Scams, scams and more scams - the Green solar panels scam

They tell you solar panels are eco-friendly and save you money. The truth? They don't work much of the time and take 100 YEARS to pay for themselves... | Mail Online

Solar panels have been around for a very long time. Here in Australia one of the oldest of these companies is Solarhart hot water systems. It has been around for around 40 years, and yes I can remember the business being set up in shops close to my home when I was a teenager. Of course in Australia there is more chance of these solar panels working but in the U.K.? Or even parts of the U.S.A. where they have extremely cold conditions? Give me a break!!

The climate change scaremongering has cost a lot of people a lot of money, and in this particular story the focus is on the selling of solar panels as being a super efficient means of cutting utility bills. Wendy Hammett is one of the pensioners that has been ripped off by salesmen claiming that solar panels are so efficient:

The system, she was promised, would slash her gas and electric bills by 70 per cent. It was a lie.

'It has ended up costing me more,' she said. She is not alone. Other elderly customers of Simplee Solar suffered a similar fate.

Now here is the reason that has led to the increase in the complaints about solar panel companies:

Solar panelling, in fact, is the new double glazing.

To date, about 100,000 households in the country have solar thermal installations.

Over the next ten years, the figure, analysts predict, will reach 1million - a tenfold increase.

From next year, government grants will be available to anyone who wants to install them in their homes.

It's one of the few areas of the economy which is expanding, fuelled by the soaring cost of gas and electricity as well as fears about global warming.

Hence the reason why salesmen such as Lee Comer are thriving.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) received a staggering 1,000 complaints about the sector last year. 

The disturbing trend was underlined by a recent investigation by consumer watchdog Which? which found that ten out of 14 companies investigated exaggerated claims about the effectiveness and potential savings of solar panels.

In fact a typical system, which uses the sun's rays to provide hot water, costs around £5,500 and will cut about 10 per cent (just £55 a year) from your bill.

Another way of putting it, of course, is that it would take 100 years - the so called 'payback time' - to recoup your £5,500 investment, based on current fuel prices.

In other words, the benefits are environmental, not financial - despite what you might be told by the man in a shiny suit on the doorstep, or in flyers through your letterbox.

The experience of retired gardening centre boss Chris Barrington and his wife Marilyn epitomises the worst of the industry - at least 200 solar thermal companies are now operating in Britain.

'We were promised constant hot water without any additional heating from the boiler, even in dull conditions,' said Mr Barrington, 61, from Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in West Wales.

'We had an immersion tank to heat our water and it was expensive but the salesman assured me I would never need one again because the system we had chosen was superefficient.'

The Barrington's soon realised they had been duped.

'For much of the year it is absolutely useless, so we're having to spend £150 a month getting hot water from our old electric immersion tank.'

Mr Barrington began legal action to get his £250 deposit returned and also refused to pay the £5,850 balance.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1274784/They-tell-solar-panels-eco-friendly-save-money-The-truth-They-dont-work-time-100-YEARS-pay-.html?ITO=1490&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailymail%2Fnews+%28News+%7C+Mail+Online%29&utm_content=Bloglines#ixzz0nVuoqZbb

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Stevens the party hack due to retire from the Supreme Court

Justice Stevens’ activism made America weaker | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

The daily caller has a very good summary of some of the more controversial decisions of Justice John Paul Stevens.

The retirement announcement by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens brings about the usual speculation about his replacement, as well as the retrospective of the retiring justice’s career. Much will be made of the oft-described collegiality of Justice Stevens, and deservedly so. He is by all accounts a decent man, a World War II veteran, and he is beyond question a Justice who wrote opinions across the spectrums of ideology and judicial philosophy, notably defending, in dissent, Congressional action to ban the desecration of the United States flag (see Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397).

But make no mistake about Stevens’ legacy. He is, like virtually all modern liberal jurists, an activist who is not afraid to use the Court to achieve his own philosophical ends. And that tendency is as dangerous as a renegade president and Congress hell bent on increasing the power of the state at the expense of liberty, as is the case with the current regime.

Justice Stevens’ opinions span some 34 years, seven Presidents and numerous colleagues on the Court. Accordingly, some will point to supposedly “right leaning” decisions from yesteryear, such as the aforementioned flag case, his 1978 opinions upholding an FCC regulation against broadcasting indecent material (see FCC v. Pacifica, 438 U.S. 726) and voting to strike down a racial quota system in California (see Regents of University of California v Bakke, 438 U.S. 265), as well as his 1976 opinion voting to reinstate the death penalty (Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153).

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/04/10/commentary-justice-stevens-liberal-activism-made-america-weaker/#ixzz0kmB9yiML

Now why do I consider the man to be a party hack? I have been reading through the considerable amount of material that is the opinion of the SCOTUS in the Citizens United case. This was a case which essentially touches on freedom of speech for those who have banded together in a group in order to promote their political views. The majority decision in the Citizens United case has struck down the restrictions on corporate funding for political campaigns which in effect has denied a group of citizens the right to free speech. The majority made their decision in part to strike down the offending clause because of the penalties attached. The power given to the FEC does indeed "chill" free speech to a certain degree, which is the point that was being made by the majority. Having read through the well-reasoned majority opinions, it was like getting a dash of cold water to read the meanderings of the Stevens opinion. The anti-corporate stand of Justice Stevens seems to me to be a little bit over the top. My first impression when I started to read what he was saying was "party hack".

The tenure of Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court has seen a number of decisions that have weakened the intent of the founding fathers, especially in his interpretation of the Commerce clause (yes I do believe that those interpretations that have broadened the Commerce clause are in fact wrong). He has also written opinions that deny Christians various rights and he was responsible in part for the Roe vs Wade decision. His liberal agenda has done irreparable harm to Americans and especially the unborn.

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Was it suicide? Request for probe into Dr. David Kelly's death

Shadow Justice Secretary backs call for inquiry into death of weapons inspector Dr David Kelly | Mail Online

Dr. David Kelly, the weapons inspector who first queried the continued existence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was found slumped in his car. His death looked like it was suicide, and the coroner ruled the case as a suicide, however, there is a group of doctors who have been gathering evidence to show that this is not possible... that the artery that was slashed was too small for Kelly to have bled to death.

I think it is possible to conclude that Iraq had WMDs. In fact Saddam Hussein used those weapons against his own people. He was ordered to destroy the weapons, and the weapons inspectors were supposed to go in and check to make sure that they had been destroyed. What seems to have taken place is that Saddam Hussein either got rid of the WMDs by sending them across the border into Syria, or he had destroyed them and then pretended that they still existed.

When Saddam Hussein was captured he did admit that he had pretended to continue to have the weapons, as a protection against Iran... I can understand why he would have wanted to pretend to Iran that he had the weapons... as such I think that Saddam Hussein did in fact dupe the world about the existence of the weapons. He would not let the weapons inspectors into Iraq to check and make sure that the weapons had been destroyed.

If Dr. Kelly's death was not a suicide after all, then what in fact happened? Was this a government hit?

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Animal tales of the moment

Micro-pig: The dog, the cat, and the six micro-pigs who share a home together | Mail Online

Having had the experience of a dog and cat that "slept together" and "ate together" well, what really happened is that the dog thought that she was mother to the kitten, I do like to read these animals stories. This one is no different because the dog, cat and micro pigs living together in harmony makes a great story.

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What exactly are you advocating Mr Rudd?

Kevin Rudd (also known as Kevin Krudd) is about to have an essay released in which he calls for a New World Order. Without a doubt what Krudd is actually advocating is a lot more than socialism - he is advocating Communism. In his essay, Krudd denounces what he terms the "unfettered capitalism of the past three decades" whilst he calls for a new era in which government intervention and regulation feature heavily.

The problem here is that this form of heavy government intervention has failed in the past. The New Deal experiment by Roosevelt is a prime example of how this kind of intervention fails in its task to bring an economy out of the morass of high unemployment, and other ills.

Also, Krudd has a bit of a problem if he describes the way in which the economy has worked for the past 30 years as a "great neo-liberal experiment", rather, it is what he wants that will be the the "neo-liberal experiment", and if it is allowed to proceed then we will find ourselves falling further and further into an economic depression.

Krudd has decreed:

"Neo-liberalism and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. And, ironically, it now falls to social democracy to prevent liberal capitalism from cannibalising itself."

Mr Rudd writes in The Monthly that just as Franklin Roosevelt rebuilt US capitalism after the Great Depression, modern-day "social democrats" such as himself and the US President, Barack Obama, must do the same again. But he argues that "minor tweakings of long-established orthodoxies will not do" and advocates a new system that reaches beyond the 70-year-old interventionist principles of John Maynard Keynes.

The problem with the Krudd analysis is that Franklin Roosevelt did not rebuild US capitalism. The reality happens to be that the USA took longer than necessary to come out of the Great Depression because of the failure of the Government intervention. What Krudd fails to appreciate is that unemployment actually got worse during the Great Depression, not better. What saved the USA was not the policies of Rossevelt, but the Second World War.

The neo-liberal socialists like Kevin Rudd seem to think that they understand Keynsian economics. They cling to the fact that Keynes advocated that there should be government intervention during times of high unemployment. What they fail to understand is that J.M. Keynes actually understood that what is also needed is private investment to help keep the economy working or well-oiled.

Like his rather incompetent counter-part in the USA, the new POTUS, Barack Obama (Sotero perhaps is more correct), Kevin Krudd believes that it is necessary to bash the CEOs of businesses and banks and to grandstand about what has gone wrong. The Kevin Krudd "fix" has been a stimulus package that will cost the tax-payer dearly, but it will not help to bring the economy out of the present recession.

When Kevin Krudd blasts CEOs for awarding themselves bonuses, he should think about how this is hypocrisy in its worst form because members of Parliament do not exercise any restraint at all. The essay by Krudd seems to be indicating that he wants to plunge Australia into a government that is based upon communism. He is talking the double talk, attacking the straw-man that he refers to as neo-liberals, when in fact it is his policies that are those of the neo-liberals.

Also, he is attacking the trade and economic policies of the Hawke-Keating years (when Keating was Treasurer) which has led to Keating's own attack upon Kevin Krudd (and a well deserved attack by Keating). Paul Keating was responsible for most of the changes in the Australian economy that have been very painful. The fall-out from those changes has seen an end to Australian manufacturing industry. At this moment we are seeing that one of the few remaining companies has made a decision to lay off employees and head to China - the company owns the brands of Bonds and Dunlop. In some ways it is inevitatble because these brands simply cannot compete against the Chinese imports. The costs of manufacturing are just too high, and with all of the Green nonsense that we suffer these costs will continue to rise in the future.

I happen to agree that we need to have some kind of justification for some of the CEO bonuses that are handed out, especially when they are given at the expense of employee jobs (QANTAS) but it is not right for the Prime Minister to bash these compnanies by implying things that are not necessarily true.

There is little chance that the Krudd stimulus package will work. The reason? There is too much pork in the package, and that pork is not going to help job creation. If Krudd had been following true Keynesian economics, then the solution would have been to lower taxes first. Those companies that are struggling need to start looking at ways of reducing their waste and bloat. They should not be relying upon a government handout. The government handouts to companies such as General Motors Holden are in reality quite wasteful. That money is not going to fix the underlying problems within the motor industry. We are a small nation, and if we were to continue to have a viable motor industry then we need to be able to sell the cars in the overseas markets. Is this happening? In other words why is the product not being sold on the world market? Why is the product so uncompetitive? Throwing money at these car manufacturers is jut not the way to resolve these questions.

I do not believe in the level of government intervention advocated by Kevin Krudd. Perhaps it could be said that I am a libertarian because I believe in less intervention, not more, but I do not see myself in that light because I have certain differences of opinion with the Libertarians. There are many areas where Government intervention is somewhat necessary, but I think that the intervention should be short-term and not long-term as Krudd seems to be advocating.

I suspect that few Australians have any knowledge of the real Kevin Krudd agenda. I just hope that more Australian voters will become aware of his very dangerous policies, especially when they begin to realise that he wants to drive us towards communism, which is the real name for what he is advocating.