I didn't quite catch that...

Oh shit. The BBC has made yet another mistake. I demand investigations, heads on pikes and a reduction in the TV tax.

Actually, I’d settle for that last on, please.

But what, you ask, is the mistake? Is it more on the Ross/Brand shenanigans? Is it another phone in scandal?

Er, no. It’s a little thing that they appended to the end of this article on the fuckwittery of SF about the RIR homecoming parade.

Major Brown, who is General Officer Commanding for Northern Ireland, said the measures “further underpin our appreciation of the sensitivities surrounding this element of the parade”.

Major Brown, as GOC for Northern Ireland? This being the same Norn Iron that has about 5,000 troops? That’s quite a responsibility for an OF-3. Unless they’re referring to Major General Chris Brown, who’s actually in charge.

I’m sure he’s perfectly happy about being demoted by the Beeb, though.

In the immortal words of jingoists everywhere: they don’t like it up them.

Prospective MPs may no longer have to give their full address when standing for office, under plans being considered by the government.
…
In May the High Court ordered addresses to be published with expenses claims, but MPs voted to keep them private.

Yes, and they jolly well should be allowed to keep their details private. A reasonable expectation of privacy is the right of every citizen of the country, not just the MPs.

If, however, said MPs have been acting against that expectation of privacy, then I see no reason why they should be allowed to have some themselves. So there should be some checking.

If an MP has voted for the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, they lose their right to privacy.

If an MP has voted for the Terrorism Act, in any of its recent guises, they lose their right to privacy.

If an MP has voted for the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, they lose their right to privacy.

If an MP has voted for the Proceeds of Crime Act, they lose their right to privacy.

If an MP has voted for the Identity Cards Act, they lose their right to privacy.

(There are others Acts of Parliament that should cost MPs their right to privacy (like most of the Budgets of recent years, what with the financial spying authorised by them), but the ones above are the biggies. Hell, if I had my druthers they’d cost the offending MPs a hell of a lot more than their right to privacy. Their citizenship should be fucking revoked for a start…)

If, in other words, they have acted in a way totally contrary to the idea that citizens should have a right to privacy, why the fuck should they be allowed one? I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask…

It used to be that you were guilty until proven innocent; now there are quite a few parts of law where it is now our job to prove our innocence upon being accused.

By the same token, it used to be that the government needed a reason to steal an organisation. And they’re trying to change that as well.

n a letter dated October 15, senior civil servant David Hendon, BERR’s Director of Business Relations, asked Nominet chairman Bob Gilbert: “What arguments would you employ to convince my Ministers that the present relationship between government and the company is appropriate in ensuring that public policy objectives in relation to the management of the domain name system and the standing of the UK in the internet community are understood and taken into account?”

Why should you continue to be free of government fuckwittery? asks the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

It’s a simple question to answer. You could go on at length about the fairly decent track record that Nominet has; you could mention that even if the government was to take it over then as crucial infrastructure BERR wouldn’t be the place for it; you could argue that it being non-political is better for all involved.

Or, as I would, you could use the traditional cry of it’s not fucking yours so get your filthy thieving hands off it. It’s not broken, but it would be broken beyond all usefulness if the British fucking government was to get involved. Jaysus, they can’t even manage a ministerial appointment without causing collateral damage; managing some seven million domains would definitely be beyond them…

If you are asked to answer said question, I suggest you go for that second answer. Perhaps moderating the language might yield better results though…

I’ll admit that I’m one of the many people who are less than impressed with Messrs Brand and Ross over their recent shenanigans. But the circus over it is getting out of hand.

The offence:

1. Two presenters with reputations for crassness get together for a pre-recorded show.
2. A guest fails to turn up.
3. Presenter A phones guest.
4. Presenter B starts shouting somewhat private information about Presenter A and the guest’s granddaughter.
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4.
6. Repeat steps 3 & 4.
7. Repeat steps 3 & 4.
8. Repeat steps 3 & 4.
9. Some dimwitted editor decides that it should be broadcast.

The developing outcome:

• Prime Minster gets involved and says that it’s all unacceptable.
• Various other politicians follow suit.
• Presenters offer apologies.
• Guest says that he wants it to go away.
• Granddaughter says to the Currant Bun that Presenters A & B should be sacked.
• BBC goes into full OH SHIT mode and suspends both presenters, pending official investigations.

Was it in bad taste? Yes. Was it exactly the same kind of humour that is only ever funny when coming home from the pub at 3am? Yes. But was it illegal? No. Should it cost people their jobs? Probably not.

My solution is very backward looking and not at all likely to happen, but I think it would please most of the people involved, even those readers of the Current Bun.

Start a service called punch-a-cad.com. The point of this service would be to, on request, send some large gentlemen (preferable with tasteful moustaches and perhaps monocles) to walk up to the boorish louts and to punch them very hard in the face. Actions by punch-a-cad.com operatives on duty would, of course, be exempt from prosecution, provided that they don’t go above GBH.

Thusly the insult to the ‘victim’ is repaid, and the offending boors would be appropriately chastised, without any lasting effects.

A further advantage would be in setting the precedent. Once punch-a-cad.com had been up and running for a while, you could expand their remit to anyone doing kiss-and-tell stories in the press. Which would a) improve the output of the newspapers considerably and b) put a stop to the Sunday World. Win-win.

Hooray! Some of the most annoying, and least effective, security theatre is going to be scaled back.

Airline passengers on both sides of the Atlantic could be free to carry larger bottles of liquids in carry-on luggage under a two-year plan to relax current security rules that sharply restrict the amount of shampoo, hand lotion, and other types of liquids that can be brought in a plane cabin.

Although not because it’s not working; not because it would never work and certainly not because the threat that it was brought in to counter wasn’t a threat at all.

Enabling the change, the TSA official wrote, is new screening technologies that can tell the difference between hair gel and liquid explosives. The TSA is in the process of installing advanced technology X-ray machines throughout the country. The new machines should be in place by the end of 2009, but it will take an additional year for them to be outfitted with software that can identify threatening liquids.

Computed tomography scanners, explosives trace detection equipment, and spectrometers are also being deployed in increasing numbers to ferret out threatening liquids.

No, because enough money will be spent to give each and every international airport more scanning ability than pretty much every hospital radiology department in the world.

Jaysus fecking Christ. Are they still peddling that explosive liquid story? I though that we’d learned better after the terrible events of Superman III. Which were considerably more credible than some of the things we’re being asked to believe these days…

I think that I’ve been fairly subtle over the last months about who I’d want to win in the US election. And it’s obvious as to why: I want McCain to win because I’m too racist to want Obama to win.

It’s not that I don’t like his vacuous nature; it’s not that I don’t like the populism; it’s not my inbuilt distrust of cultish followers. Not, it’s racism.

At least, that’s the sort of thing that’s being implied by stories such as these.

The conventional wisdom, which I share, is that Barack Obama will win this election, perhaps by a healthy margin. But Democrats are nervous wrecks; they’re having nightmares that defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory.

To add to their misery (and guard against complacency), here’s how that horror film could play out:

In the end, the problem was the LIVs. That’s short for “low-information voters”, the three-fifths of the electorate that shows up once every four years to vote for president but mostly hates politics.
…
Obama shifted New Mexico, Iowa and Nevada from red to blue. But there was a reason Virginia hadn’t gone Democratic since 1964. The transformation of the northern part of the state couldn’t overcome a huge McCain margin among whites farther south. They weren’t the racists of their parents’ generation, but they weren’t quite ready to vote for the unthinkable, either.

It’s turning into that same old story: people who say that they’re not voting for Obama are having to defend their opinions, because not to vote for him is becoming unthinkable. He’s young, good looking, progressive¹ and hasn’t bothered with actually saying anything. His opponent dares not to be progressive, and thusly anyone who would vote for him is clearly not a smart person.

The first time I was aware of this sort of thing was the ’92 general election, when all those shy Tories voted one way in the voting booth and another in the exit polls. There’s a reverse sort of thing here as well – lots of posh middle class Catholics say that they’d never vote for Sinn Fein and yet the numbers look suspiciously like some of them do.

But this time round, it’s much much worse. Because it’s not just the traditional forward/backwards looking thing; nor is it a straight left right fight. This time it’s also being portrayed as a racism test: you’re either not racist, in which case if you’ve a brain you’ll vote for Obama, or you are racist, in which case you’ll vote for McCain.

Well, fuck that. I don’t like Obama, I don’t like his policies and I don’t like the way that the media worship his feet.

Against that, I don’t mind McCain. He’s got a record to examine, he’s got a few interesting ideas. And – showing my ignorance again here – I don’t mind Palin either. So, who do you think I’d vote for?

And I’m perfectly happy to say that. Even if it’s just me showing my ignorance and racism…

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¹ – Where ‘progressive’ means ‘very backwards looking indeed’, back before lots of facts got in the way of those lovely redistributive theories of economies and fairness…

From last week’s Economist:

In the EU’s corridors October 2009 is now quietly being touted as an ideal date for a second Irish referendum. Claims that a new Irish vote might be hard to win are brushed aside: Ireland must accept its responsibilities, and make every effort to ratify Lisbon, huff Euro-grandees (and leave the EU if it fails, murmur the hard-core federalists). Yet Ireland faces perhaps the deepest recession of all. Bullying its prime minister, Brian Cowen, into holding a new referendum could amount to leaving whisky and a loaded revolver in the study and expecting him to do the decent thing for Europe.

I’m sure that we can count on Brian Cowen to do the decent thing for both Ireland and Europe.

Considering that, in that metaphor, the decent thing would be to drink the whiskey and come out shooting…

Hooray! It’s Give Everybody An Extra Hour In Bed Day! Yes, the clocks have gone back by an hour, which means that we all get a lie in. I like.

Less Hooray! BT are using this as a stunt to screw with a winning formula.

Middle England should prepare to drop its trousers, bend over the table and accept the painful truth that if anything in this Sceptred Isle was ever sacred, it isn’t any more.

As of the end of British Summer Time on Sunday, BT’s famous speaking clock will be voiced by Tinker Bell – the result of a “sponsorship deal with Disney” which will also see the traditional pips replaced with bells.

Unless it’s for comedy reasons, the speaking clock should not be fucked with. End of. And it would appear that el Reg agrees:

Back in 2003, Lenny Henry’s 123 gig helped raise £200k for Comic Relief – but then that was for charity and not to punt some bloody speaking fairy flick.

Quite.

Oh well. I hope you’ve all enjoyed that hour in bed…

Holy jaysusin’ begorrah. I knew that the Irish were in difficulty¹, but this is a roundabout way of getting funds.

A company owned by one of Ireland’s richest businessmen has been fined a record 3.25m euro by the Republic of Ireland’s financial watchdog.
…
In a statement, Sean Quinn said the company “had made loans to a related company which amounted to €288m in May 2008 when the accounts were finalised.

“These loans breached insurance regulations and as a result of this the Financial Regulator has sanctioned Quinn Insurance and myself. I accept complete responsibility for this breach of regulation.

“While I accept that I made mistakes, I feel that the levels of fines do not reflect the fact that there was no risk to policyholders or the taxpayer but are a result of the pressures existing in the current environment. However, we will pay the fines and move on.”

Did the guy deserve a big ass punishment? Yes he did. This big? I don’t know.

But it’s all about redistributing the lack-of-wealth down south at the minute, so I’d expect things like this to happen more often in the not too distant future…

Pity, because I’d always had a bit of a soft spot for Quinn. He’d made himself bloody rich, yes, but he’d also made life considerably easier for a lot of people. What with throwing money at the insurance market when it was ridiculously overly expensive up here, and rescuing BUPA Ireland when it was threatened by government fuckwittery and greed a few years ago. But if he broke the rules, he’s gotta pay a price.

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¹ – as evidenced by the truly excellent idea of cutting ministerial and senior civil service salaries, which should really be happening all over the world, and not just in times of economic woe.

Is there anything less interesting in politics than a big old bitchy game of he said/she said?

At the end of the day, no laws were broken in either Mandleson’s case, or Osbourne’s case. So please just shut the fuck up about it. Can’t we all just get back to calling Brown a cocksucker and continue to arrange plans for his fall from power?

Also, to Steve Mawhinney, editor of BBC Political News, learn a little about your subject please.

I suspect that never before has the holiday island of Corfu received quite as much attention in the British media as it has in recent weeks.

Really? So the Corfu Incident, in which 44 men lost their lives, the Royal Navy was shot at by shore based artillery and nearly lost two destroyers, was just a little diversion? Certainly not the sort of thing that the press would have paid more attention to than a shadow minister talking to a rich bloke, anyway…

They can’t be serious, can they?

Declan Ganley, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled and masterminded the successful “No” campaign in the Irish referendum, is a target all the same. Many in the European establishment would like to see Mr Ganley come a cropper, see his campaigning days terminated and his nascent political career liquidated before he can do any more damage.

The mysterious Mr Ganley is now talking about turning his think-tank Libertas into an EU-wide political party. He’s been touring Europe looking for support for his campaign to turn next year’s elections to the European Parliament into another referendum: on what he calls the anti-democratic Europe of the Lisbon Treaty. You remember – that’s the one that so many say is just like the constitution the Dutch and French threw out.

But the European Parliament has instructed the Irish authorities to investigate his funding and motives: many believe that the mysterious Mr Ganley is a stooge of the American military industrial complex, doing the bidding of the right-wing neo-cons in the CIA and Pentagon, hell-bent on smashing the rise of a political Europe.

You’re right. It couldn’t be that the EU didn’t sell the new Treaty. It couldn’t be that the Irish government was less than full throated in its campaigning, having other (useful) things to spend its political capital on. It couldn’t be that the Irish were a tad annoyed at being told that the EU Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty weren’t one and the same, when they clearly were.

No, the Irish said no because of a US conspiracy. Clearly.

There are some delusions that just can’t be believed…

Google Maps is a pretty cool application, but for most of the time it has little real use.

Yes, it can do directions, but so can a thousand other services, and Google’s isn’t the best among them.

Yes, it’s fun to see if you can spot your car from space¹, but it’s not massively useful.

Now, however, something useful may be appearing.

England’s Highways Agency has announced a hookup with Google which presents live traffic information overlaid atop the online ad firm’s popular cloud map app, Google Maps.
…
The Traffic button on Google Maps overlays colour-coded average speed data for motorways and major A-roads, in a format which is at least as easy to use as the Highways Agency’s own website – though more data intensive, which could be an issue for mobile users paying by the megabyte.

Click to embiggen

Now, it’s only for very major roads, and only in England. But if that was to roll out across the UK it’d be pretty damn useful.

Of course, if the information coming in was less than useful, the information coming out would be garbage also. So someone would need to improve upon the NI Roads Service effort before it could kick off here…

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¹ – No, I couldn’t, but I could see my old car outside my door. And I know it’s not really from space, but you know what I mean…

And once again, the thing that is wrong goes by the job title (devolved) Minister for Education.

Academic selection should continue, according to a body which represents Catholic grammar school principals.

The Catholic Heads Association said schools had been given “limited leadership” on the issue by the Department of Education.

They also said a lack of progress had “caused apprehension”.

Education Minister Caitriona Ruane said academic selection was wrong and added that she was “determined to continue to pursue a course to end it”.

Please, Minister, be so kind as to provide evidence for this. For information, some things that don’t count as evidence are listed below:

• Rants about class;
• Rants about Unionists holding up change;
• Rants about change being inevitable and anyone not being for it being ‘out of touch’;

On the other hand, one thing that does count as evidence, although it doesn’t help you with your claim:

• Northern Irish pupils consistently out performing UK pupils by all academic metrics over the last decades.

Here’s hoping you can get something along those lines to back you up. Although you’ve been talking for some time now and have yet to find such a thing, so the odds aren’t looking that good…

Yes, I know, I’m one to talk about ranting rather than producing facts. However, I’m not a Minister of State, and I’m not tearing up a working education system in the name of flawed ideology. I think that if I was either I’d be looking for a rational excuse. Ms Ruane doesn’t seem burdened by such convention.

I had a look at this story yesterday, and it got my goat.

Foreign drivers owe a London council more than £4.5m in parking fines, it has emerged, with owners of luxury “super cars” the worst culprits.

Westminster Council said parking fines on more than 80% of foreign-owned cars and motorbikes were unpaid, as it cannot trace their owners overseas.

They include a Rolls Royce Phantom owner who owes £3,000 in fines.

The council wants the legal right to access overseas driver and vehicle registration data.

And then this morning, my thoughts yesterday got my goat.

You see, yesterday I thought I had the perfect rationale for not giving the council this power. Obviously, my rationale would be that less power in the hands of government (local or national) is always a good thing, but I thought that even those who didn’t see this basic truth would be swayed by my initial argument.

This argument was basic: the only way to reasonably get the ability to get information on foreign cars would be to share information about UK cars with foreigners. And what with the somewhat shaky reputation of some foreign legal systems, that’s effectively just handing over all that information to fraudsters and other not-nice people.

A masterful argument, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’d have been celebrated the world over had I gone with it.

However, the second thoughts this morning were much less celebratory. Why the fuck are we to worry about the corruption, ineptitude and all round rubbishness of foreign governments when the councils here are using anti-terror powers to spy on applicants for schools; when the central government loses confidential information on literally half the country; when the DVLA sells your private data to anyone who can mock up a parking related letterhead?

We used to have something of a reputation for being civilised and not that rubbish at governance. Now we come of unfavourably in comparisons with the traditional punchlines to international corrupt government jokes.

When did that happen?

There was someone on one of the blogs a while ago (I think that it may have been The Levee Breaks, but I can’t find it there…) who asked Are you an easyJet speedy boarding tosser?

I have to admit, I have been. When the speedy boarding first came out, I gave it a go. For £2 you couldn’t be bad to it – it got you out of the worst of the scrum. But I didn’t make a fuss about it; if there was an advantage (there used to be on the way out of Gatwick, but not out of Belfast) I’d take it but there wasn’t much in the way of point in kicking up a fuss if that advantage didn’t materialise.

I’ll also admit that I’ve used Ryanair’s priority scheme, but only when it was free with internet check in. Not any more. And again, I didn’t make a fuss. At the end of the day you were going to be sat in the same metal tube and the doors open to disembark at the same time for everyone, so why pay the £8 or whatever it is?

I’ve been flying to and from the UK quite a bit over the last few years, and considerably more this year. This time, I saw something I hadn’t seen before: I saw someone making a fuss about the benefits of speedy/priority boarding.

Ever since Mr Levee asked the above question, I’ve thought of users of the service as speedy boarding tossers, even when I was among them. But now I have actually seen people deserving of the name. And they (two separate people) made sufficient tossers of themselves, between the barging, the arguing and the smug expressions, that the entire flight was likely thinking the same thing.

Ah well. Guess I’ll not be emulating them next time out…

Incidentally, my flight back last night was one of those nasty ones. Bumping all over the place, and with the seatbelt light on far longer than it was off. So I expected to have the usual ending to such a flight: landing with a bang and a collective sigh of relief. Imagine my surprise when the driver set us down with barely a noise. Actual best landing I’ve ever had. Apparently the pilots at Ryanair can fly, and aren’t just chosen because they *stereotype budget airline comment removed for reasons of wanting to fly again*…

You Are a Cow

You are strong and very determined. You can remain stoic when times are tough. You are stable and patient. You are able to do mundane tasks without resentment or boredom. You are a caring, nurturing creature. You are willing to sacrifice a lot to take care of those you love. You are smart and very observant. While you may seem passive, you are just taking in everything around you.

Found at The Garden. And slightly less than complimentary, if I’m honest…

Some people may ask: what was it about the smart, funny and beautiful TLG that drew my attention?

Well, the smarts, the funny and the beautiful all played their part. But so did a little character trait that came forth on a recent text or two:

Hooray indeed. I’m just having a rant about positive discrimination-got another one of these bollocks things about offering me coaching and mentoring because as a woman i couldn’t possibly be successful on my own merits. Fuckwit patronising arseholes. Bollocks. Pisses me off, is so insulting. Anyway, how’s your day going? Xxxxx

To which I replied something along the lines of Ah, so I take it you’ll be going to this little coaching session? Apparently she won’t:

Will I bollocks. Would sooner set myself on fire. What a pile of steaming pc wank. This is why men have no respect for women in senior positions-they think we got there cos of this sort of crap, or to fill a quota. Don’t even get me started on quotas. This is not what women tied themselves to railings for. Xxxxx

Yes, TLG can fire off an off the cuff rant that puts me to shame. It’s almost enough to bring a tear to the eye…

A little more about Geoff Hoon’s daftness yesterday.

But first, a little bit of background from Dictionary.com:

civil liberty
–noun Usually, civil liberties.
1. the freedom of a citizen to exercise customary rights, as of speech or assembly, without unwarranted or arbitrary interference by the government.
2. such a right as guaranteed by the laws of a country, as in the U.S. by the Bill of Rights.

In other words, civil liberties are our rights not to have things done to us by the state. We have a right not to be killed by the state (unlessin’ there’s a death penalty, and then not before a trial); we have a right not to be reduced to barcodes; we have a right not to be jailed for speaking our minds.¹

Geoffrey William Hoon, Secretary of State for Transport, clearly doesn’t get the simple definition of the words, nor does he get their meaning. More of his interview from last night has been pointed out by el Reg:

Ignoring Jacqui Smith’s call for “a well-informed debate, characterised by openness, rather than mere opinion, by reason and reasonableness” in her Tuesday speech, Hoon continued last night: “And if they’re going to use the internet to communicate with each other and we don’t have the power to deal with that then you’re giving a licence to terrorists to kill people.

“The biggest civil liberty of all is not to be killed by a terrorist,” the minister concluded, finger wagging.

Unless the terrorist is an agent of the state² then that emboldened sentence is meaningless. The actions of a terrorist do not impinge on our civil liberties at all; it’s not something that they do. They can impinge on some of our rights, yes; the right to life, the right to freedom of speech, that sort of thing. but when they do so it’s a crime, and they can be punished for it.

It’s only when governments use fear of those crimes to use the law to interfere with our right to life, or our right to freedom of movement, or our right to freedom of speech, that it becomes a civil liberties issue.

Not that I’d expect someone in the current cabinet to be able to see such nuances…

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¹ – Note, please, that the current government has violated all of these in one way or another.

² – I’m paranoid, but I’m not that paranoid…

Geoff Hoon joins the list of people who have long been thought of as inept, but now are shown to be actively malevolent.

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has said the government is prepared to go “quite a long way” with civil liberties to “stop terrorists killing people”.

He was responding to criticism of plans for a database of mobile and web records, saying it was needed because terrorists used such communications.

The government today announced the regulation of breathing; the location of all lungs would be recorded at all times, as would the amount of air either entering or leaving those lungs. Transport Secretary Geoff Goon said that this was needed because terrorists use breathing to carry out their nefarious activities.

Mr Hoon: just saying that terrists use something isn’t enough justification to make the rest of us suspects for using the same thing, dickwad. And the sooner that you, and all your little megalomaniac friends in the Cabinet, figure that out, the less the rest of us will have to bitchshap you in future life.

See? We’re providing you with helpful advice here. It’s a service…

J.D: You, my friend, have just been story-topped!

If you’re trying to impress people in a new job, and at a time when it’s difficult for people in horse-shit to get press time when the grown-ups are busy with real things, there are a couple of options.

One, you could be sensible, realistic and get grounded in said new job. Then, once you know what you’re talking about, you could come out with a comprehensive and realistic strategy and/or target.

Or, two, you could do what Ed Milliband has done: the exact opposite.

The government has committed the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the middle of this century.

Climate Change and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the current 60% target would be replaced by a higher goal.

An 80% drop in carbon emissions? Perhaps by closing all power stations, stopping all personal transportation and outlawing electricity you’d have a hope of getting there. But, in this here real world, that isn’t going to happen. And Milliband the younger must know that. Of course, the 60% target was also horseshit, and he’d have known that. So he’s obviously just story-topping to get his gob in the papers, knowing that he’ll be long gone by the time anyone comes to judge. He’ll be able to point to his leadership early on, and then say that it’s not his fault that people couldn’t match up to his lofty targets.

But hey, maybe if everyone started using wind – like in the fabulous planned London Array, then those targets could be met.

The Array is expected to begin coming on line from 2012, and will provide as much as one thousandth of the UK’s present energy needs when it reaches full capacity. The government and the project’s backers prefer to say that it will generate “enough power for three-quarters of a million homes”.

They’d need to be very dark, cold homes full of smelly people wearing dirty clothes and eating their food raw. An average UK household uses 22,795 kilowatt hours a year as of 2001: thus 750,000 such homes would require more than 17,000 gigawatt-hours annually. But the Array will produce only 3,100 gigawatt-hours. (PDF, page 3. The old renewables fudge of only considering electricity consumption – and forgetting about the more significant gas or heating oil – has been used.)

So perhaps Mr Milliband has done his sums, and thinks that the target is obtainable. And, if that’s the case, he’s more than happy to send us all back into the dark ages to do it.

Brilliant.