A perspective on Northern Ireland

This pifflingly small part of the UK has a population of 1.7m people.

It also has a £5bn budget gap between what central government spends there and what is raised there in taxes.

The government accounts for about 65% of economic output, against a bad enough 48% for the UK as a whole and a better 27% in the Irish Republic.

The number of "economically inactive" in the workforce is 530,000, compared with 720,000 in jobs.

In political terms, only the extremists on each side of the religious divide could reach a settlement. Moderates who had signed up to this would have been outflanked by these same extremists, who have nowhere else to go now that they are the dominant force in their own communities.

So we have the fanatics saying they will govern together. Hm. Anyway, it's time for them to stop whining, and sponging off England.

Hoist by their own petard

A minister says (reports the FT, in a piece not indexed on its website) that benefits will never lift a lone parent and two children above 60% of median earnings.

It's important there are incentives for people to stop relying on benefits and get into work.

The government's problem is their definition of poverty, which is 60% of median income. Hence the minister is saying that benefits alone will not lift families out of poverty. So these sensible comments were "greeted with consternation by anti-poverty campaigners".

These woolly do gooders should say what they mean by "poverty" and explain how working taxpayers will pay for their policies.

If you define poverty as a percentage of others' income, rather than an absolute level, then indeed the poor will always be with us and anti-"poverty" campaigners can be comfortably assured of a cause that will never disappear.

Gordon (Stalin) Brown

Yes, he's been compared to Stalin in his brooding ruthlessness. The media have loved it. Lord Turnbull also suavely compared him to Macavity the cat. This comparison is such fun that it's worth reading the full poem.

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw -
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air -
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Mcavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square -
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -
But it's useless to investigate - Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
`It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

His Lordship certainly knew what he was about.

A clear-minded critique of environmentalism

Vaclav Klaus has been responding to US politicians' questions about the environment (htp Lubos Motl).

Clear, short, and worth reading in full.

So tiresome, this democracy stuff

Time to move forward, says Mr Prodi, despite the people's votes.

"I want to hail the great efforts by Germany to relaunch Europe, whose way forward was interrupted [my emphasis] by the two votes against the constitution," he said, referring to failed referendums in France and The Netherlands on the bloc's basic law in 2005.

Meanwhile, Mrs Beckett said that she hoped the new text would not trigger a referendum.

“We would certainly hope that it would be possible to get, if we can get agreement and common ground, that that could be in an area where it wouldn’t need to trigger a referendum here.”

She added that

“I’ve no doubt, by the way, that no matter what it says, if there’s any agreement at all, there will be people who will call for a referendum anyway, but since they’re all people who never had a referendum when they had the opportunity, I think we can rise above that.”

José Barroso, the green hypocrite, has also come up with a novel doctrine.

“Britain, like all the other countries, have signed the Constitutional treaty so there is a kind of responsibility; when we sign a treaty we have some kind of obligation to ratify it.”

The common thread is that we know what's best, and the voters should leave us to get on with it.

Muslim lobbyist talks rubbish

Massoud Shadjareh is chairman of the "Islamic Human Rights Commission".

The government has belatedly said schools have the right to ban pupils from wearing full-face veils on security, safety or learning grounds.

The guidance says schools need to be able to identify individual pupils in order to maintain good order and spot intruders.

"If a pupil's face is obscured for any reason the teacher may not be able to judge their engagement with learning or secure their participation in discussions and practical activities," it adds.

Mr Shadjareh pronounces that this is "guidance against Muslim communities" and is "simply shocking".

It may disappoint the tiny minority of Muslims who want their children to wear the niqab, but it has been so controversial already that they can hardly be surprised by the new guidance, let alone shocked.

The BBC reports with a straight face that -

Ayshah Ishmael, a teacher at a Muslim girls' school in Preston who wears the niqab away from the classroom, told the BBC wearing the veil promoted equality.

She said: "You're judged for who you are and not what you are, so I think there are two arguments to the whole equality issue."

This is nonsense too. Of course the niqab influences how people see you, because it's an obviously different form of dress.

If a pupil doesn't want to be judged by her appearance, the best way is to wear the ordinary school uniform. Then her clothes are making no statement about her at all.

Both the people quoted are talking tosh.

Fine EU words on climate change

Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times takes a cynical view of EU leaders' recent pronouncements on climate change.

The EU has a track record when it comes to shelving grandiose pronouncements, he says, citing the Lisbon Agenda, and the rule that no eurozone member would be allowed to run budget deficits greater than 3% of GDP.

It seems highly likely that the climate-change targets will go the same way. Although the declarations made at this month’s summit sound impressive, the details of how these goals are to be achieved were left extremely vague. That was no accident. If EU leaders had tried to spell out exactly which countries were going to have to make what sacrifices, the whole deal would have fallen apart.

Do the heads of government believe in the process, or do they all know they are going through the motions? Why do they do this?

Are they criminally naive, or criminally cynical?

School closes to go racing

A special school closed for the day so that its staff could spend a day at the Cheltenham Gold Cup reports The Telegraph, in a piece I can't find on their website.

The acting head described it as a training day to boost sagging staff morale! What is it with these people, that they think it's acceptable to close the school for a day and spend public money like this?

Gloucestershire Council are investigating.

Another example of state employees' casual attitude to taxpayers' money.

We need a holistic approach

Thus bleated the senior policewoman who is apparently in charge of knife crime in the Met, when questioned on Today about the latest fatal stabbing, in East London.

Sadly she didn't get the incisive John Humphrys, but the oh so nice Mr Stourton.

She kept repeating that "we need a holistic approach."

Who is this "we"? Not the father interviewed on the programme, who said firmly that he wanted police out on the streets. I didn't hear him mention social workers once. So who is this "we"? Are the local community crying out for "a holistic approach"? That nice Mr Stourton didn't ask.

Second, in this holistic approach, what would the role of the police be? She briefly said they were looking at safer neighbourhoods, which sounds kinda fluffy. But maybe the role of the police, even in a holistic approach, is to take these people off the streets and get them banged up. That nice Mr Stourton didn't ask.

However, as we know, only one in 58 police officers is out on patrol at any given time, despite an increase in officer numbers.

She sounded wholly uninspiring. If she is typical of modern senior police - and how else would she have got promoted? - one can understand the despair of police bloggers like David Copperfield and Inspector Gadget.

I suspect her "we" is the meetings she calls of people like her who she thinks could contribute to a "holistic approach". Never mind the local community, who probably think some deterrent sentences might be a good start.

Roll on election of local police chiefs, as advocated by the Taxpayers Alliance. The police would then have to listen to their public. After all, we pay for them.

I bet she'd never get elected to any senior post. Which demonstrates the vested interest of the police in their cosy system.

Waste Resources Action Programme

Wat Tyler has a piece about the Waste Resources Action Programme, pointing out that it's yet another waste of our money.

The great global warming swindle - interview

The maker of the film has given an interview here. It is referenced by Luboš Motl, who discusses the content.

Luboš Motl also has a piece on the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature.

Fox News has a summary of the programme's arguments. Comments here from a number of Antipodean scientists.

Climate sceptics recently won a debate in New York. Nothing significant in that, but the sceptics had some nice debating quotes.

Sceptical quotes from Novelist Michael Crichton -

"I would like to suggest a few symbolic actions that right-might really mean something. One of them, which is very simple, 99% of the American population doesn't care, is ban private jets. Nobody needs to fly in them, ban them now. And, and in addition, [APPLAUSE] "Let's have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [electrical] grid. They must live in the way that they're telling everyone else to live. And if they won't do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously? [APPLAUSE]"

"I suddenly think about my friends, you know, getting on their private jets. And I think, well, you know, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe all that we have to do is mouth a few platitudes, show a good, expression of concern on our faces, buy a Prius, drive it around for a while and give it to the maid, attend a few fundraisers and you're done. Because, actually, all anybody really wants to do is talk about it."

"I mean, haven't we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes. [LAUGHTER]"

"Everyday 30,000 people on this planet die of the diseases of poverty. There are, a third of the planet doesn't have electricity. We have a billion people with no clean water. We have half a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Do we care about this? It seems that we don't. It seems that we would rather look a hundred years into the future than pay attention to what's going on now. I think that's unacceptable. I think that's really a disgrace."

Sceptical quotes from University of London's emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott -

"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I'm not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. [LAUGHTER] But it is a very serious point."

"In the early 20th century, 95% of scientists believed in eugenics. [LAUGHTER] Science does not progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts."

"The first Earth Day in America claimed the following, that because of global cooling, the population of America would have collapsed to 22 million by the year 2000. And of the average calorie intake of the average American would be wait for this, 2,400 calories, would God it were. [LAUGHTER] It's nonsense and very dangerous. And what we have fundamentally forgotten is simple primary school science. Climate always changes."

"Angela Merkel the German chancellor, my own good prime minister (Tony Blair) for whom I voted -- let me emphasize, arguing in public two weeks ago as to who in Annie get the gun style could produce the best temperature. `I could do two degrees C said Angela.' `No, I could only do three said Tony.' [LAUGHTER] Stand back a minute, those are politicians, telling you that they can control climate to a degree Celsius."

"And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let's use an engineer; I don't think I'd want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge. [LAUGHTER]"

Small issue, no action needed

Modern cars are much safer in collisions for their occupants than older models, but their extra weight and height mean that they are more likely to kill people in other cars, reports Ben Webster in The Times.

But then the piece starts to go off the rails.

Modern cars have much better safety features, such as multiple air bags, side-impact protection and stronger frames. But these have added weight, the study says, so that [my emphasis] the average new car is 20 per cent heavier than one built a decade ago.

But then we read that -

Manufacturers have also increased the size of models to satisfy consumer demand for roomier cars with higher performance. Greater acceleration and higher top speed require larger, heavier engines.

For example, the new VW Beetle weighs 1.6 tonnes, double the weight of the rear-engined versions. The modern VW Golf is half a tonne heavier than the 1976 original, 2ft longer and 5in taller. It has a top speed of 146mph compared with 113mph for the Mark 1.

So what is Webster saying here? That the average car is 20% heavier because of safety features, and heavier still because it's bigger and more powerful? I don't think so. Maybe EU safety bureaucrats are less to blame than Richard North suggests.

The Transport Research Laboratory actually spent our money to show that "drivers of the smallest cars ... are four times as likely to be killed in collisions with other cars as drivers of the largest cars" and "drivers hit by the largest cars are twice as likely to die as those hit by the smallest". The conclusions are self-evident, while the numbers must be spurious.

Interest groups have - of course - called for more regulation -

Road safety groups called on the car industry yesterday to add an extra crash test to measure the risk that cars pose to occupants of other cars. The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety said: “There is a good case for an extra test which will show prospective buyers how much damage a car will do to other cars.”

Just what this "good case" is is not explained.

In any case, how serious is the problem?

In 1998, 1,696 car occupants were killed, compared with 1,675 in 2005, a fall of only 1.2 per cent. Over the same period, the annual total for all road deaths fell by 6.4 per cent.

With more and more vehicles on the road, that doesn't look like a high priority issue to me.

In any event, the price mechanism is doing its work.

People carriers and 4x4s, the two largest categories, accounted for only 5.6 per cent of new car sales in 1996 but 12.5 per cent in 2005. Over the same period, small cars also increased their market share, from 27.9 per cent to 31.1 per cent.

The Times story includes some interesting facts, but is biased in favour of action. Small issue, no action needed, but that doesn't make a good story.

How green is my BBC

Gerard Baker has a go at "the awful BBC". Picking up an interview with Helen Mirren, he reports that -

Dame Helen was asked how difficult it had been to play such an “unsympathetic character” as the Queen, the eponymous heroine of her recent film. She replied, quite tartly, that she didn’t find the Queen unsympathetic at all and launched into her now familiar riff about how she thought Elizabeth II really, surprisingly, quite agreeable.

And he comments that -

It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch — or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world — must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media’s cultural enlightenment.

More than that, the question — all fawning and fraternal and friendly — contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.

Concern about the BBC is growing in the blogosphere - so much that there is a well populated blog, Biased BBC, concentrating on just that.

In that light there's some comic relief in viewing this morning's story on the BBC website Caution urged on climate 'risks'. Unusually, they have chosen to put a banner picture across the top of the report - an image of a plane flying in front of the sun. This contributes nothing to the text at all, but serves two purposes.

First, it reminds the reader that there is human generated activity up there in the sky. More importantly, it gives an opportunity to the caption writer.

The point of the story is that "two leading UK climate researchers have criticised those among their peers who they say are "overplaying" the global warming message". But, lest we stray from the BBC's true path, the caption to the photo - which you read before ever you reach the story - is

Both scientists believe that man's activities are causing global warming.

So that's all right, then. Important to stress that point before we let the plebs loose on the story.

How green is my BBC. How green do they think we are?

Inquests on war deaths

Richard North comments on the latest inquest on a British soldier who died in Iraq.

But why are we spending money on inquests in the UK on wartime deaths in other countries, years after the event, and for good measure headed by people who probably have no experience of war?

Welcome, Global Vision

This new campaigning body is how UKIP should have been - a kind of UKIP for the modern world without the MEPs' egos.

We agree that the kind of relationship we want in Europe means we would no longer be members of the EU as currently structured.

However Global Vision's arguments are positive and forward looking - based on establishing a new framework for 21st Century Global Trade rather than the outlook some organisations have on restoring the past.

In addition, Global Vision argues that we should seek to negotiate the Treaty changes we want as part of an agreed settlement with the EU. That allows us to take advantage of the bargaining position we have as current members of the EU, where the core group also need our consent to the Treaty changes they need to continue their process of economic and political integration. It also allows us to reach an amicable agreement to continue cooperation in those areas where we believe it is in our national interest to do so, and increases the chances of negotiating a new framework for relationships in Europe that might embrace other countries as well as the UK.

Nevertheless we accept that unilateral withdrawal may be necessary if we cannot negotiate the outcome we want.

It also avoids the essentially feeble approach of organisations like Open Europe.

We support the aim of persuading the EU to reform, but we see little evidence that this approach will succeed on the scale and timescale needed to meet the UK's needs.

Rather than relying on EU reform, Global Vision believes that the UK must therefore take the initiative to negotiate a new arrangement for the UK outside the existing EU structure that ensures we have the freedom and flexibility to succeed as a global trading nation.

Global Vision also argues that, by taking this initiative, the UK may provide a catalyst to accelerate the wider restructuring of Europe to enable a more flexible framework of relationships instead of the current EU monolithic approach.

It's headed by the excellent Ruth Lea.

It has launched with an article by Ruth Lea in The Sun, and this editorial -

THERE’LL be no dancing in the streets of Britain in ten days time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the treaty that set Europe on its rocky road to unity.

Indeed more than half of us would like to see the European Union slapped down to size rather than follow the demented pied pipers of Brussels who go to sleep at night dreaming of a United States of Europe.

And, according to a new poll, almost a quarter of UK voters would like to pull out of the EU altogether.

With so much of our trade going to the continent, it would be foolish to follow a go-it-alone strategy. We would have to obey EU trade rules but have no say in drawing them up.

But it would be equally crazy to follow the ruinous road to political union urged on us by so many European leaders.

We already suffer from more and more damaging dictats and red tape from Brussels.

Which is why our political leaders must listen to the new organisation Global Vision.

They must say NO to any attempt to raise from the dead the idea of a new European Constitution. They must REJECT any extra interference. They must LISTEN to the British people by taking back powers from the Eurocrats.

And they must DEMAND that the EU goes back to being the Common Market that was envisaged at its birth half a century ago.

Instead of an “ever closer union” demanded by Euro-fanatics, Britain needs an “ever LOOSER union” so that we can continue to prosper and grow without the dead hand of Brussels round our necks.

"First pasta the post"

Oh dear, that is the heading to a piece on the Open Europe blog.

Once more into the breach... the Italian Government under Prodi are now calling for a return to first-past-the post-elections, introduced after the fall of the so-called first republic in 1992, and abolished by Silvio Berlusconi.

All this raises an interesting question about the connection between institutions and economic reform. Electoral systems are probably the most important institution in determining whether governments can push through painful reforms.

Compare the performance of Italy, with its hundreds of parties, chronically poor government, with that of Spain - with first past the post, and regular stable majority Governments. No surprise that Spain is due to overtake Italy in wealth per head by 2009 according to the Economist.

But, as has been pointed out in the past, as long as the majority for governing is lower than the majority for constitutional reform, Italy is unlikely to see further reform without a crisis. Is FPTP the right idea? FPTP works well in keeping a simple party system stable and avoiding what Sartori called 'centripetal competition'.

But if there is already high fragmentation, particularly along regional lines, FPTP might not reduce the number of parties. Much as FPTP is right for the UK, maybe proportional representation with a high threshold (say 7% to get any seats) would simplify things quicker in Italy...

First of all, Spain's out-performance may have at least as much to do with the huge EU subsidies it's been receiving because it was poorer before. And wage costs there are doubtless lower.

Where there is economic success, there are often economic factors.

Anyway, how democratic is first past the post? It may be agreeable to pronounce favourably on it ex cathedra, but look at the UK. In our last general election, the Tories got more votes in England than Labour, but Labour got over 80 seats more than the Tories.

Most constituencies hardly ever change hands, removing much of the incentive to vote in them. Many voters are effectively disenfranchised, leading to alienation from politics.

The English put up with this and disengage. Somehow I can't see the Italians just shrugging their shoulders.

Channel 4 right on news

Channel 4 news yesterday of course covered Labour's global warming announcement. We had comment from politicians approving of it, and from eco-activists saying it was a good start.

Nothing from the deniers. That's how the MSM try to establish a smug consensus, and exclude inconvenient disagreement. Next time they might try Booker or North.

Then on to a report recommending that women's prisons should be abolished in favour of smaller, more local units. We heard of a woman who had killed herself in prison. Undoubtedly sad. Eventually it emerged she'd been done for burglary. Presumably this was not just your isolated, casual burglary, or she would never have been sent to prison, but we were not told.

Her partner told how devastated she'd been by being sent away from her family. But it also emerged that two of her children had already been adopted or put into care before then. So there already issues before her imprisonment.

At the end of this incomplete, bleeding heart account we still did not know how much the recommendation in the report might cost. But that's a big issue. There is always competition for resources.

More money down the drain

The Times reports that the EU will spend £1 million on an all-night rave in Berlin on 24 March to celebrate the EU’s 50th anniversary and the signing of the Berlin Declaration, notes Open Europe. There will be 100 DJs performing at 35 nightclubs across the German capital from 11pm until dawn and young Berliners will be able to roam around the city in specially provided buses for the EU-subsidised price of €12.

What is it about politicians and taxpayers' money? They wouldn't spend any of their own cash on such stuff.

Blogs make the news in the FT

Business leaders disagreed with David Cameron at his green summit. But what about his grassroots?

The traditional route is those tedious and probably unrepresentative vox pop interviews. Probably better and certainly faster to find some internet blogs and discussions.

Which is what the Financial Times did.

More taxpayers' money wasted

Welsh authorities took questionable risks in offering grants worth £247m linked to a £1bn mothballed silicon chip plant in Newport, says the auditor general of Wales. The European Union approved part of the huge package of subsidies "based upon cost estimates that cannot be fully substantiated".

He also said grant-giving to the £43m National Botanic Garden for Wales millennium project had lacked "common commercial disciplines" and breached Treasury guidelines.

Still, it's only taxpayers' money.

Travel, travel

According to Open Europe, the French newspaper Liberation looks at the huge preparation and cost involved in hosting the EU Presidency.

It notes that even the non-obligatory, “informal” meeting of ministers cost between 1.2 and 2 million euros.

Would Osborne and Cameron set an example by taking one flight a year?

And - closer to earth - how green is the UK government's policy to make us travel further to hospital? Not to mention Brighton's policy of abolishing neighbourhood schooling (in pursuit of social engineering)?

Euro eco-fascism

Richard North carries a scathing piece about the EU's plan, within two years, to ban the sale of traditional incandescent light bulbs, forcing us to buy the so-called high energy efficient lights.

They flicker 50 times a second rather than producing continuous light, and not everyone can stand flickering lights. Does this raise health issues? The lights take time to warm up. And so on. In fact the technology's just not very good.

In addition, says North,

CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches or electronically-triggered security lights (see package label, illustrated below), so these will become a thing of the past. They cannot be used in microwaves, ovens or freezers, because these are either too hot or too cold for them to function (at any temperature above 50C or lower than –18C they don't work),

More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top (such as the type illustrated) - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.

Astonishingly, according to a report on "energy scenarios in the domestic lighting sector", carried out last year for Defra by its Market Transformation Programme, "less than 50 percent of the fittings installed in UK homes can currently take CFLs".

In other words, on the government's own figures, the owners of Britain's 24 million homes will have to replace hundreds of millions of light fittings, at a cost upwards of £3 billion. Not only is this an unwelcome cost, but the time scale of two years to replace as many as 60 million light fittings is wholly unrealistic.

He makes other points well worth reading and sums up that

There was not a hint of democracy in this crackpot decision, which will have a major impact on all our lives, costing many of us thousands of pounds and our economy billions – all to achieve little useful purpose, while making our homes considerably less pleasant to live in.

Where is the impact assessment? And do we really believe the eurobulb law would be observed in Spain, Greece, Italy, Romania, Poland...?

Gorey disagreements

Courtesy of Newsbusters, we have a parade of scientists in the New York Times criticising Al Gore's film. He clearly has supporters among leading scientists, says the paper.

Some of Mr. Gore’s centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe’s warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore’s message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

And -

a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.

Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said on a blog that Mr. Gore’s film did “indeed do a pretty good job of presenting the most dire scenarios.” But the June report, he added, shows “that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years.”

Gore also claimed virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits.

But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

The paper reminds us that geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings. Some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Advisers say he got the big picture right. But even they then express some disagreements.

How much of Gore's so called big picture is actually left, then?

Government waste again

More public sector waste - £2.4bn forces radio fiasco, £578,000 to curtail free speech, £60,000+ on "pamper days", and £250,000 for more light pollution.

Gracious, they spend as if the money was burning a hole in their pockets, as if money was no object.

Could it be that, in the public sector, money really is no object? In which case, the less of mine they take, the better.

Cameron finally flips his lid

David Cameron hasn't claimed that he's the new messiah, but his inner workings become ever more mysterious.

First, the Tories are flying in Al Gore to address them. A sceptical piece in The Telegraph refers to Gore as a master of "the art of political reinvention". Both men, the paper says, "have made the environment their core message and both have been harshly criticised over their green credentials and efforts to practise what they preach in their private lives".

Amid much fanfare, Mr Cameron recently fitted a £2,000 wind turbine to the roof of his Kensington home, only for it to emerge that such a device had virtually no effect on cutting carbon emissions because of the lack of wind in London.

He was also derided for riding his bicycle to the Commons while a chauffeur drove behind with his shoes and briefcase.

Mr Gore has been criticised since it emerged that his 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, Tennessee, consumes more electricity in a month than the average US household uses in a year.

Claims that he spends £15,000 a year heating his home - 20 times more than the average American -were not denied although his spokesman said that solar panels, compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy-saving technologies were being installed in the house.

Vice-President Gore also offsets any carbon emissions he produces through road and air travel in an attempt to remain "carbon neutral".

Mr Cameron has now said that solar panels will be built on the roof of his home while a 660-gallon tank under the garden will harvest rainwater for washing and flushing lavatories. He also offsets his considerable air travel.

Two things are notable about this. First, the barefaced hypocrisy, a quality they share with Mr Barroso, he of the SUV and EU-provided Mercedes. Second, they are able to spend large amounts of extra money to support their present lifestyles. Not so most "hard working families" taking extra holiday breaks, not to mention British commuters to their homes elsewhere in the EU, many of them far from wealthy.

If new taxes on flying are introduced, it won't be Mr Gore who is hurt. It won't be Mr Miliband, making carbon gestures at public expense. It will be the poor bloody infantry again.

The Telegraph says it is Mr Gore's "stardust quality" that Mr Cameron is keen to import. This is a pretty odd assessment given that Gore sounds like a speak your weight machine. The Telegraph also omits to mention that his film "An Inconvenient Truth" includes Convenient Untruths.

Al Gore is a liar.

Cameron's acolytes seem to have thrown away their brains. Tory insiders are already calling themselves "the Gorey party", reports The Telegraph "and no doubt the gloating will continue apace this week". Oh, so they think lining up with Al Gore is actually good. Gorey indeed.

This is a small political problem for Labour, as they have decided to distribute Gore's film of Convenient Untruths to secondary schools. But there is still hope for them.

For it is not only Cameron's acolytes whose brains seem to be scrambled. According to The Telegraph, their leader will announce tomorrow that he has not only "a love of the landscape that Mr Brown will never rival" (who cares, and what does his have to do with policy?) but also "an instinctive understanding of the environment".

No need for science, then.

Let's not confuse ourselves worrying about a lack of heat indications in the troposphere, for instance. We just need to sit at the feet of the new messiah of the environment.

A bizarre EU rumour

Daniel Hannan reports a bizarre EU rumour.

Apparently, the European Parliament is about to open a new embassy to the UK: a vast office in Tothill Street, Westminster, employing 50 or more staff. The rent alone is said to be £1.3 million a year.

"Embassy" is surely a misnomer. It's rather as if the UK House of Commons announced it was going to open an "embassy" in (say) Manchester.

I wouldn't greatly mind, but it's my money. And will London be the only "embassy"? There are plenty more capitals to provide berths for these puffed up people. Multiply up the cost of setting up and running an "embassy" by the number of capitals, and it becomes pretty substantial.

Eurosceptics like to claim from time to time that the EU is drinking in the last chance saloon. This is wishful thinking. I don't see Nigel Farage there either - he's drinking elsewhere.

The great global warming swindle

At last a documentary that treats its audience as adults - BBC, please note. Channel 4 has supported the programme with a website broken into bite sized chunks.

The Financial Times' preview was almost apologetic for highlighting the programme, such is the sway of the green religion. And Channel 4's introduction stressed how controversial the programme was.

Mr Miliband regards the science as settled, however. So he should find the science in the programme easy to rebut. Mr Blair claimed the Stern Report (remember that?) was the most important document he had ever received. For Mr Cameron greenness seems to be an article of faith (but then I'm not sure he does analysis).

The programme did mention the religious role of greenery, but didn't have time to venture into the politics. It will be interesting to read the objections to the programme's thesis that global warming is a frequent event in the earth's history and is not caused by man.

Meanwhile, Viscount Monckton's latest piece lists "some of the dozens of fundamental scientific errors in Gore’s film", including -

· Gore, aiming to undermine the significance of previous warm periods such as that of the Middle Ages, promoted the 1,000-year “hockey stick” temperature chart

· Gore showed heart-rending pictures of the New Orleans floods and insisted on a link between increased hurricane frequency and global warming that has no basis in scientific fact

· Gore asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that Arctic temperatures in the 1930s and 1940s were as warm or warmer

· Gore did not explain that Arctic temperature changes are more closely correlated with changes in solar activity than with changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations

· Gore did not explain that the Sun has been hotter, for longer, in the past 50 years than in any similar period in at least the past 11,400 years

· Gore said the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk of the continent has been cooling and gaining ice

· Gore hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing. In fact its thickness has been growing by 2 inches per year for a decade

· Gore falsely claimed that global warming is melting Mt. Kilimanjaro’s icecap, actually caused by atmospheric dessication from local deforestation, and pre-20th-century climate shifts

· Gore said the ocean absorbs heat from the Sun, when in fact the ocean takes nearly all of its heat from the atmosphere, without which the ocean would freeze over

· Gore implied that changes in temperature followed changes in CO2 concentration in the past 500,000 years, but in fact temperature changes preceded changes in CO2 concentration.

Were these and other serious errors accidental? It is unlikely. Every single one of the errors magnifies, overstates, or exaggerates the supposed problem. Not one of the errors understates it.

Do as I say, not as I do - 2

The previous post covered the green hypocrisy of High Priest Barroso. Hot on its heels, the UK government's Sustainable Development Commission finds the performance of government departments "hugely disappointing".

• Government is not on track to meet the target to reduce carbon emissions from energy use by 2010
• Departments, on average, generated more waste in 2005/06 when compared to previous years
• Most departments are using energy less efficiently compared to previous years
• Only 18% of the total sites within the Government estate have implemented Environmental Management Systems
• The varying levels of data quality presented a major challenge in creating an accurate assessment.

So the Commission can't be accurate about how the government is doing. But the Revd Blair's government is generating more waste not less, and it's less efficient in its use of energy.

Unless Government can quickly take charge of its own operations, it risks breeding deep cynicism amongst the general public and will lag behind the private sector.

Another case of the preacher not leading by example.

Do as I say, not as I do

EU bigwigs continue to pontificate on matters green, as long as they don't affect their own country or their own life.

Notoriously, Gore is a huge consumer of energy, not only as he criss-crosses the world with his false tales of warming and hellfires, but even when he's at home in his huge, energy-hungry house.

Now another priest of the false religion has stood up, the reverend and very pious José Manuel Barroso.

Challenged about his ownership of a large sports utility vehicle, following his call to European leaders to lead by example in setting ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, Barroso said (reports The Times) that his ownership of a Volkswagen Touareg 4x4 did not conflict with the Commission’s plans to limit CO2 emissions from cars to 130 grammes per km, despite the fact that the vehicle pumps out 265 g/ km.

Anyway, he said, the vehicle is mostly used by his wife, so that's all right then. On official business he tends to use a top-of-the range Mercedes with CO2 emissions of 270 g/km! Barroso said:

“I never see myself as an example. A moralistic approach is not mine. We are setting public targets and should avoid giving certificates of good behaviour to individuals.”

Hypocrisy is the word we are looking for here. If politicians want to change people's behaviour, they should demonstrate what good behaviour would look like. Let them show that it is practical and pleasurable and does not reduce the quality of life.

Asked whether he should set an example in his own vehicle choice, Mr Barroso said:

“People are responsible and should take their decisions.

“If you start on the environment you could go on to the family, sexual, etc. You have to respect the law and what we are doing is pushing for a more ambitious law.”

Bizarre. It's as if a politician called for anti-drugs laws but continued to take drugs himself.

The Times writer then loses touch with reality, which is perhaps understandable given the Revd Barroso's remarks. Other politicians in Europe, it reports, have adapted their travel habits.

David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, for example, offsets his flights.

This isn't changing his travel habits at all! It's just making taxpayers pay twice over for his self-importance.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

This is the title of an interesting sounding programme on Channel 4 this week. Here's some comment.

Meanwhile, Stephen Glover suggests, show me a global warming zealot and I'll show you a hypocrite. Nothing new or profound, but if you're fed up with environmental piety it's a satisfying read.

The indefatigable John Ray has picked up a report in the Shanghai Daily that France is against setting a binding target for renewable energy sources in the European Union, while Germany was insisting on a binding target "to underpin the EU's drive for world leadership in the fight against climate change".

Oh good.

Eurosceptics should preserve the French summary of their position. "We are not in favour of fixing binding targets in renewable energy," said a French official. "It is up to each member state, in all flexibility and subsidiarity, to set its own objective." (My italics)

Angela Merkel meanwhile has urged EU leaders to approve "bold steps" to combat climate change but said Germany was not prepared to shoulder the same heavy burden of emissions cuts as it has in the past! This is the Germany whose proposed carbon emissions were too high for the Commission's liking.

So does it seem that every government is paying lip service to green policies as long as they don't have to comply? No. Step forward Britain's failed prime minister.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman confirmed he had dropped resistance to a binding target after Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso convinced him it would give the EU's green leadership greater credibility.

What a good reason.

Incompetence & overspending

This blog favours smaller government, partly because governments aren't cost-effective in the way they spend taxpayers' money.

To take some recent examples of waste, we learn this week (more detail here) that

• Spending on temporary staff by Whitehall has run up a bill of £200 million over the past four years at a time when the Government is supposed to be firing thousands of civil servants
• The Passport Service has spent almost half a million pounds of public funds – just to change its name.
• Regional development agency One NorthEast has committed itself to spending up to £63,000 leading a delegation of property professionals for a four-day conference on the French Riviera.
• A group of senior Royal Bolton Hospital managers is to travel to Barcelona for a three-day conference at a cost of almost £3,000 - despite hospital bosses preparing to axe 95 jobs to balance the books
• A senior local government official is to be paid more than £100,000 in taxpayers' money on top of a £200,000 retirement package after convincing councillors to make him redundant.

This is incompetence at the operational level, with apparently no serious restrictions on how the units waste our money. Wat Tyler picks up on more incompetence - the clamp on NHS pay after previous government miscalculations, the lack of jobs for junior hospital doctors coming through the system, and the failure of the Home Office to record details of serious criminal offences committed overseas for at least 10 years. But the ramshackle machinery bumbles on at our expense.

Wat also picks up a withering piece by Matthew Parris about policy announcements by Brown that go nowhere but still cost us money: "Warning: incoming Brown ideas. Likely impact: zero".

Running such big organisations is a major challenge even for talented people with experience of how to get things done. This is not just a British problem. Maybe we shouldn't expect French presidential candidates to be awfully good at adding up the costs of their manifesto commitments, but there is a problem in Spain too, as The Financial Times reports.

They point to the present Spanish government's "inexperience, particularly in business affairs".

Mr Zapatero never worked in the private sector, having left academia to become a member of parliament at the age of 28. Joan Clos, minister for industry, tourism and trade, is a former mayor of Barcelona and an anaesthetist by profession.

Finance minister Pedro Solbes, a former EU monetary affairs commissioner, is the only member of Mr Zapatero's team with economic gravitas, and he spends much of his time sorting out the gaffes of his colleagues.

The ability to get things done in large organisations is an even more diffuse skill than "economic gravitas", and thus less easily recognised and valued. But the skill has to be found and cherished.

Lord David James has revealed the cost of some of the scams and incompetence which came about through putting people without the necessary skills in charge at The Dome.

Perhaps they are learning on the job? Perhaps we have to put up with Douglas Alexander telling lies about the road pricing debate while he finds his feet in a cabinet job (and incidentally is responsible for our transport system)?

But the trouble is, they don't learn. Government just doesn't see operational competence as precious, and is prepared to make ignorant decisions for the sake of good headlines without considering the operational drawbacks. Thus in the case of the Rural Payments Agency the failures were caused by decisions taken by ministers, but the officials had to carry the can while Mrs Beckett got promoted to be Foreign Secretary. It was ministers who decided to press on with this crackpot scheme, even though they had been told there was a 60% chance of failure, and the CEO - senior though he was - "only ever met Defra Secretary of State Margaret Beckett twice in his whole time as CEO. And the second time was when he was made to confess personally to her that the entire project had blown up. In reality there seems to have been virtually no contact between the important people up at Defra's plush Whitehall offices" and the operational arm at Reading.

Now The Financial Times tells us that Ministers have spent £6m on consultants for proposals to force house-sellers to pay for home information packs.

The pack includes an energy performance certificate, rating the home's energy efficiency. No cost-benefit analysis for the certificates has yet been released. No bodies have yet been accredited to train the assessors for the certificates. The regulations for the certificates and packs will not be issued until the end of this month.

Interested bodies are warning against it.

The National Association of Estate Agents said yesterday the "seriously flawed" proposals were being rushed through in a "nonsensical" manner, before the full results of pilot schemes were known. It accused ministers of taking an "unacceptable strategic risk". The Council of Mortgage Lenders said it remained "concerned about the overall impact of the packs on the housing market", while the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has warned there are "insufficient working days available to train the requisite number of inspectors by June 1".

The government hasn't even followed its own policy on regulation.

The Better Regulation Commission urged ministers to "reconsider" the proposals last month, stating they "fall short of our expectations for good regulation". The watchdog warned that the government had failed to provide sufficient justification for its gold-plating of European requirements for energy certificates - a central plank of the packs.

But the government says this "should go ahead on June 1, given the importance of tackling climate change and cutting carbon emissions from homes. The date of June 1 was set over 18 months ago".

So this is partly another ludicrous new green policy, and partly testimony to the government's inability to set up a relatively simple (if misguided) system, even within 18 months.

The tragedy is that no political party is hounding the government over its waste and managerial incompetence, attitudes which - judging by this week's reports alone - seem to pervade the furthest corners of the public sector. Because it's not their money. It was ours.

In the US, political careers have been built on opposition to wasteful Washington bureaucracy. At the moment it seems to be just the gentlemanly Taxpayers' Alliance holding the ring. Nice people, but are there any other takers?