Freemania

An exercise in point-missing

2009-11-26T09:47:00.000Z

Robert Wilson, chairman of the British Association of Homeopathic Manufacturers:

If these products don't work beyond the placebo effect, why do people keep buying them?

Racy tennis

2009-11-26T09:23:00.000Z

Garry Richardson, the Today programme sports correspondent, this morning:

What would happen if Andy Murray were to win a Grand Prix tournament, or even Wimbledon?

Spiderman’s secret identity revealed!

2009-11-23T10:44:00.006Z

I watched Spiderman 3 last night, which I cannot in all honesty say was a good use of my time.

But I did notice something about geeky young star Tobey Maguire in relation to geeky young Foreign Secretary David Miliband:

No wonder he wasn’t available for that EU job.

Then again, maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree and Miliband is actually an entirely different superhero...

Cats for Gold

2009-11-20T10:45:00.000Z

Yeah, you heard me: Cats for Gold.

On ‘on’

2009-11-19T19:58:00.001Z

Norm Geras notes with less than total agreement the idea that, in order for something to qualify as a blog, readers should be able to post comments on it. Norm himself offers no such comment-posting facility.

In response, I would like to post a comment on Norm’s blog. Here it is:

Jolly good.

There. I like to post comments on all sorts of matters, and this is one of them.

(In other news: the wall of the gents in one of my local pubs has now been designated as a blog, thanks to its much-used comment-leaving facility. ‘Blog’, of course, is a contraction of the term ‘pub log’.)

Platitude of the day

2009-11-18T16:34:00.002Z

I have been given a 186-page report to proofread.

Page 8 insightfully tells me:

Knowledge was lowest amongst low scorers on the knowledge quiz

I think this is going to hurt.

The Waters of Britain

2009-11-16T09:44:00.001Z

Ah, good old Doctor Who.

Wonder how many kids refused to go out in the rain this morning?

5 years' jail for handing abandoned gun to police

2009-11-14T15:17:00.001Z

Is this as deranged as it sounds?

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.
The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon.
…
The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.
In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges. I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him. At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall."
Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.
…
Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a "strict liability" charge – therefore Mr Clarke's allegedly honest intent was irrelevant. Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.
…
Judge Christopher Critchlow said: "This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant."

(Hat tip.)

"The Tory party is less popular than heroin"

2009-11-14T00:25:00.000Z

Brilliant.

A picture of remembrance

2009-11-13T09:31:00.001Z

Gordon Brown hasn’t been the only party leader to blunder during armistice week.

David Cameron last night stood accused of exploiting the war dead for the sake of a set of Armistice Day publicity pictures.
He took his personal snapper into the Garden of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey yesterday to pose for carefully-choreographed photographs. The Tory leader slipped in by a side gate at 10.15am, 30 minutes before dignitaries including the Queen arrived for a First World War commemoration service.
Mr Cameron had clearly been instructed on how to behave and moved briskly from pose to pose, often bending down to read the names on crosses as he was snapped.
Within hours the carefully-vetted pictures were released worldwide.
Ron Watt, chairman of the Suez Veterans’ Association, said: “It seems very much like he’s using this for political gain.”

Out of left Field

2009-11-13T09:11:00.001Z

Mike Smithson wonders whether Frank Field, who has written yet another gushing newspaper column about David Cameron, is about to defect to the Tories.

Of course he isn’t.

He’ll wait until he’s been securely re-elected to his safe Labour seat.

Sadie retires from blogging

2009-11-07T10:27:00.003Z

And the world becomes a little duller. Her sharp wit and bloody good writing will be missed, but her reasons seem fair enough. Best of luck to her back in the real world.

The Times and autistic insults

2009-11-07T10:13:00.002Z

A French minister this week described the Tory policy on Europe as manifesting a “very bizarre sense of autism”.

The Times has seen fit to devote a leader column to the subject:

To use the term “autism” and “autistic” in a derogatory or flippant manner can cause deep hurt to those affected by the condition. To use the term as a criticism, for dramatic effect or to try to gain political advantage, perpetuates the misunderstanding of this condition and is, as the National Autistic Society said yesterday, “extremely unhelpful”.

I agree with every word.

But what puzzles me is that the editorial makes no mention of the only noteworthy use in recent years by a British politician of the same term “in a derogatory or flippant manner… for dramatic effect or to try to gain political advantage”. I mean George Osborne’s suggestion in October 2006 that Gordon Brown was “mildly autistic”.

Anyone who follows politics reasonably closely, as Times leader writers most certainly do, will remember this. Yet not a mention of this episode.

And back in 2006? Well, the Times found space to cover the row that resulted. It found space for not one but two columns by Mary Ann Sieghart, the Times columnist who originally elicited Osborne’s comment and who then sought to excuse the episode:

It felt like an innocent, if slightly tasteless, joke, and I thought no more of it.
…
What, precisely, was the problem here? Were genuinely autistic people offended to have been compared with the Chancellor? And why should it be such a sin anyway to be “faintly autistic”?

But there was not a peep of disapproval from the paper’s leader column. Perhaps they’re now making amends.

Today’s word is…

2009-11-04T10:31:00.004Z

From My First Dictionary:

More here.

Arbeit macht frei (‘At work, you’re free to be on the make’)

2009-11-02T15:39:00.000Z

David Wilshire MP, who used his parliamentary expenses inventively, is right:

The witch hunt against MPs in general will undermine democracy. It will weaken parliament - handing yet more power to governments. Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler's gas chambers.

Because MPs have indeed ~~been forced to wear portcullis emblems on their clothes~~ been criticised pretty harshly, ~~been herded into concentration camps~~ been told that they’ll eventually have to rent rather than buy second homes on expenses, ~~had their gold fillings ripped from their mouths~~ been instructed (often non-bindingly) to repay some of their claims, and ~~been gassed~~ been forced to stand down with comfortable pensions.

Oh, and since last year they control the banks. So basically they’re Jews.

A question for Peter Oborne

2009-11-01T20:11:00.001Z

You claim:

I remember that within months of [Tony Blair's] winning the 1997 General Election, his aides were confiding that his long-term aim was the then non-existent post of European President.

You have never liked Blair, you have never liked the EU and you have always had a good eye for a scoop that your like-minded readers could enjoy getting outraged by.

So, did you report this story back in 1997?

You can’t cut your way out of a recession

2009-11-01T13:57:00.000Z

I’ve been very taken with Giles Wilkes’s writing before, so I expect that his latest piece, ‘Slash and grow? Spending cuts and economic recovery’, should be well worth a read.

A couple of quotes that stood out from his summary:

Public debts have risen largely to allow private indebtedness to fall without producing catastrophic consequences for the economy.
…
If the next British government proceeds upon the basis of deficit reduction before growth, it risks achieving neither.

Home

2009-10-30T16:24:00.001Z

Obviously, the economy is in a very bad way and a lot of people are suffering. The latest example in the news is this:

The GMAC-RFC mortgage lender has been fined £2.8m by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for mistreating customers who fell into arrears. It has also been told to repay £7.7m, plus interest, to 46,000 of its borrowers.
The FSA said the company levied unfair charges on borrowers who fell behind with their repayments and was too eager to repossess them.
…
After setting up as a mortgage business in the UK in 1998, GMAC-RFC grew rapidly to become one of the UK's largest mortgage lenders, but it stopped making new loans last year.
The FSA's investigation of the company's lending practices between October 2004 and October 2008 found that:
charges for dealing with people in arrears were "excessive and unfair"
repossession proceedings were started before all other alternatives had been considered
GMAC staff were not properly trained in dealing with arrears cases and repossessions.

It would be better if none of this mess had happened.

But.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank* the greedy bankers, the clueless sub-prime borrowers, the so-clever-they’re-stupid financial engineers, Hank ‘Nobody Will Really Mind If Lehman Goes Bust’ Paulson, the dollarholic People’s Bank of China, Gordon Brown’s dead eye, the credit rating agencies who wouldn’t know a bad risk if it painted itself purple, stripped naked and danced on top of a harpsichord singing ‘bad risks are here again’, and anybody else who may have been responsible for the credit crunch and recession.

Without you, I’d not be getting the comically cheap flat I’ve just today completed on – a GMAC-RFC repossession, not that I’d even heard of them when I made the offer – nor would I have scored such a dirt-cheap mortgage.

I’ve been looking for a flat, on and off, for over two years - and very nearly bought at the peak. Phew.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think the furniture industry needs a fiscal stimulus. But not before I have an alcoholic one.

* Thanks also to C&L, for too many reasons to mention.

Groan

2009-10-29T09:49:00.002Z

I heard a really clever joke the other day, about the elevator in a tower block. It worked on so many levels.

All-women shortlists lead to equally popular female MPs

2009-10-27T08:16:00.000Z

After Sunder Katwala posted about all-women shortlists (and a typically ignorant Amanda Platell column on the subject), I thought I’d take a look.

Do female MPs who’ve been selected in this way tend to be worse than those selected in an open contest against men? Platell and many others would have us think so.

So, how do you determine the quality of an MP? There are many things you could look at, none clearly definitive, but I’ve contracted out this judgement to the people who hire those MPs: their constituency voters.

As Sunder says, “35 of Labour's new women MPs in 1997 were selected on all women shortlists and 30 were not”. Respectively 34 and 29 of these stood for re-election in 2001. I’ve compared how well they did (election results here, list of all-women-shortlist seats here).

In 2001, the average vote share won by female Labour MPs selected through all-women shortlists fell by 1.8%. The average change for those selected openly was a fall of 1.4%. A tiny difference, not close to being statistically significant. So perhaps the hubbub over this is just one of those Westminster issues that ordinary people don’t really care about.

(I’ve not looked at how female candidates selected in different ways did at their first bid for election. That would be harder, as all-women shortlists were only used in Labour-held or target seats, whereas women will have been selected in open contests for many hopeless seats as well. This would likely distort any straight comparison.)

Peter Ryley on management

2009-10-26T12:09:00.002Z

I am currently in a mood to cheer this to the rafters. So are most of my department.

One of my more frequent big speeches is about the dire quality of some management and its remoteness from, and ignorance of, the real work that we all have to do.
…
Most of the people who work on the front line are not obstacles, they are experts. Their knowledge is far more valuable than the snake oil of management theory.

I’m not going to add to that, because if I start, I’ll never stop.

Tories accidentally back bigger fiscal stimulus

2009-10-25T11:45:00.001Z

This just in:

The [Conservative] party intends to capitalise on last week’s official figures that show the economy still mired in recession by attacking the government’s efforts to boost the economy. The Tories believe the figures… vindicate their stance.
They say the small print of official statistics last week shows the government is spending only half of its planned £20 billion fiscal stimulus. Half of the stimulus, which included last November’s temporary 2.5% reduction in Vat, was “a myth”, the Conservatives said. Their claim is based on analysis of last week’s public finances figures by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which said the Treasury was undershooting its own spending projections by billions of pounds.
“Current central government spending on the delivery of public services has grown less quickly than forecast by the Treasury for the year,” said Gemma Tetlow, an IFS economist. “If this lower growth rate continues for the second half of the financial year, this element of spending will be some £10 billion lower than budget forecast.”

Let me see whether I’ve got this straight. The recession is turning out to be worse than expected. The fiscal stimulus, designed to ease the recession, is turning out to be smaller than expected. So yah boo sucks to Labour for not doing enough, and if only we’d listened to the Tories, who stood firmly against – oh.

Also, the IFS research was not “uncovered by the Conservatives”. It was published on the interwebs for all to see. And if you do go and take a look, you’ll find it brimming with caveats:

We should be cautious of inferring or extrapolating likely outcomes over the financial year as a whole from information on only the first half, particularly given that a number of factors are likely to affect the profile of receipts and spending differently in 2009–10 than in 2008–09.

Another thing to remember is that £10bn is no big deal as forecasting errors go.

Organised religion tends towards politics

2009-10-25T09:56:00.000Z

Does this sound like the relationship between two groups who have differing views on the interpretation of God’s will and on the route to salvation of our immortal souls?

The former archbishop of Canterbury criticised the Roman Catholic Church this weekend, branding as "inexcusable" its failure to consult leading Church of England clergy on the Pope's invitation for Anglo-Catholics to join him.
Lord Carey gave a cautious welcome to the proposals from Rome but said he was "distressed" that his successor had received just two weeks' notice of them.
He said that the move by Pope Benedict XVI could help clergy in the Church of England who were unhappy with the ordination of women bishops.
However, he urged the current Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, to protest at the lack of consultation.
…
Under the proposals, announced on Tuesday, Anglican congregations could join the Catholic church en masse rather than forming small, breakaway churches.
Married Anglican priests choosing to convert to Catholicism would be permitted to be ordained as Catholic priests but would be unable to become bishops.

Or does it sound like a political pissing contest between a couple of institutions vying for territory?

Does Nick Griffin like watching lesbians?

2009-10-23T11:55:00.001+01:00

I didn’t watch it, but this quote raises an important question:

On the subject of homosexuality he said "a lot of people find the sight of two men kissing in public really creepy". "That is how a lot of us feel, a lot of Christians, a lot of Muslims," he said. "I don’t know why, that’s just the way it is."

Yes, yes. If one of the men were him, I’d certainly agree. Even if they weren’t kissing. And even if the other man weren’t there at all.

But more importantly, does Mr Griffin’s inexplicable (yet sweetly multi-faith) homophobia discriminate on grounds of gender? Does he find homosexuals of the female variety creepy when they kiss in public? What if they’re young and pretty? What if they’re wearing tight tops with Union Jack designs? What if one of them’s a nurse?

The nation needs to be told.

Darling’s borrowing forecast may turn out right

2009-10-21T09:37:00.003+01:00

The UK's public sector net borrowing reached £14.8bn last month - a high for September… Net borrowing for the six months of the financial year so far now stands at £77.3bn - the worst figure for the April-to-September period on record.
…
The figures raise speculation that the government may have to revise its forecasts on borrowing.

Possibly. But I’m not sold.

I think the Budget forecast – for public sector net borrowing of 12.4% of GDP in 2009/10 – looks like turning out right, or possibly even a bit pessimistic.

This graph shows rolling 12-month figures for public borrowing as a % of GDP, based on official ONS borrowing data and monthly GDP estimates from the NIESR (rough explanation at the bottom).

The solid line is what’s actually happened, and the dotted line is how things will go if the average rate of increase over the last six months continues. By next March (virtually the end of the 09/10 fiscal year), it comes to a bit over 12.3% – just below the Budget forecast.

The usual caveats apply: past performance is not necessarily a guide, etc. But one thing that could make a difference is the end of the recession. GDP growth over the next six months is (touch wood) going to be considerably better than the last six. This will reduce any given amount of borrowing relative to GDP.

Even if I’m right, though, let’s not go dancing in the streets. 12ish% is still bloody high. And then there’s next year to worry about.

Rough explanation: I used the monthly cash borrowing figures from the ONS (series PSF2, ANNX) and the monthly GDP estimates from the NIESR, and did what I could to control for the differences in the ways the two institutions present their data. This involved using the ONS’s rolling four-quarter figures for borrowing as a % of GDP (series PSF9, J4DD) as a series of anchor points (for March, June, September and December – i.e. the final month of each quarter), weeping at my lack of social life, and also comparing the NIESR’s quarterly GDP figures with the equivalent from the ONS to generate a set of monthly GDP figures that cohere with the ONS quarterly ones. If you want more details, please shoot me and/or yourself.