Mr Hollande can fuck right off, frankly

France's wildly successful President^*, Mr Hollande has issued a stark warning that Britain must back and integrated EU or quit.

To quote Mr Hollande:

“There is no other way. It's a horrible path, but it's a logical path. Leave Europe, leave Schengen and leave democracy. Do you really want to participate in a common state? That's the question."

That's a really good point, you know? I hadn't realised that you could only be a democracy if you were in the EU. I'd thought that there were democracies outside of—and, indeed, before the formation of—the EU. Apparently this is not the case.

Of course, this neatly highlights one of the arguments that Remain have kept rather quiet about: the fact that remaining within the EU is not to maintain the status quo. The Eurozone, in particular, must have a central government, or it will fall apart—particularly economically and fiscally.

But to maintain, practically, the social and Welfare aspects of the EU, there requires further integration too, e.g. the proposed EU Tax Identification Numbers.

That nice Mr Cameron maintains that he has negotiated an opt out from all^** of this malarkey but, frankly, I don't believe him—partly because he is a proven liar (especially on the topic of the EU). So the UK will have to look forward to more integration too.

Now, you may think that all of this is a good thing—and that's your prerogative. I, of course, think that you are completely fucking wrong^***—and I will vote Leave, regardless of the scare stories—but at least we can have a proper debate the issue in an adult fashion.

^*I may have deployed some sarcasm here.
^**Or is it only some? I'm not clear. Because there's no documentation.
^***The scary clown sums up my feelings on the matter rather well.

FFA or and bust

Following their remarkable win, the SNP is now pushing for Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) for Scotland. Broadly speaking, this means that Scotland runs its own economy—being able to spend cash and raise money as they please.

The supposed driver for this is that Scotland is a "more socialist" country, willing to pay more tax in order to stave off the tyranny of austerity. This narrative is, of course, bollocks: were it not, the SNP (also the dominant party in Holyrood) would already have used the tax-raising powers that the Parliament has—up to 3p in the pound extra in income tax, if I recall correctly.

Instead, when these powers were granted at devolution, the proposal to use them was attacked as "a Tartan tax". Indeed it may be but one that, if the SNP and other Scottish commentators are to be believed, one that would be welcomed by the austerity-loathing Scottish people.

The fact that the extra tax has not, actually, ever been levied leads one to re-examine that old economics truth of "revealed preferences", i.e. watch what people do, not what they say.

Of course, raising income tax by an extra 3% probably would do little to help the Scottish budget—the projected deficit under FFA is nearly £8 billion (around 10% of Scotland's GDP). In fact, most commentators think that Scotland's Full Fiscal Autonomy would be as disastrous as HP's adoption of Autonomy (yeah—that was a tech world joke (if an old one)).

So, why on earth are the SNP lobbying for FFA—a policy that will, as Alex Massie points out, surely lead to cuts in Scottish public spending that make "austerity" look like the most extravagant fiscal splurges of the more insane Roman emperors?

A clue to what the SNP might be thinking comes from SNP MP George Kerevan, in an article for The National [Emphasis mine—DK].

It is now inconceivable that David Cameron can reject Scottish demands for greater home rule, given that all three mainstream Westminster parties – Tory, Labour and Lib Dem alike – have minimal legitimate authority in Scotland in the wake of May 7. The general election was not a mandate for a second referendum – a point reiterated time after time by Nicola Sturgeon, whatever contrary hares are set running by the battered and bruised Westminster establishment. Nevertheless, the SNP’s electoral success is undoubtedly a mandate for going far beyond the hastily conceived ragbag of new powers contained in the Smith Commission documents.

The SNP maintains that the Smith Commission does not actually give Scotland enough powers (although many English people might argue that the Smith Commission gives the Scottish Parliament a great many powers, with very little responsibility). The Grauniad has summed up the main points, which I reproduce below.

• The Scottish parliament will have complete power to set income tax rates and bands.
• Holyrood will receive a proportion of the VAT raised in Scotland, amounting to the first 10 percentage points of the standard rate (ie with the current standard VAT rate of 20%, Scotland will 50% of the receipts), but cannot influence the UK’s overall UK rate.
• It will have increased borrowing powers, to be agreed with the UK government, to support capital investment and ensure budgetary stability.
• UK legislation will state that the Scottish parliament and Scottish government are permanent institutions. The parliament will also be given powers over how it is elected and run.
• Holyrood will have power to extend the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, allowing them to vote in the 2016 Scottish parliamentary election.
• It will have control over a number of benefits including disability living allowance, the personal independence payment, winter fuel payments and the housing elements of universal credit, including the under-occupancy charge (bedroom tax).
• The Scottish parliament will also have new powers to make discretionary payments in any area of welfare without the need to obtain prior permission from department for work and pensions.
• It will have all powers of support for unemployed people through employment programmes, mainly delivered at present through the Work Programme.
• It will have control over air passenger duty charged on people flying from Scottish airports.
• Responsibility for the management of the crown estate’s economic assets in Scotland, including the crown estates’s seabed and mineral and fishing rights, and the revenue generated from these assets, will be transferred to the Scottish parliament.
• The licensing of onshore oil and gas extraction underlying Scotland will be devolved to the Scottish parliament.
• The Scottish government will have power to allow public sector operators to bid for rail franchises funded and specified by Scottish ministers.
• The block grant from the UK government to Scotland will continue to be determined via the operation of the Barnett formula. New rules to define how it will be adjusted at the point when powers are transferred and thereafter will be agreed by the Scottish and UK governments and put in place prior to the powers coming into force. These rules will ensure that neither the Scottish nor UK governments will lose or gain financially from the act of transferring a power.
• MPs representing constituencies across the whole of the UK will continue to decide the UK’s budget, including income tax.
• The Scottish and UK governments will draw up and agree a memorandum of understanding to ensure that devolution is not detrimental to UK-wide critical national infrastructure in relation to matters such as defence and security, oil and gas and energy.

Your humble Devil submits that this is very close to FFA, whilst admitting that there are some constraints on how the Scottish Parliament may act. One might argue that a great many of these constraints are there to stop the Scottish Parliament bankrupting its country. Your mileage may vary.

However, the SNP is arguing for Full Fiscal Autonomy. That means that Scotland is entirely responsible for its own economy, right?

Well, you might think that: and now we'll return to George Kerevan's comment [Emphasis mine, again—DK]...

The constitutional ball is well and truly in David Cameron’s end of the field. Cameron’s opening gambit may well be to offer Scotland fiscal autonomy, in return for termination of the Barnett Formula (a mechanism that matches per capita spending changes across the UK constituent nations). We all know that in present UK economic circumstances a fiscally autonomous Scotland would face a significant budget deficit.

For Scotland to accept fiscal autonomy without inbuilt UK-wide fiscal balancing would be tantamount to economic suicide. However, all federal systems have mechanisms for cross subsidising regions in economic need by regions in surplus. To deny that to Scotland suggests a disingenuous Mr Cameron is hoping to derail any move to Scottish Hole Rule within the UK.

Wow. Yes, that's right: George Kerevan—and, we must assume, he is a proxy for the SNP—is seriously suggesting that Scotland be given Full Fiscal Autonomy except when it doesn't have the money to afford it.

Just sit back and admire the chutzpah—George is saying that the Scottish Parliament should be given free rein to run things as it likes. Except that when the Scots overspend, rack up debts, or just go batshit wild with the cheque book, the rest of England should have to bail them out. Kerevan is proposing that English taxpayers chuck another £7 billion a year at the Scots before they've even started turning on the spending taps (because who, genuinely, thinks that they won't?).

What the SNP are holding up—as an expectation—is a total lack of any responsibility. Kerevan is proposing is that no matter how much the Scottish government screws up—no matter how fecklessly Holyrood runs the national finances, or shamelessly its parties bribe their voters—the people of England should be expected to bail out the Scottish nation regardless.

There really is only one answer to this, and its very simple: fuck off.

David Cameron, in concert with Miliband and Clegg, has already betrayed England by his shameless capitulation—a.ka. "the promise"—to the Scots after the Independence Referendum: it is entirely possible that this spineless Buttered New Potato will sell us down the river by agreeing to this shit too.

If he does, we might finally see the anger of the English people burn hot enough to march down Whitehall—parading Cameron's massive, shiny head on a fucking stick.

And not before time, frankly.

UPDATE: have the SNP been monitoring the Kitchen for suggestions...?

ClimateGate 2

(N.B. It's me, the P-G)

So it's time for another UNFCCC junket waste of taxpayers money vast addition to CO2 emissions to fly in the bigwigs and their entourages conference so that means it's time for our friendly insider to release another batch of incriminating correspondence. Anthony Watts is now surmising that these are genuine.

For new readers, here's my handy summary of why the first batch was important. I still stand by every single word of it.

The hunt is now on for the snippet that crystallises the whole thing, the "Hide the decline" moment if you will. My favourite so far:

<1682> Wils:

[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural
fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably [...]

No Pressure, eh Wils.

As this is covered absolutely everywhere that matters, I shall not dwell on this further except to note the final line of the ghastly (and for good measure this time heavily implicated) Richard Black's news item reporting this new release:

A police investigation into the hack is still ongoing.

If only Richard. If only...

Mission creep

In a rather long post about how governments in general—and the EU in particular—usurp our freedoms, I wrote the following paragraph.

It is a simple fact that the range of EU competencies is astonishingly wide, and are prone to mission creep: an EU competency in "green" issues, for instance, becomes a plausible excuse for EU meddling in energy generation policy.

Today, we come across another example of this mission creep...

As we all know, the Coalition are cracking down on non-EU immigrants: in fact, they have placed a cap on such immigration*. The reason that they have not placed a cap on EU immigration is because, quite simply, they cannot—EU law has primacy over British law ad EU immigration is an EU competence.

But we do have control over non-EU immigration. Or, as England Expects highlights, maybe not: you see, the EU is about to complete a trade deal with India—and trade is solely an EU competence.

"So what?" I hear you cry. "What the hell has that got to do with immigration?"

Well, as Bruno Waterfield points out, quite a lot, as it happens...

A planned "free trade agreement" with India, to be signed this December, will give skilled Indian IT workers, engineers and managers easy passage into Europe in return for European companies gaining access to India's huge domestic market.

Put simply, in return for access to India's domestic markets, the EU will allow thousands of Indians into EU countries. Now, personally, I am all for free trade—in people as well as goods and capital.

But that, of course, is not the point.

The point is that the EU's total control over trade has allowed that organisation to extent its competence into an area over which it is not supposed to have any jurisdiction, i.e. non-EU immigration policy.

Mission creep—do you see? And not a power-ceding treaty in sight...

P.S. Lest someone pop up and accuse me of swallowing the anti-EU Telegraph's evil propaganda, I will let England Expects point you to the following headlines in the Indian newspapers...

Here is The Hindu:

India-EU trade deal may help bypass UK migration cap

Here is The New Kerala:

EU-India 'free trade agreement' will allow flood of Indian skilled workers into Britain

The Times of India Business:

India-EU trade deal may nullify UK migration cap

You get the point.

Indeed we do.

As I say, the point here is not about whether immigration is a good or a bad thing: this is simply an illustration of the way in which the EU co-opts new powers for itself through sleight of hand—and to show how utterly fucking pointless the Tories' "referendum lock" actually is.

The final point to note is that our government is not in control—or, at least, the one in Westminster is not. The only powers that the British government has are those that the EU has not yet taken control of.

UPDATE: EuroGoblin is calling bullshit on this story...

Despite hunting, I can’t actually find a copy of the FTA text anywhere online – so I assume most people are commenting on it without having read the clause in question. However, I really don’t need to read the clause to know this particular story is bullshit. Free Trade Agreements require unanimity in the Council before they can be adopted by the EU, and this will also be the case with the Indian deal. A similar deal was recently passed between the EU and South Korea, and Italy threatened to veto unless the implementation was delayed by six months. Guess what? Italy was given the six month delay and then dropped its veto.

Thus, is it the case – as the Devil argues – that “our government is not in control”? No, that’s obviously rubbish. If the UK government wants to (and it almost certainly does), it will veto the agreement unless an opt-out is secured. It has, after all, secured numerous opt-outs in the past on immigration and trade policy – in fact, the UK has a complete opt-out from the common EU immigration policy and instead “opts-in” to what it wants.

Which is all quite probably true: I guess we'll just have to see how this pans out. If EuroGoblin is correct—and I've no reason to think he's not—and The Coalition does not object, then we'll know that their anti-immigration rhetoric is meaningless (thankfully).

* Anyone know if that applies to people already here, by the way...?

There is another option

Apparently councils are being told that they aren't going to get so much money from central government.

Now, when funding is being cut, there are two routes that organisations could take:

1. raise more money
2. stop spending so much money

Which route do you think that our local councils are going to take...?

That's right: they are going for the raise more money route. And one of the ideas that they have come up with is that private businesses should pay for any free parking that they supply to their employees.

Initially, the parking levy was seen as a way to tackle congestion and cut carbon emissions. Now, there is growing evidence it is also being seen as a source of extra cash. Nottingham City Council will be the first council to impose a £250 levy on local employers, from 2012. Within two years, the bill will rise to £350 and will target all companies with 11 or more parking spaces.

A Daily Telegraph investigation found many other councils are now preparing to follow suit.
Bristol City Council, for example, in its draft strategy, describes the levy as a "revenue stream" to help fund other transport initiatives.

Under proposals being considered by York City Council, the charge would be paid "by the employer or charged to the employee".

I absolutely cannot see how York City Council could possibly charge employees for parking on their employers' private land; sure, they could charge the employers, and the employers could pass that charge onto their employees, but that's not quite the same. But again, I don't really see how any council can be allowed to dictate the uses to which anyone puts their own, private land.

Hampshire County Council, meanwhile, is considering a "modest"—but unspecified—charge for the south of the region, including Southampton and Portsmouth, to, says a consultation document, "redress the imbalance between free commuter parking for some staff at office complexes" and "parking for other staff in public spaces where payment is required".

Yeah, well, the public spaces can be charged for by the council because the council owns the public spaces. It does not own private land.

Further, if Hampshire County Council really wanted to "redress the imbalance between free commuter parking for some staff at office complexes" and "parking for other staff in public spaces where payment is required", then it could simply stop charging for the public spaces, couldn't they?

But no, that wouldn't work, would it? For how else would councils be able to employ people to sit around on their arses all day, or go off sick for six months at a time?

Here, one employee for a large inner London authority lifts the lid on the culture of inertia and incompetence at his workplace. The Mail knows the true identity of the man - a graduate who has been a planning officer for eight years. But to protect his job, he is writing under an assumed name.

Monday morning, it's 10am and I'm late for work - but there's no point hurrying because even though I should have been at my desk 30 minutes ago, I know I'll be the first to arrive at the office.
...

Our department has 60 employees and—until last Tuesday—a budget of £22million.

I've been there for two years and in that period the only time I've ever seen every employee present and correct was at the Christmas party.

At least ten people will be off sick on any one day. The departmental record holder is Doreen - she has worked a grand total of eight days in 14 months.

Doreen must be the unluckiest woman in the country.

In the past year and a half she claims she has: fallen victim to frostbite; been hit by a car; and accidentally set herself on fire.
But she's really pulled out all the stops with her latest excuse: witchcraft. That's right, Doreen believes somebody in Nigeria has cast a spell on her and that it would be unprofessional of her to attempt to do the job she is paid £56k a year for while under the influence of the spell.

She has already been off for four months on full pay. I've no idea how long this spell lasts, but my guessing would be six months to the day - the exact amount of time council employees can take off on full pay before their money is reduced.
But having just eight weeks of full pay left won't be a problem for Doreen and the rest of the council's sickly staff - they'll simply return to work when the six months is up, put in a day or two's work and then go off sick for another six months on full pay again. Easy.
...

All credit to the bright-eyed young HR manager who, last year, wanted to dismiss a senior employee who had been off sick for three months.

The employee had still been using his company mobile phone, from Marbella.

However, the employee was able (with a little help from the mighty Unison union) to argue that there's no reason why 'sick' people can't rent villas in the Costa Del Sol.
...

Back to the day's business. Jerry is the next to arrive at 10.25am - before he takes his jacket off he performs his morning ritual of taking both his phones off the hook.

God forbid that any resident and council tax payer should be able to speak to him and get some of the advice he's paid £64k a year to dispense.

Jerry is 63 and two years from retirement. He is what is known in the civil service and local government as an 'untouchable' - he's been at the council for more than 40 years, does no work, but would cost an absolute fortune to get rid of.

So he's left alone to play online poker, Skype his daughter in Florida and take his two-hour daily snooze at his desk, no doubt dreaming of the day when his gold-plated public sector pension will kick in.

If you think Jerry's pay is generous, consider this: the head of my department is on an annual salary of £170k plus bonuses, his deputy nets £99k and even the office PAs are on a very respectable £38k - just two thousand less than I get.
...

Although it's two years since I started working for this authority I've also worked for two other London boroughs in various capacities over a period of 12 years. In that time I've never known anybody be sacked, no matter how inept and unprofessional they may be.
...

Next week there is a two-day course on 'letter writing skills' - I dearly hope that Jackie, our departmental PA, will attend this one. I've given up using her and now type my own correspondence and reports.

The last time she typed a letter for me (to an architect) she misspelt 'accommodation' and 'environment' throughout.

I gently pointed this out to her and asked her to redo the document. But she went sick for two weeks with stress, complaining that she was being bullied.

When my boss called me in to discuss this I, jokingly, said: 'Well I'll just let her misspell everything in future, shall I?' To which he replied: 'Yes, I think that's best for now.'
...

The cuts and pay freezes are desperately needed, but the one thing Mr Osborne will never be able to control is the culture of inertia and inefficiency that is rife throughout the public sector.

Of course, when I tell my friends in the private sector about my working conditions, they can scarcely believe it. As the recession bites, they consider themselves lucky to be holding on to their jobs, and are willing to work extra hours or take a pay freeze to ensure their firm's survival.

In the public sector, though, there is no competitive edge; no incentive to cuts costs or improve efficiency. Few genuinely fear for their job security, protected as they are by threats of union action every time the axe looks likely to fall.
...

In my authority's borough, the average householder pays £1,330 a year in council tax. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to know that they're funding Jerry's internet gambling and Doreen's never-ending sick pay.

Indeed. And now anyone who parks at work will be paying extra for council workers to sit about and do fuck all.

I defy anyone to read the above-linked article (of which I have only quoted the highlights) and declare that councils have no room to cut budgets; they do and they could do so, if the people at the top were not just as corrupt, venal, lazy and stupid as their overpaid, ignorant, work-shy underlings.

And supporting all of this waste and venality, of course, are the trade unions—most especially Unison. Who are, it seems, are continuing to be paid millions of pounds in "re-structuring" funds. This is, in itself, a very bad move for the Coalition: you don't make pacts with crooks, or try to buy off these devils—their power needs to be strangled and their funds destroyed.

Then, if anyone has the will, we can start going through these public bodies and sack 90% of the staff and whittle their responsibilities down to the bare essentials and nothing more.

Something, as they say, has got to be done. And that something does not involve levying yet more taxes on an already over-burdened population in order to piss it away on useless, feckless wastes of space.

Doctors do not have your best interests at heart

As the scum of the medical profession begin, once more, to flex their muscles—having realised that Our New Coalition Overlords™ have absolutely no desire to curb the BMA and their ilk—your humble Devil would like to quote an extract from a book that illustrates just how much the medical profession cares for the working man.

The book is one that I borrowed from the ASI some time ago (and will return, I promise!): it is by David G. Green and is entitled Working Class Patients And The Medial Establishment: Self-help in Britain from the mid-nineteeth century to 1948. The piece that I wish to quote comes from the Introduction to the book, and deals with the success of the friendly societies, co-operatives and other mechanisms of worker empowermen—especially as regards medical care.

It is quite long, so with no more ado, let us proceed. [Inevitably, the emphasis is mine. I have also split up some of the very long paragraphs, in order to make the piece more readable.]

Particularly striking is the success of the friendly societies, whose social insurance and primary medical care schemes had attracted at least three-quarters of manual workers well before the end of the nineteenth century. Until the 1911 National Insurance Act every neighbourhood of every town was dotted with friendly society branches, each with their own doctor, who had usually been elected by a vote of all the members assembled in the branch meeting.

In most large towns the friendly societies had also established medical institutes combining doctors' living accommodation, surgery and a dispensary. These embryo health centres employed full-time salaried medical practitioners, full-time dispensers, and nursing staff under the management of a committee elected by all the members.

The friendly societies were so successful that their arrangements for social insurance and primary medical care formed the model for the early welfare state.

As, in fact, I have recommended in the past, it should have been.

Unfortunately, of course, nothing is ever that simple—especially where vested interests are able to influence—or simply bribe—vain and venal politicians.

But this [their success], ironically, was their undoing. The 1911 National Security Act was originally seen by Lloyd George, who charted it through Parliament, as a way of extending the benefits of friendly society membership, already freely chosen by the vast majority of workers, to all citizens, and particularly to those so poor that they could not afford the modest weekly contributions. But on its way through the House of Commons the original Bill was radically transformed by powerful vested interests hostile to working-class mutual aid.

The organised medical profession had long resented the dominance of the medical consumer, and particularly resented working-class control of medical "gentlemen". The BMA were equally anxious to obtain more pay and, above all, higher status for doctors.

Working-class fraternalism also had another arch-enemy: the commercial insurance companies. They had long disliked the competition of the non-profit friendly societies and saw the 1911 National Insurance Bill as a threat to their business. They were organised into a powerful trade association, called the 'Combine'.

The BMA and the Combine formed a temporary alliance to extract concessions from the government at the expense of the friendly societies. The essence of working-class social insurance was democratic self-organisation: amendments to the Bill obtained by the BMA and the Combine undermined it. Doctors' pay had been kept within limits that ordinary maual workers could afford: under pressure, the government doubled doctors' incomes and financed this transfer of wealth from insured workers to the medical profession by means of a regressive poll tax, flat-rate National Insurance Contributions.

I am reading the rest of the book avidly, for it is, of course, rather more nuanced than the Introduction—which is, after all, essentially a summary of the exposition—but the above paragraphs give a good flavour of the whole.

The essential point to make—before one of my colleagues highlights yet more of their disgusting attempts to control us in order to gain more status—is that the medical profession have never, ever been on the side of ordinary people.

The only people that the organised medical profession give a shit about is the organised medical profession.

Most of you will have seen—in the newspapers and, in particular, on blogs written by members of the medical profession—claims that doctors should be allowed to run the NHS, because they know what they are doing. Of course they do: they want to run your lives and giving the medicos control of the NHS would give them the ultimate tool to do so. That would ensure a much "higher status for doctors" and the edict would be simple—obey us or be left to die.

If you doubt this, just take a long at some of the news stories around, especially as regards the medical profession's urgings to deny healthcare to smokers, drinkers and fat people. True, the BMA tend to side with Fake Charities more than the insurance companies these days, but the process is the same; government-funded "medical advisers"—no less effective or poisonous than Grima Wormtongue—whisper into politicians' rights ears, whilst government-funded "charities" bolster the message from the left.

Our New Coalition Overlords™ promised to take on the vested interests but, narrow-minded as they are, they seem to mean only the bankers and other huge commercial interests whose establishment status flows from the rules and regulations imposed by government.

But no mention has been made of those other vested interests: those—like the medical profession—whose power, privilege and money is propped up by the government and funded by the blood of taxpayers. There are so many of them that a stupid person might find it difficult to know where to start.

But, actually, it is really very simple: if we want decent welfare for all, affordable medical care and freedom, we need to return to "democratic self-organisation". And if we wish to do that, we have to smash and utterly destroy the organised medical profession, and grind it into the dust.

We need to return these arrogant doctors, and their associated scum (a category in which I include politicians), to beings servants of the consumer, not the masters. But whilst the doctors continue to run our medical services, and continue to bribe, bully and poison our rulers—and whilst our rulers still have the power to force us to obey these bastards—we will never be free, and we will never have a proper, functioning society.

To paraphrase P J O'Rourke, when the legislators can decide what can be bought and sold, the first thing for sale are the legislators. And the medical profession bought them a hundred years ago.

Destroy the power of the BMA and the medical profession and we can begin to struggle towards freedom. Leave them in place—poisoning public debate and raping the freedom of ordinary people in order to gain money and prestige—and we will always be slaves.

Be careful who you screw, George

Blue Eyes writes an open letter to George Osborne, asking him to consider carefully those whom he targets for tax rises and spending cuts. In doing so, he writes a splendid articulation of my own thoughts.

I have barely touched a public service in recent years. I left the state education system when I was eight years old. I did go to University, but I paid tuition fees and if you check my payslips I think you will find I have repaid my subsidy many times over since I left. I have had a couple of of vaccines and been to seen the GP about twice since 1997. I have benefited from the state’s recent unsustainable largesse by approximately fuck all.

I have never claimed a benefit or a handout. I have repaid my student loan. I am not in debt. I pay my own way. I do not depend on anyone. I save a good chunk of my salary. I create wealth and export services. I pay my taxes. I expect and receive little from the state in return. So basically, George, I am asking: why I should pay more?

Before you hit me hard I want to see you hitting those who have benefited most from Labour’s fiscal disaster. I want to see the quangistos hit hard. Those six-figure morons who have made things worse. I want to see regulators and industry bodies slashed and burned. I want to see the advertising budget set to zero. I want to see the interfering busybodies who tell us how we should live queuing up at the Jobcentreplus before I pay a single penny more in income tax. I want those non-job wasters – who have had pay and pension rises while those of us who work in real industries have seen our real incomes drop by 5% a year or more – hurt first. How about those so-called professions which have seen huge gains under Labour’s watch. I want to see all those bureaucrats who think it’s their job to say “no” to the developers and investors axed before a single tax rise is announced.

The couple who live above me have three children, a PT Cruiser, Sky TV and no job. I have no kids, no Sky, no car, no debt. Why should I be hurt first? I want those who can work but choose not to to have their standard of living chopped before I should take a hit. That may sound selfish to some, but I do not ask the state for assistance. I do not lean on anyone. Why should I fund for them a more lavish lifestyle than I afford myself? Benefits have gone up by 5.3% this year, most in the private sector have not had a raise in years. How is that “progressive”?

Of course, BE's last sentence echoes the recent words of Lord Myners, a NuLabour apparatchik, who seems to have suddenly... er... regained his senses. [Emphasis mine.]

"The government can't create jobs. The government can create the environment which is conducive to the creation of jobs, but it cannot create jobs and we mislead ourselves if we believe it can."

He added: "There is nothing progressive about a government that consistently spends more than it can raise in taxation and certainly nothing progressive that endows generations to come with the liabilities incurred with respect to the current generation."

I quite agree. But I can pretty much guarantee that the "progressive Left" still won't admit it to anyone else, even if they can admit it to themselves.

And that, of course, is why we are in the hole that we are in...

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

[From the DK Archives: originally published 29 November 2009.]

(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.

UPDATE 3 Dec: And that's not to say that there aren't pre-existing doubts there too, to accompany the doubts and shenigans in the current data, the calibration periods and the treatment of the paleo data - Squander Two reminds us of his excellent post on the dark arts of computer modelling. Note the dateline on the original post...

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.

Brown has gone

Gordon Brown: with no magic picture in the attic to bear the mark of his soul's evil, James Gordon Brown's face looks like some kind of Chapman Brothers nightmare sculpted in melted wax, hanks of greasy hair, decades-old plasticine and fresh dog turds.

So, Gordon Brown's hard-bitten fingernails were finally prised from the floorboards of No 10 Downing Street on 11th May 2010—a date that should, quite possibly, be declared a national holiday. People could organise street parties, burn effigies of Gordon and generally have a massive celebration. Apart, of course, from those 8 million or so arseholes who voted Labour on the 6th.

Your humble Devil has expended many thousands of words on the failings of our loathsome (but thankfully erstwhile) Prime Minster, and there seems little point in attempting to waste more time on this unpleasant little man—not least because The Nameless Libertarian has done so most elegantly. I cite a few choice cuts, though I recommend that you read it all.

Ordinarily, I'd try to avoid kicking a man when he's down. But when that man happens to be Gordon Brown, I'm afraid I'll have to make an exception.

There's no nice way to say this, but it needs to be said nonetheless. Gordon Brown was a failure as Prime Minister. Every single test he met, he failed at. His departure from Number 10 yesterday wasn't some tragic curtailment of an otherwise flourishing career - it was the inevitable end of a premiership that, in retrospect, should never have happened.

Furthermore, Brown's legacy of abysmal failure began long before he set foot in Downing Street. He set himself up for a fall while still Chancellor, with his talk of ending "boom and bust" that turned out to be nothing but hot air. It is true that he was perhaps the most effective opposition to the odious Tony Blair within the Labour party, but that was not out of ideological difference or political conviction, but rather about naked lust for power.
...

Gordon Brown's economic policies stand as a rebuke to those that state that government spending gets you out of recession. Government spending can help in a financial downturn, but throwing money at the problem doesn't make it go away, and actually creates another problem - a massive government deficit that will force cuts in future government spending. Some argued that Brown knew he was going to lose the next General Election, and so he was involved in a scorched earth policy to screw his replacement in Number 10. His economic policy was so bad that this idea actually seems credible.
...

Brown was the cowardly, unelected Prime Minister who when he did face an election, was soundly rejected by the people he purported to represent. And even then he didn't go. No, he tried to stay on, and when that was no longer possible, he went on scheming to keep himself in Number 10 for as long as possible and his party in power despite the verdict of the electorate. The arrogance and the unthinking sense of entitlement was with Brown to the very end of his time as a political leader.
...

The cancer has been painfully removed from the Labour party, but it now falls to them to find their way again. The scars will be deep, and difficult to heal - particularly given the party's atrocious behaviour after it was defeated at the polls. It needs to see Gordon Brown not as the brave and courageous leader that unthinking acolytes and lazy hacks are now trying to make him out to be: instead, he must be seen as he actually was - an arrogant, cowardly, bullying failure.

There'll be occasions moving forward, when the next Labour leader falters or when the coalition struggles, when people might be tempted to look back on Brown favourably, through those rose-tinted glasses that always seem to make leaders more popular once they are out of power and no longer a threat. Those people should remind themselves that Gordon Brown was the worst Prime Minister we've had since World War Two - unable to govern, unable to get the legitimacy to govern, and without even the most basic charm to aid him.

The only substantial aspect of Brown's career that TNL doesn't really mention is the myth that this maniac managed to build up—the myth that he was some kind of one-man academic powerhouse. He was not.

It is recorded, for instance, that Brown went to university "at the same early age of 16". This is far from being uncommon in the Scottish school system: I knew a good few people at Edinburgh University who were 16: they were not particularly intelligent, they had merely taken Highers whilst eschewing Sixth Form Studies or a Gap Year. Personally, I always felt rather sorry for such people: not being able to drink legally whilst at university would, ironically, be enough to drive anyone to drink.

At university, he read History—not Economics, as many seem to think—and seems to have learned precious little from that. Brown then spent ten years gaining his PhD; once again, the subject was nothing to do with economics: no, his PhD thesis was entitled The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918–29. From that point on, Brown's career was punctuated by a number of mediocre jobs until his election to Parliament in 1983.

I feel that I must stress this once more: Gordon Brown was not tremendously clever, and he had absolutely no training—and, it appears, almost no knowledge—at all of economics. And the result is his near-criminal ruination of the public finances.

Gordon Brown was an integral part of the NuLabour project—a hideous chimaera that has wrecked the education system, throttled social mobility, swept away centuries-old civil liberties, enslaved the British people in a near-police state, accelerated the fracturing of society, pulverised the national finances and expanded the state to unprecedented levels.

Gordon Brown may no longer be in power, but w will be paying for the consequences of his actions for decades to come. So, I urge you all to postpone the national holiday, take the trestle tables back indoors and put the bunting back in the understairs cupboard.

Let's save the celebration for when Gordon Brown finally dies.

Hands in the cookie jar

Via Old Holborn, it seems that the first expenses scandal of the new Parliament has already kicked off—and the perpetrator of the alleged crime is our very own Mad Nad.

NADINE DORRIES, the Conservative MP, faces the first expenses complaint of the new parliament after a row about a £10,000 claim she paid to a friend’s company.

Her former Commons researcher, Peter Hand, is writing to John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, questioning whether the claim can be justified.

The complaint will undermine hopes that the expenses controversy can be consigned to the last parliament.

Dorries, who last week retained her mid-Bedfordshire seat, claimed the money for an annual report in 2007 on her performance as an MP, and consultancy services, but Hand said he never saw the report or worked on it. Dorries claimed a total of more than £40,000 in expenses for services provided by Marketing Management (Midlands), owned by her friend Lynn Elson. They live near each other in the Cotswolds.

They just can't help themselves, can they?

Oh wait, yes they fucking can—it's just that they choose not to.

It's a salutary reminder that these people hold us in utter contempt; as such, you can bet your last penny that—no matter what the outcome is of the backroom deals that are currently being undertaken—the resolution will have been arrived at not for our benefit, but theirs.

The idea of a hanged Parliament continues to look ever so attractive...

There's an easy solution to this...

Via EU Referendum, it seems that huge numbers of mysteriously coy adults have been appearing on the electoral role in certain areas of the country.

A dozen voters have been registered to the home of a Labour candidate in an East End of London borough where police are investigating allegations of electoral malpractice.

The number registered to vote at the home of Khales Uddin Ahmed, running to be a councillor in Tower Hamlets, has risen from five to twelve in recent weeks. But a neighbour said that only three people live in the maisonette on a council estate in Bromley-by-Bow.

It is one of several cases where new names have been suddenly added to the voting register as living at addresses occupied by Labour candidates in the borough, which has a history of allegations of voting irregularities.

The Times article goes on to detail numerous other suspected abuses. Whilst some have commented that this type of tactic seems to be most adopted by a certain ethicity, I would not dream of discriminating in any way.

All I would point out is that, for a short time, we had a mechanism that would have seriously reduced the incidence of this kind of... er... creative voter registration.

It was commonly known as the Poll Tax...