Entries from December 2009 ↓

I graduated from the University of East Anglia and I’m uncomfortable when it last got into the news. Let’s be clear the emails that leaked from there uncovered a conspiracy to shut down scientific debate and blatantly lie in order that the facts fit the desired result.  Apologists such as Ian Gibson (who used to believe that global warming was a Thatcherite plot to mess with the miners) are wrong to try to explain this away.  This goes way beyond the scientific orthodoxy jealously protecting its turf, although in my opinion this is probably the main reason it started – the funding would always be there.

That doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t happening or that if it is happening it’s not man made.  What we saw were a bunch of scientists who had turned into confidence tricksters.  There is a lot of evidence for global warming outside the Climatic Research Unit.

However in Bridge it’s not clear that it matters, as we will need flood defences whatever happens to the global warming thesis.  If you live on or near water the course of the water is far less stable than the houses we build there.  Anyone who’s been to Dunwich can see clearly how the sea can nibble away relentlessly, through the medieval warm period, the mini ice age of the seventeenth to nineteenth century and our current apparent heating up. It simply doesn’t matter.

Flood defences are needed for Bridge, and they will be needed more as pressure builds up and housing becomes more concentrated.

The Halifax bend, where Halifax Road goes into Maidenhall Green is getting to be too dangerous.  It desperately needs traffic calming and there will be a horrific accident soon if nothing is done about it.

I’ve spent more years than I care to remember working in tax, often having to get the implications of the budget quickly either to the media or to the internet.  One thing that I’ve learnt is that it is only two or three days later that you work out where the worst damage is.  So we’ll see the worst through later.

Where I think that the crucial bits of the Pre Budget Review will be will be in local government and transport. There are hundreds of ways in which local government