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fairlyopenmind

Listed below are comments made by fairlyopenmind between Sunday, 22nd November 2009 and Wednesday, 25th November 2009 (9 Hours Ago) .

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Introducing green cuts 06:57am on 25 Nov 2009 This Climate Change row about leaked e-mails is worrying.

Couple of extracts (sourced from the Telegraph, but available elsewhere):

"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

It's not the use of the word "trick" that causes concern - but the fact that they refer to "adding in real temps". It indicates that data are "modified" even before getting into the computer models. That may be reasonable under some circumstances, but the further you get from raw data, the greater the risk of influencing the outcome.

It's a bit like counting the number of people using the Tube, but adjusting the numbers to allow for the fact that it was raining on some days. Fair enough to look at the weather effects, but not before you enter the raw data...

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

In other words: The data do not fit the model. So the data must be wrong!!! Now that really is worrying...

We're going to have thousands of people descending on Copenhagen, to aim at massive changes in global development, based on computer models which have failed to predict the current cooling phase.

I firmly believe in global climate change. And support the development of efficient alternative energy sorces.
But the only genuinely global measurements are satellite based. (Oceanic temperature measurement is relatively limited, though it covers two thirds of the world.)
It seems that satellite data does not reflect any rapid rise in temperatures...
Introducing green cuts 5:09pm on 24 Nov 2009 How on earth can this government now allow it to be stated that it injected BILLIONS into a bank, before encouraging it/forcing it into a relationship with a fairly sensible bank? One that had billions of private pension holders investments?

Goodness.

Moral compass?

"But we couldn't tell anybody".

Yeah. Bit like the gas chambers, I suppose. Except I thought we had an open democracy in the UK.

So where, exactly does Gordon demonstrate some sort of compass - moral or otherwise? How does hiding (very expensive) stuff meld with a moral compass? While it's done behind closed doors? And shareholders don't know what has happened?

The man is a buffoon. But he costs every person in the UK a fortune.

Private sector pensions are managed by companies who invest in what they hope will be decent businesses.

How can any government be so deceitful that it injects funds without telling the people, whose money it is, into a rag-band organisation and then encourages another company (which had a relatively good track record) to take it over?

At least Blank resigned.

Any chance that Brown will follow? Nah.
This bloke has a record that should mean he's on the DNA database. Taking money under false pretences. "Investing" in public services?
Garbage.

Man's a fool.

For goodness sake, where did honest Labour politicians go?
Introducing green cuts 12:25pm on 24 Nov 2009 Sad, isn't it?

Brown will take an entourage to Copenhagen (to meet many other leaders flying in with their groupies) and "experts" also flying in with enormous carbon footprints, to tell us we should cut carbon emissions.

I've seen newspaper (quality, not chip wrappers) suggesting 20,000 people will be in Copenhagen. To discuss how to stop climate change. It's a nonsense, isn't it?

The climate changes. Always has, always will.
If all this stuff were wrapped up as "stop polluting and wasting natural resources", I doubt that anyone would object.
I don't like a "scientific concensus" that is driven by government funding. Sounds too much like the scientific accord that "proved" Galilleo was wrong...

But government departments can't work out that turning off the lights, flying around a bit less, going home a bit earlier and stopping introducing rediculous legislation (that has to be printed, using chopped down trees) should be tackled...
Spot the difference 11:00am on 24 Nov 2009 #196, pdavies65 wrote:

"A: Personal debt is simple to understand, and basically follows the Micawber principle: spend more than you earn and in you're in trouble. To remain in the black, you need to spend less and/or earn more."

Absolutely true. The major problem (in my view) of the Blair/Brown years was a failure to recognise that borrowing to buy significant assets - like a house - needs to be fairly hard. That's to say, people should not be tempted to borrow unless they have a solid idea about their future income.
And borrowing to buy ephemeral stuff, throw away non-essentials, should be even more difficult.
Brown liked borrowing (i.e. debt) because it produced opportunities for taxation. NO moral compass in that!

"B: National debt is more complex because of the relationship between the state and its citizens. Income is mainly tax revenue,..."

Actually, Income Tax is - at least was - about 29% of tax take. That applies to anybody, whether in work or out of work. National Insurance (a tax on workers shared between the employer and employee) is about 19%. Corporation Tax is the next biggest. That's a tax on companies who employ people.
I don't think any UK company (any global company, for that matter) could "generate" £600BILLION of revenue. Which is in rough terms what the UK government spends, with absolutely no legislative framework to check whether what they do with the money makes sense.

(Having said that, the EU has fined a uselessly inefficient UK department DEFRA because it failed to pay farmers the money they were entitled to receive.)

"...so to maximize your income (always good in A) you need to raise more in tax, which isn't always good, either economically or politically. Likewise, cutting expenditure (good in A) can, if overdone, take too much money out of the economy and choke off any recovery. This is because some forms of government spending (for example, infrastructure improvements) put money into the pockets of the people who are doing that work."

Yeah.

But if government claims "investment" when under PFI deals they give contracts to private organisations and sign rediculous contracts for decades' worth of servicing, how can anybody understand where the real value for money lies?

I'm indifferent to who owns any company. A good, effective and efficient nationalised or private body can deliver decent products or services.

I do believe that we have a government structure (including all the QANGOs that Brown said he would slash, but which keep on expanding with political placepersons and cronies shoved into expensive roles) are inefficient and frankly profligate in their waste of money.

If a decent private sector management team couldn't take at least 10% off the cost of the UK government, they would have to be bribed... And I rather think that even public sector management would be able to deliver better services at a lower cost if they were allowed to.

Just doesn't suit the "Brown philosophy".

You know, the bloke who turns up at a party with a couple of empty beer cans and half bricks to make it appear he's being generous... Then consumes other people's offerings. Moral compass?
Spot the difference 10:14am on 24 Nov 2009 #199, excellentcatblogger wrote:
"183 rockrobin7
Couldn't agree more. In fact we have been systematically robbed since WW1. Income Tax was only introduced as a TEMPORARY measure to pay for the war. Several million potential tax payers paid with their lives as well."

Actually, excellent, income tax was supposed to be a temporary tax, but it was introduced by Pitt the Younger to provide funds for the Napoleonic Wars. So there is rather a longer history than you suggest!!!

Pitt was seeking to buy munitions and equipment for the troops.

Brown didn't bother...
Spot the difference 09:21am on 24 Nov 2009 #165, eye-wish wrote:

"...Thatcher set this country on a course which is hard to turn around. The same as the Atlee government did in '45 which more or less survived until Thatcher."

From what I understand, Atlee nationalised industries at a time when the UK was broke and when those idustries had struggled to get the country through WWII. So there was not much money to inject to improve them. And no appetite to push for productivity improvements.

It may have been a good move, but the UK still had to go cap in hand to the USA for a massive loan to get by...

"... I can't see why you find it so difficult to understand how Thatcher's influence still exists. I wish it didn't, but it does."

Like her or loathe her, Thatcher wanted UK industry to become more productive and competitive. She believed that would work better if they were under "private management".
Maybe she was wrong about that, but we certainly needed a massive change in the way our industries worked and it simply hadn't happened under their nationalised identities.
We didn't lose a major ship-building industry because of the ownership of companies, but because other countries were far more productive and built product better and cheaper than we did. Likewise automotive plant. And steel.
I've seen headlines about the old BOAC making a profit of £90MIL and public outrage that a nationalised company was making profits!!! As though any business should not generate "excess" cash to re-invest.

I regret that many companies are now owned by foreign interests. (That, though is also a consequence of the "Common Market" approach to free trade. Something embraced rather more by the UK than many of our EU partners... And it says something about the way that UK finance managers fail to inject money into companies in any "national interest" way.)

"...Influences of long running PMs and idiologies remain long after they leave office."

That's for sure. Blair had a fairly "Thatcherite", radical approach. Though she was long gone (7 years previously) by the time Blair achieved office.

Thatcher left a legacy of "try to make things more productive". Blair left a legacy of "hasty, ill-considered, legislation, QANGO creation and cronyism". That legacy has to be stripped down as rapidly as possible for the sake of our children.

Gordon Brown has had to gradually turn it around, and that means slowly, this country has not had the stomach for revolution since Watt Tyler.

If you are arguing from a position of the far left then why not argue for that vision, instead of just griping about GB. In other words, put a positive agenda forward rather than just rubbishing anyone who hates Thatcher.
Spot the difference 8:06pm on 23 Nov 2009 "The prime minister adjusted his rhetoric over the summer to move away from the crude "cuts versus investment" mantra he'd produced week after week with such relish. Now, David Cameron is changing his - ditching talk of an "era of austerity" to outline instead a route to an era of prosperity. Yesterday he even stole a Brown-ism by promising to "go for growth".

Just as with Brown before him, my sense with Cameron is that it is the words rather than the policies or values which have shifted. Both men are positioning themselves ahead of the chancellor's pre-Budget report which will define the economic and political debate between now and the election.

Nick,

There is only ever one Prime Minister or Chancellor. It simply doesn't matter what an opposition party says, because the folk who have their hands on the levels of power do whatever they want, even if it is crass.

Frankly, I don't give a good one whether you have a "sense" about how people think.

Statistically, we are in the merde. The only people who could be blamed are the people in power.

I'm not sure how a different group would make it better. Bu I don't see how anybody with a decent education could make it worse.
Spot the difference 4:31pm on 23 Nov 2009 "The prime minister adjusted his rhetoric over the summer to move away from the crude "cuts versus investment" mantra he'd produced week after week with such relish. Now, David Cameron is changing his - ditching talk of an "era of austerity" to outline instead a route to an era of prosperity. Yesterday he even stole a Brown-ism by promising to "go for growth"."

Dear Nick,
When you report that Cameron has projected "an era of austerity", could you provide some evidence of that?

I have checked on the net, but can't find that sort of projection.

It is certain that Brown has said that we can spend our way out of debt.

And Brown has always projected a "Prudent" approach to managing governmenht finances, although that went down the pan a few years ago.

Growth has absoltely no relationship with UK government spending. It comes from businesses (not well supported by Bown) getting busy.

Just which bits of the regulatory stranglehold is Brown suggesting he will retract? Just when will eager businesses start to benefit from the massive amounts of money Brown has allowed to be printed to support the banks?

Just when will this Stalinist (we know best) mob retreat and let businesses do what they do best, which is create - rather than tax and waste - money?
Britain lands key EU foreign policy post 9:33pm on 22 Nov 2009 #418, sagamix wrote:
fairly @ 409
"saga, from what I understand, you can get away with an awful lot in Hampstead. And on the Heath"
Mmm that's NOT a reactionary myth!
But look, there seems to be a mush going on. Are you angsty about the EU because ...
(a) Tons of your hard earned taxpayer cash is being wasted on an ineffectual and self serving bureacracy?
or:
(b) You think we're getting ruled by Brussels and we're hurtling towards a European Superstate?
Can't be both."

saga,

Why on earth do the CTPs in Hamsptead thing that your above points are in any way mutually exclusive?

Sad thing is that they seem to coincide within the city of Brussels.

The fact that a government is ineffectual and self-serving doesn't mean it doesn't have power and assume it has more.

I mean, you only have to go a few miles from Hampstead to Westminster...
Britain lands key EU foreign policy post 8:37pm on 22 Nov 2009 Sorry, mods.

Just realised I'm sending too much stuff. Just happened to be a slack moment.

Still think that it is impossible to find any definition within the Lisbon Treaty about the real role of the President of the Council of Ministers. Or the High Representative.

Certainly can't find any indication of the financial limitations for him/her, the various VPs he/she could appoint (or even how many!), or their lackeys.

Normally, if you bid for/offer yourself for selection by a contract offered by an EU organisation, the terms and conditions are fairly clear. And, a state can be fined if it avoids offering jobs or commercial opportunities in accordance with EU rules.

Why should that not apply to Commissioners, Presies or High Reps?

There is absolutely no democratic, even overt, scrutiny.

Just a bunch of self-selecting potentates.

I just don't understand why some posters think that's OK, because who ever is in power can just select placepersons to assume powers that national governments cannot block.

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