JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Last full day in jersey and went to the war tunnels. This was excavated by slave Labour and locals and served as a giant hospital complex for the Germans who had 15000 troops here in a population of only 60000 locals.
Jersey was invaded in July 1940 when Churchill decided it could not be defended. Things must have looked ultra bleak what with the airborne battle of Britain the collapse of the Belgian and French armies which culminated in the evacuation at dunkirk of 338000 British soldiers.
Jersey is very much like devon, my county, and cornwall and is very english. It was very chilling therefore to see German troops in the context of English buildings, phone boxes, pedestrian crossings etc.
All this was of course whilst europe was collapsing, German tanks were driving through Paris and fully 18 months before The Americans joined. Our Aussie and kiwi friends had joined the allies at the start of the war of course.
The allies landed in Normandy in 1944 but it was not until ve day a year later that Jersey was liberated. As I mentioned yesterday liberation day is still a very big thing here
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Jersey was largely ignored. Retaking Jersey was pointless in terms of effort and benefit. It had been turned into a fortress. So had Norway. What was effective was keeping 15,000 troops in Jersey and 250,000 troops in Norway during the Normandy landings. Defending such a huge coast was impossible. What really mattered was control of ports and supply of petrol. These were solved by Churchill’s Mulberry ports and the extraordinary PLUTO petrol pumping all the way from Liverpool to Southhampton to the beach at Normandy and then into the countryside.
So many things were invented in those times. And after the war had huge impact on the rapid development of the modern consumer society. Cheap free Penicillin in massive quantities was perhaps the greatest result of the D Day landings. And 98% of the wounded soldiers who made it back to England were saved.
But Jersey had to wait. Like Norway. Logistics were the real battle when invading, not strong points and castles as in previous wars. In modern warfare these could be bypassed.
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Also hardly known in the rapid technical development during the war was the attempt to destroy the extraordinary superweapon, a German rail gun by crashing an aircraft into the site.
This cost the life of Joseph Kennedy, the older brother of John Kennedy. Joseph volunteered instead of going home after his survival of his tour of duty as a bomber pilot. The weapon was a remote control Libeator B-24 bomber stuffed with high explosive and flown remotely from an adjacent Liberator using a television camera. This predated the drones of today. But it could not also take off on its own and the takeoff crew including Kennedy were to bail out as the adjacent aircraft took control of the drone. Unfortunately the tricky remote bomb trigger was susceptible to radio interference as a British engineer had warned. So the bomb triggered over Kent, vaporizing Kennedy.
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“America joined the war late in 1941.”
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After Pearl Harbour. But they had already been shipping massive supplies to the UK and Russia under the Lend Lease program. Neither country would have survived the war without US help. The shipments to Russia were incredible. And when Russia finally reached Berlin, it was on US trucks. The Germans may have had mobility in tanks and aircraft, but they lacked the trucks and their soldiers walked into Russia in Blitzkreig with a million horses pulling wagons.
Even today along the Trans Siberian railway there are WWII trains as memorials. Check the wheels. All sizes are in inches. And there was enough rail line to build the Trans Siberian three times over. Food in vast quantities. Aircraft. Much came through Iran, a traditional strong connection from Persian days which persists today, something which also influences US policy with Iran. The battleground remains Afghanistan, the key to India.
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“fully 18 months before The Americans joined. Our Aussie and kiwi friends had joined the allies at the start of the war of course.”
Sigh.
America had no reason to join before Pearl Harbor. Americans were extremely reluctant to get involved in another ‘European War’ after getting dragged into WWI a generation earlier for no good reason. Unlike the Commonwealth countries you mentioned, Americans prided themselves on leaving the conflicts of and loyalties to the ‘old world’ behind when they arrived on American shores. Americans were sick and tired of Europe’s never-ending wars of competing empires. It wasn’t until the Japanese forced their hand that they joined in. Heck, FDR still might have had a hard time convincing the American people to fight in the European theater if Hitler hadn’t idiotically declared war on America on December 11th.
Sadly, after WWII, when America became a superpower, it adopted the European model of maintaining the empire through constant conflicts and wars and hasn’t stopped since. I wouldn’t mind seeing America pull back a bit and embrace the more detached pre-WWII stance of avoiding ‘foreign entanglements’.
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A major UK supreme court ruling states that women’s biological sex and gender are the same thing and trans people can not use women only space. The result has been relief by many and some small demos
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14627823/Thousands-trans-activists-protest-emergency-demonstration-against-Supreme-Court-gender-ruling-London.html
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Germany awash with solar power and exports the surplus but shortage at other times
https://notrickszone.com/2025/04/16/solar-madness-in-germany-gigawatt-hours-of-subsidized-electricity-gets-dumped-abroad-for-free/
Solar farms in the UK routinely include large solar batteries but I think they are only intended to smooth out intermittency and not as a massive storage faciloty
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But smoothing out intermittency between natural supply and human demand is what a massive storage facility is for.
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So because its the cheapest power in the world power prices can come down 80% to consumers!!
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According to an article published in New Scientist, the aerosols produced by human dumping into the atmosphere have the effect of slowing global warming. When china cleaned up this pollution, warming increased.
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So when pro AGW people argue that the rate of warming is the compelling factor that means it’s CO2 causing the warming, does this cessation of aerosols mean the rate of warming was artificially inflated by the atmosphere playing catch-up once the aerosol suppression was removed?
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Why didn’t the climate “modellers” mention or predict this, assuming it s true at all?
I don’t believe anyone that identifies as a climate “scientist”.
Their “models” have no forecasting or even hindcasting ability whatsoever, therefore they are not valid and they are meaningless, despite billions of taxpayer funds being spent on them.
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Did anyone else have problems getting on this site this morning?
I got a message something to the effect that I didn’t have permission.
.
[Yes. The site does appear a bit temperamental at the moment. This includes Jo experiencing some posting issues too. – Raquel]
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I got some message saying if I could see this page (not Jo’s page) then the page I was seeing was properly installed. Figured it was result of new/updated security software Jo was/had installed. Cleared down and retried and in like Flynn.
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Absolutely. As Ian says, problems started last evening. Quite a battle to restore the connection. Did so by starting again through Google.
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DM
That started last night
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New Official White House website on Covid lab leak narrative.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/
It’s discussed by Dr John Campbell:
https://youtu.be/AwbBJexNQT0
Bad news for those promoting the lab leak theory to protect the Chicomms.
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No problem at all, but you reminded me that I couldn’t get any ABC channels on my TV on Good Friday. All other channels showed up as available.
(Wasn’t a problem although I occasionally switch to Channel 20 (or 21) for Antiques Roadshow repeats during ad breaks on the commercials).
Can any one explain this? Can we get the ABC to continue – it would save money and inconvenience very few.
Then I got this.
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /wp-comments-post.php on this server.
Cancelled and closed Browser and then checked that the above had been posted anyway.
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When our group of units loses TV, it’s always ABC and SBS first. In our case, it’s either a masthead amplifier or splitter plug pack – usually a plug pack. It seems the TV distribution system can still distribute the other TV channels, even when faulty.
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Just when you thought that climate projects couldn’t get any more crazy.
This is apparently NOT a joke. It’s dated from two days ago, not an April Fool’s joke.
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British pensioners are literally freezing to death due to energy poverty.
Where will the energy and money come from to implement this insane idea?
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Here is a very good 20 min video looking at earlier plans to colonise Mars, from the 1940s onward.
https://youtu.be/qnnY_7piaro
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