They say that what goes around comes around and what goes up must surely come down. But sometimes these things happen embarrassingly fast and that is certainly the case for the red faced boys in blue on Merseyside…

Within a week of the Liverpool police delight at their first arrest using a remote controlled spy in the sky camera, the tables are turned as they find themselves nicked.  Ironically the mini chopper’s remote controllers had their playtime cut short after an eagle eyed hack at the Guardian had been watching from afar – and then tipped-off the CAA that a remote controlled CCTV drone was being used by the police without a licence.

Up until that point the police thought they were free to use their latest spy cam due to a loophole in UK law whereby these £40,000 bits of super-snooping kit, complete with thermal imaging capabilities, were categorised as ‘toys’. This meant that police could deploy them in what ever way took their fancy. And so it was that the Derbyshire force used their new toy to keep an eye on the attendees at a BNP rally last August.

However, some senior police officers have shared concerns raised by civil liberties groups that expanding use of such surveillance drones is a step to far in the relentless expansion of Big Brother systems. According to a First Post report, Hampshire’s deputy chief constable, Ian Redhead, had warned of an “Orwellian situation” with cameras on every street corner, while Colin Langham-Fitt, acting chief constable of Suffolk, had said: “There should be a debate about the ongoing erosion of civil liberties.”

Nevertheless, it was the Liverpool fuzz who were first to make an arrest by using their remote controlled spy cam. Unfortunately for them though, that legal loophole was closed by a change in the law that came into force on the January 1st this year.  Since then, all drones under 7kg need Civil Aviation Authority  permission to fly within 164ft of people and within 492ft of buildings.

I rather doubt if this is the last we will see or hear of these drones though. And, with hugely powerful forces like BEA systems developing such kit, I’m sure it will only be a matter of time until license to use them are duly issued…

It would seem that our real Big Brother in Britain plans to use unmanned spy drone cameras to look after us even better than before. Ah, how lovely you may think. But maybe not...

Frankly, I am quite concerned by the idea of UK police using such high-tech spy-in-the-sky kit, currently deployed in war zones like Afghanistan, but now for ‘routine’ monitoring of riders, motorists and protesters, in our occasionally Green and Pleasant Land. There are also some bloggers out there like BB Watch who take a very dim view of this latest news. To be fair though, these new additions to the armoury of surveillance equipment our governors and private enforcement companies have to hand are not called spy drones at all. Oh no.

It seems, according to responses to a Freedom of Information FOI request submitted by the Guardian that the folk who make this kit are the arms manufacturer BAE Systems, and they produce a range of ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’ aka UAVs. Worryingly though for some of us perhaps, good old BAE is converting a fleet of UAVs from use in warfare to use by a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
The FOI request forced release of report documents from the soothingly titled South Coast Partnership. But it turns out that this is a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE.

There report reveals the following news:

“Five other police forces have signed up to the scheme, which is considered a pilot preceding the countrywide adoption of the technology for “surveillance, monitoring and evidence gathering”. The partnership’s stated mission is to introduce drones “into the routine work of the police, border authorities and other government agencies” across the UK.”

So there you go then. And all I can say to anyone who is starting to harbour suspicions that this plan may not be entirely driven by an earnest desire to look after us all better than ever could be in danger. And the danger you’d be in is of joining that widely reviled group called sceptics. And for those who go further with thoughts that a primary driver for getting this kit into action is to dish out loads more penalty charge notices PCNs for such heinous crimes as exceeding speed limits by a few mile and hour etc. could be in graver danger still. You could be heading down the slippery slopes to the doom of becoming an extreme cynic…

I am rarely surprised by the depths that a desperate politician will plunge to, while trying to justify action that stinks. In my experience this often happens when a plan for a government move is being pushed that is nothing more than state backed extortion or highway robbery – and that looks to most law abiding citizens like the acts of a robber baron rather than a servant of the people.

But as you can see by the expression on Cllr Chalkley’s face, even he is struggling to make it look straight as he tries to deny that his council’s latest plan to end ‘free’ parking in London’s West End and throughout Westminster, is just a new way to screw more cash from riders of motorcycles and scooters and motorists.

On the face of it this latest plan by WCC may seem like very bad news. In essence it is to put parking charges up again and end ‘free’ parking on single yellow lines up till midnight!  But I think that there is a huge silver lining to this otherwise very dark cloud, and especially  for all who have been battling with Westminster over their attempts to make an ‘experimental’ M/C parking tax a permanent fixture. More details at NTBPT. The bottom line here for me is that this latest move is already being seen by the majority of people and businesses in the West End as nothing more than a revenue grabbing move that will do a great deal more harm to all concerned than good. In turn, this majority in the heart of the capital will start to see the riders who have taken to the streets to oppose the council’s tax attacks on them less like a nuisance – and more like knights in shinning armour – and no matter whether the steeds they ride are great big motorbikes or nifty scooters.

Another key factor here for me – and IMHO all riders to consider – is that this is NOT A PARTY POLITICAL ISSUE. Westminster are of course a Tory council, but UK councils of every colour including Labour and Lib Dem, have, up until now, followed WCC’s lead in creating ever more sophisticated cash cows for milking motorists in the name of ‘traffic management’ – and supposedly ‘encouraging’ people to walk, cycle or go by privatised ‘public transport’. And, of greatest concern to me, they are also watching with keen interest to see if Westminster can get away with turning all motorcycle and scooter riders into a new source of local revenue by imposing extra road user taxes targeted at them.

Now, back to my views on the latest in Westminster and the pic of Chalkley. My choice of image may seem a tad unfair as this shot may have caught him at a ‘bad’ moment. Even more revealing though (as you can see in the BBC interview linked below) is the long pause as he says “…err…” while composing himself to deliver a statement that looks to me like a bit of a fib! To be frank though, anyone prone to strong feelings about weaselly attempts to justify more tax, under the cover of ecoist faith or ‘traffic management’, may even suggest that what our elected member may be saying about Westminster’s latest plan is a heaving steamer!

Nevertheless, in the sprit of fairness and decency that I try to live and write by, all I can say about whether lies are being told or not is that you will have to make your own mind up. And, you may find this live BBC interview helpful in drawing your own conclusions.

What I will say though is that one of things that troubles me most about this latest plan to end what is commonly described as ‘free’ parking – including by the objectivity seeking BBC – is that PARKING A MOTORCYCLE, SCOOTER OR ANY OTHER PRIVATE MOTOR VEHICLE IS NEVER FREE in Britain. As I and others have said before, all law abiding vehicle owners in the UK pay far more in motoring taxes and duties than most people in the developed world, and vastly more than is ever spent on public highways.

Lastly, I will add that the real reasons why congestion continues to be a great problem in UK towns and cities, and especially Westminster has nothing to do with parking as dear old Danny Chalkley and many others claim. The key causes of ongoing and often worsening congestion is that most local authorities continue cutting the amount of road space that the majority of people are allowed to use. And, as this report ends on Crossroads Rider, Let battle continue in the fight against robber barons – were ever and who ever they may be and whatever they’re trying to nick, be-it our cash or public highway road space!

Buses, cars, vans and trucks have been stuck in a chaotic mess in London during the last two days. At surface level this seems to be due to an inch or so of snow and temperatures dropping just below freezing for a few hours – and a failure by our traffic managers to cope with that happening. But, why does a well predicted episode of regular climate change, in one of the most advanced cities on the planet, turn a relatively small weather event from a little drama into a big crisis? Many beleaguered travelers are asking Who Is To Blame? But finding the real answers may be harder than they realise. And, in addition to most children there are some lucky folk who are able to see these events through rose tinted goggles as ‘brilliant’. One lady features in a news video for the Guardian and goes so far as saying that “everyone’s having a good time”. She goes on to rave. “All the schools are shut. Brilliant! No-one’s at work. Brilliant! No cars on the street. Brilliant!” I kid you not, but suggest that there are a significant number of us for whom the snow and traffic chaos fell a little short of being brilliant. For me, snow is fine but treacherous road conditions and hellish essential journeys are not – and the key reasons for this ridiculous state of affairs are not in my view practical.

The real driving force in Britain generally and London in particular, is the obsession our traffic managers and transport planners have with prevailing theories about the ideal ways to move people and goods. But as most of us realise we do not live in an ideal world, and better distinctions need making between worthy attempts deliver real improvements and action that is guided by dogma fuelled dreams…

Over the years I have noticed variations in public attitudes and transport authority’s responses to episodes of snowfall in UK towns and cities. Generally, the extent of disruption to essential travel or ‘traffic chaos’ caused by a well predicted fall of an inch or two of snow has less and less impact on daily urban life, the further north you are from London.

It can be argued that this is because it snows more up north and so the people and their local authorities have more pressing and frequent needs to be properly equipped and prepared to minimise the impact that snow and freezing temperatures has on essential travel. It can also be argued that the pots of money from which all road management must be funded are if anything shrinking in size – and this inevitably leads to decreased capacity for local councils to meet demand for such rudimentary action as gritting roads before it snows and freezes.

But in my view there is a far more critical reason why a well predicted inch of snow on a Monday in December can turn road transport in London into a slithering shambles of misery and massive waste of that most precious of all resources on earth, time.

The key to the problem is this. Wherever you look at those who are responsible for urban traffic management there is an all pervading orthodoxy that paves the way for chaos raining as soon as it snows. The fact is that the main thrust of efforts by a generation of highway planners and traffic managers is directed by an obsessive quest for a transport holy grail. And the grail is called ‘modal shift’ or ‘behaviour change’. And what it is about is the business of ‘discouraging’ people from using privately owned motor vehicles. Over the last two decades enthusiasm for this mission has reached levels of religious fervour and devotion among and increasingly widespread range of people and town planners. The ‘motorists’ or truck driver is vilified as a selfish, environment and planet destroyer and so anything that makes the use of cars vans and trucks more difficult has become a jolly good thing.

So although this is rarely mentioned in polite circles, the incentives to really optimise the flow of traffic, especially in London, is as close to zero as makes no difference. And this applies to council traffic controllers, and hoards of highly paid transport planning professionals in TfL or various wings of central government’s bureaucratic machine. At either end of the UK transport pros spectrum the big prizes only go to those who come up with measures that will, in theory at least, ‘get people out of cars and vans’. This invariably involves making life more difficult for drivers, and failing to grit roads is one thing that does that for sure. Or, fail to grit the side roads that are where people live and need to drive, and that overloads the main roads till they get gridlocked.

The real problem for all of us is not the occasional outbreak of snow, that most city controllers in the rest of the developed world wouldn’t dare allow to bring life to a crawl. The real problem is that the unfortunate quest that drives our traffic managers really is for a non-existent holy grail. The modal shift grail being passionate pursued for two decades has not happened, despite the well spun stats that seem to show it has. And, in reality there is no plausible evidence to show that modal shift can occur to any truly significant extent in Britain. This is for the simple reason that the alternatives of walking, cycling and public transport cannot meet the vast majority of needs we have for the transport of people and goods on which the nations’ health depends.

But there is an even bigger elephant in the room that our traffic management gurus and there disciples fail to see. Even in London, which has the greatest abundance of ‘public’ transport in the form of buses on it’s urban road network than anywhere else in Britain, it is important to recognise what these vehicles really are.

A bus is actually a big privately owned and heavily subsidised truck for carrying heavily subsidised people. And when these vehicles are not running close to empty which many are, the occupants during peak times are transported in conditions that would cause outcry if they were cattle. The much loved and hated ‘Bendy-bus’ is in fact an absurdly long, junction blocking and occasionally deadly articulated lorry.

Now, if you mix the collection of vehicles that are in reality needed to keep life in our cities going, shroud the management of traffic in a cloak of wishful thinking and then sprinkle the whole caboodle with an inch of snow, you get we what we usually get. Good old TRAFFIC CHAOS!

Although the title and content of Local Transport Today (LTT) might suggest that its greatest role might be as the featured anorak mag on Have I Got News for you, it is a twice monthly bible and font of wisdom for the top, and most influential transport professionals in Britain.

And, as such, it is likely that the following LTT article may well have more potential to trigger significant change in attitudes among transport policy and implementation professionals than most single news items...

There have, of course, been many reports of concern over the scientific legitimacy of the basis for constraining use of motorised transport to save the planet. These appear with increasing frequency in a vast range of news sources from mainstream print and TV media to Twitter. But, IMHO, very few have the potential to trigger such an eventually significant shift in attitudes among transport policy as the piece below. With thanks to Landor Publishing for permission to reproduce here.

illustration chosen by TC.com while LTT says…

Transport-climate agenda at risk as ‘consensus science’ crumbles

Public trust in the transport climate change policy agenda may have been dealt a major blow by the unauthorised release of emails and computer code from one of the world’s leading climate science centres, the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU). (TC adds that the email leak from CRU is now under investigation)
The material shows that a small group of the climate scientists have worked to block publication of academic papers by skeptics, refused to release data following Freedom of Information Act requests, and even appear to have manipulated data to strengthen the argument that man’s CO2 emissions are warming the planet.
‘Climategate’ - as the incident has been dubbed - has swept across the intern et with Google this week recording over 12 million pages using the term. Mainstream media coverage has been patchier but here too the ‘consensus’ view that the science is “settled” is breaking down. A page article in The Sunday Times discussed the ‘The great climate science scandal’ and Wednesday’s front page headline of The Daily Express went further, reporting ‘The big climate change fraud’.
The re-opening of the scientific debate could be significant for transport, given the almost universal acceptance of the man-made warming paradigm within the sector.
The Association of British Drivers, which has been the only transport campaign group to refuse to accept the “settled science” policy framework, said the emails “vindicated” its stance. “UEA is at the centre of research on current and past temperatures, which claims that the modem warm period has been unprecedented due mainly to man-made CO2 emissions,” said its environment spokesman Paul Biggs. “But what if the scientific process has been manipulated, by an influential group of scientists who also dominate the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], in order to make a stronger case for man-made global warming and create and protect a consensus? Some unambiguous emails suggest that this is exactly what has happened.” There are signs of a growing backlash against the climatechange agenda within the Conservative Party. “Today, the economic climate makes people question whether we can afford the expense of these policies,” said prominent MP David Davis in The Independent this week. He said the “fixation” of the green movement with setting ever tougher targets was a policy “destined to collapse”.LTT continued…

“Many of the people signed up to the green movement instinctively believe in statist, regulatory, dirigiste regimes,” he added. “They forget these approaches have failed many times before - or perhaps believe the sheer importance of the cause will carry them through policy weaknesses.”
Former Tory minister and now broadcaster Michael Portillo said on the BBC’s This Week it was time for the scientific data underpinning global warming concerns to be re-examined. Asked by presenter Andrew Neil whether he thought the “one-party state” of global warming was starting to “fray at the edges”, Portillo said: “Well I hope it is because it’s more than a one-party state, it’s almost a religion. It’s a new authoritarianism. It’s a way of people bossing other people around.”
The release of the emails provided the perfect launchpad for former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson’s launch of an ‘all-party non-party’ think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which aims to foster a “proper debate” on a topic that has become “seriously unbalanced and irrationally alarmist”.
UEA this week announced that the CRU’s director, Professor Phil Jones, had stood down until completion of an independent review into the allegations arising from the “hacking”. Jones accepted that some of the emails did “not read well” but added: “That the world is warming is based on a range of sources: not only temperature records but other indicators such as sea level rise, glacier retreat and less Arctic sea ice.
“Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Center in the United States, among others,” he added. “Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results.”
But even some supporters of man-made global warming believe the emails could cause lasting damage. Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at UEA’s school of environmental sciences, said last week: “From outside, and even to the neutral, the attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. To those with bigger axes to grind it is just what they wanted to find.” He predicted that “the reverberations of this episode will live on long beyond [Copenhagen).”
Leading ‘green’ commentator George Monbiot said in his Guardian column: “It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails … could scarcely be more damaging. I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.”
Some observers say the computer code and accompanying comments by CRU programmers are even more damaging than the emails. The programmer makes frequent pointed criticisms about the quality of the CRU’s temperature database and at one point writes: “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah - there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have :-)”

Whatever you think about man-made climate change and worldwide plans to cut personal mobility and spend trillions on addressing the global warming ‘problem’, there is no doubt that we are reaching a critical and potentially dangerous turning point. The point is this. After some resistance an inquiry is now looming to investigate a momentous leak of emails that cast doubt on the motives of climate change scientists. These communications are between key people at the vanguard of the ‘science’ on which world leaders and their publics base many passionately held beliefs that man-made global warming is real is set to create insurmountable catastrophe and doom for us all.

And in case you didn’t know, this latest development follows a big leak of emails that throws new light on the validity & reliability of ‘evidence’ from pro global warming scientists. But that has prompted more news carrying worms to crawl out of the woodwork of various skeleton cupboards. It now transpires that a BBC bod with a blog ‘decided’ not to bother reporting the leak as soon as he knew about this undeniably momentous and newsworthy event.

So, it is now clearly crucial that we have an inquiry into this ‘theft’ of private email correspondence between key figures whose ‘scientific’ research and government advisory work is paid for with public funds. But there is far bigger and potentially more dangerous issue at stake here for us all in our age of mega spun ‘news’ and politicised science.

The future direction of government thinking about climate change thought the developed world could be changed in the aftermath of this inquiry – or not. And what happens next may depend on one thing above all. Is it possible or likely that this investigation will o be a truly independent examination that will reveal as much truth as there is to be found between the lines of these communications? The Economist shares my concerns and view that ‘political orthodoxy must not silence scientific argument’.

At this point I would love to say that the answer to that question is the same as it is on TV talent shows, namely, you the public decided. But sadly we can’t always get what you want you know, but maybe if we try hard some times we just might find that we what get what we need…

What do you give the beleaguered British traveller or mover of goods who is attempting to do so by rail? How about the UK’s first rail fare to break the £1,000 barrier? As noted by the Guardian.
Then juxtapose this ‘public transport’ pricing landmark with news that road congestion is on the rise again after it fell for a while in credit crunched 2009.
The latest figures out today on road traffic congestion from Traffic Master & analysis by the AA show that it is rising again.

Edmund King, AA president, said: “Although we don’t welcome an increase in congestion, we do welcome the fact that it indicates that the economy is picking up. Our nation is dependent on road travel and congestion acts as a barometer of economic activity.
But is the rise in car congestion a good indicator that people are feeling less pinched? Frankly, I think it is it more to do with the increasing pressure people are under to use cars and vans in the face of escalating public transport fares and cuts in services.

Plans to increase tax on fuel and energy supplies in the name of tackling climate change are being greeted with increasing scepticism and hostility as the ongoing financial crisis sharpens views on what people are prepared to do to ‘save the planet’ from climate change. Now, the BBC says that the UK government has is to be investigated by the Advertising Standards Agency for spending £6million of tax payer’s money on a TV ‘Carbon Monster’ ad to scare children into telling their parents that we’re all going to die in heatwaves while the world is flooded as a result of man-made climate change.The Times transport correspondent, Ben Webster reports on this with the reverence one can expect from a man-made global warming/climate change believer. Conversely, man-made global warming doubter, James Delingpole of the Mail online, expresses a rather more sceptical view of the merits of the £6million government campaign to scare UK kids into believing that we’re all going to die unless we pay more carbon tax. News of all this has even raised eyebrows down under in The Australian. Frankly, all I will say about all this for now is that you couldn’t make it up.

As the late great Douglas Adams revealed in one of the finest books about transport, travel and everything ever, namely; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, the answer to the question; what is the meaning of life? Is 42. (As the BBC explain here) And, lest you have forgotten the stern warning that our Prime Minister, Mr Brown, issued last week, let me remind you now that we now have only 42 DAYS(!) to save the world from frying – and the UK from being awash with floods and heatwaves – and associated unseemly climatic catastrophes. There has been a mixture of reactions to this news and of course my highlighting it here last week. Of these, some seem to be giving the situation the sort of earnest attention that our PM will like – amongst whom is a rather concerned sausage called Anna of chemistryworldblog. Then again, in my trawl through the blogosphere I came across a slightly more cynical sausage called Mrs Rigby – who seems to have links with all sorts of folk with a rather more sceptical view of our PM’s latest decree than he might care to see. However, closer to home, I have been focused on tackling a more immediate and, for me at least, pressing transport related problem – and of course it’s potential impact on speeding up or slowing down the end of life on Earth as we know it. This has arisen with the arrival last night of my best mate’s son – who is staying saying with me here at TC Towers while doing a week of work experience in a very prestigious department of Mr Brown’s UK government. (This, I hasten to add, was not arranged by me but the lad’s well connected Economics teacher in Wales)

Anyway, this contribution to the education of my mate’s son presented the challenge of a daily commute between Sarf London and the heart of Westminster. – And, of course, a specific concern as to what would be the best balance between a desire to save the planet that many well educated teenagers seem to have these days – and my duty in loco parentis to get the lad back and forth between his temporary place of residence and work without adding too much stress for all concerned – and to do so within the bounds of real world transport right now as distinct from vogue theories about it. Perhaps sadly for the future of the planet and all who who wail on her about the need to shun motorised transport, Walking and bicycling the six and half miles were ruled out for various reasons. These included the lad’s blissful ignorance about the streets of London that has resulted from a life in the shelter of Welsh Wales. Finally we settled on a combination of one or two buses and a dive into the dark deeps of the Northern Line branch of London’s underground rail system, colloquially known as the Tube. And this reminded me that the strength of public and political enthusiasm for combustion engined buses – including the much revered London Routemaster has ebbed and flowed since they first plied for trade in the capital in the early 20th Century. In fact a quick skip through the web reveals that many still regard these large people carriers as a Transport of Delight. Two of them even performed a song about them back in days when political correctitude was yet to be invented and spread to save our minds from pollution of an ideological kind. As to whether we have made the best transport decision for this week of teenage commuting, I guess we all have to wait and see. But in the meantime the wonders of the world wide web enable you to hear what Flanders and Swann sang about the Transport of Delight when the end of the world was expected to come from us running out of oil and the world cooling towards a new Ice Age. Oh how transport times change, as well as our climate…

Message from Leon. I have decided to change the format for TC.com for a while in recognition of the impact that the Climate Change agenda is having on transport policy thinking and plans for action. I have posted more detail on this new approach in ‘about’ and start a new series of blogs as the countdown to the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Summit begins…

Day two: Sorry folks, but contrary to previous claims, it turns out that the world was not saved by PM Gordon Brown and his old New Labour government when they agreed to spend countless £billions of UK taxpayers’ money on bailing out the ‘merchant bankers’ who plunged us into a global financial crisis. Go here for Gord’s great gaff on that front. Now it transpires that far from being saved, worse is to come. “We have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe”. Says the UK Prime Minister. Go here to read what the BBC have to say about this or see and hear Gordon deliver his stark warning in person about the imminent prospect in Britain of “frequent droughts and a rising wave of floods.” And, of course, as all motorised transport is said to accelerate global warming and the end of life on earth, there is rising pressure from many quarters to stop us all using it as much as possible. I will be reporting on responses to these pressures during the ongoing countdown to Copenhagen. However, for now, you might want to see a different view of these events from a scurrilous wag who has what ever it takes to suggest that our Gord may yet again fail to save us and the world – because he secretly has other things on his mind – like saving his political career. Brown: “World has 50 days to Save my Career”. But crucially, and perhaps unfortunately for the credibility of our Prime Minister’s grave warning about imminent and certain doom from the globe heating up year on year, even the BBC has acknowledged that actually it is not. It also turns out that the jolly Hockey Stick graph that the mega fan of Global Warming theory All Gore got a Nobel prize for promoting – to ‘prove’ that the world was warming at an unprecedented and catastrophic rate – may be a tad more dodgy than jolly. For those who like to consider scientifically credible evidence about such issues as well as opinion, some inconvenient truths have recently emerged that warrant a closer look. In essence it is suggested that the bent tip of the hockey stick showing a dramatic rise in global temperatures is derived from a bent use of data available. The graph (left) shows the ‘hockey stick’ version in red – with a seemingly more valid and reliable version in black. This shows no significant warming recently – which is well illustrated by the widely accepted fact among scientists that global temperatures have not risen at all in the last ten years. Indeed this is the main reason why you rarely hear the term Global Warming these days as it has morphed into Climate Change – which is an undeniable factor on a planet that has had an ever changing climate ever since it began cooling after a very big bang. A summary of how these truths were revealed can be seen here in an intriguingly informative post from Bishop Hill. In a nutshell, it turns out that after ten years in which the scientific community was prevented from examining the full original data from which the hockey stick shaped graph was created by a chap called Briffa, it is now out there for all to see. And what some have seen and suggested is that Briffa may have used a bent method to bend his graphic display of global temperatures from a straight line graph into an image of a jolly hockey-stick to show the world how soon we were all going to fry…