Prophesy?

It's a bit strange, watching the news from the UK. Now they're going to allow 'terrorist suspects' to be locked up for a period of up to 42 days without charge or trial. No doubt the first people to suffer such detention will be campaigning OAP's who raise their voices during Labour party conferences or suchlike. However, the enabling act for this legislation has to pass through Britain's upper house, the House of Lords, which will very likely throw it out. Then the current administration will feel forced to use the Parliament Act to ramrod the whole poorly framed mess through as they have before.

Am also watching the weather reports with interest; a new report by researchers which is getting quite a lot of media coverage, states that permafrost melt will cause major problems in Canada and North America. I'm a bit dubious myself, as recent temperatures in the past year or so haven't shown indication of rising, rather the opposite. I know that one year doesn't make a trend, and there's more ice in Antarctica than of late. There were also reports of record ice packs during winter 2007/08, which rather makes me wonder. What with rather reduced solar activity and all. Some pundits are already resurrecting the old 1970's 'ice age' panic. What is it with these guys? We get enough Earthquakes and Cyclones without stirring up extra panics.

My view? There's not a lot you can do about the weather, it just happens, and slightly raised CO2 levels aren't enough to cause the variations we're seeing.

Notwithstanding all of the above, I'm feeling a bit prophetic because my 'First flights' MSS is written against a world where the ice caps have expanded due to reduced solar output, the North American continent has pursued an isolationist foreign policy for a hundred or so years, and an repressive and islamicised (But not truly Islamic) European Union is trying to metaphorically kick sand in everyone's faces. The story feels good with about 15,000 words to go to target.