The headlines were predictable enough – “New worries over Climategate data” railed The Express, “Climate scientists manipulated and hid data” screamed Fox News. But when The Sunday Times writes “The great climate change science scandal” and The Guardian headlines, “Leaked climate change emails scientist hid data flaws,” and when even George Monbiot is calling for resignations, it sounds serious right?

If you were just going on the headlines of the past couple of weeks, you could be forgiven if you were left with the perception that the whole climate crisis has now been exposed as a fraud, a theory based on falsified data manipulated by dodgy scientists hell bent on getting increased research funding from a government that wants any excuse to raise our taxes.

Most of the revelations in this manufactured controversy have focussed on jealousies and tribalism among some scientists, cock ups by others, or alleged misdoings by one scientist – Phil Jones at UEA. However, crucially, none of the ‘revelations’ have undermined the theory that global warming is real and that it is being driven by human-caused increases in greenhouse gas emissions. This theory remains unscathed and based on an overwhelming amount of solid evidence.

In December, 1,700 leading scientists in Britain signed a statement from the Met Office in agreement with the IPCC’s central findings that:

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal…

“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”

In a strongly worded statement, the US based Union of Concerned Scientists says:

“Climate contrarians are inflating the importance of an erroneous reference to Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report to attack the scientific body and its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) expects ideological bloggers, some members of Congress, and fossil-fuel industry front groups to try to exploit this relatively small error in the report to bolster conspiracy theories about the IPCC and climate scientists.”

At least The Guardian has the decency to add this sentence within its coverage, “The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings.” The same cannot be said of almost any of the other recent coverage.

Chris Mooney of MIT was spot on when he wrote in the Washington Post:

“The central lesson of Climategate is not that climate science is corrupt. The leaked e-mails do nothing to disprove the scientific consensus on global warming. Instead, the controversy highlights that in a world of blogs, cable news and talk radio, scientists are poorly equipped to communicate their knowledge and, especially, to respond when science comes under attack.”

The facebook group campaigning to ensure that Rod Liddle does not become editor of the Independent are asking for donations to buy an advert in the paper.

An email to the facebook group this afternoon read:

I’m writing again to tell you about our next plan – a simple way that you can help stop Rod Liddle being in charge of your paper.

This Facebook group has caused serious doubts on the parts of Alexander Lebedev about whether to go ahead. I’ve been told by several sources close to the top of the Independent that this appointment looked like a “done deal”, but the Facebook group “has caused real panic and second thoughts.” Lebedev is still considering Liddle, but with ever greater reservations …

So I’m asking you to donate whatever you can – £1 to £10 or more – to make this happen. We need to raise just £500 to place the ad. The decision about the editorship is due to be made in the next few weeks, so we don’t have a lot of time, but I am confident we can get there.

The advert, which plays on the old Independent slogan “It is, Are you?” is hoping to raise £500 for a small advert across two columns. If the advert is rejected the funds will be donated to Refuge – the charity for victims of domestic violence; the Refugee Council; and the Campaign Against Climate Change. Liddle has accepted a caution for hitting his wife, has criticised people fleeing countries like Somalia, and is a renowned climate sceptic.

Online civic organisation 38 Degrees are collecting the donations.

Image hat-tip: Liberal Conspiracy & Beau Bo D’Or

UPDATE 19.20

I’ve just heard that 80 per cent of the target has been reached. If you want to help the campaign get over the edge, donate here.

New figures out this morning from the ONS show that the number of pensioners living in poverty has fallen by 900,000 over the last decade. But egged on by the ONS, the mainstream media have largely reported this as a snapshot rather than looking at the progress that has been made.

The ONS press release titled, “Two million pensioners in poverty in 2007/08″ outlines that:

“In 2007/08, an estimated 2 million pensioners in the UK were living in poverty according to the most commonly used official measure, says a new chapter of Pension Trends published today by the Office for National Statistics. The number of pensioners in poverty has declined over the last decade, from 2.9 million in 1998/99.”

This graph shows how the number of pensioners living in poverty has fallen. Chapter 13 of the accompanying Pension Trends report says:

“In 1994/95, 28 per cent of pensioners fell below the 60 per cent threshold; by 2007/08 this had fallen to 18 per cent.”

Few news outlets have yet reported the figures and most have adopted the ONS’ headline. They only mention the improvement over the last decade in the text of the article. For example:

• Daily Mail: Two million pensioners are living in poverty – with half unable to afford heating

• Guardian: 2m pensioners in poverty, says ONS

• Press Association: Two million pensioners in poverty

Three cheers for balance to the BBC who go with “Pensioner poverty ‘drops by a third’.”

The heated controversy over Rod Liddle’s potential editorship of The Independent is being talked about by journalists in every national newsroom in London. But several don’t seem to think that the story is worth sharing with their readers.

The Guardian broke the story of Liddle’s potential editorship, and has consistently covered developments online and, again today, in print. The Mail on Sunday reported last weekend on Liddle’s comments on a football website (a story further developed by blogs such as Liberal Conspiracy over the last week). Niche titles such as the Jewish Chronicle have been involved.

But that’s just about all you would find in print.

There has not been a word in The Independent or Independent on Sunday, for obvious reasons, as staff there fret about the future.

The Evening Standard boasts that it keeps across the talking points of the metropolis, including the buzz in the media village. Rod Liddle was worth a long and interesting interview last Autumn, where Viv Groskop challenged Liddle over one of his more notorious misogynistic rants.

But that Lebedev-title has also kept a very stony silence since Liddle’s editorship was mooted.

Rod Liddle writes for the Sunday Times. Neither it nor its sister paper seems to have written a paragraph about this either. (Liddle’s own defence of the right to be stupid, vile and obnoxious was officially about something else entirely).

He blogs for The Spectator too. Only Liddle himself has mentioned the row there.

It has been said that the Telegraph’s famously reclusive owners, the Barclay brothers are not keen for their titles to dig into media controversies, perhaps for fear attention could be reciprocated.

In any event, the only reference to the row in either the newspaper or online would seem to be in three separate pro-Liddle ‘friends of Rod’ blogs from Toby Young, Andrew Gilligan and James Delingpole. (Young’s extraordinary blog might be considered the definitive pro-Liddle ‘argument’).

Liddle’s friend Catherine Bennett also wrote for The Guardian, worrying about the free speech impact of the Facebook and blogosphere challenge to Liddle’s possible editorship. Her argument was memorably summarised by Sarah Ditum as being that:

“freedom of speech, if it means anything, means journalists never having to be told they’re wrong”.

And yet, excepting Bennett’s Guardian colleagues that would seem to summarise a stronger instinct for most national titles than any itch to clarify Liddle’s account of the possible hacking of his Millwall account, and which of the public comments he acknowledges authorship of.

(That The Guardian have also now given space to another friend of Rod, Tim Luckhurst, to criticise their coverage as unfair does somewhat undermine his own case).

Perhaps it is just too small a story? Well, Stephen Fry leaves twitter for 12 hours was a national news story for most outlets, usually obsessed by any story with a social networking angle in every other circumstance.

Try this thought experiment: had those talkboard messages been written by Simon Cowell, by Russell Brand, by Richard Sambrook of the BBC, or by some Labour or Tory parliamentary candidate you have never heard of, would our newspapers have demonstrated quite such lofty disinterest?

Still, it’s always worth raising two cheers for our fearless free press.

But save one to be grateful that no longer entirely control what does or doesn’t count as news these days.

***

A related mystery, as Left Foot Forward noted this week, is why not a paragraph seems to have been written in print about probably the most offensive mfcmonkey comments of all: a sexually explicit discussion of a large number of named women journalists which was initiated by Liddle, or begun under his username at least. (That discussion has now been redacted from public view, restricted to specific Millwall online users).

The implications for the Indy of Liddle’s sexism were addressed by Gaby Hinsliff before those talkboard comments were revealed. But if “the sisterhood are on the warpath”, those are mainly covert operations to date.

Perhaps it would be difficult to report some of those comments in a family newspaper or blog.

But might editors also discouraging reporters or commentators who might want to cover that from doing so?

Or is it simply that the media culture inside our national titles is such that even this level of gross and personalised misogyny can be laughed off as “just a joke” and “Rod being Rod”?

Image credit: Liberal Conspiracy

Our guest writer is Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society. Sunder blogs at Next Left.

There has been a good deal of debate in the media today about whether Polish migrants to the UK are going home or not. Lots of statistics are flying around, and the BBC are running a story (on the front page of their website at the time of writing) which majors on the fact that a Polish academic has argued that:

“claims that half of all Polish immigrants to Britain have returned home are not true”

This critique is of a recent report by the Migration Policy Institute which says that around half of the 1.5 million migrants from new EU member states who have come to the UK since May 2004 have since returned home.  This report used a methodology which was developed by ippr in a 2008 report, which came to a similar conclusion.

There is, as with all questions about migration, some uncertainty about the data. The main sources of data in the UK (the Labour Force Survey and the Workers Registration Scheme) are both imperfect measures of migrant populations, and no figures based on them are ever going to be wholly accurate, whatever adjustments are made by researchers. So, it’s entirely possible that data in Poland and data in the UK could tell a slightly different story. But the evidence from Poland reported by the BBC does not disprove the claim that around half of the migrants who came to the UK after 2004 have since gone home.

The BBC make great play of figures from the Polish Central Statistical Office which suggest that the numbers of Poles working abroad continued to rise until 2008, and then fell only very slightly. This is entirely consistent with the claim that around half of those who have come to the UK have since returned. To illustrate this, imagine that 100,000 Poles came to the UK every year, and 50,000 returned.  This would mean that half were returning, but there would still be net migration of 50,000 from the UK to Poland (i.e. the number of Poles living in the UK would be increasing by 50,000 a year).

The BBC report also points to the fact that relatively few returning Poles have registered with local labour offices in Poland.  It is entirely possible, though, that migrants who have been in the UK may be returning to employment, and not registering with labour offices.

This would be consistent with another piece of evidence cited by the BBC, that unemployment figures in Poland have remained stable.  However, the BBC coverage uses this fact rather differently – reporting claims from a Polish academic that an influx of Poles returning home would have affected the unemployment figures in Poland (and thus suggesting that stable unemployment means that Polish migrants aren’t returning). But if the flow of Poles returning was matched by more Poles migrating to the UK (net migration from EU accession countries to the UK was estimated by the ONS at only around 15,000 in the year to March 2009, but with about 78,000 arriving, and 64,000 leaving), the impact on the supply of labour in Poland would be small.  This argument also seems to be based on a basic misunderstanding of labour markets – the “lump of labour fallacy”. An increased supply of labour does not automatically lead to an increase in unemployment, because the number of jobs is not fixed, and there may be unfilled vacancies in the labour market. These are the same reasons that unemployment in the UK did not rise when the large numbers of Poles arrived in the UK in the first place.

Official UK figures show a dramatic 85 per cent fall in net immigration from new EU member states in 2008, but still suggest that net migration from Poland to the UK remained positive up to the first quarter of 2009 (which is the latest data available).  In fact, it would not be surprising if net migration to the UK from Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe had become negative during 2009/10, but this is not something that either ippr or MPI have claimed, nor, it seems, something that anyone in Poland would dispute.

This would seem to be another case of the media manufacturing a controversy where none exists.  The migration debate is too often cast in terms of claim and counter claim, when what’s needed is a clear understanding of the facts and a sensible discussion of policy.

The Daily Telegraph stand accused of willfully misreporting remarks by Tim Berners-Lee at a press conference yesterday to mark the launch of the new data.gov.uk website.

The Telegraph this morning report that, “Communities could be ‘ghettoised’ by official data website, Sir Tim Berners-Lee says”. The article claims that:

“There was a risk that some areas would seem like “ghettoes” compared to others, he said, although this was not necessarily a bad thing as it would create pressure on politicians to spend money on improving the worse-off areas.”

But the authors Christopher Hope and Matt Warman do not provide a direct quote from Berners-Lee using the word “ghetto” and two eye-witnesses deny that Berners-Lee made the remarks.

James Crabtree, Senior Editor of Prospect magazine, who was at the event, recalls:

“There were around 10 journalists, two from the Telegraph. Their opening question was something very similar to “are you saying that this will ghettoise communities?” Both Tim and Nigel said no, in various ways, they weren’t saying that. The Telegraph asked the same question, in different ways, two more times, and then obviously wrote it anyway.

“Tim actually records every meeting he is in, using a small video camera. IF he didn’t have better things to do, then i’d encourage him to put that video on the web — and let the public decide whether he, or the Daily Telegraph duo, had the better of the truth, this time.”

Crabtree this morning tweeted, “Daily Telegraph, shamed again: I was in this PR brief, and Tim Berners-Lee said no such thing. http://bit.ly/5lBmqd“. Paul Clarke, also at the event, re-tweeted “Me 2″.

The Telegraph report is the only one of more than 80 news reports to use the word “ghetto”.

UPDATE 15.55:

Earlier today, Telegraph journalist Matt Warman tweeted: “@wdjstraw @jamescrabtree – happy to play you the tape of TBL saying “the risk is that you find out you’ve got ghettoes” & more.”

Warman has since posted the transcript on the Telegraph website. It clearly shows that the quote above was part of a reframing of the question by Berners-Lee and not a statement about the creation of ghettoes:

Matt Warman, Daily Telegraph: There are going to be practical consequences to making data available aren’t there because if you’ve got information about house prices and standards of schools and that sort of thing – the very good areas are going to become more attractive and very poor areas are going to be obviously quite poor – is there a risk that you get ghettoes and clusters?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Let me… You ask quite a good question – is there a risk that you get ghettoes. The risk is that you find out that you’ve got ghettoes do you mean? Well isn’t the risk that where we have bad situations that we want to remedy that this may become apparent? I would say that that’s a risk in general, but one of the main motivations is that governments should be held accountable, that people should be able to see where things can be made better – people, business and government can work together to make a difference.

Charles Arthur, the Guardian’s technology editor sums it up nicely with a tweet:

“.@mattwarman hmm. I don’t think the transcript reflects the writeup. Kudos on transcript tho’”

A range of right wing commentators and newspapers have been keen to highlight that yesterday’s labour market statistics identified a “record” gap between public and private sector earnings.

The Telegraph tells us that:

“This is the first time that the gap, which has slowly widened under the Labour Government, has hit more than £2,000 … this gap of 3.6 percentage points is the widest ever recorded by the ONS.”

And that:

“Nurses, teachers, civil servants and other public workers [were] enjoying an average annual pay rise of 3.8 per cent in the three months to the end of November.”

However, this refers to public sector earnings including financial services (i.e. nationalised banks). When you look at the public sector earnings excluding financial services the gap shrinks to 2.7 percentage points. Over a quarter of the rise that is being reported is a result of rising earnings for bankers.

This is still an earnings gap between the sectors, but not an historic one. As has been regularly highlighted the earnings differential can be accounted for by the composition of the workforce (there are more professionals in the public sector), the fact that the lowest paid workers get paid more in public sector jobs and the diverse performance of earnings in the private sector (for example earnings in distribution, hotels and restaurants rose by 1.8 per cent on the year, and in manufacturing by 1.9 per cent). Ben Goldacre has more on some of the other problems in these kinds of comparisons. At the very least, those who seek to criticise the public sector should get their facts right.

Our guest writer is Nicola Smith, Senior Policy Officer on economic and social affairs at the TUC.

The heated row over racist and sexist comments allegedly made by controversial media pundit Rod Liddle have strengthened the desire of The Independent’s editor-in-chief Simon Kelner to appoint Liddle as editor of the flagship Independent title, Left Foot Forward has learnt.

Even after the Liddle row deepened this weekend, Simon Kelner has been telling people that the row is the best publicity that The Independent has had for years.

The publication of a large number of crude racist and sexually explicit comments, under Liddle’s user name on a Millwall supporters’ public forum, have been widely thought to have damaged his credentials as a potential editor of the serious liberal broadsheet.  But Kelner is increasingly determined to stick by his recommendation to potential new owner Alexander Lebedev that he should appoint Liddle as editor if, as widely anticipated, the Russian billionaire completes his purchase of the title shortly.

Simon Kelner has had a relatively low profile outside the media industry during more than a decade as editor then editor-in-chief of the Indy. His role in the Liddle affair may now come under increasing scrutiny given his apparent determination to make as controversial an appointment as possible as a way of getting the paper noticed.

Many media experts are sceptical as to how controversy generated by The Independent courting Liddle’s almost uniquely toxic public reputation could be translated into sustainable increases in circulation, as Kelner appears to believe, particularly when over 4,000 people have joined a Facebook group saying they would refuse to buy the paper if Liddle was editor.

Independent staff are making efforts to go beyond Simon Kelner to ensure that Alexander Lebedev and his advisors understand the level of staff and reader concern. Lebedev has relatively little knowledge of the British media scene having bought the Evening Standard only six months ago, so Kelner’s experience means his advice could prove decisive.

One senior Independent voice told Left Foot Forward that, if the Kelner gamble on Liddle is endorsed by Lebedev, senior staff believe that it could lead to the newspaper folding before the end of 2010.

Liddle claims that some of the comments have been made by somebody else, though he told the Mail on Sunday that “most” of the comments were his. He has tried to avoid being drawn into the details of his account of events, or over which of the comments under his username he claimed not to have made.

To date, he has only specifically denied making one comment – about black people having lower IQs than whites – after earlier retracting his denial to the Mail on Sunday of another crude and explicit race comment which he now admits making.

On the Guardian website on Monday, Liddle also admitted making comments on the talkboard about the Auschwitz concentration camp: these involved him attacking fans who complained that jokes about the gas chambers were in poor taste.

Perhaps most strikingly, there has been to date no significant mainstream reporting or commentary over the crude and often highly personal sexually explicit comments on women in the media made under Liddle’s online username. Surely, a newspaper should find out whether Liddle admits those comments. Even in 2010, there are not many senior women in British journalism; but making the author of those comments the editor of a national title would suggest a quite astonishing tolerance towards grossly offensive sexism at the top of the Independent.

Liddle this week accused veteran Guardian media reporter Roy Greenslade and bloggers highlighting his comments on the public forum of engaging in “fascism”.

Our guest writer is an concerned hack who wishes to remain anonymous

An opinion poll conducted for Migration Watch in marginal seats has, according to the Times, shown that “David Cameron could clinch a general election victory by placing a cap of 50,000 on net immigration.”

Migration Watch must be delighted with the uncritical coverage of their poll, which is part of their campaign to convince the parties to include a pledge to cap immigration in their manifestos.

Politicians from all parties may find a cap on net immigration a tempting suggestion – a quick way to demonstrate that they are responding to public concerns. The public concerns are real enough – polling consistently shows that people in the UK are worried about immigration. In response, it’s tempting for politicians to talk tough and announce yet another tightening of the immigration system.  But a promise to cap immigration won’t help, for at least two reasons.

First, a cap on net immigration of 50,000 (or zero, which is what the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, who were making the headlines last week, would prefer) would be next to impossible to deliver. Short of withdrawing from the EU, migration within the EU is outside government control, and the UK also has obligations to meet with respect to refugees and human rights that aren’t easily susceptible to numerical caps. Even in categories that can be limited, it’s hard to imagine the government telling Arsenal that they can’t sign another promising young player from outside the UK because this year’s immigration cap has been reached, or allowing vacancy rates in hospitals and care homes to rise further because the flows of foreign nurses have been stopped.

Secondly, and perhaps less intuitively, promising to cap immigration at a much lower level would be a political own goal, for any party. It would be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the public wants. New research from ippr has looked in detail at the views of those who are worried about migration. This research found that, when they are given the space to discuss the issues in detail, self-declared migration sceptics often have nuanced and moderate views on the issue. They are concerned about the scale of recent immigration, but they can also see the benefits of migration for the UK – they respect the hard work of migrants, and the contribution they make (for example to the NHS).

Crucially, people want the government to be in control of migration.  But control does not mean a drastic limit on net migration – it’s perfectly possible for the government to be in control of a migration system that is flexible and responsive to the needs of the economy.  In fact, what often gives the public the impression that migration is out of control is politicians making promises to ‘clamp down’ on immigration that they then cannot deliver.  It might be tempting to promise a cap on immigration, but it isn’t necessarily what the public wants, and risks becoming a hostage to fortune.

The Government need to resist pressure from Migration Watch and others, and stand up for the systems that they have put in place; demonstrating that they are in control by being confident about their policies, not by constantly changing them in response to the vocal migration lobby groups.

When, with impeccable timing, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper came out for David Cameron and blighted Gordon Brown’s big conference speech, it was an easy enough to assume that this was reward for past promises. The most important being the Tory leader’s commitment that a future Conservative government would restrict Ofcom’s remit to a narrow technical enforcement role, stripping it of its policy making role and knocking it back to “regulating lightly.” Ofcom, as we knew it, would cease to exist.

Cameron had come to the aid of the Murdochs when Ofcom had had the timidity to criticise Sky’s monopolistic control (80 per cent of Premier League football and 100 per cent of Hollywod movies prevented others from entering the market). Ofcom ruled that Sky be required to sell its rights to all comers at 30 per cent less than it currently charges.

Today that screw has been tightened. The Guardian is reporting that BT and Virgin expect to take advantage of Ofcom’s plans to force Sky to drop the price it charges rival broadcasters for its Sky Sports channel.

The timing is again impeccable. With a formal announcement in March, it’s just in time for the 2010/11 Premier League football season which also makes it weeks away from the General Election. If the opinion polls are anything to go by this would leave a Prime Minister Cameron having to overturn the independent regulator’s decision or upset the Murdoch empire. They will play for time through the courts if necessary and Ofcom will eventually pay the price.

With an election, and a possible change of government more sympathetic to their thinking, only weeks away those politicians and groups that have longed wanted to let the free market rule are preparing the ground. Policy Exchange’s report, ‘Changing the Channel’, out last week
argues that, with technological changes and increased competition, public service broadcasting belongs to the past.  It is no longer viable, they argue, for the major terrestrial to be obliged to comply with a public service remit. Spectrum once scarce does not need to be managed.

That the word is changing with the British media now exposed to increased competition as a consequence of the growing integration of globalised communications there is no doubt.  But this is not a reason, it’s an excuse. Free market ideas have been the main driving force shaping media policy and pressure groups and neo-liberal think tanks such as Policy Exchange and the Adam Smith Institute have long wanted the BBC broken up.

Public service obligations and regulation are anathema so it’s not surprising that they are capitalising on the changing media landscape, technological and the economic problems of ITV to pursue their aims. Strip ITV of any public service remit and privatise Channel Four.

Authors of ‘Power without Responsibility‘ now in its seventh edition, James Curran and Jean Seaton, in a revised chapter on media reform. Democratic choices, seek to highlight the way in which media politics is no longer purely national – the exclusive concern of national government:

“It is not something that can be left safely to specialists, powerful lobbies and politicians who – unexposed to public pressure – will tend to curry favour with media magnets.”

The Tories will be presented with an early test over Ofcom we can expect the unholy alliance between Cameron and Murdoch (and it has to be said with Blair beforehand) will eventually benefit News Corporation on ownership and regulation but it won’t be rushed – it will evolve over time unless it can be resisted.

Our guest writer is Joy Johnson, a lecturer in journalism at City University and a former political journalist.

Catherine Bennett has a ridiculous piece in today’s Observer where she defends her pal, Rod Liddle’s inalienable human right to be editor of the Independent.

Bennett says:

Last week, it was the turn of my former G2 colleague, the columnist Rod ­Liddle, following reports that he has been lined up to edit the Independent in the event of its being bought by Alexander Lebedev … A petition against his appointment has at least 3,000 signatures. Having much enjoyed the hospitality of Mr and Mrs Liddle, I’m in no position to pronounce on what he may offer the Independent, but I can only wonder at the conviction among his online critics that the Liddle worldview is so much less acceptable than those of other editors, actual or potential …

This unfortunate consequence of free speech has inspired a host of worthies, including Diane Abbott, Sunny Hundal and Will Straw, to proclaim the importance of columnist-containment. In “Left Foot Forward”, his “political blog for progressives”, Master Straw boldly misrepresents one of the miscreant’s pieces, in order to attract new signatories to the “stop Liddle” campaign and thus protect our wives and servants.

I’m sorry, but when did Rod Liddle’s freedom of speech trump mine, Sunny’s, Diane Abott’s or any of the other 3,900 members of the facebook group?

And which of Liddle’s articles did I “boldly misrepresent”? Was it any of his opinions that Left Foot Forward highlighted last Sunday:

- decrying “Muslim Savages“

- mocking the black British community for merely producing “rap music” and “goat curry“

- denying the evidence for Anthropogenic Global Warming theory

- a series of sexist articles and views including “So – Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober.”

Or perhaps it was his latest outburst which highlighted on Monday: “F*** off back to where you’re from, then, you Muslims.” Or maybe the alleged racist messages on a football website.

And let me answer Bennett (no patronising honorific required) since she asks this about our views on Islam4UK:

“Perhaps, once this more pressing threat has receded, Straw Junior will take time to reconsider the gagging of Islam4UK.”

On January 6th, Shamik Das set out a detailed post about the legality of banning Islam4UK and outlined clearly that more evidence was needed. Shami Chakrabarti of the human rights group Liberty told the BBC that proscription should be limited to groups involved in terrorist activity and evidence of Islam4UK’s terrorist involvement has not been presented.

Since it appears we offended Bennett, I’ll leave the final word to her:

“the privilege of free expression carries with it a grave responsibility: not to say anything people might not like.”

The new owner of the Independent, Alexander Lebedev, is to be inundated with emails from the 3,500 strong facebook group opposing the Independent’s mooted appointment of Rod Liddle as editor.

Members of the group were emailed last night by creator Alex Higgins, a teacher in North London. The message says:

“Already this campaign has caused 1 advertiser to pull out, made the news here and in Russia and I have learned that the Lebedevs are very seriously reconsidering Liddle. If they receive 1,000 or more messages I believe we can stop his appointment.

“This could be a really significant moment for the British media – a real grassroots stand against bigotry in the press that can’t be ignored.”

A model letter is provided although readers are urged to put in their own voice since, “A mass of identical e-mails aren’t as effective as a mass of individualised ones.” Email addresses for Alexander Lebedev and the Independent’s former editor Simon Kelner, who is said to be favour the appointment.

Since the facebook group was launched on Saturday evening, it has grown to over 3,546 members. A rival campaign group supporting “Rod Liddle for Independent editor” has attracted under 200 members. The page claims to be a “bit of fun, created after reading a particularly po-faced piece on Leftie Blog Harry’s Place about what a disaster for the world in general his appointment would be. I love so-called liberals, they are so easy to wind up ”.

UPDATE 16.02

Rod Liddle has been back on the bile calling blogger LF Barfe, who recounted a story about him, a “cunt” by email. Read the full story here.

The Mail today published a piece suggesting that scientists believe the current cold weather in Britain is the start of a downward trend in temperatures that challenges global warming theories.

Their article, “Could we be in for 30 years of global COOLING?”, begins:

“Britain’s big freeze is the start of a worldwide trend towards colder weather that seriously challenges global warming theories, eminent scientists claimed yesterday. The world has entered a ‘cold mode’ which is likely to bring a global dip in temperatures which will last for 20 to 30 years, they say.

“Summers and winters will all be cooler than in recent years, and the changes will mean that global warming will be ‘paused’ or even reversed, it was claimed.”

The Mail are rather belatedly picking up on a piece of work authored by scientist Mojib Latif, which suggested that because of long-term fluctuations in ocean temperatures, there may be a pause in warming over the current decade, with average temperatures not rising relative to the previous decade.

To give some context, it is generally accepted in the climate science literature that predicting what temperatures will do over relatively short time periods, like a decade, is very difficult. The critical point is that whatever happens over the next decade, it doesn’t undermine scientific certainty that the longer-term trend in global average temperature is upwards.

The Mail continues:

“The predictions are based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They are the work of respected climate scientists and not those routinely dismissed by environmentalists as ‘global warming deniers’.”

Indeed, Latif is a respected scientist engaging in careful, peer-reviewed work. While many other climate scientists differ from his view that temperature rise will stall over this coming decade, such disagreement is part of legitimate scientific debate on a topic (decadal variation in temperatures) that isn’t well understood.

Unfortunately, with Latif’s work as a hook, the Mail engage in all-out misrepresentation and editorial sleight of hand:

“Some experts believe these cycles – and not human pollution – can explain all the major changes in world temperatures in the 20th century. If true, the research challenges the science behind climate change theories, and calls into question the political measures to halt global warming.”

The misrepresentation here is that Latif believes nothing of the sort, and so his work can’t ‘challenge the science behind climate change theories’ or call any current response to climate change into question.

Indeed, quoted in the Guardian, Latif seems completely mystified by such an interpretation of his work:

“Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he ‘cannot understand’ reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on climate change.

“He told the Guardian: ‘It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming’ … He added: ‘There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases.’

So fairly clearly, here we have yet again an article from the Mail that displays breathtaking scientific illiteracy, brought on by a burning desire to misrepresent climate science.

Our guest writer is Christian Hunt

Today’s Sun newspaper makes uncomfortable reading for Labour supporters. Mike Smithson at Political Betting asks whether the Sun is “using polling to help undermine Brown”. Sifting through the underlying data certainly reveals a more nuanced position on public services and the economy.

Asked “In general, how do you rate your child’s school?”, 89 per cent gave an overall score of “good”. This contrasts with 57 per cent giving the quality of education in primary schools the same rating and 50 per cent for state secondary schools. Meanwhile, just 26 per cent believe that the quality of education in Britain’s state schools overall is better than it was when Labour came to power in 1997. The discrepancy appears to derive from voters without children in state schools providing a more negative view of schools in general.

On the NHS, The Sun outlines that “voters complained about postcode lotteries, poor management and superbugs”. What The Sun don’t mention is that those polled were asked to pick from a list of loaded statements about Labour’s 12 years:

- Patients in many parts of Britain suffer from the ‘postcode lottery’ and fail to obtain treatment given to other NHS patients

- Hospitals, and the NHS more generally, are managed less efficiently

- The NHS failed to tackle the scourge of ‘superbugs’

- There is a shortage of midwives which is affecting maternity services

Only three positive statements were offered including a technocratic statement: “Spending on the NHS has risen to match the European average.” On the back of this loaded question, 34 per cent thought that the quality of health care in the NHS overall was better than it was when Labour came to power compared to 31 per cent who thought it was worse.

And while the economic picture is bleak with 67 per cent blaming the British government for “the recession and recent rise in unemployment in Britain”, 88 per cent blame British banks. Although 46 per cent believe that Gordon Brown is at fault for the “sharp rise in public borrowing”, 37 per cent agree with the statement that “It is not mainly Gordon Brown’s fault. All, or almost all, the rise in borrowing can be explained by the need to keep the recession as short and shallow as possible”. Liberal Democrat supporters back Brown by 44 to 40 per cent on this question.

The answers on Afghanistan provide a warning for all political parties that support the conflict and for the paper’s own editorial stance. Only 37 per cent agree that “British troops in Afghanistan are making our lives safer here in Britain” while 50 per cent disagree.

A facebook group has been launched with the aim of stopping Rod Liddle from becoming Editor of the Independent newspaper. The former Today programme editor is renowned for his offensives outbursts.

The Guardian reported on Friday that Rod Liddle was being lined up to edit the newspaper. Alex Higgins, who blogs at Bring on the Revolution, acted quickly to set up a facebook group detailing Rod Liddle’s views and warning “If Rod Liddle becomes editor of The Independent, I will not buy it again.”

Higgins writes:

“Rod Liddle would be a disappointing choice for the ‘Daily Telegraph’ or the ‘Daily Mail’. For the ‘Independent’, it represents a direct affront to the readership.

“Many ‘Independent’ readers were already disappointed by the direction the paper had taken under Roger Alton, and we absolutely should not accept the appointment of Rod Liddle.”

He goes on to detail many of Liddle’s positions including:

- decrying “Muslim Savages“

- mocking the black British community for merely producing “rap music” and “goat curry“

- denying the evidence for Anthropogenic Global Warming theory

- a series of sexist articles and views including “So – Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober.”

UPDATE 18.04

The facebook group has now attracted well over 1,000 people in under 24 hours.

The right-wing press have blindly parroted Damian Green’s misleading claims about the efficiency of the asylum seeker system. A spate of stories today highlight the £28 million cost of providing legal advice to asylum seekers but the figures imply that staff are clearing the backlog. Refugee Council Chief Executive, Donna Covey, told Left Foot Forward that asylum seekers “have no choice but to rely on publicly funded legal advice.”

A Conservative Party press release yesterday, copied almost verbatim by The Sun, Daily Mail, and Daily Telegraph (see below) details how the legal aid bill for the 46,628 “asylum matters” funded by the Legal Services Commission last year – at an average cost of £610 – came to £28 million. The papers do not detail that this has been stable for the last few years or that the total number of asylum applications fell was 24 per cent lower in Q3 2009 compared with Q3 2008.

Home Office figures (Table 2a) show that the total number of asylum applications over the same period were just 27,670. This implies that the legal system are processing 169 per cent the number of applications. This apparent efficiency is somewhat at odds with Damian Green’s statement that:

“There are still hundreds of thousands of asylum cases that have been hanging around for years. This involves a huge cost to the taxpayer, as well as being unfair to those involved. A quick, efficient system would be a real benefit, but Ministers have failed to deliver this despite twelve years of trying.”

The Telegraph inaccurately claim that “Every asylum seeker is entitled to the free legal support”. All applications are means tested as Covey explained to Left Foot Forward:

“Access to legal aid is already tightly controlled and lawyers must show that a case is likely to succeed if they are using public money for appeals.

“The best way for the government to reduce the number of legal challenges is to focus on getting decisions right from the start. The number of decisions that are currently overturned at appeal proves that this does not always happen. Yet these are life or death decisions for asylum seekers. Many of these people have come to the UK to escape torture, persecution and human rights abuses in their own country, so surely it is not too much to ask for them to receive a fair hearing while they are here?”

If asylum seekers appeal they face a much more stringent ‘merits test’ where they are expected to have a 50 per cent chance of succeeding to qualify for funding. This is a major area of concern to the Refugee Council as legal representatives have a strong incentive to refuse funding on any but the strongest of cases in order to maintain a high success rate.

The Express this morning reports that “Housing benefit payments will soar by 15 per cent to £20.8billion over the next year.” They are right but the rise is due to the recession and rising rents, not the “culture of benefits dependency” that the paper cites.

The housing benefit bill will rise over the next few years but this is partly the result of more people being unemployed (and therefore eligible). A DWP spokeswoman is quoted saying, “These forecasts were done on a precautionary basis at the time of the Budget but, with unemployment 400,000 lower than predicted as a result of the action we have taken, we are already saving hundreds of millions of pounds in unemployment and housing benefit compared to those Budget numbers.” She is right: these predictions are based on budget unemployment numbers, which are likely to overestimate the peak by some 400,000. The eventual cost will be lower.

The higher bill is also due to the trend rise in housing costs, in both the social and private rented sectors. In the social sector this is because housing benefit basically tracks rents (which have been rising above the rate of inflation) and in the private rented sector because the local housing allowance has been more generous than expected. The latter is where these horror stories of people getting thousands of pounds a week on housing benefit have come from. DWP put out a consultation to deal with this problem at the end of last year.

The figures used by the Express for the growth in welfare spending since 1997 doesn’t distinguish between different types of spending. For example, a lot of the increase is in higher pensions, tax credits and child benefit. Little of the increase is due to increases in out-of-work benefits. And the Express citing “the failure to stamp out fraud and welfare addiction” misses the facts. Both fraud and error have come down substantially in recent years and are now at historically low levels.

Reforming housing benefit is the toughest task in social policy. The Government is right to control spending in the private rented sector by taking out the very highest rents from the calculation used to work out the going rate in an area. Beyond that the solution really lies in looking at the public subsidy for housing as a whole – on both the supply and the demand side – because the rise in housing benefit is really due to increasing rents. Building more social housing in particular would certainly help to bring down the cost.

Image hat-tip: Mail Watch

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, writing in yesterday’s Telegraph, has laid out what he claims are “Ten reasons to leave the EU”. Left Foot Forward rebuts each of Mr Hannan’s points:

1. Since we joined the EEC in 1973, we have been in surplus with every continent in the world except Europe. Over those 27 years, we have run a trade deficit with the other member states that averages out at £30 million per day.

Trade is a two-way operation and Britain’s trade with other EU countries has risen from about a third of our trade when we first joined to nearly 60 per cent now, despite the huge increase in the purchasing power of China, India, and oil producing countries in that time. The fastest growth rates of UK exports in recent years have been to the new EU Member States. 3½ million UK jobs are dependent on the export of goods and services to the EU.

If we were out of the EU, there would have even less likelihood of selling UK manufactured products to other EU countries, so the figures would be worse.

2. In 2010 our gross contribution to the EU budget will be £14 billion. To put this figure in context, all the reductions announced by George Osborne at the Conservative Party Conference would, collectively, save £7 billion a year across the whole of government spending.

Hannan is guilty of sleight of hand here by talking about “gross contribution”. Once the rebate is taken into account, our net contribution is £3.3bn in 2009-10 (see UK Budget 2009, Table 9C, footnote) – about £1 per week per person. Some of this finances things like infrastructure development in the poorer EU countries, which British firms regularly win tenders for.

The EU budget is just over 1 per cent of EU-wide Gross National Income, and 1/40th of public spending in total EU-wide. The Department for Work and Pensions, for example, has an annual budget of more than £100 billion – that’s about the same as the entire EU budget, just from one UK government department.

3. On the European Commission’s own figures, the annual costs of EU regulation outweigh the advantages of the single market by €600 to €180 billion.

Hannan takes no account of where common EU rules actually cut costs for businesses. By having one set of rules for the common market of 27 countries and 450 million people, EU legislation reduces costs for businesses. For example, a firm can register a trademark once, valid throughout the EU, without having to go through 27 different sets of national rules, form-filling and fee paying. A lorry taking British exports to Italy used to need over 20 documents to present at frontiers. Thanks to EU legislation this is now down to one.

Another example, the Payment Services Directive, guarantees fair and open access to payments markets and increases consumer protection. Currently each Member State has its own rules on payments, and the annual cost of making payments through these fragmented systems is as much as 2-3 per cent of GDP. Payment service providers are effectively blocked from competing and offering their services throughout the EU. Removal of these barriers is estimated to save the EU economy €28 billion per year overall.

Indeed, a European Commission study in 2002 showed that EU GDP is around 2 per cent higher than it would be without the Single Market, equivalent to a benefit of £20bn for the UK economy (or about £1,000 per family every year). The single market gives all UK businesses access to a market of 450 million consumers. Perhaps this explains why, in a recent Ipsos Mori poll which interviewed 102 executives from Britain’s largest businesses, 78 of them replied that the single market had been helpful to UK business.

Hannan also misses the point because he assumes that all regulation is bad. Of course, some regulation imposes costs, and these should be removed if there is no justification. But most regulations have clear benefits such as saving money in the future, protecting workers for harm or loss of life, and protecting the environment. Many would also have been implemented at national level if they did not exist at EU level (though at greater costs if divergent national rules fragmented the single market).

Europeans need and want social protection. Things like maternity and paternity leave, right to paid holiday, those sorts of things. Abolishing all rules of the single market implies a total erosion of workers’ rights – for example, the costs to cigarette companies by making them label their products as dangerous are outweighed by the benefits to public health and long-term savings for the health service. Nutritional labelling protects consumers with allergies and informs consumers about the food they eat. The list goes on.

4. The Common Agricultural Policy costs every family £1200 a year in higher food bills.

If Hannan thinks that the alternative to the CAP is that Britain (almost alone in the industrialised world) would no longer subsidise its farmers, he is living in a dreamland; only one thing would be worse than the CAP – it is 27 national agricultural policies, each trying to out-subsidise the other. It makes much more sense to reform CAP by remaining in the EU and reforming it from within.

It should also be noted that the cost of CAP has steadily declined as a proportion of the EU budget from over 70 per cent two decades ago to around 35 percent now. It has switched from market intervention to direct payments to farmers similar to the old UK system.

5. Outside the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain could reassert control over its waters out to 200 miles or the median line, which would take in around 65 per cent of North Sea stocks.

Because fish stay within British territorial waters and never leave?! How exactly do you stop fish swimming from one country’s waters to another? Like it or not, the only way to conserve fish stocks and save what is left of our fish is through joint agreement. The North Sea is already terribly over-fished, and common rules are vital to ensure sustainability of fisheries.

The EU, it is true, does need to reform its fisheries policy, making sure less fish are thrown dead overboard – but fish themselves do not respect borders, hence the need for supranational decision making. And, as with the CAP, the more isolationist, the more extreme the Tories’ position, the less likely they are to influence it.

6. Successive British governments have refused to say what proportion of domestic laws come from Brussels, but a thorough analysis by the German Federal Justice Ministry showed that 84 per cent of the legislation in that country came from the EU.

This is plainly nonsense, both the claim that the Government “have refused to say” the proportion of laws that come from Brussels, and the figure he quotes. The House of Commons Library states that only 9.1 per cent of UK laws stem from the EU.

7. Outside the EU, Britain would be free to negotiate much more liberal trade agreements with third countries than is possible under the Common External Tariff.

But Britain will be in a much weaker bargaining position vis-a-vis other countries than when we bargain with the whole clout of the worlds largest market behind us. And what of the tariffs that would be imposed on UK trade with the EU were we to leave? The UK is a country of 60 million people that is reliant on imports. The EU is a market of almost 500 million people, and can negotiate in the World Trade Organisation at a similar level to the USA, China, India etc. Leaving the EU would decrease the UK’s power to negotiate internationally, not increase it.

8. The countries with the highest GDP per capita in Europe are Norway and Switzerland. Both export more, proportionately, to the EU, than Britain does.

Both Norway and Switzerland have to accept EU market legislation with no say in shaping it. Both contribute to the EU budget (more per capita net contributions than the UK!). Both are small countries with very special features: massive oil reserves for Norway and a unique banking sector for Switzerland.

These countries are also – to all intents and purposes – in the EU single market. Norway, for example, implements all legislation for the single market (labour rights included) as it is in the European Economic Area (EEA).

9. Outside the EU, Britain could be a deregulated, competitive, offshore haven.

So, offshore banking is our future! Does Mr Hannan seriously, seriously, still believe that?! And in these times of financial crisis as well.

10. Oh, and we’d be a democracy again.

So what are we now? Is Hannan questioning his own democratic legitimacy? The EU is, far and away, the most democratic of all the international structures we belong to. It has its own directly elected Parliament, Charter of Rights and Court. Compare that to the IMF, World Bank, NATO, OECD, WTO etc. It should also be borne in mind that the Treaty of Lisbon, opposed by Hannan, for the first time gives countries the right to leave the EU and improves its democracy.

Additional reporting from Jon Worth

With the failure of global leaders to get a legally binding agreement in Copenhagen, you would think that all those engaged in the debate would place a premium on good evidence. Not so Iain Dale.

The prominent Tory blogger posted last night a message from one of his readers,  who sought to show “no evidence of any warming trend” using data from the Met office. The only problem is that the methodology has absolutely no statistical basis whatsoever although that didn’t stop Iain Dale in the comments saying:

“As far as I can see Victor has calculated the figures very well. I have now been on the site to check myself. Not sure how a “professional” coudl do it differently to him. But feel free to try!”

Giles Wilkes, a trained economist, has done exactly that on Freethinking Economist. He also puts Dale’s folly in context:

“I haven’t checked out Iain Dale’s CV, but I suspect it does not include a period studying statistics.  Because he seems to believe in a recent post that taking one month every ten years from one location in the UK is a sufficient reason to justify statements about the effect of carbon dioxide throughout the entire globe over a 150 year period”

Meanwhile, in a detailed post, Unity on Liberal Conspiracy shows what the real trend in Oxford looks like using the data more accurately:

When Left Foot Forward has got things wrong in the past, we’ve been grown up enough to admit it. But will Iain Dale do the same?

And while pseudo statistics continue to be used to argue against the scientific consensus on climate change, a far better use of all our time would be spent taking action to abate our global emissions – for example, heeding Claire Spencer’s advice and signing a petition to reduce food waste and therefore 10 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions