Smacking the CRU Hack Attack
Peter Sinclair’s latest Climate Denial Crock of the Week is well worth a look…
I am an unlikely class warrior
Here’s what I don’t get.
When I talk to serious people in badly cut suits, they are unanimous in their opinions. “Oooh, the deficit is troubling”. They say, grimacing in fiscal sympathy. “It’s all very serious” they add, stroking their chins in deficit based peturbation. “Sacrifices must be made” all concur, gazing steely eyed towards a future of budget balances and restraint.
You know what? I agree with them.
I sit alongside, in my own badly cut suit, grimacing and chin stroking and gazing sternly at the dissolute world with the best of them. I nod along solemnly when, to quote Benedict Brogan, we hear the regular call for a “politics, not of them and us, but of “we” “.
But I have to respond, “Who exactly is this “we”?”
Because when it comes to asking people who have done very well out of prosperity and asset growth to contribute towards last and this years current economic rescue operation, I’m all for it. Go right ahead, I say.
continue reading… »
Productivity in public services: how the Tories lie
contribution by Margin4Error
Last week the Conservatives launched a new line of attack on the public sector. Phillip Hammond, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told Policy Exchange that the public sector was inefficient.
He said that in the last twelve years its productivity had grown a lot slower than the private sector. Then he concluded that had it kept pace we could have had the same services for £60billion less tax each year.
There are a lot of inferences intended. One is that Labour is wasteful. Another is that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. Another is that voters can expect something for nothing from the Tories, or “more for less” as the official line goes.
But the most important inference is that the Tories can cut the deficit by cutting waste rather than by raising taxes or sacking nurses.
£60billion?
So let’s start with the £60billion annual saving that Labour cruelly denied us.
First of all I have to acknowledge a weakness in my article. I can’t break down their figures for you. I can’t break them down because I don’t have them. In fact no one seems to.
The Conservatives don’t appear to have referenced their assertion anywhere. As such, other than the mouth of Phillip Hammond, we don’t know where £60billion came from.
That problem aside, we are talking about a fairly modest rise in productivity over twelve years.
continue reading… »
Exclusive: Miliband denies ‘leak’ reflects UK stance
Ed Miliband has denied to Liberal Conspiracy that the leaked transcript of a deal between rich nations at Copenhagen represented the UK’s position.
The Guardian published a ‘Danish text’ leak yesterday and claimed the summit was in disarray because developing countries were furious.
The draft agreement, which was apparently agreed between the Danes, UK and USA, and shown to a handful of rich countries, would sideline the UN’s negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol.
In a tweet reply to me Ed Miliband MP said:
@pickledpolitics shouldn’t judge UK position from one article. Danish text not a british one.
The Guardian today reports that representatives from developing countries reacted in dismay to the text.
Ed Miliband was replying to an earlier tweet by me that stated:
UK trying to push through Copenhagen proposals to screw poorer countries http://bit.ly/7Ciwx3 – @EdMilibandMP must be proud
The British government is yet to release an official response to the leak.
Mail implies Christians persecuted. Were they?
The Daily Mail has this story:
A Christian couple have been charged with a criminal offence after taking part in what they regarded as a reasonable discussion about religion with guests at their hotel. Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were arrested after a Muslim woman complained to police that she had been offended by their comments.
They have been charged under public order laws with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words’ that were ‘religiously aggravated’.
…
Although the facts are disputed, it is thought that during the conversation the couple were challenged over their Christian beliefs.
The facts are “disputed”, but to no surprise the story implies strongly that the Christian couple are being persecuted after being challenged over their beliefs.
Let’s look at another version of events:
A Muslim woman was asked by a Christian hotelier if she was a terrorist and a murderer because she was wearing Islamic dress, a court has been told. Ericka Tazi told Liverpool magistrates she faced a tirade of abuse from Benjamin Vogelenzang and his wife Sharon, at their hotel on Merseyside.
…
The 60-year-old, who suffers from fibromyalgia and lives with chronic pain, said: “He just couldn’t accept the way I was dressed. “He asked me if I was a murderer, if I was a terrorist. I’m a 60-year-old disabled woman, I couldn’t understand where it was coming from, it was shocking to me.”
…
Another guest, Shirley Tait, said she was in her bedroom when she heard Mr Vogelenzang shouting the words “Nazi” and “warlord”.
Funny. The Daily Mail reporter only reported one side of the story. Wonder why that is.
[via Martin Robbins]
Update
The Daily Mail’s update to the story is still slanted but offers more facts about the case.
[via mudlarklives]
Times: Cameron case ‘is not yet persuasive’
A Times newspaper editorial says today:
More and more leading figures, both in Westminster and the City, are expecting either a hung Parliament or a minority administration. Clearly David Cameron is not making a convincing case. The central charge against him is that, while he is approachable and likeable, his aims and values as a future prime minister of this country are still unclear. David Cameron has yet to answer a basic question: what does he stand for?
…
Despite this serial good fortune, Mr Cameron’s case is not yet persuasive. His speeches are replete with favourable references to charities but precious little about the practical business issue of job creation. He has been fond lately of set-piece speeches of dubious intellectual and strategic wisdom on the iniquity of the big state and health and safety legislation. He would be better advised to get out into the country to visit as many people and places as possible, splitting his time between persuading and listening.
…
Mr Cameron is, instead, projecting the aura of a man who wants power rather more than he knows what to do with it. He is also sounding, as he did at his party’s conference in October, like a man who is spending more time preparing for government than he is asking to be elected. This is a dangerous attitude to strike. It may be possible for Mr Cameron to drift to victory on the tide of government unpopularity but this will not provide him with a mandate for power. “Anyone but Gordon” is not a slogan on which to rely.
Ouch!
Sunder Katwala at Next Left thinks the ambiguity over Cameron’s thinking is unlikely to change. While the grassroots clamour to get heard even more, the Times editorial makes clear that he needs to think outside the party’s narrow base in order to convince more people.
The so far limited tightening of the polls will see calls for Cameron to return to the modernising outreach agenda, and calls for him to connect better to his core support. One can not easily fulfil both of these demands.
…
So I would be surprised if there was more clarity and less ambiguity about what David Cameron stands for in the next six months – though the government might best, through its own policy agenda, present tests which may sometimes require a choice to be made.
Sexed up: the vindication of Andrew Gilligan
Now that the Chilcot Inquiry is in full swing, cast your mind back to the Hutton Inquiry into the suicide of Dr David Kelly in 2003. Remember that day six years ago, when BBC Radio 4’s defence correspondent was subjected to a four hours and eleven minutes of hostile interrogation from James Dingemans QC?
Andrew Gilligan’s crime had been to base a radio piece for the Today Programme on an interview with Kelly at a London hotel in May that year, in which the former UN weapons inspector questioned a key assertion contained in a government dossier in support of its intention to invade Iraq.
Downing Street stood accused of ‘sexing up’ the document with the contention that Saddam Hussein could launch a chemical and biological attack within 45 minutes, despite knowing that the claim was based on an unreliable single informant. In a subsequent newspaper article, Gilligan named Tony Blair’s personal PR man Alastair Campbell as the man responsible for the move.
New Labour hounded the BBC to name the source for Gilligan’s report; the BBC rightly refused. In the event, Kelly revealed to his employers that he had spoken to Gilligan. Events moved on rapidly after that.
Right-wing wonks demolish spending myths
Our friends at the Other Taxpayers’ Alliance have spotted that the right-wing Reform think-tank demolished the myth that we can combine deep public spending cuts with protection for front-line services. Its report, The Front Line, published today, argues:
“The basic cost of front line services means that the deficit cannot be sufficiently reduced without tackling the front line… Contrary to popular perception, the great majority of the public sector workforce are front line workers. Of the 1.4 million people working in the NHS, for example, only just over 200,000 provide administrative support.”
Reform’s response is to embrace such cuts with relish – and propose removing one million public sector jobs. You can read a more progressive alternative here.
Reform is a politically independent think tank.
Their Director is a former Head of the Political Section in the Conservative Research Department, and their former Deputy Director is Liz Truss, who is now the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for South West Norfolk.
Mad Mel’s list of sceptical ‘climate-related scientists’
If the furore surrounding the hacking of a webmail server at UEA’s Climate Research Unit has achieved anything at all it’s been to push the issue of scientific probity and integrity firmly into the spotlight. By far the most damning, but still unproven, allegation levelled at the CRU’s scientists is that they deliberated distorted and manipulated the evidence to shore up AGW theory and, on the basis that I’m entirely in agreement with the proposition that distortion and manipulation of evidence is a bad thing I think it only fair that we apply that same standard to some of the arguments put forward by some self-styled AGW ‘sceptics’.
Oh, screw it – we’re not talking about genuine sceptics here, we talking about Mad Mel, who’s used her blog at the Spectator to direct yet another signature rant at the BBC (as recommended by Iain Dale) because it neglected to put up a complete fruit-loop against Ed Miliband on the Today programme.
She goes on to state that:
This was just yet more anti-scientific ignorance and ideological propaganda. There is no such ‘overwhelming consensus’ of scientists; more than 700 of the most distinguished climate-related scientists are on record expressing deep scepticism of AGW. Is Miliband saying therefore that these eminent scientists are themselves ‘profoundly irresponsible’? Does Miliband even know they exist?
She’s most likely referring here to a list of allegedly sceptical scientists compiled by Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma/Exxon-Mobil) who, just from his biography on Wikipedia, looks to be a bigoted wackaloon after Mad Mel’s own heart. He loves God, Israel, torturing Iraqi prisoners and his campaign contributions from the oil, gas and energy industries – in 2002 he received more oil and gas contributions than anyone other than Texas senator John Cornyn – and he hates immigrants, gays and genuine climate scientists.
continue reading… »
Preventing terrorism at home
A late contender for post of the year, this superb treatise on local racism, the decay and depression of outer-city housing estates and with it the potential for extremism, also contains a paragraph that gives me heart that permanently pulling up the tabloids on their bullshit, however many times you repeat yourself, is worth it:
The impulse to segregate was compounded by the messages that seemed to reinforce the idea that the treatment in Southmead reflected the mood and views of the rest of Britain. “Hundreds of thousands of migrants here for handouts, says senior judge“. “Britain paying migrants £1,700 to return home BEFORE they’ve even got here” “The violent new breed of migrants who will let nothing stop them coming to Britain“.
These headlines were just three of many that were printed in the Mail, a right-wing daily during my time in Southmead. I don’t usually take much notice of the headlines in the Sun and the Mail unless they are truly shocking, but in Southmead the headlines seemed to have an impact on the treatment we received. The level of low-level hostility from adults seemed to be directly linked to the content of the headlines. More outright hostility from younger adults and children followed a day or so later.
Do go and read the whole thing.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed. You can also get them by email and through our Facebook group.
» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
|
62 Comments 15 Comments 23 Comments 8 Comments 24 Comments 19 Comments 16 Comments 83 Comments 203 Comments 85 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » Oliver posted on Job snob? No, I've got the T-shirt » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Hannah posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » mr_hopkinson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Amy Finlayson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pagar posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Oliver Conner posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pjt posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Lee Griffin posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » JIm posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » BendyGirl posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Liza Harding posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » rentergirl posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation |
