No alternative

Martin Ivens in the Sunday Times hits the nail pretty squarely on the head on the subject of whether the Conservatives are actually offering alternative NHS policies to Labour.

If Lansley tells an audience of doctors and nurses that the Conservatives will no longer fiddle with the NHS like new Labour, he will get easy applause. Health workers are truly fed up with obtuse management and endless Whitehall directives. But after the clapping has died down he should ask that room whether the NHS should continue as it is...
 
...David Cameron, you present yourself as the future, the new politics. If you don’t offer the prime minister a challenge on health reform then another decade will be wasted. By not rocking the boat you think you will get more votes. Maybe. But you’ll be passing up a great opportunity and we will all be the losers.

It's not just health policy where the Conservatives are offering a policy of "the same but better". Here's the Shadow Education Secretary, Michael Gove:

Tomorrow, parents across the country will find out if their children have got into their first-choice school. I vividly remember last year when I, like thousands of other parents, faced a nerve-shredding few weeks to see if my daughter had got into her preferred school. She was lucky and now she's enjoying a superb education at a fine state primary. But the experience reinforced my conviction that parents shouldn't have to endure this anxiety and a good state education shouldn't be a matter of chance. It should be a right.

What makes this year's admissions roulette even more tense is the pressure by the Government to micro-manage the process. Schools face new rules and parents new barriers when it comes to exercising choice. Head teachers have been warned not even to talk to parents lest those who are committed to finding out more about a particular school secure an unfair advantage. And the bureaucrat in charge of this process is threatening even more lotteries to come. As someone who believes totally in state education I understand why it's important to do what we can to make opportunity more equal.

If even the Conservatives can't see that it's the "state" bit of "state education" which is the problem, heaven help us.  

Illiberal and statist outreach work

I often wonder whether we in the libertarian part of the blogosphere end up just preaching to each other. With this in mind, I've been making doing some outreach work at LabourHome and LibDem Voice which has been lots of fun and much more of an intellectual challenge. (I don't think I've actually converted anyone yet though).

The latest venture here was the comments thread on this post at LibDem voice on the subject of Post Office closures. The point I keep coming back to is this: if you're not going to use economic viability as your criterion to decide if a PO branch should remain open, what are you going to base your decision on? So far this appears to have the Liberal party stumped. 

Disingenuous greens

The Green Alliance have issued a report calling for VAT to be replaced with a green goods tax.

Julie Hill, Green Alliance’s waste policy expert, says:

“We have a choice: do we want to continue living with stuff which conflicts with living a low-carbon, low-waste lifestyle or do we want to consume in ways that are smart, pleasurable and sustainable? The market still brings forward products that conflict with the government’s own environmental goals, from appliances that can’t be taken off stand-by to packaging that can’t be recycled. And without the right price signals this pattern is set to continue. Other European countries do it so let’s tax bads  - not goods.”

What Julie Hill neglects to say is that this can't actually be done, because VAT is compulsory under EU law. She does actually know about this flaw in her little plan, because it says so in the full report. She just accidentally forgot to mention it in the press release, I suppose. 

What is it about the name "Prescott"?

Lots of traffic coming my way as a result of the "E-day" post. Welcome to everyone who's visiting here for the first time.

While researching the background to E-day, I came across a curious fact: there are lots of Matt Prescotts involved in greenish politics.

We've already met Matt Prescott, PhD (Oxon) in Ecology, head of Ban the Bulb, Planet Relief and E-Day.

Then there's Matt Prescott who runs Carbon Limited, a project trying to make Carbon Communism Personal Carbon Allowances a workable idea. 

And there's a third Matt Prescott who is a spokesman for PETA.

As far as I can tell, these are all entirely different people, but they're all involved in enviroloony causes. 

But I suppose I might go off the rails too, if I shared a name with our former Deputy Prime Minister. 

Environmentalists trashing the environment 3

They're coming thick and fast now.

The government's going to ban plastic bags, despite its own advisers telling it that this will make the situation worse!

Idiots. 

Unaccountable

Matthew Parris says that holding Gorbals Mick (I thought he was a Jock?) accountable is not the job of the public or the media but of MPs.

I don't think the question of whether Mr Speaker Martin should resign is any business of mine, or yours, or the British media's, or the British public's. I think it's for sitting MPs, and for Mr Martin himself, to consider and decide. And in making that decision I doubt that he or they should take much notice of any of us.

Now this is all very well, but we have also been told in recent days that no sitting MP will risk criticising the speaker for fear of never being called to speak again. All we've had is a chorus of Labour MPs cheering him to the rafters and making vague claims of snobbery.

This one-sidedness is so pronounced, it completely undermines the idea that MPs can hold the speaker to account. So it's pretty much inevitable that the press and the blogs are going to have to do the work for them.

Mind you, if the idea of recall referendums ever takes off, then we might have real public accountability.  

Different priorities

Two news stories from recent days could be seen as highlighting a different sense of priorities among the two main parties:

Conservative MPs propose recall motions against errant MPs

Labour (and one Lib(?)Dem) MPs sign early day motion praising Fidel Castro

I suppose we should be grateful that some of our elected representatives are still trying. 

Environmentalists trashing the environment (again)

The greatest threat to endangered whooping cranes? Environmentalists.

(H/T ASI) 

Edward III and the Black Prince

Look, I'm sorry the Frenchies found out you were here, but you're now a marked man...

Le plonker le plus grand

This is wonderful - funniest green since Swampy.

The fallacy of composition

Lord Mancroft has said that he was appalled by the standards of nursing he received from the NHS:

Lord Mancroft claimed that it was “a miracle” that he was still alive after his experience of filthy wards and “slipshod and lazy” nurses when he was admitted to an NHS hospital in the West Country, believed to be the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

On occasions like this, the standard defence is to adopt the fallacy of composition and pretend that the criticism was being made of the whole industry rather than just particular members of it.

Mr Cameron was swift to act. Aides said he was furious and has asked Lord Strathclyde to rebuke Lord Mancroft. His views were not shared by the Conservative Party, which knew that nurses did a fantastic job, often in difficult circumstances, a spokesman said.

Dave has clearly picked up a lot from studying Labour's modus operandi, but the public sector can still teach him a thing or two. The nurses union claims that Mancroft was bitching about the whole of the female sex! 

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said Lord Mancroft’s comments were “grossly unfair on nurses across the UK” and amounted to a “sexist insult about the behaviour of British women.”

Fallacious argument aside, you would have thought they might actually investigate his claims first, before condemning him. It's not as if he's the first person to say things like this about NHS hospitals, and he'll not be the last either. Longrider Peter Risdonhas his own NHS horror story to relate.

The NHS will never get better if we're not allowed to criticise it. 

John Palmer

A europolicywonk called John Palmer is congratulating the EU on reforming the Common Agricultural Policy in order to boost food production.

Although governments have been reluctant to talk publicly about the looming crisis of food inflation and outright food shortages, the European commission has proved quick to make drastic changes in the management of the common agricultural policy (CAP).

It does strike me as a bit sad that when the EU fails to act like a bunch of drunken imbeciles, it's presented as a policy triumph.

Planet Relief redux

Remember the BBC's Planet Relief? 24 hours of being lectured by holier-than-thou greens? It was pulled from the schedules a year into the project, when BBC planners got cold feet. They reckoned their viewers might not be too pleased at having naked propaganda shoved down their throats.

I came across some interesting developments related to this project the other day. It's a bit involved, but stick with me.

Planet Relief was the brainchild of an environmentalist called Matt Prescott. Now it's interesting in itself that an environmental campaigner appears to have been appointed to head a very large BBC project. Still more surprising is the fact that he was barely out of University when appointed to head it up.

The justification for the licence fee has always been that the BBC is objective and impartial, and yet here we have Mr Prescott brought in from outside, apparently to use public resources to promote his own (and presumably the BBC's) political views.

Now perhaps I'm leaping to conclusions. Perhaps Mr Prescott has TV experience, as well as being an environmental campaigner. Perhaps his objectivity and is unimpeachable. Let's see.

So what do we know about Matt Prescott?

His Blogger profile can be seen here. He is nothing if not prolific, with fully eleven blogs associated with him. He has a PhD in zoology from Oxford, and organised the Oxford Earth Summit. In 2005 he launched a campaign to ban incandescent bulbs and since graduating has worked for:

• Prof. Norman Myers (a British environmentalist),
• Sir Crispin Tickell,(a British diplomat, environmentalist and academic)
• Roger Harrabin,(BBC environment)
  
• George Monbiot, (journalist and environmentalist)
  
• Jon Plowman (Head of BBC comedy)
  
• Glenwyn Benson (Controller BBC knowledge)

Now an environmentalist working for environmentalists isn't really news, but working for the head of BBC comedy? That's a bit odd isn't it?

According to this article by Prescott himself, he was introduced to Plowman by Roger Harrabin and the Open University's Joe Smith in Cambridge "a couple of years ago". This puts it in 2006.

Now Cambridge, Roger Harrabin, and Joe Smith rang a bell with me. Harrabin and Smith run something called the Cambridge Environment and Media Forum (CEMP) which I've blogged about previously. It's funded by the BBC and is alleged to look at ways of improving reporting of environmental stories. There are some details of some of the seminars they have organised online. By looking at the lists of attendees it appears that the meeting of Prescott and Plowman may have taken place at the seminar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge on September 14th and 15th 2006, the purpose of which was apparently to look at how non-factual program makers might include environmental and development issues in their storylines. It's worth a look at the names of those involved which reads like a list of the movers and shakers in the upper echelons of the Beeb.

We should first stand back and wonder how a fresh-faced PhD, not long out of Oxford, manages to move so rapidly through the ranks at the BBC. No sooner is he in the door than he is hob-nobbing some of the most powerful people in the BBC. But not only that, but he has also landed himself a major project to co-ordinate. It's pretty impressive stuff.

We might also wonder how  Mr Prescott came to work at the BBC. Was he an employee or a consultant? If the former, was the position advertised openly, and if the latter, what particular expertise was Prescott supposed to bring in order to justify his retention.

Why, we wonder, did the allegedly objective BBC journalist Roger Harrabin invite this rather wet-behind-the-ears environmentalist to meet such important people?

Reasons for the invitation aside, the result seems to have been that Plowman, the head of BBC comedy, got right behind the Planet Relief idea. He was still supportive after it was cancelled. In Prescott's words:

Jon did his best for Planet Relief within the BBC and stuck by me after his baby was cancelled.

Prescott is also clear that Harrabin and his CEMP colleague Joe Smith (who, we note in passing, is also a non-political public servant and who also has a startling sparse publication record, according to his webpage) were also instrumental in getting the Planet Relief project off the ground:

Joe Smith (Open University) and Roger Harrabin (BBC News) [...] also played a crucial role in helping to get things off the ground a couple of years ago.

After Planet Relief was pulled, Prescott went back to campaigning - as noted above, he had launched a campaign to ban incandescent bulbs in 2005. The BBC obligingly gave him a slot on their website to promote his views, here and another one here.

Roll forward to today, and Matt's latest wheeze is E-day. This time, we are all going to switch off lights for a day and the planet will be saved. All the usual suspects are involved: Jon Plowman is on the steering committee, and among the list of people thanked for help and support are Roger Harrabin and the following BBC staff:

• Andrew Lane (BBC Weather)
• Andrew Zincke (BBC Worldwide)
• David Shukman (BBC)
• Jonathan Harvey (BBC)
• Kate Forbes (BBC)
• Mark Damazer (BBC Radio 4)
• Mark Kinver (BBC)
• Peter Barron (BBC)
• Richard Black (BBC)
• Sarah Mukherjee (BBC)
• Sophie Stafford (BBC Wildlife Magazine)
• Will Watt (BBC Worldwide)
  

In addition, occasional BBC correspondent Alex Kirby seems to be heavily involved. 

Now, were we especially naive, we might think that all these BBC staff were giving their spare time to support Mr Prescott's campaign. But thirteen people, representing all the major arms of the BBC, is strongly suggestive that the  Corporation is giving unofficial support to this campaign which is nothing if not political. Essentially, they've tried to resurrect Planet Relief on the quiet. They've done their bit puffing up E-day, with an online article from Richard Black at the start of the month and another today. They seem to be almost the only MSM outlet which seems to think E-day is news.

So where is all this heading? I don't really know, but it just doesn't look right to me. It kind of looks as if the BBC is allowing itself to be used once again as a vehicle for environmentalist propaganda.

Just another reason to privatise it. 

 Update:

Matt Sinclair is following E-day's progress. So far energy consumption is above normal. Even the kindest heart would find it hard not to snigger. 

Why you should not buy newspapers or watch TV news

The reason is that they only tell you what they think you should hear.

Professor Philip Stott links to Melanie Phillips' round up of the recent cold weather around the globe. Pretty much all of it has gone unreported elsewhere. 

Another global warming sceptic

Dr Joanne Simpson is a very important climatologist. See for example this summary of her career:

In 1983, the American Meteorological Society bestowed on her its highest honor "the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Award" and then named her president a few years later, a notable achievement given the fact that no other woman had ever won the job. NASA, too, has weighed in with many awards and commendations, including its coveted Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award.

Having recently retired, she has announced that she is rather sceptical of the case for catastrophic global warming.

[T]he main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system. We only need to watch the weather forecasts.

It is an indictment of the state of fear in climatology that she hasn't felt able to speak out before.