Alexa - I said hoarse not horse

From the BBC

People will be able to get expert health advice using Amazon Alexa devices, under a partnership with the NHS, the government has announced.

From this week, the voice-assisted technology is automatically searching the official NHS website when UK users ask for health-related advice.

The government in England said it could reduce demand on the NHS.

What if such a system actually does reduce demand? Hard to imagine because even if it does reduce demand the statistics may not show it for one reason or another.       

AOC - almost spoof proof

Via Tony Heller - his climate videos are good too.

Money talks

An £845,000 project has been launched in eight areas of Derby to encourage parents to talk to their children - at mealtimes, during play and through everyday conversations.

What are they supposed to talk about though? Maybe that comes later.

Boris for PM?

If elected leader of the Conservatives it is impossible to predict how Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tackle such a poisonous chalice. The leader’s character is only one facet of a complex web of political forces – the EU, civil service, media, Parliament and the electorate. Whatever his strengths and weaknesses, failure seems more likely than success.

Boris comes across as a colourful, clever, likeable but somewhat idle and unreliable chap who may have no clear idea about tackling the job of Prime Minister. He may simply be very ambitious and achieving his core ambition, tasting the pinnacle of political power, lining himself up for another move when things fall apart – that may be enough. We can’t tell.

Yet the Conservatives need a real leader, a breath of something different, a clear contrast with the politically correct loons and grey managerial types we encounter in modern politics. They need someone to take on Jeremy Corbyn and make him look foolish. Not a difficult task of course but still essential if the party aims to deal with the Brexit Party and find a way through Brexit intact.

Many Conservative MPs may see Boris as worth a punt and perhaps he is. At least he’ll be interesting but it leaves us with the question of why modern political leaders have largely abandoned leadership. Political leadership is an actor’s job, a performance designed to inspire and enthuse followers while blunting the attacks of critics and opponents. Boris seems to realise that, but apart from Nigel Farage he appears to be the only political leader who does.

As if the leader has been supplanted by the manager, the uninspiring functionary who is almost bound to fail simply because failure to enthuse leads to failure.

Jeremy storms into fourth place

Labour are backed by fewer than one in five voters and are only the fourth most popular party, according to a new poll.

In a fresh YouGov survey for The Times, Jeremy Corbyn's party dropped to 18% behind the Conservatives (24%), Brexit Party (23%) and Liberal Democrats (20%).

Mr Corbyn never fails to entertain, but a slightly disturbing aspect is that he still attracted 18% of this particular poll. People who respond to such polls need to pull their socks up - 0% would have been far more entertaining.  

A waste of bacon

source

A quick visit to the past - if you type ‘Ed Miliband’ into Google the second most likely bit of additional text offered by the Mighty Search Machine is ‘bacon sandwich’. All that expensive image management effort wasted. I don’t know why they bother.

Yet while we are on the subject of bacon sandwiches, eating is a rum game anyway isn’t it? Take the bacon sandwich for example. Firstly we insert it it into our mouths as elegantly as possible. Then it is masticated, absorbed and as if by magic turns into enough energy to mow the lawn.

Which is fine if you want to mow the lawn or do something else equally useful, but what about politicians such as Ed? If they eventually manage to gobble up a bacon sandwich they are liable to turn it into enough energy to talk bollocks for a few hours. Seems like a waste of bacon to me.

Insignificant individuals have no role

This is another in an occasional series of mostly non-technical climate posts. To begin we have one of the many obvious questions thrown up by the catastrophic climate change project.

Does anyone actually believe we are headed for climate catastrophe?

To my mind the answer to this question is obvious – no. To a good approximation nobody believes it and nobody ever did believe it. Look at the behaviour we see around us.

Climate leaders fly all over the world and climate followers drive cars, take holidays, heat their homes in winter, cook their food and use electrical appliances. We see large houses being built in the traditional manner, packed airports at holiday time and hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius doing 80mph down the motorway.

Moving on to international climate mitigation policies we are confronted with technological solutions such as wind turbines and solar panels which cannot deliver reliable energy at the level we have come to rely on. If we consider international climate treaties such as the Paris Agreement we are confronted with the China issue - there is no point to emissions treaties if China doesn’t join in.

If we consider energy technology which has the capacity to deliver a low emission future we are left with nuclear power and nothing else. The climate industrial complex doesn’t want nuclear power, the one technology which would deliver us from the supposed climate emergency.

To a good approximation nobody believes catastrophic climate predictions. Nobody ever did.

So what is the real game?

Again this is well known - Agenda 21. The climate game is a global bureaucratic and political project initiated and sustained by the UN with the willing cooperation of numerous interested governments, NGOs, journalists, universities, businesses, criminals and celebrity virtue-signallers.

Insignificant individuals have no role.

But that’s the plan anyway.