Baillieston Report

 

Report Baillieston 31-8-08 from Max Dunbar

 

During the past week Glasgow and West BNP have carried out a well organised campaign of leafleting and newspaper distribution in the Baillieston Council Ward. This is in anticipation of the forthcoming by-election which takes place on the 18^th September 2008.

 

We have considered that leafleting, although a very important part of the campaign can be enhanced by door to door canvassing. This has the undoubted added benefit of giving the BNP a human face, and making the work of activists much more interesting.

 

Although it may be argued that this technique is slow, in practice this proves not to be the case. In a short period of time, hundreds of households can be covered. A percentage of people are not in and the remaining households are simply leafleted.

 

By and large, we have had a most favourable response and the general public have treated us with courtesy and have shown interest in what we have to say. They have drawn our attention to the local issue of a complete lack of sports facilities for children and young adults. This is a matter of high priority to us as we consider that young people be given every opportunity to exercise and enjoy themselves in a positive and constructive way. We fully intend to continue with this essential work and the local BNP activists are determined to do their utmost for the people of Baillieston.

 

If you wish to assist, please telephone 07960 714931

Mission Statement

The British National Party exists to secure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands in the North Atlantic which have been our homeland for millennia.

We use the term indigenous to describe the people whose ancestors were the earliest settlers here after the last great Ice Age and who have been complemented by the historic migrations from mainland Europe.

The migrations of the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Norse and closely related kindred peoples have been, over the past few thousand years, instrumental in defining the character of our family of nations.

While we recognise the United Kingdom as a political entity, the BNP does not arrogantly seek to impose one set of Westminster dominated decisions across these nations. We embrace and cherish the native cultural diversity within the British Isles and wish to extend the concept of democracy to the lowest possible level, where those that are affected by a decision are the ones who influence and make the decision.

Political battle

The struggle to secure our future is being waged on many fronts. The need for political power is crucial to bring about our goals. Without effective political representation the majority of Britons, who are deeply concerned about the future, have no voice in the chambers where decisions are made. Increasingly numbers of voters are expressing apathy and discontent with the endless incompetence, lies, false promises and sleaze coming from the three parties that make up the Old Gang. The BNP will contest and win elections at council, parliamentary, Assembly or European level in order to achieve political power to bring about the changes needed.

Torch bearers of culture

The rich legacy of tradition, legend, myth and very real wealth of landscape and man-made structures are our island’s richest treasures. The men and women of the British National Party are motivated by love and admiration of the outpouring of culture, art, literature and the pattern of living through the ages that has left its mark on our very landscape. We value the folkways and customs which have been passed down through countless generations. We enthuse with pride at the marvels of architecture and engineering that have been completed on these islands since the construction of the great megaliths 7,000 years ago.

Liberties

Above and beyond our activities in the political world, we daily work with our people in their homes and communities addressing the fundamental issues of civil liberties and reverse discrimination. Increasingly our people are facing denial of service provision, failure to secure business contracts as well as poor job prospects as reverse discrimination excludes our people from the school room, workplace and boardroom. A key role of the British National Party is to provide legal advice and support to victims of repression and those denied their fundamental civil rights.

Policies & Manifesto

British National Party Policies.

Download our 2007 Mini Manifesto here.

IMMIGRATION — time to say ENOUGH!

On current demographic trends, we, the native British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years.

To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.

We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers’, all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries.

EUROPE — back to British independence!

We are opposed to the Single European Currency, and support the overwhelming majority of the British people in their desire to keep the Pound and our traditional weights and measures. At the same time, we are for the best possible relationship with our European neighbours and believe that the nations of Europe should be free to trade and cooperate whenever it is mutually beneficial, though without being forced into a political and economic straitjacket – political unification. Accordingly, we stand for British withdrawal from the European Union. In place of the EU, we intend to aim towards greater national self-sufficiency, and to work to restore Britain’s family and trading ties with Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and to trade with the rest of the world as it suits us. Following our withdrawal from the EU, the BNP will use the £43 million per day net contribution Britain at present makes to the European Union to fund many far more useful projects at home.

LAW AND ORDER — crack down on crime!

The BNP will crack down on crime and restore public safety and confidence. We will free the police and courts from the politically correct straitjacket that is stopping them from doing their job properly. The liberal fixation with the ‘rights’ of criminals must be replaced by concern for the rights of victims, and the right of innocent people not to become victims. We support the re-introduction of corporal punishment for petty criminals and vandals, and the restoration of capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers as an option for judges in cases where their guilt is proven beyond dispute, as by DNA evidence or being caught red-handed.

ECONOMY — British workers first!

Globalisation, with its export of jobs to the Third World, is bringing ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities that depend on them. Accordingly, the BNP calls for the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports. We will ensure that our manufactured goods are, wherever possible, produced in British factories, employing British workers. When this is done, unemployment in this country will be brought to an end, and secure, well-paid employment will flourish, at last getting our people back to work and ending the waste and injustice of having more than 4 million people in a hidden army of the unemployed concealed by Labour’s statistical fiddles. We further believe that British industry, commerce, land and other economic and natural assets belong in the final analysis to the British nation and people. To that end we will restore our economy and land to British ownership. We also call for preference in the job market to be given to native Britons. We will take active steps to break up the socially, economically and politically damaging monopolies now being established by the supermarket giants. Finally we will seek to give British workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprises whose profits their labour creates by encouraging worker shareholder and co-operative schemes

EDUCATION — discipline, standards, achievement!

We are against the ‘trendy’ teaching methods that have made Britain one of the most poorly educated nations in Europe. We will end the practice of politically correct indoctrination in all its guises and we will restore discipline in the classroom, give authority back to teachers and put far greater emphasis on training young people in the industrial and technological skills necessary in the modern world. We will also seek to instill in our young people knowledge of and pride in the history, cultures and heritage of the native peoples of Britain.

AGRICULTURE — quality before quantity!

We see a strong, healthy agriculture sector as vital to the country. Britain’s farming industry will be encouraged to produce a much greater part of the nation’s need in food products. Priority will be switched from quantity to quality, as we move from competing in a global economy to maximum self-sufficiency for Britain. We will ensure a major shift to healthier and more sustainable organic farming. We are pledged to ensure the restoration of Britain’s once great fishing industry with the reimposition of the former exclusion zones around our coast.

HEALTH — first-class healthcare for all!

We are wholly committed to a free, fully funded National Health Service for all British citizens. We will revitalise the Health Service by boosting staff and bed numbers, slashing unnecessary bureaucracy and by addressing the root cause of low recruitment and retention — low pay. We will see to it that no money is given in foreign aid while our own hospitals are short of beds and the staff to run them. More emphasis must be placed on healthy living with greater understanding of sickness prevention through physical exercise, a healthier environment and improved diets.

TRANSPORT — time to invest!

Increased investment is needed in Britain’s public transport system to bring it up to the highest standards in the world. The fiasco of rail privatisation with different companies running services and track leading to higher fares and lower safety also needs to be resolved. Congestion of our towns and cities must be eased by the provision of greater incentives to use rail and bus transport instead of private cars. The first step is to end the crime and squalor that puts so many people off public transport. Motorists must not be made the scapegoats for government failure. Fuel tax should be cut, motorway speed limits raised, and hidden speed cameras should be banned. Far more must be done to encourage the development and use of cleaner fuels.

ENVIRONMENT — a cleaner, greener future!

Our ideal for Britain is that of a clean, beautiful country, free of pollution in all its forms. We will enforce standards to curb those practices, whether by business or the individual, which cause environmental damage. “The polluter pays to clean up the mess” must become a fact of life, not an electioneering slogan. In towns we would work to replace the brutalist modernism of 1960s-style-architecture with a blend of traditional local styles and materials and ensure that developments take place on a more human scale.

FOREIGN AID — time to spend our money on our own people!

We reject the idea that Britain must forever be obliged to subsidise the incompetence and corruption of Third World states by supplying them with financial aid. We will link foreign aid with our voluntary resettlement policy, whereby those nations taking significant numbers of people back to their homelands will need cash to help absorb those returning. The billions of pounds saved every year by this policy will also be reallocated to vital services in Britain.

PENSIONERS — pensioners before asylum seekers!

The conditions in which many of Britain’s old people are forced to live are a national disgrace. We are pledged to ensure that all our old folk are able to live in comfortable homes, and will restore the earnings link with pensions. Elderly people who have paid a lifetime of taxes and reared families should not have to sell their homes to pay for care.

NORTHERN IRELAND — an end to sectarianism!

Britain has shamefully allowed the terrorists in Northern Ireland to come close to winning when the IRA could have been destroyed years ago. Government weakness has led to hundreds of deaths and given those same terrorists a share in government. We would end all attempts to force the people of Northern Ireland to accept foreign interference in their affairs and deal with terrorism — from whatever side — once and for all. No one with links to a terrorist organisation that refuses to lay down its arms should be allowed to enter government. We would abolish state-supported segregation in education. In the long run, we wish to end the conflict in Ireland by welcoming Eire as well as Ulster as equal partners in a federation of the nations of the British Isles.

DEFENCE — no more cuts!

Successive cuts in defence spending have left Britain’s armed forces perilously weak. We will boost Britain’s armed forces to ensure that they are able to deal with any emergency, and defend our homeland and our independence. We will bring our troops back from Germany and withdraw from NATO, since recent political developments make both commitments obsolete. We will close all foreign military bases on British soil, and refuse to risk British lives in meddling ‘peace-keeping’ missions in parts of the world where no British interests are at stake — a position of armed neutrality. We will also restore national service for our young with the option of civil or military service.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS — Britain’s interests first!

Britain’s foreign relations should be determined by the protection of our own national interest and not by our like or dislike of other nations’ internal politics. We would have no quarrel with any nation that does not threaten British interests. We will maintain an independent foreign policy of our own, and not a spineless subservience to the USA, the ‘international community’, or any other country.

DEMOCRACY — letting the people decide!

The British people invented modern Parliamentary democracy. Yet in recent years the British people have been denied their democratic rights. On issue after issue, the views of the majority of British people have been ignored and overridden by a Politically Correct ‘elite’ which thinks it knows best. On immigration, on Capital Punishment, on the surrender of British sovereignty to the EU and in numerous other areas, democracy has been absent as Labour, Tories and Lib-Dems conspire in election after election to offer the British people no real choice on such vital issues. The BNP exists to give the British people that choice, and thus to restore and defend the basic democratic rights we have all been denied. We favour more democracy, not less, not just at national but at regional and local level.

Power should be devolved to the lowest level possible so that local communities can make decisions which affect them. We will remove legal curbs on freedom of speech imposed by successive Governments over the last 40 years. We will implement a Bill of Rights guaranteeing fundamental freedoms to the British people. We will ensure that ordinary British people have real democratic power over their own lives and that Government, local and national, is truly accountable to the people who elect it.

What Do I Get for Joining the British National Party?

What do I get for joining the British National Party?

BNP members not only get the satisfaction of knowing that they are contributing directly to the vital work of building the Party.

You will also receive a plastic credit card style membership card and our monthly membership bulletin ‘British Nationalist’.

Membership runs for 12 calendar months from the issuing of your card.

Paid up members are also entitled to attend all meetings, to hold offices within the BNP and to put themselves forward to be candidates in local and national elections. After two years you also become eligible to apply to become a Voting Member.

VMs are members who have earned the right to attend events such as our Annual Conference and help form BNP policies by debate and voting.

We as a party are passionately committed both to democracy and the belief that rights are earned by fulfilling duties. This is why power and influence on the BNP have to be earned by sustained activism, financial support and commitment to politic education.

To join as a member or to renew, you can either send in the form in the online inquiry pack, join online or pay by credit card over our payments hotline below.

Gold Members enjoy the same rights and status as ordinary members, but in recognition of their generosity in contributing double the normal membership fee they receive a BNP Gold badge for the year in which the membership begins. Gold Members rightly wear their special badges with pride as everyone else can see at a glance their ‘extra mile’ commitment to helping to fund the BNP’s continued progress.

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Join the British National Party

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Telephone: 0871 050 0236

Make a Donation to the British National Party

Make a Donation to the British National Party.

We do not receive big business donations, State funding, cash for honours, questions, planning permission or even dodgy “think tanks”, so please help us so we can help you!

Online donations:

Select your donation amount from the drop-down menu below to complete the secure online donation form.

 

 

Telephone donations:

We now have an facility for allowing supporters to make donations by telephone.

Call our Treasury team on 0871 0500 234, have your card ready and we will talk you through the quick and easy donation process.Lines are open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.

Postal donations:

Please send all cheques / PO’s, made payable to British National Party or British Heritage, to:

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Please note you MUST supply your name and address, otherwise the money goes straight to asylum seekers, the Lib/Lab/Con fat cats and other scroungers.

The Union Flag

On January 1st 2001 it was the 200th Anniversary of the UK.’s most visible symbol, the Union Flag. Unveiled to coincide with the Union of the British and Irish Parliaments, it combines the flags of St Andrew, St George and St Patrick. Unique in its inclusive design, the Union Flag has symbolised our British heritage and traditions throughout the world. As a national emblem it has proudly flown on every continent. People of every race, creed and colour have been privileged to become citizens of our nation and to claim the Union Flag as their own. They have done so because of the democratic principles enshrined within it and because it champions freedom. Countless men and women have been proud to serve under the flag in armed forces, which have played a major part in safeguarding our world during two World Wars, and countless other wars and conflicts. The Union Flag has been prominent at the formation of major international organisations such as the United Nations, NATO and the Commonwealth. Within the Commonwealth there are several national flags which incorporate the Union Flag into their design to maintain the link within their heritage whilst moving forward into a new mature national independence.

The Union Flag is a truly outstanding, internationally recognised symbol of our national heritage. It is a priceless logo in the promotion of the U.K. Yet we are now being asked to believe that in our multicultural, post imperial, Euro-centred nation that we should no longer take pride in our national flag. Travelling abroad it is refreshing to see public and commercial buildings as well as private homes “flying” their national flag. In every nation in the world citizens take pride in their national flag. At all sorts of gatherings, both national and international, flags are flown to greet and to identify the participants whether these are individual athletes or Heads of State.
 
At sporting events, trade gatherings, political summits and on official visits as well as important historical dates people throughout the world take a pleasure and pride in displaying their national banners. In the U.S.A the citizens pledge their allegiance to the flag and although this is a very large and diverse nation, wherever you travel you will find the stars and stripes proudly flying often alongside the national flags from the immigrant Americans’ mother countries.

In many parts of the world it is an offence to show disrespect to the national flag and yet in the U.K., the home of democracy, we are being encouraged to believe that the Union Flag is outdated or that it is divisive because it has been hijacked by extremists and therefore should be replaced.
 
During the visit of the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern to the Scottish Parliament, veteran Nationalist Winnie Ewing was so enraged by the sight of the Union Flag, displayed alongside the Saltire and the Irish Tricolour, that she described the flag of the United Kingdom as “an insult” to Mr. Ahern and both the Scottish and Irish peoples.
 
Such fanatical outbursts and hatred of the Union Flag echo the similar bigoted rantings from Republican Nationalists in Ireland. Her outrageous comments are without doubt offensive to the vast majority of Scots but are never the less the norm from the mouthpieces of the S.N.P.

Remember November 1999 when the leader of that party, Alex Salmond, got himself all agitated by the sight of the Union Flag on the flag pole of Inverness Castle and refused to pose for a photograph in front of the castle.
 
Again on the very next day, the finance spokesman, Andrew Wilson, said “the Union Flag is an offensive symbol which doesnít refer to anything other than colonialism and the worst aspects of what is happening in Northern Ireland.”
 
He was backed by the party treasurer, Ian Blackford, who stated that “Britain has little relevance for the people of this country.” Many thousands of Scots fought and died under the Union Flag in two World Wars to secure the freedoms that allow Ewing, Salmon and Wilson to spew out their bile and extreme divisiveness.
 
 
With thanks to the Scottish Unionist Party with who, apart from immigration, we have much in common.

Islamic Colonisation

Most assuredly Anne Marie Keenan is not alone in her concern at the politically directed silence in the matter of ascendant Islam in Western society.

By far the most troubling evidence of Islamic colonisation of Britain, and indeed of Western Europe, is the demographic facts of disparate birth rates between indigenous British and Muslim women.

In the latest O.N.S. population report it is stated that ‘foreign’ women, on average, have 2.5 children each, rising to 3.9 for those from Bangladesh and to almost 5 for Pakistani women. Indigenous British women presently have an average of only 1.3 children. It is not difficult to agree with  Col. Muammar Gaddafi when he gave voice to the following, recently on Al Jazeera  TV, “There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe, without guns, without swords, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims in Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent in three decades.”

In Britain the cities of Leicester and Birmingham are contesting candidates for Muslim majority populations within this decade.

The studied unwillingness to discuss the Islamification of Britain is sinister and well merits the concern of so many undisclosed Britons.

Scottish Office Press Officer

Battle of Birth Rates

The report, “Two in every three babies now listed as White British” makes grim reading for those of us who are realists and who love our nation for what it was.

Not only have we a situation where the present Government has little idea how many people are entering the country, particularly from the Third World, but a new demographic dynamic is emerging with the alarming evidence that the coloured population of Britain is powering  rapid population growth.

These foreboding statistics are made worse if we add the multiplier effect of disparate ethnic birth rates. Whilst indigenous British women have presently a total fertility rate of around 1.3 offspring, Bangladeshi women parade a rate of 3.9 and Pakistani women 5. It is little wonder that cities like Leicester and Birmingham are contesting candidates for White minority status within this decade.

One need not digest the gloomy  statistics on disparate ethnic birth rates to see that the physical appearance of our British populations is changing markedly. A recent car journey from London Kings Cross to Beckenham, Kent bore out the evidence. In some of the districts through which I passed the entire population, particularly the young, seemed to be coloured. Harking back to similar journeys in the 60s and 70s the population seems to have had a complete racial transformation.

Evidence from the Human Genome Project and from human geneticists like Professors Sykes and Oppenheimer of Oxford University makes it clear that the indigenous natives of the four nations comprising Britain are of closely related human stock dating back to the end of the Ice Age c. 7000 years ago.

We in Britain have now entered the first phase of the Battle of the Birth Rates. With so many of our indigenous people either blissfully unaware of the consequences of this geopolitical struggle or actually encouraging, for sinister reasons, the majority procreation of alien human stocks the future for the British peoples as they have historically been known is very dark indeed.

Alastair Harper

Mid Scotland and Fife BNP

Taxpayers Cough up Another £1.3m to ‘Fight Islamic Extremism’ in London’s East End

Tower Hamlets council — which recently tried to force its non-Muslim members to observe the Ramadan fast — has been given £1.3 million of taxpayers’ money to “help tackle violent (Islamic) extremism being promoted in London’s East End.”

The £1.3 million has been allocated over the next three years to help Tower Hamlets council deal with extremism and get “disparate communities back into mainstream society.”

Now they are looking for proposals from voluntary and community groups to run projects to build “One Tower Hamlets” — an idea which has emerged from a series of public meetings which began last week.

The first consultation for the development of the East End’s new Community Plan for an integrated single community was held on Wednesday at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel.

The authority is keen to jump on board the Government’s ‘Prevent’ agenda, which aims to promote cohesive communities and tackle violent extremism in invader-dominated inner city areas like the East End.

Community groups are being told by Tower Hamlets council how to bid for the cash if they can show how they would contribute to the five objectives laid out in the Government programme.

The five principles are: “Disrupting those who promote violent extremism; Backing vulnerable groups and individuals; Supporting ‘mainstream’ voices; Building community cohesion; and Addressing real grievances effectively” – whatever any of that actually means.

A Prevent Programme manager has been appointed, Assan Ali, to coordinate the campaign. We are sure Ali will be well compensated for this latest made-up fake ‘job’.

PC Gestapo Seek to Outlaw Harmless British Cultural Fun

The Politically Correct Gestapo of the far left have launched yet another attempt to stifle harmless British cultural fun with a fake ‘outrage’ over three binmen in Reading, Berkshire, taping a gollywog to the front of their vehicle.

The refuse truck is owned by Woodend Municipal Services and leased to Reading Borough Council, whose staff used it to collect rubbish from the streets of the Berkshire town.

The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph have all run large stories on the prank as if it were some major news story (all the while ignoring real issues like crime, immigration, the economy etc.) and attempted to generate ‘outrage’ from residents of the town they have interviewed.

A spokesman for Reading Borough Council has already been browbeaten over the incident and has ‘apologised’ for the incident, adding that action was being taken against the binmen involved.

“The council has investigated this matter and spoken to the lorry driver,” he said. “The employee has been informed of the serious nature of this complaint and his management colleagues are giving further consideration to how the matter will proceed. Reading is an international community and the council celebrates its rich diversity and cultural heritage, working vigorously to combat all forms of discrimination and injustice.”

In May 2007, a greater Manchester shopkeeper was ordered by police to remove golliwogs from her window display — because they were allegedly offensive.

Moira Pickering, 62, was warned that she risked breaching race hate laws if she failed to take them down. Moira has been selling the dolls in her shop, Stalybridge Reproductions, in the town near Manchester for years and said they had never caused offence.

Moira said the action was political correctness gone mad. She said that two women of an ethnic background had reported the incident and that one was a regular customer. “A woman came in and began taking photos. I thought she was taking a photo of the table and chairs, but then she went outside and started taking more photos. The next minute the police were here and said it was an offence to display the gollywog which was sitting in a chair. Golliwogs have been going for years and I’ve always sold them. They sell very well. People are far too politically correct — they go over the top.”

Police confirmed they had spoken to Moira after they had received a complaint that she was selling offensive items. Officers attended the shop and spoke to Moira who said she was not aware the items were deemed offensive. She was asked to remove the item from the window display which she did and no further action was taken.

Greater Manchester Police said it is an offence under the incitement to commit racial hatred act if she put them back on display and someone made a subsequent complaint.

Strike a blow against political correctness with this fantastic 6″ “Golly” pen, mounted on its own suction base and spring loaded body.

You can buy it from Excalibur right now by clicking here. £2.99 (excluding p&p) or how about an “England Golly” pin badge for £2.00 (excluding p&p).

Army Suffers Personnel Shortage Crisis as Illegal Iraq War Drags On

The Armed Forces are facing a shortfall of almost 6,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen, according to official Ministry of Defence figures. The refusal by qualified British men and women to serve in the Armed Forces is clearly linked to the illegal and immoral war being waged by the government in Iraq.

The latest manning quarterly figures show the total number of full-time, trained military personnel was 173,370 — 5,790 short of the total requirement of 179,160.

The Army had a 3,500 shortfall, the Royal Navy was 1,220 under strength, while the RAF was 1,070 below the required total.

The shortfalls occurred even though the total number of service personnel required has fallen by almost 12,000 since 2005 when the forces were just 3,000 below strength.

Fewer and fewer British people support that criminal activity of waging war against Iraq — a war fully supported by the equally-to-blame Tories — and are simply refusing to put their lives at risk for a cause which is completely unrelated to Britain’s national interest.

BNP policy on Defence is based on a Britain First platform: We will bring our troops back from Germany and withdraw from NATO, since recent political developments make both commitments obsolete. We will close all foreign military bases on British soil, and refuse to risk British lives in meddling ‘peace-keeping’ missions in parts of the world where no British interests are at stake — a position of armed neutrality.

In addition, a BNP government will put the leadership of both the Labour and Tory parties, who all consciously voted to send our troops to war in Iraq in the face of overwhelming evidence that the case was bogus, on trial for war crimes before an international tribunal.

Why Britain’s Benches Are in Urgent Need of a Clean Sweep

More than 60 judges have given ‘unduly lenient’ sentences to offenders convicted of serious crimes, according to official figures.

The Court of Appeal ruled 62 judges across England and Wales let off criminals, including terrorists, murderers and rapists, with light sentences.

The Attorney General Baroness Scotland QC referred 106 criminals to more senior judges last year to seek tougher sentences. Among them were robbery gangs, drug smugglers, paedophiles and terrorists linked to al Qaeda.

Of these, 86 individuals were ruled to have been given ‘unduly lenient’ punishments, with 75 handed harsher terms. Sentences were increased in 12 sex cases, 15 violence cases, 17 robbery cases, 11 drugs cases and one murder. The number of Court of Appeal referrals fell by 38 and the number declared unduly lenient fell by 27 compared with 2006.

Among the cases highlighted were: Internet terrorist Younes Tsouli, of West London, whose ten year jail term for inciting murder overseas was increased to 16 years, and Essex businessman Rohail Spall (illustration), who spiked a woman’s drink at a restaurant and planned to sexually attack her. His sentence was increased by 18 months to three-and-a-half years.

From Monday, Faith Schools are Legally Allowed to Discriminate on Basis of Religion

When the new school term starts on Monday, faith based schools — even those funded by the state — will be legally allowed to discriminate against students and staff based on their religion.

This means that a Muslim school will legally be allowed to give employment preference to Muslims; Jewish schools will be allowed to give preference to Jews, and Christian schools will be allowed to give preference to Christians. So much for the vaunted ‘integrated society’ proposed by the Labour/Tory mass immigration con-trick.

In some schools this will expand to include the headteacher while in others this would apply to non-teaching jobs, such as classroom assistants and cooks.

In 2006 faith schools were handed new powers to discriminate when Lord Adonis, the schools minister, brought forward an amendment to the education bill allowing them to favour members of the same religion when choosing support staff.

Shortly afterwards the education secretary, Alan Johnson, said he would no longer try to force faith schools to accept up to a quarter of their pupils from other faiths or with no religion.

Earlier this year the National Union of Teachers unveiled plans to rival faith schools, proposing that all schools should become practising multi-faith institutions.

Headteachers would bring in imams, rabbis and priests to instruct religious pupils as part of the curriculum in an attempt to satisfy parental demand for religion in schools.

The Worst Crisis in 60 Years?

The word here is sustainability and Alistair Darling has plainly and candidly said that the so called quality of life based on rising debt because of Labour’s mismanagement is blatantly unsustainable.

From Labour’s myths like ‘the economy is in safe hands’ to the realities of today, there has been one shock after another. Labour has little to offer and all it has done, again and again, is to accept the fait accompli.

But beware. Both the Conservative Party and the Lib Dems have been very quiet about what is on offer to put the economy back on track. They want to defeat Labour in the polls and in fact the Conservatives are taking it for granted that they will win the next General Election and so they might, but what then?

At local level and coming back to London, is the idea of converting Local Authorities into mortgage lenders. What is more, there is talk about Local Authorities buying properties that are about to be repossessed. With what money? How do they plan to acquire the said resources? Are we going to see once again Local Authorities crushed by the burden of debt and having to cut local services or are we going to see taxation levels sky-rocketing?

What happens at national level also happens at local level. If we want to spend, the monies must come from somewhere and this is something that they are not talking about acting like a hunter that waits until the last second to strike its victim.

Energy Alternatives

Let us have a look at some of the alternative energy sources that have been mooted, dabbled with, researched, piloted or are actually already in use.

• Wind
• Solar
• Wave
• Tidal
• Nuclear
• Bio-fuels
• Hydrogen

Can any of these either by themselves or in combination take over from oil?

Can any of these lead us to a bright new future or are they just overrated, irrelevant and even dangerous suggestions?

 

Welcome to Peak Oil

Welcome to the British National Party’s Peak Oil Discussion Group.

You may not have heard of the phrase “peak oil” just yet, but you will hear and see that phrase more often in the months ahead. It is a term that is being discussed at supra-governmental level, in government departments, universities, research institutes, think-tanks and even in the media.

“Peak oil” is going to become a household term in the same way that “global warming”, “climate change”, “third world poverty” and “consumer society” filtered down from academia to the popular press and media to become everyday terms.

Peak oil spells the end of cheap oil and gas. It is the moment when 50% of the world’s reserves of these two finite fuel sources are used.

It is not about completely running out of oil or gas. There will always be some reserves remaining but the monetary cost and more importantly the energy cost of exploiting those reserves makes such activity prohibitive.

Oil is a finite resource, it took several million years to produce the earth’s oil fields, no new oil is being made and the human species is devouring those finite reserves which lay untouched for millions of years.

World demand for oil continues to rise, our insatiable demand for oil based products - everything from cheap air travel to plastics drives the exploitation of the oil reserves. With the burgeoning populations of India and China eager for rapid industrialisation the global demand is soaring.

The crossover before falling production and rising demand will cause almost immediate economic chaos, with recessions, business failures, high unemployment, trade disputes and inevitably wars to secure the last remaining oil supplies.

The consequences can be interpreted as either apocalyptic or a window of opportunity for radical change in society and how we live with Nature. It will either be seen as an end of civilisation or the heralding of a new age when we learn to live with the resources of the planet.

These pages are designed to inform and educate. It would be foolish and morally wrong to avoid discussion of the issues even if those issues are both technically difficult to master and pessimistic in their analysis.

There is nothing the British National Party can do to avert the energy crisis. We have no political power to change the way our society functions. What we can do is make our people aware of the issues, prepare them psychologically for the potential troubles ahead and where possible work with communities to ensure survival and continuity when the effects of peak oil make themselves manifest.

We will be examining energy alternatives at a community level and advising on transport, food and energy issues to allow our people to survive and function.

Hydrogen

We could involved in some in depth chemistry here. But this is a political site and not a chemistry site so we need to keep things basic for the lay persons.

Essentials

The basics of hydrogen technology are as follows.

1. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It is found on earth in many forms but the most practical one for human use is the globally abundant water, good old H2O.

2. Sending an electric current through water splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Every schoolchild will have performed this experiment. It is called electrolysis and for every molecule of water, two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen are produced. Energy in leads to hydrogen and oxygen out.

3. The reverse process of combining atoms of hydrogen with oxygen generates energy which can be captured as electricity, the only other product is a harmless one - water!

4. The reverse process is the basis of a fuel cell, where hydrogen and oxygen react with one another on a surface of something called a catalyst, a chemical which facilitates the chemical reaction.

5. Fuel cells have been built in laboratories and pilot units. The most common catalyst used in these pilot and experimental units is platinum.

6. The hydrogen can be produced by a variety of means but the most attractive option for a future hydrogen based economy would be electrolysis. The electricity for electrolysis would have to be generated from a renewable source in a post oil situation and the hydrogen stored and distributed via pipelines or tankers.

7. It is envisaged that fuel cells will be used to drive motor vehicles. Motor vehicles will be filled at “gas stations” in a similar way to existing petrol stations. The gas stations might be the same places where the hydrogen is produced. Arrays of solar panels on the roof of a gas station will generate the electricity to perform the electrolysis. The hydrogen will be stored on site and vehicle drivers will come along and refuel their fuel cell driven cars.

Clean, pollution free, sound very neat doesn’t it, except for a few major shortcomings.

Lightest element

First off, because hydrogen is the simplest element, it will leak from any container, no mater how strong and no matter how well insulated. For this reason, hydrogen in storage tanks will always evaporate.

Hydrogen is very reactive. When hydrogen gas comes into contact with metal surfaces it decomposes into hydrogen atoms, which are so very small that they can penetrate metal. This causes structural changes that make the metal brittle.

Perhaps the largest problem for hydrogen fuel cell transportation is the size of the fuel tanks. In gaseous form, a volume of 62,880 gallons of hydrogen gas is necessary to replace the energy capacity of 20 gallons of petrol. The arithmetic doesn’t look good so far.

However demonstrations of hydrogen-powered cars have depended upon compressed hydrogen. Because of its low density, compressed hydrogen will not give a car as useful a range as gasoline. In addition compressed hydrogen fuel tank would be at risk of developing pressure leaks either through accidents or through normal wear, and such leaks could result in explosions.

If the hydrogen is liquefied, this will give it a density of 0.07 grams per cubic centimetre. At this density, it will require four times the volume of gasoline for a given amount of energy. Thus, a 15-gallon gas tank would equate to a 60-gallon tank of liquefied hydrogen. Beyond this, there are the difficulties of storing liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen needs to be stored at -253 C. That is colder than the surface of planet Pluto!

Refrigeration costs

Beyond this, there are the energy costs of liquefying the hydrogen and refrigerating it so that it remains in a liquid state. No studies have been done on the energy costs here, but they are sure to further decrease the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of hydrogen fuel.

A third option is the use of powdered metals to store the hydrogen in the form of metal hydrides. In this case, the storage volume would be little more than the volume of the metals themselves. Moreover, stored in this form, hydrogen would be far less reactive. However, as you can imagine, the weight of the metals will make the storage tank very heavy.

The basic problem of hydrogen fuel cells is that the second law of thermodynamics dictates that we will always have to expend more energy deriving the hydrogen than we will receive from the usage of that hydrogen. The common misconception is that hydrogen fuel cells are an alternative energy source when they are not. They are a form of energy storage - a big difference!

Because of the second law of thermodynamics, hydrogen fuel cells will always have a bad EROEI. If fossil fuels are used to generate the hydrogen, either through the Methane-Steam method or through Electrolysis of Water, there will be no advantage over using the fossil fuels directly. The use of hydrogen as an intermediate form of energy storage is justified only when there is some reason for not using the primary source directly. For this reason, a hydrogen-based economy must depend on large-scale development of nuclear power or solar electricity.

Therefore, the development of a hydrogen economy will require major investments in fuel cell technology research and nuclear or solar power plant construction. On top of this, there is the cost of converting all of our existing technology and machinery to hydrogen fuel cells. And all of this will have to be accomplished under the economic and energy conditions of post-peak fossil fuel production.

Further reading

For those readers who want to find out more about the underlying chemistry and physics of fuel cells and hydrogen should have a look at the following:

http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/education/abcs.html

 

Wind Power

The most talked about alternative and one which is being rolled out across the British countryside.

Proponents of wind turbines claim that wind represents a free, unlimited source of energy. It does have its attractions.

Advantages

It’s clean. Wind power does not produce dangerous waste, nor does it contribute to global warming because it generates no carbon dioxide.

It’s abundant and reliable. The UK is the windiest country in Europe and the resource is much greater during the colder months of the year, when energy demand is at its highest. Technology is being developed to store wind power as hydrogen which can then be used to power fuel cells in power stations and in vehicles.

It’s affordable. The first offshore wind turbines in the UK are producing power more cheaply than our newest nuclear power station.

It works. Denmark already gets 20% of its electricity from wind power. A turbine can turn when wind speeds are just 9mph.

It creates jobs. The wind industry could bring thousands of new jobs to the UK, many of them using offshore engineering skills used by the declining oil and gas industry. If offshore wind were developed to supply just 10% of the UK’s electricity, then 36,000 jobs could be created.

It’s safe. Unlike nuclear power stations, wind turbines are unlikely terrorist targets. The rotors are automatically shut down when wind speeds reach in excess of about 60mph.

Opposition to wind turbines on Britain’s hills and coastlines on the basis of “spoiling the view” is subjective. What some might see as brutish industrialisation of the hilltops, others see elegant, graceful and powerful monuments to Man’s ingenuity and harnessing of nature’s bountiful gifts. A study by the RSPB also debunked the myth that wind turbines kill large numbers of birds. The available evidence suggests that appropriately positioned wind farms do not pose a significant hazard for birds. However, evidence from the US and Spain confirms that poorly sited wind farms can cause severe problems for birds, through disturbance, habitat loss/damage or collision with turbines.

Wind and likewise solar energy suffer from four fundamental physical issues which prevent them from ever being able to replace more than a tiny fraction of the energy we get from oil. These issues are:

a. lack of energy density,
b. inappropriateness as transportation fuels,
c. energy intermittency,
d. inability to scale.

Energy Density

Density refers to the amount of energy per unit of volume of an energy source. Oil is a very, very dense energy source. Coal is quite dense per unit of energy, but much more bulky than oil. Unfortunately, solar power has very low relative energy density. Density, is often, but not always, associated with the energy profit ratio, the ratio between how much energy you get for how much you expend to get it. Generally, speaking, the higher the density, the higher the energy profit ratio. Oil energy profit ratios were well over a 100 to 1 in the early days of the oil age, that is 100 units of energy gained for every unit expended to get it. Oil has slipped to about 20 to 1 for most old discoveries now and to around 8 to 1 for new discoveries which are getting harder and harder to extract and are of lower quality (i.e., lower energy density). Compare this to 4 for nuclear power, 2.5 for biodiesel, 2 or more for wind, and slightly more than 1 for solar. Oil and coal (about 10 to 1) continue to be favoured because of this ratio.

To put this into perspective, the Rye House power station at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, generates 715 MW of electricity from natural gas coming in from the North Sea. Built in the early 1990s it is a very efficient producer of electricity. Output from the station is enough to meet the daily power needs of nearly a million people - almost the population of Hertfordshire. To produce the same amount can you guess how many wind turbines might be needed. 50? 100? 1000? Based on a typical turbine output of 0.70MW the actual answer is 1020! According to Scottish Power the Black Law turbine farm in South Lanarkshire will be the biggest onshore project in the UK. It will contain 62 individual turbines and cover an area of 24.5 square kilometres. Our theoretical 1020 turbine farm would need an area of 403 square kilometres or roughly an area 11 miles by 11 miles - 25% of the land area of the entire county of Hertfordshire!

Transportation

Over ninety percent of our transportation fuel comes from petroleum fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet-fuel).

Unfortunately, solar and wind cannot be used as industrial-scale transportation fuels unless they are used to crack hydrogen from water via electrolysis. The electrolysis process is a simple one, but unfortunately it consumes 1.3 units of energy for every 1 unit of energy it produces . In other words, it results in a net loss of energy. You can’t replace oil - which has a positive EROEI of about 30/1 - with an energy source that actually carries a negative EROEI.

Assuming away this not-so-minor problem, where are we going to get the energy, capital, and time necessary to replace a significant portion of the following:

1. 700 million oil-powered cars traversing the world’s roads;

2. Millions of oil-powered airplanes crisscrossing the world’s
skies;

3. Millions of oil-powered boats circumnavigating the world’s
oceans?

On top of that, we need to completely overhaul/retrofit the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure responsible for the fuelling and maintenance of numbers one through three.

Intermittency

Unlike oil and gas, which can be used at anytime of the day or night, solar and wind are dependent on weather conditions. This may not be that big of a deal if you simply want to power your household appliances or a small scale, decentralized economy, but if you want to run an industrial economy that relies on airports, airplanes, millions of miles of highways, huge skyscrapers, 24/7 availability of fuel, etc., an intermittent source of energy will not suffice.

The energy produced from solar, wind, and other green alternatives can be stored in batteries, but battery technology is woefully inadequate for the scale of our problem.

Scalability

The problems of using a low density energy source such as wind was demonstrated above. Not even the most enthusiastic wind turbine proponent claims that all of the UK’s electricity requirements will be satisfied by wind, but by way of illustration, we showed above that the electricity requirements of 1million households and businesses in Hertfordshire could be met by turbines covering a 11 by 11 mile plot. What of the UK’s 60 million residents? What size farm would we need? A 24,180 square kilometre plot equivalent to the combined size of Cumbria, Northumbria, Co Durham and North Yorkshire!

Conclusion

Great for powering the electricity requirements of caravans, isolated homes and small communities but its low energy density makes it impossible to provide anything other than a tiny fraction of the UK’s generating capacity.

Opportunity?

We are faced with a situation in less than a decade, of rising oil prices which will rise so high that many of us will be forced to abandon our petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles.

Transportation of all goods and freight will be effected. The cost of everything from groceries to imported clothes and toys and medicines will be higher, in some cases prohibitively so. Electricity generation will likewise be effected as natural gas becomes an expensive and unattractive fuel for electricity consumption. Some aspects of the lives of all of us are going to change.

It might be a time of apocalyptic events but if there is enough awareness of the issue, certain preparations made and a psychological adjustment to a world without oil, then such a change in world events may be a time for tremendous opportunities. These are just some of the situations which might arise and which present themselves as new opportunities.

Travel and transport

It will be travel and transport that see the biggest likely upheavals. Oil accounts for 90% of UK transport, the remaining 10% is accounted for by electric trains, trams and underground trains.

A daily commuting trip of 100 miles will be prohibitively expensive, even filling up a car for a cross city trip of 5-6 miles will no longer be cost effective. Things will change.

Commuters will initially be inclined towards greater use of public transport but as even the cost of using trains and buses starts to rise then individuals will be forced to make key life changing decisions. Working from home or working closer to home will be options. Walking or cycling to work with the knock on health benefits of keeping fit may be appropriate for some. There is much talk of fuel cells replacing petrol driven engines.

Centralised society

A society which feeds information and power down from the top is an energy intensive arrangement. It requires a large bureaucracy, huge databases and all the technology that is needed to keep those databases up to date. It requires efficient communication between executive, legislative and judicial branches. It requires streamlining and standardising everything from police procedures to the national curriculum. Remove the energy powering these complex centralised behemoths and they cease to function just as flicking the power switch on a computer stops it working.

Power is returned to the end user, the consumer and the citizen. Town councils which throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries ran efficient and effective administrations with considerably less influence from Westminster and Whitehall will be the decision making bodies of the future.

Wider still, a centralised Euro empire with its hub in Brussels will never be able to function. The bigger the empire, the greater the infrastructure, the greater the usage of energy to maintain that infrastructure. The project to enslave all sovereign peoples of Europe in a Soviet style European Union will never come to fruition. The peak oil crisis will be welcomed by all patriotic people of Europe and decision making will be repatriated to the lowest appropriate level

Environment

One thing is for sure, the countryside, the wildlife and human health should benefit enormously from an oil crisis. Most of the UK’s 31 million vehicles will not be going anywhere. As the price of crude rises, pump prices will follow suit, pricing all but the very wealthy or very determined or very criminal off the roads. There will be no need for new motorways, no new town by-passes, saving for prosperity our native woodlands, meadows, heaths and downland. Agri-businesses will not be spreading artificial fertiliser on our farms, nor will they be applying pesticides. Water courses will be improved and all manner of flora and fauna will once again thrive. Endangered species of butterfly, newts, orchids and birds will have a reprieve following years of decline, a consequence of industrialised farming which has destroyed habitats, killed with pesticides and fouled the waterways. Human health will benefit as well.

Health

People will still die, suffer from ailments and contagious illnesses and even if energy demanding organ transplants may not be possible, overall human health should improve. Those diseases and conditions that have resulted from decades of conspicuous consumption will become a thing of the past. Obesity resulting from the mass consumption of junk food and factory processed food will yield to healthier eating habits and more exercise as consumers walk and cycle rather than depend on cars.

Cancer has been seen as a scourge of modern living. Those chemicals which have given us fizzy drinks in plastic bottles, banana flavoured milk shakes without ever have been within a mile of a real banana, barbeque flavours and provided industry with lubricants, catalysts and feedstocks for the past 60 years have left their legacy in the food chain and the environment.

Post-oil more people will know exactly what they are eating. They will either be growing food themselves in their gardens, allotments or they will see the market gardener, the orchard grower, and the pig farmer tending to their crops and animals. They will be buying from a butcher or a greengrocer who has seen the items from farmgate to shop shelf. They will once again be involved in the natural cycle of planting and harvesting, birth, maturity and death. Without pesticides and artificial fertiliser, all food will be by default “organic” putting an end to the duality of food marketing. Organic food will quite rightly be available to all on a level economic playing field unlike the current situation where foods labelled as organic are paradoxically more costly than non-organic foodstuff.

Stress- the modern psychological condition resulting from overwork, commuting, dealing with deadlines and never ending demands for improvement will give way to a slower pace of life, a lifestyle more in keeping with the human mind and human time scale.

Family life

Post-oil means post mass production of processed foods. Someone, male or female will need to cook a family meal. Instant microwave TV dinners will give way to properly prepared and cooked meals mostly using ingredients locally grown and harvested with the minimal of processing. Dinner will be a family experience, just as it was throughout our nation’s history before the advent of cheap oil. Sitting around the evening dinner families will be doing what families have always done since Man began to use fire to cook the kill.

Instead of being dependent on a centralised State bureaucracy and a Nanny State parents will take more interest in bringing up their own children and children might be inclined to take more care of their elderly parents and grandparents. Without the same degree of reliance on complex health and rescue services individuals will assume self-responsibility for their own actions. The extended family will once again assume its place as the foundations and building bricks of a healthy functioning society.

The new economy

Big financial institutions will try and keep a lid on things but the cycle of economic growth fuelled by debt will come to a crashing devastating halt. The fall out will be of world shattering consequences but change will make available new opportunities and human needs will necessitate new forms of economic activity.

The Danes are well in the lead with their wind technology and a radical approach to ownership has been adopted. The first turbines were erected by guilds or co-operatives, which required member-owners to live within 3 kilometres of the site. The guilds eventually organized as the Danish Wind Turbine Owners Association, which became a powerful political force. Today, 100,000 Danish families own wind turbines or shares in wind co-operatives. Although the rules have been relaxed following pressure from the big utility companies a stakeholder in a wind turbine or wind farm is allow ownership of up to 30,000 kWh per year by any person who lives or works in the borough or who owns a house or other property there.

If Denmark can lead the way with wind farms then there is no logical reason for such co-operative enterprises to exist in other areas of activity; food production, manufacturer of bicycles, printing presses, house building, craft workshops and countless other goods and services.

Small businesses benefit

People will still need to eat, drink, clothe themselves, fill their homes with both the essentials and the nice things that make a house a home. People will still need attend to their personal hygiene and amuse themselves when not working. But the things that people will buy will need to be sourced, manufactured and sold locally. Mass transportation of Chinese made cotton T-shirts will not be possible. In fact unless we return to using sail or steam (coal driven) ships, cotton from the US, Egypt, India will not reach Albion’s shores, so alternatives will be needed.

Massive new business opportunities will exist for small enterprises, individually owned, family run and co-operative ventures. Mass production will be unfeasible and businesses will source primary raw materials locally, turn those materials into finished products locally, sell locally and employ local people.

A massive renaissance of traditional crafts and cottage industries may take place. Wood turners, leather workers, blacksmiths and stone workers may be struggling to keep up with demand. A restructuring of the education system will be necessary to provide training in new skills and old crafts as demand for graduates in sociology, media studies and peace studies will be even more unemployable than they are now.

Differences

Because mass transport of goods will not be possible and because local raw materials will be sought for various activities, there will be an end towards the trend of standardisation.

Recent news stories bemoaned look-a-like Britain. Market towns from Falkirk to Exeter have town centres that are virtually indistinguishable from one another. 10 years post-oil, we will see the end of the dominance of High Street chains; goodbye to the golden arches of McDonalds, goodbye to Gap, so long to Starbucks and cheerio to Comet and Currys.

Houses will be built using materials locally sourced. Bricks and mortar will not longer be appropriate or possible in all of these islands. East Anglian houses may see brick walls with Norfolk reed thatch while while Welsh builders opt for slate roofs and stone walls.

No new skyscrapers and towering office blocks will be built. Everything will be conducted at a more human level and in a more human time scale. Because flying will be next to impossible people seeking to recharge their proverbial batteries will look to holiday closer to home. Parks will be seen as valued places of retreat, even if only for a few hours; their pavillions and monuments restored and plots carefully tendered.

Global warming stops.

If global warming is caused directly by the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has been generated by the burning of fossil fuels, and there are strong arguments which assign the blame to carbon dioxide and equally strong arguments which disprove this conclusion then the release of carbon dioxide by burning oil and gas will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as renewable alternatives are sought and used. It may be too late to undo the damage which some have attributed to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past few decades, but the process will be brought to a halt. As more land around the planet gradually returns to natural vegetation over a period of centuries the carbon dioxide levels will return to a pre-oil boom level. Readers of this page will not reap the benefits but our great great grandchildren probably will.

Conclusion

Change is inevitable but one person’s apocalyptic view of the same situation could be interpreted as an opportunity by another. Britons are resourceful, innovative and can be pretty bloody minded in a crisis. We can knuckle down, roll up our sleeves and get on with life even without all the labour saving devices, the shopping malls and the twice year trips to the Med or Florida.

Comments

We welcome your feedback. Whether you think this is a lot of hype and propaganda or are genuinely concerned, send us your questions, your suggestions and your comments. We will publish a selection of material submitted. Your material should be posted in the comments section relating to each page in the Peak Oil Category of this website.

 

Apocalypse?

It is the worst case scenario anyone can possibly imagine.

The extraction and processing of the finite fuels, oil and gas, are at the root of our industrialised and technological advanced society. Take the cheap oil and gas away and everything that is built on the availability of cheap, unlimited fuel collapses. Our complex, highly structured, regimented society depends ever more on the use of technology on complex logistics to ship goods around the world to meet consumer demands. Take away the power for that new technology and the world falls apart. What can we expect when we can no longer afford oil, when we can no longer run natural gas burning power stations, when the wheels of the UK economy literally grind to a halt.

Stranded

90% of all today’s transportation systems depend on oil. There is no other commodity which could replace oil (in the form of petrol or diesel) as a fuel to drive the millions of cars, freight vehicles and trains on Britain’s roads and railtracks. In fact the very roads themselves actually come from oil. 26 million tonnes of asphalt were produced in the UK in 1998 for use on British roads. Asphalt is not employed to make all road surfaces look dark grey but has been widely adopted as it is easily laid and rolled to give a smooth surface, enables easy drainage/run off, minimising skid risks, acts as a noise dampener and allows for coloured paints to be applied as road markings. No oil - no asphalt; no asphalt - no smooth water-proof road surfaces.

Perhaps more importantly aviation cannot be fuelled by any other source. Given the time and the money electric trains could replace all the diesel fleet of trains, given the time and money electric trams could replace conventional diesel driven buses, but no commercial aeroplane can possibly be run on any alternative fuel. So as oil becomes more expensive, budget airlines will cease to exist. Those two foreign holidays so many Britons consider as their “right” will become much more expensive.

Shipping all that food, all those electronic consumer goods from Korea and Taiwan, those cheap T-shirts and toys from China depends on oil. While shipping is far less energy consuming than aviation, those giant container ships are diesel and fuel oil guzzlers. Without a cheap supply of diesel and marine fuel oil Johnny doesn’t get his latest animated piece of plastic at Christmas but then millions of food aid recipients in the Third World will literally go without their daily bread and butter.

How will you get to work? In fact will you have a job to get to? What happens when there is a fire in your home, office, factory? Will the local authority have the money to put fuel in the tanks of the fire tenders, will the health board have the money to pay the exorbitant cost of what small amount of diesel or unleaded to fill up the tanks of the ambulances, the GP’s cars and the motorbikes of the paramedics? Will the police arrive in time to catch the burglars who have broken into your house while you were asleep? It is not like the “old days” when a patrol car could be dispatched but in a world where a gallon of petrol costs more than a weekly wage, the constables have a fair distance to walk or cycle from the station.

Famine

Every nation on the planet benefits from the advances made in dramatically boosting crop yields. Wheat and barley harvests in East Anglia are now nearly double what they were 50 years ago. Western nations have a food surplus which are used to either trade with other nations or given away to the starving of Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America. While some increase in crop yield can be attributed to selective breeding and fluctuations in climate, most of the increase in crop yield has arisen from the use of oil! Oil is not of course used directly on crops but pesticides are and many pesticides are derived from the processing of crude oil. Those pesticides are sprayed from booms attached to tractors and tractors use diesel which comes from the processing of crude oil.

The other major input in the crop production process is artificial fertiliser. This is made from ammonia which in turn comes from petroleum or natural gas. This artificial fertiliser is applied to Britain’s fields using the same diesel burning tractors mentioned above.

The bags of fertiliser and the chemical drums of pesticides are likely to be made of plastic and again plastic packaging needs oil.

The UK remains one of the leading chemical producing countries and exports millions of tonnes of both fertiliser and pesticide around the world - aboard diesel driven ships!

Away from the farm, the contents of the typical British/American/Western European larder are likely to have been harvested, distributed, processed, packaged and redistributed through supply chains of wholesalers, supermarkets and delivered to one’s nearest retailer by gas guzzling vans, artics or train. Keeping those perishable items chilled requires expensive refrigeration. Refrigeration units are energy demanding pieces of kit and depend upon oil or gas to generate the electricity to power them. What’s more the source of the refrigerant; the chemical mixture that is pumped around and around the coils in the refrigeration kit, is also derived from either oil or gas.

Without oil there would be considerably less inorganic fertiliser production, almost no pesticide production and a radical change in the distribution of those types of fertiliser and pesticide that are not dependent on crude oil. It means an end to cheap processed foods, an end to apples being shipped in from Chile and South Africa during a British winter, an end to Egyptian strawberries being available for Christmas desserts.

More significantly it means a drop in crop yields, which will lead to higher food prices in the west and less food aid to donate to the Third World.

Poor

The world’s wealth in the 20th century and opening years of the 21st century has been created by debt. A business with a good idea and which could show growth would seek a loan from a bank. That the bank never had the cash to lend to the customer but merely extended credit to the customer is not the point. The customer could get the credit needed to buy the equipment, rent the factiry unit, pay his wages and as long as his sales grew he was happy, the banks were happy, the staff were happy and his own customers were happy. But when growth stops and show no signs of recovering, the banks pull the credit, the customer cannot pay his suppliers, pay his rent, pay his wages and his business suffers. A simplistic overview but it does show that in modern economics growth is needed for businesses to survive. It should not have to be like that. After all we can all think of the self-employed window cleaner who does say 20 houses a day at £5 a time and takes £100 in cash a day. He cannot grow, he might have to work the extra hour or take someone else on to assist but he makes a reasonable living from doing what he does. That is human scale economics. The same applies to most self-employed people, small businesses and others who do not need to resort to the banks for credit. The big businesses need growth to satisfy firstly the big banks and secondly the other element in this the instituional investors, speculators, pension funds and insurance funds.

War

President Bush lies when he says he has sent teenage recruits from Iowa and Idaho to Iraq in order to create a safe democratic country now devoid of the tyranny of Dictator Saddam Hussein. Bush is not planning a war with Iran just so that the home of the once great Persian Empire will embrace American style democracy. Bush’s Troops do not continue to occupy Afghanistan just so the people there can grow opium poppies without being troubled by the Taliban. These three countries are key players in the oil based geo-political landscape.

“We now have the second largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia,” Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh announced last July (2004).

He said that discoveries in the country’s south western deserts showed the Islamic Republic sitting on 132 billion barrels of proven reserves, a jump of 17 billion barrels.

BP puts Iraq in 3rd place for proven crude reserves with 115 billion barrels.

America is currently blackmailing nations to support its continued occupation of Iraq. Non American troops are being dispatched to the troubled region in exchange for oil deals.

Afghanistan has very little oil, it has some gas worth having but its great wealth lies in its strategic position, capable of carrying a much debated pipeline from central Asia to the Indian Ocean via Pakistan. America’s foreign policy does seem to indicate that the Whitehouse knows fine well about “Peak Oil” and that American troops are being deployed to safeguard the world’s oilfields. China’s current demand of 7 million barrels of crude a day, rising to 8 million barrels a day by the end of the decade is likely to spark off hostilities with competitive countries, principally America. Tensions are rising in Nigeria and noises are coming from the Oval Office about fighting the war on terrorism in the region.

Strange is it not that the places where “terrorism” abounds are precisely those places which have bountiful amounts of crude! Perhaps Uncle Sam will descend on Africa’s largest oilfields to protect the Nigerian infrastructure from “terrorism”. America is facing a sustained backlash from angry Muslims in Iraq. It will likewise face the same challenge in the more populous Iran and if it tries to take on the emerging superpower of China the backlash might lead to full scale military activity.

When the smaller poorer nations of the world cannot get their hands on the black stuff to help feed, clothe, transport and employ their own burgeoning populations are they going to wait for aid to come, wait for outside assistance and hope the price of crude falls once more, are they going to remain quiet and just on with things or are they going to fight their neighbours to seize whatever energy resources it can?

Pestilence

We quite rightly place great pride in the advances in medical science in the past 50 years. The risk of catching a deadly disease in a dirty hospital aside, which is more a political issue than a health issue, in the UK we have greater longevity, are less likely to succumb to the diseases that plagued our grandparents and can rely on our medical services to rescue us, treat us and give us all the medicines money can buy to prolong our active lives. How do you keep the donor organs at the right temperature? How do you power the magnetic scanners which are used to detect tumours, keep an eye on growing babes in the womb?

And what of those petrochemically derived pills and medicines, the analgesics, antihistamines, antibiotics, antibacterials, sedatives, tranquillisers and those plastics in all disposables used for maintaining sterile conditions; specialised plastics used in heart valves; common items such as isopropanol (rubbing alcohol); polyethylene and poly-vinyl acetate used in tubing, sheeting, splints, prostheses, blood bags, disposable syringes and catheters?

We take our water supplies for granted. Fresh clean potable water comes out of the tap whenever we ask for it. An awful lot of oil went into getting that water to the tap. Reservoirs need to be maintained, pumps need electricity, the water treatment works need a lot of electricity, to get the water in the first place needs concrete pipes, concrete is manfacutred using a lot of oil. The pipes have to be delivered by truck to the building sites, the trenches are dug using oil fuelled diggers and so it goes on. Water isn’t just for drinking. It is used to flush the loos in milions of homes, offices, schools and hospitals. Unflushed human waste is pretty unpleasant, not just the stench. Can you imagine the huge potential for the spread of some pretty nasty diseases; there is going to be a big demand for treatment of cholera, dysentry, gastro-enteritis, hepatitis.

Oh and the rats…with crumbling sewers and a lack of “fresh” human waste passing through the sewers yes the rats will have a wonderful time as the emerge from the sewers looking for the titbits that keep them breeding. Rats carry Weil’s disease which gives rise to flu like symptoms and leads to heart failure if not treated. It wasn’t the rats that caused the outbreaks of bubonic plague in the middle ages, it was the fleas that the rats carried, but when you are dying in agony as the lymph nodes in your neck, armpits and groin have swollen to the size of a walnut you will not be too interested in the method of carrying the disease! A good strong cat might be a useful pet and possible life-saver!

Without oil we all go back to a time of greater hardships; uncontainable epidemics, hospitals which cannot be heated or air conditioned, no rescue helicopters or airlifts, no mass produced vaccines or painkillers. Death comes closer to those without oil. How are we going to cope?

Vulnerable

The entire complex centralised societies of the west are wholly dependent on cheap fuel. Those surveillance cameras on every High Street, inside every rail station and public building are there to help deter criminals, make commuters and everyday shoppers feel safe and in the worst case scenario, if someone is attacked, mugged or murdered then well there is the camera footage to help identify the culprit and provide evidence in any trial. A database of fingerprint images and DNA samples of hundreds of thousands of criminals exists, easily accessible by any authorised police officer. Well perhaps….

Apart from the token bobby pounding the beat (in pairs of course…21st century society is far too dangerous for a lone police officer to go out on patrol) those police cars - from the humble patrol Astra to the gas guzzling Range Rovers, the favoured vehicle of traffic cops, they need oil and lots of it. Starve a constabulary of petrol and diesel and how are the officers going to deal with the local teenage louts…..the corporate fraudsters…the drug barons whose fortunes will increase as society falls apart and the weak, lonely, the redundant, the business failures and atomised seek solace in bootleg alcohol and whatever mind numbing substances they can lay their hands on? Of course there is always the Army, but an army these days drives rather than marches, can a few score thousand professional soldiers keep the peace on British streets?

A mass attempt by the populace to storm a food distribution depot close to the M62 might be dealt with by a few hundred armed infantrymen, but if the scene is multiplied across two hundred depots in twenty counties and a further hundred High Streets and a score of coastal ports as desperate, genuinely desperate fathers, older brothers and husbands try and grab whatever food, medicines, drugs, alcohol for their crying, malnourished offspring siblings and family members. What if the working class storming the food distribution depots are the brothers, sisters, cousins of the twenty-something infantrymen armed with SA80s? Will the well trained British squaddie really fire on his neighbours, friends and family?

The cities will be dangerous places, conventional policing will be unable to contain the armed gangs who will control “their” areas. The wealthy can try and hide behind armoured gates and security systems, can establish their own armed gangs or buy protection from an armed gang. What of the rest of society? Even in today’s oil booming consumerist society there are no go areas for unarmed police officers, housing schemes who are in thrall to the local “Mr. Big” often a pimp, a drug dealer and fence. If the police are not there to help, just who is going to look after the law abiding residents? Do we take the law into our own hands or do we all become easy prey to the armed gangs of pimps, drug barons and organised crime rings?

The nights will of course be darker, the local councils will not be able to afford the cost of electricity to power street lamps. The nights will be quieter too, as millions of exhausts are silenced, lying rusting in driveways and gardens across the country. Fewer people will frequent the city centres, those that do risk assault, attack and even murder. Living in a city is a real health hazard in a world without oil.

Conclusion

A darker, hunger filled, more dangerous existence. That is one possible view of life after oil, but does it really have to be this bad? Could there be some upside, some silver lining on this particularly gloomy looking cloud?

It might be apocalyptic but it might just be a time of opportunity for those that are aware, those that are prepared and those that can adapt. Don’t have nightmares and see for yourself just what opportunities might open up.

 

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