Frustration at this nation

I have railed before at people objecting to something third or forth hand when they haven't checked the original story. I have also covered (along with many others) the extremes you get with commenting on mainstream news stories. This story about some research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation follows the pattern, I found the report a few clicks away from that page but it is quite a way down the page, after a large number of comments all suggesting that because there was a suggestion of suing public transport that it had to be all done in London because no other tons or cities shave public transport, before someone else who has bothered to read it points out that most of the work was done in the Midlands of England with London having a check group along with Wales and Scotland. Why they couldn't have read the report I don't know.

The other great thing the comments highlight is that because the result isn't exactly right for them the commenters have to do tedious and pointless maths to show how they are special, missing somewhat the point of statistical benchmarks they are there to measure populations against not you you self centred idiot, they are there to inform policy to ensure that more people, preferably everyone has a decent standard of living and it is unlikely that any policy maker is going to specifically draft something just because the 43 doesn't run at the right times for you to get to work so you drive or you have a large student loan due to re-sitting a year. Get a grip.

Wow that must be galling

In a country renowned for unfair elections, so presumably they are quite practiced at them.

Where a campaign of terror, violence and murder has caused the opposition candidate to withdraw leaving a single valid choice to vote for.

They still can't get the results out on time.

It really mussed be utterly embarrassing to be the chief Zimbabwean ballot box stuffer this weekend.

Winnie the Pooh

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it."

Richard Danzig a top advisor on foreign policy to Barack Obama quoted this to a major foreign policy conference in Washington. Some people are painting this as a gaffe, I get the feeling that they are doing this more because they can't stomach the underlying message "America needs to rethink the middle east and the *cough* war on terror is not one that will ever be won"

All of this is the sort of refreshing stuff that I think we want from a Democrat in the White House a sense that the real world will leak back into the Commander in Chief's viewpoint which under the current office holder is clouded with the belief that throwing enough troops and contracts at the munitions & reconstruction industry can solve anything.

P.S. another blog post that I don't have to finish writing Lee Griffin on liberal left bleating about David Davis

Lisbon or Bust?

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Respect the result of the Irish referendum and abandon the attempt to ratify the Lisbon Treaty - currently 17,278 signatures

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Ignore the result of the Irish referendum and ratify the Lisbon Treaty - currently 3 signatures

Results are indicative, from a self selecting sample and may not reflect public opinion.

Hoiked from Guido

Sick to my stomach

Even if I didn't think David Davis was right to make the stand he has.

Even if I couldn't find myself able to support a tory campaign.

I have just had the greatest motivation to support his campaign, Kelvin Mackenzie probably standing as the Rupert Murdoch candidate in the in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election. I would rather Alan B'Stard stood for his old constituency. The worst point in his monologue espousing the pro side of the debates on 42 days, CCTV and ID Cards was that the innocent have nothing to fear. Tell that to Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza the Nottingham university academics detained over attempting to do research, the teenager summonsed for holding a placard summerising a High Court judgement on Scientology or anyone within the reach of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad sporting an Irish accent during the 70s.

I now have to go find a really strong anti-emetic.

Representation

Nick Robinson has neatly summarised the main reasons Gordon shouldn't be fighting so hard to get 42 days detention:

• there was no consensus for change (he met Liberty's Shami Chakrabati twice in one day in order to find a deal);
• that he faced parliamentary defeat;
• that the Director of Public Prosecutions, the former Attorney General and former Justice Secretary did not support the need for change;
• that MI5 would not back his arguments either privately or publicly - the spooks have let it be known that they are "neutral" on the issue; and
• that many of his own ministers - not least the man he brought into government to deal with terrorism, Lord West - had had real doubts about whether this was the right priority.

I have no gripe that he has listed the political reasons over the practical, that is after all his job.

I will be watching to see what my current MP, Angela Smith does, I suspect given that she voted for 90 days she will vote for 42. I would see this as a solid reason to vote against her next time, along with her strong support for introducing ID cards, voting against an investigation into the Iraq war and a transparent Parliament. But this isn't an issue, I won't be voting for or against her next time round, there has been Boundary Commission changes since then, next time round the Labour candidate will be a man for whom I respect his tenacity and ambition I revile his standpoints on many issues. David Blunkett is a man who has been caught on the fiddle and consistently promotes authoritarian policies whilst being paid by a company that will profit from them. I severely doubt it, but I really hope that there is some way of getting rid of him at the next election.

Free Our Bills

Free our Bills! – The Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way, Please. Now.

IANAL

I kept getting people asking me to sign this: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/dancers/ I couldn't find a new Violent Crimes Reduction Bill so decided the one it probably referred to is the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006. But none of that matched what the petition was saying, still I thought some of its provisions are about to be subject to a commencement order. At this point I asked the Internet for help.

The key bit appeared to be the talk of "historical re-enactment" and "sporting activity" which led a friend to point me at this statutory instrument from April. Which amends section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 in the same way that the VCRA '06 did. However as far as those dancers are concerned I can't see that it repeals the added defences that VCRA '06 added to CJA '88 which included "the purposes of theatrical performances and of rehearsals for such performances". From my reading various licensing acts and bizarrely the NI factories act I feel that an argument that a dance performance counts as "theatrical" has weight, but as it says in the title of the post IANAL^[1].

I await the governments response, to see whether they make a similar point or suggest that the petitioners are right.

What was most interesting was that none of the people asking me to sign the petition could point me at the proposal they wanted me to sign up to oppose. Why do I think that is important, because I feel that petitions with fatuous, inaccurate or pointless messages should be kept out of the way, the government love them as they help camouflage the really important ones in the system. It could however, in this case, just have been difficult to find. These days of course pretty much everything is online, but when you come to these pieces of legislation that are added to over the years by order and amended by later bills, it can be difficult to work out exactly how the relevant legislation looks now. There are shiny databases out there that purport to collate all this information, but they all seem to be proprietary and I don't even seem to have enough status to get a free trial.

^[1]If I had the time and the money I would love to at least do an OU law degree if not actually go the whole hog to lawyerdom. If I had even more time and money, going back to University to do it for real now I understand the value of learning could be a great experience.

Stop what you are doing

If you are in politics stop bothering to campaign, it isn't worth your time or that of the people you are stopping on the street or knocking on the doors of. Really, don't bother, go home and relax, cancel your  plans to go to Henley next month. Harriet Harman has said that it makes no difference, that the result in Crew and Nantwich had nothing to do with the Labour party's campaign.

The morning after (sans pill)

Iain Dale has posted about the abortion debate and votes and I must applaud the tone of the post. I especially want to point out the last paragraph about Parliament itself and say that I for one agree that open debates with free votes are always the best parliamentary spectacle. I do however also understand why it won't work for the majority of business, not because a government can only get their programme through by whipping hard, but because an awful lot of legislation is just too dull.

Nadine Dorries hasn't posted about it yet, the last post on the blog we all pay for is about people accusing her of being a fundamentalist Christian. Which neatly sidesteps the actual accusation which was that her campaign was being funded by CCFON.

Chelsea will lose in Moscow

It has been well documented by Guido that the last thing you need as a sports team (or obviously as a political team) is Jonah Brown on your side. MUFC will win the Champions League final because Avram Grant had the misfortune to meet Brown at Downing Street last night.

Something has just struck me about Nadine Dorries

Nadine Dorries is a former director of BUPA.

BUPA has a number of clinics/hospitals approved for the termination of pregnancy under the Abortion Act 1967, as amended.

In common law and under the Companies Acts a company director is legally responsible for the actions of the company.

SO: as well as having been a Nurse, Nadine Dorries has been an abortionist.

She also seems to be the only voice the main stream media have opposing this new research, there doesn't seem to be one scientist lining up to back her claims that it is tosh, I wonder why? And even when they are quoting her unsubstantiated accusations that are possibly libelous they are doing so below the fold.

• Premature baby survival rates - Nature
• Very premature baby survival not improving - Reuters
• Baby study backs abortion law - ITV
• Premature baby study stokes row on abortion - Times
• Early baby survival 'not improving' - PA
• New research on baby survival rates stokes abortion limit row - Guardian
• Early baby survival 'unchanged' - BBC
• New setback to lowering abortion limit - Scotsman
• Survival rate for premature babies fails to improve -Telegraph
• The survival rate for babies born before abortion limit of 24 weeks 'has not improved' - Daily Mail

Late term abortion

Nadine Dorries has shown herself to be utterly able to deal with any facts before. First her accusations against Ben Goldacre over stealing data that was published by her committee. Then falling for 'the hand hope' rubbish. Now a group of specialists in neonatal, perinatal and paediatric medicine and epidemiology read the comments of the house Science and Technology committee that "it was recognised that published peer reviewed UK evidence is lacking to answer the question of whether the survival of infants born at 23 or 24 weeks has improved in recent years." and did a study comparing 1994-9 with 2000-5. The study looked at all infants born in the region in question and concluded:

Survival of infants born at 24 and 25 weeks of gestation has significantly increased. Although over half the cohort of infants born at 23 weeks was admitted to neonatal intensive care, there was no improvement in survival at this gestation. Care for infants born at 22 weeks remained unsuccessful.

So what was Nadine's reaction?

This report is the most desperate piece of tosh produced by the pro-choice lobby and it smells of one thing, desperation.

To use a particularly childish, but I think apposite response no you are. This isn't opinion, this is science, the only way this could be bunkum is if they had made the numbers up, which given these are numbers that are a matter of public record isn't really a feasible idea. There isn't even any complex statistics in the research to confuse someone not versed in epidemiological methodology, they key point pretty much boils down to: is an increase to 19% from 18% between two five year periods a significant one? I don't think it is difficult to accept the conclusion that the answer is no.

The really great thing is that Nadine asks the question "No improvement in neo-natal care in twelve years? Really? So where has all the money that has been pumped into neo-natal services gone then?" to which the answer is in the report! "The proportion of infants dying in delivery rooms was similar in the two periods, but a significant improvement was seen in the number of infants surviving to discharge". Nadine thinks that those using science and facts have shot them selves in the foot with this report, I think she has shot herself in the head with this reaction.

London has appeared to have developed an annoying whine

Ok so I don't live in London, the mayoralty is still important, the capital can quite often be the only part of the country tourists see, the Olympics are coming up oh and like the rest of the country I'm having to stump up cash for the place.

So while Boris is so far an unproven force in running the city, he did win an election, fair and square. Yet the Internet is alive with people complaining about the how the result came about. The first group are just plain bitter and nasty, they are the ones infecting the place (especially commenting on sites like the BBC and Comment is Free) with complaints that Boris got in due to all the people in the suburbs who voted for him, They aren't proper Londoners, they don't have the right Postcodes, winge winge. To the best of my knowledge the definition of the bounds of Greater London haven't changed dramatically since 1965 so these have always been the people electing the umbrella layer of local government, even in the days of the GLC. But I don't recall any lobbying  for them to not be part of the Authority before so this must be just sour grapes.

The other set of whimpering is about the voting system and that it caused problems. Some people such as the greens are even saying their supporters were too stupid to vote for them which seams a bit ungracious if you ask me. I think civics lessons are a good idea in general, but I don't think how to vote should trouble the curriculum for too much of the total time for them, given that it is a really simple process. I will be eagerly awaiting the report on the counts that will be produced by ORG but so far no-one is reporting chaos on the scale of the Scottish elections of last year, so I doubt that it really was such an issue.

Budget

Every one else is "live blogging" the budget, I will probably make some comment later but for now all I want to mention is this:

This is the most important piece of parliamentary business in this part of the calendar, but the Speaker is not in the chair. He he scared to be in the house while they talk about money?

Find it hard to stay out of trouble?

Think you could hack a stint behind bars?

Have you got what it takes to survive Prison life?

These are the opening lines from the advert for young men to join a new program for five called banged up, later on it talks about the "respected experts" who would work with these kids during a simulated prison stint. The Register reveals on of those involved is David Blunkett. A great moral example to the nation's youth!

Darling and Brown, Undertakers, Est MMVII

Does my right hon. friend accept that the policy of nationalisation would lead to a slow lingering death for the jobs of the Northern Rock workers, its assets and Britain's reputation as a major financial services centre, with my right hon. friend the chancellor cast in the role of undertaker — Jim Cousins MP

I agree with my hon. friend. — Alastair Darling MP

Now this is just my own opinion as I am not an economist, but I bet that if they had done this right at the outset it would have done a lot less damage than it will do now. All because Darling and Brown decided that if the bank collapsed due to no fault of the government they would lose votes. So all of us now own a chunk of a bank to try and save this Labour government from losing votes.

Don't believe a word Gordon Brown says.

He defence in the court case brought by Stuart Wheeler of IG Group for breach of contract is that you can't trust what politicians say in manifesto promises.

"manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation" — Brown's personal barrister

Story from Trixy

The absolute and the rest.

I am, in part, a technologist, when in that mode and asked "can I do this" my answers are based on having translated the question into terms of "is it at all possible". The rest of the time I am a pragmatist and a solution provider and in that case I am answering the question in terms of business cases, cost-benefits or having to translate the question from some impenetrable non-technical (generally marketing based) misunderstanding.
When thinking about the political space I do my best to do my thinking in the latter mode, which is why I emitted a Homeric Doh! when I read this piece about the "Wilson Doctrine" by Nick Robinson. Of course no sitting prime minister would tie their hands like that without leaving a suitable loophole.

"But if there was any development of a kind which required a change in the general policy, I would, at such moment as seemed compatible with the security of the country, on my own initiative make a statement to the House about it." &mdash Harold Wilson

How, as a dedicated fan of Yes Prime Minister I didn't think about it in those terms I didn't know.

Quis cust... oh I can't be bothered the irony is lost on them.

This morning you were going to get a rant about the waste of space speaker Michael Martin and his "root and branch" review of MP's expenses or more accurately the fact that it is being conducted by a standing committee of MPs. They couldn't be bothered to find a tame cross bench lord after a juicy post enquiry position to whitewash the matter.
Then I read Guido's account of the MPs involved. If even half of his mud is the accurate sticky kind (I don't have time to go and check on its veracity at the moment) then it shows just how much respect Martin has for the public these days, he makes Derry Irvine look like a sensitive man of the people.
I really despair at quite how much common sense is lacking in the upper echelons of government in this country.