A Potential Credibility Problem for Harriet

As if Harriet Harman needs any more questions hanging over her credibility, a surprise story in the Mail on Sunday may offer yet another. The Mail story claims that a book due to published on 1 March 2010, by the Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley, will detail behaviour by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown that amounts to workplace bullying. It will also contain, it claims, details of one incident involving a junior and female member of staff.

The Mail on Sunday has been told that the new allegations include claims that Mr Brown:

• Hit a senior aide who got in the way as he rushed to a reception at No10.

• Physically pulled a secretary out of her chair as he dictated a memo to her.

• Hurled foul-mouthed abuse at two aides in his hotel room in America in a state of semi-undress after reports that he had been snubbed by President Obama.

Now why is this a problem for Harriet Harman? She isn’t, after all, the alleged aggressor. No, she is the politician who has carved out a niche for herself as the ‘voice of women’. She would like nothing more than being  treated, instinctively, as women’s champion. She rarely makes a public appearance without mentioning some way in which women are discriminated, mistreated, ignored. How can Harriet Harman possibly ignore this?

How can she ignore it and keep any credibility? Harriet, more than Gordon, must hope that the Mail have exaggerated somewhat.

Progressive London – A Front

You might have heard of this eclectic mix of Labour, Liberal Democrat, Greens, old trots, pacifists and assorted loons. You probably haven’t.

It is actually quite influential and is having a big meetin today. See the list of people speaking here to get a feel for how influential it is. As with any gathering of powerful people, we have to ask what is the purpose of this grouping? Is is just a forum for debate as the organisation implies? No, I’m not falling for that one either. Is it a veneer of respectability for some of the more distateful characters attending? No, they probably have a genuine admiration for the ambassador to Hugo Chavez.

I think the clue to the purpose of Progressive London is this:

Progressive London wishes to work with all of those who support such policies, and this entire progressive culture which has developed in London and is under attack from sections of the media and right wing politicians through institutions like the Conservative administration at the Greater London Authority and Conservative led local authorities.

In other words it is a pretty blatant front organisation whose purpose is to get Ken Livingstone elected to the mayoralty, by cleaning up the second preferences.

A Labour MP Points out the Obvious

Relative measures of poverty are absurd. Well done Tom Harris MP.

Mr Harris finishes with this:

And I’m not convinced there’s anything the government can or should do about that, unless you want to go down the route of a return to a Supertax of 98 per cent.

Which is exactly what those pushing relative poverty want, but don’t publically say.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation

If you haven’t heard of this organisation, they have a website here. It’s a new think tank that has been set up by the former British Chancellor Nigel Lawson, who has also wrote a book on climate change. As you can imagine this will be a climate research, but sceptical organisation, which probably makes it the world’s first of this type and will likely be a priority target for the ad hominen attacks that characterises so much of climate debates. I’m sure Lawson is aware of that.

What is interesting is the names of those involved, not least Professor Plimer and Professor Dyson and of course you can get a flavour of the kind of work they will be doing from the aims:

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is an all-party and non-party think tank and a registered educational charity

Our main purpose is to bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant.

The GWPF’s primary purpose is to help restore balance and trust in the climate debate that is frequently distorted by prejudice and exaggeration

Our main focus is to analyse global warming policies and its economic and other implications. Our aim is to provide the most robust and reliable economic analysis and advice.

We intend to develop alternative policy options and to foster a proper debate (which at present scarcely exists) on the likely cost and consequences of current policies.

After the leak, we now have an organisation ready to put the other side. Interesting times.

Agreeing With Monbiot

The leaks from CRU were always going to have casualties, but never would I have thought that Monbiot would so quickly condemn those involved, Phil Jones in particular:

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed. (George Monbiot).

My word. Within days of the leak, Monbiot states that none other than P.Jones should resign and the ‘data should be re-analysed.’ The cynic wonders if Monbiot is looking for a sacrificial lamb. The fluffy part of me wants to congratulate these statements, especially as I agree with them.

Monbiot further states in a comment:

It is exactly for those reasons that Phil Jones should resign. There’s a word for his lack of openness and control of the data: unscientific.

Blimey. If I had said that on the Guardian, my comment would have been deleted in all likelihood, that’s how much has changed since the leak.

Climate Gate – Let the Sunshine In

For those of you who haven’t heard, information has been leaked from the Climate Research Unit, in the East of England, onto the Internet. This information comprises emails, letters, policy documents and more technical data. So far, the discussion on the leaks has concentrated on the content of the emails, though some of the data files are now getting a look.  With accusations flying around (and denials), the story is in danger of becoming clouded by the kind of personal ad hominen attacks that make debates on climate change so unattractive.

For me, exposure to climate change science began at undergraduate level in 2001 and the prominence given to Michael Mann’s now infamous hockey stick graph. Back then, the observed data seemed to support Mann, with the el-nino spike of 98/99. It looked worrying this global warming, but then time and observed temperatures started to dent my confidence in the ‘unprecedented’ nature of the warming. Then the name was changed to ‘climate change’. I became sceptical.

So what to do? Start reading of course. Compare the observed data in the satellite and land based systems with various reconstructions of historical temperature. Read various theories as to the cause of temperature changes over time. Any person who does this will quickly realise where the controversy lies. The observed data is inconsistent with Mann, there are questions over the GISS and HADCRUT systems and there is something called the Medieval Warm Period that may or may not exist.

Now, in any other branch of research, such questions should lead to further analysis and a questioning of that which we take for fact. There’s a problem though, if the people with the data refuse to share it. How can a conclusion be tested, a conclusion that is based largely on statistical adjustments, if the data is witheld? Those statistical adjustments obscured?

The argument on CRU’s side is that their papers have been published in scientific journals and peer-reviewed. As such, no further analysis is necessary and we should trust the answers. In particular, nobody should be allowed to analyse this data if they aren’t considered to be part of the ‘climate science’ community. This is patent nonsense. If someone is able to test the data and produce results, then they can. Those results, should of course be further tested. And on it goes. This is called the scientific method.

By witholding the data, except from carefully chosen people, CRU have failed in a key scientific test, that of falsifiability. If a paper is based on data, then for that paper to be falsifiable, the data has to be available. That is the way forward: transparency. As for the common refrain that only professionals working in climatology departments are competent to review and publish (peer-review), well there was that patent clerk.

Cabinet Should Beg Cruddas to Take Leadership

Now some in the Cabinet are so loyal to Gordon Brown they would jump of the metaphorical cliff if he said so. They can’t all be that supine though, so what should the rest do, those with something approaching a backbone that is?

Well first there needs to be an acceptance that Gordon Brown is a very large part of the problem. I think that acceptance is there, bubbling away under the surface but afraid or unsure whether to act. Let’s face it, replacing Gordon Brown now isn’t exactly appealing. The new leader has less than a year before a General Election and Labour are trailing in the polls by a substantial distance.

There is also the very obvious lack of a unity candidate. Should it be a Milliband, Harriet, Johnson, Straw or even (I say in jest) a Balls? In my opinion, none of these have any hope of reversing Labour’s fortunes, so my first recommendation to the cabinet is to put aside your ambitions (and your differences), accept that drastic times are upon you and join forces to annoint someone more appropriate.

So who is more appropriate? Well it has to be someone who can grab the attention of the media and the public. With only 7-8 months until the next GE, a new leader that the public know little about has the potential to grab the agenda and the headlines. Equally, it has to be someone relatively unscathed from Scamalot, an MP whose expenses will stand upto the scrutiny they will surely get. Finally, this person has to have that ability to connect with the voters who have deserted Labour en masse. That is the lower and middle classes in the Midlands, Yorkshire, Scotland’s Central Belt and the Urban White Working Class.

Step forward John Cruddas. The cabinet should do their duty, hand the PM his resignation letter and then ask Cruddas to take the leadership. If Cruddas demurs, they should get down on bended knee and beg. Otherwise oblivion awaits.

All Women Shortlists

Let me say upfront that I’m very much against them.

Now I’ve said it. It is however an indisputable fact that there are significantly more male MPs than there are female. Now I’m personally not that bothered if there is more MPs of one gender than another, to a point, but when less than a sixth of MPs are female that is taking the biscuit somewhat.

How to increase that ratio is no easy thing. First, incumbent MPs, who are mostly male are mostly keen on keeping their jobs. Even if the tories get their 150 seat gains at the next GE, as they hope and other parties have some churn, the vast majority of MPs will still be returned and will still be male. So the first thing that needs admitting is that increasing the number of female MPs will not be an overnight project.

Second, drastic measures imposed by the HQ’s of the main parties can have unintended consequences. Remember Blaenau Gwent? There is a danger in this type of affirmitive action being seen as elitist favouritism being imposed on local communities. It’s surely more encouraging that the tories recent experiment with Open Primaries in Totnes was won by a woman and that this shows the public are quite willing to vote for a woman if they feel she is a better candidate than her male opponents.

A note of caution though and an area where the main parties can do some positive work. In my experience, some women who are actively involved in politics and more than capable of being representatives, are reticinent about putting their names forward. Why that might be could be argued about until the cows come home, but I think it fair that the main parties have programs in place to actively encourage female candidates, offer training and support and assist with their applications. Success, should be breed success.

Just stay away from the AWS.

Mori and ICM Put the Tories in the Mid 40s

Two polls in one afternoon and both are good for the tories. The first is the latest from Ipsos-Mori with the headline voting intention of:

Con 43%, Lab 26%, LD 19%

The second is the regular ICM poll for the Guardian and reports voting intentions remarkably similar to the Ipsos-Mori poll:

Con 44%, Lab 27%, LD 18%

The polls have been quite volatile over the last month or so, probably because of the party conference season and the extra coverage each party gets during their conference. If I had to think of one reason why the polls would move back in the tories favour, it would be those terrible headlines Gordon Brown got when it was reported that he was having to pay back £12k in expenses.

The Guardian report that ICM found:

By contrast, only 24% think Brown has handled expenses well, against 66% who say badly, a deficit of 42 points. The prime minister appears to be taking the blame for a scandal he says is not of his making.

UPDATE

It’s poll overload today. Mike Smithson of politicalbetting.com reports a new poll, by a new pollster Angus Reid of Canada. The headline voting intentions are:

Con 40%, Lab 23%, LD 20%.

More bad news for Labour.

Sweden Away it is Then.

These are the kind of things that make me think there’s something to the karma/fates/god stuff.

Sweden lost out in their bid to qualify for the World Cup 2010 and their manager promptly fell on his sword. So who should be the name in the frame: step forward Mr Sven Goran Eriksson. With England likely to be top seeds for the next round of Euro Qualifying and Sweden second seeds, what are the chances we end up in the same group?

Yep, Stockholm here we come.