Bishop Hill Jan 26, 2009 Climate The Greenland ice sheet melt was meant to be evidence of an imminent global warming Armageddon. Just as well that it has stopped then.
There's also been snow in the United Arab Emirates.
Bishop Hill Jan 25, 2009 Corruption Labour The news that a bunch of Labour peers have (allegedly) been tarting themselves about on their purported ability to get legislation changed for their "clients" has given the week's news a delicious fin-de-siecle sense of grubbiness and corruption.
One of the commenters at the relevant post at Labour Home helpfully points out that one of the alleged culprits has previous form:
Typical that Lord Taylor of Blackburn is one of them. He's a central character in the saga of Jack Straw's embarassment by the Committee on Standards and Privileges. It was Lord Taylor of Blackburn who "invited" U.S. company Canatxx, with no previous connection to Blackpool, to make the £3,000 "a non-political donation" to Jack Straw's 25th anniversary party that was never declared. A bit before Canatxx made a planning application to Lancashire County Council to to store gas in salt caverns. Lord Taylor was a paid consultant for Canatxx.
Oh, and Lord Taylor of Blackburn forgot to declare an interest when asking a supplementary question about gas storage. Canatxx's business is gas storage. He made an apology later.
Bishop Hill Jan 25, 2009 Fake charities Still reeling slightly from the shock of reading the Work Foundation's recent accounts, I decided to take a look at an older set, just to get a feel for how long this has been going on.
The earliest year available from the Charity Commission is 2003. Willie Hutton was still in charge back then, and the pattern in the Foundation's activities was rather similar too. For instance, Willie H was identified as the top-paid director by name back then, taking £140k per annum. Nice work if you can get it. Back in 2002 (i.e. the comparative year) the Foundation had over 200 employees, so the salary is slightly more justifiable than the rather larger sum he gets paid for overseeing the Foundation's current 60 staff. It still strikes me as an amazing amount for the head of a small charity to be paid though.
Looking back to the prior year comparatives, it appears that in 2002 the Foundation sold a training business and its associated publishing operation (to Capita - nice to keep these things in the family), making a cool £20m gain in the process. Just as well with a £14m deficit on the pension scheme, I suppose.
It's interesting to compare the balance sheet total for 2002 to the most recent date. In that time, the assets of the Foundation have shrunk by about £10m, and of course it would have been even worse if it were not for the gain on selling their headquarters.
It looks to me like the Trustees need to get a grip.
Bishop Hill Jan 25, 2009 Fake charities This one is astonishing: the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds received £19 million in government money in 2008.
Bishop Hill Jan 25, 2009 Crime Much harmless fun is to be had at the expense of global warming promoters at Climate Audit (a non-technical post, accessible to everyone).
Bishop Hill Jan 25, 2009 Education Hot on the heels of their last inquiry into Home Education, the government are launched another. Home Educators are not amused.
Education Otherwise and home educating families have contributed to three
major consultations on the guidance to local authorities since 2005. The latest
guidance was issued in autumn 2007.
I have this pet theory that much of the apparent campaign against the citizen is actually just bureaucracy run amok. This looks like more of the same.
Bishop Hill Jan 25, 2009 Fake charities I was looking at the accounts of the charity run by Will Hutton, the Work Foundation. I wanted to see if I could figure out just how much of their income was generated from the taxpayer, assuming of course that the answer was going to be "most of it" and I could then submit it to Fake Charities. Apart from a general impression that the answer is somewhere in the vicinity of "a very large proportion" I didn't get very far, but what I did find out was rather more interesting. Here's an extract from the Employees note to the accounts for 2007, which are the most recent available (the numbers in blue are my calculations, the rest is derived from the Foundation's accounts).
The Foundation has no less than seventeen people paid over £60k and it has five directors who are all paid over £100k by the looks of it. This looks to me like an awful lot of chiefs for an organisation which employs only 61 people. The Work Foundation studies the future of work amongst other things, and I can tell you that the future is looking pretty rosy, because Willy H is demonstrating loud and clear that in years to come, everyone is going to be a fat-cat.
And I can tell you also that just because there are going to be a lot of fat-cats doesn't mean that we are not all going to have the fat-cat salary to match. Between them, the chiefs at the Work Foundation manage to consume something of the order of £1.5 million of this charity's assets in salaries alone! The highest paid director (presumably Willie H himself, him being CEO) has had a pay rise of the order of 20% too! On top of that, there was £0.8m put in to the pension scheme in 2007 and £1.4m in 2006 and 2005.
Can the Foundation afford this largesse? Well, not entirely is the answer. In fact there was a cash outflow on their main operations of nearly £3 million in 2006 and another £2m million-odd in 2007. There was also a massive deficit on the pension fund: the deficit was £16m on a fund worth just £12m. This was caused, it seems, by automatically uplifting pension values by 5% a year ever year in the past. You would have thought that with all those directors, one of them might have pointed out that this was probably unsustainable. They finally put a stop to this bonanza in 2006.
With their, ahem, charitable activities haemorrhaging cash and their salaries and pensions troughs swallowing it at a prodigious rate too, they've had to take drastic action and have flogged off their swanky building on London's Carlton Terrace for £4m. They've also liquidated investments at a tremendous rate, with £1.6m going in 2007 and £3m in 2006.
But the really interesting take on this is when you work out how much of the Foundation's income is going on salaries and pensions. In cash terms it looks something like this:
I'm pretty staggered by this. The overwhelming impression is of the assets of the Foundation disappearing into the pockets of its employees.
Now someone wanting to defend this might point out that these are highly qualified people providing advice and research to public and private sector corporations. That's what they do - it's right there in the accounts. But when you think about it, if these people are genuinely doing this high powered consultancy and need to be paid accordingly then the Work Foundation is a business and needs to be structured and taxed accordingly.
Definitely a fake charity. But not for the usual reasons.
Bishop Hill
Just when you think there's nothing more to say, you stumble across some more amazing details. Follow-up post here.
Bishop Hill Jan 24, 2009 BBC There's a lot of todo about the BBC's backing off from the idea of holding a fundraising appeal for Gaza. Liberal Conspiracy objects, as does Iain Dale. David Vance reckons it's all done for show anyway.The Beeb's big boss, Mark Thompson, spins the rather unconvincing line that it's because they can't be sure the aid can actually be delivered on the ground. Pull the other one Mark.
It looks to me as if people are missing a trick here. The BBC's BBC's decision has been complicated hugely by the imminent publishing of the judgement by the House of Lords' on the Balen Report into an alleged lack of even-handedness in the corporation's reporting of the conflict in the Middle East over the years. If, as is widely expected, the Lords rule that editorial documents are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act's exemption for data held for journalistic purposes, they will be forced to publish the Balen report in fairly short order. If, as is also expected, the Balen report documents the reality of a systematic BBC bias against Israel, then the implications for the Beeb will be explosive, and it is likely that heads would have to roll.
You can imagine how much worse it will be for the top brass if the BBC has just days before run a fundraising appeal for the people in Gaza.
It may even be that the BBC has had some inkling of the contents of the Lords' judgement and that their behaviour now is actually a case of creating some form of defence - "Look at all the criticism we took for not doing a Gaza appeal! Biased? Us?"
Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.
Bishop Hill Jan 23, 2009 Fake charities There are a few new fake charities on at DK's new site. I've added one or two and so have a few others - I hope progress continues in this vein because it's an interesting and rather important project IMHO.
I notice that one of the charities (or perhaps that should be "charities") on the site has objected to their inclusion. I don't know anything about the rights and wrongs of the particular case of the Woodland Trust, but it does at least show that people are noticing and are embarrassed to be included.
Progress.
Bishop Hill Jan 23, 2009 Quotes The noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, who I am delighted is now a Member of our House, adds greatly to the gaiety of nations wherever he goes.
Nigel Lawson in Hansard
Bishop Hill Jan 23, 2009 Labour 
Tractor Stats is a new site for me - a picture blog in fact. Most amusant.
Bishop Hill Jan 23, 2009 Climate A couple of days ago the news feeds were full of a story that Antarctica was warming up, overturning earlier views that it was cooling down - an embarrassing flaw in the global warming case. Now NASA scientist Ross Hays, who works in Antartica, has spoken out against the paper.
With statistics you can make numbers go to almost any conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for media coverage.
Bishop Hill Jan 23, 2009 Economics Jim Lindgren, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, suggests that the American banks hold a yardsale (that's something like a car boot sale, I imagine) to liquidate some of their assets. That makes perfect sense, and I'm sure British banks should follow suit.
But why stop there? Surely the government should not start holding a carboot sale to get rid of its assets and fill the budgetary holes left by its mismanagement of the economy. Yup, it's privatisation again. Now. Where could we start. Schools....hospitals...the BBC...Channel 4. That should help.
Any other suggestions?
I've how much these would raise in the marketplace, but it must be quite a lot, mustn't it. Your estimates are also welcome.
Bishop Hill Jan 22, 2009 Civil liberties Email in from NO2ID. The latest assault on civil liberties comes from the truly outrageous attempt to insert "Information Sharing Orders" into the Coroners & Justice Bill. These Orders would permit ministers to alter any act of Parliament by decree in order to allow any information about you to be used anywhere they liked.
I do sometimes wonder if this is going to turn violent.
In the meantime, get writing. Here's what you need to do:
In your own words, please ask your MP to read Part 8 (clauses 151 -
154) of the Coroners and Justice Bill, and to oppose the massive enabling powers in the "Information sharing" clause. The Bill is due its Second Reading in the Commons on 26th January 2009.
Request them to demand the clause be given proper Parliamentary scrutiny. This is something that will affect every single one of their constituents, unlike the rest of the Bill. There is a grave danger that the government will set a timetable that will cut off debate before these proposals - which are at the end of the Bill - are discussed.
http://www.WriteToThem.com is the tool you will need.
