The prisons fiasco

The government could easily have seen that it needed more prison places. Doubtless officials knew. But ministers prefer redistribution, or headline-catching initiatives. So much for responsible government.

Did the Home Office fail to ask the Treasury to pay for more prison places, or did the Chancellor chop them out? One political analysis suggests the Chancellor is happy to deny funding to heavyweight potential rivals at the Home Office.

Of course he is a Scottish Chancellor and we are talking about English prisons. Our Scottish correspondent says Scotland will have its own budget.

There is a separate Scottish Prison Service that like policing and courts is dealt with at Holyrood under the block grant from the Treasury. I seem to recall something about a new build programme, but am not sure.

According to The Scotsman and the SNP, Scotland also gets debited with one tenth of the cost of the English Prison Service under the accounts that show our overspend!

Is a Scottish Chancellor using English prisons as a political pawn?

Who loves the euro?

Richard North picks up a trivial poll about the euro which the Financial Times oddly put on its front page.

People in the eurozone think the euro has damaged their national economies, but more Germans, Italians and Spanish see a positive impact on the EU economy than a negative effect.

Why the difference? Is this a sign of subtle economic analysis on the street? Probably not. These countries' politicians praise, laud and magnify European integration, while at a national level they find the euro a convenient whipping boy, rather than admit to their own failures to grip domestic economic problems, which would cause their electorates short term pain.

All the street is doing is parroting what its politicians and media have told it. In reality most euro countries have - and will continue to have - inappropriate interest rates. But this hasn't hit home in the street yet.

Keeping track of sex offenders

Some 300 released sex offenders go missing, and the government says in a statement that it's a matter for the police.

Always try to distance yourself from bad news. Bad news? Not us, guv.

Oops, it turned out the police had told the shambolic Home Office about the problem ... but the Home Office had done nothing about it.

But even if the police had said nothing, the responsibility still lay with the government. Nothing physically stops released sex offenders wandering off, and the police don't have the manpower to catch new criminals, let alone keep track of released criminals who might re-offend.

The government decided the risks were acceptable. It was the government's judgement call, and the buck stops with them. That's what governing is about - much though Mr Blair would prefer it to be about headlines, spin and moving on (to other issues, of course, not to other Prime Ministers).

North Korea

Has UN and other international aid been propping up the regime in North Korea?

Yes, suggests Helen Szamuely, in a depressingly convincing argument.

On the one hand, it is hard to look at pictures of starving children and not want to do something to help. That is the usual reaction and there are many organizations in the world, such as the WFP who benefit from this impulse.

On the other hand, it is almost axiomatic that the money, food and other supplies will go to the oppressive rulers who have caused the misery in the first place and will be used for further oppression.

Not giving aid to North Korea or, say, Sudan is the only possible weapon the West has. If we are serious about wanting to solve the problems in these countries, we shall have to harden our hearts in the short term.

Stern Report - another dodgy dossier

Charles Moore usefully reports eminent academics' criticisms of the Stern Report. "It is notable that none of these experts is a climate-change denier. Some, indeed, were warning about the dangers 30 years ago."

Professor William Nordhaus, for example, perhaps the doyen in the field, is affronted to find his own projections beyond the year 2100 treated as totally accurate by Stern, when he himself has always insisted that such projections were "particularly unreliable".

Professor Richard Tol finds Stern making free with his work on rising sea levels to warn about the terrible damage that would cause, without making any allowance, as Tol does, for the fact that people would find ways of adapting to that rise.

Professor Robert Mendelsohn, of Yale, notes that Stern assumes that the economic damage from hurricanes will rise strongly each year, when we already know that the damage last year was much less than the damage in the year that Katrina struck.

Tol criticises calculations about control of emissions: "This can be found in any textbook on cost/benefit analysis. It is puzzling that economists at HM Treasury can make such basic mistakes." The report, he says, is "alarmist and incompetent".

Professor Mendelsohn points out that Stern's calculations about the future costs of climate change might easily be wrong by trillions of dollars. Sir Partha Dasgupta, of Cambridge, says: "Where the modern economist is rightly hesitant, the authors of the review are supremely confident."

Then we turn to the discount rate, which we have discussed here before. Stern has the unusually low discount rate of 0.1%.

Sir Partha Dasgupta applies the Stern discount rate to other walks of life. Suppose, he says, that the British economy today followed that discount rate: we would have to invest 97.5 per cent of what we produce in saving for future generations. At present, we invest 15 per cent. The idea that people should starve now for the sake of their great-grandchildren is, he says, "patently absurd".

And before anyone says that the rich today must make sacrifices for the poor tomorrow — which sounds eminently reasonable — the critics point out that, by Sir Nicholas's own calculations, future generations will be much richer than our own. Stern predicts that, by 2200, the annual consumption of the world will be $94,000 per person (at today's prices). In 2006, it was $7,600. Sir Nicholas is asking us to make huge sacrifices today for people who, he himself says, will on average be 12 times better-off than we.

So, says Moore, Stern "always uses the most doom-laden projections, omits the numerous qualifications on the other side of the ledger, employs figures that don't add up and advocates a shock to the present world economy so great that it would make the Great Depression look like a hedge fund's Christmas party".

We can add other questions aired on this blog (click the "climate change" label below). How sure are we that the world is really warming, and how much of it is caused by man anyway?

This is hardly a basis for expensive, authoritarian action curtailing our freedom of choice.

2m drivers dodge road tax - government fiddles

2,193,000 owners failed to pay vehicle excise duty last year. That's nearly twice as many as in 2004.

There were 1,338,000 unlicensed private cars and vans in 2006 compared to 851,000 two years earlier (up 57%).

The number of unlicensed motorcycles rose 152%, from 275,000 to 694,000, and 21,000 goods vehicles were not licensed - up from 17,000 in 2004.

The statistics are based on checks conducted at 256 sites across the UK where around 1.3 million registration marks were recorded and checked against DVLA records.

All this equates to one in 15 of the 33 million vehicles on the road, and is estimated to have cost the DVLA £217 million in lost revenue. They estimate that 80% of untaxed vehicles have no insurance, and 70% of these uninsured drivers have criminal records.

Uninsured drivers were involved in accidents which killed 150 and injured a further 12,000 in 2005 and such vehicles are 10 times more likely to be involved in hit and run crashes. Which increases insurance premiums for the rest of us.

The Department for Transport insists it has brought in a number of measures to combat the problem.

“The DVLA has been rolling out a national clampdown on untaxed vehicles. Wheel-clamping has been ramped up so up to one hundred thousand will be clamped each year,” a spokesman said.

Vehicles equipped with Automatic Numberplate Recognition technology are taking 100,000 untaxed vehicles off the road each year, he added, and drivers caught with untaxed vehicles are sent £80 penalty notices, or visited by debt collectors if they do not respond.

The spokesman said the DVLA hoped to recoup 80 per cent of the lost revenue through this enforcement activity.

He added: “The DVLA is also sharing evasion records with the police and local authorities which will lead to another eighty thousand vehicles taken off the roads. These are tough measures. There is nowhere to hide.”

To start with, there's something far wrong if evasion has almost doubled in two years. To anyone but a dishonest government spin doctor, that's as clear a sign as you can get that enforcement is failing - and indeed getting worse fast.

So let's look at the government's own numbers. "Up to" 100,000 will be clamped each year. What does this mean? It probably means the true number is far below that, and it's probably falling - if it were rising, the government would have said so.

"Vehicles with ANPR are taking 100,000 untaxed vehicles off the road each year". What does this mean? Presumably they're not blowing them up as they drive past. The ANPR is just the detection stage. And detection on its own does not take a single unlawful vehicle off the road. Not one.

Then there's the sharing of records with the police and local authorities "which will lead to another eighty thousand vehicles taken off the roads".

Given that enforcement is manifestly failing, and given that the government promised to be tough on crime, what new measures is the government taking to reverse this huge increase?

Apparently none.

Even if we believe that 180,000 untaxed vehicles are being removed from the roads each year, that's less than one in twelve. So it's not such a big risk in any one year. The government's suggestion that there is nowhere to hide is dishonest nonsense. Of course, we're used to that.

How should government stamp out this lawlessness? It's no good using police manpower for this, since we know they are over-stretched and bureaucratic. Private firms should be incentivised to get unlicensed and uninsured vehicles taxed and insured, or off the roads.

1. The DVLA should be allowed 3 months to get offending vehicles taxed. After that, the records should be handed over to private companies. If the vehicle subsequently gets taxed and insured, the company gets paid - by results. They also get paid if they tow it away and it's destroyed or sold. Companies should bid for the business.
   
   
2. There should be a pilot scheme in a city with good CCTV and ANPR coverage to blitz unlicensed and uninsured vehicles. Private companies should be invited to bid for the business.
   
   
3. And why shouldn't parking wardens ticket vehicles for being unlicensed? The technology would be simple, and confidentiality shouldn't be an issue (since the warden would only need to know that it was a positive, and to go ahead and issue a ticket).
   
   It's a ticket for the first detection, and if you're caught again more than (say) 14 days later, the vehicle gets clamped.

Or is the government prepared to tolerate this surge in crime?

The Rural Payments Agency

This was the Agency where cock-ups on agricultural support payments cost hundreds of millions of pounds. At the time the Chief Executive was vilified.

Now he's hit back, as reported in the excellent Burning our Money blog. Lo and behold, it was Ministers who handed down the obviously duff decisions, and the official who is made to carry the can.

"The abolition of health care in Yorkshire"

The NHS blog doctor blogs in detail on this here and here. Read about how the government can't manage our crumbling Nationalised Health Service (honestly, are you surprised?) - especially if you live in Yorkshire.

The BBC report quotes the official extensively without highlighting any opposition, while The Times at least puts the cuts in a national context,

The UK's contribution to hot air

John Redwood comments on the volume of UK emissions.

For once when I asked the government a written question I received an answer.

I asked “How much carbon dioxide is put into the atmosphere each day ,and what proportion is from human sources”

The answer stated “The amount of carbon dioxide emitted from human sources is small in comparison to natural flows:at around 3% emitted from the land and oceans to the atmosphere”

The Minister also told me “In 2004 the UK emitted approximately 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per day “(I think from human sources). This compares with the “25 billion tonnes emitted each year globally” from human sources and the total emissions of 800 billion tonnes from all sources.

It is just useful to understand the scope of the problem and the UK human component. According to the government the UK human component represents 2% of the world total human emissions, or 0.06% of total emissions.

Strangely, he sees this as an argument for precautionary measures. He does also argue for more spending on flood defences. But that's needed now anyway.

Global warming just a natural cycle?

Global warming comes and goes in 1,500 year cycles which may have more to do with cosmic rays than fossil fuel emissions, according to a new book, reports The Telegraph.

According to Dennis Avery, one of the authors, “If this were a CO2 driven warming it should have started in 1940 and risen strongly from there. In fact warming started in 1850 and rose sharply until 1940 then decreased for 35 years.”

He claims that only half the warming that has happened since 1940 - 0.2 degrees according to his measurements - can be ascribed to man made emissions. The rest he says is natural variability.

“If you factor in the warming from the cyclical trends, it is not very frightening,” he said.

The authors say that history, ice core studies and stalagmites all agree on a natural cycle at roughly that interval that is superimposed on the longer, stronger ice ages and interglacial phases.

They point as evidence of this natural cycle to the “Climate Optimum” - a period of warmer and wetter weather than the present Earth’s climate, which took place 9,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago, and a cooling event 2,600 years ago.

During the Roman warming period from 200 BC to around AD 600 North Africa and the Sahara were wetter and supported crops. In more recent times they point to the Medieval warming of 900 to 1300, when Eric the Red’s descendants colonised Greenland and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1850 which saw the Norse dairy farmers on Greenland grow short from malnutrition and eventually die out.

Avery suggests that the natural cycle of warming and cooling may come from variations in cosmic rays which have been linked to cloud formation.

This theory was validated in a recent paper in a Royal Society journal (noted on this blog, for instance here) by scientists from the Danish National Space Centre who showed that "sub-atomic particles - cosmic rays from exploding stars - play a major role in making clouds. During the past century cosmic rays became scarcer as vigorous activity by the sun forced them away. So there was less cloud cover to reflect away sunlight and a warmer world, according to the Danish scientists".

You don't have to believe in the cosmic rays. All you need to accept is that climate wasn't constant before industrialisation happened along.

That must raise questions about spending trillions of dollars to make the world poorer.

Rotten at the head

Richard North picks up a piece by Simon Heffer discussing why increasing numbers of voters are walking away from our three similar left-wing main parties.

One of the minor parties benefiting most from this is UKIP, which is starting to attract more Peers and votes.

Comments North -

In so doing, it is undoubtedly aided by its new leader, Nigel Farage, who Heffer tells us is, "highly articulate, plain spoken, experienced, attracting much media attention and highly politically motivated". Fortunately for UKIP, very few know - or care - that Farage is also an unprincipled, self-centred, intellectually challenged shit. Most of those who do have left (or are leaving) the party.

Truly spoken.

Incidentally, UKIP also suffers from injelititis.

Injelititis is a word that Parkinson made up from Inferiority and Jealousy; it is a character deficiency in people that can bring about the decay and death of organizations they work for. The basic mechanism is that the carrier of Injelititis would try to move himself or herself into a position of authority (because of the inferiority complex), having obtained which he or she would try to surround oneself with individuals non-threatening intellectually or professionally (because of jealousy.) Parkinson thus formulates it succinctly, "If the head of the organization is second-rate, he will see to it that his immediate staff are all third-rate; and they will, in turn, see to it that their subordinates are fourth-rate."

It will be interesting to see how long UKIP manages to retain its newly acquired Lords.

Why pay for university education?

This is what some EU governments may be asking themselves. According to EU rules, EU citizens should have equal access to universities across the bloc.

Last year

Belgium's French parliament adopted a decree which requires 70 percent of new medical students to be resident in Belgium.

The move came as French students in particular come to Belgium to take advantage of easier access to medical studies and cheaper education in Belgium in their own language.

Jolly good for France. Poor little Belgium. Hang on, aren't the Belgians among the most federalist of countries?

Austria capped the number of foreign students at its universities at 20 percent early last year in a bid to restrict German access to its medical faculties, despite a July 2005 ECJ ruling which declared earlier restrictions illegal.

Jolly good for Germany. Poor little Austria.

And after it emerged that one third of students accepted in Danish medical faculties in 2006 were Swedish, the Danish science minister said that "We have to find a solution at the EU [level]". In effect, governments cannot plan spending on medical places at their universities in line with their own countries' medical needs, because they may be swamped by students from other countries - especially if their courses are better or cheaper. Levelling down, anyone?

The Commission does not see any of this. They are sending Vienna and Brussels "letters of formal notice" - the first step of infringement proceedings which could lead to cases before the European Court of Justice.

Truly they view the EU as a single area.

The right analysis of the Right?

Gideon Rachman in a characteristically interesting piece suggests that the Iraq war and climate change threw the right into disarray.

Only the traditional woolly left opposed the Iraq war - the CND crowd - and they were also right about global warming. "There are restrictions on individual liberty as the clamour grows to tax people out of their cars and off their cheap flights."

The problem with this analysis (which I've severely abbreviated) is that the advocates of the Iraq war were the US government and Tony Blair. I don't recall advocacy of war from the right in the UK. They (with the exception of Ken Clarke, who was as correct about this as he is wrong about the EU) loyally accepted the word of the UK prime minister and government, a trust which proved badly misplaced, as the presentation of the case for war probably stopped just this side of outright lying. There was no UK equivalent of the US neo-cons.

Rachman refers to "the Anglo-American right". But in fact the Anglo and the American Rights had - and still have - very different positions about the war. In the UK the post cold war vainglory was Tony Blair's.

On global warming Rachman has the American right moving towards calling for action. Cameron has of course been preaching for some time. It is questionable how deep this concern runs in the Conservative party, but the touchy feely message seems to appeal to voters, at least until they understand what the fanatical puritan Miliband has in mind.

Rachman suggests that the right has a defensive role, in ensuring that opposition to the Iraq war doesn't spill over into anti-Americanism, and in showing that growth and greenery can be reconciled. And a spell in intellectual opposition may produce new ideas.

Rachman's analysis concentrates on the political establishment, who in the UK at least are intellectually under-powered at government level. In the context of the UK - and we've already argued that the Anglo and American contexts aren't identical - it's interesting to lay this analysis alongside Paul Dacre's comments on the BBC and the wider soft left media.

Dacre is claiming, rightly, that there is a large rightward section of public opinion which the BBC isn't adequately representing. Maybe, then, the new left consensus is barely skin deep.

There is no high level home for rightish political ideas now. One thrust must be to intensify the pressure on the biased BBC. But what else?

How bad is the NHS?

Could EU law actually do the NHS a favour, asks the Civitas blog, and the answer is probably not.

The case is too thin to be interesting - it's really just a hook for reviewing the performance of our Nationalised Health Service.

The NHS, at least by international standards, really isn’t a very good health system. Take the main killer diseases: cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke. The OECD measures deaths before the age of 70 that were potentially preventable by good medical care. The UK had the third worst death rate from cancer in nine developed nations in 2003. For ischaemic heart disease, the UK had the second worst death rate in 2000 and was still there in 2003. An OECD report on strokes found that in 1998 the UK was by far the worst performing country measured by deaths within 30 days. Fatality rates were often double those in 11 other countries. Despite recent reforms NHS patients still wait far longer for treatment. In 2005, 41 per cent of UK patients waited four months or longer for elective surgery, compared with 33 per cent in Canada, 19 per cent in Australia and less than 10 per cent in the US and Germany.

The Geoffrey Robinson programmes were a shocking illustration of the hugely wasteful inertia in the system. This can't be altered by decree from above - not that someone who can't even cap a GP contract would be capable of addressing such an issue. But the balance of command needs to be altered in hospitals, and that's not going to happen under a centralised public bureaucracy.

So Civitas may be right in thinking that this poor performance is largely because the NHS is a public sector monopoly.

The French, German and Swiss systems have proved the truth in this; in these countries hospitals are under diverse ownership and health care is paid through social insurance, yet the poorest people receive a higher standard of care than the UK.

Certainly someone I know in Austria has been receiving responsive specialist care which is hugely better than he will get in the UK. However, this doesn't take into account what their health systems cost those countries.

Most UK political establishment commentators choose to focus on the alleged contrast between individuals' good experiences of the NHS and their criticism of it as a whole.

But how do we compare with other countries when it comes to value for money? That's the missing number.

Global cooling again

Apparently a "large portion" (whatever that is) of physicists in Russia, especially solar physicists, have reached a "scientific consensus" - as others would call it - that the Earth will enter a period of global cooling in a couple of years and the temperatures will drop to the minimum sometime in the middle of this century.

If they're right, we're told, "a period of deep freeze will start around 2055-2060 and last for 50 years or so. These predictions are based on a detailed analysis of internal dynamics of the Sun."

A good thing, then, that Kyoto won't have reduced global temperatures drastically.

The total temperature increment hypothetically subtracted from the global temperature in 2050 has just surpassed three negative millidegrees centigrade! ... You can now proudly inform your grandkids that in 2050, if they're still around, the global average temperature will be about 14.863 Celsius degrees even though otherwise, without the bold acts of the grandfather and millions of other great people, it would probably be frying 14.866 Celsius degrees although no one will be able to prove this assertion.

They're the official numbers generated by the IPCC, the panel of the United Nations, in documentation used to support the Kyoto protocol. Of course, they had to offer these numbers for such a huge project.

Anyway, the hypothetical reduction of the temperature is our generation's contribution to the civilization: no boring cathedrals or theories of relativity: three negative millikelvins. Wow. And it was very cheap - something like 300 billion U.S. dollars. Thanks, Al Gore, for guiding us in this enlightened direction.

Scottish waste

As David Smith reminds us, public spending as a proportion of the economy is higher in Scotland than it is in most of England.

If those national governments that lost the greatest amounts of money through waste reduced their levels of waste to that of the most efficient government, they could save over one third of the costs of government spending. It does not appear to be possible, however, to cut waste without cutting the size of government.

Governments that spend the biggest proportion of national income waste more as a percentage of their spending. Thus a ‘war on waste’ alone will tend to be ineffective.

Here's an example. As it happens, it comes from the Scotsman, via Wat Tyler.

Hundreds of civil servants are being paid extra to travel to work under the Executive's flagship relocation policy.

More than 3,000 workers have been relocated under the controversial scheme to move public-sector jobs out of the capital. Under civil-service rules, however, they are entitled to receive extra cash for the excess cost in travelling to new locations for work.

Yesterday, it was revealed Transport Scotland, which has been moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow, was spending £2,000 a week on fares for 57 of its 250 staff to commute. Audit Scotland has estimated the Scottish Public Pensions Agency, which moved from Edinburgh to Galashiels, will spend more than £92,000 in excess fares over five years.

The Executive was unable to calculate the cost to some 30 other agencies forced to move, but it is expected to run to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Civil servants whose commutes have increased because of moves are also taking advantage of flexible hours to include travelling time as part of the working day.

If the money is there aplenty, discipline goes out of the window, and anyone trying to enforce it is likely to be squeezed out by the culture of the organisation. After all, why the disagreeable belt tightening when there is no advantage to be gained?

"You'd almost", says Wat, "think the politicos were engineering these relocations not to save taxpayers' money, but to shore up electoral support in favoured constituencies".

Indeed. Why would high spending politicians be interested in saving taxpayers money?

Dacre on the BBC

Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, made a speech criticising the BBC, the thrust of which was reported on Today.

Yes, the BBC is, in many ways, a wonderful organisation. But the fact remains that it depends for its licence fee on the British population as a whole yet only reflects the views of a tiny metropolitan minority.

This is an abuse of the position of trust it should occupy and if it continues with its political and cultural bias then the British people will withdraw their consent and the Corporation will fall into discredit which would be a great pity.

The full text is here.

Objections to more EU red tape

New cross-border trade laws proposed by Brussels will bog companies down in a legal quagmire, damage online businesses and undermine the UK's financial services sector, the CBI has warned.

They have called on EU policy-makers to review the contract legislation before it goes to the European Parliament for debate this week.

Under the proposals a UK firm selling its goods and services to consumers across the EU would no longer be secure in the knowledge that it is broadly governed by English law. Instead it would have to navigate a minefield of up to 27 different, often conflicting legal regimes - or, more likely, opt not to do business outside the UK.

Financial and legal services firms will be particularly affected because they will lose the right to decide which country's law applies to a contract with a foreign company. In the event of a dispute a court could over-ride the companies' choice and rule that a different legal system applies.

To avoid exposure to these legal risks and uncertainties, firms which currently use the City of London and English law as their preferred business location and legal option, might opt to do legal business outside the EU instead, for example in New York.

Separately, the Forum of Private Business (FPB) has warned of the dangers arising from potential new EU red tape governing the hiring and deployment of non-standard workers.

"A significant number of our members already think that red tape relating to employment is hindering their expansion," said the FPB’s chief executive, Nick Goulding. "The last thing they need is for their hiring of contractors, agency workers and the like to be subject to extra rules as well."

"The global climate is cooling"

A Chinese scientific study reached this conclusion recently, and now there is a long article making this claim. While British winters seem to me undoubtedly milder, this piece includes an impressive list of recent cold weather events which give pause for thought.

That's what we British like: hard, inconvenient facts.

Will Al Gore melt?

This is the title of a piece from the largest Danish newspaper. Gore is in Denmark on his world tour. The paper originally planned to interview him along with Bjorn Lomborg, which Gore's agent accepted. Then, close to the time, Gore stipulated that Lomborg should be excluded. The paper accepted this, but Gore cancelled the interview anyway.

Let the blogosphere trumpet Gore's arrogant cowardice round the world. He's just another conceited politician who's keener to shout his mouth off than to look behind what he hears and think about it, even if that means a period of silence. That might be unbearable to Mr Gore and other self-satisfied political loudmouths, but I could stand it.

He needs to be cross-examined, says the National Center for Policy Analysis, helpfully summarising the article's analysis.

First, the costs associated with Gore's plan need to be explored, say the authors:

* The United Nations estimates that if we slowly change our greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world.
* However, the U.N. Climate Panel suggests that if we follow Al Gore's path, by 2100 the average person will be 30 percent poorer.

Given the huge costs, it would be paramount to look at Gore's facts, which seem more convenient than accurate, says Rose and Lomborg:

* In his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore shows sequences of 20-feet flooding in Florida, San Francisco, New York, Beijing and others; yet the U.N. climate panel expects only a foot of sea-level rise over this century.

* Gore also says global warming is bringing malaria to Nairobi; yet this is quite contrary to the World Health Organization's finding that Nairobi is considered free of malaria; but in the 1920s and 1930s, when temperatures were lower than today, malaria epidemics occurred regularly.

* In Antarctica, Gore presents pictures from the 2 percent of Antarctica that is dramatically warming and ignores the 98 percent that has largely cooled over the past 35 years; he also ignores U.N. panel estimates that Antarctica will actually increase its snow mass this century.

* He also says heat waves will cost lives, but says nothing about the fact that avoided cold deaths far outweigh the number of heat deaths.

* In the United Kingdom, for example, it is estimated that 2,000 more will die from global warming, but 20,000 fewer will die of cold.

Quite apart from the exaggerations in his apocalyptic vision, what would the cause of any global warming be? It's far from clear that it's man made.

Kenyan malaria again

I blogged on this before, but its worth returning to, to notice an article by a specialist in diseases transmitted by mosquitoes in the International Herald Tribune.

Recently, he writes

the Associated Press quoted an entomologist claiming an unprecedented outbreak of malaria in Karatina, Kenya, at 1,868 meters. The heart rending article began, "The soft cries of children broke the morning stillness as parents brought them in to the hillside hospital one by one...drained by a disease once unknown in the high country of Kenya."

But there's nothing new about malaria in Karatina. Between World War I and the 1950s, there were 10 disastrous epidemics in the region, and they extended much higher.

Al Gore's film, he says, claims that Nairobi was established in a healthy place "above the mosquito line" but is now infested with mosquitoes — naturally, because of global warming.

Gore's claim is deceitful on four counts. Nairobi was dangerously infested when it was founded; it was founded for a railway, not for health reasons; it is now fairly clear of malaria; and it has not become warmer.

Indeed, a recent study

found no evidence of long-term climatic change and noted that epidemics of malaria were frequent until the 1950s, when DDT appeared. Malaria's return in the past 20 years has been due to many factors — the effective ban on DDT, deforestation, migration from highly malarious areas, drug and insecticide resistance and above all, poverty.

And he picks up the Stern Review, which "predicted increases in temperature will produce up to 80 million new cases of malaria".

This claim relies on a single article that described a simplistic mathematical model that blithely ignored the most obvious reality: Most Africans already live in hot places where they get as many as 300 infective bites every year, though just one is enough. The glass is already full.

The weather, he writes, is largely out of our control, but malaria is not. "While billions are spent on climate change prevention and by advocacy groups, malaria remains rampant, killing millions, making life a misery for hundreds of millions — like the children of Karatina where the epidemic could easily be eliminated cheaply."

If the greenies are wrong about malaria, if Al Gore is wrong about malaria, if the Stern Review is wrong about malaria - what else are they wrong about?

Scientists and economists criticise the Stern Review

A group of scientists and a group of economists have produced their critiques of the Stern Review (summarised here).

From the scientists - We conclude that the Stern Review is biased and alarmist in its reading of the science. In particular, it displays:

* a failure to acknowledge the scope and scale of the knowledge gaps and uncertainties in climate science
* credulous acceptance of hypothetical, model-based explanations of the causality of climate phenomena
* massive overestimation of climate impacts through an implausible population scenario and one-sided treatment of the impacts literature, including reliance on agenda-driven advocacy documents
* lack of due diligence in evaluating many pivotal research studies despite the scandalous lack of disclosure of data and methods in these studies
* lack of concern for the defects and inadequacies of the peer review process as a guarantor of quality or truth.

These and other related problems arise because the Review has relied for advice almost exclusively on a small number of people and organizations that have a long history of unbalanced alarmism on the global warming issue. Most of the research cited by the Review does not, on inspection, make a convincing case that greenhouse warming constitutes a major threat that justifies an immediate and radical policy response. Contrary research is consistently ignored, as are basic observational facts showing that alarm is unwarranted. The Review fails to present an accurate picture of scientific understanding of climate change issues, and will reinforce ill-informed alarm about climate change among the general public, the bureaucracy and the body politic. HM Government will need to look elsewhere for a balanced, impartial and authoritative review of the current climate change debate.

And from the economists - Our main conclusions coincide with, and serve to confirm and reinforce, those reached by our scientific colleagues in Part I above. Like them, we would emphasise in particular two interrelated features of the Stern Review:

* it greatly understates the extent of uncertainty as to possible developments, in highly complex systems that are not well understood, over a period of two centuries or more
* its treatment of sources and evidence is persistently selective and biased. These twin features have combined to make the Review a vehicle for speculative alarmism. We also endorse, from our own analysis, the judgement of our colleagues that the Review:
* mishandles data
* gives too little attention to actual observation and evidence, as distinct from the results of model-based exercises
* takes no account of the failures of due disclosure, and the chronic limitations of peer reviewing, that have been characteristic of work relating to climate change which governments have commissioned and drawn on.

As to specifically economic aspects, we have noted among other weaknesses that the Review:
* systematically overstates projected costs of climate change, partly though by no means wholly as a result of its failure to acknowledge the scope for long-term adaptation to possible global warming
* underestimates the likely cost - including to the world's poor - of the drastic global mitigation programme that it calls for
* proposes worldwide adoption of a specially low rate of interest for discounting the costs and benefits of mitigation, on the basis of inadequate analysis and without regard for the problems and risks that would result.

So far from being an authoritative guide to the economics of climate change, the Review is deeply flawed. It does not provide a basis for informed and responsible policies.

So is our sternly impartial civil service going to draw this to ministers' attention? Don't hold your breath. Meanwhile, much green policy may be hot air (intellectual rigour, Mr Cameron?), and much taxpayer-financed expenditure on it (come in, Mr Miliband) wasted money.

Who is to speak against this political consensus?

Poll says most people support English parliament

Most people, including the Scottish and Welsh, believe England should have its own parliament, according to a BBC poll.

61% of those questioned in England, 51% of those in Scotland and 48% of those in Wales thought there should be an English Parliament.

There was no majority in any of the three nations for further independence.

The opinions about the English parliament are terrible news for Gordon Brown - because he sits for a Scottish seat. So far, the only argument he has put up against it is that it would be a "Trojan horse" for dissolving the union, without explaining why.

I've yet to see any democratic argument against English votes for English laws. Cost is certainly not one of them - David Davis provided the right answer long ago when he suggested that an English parliament could sit at Westminster.

One of Mr Brown's arguments for continuing the union is that the countries in it share a culture. But they don't share a political culture. Northern Ireland - happily - is unique, while Wales and Scotland are far more to the left than England.

Hence Labour's anti-democratic stance that celtic MPs should continue to vote on English laws.

Kyoto strains the EU?

We've noted before EU nations ready to trumpet their green credentials until the Commission told them to reduce their carbon output. Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, has taken up the theme in Canada's National Post.

The crisis, he writes, centres on "a fundamental conflict between economic realism and environmental idealism, between national interest and green ideology. It has exposed the increasing tension between Europe's green enthusiasm and the realization that its unilateral framework comes at a hefty cost that is beginning to erode the economic stability of a waning continent".

He sets out a useful potted history of the Emissions Trading Scheme and notes Gunter Verheugen has warned that by "going it alone" the EU is burdening its industries and consumers with soaring costs that are undermining its international competitiveness. "Instead of improving environmental conditions, Europe's policy threatens to redirect energy-intensive production to parts of the world that reject mandatory carbon cuts."

After years of inflated promises that the Kyoto process would not upset their economy, European governments are beginning to realize that the era of cost-free climate hype is coming to an end. In its place, concern is growing that key industries and entire countries will pay a devastating price for Europe's reckless Kyoto craze.

Political realists, he writes, have absorbed these sobering developments. "There are signs that they are preparing the public for the EU's ultimate exit from Kyoto-type treaties." One influential German advisor on climate has suggested that G8 countries as well as China and India should adopt their own, national climate goals and policies, a loose road map that could replace the Kyoto treaty after it runs out in 2012.

What then are the chances that Europe's flagging climate policy will survive? The prospects are rather bleak.

What then are the chances of David Miliband realising any time soon that he is late to a party which is already breaking up? Not high, I fear.

Meanwhile, UK taxpayers will doubtless continue to pay the price of his folly, by burying rotting vegetables in Thailand or in other ways.

Climates changed before the industrial age

Those who don't know any history think everything that happens is new.

But the ancient Egyptian civilisation may have collapsed because of climate change.

Samples taken over the past two years from sediments beneath Lake Tana, which supplies the water which makes the lower Nile valley so fertile, reveal the lake may have almost dried up during the critical period around 4,200 years ago due to climate change. According to the team's theory, the flow of water on which the farm-based ancient Egyptian economy thrived would have slowed to a trickle, causing a devastating famine that lasted for 200 years. That would have been enough to destroy the Old Kingdom and its people, leaving only the pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza as their legacy to history.

Separate research suggests that climate change led to the collapse of the most splendid imperial dynasty in China's history more than 1,000 years ago. The cause was to be found in the migration of a band of heavy tropical rain, which moves in response to phenomena such as El Nino, scientists have argued in an article in Nature.

The scientists discovered that titanium sediment and deposits of magnetic minerals in a lake in southeast China indicate that the period was one of intense climate change that left northern China a desolate waste.

The lesson from history? Climate wasn't stable in pre-industrial times.

And if it wasn't stable in pre-industrial times, how do we know that industrial activity is the cause of whatever climate changes we are seeing now?

What caused these earlier climate changes? And could that be relevant now?

Brown waffles about the UK

Gordon Brown's Telegraph piece defending the union is waffle. He claims the nations are stronger together than they are apart. That may be true for the celtic fringes. But is it true for England, which makes up 85% of the union and subsidises its fringes?

Brown never addresses this, having recourse to patriotism (which we know is the last refuge of the scoundrel) and other "shared values", such as fair play - hilarious from a Labour government which has taken the art of spin to new depths. And he describes "English votes for English laws" as "a Trojan horse for separation".

The message, therefore, is that the English will have to put up with having celtic MPs helping to make our laws as a price for staying in a union which brings us - what benefits? Well, Mr Brown is not going to tell us.

The real reason is that Labour has no natural majority in England. At the last general election they got fewer votes in England than the Conservatives - but 93 more seats.

Mr Brown wants to make policies for England in areas such as health and education which do not affect his own constituents.

Meanwhile, David Cameron has said the SNP offered "rhetoric on the dismemberment of the union" but - more hilarity - claimed that they lacked "intellectual coherence".

Since when has "intellectual coherence" been a Cameron criterion? Is he really implying that intellectual coherence is on offer from his own party?

Anyway, Cameron is as usual irrelevant here. The question for Brown - and for Cameron should he care to attempt it - is, What does England get from the union except for extra costs and foreign rule?

Let's secede

The SNP have said a newly independent Scotland would join the EU. Not so fast, says the Commission, Scotland would have to negotiate terms to join, there would be no automatic right.

So England's course is clear. England should leave the UK. Apparently we will then have left the EU too. Excellent.

Sadly, UKIP's members (they sang Jerusalem at the AGM) would have none of this.

More French murk

The new President of the EPP is facing trial for theft and misuse of public funds amounting to €16 million, reports UKIP.

Joseph Daul MEP was charged in 2004 after an investigation by police spanning years. The accusation is that funds were transferred through Mr Daul's Trade Union Association, before being passed onto another French trade union, the FNSEA.

As the Financial Times comments,it is reminiscent of the case of Jacques Barrot, the European transport commissioner. He failed to tell José Manuel Barroso, his boss, that he had been convicted of fraud in a party funding scandal. He was granted an immediate amnesty by Jacques Chirac, the French president.

Brown struggles to preserve the UK

A majority of voters in both Scotland and England want the countries to split, reports the Daily Mail, citing an ICM poll. Failing that, both think England should have a Parliament of its own deciding on English affairs without any involvement of Scottish MPs.

• Nearly half of those polled think the present United Kingdom is unlikely to survive more than 25 years.


• Two out of three English voters want an end to the subsidies paid to Scotland, and a majority want to end the anomaly that gives Scots MPs at Westminster a say over legislation which affects only England.


• 31% of people in England say they are British first, and only 15% in Scotland.


• 51% want Scotland to break away. So do 48% of English respondents, again a clear majority of those who expressed an opinion one way or the other.


• 51% in England back an English parliament, and 58% in Scotland.


• 54% in England and 62% in Scotland want England to have its own Prime Minister or First Minister.


• Among the English, 53% want Scots MPs at Westminster to be barred from voting on issues that affect England only, such as health and education. A majority of Scots who expressed a view also want to see Scots MPs' voting rights restricted.

Thus the Mail's report. And the best Mr Brown can do it to say that "this is a Union that is built around an England that is 85 per cent of the Union".

What does this mean (if anything)? Especially given that England is uniquely denied devolved government?

He added -

"Let's not forget the strengths of the United Kingdom, and let's also not forget that a policy of English votes for English laws would in the end break up the United Kingdom, because the executive would have to owe its authority to simply the English members."

And let's also not forget that he is talking tripe about England, because he's desperate to be Prime Minister of the UK, and desperate for Labour to continue to rule England even though it got fewer English votes at the general election than the Conservatives did.

It's a democratic scandal.

Frequently asked questions about immigration

Migrationwatch have updated their readable FAQs.

The hypocrisy of Ruth Kelly

Can't fault the trenchant, well researched criticism of the NHS Blog Doctor of Ruth Kelly and other NewLab luminaries who have educated their children outside the state system.

I suppose the Google Ads in the margin of his post are generated by reference to words in the text. When I visited, the first one was for boarding schools.

Oops :)

More government waste

Competition forces private companies to try to make things cheaper for their customers. When did government ever reduce the price of its services to us?

Here are some reasons why not (usual hat-tip to the Taxpayers' Alliance) -

- Lavish new MOD HQ now to cost £2.3bn

- £7m for training in positioning pencils and bananas

- Another £3.8m on Whitehall taxis

- £1.3m on unwanted Norwich bus service

Sorry about the pause

Attempting to upgrade to wireless internet connection just as the builders were about to start wasn't perhaps my wisest decision ever. But communications seem to have been restored - now for the building works!

What economic benefits of immigration?

The government has been praising the economic benefits of high immigration. Andrew Green of Migrationwatch reports that

They told Parliament that immigrants add "at least £4 billion to production". What they did not say is that they also add almost exactly the equivalent percentage to our population, so that the extra wealth per head is barely positive. We calculate that it is worth 4p per week per head.

We shouldn't be entirely surprised, he says.

Major studies in America, Canada and Australia found similarly small benefit – typically one tenth of one per cent of GDP.

In Holland, the c