178 Impose a Carbon Tariff on manufactured imports from China - Jeff Rubin

(1) El Niño to affect Philippines until early 2010
(2) Tree-crops are less vulnerable to drought
(3) Make meat-eaters pay with a Meat Tax - Peter Singer
(4) Carbon trading more about World Government than allowing Wall St. to make money
(5) List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
(6) Coastal land is sinking due to offshore oil and gas extraction
(7) Global Warming? What a load of poppycock! - Professor David Bellamy
(8) Impose a Carbon Tariff on manufactured imports from China - Jeff Rubin
(9) Tim Flannery calls for inquiry into effects of Population Growth from Immigration
(10) British World War II veterans say "It's not our country any more"

(1) El Niño to affect Philippines until early 2010

11/12/2009 - 22:06

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/el-ni%C3%B1o-affect-rp-until-early-2010

AN EL Niño condition continues to affect the Philippines and the rest of the countries located along the equatorial portions of the Pacific Ocean.

Based on the report of Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), a weak form of El Niño continues to be present, causing sea surface temperatures to slightly rise in the past couple of weeks.

"The Manny Pacquiao Blog". Click here for stories and updates on the Filipino boxing champ.

"Majority of statistical and coupled model forecasts from international climate centers predict that El Niño condition will prevail and continue at least up to early 2010," the report of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) read.

While the rainfall of Luzon has been affected by the recent onslaught of typhoons, below normal rainfall conditions were experienced in the rest of the country.

Majority of the Visayas and Mindanao, particularly the provinces of Southern Leyte, Agusan del Norte and Surigao del Norte, experienced way below normal rainfall condition.

Pagasa cited the rainfall deficiencies for the past three consecutive months that was prevalent in most parts of the country outside Luzon.

For the rest of the month, rainfall conditions are still expected to be below normal. (CPM)

Published in the Sun.Star Davao newspaper on November 19, 2009

(2) Tree-crops are less vulnerable to drought

From: Rob Wagner <xrysodrakos@msn.com> Date: 22.11.2009 04:29 AM

> El Nino creates drought in Western Pacific; monsoon fails in India

> Tree-crops are less vulnerable to drought - this is the idea of Permaculture (Permanent Agriculture).

Moringa trees are one option. A few species are already native to India including the fairly well-known Moringa oleifera. Indians already know to harvest and eat the pods, known as "vegetable drumsticks", and some of them make a chutney out of the raw leaves, which taste like mild horseradish. Cooked, the leaves make a vaguely spinach-like vegetable (the horseradish taste cooks out) that is roughly 5.7% complete protein, and rich in vitamin A, the B vitamins, and vitamin C. If you dry and powder the leaves, they lose most of the C content, but then they keep in storage without refrigeration. In the Philipines they are considered "food of the poor" but I have eaten them and find them quite palatable and easy-to-accept.

Not calorific enough to live on, but at least the trees are quite drought-resistant. They are drought-deciduous, deep tap-rooted, and if grown in dry climates they eventually develop swollen trunks in age like a baobab.

The African Moringa, M. stenopetalum, is even more drought-resistant, often able to retain its leaves during the dry season, and they are less pungent raw than those of its Indian cousin.

Cactus fruits are edible, and some are actually palatable. Because of the variability of Indian rainfall, true desert species probably not suitable, but Hylocereus undulatus, which grows in wet-dry jungle and produces the quite palatable dragon-fruit, would probably work. I think it's already a fairly major crop in Vietnam of all places.

Australia is blessed with a few interesting xeric fruit-bearing plants, one being the Desert Lime, Citrus glauca, the world's only xeric Citrus. Another one is the Quandong. I'd be very interested in hearing from someone in Australia who could direct me to a source of viable seed, as they are practically unobtainable outside of Australia, and some of the few crops that would be suitable for a project of my own.

Carob trees are quite drought-tolerant. The pods are sugary, and from the seed you can extract proteins and a vegetable gum.

Starchy staple crops for the dry tropics are trickier and something I am still working on. There's Cassava but that is so pure starch it cooks up into a bland gelationous cake. Also, they are drought-tolerant once established but it's not clear how to harvest the roots AND keep the plants "established". Nothing like a sweet potato or a cereal I can think of for the dry tropics. Breadfruits will take some drought by going deciduous but probably aren't particularly suited to it.

Reply (Peter M.):

New Gippsland Seeds & Bulbs has Quandong listed as available at present:.
6 Quandong seeds for $3.50: http://www.newgipps.com.au/subcategory.asp?id=206

(3) Make meat-eaters pay with a Meat Tax - Peter Singer

From: heather bryse-harvey <hb-h@comcast.net> Date: 15.11.2009 02:20 PM

Well... If one is going to bring-up the 'elephant' in the room, then let's deal with the REAL elephant.
Agreed, eating meat uses more fuel to produce protein than growing something like soy, but eating too much soy is not good for us either. Now that may be being nit-picky, I grant you, but my point is that for a proper existence we should be able to eat everything, just not huge amounts as we do now.

So limiting not only the trans-fats but also the quantities served in a restaurant meal would help enormously... but again... this is just the tip of the iceberg.

What is it that has caused us to 'need' to produce so many cows/chickens/pigs/soy/rice/corn etc? Is it just that each person eats so much more than they used to 100 years ago? Is it that the food has so much less nutrition in it than it did 100 years ago? Is it that we are so much healthier than we were 100 years ago (when meat on the dining table was much more scarce, BTW!).

Perhaps it is all of those things, but none of them, because the true reason that ALL of our problems have manifested themselves as they have is only ONE thing... everything else is 'moot', but to discuss, seriously, the real issue, is taboo.

Studies have been done, and the opinion reached is that for us to live 'comfortably' we should be no more than 2 billion people on the planet. That sounds like a lot to me already, but then you look at the numbers and realize that we reached that number around 1940, and since then have managed to increase it to 6.5 billion+!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

So no matter what we do to try to improve our condition here, it won't make a lick of difference if we tax ourselves from here to Doomsday (coming soon, I hear! LOL), and recycle ourselves into the ground, if, at the same time, our numbers keep exponentially rising! It is predicted that by 2040 we will have reached 9 billion... Nice!! (NOT!)

I think that a far more productive way of solving many more problems than just meat-eating, would be for the media (which has a huge impact subliminally on the general public) to wage a campaign "encouraging" humans to have less children. It would never work if they tried to 'discourage' such a thing, but by using reverse psychology I think it would slowly have a beneficial impact.

There is not only the religious issue to consider (and combat) any more, there is now the "carbon footprint" to think about, and if we are talking about taxing anything, I suggest that people who have more than one child should not be given encouragement (by subsidies) to have more (I know of several women who have had a child every 18 months just to keep the govt checks coming!), but in fact should be penalized for so doing, by either being taxed extra, or by being required to work for a period of time in nursery school. That way those that could afford it could just pay the extra, and those that couldn't would have a job which would help the employment levels and their income too, but they would not be able to just sit around gathering govt checks and breeding.

(4) Carbon trading more about World Government than allowing Wall St. to make money

From: Mark MacCuish <markmaccuish@hotmail.com>  Date: 03.12.2009 12:45 PM

Carbon trading akin to Oil trade, a bonanza for Wall St

Wall St. would get lots of money with Carbon trading.  But I'm confused: what makes Wall St. poised to cash in on Carbon trading and not London? or Shanghai? or Mumbai?

Why is America and Wall st. the only ones to benefit from this rigged data?

Also, I believe the rigged data and "climate change" is more to set the stage for World Government than to make money of Carbon.  Money is in and of itself an illusion.  A Global initiative that reduces the sovereignty of nations is more in line with World Government than allowing Wall St. alone to make some money (which they print out of thin air anyways)

(5) List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 30.11.2009 02:21 AM

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

(6) Coastal land is sinking due to offshore oil and gas extraction

From: Peter Wakefield Sault <peter.sault@cyberware.co.uk> Date: 28.11.2009 02:34 PM

Carbon taxes are in some respects red herrings. It is the loss of land to the sea, as at New Orleans, that underlies the global warming hoax. The real reason for such loss is that coastal land is sinking due to offshore oil and gas extraction. Offshore oil and gas tends to occur in areas of 'sea marsh', where the coastal lands are frequently reclaimed, only a few feet above sea level and very flat. As at New Orleans and in Holland and eastern England (East Anglia in particular). The oil companies, in order to avoid paying for the damage they are causing, need the sheeple to believe that the sea is rising. Hence [non-existent] global warming was invented to explain the [non-existent] rising sea level as in "Omigod!!! Antarctica is melting because I eat meat!!!".

(7) Global Warming? What a load of poppycock! - Professor David Bellamy

Global Warming? What a load of poppycock!

by Professor David Bellamy

Daily Mail, July 9, 2004

http://www.junkscience.com/july04/Daily_Mail-Bellamy.htm

Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we've had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere - and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist - will blame the weather on global warming.

But they will be 100 per cent wrong. Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not.

Instead, they have an unshakeable in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement. Humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up.

They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock. Unfortunately, for the time being, it is their view that prevails.

As a result of their ignorance, the world's economy may be about to divert billions, nay trillions of pounds, dollars and roubles into solving a problem that actually doesn't exist. The waste of economic resources is incalculable and tragic.

Dreaded

To explain why I believe that global warming is largely a natural phenomenon that has been with us for 13,000 years and probably isn't causing us any harm anyway, we need to take heed of some basic facts of botanical science.

For a start, carbon dioxide is not the dreaded killer greenhouse gas that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol five years later cracked it up to be. It is, in fact, the most important airborne fertiliser in the world, and without it there would be no green plants at all.

That is because, as any schoolchild will tell you, plants take in carbon dioxide and water and, with the help of a little sunshine, convert them into complex carbon compounds - that we either eat, build with or just admire - and oxygen, which just happens to keep the rest of the planet alive.

Increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, double it even, and this would produce a rise in plant productivity. Call me a biased old plant lover but that doesn't sound like much of a killer gas to me. Hooray for global warming is what I say, and so do a lot of my fellow scientists.

Let me quote from a petition produced by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which has been signed by over 18,000 scientists who are totally opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed the world's leading industrial nations to cut their production of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels.

They say: 'Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to experimental knowledge.'

You couldn't get much plainer than that. And yet we still have public figures such as Sir David King, scientific adviser to Her Majesty's Government, making preposterous statements such as 'by the end of this century, the only continent we will be able to live on is Antarctica.'

At the same time, he's joined the bandwagon that blames just about everything on global warming, regardless of the scientific evidence. For example, take the alarm about rising sea levels around the south coast of England and subsequent flooding along the region's rivers. According to Sir David, global warming is largely to blame.

But it isn't at all - it's down to bad management of water catchments, building on flood plains and the incontestable fact that the south of England is gradually sinking below the waves.

And that sinking is nothing to do with rising sea levels caused by ice-caps melting. Instead, it is purely related to an entirely natural warping of the Earth's crust, which could only be reversed by sticking one of the enormously heavy ice-caps from past ice ages back on top of Scotland.

Ah, ice ages... those absolutely massive changes in global climate that environmentalists don't like to talk about because they provide such strong evidence that climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon.

It was round about the end of the last ice age, some 13,000 years ago, that a global warming process did undoubtedly begin.

Not because of all those Stone age folk roasting mammoth meat on fossil fuel camp fires but because of something called the 'Milankovitch Cycles,' an entirely natural fact of planetary life that depends on the tilt of the Earth's axis and its orbit around the sun.

Melted

The glaciers melted, the ice cap retreated and Stone Age man could begin hunting again. But a couple of millennia later, it got very cold again and everyone headed south. Then it warmed up so much that water from melted ice filled the English Channel and we became an island.

The truth is that the climate has been yo-yo-ing up and down ever since. Whereas it was warm enough for Romans to produce good wine in York, on the other hand, King Canute had to dig up peat to warm his people. And then it started getting warm again.

Up and down, up and down - that is how temperature and climate have always gone in the past and there is no proof they are not still doing exactly the same thing now. In other words, climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon, nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.

In fact, a recent scientific paper, rather unenticingly titled 'Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Over The Last Glacial Termination,' proved it.

It showed that increases in temperature are responsible for increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around.

Ignored

But this sort of evidence is ignored, either by those who believe the Kyoto Protocol is environmental gospel or by those who know 25 years of hard work went into securing the agreement and simply can't admit that the science it is based on is wrong.

The real truth is that the main greenhouse gas - the one that has the most direct effect on land temperature - is water vapour, 99 per cent of which is entirely natural.

If all the water vapour was removed from the atmosphere, the temperature would fall by 33 degrees Celsius. But, remove all the carbon dioxide and the temperature might fall by just 0.3 per cent.

Although we wouldn't be around, because without it there would be no green plants, no herbivorous farm animals and no food for us to eat.

It has been estimated that the cost of cutting fossil fuel emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol would be £76trillion. Little wonder, then, that world leaders are worried. So should we all be.

If we signed up to these scaremongers, we could be about to waste a gargantuan amount of money on a problem that doesn't exist - money that could be used in umpteen better ways: fighting world hunger, providing clean water, developing alternative energy sources, improving our environment, creating jobs.

The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth. It is time the world's leaders, their scientific advisers and many environmental pressure groups woke up to the fact.

Copyright © 2004 Daily Mail -- All Rights Reserved

(8) Impose a Carbon Tariff on manufactured imports from China - Jeff Rubin

We need another carbon tariff

Jeff Rubin

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 6:10 AM

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/jeff-rubins-smaller-world/we-need-another-carbon-tariff/article1365078/

With meetings on an international climate-change deal in Copenhagen just around the corner, it’s time to get real about carbon emissions. While it was emissions from the old carbon reprobates like North America and Europe that took us from 280 to 390 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere, it will be the smokestacks of China and India that threaten to drive us to an environmental tipping point.

China already has more coal plants than the US, UK and Japan combined, and over the next twenty years that country and India will account for almost eighty per cent of the expected doubling in global coal consumption. If these guys aren’t playing by the same carbon rules that we are, it’s game over.

But to the ears of the energy-hungry Chinese and Indian economies, carbon rules sound a lot more like eco-imperialism than environmental sustainability. With per capita energy consumption at a tenth of Western levels, those countries aren’t about to make any voluntary concessions to the environment, and we can’t expect them to.

But what we can do is ensure that when they export products to our markets, they have to play by the same carbon rules that we do. Otherwise, we can’t expect our own manufacturers and resource producers to pay a double premium to do the right thing: once by writing a check to cover their own emissions, and then a second time by giving up competitiveness to trade rivals that underprice them by doing the wrong thing. That’s not environmentalism—just national economic suicide.

A carbon tariff is an indispensable component of any economically viable carbon policy that Western economies must ultimately adopt.

China and India can build all the coal plants they want, but when their manufacturing plants use dirty power to produce goods that are then exported to our market, the emissions embodied in those goods must be taxed at the same rate our domestic producers would pay for their own carbon emissions.

Not only would a leveled playing field ensure popular voter support for putting a price on carbon emission prices in our economy, but it would also start collaring runaway emissions growth in places that really count in the global picture.

(Emissions from China’s export sector, for example, comprise a third of that country’s world-leading emissions.)

We don’t need another Kyoto-type protocol in Copenhagen. What we need is to put a price on our own carbon emissions and a carbon tariff on everyone else’s. ==

After nearly 20 years as the chief economist of CIBC World Markets, Jeff Rubin left the bank earlier this year to seek a larger audience for the story he wanted to tell.

His predictions of steadily rising oil prices over the last decade, including $100 (U.S.) per barrel oil by 2007, had flown in the face of conventional economic wisdom. As he said, soaring oil prices demonstrated that the traditional laws of supply and demand were no longer working for one of the global economy's most basic and essential commodities.

The consequences would be severe. He argued that it wasn't sub-prime mortgages, but record oil prices that drove the world economy into its deepest post-war recession. And unless the economy starts to wean itself off an ever depleting supply of affordable oil, he believes there will be other recessions to follow as economic recoveries quickly push oil prices right back into triple digit range. But weaning our economy off oil means some fundamental changes in the way we live.

That's not the kind of message chief economists' at investment banks are supposed to deliver so he resigned from CIBC World Markets to write about it in his new book Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller. See his website at jeffrubinssmallerworld.com.

(9) Tim Flannery calls for inquiry into effects of Population Growth from Immigration

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/20/2748335.htm

Flannery calls for population inquiry

By Tony Eastley for AM

Updated November 20, 2009 09:22:00

The former Australian of the Year, environmentalist Tim Flannery, is worried what effects a growing population will have on the environment.

South-east Queensland is a region where population pressures are at their greatest, with 2,000 people moving into the area each week. Some are from interstate, others from overseas.

Queensland's population is set to double within 50 years.

Professor Flannery says no-one has any real idea of the environmental effects of population growth and it is time for an independent inquiry to look at the issue.

"I'm pretty aware that we live in a fragile country with limited water availability, with a significant biodiversity crisis, a limited capacity to feed ourselves because our agriculture is under increasing stress from climate change," he said.

"And what I see is a government-set program for immigration, which really seeks to increase our population very quickly but without any proper analysis of the environmental impacts or indeed the social impacts of that program."

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has weighed into the population debate, saying it is laughable to argue Australia has too many people at this early stage.

He says Bangladesh is roughly twice the size of Tasmania but has seven times the population of Australia.

Professor Flannery says that is a meaningless comparison.

"Antarctica is bigger than Australia and it hasn't got any people at all, size isn't everything," he said.

"Lindsay Tanner may well be right but we need the figures. We need the analysis to understand what we can do in terms of a sustainable population living at this standard of living.

"It's all very well to wave your hands in the air and say everything's going to be okay, but show me the data, that's what we actually need.

"At the moment ... all of our population-related policies, such as immigration and rebates for children, all that sort of stuff are just happening in a vacuum and that's not good enough." ...

Professor Flannery concedes population growth is needed to grow the economy but he says it's vital to get the balance right.

"The economy will always need more people, business will always need more customers, government will always need more taxpayers," he said.

"That's not a valid argument for eternal growth. We all know there are limits to growth and we need to work out how to grow our population, if that's what's required, at the appropriate level over the appropriate time scale.

"To do that you've just got to really look at proper triple-bottom-line accounting and the Government's always getting onto businesses about doing triple-bottom-line accounting, well it's time the Government did it itself.

"Our environment, social and economic outcomes all have to be fed into these very important policies that will change our country in the long term, change it forever. You can't really wind back population once you've built it in."

(10) British World War II veterans say "It's not our country any more"

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 26.11.2009 06:41 PM

`This Isn't The Britain We Fought For,' Say Britons of World War II Era
Daily Mail (Britain)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229643/This-isnt-Britain-fought-say-unknown-warriors-WWII.html

By Tony Rennell
Last updated at 10:55 PM on 21st November 2009

Sarah Robinson was just a teenager when World War II broke out.

She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand.

Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout, with bombs falling around her.

As soon as she turned 18, she joined the Royal Navy to do her bit for the war effort.

Some WWII soldiers, and families of those lost in the war, have complained society today shows no sign of the effort they made to help

Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation's sense of service and sacrifice.

Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally.

But was it worth it? Her answer - and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s - is a resounding No.

They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It's not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger.

Sarah harks back to the days when 'people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn't have much money, but we were contented and happy.

'People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we had fought for, our freedom, democracy. But where is it now?!'

Sarah Robinson, who joined the Royal Navy when she was 18, says the Britain she once knew no longer exists

The feelings of Sarah and others from this most selfless generation about the modern world have been recorded by a Tyneside writer, 33-year-old Nicholas Pringle.

Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences.

He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves.

There is the occasional bright spot - one veteran describes Britain as 'still the best country in the world' - but the overall tone is one of profound disillusionment.

'I sing no song for the once-proud country that spawned me,' wrote a sailor who fought the Japanese in the Far East, 'and I wonder why I ever tried.'

'My patriotism has gone out of the window,' said another ex-serviceman.

In the Mail this week, Gordon Brown wrote about 'our debt of dignity to the war generation'.

But the truth that emerges from these letters is that the survivors of that war generation have nothing but contempt for his government.

They feel, in a word that leaps out time and time again, 'betrayed'.

New Labour, said one ex-commando who took part in the disastrous Dieppe raid in which 4,000 men were lost, was 'more of a shambles than some of the actions I was in during the war, and that's saying something!'

He added: 'Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today.

'They would wonder what happened to the Brave New World they fought so damned hard for.'

Nor can David Cameron take any comfort from the elderly.

His 'hug a hoodie' advice was scorned by a generation of brave men and women now too scared, they say, to leave their homes at night.

Immigration tops the list of complaints.

'This Land of Hope and Glory is just a land of yobs and drunks'

'People come here, get everything they ask, for free, laughing at our expense,' was a typical observation.

'We old people struggle on pensions, not knowing how to make ends meet. If I had my time again, would we fight as before? Need you ask?'

Many writers are bewildered and overwhelmed by a multicultural Britain that, they say bitterly, they were never consulted about nor feel comfortable with.

'Our country has been given away to foreigners while we, the generation who fought for freedom, are having to sell our homes for care and are being refused medical services because incomers come first.'

Her words may be offensive to many - and rightly so - but Sarah Robinson defiantly states: 'We are affronted by the appearance of Muslim and Sikh costumes on our streets.'

This picture of a teenage hoodie making a disrespectful gesture at Tory leader David Cameron illustrates a wartime WAAF's comments that Britain has become 'a land of yobs and drunks'

But then political correctness is another thing they take strong issue with, along with politicians generally - 'liars, incompetents and self-aggrandising charlatans' (with the revealing exception of Enoch Powell).

The loss of British sovereignty to the European Union caused almost as much distress. 'Nearly all veterans want Britain to leave the EU,' wrote one.

Frank, a merchant navy sailor, thought of those who gave their lives 'for King and country', only for Britain to become 'an offshore island of a Europe where France and Germany hold sway. Ironic, isn't it?'

'Our culture is draining away and we are forbidden to say anything'

They see the lack of debate and the damning of dissenters as racists or Little Englanders as deeply upsetting affronts to freedom of speech.

'Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,' wrote an ex-Durham Light Infantryman, 'and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.'

A widow from Solihull blamed the Thatcher years 'when we started to lose all our industry and profit became the only aim in life'.

Her husband, a veteran of Dunkirk and Burma, died a disappointed man, believing that his seven years in the Army were wasted.

'It is 18 years since I lost him and as I look around parts of Birmingham today you would never know you were in England,' she wrote.

'He would have hated it. He also disliked the immoral way things are going. I don't think people are really happy now, for all the modern, easy-living conveniences.

'I disagree with same-sex marriages, schoolgirl mothers, rubbish TV programmes, so-called celebrities and, most of all, unlimited immigration.

'I am very unhappy about the way this country is being transformed. I go nowhere after dark. I don't even answer my doorbell then.'

A Desert Rat who battled his way through El Alamein, Sicily, Italy and Greece was in despair.

'This is not the country I fought for. Political correctness, lack of discipline, compensation madness, uncontrolled immigration - the "do-gooders" have a lot to answer for.

'If you see youngsters doing something they shouldn't and you say anything, you just get a mouthful of foul language.'

Undoubtedly, some of the complaints are 'grumpy old man' gripes, as the veterans themselves recognise - from chewing gum on pavements and motorists using mobile phones to the march of computerisation ('why can't I just go to the station and buy a railway ticket?') and the dearth of pop music tunes you can hum.

But it is the fundamental change in society's values which they find hardest to come to terms with.

Bring back birching and hanging, the sanctions they grew up with, they say. Put more bobbies back on the beat.

'We were rigidly taught good manners and respect for older people,' said a wartime WAAF, 'but the nanny state has ruined all that. Television programmes are full of violence and obscene language.

This Land of Hope and Glory is in reality a land of yobs, drug addicts, drunkard youths and teenage mothers who think they are owed all for nothing.'

Aged 85, she has little wish to go on living. ...

Another common issue was their bemusement at the idea anyone could live in constant debt.

'We were brought up to believe that if you hadn't the money, you waited till you had!' one wrote. ...

• The Unknown Warriors by Nicholas Pringle, £11.69: http://www.theunknownwarriors.co.uk