America « Dr Alf's Blog

Cover of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Ottoman empire map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)





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Dr Alf is correct, the Jerusalem Post has made a telling and incisive analysis of where Erdogan, the Muslim Brotherhood of which he is a member, and Turkey as a nation, are attempting to position themselves.

TURKEY under Erdogan is attempting to be all things to all people:

–A NATO member and friend to America

–A bridge between the West and the East in terms of trade and commerce

–Against terrorists and for stability

–A would be member of the EU

–A close partner with Germany

–A country that would like money from the new BRICS bank (he met Vladimir Putin to ask for money)

–A country that wants to overthrow Syria and recreate the lost Ottoman Empire, having lost it 96 years ago following defeat in World War 1 at the hands of the British and Commonwealth troops

–A country that is in league with ISIS and sees them as a vehicle towards greater regional ambition

Turkey needs to attend to its own economic affairs and stop trying to imagine a greater role for itself running the recreated Ottoman Empire.

It is not going to be allowed to join the EU, which is essentially a Christian club and needs to make progress on improving the well-being and prosperity of its people.

The Jerusalem Post likens Turkey to a woman who has upset too many lovers only to find that nobody trusts or loves her anymore.

My prognosis is that Turkey cannot be trusted and needs to be watched carefully.

Beyond that, Erdogan is long past his sell-by date and, like a worn tyre, needs to be reconstituted into something less useless and then be replaced with someone more in tune with our interests.

John Gelmini

Drax Power Station (Photo credit: Wikipedia)





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Like Dr Alf, I can broadly relate to the Bruegel article but I cannot “buy” the argument about the need to “insure against Climate Change”.

Currently, Germany will have problems with energy supply because of a refusal to build nuclear power stations and the UK, since the recent fire at Didcot power station, is now just a heartbeat away from blackouts, as we have now been run down to just 2% spare generating capacity, with winter less than 5 weeks away.

There is no security of energy supply and Europe’s economy is stagnating.

Even if there was some sort of recovery from the “flat-lining patient”, which seems unlikely, there would not be enough generating capacity to power the factories and produce a sustained recovery.

Closing down coal fired power stations may save pollution but when China is opening up 7 of these every week, all we are doing is putting more people out of work.

It gets increasingly barmy because now Ed Davey, the UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change, has decided that Drax power station, in Yorkshire, UK, will burn wooden pellets from the Carolinas in America. Of course, these pellets are shipped by sea, using diesel ships and presumably diesel powered lorries or trains to actually get the pellets to the power station and from their American forests to the freighters in America, prior to their 4,000 mile journey in the first place. This “so-called2 UK Government Minister, also likes wind-farms which are subsidized at the rate of £2,500 gbp per turbine and which between them all only produce 14% of our electrical power requirements. In addition, he wants to put smart meters into houses and envisages switching off people’s refrigerators at 3.00 AM, whilst people are asleep and then switching them back on again at say 5.30 am, whilst people are still asleep in order to save energy. I have this first hand, from one of his Civil Servants whom I met at the University of East Anglia. She expressed surprise when I asked what the Department’s approach would be to the personal representatives of a pensioner suing the Department in the event of food poisoning caused by such a switch-off of power causing food such as fish to go off.

Clearly Europe is full of “Ed Davey” lookalikes, devoid of commonsense, devoid of any concept of consequences and devoid of any concept on how a modern economy is supposed to work.

Without people working and paying taxes, there are no revenues to sustain a Government or Ministerial Department, let alone provide public services so perhaps the objective is to de-industrialize to the point where no-one works all but a few people die off and society as we know it changes to a feudal economy, whereby a few people live in moated castles, robots do all the menial work and no-one else is left?

I exaggerate to make the point but left unchecked this is the ultimate endgame if there is no change of direction.

John Gelmini