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For some years I served as Treasurer to the Bristol Branch of UKIP, my first ever membership of a political party. I joined for several reasons, partly because EU regulatory red tape has started to create idiotic problems for my business without bringing any benefits, but mainly because I didn’t want to see my country subsumed within a developing Synarchist Totalitarianism, or to have to open its already overcrowded shores to uncontrolled immigration. I attended the triumphalist conference after the 2004 European parliament elections but left after the 2005 Westminster general election campaign. I had three reasons for doing so.
Firstly I don’t think the UKIP MEPs should take the enemy EU shilling. They should not draw any form of salary or expenses, for to do so means compromising and corrupting themselves. Yet their policy of stunts and buffoonery in the EU ‘parliament’ seems perfectly appropriate for a virtually powerless sham parliament that exists merely as a fig leaf for the democratic deficit of the EU. They should seek funding from the UKIP membership or simply keep their day jobs. MEPs have almost nothing of any significance that they can actually do anyway. If UKIP had had such a policy it would not have ended up with crooks and spivs standing for MEP election.
Secondly I deplored the strategic error of contesting far too many Westminster seats in the 2005 general election. This simply destroyed the funds I had spent a lot of time gathering and adding to personally, without applying any significant electoral pressure to the Conservative party whatsoever. The British people seem happy to vent their anger at the EU by sending a two fingered message in the form of a dozen UKIP MEPs, but they remain unwilling to have such buffoonery in Westminster.
Thirdly, and most importantly for me, I found the attempts by UKIP to develop a manifesto policy on the environment lazy, scientifically illiterate, and terrifyingly myopic. Well maybe one doesn’t expect much intellectually from a party that has had to adopt a right-wing-populist agenda to gets its euro-skepticism across, but its Friday, 13th manifestoes of April 2012 stoop to new depths of contemptible short sighted populism on the subject of ‘Planning for our green and pleasant land’
It includes such gems as: -
“Ban new wind farms and subject existing ones to democratic local planning procedures,
Build new power plants to secure our energy supply,
Close the Climate Change Department saving up to £18billion a year,
End wasteful UK subsidies to ugly, cost ineffective ‘renewable energy’ scams,
Stop all payments to the Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel and other UN climate-related agencies.”
Humanity now faces the tragedy of having Too Much Fossil Fuel with the discovery of the deep gas and the oil shale reserves. This doesn’t actually seem all that surprising, this planet doesn’t naturally have an oxygen atmosphere, free oxygen exists solely because millions of years of photosynthetic activity have liberated it and buried the carbon whist doing so. This planet holds enough fossil fuel to consume all the atmospheric oxygen and if we don’t stop burning it soon the planet will trap ever more energy and the climate will go really crazy, we can look forwards to rising sea levels and severe rain flooding alternating with scorching droughts, welcome to a new dinosaur age.
Both my daughters study ecology at degree and doctoral levels, the evidence for anthropic climate change and mass-species extinction remains increasingly impossible to deny, both they and I remain severely concerned for their futures.
UKIP does not take its nimbyism far enough, okay so most people would rather not have wind turbines and solar panels all over the place, but do they really want an unstable climate, ruined agriculture, resource wars raging all over the world, and climate refugees in their backyard instead?
Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels will have its costs, particularly if Britain’s competitors do not follow suit till later, but Britain should have the courage to make some sacrifices for the future and to set an example. In the longer term, renewable energy technology developed with the customary British genius for science, engineering and innovation will provide an invaluable export commodity.
The current UKIP stance on the environment sounds like cowardly appeasement, oh this carbon dioxide thingy is nothing to worry about, it might be nice to have the place a bit warmer, let the carbon giants get on with it, they pay the bills and keep the trains running, it will all blow over eventually…….
Well no it won’t. It will get bloody serious and threaten our way of life in these green and pleasant lands if we don’t stand up and show a bit of Churchillian foresight and backbone.
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Saturday and off to Glastonbury for the Book of Baphomet book launch. Decided to go a bit early and inspect glasto itself, it has rather a lot of mystical supermarkets and galleries, catering it would seem, largely to the tourist and pilgrimage trade, I can hardly imagine the local hippys and pagans managing to consume a fraction of the merchandise on offer. Some of the stuff on offer seemed totally OTT to a mage that just carries but a simple self-made wooden pocket wand. Just how much extra belief can you invest in a two foot long silver chased bar of machined quartz encrusted with half a pound of exotic semi-precious stones?
Anyway, I acquired a copy of Phil Bakers book on Austin Osman Spare http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/austin-osman-spare-2/ having read such glowing reviews of it on Arcanorium College www.arcanoriumcollege.com , and indeed it makes for a very informative read, it seems stylishly written and deeply researched, and really gives the flavour of the brilliant crazy old rogue and wizard, and his life and times. It also clears up certain misconceptions that have crept into more popular accounts of his life and work.
The Book of Baphomet book launch went well, Julian Vayne and Nikki Wyrd played their promo videos and then spoke about their work and book and I gave a bit of background to the development of the Baphomet concept since Levi. The guests included the extraordinary Orryelle Defenestrate Bascule with whom I spent some time, rather like Genesis P Orridge he sports a weird riotous fairground sort of appearance yet beneath the showmanship lies a serious alternative philosopher, we have exchanged publications and established lines of communication.
Thence to Druidry Grove on Sunday for some rather quieter reflective ritual work, and the usual philosophical salon with the Proff.
Refreshingly, during the entire 11 hours of these events nobody at all even mentioned the Olympics once.
In case they had done so I came prepared with my hound's results across Llangenith sands, she would have won the 100m rather easily, and almost reached a seagul before it lifted off, must discourage such behaviour.
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Firstly a number of interesting items from some of my friends and colleagues: -
Dave Lee’s new novel, The Road to Thule. A rollicking tale of futuristic post apocalypse Wodenist society replete with strange science and sorcery, plenty of sex and violence, surprising storyline, fascinating characters, all in all; a book in a genre all of its own, you don’t come across anything like this very often. Niche critical acclaim already calls for a prequel and a sequel. Lets hope Dave obliges.
Dave has also blogged an interesting essay on a recent talk he gave: -
http://chaotopia-dave.blogspot.co.uk/
Nikki Wyrd and Julian Vane have just released The Book of Baphomet
http://theblogofbaphomet.com/2012/07/17/the-book-of-baphomet-on-sale-now/
I had the privilege of reading the draft of this astonishing work, hence on the back cover it says:
“An excellent read, consisting as it does of such a wealth of
information, research, anecdote, experience and vision” - Peter J Carroll.
I might also add that it also contains some remarkable work by its authors with sex magic and heroic chemognosis, so obtain a copy now, perchance it should become banned.
Secondly, EPOCH, The Esotericon and Portals of Chaos, proceeds well, it should eventually consist of about 50 large images on cards which the magician can use for cartomancy, but which we have primarily designed as altarpieces as foci for Evocation and Invocation, plus a book containing three Grimoires for Elemental, Planetary and Stellar magic, this last appears as an updated Necronomicon. Matt Kabryn and I, assisted by the Staff and Alumni of Arcanorium College, should have this ready in about a year. I’m making statues of the entities involved for use in ritual work, and to assist the graphics effort. Attached see Hastur.
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Jose Manuel Barroso, head of some apparently important part of the hydra like EU Totalitarian Synarchy has just said that 'Britain will reduce(?) itself to the level of Norway or Switzerland if it leaves the EU'.
Is that a threat or a promise?
Just think about it for a moment........
Hurrah, oh yes, please yes, bring it on Jose!
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With reference to the previous post about the Higgs, my thanks for all the supportive emails from fellow skeptics. The Hyperbole in the upmaket press about the 'discovery' of 'The God Particle' has wildly exceeded even the over-egging that CERN gave their meagre result. Apparently the title 'God Particle' arose from a publishers decision to reject the title for a book about the hunt for it provisionally titled 'The Goddamn Particle'. So now it enters the popular imagination and the rickety cannon of scientific orthodoxy as a given, along with that other huge leap of questionable asumptions that constitute the standard big bang inflationary expanding and now accelerating expanding universe/multiverse? hypotheses.
We now have a very messy and questionable result which the particle jockeys will undoubtedly use to justify much more funding and which will keep the theorists writing speculative papers.
On a lighter note, since nobody can quite decide whether to attribute the entire idea to Peter Higgs or whether the idea that a boson should exist as a consequence of a mass-giving field represents a group effort, we should perhaps consider calling the 125GeV signal 'The Europarticle'.
The Europarticle, like its monetary equivalent, seems based upon dubious theory, it has cost a fortune and kept vast numbers of people busy collaborating on it, and it shows every indication of falling apart very quickly, plus it has failed to create unity (between quantum and relativistic models).
Based on the energies involved and its apparently bosonic characteristics, I'd like to enter my best guess for posterity, think the elusive once in a trillion 125GeV signal probably represents just a couple of Z bosons stuck together momentarily.