Hmmm, I’ll bet they didn’t forecast this either. Might make a nice museum or art gallery though.
UK Government May Sell Off Met Office, Nature Reserves
John Vidal, Severin Carrell and Juliette Jowit, The Guardian, 13 August 2010
Some of the most beautiful areas of Britain could be sold off and wildlife and countryside protection measures cut to the bone to meet expected 40% cuts in the budget of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it emerged.
Among the plans being considered by the government, which once declared itself “the greenest ever”, are selling off national nature reserves; privatising parts of the Forestry Commission; privatising the Met Office, one of the world’s leading research organisations on climate change; and withdrawing grants to British Waterways, which manages 2,200 miles of canals and rivers.
Natural England, the government’s principal nature conservation agency, has put forward 400 job cuts next year, and up to another 400 after that, potentially one third of its workforce.
There are also concerns that the Environment Agency, which looks after waterways, air and soil, will have to slash spending on pollution and waste controls and river protection after the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, recently said she had made it “perfectly clear” that the government would maintain the level of spending on flood defences – which take up more than half the agency’s budget.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Privatizing the Met Office sounds like a good idea. Maybe that would finally remove the political influence.
BP may be looking for a smaller head office. I wonder, tho’ if it goes private does all its data avoid FOI requests?
“one of the world’s leading research organisations on climate change”
Scientists study climate. Politicians study “climate change.”
No good scientist makes pre-determined conclusions about the result of their research.
Who, in his/her right mind would want to buy it?
I wonder how much of this could be avoided if the British govt dropped their subsidies for wind power?
The UK has a £155 billion deficit to try to fill and a national debt heading towards £1.4 trillion.
So of course what we find are civil servants putting up all the most unpalatable cuts in an attempt to keep their own jobs.
The incoming coalition are allegedly ‘green’ so the civil servants will wallow in offering these sorts of cuts. I hope there are minimal cuts to the support for waterways and canals – it is a great resource; but the debt needs to be reduced.
Its hard to how the Met Office can justify its bloated existence beyond giving local short term forecasts. But of course the global warming scare justifies its claims on mega mega computers and a lush expense account. As well of loads of largess and influence to disburse.
BTW – despite the word ‘cuts’ actual spending will continue to increase.
A nightmare scenario — they could sell the thing to Greenpeace; those forecasts could give new meaning to the phrase Comedy of Errors.
That building must be an energy hog — look at all that glass …
Try getting FOIA data from the MET when it’s privatized.
Turn it into a Global Warming Museum . . . showing the whole story of how the scam started, overlap between environmentalism and socialism/marxism, have exhibits showing how temperature data is “adjusted” and of course a rogues gallery of the scammer scientists and politicians who made so much money off the scam.
Special “Al Gore Hall” is a must
Wow Nature England has 2400 employees for their nature preserve forests – how many trees per person is that? I’m not sure the Canadian Gov’t has many more, anyone know(?). Anyway, their is definitely a catastrophic climate change in the global warming fellowship if the growing number of deep-six news stories on the subject is any indication (UK, Germany, the Spanish green bust, NZ lawsuit, etc). The craziness is still out their though when you see global warming protesters in Australia out there in their parkas.
I wonder if they’ll have to pay someone to take it off their hands..?
After all, what is an organisation that can’t get tomorrows weather right – let alone next months, next seasons, next years – worth?
Maybe it will be of interest to one of the TV networks comedy channels…
When you stop and think of all the money and time that has been wasted on one made up, hyped up, disaster – just so a few ego inflated people can try to elevate their science to some fabricated credibility………………
Beautiful looking building – my complements to the architects.
Yes, an art gallery…or better yet a car-dealership; both new and used of course.
Does the purchaser also acquire their legal liabilities?
It seems that things of least value go first. Barbeque summers forecasts
show the value of The Met.
Sell it on e-bay.
Hallliburton could buy it and hire the people. Send them to work in the oilfields of Iraq where it hits 125 degrees.
Looks like it would be a great site for either a coal-fired power plant or a nuclear power station. The Brits certainly will need the electricity and at least a power plant is, well, useful isn’t it.
I wonder if Piers Corbyn might be interested in buying the MET office?
Piers could trim the fat, train the remainder in accurate forecasting, sell off the fortran number crunchers for scrap, and make a tidy profit. The UK would benefit from: better forecasts, lest wasted tax money, and reduced AGW alarm-ism. Piers might be the only person in the world capable of executing the necessary turnaround. Here’s hoping.
There does seem to be a growing backlash, never articulated as such, of course, against the over-hyped danger of global warming. The new danger, however, is a return to disastrous environmental policies of the old style. We don’t want to go back to the bad old days of treating Earth like some kind of unkillable, endlessly regenerating Doctor Who.
I like the fact that they’re finally getting rid of the Met Office, but not the ecosystems! Why would they do such a thing? 🙁
—
It’s an ugly damn’ building, as only a tax-sucking bureaucrat with an empire-building fixation could have ordained.
But where is it located? Proposals for turning the Met Office’s present nest into a museum would come to naught if it’s not a place suitable for drop-in traffic. Any other amusements in the vicinity? How close is it to public transportation and highway access?
It looks as if there’s plenty of floor space available to put in a food court and a games arcade, and that would help to generate additional revenue (so important for museums nowadays). Would an Imax theater be a cost-efficient modification?
Let’s put some thought into this, folks. Tempting though it might be to call in a demolitions team and simply blow the place up (while thoughtfully salting the ground after burning off the rubble), this pile has been inflicted upon the public at considerable expense, and it behooves conscientious consideration of what utility might be made of it after it passes out of the hands of the soon-to-be-extinct Met Office.
—
Pssst, want to buy a used supercomputer?
At least the UK is trying to pay their bills.
Vastly better than the crew claiming to be running the US government.
The Met Office hasn’t already been privatized? You mean it has been working for the public? Or was it actually working for the government?
In the early 1980s when the Met Office headquarters was at Bracknell in Berkshire there were rumours that the forecasting part of its work could be closed in favour of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). That centre is based at Shinfield Park near Reading. The two sites were only about 10 miles apart.
Must have seemed like an opportunity to cut costs.
Moving the Met Office HQ to Exeter was not popular with everyone especially academics with Oxford and Reading universities convenient for Bracknell and London readily accessible by road and train. The Royal Meteorological Society is also based in Reading. Perhaps by moving to a corner of Devon the Met Office thought they wouldn’t be noticed – out of sight out of mind?