The UK government seems to have decided that an expansion of use of biofuels for road transport is possibly not the best idea ever.

In a sudden outbreak of common sense, they have acknowledged that diverting crops from food production to biofuel production may in fact drive up the price of food. They are debate whether to abandon the EUs target of 10% biofuel usage by 2020, a target which I believe the EU government themselves are thinking of scrapping.

Ruth Kelly for the government made some points about rainforest deforestation and suggested a softly-softy approach

“To tackle climate change we will need to develop new, cleaner fuels - but that doesn’t mean pushing forward indiscriminately on biofuels that may do more harm than good.”

Which was rather contrary to previous policy which seemed to be pushing biofuels as a general panacea and solution to the fuel crisis.

The reality is that as such epic quantities of land have to be diverted to biofuel production to have any meaningful effect, the price of food is inevitably driven up making poor people poorer (or just plain starving them).

My personal view toward a solution is to change the energy storage medium for all short-range vehicles to battery-electric combined with a clear nuclear-power generation strategy. Then the inevitably higher-priced hydrocarbon fuels can be dedicated to longer-range transportion where the energy density afforded will still be neccesary. This could perhaps include high-capacity PHEVs.

Unfortunately, vehicle manufacturers are still faffing about with hydrogen fuel cell designs for which there is no present-day infrastructure and arguably require far more energy in their operation cycle than battery electric systems anyway.

British MPs have voted to keep their £24,000 a year housing allowance which allows them to buy, furnish and service a second home in the capital.

The allowance, worth over £2,000 more than the average British salary on it’s own is on top of an MPs existing salary of £61,181.

MPs will also be able to spend £400 a month expenses on shopping and to add insult to injury, expenses will be internally audited rather than given to an independant body.

The purpose of the votes was apparently to reform MPs expenses and yet they appear to have votes to keep their noses in the trough. Wonderful.

Guido Fawke’s blog has the voting list.

The Royal Navy’s next class of aircraft carriers is set to be built in the United Kingdom creating real jobs in something called ‘industry’.

The new aircraft carriers replace the diminutive Invincible class carrier (also known as through-deck cruisers) which could only support STOVL/VTOL operations. Typically though, it’s not going to be as simple as going straight back to normal carriers, oh no. The new Queen Elizabeth Class will be built to the dimensions and specifications needed for proper, angle-deck CATOBAR operations and then fitted with a ’ski-ramp’ and no arrestor or catapult gear and used for STOVL operations of the F-35B. You couldn’t make it up.

The MoD say the carriers are ‘future-proof’ in that they can be later fitted out for CATOBAR. I reckon they’ll be fitted out for CATOBAR (at great cost, no doubt) fairly soon on when their abilities with the F-35B get shown up by the Americans who will be launching normal F-35s with greater payloads and the French who will also be taking a carrier of the same design but fitted for CATOBAR to support their Dassault Rafale fighters. The MoD seem hell-bent on getting it wrong to start with and then spending a fortune fixing it in a hurry.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales are to be built by VT-Group and BAE Systems with work being carried out at Glasgow and Rosyth in Scotland and Barrow-in-Furness and Portsmouth in England.

The new carriers which will displace 65,000 tons each and carry up to 40 aircraft are due in service around 2015. The contracts for their construction are said to be worth £3bn and could create or secure up to 10,000 jobs.

Now if we (the UK) knew what was good for us, we’d be out trying to sell variants of this carrier design, scaled down versions etc wherever we could as well as using them as marketing material for British ship-building industry at every turn yet these vessels appear to be pretty much a one-off. The single French aircraft carrier based on the same design will be built in Saint Nazaire and Brest.

While not on the scale of some of the previous gargantuan NHS data loss cockups, an NHS Lothian worker has none the less done their best to compromise patient data security.

This time it’s all of the letters sent by 137 patients to their Edinburgh GPs over a period of two years. All this data was stored on a USB flash drive which was promptly ‘lost’.

NHS Lothian say they immediately called in their their own IT team to find all of the patients who had been put at risk by this latest data loss. It begs the question though, why can’t these IT departments start training NHS workers to use industry-strength encryption which is readily available through well-know, free and easy to use open-source software?

Some MEPs have tabled amendments to the EU Telecom Package (draft EU communications framework bill) which would see the previously voted-against ‘3 strike rule’ brought into law.

The ‘3 strike rule’ would see corporations (in some cases non-EU corporations) being given power of judge and jury over private EU citizens under the auspices of the corporations defending their ‘intellectual property’ rights. The EU Commission would effectively be able to mandate the installation of spyware at the ISP level so that 3rd party corporations would be able to directly spy on EU citizens data usage.

The legislation could also see EU ISPs having to bar access to Peer to Peer (P2P) networks such as bittorrent in an arbitrary manner. I’m sure that will go down really well with Linux users who can’t get their distros and World of Warcraft players who can no-longer download their game updates. The problem is that while the likes of the music industry may not like peer-to-peer software, it has so many legitimate uses that it’s as hard to justify blocking as HTTP Port 80.

I’ve written to my MEP opposing this stupidity. If you are an EU citizen, you can write to yours too. Click here for a searchable map to find your MEP. MEPs will vote on the amendments next Monday (7th July) so get cracking and get your MEP informed today!

I also suggets visiting EDRI and La Quadrature Du Net for further information. You can also read La Quadrature Du Net’s arguments against the amendments.

Retired French aircraft carrier Clemenceau (R98) is to be broken up at Graythorp in Hartlepool. Clemenceau was originally sent to India for dismantling in 2005 but due to the large amounts of toxic chemicals and materials on board, was denied access.

In 2006, Clemenceau returned to French waters and was anchored off Brest. Able UK have now secured dispensation to handle the 700 tons of asbestos and will be carrying out the contract to scrap the vessel.

About the Clemenceau

“le Clem” was laid-down in 1955 and launched in 1957, with 32,700 tons displacement and angle-deck CATOBAR configuration, she could carry up to 40 aircraft including the possibility of nuclear-armed Super Etendards. In the 1990s Clemenceau supported sorties over the former Yugoslavia. There was a second ship of Clemenceau’s class named ‘Foch’ (R99) which continues to serve to this day in the Brazillian Navy as Sao Paulo.

Clemenceau is expected in Hartlepool for dismantling in the late summer.