My Doubts

Auditing Climate “Science”

2011-11-30T19:02:00.001Z

It is a long story why, but I was recently appointed to manage all the quality auditing within the company I work for, and of our suppliers. This is considered a vital role, for which I require training, and although I have been auditing for a while after an introductory course this week I am on a full Quality Manager’s course.

Learning to audit is eye-opening stuff, and very interesting that auditing is a general skill, not specific to the activity of the company; in fact the practice audit we completed was of the only part of our type of operation about which I know little, and it was no more difficult for me than it was for the guy who works in that area.

Also surprising is how vital auditing is to all activity if it is to be done well, how easily any organisation, even with the most competent and professional staff slips in quality. Any company of any size really should have a quality department, and typically companies involved in safety-related work are required to do so, either by a regulating authority or by their insurers (for the record, I believe insurance companies make the best regulators; that is the free-market libertarian in me).

The final surprise was that a good external audit will find about what is going wrong even the best-run organisation. The hosts for our audit were great, a very good company with an excellent auditing system of their own and frequent outside audits. Yet I still made findings.

So what does that have to do with climate research?

Publically-funded science is way behind commercial enterprise and even many government organisations in quality auditing. There is very little and what exists is done badly. Very badly. As in almost always breaking fundamental principles of auditing. Some of the requirements are listed here.

Auditing should be to objective questions which query whether stated, objective aims are being achieved.
Auditing should be carried out by independent people with training in quality auditing.
The auditor should be able to present objective evidence of compliance or non-compliance for which:

the auditor should be able to state that any processes are suitable and are followed;
the auditor must have access to samples of all information used or produced, selected by the auditor.

The only external auditing carried out in government-funded science, certainly in British universities, is in the peer review of the resulting papers and the post-publication study by interested parties. This is an audit because it is an examination and verification of the paper, and the science behind the paper.

So I will consider that in respect to climate “science”.

I am suspicious about the actual aims of climate science; I think they aim to prove that human activity causes climate change. A few of them start talking about “post-normal science”, which is by definition subjective. For those who still recognise science, an objective aim can be assumed, however if they are not honest about that aim, then they should fail every audit.
The “scientists” complain vociferously when independent scientists are used for peer review. After publication their papers are studied by independent minds, although they have not been conspicuously grateful when gaping flaws are found.
Objective evidence is where peer review falls down as an audit process within climate “science”:

the processes are not available in full to the reviewer. The authors of the papers refuse to allow their computer code to be provided to reviewers, let alone to interested readers post-publication;
the climate scientists conspire to break the UK Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations in order to keep the data they use secret.

So peer-review and study of papers post-publication is not sound auditing.

Without auditing no-one (not even the researchers themselves, I must stress) knows whether the results have any merit whatever.

It is certain that they don’t know if the data sources are reliable. They don’t know if the initial data are sound. They don’t know if the processes are correct. They don’t know if the processes have been followed. They don’t know if the published results bear any relation to the output of the process.

I will go out on a limb here, from my experience with being auditing and with auditing. For every paper written by climate “scientists” some, and often all, of those aspects behind a new paper will be flawed. Some of those flaws will be serious.

So what is the quality of those papers?

Context

2011-11-27T00:09:00.001Z

If any warmist ever mentions that “emails have been taken out of context” you might do worse than point them to Ross McKitrick at Climate Audit.

Escalation of Climategate

2011-11-26T02:46:00.002Z

Something has struck me about he new “Climategate” emails, as they are gradually being mined for interesting and relevant comments.

These are worse, these are more damning even than the 2009 release.

Yes 2009 had the data, with the harry_readme.txt file which cast suspicion on the data. It had “hide the decline”, which despite all excuses was a terrible indictment of the whole process, if interpreted correctly and as broadly as I viewed it. But that is the point. It was up for interpretation; the excuses were sort of believable; you could accept that each one piece of evidence was only relevant to the sender, or occasionally the sender and recipient.

This new lot is dynamite. It is unequivocal. The web of deceit is much clearer.

I cannot possibly do it justice, I simple don’t have the time, so I am grateful to those that do. If you read Watts Up With That, Bishop Hill blog, Roger Pielke Snr, Roger Pielke Jnr and Junk Science then you can get a fair impression, although there are many other sources out there.

So we have a puzzle. This has been mentioned by others. What is the leaker’s motive? What is his aim? Considering these two questions, what is his intention?

There is another huge file there. It is encrypted. The leaker has released some embarrassing emails and data that the climate-change alarmists could, and did, cope with. Phil Jones was side-lined a little. No-one else really suffered more than a red face. Two years later (this man is more patient than my wife is, I’ll tell you that) more emails are leaked. The surprise is less, but the emails are more damning. A different league. If any real notice is paid to them there is no way that all the people involved are going to get away with this.

So why? With what aim? Considering perhaps close to 250,000 emails not yet released, with what intention?

My cutest picture post yet …

2011-11-26T02:12:00.002Z

A beautiful kitten, an Istanbul stray. I love the song at the link; there are not many songs about cats that are not sickly, but the “cute punk” style makes up for the slightly unformed lyrics.

Climate change conspiracy went further

2011-11-25T19:09:00.001Z

Someone just replied to a comment I made on another blog over two years ago. That generated an email to inform me of the reply, so I went and looked. The blog author had expressed scepticism of the idea that there was a conspiracy at the heart of the global-climate-change industry.

I am quite pleased with my judgement. This was before even the original “Climategate” release.

But there is a conspiracy in Global Warming (sorry, it’s called climate change isn’t it, now the globe has stopped warming?). Those in the conspiracy have all but admitted that there is a conspiracy to keep the data on which the scare is based away from researchers who might challenge their interpretation of it.

…

As for undisclosed affiliation, what about the people who favour climate change panic? Well the scientists need to ensure their funding. There is far more money, by orders of magnitude, in claiming AGW than in refuting it.

So with the 2009 release of emails and data, and the 2011 release of emails from the CRU, further evidence of these conspiracies emerged, exactly along the lines I had stated, but also far further. What I commented on was only one of a web of conspiracies.

Did I underestimate the scope of conspiracy, or was I just commenting on those parts for which there was, at the time, evidence? I think a little of both. I certainly would not have guessed that the World Bank would be at the centre of things, but the involvement of a BBC reporter and at least some BBC management is not quite so unexpected.

[Update: edited to add extra hyperlinks]

Classic error in science – Climategate 2.0 (the revenge)

2011-11-22T17:36:00.005Z

A quote from Phil Jones in the recently-released emails:

I too don’t see why the schemes should be symmetrical. The temperature ones
certainly will not as we’re choosing the periods to show warming.

You can say what you like about context, but my doubts are very slight that Mr Mann is making that classic scientific error, in cherry-picking data. Many erroneous scientific conclusions have been drawn in the past from scientist who found an excuse to disregard data that did not fit. Many theories have only stood after they should have been disproved as scientists ignored results showing they were wrong. Theories stood until some brave soul comes along willing to dispute the consensus.

Only it is not an error in this case, is it? This looks very much like blatant dishonesty. I look forward with great interest to the excuses Mr Mann and any recipient of this email can make.

To whom does “we” refer?

[Edited to correctly attribute the email]

The BBC lies – whichever side you take

2011-11-22T00:23:00.003Z

The anonymous BBC “reporter” who wrote an article “No let up in greenhouse gas rise” either does not understand the subject or is dishonest.

The article claims that carbon dioxide is “the major contributor to climate change”. It is a lie not claimed by any scientist, but of course most people think this.

That is because they have been told that human generation of CO2 is causing a catastrophic rise in temperatures. What they have not been told is that this claim is based on an assumption of positive feedback, not only that but feedback that must have greater influence than the CO2. Heat trapping by CO2 just isn’t enough to support the claims of the warmists, and they randomly add large positive feedback to models. So even according to climate hysterics the carbon dioxide itself is not the major contributor, the putative feedback mechanism is.

This is not a trivial falsehood. How many times have we read that this is “basic physics”, and that “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas” so must be causing the rise in average temperatures? How rarely do the people who tell us this admit that without positive feedback CO2 cannot explain most of the warming since the 1970s? How many state that all the nightmare scenarios claimed in the press require a lot of feedback?

Feedback is very important to a lot of what I have studied and taught. It comes into a lot of physics, into geology and in aviation theory in the principles of flight (stability of an aircraft is determined entirely by feedback). What I can say is that positive feedback is that it is rare in natural systems and essentially unheard of in a stable system. Positive feedback is the cause of instability.

Which thought brings us to an interesting place. Either the temperature has positive feedback, and is unstable, or else temperature is stable and shows negative feedback. The whole climate panic is based on the assumption that the temperature is stable (and so the recent fluctuations are unusual) but that temperature response to carbon dioxide shows positive feedback …

Faster Than Light

2011-11-21T09:01:00.003Z

I no longer read the New Scientist regularly. How can anyone trust a magazine that promotes “consensus” yet claims to be about science?

However if a particle can travel faster than the speed of light, or even if scientists can contemplate the idea that this is possible, then the bizarre notion of science by consensus disappears rather rapidly.

Where are the articles demanding silence from the dissenters? Where are the scientists condemning this research, claiming it must be funded by some random special-interest group (which is, conversely, actually funding consensus research)? Where are the politicians, the socialist journalists, the polemicists condemning the very suggestion that neutrinos might travel at more than c?

Carl Sagan Part II : Climate “Science”

2011-11-12T23:47:00.012Z

Well Carl Sagan’s comments on pseudo-science fit remarkable well with the methods and attitudes of the climate scientists. So what about the claims of the CAGW researchers that what they are doing is science? What does Sagan’s book say about science, and how does that fit with CAGW claims?

Every time a scientific paper presents a bit of data, it's accompanied by an error bar - a quiet but insistent reminder that no knowledge is complete or perfect. It's a calibration of how much we trust what we think we know.

…

We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error bars a little, and to add to the body of data to which error bars apply. The error bar is a pervasive, visible self-assessment of the reliability of our knowledge.

This is exactly what the climate guys don’t want us to know. They have so often ignored error bars, or been accused by reputable statisticians of poor error handling that I think they have forgotten that their data are not perfect. Considering some of the problems found in their original data … that is not promising.

I keep talking about the “idea” of catastrophic climate change being caused by human activity. That is because I have never seen it categorised, except in the vernacular as a theory.

… scientists are usually careful to characterize the veridical status of their attempts to understand the world - ranging from conjectures and hypotheses, which are highly tentative, all the way up to laws of Nature which are repeatedly and systematically confirmed through many interrogations of how the world works. But even laws of Nature are not absolutely certain. There may be new circumstances never before examined … where even our vaunted laws of Nature break down …

So in the scientific sense is CAGW a theory? An hypothesis? What? I would call it conjecture, but it is certainly not a law. Yet as Sagan says here even a law is not known to be immutable. How can anyone say the debate is over?

But our climate scientists are the great experts, are they not? Surely we should uncritically accept what they say, regardless of the complete lack of evidence.

One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.) Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.

Ah. So Carl Sagan says specifically that we should mistrust anything we have ever read in the mainstream press or heard on television about human activity, and CO₂ in particular, being an overwhelming factor in global climate. Every one of those pieces is an argument from authority. Not a single one is a presentation of evidence, because there is no evidence.

That I am asserting from authority, my authority as a graduate in Earth Sciences who has been following the media avidly for over two years on the issue. You should therefore distrust my assertion, and look for yourselves. Seek an article that discusses empirical evidence (not models, certainly not discredited models; not data twisted to show human influence as a statistical artefact) that humans cause significant climate change. If you find a single one, please post here. Free gig tickets, concert of your choice to the first to link such an article in the comments (my dear wife is in the music business, so I can usually acquire VIP or even AAA passes).

So what about the response in climate “science” to sceptics? Is calling the man who disagrees with your conclusion a “denier”, to link him with neo-Nazis and to avoid having to answer his substantive points good science?

Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don't reply to critics, wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I'm very fond of it; it's done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. The British physicist Michael Faraday warned of the powerful temptation to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in the favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them . . . We receive as friendly that which agrees with [us], we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.

So that’ll be a no then.

… I maintain that science is part and parcel humility. Scientists do not seek to impose their needs and wants on Nature, but instead humbly interrogate Nature and take seriously what they find. We are aware that revered scientists have been wrong.

Oh. Surely that can’t be right. The revered climate “scientists” have never been wrong, have they? Surely climate “scientists” need not be humble?

Of course not! Sagan is, of course, talking about real scientists, not climate “scientists”. Sagan did not know about post-normal science.

We are constantly prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.

Again, I think the problem is that Sagan died too early to hear about post-normal science. I am sure he would have sought fewer alternative explanations if he was alive today.

However Sagan did have some distinctly odd ideas.

In diverse ways, many other physicists are testing General Relativity, for example by attempting directly to detect the elusive gravitational waves. They hope to strain the theory to the breaking point and discover whether a regime of Nature exists in which Einstein's great advance in understanding in turn begins to fray.

These efforts will continue as long as there are scientists. General Relativity is certainly an inadequate description of Nature at the quantum level, but even if that were not the case, even if General Relativity were everywhere and forever valid, what better way of convincing ourselves of its validity than a concerted effort to discover its failings and limitations?

This is one of the reasons that the organized religions do not inspire me with confidence. Which leaders of the major faiths acknowledge that their beliefs might be incomplete or erroneous and establish institutes to uncover possible doctrinal deficiencies? Beyond the test of everyday living, who is systematically testing the circumstances in which traditional religious teachings may no longer apply? … What sermons even-handedly examine the God hypothesis?

Is Carl Sagan, the quintessential scientist, saying that climate “science” has a lot in common with religion? Surely he would never have written this if he knew that a new science would rise, one whose leaders do not “…acknowledge that their beliefs might be incomplete or erroneous and establish institutes to uncover possible doctrinal deficiencies”. A science that refuses to “systematically [test] the circumstances in which [its] teachings may no longer apply”. A science that refuses to “even-handedly examine the [CAGW] hypothesis”, or even acknowledge that such even-handed treatment could have any validity.

A science, no less, that is closer to a god, that we can worship, with sins, penance and the sale of indulgences, taxing people, paying the high priests to live in luxury while they interpret the world by declamation.

So we come to the bible, the great revelations of science. For centuries Christianity hid the “revelations of God” in the bible from common folk, by insisting it could only be published in Latin (and of course murdering the first man to publish it in a language commoners understood). Only a priest could interpret the word of God, and to ensure this remained so the common people would not be permitted to even read it or have it read to them by a literate friend.

Climate “scientists” also seem rather reluctant to part with the information they interpret. They hide their data, in the case of UEA breaking two completely separate laws to avoid disclosure. They openly declaim that this is so others cannot challenge their conclusions. Surely this is a normal part of science?

Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions.

That’ll be another no then. Not sure, but I think I’ll just have to put this one down to post-normal science too.

So I have in two posts shown some of Carl Sagan’s opinions on pseudo-science and then on science. I am convinced by these sections that Sagan would have seen today’s climate “science” as more akin to pseudo-science that to science.

I have provided no citations or page reference simply because this is an essay not a research paper. As such I want it to flow, and stimulate further reading rather than prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. I know that I have seen all the poor science and pseudo-science I claim in print from climate “scientists”. If you feel differently, look for evidence. If you can find any to the contrary, or cannot find the types of errors and claims I assert then post a comment, I will give more detail as to what I mean. If you want to know more about Carl Sagan’s views on science, read the book. It’s very good.

[Update from Climategate II] It's funny how the climate hysterics are bent on proving everything said against them. Remember what I said about error bars?

...any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think. (Wilson)

Carl Sagan, Part I: Climate Pseudo-Science

2011-11-12T21:36:00.004Z

Climate “scientists” are not involved in science. They are peddling pseudo-science, and allowing others to use it to grind the rest of us into the dust. Incidentally that means they get their next grant approved, and have articles published not in journals but in well-known newspapers, as they get paid large sums for speaking engagements.

For several years I have believed that the idea of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is unscientific. I have described the Royal Society as anti-scientific for its official stance. However I am one person, a graduate in Earth Sciences and so more qualified to comment than most but with no reputation.

Carl Sagan, on the hand, was a revered and internationally-renowned astrophysicist and science communicator. Unfortunately he died before CAGW became such a huge issue, in fact around the time it should have died, when it was proved there was no warming in the upper troposphere at low latitudes. Let’s see what he has to say about pseudo-science in his book The Demon-Haunted World.

Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science. Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.

Well we could say that climate “scientists” thrive on errors; the problem is that they don’t recognise that they are capable of making errors. They think that admitting errors is a sign of weakness. Science’s great strength, as Sagan implies, is to admit to making errors – this means errors can be corrected.

Climate “scientists” don’t make tentative conclusions. They declaim, they make wild assertions. And they never cut away their errors. They hide them in the dark, they refuse to let anyone find those errors by conspiring to keep information secret, like a cabal.

Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Sceptical scrutiny is opposed.

Does this remind you of anything?

Sagan carries on:

When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced.

Even though so many scientists (possibly even a majority) accept the idea of CAGW the proponents still whine about conspiracies for which they have no evidence, while completely ignoring and even denying the conspiracies to push poor science which have sound, even irrefutable, evidence. You know, emails between conspirators discussing details of a conspiracy, which they admit are genuine.

Finally on pseudo-science, Sagan says

Perhaps the sharpest distinction between science and pseudo-science is that science has a far keener appreciation of human imperfections and fallibility than does pseudoscience … If we resolutely refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that error - even serious error, profound mistakes - will be our companion forever.

Indeed.

Human Rights We Should Recognise

2011-08-21T20:16:00.001+01:00

The recent riots have brought up a lot of commentary about the Human Rights Act, and Call Me Dave’s attack on the Act as contributing to the unrest. All this commentary seems to be from the point of view of the rioters, and the rights given under the act encouraging criminality and violence.

I want to look at the other side, my big gripe with European human-rights legislation. What I object to is not just the rights given that should not be rights, but also the fundamental rights that are not given; these also affected the course of the riots. Of course once the Human Rights Act was made law, it is often assumed that anything not included is not a human right.

The example here is the right to self-defence, including the right to keep and bear arms for this purpose.

For years the right of an Englishman to defend himself, his family and his property have been eroded. The change in this is discussed in an article on Powerline. The claimed reason, that we should rely on the police to protect us, has never been very sound. The police could never claim to be available at every time a man might need to defend himself, so the idea of abdicating this responsibility to the sanctioned authority was always ridiculous. The allegation that police are being told in cases of violent disorder to avoid arresting people and simply try to contain the situation makes it farcical.

Like any well-read lad I enjoyed reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a boy; most people have seen Sherlock Holmes on film and television. Does it not strike people that Watson frequently carried a revolver, as occasionally did Holmes? It was clearly unremarkable to Conan Doyle, and of course it was an assumption at that time that a man might carry a weapon, and defend himself with it. Crime was a lot lower then, around a tenth for more than half the population, for a crime rate of around 1/6 to 1/7 today’s.

In 1964 advice to police was that self defence was not a reason to allow a fire-arms certificate to hold a handgun. Between 1997 and 1998 handguns were banned altogether (high-calibre in 1997, .22 in 1998). Now we are not allowed to carry any weapon at all for self defence. There is no requirement for the police to even suggest that the person was a threat to anyone else. If a person carries a weapon, or anything that can be used as a weapon, without a good excuse he or she can be prosecuted.

Since then there have been increasing cases of police persecuting and prosecuting people who defend themselves. There are cases that should never have come to court, there are cases of arrests that never resulted in charges but still cause distress to people who have already suffered the trauma of attacks on themselves or their homes and businesses.

So where is the human-rights legislation to protect rights of crime victims from the Police, when the criminals receive so much protection?

Of course there are many other rights that are being stripped by the government and the EU, or rights one of us might argue for, but because they are not coded into the European Convention on Human Rights there is almost no chance that they will be recognised as human rights.

Recently there was a television programme about fake Euro notes. It is a strict-liability offense in the Euro-zone to even own fake Euro notes, and also to try to spend them. Yet there are millions of fake notes in circulation. Many people might have them completely innocently. At least one British person, unfamiliar in any case with Euros, tried to spend a single fake note in a large bundle he had directly from a travel agent, yet had he been charged his lawyers had said he was best to plead guilty, as he had no defence. That the Austrian police did not charge him was good sense from them, to his fortune. Not everyone has been so lucky, and a law that relies on luck and the good sense of officers is a poor law.

Where is the protection of our human rights to carry currency without worrying that we might inadvertently commit a serious criminal offence?

What about the one right on which all others, and our freedom and political rights depend, the the protection of our right to free speech? It is protected under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, with a few exceptions. One of which is protection of morals, another is maintaining the authority of the judiciary. Both of these exceptions are incompatible with what I would see as the human right to free expression.

Of course the UK libel laws are not compatible with natural rights to free speech, nor are the reporting restrictions on family courts, for example. So even our most fundamental right is not protected.

I could go on. Rights to privacy that Americans recognise in the fourth amendment to their constitution, right to free assembly, right to silence under police questioning (broken in the UK; if you disagree with my objection to the current British police caution of rights, I recommend this video "Don't talk to the police", advice from an American lawyer), rights to due process of law and against double jeopardy, rights to speedy trial.

All of these are rights recognised in the constitution of the USA, you will notice; the USA so criticised by sophisticated Europeans as the barbaric outpost of rednecks.

I would argue for other rights: the right to self determination, taken as far as euthanasia, the right to a proportional tax rebate if you choose supply from a third party of services currently offered by government, the right to freedom of choice to the degree that government cannot place extra taxes on products politicians feel we should use less (petrol, home energy and alcohol affect me, but tobacco is unfairly taxed too), and a few more radical libertarian positions. I am even willing to give credence to arguments in favour of right to use certain drugs that are currently illicit, although I am not a libertine and feel that more information is needed to decide on some of those issues.

There is even one right of criminals, to blind justice without considerations of motive (such as “hate crime”) or the victim’s wishes in sentencing. Both of these allow or encourage revenge, not justice.

So, not only does human rights legislation allow rights that are not natural human rights, especially to criminals and those who are not legally resident in this country, but by not mentioning certain rights, or by curtailing them in exceptions, it restricts the rights of the majority. This happens because when the British common law assumption that we have all rights that are not removed whether by historical precedent or by legislation has been supplanted by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Finally I believe that supplanting is unconstitutional. It is entirely at odds with British legal tradition, and if there is any one thing at the heart of the British constitution, tying together the various threads of our written constitution, it is legal tradition.

Les Misérables

2011-08-07T18:29:00.001+01:00

[WARNING: minor spoilers; go to the last line if you want to see the musical fresh]

Sometimes we get so used to circumstances that it takes a sudden insight from the distant past to remind us what we enjoy or what we suffer daily.

The state of the entertainment industry, in Britain and America is such a case. The system is so shot through with politics that certain very normal, realistic events and characters are simply unthinkable.

I went with my wife to see Les Misérables recently, and some of the value of the play is the almost unthinkable behaviour of the characters.

When the main character, Jean Valjean, steals from the Catholic Priest and is caught, we assume that a Priest is going to be a terrible man who wants him hanged. Instead the priest claims to have given Jean the things he stole, even claiming he left more silverware behind and giving him the candlesticks. He had seen Jean as a desperate man who needed help and compassion, even if he did not deserve either.

When Valjean becomes a wealthy, powerful man, he is an important local employer. Much to our surprise he is shown as caring about his workers, but also satisfied that his enterprise is employing others; when he fears he will be returned to prison for breaking parole, one of his main concerns is for the people who would then lose their livelihoods.

Both of these characters are so surprising to us, not because they are abnormal. Many Catholic Priests are very generous, patient, kind and understanding. Many wealthy employers take great satisfaction in employing people and making a close community. What surprises us is that such characters are portrayed on stage. We are used to evil, small-minded or bigoted Priests and grasping, self-serving employers.

The musical is of course based on a book written long before such portrayals became ubiquitous. It is not politically biased, but does also touch other ideas that seem odd to the modern filmgoer or television viewer. The anti-royalist student radicals are naïve, well-meaning and courageous, but also their leader is shown to be uncaring of an individual, interested in the people but seemingly only as an ideal. That seems a very perceptively-written character. There are themes throughout of personal responsibility and the evils of an uncaring, impersonal government in the person of the police officer Javert, who is not a bad man but is the antagonist of the piece through just following his perceived duty as an officer of the law.

Oh, it’s a great musical by the way, I thoroughly recommend it. Matt Lucas (of Little Britain fame) made a fantastic innkeeper.

Napoleon and the French Revolution

2011-07-04T20:30:00.001+01:00

A bit of an odd monologue today, but it has a point.

I heard some time ago of the Khan Academy, a great resource for autodidacts. At the time the only history available there was the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, so I watched the whole lot; what a horrifying series that was. What a barbaric forerunner of the 20th-century communist revolutions, what terrible conflicts for the grandiose ambitions of one man.

What is more worrying, and certainly more current, is the French attitude to both the Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte. They are both openly revered. The French motto is the motto of the Revolution; the French National Anthem is the Anthem of the Revolution, schools are named after its violent leaders (I went on exchange to École Robbespierre). Although the French are a little more ambivalent towards him, Napoleon Bonaparte is still widely considered a French hero, or else considered to have helped France or Europe in some ways; Metro stops are still named for his generals. The pupil I exchanged with at École Robbespierre was utterly adamant that Napoleon had ended his wars victorious; he would not believe otherwise.

Violence of the French Revolution: this time, ironically, the execution of Robbespierre

Why do I consider these things today, and why are they important?

Here I have a confession: I was reading the Daily Mail. I usually refuse, for personal reasons, but I was in a coffee shop awaiting my wife, and that was all that was available. In it A.N. Wilson has an article on the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo (for those educated in Britain, that will be in 2015) and the lack of official plans for celebrations.

Yet this was a victory every bit as important for modern Europe as the victory over Nazism and Fascism and the victory over Communism. We celebrate these victories in some official way. We honour the great figures in these victories, with a statue to Ronald Reagan having been unveiled today, Independence Day.

The Communist Parties and Nazi Parties are widely reviled today, most importantly in their own countries (with the possible exception of Russia). People recognise that these were evil regimes. People would not wish to be associated with the political ideals of these regimes (even when their views happen to coincide).

Yet in France it is not so, and it is just accepted that victory over Napoleon and post-Revolutionary France are something to keep quiet about, not to be triumphalist, as if the violent, repressive, French dominance of Europe was something that could have been allowed to remain, the victory in these terrible wars something to be ashamed of as we are now allied to France.

Napoleon Bonaparte was an egotistical bastard. He set a continent ablaze, killed on a scale never seen before, not to be seen again for a century. He did so for his own personal satisfaction.

A.N. Wilson puts it well, in comparing the two opposing commanders that day.

When told he risked his life by riding to and fro on his horse, [Wellington]replied: 'The battle's won. My life's of no consequence now.'

Napoleon would never have said that. To such a megalomaniac, his own life was all-important; those of the people he killed and enslaved were of no consequence whatever.

It is about time France recognised the horrors of the Revolution and the subsequent wars, as the Germans did with the Nazi regime, and that French honour for the Revolution and Bonaparte is challenged. This attitude is at the core of an unhealthy French nationalism, that leads directly to some of the most damaging aspects of the EU and of French dealings with the world.

On a final note – what do the three evil regimes compared here have in common? The French Revolutionaries, the Communists and the Nazis all started out as socialists.

Edit: just to add a comment to any that seriously doubt that the French revere the monstrous post-revolutionary regime. 25 years ago I was on a school exchange in southern France, to a modern secondary school. It's name? Ecole Robespierre.. Named after Maximilien Robbespierre. I doubt the name has been changed.

Happy Independence Day

2011-07-04T20:23:00.003+01:00

With all that an independent USA has done for the world, we should celebrate this one. Yes, I know that the words are anti-British, but they had a point. May today’s Tea Party lead to as much freedom as did the original!

As usual, click the pic for music.

Hollywood Was Not Always Socialist

2011-06-19T18:54:00.004+01:00

That Hollywood is, despite itself consisting of businesses that aim to make a profit, a part of the socialist anti-business movement is beyond reasonable argument. Pointing to the numerous films where absurd plots make businesses and their senior executives the antagonist is a fairly weak argument, albeit true, but there is now a book detailing evidence, Primetime Propaganda and of course a whole website of news about Big Hollywood from right-wing commentators which documents left-wing foolishness.

I am a great fan of Audrey Hepburn, so am watching Sabrina, where Hepburn plays the eponymous heroine, and her (eventual) love interest, played by Humphrey Bogart is a senior executive of a large, family-run conglomerate. At one point his wastrel, playboy brother he asks what his “urge to go into plastics” will prove. His answer is something a socialist could never write

“Prove? Nothing much.

A new product has been found, something of use to the world, so a new industry moves into an undeveloped area. Factories go up, machines are brought in, a harbor is dug and you're in business.

It’s purely coincidental of course that people who never saw a dime before suddenly have a dollar, and bare-footed kids wear shoes and have their teeth fixed and their faces washed.

What’s wrong with the kind of an urge that gives people libraries, hospitals, baseball diamonds and uh, movies on a Saturday night?”

This is one of the best rebuttals I have ever heard of socialism, a succinct explanation of why business should be encouraged, and not opposed.

That was a Long Interruption

2011-06-19T18:52:00.003+01:00

Two years ago I was unemployed. Long and unpleasant story that cannot be told truthfully without risk of a case for libel. Hence I had plenty of time to pontificate and pronounce on matters political.

I stopped blogging when I suddenly got work, and had little time for it. Since then I have married and become involved in my wife’s business, which has been hard work at times but interesting.

Now my life is now less insane, and the world more so. We have a Conservative-lead coalition sacrificing our economy to appease radical environmentalists (for no conceivable environmental benefit); the EU snatching ever more power and money, in denial about the imminent collapse of its currency and the damage done by the bailouts in the interim; Barack Obama worse than even his critics anticipated, "Hope" now being a hope that he is no worse than Jimmy Carter; the BBC, our state broadcaster, supporting everything that is wrong.

Thus I find myself wanting some outlet for a frustrated cry at the stupidity of the world, and the lack of voice for us, who are called libertarian, who just want to be able to live our lives without anyone else screwing it up claiming to help.

I might not blog frequently, but I hope to do so several times each week.

ACORN – The Final Nail

2009-10-21T23:23:00.001+01:00

When the ACORN scandal hit the ‘community organisation’ had one excuse. They claimed that the undercover couple had visited many offices and been turned away, and only in a handful were they offered advice on how to cheat the taxes on money they earned from underage sex slaves.

In particular ACORN claimed Giles and O’Keefe were turned away from New York and San Diego offices (video evidence has already been shown that they were actually helped there). Most importantly they were not only refused advice in Philadelphia, but were told to leave the office and the police were called.

Errrrrrmmmmm, or not, as the case might be.

Incidentally the ACORN employee’s voice is muted, for legal reasons.

How can anyone who knows about this now fail to utterly condemn ACORN? How can ACORN continue to function, when they don’t know what else Andrew Breitbart has to release? How can they have any credibility when everything they have said has turned out to be a lie, because Breitbart really, really knows his business, knew exactly how ACORN would react and had the evidence to respond to everything, so ACORN’s defence only made things worse at every stage?

Arrogance of Authority

2009-10-16T20:19:00.002+01:00

A great case of someone who let his own arrogance overcome any doubts he might have had. A Justice of the Peace in Louisiana has decided not to sign a marriage license because the couple are of mixed race.

Now I happen to accept his claim that he is not racist, and that he simply believes the marriage is less likely to last. This does not necessarily show racism. What it does show is that he thinks his views are more important than this couple’s decision about their own life, and that he thinks that statistical norms should determine an individual case.

Another time where someone should have more doubts.

Hat tip Instapundit.

Why Are You So Greedy?

2009-10-15T21:11:00.001+01:00

The most stupid question I have ever heard on national television. It simply indicates that the BBC have no idea of the concept of the market, and of choice and freedom.

Anne Robinson was talking to the Marketing Director of Centre Parks holiday park company on Watchdog, the consumer-affairs programme on BBC1. She was trying to claim that it was some sort of dreadful offence that Centre Parks charge people far more in the school holidays than outside. She was livid, and went through a whole host of random complaints. She showed no hint of understanding when the Marketing Director pointed out that they were full at that time, so people must feel that it is value for money, and she went on at him about the additional charges they make for their activities.

The funniest part was failing to see the irony when people started saying that they had gone or would go elsewhere due to the price at Centre Parks. That is their choice – they are not forced to go to Centre Parks, or to indulge in extra activities when they are there. It is their choice to pay what Centre Parks’s choose to charge.

This shows the core problem with the BBC. They are an insular organisation, where charges and pay are not related to choice or to freedom but to some arbitrary concept of “fairness”. Oh, and that they think that paying Jonathan Woss £6 million a year has any relation to fairness.

Update: this self-righteous piece of ignorance is online now.

Bercow Not Such a Berk

2009-10-15T19:03:00.001+01:00

Although I stand by previous comments about Bercow and his pompous decision to appoint himself a special advisor. However I was always willing to give him a shot at the job before condemning him as speaker. I hoped he would do well by the House, even as I feared he would not, but it seems he might be making a decent fist of it. At the least he is far better than Michael Martin, perhaps with time he can come up to Betty Boothroyd and Sir Bernhard Wetherill’s standard. We can only hope this continues.

The ‘Far-Right’ and the Left

2009-10-15T15:27:00.002+01:00

The media always term the BNP and other neo-Nazi or neo-fascist organisations ‘far-right’. This is despite the fact that they are always socialist, of course the term Nazi explicitly includes socialism. Despite the fact that they appeal to disaffected Labour voters in the UK, hence the BNP success in areas where Labour once held sway.

So I am far less surprised than Lucy Lips at Harry's Place that left-wing Labour MP Clare Short and Liberal Democrat peer Jenny Tonge shared an anti-Israeli platform with neo-fascist MEP Kristina Morvai of the Hungarian nationalist party Jobbik, as well as the usual supporters of terrorist Hamas.

So where are the cries of horror in the news? where are the commentators decrying a sitting British MP making common cause with Jobbik, a Hungarian Party that discussed alliance with the BNP?

Although I have some doubt that Jobbik are as extremist as Harry’s Place make out – the evidence that they are anti-Semitic (apart from the anti-Israeli stance common to many left-wing British organisations, placing the only Jewish state as a unique villain for no apparent reason) is very weak. They do however seem to be anti-Roma to rather a strong degree, as well as nationalist. Most telling their MEPs discussed making common cause with the BNP and the French Front National in the European Parliament (they did not join Euronat, the party the BNP and FN MEPs belong to) and Nick Griffin, the BNP MEP spoke at a Jobbik rally.

So Jobbik is not a respectable party. It is far less respectable than the parties in Latvia and Poland that our esteemed Foreign Secretary managed to offend when criticising Conservative alliance with them in the European Parliament. Yet a Labour MP, former cabinet member can openly associate with one of their MEPs, and make common cause without any comment being made.

More on Global Cooling

2009-10-15T00:13:00.001+01:00

This could be an important time, leading to great relief and perhaps great fear. It appears that the media are finally seeing the cracks in global warming. Much as I hate to link the Daily Mail, as I have said before sources that go off the deep end sometimes will also are sometimes go the whole way, where few others dare go so far.

So temperature records are falling in falling temperatures. Austria’s earliest recorded snows, an American town breaking record low by seven degrees.

Even the alarmists are admitting that temperatures might fall for two decades, although they insist that the rising trend will overcome that.

It is easy to see the fatal flaw in their argument, it is mentioned in the Daily Mail article, “…the global cooling from 1945 to 1977…”. So the globe was cooling until 1977, and the warmest year since 1934 was 1998, and the world has been at an even temperature then cooling since, and now might cool for two decades.

So let me see if I have the sequence right, starting in 1947. The world cooled for three decades, then warmed for two decades and then is about to cool for another two decades before returning to a warming trend. Ooooookaaaaaay. Errrrrrrmmmmmm, I am not sure if you’re getting this, but I don’t see any consistent trend at all here. I see a pattern of rising and falling temperatures, probably therefore dominated by a factor that itself rises and falls.

Since the alarmists have been going on at us for 15 years now about the fact that CO2 levels have been rising exponentially, I am getting the idea that they don’t fit the pattern. I am not sure what physics these guys have, but mine is a little rusty; I did leave university 14 years ago. Can an exponential rise in CO2 really trigger oscillations in temperature? I reckon it’s possible, but I also am damned sure that is not what those little models predicted.

With the hockey-stick curve having fallen for a second time, and no sign of sea-level rises the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is looking remarkably thin.

Nobel Prize Explained

2009-10-14T01:30:00.001+01:00

So it appears it was not just the politics of the left but the venality and vanity of the left. It seems that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize to allow Thorbjørn Jagland to meet the world press. Jagland (who I must admit has a great name – sounds like the bastard child of a Norse god and a member of Abba) is the chairman of the committee, and a left-wing politician. He is also general secretary of the Council of Europe.

His own words seem to indicate that he chose Obama for publicity, in order that he would gain reflected glory. Read the final page of the article if nothing else. However the whole thing is worth reading for the political context, and commentary on Jagland’s use of the Prize for his own gain and for politics, but also a sense of his cluelessness that he might have done anything wrong.

Oh, and a great new example of the racism in left-wing politics. “Bongo from Kongo”?

So How Are Those IPCC Predictions Working Out?

2009-10-13T11:21:00.000+01:00

The IPCC did a lot of detailed work, in fact a surprising amount considering the lack of contributors who had actually published anything in peer-review literature before. A lot of this was to support the central ideas required to convince people of climate change. Since Carbon dioxide does not actually absorb much energy that has previously escaped absorption by water or existing carbon dioxide levels, it was important to deal with other greenhouse gases.

One of the powerful greenhouse gases associated with human activity is methane, biogenic methane being produced by farming among other sources. Of course anyone modelling future climate would need to estimate the levels of methane, so how were the predictions now we can predict them against actual changes seen in the atmosphere?

Well I’m convinced that the IPCC could avoid arse/elbow confusion, although some are not.

Thanks again to those Small, Dead Animals.

Outrageous (updated)

2009-10-13T01:34:00.001+01:00

This is everywhere, so I shall be brief. Really I am just registering my astonishment that the Guardian “newspaper” has been banned from reporting the proceedings of parliament. This is a genuine constitutional outrage, and should not have been even contemplated. Having been attempted it should not have been allowed. Guido adds the details that the Guardian is forced to omit, using his off-shore server privilege (the US has the freedom of speech stuff right).

The Trafigura case is a truly awful story, disgusting, basically down to killing black people for profit. They certainly should not be protected by our courts!

So who is going to stop Carter Fuck? They seem to be implicated in every disgusting cover-up (any law firm with a long-standing Private-Eye nickname is suspect).

Update: just to link to the Guardian's report on Trafigura. Thanks Speccie.

Update: gag order lifted, many are crediting a widespread internet campaign, on blogs and Twitter.

On The Subject of Education Again

2009-10-12T21:35:00.001+01:00

PJTV has a video of a large demonstration in Washington DC, against Obama’s proposal to cancel a school programme similar to that recently hard-won in Los Angeles.

A few points I’d like to note about this, apart from obvious that the teaching unions connect this with the objections to the LA scheme.

Each pupil on the scheme costs the government half what a child not on the scheme costs. Even so this costs money, because in a sop to the unions bad schools do not lose funding when they lose pupils – they are in effect paid for pupils no longer there. This is probably why it is the only such scheme in the US that has not triggered general improvements in the local schools (as has the similar Swedish system).

People still proclaim their love for Obama, despite opposing his policy (DC is administered by the Federal Government). That really does bemuse me, when he has done nothing beneficial for them. Obama said he would keep the scheme going if research showed it working, which it does. He is willing to go back on that for a union – so who can now deny he is a socialist?

Obviously the NUT opposes the Conservative’s similar policy for the UK. We shall have to see what arguments and slogans they come up with. The best slogans are succinct but point clearly to sound arguments, and ‘Put Kids First’ seems to fit the bill to counter the unions.

Mandelson the Imperialist Communist?

2009-10-12T14:21:00.001+01:00

Did Peter Mandelson’s Communist ideology drive businessmen from Tanzania?

Abbreviated biographies of Peter Mandelson say that he went to Tanzania in the early 1970s (I think 1972) for a year. At the time he was a communist, but could a 19-year-old possibly have influenced government policy?

A few days ago I was talking to a businessman in an hotel bar, while I was away working. He was very intelligent, well-educated and widely-experienced. He asked about my work, and he quickly either knew or was able to grasp what I was talking about. He was also well-travelled, having lived in various countries.

This man was born in Tanzania, where he grew up and ran a business. He was well-off and had a good life, with several servants. However he also worked hard and earned his money, contributing to the local economy. Eventually he was forced to leave, sneaking out of the country, afraid even to be seen packing a suitcase in his car, car loaded with boxes of money for bribes, then left abandoned at the border, and he was relieved to get out safely.

He blames Peter Mandelson for the political changes that forced him to flee for his life. He said that Mandelson had gone in and advised the government on communist ideology – already by then thoroughly discredited and linked with tens of millions dead. He said this was widely known in that part of Africa at the time, and that the British High Commission had made him sign to say he would not write about his ordeal before he could receive assistance to leave Africa.

So, a few questions arise.

How true is this, and are there any more details to be found? A cursory internet search does not reveal any, but how widely known is this part of Mandelson’s life?

Why have the press not held Labour to account for this? The Guardian and BBC condemn Conservatives for working with Kaminski, the Polish MEP, for past connections with politicians who later became extremists, yet one of our own senior politicians, who has rather a lot of flaws anyway, was himself an extremist.

Communism has been the scourge of Africa. It destroyed healthy economies and was responsible for widespread famine, for wars and since Soviet support disappeared for failed states. If Lord Mandelson shares even slight blame for this then it should be known, for he has blood on his hands.

Debasing the Prize

2009-10-09T18:50:00.001+01:00

The Nobel Peace Prize has, for a long time, been a broadly debased award. It has been given to so many unashamed terrorists that it no longer had any real credibility except with the trendy left, who forgive terrorists as long as they call themselves left-wing. Of course those same lefties, seeing a group with the same politics who use less violence but who happen to be white Englishmen, Israelis or Americans call them despicable right-wing extremists. Such is the inconsistency of the left.

Anyway, another shock as again left-wing appeasement manages to plumb depths I did not think possible. Arafat, Adams and even Mandela (great politician though he became) might have committed terrible acts that should really have prevented them from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, but at least before they received the prize they had done something that helped to encourage peace. In two of those cases it was to bring about an end to violence they themselves caused, and in one he caused further violence afterwards, but at least there was a reason for the award.

Obama.

WTF?

What on Earth has Obama done in foreign policy that is positive? What has he done to aid the cause of peace? He almost helped cause a civil war in Honduras for Christ’s sake (and still might do). He has appeased a terrible warmonger who has committed many acts of war against the USA and is now trying to build nuclear weapons. So I can see acts of his that have made war more likely, but nothing that makes it less likely.

Words truly fail me. As always, when you think the left has been utterly stupid, they manage just that little bit more.

What Is The Effect of Big Government?

2009-10-06T21:42:00.000+01:00

This is another video I found on ReasonTV that i think needs wider distribution. In principle it needs to be answered before anyone can argue for more government intervention and a larger role for the state.

Reality TV Can Be Good

2009-10-06T10:22:00.000+01:00

I am not a TV watcher. I like a handful of entertainment programmes, and sometimes enjoy a documentary. Otherwise I far prefer the interactivity online or reading a book, although I do like watching films. Reality TV as shown in the UK is mostly dire – Big Brother, I’m a C-List Celebrity Get me back in the B-List.

If the television companies are going to make ‘reality’ TV it seems to me there should be two characteristics. It should bear some relation to reality, to what some significant proportion of its viewers experience, or might experience in the future. It should offer some potential benefit to its participants apart from fame or notoriety. Without these two ‘reality’ TV seems to me a freak show, entertaining

Rather randomly I came across the website for A Week With My Father, a new American reality show. It seems to take people who lost touch with their fathers when very young and, as the name suggests, take them to live for a week with their father. This strikes me as a potentially good programme, enough human interest to be entertaining, but could also give a lot back to the participants, and even to the viewers who might realise both the importance of a father to a growing child, and the possibility of reconciliation even after many years.

The site has a pilot episode in several sections, and as far as I have currently watched it seems very good. The son in that episode seems a great guy, and the way it is filmed strikes a good balance, never seems too intrusive.

On The Subject of Education …

2009-10-05T01:14:00.001+01:00

This is the response of parents in LA to poor schools, on Reason TV. Demand choice, demand ‘charter schools’, self-administered state schools. These sound identical to official Conservative Party policy, the policy that convinced me I could support Cameron despite other reservations.

Note that the teachers’ unions just don’t get it. They simply do not understand why this is popular, why it has worked in other places, nor do they understand that the choice is not theirs to make. They have no legitimate say, apart from their say as parents if they have children in school. Their choice is where they are willing to work and on what terms after this decision has been made.

Notice also the disingenuous debate. One person, I can only assume in the teaching union, criticises the idea of freedom of choice because the term was used by segregationists. What possible relevance does that have, apart from dishonestly linking demands for freedom to oppression? Really sickening.

Update: I have just noticed that one of the signs held by a protesting teachers’ union member says “Our Schools No Privatization”. Well actually they are not your schools are they? They belong legally to the state, and morally to the mass of parents reliant on the schools. I am glad these are taking back control.

Snide and Sickening In Their Bias

2009-10-04T21:04:00.001+01:00

The BBC has again shown its true colours, and they are red.

Interviewing David Cameron they used a photograph on a screen in the background that has frequently been used to criticise Cameron and Boris Johnson, of them at university wearing white tie. The photograph has no relevance to Cameron’s leadership, and nor does his personal wealth which Andrew Marr asked him about. The photograph is snide and sneering, but the whole attitude is patronising to viewers and I can see no reason for it apart from partisan politics in which the BBC has no business engaging.

Hat tip to Tim Montgomerie.

Modern Educational Ideas

2009-10-04T13:21:00.002+01:00

At the moment I am struggling my way through a book. Yes, I am well-educated and can read even quite long words. The book is well-written and contains all the information needed to grasp the idea it presents. Those concepts are quite sophisticated, but they are within my wit, no more difficult to understand than some of the concepts I teach my more able students (I am involved in vocational training).

The book is Descarte’s Error by Antonio Damasio, and it concerns the functioning of the human brain, with particular emphasis on the influence of the body on emotion and thus on reason.

The problem is that the subject is well outside my field, and I don’t have the basic grounding. I am having to learn the fundamental knowledge in neurophysiology, and so I have to read slowly, refer back frequently, understand a new vocabulary and a structure of basic facts and concepts. Only then can I grasp the more sophisticated ideas in the book.

This morning it struck me that I am suddenly like an ideal product of modern educational trends, the trend not to teach facts and knowledge, but to teach the ability to find out information.

I have the ability to carry out literary research, look up new ideas in secondary sources, be they paper or digital. I even have the ability to carry out primary research if needed – after all I have a science degree, and the fundamental difference between a diploma and a traditional degree is that the degree should contain an element of original research.

However in the fields of neurophysiology and psychology I have only the sketchiest of actual knowledge. I knew the brain had a temporal lobe, but had no idea where it was (it’s the bottom bit). I had heard the term ‘limbic system’ but had no clue what it meant (the evolutionarily ‘old’ bits, but the definition varies).

That is why I find the book hard going. That is why every student going through the UK state school system at the moment will find areas of life difficult. Academic life will of course be affected, but so will politics, management in all but the simplest fields, business and so on.

They have every bit as much ability as I to read through a book and understand the concepts, or to find out new information. What they are going to lack is the structure of basic knowledge in a wide variety of fields, and gradual specialisation in increasingly narrow fields as they progress.

Without that structure of knowledge, a structure that is not inherent, and will not be significantly assisted by teaching those in the start of their secondary education how to do basic research then sending themselves off to write an essay on what a peasant might have thought about Tudor England, they cannot easily take on new information.

The ability to read non-fiction or to research efficiently depends on a structure of knowledge, in order to direct the research, understand and order the new information, express that information if passing it on and to help recognise erroneous conclusions (either one’s own or any contained within a book or article). The structure of knowledge should be imparted in primary and secondary education. The ability to discover knowledge for one’s self should be emerging in the end of secondary education and through tertiary education.

I do not work in the field of child education. My assumptions about modern theories comes, I admit, from popular not academic sources. However I not only know academics who despair of the lack of basic knowledge of those seeking university education but I also see the lack of knowledge in some of those I teach who were educated in the 1990s and 21st century. Only once did I make the error of assuming that the class member who had a CSE* in maths might struggle with that element of the course I was teaching, compared with those with GCSEs. He had more thorough grounding in maths than most of the younger students.

*For the non-British (or very young) reader, CSEs were exams taken at age 16 before 1988. They were taken by the pupils considered less academically able (the more able took O levels). GCSEs were taken by pupils of all the normal range of abilities from 1988 onwards. So the CSE holder would have had an education earlier, but with less depth by the standard of the day.

Autumn is Here

2009-10-03T14:34:00.000+01:00

It’s distinctly autumnal now in southern England.

Hollywood Self-Defence (updated)

2009-10-03T00:26:00.002+01:00

There is a very good discussion up on PJTV about Roman Polanski's arrest, or rather about the disgraceful Hollywood reaction to that arrest.

The reasoning they come up with for the broad support for Polanski among the Hollywood elite is that they are “defending their own potential exposure for future behavior” and “want to protect the nomenklatura”. I think the idea here is that if they are in the club that protects Polanski, the club that defends the excesses of ‘artists’, then they will be protected if their own faults are ever exposed.

This suggests a Hollywood that has been glimpsed before, that ostracise anyone mildly right-wing, but refused to condemn the murder of Theo van Gogh (ironic then that Salman Rushdie has supported Polanski). This is the same club that closed ranks to protect genuine communists desiring the destruction of a free Republic, thus being as culpable as McCarthy in his excesses. The same that instinctively condemn anything George W Bush did because that was what people did, and made poorly-received films to that end. They are left-wing because it is trendy and makes them feel good even while they exploit their employees and customers by their own proclaimed standards.

One extremely telling point brought out in the PJTV discussion is the effect this has on the unfortunate victim, Samantha Geimer, who has asked that Polanski be released because she simply wants to get on with life. The vast majority of the publicity, the press attention, interference and upset she is going to suffer over the next few weeks is due to the support for Polanski from the glitterati (or perhaps that should be Glitterati, considering the nature of the offence).

These people are abusing their fame and influence in the media to bring Polanski more attention, to increase the intensity and duration of the coverage of this case. They want more fuss to be made, more attention from the news media, and are able to achieve that. This result is exactly what Mrs Geimer is trying to avoid or at least minimise.

So these people are not just supporting a rapist. They are abusing his victim for his benefit. I don’t think they have even considered her feelings. They simply don’t care, as long as their little mutual-support club works.

Update: good on Big Hollywood, Breitbart’s site has a counter petition for entertainment industry professionals. Comments contain links to other counter petitions, but it is important to show the media that the Beautiful People are not an homogenous mass.

Update: Parcbench has a great satirical piece on this – Hollywood changes it’s mind as they find out Polanski had Halliburton shares! Worth reading, it’s only short.

Image Over Substance

2009-10-02T21:08:00.001+01:00

This time it’s Obama, not Blair or Brown. In fact it appears that Brown deserves some rare praise, for disagreeing with Obama over the announcement of an Iranian nuclear facility discovered by French, British and US intelligence.

The story suggests that Obama delayed the announcement in order not to “spoil the image of success” of UN disarmament talks he was chairing. You know, spoil the image of success by admitting abject failure. By actually giving an accurate assessment. By being realistic and facing the truth.

What on Earth is the point of the image of success? Are the people of Israel going to be comforted by being told that there aren’t any nuclear weapons targeted at them, if later someone admits that there are and Obama knew all along? Are they going to be comforted if they have the image of safety as those nuclear weapons fly towards them?

Sarkozy’s comments on Obama’s naivety make a lot more sense now, although I have always considered him both naïve and more interested in perception than reality. I have described him as an American Tony Blair, and that is not a compliment.

Who Are They?

2009-10-01T23:18:00.002+01:00

Who do these people think they are, that like to tell us what to do?

I read two unrelated stories today, on first site they could not be more different. One is about American school children cycling the other about customer reviews of British prostitutes. The common link is that both have regard to officials telling others what to do, when rightly it is none of their damned business, and in both cases they are seeking to act beyond their rightful authority.

Both the Saratoga Springs School Board and Harriet ‘the Harridan’ Harman have decided what is good for other people’s safety, and demands that those people fall into line with those decisions, regardless of their own judgement.

Just as without the School Board’s ruling parents would not be forced to send children to school by cycle or foot, no prostitute on the Punternet website is forced into her profession. Note that the website has prominent information for reporting suspected child prostitutes or forced/trafficked girls.

Why does the Saratoga Springs School board have jurisdiction over how a child is brought to school by his parents? Why did a state trooper attend the school to enforce this ban? Why does Harriet Harman think that she has jurisdiction over a website hosted in California, where not even the State Governor or the President has authority to control web content?

Thanks to The Bleat and Man Widdicombe, via Muffled Vociferation for today’s helping of bemusing officialdom.

Tiger Lilies – Another Picture Postcard

2009-10-01T10:58:00.000+01:00

Cornwall again, although more specifically known as the Michigan Lily it is not native.

It’s Piracy All The Way

2009-09-30T15:59:00.001+01:00

I am not one to begrudge paying a fiver for a good DVD, or even the extortionate price of a cinema ticket for the right feature. I like films, some of them quirky, some of them even Roman Polanski’s (Chinatown is one I could recommend). However with so much of Hollywood’s out-of-touch elite objecting to a child rapist serving his sentence, I cannot now decide who to boycott, and will have to simply watch illegal copies.

That list consists of people who favour the release of a man who has served not one day of his sentence (the 42 days he was incarcerated were for pre-sentence psychological evaluation). As far as I have read the sentence was never even pronounced.

The sentence, remember, relates to the admitted statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. The remaining allegations were never tested in court because Polanski threatened to use his fame to intimidate the girl and her mother. In fact the decision to accept the plea to avoid a court appearance was the mother’s, and she was not blameless in pushing her daughter into the dangerous situation, and could expect to be ripped to shreds by the press.

However those remaining allegations, made under oath to a grand jury, indicate that Polanski got a 13-year-old girl drunk, drugged her and then raped her vaginally and anally. He raped her anally because she was not on the pill, so he did not want to ejaculate in her vagina. While untested, there is no reason to believe those allegations are false.

OK so Woody Allen has been crawling up his own backside since Sleeper, and I never saw the point of much of David Lynch’s weirdness (I am not against weird per se, some of my favourites are very odd; it is Lynch I cannot grasp). However it is a racing certainty now that any film one could buy will benefit someone on that list.

Therefore I will from now on be embracing and encouraging film piracy at every opportunity. I still want to watch interesting films, but I don’t want that to benefit apologists for a child rapist.

Excellent Reporting From Honduras

2009-09-30T09:20:00.000+01:00

Pajamas Media is a fantastic organisation, and PJTV continues to impress me. Much as I have nailed my own colours to the mast on Honduras and it is in line with PJTV’s editorial line, I am still pleased they managed to provide balance in their reporting from in the country, if not in the headline.

A new-media organisation that can afford international reporting is an interesting development, and should worry the traditional media. Of course it should also worry the Democrat Party, considering the editorial line of the media with which they are used to dealing and the editorial line PJTV takes.

Global Cooling (updated)

2009-09-29T23:01:00.001+01:00

I am doing a bit more work now, so posting has been and will be light.

However there is bad news on the climate front. The world is not warming, to bring us into a new era of prosperity and plenty. It appears it is cooling, and we might be in for a tough time here at the mid-latitudes.

You might have heard of the infamous ‘hockey-stick’ graphs of Mann et al 1998. That paper has been at the core of climate alarm, and has been prominent in every IPCC report since and the graphic of the hockey-stick time/temperature graph prominent in global-warming propaganda. It has also been attacked for many years by a Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre.

It will not surprise readers of this blog that Mann refused to release his data for McIntyre to confirm. Until recently he had managed to publish peer-reviewed articles without releasing the original data. How that can be correct peer-review even I as a humble science graduate with no post-graduate studies cannot grasp. It seems fundamental to me that in order to allow criticism of work (the core of science) the original data must be widely available.

However finally Mann’s collaborator, a Professor Briffa of the Hadley Centre for climate research in Exeter published in a journal that has not lost its balls (and I am pleased to say it is Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, a prestigious British publication) and insists on archiving raw data from any research published.

McIntyre has them. They had simply picked the data to show what they wanted. The oldest con in the in science. A perpetual worry at the back of the mind of any conscientious scientist, that they must not discard results just because they don’t fit, and if they discard one for sound reasons they must have an extra few that do fit to justify that decision.

No, for Mann and Biffa, taking 12 samples and leaving out 34 was fine, just so long as it shows warming.

So what do the data show if all of them are used in a graph? That is the down side to this story. The Earth is not warming, but it might well be cooling. Which is far, far worse, and if the CO2 that we’re pumping out now isn’t helping then we probably can’t do a lot about it!

Basically red line = Mann et al. hockey-stick curve, with the 12 specially-picked ‘good’ results, the black line is McIntyre’s assessment with all the results, including ‘naughty’ ones that refuse to agree with communists. Actually that red is a good colour choice.

Hat tips: Biased BBC, Icecap and Watts Up With That?

Update: The Register has a very readable article.

Update: it seems that my post is a massive over-simplification of an intriguing, truly scandalous story. The Register article has a link to Bishop Hill Blog which goes into all the dishonest, anti-scientific details of this con.

So This Is Reset

2009-09-23T11:36:00.001+01:00

Of course we are starting to see the great results of the promised break with Bush's foreign policy. It appears that break consists of playing up to dictators by allowing open diplomatic contact and allowing their representative to visit, while revoking the visas of representatives of the constitutional government of a democratic state.

We have seen Obama give in to Russia’s absolutely illegitimate desire to retain influence over her near neighbours and so offend most of central Europe. we have seen closer ties sought with dictatorial regimes in central America – especially Cuba and Venezuela. Obama managed to personally offend the leader of America’s most reliable ally, and while that leader is an arse he is our arse, it is up to us to offend him. He is also peddling a soft line on Iran, following the Jimmy Carter school of diplomacy that worked so well there before.

Before Obama’s election his opponents pointed out his lack of experience, especially in international affairs. His supporters responded, bizarrely, that his opponent’s prospective Vice President was inexperienced (despite having more executive experience than Obama himself). We can now see who was right.

If it can’t have Obama’s support, Honduras needs all the support we can give.

Hat tipped to Hot Air.

Stunning Beauty

2009-09-22T21:43:00.001+01:00

Saturn at equinox.

Click the image for a larger copy. Click here for more images.

Hat tip to Bad Astronomy.

All Hopes Are On Ireland

2009-09-22T18:10:00.001+01:00

for the freedom of Europe. Nigel Farage had a very impressive debate against Irish politician Dick Roche and Mr Begg, an Irish Trades Unionist. UKIP is too much of a single-issue party for my tastes, but I always thought that Farage was a wonderful speaker. Watching videos of him speaking to the European parliament back-to-back with Daniel Hannan’s is quite fun. Hard to say who is better – Hannan comes across slightly better-educated, but Farage is slightly more relaxed.

In the debate watch especially when he catches out an audience member who questions him on honesty, without admitting that she is in the employ of the EU for propaganda in university.

Watch highlights of Nigel Farage’s performance at Dazed and Confused or the whole hour-and-a-half at Reuters.

Why Demand More Regulation?

2009-09-22T11:07:00.000+01:00

There have been many demands, especially from the left, for more regulation of the world’s banks after the catastrophe that started last year. In addition to regulation other forms of coercion, from government threats to protest have been used to subvert the banks.

However this seems to be a knee-jerk reaction. I have not seen anywhere a considered argument to show that lack of regulation in the banks was a major factor; many arguments have been advanced for regulatory failure, but due to excessive or incorrect regulation.

Indeed I have seen many mentions of regulations that actually helped to both set up the underlying high-risk mortgages and to pass the crisis through the banking system in the USA. Banks were chastised for ‘racism’ when it was realised that a higher proportion of blacks were turned down for mortgages than other groups in the USA, and threatened with the law. This was backed of course by political action by the left, including ACORN who bullied banks with demonstrations and by Clinton’s administration.

So at least to some of the cause was the regulation itself and non-regulatory coercion by the government, regulators and even campaigning bodies politically connected with many of those currently demanding more regulation and trying to tell the banks how to operate.

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has published an interesting paper by Arnold Kling detailing some of the regulatory failings that led to the collapse. The main thesis is that regulations intended to deal with previous banking problems from the 1930s to 1980s set up a series of conditions necessary for the recent crisis to occur and to have such widespread effects. In the process it has gained my grudging approval for the initial government financial support for financial institutions in the USA (although I am rather less certain about those in this country, and think that the banks should now be allowed to pay the money back, which Obama has resisted).

However what I found far more interesting is that actually the banks were subverting the regulations then in place with the tacit agreement of the regulators. Those banks were moving risk off balance sheets, and circling risk around the markets and buying back more. So-called NRSROs (agencies approved by the government to rate the risk on credit instruments) had an incentive to play down risks and so upgrade credit ratings, and followed that incentive.

All this meant that by the rules of international banking agreements reached in Basel the banks cut the capital holdings they were required to keep to back their debts from about 8% to about 4.5%. That effectively increased their exposure, their leverage, by over 75%. This was great, because they were making money on these deals, so to increase the amount they could buy into by 75% meant they made 75% more profit.

The articles quoted by Kling written by regulators at the time show that they not only knew about the banks subverting the rules, but approved of it, for the same reason as the banks. The regulators approved because it allowed the banks to do more business, by higher leveraging.

Of course when it all started to fail it was the high leveraging, the low capitalisation and use of over-rated instruments to capitalise that caused the domino effect and a run on the banks and insurance institutions. Had the spirit of the rules been followed then they would have been able to meet immediate obligations, and would not have had to offload poor assets in a great hurry, further suppressing prices and triggering capitalisation problems at other banks whose supposedly safe assets used as capital had just been devalued and who themselves were insufficiently liquid, so had to sell the same poor products that no-one wanted any more and further collapse the price.

So if the regulators are not capable of holding the banks to account, in fact they agree with the banks, all the regulation in the world will simply be circumvented. Huge amounts of money can be made by getting around regulation others follow, so a lot of sharp, innovative people are paid a lot to do so, and regulators’ vigilance must be equally sharp or they are worse than useless.

Now I don’t advocate an unregulated market. However regulation should be as light, simple and intelligently-designed as possible, and then firmly enforced.

In this case capitalisation rules were in place. They were over-complicated and poorly enforced to set up the situation where the crisis could occur. They then became part of the crisis, spreading it from bank to bank as each was forced to sell assets as prices of those assets collapsed, forcing prices further down.

Hat tip to Small Dead Animals for the article and video.

Update: Lisa has provided a link in the comments to an interesting video.

Although it does suggest talk several years ago of more regulation, this only applied to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which as Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) did not fall under the same rules as independent institutions. However they were subverting the rules that did apply, by buying political influence to attack the regulator when he found the problems.

Note that while I suggested there should have been concern at capital reserves of 4.5% in the commercial banks, Freddie Mac was down at 3% with Franklin Raines claiming this was so secure they should be able to drop to “…under 2%”.

This video is partisan, only showing Democrats defending Freddie Mac and Republicans talking of concerns and of more regulation, whereas some Republicans were taking money from the two GSEs. However the vast majority of money went to Democrats, and there is far more evidence of defence of GSEs malpractices by Democrats many of whom now work closely with Obama. Note that one of he reasons given in the video for defending Fannie and Freddie is that they allowed ‘innovative’ mortgages – exactly what caused the crisis, but important to ACORN and the Democrats.

Update: and evidence suggests it probably wasn't executive bonus culture that caused the crisis either.

The Great NHS

2009-09-22T02:36:00.001+01:00

So this is the wonderful NHS that so many people are so keen to defend is it? Nearly one in six diagnoses incorrect suggests to me a systematic problem.

If I did my job that badly people would die. Ah, yes, well I am sure they are dying in this case. No-one seems to care though, at least not those that matter. The fact is that if I did my job that badly I would be sacked well before people did die, but then I work in a heavily-regulated industry in the private sector, not in the shielded and unaccountable public sector.

More Trouble In Honduras

2009-09-22T00:45:00.001+01:00

It appears that Zelaya has managed to make his way back to Honduras. Despite claims that he is there to start peaceful dialogue, so far his actions look calculated to cause violence and upset stability.

The Organisation of American States is not helping, neither is Chavez. Obama has not said anything yet this time, but his past lies are not helping the country, which is due to hold fresh elections in less than two months anyway in which Zelaya is not permitted by the constitution to stand as President, having already served (most of) a term.

La Gringa is updating her blog frequently, thanks Glen for providing that link.

Entirely Predictable Consequences to Free Speech

2009-09-21T18:34:00.001+01:00

I have written before about the unintended consequences, and the unspoken but intended consequences of laws, and especially of laws made in haste, made by an over-confident, bullying executive with a cowed legislative chamber or with weak or non-existent opposition.

The consequences of legislating against religious intolerance were not only predictable, they were widely predicted. Famously Rowan Atkinson and a few other comedians, making their living pointing out ridiculous pomposity of which religion can be a rich source, complained that such laws would be used to stifle entirely harmless and in fact important speech, including humour and debate.

Thus the charging of two Christians who are alleged to have argued with a Muslim guest should not be a surprise. It was not the stated intent of any law to criminalise entirely harmless disagreements, and the government at the time of the 2006 Religious Hatred Act’s progress denied that this would be the case. Worryingly the police did not even use this Act, although the same spirit is clear in the wording of the charges under the 1986 Public Order Act, an act intended to calm street disturbances, as being “religiously aggravated”. Are the police using the 2006 Act to guide their prosecution under the 1986 law, or are they making up the law as they go along? religious intolerance was not illegal in 1986, in fact I didn't think it was illegal now. Is this a generally accepted rider to a charge, and if so on what basis?

The Muslim woman in question might have been offended, but nowhere is it suggested she was threatened in any way. Where did anyone get the idea that a person has the right not to be offended? If freedom of speech is not the right to offend people then what is it? No-one objects to inoffensive speech, by its very nature, so its freedom need not be assured.

Incidentally I was reluctant to use the Daily Mail link above, due to the sometimes-justified reputation for over-the-top reporting, especially on this sort of issue. However after reading the Letter From A Tory about this my brief search only revealed one other national newspaper story. That was unsuitable because The Independent lied in the very first sentence that summarised the story, and lied in a way material to the events. Mr and Mrs Vogelenzang were not, as stated, charged with a racist offence.

Is the Independent simply incompetent? Does that incompetence show up some underlying tendency to see all politically-incorrect speech and action, from the most harmless to the most heinous as equivalent? Was this a deliberate attempt to make the Vogelenzangs look bad, and justify their arrest? It was at best farcical incompetence that should have been followed by a prominent apology and a sacking, at worst snide, disgusting, libellous dishonesty.

Weird Science

2009-09-21T12:57:00.001+01:00

New Scientist has a brief but interesting article on 13 phenomena that don't fit current scientific understanding. They relate to different areas of science, and if you know a little about the way things work then some of them are absolutely fascinating. Five of them intrigue me especially.

It appears that hybrids of two life forms can occasionally be viable in much more complicated organisms than generally assumed.
No-one is sure whether Morgellon's disease exists or not, despite people suffering from it
Low-energy electromagnetic waves appear to travel very slightly faster (for example 4 minutes in 500 million years) than high-energy waves in a vacuum. That is not supposed to happen, they should all travel at a speed determined by two universal constants, the electrical and magnetic induction constants.
Astrophysicists think that they might have found the biggest thing in the known universe by a long way. No-one is sure, because they can’t see it and have no idea of its nature.
The shape of the entire universe appears to be … wrong.

All of these suggest the paths of scientific development. Natural sciences advance by finding something that does not fit current ideas, and developing new ideas to take that into account.

Iranians Still Protesting

2009-09-20T23:05:00.001+01:00

I am sorry that i have not blogged the Iranian Protests recently, but I have seen little except the brief mentions in the national press. The recent Al-Quds day anti-Israel marches were seen by Ahmadinijad’s regime as a time the opposition might use to protest. That does seem to have been the case, although you might have missed it in the news media.

I cannot confirm that this video is from that protest, although I think it is and the date is correct for that.

It also seems that on al-Quds day some Iranians think that It was less important to protest against Israel than another rather more powerful country. I have to say that they seem to have far more sense than the whole political leadership of the UK, USA, EU and the UN.

Posters made to honour the disputed Iranian government were carried, although not necessarily with the respect that was intended by the distributor.

Big hat tip to Gateway Pundit, on whose post I have based this entire story. Thanks!

ACORN Roundup (updated)

2009-09-20T13:33:00.000+01:00

There are rumours that suggest there will be more Giles/O’Keefe videos from more ACORN offices. I will keep a look out and post anything new that comes up, especially if it gives any more insight into ACORN’s increasingly dubious claim that the pair was turned away from '”dozens” of ACORN offices.

For anyone who has been interested in the dirty dealings at ACORN, the Washington Examiner has a roundup of stories going back to February.

It shows that ACORN is about so much more than helping people to set up their child prostitute slavery empire and avoid paying taxes. It’s about not paying its own taxes, exploiting employees, failing to file accounts, demanding those sub-prime mortgages that got us in this mess (demanding them now, that is; of course they demanded them during the boom years and helped trigger the whole issue). Hey, to get the full impression you’ll have to look at the link.

Phil Kerpen is rather dubious that ACORN’s culpability in the sub-prime loan catastrophe will be exposed by the commission investigating why the recent economic problems came about.

Big Government, who launched their site by breaking the recent ACORN scandals, has a good ponder about the whys and the wherefores. Of course it all connects with political correctness, and the distortion of values inherent in politically-acceptable (but in fact utterly contemptible) attitudes to poor people of minority ethnic identity.

The most interesting thing about this satire? The wall belongs to Shepard Fairey, who designed Obama’s ‘Hope’ poster, and didn’t charge for it (in the process probably breaking election funding law, but by the time anyone noticed Obama was in charge). Someone is clearly connecting Obama’s campaign and ACORN.

Jay Leno also sees the humour. Although not as good as the Jon Stewart video it is still well worth watching.

Update: lots more at the New York Post and even the Washington Post. However it appears that Obama has f-all idea what's going on.

Remind You of Anyone?

2009-09-19T23:01:00.002+01:00

It kind of reminds me of the New Labour spin machine. Although I always thought of Obama as a US Blair, this bit sounds more like the hyper-sensitivity some of Brown’s lot have shown, and the bullying of McBride, although they might have learnt from Campbell too.

Trouble Smuggling Underage Prostitutes?

2009-09-17T14:00:00.001+01:00

An age-old problem we have all faced at some time or another

ACORN can help you there too. Yes, it’s another ACORN video from ~~the professional US media~~ a journalism student and a guy she met on Facebook.

This time the ACORN employee is a lawyer, and since he was educated in Mexico James O’Keefe wonders if he can help with getting his illegal immigrant child prostitutes across the border. What do you think?

Giles and O’Keefe have used an interesting tactic against the socialists who they knew would leap to the support of ACORN. They only released a single video at first, and at that time did not really give any clue that there were more. This then looks like something ACORN can contain, and they do. However this commits them to a line of defence and also to the fact that something is seriously wrong in the office in question.

A couple more videos, and ACORN has a problem but one they think they can handle, so they come out with stronger defences, further committing themselves to a strategy. There is a hint that more videos will come out, leaving ACORN unsure but also committed by their previous response to actually firm up their defence.

Then the east-coast videos start coming out, saying slightly different things and the defence is suddenly all over the place, with wild, utterly unconvincing stories.

It is a tactic I have occasionally tried to use against socialists, but not often successfully. Socialism is an incoherent, self-contradictory philosophy. With that to draw on the left so often shade their views depending on what they are responding to (hence they often come out as hypocrites, e.g. Islam, gay rights and women’s rights)that to argue successfully you need to make them commit early on, before your own argument is out.

Miss Giles, Mr O’Keefe, my hat is off to you. Well done sir, miss.

Gross Stupidity – 144 Times Ordinary Stupidity

2009-09-17T11:51:00.002+01:00

It appears that NASA is going to bomb the moon. OK, not really bomb just drive a craft into it at high speed.

That is not the stupidity. There are very good reasons for doing this. The impact will penetrate deeper in the moon than we could on a reasonable timescale any other way, and imaging and sampling from another spacecraft (even possibly from the Earth) will allow us to analyse what is there, especially water. This is important if we are going to set up a permanent base on the moon, and there are sound (although I will admit debatable) reasons for doing that.

No, the stupidity is in the comments. Almost every one is against the project. Some for economic reasons, which I think have missed the point but could argue a case. The rest really do beggar belief. They think that NASA is doing significant damage to the moon. The actual moon. The 70-billion-billion-tonne satellite orbiting Earth. The one hit by huge numbers of asteroids with a lot of energy many thousands of times in its 4-billion-years or so. This one, with the scars that make it obvious it can take an impact.

I’m quite pleased with this picture. Taken with quite an old DSLR and 300 mm lens.

One suggests that we might shift the moon’s orbit and cause climate change of “omega” proportions.

I know I am supposed to be open, sceptical and doubtful, not scornful, but it is hard. It is difficult not to wonder why these people think they are knowledgeable enough to have something relevant to say. Are they arrogant enough to think that, despite little scientific education, they have seen some great catastrophe not considered by NASA engineers and scientist? Is the standard of world science education so low that people with scientific education can think these things? I can’t think of any other explanation.

It does strike me as significant in the environmental movement though. these are people who are worried about humans having an impact, however trivial. They have no sense of proportion at all. They have taken onboard the green lobby’s most extreme ideas and blown even those out of proportion, in scale or in time. Why are these people arrogant enough to think that humans could possibly do something in a universe of 100 billion galaxies, with maybe 100 billion stars in each that is relevant to except to us?

Hat tip to Instapundit.

And the Stars of the Show Are …

2009-09-17T00:02:00.001+01:00

Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, whose amateur acting, filmed on a US$ 1300 budget, and pure brass neck has put the US professional media to shame, shot them to fame and exposed the criminal soul of a political animal.

Having run with this great story for more than a day now, I feel I have not given enough praise, admiration and credit to the great duo who brought the mighty corrupt edifice low. Fortunately Glen Reynolds provided an apt link, as usual.

ACORN Finally Acts

2009-09-16T21:08:00.001+01:00

Has ACORN acknowledged that there is something seriously wrong, or have its leaders simply realised how much harm is being done when even the traditionally friendly press finally start to report malfeasance? Whatever the reason, ACORN is shut for new business, whether that business be a brothel or not.

The Daily Show Takes On ACORN

2009-09-16T18:28:00.001+01:00

I am not a big fan of the Daily Show, but that might just have changed. You really have to watch this video. Unlike many on the left, it seems that Jon Stewart really gets all the issues here, including the lack of response from the serious media. Oh, and it is very, very funny.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Audacity of Hos

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Much credit to Jon Stewart. I never thought I’d say that!

Hat duly tipped to A Blog For All Seasons.

Update: it appears the media are catching up. The LA Times even goes as far as “If ACORN is to survive and retain a shred of credibility, it needs to stop deflecting blame and clean house”. I would argue that it is beyond that and ACORN should be wound up, but it’s a good, solid position to take that can easily be justified.

ACORN Responds (updated)

2009-09-16T11:59:00.001+01:00

The co-founder of ACORN Wade Rathke, has responded, to the recent videos of employees offering to help set up child sex slavery, claiming that this is a “…fake issue”. No it is not, Mr Rathke. Giving help to break the law is a real issue. Giving help to break the law in order to help run a political campaign is an issue in a non-partisan organisation. They are issues, real ones.

Systematically helping someone to claim child sex slaves as dependents in order to cheat taxes and help a politician pay for his campaign is a huge fucking deal, it is an explosive, shocking issue that should destroy ACORN if there is any justice.

The fact that Mr Rathke can say this is a “fake issue” (note he was talking about these videos, not any other issue, as he is linking it directly with the decision to remove any ACORN involvement in the census which happened in direct response to the Baltimore video) shows just how degraded is his sense of morality. If that is the origin of ACORN that explains a lot.

The official response from ACORN just can’t be taken seriously. Not only are they trying to say that their representative was joking, but they don’t even address the fact that three or more other offices offered to help break the law (although admittedly in those cases not to kill people). Their original excuse, that it had been tried in other offices and the ACORN employees had acted properly and even called the police (no evidence provided) has been removed from their website, which does nothing for their credibility. Especially as one of those offices was supposed to be in New York, and employees did fall for it in Brooklyn.

Update: it appears that the couple was turned away from the ACORN office in Philidelphia. So paid love is not so welcome in the city of brotherly love. That is not a great deal for ACORN to brag about, all things considered. Not sure that’s one for the brochure, “13. We don’t help child brothels to avoid taxes in Phili”.

Remember This …

2009-09-16T11:29:00.001+01:00

It might be an opportune moment to remember some Labour advertising …

Taken straight from the Labour Party website. Yes it is still there!

ACPO Advises Breaking the Law

2009-09-16T08:54:00.000+01:00

I have mentioned ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, before. It is an organisation I believe should be disbanded, and its officers charged with corruption if there is a law general enough to cover their actions, exposed in the press otherwise.

ACPO is not a government body, a QUANGO or even a staff association or union. It is a company limited by guarantee, answerable only to its guarantors. I can only assume it is specifically permitted to leave out the term “Limited” in its name. This is usually required, and leaving it out masks the nature of ACPO.

Now ACPO is advising senior police officers to break the law and keep DNA samples despite a court ruling. Now I disapprove of the European Court of Human Rights. I also disapprove of large tracts of human rights legislation that conveys rights, having seen no case that these rights are inherent. However police of all people cannot just go around obeying only those laws they choose to obey.

Of course there are solid arguments against keeping DNA of innocent people on a database. Political argument (it is unpopular), theoretical science (a large database is arguably less useful) and experience (it has rarely if ever been used to solve serious crime) argue against keeping such a large database.

Anticipating that new legislation on DNA retention will come into force next year, a letter from ACPO states

“Until that time, the current retention policy on fingerprints and DNA remains unchanged.

Individuals who consider they fall within the ruling in the S and Marper case should await the full response to the ruling by the Government prior to seeking advice and/or action from the police service in order to address their personal issue on the matter.”

Why is an unaccountable body making policy? Why is it doing so in secret? On what authority does ACPO determine what any officer ‘should’ do? Why moreover is an independent body coercing the police to break a court judgement?

Post Racial America

2009-09-16T00:30:00.002+01:00

Seeing the silver lining

There was not a lot for ACORN to be proud of in the last week. They very quickly lost a lot of money and influence that there is a strong argument they should never have had in the first place, let alone after evidence of vote rigging last year.

However the Weasel Times and Stoat Intelligencer has a great take on the story, the positive side for ACORN’s public image. So Obama’s supporters are finally embracing his claims to a post-racial America!

Silencing Ben

2009-09-15T22:47:00.001+01:00

It appears that there is an attempt to shut down the only voice of a serving convict in the blogosphere, Ben’s Prison Blog, about which I disagreed with A Tory. If you agree with me, or if you have not read it yet, please do visit the site to learn more about this potentially illegal effort to silence an intelligent, articulate voice.

Corruption in Left-Wing Pseudo Charity (updated 11:30 16/9)

2009-09-15T14:19:00.001+01:00

There has been an undercurrent of grumbling about pseudo charities (non-profit organisations which are largely funded by government and use a significant proportion of those funds for political lobbying and campaigning) in the right-wing and especially in the libertarian blogosphere. Mostly the complaints are about political influence and the waste of tax-payers’ money.

In America they appear to have a problem that is at least a couple of orders of magnitude beyond that. ACORN (Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now) has been shown to have been willing to assist importation of children for the purpose of sexual slavery, for profit with the aim of political campaigning. Assistance went as far as advising how to buy a brothel and to cheat the taxes on the money earned, by claiming the child prostitutes as dependents. ACORN then requested a donation.

Really. I am not kidding. Tax evasion. Mortgage fraud. Children. Slavery. Sex. Selling actual children for sexual gratification. Then claiming tax benefits because they are children. Then using the money for a political campaign.

This happened in three different states. It could possibly be worse if they start advising on how to hide the bodies once they are too old to work, but I am not sure how else it could be. Yet there are rumours that the people exposing this have something devastating to release today. WTF?

To paraphrase the article linked above, once is a bad apple, twice is an unfortunate coincidence, thrice is systematic corruption resulting from policy.

There are two things that really strike me about the response to this.

Seven senators, six Democrat and one independent, voted to carry on funding ACORN.

This has not been a huge international news story; even in the US it has been remarkably quiet. Below is what the BBC considers to be world news and Americas news at 14:00 today (click to enlarge World News).

ACORN is an organisation that has strong connections with Barack Obama which looked like having significant political influence with the Democrats in power. They were at one-time a client of Obama’s. They helped elect him, in many cases breaking electoral law, in other alleged cases breaking employment law. He had arranged for them to work on the national census (risking a constitutional challenge, which should be a big deal to a former constitutional law professor). He had arranged for them to be in the stream for government funding that was potentially to total several billion dollars.

Is Patrick Swayze’s sad but not unexpected demise really more newsworthy? Is the entirely predictable anger of Islamic fascists really more important for us to know about than a charity supporting child sexual slavery in the USA? Can you imagine the headlines if Halliburton or any other organisation with real or alleged connections with Bush had been caught on tape giving illegal advice? Three times.

Update: note I did not mention which party’s candidate ACORN thought would gain from political donations they were advising on the laundering of. Do I need to?

Update: a fourth video has been released, of a similar nature, filmed in California. It’s a good one though, naming politicians, ACORN employee offering to kill anyone exposing the brothel, suggesting violence against the underage girl, admitting killing her husband. It’s … wow, just watch it.

One ellipsis here hints at more videos to come …

Oh, and it appears that Acorn was breaking the law even operating in Maryland where the first video was shot.

Update: Hot Air has more on the embarrassed silence of the media.

Update: The co-founder of ACORN Wade Rathke, has responded, claiming that this is a “…fake issue”. My response warranted a new post …

Thanks to Instapundit for some of the links.

Steamy Postcard

2009-09-15T13:51:00.000+01:00

From Cornwall, as usual

Perhaps Children Really Are Smarter

2009-09-15T12:09:00.001+01:00

A lesson in the dynamics of media response to protest

At least in the case of Marcus the sheep, the children seem to have more sense than the adults responding to the story. The most satisfying aspect is that the children seem to have learnt the intended lesson, about the origin of their food. I suspect some will also have a better idea of collective decision-making and even of media hype.

The last of these is of course where the evidence that the children are more intelligent or more aware than adults educated years ago breaks down.

Media hypes a self-selecting group of activists. People who support or accept the children’s decision do not make any fuss. This must be borne in mind when reading about any protest; the media coverage can be dominated by a self-selected few. Once the story is out there is social pressure not to be seen to disagree.

With the “overwhelming majority” of the children at the school who had a say in the fate of Marcus favouring selling him for meat I strongly suspect the same is true of adults reading the story. Even of those that would have chosen differently themselves it seems likely that many would support the children’s decision. That is, however, completely irrelevant in how the story is presented. Only the adults who object to Marcus’s slaughter matter, because the story is about them, not about the sheep.

Is there a term ‘meta-irony’, for describing the fact that ironical satirist Paul O’Grady fails to see irony in campaigning to save a sheep from slaughter when the idea of the project was to teach the children about the origins of food, and the result of the open vote shows the success of that project?

Is Climate Catastrophism Harming the Environment?

2009-09-15T00:11:00.002+01:00

“We can’t save everything, but we have to save the richest places, and the richest places on Earth are forests like this”

This is a quote from the documentary programme about New Guinea, “Lost land of the Volcano”. Obviously it is a point that I think can be debated, but I think it has as good a claim to a valid environmental concern as any. Personally I would argue that it has a greater claim than most.

So what is the best way to protect rainforests? There have been many methods tried, with mixed results at best. However there are some ideas to consider that might point to a long-term strategy that might be of great indirect benefit to the rainforests.

Rainforest destruction is usually connected to economic activity. Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and crude mineral extraction is primitive economic activity, of a kind that tends to reduce importance to the community as the economy develops.

Environmentalists’ claims that economic development increases environmental destruction is not as obvious as they claim. Vaclav Klaus has pointed out that the Czech environment, destroyed by the Communist economy, only improved with the developments in the economy of a free Czech Republic and Slovakia. Developing economies not only allow resources for clean technology, but also for activities not essential to everyday survival, such as the leisure to take interest in long-term environmental protection.

In the UK, and I believe other western economies, the number of trees has increased in the last few decades. Outside areas with direct population pressure the forest land has all but stopped retreating, and in many areas is being managed to either keep its extent or even spread. This is after massive destruction of forests for centuries. In Britain continuous forests once stretched from the south coast to the Scottish Highlands.

Economic development also tends to lead very quickly to population stability and even reduction, reducing environmental pressure. Human populations explode when they have western medicine available and food aid or improved agricultural technology but not education and other cultural changes which lead to family planning. The most economically-developed nations are almost all suffering from reducing populations.

Is the solution to the preservation of the rainforests as simple as economic development? I doubt it. Rule of law and property rights will be essential both for that economic development, but also for ensuring that someone has an interest in the forests beyond short-term gain, and that those guardians are able to protect their wards.

Unfortunately environmentalists seem to have a knee-jerk reaction against economic development. There are many connections with communism, with many former communists and fellow travellers prominent in the environmental movement. They have a dislike of economic independence and also of property rights and the strict rule of law.

I would argue then that for many years the environmental movement has opposed development that might have helped protect the environment. However without authority they brought attention to important issues, but struggled to make a great impact until a few years ago. A weak hypothesis, supported by models that skated over the most critical issues using fudge factors made up by true believers, was trumpeted as The Great New Truth.

Politicians with little understanding of the science or of scientific process used this claim to their own ends, to take power over people, and to keep themselves in office. The science is uncertain; the politicians bought the certainty of scientists, and distorted the channels of communication until they only heard what they wanted to hear. That might just seriously damage some of the wonders of nature, not just in parallel with but because of condemning billions to poverty.

Socialist Blind Spot

2009-09-12T01:20:00.002+01:00

It has always seemed to me that many socialists don’t just dispute that a free market works to benefit all involved, but that they are incapable of understanding that it might, or even that some rational people believe it does.

As far as I can see that is why a significant proportion actually think that to be capitalist, libertarian or worst of all Conservative is to be evil, is to be utterly selfish. They don’t believe it is actually possible for the free market to help people, anything without altruistic motives cannot have a positive result. Of course nurses, doctors and fire crews are never selfish in working for pay or even in demanding higher pay, they are altruistic whether they work hard or not, and whatever their pay.

I watch little television, and on the BBC it is strictly QI, Top Gear or Have I Got News, but I am visiting my parents. On Thursday night Hard Talk was on, and Stephen Sackur was interviewing Steve Forbes, CEO of a major magazine publisher and editor-in-chief of Business magazine.

Sackur just could not understand that Forbes could lay responsibility for the financial collapse on government rather than bankers; it was not that he disagreed, he just seemed unable to accept that someone could hold that opinion. Forbes made a case that monetary indiscipline and regulations, especially the unpredictability of government intervention, were the root cause, but Sackur just kept asking Forbes to condemn bankers and accept that capitalism was dead. He was obsessed by it, and showed little sign of listening to Forbes’s arguments and no sign at all of understanding them.

OK so the BBC should not show this sort of naked socialism in its interviewers, nor have a non-entity who cannot understand basic economics interview a man like Steve Forbes on that topic. However what struck me was a classic case of a leftie assuming that evil capitalists, and the evils of free markets must be to blame, and government must have a role in recovery but did not have any responsibility, and utterly incapable of understanding that a very knowledgeable person might disagree.

Remember That Day They Wounded New York

2009-09-11T14:27:00.002+01:00

It is a sad time to remember. Many thousands affected, far beyond even the injured and the friends and families who are today remembering the dead. I know dozens whose lives were turned upside down. More lasting, in that horror our whole industry lost its innocence.

The Importance Of Opposition

2009-09-10T23:21:00.001+01:00

Why I doubt the wisdom of consensus politics

Life is easy for anyone who has power or authority if no-one questions their use of that power. Life is extremely difficult if alongside power and authority there is effective opposition.

However without effective opposition then good decision making on difficult or controversial matters is almost impossible. Arrogance and ignorance dominate if the only voices heard are in agreement. That is why the term ‘yes-men’ is so pejorative. Any decision important enough to be taken by government is also important enough to hear and judge the reasoning for both (or indeed all) sides. To listen requires at least some level of doubt.

The Conservative Party seemed at one time to recognise this, and when Margaret Thatcher was seen not to be listening to those who disagreed with her she was removed. New Labour only ever cared about power, and silenced internal dissent ruthlessly while despising the opposition. For most of the time opposition was weak, and Labour took full advantage of that weakness. That is why so much New Labour legislation has had unintended consequences where they have been incompetent, or consequences that were not those the authors claimed to be striving for.

Barack Obama never had effective opposition before he entered the race for the White House. He was a Chicago politician in the Democrat Party, which not only has all-but-guaranteed office but a party machine of legendary ruthlessness and corruption. Even in his work as a law professor Obama did not have the usual academic opposition, for the simple reason that he appears not to have published anything. He lectured, but there was little to challenge what he taught.

During campaigning Obama did see opposition, but once he was the Democrat candidate the media shielded him from and effective scrutiny of his policy (or lack of it) and political history. When he did see any his response was petulant, aggressive and ignorant. Obama wanted to silence opposition, not listen to it and response, and he or his agents have often used his skin colour to do so, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being racist however strong their argument.

Once in power Obama did not anticipate opposition, with Democrats holding the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

However opposition to Obama’s policy out in the real world has been so consistent and vocal that it has had practical influence. The massive changes he wanted to make to the healthcare system in the USA are unlikely to pass in anything close to the form he wanted.

How did Obama respond to the debate about the issue ion his latest major speech? As Power Line notes in an excellent article he called it bickering. Now this is one line in a long speech, but I see it as the most telling. Along with many other attacks on his opponents it shows that Obama does not understand the importance of debate, the vital role played by debate.

In addition the Power Line article highlights several passages in Obama’s speech where he claims the opposition is lying when it seems he is the one being dishonest. While the bill might not have death panels or give free coverage to illegal immigrants the results are the same. British experience with NHS tourism (people who are not entitled to care coming to Britain just to get treatment) and the decisions of NICE suggest that Power Line is right.

The Power Line article also shows how useful opposition could be if Obama really wanted to improve healthcare (as opposed to help his socialist backers). The debate has brought up many ways of improving healthcare, such as opening state markets, tort reform and decoupling insurance from employment, that would certainly improve health and be supported not only by Republicans but most importantly by the people.

In his election campaign Obama claimed to want that consensus politics that I so distrust. In fact what he wanted was for others to agree to his ideas, he didn’t want to listen to theirs. I am glad in a way that he does not want consensus, glad he has not reached out for a cross-party back-room deal. It has energised his opposition; the health bill has been studied by opponents while proponents admit to not having read it.

Even better his opposition is within the people, it is a grassroots movement, whatever socialists say. The Republican Party has so little to do with the effective opposition that it has been wrong-footed. It has not taken advantage and realigned itself with the protesters, many of whom are non-aligned or even Democrat voters.

However it is a pity he didn’t use the opposition, listen to those opponents.

The demands for consensus politics must be resisted. Any action of government should be challenged by intelligent, reasoned opposition. Then it is far more likely that new legislation will not only have the intentions stated by proponents but it might actually achieve those intentions as its sole consequence.

Letter To A Tory

2009-09-10T17:23:00.002+01:00

Letters From A Tory has a Letter today addressed to Prisoner Ben claiming very forcefully that Ben should not be allowed to author a blog.

Since Ben’s friend accesses the blog from outside prison there appears to be no practical way Ben could be prevented from blogging. I cannot think of any that would not curtail the the freedom to write letters, a freedom assumed thirty years ago when his ten-year minimum sentence was recommended on that basis. However not forgetting that I would like to disregard it and answer A Tory.

I saw no reason in anything in the post or comments that Ben should not be allowed to blog.

It is not, as implied in the Letter, an increase in Ben’s liberty, as he is using his traditional liberty to achieve it. There has always been heavy restriction on prisoners' communication, and this is no exception. I am sure we can all imagine the restriction of having to access the internet via a friend and the Royal Mail. Given that prisoners have never been entirely isolated blogging in this way is no real change to Ben’s liberty.

I would argue that blogging is an excellent medium for rehabilitation. In a good blog there must be an attempt to communicate well and to reason. If a blog of the style Ben is writing is to be successful and well-read then the author must not only write something interesting but must engage the reader and develop some empathy, some consideration for those who disagree with him and indeed those like LFAT and Iain Dale who dispute that he should be allowed to blog. A good blog receives feedback, and a good blogger responds to this in an effort to increase readership. All of these are aspects of rehabilitation that can easily be missed in traditional education, and especially in artificial environments, like a prison.

The blog can also allow aspects of rehabilitation that the essential isolation of a prison prevents and the environment of prison necessitates, interaction with the real world. Open prisons and day-release towards the end of a sentence have similar effect, but where used give far more liberty than blogging via mail!

My final point is that Ben’s is an excellent blog. I even toyed with the idea of making it a Featured Blog, but the first two I have chosen both relate to injustice, and Ben has made it clear that his life sentence is fair. Ben is intelligent, articulate and direct. Today he addressed an issue others have not and perhaps would not dare to address in the same way. It so happens that I agree with him, but that is not the point. A new viewpoint is welcome, as long as it is coherently argued.

Liking Cameron More

2009-09-10T13:40:00.002+01:00

I really respect politicians who will talk like real people, not like media-friendly quote-generating machines. In last year’s US election I was hoping Fred Thompson could gain the candidacy, and it is one reason Daniel Hannan and Boris Johnson are so impressive (I see no need to talk like real, uneducated people).

That is of course one thing that annoys me about David Cameron. I can see why he is timid with the media. They have misrepresented the Conservative Party for so long, and spread so much socialist propaganda that it is very hard to persuade people that racists are not necessarily right-wing for example. Cameron does have to be careful what he says, as do all his senior people, as the Guardian and the BBC will wilfully distort his words, and the new media do not yet have the reach to correct them.

However I think he has generally been too careful. Most critically this means he has failed at times to argue the case for capitalism and small government. On top of this it has made him seem far more bland than I think he really is.

I think that is why Guido Fawkes's quote of the day pleased me, and made me think better of Cameron.

“…in the restaurants on the parliamentary estate you can treat yourself to a ‘lean salad of lemon and lime-marinated roasted tofu with baby spinach and rocket, home-roasted plum tomatoes and grilled ficelle crouton’ for just £1.70. That’s all thanks to you: taxpayers’ cash subsidising a politician’s food and drink. Well I suppose LibDems have to have something to eat…”

Now that is the sort of thing real people say about rivals.

A relevant point is made with banter, apt and witty without being nasty. Suddenly Cameron the toff seems more human and more ‘of the people’ than any Labour postman or ship’s steward.

I’m Calling Buckingham For UKIP

2009-09-09T00:06:00.001+01:00

And which of us would be disappointed?

Despite already having a staff of press officers and media advisors attached to the office of Speaker, John Bercow has decided in his image and profile needs to be raised. No, Mr Bercow, it doesn’t. Your image is irrelevant to your role. I suspect and hope that your constituents agree.

Mr Bercow was one of very few non-Labour MPs involved in flipping, among the most dishonest practices relating to abuse of allowances. He has taken the unprecedented step for a Speaker of appointing a special advisor. That adviser is a former Times journalist, and as the Telegraph puts it “Among his duties will be raising Mr Bercow's personal profile”.

It appears that Mr Hames duties will also include the creation of a "broader external role for the Speaker". The role of speaker is critical to the constitution. It is not for the fatuous Mr Bercow or anyone he appoints to redefine.

Mr Bercow’s vanity has never been well-hidden, but this really takes the piss out of us, along with up to £107,000 per annum plus benefits.

Ed Balls Was Right

2009-09-07T22:51:00.001+01:00

Stop the presses, I agree with something Ed Balls said, and history is on his side. It is just a pity he said it in 1991, then became a member of the government that did exactly the reverse of what he recommended.

Guido Fawkes always has an excellent quote of the day. The current one from Balls is

“The allure of a minimum wage is deceptive and should be resisted … Fostering a high wage, high skill economy is the only way to reverse Britain’s relative economic decline and to generate the resources to eradicate poverty. But the minimum wage is not the answer. If anything the minimum wage will make it even harder to achieve these ends”

Unfortunately he has proved prescient.

I never trusted Balls because he is not stupid yet is on Brown’s coat tails.

Most of what the Labour government has done in twelve years, and almost everything Brown has done in that time has had the aim of furthering the Labour Party, and in the latter case furthering Brown within the Party. I think Balls knew quite well that much government policy would not have the effect proclaimed, even have the reverse effect. However that would not be obvious in a simplistic reading, by the BBC and the parts of the population the policy was targeted towards.

These policies were intended to give a good impression while making ever more people beholden to the Labour Government. This is government for the purpose of gerrymandering, with no other aim.

Orwell’s Forgotten Predictions

2009-09-07T13:16:00.003+01:00

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book from which most people only know one concept, that of being under constant surveillance. It is far from the most important concept in the book.

Not a Sheep highlights today a satirical comparison of 1984 and Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s idea of socialist Utopia. The cartoon goes much further than that shallow idea of being watched, but does not address what I always felt to be the most important themes in 1984, Newspeak and corruption of history. It is too long since I read Brave New World, and I cannot remember if or how Huxley addressed these issues.

In 1984 language was changed to control thought. Words were not to be used, others no longer had all the same meanings and others still had their meanings reversed. In that way it was intended to control thought, because abstract thought without language is very difficult (and all but impossible to communicate) and control of language allowed control of what could be thought in that language.

While I agree with the cartoon that Huxley’s vision is closer in many ways to developing reality, Orwell did get the language concept right. The authoritarian left is quite literally doing what Orwell predicted.

There are words we cannot say, concepts we cannot express without being the object of contempt or hatred. Other words and concepts have been twisted to the reverse of their original meanings. Words such as 'liberal', 'tolerant' and 'progressive', concepts such as anti-racism, anti-fascism and diversity are used to mean exactly the opposite.

An important slogan in 1984 is “Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past”. Winston Smith, the protagonist, works is the Ministry of Truth changing the records of history, the control of the past.

The left has altered history, in a wide variety of ways. We are told that European culture is solely responsible for slavery, when the truth is that until European culture developed to ban slavery it was almost universal. We are told that FDR saved the world from depression with his ‘Keynesian’ and other socialist policies, when they actually deepened recession into depression, and Keynes later disavowed them. We are told that racism is historically right-wing, when from the Democrat Party and unions in the Southern USA to Nazis and Communists it has been far more a factor in the left.

Unless we wish to succumb to shrill left-wing authoritarianism we must take back our history and take back our language. In order to do so we need to challenge bias in government, education and the media, especially powerful, influential special interest groups like the NUT and the BBC.

UFO ‘Researcher’ On Another Planet

2009-09-06T11:55:00.002+01:00

There was an amusing commentary about the scepticism, or lack of it, in humankind, in Friday's Telegraph.

It appears that a lorry driver, Peter Turtill, has come forward to claim responsibility for a sighting of an apparent UFO that was widely reported at the time. The article even describes it as “Britain’s Roswell”. The explanation might well explain the reported sighting. The driver says he set fire to a load of stolen fertilizer, then realised it was being noticed so towed it away from the military base fearing how the guards would react to the multi-coloured flames it was producing.

The reaction from Brenda Butler, a UFO researcher?

“I don’t get what he is saying. There have been so many witnesses who have come forward.

He would have to come up with an awful lot of proof to call them liars. Why has he waited 29 years to come forward?”

Well let me see, for a start he might not have come forward because he was driving around with stolen fertilizer. He burned it in the first place to hide that crime. He is not calling anyone a liar, and the number of witnesses is irrelevant. Mr Turtill is providing a rational explanation for what they saw, not saying they lied about it or that the lights the witnesses described did not exist.

It seems to me quite obvious that Ms Butler would have to come up with “an awful lot of proof” to call Mr Turtill a liar. Burning fertilizer is an explanation that fits with our rational understanding of the world. A UFO is not. Therefore anyone advancing a UFO as an explanation has a far greater burden of proof.

This is a very clear, obvious example of a mentality that allows the belief in the supernatural, or in unproven cures or indeed unfounded health scares to persist against all evidence. It is also the mentality of people like the so-called 9/11 Truthers, and other believers in unlikely conspiracies.

Unwarranted certainty is the root of this. Please have your own doubts, as I have mine.

Another Postcard

2009-09-06T11:23:00.000+01:00

… from Cornwall. As usual, with a musical theme.

Be Thankful For Bickering Nations

2009-09-05T16:08:00.001+01:00

We can only hope that the G20 group will reach no substantive agreement as they argue for different measures, and so will not further damage their economies.

Gordon Brown has argued that nations must keep on overspending. This is the tactic that has failed to work in Britain and the USA, as the economies of France and Germany, which conspicuously did not try to spend their way out of recession, start to recover. Since Britain was best placed to weather the recession according to one G. Brown of Westminster and Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, the massive increase in already bloated public spending cannot have done much good.

A massive splurge of public spending during recession does not work to help recovery. It can create artificial growth (or of slow-down in contraction of the economy) in the same way as spending on your credit card can artificially increase your spending power. It does so at the expense of the future and also at the expense of private-sector growth. In the meantime it damages the free market as government interferes, intervenes and distorts the labour market.

If Britain is ever to recover we need other economies to be successful. Let us hope that other governments do not heed Brown, and continue to reduce their 'stimulus' spending.

Speaker of the House

2009-09-05T14:35:00.005+01:00

I have to agree with Shane Greer that the convention that the speaker stand unopposed is undemocratic.

It strikes me that the Conservative plan to reduce the number of MPs is an ideal opportunity to resolve the issue, with a rather more considerable change than simply contesting the Speaker's seat. Why not also have a Speaker who is not an MP at all? Elect an MP to the chair, but his or her appointment triggers removal from the seat and a by-election. Then not only is representation restored for the constituency of the Speaker, but it would be easier to avoid the bias Speaker Martin showed in favour of his party.

I realise that this would be a considerable constitutional change, but not nearly as great as the changes Labour instigated to the post of Lord Chancellor. They screwed that up, but if the Conservatives use more forethought this could happen in a couple of years, starting a convention that the Speaker resigns in the middle of an administration, not so close to an election that a constituency has two elections in a few months. A good excuse to elect a new Speaker on those revised terms, and Bercow can stand again for his job.

Left-Wing News Agency Plumbs New Depths

2009-09-05T12:12:00.007+01:00

The Associated Press is known to among the self-described 'anti-war' when it comes to combatting regimes that support terror against the West and Israel. Of course those are often described by their political opponents as 'not ant-war, just on the other side', and the Associate Press has a case to answer.

That biased position is the background of a shocking decision that AP made to distribute the photograph of dying US Marine (photograph NOT shown at the link; I have not seen it), Lance Corporal Joshua M Bernard against not only common decency but the express wishes of Lance Corporal Bernard's family. It is an absolute disgrace that a news agency will use such tactics, for which I cannot see any other reason than to leach support for the war in Afghanistan.

There are reasoned arguments that the Iraq war was unnecessary, event that it was wrong. I don't agree with them, I think they are naïve, but there is a case that can be made. I can see no reasoned argument against the decision to go to war in Afghanistan. A private military force allied to and protected by the Afghan government and working from Afghanistan attacked the USA. That was by any definition an act of war. The only way that the anti-war lobby can damage the war effort, and help the terrorists with whom they sympathise is by sapping morale at home. That cannot be done by reason so it is done in this underhand, nasty fashion.

This has infuriated the military, not only because it is a disgraceful indignity on one of their own. The military support the campaign in Afghanistan. The complaints they make are about the conduct and the equipment, not the fact of their presence. From what I gather down to the front-line soldiers they feel the need to be there, but just want support from home. The AP is deliberately setting out to destroy that support.

Update: it appears that the publication of that picture also violated AP's embed agreement.

More Climate Politics

2009-09-03T13:57:00.003+01:00

It is difficult to decide what the UK Meteorological Office hopes to achieve in predicting future climate. What seems certain is that they have politicised their science.

Christopher Booker writes in the Daily Telegraph about the refusal of the Met Office to release the data on which its climate predictions are based. I have talked before about the conspiracy to withhold those data. However the Met Office appears to have given an even more bizarre and telling excuse than Professor Jones’s.

To release that information might

"damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector"

As Mr Booker explains that trust is already damaged. However I think there is far more to this statement than that. If releasing the data might damage trust in the scientists then there is something in that data set that runs against the conclusions the scientists are reaching.

Trust will not, as they suggest, be damaged because the scientists “…happen to be employed in the public sector” but because of their conclusions and the unstated problem in the data. This statement implies that other scientists would disagree with the conclusions reached by the public-sector scientists. This is in effect an admission that those scientists in the public sector are reaching a conclusion because they are in the public sector.

It is widely known that even though scientists are not, senior politicians are all but unanimous in believing in man-made climate catastrophe (with a glorious exception). Therefore employment in the public sector depends on reaching conclusions in line with this view.

To sum up, that one statement suggests both that the conclusions reached by the UK Met Office, one of the major contributors to the IPCC, are not in line with the data and that those conclusions are influenced by politics.

Political Policing

2009-09-02T16:43:00.000+01:00

The words ‘politics’ and ‘police’ have the same root, but they have drifted too far from the root and too close to each other. Polis meant a body of citizens or a city state, police protect them and politics represents them.

Now politics has moved away from that body of citizens, as have the police. I have previously made plain my disdain for the idea of hate crime. I don’t think motive should be important unless it mitigates the crime (for example self-defence). Setting apart certain groups as more important victims is not blind justice. Allowing the police and prosecutors to judge motive means they are automatically politicised.

In front of me is a case in point, in a copy of the Operational Directory for Sussex Police. Several parts of the ‘Hate Crimes’ section are politically controversial or likely to encourage misinterpretation.

On racism

“In its more subtle form it is as damaging as in its overt form”

What more subtle form? How does the officer know if he is seeing subtle racism or just inconsiderate and unthinking behaviour? Is an officer going to look to find subtle racism reading that advice? How about if he sees subtle racism when someone reports a crime by a non-white, so the police ignore the crime and go after the victim or witness? I would not have considered that 12 years ago, now it is easy to believe.

“The term ‘racist incident’ must be understood to include both crimes and non-crimes in policing terms. Both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment”

Why should a non-crime “in police terms” be investigated by police at all? Why should they be investigated when there are not enough resources to investigate all crimes? If they are investigated at all why should they receive equal commitment?

“Incidents where visiting international students are the victims of crime will normally be recorded as racist incidents”

Why? This only goes to show that the way police define hate crime has no rational basis.

So the official guidance from Sussex Police advises that police see the bogeyman of racism and hate wherever possible, and to investigate even if there was no crime. This is advice to harass people for their thoughts and opinions. This is, quite literally, Orwellian. Reporting, recording and investigation of opinion as if we have no freedom of conscience is making political issues an offence.

Update: I spoke to a friend with police connections. One of the main reasons for identifying crimes against foreign students as racist is so that the files are easy to find from a large number of police reports. Remember that next time you see hate-crime statistics. Many of those are for convenience of categorisation, they are not hate crimes at all.

Funny how I don’t see this as reducing the relevance of my post.

Why Should We Protect The Environment?

2009-09-02T14:00:00.003+01:00

We are told to protect the environment, but first we need to ask why

I did say after a discussion on the science that I would discuss the politics of climate change. However first I want to take issue with the rational basis of environmentalism, which strengthens the case that the whole idea is political.

The Earth is one planet in a universe probably populated with many millions of billions, roughly 4.65 billion years old. There is evidence of life in rocks older than 3.8 billion years. During that time there has been one dominant form of life, prokaryotes, basically bacteria. They make up most of the Earth’s biodiversity and even biomass. Eukaryotes evolved much later, and form everything else, including some single-cell organisms more complicated than bacteria.

Macro-organisms, larger creatures, evolved much later still, perhaps about 650 million years ago. Since then different forms appear and disappear in the fossil record. The greatest mass extinction known (the end Permian, since you ask) seems to have wiped out perhaps 95% of all species identified by fossils. Other times creatures just evolve to be something distinct, or die out.

The point I am trying to make is that we can split life into small, simple but vastly abundant things that we could not wipe out if we tried (with the exception of those that are dependent upon us, like smallpox, or on another organism that we wiped out) and large organisms that go extinct as a normal part of the changes in the world. More importantly new creatures evolve, and biodiversity is always different but it is always there.

So what is the point of environmentalism? To ‘save the Earth’ many would say, but the Earth is not under threat. The Earth is 6000 billion billion tons of rock that has been here for over 4 billion years, not a kitten we are drowning. Gaians might believe differently, but then Gaian hypothesis was just made up from very little, it makes no sense, and the truth might be the very opposite.

Other environmentalists would say that they are trying to save animals and plants, keep biodiversity. The fact that they tend to save the cute and the majestic animals before the rest is suspect. In fact once humans have gone then whatever damage has been done the Earth will recover. That process will take a trivial time, in terms of the Earth’s history.

Cruelty and stress to animals is another answer given, but that is the way of nature. Life in the wild is harsh, and basic ecology tells us that species will expand to fill their range to the limit of available resources. Breeding will always put pressure on range and resources, and individuals will suffer and die. Human activity simply changes the size of the range and available resources, not the fact of a limit. Species cannot feel suffering.

None of this says that we should not protect the environment, or protect species, but simple pat answers don’t tell us why, and ‘why’ turns out to be critical. The rational reason for protecting the environment is human needs and human morality, as nothing else on Earth has needs that we should rationally put above our own.

We are occupying an infinitesimal amount of time in an infinitesimal amount of space in the universe. The only reason we believe Earth is special and should be preserved is that we occupy it.

This turns environmentalism on its head. We should be working for a good human environment. It does not excuse us stewardship of the Earth, but it means that we are looking after the environment for humanity and for human morality. So any higher imperative for human existence or of human morality must take preference. Whereas traditional ‘greens’ put animals and nature on a par with or more often above humanity.

The most extreme greens have indeed called for humanity’s destruction. We can see how irrational that is in that the only possible reason for that could be human morality (rendered inane as soon as the solution is achieved) or to help nature recover, which is pointless on the scale of the existence of humankind.

Down the scale of environmentalists almost all the serious activists advocate action that would seriously damage human comfort of life. The most widespread of those being massive reductions in carbon dioxide demanded by global warming alarmists. This would not only seriously restrict human lifestyle (an important consequence trivialised by those who advocate carbon restrictions, either because they think temperature is more important than people or because, like Al Gore, they know their own lifestyles will not be harmed) but it will kill millions. It is already increasing the desperate poverty in Africa, not only grinding poor people into the dust but killing them as well.

None of this makes any sense to the human environment. No moral choice to keep climate constant* is more important than the immoral act of the harm done.

The net result that can be claimed though is damage to western economies, damage to the integrated global market, political harm to large companies now unwilling to defend their activity, suppression of free economic growth and implementation of draconian rules, restricting individual freedom. All of these are aims of communists.

The connections between socialism and the hard-core environmental movement have been widely explored, and even publicised by the communists. Now the US President has appointed an avowed communist as a green adviser, most ridiculously to try to create jobs.

So the fundamentalist green movement is run through with red, and the results of the climate panic constitute a wish-list for socialism, but do more harm than good to the environment. Can anyone seriously doubt that the climate change debate is almost pure politics?

*This is the political discussion, so I am not trying to break the scientific case for anthropogenic climate change, just show that the case is politicised.

Update: I forgot to relate the politics behind this to Critical Theory, the back-door attempt to spread communism through a variety of apparently unrelated left-wing causes as detailed in the most important video I posted a link to last week. The important common factor in in the causes linked by critical theory was to attack western values and strengths. Fundamentalist environmentalists certainly aim for that.

Update: More evidence of politics in climate science.

A More Courageous Approach To Race

2009-08-29T19:44:00.002+01:00

This is a truly funny story about how one man beat the Ku Klux Klan, a brave man who refused to respond to racism against him with racism, anger or even distaste. He responded with compassion and levity. The story is told by the Klan leader he defeated Johnny Lee Clary. Mr Clary comes across very well too, as a man having reformed himself and found great humour.

You have to hear the chicken story.

I really wish I could have met Revd Watts. I think some people could learn a lot from his example, and the world would benefit.

Found at BoingBoing.

TV Documentary Lies To Steal Presidential Election

2009-08-29T10:17:00.006+01:00

No it was not Obama’s election, in fact they were not successful. However Bernie Goldberg has further proof that CBS deliberately lied to try and influence the close Presidential race in 2004.

It has long been known that Dan Rather presented documents on the CBS documentary programme 60 minutes that seemed to show a senior officer’s criticism of a young Lieutenant G W Bush, suggest that he went absent without leave and support accusations that he failed to fulfil his obligations to the Air National Guard. The accusation was that he was a slacker, who was trying to avoid being drafted to Vietnam by joining the ANG and avoiding duties where possible, protected by his father in the Senate.

Of course it turned out that the documents were fake, and there the story ends for most of the news media, an embarrassment brushed over.

Well it turns out that not only did Lt Bush not shirk his duties, not only did he specifically volunteer to go to Vietnam (others with more experience were chosen instead), but that Mary Mapes, the producer of that episode of 60 Minutes, knew at the time it was made that he had volunteered. She had been told on more than one occasion.

This is really very serious.

I was no Bush supporter (although knowing more now I am relieved Gore and Kerry lost) but neither did I ever subscribe to the ridiculous ‘idiot’ or ‘Hitler’ memes. It was always known that election was close, and Vietnam was important. The media painted Kerry as a hero to help his cause (although his record was suspect while he was there, and he told lies about atrocities once he returned).

The Democrats were trying to paint Bush as a coward to contrast, and the 60 Minute episode was widely quoted in the press to support that; it could easily have changed the election result. Mary Mapes was a known ‘liberal’ as the Americans put it. It appears she produced a programme that she knew all along was advancing a lie, in order to influence an election. That is shocking, even for the modern news media.

What is even more widely relevant is that this information has been available for several years, and the US news media do not want to know. They will not tell the truth.

Background For Those Unfamiliar

This incident brought Charles Johnson’s Little Green Football (UPDATE: link removed as Charles Johnson has descended into insanity, and I am not willing to direct people to his creepy blog) libertarian blog to national (and to some degree international) media attention, when he challenged the documents and proved that the document below, dated 1973, was almost certainly produced on Microsoft Word (the animation compares the 60 Minutes fax, and identical wording written in Word with default fonts and paragraph settings), and could not have been written on any known typewriter available in 1973.

How Sick Can They Get?

2009-08-28T21:19:00.001+01:00

I am not sure how to put this, as it is … stunningly crass. Ace of Spades is reporting an NRO post that a writer at the left-wing Huffington Post has said of Senator Ted Kennedy’s career that Mary Jo Kopechne would “… [maybe] feel it was worth it”.

There goes the left again; I said Senator Kennedy had plumbed the depths and continued on for fathoms, then less than four hours later those left manage to go even further than their mentor. Even I, who have few illusions about socialists often being unpleasant and self-righteous people, am truly stunned by this.

Ted Kennedy’s Sick Sense of Humour

2009-08-28T17:32:00.001+01:00

I really cannot believe this. Not sure how to express my stunned astonishment. I first saw this on Small Dead Animals, which linked to Jules Crittenden, but I really had to listen for myself as I could not believe what he was saying. I really thought that Jules Crittenden was having a dig at Kennedy, that nobody would be so crass, but even when you think Democrats have plumbed the depths, they go a few more fathoms.

On radio station WAMU, American University Radio, Katty Kay interviewed various people about the Senator, including Edward Klein. All are fans of Kennedy and Klein edited the left-wing New York Times and was foreign editor of the equally biased Newsweek. You can listen on Real Audio or WMA, but it gets tiresome quickly.

If nothing else then download it and skip to the 30:24 point. Apparently Ted Kennedy liked Chappaquiddick jokes; he liked to tell them, and would ask people if they had new jokes. Jokes about the young woman who had died because of him, and who he had abandoned to her death in order to save his own career.

Not only did Klein think it was an appropriate story to tell in a pro-Kennedy interview, but he thinks it is “…just the most amazing thing”. Not only that but the other Kennedy groupies don’t say anything, it appears that none of them see anything wrong in that picture of Kennedy.

I’ve heard and told plenty of sick jokes; in any business where death is a constant concern it happens. I have never imagined any rational man could delight in jokes about the death he caused of an innocent person, let alone a death that occured in such disgraceful circumstances.

White House Chilling Free Speech?

2009-08-28T11:06:00.001+01:00

If you are not American then you might not know about Glenn Beck, a presenter of a comment programme (opinion rather than news) on the Fox News TV channel. He claimed that President Obama is racist, and now Color of Change have organised an advertising boycott. More details are given in an LA Times blog post, indicating the great flaw that Beck's ratings have improved dues to the boycott.

Color of Change is a group apparently formed out of a racist, partisan lie, that George Bush had not helped black residents when Katrina struck. In fact a higher proportion of whites in New Orleans were killed, and the Federal Government could not legally act until asked by the (Democrat) Governor. Color of Change supported the Jena Six (black students who beat a white student “…into a state of bloody unconsciousness”). So Color of Change is basically a pro-black racist organisation, and part of the race industry.

Whether Beck’s charge that Obama is racist is justified or not it is fair political comment. Obama himself set the bar high, by suggesting that only he could be a post-racial president. I think there is a good case that he has been racist in his campaigning and some of his comments as president, but that is irrelevant as Beck’s programme is opinion, not news, Beck can make his case and others can argue it.

So how does the White House come into this?

It appears from the LA Times blog that one of the founders of Color of Change is Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to the White House. Leaving aside that his appointment despite his links to a racist group is more evidence of Obama’s racism, it appears that a White House advisor is attacking the free speech of an Obama’s opponent.

This is highly suspect. Did the White House ask Mr Jones to start this campaign? If not, and given the way this looks, why did Obama not ask him to either distance himself from the group and disavow the campaign or to resign his post?

For someone supposedly so clever and politically adept, Obama makes an awful lot of unforced errors.

Hat duly tipped to Instapundit.

All You Need To Know About Balls

2009-08-27T12:43:00.001+01:00

Warning: article contains a photograph. Do not scroll down if you are of nervous disposition or violent temper.

Ed Balls is not the most popular man in British politics. He revolts me. He is a known Brown sycophant, but I think the real reason he is detested is that he plays politics. He is like those people who get involved in the student union, or the committee of their club. The politics is more important than what actually gets done in the job, because the job is trivial, the prestige, the petty power and socialism are everything.

The title of Mr Balls’s article in today's Grauniad, Old Tories In Disguise, is the first sign of despair to all who care about education. It is clearly simply an attack piece against the Conservatives, as if Balls cannot quite believe Labour are in power, and like the press still think of them as opposition. Instead of a positive attitude to dealing with the education system, Balls just wants to use it to beat the hated foe.

The article continues in that vein, meaningless hot air designed only to attack the Conservatives, wrapped in self-satisfied dogma. It is treated as self-evident that government compulsion and guarantees are a good thing, without considering the corollary that freedom and self-reliance are therefore bad.

How can the man in charge of schools use the phrase “…less than 30% of pupils…”? Either he is ignorant of very basic grammar (as is whichever SpAd helped him write the piece) or he can only think of children as statistics, a continuous quantity with no individuals, just an amorphous mass.

I take no responsibility for vomit damage to keyboards, or screens broken by thrown objects.

The piece is also dishonest. Talking about Conservative policy, the so-called ‘Swedish model’, although I can think of far better Swedish models and this policy is used in many other places, he claims that it is going to be more expensive by only considering Sweden.

All I can say is ‘Balls’. Education is already expensive in this country, and the vouchers could save a lot of money, whatever the Swedish experience.

A similar system is more expensive in Washington DC. That is a sop to the unions, because the government guarantees each existing school’s income, so all voucher costs add to the budget. The pupils who get places on the voucher scheme actually cost the state about half what the other pupils do.

Voucher schemes are in place in a growing number of areas of the USA, and not only do the voucher pupils get generally better education, but the ordinary state schools have improved. Costs have not gone up. In fact the only place where the state schools have not improved is in DC, because there is no incentive to keep pupils. So the system that is more expensive is worse for precisely the same reason. That is very strong evidence that Balls is wrong, that voucher programs don’t make state schools worse. Competition makes them better, but Balls cannot admit that because socialism is more important than good education to him, the schools minister.

In fact Sweden has more evidence, in that many planned voucher schools never open because state schools have improved in response to the perceived threat.

So Balls is opposing the voucher scheme, but his stated reasons are nonsense. I have already suggested dogmatic socialism as one of his reasons. This article’s title suggests that pure politics, opposing Conservatives, is another. Of course the unions would hate it, for pure socialism and their members would have to compete, so the Labour paymasters are another reason. It seems the final reason is just power for Mr Balls. This government has concentrated power at every turn, and the article openly opposes any move of decisions from Whitehall even to councils, let alone parents.

The final condemnation of Balls is that objectively education is not improving as he claims. I know from close friend who is an academic, so instinctively left-wing. He interviews and selects students for one of the best universities in the world, has the choice of the very cream of what comes out of our education system. Every year he despairs more than the last, because not only do the students know less (which is a deliberate aim of socialist education, and means his university has already added a year to science degrees) but they are less, rather than more, capable of independent thought and deduction. The supposed aim of new educational structure is to improve those areas.

Most Succinct Answer to Ted’s Sycophants

2009-08-27T01:03:00.002+01:00

From Ace of Spades via Small Dead Animals, regarding Senator Edward Kennedy:

“If they’re going to talk about Camelot, then we get to talk about The Lady in the Lake.”

Update: too many people even on the Right fell for Ted Kennedy’s charm, his name and his power, so I was not looking forward to the eulogies. Most were as bad as I expected, David Blackburn's in the Spectator Coffeehouse not much better. However it seems that far more people than I expected saw through him. Read the comments under that one; the phrase ‘as popular as a pork pie at a bar mitzvah’ springs to mind.

A Picture Post(card)

2009-08-26T21:45:00.001+01:00

Greetings from Cornwall, wish you were here!

Dehumanising the ‘Other’

2009-08-26T14:39:00.001+01:00

I have been highly critical of the race 'equality' industry before. Reading a recent case of torture, rape and murder again brought its pernicious influence to mind.

Via Instapundit I came across an horrific story of a terrible crime in Tennessee. The crime itself is sufficiently covered in that blog post and the stories it links, so I will only recount the barest details relevant to my point.

A young couple, Chris Newsom and Channon Christian, were taken at gunpoint. He was tortured and killed , she was tortured, raped and killed over a period of 24 hours. During her captivity the young men involved left the house where Channon Christian was trapped and went about their daily business before returning to repeat their crimes. During this time at least one woman was present in the house, probably more than one, and knew that Channon Christian was there, although with no direct involvement in the crime.

Katie, the blogger who posted the Mamapundit story linked above, suggested that there was no evidence that race played a role in the crime. I think that it is possible that on one level this is not about race, not about blacks killing whites per se.

I think that on some level this is about young blacks killing people of a different race, and how identity politics that make it increasingly likely that one race does not identify with another. The ‘equality’ industry has a vested interest in emphasising differences, in pulling communities further apart.

I don’t think that is why the men carried out vicious crimes. That was evil. What I think it explains is how they could be so sadistic, how they could go about their normal lives in between, and even more clearly I think it is how Vanessa Coleman, the woman who admitted to being in the house, could be there yet do nothing for Channon Christian.

Vanessa Coleman has been told over and again by the race industry, by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, even by the Democrat Party, that she is a black first. She has been told that whites are different and don’t care about her, in fact that white people are responsible for her problems (of course to socialists Miss Coleman certainly is not responsible, nor are her parents). With all that propaganda dehumanising both Miss Christian and Miss Coleman, why should Vanessa Coleman care?

I have written about the logical conclusions of the race industry, and these aspects of the case are, sadly, not entirely surprising to me. There are better responses to racism, and they can be very promising. We just need to defeat the lies behind Critical Theory before a rational response becomes normal.

The Power Of One, The Idiocy of Bureaucracy

2009-08-25T12:12:00.000+01:00

One man can save a town. A faceless, self-serving and rule-bound bureaucracy considers charging him with a criminal act for doing so.

OK, so he has not been fined after six months, and I cannot imagine a dozen of his fellows will ever convict him, but Eric Notley’s story is a great parable.

One man sees the fires approaching, and realises he can do something about it if he acts quickly. He takes a bulldozer and builds banks to stop the fire. However he did not ask. The bureaucracy that owned the machine (and was conspicuously not using it to save the town) did not have chance to ponder his action, fill out forms in triplicate and make a safety case. They order an investigation.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (lovely Orwellian title) owned the bulldozer. Only a corporatist bureaucracy of a large company, NGO or government, could have an investigation long enough to last until a reporter could be told about it. My investigation consists of three questions. Was there ill intent? Was anyone hurt? Was the town saved? If it is ‘no’, ‘no’, ‘yes’ then the case is closed.

This is why I am a libertarian. One man, free to act, does what he can in a tight spot under pressure. A committee not only fails then, but after the pressure is off compounds the failure by blindly following its procedures.

Hat tip Instapundit again.

The Most Important Video

2009-08-25T00:37:00.001+01:00

This might be the most important video you ever watch.

Rather the historical detail it gives on Critical Theory, with the perspective that shows on the links between ‘liberal’ socialism, communism and political correctness, could be the most important fact to spread. Certainly those of you concerned about the ‘New World Order’, the EU and bias in the news media will learn about your fears.

The most important thing I took from it is that these things are not vast conspiracies with tentacles in all walks of life. They are emergent patterns, coming from socialist dogma of Critical Theory just as an efficient, structured economy emerges from the free market or organisms emerge from evolution. Structures that look a lot like a conspiracy, behave a lot like that and could have the same end results. However the apparent tentacles are not willing, aware parts of some plot, they are ordinary people with incorrect or more often incomplete information – the narrative mentioned in the video.

That is the reason that no conspiracy has become obvious (I wrote before about the reasons most conspiracy theories don't add up). However it is also the great weakness of Critical Theory, and if it remains free the internet is likely to kill it. Knowledge is key to stopping its spread.

Since this is mentioned on Instapundit and is a PJTV video it will have a wide audience.

If They Were Not In Charge You’d Laugh

2009-08-24T00:11:00.001+01:00

If I was Gordon Brown then I would be pretty annoyed with whoever made the Freedom of Information request (update: George Ffoulkes apparently – thanks Goodnight Vienna) about General Dannatt. Sorry, no, I would be steaming. Brown is not known for his cool, even temper. If he had anyone competent to raise from the back benches, he might be tempted to sack Kevan Jones and the unnamed, foul-mouthed minister.

So what has come out of it is a restrained senior officer (popular with his men), spiteful MPs trying to attack that officer and a nice reminder of Labour’s excessive expense claims, with no mention of any other party’s. That is such a bad result, and considering the military have far more sympathy than MPs the best gain that could have been made was tiny. You have to worry about the intelligence of those MPs involved, let alone their judgement, risking so much for so little potential gain.

How has the Labour party allowed such complete idiots, playing student politics, to gain seats, let alone gain office?

Science or Pornography?

2009-08-23T17:18:00.000+01:00

New Scientist has a video taken of a couple in an MRI scanner … well … coupling. This is obviously somewhat explicit, although probably safe for work, as someone would have to look closely or know what they were seeing to be offended. However it isn’t exactly erotic. Well, I suppose someone will find it so, it takes all sorts.

Great News of Foreign Justice

2009-08-22T14:52:00.003+01:00

It seems that the justice system in Brazil shows wisdom and compassion beyond many European courts, and certainly some in Britain.

Two English girls, Shanti Andrews and Rebecca Turner, who were bumming round the world before trying to find work, were caught out in an insurance scam. It is a fairly common one apparently, and often successful. They have just been served a sentence amounting to about 8 months of community service (up to 16 months if they only do one hour a day).

Not only does that sound a more realistic sentence than the one or two hundred hours they might have served here but they might do some good, both for the people of Brazil and for themselves. Bryony Gordon in the Telegraph speculates (an opinion piece) that they will probably clean in the favelas, teach English and read to orphans. This sounds entirely just, and beneficial.

However I can see how they ended up as criminals. The family of one criticised the Brazilian justice system for treating them harshly even before sentencing, one parent calling the fraud a “misunderstanding”. It is just an extension of the parents who support their obnoxious children against teachers in school, thinking their little darlings should be excused every misdemeanour. Personally I think the sentence is light, even on top of the short time they spent on remand.

They are now appealing to commute the sentence to a fine, so they can get home early. I thought they wanted to experience the world?

Presumably they tried fraud after running low on funds, so they could not pay the fine themselves. More parental coddling, how is that going to teach them anything? I hope the court keeps the sentence, hoping that real work in such poor communities will give them some perspective and insight and help make them better lawyers. Yes, these were law graduates, likely to end up practicing law or as politicians.

Racist Left

2009-08-21T12:56:00.003+01:00

I have often argued that describing a political party or an individual ‘extreme right-wing’ because they are racist is wrong, it is a slanderous propaganda that the Left themselves have come to believe. Yesterday Reason Online had an article about the history of violent racism in the American Left.

That is far easier to prove in the US than in Britain. While Britain was in difficulty coming to terms with the beginning of mass immigration of non-European people, a Democrat Senator was filibustering (talking out) the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now it is possible to object to rights legislation and not be racist, regardless of what the left will tell you, but Senator Byrd was a senior member of the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation formed in 1865 in part to serve the interests of the Democrat Party.

In the 1920s it was the Republicans who were trying to legislate against lynching, and the Democrats who prevented that legislation. Please listen to Nina Simone, and ponder on the utter evil that can make legislation against lynching controversial.

The Ashbrook Centre article goes on to argue that many of the current policies of the Democrat Party when it was written in 2002 harm blacks more than whites. Those arguments transfer far more readily to the British Labour Party, which has remarkably similar policy aims and political tactics, even if the political climate means each achieves different results.

The most practical racism still existing in free nations, discrimination at work, is a form of protectionism which fits much more readily with socialism than free-market capitalism. In the UK, where most of the support for the left comes from inner cities and unions, recent immigrants (who tend to live in cities and work more cheaply than natural-born workers of equivalent skills) are far more likely to come into conflict with Labour supporters than Conservative ones. That is why a lot of the support for the BNP is in areas where Labour is losing core support.

The extreme left, both internationalist socialists, the communists, and nationalist socialists from German Nazis to the BNP, have had strong racist tendencies. The Soviet Union was anti-Semitic, as well as racist against citizens who were not ethnic Russians, especially non-Slavs. China is today racist against those not of Han extraction.

So never believe it when you see the Left equating racism with the Right. At the very least we have proved here that racism is as much a factor on the Left, I would contend that the Left has historically shown far more racism.

Update: one thing I failed to include is that more on the left than the right (self identified) claim to dislike or hate Muslims according to a poll on the Muslims Against Sharia website. While this is not itself racism, it is bigotry (note they dislike Mulims, not extremism or Islam) of a nature often caused by racism.

Unions and Other People’s Business

2009-08-20T16:40:00.001+01:00

Equity has stuck its nose into the reality TV business, claiming that participants should be paid. The performing artists’ union apparently reckons that X Factor is making money by “exploiting and humiliating” contestants. Well I only occasionally watch the first round, which can be hilarious, and I reckon the contestants humiliate themselves.

However what business is it of Equity? I doubt there is a significant proportion of Equity members among them (if there were there would be far fewer completely hopeless and clueless people, and they provide the entertainment).

Equity’s statement claims that “… [t]he contestants in such programmes are often compelled to enter into restrictive contracts …”, which is a direct lie. The contestants enter into a voluntary agreement with the production company; no-one compels them to put themselves forward for the competition. Why should Equity feel it has any say in those people’s right to sign that contract?

All the unions used to be like that, in the days when closed shops were legal and ‘flying picket’ a term in common use. They must never be allowed to have back the power they once had and many hardcore socialists want them to have again. In particular unions like Unite and the NUT, which involve themselves in political activity that does not relate directly to members’ rights, must be challenged every time they make demands of the government. Of course this government is hardly likely to do so, the Labour Party would be bankrupt if it were not for the generosity of those unions. That is a serious conflict of interest.

Unfortunately the only argument TF1 appears to make against a French court ruling that they have to pay contestants in similar cases is that this might spell an end to reality TV on their channel. As far as I can see that is the one benefit of the ruling.

Conspiracy: The Exception Proves The Rule

2009-08-19T15:57:00.003+01:00

Most conspiracy theories don’t hold up well to scrutiny for very simple reasons. People are not that efficient, and it is not that easy to persuade all the people who have to know into silence. Some either want no part in a conspiracy of silence or are arrogant enough to be unaware that what they are saying exposes them. The conspiracy would become obvious.

To prove that rule there is a genuine conspiracy, and it is becoming ever more obvious as inefficiency causes leaks and as some of those in the conspiracy tell all.

Last week The Register published an article about the refusal of various organisations involved in climate research to release their raw data and data processing information. The excuses given beggar belief from confidentiality clauses (why are the UK and Danish Met Office keeping data secret?) to losing data, some of which might have been made verbally and not written down. So a research organisation is seriously suggesting we forego tens of trillions of dollars, yet they cannot be bothered to write the numbers down.

The worst excuse might be,

“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Well maybe because that is science, Professor Jones. Interesting that The Register considers him an “activist-scientist”. The two terms are mutually exclusive; I know which I think he is.

In any other field a scientific paper with a novel conclusion is an invitation for others to try to replicate the results. Until someone can do so then the original paper is considered highly speculative. If other groups are not able to do so then it is generally concluded that the original research was flawed in some way. So if the data are not available then the science can never be judged to have solid grounding, let alone settled beyond all debate.

It is clear from the article that there is a conspiracy to keep the raw data from being studied by scientists who might challenge the conclusion that human activity is changing the climate in a predictable way. This seems to be part of a wider conspiracy. Notice how difficult it is to conceal such a conspiracy, even with the collusion of the UN, of most of the news media and of almost all politicians in the democratic nations? Professor Jones did not remain silent, and the CRU made an error, leaving information on a server, that makes the conspiracy obvious.

Hat tip Small Dead Animals.

Another Seriously Cool Physics Video

2009-08-18T23:28:00.001+01:00

Notice the way that the charge almost feels its way down, testing multiple routes until a continuous path from the cloud to the Earth forms, then the main discharge slams through that path. Awe-inspiring video.

I have to give a hat tip to the wonderful physics blog Gravity and Levity for this one.