Saving labour
Tomorrow night, tireless leftie grafter John McDonnell speaks at a London meeting called to kick off a fightback against public sector union Unison’s vicious witchhunting of popular anti-Labour union activists.
Yours truly will be in close attendance, as will everyone who thinks the future should include a representative Labour party and democratically-run trade unions (I trust I won’t be the sole attendee).
Right now, we have neither a representative Labour party, nor democratically-run trade unions – particularly in Unison’s case.
Unison’s New Labour luvvn’ bureaucrats have lined up against shopfloor activists and members who believe that this Labour party has betrayed working people and that the union must stop funding the party as a result. Things ain’t been pretty for a while.
Some of Unison’s unelected officials appear at employment tribunal next week, accused of running a very nasty campaign to remove activists who insist that Unison cuts its links with Labour.
As I wrote earlier this year, these activists:
“have long held that Unison ought to cut the Labour party loose – and that’s a line that is making sense to more union members than Unison cares to see. The government’s war in Iraq, various doomed love-ins with big business, privatising of public services, and failure to repeal this country’s draconian anti trade union laws have stirred a poisonous – and possibly permanent – loathing for this Labour government in the average union member.”
So it is that Unison members are demanding an independent inquiry into allegations that union officials are actively jettisoning people who dare to dump on Labour’s record.
I will report back from tomorrow’s event. Suffice to say for now that Labour party members dying for reelection should take note. Unison has a million members and they’re very aware that their hardest-working shopfloor representatives are getting the boot for going off New Labour message.
The good people of the grassroots are buzzing with it. Throw them a bone and you might get something back. Do the math, if you will.
Telegraph accepts climate change consensus
The Telegraph Newspaper yesterday published this extraordinary editorial, which accepted, despite the conspiracy driven rantings of many of its writers, the consensus on climate change.
The road to Copenhagen has proved to be a rocky one. This past fortnight, ahead of the climate-change summit that starts in the Danish capital on Monday, the air has been thick with pejorative cries of “warmist” and “denier”. The former are those who subscribe to the view that the increase in the Earth’s temperature in recent decades is the fault of man’s profligate use of the planet’s fossil fuels; the latter may or may not dispute that the temperature is rising, or that it is in some way man’s fault, but are certainly not convinced that dramatic remedial action is required. What should be a scientific debate has descended almost into a theological dispute.
…
However, the governments of most countries in the world now accept the consensus. And so, as many as 100 world leaders will gather in Copenhagen – not to argue about the reality of global warming, but to decide what to do about it. Many of the proposals would be the right thing to do even without climate change: it is surely unconscionable, for example, for the current occupants of the Earth simply to continue extracting and exploiting a finite resource – such as fossil fuel – to the point of its depletion. Even those who consider the science ambiguous must acknowledge that there is a moral dimension here; our children and theirs are entitled to a future that has not been blighted by our mistakes. If the consequences of inaction are uncertain, yet possibly calamitous, then we should err on the side of caution.
It’s worth noting that the editorial says emails from University of East Anglia were “obtained”. They were actually stolen.
Treasury could impose Windfall Tax on banks
A windfall tax on bonus payments to highly paid City bankers was under consideration at the Treasury today as the government prepared to announce Whitehall efficiency savings worth £3bn.
The chancellor, Alistair Darling, is looking at bonuses but has ruled out a tax on bank profits of the sort Labour levied on the privatised utility companies in 1997.
The Treasury is concerned that a windfall tax on profits would hit the capital position of banks at a time when the government is eager that they should rebuild their finances after the losses suffered over the past two and a half years.
Government sources said that a decision had yet to be taken and Darling would make up his mind during the next 48 hours.
The bankers don’t deserve bonuses
Why is there still a row about bankers’ bonuses? What I mean is that the issue should by now be settled against them. There’s abundant evidence that large bonus “incentives” are not only not justified (pdf) by efficiency considerations, but can actually backfire, with the result that intelligent observers are demanding an end to them.
If we were serious about designing high-powered incentives, we’d consider abandoning bonuses and instead simply killing under-performing bankers. After all, the threat of death works perfectly well in motivating airline pilots or soldiers. So why not apply it more generally?*
Let’s be clear. Bankers’ bonuses have less to do with rational incentive mechanisms than with the fact that bankers have power. It’s a form of legal extortion.
Which raises the question; why is this not more clear? It’s because any power structure is sustained by ideology – a set of cognitive biases which might have a grain of truth but which serve to defend vested interests. In the case of bonuses, there are four such biases:
continue reading… »
Difference between climate deniers and sceptics
As anthropogenic global warming is currently a hot topic, thanks to the CRU e-mail hack and the Copenhagen summit, I figured it was long past time that someone (me) sorted out this whole business of how to correctly identify the difference between climate change sceptics and climate change deniers.
The problem is a fairly straightforward one.
On the one hand you have genuine climate change sceptics who are often unfairly labelled as deniers for voicing what are wholly legitimate scientific and economic concerns about the validity of certain aspects of the main climate change narrative.
On the other, you have a loose coteries of flat-earthers and wackaloons who use the terms ‘sceptic’ and ‘scepticism’ as cover for the fact that they haven’t got the first clue about climate science and are, not to put too fine a point on it, talking out of their collective arses.
So far as helpful resources go, the Denialism blog at Scienceblogs has a long, but very interesting and helpful, generic guide to denialism which covers the main tactics deployed by genuine deniers; conspiracy, selectivity (cherry-picking), fake experts, impossible expectations (i.e. moving the goal posts) and fallacies of logic. Do take the time to read the full article as it will arm you with many of the tools you need when spotting deniers, not just in the climate change debate but more generally as the tactics set out in the article apply just as readily to creationists/ID-ers, HIV/AIDS deniers, 9/11 conspiracists, the anti-vaccination lobby and an assortment of other wackaloons.
So, bringing the subject back to climate change, what can we say about the position adopted by genuine sceptics? continue reading… »
Climate change sceptics? Really?
Growing climate change scepticism on the political right has been one of the themes of a week in which David Davis gave voice to the Parliamentary dissenters to David Cameron’s (welcome) “hug a huskie” enthusiasm, while the Australian Liberals ditched a leader over his support for legislation to reduce carbon emissions.
Andrew Grice reflects in his Independent column, quoting the well informed Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home claiming that the dominance of climate scepticism around the Tory blogosphere, documented here on Next Left is not simply an internet phenomenon buzt reflects majority sentiment among Tory MPs, candidates and activists.
Tempting though it may be to dismiss this as leftist stirring, that seems a good right-wing source.
If Montgomerie is right about the strength of scepticism at all levels, then it is not at all surprising that Grice reports that there are ‘sleeper’ allies at the top table.
So, who are they? Tips, educated guesses and/or evidence from previous statements very welcome! I don’t think any member of the Shadow Cabinet will think the balance of risk would make it worth a showing a bit of leg to grassroots sentiment, not this side of a General Election anyway.
continue reading… »
The public sector rich list
The TaxPayers’ Alliance released its annual Public Sector Rich List today, always a sure-fire hit with the media. Among the statistics highlighted by the TPA – and quoted enthusiastically by journalists – are:
There are 8 people in the public sector who earn more than £1 million a year, compared with 4 people last year.
There are 35 people in the public sector earning above £500,000 a year compared with 21 last year.
There are 120 people earning above £250,000 a year compared with 88 last year.
Which is odd, because, in the small print beneath these statements, the TPA says the real reason for the increases is that it has surveyed more staff – by investigating more quangos and making more Freedom of Information requests. “The figures are therefore not directly comparable with previous editions of the Rich List,” the TPA cautions.
So why compare them then? And if it is going to compare them, why not be consistent and include inconvenient data, such as:
The average total remuneration of those included on the list is almost £225,990 per annum, compared with £240,000 per annum last year. Excluding staff in the newly nationalised banks, this year’s average is £209,151 – down 13% on last year.
Removing the nationalised bankers also brings the number of Rich List members earning more than £1 million a year down from 8 to 2 – ie half last year’s number, despite the larger survey group. Surely a cause for both TaxPayers’ Alliances to rejoice!
continue reading… »
BBC has repeats, ITV has ‘classics’
Sometimes it’s the subtle semantic prejudices that are the most revealing, as here in Telegraph’s foray into the annual round of whinging about there being too many repeats in the Christmas TV schedules…
600 hours of TV repeats to be shown over Christmas
Nearly 600 hours of repeats will be shown on Britain’s four main television channels over the festive period according to schedules released by broadcasters.
Let’s play ‘Karate Kid’ – Wax on…
On the BBC’s two main channels, there will be approximately 270 hours of repeats over the holiday period.
The majority of BBC Two’s Christmas schedule consists of repeats. On Christmas Eve, the channel is showing only four programmes that have not been seen before, including the traditional carol concert from King’s College, Cambridge.
Wax off…
ITV One will also be broadcasting more than 117 hours of classics and old shows during the Christmas fortnight.
And wax on again…
On Channel 4, about 192 hours of repeats and old films will be shown during the festive fortnight.
In 2007, Channel 4 were notionally granted £14 million in state funding over six years, by the government, to help it out of a funding crisis, with the money due to come from the BBC licence fee. The deal was, however, scrapped by Andy Burnham, during his tenure at the DCMS (Jan 2008 – July 2009) before C$ received any of the promised funding, not that this has prevented the channel from winding up on the Telegraph’s shit list. continue reading… »
Things that are banned, but aren’t
So there you are taking a stroll in the countryside after a couple of pints in a delightful rural boozer on New Year’s Day, when you happen across a bunch of upper class tossers in red tunics, surrounded by a pack of beagles, casually sipping sherry while sat on horseback.
What are they up to? They are about to go looking for some cute little foxie woxie that the dogs can rip to shreds. Of course they bloody are, no matter how much they try to deny it.
Aha, you observe at this point, but hasn’t fox hunting been outlawed in Scotland since 2002, and in England and Wales since 2004? That’s right, but to paraphrase Gerry Adams, they haven’t gone away, you know. So just as soon as the hicks have necked down the Tesco Finest Amontillado, the bugles sound. Tally Ho! Off they go!
Hundreds of thousands of hunt supporters would have us believe that Britain’s 184 active hunts are simply ‘following artificially laid trails’. But how gullible do you need to be to swallow that? Hardly the sort of thing that inspired Fred Engels to ride with the Cheshire Hunt for, is it? Oh well, I suppose we townies never will understand them country ways.
Climate Change – Those hacked emails
To reiterate John’s point about the relative plausibility of conspiracy theories based on the hacked CRU mails, Dave Cole has forwarded this video, which really does make the point very well…
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