Another day, another propaganda piece

I do sometimes wonder if Messrs Harrabin and Black, the BBC's prime global warming propagandists, ever get bored of telling one side of the story.

Today's contribution from Mr Black is a story about declining sea ice coverage in the Arctic. 

Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than last year, despite a cold winter.

Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the year began with ice covering a larger area than at the beginning of 2007.

But now it is down to levels seen last June, at the beginning of a summer that broke records for sea ice loss.

Why does he keep doing this? Everybody knows he's cherry picking in order to maintain the BBC's  chosen narrative of "We're all going to die!". Simply checking the sea ice chart at Cryosphere Today shows that global sea ice coverage is pretty much normal - the reduction in the Arctic is offset by extra in the Antarctic.

However, the word "Antarctic" appears nowhere in Richard Black's article. This is good, plain, old-fashioned out-and-out dishonesty. Par for the course for the BBC's environment team.

Basher for Liberty news 2

The resignation

DD handed in his resignation and called on Gordon Brown to put up a candidate. Gordon kept his head down. (He always does that doesn't he?) 

The campaign

An unofficial supporters blog called 4 David Davis 4 Freedom was launched.  The by-election has been confirmed for 11th July.

Madman Basher

Rachel North documents the continuing retreat of the mainstream media from its earlier "Davis is a madman" meme, with even the Sun now speaking up in favour of civil liberties.  Another history of the MSM's retreat is provided by media wonk Martin Moore.

Sparring partners

A fruit and veg trader from DD's constituency and a beauty queen are going to run in the by-election, but Labour confirmed that they will not put up a candidate. DD described the Prime Minister as "gutless". (Update: Liberal Conspiracy reckons the New Statesman is going to put up a "more liberal than thou" candidate.

The debate

The Adam Smith Institute is running a series of postings on the liberties we've lost - like the assumption of innocence and double jeopardy. 

Guy Aitchison, writing at Our Kingdom, says that Basher must also examine the Conservatives' record on civil liberties, a demand that one can hardly call unjustified.

Basher for Liberty news

Given the dreadful state of Basher Davis's campaign website, I thought I might do a bit of a roundup of the goings-on of the day on the civil liberties front.

David Davis for Liberty

Basher's campaign website went live. Geeks noticed that it wasn't very interactive. And that it didn't mention the Conservatives or David Cameron. Technology poor, content good then.

The masthead picture attracted attention too. Some people noticed that it didn't include any brown people, although others detected some oriental features among the crowd. I didn't spot any gays/lesbians/transexuals either. The man is clearly a Nazi.

Gay basher Basher

Iain Dale accused Stonewall of briefing against Basher.  Stonewall denied everything. They seem to be of the opinion that gay "rights" should trump civil rights.

Illiberal Basher

Debate continued to rage on the blogs as to DD's credentials as a liberal. Stephen Tall said that anyone who supported the death penalty wasn't a liberal. Yours truly pointed out that Locke and Mill said otherwise.

Final word probably went to James Graham:

I’ve lost count of the number of blog posts and facebook groups I’ve skimmed past denouncing Davis for being a hypocrite on the issue of civil liberties. That may be so, but what is more hypocritical? A hang ‘em, flog ‘em politician standing up for fundamental civil liberties or a smart arse who claims to care about the drip-drip erosion of our rights while sitting on the fence because the one person taking a stand doesn’t pass a “purity” test.

Stuntman basher

Nearly everyone has stopped saying that it's a stunt. Only Steve Richards at the Independent is still singing that particular refrain. The commenters on his piece aren't impressed.

Sparring partners

Somebody with a book to promote announced that he would stand against Basher in the by-election. Brave man. Somewhat less endowed with cojones was Kelvin MacKenzie who indicated that maybe he'd stay at home and write an article or two.  Similarly, the government has still not said if it will put a candidate up against DD. Gordon Brown demonstrated his fearlessness by giving a speech on civil liberties and not mentioning Davis at all. Go Tiger! Gordy's thesis is that security is the most important liberty of all, thus neatly proving that North Korea is a free country.

Cheering him on

Nigel Kennedy, the violinist, outed himself as a Basher supporter. Meanwhile, an opinion poll showed levels of public support for the civil liberties agenda which surprised some commentators. Iraq war hero Colonel Tim Collins and Labour's Bob Marshall-Andrews and Tony Benn are already on board.

Davis said that he had been overwhelmed by the support he is getting. 

What do we want?

Spiked started to outline a programme of restoration of civil liberties: 42 days becomes 24 hours, bring back the right to silence and double jeopardy, get rid of hate speech offences and so on. 

Petition to abandon the Lisbon Treaty

Richard North of EU Referendum fame is calling for people to sign up to a petition, demanding that the government abandon the Lisbon Treaty. They've signed up a very impressive seven thousand people in four hours.

Add your name here. 

David Davis for Freedom

David Davis's campaign website, David Davis for Freedom, is now live. Looks like there's still a few issues to sort out on the RSS feed though.

Update:

It's not the best website, is it? Quite apart from the feed problem, someone seems to have forgotten to create the links for the Speeches and Articles pages. There's no comments facility on the blog and commenters at Guido's are reporting problems subscribing to the email newsletter (although it worked fine for me).

I suppose there's a possibility that it's not actually live yet, but if it is, then Basher needs to start bashing pretty soon. This isn't good enough. 

The media and David Davis

Frank Fisher has a wonderful article up at the Graun.

The Indy now realises that DD has captured the public's imagination, the Times's William Rees Mogg admits his own failure to grasp the strength of public feeling and here at the Guardian, Jackie Ashley figures out what Cif's punters knew within moments of Davis's announcement – that Davis's main goal may well be to entrench Conservative support for civil liberties, directly confronting the kind of focus-group friendly policies favoured by the other Dave.

Four days it took the commentariat to grasp this simple issue that the online community figured out within 14 minutes.

 Read the whole thing.

My human right to an education voucher

The Human Rights Act says of education:

No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.

Personally, I have a deep philosophical conviction that the state should play no part in the education system - standard liberal stuff, per JS Mill. Unfortunately, because the state takes lots of money from me to pay for the education system that I oppose, I am unable to send my children to private school. So it looks to me as if the state is not only not respecting my right to ensure an education in conformity with my convictions, it is actively preventing me from doing so.

The remedy is simple though. I want my money back. Cash or voucher, I care not.

Jack Frost

According to the weather forecast, there's a slight possibility of frost tonight in my neck of the woods. The summer solstice is a week away.

Global warming eh? 

Great illiberals of the past - Locke and Mill

Stephen Tall has added his name to the list of those who think that David Davis can't possibly be a liberal because of his support for the death penalty.

I was amused to see that a commenter on Stephen's piece points out that one of the prominent supporters of the death penalty was none other than John Locke, who opined:

Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property - that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. 

Chris Dillow, a man who is never likely to be mistaken for a Tory, has also posted at length on this subject and, rather amusingly for me, calls in his support none other than John Stuart Mill, who apparently said:

I defend this [the death] penalty, when confined to atrocious cases, on the very ground on which it is commonly attacked-on that of humanity to the criminal; as beyond comparison the least cruel mode in which it is possible adequately to deter from the crime…What comparison can there really be, in point of severity, between consigning a man to the short pang of a rapid death, and immuring him in a living tomb, there to linger out what may be a long life in the hardest and most monotonous toil, without any of its alleviations or rewards--debarred from all pleasant sights and sounds, and cut off from all earthly hope, except a slight mitigation of bodily restraint, or a small improvement of diet?

As I've said in an earlier posting, many people seem to mistake "views commonly held by liberals" with liberalism itself. All these Liberals are going to have to explain to me how a the holding of a view that was shared by the two greatest philosophers of the liberal movement can be diagnostic of not being a liberal at all.

Quote of the day

The politicians need to ask themselves why so many of the public seem to regard David Davis as the only sane man in the asylum.

Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer 

Bigger Bishop

There appear to have been enough people who found the font size 'ere a bit on the small side, so I've upped it a bit. I await a rush of new readers....

We want all your data....

...and we're going to leave it lying around somewhere.

Secret Government documents which detail Britain's policies on fighting global terrorist funding, drugs trafficking and money laundering have been found on a London-bound train.

Just so we're clear, this is different to the load of secret data they lost last week.

Some people are still seriously asking what the problem with ID cards is. Incredible, isn't it?

All the other places are shut

As people try to size up the implications of David Davis's bolt from the blue, it's already clear that the civil libertarians are dangerously divided. That's not to say that the authoritarians aren't divided too, but as the control freaks run both government and official opposition parties, it matters rather less to them.

One of the main sources of difference is the theory that Davis's credentials to lead a civil liberties backlash are compromised by his support for, well, any number of issues - the death penalty, section 28, abortion are chief among them. This seems to me to mistake "issues that are sometimes supported by civil libertarians" with civil liberties per se. It's quite possible to make the liberal case for supporting any or all of these issues - here's Chris Dillow on corporal punishment (yes, I know it's corporal not capital, but similar arguments apply). And even if you don't accept these arguments, at the end of the day, there's only one show in town and that's Davis. Civil libertarians could wait for the perfect candidate to lead the movement to Nirvana, but they have to face the fact that it's a pretty demanding set of criteria to make the grade - we're probably looking for  an MP, and moreover one with perfect liberal credentials. They should have no significant personal peccadillos (not usually a feature found among MPs), and they should be ready to risk their career; to throw away their secure income and bloated pension to make a stand for the cause. Shall we say that this person would be a bit far-fetched in a story book, let alone in real life?

Meanwhile, whereever you look, there are people of impeccable civil liberties credentials arguing about what other issues they'd like to roll up with the ones David Davis has outlined already, namely ID cards, CCTV, habeas corpus and free speech. UKIP want Europe added to the slate, this chap wants the anti-smoking legislation repealed. 

The similarity between this and the Life of Brian is both amusing and depressing. The People's Front for the Liberation of Britain says anyone who doesn't include put the EU on the slate is a traitor. The British League for Liberty says only fools think such nonsense and it's smoking we want.

There is no way in a thousand years a coherent platform can be built around all these issues. Nobody would support it at all. Strange as it might seem to myself and UKIP, lots of people who are against internment think that the EU is a smashing idea, and that if we just tweak it here and there, everyone will end up rich, free and good-looking. Yes, it's bizarre, but there it is. Now't as queer as folk. Sorry UKIP, we need these people on board - without them we're sunk. We can't have the EU on the ticket.

And there it is. There's one guy with a set menu. Don't walk out of the restaurant because he doesn't offer a la carte. All the other places are shut.

Irish eyes are smiling

It looks like it's in the bag and the Irish have saved the nations of Europe to fight again another day. That's not to say that the EU vampire won't rise from the dead again, but for the minute, let's just be grateful our friends over the water have spoken up for all the people around Europe who have been denied a voice.

And in honour of this victory, here's a blast of a bunch of Irish musicians who can probably lay a fair claim to being the best there ever was - the Bothy Band.

Can Labour afford to run against DD?

Interesting theory doing the rounds about the upshot of the Davis resignation - Labour are bust already - they just can't afford to fight another major by-election campaign.

So come on MPs, start following Davis's example!