AGW: battle of the conspiracy theories
Let’s forget the actual data for a second. Let’s assume that we know absolutely nothing about the likelihood of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory being true, but that either the climate scientists or the [denialists/sceptics - insert loaded term of your choice here] are right.
Let’s also assume that one side consists of crooks, cheats and liars, and the other side of bold seekers for truth – but we don’t know which one.
What happens if you try and deduce which side is lying from how the world has acted, based on every actor’s incentives?
Who’s in it to win it?
If AGW is false and people are lying to try and show that it’s true, who benefits? To start with, some geeks who get money to build computer models, some hippies who get to feel less silly about 50 years of veganism and hair-shirt-wearing, and some companies selling turbines and carbon filters.
The nuclear industry is the obvious big potential money-draw, and has form on extorting enormous quantities of state cash – but almost the entire environmentalist establishment hates them and rails against their product, and nuclear currently isn’t counted as ‘renewable’ by any major standards. Still, they’re the ones to watch if there were a conspiracy.
On the other hand, if AGW is true and people are lying to try and show that it’s false, who benefits?
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Why we should fall a little bit in love with Sally Bercow
Ever drunk more than one bottle of wine? Had a one night stand? Not if you’re a Labour politician standing for a seat in Pimloco you haven’t. Except Sally Bercow has, and she doesn’t seem afraid to admit it.
Anne McElvoy deserves full praise for an exceptional interview with Sally Bercow in yesterday’s London Evening Standard, where she gets the Sally Bercow to frankly discuss politics and past misdemeanours.
It’s not that she’s married to a Conservative speaker and willing to trash the party, we’ve all gotten used to that. It’s that she actually seems to be refreshingly human. Speaking as young person, it’s brilliant to hear politicians admit to making a mistake (lying on her CV) or just behaving a little big outrageously.
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New demand for Trident to be scrapped
A 100-strong coalition of celebrities, religious leaders, campaigners and politicians has urged the Chancellor Alistair Darling to axe Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system.
The Rethink Trident campaign claims that the Government’s £25bn plan to renew Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent can no longer be justified as Mr Darling is preparing to announce cuts in public services in his Pre-Budget Report next week.
Supporters of the campaign said Trident would do nothing to combat the threat of terrorism – the reason given for sending British troops to Afghanistan.
They say Gordon Brown has already shown he is open-minded on the issue by announcing plans to cut the number of submarines from four to three – a course opposed by some defence chiefs. He will also suggest Trident as a possible source of cuts in a new round of global disarmament talks next spring.
£850bn: official cost of the bank bailout
Government support for Britain’s banks has reached a staggering £850bn and the eventual cost to taxpayers will not be known for years, the public spending watchdog says today.
The National Audit Office (NAO) revealed that £107m will be paid to City advisers called in to work on the rescue because the Treasury was too “stretched” to cope with the sudden financial crisis which broke in the autumn of last year.
The commitments include buying £76bn of shares in Royal Bank of Scotland and the Lloyds Banking Group; indemnifying the Bank of England against losses incurred in providing more than £200bn of liquidity support; guaranteeing up to £250bn of wholesale borrowing by banks to strengthen liquidity; providing £40bn of loans and other funding to Bradford & Bingley and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme; and insurance cover of over £280bn for bank assets.
The ‘horrors’ of inheritance tax
David Blackburn in the Spectator explains the horrors of inheritance tax:
Take one example: a family friend, who was a career soldier rising to the rank of Colour Sergeant, retired to a two-up two-down in suburban Essex and lived off a combination of state and service pensions for 27 years. He died in 2006 and his estate yielded £84,000 in inheritance tax.
The deduction means that a maximum of 3 of his 4 grandchildren will enjoy the opportunities that a private education can offer; he had intended all four to do so, among other things, such as enabling his children to move up the property ladder.
I’m assuming this is the worst example of the iniquities of inheritance tax that Blackburn is aware of.
So the consequences are:
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The cost of ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’
This is a guest post by James Radcliffe of Shelter Cymru in response to the current immigration series. It takes a view of some of the consequences of legislation passed to restrict migrant worker’s access to benefits and explodes the myth immigrants are getting free houses, free cars and massive benefits.
When the A8 countries joined the EU in 2004, the UK government was faced with the usual scare stories in tabloid newspapers about Britain being over-run by hoards of migrants who would both steal our jobs and lazily claim benefits.
Faced with these concerns the UK government introduced additional restrictions on people from the new members of the EU. They introduced the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) in order to initially monitor and restrict access to benefits.
For those of you still unconvinced of the power of the media, it is worth taking a look at the leaked paper from the ministerial working group on immigration that considered whether to extend the WRS beyond the initial transition period. Note the following paragraphs:
“The change in policy is likely to be perceived domestically as a loosening of the governments grip on migration and benefit shopping. This would contrast unhelpfully with other government policy to tighten management of the migration system (as set out in the five year strategy for immigration and asylum). Public and media opinion remains largely resistant to rational arguments for migration, and the media climate is more hostile to migration now than in early 2004………..by closing the WRS, the UK would be going out on a limb re-igniting the media debate to no obvious (domestic public) advantage”
This has a consequence. In order to be eligible for public funds*, an A8 national has to been registered on the WRS and working in the UK for 12 months continually (they are allowed up to 30 days break). If they do not meet these criteria then they cannot access housing services, and many welfare benefits.
In the jargon they have No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). A8 nationals in the UK with this condition do not have a welfare state to provide a safety net for them should they lose their job or get evicted from their home, etc.
As a result, anecdotal evidence of destitution amongst A8 nationals began to emerge from a variety of sources. I’m highlighting a couple of case studies that we uncovered in the course of our research to illustrate the human side of NRPF.
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Re-tuning the environmental movement
Dubbed ‘climategate’, the leaking of emails from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, seems to have given the self-proclaimed ‘global warming sceptics’ a boost in their worldview.
Inevitably, a lot of the comments and emails have been taken out of the context and twisted to suit the ‘sceptics’. The emails haven’t even been verified for authenticity – they could have been made up. The Times even claimed a lot of data was dumped, when it wasn’t. Misinformation has always been a classic tactic of the deniers.
This isn’t about whether most of global warming is driven by human activity – my position is very clear – but about how to win the public relations battle.
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Why are Tory writers so stupid?
Maybe it’s a good job that newspapers don’t matter, because even the so-called quality ones carry appalling errors. Via Tim and Danny, here are two in the Torygraph.
First, it tells us that:
A low income household is one that lives on less than 60 per cent of the average UK household income
No. Low income is defined, for official purposes, as 60% of the median household income. If you’d read the Joseph Rowntree report, or even just the summary of it, you’d know this*.
Second, Janet Daley writes:
The Office for National Statistics points out that the amount spent on state education has risen by 43 per cent since 2000 but school “productivity” – measured by GCSE and stats results - has actually declined by 7.5 per cent. There is what statisticians call an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent by the state on schools and their academic success.
This is just gibber.
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Mongolia to introduce national basic income
The US Basic Income Group reports that Mongolia is to become the first country in the world to introduce a basic income for all its citizens:
The Mongolian government has taken the initial steps to create a basic income in the form of an Alaskan-style resource dividend. That would make it only the second regular basic income in the world and the first on a national level.
Bloomberg News reports that the Mongolian government has pledged to set up a “sovereign wealth fund” using mining royalties from new gold and copper mines, which are expected to begin generating large tax revenues within the next three to five years. The fund is expected to distribute part of its revenue as an annual income to every Mongolian.
Although the government has not yet published estimates of how large the annual income might turn out to be, this program could eventually make a large impact on Mongolians, because Mongolia is a small, poor country with a large amount of newly discovered resource wealth. During the elections this year, both parties discussed distributing as much as $1000US to each citizen. Although the government might not follow through with such a large grant, the size of the new mines brings this size of a dividend into the realm of possibility.
A $1000 dividend might not seem terribly significant, but the potential impact of the dividend has to be looked at in relation to how wealthy the citizens already are. According to Bloomberg, per capita income in Mongolia is only $1,680US. A dividend of only $50 per year would have the same relative impact on the average Mongolian’s budget as Alaska’s $1300 dividend has on the average Alaskan’s budget. The impact of a dividend of $500 or $1000 could be astounding, but we should be cautious about expecting anything like this in the short run.
Whatever happens, basic income supporters will probably want to keep an eye on developments in Mongolia.
Compassionate conservatism in action
Conservative Home has a new site called ‘RedLeft Watch’. The main purpose of this site to date seems to be to identify people who dare to speak up against Conservative policies, so that they can be subjected to the Two Minute Hate by the Daily Mail.
They’ve now branched out into policy suggestions:
“One of the first acts of any Tory government should be to end government funding of all charities with a political agenda. Stonewall, for example, should lose its money. Ben Summerskill’s political ranting against the Conservatives shouldn’t continue at all our expense.
Conservatives should protect themselves from accusations of being anti-gay or whatever other charge will be thrown by these state dependents by channeling 50% of the saved money to genuinely good causes in that same field of work.”
So if any charity dares employ anyone who speaks up in favour of the charity’s policies and against the Conservative Party, they should have all their funding taken away and half the money given to politically approved groups who right-wing conservatives believe, based on their vast knowledge of LGBT issues, are doing ‘genuinely good work’.
And this ‘should be one of the first acts of any Tory government’. Nice to see their ‘compassionate conservative’ principles in action, isn’t it?
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