More media misinformation on climate change
1. On 14th Feb the Mail on Sunday published a story titled Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
Typically of the Daily Mail and its coverage on the issue: it was a distortion. Real Climate points out:
What Jones actually said is that, while the globe has nominally warmed since 1995, it is difficult to establish the statistical significance of that warming given the short nature of the time interval (1995-present) involved. The warming trend consequently doesn’t quite achieve statistical significance. But it is extremely difficult to establish a statistically significant trend over a time interval as short as 15 years–a point we have made countless times at RealClimate.
In fact it hugely distorts what Phil Jones said. More on the Daily Mail’s farcical reporting on climate change exposed here.
continue reading… »
Why is Andy Coulson being let off the hook?
Mark Pack from Libdemvoice notes that with all the outrage over what MPs said on Twitter – the real story is being missed: Andy Coulson.
The Guardian reported on Monday that:
The paper’s then royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed in January 2007 for intercepting the voicemail of a total of eight victims, including Max Clifford. Coulson and the paper said they knew nothing about the illegal activity by Goodman and Mulcaire. Coulson resigned on the grounds that he carried ultimate responsibility.
Since then it has emerged that other News of the World journalists were involved in handling illegally “hacked” voicemail messages and that there were numerous other victims…
The Clifford case threatened to bring important new material into the public domain. Two weeks ago, his lawyers won a court order for the disclosure of material which, the high court was told, would reveal widespread crime at the paper during Coulson’s time there. Today, however, there were signs at the high court that the case is being stalled or dropped.
Mark says there were more important issues at stake than, “whether an MP made a stupidly over the top tribal comment about another party.”
Myself, I’m more concerned about how widespread the phone hacking was, what Andy Coulson knew about it (and the more widespread it was, the harder it is to believe he didn’t know about it) and whether the truth will come out.
After all, if Coulson was in charge whilst there was widespread breaking of the law, and repeated invasion of people’s privacy, what does it say about his suitability for such a powerful role in David Cameron’s set-up?
What does it say about Coulson, and Cameron, indeed.
Guido Fawkes’ is confused and wrong on inflation
Guido is SO confused on the latest inflation figures. Because he seems not to understand how annual inflation figures are created, he presents the first fall in the index as proof that INFLATION is settling in.
Proving my prediction in a post a few weeks back: How the Right will be screaming ‘Inflation’ as we go into deflation.
So what figures have come out? Here is a graph of the CPI index:
continue reading… »
New group of economists oppose slashing spending
It is being described as “an economists’ duel”.
A new letter is circulating among prominent British economists arguing that Britain should not slash spending or it would threaten economic recovery.
The US nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said that the new letter would be published imminently, perhaps as early as tomorrow morning.
As you might guess, I’m very much in agreement with the second group. It’s important to be clear that the call for immediate austerity isn’t grounded in unarguable economics; in fact, the arithmetic tells you that what Britain does in the next year or two is virtually irrelevant to its long-run solvency.
The second letter will come in response to a letter published in the Times earlier this week supposedly supporting the Conservative economic position.
However, Adam Lent pointed out that it said nothing substantial that supported a Tory position.
Conservatives and Co-ops: vote blue, get red:?
I’m not exactly certain when advocacy of workers’ self-management along the lines of 1950s Yugoslavia became official Conservative Party policy. But deliberate emulation of Josip Broz Tito is surely taking the notion of Red Toryism one step too far.
Little wonder, then, that yesterday’s commitment to John Lewis-style co-operatives and social enterprise across the public sector left Labour thoroughly flummoxed.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne bigged up the move as a “a transfer of power to working people” on a scale not seen since the introduction of the right to buy council houses during the hey-day of Thatcherism.
What’s the problem with teenage parents?
It is funny that the Tories put out a policy document claiming that the conception rate among under-18 girls in the 10 most disadvantaged areas was 54%, when the real figure was 54 per 1,000. It is kind of a fair point, though, that focusing on this is pretty trivial, and that rather than playing ‘gotcha’ with statistical errors, politicians, the media and so on should actually be concentrating on the more important issues.
Happily, a new book has just come out about teenage pregnancy, summarising the latest research on the subject. The authors set out the conventional view of teenage parents, that mothers are ignorant and irresponsible, fathers are feckless, that teenage parenthood is a negative experience for the mothers themselves, their children and for society as a whole, and that the whole thing is a moral, social and economic problem. They then go on to say:
“There is a severe problem with this ‘public’, axiomatic, view of teenage parenting, however—the evidence does not support it. As the chapters in this book show, there is little evidence that lack of knowledge ‘causes’ pregnancy, or that increased knowledge prevents it. Teenage birth rates are much lower than in the 1960s and 1970s, and overall are continuing to decline, while few teenage mothers are under sixteen. Age at which pregnancy occurs seems to have little effect on future social outcomes (like employment and income in later life), or on current levels of disadvantage for either parents or their children. Many young mothers and fathers themselves express positive attitudes to parenthood, and mothers usually describe how motherhood makes them feel stronger, more competent, more connected, and more responsible. Many fathers seek to remain connected to their children, and provide for their new family. For many young mothers and fathers parenting seems to provide the impetus to change direction, or build on existing resources, so as to take up education, training and employment. Teenage parenting may be more of an opportunity than a catastrophe.”
They go through, point by point, research report by research report, the real facts about teenage pregnancy. I’ve put some of the key quotes on my blog, here, or you can read the introduction here (pdf). Here are six key facts:
*Teenage pregnancy rates have been falling for nearly thirty years, and are lower than in 1956, during the supposed ‘golden age’ of the family.
*There is little evidence that low levels of knowledge ’cause’ teenage pregnancy, and meta-analysis of preventative strategies focusing on sex education, and improved access to advice and contraceptive services, concluded that this did not reduce unintended pregnancies among young women aged between 11-18.
*Studies of teenage mothers showed how they made moral and thoughtful decisions about contraception, proceeding with their pregnancy, and engagement with health and welfare services. Rather than suffering ‘broken’ family circumstances, teenage parents were often embedded in networks of support, and were optimistic that parenthood would shift them onto a positive life trajectory.
*Social research in the USA, found that the social outcome effects of mother’s age at birth were ‘often essentially zero’. Indeed, by their mid/late twenties teenage mothers in the USA did better than miscarrying teenagers with regard to employment
and income.
*Research using the Milennium Cohort Study found that those children with teenage mothers are indeed born into families experiencing multiple disadvantages. However, it is not the mother’s age at first birth which is the main driver of these disadvantages — rather it is the prior disadvantages experienced by the young mothers during their own childhoods.
*Qualitative studies find that many mothers express positive attitudes to motherhood, and describe how motherhood has made them feel stronger, more competent, more connected to family and society, and more responsible. Resilience in the face of constraints and stigma, based on a belief in the moral worth of being a mother, is one overriding theme.
*
I know that actual research evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, is much less compelling to politicians that “I saw a teenage mum once and I was disgusted”, but if you want something a bit more informed than what the Conservative Party has to offer on this subject, this book is a good place to start.
Tory ads: taking negative campaigning to new places
There’s been something wrong with all the Tory campaign posters so far, even before their myriad and amusing spoofings.
Take the “We Can’t Go On Like This” line, first seen accompanying David Cameron’s shiny airbrushed forehead. Rather than a reason to vote Conservative, it reads like the first stage of a relationship break-up. Almost as bad as “It’s not you, it’s me”, but somewhere above “If you liked it, then you shudda putta ring on it”.
Last week there were the tasteful “R.I.P OFF” gravestones, taking a mooted proposal, dishonestly elevating it into Labour policy, and turning the morally complex issue of end-of-life care into a macabre political football. But again, the message was hardly, ‘here’s a reason to vote Conservative’. It was more “OOOOHHHH be SCARED, evil Gordon is coming to steal YOUR MONEY when you’re DEAD!”
The most incredible thing about these and the latest campaign is that the Conservatives are practically admitting that they are a rubbish party, hence why people don’t normally vote for them.
continue reading… »
Humourless Tories angry over bad-mouthing!
OMG! A Labour MP has said something nasty about the Conservatives!
Sound the alarm! Call out the dogs! It’s time to get all politically correct because there’s a potential scalp!
Look, Iain Dale is outraged. ConservativeHome doesn’t believe him! Tory Bear wants him denounced!
Bizarrely enough, the same Tories were rather silent when George Osborne called Gordon Brown “autistic”. Then, apparently, lefties were having a “sense of humour failure“.
Also very curiously, nothing was said when Tory Bear posted a whole bunch of offensive tweets the other day, including ‘Gordon should try drugs.. oh wait.‘ and ‘Brown looks like a paedo‘ — before hurriedly deleting them when someone called him out on it.
All this time I was led to believe that rightwingers had a sense of humour, didn’t try to police people’s thoughts or get all politically correct.
My illusions have been shattered.
No doubt this is how Iain Dale will show his future constituents how he can be a responsible, mature MP who can bring people together. Oh wait…
Don’t you just love the blogosphere?
Campaign on Rod Liddle moves into final stage
Such is the strength of anger against Rod Liddle being appointed editor of the Independent that over 1000 people sent an email to Alexander Lebedev’s official email account this weekend. We also exceeded our fundraising target against Liddle.
The email campaign was organised by 38 Degrees, who recently joined our coalition.
A decision on the sale of the Indy is imminently expected. This is the final stage in our push to let Mr Lebedev know of the strength of feeling against Liddle.
continue reading… »
Indy columnist supports torture… of family too
If this is The Independent now, as a newspaper supposedly holding up liberal ideals, then it can’t get worse under Rod Liddle surely?
Today, Bruce Anderson starts off by saying:
Torture is revolting. A man can retain his human dignity in front of a firing squad or on the scaffold: not in a torture chamber. Torturers set out to break their victim: to take a human being and reduce him to a whimpering wreck. In so doing, they defile themselves and their society.
There is bound to be a ‘but’ here because Anderson is the resident war-mongering neo-con, employed by (supposed) liberal-left newspapers who like to think they should be balanced.
Here’s some excerpts, though feel free to read the whole thing:
We and the Americans have long-established methods of intelligence co-operation, which are now even more important than they were in the Cold War. It also makes sense to work with other threatened nations, such as Pakistan, where a brave political elite is bearing a disproportionate burden, and receiving few thanks for doing so.
…
Before 9/11, in front of some serious lawyers, I once argued that if there were a ticking bomb, the Government would not only have a right to use torture. It would have a duty to use torture.
…
After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney’s question. Torture the wife and children. It is a disgusting idea. It is almost a tragedy that we even have to discuss it, let alone think of acting upon it. But there is nothing to be gained from refusing to face facts, in the way that the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuburger, did last week.
…
There is a threat not only to individual lives, which is of minor importance, but to our way of life and our civilisation. Torture is revolting, but we cannot substitute aesthetics for thought.
If I wanted this kind of balance I’d read the bible of wingnut neo-conservatism – FrontPage Magazine. I thought that kind of crap was only limited to the US, but now we’re getting it here.
On Sunday, in the Observer, Nick Cohen was having a go at judges for the Binyam Mohammad ruling:
Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, added a further complication when he said that the Mohamed ruling provided a propaganda victory for our enemies. And I am sure he was right.
Nick Cohen has earlier justified torture under certain circumstances.
Now we just need Bruce Anderson to condemn Amnesty International for not upholding human rights and the circle would be complete.
[hat-tip @Naomimc]
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