Drugs for Cattle

A number of large farm owners have started putting the drug – Bovaer – into cattle feed. The active ingredient is 3-Nitrooxypropanol, or 3-NOP, and what it does is inhibit the natural enzyme methyl coenzyme M reductase, usually found in cattle digestive systems. By inhibiting this natural enzyme, the drug reduces the amount of methane emitted by those cattle.

It is perfectly possible that this drug is safe, and a number of regulatory authorities around the world have approved its use. But there are a number of reasons to warrant some caution:

• It is little more than a wet weekend since these people approved the use of the mRNA “vaccines”. We now know that those products were far less effective, and far more dangerous, than we were led to believe.
• The motive for using this drug is climate alarmism – methane is a greenhouse gas. But regardless whether the whole climate alarmism thing is a hoax, it is all too evident that the profits of doom will do extraordinarily stupid and damaging things.
• Common sense suggests that if, after a very long time, cattle have evolved with methyl coenzyme M reductase in their digestive systems, there may be a good reason for that. This is not to say that every product of evolution is necessary, but it is to say that knocking out a fairly significant part of an animal’s system may well have rather far reaching impacts.
• It would hardly be surprising if a conjunction of profit motive by the drugs companies and zealotry by the climate alarmists has led to the tests being less thorough than they should have been.

I am perfectly content to accept that cattle fed this drug do not promptly keel over and die. But I do not know what long-term effects there may be on the health or fertility of young people who consume dairy products from cattle who have been administered Bovaer. And in the absence of proper double blind trials, I rather fancy that the regulators do not know either.

Blaspheming

I am quite sure that there should not be a law against blasphemy in the UK (or anywhere else in the Western world for that matter). But if there were to be, what should be treated as blasphemous?

Obviously, the whole concept of blasphemy is founded on the proposition that some beliefs are okay, and some are not. So what should be okay in the UK?

Assisted Dying

My friends will know that I loved Perdita, my English setter. And in the way dogs do, Perdita loved me.

When she was diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable cancer, I had no hesitation in ending her suffering straightaway.  She had a great life, and it was unthinkable to me that she would end her days in debilitating pain. With the assistance of an injection administered by the vet, she died painlessly in my arms knowing, as she had throughout her life, that I was caring for her.

People die from aggressive cancers, and other incurable diseases, as well. It is a mystery to me why anybody would think that it is okay to save dogs from pain at the end of their lives, but not people.

The Big Misnomer

As we now know, the Republicans in the United States won the president election, both in the Electoral College (which is what they needed to win) and in terms of the popular vote (which rather seals it). They have also won a majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives. It is hard to see a more conclusive democratic result.

And yet the losers, who call themselves the Democratic Party, apparently think it is perfectly all right to do everything possible all to prevent the Republicans from doing the things that they were elected to do.

This is, of course, the very opposite of democracy. For them to call themselves Democrats is an outright deception (disinformation, if you like that sort of language). They should be forced to change their name. The Bureaucratic Party, perhaps?

Their Bad

Yesterday, I called a government agency to try to get something fixed. The call was answered quite quickly by a recording, telling me at some length that they did not tolerate abusive behaviour or bad language. I was then left hanging on for fifteen minutes before getting put through to human who was so mind-bendingly unhelpful as to reduce any ordinary individual to paroxysms of rage.

Would it not be easier, I find myself wondering, for them to focus their efforts on being helpful, rather than obstructive in every possible way? Then they would not need their recording at the beginning of every telephone call.

Who shot H?

Am I alone in thinking that the creator of Line of Duty, Jed Mercurio, rather ran out of steam at the end of series 6?

It is all very well getting Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) to cry “Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey” in terms of increasing exasperation, and getting DIs Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) and Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) call each other “mate”, but that does not really advance the plot very much.

David Irving Has Deserved Better

Like many people, I used to assume that David Irving, the historian, is a bit of a nutter. I lazily assumed that, simply because that was the conventional view.

Having now paid more attention, it seems to me that he is anything but. He differs from other historians because he writes about, not what other historians have previously written, but about what is contained in the contemporaneous documents, including a large number of documents that other historians appear not to have troubled to read at all. I hesitate to try to encapsulate his main conclusions, but roughly, they appear to be as follows:

Oil is Not a Fossil Fuel

There has been a resurgence of interest recently in the origin of oil, with more people coming around to the view that it is not a fossil fuel at all. And indeed, it is not in fact squashed plankton, but the result of a chemical process within planets (including ours) which continuously produces oil, and gas, and water.

I have been saying as much for the best part of 20 years. Here is what I posted on 14th June 2008:

Oil is a Fossil Fuel? Well, probably not, no.

I am by no means alone in being skeptical about the theory that oil is the product of decomposed Jurassic life, sometimes unkindly referred to as the rotten dinosaur theory. Thus Professor Fred Hoyle said in 1982:

“The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.”

Does Peter Kyle MP Care? At all?

If Ray Sanders is right (and his letter suggests that he is a sensible and careful person) much of the data which goes into the climate alarmism sausage machine is sheer fiction. So it is GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.

He gives a couple of examples from his own back yard, of places where the Met Office take their “data”. The data from the Dungeness weather station is suspect because that weather station closed 38 years ago. And yet the Met Office still reports data from it. Hmm. Another example is Dover. The supposed location of this site is on the beach. Under water twice a day at high tides. That does not look likely either, if it exists at all.

He has written to the Minister. The Minister should pay attention. We know the same thing has been happening in the USA. They report data which is not real data, but imaginary data, concocted from what their models (which we know are flawed) would predict. The Minister should set up an enquiry. Red team v Blue team. Mandate full access to both teams to all the data. Let them argue out whether or not this whole climate alarm stuff is real, or a pile of manure. Red team can be the Met Office. Blue should include people like Ray Saunders, and Rog Tallbloke and the GWPF. Then make an assessment, having heard the debate between the 2 teams, as to whether or not there is any reliable basis for the wholesale destruction of the British economy, and the well-being of its people.

Trump Redux

So. Donald Trump has won the 2024 US presidential election. And so, unless he is assassinated in the meantime, he will commence his second term as president in a couple of months. What will his presidency look like this time around?

There is good reason to believe that it will be rather more significant than his first term. There are a number of reasons for this.

He will have learned how the obstacles to change work, from his first presidency, and will have had time to reflect about how more effectively to deal with those obstacles.

He has more clout this time. Last time, he was something of curiosity. A political rookie. A maverick. Many did not take him very seriously. This time, he has much more stature. He is only the second president to have regained office after an electoral defeat. He has overcome a wall of criminal prosecutions against him. He is survived two assassination attempts. And he has won this election, not just by a narrow majority, but by a substantial refutation of the opinion polls.

Unlike last time, he has a clever and effective vice president in J.D. Vance. He is also going to have assistance and support from Elon Musk and from Robert Kennedy Jr.