OMG! Gays!! Don’t Panic!!!

Same-sex marriage. Does this phrase offend you? No? Well, according to Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s most senior Catholic, it should do. That the Government has decided to consult on the idea is, for Cardinal O’Brien, serious enough to justify publishing a photo of Fat Reg From Pinner with civil partner David Furnish. The public clearly needs to be properly scared about this one.

And it isn’t just the Catholic Church, but the Tory establishment too: weighing in behind the good Cardinal has been rent-a-quote Europhobe Peter Bone (and, by definition, this has followed the obligatory consultation with Mrs Bone), who has taken to ConHome to thunder “Redefining marriage threatens the liberties of Christians, teachers and parents”.

The only surprise thus far is that there has not been even a rumble from the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, but that will surely come: after all, if the Mail could dredge up Jan Moir’s hatchet job on Stephen Gately, there will be no problem persuading whoever is at the head of the hacks’ cab rank to spew out the required torrent of apocalyptic froth.

The ConHome piece leans heavily on the “one man one woman equals marriage” petition which, it is claimed, had already secured 97,000 signatures before Bone threw in his, er, bone. Maybe so, but then, it’s always possible that a suitably promoted petition in favour of legalising same-sex marriage could also garner a lot of support. It’s not representative of overall public opinion.

And nor is the good Cardinal’s talk of same-sex marriage perhaps being the precursor of allowing unions of two men and two women, or a man and two women, or a variety of other more or less interesting combinations. The apocalyptic language (“It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father”, for instance) doesn’t help, either.

Nor, too, does Bone’s intervention – he begins the same way as the Cardinal (“To many this might seem a trivial matter” versus “On the surface, the question ... may seem to be an innocent one”) – trying, like Keith O’Brien, to frighten people about what both see as the inevitable consequences for education. Yes, there will be compulsory gay lessons for little kiddies. Be very frightened.

And “Parents who object will be treated as bigots and outcasts ... discriminated against and persecuted ... cornerstone of our society for two thousand years”. Cardinal O’Brien, meanwhile, is busily making slavery comparisons. And all this over a measure which has merely reached the consultation stage. What will be the next ratcheting up of this debate?

Apart, of course, from the inevitable and thunderous denunciation from the Mail.

Booker Still Making It Up

When will he learn? Usually, the ramblings of Christopher Booker are something not worth the trouble – the times he appears on this blog are small compared to the waves of guff emanating from the Telegraph – but every so often, he drops a clanger and lets slip just how little research he does, and therefore how little he really knows, on those issues where too many still trust him.

No Brussels constraint on this place

And today’s clanger is on the subject of Europe. Booker has railed against the EU for decades, and if today’s effort is anything to go by, the experience has left him unable to distinguish between fact, and what he would like that fact to be. His beef, as so often, is the idea that EU regulation – to which the UK is a contributor, let’s not forget – is intruding on the independence of Parliament.

Booker’s chosen subject is circus animals, and the idea that their use should be banned, and moreover would be, if only those rotten Eurocrats would let us. He describes how there was great support in the Commons for a motion in favour of such a ban, then suggests that the Government has hidden behind the potential of legal challenges to obscure the dastardly hand of Brussels.

Unfortunately, Booker also quotes directly the EU regulation concerned, numbered 1739/2005. A summary of this is available online, so his assertions can be checked against reality. So what’s it all about? “EU Regulation 1739/2005 laying down animal health requirements for the movement of circus animals and animal acts between EU Member States”.

So it’s a regulation to ensure decent standards of welfare for circus animals that move between EU countries. It has nothing to do with what happens within any one country. It has nothing to do with countries’ own Governments deciding of their independent will not to allow circuses to use animals in their acts. It does not prevent the UK making its own rules on what happens in the UK.

All of which means that Christopher Booker is, once more, talking out of the back of his neck, and Telegraph readers are being blatantly misinformed by a pundit who passed his best-by date many years ago. He might find useful the wise words attributed to the late Denis Thatcher: “Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”.

I’m Joining UKIP Because Of ... Muslims!

If something happening on the fringe of the Tory Party does not even warrant a mention in the Telegraph, one can only conclude that it is not important or even surprising. That has been the fate of MEP Roger Helmer, doyen of a political incorrectness that borders on forthright bigotry, who has jumped ship to UKIP, to the relief of many in the party who wish he had done so earlier.

Helmer’s ability to open mouth and insert foot is legendary: during last Summer’s riots, he opined that Police should use “water cannon and plastic rounds first”, and that the authorities should “Bring in the Army. Shoot looters and arsonists on sight”. While some on the right urged those objecting to avail themselves of a sense of humour, most correctly identified the comments as less than helpful.

And we found that the MEP with 40 years’ devotion to the Tories still uses a shaving brush, when he called the price of these antiquities “exorbitant” and suggested that their cost would be lowered by having a badger cull. That, though, was trivial compared to his characteristically insensitive suggestion that some victims of rape bore responsibility for the crime.

The list goes on: Helmer has also suggested that homosexuality is a mental health issue. Here – again – he caused Young Dave the kind of grief that Prime Ministers can do without. So he had no complaint when the Tories decided not to listen to his wishes when he decided to step down from his lucrative Brussels berth. But, Helmer being Helmer, he flounced out and joined UKIP.

And the fascinating side-show now playing is the manner of the reportage: while it is certain to have been approved by the party leadership, the blame for Helmer’s departure has, in the creative retelling of the Mail, been dropped squarely on Sayeeda Warsi. Hack Kirsty Walker has taken Helmer’s word and inflated the story from there.

Only later on is it conceded that “Tory officials are said to have been concerned” about the suitability of Rupert Matthews, the next name on the party’s electoral list for Helmer’s patch. Matthews “has ... published numerous books on ghosts, UFOs and aliens”, so just the kind of upcoming politician that a party needing to focus on mainstream issues could do without.

But instead of accepting that the Tory leadership was unhappy with Matthews – and Helmer wanted him to be the successor MEP – the Mail instead heaps the blame on the only Muslim in the vicinity. Moreover, Sayeeda Warsi is another of those characters – like Speaker Bercow – whose imminent demise is so often being predicted by the Mail, but who never actually leaves the stage.

So this is just another personal attack pretending to be news. No change there, then.

Slut Rush

[Update at end of post]

There has been a row brewing for some time over in the USA over employers’ provision of health care, with the so-called Blunt Amendment – named for the junior Senator from Missouri – finally being killed off by the Senate. This would have allowed any employer, faith based or otherwise, to opt out of providing birth control coverage (churches were already exempt).

And that should have been that, but in the meantime, a law student at Georgetown called Sandra Fluke had first been prevented from giving testimony to Congress, then had been invited to speak to Democrat members only, on the issue. Thus far this does not appear controversial: those House Democrats were mindful that no woman had been among those giving testimony.

But then came a series of interventions by the deeply unpleasant Rush Limbaugh, beginning on Wednesday, and, in the legendary words of Theresa May, I am not making this up: “What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex”.

Anyone thinking that was nasty would have been well advised to avoid the Limbaugh show the next day, when he went for Ms Fluke again: she was “Having so much sex, it’s amazing she can still walk”. But this was a mere sighting shot, as witness “So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch”.

He wasn’t finished. On Friday he returned to attacking Ms Fluke, saying she had boyfriends “lined up around the block. They would have been in my day”. Barack Obama, in the meantime, called Ms Fluke and thanked her for speaking out about the concerns of many American women.

As so often with politics Stateside – and it’s something that is infecting too much debate in the UK, especially that coming from the right – the reaction has been intensely polarised. Right leaning commentators have either kept quiet or played down Limbaugh’s incendiary comments.

Ms Fluke has been smeared as a Democrat activist and plant, and there have been accusations that she is not a student. Fortunately, moves are afoot to persuade advertisers to pull their presence from the Limbaugh show, and several have already done so. This was the technique that hurt Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) after Glenn Beck called the Prez a racist.

It’s only sad that there are some in the States prepared to stand by Limbaugh.

[UPDATE 4 March 1400 hours: Limbaugh, someone who is not given to the practice of retraction, has apparently apologised to Sandra Fluke, although his act not only appears to be less than unequivocal, but also gives every sign of being driven by the number of advertisers dropping his show.

David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, said that even though Limbaugh had recanted, his firm was still going to pull its advertising, telling "No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady".

Sadly, in the meantime, Fox News has clearly made the decision to take the same line as Limbaugh. Top rating host Bill O'Reilly attacked Ms Fluke, saying "Let me get this straight, Ms Fluke, and I'm asking this with all due respect, you want me to give you my hard-earned money so that you can have sex?".

Bill-O could, of course, have bothered himself to do a little research. Ms Fluke is calling for her University's private health plan to cover birth control. Here endeth yet another lesson in the lengths to which the American right will go to attack anyone it perceives as being of inconvenient thought]

Murdoch Is Served (68)

THE SUPER SOARAWAY SPIN-OFF

Rupert Murdoch made his name running newspapers. He still clearly retains great affection for titles like the Sun, which he took over back in 1969, but his more upmarket Times and Sunday Times are losing serious amounts of money, he had no compunction in closing down the Screws in the wake of Phonehackgate, and some 70% of News Corp’s money now comes from other sources.

New Sun printers shock horror

Why this is important is that the question is now being asked: what if Rupe pulled the plug and span off his UK newspapers? Had the thought been aired before the July 2009 revelations by Nick Davies in the Guardian, the idea would have been laughed off as the idlest and least informed of speculation. Not any more, especially as News Corp shares would almost certainly gain in value as a result.

So who is talking about selling off the Times and Sun titles? Well, Rupe’s headquarters troops in New York are, that’s who: once again, rival news provider Bloomberg has the story, citing Chief Operating Officer (COO) Chase Carey having talks about two options. These are merely to separate the newspaper unit from the rest of News Corp – or outright sale.

Talk of newspaper selloffs also made the news at Deadline Hollywood, as they pointed out that the departure of Murdoch Junior from News International could be a sign that the troubled UK titles could be offloaded. It would make sense, with the hacking saga now being joined by accusations of bribing the Police and computers being routinely accessed by illegal means.

But who might buy? The Sun, now a seven day operation, is at present profitable and will be so for some years, despite gradual falls in circulation and cost pressures on journalism, and so there should be competition to get hold of the title. But the Times and Sunday Times would be a challenge, with few Russian oligarchs in the wings, and only the readership to play for.

It’s entirely possible that the Times and ST could be bought just for the name, and subsumed into another upmarket title, maybe the Telegraph, though the Guardian could not be excluded – it would depend on the price. At the front of the queue for the Sun would be Richard “Dirty” Desmond, who has offered to buy before, and that will fill the hacks with dread.

Desmond is widely considered the worst proprietor in modern times, Robert Maxwell included. But if Rupe is willing to close the Screws, he will have no trouble offloading the red top on to Dirty Des, whose existing stable of Express and Daily Star titles has the cheapest and nastiest hackery on the national market, bar none. And it would park the criminality outside the building. Just a thought, Sun people.

TPA – Union Of Desperation

Over the past few months, I’ve observed the attack by the dubiously talented assortment of non-job holders at the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) and their new pals at the hilariously dishonest and accident-prone Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC) against Trade Union representatives’ facility time. This is clearly so important to the TPA that they have now assigned an unpaid intern to it.

A comfortable place to do your interning

Sadly, Yazdan Chowdhury is not doing any better than his generously remunerated permanently employed colleagues when it comes to disguising the blatant misinformation and sleight of hand for which the TPA has acquired a particular degree of infamy. Indeed, his post, “How taxpayers’ money funds trade union campaigns”, signposts the main whopper rather deliberately.

Chowdhury ensures he stays the right side of the defamation line – but only just – as he pulls a particularly fast one: “new evidence appears which suggests that the problem has reached a whole new level, with taxpayer-subsidised trade union branches openly campaigning against government policy in the very departments in which their members are supposed to be working”.

Trade Union branches are not in receipt of “taxpayer subsidy”. Let’s briefly recap here: facility time is paid time off, for employees of organisations in both public and private sectors, to perform a tightly-defined set of duties on behalf of the Trade Union of which they are a member, those duties having been set out in legislation passed in 1992 under a Conservative Government.

Workplace Trade Union representatives are not Union officials. No money is paid to any Trade Union branch in respect of facility time payments. Any representative using that time, or any facility that goes with it – such as IT equipment – for campaigning purposes is in breach of facility time rules, and if anyone has evidence that this is going on, they should report it and it will be stopped.

So when Chowdhury tells that “trade union branches ... take taxpayers’ money” he is being blatantly dishonest. It isn’t the only instance: he also asserts that the number of workplace representatives at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) means that one Trade Union’s branches “will be among the beneficiaries”. This is truly desperate stuff.

And here a parallel can be drawn: as the TPA’s campaign to demonise the HS2 project failed to make headway, the scare stories became ever more preposterous, the re-working of the costs and benefits so blatant that some former supporters began to distance themselves from the group. The wider Trade Union movement, then, should not be too concerned about this latest froth from the TPA.

Because they are protesting too much, and nobody who matters is listening.

The Not Very Full Nelson

March is generally Budget month, and so, as that month begins, the pundits are setting out their wish list stalls. Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, a persistent contrarian who doesn’t believe in climate change or that HIV begets AIDS, has extended his disbelief system to the 50p rate of Income Tax, which he asserts is “a bomb that a brave Chancellor would defuse”.

Royal Exchange, London

This tax is at the outset attributed to Pa Broon, which is always a difficult one when he had left the Treasury over two years before. Then it is held to be behind a “brain drain”, and “successive independent studies” are asserted to show that it is actually costing the Exchequer between £500 million and £4 billion a year. Actually, those successive studies show nothing of the sort.

As FullFact have pointed out, successfully maximising the income tax “take” depends significantly on what is called taxable income elasticity, that is, the percentage by which taxable income falls as the marginal tax rate – the rate on the next pound you earn – increases. If this figure is 0.46, then a top Income Tax rate of 40% maximises the tax take, and a 50% rate lowers it.

However, if the figure falls, then the tax take is maximised at a higher Income Tax rate, and even if it is higher – meaning a 50% rate would lose even more – that amount would not be anywhere near the £4 billion claimed by Nelson. It seems the folks at Money Week, who sniffily dismiss whatever the deeply subversive Guardian has to say on the matter, have not pronounced one way or the other.

Moreover, that Guardian piece points out that Treasury receipts for January 2011 showed an “unexpectedly large surplus”. Added to that is the characteristically sceptical view of Richard Murphy, who claims the support of Warren Buffett, one name to set the right frothing, given his deeply inconvenient stance and calls for more taxes on people like himself.

But what of Nelson’s suggestion that lowering the top Income Tax rate has brought more folks from abroad, attracted by the supposedly pro-business message this is held to send out? The problem here is that the tax cut was not the only influence at work: his figures come from 1989, which was just three years after “Big Bang”, the deregulation of financial markets in London.

The influx of outsiders – and that includes those in the UK who would not previously have been let through the door of most City institutions, as well as incomers from abroad – would have begun relatively slowly, hence his “11 immigrants in the top 100” for 1989 versus “16 of the country’s 20 wealthiest individuals” today. Nelson is adding a false assumption to his unproven tax take numbers.

Which suggests the conclusion got written first. No change there, then.

Harry Phibbs Again

It must be a continual challenge for someone called Harry Phibbs to risk being called out for living up to his name, but this notorious Tory journeyman does not allow the thought to enter as he whinges endlessly about trade unions, firms having to pay the minimum wage, students of inconvenient thought, the EU, taxes, why Workfare is very wonderful, and his undying love for Bozza.

City Hall, on London's South Bank

Yes, Phibbs is, to no surprise at all, backing the campaign of occasional London Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, although some might argue that with friends like Harry, one might not be in need of too many enemies. Why this should be is easily explained when one considers the attack piece he has written today for Mail Online, accusing Labour of electoral fraud.

Moreover, it is an accusation that has very little foundation: Phibbs claims that one flat somewhere in the borough of Tower Hamlets has twelve people registered to vote, but only some of them living there. He otherwise suggests the Standard – now running what looks very much like a pro-Bozza campaign just as shameless as that of 2008 – has more of this evidence.

Tower Hamlets is a favourite target for rightwingers: the Maily Telegraph “London Editor” Andrew Gilligan, purveyor of some of the capital’s dodgiest journalism, alternates kicking Ken Livingstone with pieces about the borough’s elected Mayor Lutfur Rahman, who, if you believed half of what was written, would right now be putting the finishing touches to an Islamic thermonuclear device.

And so it is with Phibbs: his evidence for electoral fraud is partly based on the numbers for the 2004 Mayoral election (16,229 for Livingstone versus 10,157 for “Shagger” Norris) compared to 2008 (37,361 for Ken and 17,509 for Bozza). What he doesn’t say is that Ken actually increased his vote in 2008, when turnout was significantly higher, and Respect fielded a candidate only in 2004.

All of these factors would increase Livingstone’s 2008 vote – and the increased turnout could be seen in a higher vote for his opponent. Moreover, there might just be more folk living in the borough, given the presence of Canary Wharf and its attendant new financial district. But Phibbs doesn’t want to dwell on these, because it would puncture his overinflated scare story.

We know it’s a crude piece of attack hackery meant to frighten voters into the desired polling booth, as it mentions Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro at the top. The failure to mention the background to the result reinforces that conclusion. And Phibbs’ accusation of fraud, while he has taken no action to bring a complaint before the Electoral Commission, puts the lid on it.

Harry gives every indication that he indeed Phibbs. No change there, then.

Beware The Christ Child

A climate influencing phenomenon that occasionally makes its way into the news is that of El Niño and La Niña, more correctly qualified with “Southern Oscillation” and abbreviated to ENSO. The warming of the Pacific near South America, heralding the start of an El Niño event is usually noticeable around Christmas, and the name, being Castellano for “the little boy”, is a reference to the Christ child.

For air temperatures through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the El Niño events generally coincided with positive anomalies – in other words, higher global temperatures than the established norm. La Niña events would, on the other hand, herald negative temperature anomalies. This, though, as can be seen from the chart, changed around 35 years ago.

While the 1983, 1995 and 1998 El Niño events coincided with significant upward movements in positive anomalies, successive La Niña events have been less effective in drawing those increases back. For that reason, the next two or three El Niño events may prove not merely interesting to scientists, but the bringers of a further step change in global temperatures – a change yet further upwards.

And that upward change would be fuelled by the oceans: the recent rise in global temperatures has not been a straight line phenomenon – though the trend is only going one way – but has periods of apparent hiatus, where there is no discernable upward movement for a few years. In the meanwhile, the oceans are absorbing heat, and it is ocean currents that drive El Niño.

So while the denial lobby tries to infer that taking the period from 1997 to 2011 in isolation can be used to support their latest assertion – that warming has stopped, and that it might, just might, all start to go into reverse – the oceans are gradually storing up heat, ready to kick-start the next phase of temperature rise. That is why we should beware the coming of the Christ child.

The Retelling Mode

The late Frank Carson would explain his success in making people laugh by saying “It’s the way I tell ‘em”. The way he told them made jokes even funnier, because he was, in life, a genuinely funny man. And, in its own way, the Fourth Estate has its own version of Carson’s Law: the way they tell the story makes it, well, more likely to do the job that editors and proprietors want it to.

Nowhere is this more readily apparent than in a curious item that has been picked up by the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre: “Secret EU deal forces Britain to take in 12,000 Indian workers despite soaring unemployment” thunders the headline of James Slack’s piece. It presses all the Dacre buttons: EU “diktats”, immigration, Indians, some Muslims, and maybe house prices.

Yet this is not quite the whole story: the drive to allow multi-national companies to bring in workers from outside the EU, working the rules to their advantage and paying less in wages and taxes, has not come from the EU, but from the Corporation of London and a body called International Financial Services London (IFSL), with the UK Government also on board.

We know this because the campaigning group 38 Degrees has picked up on what are known as “Mode 4 concessions”, which has to do with movement of workers across borders. This is part of a free trade agreement (FTA) being put together between the EU and India, which Trade Commission staff have admitted is “in effect 85% a UK deal”, with 85% of likely benefit coming to the UK.

But that benefit is what is likely to accrue to the UK based organisations that are allowed to bring in workers from India as part of the FTA. It does not mean there will be any benefit for the proverbial man or woman in the street – in fact, the opposite appears to be true, with the likely outcome being workers in sectors such as Information Technology (IT) being potentially displaced by migrant workers.

That is the inevitable effect of corporate input to the FTA: they have the best lobbyists, and an eye on improving their bottom line. Countries like India add value to their already well trained IT workforce. The EU gets a little more access to the vast and growing Indian market. Those without lobbyists, but with families and mortgages, end up getting screwed over.

That last is what the Mail it trying to tap into, but to identify the City as the main culprit would be unthinkable. So, as there is an EU dimension, the EU must be to blame. Moreover, Vince Cable can also be blamed by association, as can another favourite Mail bogeyman, Baron Mandelson of Indeterminate Guacamole. The money men and their lobbyists can therefore sleep easy.

As ever, it’s the way they tell ‘em. No change there, then.

Breitbart Checks Out

[Updates, two so far, at end of post]

To leave at the age of just 43 is too soon for anyone in today’s world, and despite my distaste for his tactics, and much of his politics, I make no exception for Andrew Breitbart, who passed last night in Los Angeles. Nobody who follows politics in the USA will have been able to avoid his presence these past few years. The Right has suffered a major loss with his death.

Yet I am not surprised, but rather saddened, by the news: Breitbart appeared to take the whole business of blogging, punditry, activism and politics far too seriously. He was not only committed, and fiercely and unequivocally so, but he was also angry. It was a clear anger, a rage against his opponents for being, well, opposed to him. He gave the clear impression of a man very heavily stressed.

Anyone wondering what I mean need look no further than Breitbart’s appearance outside the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he went to confront a group of Occupy protesters. Screaming “behave yourselves”, then calling them “filthy freaks”, telling them to “stop raping people” and finally denouncing them as “murdering”, Breitbart is clearly charged up.

The person who seeks to copy Breitbart on this side of the north Atlantic, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines – whose ability to reinterpret reality in a creative manner is in every way as original and bizarre as his contemporary – tends not to get himself into such a state. And, whatever I think of Staines’ qualities – we’re out of postage stamps right now – he at least does get one thing about this game.

And that is that you should not take that game, nor yourself, too seriously. This is a spectator sport, and participation is best left to those foolish enough to offer themselves up to the electorate. Andrew Breitbart, at times, tried to enter the fray himself, rather than remaining in the stands. That was the measure of his commitment. So what will endure?

The Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood sites have become fearsome misinformation machines, mainlining right-wing attack propaganda in a shameless, utterly committed way that takes no prisoners. This did not win friends elsewhere on the political spectrum, especially after the ACORN “sting” videos, and the Shirley Sherrod video edit, over which a lawsuit was pending.

But, despite the sometimes vicious conflict which Breitbart gave every appearance of enjoying, the people at Media Matters For America (MMFA) have stated “We’ve disagreed more than we’ve found common ground, but there was never any question of Andrew’s passion for and commitment to what he believed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family today”.

Don’t take this game too seriously, folks. It’s not worth it.

[UPDATE1 1720 hours: James "saviour of Western civilisation" Delingpole has posted his own thoughts on Breitbart's passing, noting that he enjoyed "a voraciously Type A lifestyle - drinking, smoking and burger-scoffing like there was no tomorrow", which would not have done his health any favours.

Fortunately, Del Boy brings unintended hilarity to proceedings when he observes of Breitbart "he also knew how to use Twitter as a devastating weapon against the enemy. It's a simple technique which I've since copied". Sadly, nobody told Del Boy that enemies are unlikely to be devastated by blocking them.

(The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines has also posted a tribute which you can see HERE)]

[UPDATE2 2 March: Telegraph luminary Tim Stanley has weighed in with his own thoughts on the news, telling "Andrew Breitbart was the authentic voice of the Tea Party revolution". This is grade A bullshit, and for two very good reasons.

The so-called "Tea Party revolution" is nothing more than a loose assembly of convenient idiots, whipped up by Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) and paid for by the Koch brothers and their like.

Breitbart, on the other hand, was the authentic voice of Himself Personally Now - he was independent of any overlord or controlling interest. I'm sure that Tim Stanley will take this on board - after all, you can tell him as he's a Doctor]

Workfare – After The Storm

The fog of battle has, for the moment, cleared, and we can now gaze upon the PR car crash that has been the Government’s charm offensive on Workfare. It is not a happy sight for Coalition MPs and their supporters: there has been far too much backtracking, revelation of dishonesty, and general lack of transparency, and all over one word. That word is Sanction.

This is where defenders of the scheme invariably came unstuck: few were saying that unpaid work placements should be outlawed – though it looks incongruous for firms like Tesco to not pay its shelf stackers at least the minimum wage – but that the threat of having benefit payments withdrawn was not acceptable. That has now been taken on board and the S-word is no more.

But, while it proved difficult for the unfortunate Chris Grayling to sell, actually admitting that there was an element of compulsion was, for far too many of those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet, next to impossible. One hack after another echoed Janet Daley in the Maily Telegraph: “the chance of anybody actually losing their benefits is remote”. Not for over 200 folks, it wasn’t.

At least the otherwise loaded piece in the Mail, after telling once more that the scheme was voluntary, conceded “if they withdraw without good reason (?) ... benefits can be withdrawn”. But readers had to first negotiate their way past several paragraphs of verbiage about “anti-capitalist extremists”, “Left-wing activists”, and the obligatory photo of Priti Patel.

Those following the Telegraph column of occasional London Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson were not so fortunate. Bozza told that “They are not forced to do it, and they can pull out of it within a week if they don’t like it – with no loss of benefits”, while bodyswerving the S-word, before going off on a stream of consciousness rant about rotten lefties.

And the S-word was equally absent from the screaming denunciation of anyone not agreeing with Herself Personally Now issued by Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips, who made sure readers understood “It is an excellent policy. It exploits no one”. So there. In those few words, Mel has redefined reality to fit her view of the world.

Having accomplished that, pulling a whopper is child’s play: “It does not penalise the unemployed. Nobody is compelled to go on these placements ... they lose no welfare benefits”. This was proved not to be true, but Mel, along with all the other frothing pundits, will be back for more, despite the reality, which is that this has been a publicity disaster for the Government.

The difficult part, for some with a problem, is admitting that there is a problem.

Del Boy – Nurse, The Screens!

Delivered almost every year since its inception in 1972, the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby Lecture has been given by a variety of scientists, theologians, politicians, business folk and others. This year’s lecture was given on Monday by Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, and was titled The Wonder Of Science. By most viewers it was well received, but in one corner of south London, dissent was stirring.

And that dissent was not confined to mere disagreement, but, thanks to the bully pulpit afforded by the bear pit that is Maily Telegraph blogland, spewed out in a torrent of abuse, bile and screaming denunciation as James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole raged at the Beeb, Nurse, and science in general as he penned a sneerfest to satisfy the most discerning rant connoisseur.

While many observers watch Paul Nurse at work, giving lectures, or discussing science with a variety of colleagues and pundits, and see an agreeable and avuncular being, Del Boy has the inside track on what is really a political activist. No, don’t laugh, this has to be true because Del said so on his own blog, and a report from the GWPF agrees with him.

That the GWPF is another of those Astroturf lobby groups set up to rubbish climate science is not allowed to enter. And, sadly, while he accuses Nurse of “boo-boos” (an alumnus of Malvern College and Christ Church Oxford clearly has that much more of a grasp of the English language), he makes the most elementary of howlers before even getting into his stride.

That is the mantra “The Science Is Settled”. Paul Nurse never said that, and nor did anyone else that Del Boy has routinely insulted and denigrated on his odyssey of occasionally incoherent rage. The science is never settled, and because of this, one cannot say that Global Warming is proven. This enables the denial lobby to dismiss it as an “unproven hypothesis”.

But let’s cut to the real issue here: Paul Nurse kebabbed Delingpole in two minutes flat in the Science Under Attack documentary. Del Boy was found to be wanting on the most basic of subjects – like bothering to read around the science. By his own admission, he relied on others’ interpretations. This also brought his interpretation of the “Climategate” emails into question.

As one of the commenters put it: “Must be difficult to avoid holding a grudge against someone who has humiliated you on TV”. For Del Boy, it’s beyond difficult: he won’t stop ranting at Paul Nurse, and thus will look ever more like a caricature of himself. He’ll keep on getting the media coverage, but will be brought on not as a sage, but a figure of fun.

Perhaps he could try doing Panto this Autumn? Just a thought.

Guido Fawked – Livingstone Foot In Mouth

The ability of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, to open mouth and insert boot was illustrated superbly at the Guido Fawkes blog yesterday. This less than dynamic duo, the Laurel and Hardy of the blogosphere, had decided to widen their attack on rotten leftie Ken Livingstone to London bloggers who they deemed of inconvenient thought.

Now that's not a good idea

And, demonstrating the tribal and uncharitable nature of the Fawkes blog, the post thus generated links to only two of the eleven blogs upbraided: on this matter, Staines and Cole expect their readers to be gullible enough to take them on trust. But the Fawkes blog also needs to generate advertising revenue, and the need apparently trumps any need for ideological purity.

Because, as readers were reading the allegations against Livingstone and the bloggers who are supposedly batting for Labour, they were also being served a series of very prominently displayed adverts promoting the former Mayor’s campaign and passing suitably adverse comment on current (and occasional) Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Moreover, the adverts were on the right-hand side of the screen, the part towards which the eye naturally gravitates – as witness the Huffington Post using it for its sleb stuff (an idea later lifted by Mail Online, which as far as is known hasn’t even given Arianna so much as a thank you). So readers were informed that the blog’s hero Bozza had a second job at the Maily Telegraph.

Not only that, they were then informed that this “second job” paid Bozza a cool £250,000 a year, although the great man has dismissed this amount as merely “chicken feed”. Following this information comes a reminder of the Livingstone assurance that he would be a full time Mayor, with a sign-off giving a text number to send “chickenfeed” to BorisStoppers.

And one additional thought enters, given Bozza making light of his wad from the Telegraph: his Mayoral stipend is a far smaller amount, so if £250,000 is “chicken feed”, one can only conclude that he is in receipt of a rather more substantial sum from one or more other sources. And the accepted way of dealing with multiple income streams is to work through a limited company.

So if Staines and Cole are so keen on full Mayoral candidate disclosure, no doubt they will be just as keen – given Livingstone’s commitment – to expose Bozza’s full range of income, the company he funnels it all through (or not), and his equivalent commitment to put all else aside to concentrate on being London Mayor, if returned for a second term.

Won’t they? No, they’re just blinkered, clueless tribalists. Another fine mess.

Bunging The Law – The Mail Did It Too

While the attention in the wake of Phonehackgate and the Leveson Inquiry continues to focus on the less than principled behaviour of Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Sun and Screws, the recent arrests related to paying Police and other public servants should by now be sounding alarm bells among another group of those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet.

Who're you f***ing calling bent, c***?

And that group is the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, as one reading of Flat Earth News – whose author Nick Davies added this year’s Paul Foot award to his trophy cabinet last night – will show. While the Screws used Jonathan Rees as a go-between to access corrupt Police officers, the Mail used the services of a rival Davies refers to as Z.

Davies sums up the character of the Dacre empire’s conduit thus: “Z is happy to describe himself as a journalist, and it’s true that he earns a living selling stories to national newspapers. Z is also happy to describe himself as a former detective. The simple reality is that Z is bent. He was bent in the police and he went on to be bent in Fleet Street”.

So how did Z do his dealings with the Mail? According to Davies, “Reporters who have worked at the Mail talk of handing over envelopes containing up to £3,000 in cash”. Some of these were bribes to serving officers. On occasion, Mail hacks would meet corrupt coppers for drinks at the Wine Press in Fleet Street. And the Met tried, but failed, to cut this out.

And it wasn’t only the Police that were bunged a few drinks by Dacre’s finest, as Davies then tells “Reporters from the Daily Mail to whom I spoke independently agreed that they have bribed not only police officers but also civil servants”. These included officials with access to the social security database, which was at one time used “as if it was an extension of the Daily Mail library”.

None of this should surprise anyone: the Mail has, over the years, consistently been at the front of the pack when it comes to getting personal information on its targets. As another reporter told Davies “If the Mail go for you, they get every phone number you have dialled, every school-mate, everything on your credit card, every call from your phone and from your mobile. Everything”.

So it was entirely predictable that, after keeping schtum for so long, the Mail reports helpfully detailed all the wrongdoing of the Murdoch empire (this article from earlier this week is typical) while in the Dacre bunker, fingers are being crossed and silence is being maintained. Because what the Sun has been accused of doing is exactly what the Mail has been up to.

Maybe Nick Davies should donate a copy of Flat Earth News to Operation Elveden.

TPA – Recommended Dishonesty

[Update at end of post]

Things are quiet right now at the comfortable and lavishly financed offices of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), which is inevitably an ominous sign, as it means the dubiously talented convocation of non-job holders is at work on yet another magnum opus of agenda driven misinformation. But enough is going on for the stream of falsehood to keep on flowing.

More from the Comfortable of Tufton Street

This continuous torrent of false facts is, at present, mainly directed to demonising Councils that are increasing Council Tax this time round. The TPA wants them instead to take advantage of Government assistance which will keep the rise down – though not necessarily eliminate it – although this would only be for one year, and it would still be taxpayers footing the bill.

To reinforce what is admittedly a rather sterile debate – the odd percent on something that most pay by direct debit over ten instalments each year is hardly here or there – the TPA has used a number of tactics. One is to say how much the tax has risen since 2001, but this only works until folks realise that much else of what they consume has gone up a lot more.

So into the mix is thrown mileage allowance, which, sad to say, is an equally sterile and unpromising debating chip. But that has not stopped the TPA from employing a mixture of misinformation and straightforward dishonesty to press the point. First, they cite a figure of 40p a mile and say that this is the “HMRC recommended rate”, which is not true. HMRC make no such recommendation.

What the nice people at the Revenue do do, however, is to allow folks to charge an amount free of tax for their mileage travelled on employer’s business. If the actual cost is more than that, well, that’s tough: you can only claim what they allow you to. The TPA argument is like saying the Income Tax allowance for single persons or married couples is “The HMRC recommended salary”, which is preposterous.

That is, in a nutshell, why one should never take a TPA assertion at face value. Moreover, the amount the TPA cites is not what HMRC allows: the figure has recently been revised from 40p to 45p (well, for the first 10,000 “business miles”, anyway, which for those using their own vehicle for occasional business use, should cover it). Note that the word “recommended” does not appear.

And that is how the TPA uses sleight of hand and dishonesty, day in, day out, in order to pursue its objective: the demonisation of Government – any Government – along with public service and public works.

[UPDATE 1 March: the TPA's supposed "Grassroots Coordinator" Andrew Allison - now there's a non-job for you - has re-iterated the "recommended rate" interpretation of the HMRC mileage allowance. A word in your shell-like, Andrew: back in 1999, this allowance had a maximum level of 63p per mile. I know this as my car, at the time, qualified for it. It can hardly be a "recommended" rate if it is cut by over a third over time, when the cost of motoring remains at a similar level.

But he does concede, in his rant at Stockton-on-Tees Council, that the allowance went up to 45p last April. Pity the TPA doesn't also say that they got this wrong several times over. And the chance of this malign body apologising for misleading the public is out of the question. No change there, then]

Murdoch - Getting Away With Murder

[Updates, two so far, at end of post]

Why Rupe and his downmarket troops were so eager to get the Super Soaraway Sunday Steamer up and running came clear yesterday as the Leveson Inquiry resumed its hearings, with the beginning of Module 2, covering relationships between the Fourth Estate and the Police. And critics of the Inquiry, from Trevor Kavanagh to “Oiky” Gove, may wish they had kept schtum a little longer.

Because, almost from the word go, the revelations went from grim to a lot worse, starting with the genesis of Phonehackgate. Here, the Met knew full well that hacking had gone on on an industrial scale, yet they played down the extent to which Glenn Mulcaire had taken notes, and only prosecuted him, along with Clive Goodman. They then let News International (NI) in on the whole thing.

Yes, a senior officer at the Met contacted Rebekah Wade (as she then was), briefed her on the affair, and confirmed that no further action would be taken. A cosier and more blatantly corrupt arrangement would be hard to imagine. And it might have remained that way, had Neil “Wolfman” Wallis not tried a little too hard to shout down Nick Davies when the latter was promoting Flat Earth News.

All this caused some raising of eyebrows yesterday, but this turned out to be a mere curtain raiser for today’s bombshell: that it appears Screws hacks were interfering in a murder investigation. The murder was that of Daniel Morgan, found with an axe in the back of his head at the wheel of his car in a South London pub car park. Morgan had apparently unearthed police corruption.

One of those on trial for Morgan’s murder was his business partner at Southern Investigations, Jonathan Rees, a private investigator who supplied significant quantities of illegally obtained information to the Screws. It was because details of the trial were sub judice at the time that much of the information given to Young Dave about Andy Coulson by the Guardian could not be made public.

The excuse from NI, when confronted with evidence of their surveillance on Chief Superintendent David Cook and his wife Jacqui Hames, was that they had evidence of an affair between the two, and there was a public interest angle as (then) WPC Hames was a presenter on BBC Crimewatch. As it was public knowledge that they were in fact married, this was clearly crap.

Rees got off the murder charge, but had been convicted in the meantime for perverting the course of justice. This proved no bar to Coulson re-hiring him to work for the Screws. I’m sure that Coulson would not have allowed himself to be swayed by Rees’ known connections to a number of bent coppers who could supply information to oil the wheels of NI’s particular brand of journalism.

Oh, and “Oiky” Gove isn’t the only one in the cabinet close to all of this. Is he, Dave?

[UPDATE1 29 February 0940 hours: this blog is not the only one pointing up this story. The lack of media attention garnered yesterday has been highlighted by Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy, with screenshots comparing the coverage given by the websites of Channel 4 News (significant) and the BBC (negligible).

Fortunately, the matter is being kept in the public eye by Labour MP Tom Watson, who has secured an adjournment debate on the death of Daniel Morgan. This will take place in the Commons later today]

[UPDATE2 1 March 1800 hours: the full text from the adjournment debate can be seen HERE (scroll down to 4pm). For those wondering what point is served by this, remember that the statement by Tom Watson and response by Nick Herbert - a minister has to attend and respond - are got on to the Parliamentary record, and in full.

Herbert's reply also puts on record the Government's commitment to seeing justice done for the family of Daniel Morgan]

Telegraph Turns Out The Lights

When the Maily Telegraph published expense details for MPs including many leading Tories, and caused some minor tremors to shake the Coalition as they went after David Laws and Vince Cable, there were some on the right who questioned whether the paper was still the reliable soulmate of fond memory. They need not have worried, as the Workfare episode has shown.

Ultimate act of desperation

Moreover, the sheer desperation of the Telegraph’s attempts to smear anyone and everyone reporting the matter in a way that is other than to their total satisfaction has merely underscored how far this once great paper of record has fallen under the less than benign stewardship of David and Frederick Barclay (aka The Fabulous Bingo Brothers).

Following Janet Daley’s sounding of the retaliatory charge at the weekend, the hacks and pundits have rallied strongly, with occasional London Mayor and regular collector of the Telegraph’s generous “chicken feed” allowance Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson railing yesterday at the “loony left”, and by the happiest of coincidences being totally in tune with his own party.

This was the cue for the anonymous “Telegraph View” to build on Bozza’s scattergun pounding of the opposition by setting out the approved Tory view, that “A retreat on workfare would fail our young”. This was reinforced by telling that the apparent retreat by many High Street names had been nothing of the sort. Thus readers would be reassured, though later use of the phrase “in truth” should raise suspicions.

Then came supposedly thoughtful pundit Matthew d’Ancona, falling at the first hurdle as he talked of young people going to work in a supermarket “for a month’s learning”, while not telling that this experience, for those stacking shelves, enjoys distinctly limited horizons. He then attempted to sound a rallying cry to firms who have backed away from the scheme not to be “scared of Tweets”.

Thus far, though, the copy had some kind of sense and reason to its talking points, although these were unequivocally in support of the Government. But then came the return of Janet Daley, with a piece that any credible editor would have spiked without hesitation. “‘Workfare’ has not collapsed: the backlash against the SWP has saved it” she announced, and then went completely gaga in short order.

Criticism of the Government was “the SWP’s wrecking campaign”, companies hadn’t really pulled out of the scheme – which was being “loudly bad-mouthed by the Guardian and Newsnight” – and there was an “SWP/Guardian/BBC troika” at work. Just in case readers didn’t get that, an SWP logo was captioned “The red fist of the SWP/BBC”, as the barrel was well and truly scraped.

Will the last journalist leaving this former paper of record please turn out the lights?

Workfare – Trash Those Lefties!

Following last week’s revelation that some of those claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA) were being forced to undertake work placements for no additional payment other than travel expenses, and the protests that caused, some of the employers concerned pulled out of the scheme. And the remaining employers are still being pressured by campaigners.

The scene was then set for the inevitable reaction, the full righteous rage of the right, and so it has proved. This actually kicked off on Saturday in the Maily Telegraph – rather than the Mail, the usual seat of this kind of explosion. The author of what was to become the template for the fightback was Janet Daley: “The Government should stand up to the rent-a-mob campaign against unpaid work experience” she stated.

This moderately wayward rant identified the villains of the piece: the deeply subversive Guardian (theirs was denounced as a “wrecking campaign”), the Socialist Workers’ Party, and of course the BBC. The Coalition was held to be merely a thing of benevolence, battling valiantly against the feared, er, Kirsty Wark, in a Newsnight edition that, it was asserted, was “shockingly biased”.

And with that, the scene was set for a rantfest to satisfy the most discerning connoisseur: the following afternoon brought “Tories order Police to halt workfare demos as MP makes formal protest to BBC over bias in favour of hard-left militants” in the Mail. Note the use of “hard-left”, a characterisation much beloved of Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

Note, too, the “formal protest”, as opposed to “complaint”, by self-promoting Tory MP Priti Patel, occasionally representing the electorate of Witham, but more often Herself Personally Now. The “protest” was yet more of that self-promotion. But more pundits had to be sent over the top, and to his shame, occasional London Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was next at the Telegraph.

“The loony Left, out to destroy youngsters’ hopes of a job” asserted Bozza, on the day his fabled New Bus For London made a less than auspicious debut in service and broke down twice. “Most of them go into full time jobs” he further asserts, but that is not true, unsurprisingly for Johnson. Then the icing on the cake has come from Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips at the Mail.

“Jobs, welfare and how the BBC went in to battle for the Socialist Workers” thunders the title, as Mel smears the Back To Work campaign as some kind of SWP front. A “few far-Left thugs” have exposed employers’ “contemptible absence of spine”, the whole protest “vastly amplified by a combination of social media and the BBC”. The Guardian has exhibited “shameless and poisonous hypocrisy”.

And the poor are then depicted as “victims”. There’ll be more of this dross to come.

The Myth Of Automation

The spectre of trade unions – make that militant trade unions – has appeared over the race for the London Mayoralty. And, as I noted earlier, an awful lot of hot air is being expended on the subject of driverless trains on the Underground. Much of this merely emphasises the ignorance of many hacks and bloggers, some of whom would rather believe their own dreams than take on board reality.

What has sent the convocation of Ron Hopefuls into a mood of slavering expectation has been another article in the Standard, titled “I’ll curb power of Tube unions, says Boris”. And it falls at the first hurdle, as Automatic Train Operation (ATO) is confused with “Automation”. These are not the same thing. There is no prospect of the latter on any Tube or Sub Surface Line (SSL) in sight.

Central Line: out in the open and a bit complex

The piece is partly correct when it mentions the Victoria, Central and Jubilee lines, but ATO is not the same as “Automatic Trains”, particularly on the latter two routes with significant parts of their track out in the open and therefore subject to a variety of inclement weather conditions, as well as trespass and vandalism. “Automation” may not be an option here. Ever.

Nor is the Northern Line ATO even running in test form as yet – and on top of that, this has a complex layout with a variety of potential routings. To get ATO working here before 2014 may be manageable, but nobody familiar with the Tube and its ageing infrastructure should guarantee it. On top of that, the SSLs are yet more complex in terms of their routing possibilities.

As I noted previously, new fully automatic lines, such as the 9 and 10 in Barcelona, are completely underground and all platforms have doors, to ensure passengers have no chance of accessing the tracks. This would be required in London – else how would full automation cope with those who fall off the platforms, whether deliberately or otherwise?

There will be no fully automated working in London for at least four years, and that would only be between Waterloo and Bank, on a line with no intermediate stations. Moreover, thus far the public preference has been for retaining a train operator, which is also useful when there are problems, and especially on open sections of track (see above).

And there will only be any potential political advantage to be gained from this idea when one of the major Tube lines has gone over to fully automatic working. There is no prospect of this as yet, and little even if Bozza were to serve a second and even third term. It’s just the right, whistling to keep their spirits up, aided and abetted by the gullible hackery of the Standard.

But it might move a few more papers, so that’s all right, then.