Excerpt from a IM conversation with my friend Cat, I would re-write it, but I am too idle:

Today, I was done for a £20 penalty fare for going one stop passed my ticket
I am going to fight it
Just to cost them £20 dealing with me
I may have used a swear word beginning with F
and he said that swearing was an £80 fine
I fear I may have become less concerned at the lot of the low paid working man at that point
It’s like being in fucking Germany
circa 1941
Cat: well give a man a hat and he becomes some kind of nazi i find
I bought a £27 ticket
to sit in a cramped seat
on a dirty train
which takes 42 minutes now – took 25min 15 years ago
and then I overshot by one stop
all of 3 miles
and paid the excess fare of £1 fucking 50
and the cunt fined me £20
When I refused to give him name and address, he said he would call police – I should have called his bluff
I may have thrown the ticket on the tracks – should have been in his face
Cat: rail conductors, security guards, traffic wardens…all the fucking same
yes
there were two kids
about 14-15
had done the same as I (that train doesn’t stop at our station, but one overshoots and walks back)
they were happily fining them £20 each too
I mean, how fucking petty
Cat: I do so hate officious twats

This is a piece ripped unashamedly from Jerry Pournelle’s blog
(http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q2/view515.html#Thursday):

Phil Chapman makes Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352241,00.html

Until recently the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age were thought to have a connection. Apparently man made global warming is more important now. Hypothesis: if the sunspot minimum continues during 2008 then the Earth will be cooler in January 2009 than it is now. Second hypothesis: climate model builders will have a good explanation that shows the Earth is still warming, but we just don’t see it yet.

I quote this becuase I think he’s right – next year will be cooler, and the global warming fanatics will claim that it is just a variation in the long trend upwards – what complete bull. All the information seems to suggest that we plateaued about ten years ago (yes ten years where the average world temperature has not gone up) and the next bit of the cycle will probably be down – based on experience, as oppossed to nonsensical models.