5 September 2008: the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average.

Now they say the UK had its coldest winter for 13 years. The average mean temperature across December, January and February was 3.1C – the lowest since the winter beginning in 1995, which averaged 2.5C.

More here

Tossers!

The Times
EU must pay price to keep Eastern poor relations in the family

The crisis in Central and Eastern Europe has been triggered by the world’s financial turmoil. But the European Union was already set for an unpleasant showdown between its older members and its newer ones. Any recession — never mind one as acute as this — would have driven home the point that the east wants more than voters in the west want to pay.

The Independent
Ukraine: Nation on the brink of bankruptcy

International financiers will say, without wanting to be quoted, that Ukraine is already, for all practical purposes, bankrupt. They do not like the D-word, default, though that is clearly on their mind. Ukrainian officials like the word still less, smacking as it does of national humiliation. But the taboo was broken in recent days, when a senior IMF official, Marek Belka, director of the fund’s European department, was quoted in the Ukrainian press as rejecting that idea. Which, in many Ukrainian minds, only made the prospect more real.

Financial Times
Lack of Bank policy details fuels concern

The Bank of England and the Treasury are poised to rip up the blueprints for monetary policy on Thursday and start flooding the system with cash in an effort to raise spending and halt sliding prices.But they have been silent so far on the most important question relating to this “quantitative easing” – what would be a bold move, and what is just dabbling? This unaddressed issue is creating uncertainty and gives the impression that the authorities do not know what they are doing.

Financial Times: Late mortgage payments hit record levels

Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency, examined the performance of loans bundled into securities – bonds or notes – and sold to investors. The rate of delinquent or overdue payments, particularly those late by 90 days or more, are a leading indicator of the losses that lenders are likely to make on those loans.

The Independent: Brown can’t save the world – and even Obama can’t save him

This is a good time for him to be in Washington. Mr Obama still seems to be on honeymoon with his electorate. Mr Brown will hope that some of the glamour rubs off on him. In advance, the Labour spinners have been working hard. We are told that the Brown/Obama meeting will be a progressive coalition against the forces of international conservatism. Every American leftist who was involved with the Obama campaign, however peripherally, will be wheeled out to conflate David Cameron and the Republicans who opposed the Obama fiscal measures.

The Guardian: Summit fails to heal EU’s divisions over recession

Despite Sarkozy’s apparent climbdown on cars, suspicions are rampant among newer EU members in central Europe that Germany, France, Britain and Italy are preoccupied with national salvage schemes that are shredding the European rulebook. “We fear there will be two plans to save the European economy, one for the west and the eurozone and another for the rest. That’s an idea that would be very dangerous for the EU,” said Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Poland’s Europe minister.

The Times: Bank of England set to pump cash into economy to avoid deflation

This week, the Bank will deploy its last resort, and begin printing money, or at least its modern equivalent. It has been forced to ask permission from Mr Darling to begin this quantitative easing. The MPC will inject billions into the economy by buying company and government bonds, their IOUs, from banks. It will create money by electronically crediting the banks’ accounts. In turn, this is intended to allow the banks scope to make billions in new loans. But the strategy raises huge questions: over whether it will work, what it means for MPC independence, and how such desperate measures became needed.

The Daily Telegraph: Mandelson warns Post Office row is harming Labour

Britain facing unprecedented crisis, warns leading left-wing economist
John Prescott: Dock RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin’s massive pension
We’ll fix law to grab Fred’s bread
Minority groups to get extra Government help to protect them from the recession

The global crisis is far from over, has only just begun, Harvard author and financial crisis guru Niall Ferguson said in an interview before delivering a presentation to public-policy think tank, Canada 2020.

Policy makers and forecasters who see a recovery next year are probably lying to boost public confidence, he said. And the crisis will eventually provoke political conflict, albeit not on the scale of a world war, but violent all the same.

“There will be blood.”

Source

Don’t expect it to receive much coverage by organisations like the BBC, who are sold out to the likes of Al Gore and the IPCC muppets.

Austria’s finance minister warned last week of the risk of an economic “catastrophe” in the 46m-strong country triggering a “domino effect” of problems further west. Ukraine’s finance minister, meanwhile, resigned amid differences over budgetary policy that delayed the second tranche of a $16.4bn International Monetary Fund loan, due this weekend.

Fuel loads above about eight tonnes a hectare are considered a fire hazard. A federal parliamentary inquiry into bushfires in 2003 heard that a fourfold increase in ground fuel leads to a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.

Things are no better in NSW, although we don’t quite have Victoria’s perfect storm of winds and forest types. Near Dubbo two years ago, as a bushfire raged through the Goonoo Community Conservation Area, volunteer firefighters bulldozing a control line were obstructed by National Parks and Wildlife Service employees who had driven from Sydney to stop vegetation being damaged.

The poor management of national parks and state forests in Victoria is highlighted by the interactive fire map on the website of the Department of Sustainability and Environment. Yesterday it showed that, of 148 fires started since mid-January, 120 started in state forests, national parks, or other public land, and just 21 on private property.

Gobsmacking! The world is in the grip of its greatest-ever financial crisis and some smart-arse at the CBI can forecast economic decline with accuracy and tell us when expansion will begin. God help us all if anyone takes this kind of expert crapology seriously and, worse, makes financial decisions based on it.