Picking Losers

The claims that this summer's unseasonal weather are the result of global warming continue. Whether you believe that global warming is the result of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, like the majority, or of permissive attitudes to gay relationships, like the Bishop of Carlisle, you are supposed to believe that the recent floods are nature or God's judgment on our wicked ways.

Contrary to earlier claims, the Met. Office have started to whisper that this weather is not, in fact, the result of global warming, but is more likely caused by the impacts of a La Niña weather system. If so, it also gives the lie to the claims that this weather was unpredictable. It wasn't, it was just unpredicted by the "experts" to whom the government and the media listen.

Let's be clear. No one who knew anything about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory should ever have been claiming that heavy summer rainfall was the result of AGW. Below is a graph produced by the Governments' UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) in cooperation with DEFRA, the Met. Office's Hadley Centre, and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, showing predicted changes in precipitation under two climate-change scenarios (Top row = Low emissions, Bottom row = High emissions). It is missing one vital piece of information, which is what each column portrays. The three columns for each block (Winter and Summer) are predictions for how the precipitation will have changed, respectively (left to right) by the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s. As you can see, even under low-emissions scenarios, by the 2020s, summer precipitation is expected to have fallen by upto 20% in most of England, including most of the flood-hit areas. Heavy rainfall that delivers in the space of a few days an amount of rain equal to the total rainfall in an average summer is ABSOLUTELY INCONSISTENT with this, however much pundits might like to claim airily that the models predict more extremes.

Government  

Taking a leaf out of Patricia "best year ever" Hewitt's book, Defence Minister Derek Twigg has responded to a critical Public Accounts Committee report on recruitment and retention in the Armed Forces by claiming that:

"Recent independently verified manning statistics show that recruitment into the Armed Forces remains strong against a buoyant economy, particularly for the Army Infantry. The latest Army figures show a 12 per cent increase in Army recruits since last year. The National Audit Office report last year highlighted that the Armed Forces have recruited 98% of their target since 2000. It is not the case that there are increasing shortages of personnel. In 1997 there was a 4.2% shortage compared with today's figure of 3%. It is also inaccurate to say that more people are leaving and that we are experiencing a "peak" in outflow. The number of people leaving has remained broadly stable and compares favourably with the retention rates in the public and private sector."

That's alright then. So long as we're hitting the recruiting targets, there must be no problem (obviously, the Government couldn't possibly have set too low a target relative to current commitments). Don't know what these soldiers and sailors are whingeing about. Overstretch must just be in their imagination.

This is a screenshot of the Conservative party's home page at around 1:30am on the day after the Tory reshuffle.

Do you think their website will be catching on any time soon to their own news? Most of the blogs have had it for hours. I thought Dave's team were supposed to be new-media-savvy.

Government

Is Gordon having problems with his new Business Council already? Curiously, if you go to the No 10 website and look at the index of press releases, there is no mention of the one announcing his plan for the cosy group of corporates advising him (already comments on by bgprior here)

Even more curiously, you can still find the release on the No 10 site if you know where to look. So here it is, if you are struggling.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) - they really do have a quango for everything -  recommended this year in a letter to the former Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, that the A* grade should only go to students who get 90 per cent. An A grade is awarded for 80 per cent.  This is off the back of pass rates rising every year for the past 23 years.

Government

The tensions that have been festering in the Conservative Party since the end of Dave Cameron's brief honeymoon (and, indeed, much longer than that) are breaking out into open sores (again), following the unfortunate coincidence of Tory cock-up (on grammar schools) and Brown bounce. Tim Montgomerie's ToryDiary, usually the most loyal of the high-readership Tory blogs, offered measured criticism of a piece by Michael Gove in The Observer, and the response from Tim's readership has been all-out warfare between the "don't rock the boat" crowd and the "where are our principles" crowd. The same debate occurs in response to most posts on the future of the Tory party.

It's time for an SDP moment. The Tory party isn't a broad church any more, it's schizophrenic. The comments in the Tory blogs make that clear. There are (at least) three separate philosophies within the Conservative party, which I cannot see being reconciled - conservative, social-democrat, and (for want of a better word since "liberal" got hijacked) libertarian. Being part of the same tribe isn't enough to hold them together any more.

What has made the current discontent so strong and persistent is that it's not clear (for lack of policy) where Dave Cameron stands philosophically, but most of the "mood music" is social-democrat, which has got both the conservatives and the libertarians up-in-arms. To alienate one branch of the party is unfortunate. To alienate two could be considered careless.

Social-democrats and conservatives have managed to compromise in the past, in the One Nation tradition. Libertarians and conservatives cooperated in the form of Thatcherism. It is not clear that there has ever been a successful alliance of social-democrats and libertarians within the Tory party (if one deletes the word "successful", that is more the domain of the LibDems), let alone of all three.

Before Lady Thatcher, the libertarian wing was sufficiently insignificant (and without alternative home) for the party to pursue the One-Nation approach for decades without widespread discontent. After Lady T, the libertarian wing was so numerous that it could no longer be ignored. But finding a policy framework that could satisfy all three seems to be very difficult, which explains the essential vacuity of the Major years. The response to these impossible tensions has either been to say as little as possible about principle (Major and Cameron so far) or to position oneself between two of the philosophies (Hague, IDS and Howard). The choice seems to be to alienate the party or the electorate - usually both. Dave Cameron's strategy of "moving to the centre-ground" has no more addressed this problem than did any of his predecessors.

The tuber of a water-lily can outgrow the resources of its environment, at which point the plant begins to atrophy. The solution is occasionally to lift the tuber, divide it, and replant the separate pieces in their own space. Each new water-lily will, after a year or two, prosper more than the overgrown original.

It is time for the Tories to give their various philosophical strands the space to grow.

Life just got worse for the little guy. Gordon has always believed that "business" = "the major corporates and City institutions". His understanding of the impact of his policies, and therefore the policies themselves, have been conditioned by the advice he has been given by the bosses of these businesses. Never ones to look a gift-horse in the mouth, these leaders have not been averse to steering their advice in the direction that suits their businesses. Hence the Government's support for failed and partial policies that favour the big incumbents, like the EU-ETS.

This biased and blinkered attitude to business in the nation of shopkeepers (by which Smith and Napoleon did not mean Tesco and Sainsbury) has now been institutionalized, with the creation of the Business Council for Britain, and its proposed close relationship to the rump of the DTI, now known as the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Add to that the appointment of another ex-CBI, corporatist, third-way poodle - Sir Digby Jones - as Minister of State for Trade and Investment, and you have a government that is going to be run on the advice of and in the interests of big business, whatever Sir Digby might claim.

The BCB, populated exclusively and deliberately by corporate leaders, will have great influence over commercial and regulatory policy direction, and preferential access to No.10. Expect to see policies, mechanisms, incentives, and regulations change over time to further favour big businesses - for example, through imposition of costs that can be spread more effectively by larger corporations, but loosening of constraints that prevent them abusing their market power.

The balance of power and responsibility is revealing. DBERR/DTI's home-page tells us that "DBERR will provide support to the new Business Council for Britain. The Council, made up of senior business leaders, will assist the Government in putting in place the right strategy to promote the long-term health of the UK economy." DBERR will support the Council, not the other way round. And the Council will assist the Government, not the DBERR. What this means is that Gordon ("the Government") will run the economy on the advice of his City pals, and John Denham and the DBERR will be their gophers.

We knew that corporate capture of government would be escalated by Brown's arrival at No.10, but even to pessimists like myself, the speed of the takeover is breathtaking and depressing. The corruption and sell-out of Britain continues.

Still no official word on what the Ministers for the regions are actually meant to do. Bgprior has had a stab at it here - how very cynical. And probably right. They will just be another layer of government to shift the blame around so no-one really knows who is in charge or responsible. Other speculation, from Iain Dale’s site, has been that they will be regional propaganda officers.

A couple of days ago I said the two worst departments to get your hands on as a Secretary of State have to be the Department of Health and the new Ministry of Justice. Well, in the first full day, what a surprise but it is the DoH and MofJ that are in the Picking Losers' firing line. And boy this one is cracker. You could not make this one up. Jack Straw, welcome to the fiasco that is known as the rather Orwellian sounding Ministry of Justice.

Good bye Tony. Hello Gordon. Cabinet reshuffle. The Miliband brothers. Jacqui Smith. DCSF. DIUS. DBERR. Car bomb found in the West End. Spice girls reforming. It's been a busy 24 hours or so. So busy in fact, then what better day to "bury” some bad news? Well an old favourite (or not) hasn't slipped under the Picking Losers' radar. The online Modern Training Application Service (MTAS) is still haunting young doctors and the Department of Health even though it was dead and buried (or not) way back in April. Welcome to your first day in office Mr Johnson.

Government