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Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Dec 27, 2012 11:54:29 GMT 10
No, he aint - www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....ber-house-lords Yeah, but people keep believing it, and that's all that matters. If monckton is right, and if he has actually been legally excluded from the house of lords by a "general law" that can't annul "letters patent", then (this isn't meant to be funny) all law passed by the UK upper house since the house of lords reform act of 1999 has probably been invalid, and could be open to legal challenge. That's not an inconspicuous detail. I'm sure the assembled minds of the UK parliament (not to mention the house of windsor) might have considered that. And if monckton himself really did believe that he's being unlawfully kept from his rightful seat in the house of lords, then why does he keep standing for re-election in that house (and losing dismally) rather than just challenging the law? I imagine that he has legal standing (i.e. they won't let him in), and if he's right about his arguments, then it would surely be an open-and-shut deal. I also notice that the conservative party hasn't taken his side, either. Whatever great legal loophole this is, it appears that nobody in the UK government seems very worried about it. If the labor party was concerned, then they'd have simply run through a bunch of votes to annul all of those appointments. They could have run them into a single bill and had it over with in an afternoon. Yet ... nobody bothered. And, at least according to this, monckton's defense is based on a misinterpretation of advice on an unrelated matter anyway. And his claim that his passport names him "right honorable" doesn't really cut any ice - nobody's saying he's not a viscount (which does attract that title), they're just saying he's not a member of the house of lords. And of top of that, the actual house of lords has asked him to stop saying he is, and to stop using a coat of arms that implies a connection. And when he claims that "I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and I have never pretended otherwise"One can't help but recall Finally, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature, wholly unconnected with and unpaid by the corporation that is the victim of your lamentable letter, should take the unusual step of calling upon you as members of the Upper House of the United States legislature either to withdraw what you have written or resign your sinecures.Uh-huh. Never pretended otherwise. Right. Jo Nova calls this "part of his clown disguise", which "reels the small minds in". You know something? If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, maybe it really is just a bozo in a clown suit. Not much of a defence, though. He's a genius, really. But he likes to fool people by acting like a $#%#*%^ @#%$. And you fell for it! I wonder if going full birther and actually questioning obama's birth certificate while he was off entertaining the US was also part of his "clown disguise"? Whatever it is, it must be paying off - I can't see why he'd otherwise bother coming back down under. The carbon tax is done, and we won't have an election for quite some time yet - so what's to campaign for? Is he really going to make a play for the "judeo-christian" tradition? That should be entertaining. I wonder if he'll bring his clown disguise.
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Post by angra on Dec 27, 2012 14:13:43 GMT 10
Monctkon is a known fraud and lair. You might as well be taken in by Lord Archer - who served gaol time for his lies.
Blot has both of them down his gullet.
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Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Dec 27, 2012 15:40:20 GMT 10
Angra, seriously .... I'd tone it down a bit. Those are some pretty unequivocal statements of fact, there. Maybe I'm just chicken, but I just wouldn't be posting some of that stuff.
Meanwhile ...
I've been having a look at the 2010 figures on gun injury and death in the US (it's got a good search feature, but their SAS back-end keeps crashing!)
I got some rough numbers. In 2010
31,300 (or so) people were killed by guns - be it homicide, suicide, accident, unknown intent or by law enforcement.
On top of that, about 75,000 people were sought medical attention for gunshot injuries (mostly intentional, but I can't remember the breakdown).
So let's call it 106,000 gunshot wounds per year - at least serious enough to require medical care, about a third serious enough to kill.
If a similar rate occured in australia, that would be 7700 gunshot injuries every year. About 2300 deaths annually.
If that were the case, I don't think we'd be talking about solving the problem by putting guards in schools. I think we'd be admitting that we had a gun problem.
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Post by angra on Dec 27, 2012 16:22:33 GMT 10
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Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Dec 27, 2012 16:31:22 GMT 10
Unless he was merely honestly mistaken, or even if he WASN'T honestly mistaken, but it had never been decided on in the courts.
I think it's a lot safer (and a bit more civilised) to take the piss out of the things that showmen like monckton say - particularly when they appear (see what I did there) to be fond of sending nasty letters to people.
I don't see how anyone can see the body of things that monckton has said and done over the years and take him any more seriously than a man in a chicken suit. I personally think his current (latest? imminent?) visit to australia is probably only happening because people are apparently willing to spend money to go see him - which can't be a great DEAL of money ... I mean, we're not taking an AC/DC concert here ... and that's a sad reflection on a man with pretensions of belonging to the house of lords, having to sing and dance for idiots like that, to pay the bills. At least ... that's my impression (see? see what I did?)
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Post by chookmustard on Dec 27, 2012 17:41:24 GMT 10
Don't foret Judeo-Christian heritage....ruling out indigenous people in one fell swoop.
My previous post got some of it cut off! It was pure gold tooK
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Post by jack on Dec 27, 2012 18:19:01 GMT 10
" people keep believing it, and that's all that matters" I'm not sure how much the threat of lawfare may have to do with that, but people are generally aware that Monckton is a peer, so perhaps if its asserted enough times by His Eminence and supporters, then the distinctions become a little hazy. It's odd that it seems to matter so much to the Monckton camp. As if being an upper class twit somehow adds any further weight of authority to someone's argument. Monckton himself is on record as being "familiar with the elementary fallacies first propounded by Aristotle," that "argument from appeal to authority is fallacious." That's from his letter to the Wagga Daily Advertiser, in which he was given oodles of column inches to rebut a letter by a local critic. /photo/1/largeMy favourite bit... If he were familiar with the fundamental equations of climate sensitivity and of intergenerational investment appraisal... Yes fellow paeons, His Excellency is even an authority in the exacting discipline of intergenerational investment appraisal, over which the debate is obviously over. Note that, after several hundred words of meticulous argument pompous declamations, he clinches his polemic with a fairly explicit threat of lawfare. I'm assuming that the letter from "A Mr White" that so displeased His Extraordinariness was this one... www.dailyadvertiser.com.au/story/1158901/letter-clarity-on-climate/?cs=155Read that letter, marvel at the damnable impertinence with which His Lairdship had to contend! And from a commoner!! In the antipodes!!!
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Post by angra on Dec 27, 2012 19:30:55 GMT 10
So basically Monckton is a complete dick and we shouldn't bother spending any time on him.
A
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Post by Matthew Of Canberra on Dec 27, 2012 19:43:54 GMT 10
"His Excellency is even an authority in the exacting discipline of intergenerational investment appraisal"
Presumably why he's doing paid performances in the antipodes these days.
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Post by chookmustard on Dec 29, 2012 8:36:29 GMT 10
Unless he was merely honestly mistaken, or even if he WASN'T honestly mistaken, but it had never been decided on in the courts. I think it's a lot safer (and a bit more civilised) to take the piss out of the things that showmen like monckton say - particularly when they appear (see what I did there) to be fond of sending nasty letters to people. I don't see how anyone can see the body of things that monckton has said and done over the years and take him any more seriously than a man in a chicken suit. I personally think his current (latest? imminent?) visit to australia is probably only happening because people are apparently willing to spend money to go see him - which can't be a great DEAL of money ... I mean, we're not taking an AC/DC concert here ... and that's a sad reflection on a man with pretensions of belonging to the house of lords, having to sing and dance for idiots like that, to pay the bills. At least ... that's my impression (see? see what I did?) You are totez gonna get an angry wordy letter dude
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Post by jack on Jan 3, 2013 9:43:21 GMT 10
Andy accuses Greg Combet of "mendacious and deceitful spin." The 'M' word is one that Combet has for months repeatedly hurled at Andy's mate Tonez and the Coalition (the 'L' word being a no-no in Parliament). Yeah, take that, Combet! Naturally there's nothing mendacious or deceitful about selectively quoting from an article to draw attention to Japan dropping out of the Kyoto protocol in 2010, while omitting to quote stuff like in this bit... Some will conclude that Japan’s decision on the protocol is simply a ploy to shirk their responsibilities on carbon mitigation and helping poorer countries adapt to climate change. But Japan’s pledges and actions to date point to a different conclusion.
Japan’s commitment under the Copenhagen Accord is to cut emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That target is more stringent than the European Union’s current goal, and it is regarded as the global leader in carbon mitigation. Of the fast-start financing announced in Copenhagen last year—for developed countries to provide $30 billion to developing countries by 2012 for adaptation and mitigation—Japan has pledged $15 billion and already implemented $7.23 billion as of the end of September.
[a href="www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2010/12/08/8733/has-japan-killed-the-kyoto-protocol/"]www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2010/12/08/8733/has-japan-killed-the-kyoto-protocol/ [/a][/blockquote] Obviously Andy's trying to shield his fans from the cognitive dissonance in the proposition that a country that ditches Kyoto can also be a "global leader in carbon mitigation." But doesn't he know that misplaced kindness can be harmful? And gosh, the vanguard of enlightened policy, Russia, has now dropped out of Kyoto as well. So Andy reckons the Australian government should follow Russia's example. None of us saw that one coming, did we?
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