Is it just me, or.........

Jobs, growth, doom!

2012-01-30T21:21:00.002Z

This is a reply I made to John Redwood's Diary today. 12 or more hours later, it's not been passed by a moderator, though lots of others have. Given the crap spouted after the EU summit today, I think it's a debate we should be having.

I’m slowly becoming convinced that full or low unemployment is almost impossible to achieve in the post-automation age. There are very few labour-intensive industries any more, and those that do exist have moved to developing countries where labour costs are much lower.

All parties seem to focus on economic growth as the answer to provide jobs, but at the growth after the 80s recession showed, modern economic growth is achievable with low job growth – in fact is more likely to be employment light.

It only seems logical to me – think of all the industries that have either moved overseas or slimmed dramatically in respect of workforces – shipbuilding, car manufacturing for example. My career was largely in electronic engineering, and even that highly skilled occupation has changed dramatically with design automation and high levels of integration reducing the number of designers needed. Drawing offices have largely disappeared, secretarial and administrative roles have shrunk through the use of computers. Even IT work has been deskilled and wages contrained – and this was heralded as one of the new golden opportunities we should be training people for. The time that the shrinkage in good jobs started to show itself was masked by the rapid growth in public sector employment in the late 90s and early this century.

I simply can’t see where mass jobs are going to come from other than in low paid, low skilled service sector roles. It comes to something when the BBC heralds as good news that MacDonalds are planning to create thousands of new jobs!

Surely the only way to address the future is for a complete shift in our political models that plans for a society that will never have full employment, where business and growth is capital intensive rather than labour intensive?

Economic growth - wishful thinking?

2011-11-08T13:24:00.002Z

I've spoken before about being concerned that some of my thoughts are naive or ill-informed (ie "is it just me, or.....") but I'm a bit confused about all the talk of growth - and the reliance on it.

As I understand it, a country's economic growth can primarily only come from two sources - greater consumption by it's citizens and businesses (which surely can only come in any significant sustainable measure by an increase in population) or from exports. In fact, I'm sure Obama said in his G20 speech that for global growth, weaker economies should work to become more efficient and competitive so they can export, and stronger economies should be prepared to open their markets for others.

Problem is, it seems to me, the world is a closed system as a whole. If one country is exporting, another must be importing. The net sum of exports against imports must be zero. Therefore, economies that grow through exports must do so at the cost of other economies.

Looking at the state of our country's debt, and that of its citizens, surely much of the growth our own economy has had over the last couple of decades has been at the cost of running up personal and national debt?

All the plans both domestic and through the EU in particular that rely on growth really do seem to be so much wishful thinking to me - or worse, deceit, a fop to the people to delay the day of reckoning.

Greece, for example. It's said that the only hope for the Greek economy, and the very nation, is for their economy to grow. Even after the bailout and debt write-offs, they can't survive, reduce their defecit and manage their debt. How on earth are they going to grow their economy? The only hope I can see for them is to decouple from the Euro, devalue, and be able to exploit their greatest natural asset - tourism, by becoming a destination of choice again because of the value they can offer with a weaker currency.

Come on, put me straight. To my mind, all the strategies for economic recovery should assume no growth. Any growth there is would then be a bonus.

Waking from my slumber!

2011-11-08T13:17:00.002Z

It's about a year and a half since I last blogged. I stopped because the things that really wound me up (Labour in power) had changed, and I was hopeful for change.

I'm beginning to feel as pissed off as I did when I blogged before. Not necessarily about things like the "cuts" the coalition are making, because I genuinely believe it is needed. In fact the cuts are not enough, and real dead wood in the public sector should be more vigorously pruned. Most of my ire now is directed towards the EU, and I want to say more about that among other things over coming days and weeks.

I'm tired of the lie that is Europe, and the concealment of the true aim of a federal Europe with the destruction of the sense of nationhood. It's so undemocratic that it's almost hard to believe they're getting away with it.

Brown spotting

2010-06-09T13:07:00.004+01:00

I know I've been quiet lately - just had many other things to do, and I'm much less exercised politically right now.

I was lovvely to hear that nice Liam Byrne on the radio yesterday, smarming his oily scaremongering criticisms of the new government's cuts agenda.

What struck me, though, was his response when asked if he'd had any contact with Gordon Brown. He said that Gordon was having a well earned break. We haven't seen anything of him at all, have we?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did he not decide to stay on as an MP? Has he not got a constituency to represent? And - I assume, he's being paid an MP's salary?

Is it just me, or does this seem just another sign of his contempt for us all? Nice to get paid for not doing anything, eh?

A new dawn?

2010-05-13T08:27:00.003+01:00

I thought I'd better not leave my blog with the last post still talking about the dark days!

So we have a new and rather unexpected government. While they were negotiating, and especially at the time when the prospect of that ridiculous "rainbow alliance" was not out of the question, I still felt very deflated and depressed at the failure of Cam to gain an overall majority.

Since the deal was sealed, and especially after the cabinet was named and after that extraordinary press conference in the no 10 garden, I feel a sense of real optimism. Look at the stark difference in the feel of that press conference and the spirit of the leaders with the last administration.

To see people with a real passion for their subject, who have worked with enthusiasm that almost fizzes, like Gove and IDS to get the opportunity at last to actually DO something is really exciting. Cameron was brave in some of his appointments, and he deserves credit. Clarke in Justice is a great idea too. It wouldn't have been surprising for Ken to decide to take an easy life, but for him to accept the job says so much about this new team.

Go for it, boys. Make us proud of you. We, in the blogosphere will be watching, though!

The PR debate nonsense......

2010-05-08T13:13:00.003+01:00

Recently, and especially in the aftermath of the election, there's been a great deal of discussion and righteous posturing about proportional representation.

I can't say I've ever been that much of a fan - sure, the FPTP system with the current make-up of the constituencies and distribution of voters creates a result that renders a population of MPs that doesn't match the proportion of votes. Maybe that isn't fair, but hey, life isn't fair. I'm not even really convinced that it's necessarily desirable to offer an elected postion to someone who represents beliefs shared by 0.15% of the electorate, which is the logical extension of the PR argument - unless it's not really about PR, but about pandering to the LibDems.

Theres a real issue about the link between voting and identifying your elected representative too, I think.

But the current manoeverings within the hung parliament has really got me thinking. The negotiations, held in private, with all the dealing and horse trading and brinksmanship - this isn't good, is it? This isn't really open democracy.

And under PR, we'd never have another majority government, so this would be the norm. Is that what we want?

So. Debating, holding a referendum on PR is missing the point by a huge margin. It's not the voting system that needs to be reviewed. It's the wider political system - how government is constituted, how it operates, the very values it seeks to stand for.

People point to other countries as proof that hung parliaments or coalitions can work. Well fine. But they aren't the UK government. I'm no expert on foreign parliamentary mechanics, but I bet there are fundamental cultural and structural differences that mean it's much more practical to work in those places.

Just focussing on FPTP vs STV or PR is dangerously missing the point, it seems to me. That should be the final, minor part of changing the political system.

If that's what we want of course.

To me, for all its flaws, it seems to me that the current system isn't that bad.

There are more important things that all that intellectual energy and time would be better employed at.

Like fixing the economy.

And working out why so many people have demonstrated how tribal, bigoted, closed-minded and generally stupid they are. By voting Labour.

One observation on immigration/movement from the EU....

2010-04-29T14:05:00.002+01:00

For what it's worth, prompted by Derbyshire's programme on R5L this morning, a thought about inward immigration from the EU.

The argument, reiterated by Brown to Gillian Duffy yesterday, is that there is equal opportunity for Brits to go to other EU coiuntries to work, and that therefore the economic effect is at least neutral, and probably beneficial.

A Polish woman was interviewed. She had a Masters degree, but admitted that she was financially better off coming here to work in a factory than to work in Poland. Later, when asked about the effect she thought that Poles coming to work here was, she said that British people could (and she asserted, did) go and work in Poland. However, clearly, from her evidence, they would be going to work for lower wages that they could get here. So why would they?

I have nothing intrinsically against movement of people around the world or within the EU, but I would like there to be more openness and truthfulness about the effect of it. It seems obvious to me that if there is a source of workers available who are prepared, even eager, to work for lower wages than would otherwise pertain, it will inevitably produce a downward pressure on wages. I suspect that is in some way an intentional effect of the EU.

Anecdotally, from my experience, it does seem that salaries available from jobs now are relatively much lower than perhaps ten years or so ago. Life is much harder, and was even before the recession.

Try this for size - child care and unemployment

2010-04-26T10:34:00.002+01:00

I've been musing, but haven't bothered yet to try some sums on it.

Listening to the R5L phone in this morning, it struck me that quite a number of people blame child care issues for not being able to take available jobs.

This goes against the grain a bit as far as feelings about the public sector goes, but.....

why not put public funding into child care centres and support, and take away that excuse?

Costs:
Wages for the childcare staff
Infrastructure costs

Gains:
Less paid out in benefits for out of work mothers
Possible taxes collected from the now in work mothers
Jobs created for the childcare staff

Seems to me that the ratio of childcare staff to children would be less than 1:1, so the net effect would more unemployed back to work than childcare staff funded.

Well?

Pat on the election

2010-04-25T17:42:00.002+01:00

More from the indomitable Pat Condell - take a look first....

Now, much of what he says chimes with my own feelings. However, I can't quite agree that individuals really are going to make a difference en-masse, by voting small or independant. You just know that if you do that, enough other people, especially Labour voters, will carry on as before, and we'll end up with Brown back.

I have to believe that Cameron will keep his word, and at the very least, avoid further expatriation of power to the EU and hold referenda on anything along those lines. Hopefully, there will be some repatriation.

Apart from our domestic issues - economy etc., Europe scares me. I don't want to lose my national identity.

Excellent exposure of Brown's deceit!

2010-04-21T18:33:00.001+01:00

I won't say much about this immediately, but wanted to link to this publication as soon as I could. It's a pity this won't get the exposure it deserves!

Another example of a Labour double-whammy.....

2010-04-15T15:31:00.002+01:00

Apropos of nothing in particular, I offer another post of a little thing I'd like to get off my chest. I was driving back from the supermarket, musing on things I'd read and heard today, and this in particular bugged me as another example of something most people wouldn't think twice about, what with the way people have been turned into unthinking, uncritical sheep by this government.

Do read it, and especially hop down to the comment from nannyknowsbest.

Think about it, and join me in fuming about it. Business is being held back or even destroyed by red tape and stupid or stupidly applied legislation. So the recovery is held back even more. PLUS, to implement these stupid bits of legislation and rules, countless non-jobs, filled by talentless state-dependant jobsworths are created and maintained.

It's just bloody wrong! Labour, begone - and Dave, you'd better deliver!

Cameron's Big Idea/Big Society

2010-04-05T09:32:00.002+01:00

Now, cut me some slack, and don't jump on me in a shouty ranty way. I'm opening up and telling my thoughts, which I imagine many people will label as naive.

I've read many blog posts which are scathing and dismissive about what has been reported concerning David Cameron's "Big Idea". The things he's said, and some of the language he's used have been caricatured and sneered at.

Now, I know that in many ways it's become the role of the blogosphere to keep our politicians in check by being critical and challenging what we are expected to do by many of those politicians, which is to believe whatever we're told, even when it's blatently untrue.

But.

I've written, albeit sparsely, about the despair I feel for the state of our country, and especially the fact that after 13 years of this evil Labour government so many of our children, youth, and young adults don't remember and haven't experienced a different way. In many senses, they have been effectively indoctrinated, brainwashed.

Let's get real. The only outcomes for the coming election are a Labour win (in which case show me the door out of the UK), a Conservative win, or a hung parliament. In the case of a hung parliament, it won't deliver a more consultative, consensual and sensible government, it will just create a period of stasis for a few months until a new election, in which case return to go, do not pass go, do not collect £200. Does anybody really believe otherwise?

So it's Labour or the Tories. And back to the "Big Idea"

I read all about it, and I felt encouraged, even a little excited. I can see what bloggers are suggesting when they lampoon the "Big Bank" (or was it "Peoples' Bank"?) and the suggestion for voluntary "National Service" and many of the other ideas that have been given unfortunate names, making them sound a bit like loony sandal-footed hippy schemes.

But cut him some slack, please, and open your mind and look at the intention behind the ideas. He's said he wants a small state, which I believe, so it's not really fair to accuse him of simply creating more Quangos. Sure, there may be some new structures set up to implement the new ideas, but if that's in the context of massive reductions in government elsewhere, I'm happy with that.

And the rest of it - surely it's about trying to make the country (and dare I say, society) better again - encouraging individual responsibility, respect, freedom and independance? Isn't that what everybody has ben banging on about in blogs all these months and years?

I want him to make this happen, and I want the country made a better place. He's got my support - not unquestioningly or uncritically, but I want him to win, and I want him to be the person I hope he is, and to do the things I hope he'll do. Personally, I want to encourage him in the right direction, and not spray my despair and anger indiscriminately at all politicians and parties, especially if that aids Labour even marginally in their desperate attempts to get back in.

Go ahead - flame me, call me stupid and naive. But I've said it and I meant it.

HELP! Am I missing something, or what?

2010-03-24T15:28:00.003Z

I've been pondering this for weeks, and I feel like I must be missing something blindingly obvious - and fear looking stupid.

But.

This business about public spending being used to stimulate the economy. Somehow it makes no sense to me. Seems to me it's a closed system - the money to perform that public spending comes from taxes and borrowing, so surely it can't create growth?

If anything, it makes things worse, because a lot of that spending will be on Gordon's HMG AmEx.

Enlighten me, someone?

Goodbye Harry

2010-03-22T16:04:00.001Z

Harry Carpenter is dead.

It's a really sad day. I'm listening to heartfelt tributes to the lovely man on the radio right now. It's a voice that brings up so many memories, of listening to his commentary on some great fights.

I'm the first in my family for many generations that didn't pursue a career in boxing. My dad told me once, that when Harry Carpenter got the boxing commentary job he didn't know anything about boxing. He went to my grandfather (who was a boxer, and also trained the British Olympic team for the Rome Olympics) and asked him to brief him on punches and rules.

RIP, Harry, you're fondly remembered.

8.16 million unemployed in the UK!

2010-03-17T11:52:00.001Z

From Ollie - http://tinyurl.com/yeco54f

Byrne squirms

2010-03-16T08:48:00.002Z

Interesting. On the Daily Politics last week, Liam Byrne said quite clearly, and was pressed to confirm what he said by Brillo, that because the (current) government had such a great and well defined plan for the defecit reduction, no tax rises beyond those already announced would be necessary. When asked to confirm that, he said "yep" in his slimy way.

Just now, on Fivelive, he was asked the same question (and Sheila Fogherty is a presenter on both shows) he refused to be so bullish.

Got at, or what?

Brown on the Politics Show - gotcha!

2010-03-15T09:06:00.002Z

If anyone who happens to see this post hasn't seen the Politics Show from 14th March, with Gordon Brown in an open session with a studio of a good cross section of Midlands people, I urge you to find it on iPlayer (parts are on youtube now too, I see).

He was ruthlessly exposed as having no substance behind all the rhetoric he spouts, trying to persuade people that because of his investment, new jobs were coming in "low carbon manufacturing" and the digital technology field, and in things like electric cars (ref Jag Landrover etc) because of the research being done. It showed starkly that this is all jargon and spin.

WTF is "low carbon manufacturing", and how is this going to replace all the thousands of manufacturing jobs lost to China etc?

It was a largely articulate audience, who exposed many lies (a clinical psychologist spelt out how targets are falsely met, and how red tape is grinding them down).

This should be compulsorary reading for everyone!

Eggs....

2010-03-12T11:59:00.002Z

A little off topic....

Something very strange has happened today. We keep chickens in our garden. Today I've collected six eggs.

We only have four hens! That's never happened before.

Prime Minister's Questions is an utter disgrace and insult to the country

2010-02-24T12:34:00.002Z

I've just suffered watching PMQs, and I wonder if you, like me, think it has sunk to a disgraceful, contemptible low?

Brown had the temerity to accuse a tory backbencher of asking a planted question! FFS, almost ALL the questions from labour MPs were blatently planted, and just lead-in lines for Brown to attempt a punchline and tory putdown.

Something desperately needs to change.

Also, surely Brown told a number of lies today when asked direct questions, particularly about the briefings against Darling. I wish someone could produce some proof, and show him to be dishonest.

The business about the failed hospital was awful, too - he simply ALWAYS blames someone else. Surely it's clear where the buck really stops - at his desk.

Grrrrr!

Unemployment, job centres and stuff

2010-02-17T16:30:00.003Z

It's too long since I blogged! Things I've been listening to today, and thoughts prompted by them, make me want to give forth a ramble, though.

The latest unemployment figures came out today, and there was of course the usual spin and lies that are rolled out to try to convince (unfortunately successfully too often) people that things are getting better. I've blogged before how the statisitics really lie, and that many people classed as "in work" are actually doing part time work where they want full time, or in a position much worse than their last job.

Also, on Fivelive, there was an interesting phone-in on the subject. Many people were criticising both the lack of help from jobcentres and the lack of ability or knowledge of their staff to help. Several people were told that they should "dumb-down" their CV in order not to frighten off potential employers - presumably because the positions they were being encouraged to apply for were seriously below their ability and experience.

I'm seriously pissed off at the strong feeling that we, the electorate, the controlled masses, are lied to, but also that the truth of the situation isn't even aired or articulated.

Surely, the truth is not, as the debate frequently rages about, that either the jobcentres aren't fulfilling their role, and/or that the government isn't doing enough to help people into jobs.

The truth is, there simply aren't the jobs there at all, or at least not the quality of jobs that there once were.

Our standard of living, and quality of life is being dramatically eroded.

We need steps to build new businesses, and to help the competitiveness of business generally in this country. We need to be selfish in a global, and especially european way, so that we can look after ourselves and our own, and restore some of what we once had.

I wish I could articulate these feelings more clearly. I feel rather pessimistic about the future.

Bully boy Balls on 5 live drive

2009-12-10T11:16:00.002Z

Did anybody else hear Peter Allen trying to interview Ed Balls yesterday evening on Radio 5? (Here, starting about 2:07 in).

It's the worst I've heard him. He was bullying, repugnant, rude to Allen. He accused his interviewer of failing to do the BBC's duty to "impartially" stress the blatent electioneering of what he was saying, and that it was wrong to question what he said, and what Darling said in the PBR, even to challenge him. He's an evil, wicked bastard. Listen to it if you can.

I'd like to say it's unbelievable, but it's not.

BBC bias - unbelievable!

2009-12-07T21:22:00.002Z

I still find it hard to believe that the BBC are so badly biassed.

When I heard them discussing the "hacked" emails, and asking what the Russian connection might be, after so many days history of this episode, I couldn't help but shout at my poor radio.

You know they were not hacked, they were leaked.

You know the only Russian connection was that the leaker first tried to leave the data on a Russina hosted FTP server.

And, above all, you know it's not just a few emails. It's data, models and so much more.

Why lie to our people so blatently, so you entirely discredit yourself?

A call to action - climategate

2009-12-06T21:29:00.003Z

This article is so distorted and deceitful and outright lying that it needs to be refuted and placed in the gutter.

Please, sieze on it and bury it. I'm horrified at how something like this can be published somewhere like the Times. It's such a heap of lies and bile and deceit. They should be ashamed.

Come on, please sort this out!

Bankers' bonuses - a small thought.

2009-12-04T10:28:00.001Z

I listened to the phone-in on fivelive this morning on this subject, and find myself torn as to what the sense of the situation really is. I can very well understand those people (like me, and most others, I think) who struggle to keep afloat and simply feel aghast at the obscene amounts given in bonuses to "bankers".

One argument, though, seems on the face of it to be entirely false. Some say that it's good for the treasury, because income tax is paid on the bonus. Surely, if the bonus wasn't paid, it would increase the bank's profits and therefore incur extra corporation tax? The profit after tax would be available to add to the bailout repayments too.

Have I got that wrong?

Climategate intensified

2009-11-30T23:02:00.002Z

Oh, wonderful.

Just look at this!

Those poor people at East Anglia didn't have the capacity to store all the raw data they used to predict doomsday!

They had to delete it, poor lambs.

It's time for this nonsense to end, don't you think? There can be no defence of the crap at all now.

What will it take to kill this monster?

2009-11-27T22:13:00.002Z

With full credits to Pedant-General over at Devil's Kitchen......

CRUdGate - Why this can't be swept under the carpet

Posted by The Pedant-General at 11/27/2009 08:36:00 AM

(NB, It's me, the P-G)

As others have commented, ad nauseam, the response from the proponents of AGW essentially boils down to the following main components:

The mail (often there is only one, not several thousand threads of multiple mails and it's usually only mail, rather mail, code, data and commentary) was hacked and that's frightfully naughty. Aren't hackers nasty? Particularly when they are Russian.

This does not merit any response beyond laughter.

The science is peer reviewed and it withstood that process.

Still an appeal to authority and, more importantly, dealt with damningly here.

This is but one part of the literature, it's only a handful of bad apples and the structure is utterly unchanged even without it.

This is the main charge that our great friend George Monbiot lays out here and that must be tackled. That is what, with your permission, I shall make a hesitant attempt to start the process to do.

Firstly, we must understand how the whole thing hangs together, because the edifice of AGW is very definitely not just pure science, boffins in white coats in labs and so forth. It spans the whole gamut from real pure science, through the applied sciences and Engineering, passing through economics and finally ending up in the dark arts of Politics and Diplomacy. That's a lot to take in, so I have created a handy diagram that explains. Never let it be said that your polymathematic Pedant-General makes you do the hard work.

Let's start at the top, and bear with me.

If the climate and recent changes are not unprecedented, then there's nothing to do. Let's go to the pub.

If it is unprecedented, then we need to know why. If we don't know if it is unprecedented or if we don't know why, we need to stop here until we can find out.
If it is unprecedented but it's not us, then we need to question seriously if there is anything that we can do about it and the answer to that is very very likely to be "no".

If it is us, we then to move into economics. Will the damage outweigh the benefit?

And even if the damage does outweigh the benefit, we still need to consider if the cost of stopping the climate change at source is less than the cost of adapting to the problem to minimise the damage.

And even if the mitigation does cost less than adaptation, we need to ask if our only option for mitigation is to subborn all our freedom to a putative benevolent world government.

Only if you can answer "yes" all the way down that chain can you get to Copenhagen. One misstep and you are looking at adaptation, either because we shouldn’t do anything, or it’s the best thing to do or the alternative is so appallingly ghastly, depending on which route you took to get there.

It is also useful to plot where you and your friends sit on this decision tree:

Whilst I wouldn't wish to claim to speak for our diabolical host, I suspect that he is in the box labelled, if not actually, "in the pub".

Steve McIntyre et al are in the "Find Out" box.

Interestingly, although the "Hockey Team" declare themselves to be at least on the "yes it is caused by man", they appear both to have been buggering about at the bottom in the politics and policy bits and yet the leak makes it clear that actually they are indeed right there in the "Find Out" box with the very chap they hate so much. They really don't actually know. They want to like to think they do, but they know that actually they don't.

Next, we get down to the economics and again, we find that there is a disconnect between stated and actual positions. The blogfather Tim Worstall—whatever his private views—maintains a carefully studied neutrality on the science, erring always on the side of "let's grant that it is correct". But he then falls off the "critical path" at the economics. If it's not clear that the downside of GW (whether "A" or not) are worse than the upside, it's similarly not at all clear that we have to do something (or that what we are already doing is not already enough). More importantly, the worse the climate situation is, the greater the cost of mitigation and the more attractive it is to go for adaptation. This is the oddity with the Stern Report. If his numbers are correct, we're either doing enough for mitigation already or we shouldn't be doing it at all. As the shrieking gets louder, the costs of mitigation inevitably rise and the argument gets stronger AGAINST mitigation.

Finally we get to the politics and the Bjorn Lomborg position. Even if it is all ghastly, there are many more important things to do with our resources. Millions really actually will die from preventable water-borne diseases, malnutrition and malaria and we really actually can do something about those. Buggering about with the climate, although it definitely will be expensive, is desperately uncertain both in terms of its effectiveness and the lives it will save. That's not a good trade off.

Simples.

Except of course it is and it isn't. If you do really accept the heavily-lauded consensus, then the decision tree changes quite a bit. Think about it in first aid terms. If it is the case that the climate is changing in an unprecedented manner and that change is driven predominantly by manmade CO₂ emissions, then we really shouldn't be muddling about with adapting to effects: we should address the cause and that inevitably means finding a way to reduce manmade CO₂ emissions. The problem with this is that everything becomes a bit too clearcut and the diagram now looks like this:

Because there is a skip from the straight science, straight to politics and policy, the science becomes absolutely essential.

As a result, no dissent can be tolerated because the wheels come off very quickly as soon as you have to make your way through the rest of the decision tree.

Suggesting that it's not unprecedented is straight denial and even doubt has to be censored.

But what of George's Knights Carbonic? How can this small number of scientists with "clever mathematical techniques", or "fudge factors" according to taste, affect the whole scientific foundation layer.

Richard North suggests historical parallels, but his analysis does not pull back the curtain, "Wizard of Oz"-style, on the Knights Carbonic.

Permit me to try. Here's how the process works:

Temperatures, CO₂ levels, sun spot numbers et al are gathered currently using all the sophistication that we have today. We have the real measured data but only for a short (and geologically utterly insignificant) period.

Next, we try to see if we can find other things, with a longer history, that might be useful for telling us what those key measurements might have been if we had been there at the time with all our technology to measure them. We need proxies and we need to show that those proxies are a good match with the current data.

Once we have done that, we can then use the proxy data to fill back the history. At this stage, we can also say whether or not we believe the current data to be exceptional even without reading the entrails from the GCMs etc.

Now we can add some light seasoning of the real physics and chemistry that determine how things actually work, thermodynamics, mechanics, spectral absorption of different gasses and the lot.

Finally, we bake all the ingredients together in the models to try and tie all the inputs (CO₂ levels, solar activity, orbital wobbles etc) with the outputs (particularly temperature, but also climate generally, plus sea levels etc). In particular you are trying to identify how the each thing interacts with everything else, given all the control theory horrors of signal delays (introduced by thermal capacity of the oceans that delays temperature rises by the massive amount of energy required to do so) and feedback couplings (that the solvency of CO₂ in water changes with temperature, so the oceans absorb and release CO₂ in response to temperature).

But this is where the game is. If the temperature today is NOT unprecedented, in particular relative to the MWP, then we have a big fat data point that says the unprecedented current level of atmospheric CO₂ probably isn't tremendously relevant to climate. Or rather, there is some other input signal that is just as important that we are overlooking and therefore the impact of CO₂ will be being overstated.

This is not about whether we are warmer than we were 100 years ago. That is undeniable. 30 years ago, almost every Christmas in Scotland was white. Memories of sledging after Christmas lunch cannot be false consciousness. That stopped in about 1980 and has not happened since. The question is whether or not we are warmer than we were when they spoke Norse in Perth. That we are denied post-prandial sledging tells us nothing about that.

This is where CRUdGate is so important. Just look at where CRU and more generally Phil Jones and Michael Mann have - and have had - an influence on the process:

The Harry Read Me file shows just how badly knackered the HadCRUT temperature series really is. HADCRUT is one of a tiny number of recognised ("peer reviewed" even?) global temperature sources. All of them feed off each other and the people implicated in the emails are linked to some of the others. RealClimate's Gavin Schmidt, for example, is a protege of the team, is extensively mentioned in the audit trail of shame and works for NASA's GISS - one of the other of this tiny number of recognised ("peer reviewed" even?) global temperature sources.

So that's goosed the first box.

"Hide the Decline" reveals the fact that the second box doesn't work properly, especially for the tree-ring proxies. Since there is almost no-one of any stripe publishing in the field of paleodendroclimatology (sod the trillions of dollars to be squandered, I want that on a triple word score) who is not very deeply implicated in this leak, it is clear that the failings of this step have been censored.

There is then ample evidence of the attempt to wipe the MWP from the dendro data and we now know that MBH relied on just 12 trees in North America and, when that was challenged, just 1 tree—one lone tree—in Yamal, Siberia.

In any event, the whole paleo data thing is probably onto a hiding to nothing as we can't trust the two steps that got it there. So (I'm being a bit flippant here) any genuine proxy data (ice cores, lake sediments etc) is knackered because it's trying to be matched to goosed temperature data. That's not to say that there aren't pre-existing shenanigans there too though. So even if you haven't actually attempted to censor your failings (and the mails contain plenty of evidence that this has indeed been happening), your results are going to be goosed anyway.

By this stage, you don't have to touch the actual hard science because, since all your input data is garbage, your models are going to be garbage no matter how carefully you understand the basic physics.

Lastly and as a slight aside, why so little from the MSM? That one is easy. You need to have a decent analytical brain just to deal with the chain of events. You need to have a decent analytical brain, a mathematical/scientific mind and a good grasp of some very hard statistics to understand what is being done to massage the numbers and to see how significant it is to the chain of events.

Slice your average environment correspondent through the middle and you're going to find a left-leaning liberal arts graduate who is utterly out of his/her depth. Their world view is being swept from underneath them and they are being shown—in ways that they do not really and have never had to understand—that the guys they thought were the goodies are in fact "at it" and that those they have spent a decade disparaging as deniers were in fact spot on.

I would find that hard to report too.

Tossers

2009-11-26T21:48:00.001Z

http://tinyurl.com/east-cpz

2009-11-23T21:39:00.003Z

Time to act?

2009-11-19T22:07:00.002Z

OH sounds a bit depressed.

It really does seem that it's past time that we do something. What that is, I don't know.

However, this crap has gone far, far beyond sane.

Let's get together and consider where to go.

Stop press - Harriet Harman to be prosecuted!

2009-11-19T18:18:00.002Z

So the CPS has done a good thing and decided that HH should be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention, driving while using her mobile, and failing to stop at the scene of an accident!

Should be fun :)

Help for the unemployed and jobseekers? Maybe not.

2009-11-19T13:48:00.002Z

My partners' daughter is bright, optimistic and motivated. Mind you, that's potentially in the process of suffering some damage. Not the bright bit, though.

She achieved a degree in Mechanical Engineering two years ago, worked for a year, then decided a masters degree would help he career. She's just passed that, and has been looking round, bright-eyed and eager, for her next job.

Trouble is, there aren't any.

Today, she went to the jobcentre in a certain amount of desperation, to register a claim and seek assistance in finding a job.

Because she shares a flat with her boyfriend, she's not entitled, it seems, to anything..... no benefits of any kind, and not even an interview to help find a job. They just basically told her she was on her own, and to go away.

She's hit a reality check hard. Prior to this, she basically believed in the integrity of government, the state. Like so many of her generation. So many to be disillusioned.

I'd like to see Brown explain and justify his policies to people like her, one to one. Because he's doing so much for the unemployed, isn't he?

A grand deceit

2009-11-18T20:22:00.005Z

I'm stupid.

I lost sight of this.

What proportion of the population doesn't understand the difference between "defecit" and "debt"?

I'd wager it's frighteningly close to 100%.

So, to put it simply, the defecit is the gap between income and spending.

Aaaaand...... that means that Labour have just promised to legislate that our national debt will be slowed down from growing at £200 billion a year now to £100 billion a year in four years time.

Wonderful. Thank you Gordon, you liar, you deceiver, you hate figure, you selfish, freedom hating scum. As time goes on, I realise I'm coming to hate you with a burning passion I've never experienced before. You've subverted our country by your misrepresentation and "clever" manipulation. You drone on and on with your preprepared misinformation speeches.

I want you gone. I want the average person to see what you've done and you're doing.

This socialist, statist government is finally showing its true colours. The things that New Labour tried to hide.

Just bugger off.

A sobering and frightening read....

2009-11-15T11:40:00.002Z

I commend you to read Anna Raccoon's article over at OH's place on the Court of Protection.

If anything highlights the evil immoral, and in any other circumstances, surely illegal nature of state control gone mad, this does. I find it hard to understand how it has been allowed to continue without total public outcry.

Much power to Anna in her determined campaign to shine some light on this abomination.

Apologies?

2009-11-15T11:13:00.002Z

So, as I heard on the radio this morning, Gordon Brown is going to apologise for the UK's role in sending thousands of children to the colonies, where many were abused.

Another apology from Brown the clown for something he wasn't actually responsible for. Call me thick, if you want, but how can he possibly apologise and it mean anything? It's stupid and meaningless, illogical. Decry and condemn the actions, by all means. Say it was wrong and never should have happened. Express sympathy to the parents and children affected. But apologise?

He's free enough with these meaningless apologies, isn't he? But as John Redwood points out, there are lots of things we'd really like to hear an apology for!

A stranger in my own land

2009-11-11T17:16:00.002Z

I posted the other day on my negative feelings about the way things are.

Seriously, I feel absolutely appalled at how the country has changed in the last decade or so, and shocked and guilty that it's really only very recently that I've noticed.

Reading stories like this, this, this, this, this, the Neather stuff (and the subsequent Home Office leak confirming it), the barefaced lies and deceit spewed by most labour politicians, and the general decline in the standard of living and quality of life, while the politicians live the life of Reilly and get away with murder, I just feel like curling up and giving in.

This honestly is not the country I grew up in. And the coming adult generation won't know how things were. They've grown up, been indoctrinated by the government on things like climate change, and most of them can't see what's wrong with all the impostions and intrusions and limitations and control on our lives.

As I see it, there is a limited window of opportunity to restore the balance, to roll back the iniquities and corruption of democracy that labour have wrought, before the sheep overwhelm those that can think and see and fight for what is right. Like it or not, the next government will almost certainly be a Tory one. Regardless of what many bloggers say about the Tories delivering just more of the same, I believe that Cameron has enough of the right instincts to want to do enough of the right things to restore some sanity to our lives. I think we need to support them, but hold them accountable - they can have my vote, but I insist on them making lots of changes - unpicking all the rubbish legislation and giving us our independance and privacy back.

Right now, I feel like an outsider in this country and this society. I hate what has been done to it, and those who did it, with a burning, incandescant rage. I despise Brown, and Blair before him, and all this government for the astronomical deceit and arrogant, self-indulgent underhand planned infiltration and undermining and corruption that they fooled the country with. I earnestly believe they should be charged with treason.

Keep things like this alive!

2009-11-09T20:21:00.004Z

I quote verbatim from OH, and I do my little bit to stop important sentiment from being cleansed from the Interweb.

Monday, 9 November 2009

Mandelson censors Jeremy Clarkson

I spotted this earlier by Jeremy Clarkson in the Times. Great article

Jeremy Clarkson
Sunday Times

I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I’m afraid I’ve decided that it’s no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I’m afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn’t alive any more.
He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country’s top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon the conniving idiot has leapt

I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn’t bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he’s resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.

There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can’t see the point because she won’t be going to university, because she doesn’t have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don’t live in America.

Then you have the chaps and chapesses who can’t stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They can’t understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nation’s capital. They can’t understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They can’t understand anything. They see the Highway Wombles in those brand new 4x4s that they paid for, and they see the M4 bus lane and they see the speed cameras and the community support officers and they see the Albanians stealing their wheelbarrows and nothing can be done because it’s racist.

And they see Alistair Darling handing over £4,350 of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesn’t understand because he’s a small-town solicitor, and they see the stupid war on drugs and the war on drink and the war on smoking and the war on hunting and the war on fun and the war on scientists and the obsession with the climate and the price of train fares soaring past £1,000 and the Guardian power-brokers getting uppity about one shot baboon and not uppity at all about all the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, and how they got rid of Blair only to find the lying twerp is now going to come back even more powerful than ever, and they think, “I’ve had enough of this. I’m off.”

It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?

You can’t go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can’t go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don’t sweep your lawn properly, and you can’t go to Italy because you’ll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse’s head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for “organising” a plumber.

You can’t go to Australia because it’s full of things that will eat you, you can’t go to New Zealand because they don’t accept anyone who is more than 40 and you can’t go to Monte Carlo because they don’t accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you can’t go to Spain because you’re not called Del and you weren’t involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you can’t go to Germany ... because you just can’t.

The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you’ll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it’s okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can’t go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.

Canada’s full of people pretending to be French, South Africa’s too risky, Russia’s worse and everywhere else is too full of snow, too full of flies or too full of people who want to cut your head off on the internet. So you can dream all you like about upping sticks and moving to a country that doesn’t help itself to half of everything you earn and then spend the money it gets on bus lanes and advertisements about the dangers of salt. But wherever you go you’ll wind up an alcoholic or dead or bored or in a cellar, in an orange jumpsuit, gently wetting yourself on the web. All of these things are worse than being persecuted for eating a sandwich at the wheel.

I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it’s been for decades, but the lunatics who’ve made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.

So actually I do see a reason to be miserable. Which is why I think it’s a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit. onto in the meantime.

Guess what? It's gone

Red Rag to a Bull, I say.

Ha! But the article is still being advertised in the Times comment banner!

Update: Well, that's a good story spoiled..... it's on the Times website again!

Tired, confused, sad and pessimistic

2009-11-07T20:30:00.003Z

Today, I feel mostly despair.

I've watched all that's gone on over the last few years with anger and disappointment.

Recently, it's got so much worse. Especially the intrusions into how we lead our lives; our liberties and our freedom to act, harmlessly, as we want.

The thing that really makes me despair is a result, as I've blogged earlier, of the fact that our children have seen no different. When I say our children, I mean those capable of coherent and logical thought, of course. With some kind of values. Not the wild animals that the underclass has graced us with.

I'm seeing more and more, people that have no sense of a value of our nationality. No sense of suspicion of the motives behind european politicians. No realisation that our freedom and our rights are being washed away. No hesitation in saying "yes, lets surrender our freedom to the EU project". They have no sense of vested interests...... see Kinnock, and what he earned and earns through the EU, and so many besides. The naivety terrifies me.

Look at the comments on any news item. How dissenting voices are shouted down.

What can we do? Please.

Afghanistan

2009-11-06T10:42:00.004Z

After listening to Brown drone on this morning, a few things occur to me.

I'm fully behind our troops, and I think it's unhelpful, to say the least, when people try to connect any criticism or questioning of policy or tasking of the forces with lack of support for them.

It increasingly seems to me that we're chasing an impossible outcome, and losing lives in the process, if we follow the route of trying to achieve a corruption free, western style democracy in Afghanistan. "Corruption" is seen as the norm there, and accepted by the Afghans. They are a tribal society. It's been that way for centuries.

All we really need to see happen, is for a stable society/government to settle down there. If it's tribal, regionalised, and doesn't conform to our notion of morality, we should let them have that, as long as there's a framework in place to ensure it works. Why should we impose our notion of how a society should look on them?

Did anyone notice, too, how Brown played his old trick of dumping responsibility onto others? It's up to Karzai and the Afghan government to make all this work. And - he said, if I recall properly, that if they fail, they will not be deserving of outside help. Can you believe that? What happens then, Brown? You said we're there to protect ourselves - to stop terrorist attacks on our streets. Are you really going to say after the next bombing "it's not my fault, it's Karzai's!".

The final thought, that sent a shudder through me, was that Brown can say whatever he wants. He knows he doesn't have to deliver, only has to hang on for six months. Then it's someone else's problem.

Oh, god - just look at this!

2009-11-05T19:48:00.001Z

This QE business looks like it's just making things worse. The article at CH shows that the billions injected into the economy is essentially just IOUs for the government debt. It's not going to help the economy at all.

Please, let's get this government out and have a fresh start!

Lord Sugar of TackyAmstradville - what a prat!

2009-11-04T21:29:00.001Z

See.

Very constructive. Can we disenoble people? Why was he made a Lord, other than by a Tourettes jerk by Brown?

Ridiculous.

A conflict of interests?

2009-11-04T10:57:00.002Z

Actually, it rather demonstrates a purpose to the madness.

Al Gore is set to become the first carbon billionaire. I'm beginning to be more persuaded by the huge commercial and political interests involved than by the science that AGW is a major hoax and manipulation of society. It truly is a religion now.

What do you think?

Please pass this on!

2009-11-01T17:23:00.002Z

This is the first good article in the mainstream press I've seen since the original item, revealing how Labour maliciously and willfully encouraged mass immigration. I really, really want everyone in this country to know about this and understand how outrageous and criminally thay have behaved.

Getting angrier and angrier.....

Megrahi - an update at last!

2009-11-01T12:25:00.002Z

I've been wondering about the health of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, who was released on "compassionate" grounds, due to experts having assessed that he had three months to live.

The Telegraph carries a story today. It seems that his health has not significantly deteriorated.

Surprise, surprise.

What kicked me in the face, though, was who the "experts" who gave the diagnosis were. Now, bear in mind that the figure of three months is critical, as that is what is required to meet the guidelines for compassionate release.

Expert #1

Within three weeks of the medical examination by Professor Karol Sikora, one of Britain's leading cancer specialists, Megrahi was put on a plane and sent home to Tripoli to die.

Well, that sounds good..... but read on....

Prof Sikora, who is the medical director of CancerPartnersUK in London, was one of three doctors who visited Megrahi in jail on July 28.

He was paid a one-day consultancy fee by the Libyan government to draw up a report delivered two days later. In an interview in September not long after Megrahi's release, Prof Sikora said he was initially "pessimistic" that the experts could say he would survive any less than a year.

But Prof Sikora admitted that the Libyans had encouraged him to conclude that Megrahi had just three months to live following his examination.

"The figure of three months was suggested as being helpful [by the Libyans]," he said. "To start with I said it was impossible to do that but, when I looked at it, it looked as though it could be done – you could actually say that."

Smelly? Who were the other two experts?

While one of the doctors in the team was apparently 'more vague' about putting a limit on Megrahi's life expectancy, a third doctor, Professor Ibrahim Sharif, a Libyan oncologist from the Tripoli Medical Centre, agreed Megrahi had 'about three months'.

I don't recall these sort of details being aired at the time, do you? An interesting quote from another, "real world doctor"....

Prof Nick James, professor of clinical oncology at the University of Birmingham, said: "I would not be surprised if Megrahi was still here well into next year. For sure it could be right his condition has not deteriorated."

What a stitch up. Given all the other things we've learned recently, I withdraw the benefit of the doubt to anything the government says. Even more than I did before.

Wow.....anger!!!

2009-10-30T10:01:00.002Z

There really does seem to be a growing groundswell of anger, real anger at what New Labour have done to this country.

Take a look at this item over at CH - and especially the comments. I don't remember such a huge response before, and I can't spot a dissenting voice there. It really is time that action was taken to repair our society.

Spiralling down the plughole

2009-10-28T09:01:00.002Z

..this government, at least.

It occurred to me this morning that the confluence of news stories often reveal so much more than the individual items.

Yesterday, one of the main news pieces told of the fact that in the years since 2001, the number of middle-aged first offenders in the criminal justice system has increased by almost 50%. Bad enough, and hardly surprising, given the petty and vindictive nature of many new laws and regulations this shower have introduced.

Then there was the other story, first aired a month ago, but which is now in force, about changes to the legal system such that motorists and many others who win their case in court will still have to pay the majority of court and legal costs. Again, looked at in isolation, it's bad enough, and seems grossly unfair.

Today, I heard on the radio news (I can't find an online link for this yet) that large numbers of serious offenders are being let off with a "slap on the wrist" or a caution, due to resource issues.

Often, these stories can seem to be contradictory.

Look at them all together..... and it seems to me that this government cannot afford to continue with the policies they've burdened us with. They've run out of money.

A minor example, perhaps, but it seemed interesting to me.

Tee hee!

2009-10-24T11:45:00.001+01:00

Look here - especially at the vote results.

Stop Press......New Labour succeed in their plan to destroy Britain

2009-10-24T10:57:00.003+01:00

I'm normally scathing of conspiracy theorists. However, observation of the mess we're in, and two recent posts - one at both OH and DK, discussing how immigration policy has been blatently and recklessly directed at achieving a leftie political agenda, and delibreately to "rub the right's nose in diversity", and the other, again at DK, discussing how they planned to change the consitutional working of the country irreversibly.

It just all adds up too neatly and plausibly. I feel shocked at the irresponsibility of the "New Labour Project" playing deadly games with our country an our culture for the sake of their twisted student political games. If this is true, it surely adds up to a series of criminal acts - treason, even.

Though I'm sure the legislative system or other mechanisms have been carefully sabotaged to protect them.

Depressing, eh?

Addendum: An original article is worth reading. It's scary, and tells me that "something must be done". But what?

It's Pat again!

2009-10-23T10:47:00.001+01:00

Immigration matters

2009-10-22T18:43:00.002+01:00

It does.

On the day that Nick Griffin will be on QT, there is a lot of disturbing information that lends credibility to his odious party.

Like.... I was gobsmacked to learn that the number of immigrants in the UK has almost doubled in the last 12 years. I mean.... we had kind of nice immigration since the 50's 60's, when people came from the Caribbean and then the Ugandan asians, and then more...

I know that they often were treated badly, and some parts of our society were disgustingly bad in their attitudes and actions. But it worked, in its way.

But you do have to say, it seems to be in danger of getting out of hand. The projections of the growth in our population in the near future, likely to be fuelled purely by immigration causes me concern.

While the main parties don't pick this up and deal with it, people like the BNP will be given undeserved legimacy. I was surprised to see a joint press article by Frank Field and Nicholas Soames on this subject today.

It's an issue, it really is.

Here, look here...... vote no!

2009-10-22T18:41:00.001+01:00

Rab says stand up for common sense!

Where's DK gone?

2009-10-21T16:16:00.004+01:00

The blog of Devil's Kitchen has gone! Have they caught up with him?

Addendum: seems it was tecchie messiness, not assassination!

Targets, SLAs and Tractor Stats

2009-10-20T10:28:00.003+01:00

There was an interesting phone-in on fivelive this morning, about the target "culture". It was prompted by news items on how prison inspections were innefective because the prisons prepare for them by transferring problem prisoners, and other tactics (two senior prison managers have been suspended for this trick).

It quickly spread to school and hospital inspections and targets in general. There were many callers able to give examples of how being measured solely by targets is entirely counterproductive. A number of NHS trusts, for example, employ managers in A&E to ensure targets are met, where the money could have been used for more medical staff to actually make a difference. People are admitted to hospital, using a bed, rather than break the 4 hour limit, where the reason for the delay can be entirely reasonable, and for clinical reasons.

A teacher described how he left the profession because he was so burdened by meeting all the requirements pushed down from the government that he couldn't plan his lessons in the way he knew was really beneficial to the students.

They just don't work for the benfit of the consumer.

And then, like a flash bulb going off, I saw the analogy - or well, an example where I know they don't work.

I worked in and around IT services - from both sides - providing services and receiving them from a service provider.

SLAs - Service Level Agreements. Targets. Key performance indicators. Don't work. Well, at least very rarely.

You see, when two parties contract, one to purchase, and one to provide a service, and the quality of that service is quantified by numbers, and the meeting of those figures determines payment, or compliance with the contract (and compliance or non-compliance has a critical effect on managers and staff within the service provider), the focus is on the figures. It's incredibly hard to get numbers to really determine the quality of a service accurately and fully.

The service provider's first priority is to meet the targets, by hook, or very often, by crook. It means things that can really make a difference, but provide little benefit to the provider, suffer, get put on the back burner.

Targets allow those responsible for providing a service, and those responsible for procuring a service, to look squeaky clean and great at their jobs. While reality can be very very different.

Performance measurement has a very important place in this arena, but theyshould be used intelligently, and as a guide to where improvements can be made. They should be used flexibly and co-operatively, to ensure a finite resource is used to best effect.

It's stating the bleeding obvious, but this government is not interested in taking responsibility. Targets aren't to make services better, but for them to be able to raise their hands and claim it isn't their fault.

This government and legislation

2009-10-19T14:45:00.002+01:00

One of the things to really get me steamed up lately is the way this useless government uses legislation as another way of avoiding responsibility.

Have you noticed how they never take responsibility themselves for anything? If there is inadequate performance in the NHS, it's failing trusts that are responsible, and have been told to "improve, or else". Schools must improve, or else. It's never the government's fault. Never.

It's the reason for most of the legislation. They think they can demonstrate that they have addressed issues simply by forcing a new piece of law through parliament. All this nonsense that is the ISA - all of it poorly drafted, and hurriedly pushed through.

A few years ago, when I worked in industry, I was part of an "expert group" helping to advise the DTI (as was) team who were responsible for the detail of a new bill, which had technology implications quite fundamental to the way industry works, and which would put new, very serious requirements on industry which if breached, could (and have) result in multi-million pound fines, and even jail sentences. The DTI "team", which numbered three at most, had no experience in the field in which the act would operate, and failed to address the real issues adequately. In the end, the act was passed with serious vagueness about exactly what was required in order to comply. There was a danger that people could get in serious trouble through different interpretations of the provisions. In the end, as far as I can see, essentially lip service is being paid to compliance, and the real intent of parts of the act has never really been dealt with.

How many other pieces of legislation are like that, I wonder? At the very least, a great waste of time and money, and a cluttering up of the legislative system

And then, today, I heard Peter Hain on radio, telling us that Nick Griffin shouldn't be allowed on Question Time this week because the BNP is "an illegal organisation" - by which he meant that they were not legally constituted, as ruled recently. Jack Straw said the same thing on QT last week. Idiots. It's a sad day when people run out of real cases to argue and result to that kind of attitude. I've no time for the BNP, but censorship, and that's all it would be, is entirely the wrong way to deal with them. Where would it end?

And then - such irony - you hear MPs (unfortunately on all sides) claiming that the Legg letters are against the law. Idiots, idiots, idiots! Are they really that far out of touch that they don't realise that whether it's against the law or not is not the point (though as so many others have pointed out, it can't be against the law, since the expenses rules said any claims had to be for costs incurred solely for the purpose of fulfilling their MP duties).

Bottom line, for me, is that the law sets a framework, and is mainly a safety net, a last resort. People should do their jobs, behave decently, give and earn respect. Individual responsibility and accountability.

\endramblerant

Government brainwashing of children

2009-10-17T12:29:00.004+01:00

I've mentioned before, I think, how I think it's dangerous, malicious and devious to manipulate the belief system of children through the national curriculum.

A few days ago, Prodicus made me aware of even worse offences like this by them. He's passed on a request for people to sign this petition in protest.

If anyone's reading this, please take a minute or two to sign the petition.

Case proved

2009-10-17T11:44:00.000+01:00

Idiots.

Dangerous idiots.

Where will the jobs come from?

2009-10-17T10:48:00.002+01:00

Since I've had more time recently to read and think, and especially since "discovering" the blogosphere, I've surprised myself by becoming better informed about the current political and economic situation (mess). Also, more appalled at what is going on around us, and especially how the public are being deceived and manipulated, from the national curriculum to the utterings of politicians.

One thing has been really bugging me lately. That is, where are the jobs going to come from to satisfy the demand of the growing ranks of the unemployed?

The recovery from the last recession was supported to no small extent by the explosion of the financial sector. It's hard to see many jobs being created in that area in the foreseeable future - indeed jobs are still being lost there (example: announcement yesterday by LTSB of 460 jobs as discussed by John Redwood here) and it seems likely many more are still to go. Apart from very specialised niches, it's hard to see how much in the way of manufacturing industry is feasible, until and unless costs in the far east and India rise sufficiently to erode the competitiveness gap. We all know that the official unemployment figures understate the number who want to work, and the number who can and should work. While the government proudly discuss the hundreds of jobs they are "creating" through things like apprenticeships (and I wonder how many of those will turn into long term, permanent and full time jobs), it's merely scratching the surface, and to be honest, hardly worth doing.

I know Cameron plans to improve the climate for private enterprises to be created and succeed more easily, by reducing business taxes and red tape (which is very important and long overdue) but I find it hard to see how a real surge in the creation of jobs is going to happen. I'd love to hear someone address this properly - it seems to be possibly the biggest issue facing us, especially as we ought to add to the unemployed numbers the number of people that will have to move from the public sector to the private sector. Personally, I'll be looking for ways to stand on my own two feet, rather than expect to be employed by others for the rest of my working life (however long that happens to be).

Apologies for my rambling writing style - hopefully it will improve if I can keep my blog going.

Any ideas or reassurance?

My first ever blog post!

2009-10-16T10:24:00.000+01:00

I don't want to sound like a boring old fart (and I promise, you, I'm not), but to start my blog, I want to set down some, possibly unstructured and rambling, thoughts, which may go someway to explain the way I feel about things. Bear with me, please.

I've seen astonishing changes through my life.

I went to school in the 60's and 70's. Through higher education from '75 to '79 - an abortive first year at university, then a second, successful degree course at a "technical college", resulting in a 2:1 honours degree in electronics engineering, and a choice of several job offers.

Computer technology burst into real life during my degree course. I'd done some BASIC programming in the last year or so at school - which meant trips to a local computer centre, and sitting at a Creed teleprinter, typing my program onto punched tape and leaving it to be run for me, and collecting the printed results on the next visit. We never saw the computer itself. I learned machine code programming on a DEC PDP-8 at college, entering the program via toggle switches on the front of the machine. The first microprocessors (such as the Intel 4040 and 8080 and Motorola 6800) came out during my degree, and I learnt more with them - all very basic facilities and technically limited. The first IBM PC came out after I'd been at work a few years. Look where we are now!

I mention this, because in those years, when I was becoming a young adult, the popular view (think back to "Tomorrow's World" on TV) was that we were entering a bold and exciting new age, where automation and computers would increase productivity so much, that in the future, everybody would not have to work long hours, and that leisure time would be abundant for all. I kid you not, if you don't remember those days.

Obviously, the opposite has happened. In those years, even not that long ago, whether a couple both worked was usually a matter of choice - it was possible for a family to get by on one income. Now, life is often a struggle, especially for younger people and new families. I embarked on my career with no debts, and a wide choices of jobs. Now, our children leave university (and HE educational establishments are all Universities now, aren't they?) with typically £10 - £15K of debt, and often little or no choice of an appropriate job. They find it hard if not impossible to get on the housing ladder, and if they do, it's with dangerous mortgages (I remember my first mortgage - I had to be a saver with the Building Society for a year, then join a waiting list for available funds, pay a deposit, and be able to borrow 3X salary max) and now in a volatile housing market. So many people in negative equity - and to me, the current climate appears much worse than the early '90's when the last recession hit.

It seems to me that although there have been countless changes, innovations etc that do enhance life, the quality of life, and general happiness "with our lot" is not better. I find myself repeatedly exasperated at the rubbish that is spewed into our lives in the way of nannying, outright bullying, stupid rules and legislation, just all the intrusion into our lives by government, especially this deceitful, corrupt excuse for a government that New Labour is.

There seems to be no room for common sense or individual responsibility and accountability any more.

Is it just me, or is it all rubbish?