Temperatures, however measured, have failed to show a rising trend in this young century so far, the sceptics have found a renewed voice, the exposing of dodgy e-mails emanating from the University of East Anglia (UEA), one of the world's foremost sources promoting the idea of man-made warming, has further emboldened the sceptics and the global recession have all combined to make it tougher for those now in Copenhagen.

But there is some 11th-hour relief. The latest temperatures are in from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), who's satellite measurements are up there with the UEA when it comes to tracking global warming, and they show a distinct spiking in November. Of course, nobody on either side of the debate would put any store by one month's figures but when things have not been going well you have to grasp at whatever straws are available.

To put the November increase in perspective I've been poring over the UAH's satellite temperature data for the last 30 years (the things I do for you!), in particular how temperatures have changed since 1979. The UAH's latest measurements show global-average lower tropospheric temperatures 0.5 degrees Centigrade higher than 1979 and a big bounce from October. Both hemispheres, as well as the tropics, contributed to this warmth and the increase is a period record for November (since 1979).

Let's try to put this in context. The same measurements showed temperatures up almost 0.8 deg C in 1998, widely regarded by warmists and sceptics as the result of El Nino that year.

Since then, temperatures have fallen to 0.1 deg C below 1979 in 2004, risen to 0.7 deg C above in 2007 and fallen again to 0.2 below 1979 in 2008, more than wiping out the temperature rises of the previous 30 years. But since then temperatures have been on the rise again and in November were 0.5% above 1979. It is widely thought, however, that another El Nino is stirring in the tropics, which largely explains the spike. So we need to look at longer-term trends.

The UAH helpfully provides a 13-month running average of its satellite data. This shows, in the last three decades, temperatures peaked at 0.5 deg C above 1979 in 1998. They then plummeted to below 1979 and started rising again - but only modestly and with below 1979 troughs in 2004 and 2008. This year temperatures have averaged 0.2 deg C above 1979. A rise, to be sure, but a pretty modest one for a three-decade period and not necessarily associated with CO2 emissions: it could simply be a continuation of the slow and moderate upward trend in temperatures which has been occurring since the world started leaving the Little Cooling Period which followed the Second World War (when CO2 emissions were soaring and during which scientists talked of a new Ice Age looming.

Now I could be missing something here --and I look to you to correct me - but a 0.2 deg C rise in temperatures over 30 years seems, at least on the face of it, a flimsy basis for the action - costing several trillions of dollars - that many are calling for in Copenhagen, which could hit living standards in the affluent countries, perhaps even change life as we know it and make it even harder for the world's poor to escape their poverty. But, as I say, I could me missing something.

Over to you.

Former government chief scientific advisor Professor Sir David King and Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, on Thursday's Daily Politics

His remark included a sideswipe at Zac Goldsmith, the Tory candidate for the marginal London seat of Richmond who had non-dom tax status (until it was revealed in The Sunday Times and he promptly dropped it); Mr Goldsmith also went to Eton.

A Labour backbencher piled in the PM's side saying the Tories would make "a right old Eton Mess" of the economy (Eton Mess is apparently a pudding -- nope, I've never tasted it either).

I'm not sure how well this plays with voters and would be interested to hear from you (as I always am!). It certainly did nothing for Labour in the Crewe by-election, where it tried to smear the (victorious) Tory candidate as a toff.

Some Labour strategists fear that it appeals only to the core Labour vote and repels the less tribal aspirational vote. But it certainly puts a spring in Mr Brown's step and those around think that when he's happy and engaged, Labour has a better chance of winning.

The London Tories seem to know little of Scotland these days and apparently nothing of its social nuances. Otherwise they might be tempted to indulge in a little class war of their own.

Mr Brown, after all, is hardly a horny-handed son of toil. He's actually steeped in the Scottish Establishment, as much as Mr Cameron is in the English Establishment. As a son of the manse -- and a manse occupied by a highly-respected and well-known Presbyterian minister -- he hails from the heart of the Scottish professional bourgeoisie. He attended a fiercely selective elite grammar school and sailed into Edinburgh University, an overwhelmingly middle-to-upper-middle class institution, jammed packed with public school boys like Mr Cameron (the locals call them "Yahs" -- as in OK Yah!). His father's reputation gave him an easy entree into Scottish socialism and its leading lights. He could be regarded, in some ways, as part of the Scottish socialist aristocracy.

So in his own way Mr Brown is just as privileged as Mr Cameron.

Yesterday he attacked the Tory leader for starting his working life as a PR man; Mr Brown started his as TV producer (for STV). Plain folk might not see much of a difference. Neither began their careers down the pits.

Tory focus groups and polls find little concern among voters that Mr Cameron went to Eton or has a posh background. But there is some voter concern that he's surrounded by too many posh public schoolboys who know very little about the struggles of everyday life. That was one reason why Yorkshire's William Hague and Eric Pickles and Everyman Ken Clarke were given more prominent Tory roles early this year. It is also why you rarely see Mr Cameron and George Osborne (St Paul's, son of a baronet) together in front of the cameras.

This sense of the return of a public school elite to govern us was expressed by actor Brian Cox on the programme yesterday, a development he clearly didn't like. We might have been less gentle with him after his film if we'd known that two of his children had gone to two of the most elite public schools in the country (something we didn't discover till we came off air).

Yes the British class system is still a minefield. Over to you!

When a recent poll broke the trend showing a clear Tory victory and suggested a hung parliament, some Tories went into headless chicken mode, even though subsequent polls indicate that it was probably a rogue poll.

The Tory reaction, however, showed how uncertain the party remains of victory.

Then there was last week's PMQs, when David Cameron raised the potentially incendiary matter of taxpayers' money being used to subsidise schools with link to Islamic extremists.

There are two schools -- in Tottenham and Slough -- that have indeed had government money despite such links. But because Mr Cameron got some of his facts wrong, what should have put the government on the backfoot ended up backfiring on the Tory leader and his party.

Mr Cameron's main error was to get the source of government funding for these schools wrong. I'm not sure his critics would have bothered what the source was if the state was funding BNP-linked schools. But no matter: as any good journalist could have told him, when you make important revelations, you need to get all the crucial facts right or the revelations rebound on you.

That's what happened: the Tories ended up on the defensive, Labour got off scot free (even though taxpayers' money has gone to these schools and they do have links to Islamists, which is why I won't be apologising -- as some of you requested -- for giving former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith a hard time last Wednesday) .

Now we learn that Zac Goldsmith, the wealthy trustafarian who is contesting the winnable London marginal of Richmond for the Tories, has non-dom tax status, which is embarrassing.

Mr Goldsmith points out that he pays UK tax on UK-generated income, which I don't doubt for an instant. But all non-doms do that: there tax status allows them not to pay UK tax on income generated abroad that they do not repatriate to these shores.

I have no idea how much (if at all) Mr Goldsmith benefits from that non-dom benefit and he's already said he intends to drop his non-dom tax status before the election (though it might have been sensible if he'd done that the moment he was selected to run for Richmond rather than wait for the revelations in yesterday's Sunday Times).

But many voters will think that those who have power over tax-and-spend (MPs) should be subject to exactly the same tax regime as the rest of us before they have the right to rule over us. Mr Goldsmith's radical Green agenda, for example, has many calls on the public purse, include taxpayers' subsidies for renewable energy. It wouldn't be quite right, would it, to ask the rest of us to meet the cost if he wasn't paying his fair whack too?

No doubt all these matters will be forgotten come the election. But they do suggest that, even with a clear lead in the polls, the Tories are in for a bumpy ride as they head towards election day.

At least that will make the campaign more interesting for the rest of us.

Above all, it showed that there are real differences to debate and that those who've tried to shut debate down -- not just scientists, the green lobby and politicians but many in the media too -- might be doing us a disservice.

We plan more debates on the run up to the Copenhagen climate summit.

President Obama echoes most mainstream politicians in the Western world when he insists "the science is settled". Many viewers watching yesterday's debate must have wondered if that is really true.

Moreover our debate was staged in the aftermath of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's climate research centre, a leading advocate of man-made global warming of international repute, suggesting something of a cover up when it comes to the raw data on which it bases its conclusions.

Even George Monbiot, one of the country's leading exponents of global warming, describes these e-mails as "a major blow" to his side of the argument.

Indeed in this morning's Guardian he says they could "scarcely be more damaging" and confesses to being "dismayed and deeply shaken by them ... There appears to be evidence here to of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request ... worse still, some of the e-mails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics or to keep it out of a report by the IPCC [the UN's official body on climate change] ... the head of the [university's] unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the e-mails should be re-analysed."

To call for Phil Jones to resign is quite remarkable: he is probably Britain's leading global warming scientist.

Mr Monbiot's honest and fair reaction to the e-mails is in stark contrast to David Aaronovitch's response, who (for reasons he doesn't give) dismisses the e-mails as "quite inconsequential" in today's Times.

Some will wonder what his qualifications are for such a de haut en bas judgement. Whether you agree or disagree with Mr Monbiot, nobody can doubt his expertise in such matters, which is why many will conclude that his response is much more significant (and reasonable).

One thing seems pretty sure: the debate certainly isn't over!

Correspondents are reminded to keep their comments brief and relevant to the content of Andrew's blog.

The Sun has made much of the apparent mistakes in Gordon Brown's letter to the mother of a soldier killed in action, including getting her name wrong (he called her "Ms James" when her name is Mrs Janes).

Now a Sky News blog post has fun at the expense of The Sun, pointing out that:

"The Sun's Political Editor, Tom Newton Dunn, has just spent the entire Politics Show over on the Beeb calling Labour's Phil Woolas [a government minister] 'Andy'. Easy mistake to make no doubt, but not as easy as calling Jamie Janes Jamie James! Talk about the teapot calling the kettle black."

Andrew (Neil), Andy or Phil (Woolas) and Tom Newton Dunn on the DP (or Politics Show!)

So this is what it has come to: the Sun attacks Gordon Brown for getting a name wrong. The Sun's new political editor then gets the minister's name wrong, calling him "Andy" throughout his interview on the Daily Politics, then Sky has a laugh at his expense at its blog - but then gets the name of our programme wrong in the process.

Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy. Perhaps we all need to take a deep breath, calm down and concentrate on what's important, like the recession, unemployment and our predicament in Afghanistan.

First, this isn't really the government's plan at all. It is being forced on London by Brussels, which has insisted on a more competitive environment as the price for the multi-billion pound state aid pumped into both banks.

Second, if the High Street needs more competition, why was it that, only a year ago, the government encouraged Lloyds and HBOS to merge? Many commentators, consumer groups and bankers warned this would create a high-street behemoth and HBOS could have been bailed out by the taxpayer without a merger (as was RBS). But Gordon Brown was so keen to save HBOS that he intervened personally with the then Chairman of Lloyds to say competition rules would be waived to allow the marriage to take place. Lloyds' shareholders (which through our pensions probably means you and me) paid dearly for this shotgun wedding -- and now, only a year later, the giant is to be unravelled.

Third, be suspicious about claims that the proposed sell off will herald a new age of high-street competition. RBS has agreed to sell off its insurance arms (so a new master for Churchill) and to get rid of the few branches it still has in England which trade as RBS (NatWest in Scotland will go too). This will still leave RBS with over 2,700 branches throughout the country -- as well as its vast international operations.

Lloyds will also suffer only mild pruning. It's being told to get rid of its smaller building societies (which it intended to do anyway) and its TSB branches in Scotland. That will barely dent the 30% share of High Street deposits and loans it currently accounts for.

Bottom line: RBS and Lloyds will continue to dominate High Street retailing banking for the foreseeable future in this country -- and it will be a long time before any new competition will rival them.

Gordon Brown welcomes banks plan

LORD STERN ON TUESDAY's TODAY PROGRAMME

It's a fair question and I detect a growing disconnect between the global warming establishment and public opinion as the December summit on global warming in Copenhagen approaches. Fear that a suitable far-reaching post-Kyoto deal might not be reached has encouraged some to become ever more apocryphal, some might even say hysterical.

We've had the Prime Minister effectively saying there are only 50 days left to save the world, then several campaigners saying the polar ice could have melted in 20 years, now an economist urging us to become vegetarians for the sake of the planet. They may all be right, of course, but I sense the general public isn't buying it and if anything is becoming more sceptical about global warming (recent polls show that is certainly the case in America).

Part of the problem is that, as those worried about global warming become more apocalyptic, so the supposed scientific consensus about the matter begins to fray at the edges. Then there is the problem that global temperatures have actually been falling since 1998: I appreciate there are reasons for that which don't completely undermine the global warming case but when people in countries like Britain don't see much change in their own climate they do question why they all have to become vegans. And there is the simple populist resistance to rock stars and rock politicians who lecture the rest of us on the evil of low cost flying while circling the globe in their private jets.

The media also needs to become tougher in questioning what the experts tell us -- for example, there is much coverage of claims that the Arctic is melting, very little mention that Antarctica, which counts for 90% of the world's ice, has been cooling for the past three decades. And we need to be very wary indeed of events that are clearly stunts: there was much unquestioning coverage of the recent underwater meeting of the Maldives cabinet, meant to highlight the danger to the islands of rising sea levels, caused by global warming.

Hardly anybody bothered to ask the question: are the seas around the Maldives actually rising? The answer, from the world's greatest authority on the subject, the Commission on Sea Level Change, would seem to be no.

It has visited the Maldives regularly in recent years. Its studies show that sea levels today are about 20 centimetres LOWER than they were in the years below 1970, that the current lower level is stable and there is no sign the islands are about to be submerged. Didn't hear any of that amid all the breathless coverage and beautiful pictures. When the cries from lobby groups, politicians and vested interests become ever more strident and the stunts ever more eye-catching, it is time for the media to become ever more rigorous.

After five consecutive quarters of economic decline, figures out this Friday are expected to show that the recession statistically came to an end in the third quarter of this year (July-September).

I say "statistically" because I suspect only statisticians in the City and think-tanks will notice: they expect the latest figures for British gross domestic product (GDP) either to have flat-lined in Q3 or to show marginal growth of around 0.2%. Technically, that would mark the end of the recession but for most folk it would hardly feel like a recovery.

Gordon Brown will place great store by the recession ending. His hope is that, come the Spring election, people will accept that the worst is over and that a steady recovery is now gathering pace.

You can write the campaign speeches now: we're through the worst, we stopped a recession turning into a Great Depression, growth is returning -- don't let the Tories ruin it.

The PM genuinely believes he can win the next election with this pitch, whatever the polls currently say. And it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility. But he has some formidable problems.

Growth had returned to the British economy in 1996/97 but much good did it do John Major's Tories on polling day. Last night Michael Heseltine explained to me why: "We didn't have enough growth for long enough to convince the British people that we'd returned the economy to prosperous growth. Gordon Brown will face the same problem -- even worse because the economy won't be growing as fast in the Spring of 2010 as it was in 1997 when we had to go to the country."

Mr Brown's problem is that people may feel the worst is over by next Spring -- but still not see much of a recovery. The Treasury expects only modest growth next year (so does the IMF and OECD) and senior Treasury sources have told me they expect unemployment to continue to rise until the election -- and even beyond.

Nor does the technical end of the recession in Q3 mean growth is guaranteed in subsequent quarters. The Chancellor is worried that growth will falter at the start of 2010 as consumers and businesses draw breath post-Christmas to determine if the recovery really is underway. He fears investment and spending decisions will be delayed until the outlook for 2010 becomes clearer. So the growth figures for Q1 2010 -- the last before the election -- could be pretty uninspiring, thus undermining Mr Brown's strategy of going to the country with a "we're on our way back" appeal.

Add to that the problem of trust -- all the polls show that voters don't trust what the PM tells them any more -- and you can see the size of the mountain Mr Brown has to climb. A recovery that is seen to be merely a statisticians' recovery is a tough basis on which to seek re-election.

Far from continuing to dominate economic policy it looks as if the PM has lost control of it.

MPs have claimed a lot more for both of these than they have for cleaning or gardening. Legg had better be a robust character: the squeals of pain and anger from MPs so far will be as nothing compared with the reaction when (if) he starts asking for the return of tens of thousands of pounds. I sense he might shy off doing this; if he doesn't we're in for a clash of constitutional proportions.

2. Unemployment rose by 88,000 to just shy of 2.5m in the last three months. The government knows the figures are terrible but takes comfort from a slowing rate of increase. But ministers should perhaps not take too much comfort. A senior Treasury source told me yesterday that unemployment would continue to rise "well into next year", by which I take it to mean that it would only start to fallback sometime in the third quarter. In other words, unemployment is likely still to be rising (to 3m or worse) when the government goes to the country in May/June.

After all, MPs from the PM downwards are being requested to pay back money they claimed for gardening and cleaning (all largely with in the admittedly generous rules) while MPs from the Leader of the Opposition downwards who've claimed much more in mortgage payments -- or have made a capital gains tax-free killing when selling off their mortgage-subsidised homes -- are getting off scot free, so far anyway. Of course I understand that the standing of the current crop of MPs in public esteem is only a few notches higher than serial killers (which puts them even lower than journalists) but justice should apply to the unloved as well as the adored.

I think most people agree that much of what was claimed for gardening and cleaning should never have been claimed in the first place -- why should the taxpayer fork out for Nick Clegg's stone wall? -- so the party leaders are probably right to say MPs should bite their bottom lip and stump up (as the PM and Mr Clegg have done). But what is Thomas Legg going to do about those who've claimed small fortunes on their mortgages and made a killing on the sale of their homes? The rumour in Westminster is that he will address these sort of expenses too. If he does, that will cause much more pain than the cleaning/gardening refunds because the sums involved are so much larger.

One further anomaly: readers might be puzzled that former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith did not have to pay back any of her expenses, even though the home she designated as her primary residence (a room in her sister's house in London) was found not to be so by an inquiry, which concluded, not surprisingly, that her main family home was where her family lived in her Redditch constituency. The inquiry also discovered that the nights she claimed to spend in her sister's home was untrue -- in fact, she'd spent 37 more nights in Redditch. But by claiming, falsely, that her main home was in London she was able to claim £116,000 she was not really entitled to. Yet not a penny has been asked back (perhaps because she was judged by a committee of MPs which, when it met, had only one non-Labour MP on it). A strange outcome nevertheless.

Sir Stuart Bell on Monday's Daily Politics

With opinion polls showing the Tory lead as solid as ever -- even discounting a post-conference bounce -- the PM's position remains a matter of speculation. Most Labour MPs had resigned themselves to sticking with him, even if it meant certain defeat (as many think it will). But news of trouble with Mr Brown's remaining good eye has MPs buzzing that this is perhaps a precursor to the PM stepping down because of ill health. Sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Those MPs who thought they'd seen the worst of the expenses scandal will be sorely disappointed. It's back in the headlines with a vengeance. MPs sound aggrieved because the Commons' chief auditor is holding them to a higher standard than they have held themselves -- and demanding they pay back some claims. MPs are bleating that the rules have been changed. But MPs have always been subject to the rule that expenses must be "wholly and necessarily" in the line of duty. Use that yardstick -- common in the private sector -- and MPs will be writing a lot of refund cheques.

Mr Brown makes the latest contribution to the great deficit debate today by announcing a great sell off of state assets, such as the Tote and the Dartford crossing. But this is unlikely to have an immediate impact on deficit reduction, since many of these sales will take a long time to arrange. They also have only a one-off impact on the public finances whereas the bond markets are looking for evidence of major annual reductions -- and that can only come from cuts in spending or increases in tax -- or (more likely whoever wins the election) a combination of both.

It would be wrong to say nothing has changed when Parliament went off for the summer. The Lib Dems and the Tories have given us an idea of how they would cut public spending. Sure, they've announced no more than a down payment, but it gives us an indication of how they would do it. And Labour is now allowed to talk about cuts too.

The most important event between now and Christmas will be November's pre-Budget report when Alistair Darling will have to flesh out exactly how he plans to cut the deficit in half over four years starting in 2011 -- and the other parties will then have to make their dispositions accordingly.

Should be a busy and interesting autumn.

In fact, not being hard or honest enough is still the more telling criticism. The Shadow Chancellor admits that his announced cuts are only a downpayment on what must be done. But even the downpayment is vague in places, depending a lot on our old friends "waste and inefficiency", who are always threatened by politicians in opposition but somehow manage to survive when they get to power.

Tory leaders know you can't get elected on gloom alone. So today David Cameron will use predictable and well-worn rhetoric to say that after we've been through the Slough of Despond we'll reach the sunny uplands (the excerpt that's been leaked in advance uses language that's not far from that!).

Cameron/Osborne are quite a formidable double act. It was always clear that Mr Osborne would dole out the gloom in Manchester then Mr Cameron would come along to sprinkle a little sunshine.

There is none of the animosity/rivalry that so poisoned the Blair/Brown relationship and made government dysfunctional. They run the opposition as a co-operative double-act, with their office doors connecting and always open. If they win the election government process will be more Friends than West Wing.

The pressures of power, of course, can muddy the best of friendships but for now they are in harmony. But don't expect to see them much together come the campaign.

The Tories' own market research discovered that the public doesn't mind these two separately but doesn't take to these two public school Oxford chaps when they appear together.

So don't think the absence of a joint photo-call is evidence of a rift. It's just focus-group driven politics!

On how that will be done, Labour and Conservative are still pretty vague. The Pre-Budget Report will be the time for clarity from all sides.

Reaction on Tuesday's Daily Politics to George Osborne's speech