A pincer movement of sheer lunacy - Part I

In the curry house yesterday I was asked whether I had been out in the sun, apparently my forehead was bright red and deeply blistered. The reason is not exposure to sunlight, it is relentless frustration with the stupidity of current political debate that has caused the vigorous and repeated application of palm to head. At the moment our Parliament seems to be dominated by two topics - the activities of the press and the government's desire to make electricity prohibitively expensive. Both subjects seem to have a magical power over MPs such that they spout complete and total nonsense without any comprehension of the lack of common sense behind their analyses. I'll deal with the press today.

The basis of Parliamentary hysteria seems to be the "revelation" that a tabloid newspaper published information gleaned from illegal phone taps and computer hacks. Well, well, what a surprise, who'd have thought any such thing has occurred in this country? Everyone, that's who. Another, secondary, "revelation" is that journalists paid money in return for information the law requires to be kept confidential. Well, well, what a surprise, who'd have thought such a thing has occured in this country? Everyone, that's who.

There is only one sensible reaction to these "revelations". It is to get the police to investigate the matter and charge anyone against whom there is sufficient evidence. The activities complained of are already illegal under our law so there is no need for any more laws. The one and only thing that should be done is to enforce existing law.

Instead a Court of Appeal Judge is going to be kept out of court for a year or more so that he can conduct an inquiry which will be called a whitewash if he says current laws are fine and a witch hunt if he says new laws should be passed.

In Parliament we have witnessed the unedifying spectacle of buckets of sanctimonious hogwash being sprayed around by hundreds of MPs, each trying to out-outrage the previous speaker with the level of their ignorant and hypocritical humbug.

Everyone with a brain larger than a pea knows newspapers act in underhand and, sometimes, unlawful ways to get attention-grabbing information they can plaster across their front pages. They all do it. Locals, nationals, broadsheets, tabloids - they all do it.

How do you think the Yokel Local Chronicle learned about the intention of Big Supermarket PLC to buy farmer Giles's front field for a new shop? It's obvious, someone working for the company leaked the news, probably in return for a fee or favour. In that instance the person working for the supermarket company broke the terms of his contract of employment and risked summary dismissal. He had to balance the benefit he gained against the risk of losing his job. The newspaper knew he was breaching his contract but also knew there was no realistic chance of being sued, so it published anyway in order to have a good headline, a reputation for having it's finger on the local pulse and the chance of greater circulation in future and higher advertising revenues. The only question that would trouble the editor is whether the information was true.

Paying for information obtained in other unlawful ways is different only in degree from paying for leaked confidential information about the intentions of a supermarket chain. The degree might be higher or lower, but the substance is the same each time. That some information results from activities that amount to criminal offences and other "feeds" involve a breach of contract but not a crime is a distinction without a difference in this field. We have laws against this sort of activity. Those laws provide a penalty for anyone proved to have breached them. There is one reason and one reason only why those laws were broken - the people breaking them considered the benefit of the breach to outweigh the risk of being caught and/or the penalty for being caught and pursued to judgment. Making the activity doubly unlawful will not change this because it is a matter of human nature rather than of law.

Increasing the penalty can make a big difference to how people behave but it brings up a wholly different matter that makes serious penalties impossible. How does phone tapping or hacking emails compare to burglary, or stabbing someone or holding-up a bank with a shotgun? Obviously infringements of privacy are not in the same league, so what maximum penalty can be justified without the law becoming absurd? There is no certain answer to that question although the general answer is that the maximum penalty, and the penalty actually imposed in any particular case, is unlikely ever to be so severe that it would deter those offered a chunky financial inducement.

Members of Parliament can huff and puff all they want about how morally reprehensible it is to tap the phones of the families of deceased soldiers and victims of crime. I doubt that there are many in the country who have not huffed and puffed in disgust. Nothing MPs say and no amount of hot air they expel can change anything. Newspapers will still use whatever means they can get away with to obtain the information they think their readers want to read, because more readers means more advertisers and that is where the money is.

A theme that ran through contributions in the debate in the House of Commons was a call for regulation not just of how newspapers obtain information but of what they publish. This deserves to result in blistered foreheads across the nation. Do these people really think the interests of the people of this country as a whole are best served by newspapers being constricted in what they are permitted to print and how in buggery do they think such restrictions can be imposed?

Only two restrictions can ever be justified. First, they should not publish things that are untrue. The law covers that already (albeit imperfectly) through the law of libel. Secondly, they should not publish anything that causes them to lose business. This is nothing to do with the law, it is all about the little people voting with their feet. Editorial judgment must be exercised to decide whether a story will be good or bad for circulation. If it will be bad it should not be published, if good it should be published, if it appears good but turns out to be bad the paper can look for a new editor. No other restrictions can have any justification under any circumstances. I hear you cry: what about kiddy porn? Simple, advertisers will disappear overnight, only a few pathetic dribblers will buy the paper, the publisher and numerous editorial staff will face lengthy time behind bars and next week there will be no newspaper.

The very suggestion that there should be any sort of State control over the content of newspapers other than the law of libel is so absurd as to be obscene. Some might suggest it is part of a plot by politicians to protect themselves from criticism, I do not agree. I believe it to be nothing other than an irrational knee-jerk reaction to extremely distasteful newspaper activities that have been exposed recently. The politicians want to be heard expressing disgust so they can have their local paper report they have stood up to be counted. OK, fine, let them say it and get their favourable editorial, then they can return to the real world and acknowledge that what was done was unlawful so no new law is needed and that any attempt to censor the press is bound to fail.

The question they are really addressing is this: should Parliament legislate to prevent publication of the truth? Sadly, they do not seem to be willing or able to understand that this is what they are doing. In any event, how can Parliament legislate to prevent publication of the truth? The key here is "prevent publication". How can Parliament - which can only do anything through the laws it passes - prevent someone doing something? As the law now stands there are penalties for doing naughty things once you have done them, and only then if you are caught and there is sufficient evidence to prove you did them. It is the risk of penalty that is preventative. Short of physical restraint, all the law can do is threaten a penalty in the hope the threat will prevent naughtiness.

So, how do you prevent the truth being told? The simple answer is that you cannot, all you can do is pass laws imposing penalties for telling the truth and therein lies the fundamental flaw in all the guff spouted in Parliament. They can moan about invasions of privacy and the extreme distastefulness of some of those invasions until they are any colour in the face they choose, but they cannot produce a rational argument for the truth being suppressed. If that truth is not to the taste of a newspaper's readership there is a risk to advertising revenue, if it is to their taste the till will ring triumphantly. The little people will vote with their £1 coins. Parliament is an utter irrelevance on this issue. Honourable members should shut up and keep their fingers crossed that their peccadillos remain below the radar.

Huhne - the car's the key

Let's take a hypothetical situation and see how we should go about solving a mystery. The situation is this. A man has been in in France for a few days and flies back to England, landing at Stansted airport at about 10.23pm. The same evening his wife is at a function at the London School of Economics, the function commenced at 6.30pm and she is believed to have left by 10pm at the latest. At 11.23 the same evening a motor car registered to the man is photographed speeding on a road between Stansted and London. Either the man or his wife was driving the car at the time the speeding offence was committed. The mystery is to identify which of them was driving.

How do we solve the mystery? I know how I would go about it, I would not look at the people first but at the car.

Where was the car while the man was in France? On the face of it there are two relevant possibilities, either it was parked at the airport awaiting his return or it was not. Is there a record of cars parked at the airport during the period he was abroad and, if so, was his car parked there throughout or was it removed at some point? If it was there all the time the only chance of the wife driving it back to town from the airport would be by her taking the train to Stansted (say 20 minutes to get to Liverpool Street station and at least a further 45 minutes to Stansted). Quite why she would do so rather than let him drive back is unclear, because the time it would take her to get there is as long as the flight from France so it would have to have been arranged before he left the continent.

If there is no evidence of the car being at Stansted throughout I would investigate whether the London congestion charge was levied against the car during the period he was abroad, if it was we know the car was within central London and not at Stansted. Was the congestion charge levied on the day in question? The London School of Economics is within the congestion charge zone, so the charge will have been triggered if the wife had it with her while she was at the college, though her options for parking would have been severely limited unless she was given a spot by the college itself - was she?

I would then ask whether the wife had her own car at the time. If she did, it would seem more natural for her to use her own vehicle to collect her husband. Wives often, but not invaiably, use their husband's cars to collect their worse half only when he wants to drive back - men being so much more fussy than women about what they drive.

Trying to solve the mystery by reference to where the wife was at various points of time on a date more than eight years ago is fraught with difficulties because of the need to rely on personal recollections. The car is the key.

Beware the voluntary vegetarian

When people choose to adopt a cause they do so for reasons, it is not an accident it is the result of applying their mind to something and deciding to follow a particular course. Much of what we do is ingrained in us by the culture in which we grow up. Other cultures have different priorities and their people grow up following different practices. You can see this in all sorts of fields of life. In this context both national and local culture have a part to play, as does family culture.

Religion is an indication of this obvious truth. Why are most Pakistanis Muslim and most Italians Catholic? It's really very obvious and has nothing to do with people making an informed choice of religion after studying the core texts and the centuries of academic critiques of those texts. It is purely a matter of prevailing culture. One could say it is about default positions. If your parents are Muslim, Catholic, Hindu or whatever it is very likely you will be brought up to be a member of the same club, subtle pressures will be applied to you from the day you exit the vulva such that the default position is that you will align yourself to your parents' religion. It will take a deliberate decision on your part to follow a different path. And what made your parents Muslims or Catholics? Again the answer is usually that their parents were Muslims or Catholics. It is far more to do with culture than religious belief and the family religious culture can be reinforced by local or national usage.

The same applies to modes of behaviour. Those brought up to be polite and respectful tend to be polite and respectful, those brought up to bully others in order to get what they want tend to do exactly that. Of course there are exceptions, there always will be, but they are only exceptions they are not the bulk.

So it is again with food. In America very little lamb is eaten because it is not part of their culture. The country has no real tradition of farming sheep so the mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers didn't cook much lamb, in turn the current generation doesn't cook much lamb. There is nothing dogmatic about it, it's just not something they do over there. Jews and Muslims are intoned not to eat Pinky and Perky and Hindus keep Ermintrude off the menu. America's shunning of the sheep is not doctrinal or dogmatic it is simply the result of generations of practice based on lack of availability. By contrast, the meaty practices of Jews, Muslims and Hindus are based on doctrine or, if you prefer, dogma.

One might think that rejection of a doctrinal/dogmatic cultural practice would result in a radical desire to persuade others of the folly of the doctrine/dogma, but that does not appear to be the case in relation to dietary "rules". The reason for this, I suspect, is that a Jew who likes a nice pork chop has no axe to grind with his cousin who prefers chicken soup. Man cannot live by pork chop alone, so the dietary heretic will probably also take chicken soup and gefilte fish. He might suggest to his cousin that a bit of crackling and apple sauce makes a tasty addition to the diet but knows he has no way of forcing a slice of ham down his cousin's throat. The same applies to Americans who like a crown roast of lamb. All they can do is invite their family and friends to try it but compulsion is not feasible.

And that is where we arrive at vegetarians. Some vegetarians are unfortunate enough to have been brainwashed by their gullible parents into believing that eating meat is not a beneficial lifestyle choice. Others have turned from a sensible balanced diet and chosen to adopt the freakish meat-free path. Not quite all of them are swivel-eyed fanatics and not quite all of them feel the need to impose their views on others, sadly more fall into both these unsavoury categories than is comfortable for civilised existence.

There is a fundamental difference between those who believe others would gain benefits from doing something they do not yet do and those who feel others would gain benefits from ceasing to do something they do currently. The former have no means of securing their desired result other than persuasion. You cannot legislate for people to eat a nice bacon roll but you can, in theory, legislate against the eating of the same product. That ultimate sanction, the criminal law, is the ultimate reward for persistence in arguing a prohibitory cause. Now, I doubt that we will see the consumption of meat outlawed for at least another year or two but the possibility is always there, particularly while the extant Secretary of State for Agriculture is a swivel-eyed vegetarian from a family of hugely wealthy Marxists. All the radical vegetarians feel they need to do is press their dangerous case further and further in the hope of one day reaching their goal.

In reality, their goal is not for the world to be vegetarian. I believe their goal is nothing more than to get their way. Their cause could be anything at all, it is not the particular change of behaviour that matters, it is that they will have forced others to succumb to their will. They are selfish bullies.

Just recently this was exemplified in my local curry house of choice. One evening a week a cleaner visits FatBigot Towers to scrape some filth off the walls; on that evening the property has to be abandoned by all other human life, which decamps to the curry house. One week a vegetarian came in to order a take-away, a single dish of spiced vegetables with plain rice costing a grand total of less than £4. The curry house provides complimentary popadoms and pickles for take-away customers to eat while they wait. The vegetarian consumed the free stuff, paid her tiny bill using a card (thereby costing the restaurant transaction charges), borrowed a stapler, begged a few sheets of A4 paper and left. On a subsequent cleaning evening the same vegetarian returned and placed the same order. Again free food was consumed and payment was made by card. Before leaving she said she used to order from a rival restaurant and was always provided with a selection of free pickles and chutneys along with her order, clearly threatening them with the loss of her valuable custom if they did not provide the same. I happen to know that the other place does not give waiting take-away customers free popadoms but she clearly didn't care to take that into her tiny lentil-addled mind. One might think the owner could hardly believe his ears, after all a take-away order with a minuscule profit margin would be rendered almost worthless to him, but he complied with her request and told me later that take-away customers ordering vegetarian meals almost always wanted additional freebies.

This didn't surprise me at all. Voluntary vegetarians have chosen their dietary path for reasons. Those reasons are almost always borne of selfishness and self-importance, even self-aggrandisement. Like those who sport red Mohican haircuts or rings through their noses they feel they are different from ordinary people. Silly hair and adornments previously reserved for cattle are there for all to see - "look at me, see how different I am, look at me, I wouldn't do anything this absurd unless I were a higher form of life than you, look at me, look at me, look at me". And so it is with those who have chosen to abandon proper food. Never mind the wisdom of countless generations, they know better and because they know better and are superior beings everyone must bow at their knee. And they all look so bloody ill.

Goodbye Michael Foot

So, Michael Foot is no more, gone at the age of 96. Proof that the old saying "the good die young" gives only half the story.

Reports of his death contain gushing tributes to a "man of principle" who was "true to his beliefs" and a "magnificent orator". I can't read stuff like that without wanting to bring up my dinner. Nick Griffin is a man of principle, David Koresh was true to his beliefs and Mussolini was great at stirring up a crowd, yet they are or were despicable pieces of filth who deserve nothing but condemnation for the dire effects of their principles, beliefs and oratory on other people.

Having misguided principles is not something to be lauded, sticking with them when they have been exposed to be not just flawed but dangerous is the sign of a stubborn bigot and being good about proclaiming them to the world is nothing other than the ability to show yourself to be an idiot to a wide audience.

Foot not only supported but fought for all the things that brought the UK to its knees by 1979. A fervent advocate of nationalisation, massively high taxes, limitless unions power and the destruction of our ability to defend ourselves, he epitomised the recipe for bankruptcy that our current government has fought so hard to emulate. The man's judgment could not have been more flawed. When the failure of socialist economies was brought to his attention he stood his ground like a religious zealot and argued that they hadn't done it properly ... none of them, even though every one had his support. It was like listening to a particularly stupid student union politico. He supported every major pro-soviet and anti-British movement, relentless in his pursuit of socialist dictatorship. Facts never got in the way, they never do with those who can't see beyond the hem of their donkey jacket.

Perhaps it is a little unfair of me to compare him to Griffin, Koresh and Mussolini. Support for the BNP has increased under Griffin's leadership, Labour's support was never lower than under Foot. Koresh's charisma seemed to keep the women happy, Foot kept no one happy. As for Mussolini? Well, there was absolutely no chance of the trains running on time under a Foot government.

Michael Foot was a naive failure.

Certainly not

I recently left a comment over at nice Mr Watts' place. It received a favourable response, so I thought I would expand it a little and reproduce it here. The relevant background is that a number of commenters had explained that they had been subjected to abuse when leaving comments on another blog (which shall remain nameless but which does not welcome comments from me). That blog takes an extreme view on the catastrophic man-made global warming issue. Its editorial policy appears to be that the IPCC's computer games are beyond any criticism whatsoever and anyone who dares to challenge any part of them is too stupid to understand the issues and/or actuated by malice or greed.

This is a peculiar trait of extreme dedication to the catastrophic global warming hypothesis; as far as I know it is not displayed in relation to any other scientific hypothesis. To what do I refer? Certainty, that’s what.

Some practitioners of an infant science might say “this is our hypothesis, now we’re going to study what actually happens and make any necessary adjustments”. But not, it seems, those wedded to this particular idea. They like to say “the science is settled” but it seems to me that they really mean “our minds are closed”. On hearing that some measures suggest global average cooling within the last decade rather than global average warming, they reply in two ways and adopt both replies, mindless to the conflict between the two.

On the one hand they assert that measured cooling is not cooling at all. This is just legerdemain, by selecting particular starting and finishing points they create trend lines on graphs to argue that lower readings from thermometers actually display continuing upward movements in average temperatures. Yet you only need to adopt different start and end points to show something different. On the other hand they say “this is what should be expected because warming causes cooling”. No. Warming means temperatures going up, cooling means temperatures going down. You cannot create ice by applying heat to a pan of water, nor can you bring tepid water to the boil by adding ice. These two positions are wholly contradictory.

There is a credible explanation available to them but it involves a concession of uncertainty, so they will not propose it. They could say “temporary blips are only to be expected because we are dealing with a vastly complex interaction of factors and we do not fully understand them all”. That would stand alongside their hypothesis and would not cause the batting of a single eyelid. But it would require them to accept that they do not know everything and, therefore, that their hypothesis has not yet been proved. Such a position appears to be unacceptable to them because they have pinned their colours unequivocally to the “the science is settled” mast.

Acceptance of uncertainty lies behind all honest debate, whether scientific or otherwise, until such time, if ever, that all the evidence points in one direction and nothing that is observed in real life is inconsistent with the position being advanced. Unjustified certainty requires dissenting voices to be dismissed rather than challenged on the merits of the points they put forward. Debate and challenge are the tools of those with open minds. Scoffing, sneering dismissal is the tool of those unprepared to accept that their belief in a hypothesis might not be well-founded. It is also the tool of those who know their hypothesis can be subjected to legitimate challenge but are not prepared to risk the personal loss (whether financial, reputational or both) that would result from such a challenge being successful.

What makes their certainty all the more absurd is that they are forever tinkering with both their hypothesis and their computer models, something that would be wholly unnecessary if they really had all the answers already.

Lying takes skill, amoral scum tend not to have skill

If you think your very survival depends on telling lies it is very unwise to commit your thoughts to print without taking a little peek at the rushes to make sure you are not making a complete pigs' breakfast of the whole thing.

Gordon Brown has lent his name to a simply astonishing piece of mendacious codswallop in today's Sunday Mirror. It's necessary to put it in context. The Shadow Health Secretary said that ring-fencing government spending for health and overseas aid in 2011 would mean cutting the total amount spent by all other departments by 10%. He was not setting out his own party's position, he was using the current government's own figures. In 2011 Gordon Brown's government would have to cut spending by 10% across all departments other than health and overseas aid if it kept to the spending commitments it has made but excluded health and overseas aid from reductions. That is a fairly simple proposition. The government has said how much it intends to spend. It has not said how it intends to spend it. But if health and overseas aid are not to suffer reductions the amount available to all other departments will be 10% less than it is now. What's difficult about that?

In today's article poor Gordon has turning himself into pitiful Gordon. He claims that his spending plans are different from those Mr Lansley was talking about. That is a blatant lie. It doesn't stop there. Then he says the purpose of cutting government spending is to provide "a £200,000 tax cut for the richest 3,000 families". What a stupid line. Is it really his case that the Conservatives would hunt for the 3,000 richest families in the country and arrange things so that they each pay £200,000 less in tax? Has anything more absurd ever been written by a serving Prime Minister?

Then he made his worst mistake. He wrote this: "David Cameron ... would actually make the recession worse, by slowing public spending at exactly the time we need it most." How very insightful that sentence is ... or is it? The reduction in spending of 10% over all but two departments relates to 2011. Does pitiful Gordon think we are still going to be in recession in 2011? If he does it conflicts with everything he and his puppet Chancellor have said on the subject. Or was he saying that cutting government spending this year would make the recession and/or the consequences of recession worse? If he meant the latter he should have saved some ink because the Conservatives are not in power this year so his point has neither form nor substance.

When you start lying it is very difficult to stop. Were government expenditure (save for health and overseas aid) to be cut by 10%, as Labour plans, that reduction could be effected in numerous different ways. Stopping funding for all quangos and charities would achieve something like the reduction pitiful Gordon wrote into the last budget. Yet in his article today he says it "would mean" reductions in the numbers of teachers, police officers, soldiers and university places. That is another blatant lie. There is no scope for misunderstanding here, it is a lie. Were he an honest man he would have written (with a disgraceful amount of spin, albeit honest spin) that such a reductions would be equivalent to the cost of the number of teachers, police officers, soldiers and university places that he mentioned. But he did not say that, he said it "would mean" actual reductions in those fields. A disgraceful, deliberate lie by a man who wouldn't know how to tell the truth if his pathetic sham of a life depended on it.

To make sure there could be no doubt about the depth of his dishonesty he wrote this extraordinary sentence in winding up what must be one of the shabbiest pieces ever submitted by 10 Downing Street to the national press: "They will cut the services you and I rely on so that they can redistribute resources to the 3,000 richest estates in the country." Let's start with a simple question, one even a supported of pitiful Gordon might be able to answer. What services relied on by pitiful Gordon himself will be cut even on his fairyland view of what a Conservative government might do? Hmmm, that's a bit of a toughie. Maybe he means schools for his children; no it can't be that he'll just arrange for them to go to a private school at public expense as his predecessor did. Maybe he means ... no, the list is already exhausted.

"...redistribute resources to the 3,000 richest estates in the country." That is an absolute corker. On no possible basis of fact can it be asserted that keeping to pitiful Gordon's own spending plans - involving as they do sucking a greater and greater amount from everyone in tax to pay for the unprecedented debt his incompetence has accumulated - will result in anyone getting richer. No doubt one could take the cash value of the cuts pitiful Gordon plans and pretend they will be paid to the richest 3,000 families in the country and calculate that each of the 3,000 will receive £200,000 in Monopoly money, no doubt fairy dust is a more appropriate currency in the world of pitiful Gordon. But no one is planning to cut the taxes payed by anyone and no one is planning to give hand-outs to rich people.

The man has descended to the sewer. At long last his words have reached the level of his moral compass. He is a shocking piece of scum, utterly dishonest filth, unfit to lace his own boots let alone anyone else's.