the real cost of political posturing

'The average price of a pint of bitter in Britain's pubs could increase from around £2.20 to as much as £4 next year, the industry has warned.

The massive hike, which is also expected to affect cans bought from off licences, is due largely to increased prices of key ingredients barley and hops - in part because farmland is being turned over to environment-friendly biofuels.

But brewers are also suffering from rises in fuel costs and the price of the metals used to produce kegs and cans. Kegs are now so valuable that they have become a target for thieves, who stole 60 million this year to melt down for their metal.' (AOL news, 24/12/07)

So the hippies' obsession with driving at any cost is already having terrible effects. This is also going to drive more pubs out of business. I'm so glad I'm getting a vineyard in Hungary in the next few years. I'll do EVERYTHING to resist turning my land over to biofuels - the biggest con in history. The recipe for biofuels disaster - loads of scarce water + valuable land + 10 barrels (conventional) oil = 8 barrels biofuel + rich farmers + smug (ostrich) politicians. Total madness.

And the second part of the story is also telling. ALL metals are running out, being snapped up to fuel the expansion of China and India. Okay, as an investment ploy metals are great, but otherwise we should all be concerned ...

hungary

The Christmas market in Budapest. This was great fun with loads of stalls selling local products and even real food (vegetarian!) plus regular free shows on the stage.


The castle on the Buda side. This was very impressive, especially at night when it's floodlit. There were no tourists there on a cold December morning, and all the better for it!


Budapest has - inevitably - a superb public transport system. These modern trams run around the city, though other routes have far older trams, a testament to their longevity and superiority over buses! Behind is one of the maon Budapest stations designed by Eiffel.


The largest open air ice rink in Europe, at the City Park in Budapest.

Hungary's a fantastic country - we're planning to move there within 6 to 7 years.

more idiots

Do you agree with the protesters that the price of fuel is too high?
Results:
Votes
Per cent
Yes
32,284
96%
No
1,324
4%
Don't know
171
0%
Total votes: 33,779

This is an AOL poll. I find it hard to believe that in this day and age fully 96% of the population feel that our ridiculously cheap petrol is too EXPENSIVE! Are 96% of the population completely stupid or do they spend their entire lives hidden in basements??

Get this thickos - petrol is cheaper now than it will ever be again. It is ludicrously cheap, hardly allowing at all for the environmental costs it incurs. Climate Change means we'll all have to produce less CO2. The idiot communist USA isn't even committing to keeping temperature changes under 2 degrees, even though scientists state that any rise above 2 degrees will be catastrophic. Perhaps our dim friends across the Atlantic should look that up in a dictionary (Webster's if neccessary). We don't have the option of over 2 degrees - it will lead to mass extinctions and runaway positive feedbacks. Listen to the scientists - they know what they're talking about. David Handley, the commie christians and the brickie in the pub DON'T!!

And in any case the harsh economics of Peak Oil are upon us, which will decrease the availability of petrol by 7% per year from now on. That will be reflected in prices, idiots. And this is just the beginning.

more idiots ...

'The United States will reject demands to commit to internationally binding cuts in global warming gases at the UN climate conference in Bali, the chief US climate negotiator said.'

More hippies from dying semi-nations burying their heads - and economies - in the sand. Why not join this facebook group if you think all Americans are communistic, christian morons!! Apart from those heading Peak Oil groups, survivalists and Pagans of course, who are well mint.

gloves off ...

'China has refused to accept mandatory cuts on greenhouse gases, saying the West should lead the climate change battle by being less extravagant.'

Have they indeed? Well, if you read the above statement you can see there's the potential for some stunning internal logic.

Let's bring the Chinese dream to life by being less extravagant and NOT BUYING any Chinese products! That will reduce their economic growth and with a bit of luck start the break up of China as a future superpower.

Climate Change is now far worse than even the very worst scenarios predicted. The tropics have ALREADY expanded to the point predicted in the WORST scenarios for the end of this century. There are already massive population dislocations. Nobody, especially some tin pot COMMUNIST third world pigsty, is in the position to decide it ain't going to join in the prevention attempt. Even Australia, hippy communist third world Foster-drinking joke, has now agreed to Kyoto (big deal!)

As Jarvis Cocker once sang so eloquently, 'Something Changed'. It's just a few dinosaurs, hippies and commies still haven't realised it.

No more Chinese junk for me ...

time to disengage

Thousands of Sudanese, many carrying knives and sticks, have taken to the streets of Khartoum calling for the execution of British school teacher Gillian Gibbons, jailed over a teddy bear.

I seriously think it's time the world split into two mutually exclusive camps. That this world of ours can produce such lunacy appalls me and every decent person. Religion is a HOBBY, it's not actually real. And even if it were it has nothing to do with the rest of us. I'm sorry but only a certifiable maniac would suggest that naming a teddy bear anything is courting death. It's pathetic.

We have the decent, civilized, secular world, scientific and advanced and kind, we have the dark third world where people are killed for their beliefs, or elevated to the status of gods. Sudan, North Korea, the USA - they need to be isolated from the real world and we should disengage totally from them. They have nothing we need, and we have nothing that they can learn from. We show our soft side too much. I think the hippes should be ghettoised, for their own good. They've gone too far ...

I wonder what's happened to the teddy?

france looks ahead

With riots in the Paris suburbs and the best cheese in the world, France is always cool.

And with a policy of using nuclear power they are looking ahead to life after oil. But, amazingly, they are also looking even further ahead. 70 French towns are now using horses to take kids to school and to pull recycling carts and dustcarts. They are claiming it's because of Climate Change, but of course it's really because of Peak Oil. It works, economically, already when we still have incredibly cheap petrol! This is the future, and it's already happening.

France has also built over THIRTY new tramway systems in the last 10 years. Makes you ashamed to be living in the UK really ...

(Okay, the picture above is Zermatt, but it was the closest I had to a horse-drawn vehicle!)

the ultimate madness

Look at the slogan on this machine. 'Turn Your Coins Into Cash'. Er, coins are cash fuckface!

I've actually seen people using these machines. You pay in £1 of real money, cash, yours indeed - and you get out 85p. The supermarket gets 15p! Well, they obviously need it and you don't!

I know the average chav hasn't got two brain cells to rub together, but how on earth have we de-evolved this far?? How did this machine ever happen? What makes somebody so STUPID that they use a machine like this?

fucking morons

'The UK population could almost double by the end of the century, according to Government projections.
The figures from the Government Actuary's Department (GAD) suggest that with high immigration and fertility rates, the population could reach 108,723,000 by 2081.'

LOL! Is this the same government that intends to increase capacity at Heathrow Airport? The same government that lost 25 million personal records? The same government that really, seriously believe that the British people will accept COMPULSORY ID Cards??

I project UK population in 2081 to be around 5-8 million.

looking backwards

Mmm. So Sudan is imprisoning a woman for calling her teddy bear Mohammed. Whilst the world burns up and we run out of petrol these spoilt mummys' boys and nutters have nothing better to worry about. How we envy them.

Don't tell anyone but I've just called my pet rat Jesus ...

too late?

So the IPCC report on Climate Change presented to the United Nations now claims that some Climate Change effects can not be reversed. We need to know - are these effects that will kickstart positive feedback? If they are then we are well and truly fucked, and every 'green' initiative will make no difference. Coupled with Peak Oil it really is a bleak picture, though not one without some degree of potential romantic adventurism.

Our kids won't be worrying about mortgages, traffic queues, celebrities and holidays. They'll be engaged in a daily competition with nature as they learn to live in a world where the slightest weakness is punished, where you grow your own food or starve, where you learn what you need to live and not much else. But they'll also have more time, they won't be wasting loads of it travelling, they won't be sat stupidly in front of the TV. Who's to say that CC and PO aren't good things?

dinosaur watch

I've had great fun with a group called We Will Not Be Paying Over £1 a Litre for Petrol in the UNITED KINGDOM [sic] on Facebook.

They are fair game because they are dinosaurs. I find it extraordinary that in 2007 with the first effects of Peak Oil starting to hit there are still a few people who think £1/litre is expensive! This is hilarious. In a few years it'll be £2/litre, within 15 years probably around £10/litre. There's no way out of this and there's no point bleating about it. It's simple geology and economics, a lethal combination. Even now we only produce 1 1/2 million barrels of oil over demand levels. Demand will rise by 2 million barrels a day next year yet the wells are now not only running at full capacity but are running dry. Is anyone willing to take bets that next year there won't be a REAL oil crunch?

The sad thing is that there are still millions of people in the UK that are too stupid or too decadent to take this on board. There are still 17 year olds learning to drive, there are still people moving into areas where there's no public transport or work.

But you know what? I'm not going to 'bother' them any more. If they want to live in a fantasy socialist utopia with petrol at 80p a litre forever then let them. It's probably not wise to spread the word too much - some of them may have the brains to see that what we're saying is right and they may then compete for all those lovely assets - land, trees, seeds, tools, networks, gold - that WE need.

Climate Change deniers - remember them - helped keep up demand for waterside properties and other useless assets, reducing the value of useful stuff, making it easier for us to get MORE of the real stuff, so perhaps we should let the Peak Oil Prats do the same? In a few years we'll all be fretting about Peak Oil and locating away from the danger areas, by then all the sensible folk should be well ensconced in their nice self-sufficient defendable homes. Let the lefties descend on us then - we'll wipe 'em out!

the romance of rail - is back ...

More proof that even this dumbo government realise the way things are going is the £800 million redevelopment of St Pancras for the new Eurostar trains. When is any money invested in roads nowadays?

But what chance does the car have against rail? There's no glamour in driving - it's an endless slog being stuck behind lorries, bikes, horses, old fuckers ... If you want to enjoy driving one last time head to eastern Germany where there are still no speed limits on many of the autobahns. This is going to change soon and all autobahns will have a 130kph limit.

Meanwhile rail just keeps growing. Soon all short-haul air trips will go. We still need to invest massively in the UK high speed network, now we've made a start. Within 20 years even medium distant air trips will go. I reckon we'll be doing Bristol to Budapest in 12 hours by 2037. And the light rail/interurban revival is only just beginning.

And the new Eurostar is promising ROMANCE again. This is something the railways always had in droves, until swept away by the socialists in the 60s and 70s. But romance is making a big comeback, and rail is - again - the big winner. In a car-less future we'll all become rail travellers, crossing Europe at 300 mph, catching the tram into town, visiting the coast and villages by light rail. We need romance. The car tried to kill it. It failed.

silence of the lambs

Our 'government' is proposing some ridiculously soft 'green' taxes that will encourage purchasers (NOT existing users) of new, large fuel-inefficient vehicles to choose more sensible options. AOL did a vote on whether this was a good idea. Duh - soft but could only be good. I voted just for the sake of it, expecting a 100% yes. Amazingly, unbelievably, the vote was 74% NO!!!!!!

This is simply more confirmation that the little soft lefty luvvies really don't have a clue what's coming! That they don't understand even the basics of the huge changes that are going to turn their lives upside down - if they survive. Twenty years ago this may have been a workable idea. Today it's irrelevant anyway - the soaring cost of petrol will ensure that we all opt for firstly smaller cars then for lifestyle changes that will mean we can live without the stupid socialist things.

It never fails to amuse me that the general public are so backwards-looking. This is OUR opportunity. All the time they're going the wrong way we can pick up the assets that we'll all need in the future at knock-down prices. Every 4x4 sold, every seaside house, every beefburger means that the real stuff - gold, seeds, land, woods, tools etc - are still available at reasonable prices. More power to the idiocracy!

flood disaster

Stayed in with some Stella and Mr Toms last night and watched the British disaster movie 'Flood'. And what a disaster it is too. Starring two icons - Robert Carlyle and Tom Courtenay - surely we could have at least expected something half decent? Had they played Begbie and Billy Liar perhaps, but Carlyle plays a gormless yuppie and Courtenay plays a rheumy-eyed humourless professor. The whole film from start to finish is a wish-fulfilment fantasy - London flooded, great loss of life. It could have been such fun. But it was so downbeat and lacking in character or spectacle that I'd rather have watched Wacky Races with the sound off.

But what's this? Vicious storm to the north of Scotland with 90 mph winds, storm surge down the North Sea, London flood barrier raised, spring tides ... oh dear, that's just what's happening in reality tonight! Looks like we may be in for a re-run of 1953. They're forecasting a 2.9 metre storm surge. That's scary. 1953 was 2.4 metres ... and the land has sunk 6 inches since then, and sea level risen about 2 inches.

But ... if you live on the North Sea coast surely you've taken this possibility into account, your house prices will almost certainly reflect this risk. Why are the people in Great Yarmouth fighting over sandbags? Surely if you live in Great Yarmouth you already have sandbags? And flood boards. And you're moving your furniture onto upper floors. You've got tinned food, bottled water and everything else ready - always.

This is the future. It will get far worse. It's your responsibility to be prepared, no-one else will look after you. Stop whingeing and just sit it out. This is the tame taster for a wild future. Get used to it. Be Dutch about it ...

idiots ...

(Nostalgic look back at petrol under £1/litre)

This on today's Moneyweek website

'The IEA reckons that oil could hit $159 a barrel by 2030, with demand of 120m barrels a day far outstripping supply of 116m barrels a day. And this is assuming we can get supply that high – it’s currently just 85m barrels a day, and if you believe in the Peak Oil theory, then it’s not going to go much higher than that.'

Perhaps the IEA should employ an economist? The idea that by 2030 production could reach anything like 116 million b/d is absolutely hilarious. Latest figures in the real world suggest a 7% pa fall from now on in oil production. Taking this to 2030 suggests a REAL oil production figure of 16,014,988 b/d, so there's a shortfall of just under 100 million barrels a day to find! Biofuels? Hardly. The EROEI is less than zero anyway for biofuels, so all biofuels will do is use up the existing oil that much faster. As will pumping harder, though that seems hardly an option now. All taps are fully open and stockpiles are still falling. And people still complain about £1 a litre petrol! It's hilarious. £10 a litre will seem cheap in ten year's time. They are like lambs to the slaughter.

In reality I suspect the retreat from oil will make all this speculation seem silly in 2030 - we'll wonder why we ever bothered.

And as for $159 a barrel by 2030? My guess is somewhere between $1000 a barrel tops and $0 if we're in a post oil economy. And yes, I will remind you of this forecast in 23 year's time!!

Figures for projected oil production assuming a 7% year on year fall in production capacity starting from a 2007 base of 85 million b/d are as follows -

2008 79,050,000
2009 73,516,500
2010 68,370,345
2011 63,584,420
2012 59,133,510
2013 54,994,164
2014 51,144,572
2015 47,564,451
2016 44,234,939
2017 41,138,493
2018 38,258,798
2019 35,580,682
2020 33,090,034
2021 30,773,731
2022 28,619,569
2023 26,616,199
2024 24,753,065
2025 23,020,350
2026 21,408,925
2027 19,910,300
2028 18,516,579
2029 17,220,418
2030 16,014,988

motor news

Today unleaded petrol broke through the £1.00 per litre barrier generally for the first time ever. Peak Oil effects are hitting much quicker than anyone dared guess just a year or two ago. Hang on tight, because this is just the start!

Other welcome news today is that General Motors, a dinosaur American company, has posted third quarter losses of 39 BILLION dollars. Getting the message? The oil economy is heading towards the rocks, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. As always my advice is prepare ...

Hopefully you've invested in gold and silver as I recommended. Silver has risen 10% in just two days, gold is up to $820/oz. I'd still recommend buy, in dips if possible. Of course physical silver and gold has become much harder to find over the last few months, the price has risen steadily since August, so you'll have to search around for it.

My forecasts were for petrol at £1.10/litre and gold at $900/oz by the end of December 2007. I think both will fall just short, but remember most other people were recommending property LOL! And they were whinging when oil was about $50 a barrel! Again, this is just the start. I think we've all been over cautious in our predictions of both climate change effects (see positive feedback loops) and Peak Oil (it may well already have peaked). Keep switching paper to gold and silver, look for that land, learn how to defend yourselves, network like buggery and clear all your debts. We're talking survival now ...

pretties ...

Some shots from yesterday's firework display at the Bristol City ground. We had to endure about half an hour of the worst music imaginable as an accompaniment to the fireworks. If only it had been Enter Shikari ... or Mahler.

Being brought up in Sussex I know how to do Bonfire Night properly! Torchlit parades, bangers through letterboxes, random indoor bonfires ... we had it all. Lewes bonfire night is the best on earth.

And what do we celebrate? The getting rid of half of this idiot 'religion' that still clings on in this most Pagan country on earth. The ditching of the even more deranged half of christianity as the catholics were removed from society by their fellow religionists - and all in the name of their imaginary 'god'.

So why not let's move on, declare the 5th of November as Pagan Day, 5 days into the New Year, the elements of fire to the forefront (but often with earth, wind and water taking its part!) Let's really let go, turn the whole nation into a big version of Lewes!

happy new year

Okay, so I'm a few days late, but we've been busy!

You've no doubt read my post about Enter Shikari, New Year's Eve/Hallowe'en/Samhain at Cardiff. It was funny going to a different country to celebrate it, but it was definitely worth it! Cardiff was full of ghosts, werewolves, skeletons etc, the atmosphere was brilliant.

So why do the vast majority still celebrate 'New Year' on 1 January?? This is a Pagan country, why are we still lumbered with christian legacies? Why is it still called 'Christmas' and not Yule? Why do the christians pretend that Easter is anything to do with them? With Easter the buggers didn't even bother changing the name! They changed the hare to the rabbit, lose the fertility aspects and try to blind us with drivel about 'resurrection'. Resurrection is merely misinterpreted reincarnation. Some of the christians really, truly believe they get one shot of life (though preordained by their 'god' (male, white, left wing) despite being granted free will!!) and then they're judged on it, to spend eternity then either in a suburban hell of worship, warmth, sanctimonious drivelling and church fetes (heaven) or a pikey idiot-riddled inner city hell of no education, no sleep and no pleasure (hell). It's laughable. Of course we all know that we live an endless succession of lives, some here, most elsewhere. Life's the point stupid!

Anyway, if you get the chance visit Cardiff at night, and watch Enter Shikari every chance you get. You may not get the opportunity in your next life! And kick a christian for me!

chofnoda shikari

The world is divided into two groups - those that have seen Enter Shikari live and those that haven't.

We joined the important group on Wednesday. Hallowe'en, Samhain, the most important night in the Pagan calendar. And we crossed over the bridge to Wales to see them.

I've seen loads of groups. From Geordie through The Police and UB40, New Order, Pulp, Mumm-Ra, Plan B - 30+ years of fun and excitement (and crap). But Shikari topped them all. The energy put out and returned in the 100 minutes they were playing was like nothing I've ever seen before. Their music is the savage but beautiful child of Rachmaninov powered by the beats of a Stewart Copeland on industrial strength Metformin and presided over by a cool and literate clone of Jools Holland. And latching on to the energy of the best club night you've ever been to.

The scary thing was that we were by far and away the oldest people there - in fact we seemed a good ten to fifteen years older than the PARENTS that were waiting outside to pick up their kids from the show. What's that about? Why weren't there hordes of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s there? They need energising like everybody else, possibly more so. Some of the kids couldn't handle the terminal moshing down at the front, and were being dragged out every few minutes.

Shikari's trick is that they blend the most monstrous vocals (sometimes) with the most elaborate music, then switch to Rou's 'listen Mum, I CAN sing' voice that beats Boyzone and Westlife at their own game. This switching, from the ridiculous to the sublime, creates the most powerful breaks that send the crowd wild. The songs are driven by powerful drums, bass and guitar, multi-layer Rachmaninov-style complexity coupled with some of the most clever hooks around. These are real songs and the whole band are natural performers, there's no irony or posing here.

Well, there is, but it's smart! Like turning up dressed as the Furies from the brilliant 70s classic film The Warriors, complete with face paint and baseball bats, or slipping in 'Insomnia' just when the crowd were at their most perceptive (and didn't they do it well!!), or giving us 3 minutes of formless and gut-mashing drum 'n' bass before the brilliant encore of 'Sorry You're Not a Winner' and 'OK, Time for Plan B' (cleverly referencing both one of the best films and best acts of our time!)

Loved it. Lads, you're welcome to visit Hartcliffe at any time!!

dirty faggers

A new poll shows that the majority of publicans want the smoking ban to stay. I wasn't aware that there was any other option anyway!

Amazingly 26% of the respondents genuinely believe that the ban is negative!!! The sooner these losers are out of business the better - they clearly don't have a clue and are bound to go out of business anyway.

But the agenda is shifting. Now 72% want smoking banned when driving. Big deal. There should be a TOTAL ban on smoking in the UK, and the sooner the better. It serves no purpose at all except to make one bunch of losers look uncool, stupid and dirty and another bunch look wealthy. It has to be the most pointless activity ever.

I want the twins (above) to grow in a world without faggers. It would also be nice if they grew up in a world without that other bunch of lamebrain losers - meat eaters (or 'hippies' for short). That is also likely as the current rush to produce uneconomic, negative energy biofuels is rapidly squeezing out food production in any case. The Americans must be absolutely TERRIFIED of Peak Oil if they're allowing this to happen!

the state of things

Expect a far more active Looking Ahead from now on. I'm having one of those life-changing moments, giving up my boring finance role at the S&D, signing up for my PhD and getting building skills over the next few months - and pushing this blog as my one and only! So expect the usual polemics about idiots and CC/PO, the occasional foray into chavdom, diatribes against faggers but also far more cultural input, loads more economics and investment advice and even bits about what I'm doing as we get ready for our own personal push towards post-Collapse survival!

On Tuesday we went to see Reverend and the Makers at the Carling Academy at Bristol. Now the Carling sound may be as flat and lukewarm as their beer, but the Rev cut through all that to put on a brilliant show! Interestingly just before the show started, whilst the Ting Tings were on stage, the Rev and a few of the band stood next to us and watched them. It's a strange experience being so close to genius, but the Rev seemed to handle it well.

There are seven on stage, two percussionists, two keyboardists, bass, guitar and the Rev. So you get a really full, groove driven sound to highlight his amazing voice. The songs are about real stuff, dropping Etam, council estates, babies, all the usual material. With me music has to pass the Hartcliffe Test - be relevant, cool and sound good loud with the windows down on a Friday or Saturday evening. This does!

Support band were the Ting Tings, who seem to get more publicity than almost anyone else around at the moment. Singer Katie is an ex-girl band type, but seems to have found her forte with this new two piece. And it was a nice touch when the Rev invited the Ting Tings on stage for a final rousing 'He Said he Loved Me' which has to be about the best 3 minutes of live music I've ever seen!

So catch the Rev if you can whilst they're still fresh and hungry. Although I suspect they'll be around for years.

Next night out - Enter Shikari, Hallowe'en, Cardiff!