So Lord Elis Thomas, the National Assembly for Wales' Presiding Officer has suggested that the referendum on Assembly powers should be held in Autumn 2011. This does not surprise me at all. A few weeks ago I read a piece by Martin Shipton in the Western Mail, postulating the same date. Perhaps Martin had written his piece uninstigated, but my immediate thought was that a very senior and very cunning politician had been involved somewhere behind the curtains.
I'll go further. October 2011 may have been the preferred date all along - by very senior and very cunning politicians that is. Lets look at the circumstantial evidence. It was May 2007 when Plaid Cymru and Labour formally agreed that the referendum should take place on or before the May 2011 Assembly Election. What followed was an exercise in pointless procrastination of epic proportions, that delayed the vote by which AMs formally asked the Secretary of State for Wales to hold this referendum until February 2010. Legal advice (which remained private) fell into my hands at the time pointing out how difficult it would be to meet an October/November 2010 deadline. Despite that advice, First Minister, Carwyn Jones, delayed sending on the AM's 'request' for over a week, and Peter Hain, the SoS then left the letter lie on his desk. We suspect this because of the false vociferousness of his protestations. So when Cheryl Gillan took over in May, it was too late to hold the referendum this year, before winter sets in. Again we can tell this was a pre-planned stunt because of the orchestrated protests both in Cardiff and Westminster - which I notice have died down now that the Assembly's latest legal advice has been made public. No-one seemed to have told Welsh Labour MPs before PMQs last Wed. though. They did sound daft.
So what are the choices before us. 1) We could try to hold the referendum in the late autumn/early spring - when the weather is decidedly suspect. 2) We could hold it on the same day as the Assembly Election - a stunt which would lead to inevitable defeat (in my opinion). 3) We could do as his Lordship has suggested today. I know where my money's going. What would be odd is if the Secretary of State called a referendum earlier than the Labour/Plaid Coalition actually wanted it.
1 comment:
Hit the scrawl button NOW.
If memory serves Lord Elis Thomas didn't seem very keen to welcome the Israeli Ambassador. Not a terribly good transition sentence for introducing ‘a solution’ for dealing with (if it becomes necessary) Iran's underground enrichment centrifuges at Nantanz.
Israel or USA could remove nuke warheads from currently deployed ballistic missiles (ICBMs in the case of the USA) and fill the warheads with half a ton or so of depleted uranium. Such non-nuke ballistic missiles/rockets would be eminently useable to destroy in totality the Nantanz facility even if it is protected by the Russian S300 system.
High kinetic energy warheads filled with depleted uranium would easily penetrate and destroy Iran's underground enrichment centrifuges at Nantanz. Upon deployment of such a weapon system Nantanz would be reduced to an inglorious underground dartboard vulnerable to be punctured by high velocity ‘darts’ loaded with depleted uranium.
The massive centrifuge hall at Nantanz would become a massive powder-keg of very hot particulate matter resulting in huge fireballs and the impact of the rest of the high velocity/kinetic vehicles (meaning it would be the equivalent of a large dum-dum bullet) would knock the centrifuges out of whack which will result in their destruction if they are running at high Gees – so it would be a double whammy weapon. Whole cascades would be reduced to piles of scrap metal.
100 of these kinetic weapons would be sufficient to destroy Nantanz with sufficient left to make its reconstruction moot. German V2s had so much kinetic energy on impact they went through London’s clay reaching Tube lines, if memory serves at least one went through the River Thames and penetrated so far down that it drilled a ‘pipeline of Thames water’ right into an underground Tube system resulting in lots of terrible deaths from drowning among families who had taken refuge underground in London’s Tube to survive the London blitz during WWII.
(Another simple solution is to wreck the heat rejection units (cooling system) at least part of which must communicate with/be operably connected to the outside world - take them out and ice-cream: the centrifuges would have to be shut down.)
Gentlemen: we have the means (if deployed) to knock out the Natanz plant without risking or using a single aircraft. And do you know why there would be no aircraft to shoot down? Because there would be no aircraft to shoot down (based on a couple of lines in Red Dwarf). “Marvelous,” as Rimmer might say.
Now who on earth would come up with such an idea to destroy Natanz? The guy who invented the kit to fix the original BP Gulf oil leak? No way no how no calves no buttocks and definitely no flap-jacks (mutated line from an episode of Red Dwarf).
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