had to go, into the light.

No guillotine in the Tavern.

Drink up.

Pax

What a Waste

Being terribly rich, as many nations are, means you can waste an awful lot, especially when it is someone else's money. This is a Theme of modern economies, industries, governments and even charities. We do get some seriously wealthy people occasionally rubbing shoulders with the hoi poloi in the bars here but I try to get them to tone down a little and not embarrass the rest of us who 'manage to get by'. But the message doesn't get through to the mobs of charlatans and crooks kept at bay by our tall hedges. Out there are Mammon worshippers and we see their Monoliths on the hill tops turning your money in the wind.

And it is your money out there, not theirs. 

It seems on the surface such a good idea to generate electical power by wind and solar. Wind is free, isn't it. The sun is free. 

Why not use it. 

I have nothing against a chap having a wind generator on his roof or in his garden for his own needs, Even sharing with his neighbour.  Solar panels too. I even, at one time, in an exotic land far away, had a  barrel thingo on my own roof to heat water.  I paid for it. 

It saved a bit of my heating bills every years, paid for itself in less than a year and cost very little to make and put up. Not so with the monstrosities we have all over the place that supposedly make us less reliant on fossil fuels.

They cost me and you a great deal. And it is a great deal for the 'owners' who rob us blind with the help of their mates in government. 

Those mates deliver our money: the windmills and acres of solar panels on otherwise prime agricultural land deliver profits, from more of our money, coerced from our wallets at gun point. 

What they do not often deliver is a nett power benefit.

Our Government looks at other nations that have invested their folks' monies and copy them without regard for the effect. 

WASTE.

It was busy in the P&B: a lot of disgruntlement going down. Jo Nova and Lawrence Solomon had a few things to say:

Bloodbath in the German solar “industry” — 

without subsidies 80,000 solar jobs are gone

Climate Worriers have the most terrible luck. All the runes were lined up for Solar power — it is nearly free, pours from heaven, and millions of people seem to need energy “pretty often”. 

 http://joannenova.com.au/2018/04/bloodbath-in-the-german-solar-industry-without-subsidies-80000-solar-jobs-are-gone/

Plus universities and governments have gifted twenty years of free advertising about its Glorious Wonderfulness.

  Solar power is also used by the Celebrity Saints of Gaia thus filling fashionable, spiritual and tribal needs. On a good day, it fills some megawatt needs too.

Despite all this, without forced payments from unwilling and unwitting non-users of solar power, investors are fleeing and the solar industry in Germany is collapsing. How can that be?!

You may like to chase up Jo's note about the German 'Green' industry here:

https://climatechangedispatch.com/germanys-wind-energy-mess-as-subsidies-expire-thousands-of-turbines-to-close/amp/

Lawrence Solomon asked: 

Are solar and wind finally cheaper than fossil fuels? 

Not a chance

After the German government decided to reduce subsidies to the solar industry in 2012, the industry nose-dived. By this year, virtually every major German solar producer had gone under as new capacity declined by 90 per cent and new investment by 92 per cent. Some 80,000 workers — 70 per cent of the solar workforce — lost their jobs. 

Solar power’s market share is shrinking and solar panels, having outlived their usefulness, are being retired without being replaced.

Wind power faces a similar fate. Germany has some 29,000 wind turbines, almost all of which have been benefitting from a 20-year subsidy program that began in 2000. 

Starting in 2020, when subsidies run out for some 5,700 wind turbines, thousands of them each year will lose government support, making the continued operation of most of them uneconomic based on current market prices. 

To make matters worse, with many of the turbines failing and becoming uneconomic to maintain, they represent an environmental liability and pose the possibility of abandonment. 

No funds have been set aside to dispose of the blades, which are unrecyclable, or to remove the turbines’ 3,000-tonne reinforced concrete bases, which reach depths of 20 metres, making them a hazard to the aquifers they pierce.

On the plus side, 80,000 Germans can now do something productive.

Funny thing, something similar happened in Australia in July 2014:

Broken Hill: Broken economi

Suddenly 97 percent of Australian renewables investment dried up without subsidies:

We’re told “clean” energy is a viable and cost effective. 

But cut the government subsidies, and 97 percent of investors vanish (in Australia it’s collapsed from $2.6b annually to $80m).

In Australia this brief lapse into something resembling a free market was due to policy “uncertainty” at the time. The dead hand of Government. Certainty has since returned to pick the losers winners.

And all of this stems from the biggest intellectual con of the age. Global Warming Climate Change.  (Watch this term space).

Our best brains in Universities and weather forecasting, environmental sciences, marine sciences, cosmic sciences indeed any 'science' that can muscle in and get a Grant (and that might incluse gender studies, homoeopathy, ant & termite-colonial studies et al), and they all tell us loudly that we are roooonin' the planet. Well, just the rich and middle class white folk are.  It is we who get money reefed from our wallets to pay for the Grants. And we must do somefink about it. Somefink that will hurt our wallets (but not theirs). 

And you can trust their dispassionate warnings. Shirley?

Hmmmm. Do I hear disagreement? Skepticism? 

Veteran Meteorologist talks of culture of intimidation — 

skeptics hide at National Weather Service, NOAA

CFACT has a report from a 40 year career meteorologist who alleges that skeptics are silenced through intimidation and threats at the National Weather Service (NWS). He also says data is “altered for political purposes” and that he was advised nearly forty years ago that he could find fame and fortune with CO2.

 http://joannenova.com.au/2018/05/veteran-meteorologist-talks-of-culture-of-intimidation-skeptics-hide-at-national-weather-service-noaa/

““When I was a graduate student I had a professor come up to me, and he said in the late 1970s ‘If you want to make a name in the field, want to be famous, CO₂ is the place to go.’ There is a lot of money to be made, authority and control over people’s lives at stake.””

A whole generation of meteorologists and climate scientists have been raised with these incentives, and a culture of fear:

Meteorologist allegedly assaulted by NWS Director Uccellini

No fishing for Facts

Adam Howser, CFACT

“I was giving a talk to fellow NWS staff about the jet stream flow in the upper atmosphere [in 2014]. What it showed was large amplitude waves in both the northern and southern hemispheres. I explained that the only way the jet stream could get to be high amplitude is if the atmosphere was actually cooling.”

“Right at the bathroom break, the Director of NWS, Louis Uccellini, put a hand on my chest and pushed me up against the wall and said ‘Don’t ever mention the word cooling again.’ He did not mean it in a ‘joking’ way, he absolutely violated my personal space and was dead serious.”

The whistleblower, who spoke to CFACT on the condition of anonymity, described a culture of fear and ostracism at NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) against those who dissent from the “global warming” narrative.

The accused NWS Director Uccellini, has responded through a spokeswoman, and claims that “this alleged incident never happened”, and that Uccellini “encourages open discussion on all science issues…”. 

The whistleblower disagrees saying that the incident described above was not isolated and according to CFACT “describes a culture of fear at the agency in which experts are silenced through intimidation“.

“One coworker who is a fellow ‘skeptic’ and I have to be careful about what we talk about at our desks or the break room,” the NWS employee explained. “We can’t let the word get out that we aren’t buying into the whole ‘the climate is warming’ narrative.”

“It is an almost Orwellian, nasty-type society.”

Read all of it at CFACT --  the meteorologist also describes problems with climate models, says the NWS and NOAA is a “well oiled propaganda machine”. 

He referred to a study that took ocean buoy data and recalibrated it with measurements taken in ship engine intakes, even though everyone knew that the ocean bouys were more accurate.

Taxpayers' monies can be well spent on essentials and needed items, things and matters. Especially on things that matter.

But heck, why not be creative. It is a huge amount we can put in the national piggy bank each year, and we can always borrow more. There are schemes and plans and cons and scams, 

and they all can do wonders with YOUR money.

I pulled pints and pondered on what Jo and co had to say.

Perhaps you might too.

Drink up.

Its free here. Indeed, it pours down from above.

Pax 

Woman on Board

It has been 'Wimmin's Week' in Oz, and like the old warnings against women on board ships, the women who have been pushed upward to Corporate Board office have shown why zozchial engineering is not the best idea we have had foisted upon us. Several 'high fliers' elevated by the 'Diversity' drive have come crashing down to earth to the detriment of competent women everywhere.

Far from the Boardroom being the 'Last Frontier', feminism has not been eagerly pushing women into such traditionally male jobs as roofing or garbage collection, sewerage works or even that most glamorous of careers, electricity linespersons.  There are very few lady wall plasterers. The tide was STEMed long ago, simply by the dirt, danger and outdoor weather.

I am all for the top jobs going to whoever is most suitably skilled, experienced, competent and intelligent enough to cope with the demands of our complex organisations upon which much depends, but we have been cajoled, blamed, denounced and forced to elevate some on the basis of just their genitals and cosmetic artistry.

Feminism is behind it of course. And how we are suffering for it.

Women like the arch misandrist JuLiar Gillard, who weaseled her way into the topmost of top jobs as Prime Minister, were vociferous in claiming a glass ceiling which must be smashed.

I also agree with those who point the fingers at bad men in charge: the crooks, the greedy, the power-mad. Just why our society thinks that women cannot be just as bad, nasty and immoral beats me. But the ladies have cornered the market in 'nurturing', 'empathy', communication skills and a host of assumed qualities that are supposedly needed in the Board Rooms to counter and replace the crass, hairy, 'old-white-male' emphasis. Men, it is said, do not have such refined qualities.

Why women are called the 'Fairer Sex' is more to do with complexion and cosmetics than character.

But despite our banks and financial houses, lead by men, managing to survive the last big financial crisis without being 'bailed out', we now find their share prices falling like lead weights and taking down with them the women who sat in the Big Chairs. 

The sharp pointy shards from the smashed glass ceiling are showering down on $300 hairdos.

Dallas Beaufort brought Graham Richarson in for a pint or two to tell of big-bottoming women.

Fairer sex, but not always best

It was only this week that I realised just how much political correctness has distorted the normal functioning of our society and cowed me into being a wimp of the first water. What’s more, it was a woman of courage who made me come to my senses.

In Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph, Miranda Devine wrote what many of us have believed for some time to be true but lacked the intestinal fortitude to proclaim publicly. 

The first paragraph pretty well sums up the situation in which we find ­ourselves: 

“The obsession with diversity in corporate Australia had a decade to prove itself. The results show that experiment has been an abject failure.”

You can all recall how a decade ago it became an irresistible tidal wave of belief in the view that more women on boards would make corporations more sensitive to their customers. Boards would somehow become more ethical and fairness would replace any ­rapacious desires of those awful men who held all the board seats.

While every institution to come before the Hayne royal commission has come out poorly, by far the two worst offenders have undoubtedly been Commonwealth Bank and AMP.

The obvious question therefore has already been answered firmly in the negative. Could anyone possibly believe that these two organisations had been fair or ethical? 

Livingstone. Chair of Commonwealth Bastards of Australia.

Both companies have been chaired by women — Catherine Livingstone has the helm at Commonwealth Bank and Catherine Brenner, until last Sunday, had the top job at AMP. 

The ­extent of wrongdoing at these ­financial ­giants has staggered every Australian from the Treasurer down.

Brenner. Spent $600 a  week on 'beauty'. ! Chair of All Making Piles.

The financial advice industry that sprung up in the past few decades was supposed to help people. At CBA and AMP it was often about exploiting people, and that is putting a benign spin on this. 

Given the thousands of customers who have been given rotten advice — which in the case of Storm Financial meant many retirees had to start over again in their 70s after mortgaging their homes to invest with crooks recommended by CBA — 

nothing changed under female leadership.

The Austrac scandal, the robbing of clients and all the other dramas at CBA apparently were ignored by the board - four women and six men. 

I would love to be able to see the minutes of board meetings so I could see how many times directors asked probing questions about the appalling treatment of their customers. I suspect that would be a search doomed to failure. It would seem the CBA board (to be fair Livingstone has been on it for only two years) rested comfortably while the bank could report quarterly profits in the billions.

Only two years? Just how long does anyone expect a leader to get a grip. Imagine a ship's Captain not being fully in command after two years!! 

Diversity, eh? Not a man in sight

It is not as if I am suggesting that the abysmal failure of the CBA board should be placed squarely at the feet of the chair or the other female directors. The men failed as miserably as the women. 

It is crystal clear though that the women at the board had no effect on the culture of the company. 

They collected their huge cheques (from $300,000 to $700,000) but made zero contribution in terms of what diversity was supposed to bring with it.

Over at AMP, if anything, the situation was worse. That something was wrong at the company has been obvious for at least 18 months. We didn’t need a royal commission to tell us its share price had been heading south. While the commission has accelerated the drop, it was not its original cause. The company looked old, tired and flat but still too many Australians went to it for financial advice ­because of its iconic and historical status.

Where was Brenner when the company she chaired lied to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission on 20 occasions? 

Where was she when dodgy financial planners were kept on the payroll even when their advice was known to be dreadful and had cost customers serious amounts of money? 

It is even alleged that she knew her in-house lawyer was vetting a supposedly “independent report” to be submitted to ASIC. Again, I am not suggesting Brenner and other women on the AMP board were responsible for a culture which led to the company being accused of criminal conduct, but I’m absolutely certain they did nothing to alter that behaviour.

If she was not responsible, having taken responsibility and fat cheques for every kudo for so long, just who does Graham think was? 

It took Brenner way too long to acknowledge the inevitable and drift off into the sunset. Like the rest of the CBA board, Livingstone will be hoping that the hoo-ha will blow over and those plush board seats will be waiting for them.

New CBA boss Matt Comyn was quick to announce that every one of the recommendations contained in that damning Australian Prudential Regu­lation Authority report on the bank would be implemented as soon as possible. I trust the board is not so stupid as to believe that this response could herald the end of the aftershocks following the quake of the past fortnight. 

Heads must roll at the board and executive levels to restore some faith in the once-revered institution. If she has sufficient pride and sense of occasion, Livingstone should be the first to know her time is up.

Now, on that. Like politicians, these top bods may lose position and salary (only to find sinecures elsewhere) but their superduper superannuation is assured. They should be jailed.

But let us look at the 'before' part that preceded this 'after' problem.

Diversity is one half of the problem when boards select new directors, and in practice boards do the picking and the annual meetings of shareholders almost always elect the board-recommended directors. 

And all too often when women get the nod, their main interest is simply in women. Not customers. Not company. 

The other prob­lem is that if you can join the right “in” crowd you can expect a slew of directorships to come your way. If you can become good mates with someone like the brilliant David Gonski and he puts in a good word for you then the doors are opened to the boards of the 50 top-listed Australian Securities Exchange companies.

Gonski is a svengali mate of Gillard's who pops up all over, raking in vast bags of taxpayer's monies while he wrecks everything he touches.  He does like his ladies.

Gonski has backed his share of winners but there have been a few losers as well. There is a good club in Melbourne, too, and in these clubs, while you will be told merit has its place, so does obsequiousness. Followers in the club can be given leadership jobs on boards. Some make the transition, many don’t. Nonetheless, a rich vein of cash can come your way as you hop on to two or three boards.

The question then becomes how seriously does a director take their duties. Regardless of gender, there should be proper legislative definitions of what those responsibilities are. Then perhaps we may sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Merit, not sex or connection, should be the only determinant.

I find 'merit' to be too easy a word, soon enough to be stolen by the left and have its loose meaning tidied up. Try the few words I mentioned above. .... most suitably skilled, experienced, competent and intelligent

The genitals ought not be seen. 

The lipstick should go.

There are fine, morally strong women about, with brains, intellect, skills and competence, who do not need and do not like the fawning obsequiousness  that over-sells womanly qualities. They are scandalised by feminist rhetoric that casts them as 'needing' political support and path-straightening. They do not wish to be seen as 'token', even in the Chair. They do not seek faux 'empowerment'. They are powerful individuals in their own right.

So drink to ladies of worth, but not to their sistas.

Pax.