Can We Now Drop the ID Cards Lunacy Once And For All?

According to the TeleBarclaygraph this morning, Chancellor of the Exchequer Fiscally Incontinent & Incompetent Glove-Puppet-In-Chief Alistair Darling has dropped a strong hint that the national ID cards proposal is going to be dropped.

Which is excellent news, if true, although, as quickly picked up by several UK libertarian bloggers, the key issue here surely is not so much the "...biometric passports can do the same job..." issue, as the continuation of the all-encompassing state database comprising the iniquitous National Identity Register.

With the need now to re-cast next year's budget expenses downwards in the wake of Deputy Sean Power's successful heading off of more taxes on Middle Jersey, perhaps the Treasury Minister could take the opportunity to pronounce the authoritarian and illiberal idea of any ID card system or centralised identity database for Jersey to be totally and absolutely dead for any time in the foreseeable future.

Confirmation please, Minister.

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Internet Journalism, New Media, and Political Reporting

Challenging the Mainstream Media’s Self-Assumed Monopoly

Clameur de Haro's fellow-blogger Jersey 24/7 commented recently on the threat which the traditional press feels is posed generally by the growth in internet journalism, and particularly, the blogosphere: and J-24/7 quite correctly links this to the concerns of Jersey’s political bloggers that the local “accredited” press are trying to stifle the development of the medium.

As political bloggers we have a great opportunity to put our collective case across at the moment, because after the recent kerfuffle about rights of access for the reporting (and in particular, the filming) of Scrutiny hearings, the Media Working Party set up under the chairmanship of Senator Ben Shenton has issued a call for evidence (“Publicising the States and Scrutiny”). In particular it asks -

Do you have an opinion on the use of blog sites?

Who do you believe to be ‘the media’?

and its terms of reference require it, after considering “…..the distinction, if any, between ‘bloggers’ and the ‘official’ press…”, to come to a definition of “the media”.

Clameur de Haro’s view is that no coherent definition of the media in 2010 can possibly exclude the political blogosphere: and that regular local political bloggers have just as much right as the MSM to attend and report events like Scrutiny hearings, should receive formal press accreditation to do so, and should be included in the definition of “the media”.

There’s very little doubt that the MSM in general and the Dead Tree Press in particular see the growth of the local political blogosphere as an unwelcome development at best and a threat at worst, and would like to negate it or marginalise it so as to protect its near-monopoly of political reporting and comment. The Jersey Evening [sic] Post kicked off its campaign of objection - in what it presumably thought was a subtle way - with Christine Herbert’s op-ed piece in last Saturday’s edition (still not posted online yet, incidentally – now there’s web-savvy for you….).

Writing about blogs, Ms Herbert professed herself to be “….a firm believer in the freedom of speech – and in the freedom of information” – but here comes the qualification “…when it is fair and in the public interest”. That’s exactly the point, Ms Herbert, which you signally didn’t go on to address. Before the development of internet journalism, it was the MSM which exclusively determined what was “fair” or “in the public interest” and either allowed or denied the public access to it: the MSM no longer has that monopoly, and like all monopolists whose position is challenged, it doesn’t like it.

She went on to say “Sadly, blogs in general are often little more than a licence to bully and victimise without fear of retribution”. In some cases that’s correct, but as Mr David Rotherham pointed out in a splendid riposte a couple of days later (curiously, also not viewable online), many concern themselves with the same kind of issues and material as the Dead Tree Press (sometimes rather more analytically), and no-one is forced to read a bad blog among the many alternatives available.

Ms Herbert continued “The information contained on the internet is often untruthful and lacks the kind of rigour and responsibility that more formal forms of communication have been subject to for many years”. Well, that’s sometimes true – but just a few lines above her blogging-related comments, when talking about the finance industry’s marketing initiatives in the Middle East, Ms Herbert referred overwhelmingly to Dubai, and used the phrase “families who had made their money from the liquid gold known as oil”. CdeH hopes that she has by now had it pointed out to her that Dubai has virtually no oil of its own, and that most of the UAE’s oil reserves are those of Abu Dhabi – as most bloggers of CdeH’s acquaintance well know. Not an especially momentous error, perhaps, and it doesn’t destroy the sense of the piece, but it shows that lack of journalistic rigour isn’t by any means exclusive to specifically internet journalism.

But the JEP isn’t alone: dislike of the accelerating development of new political media runs across most of the MSM, which increasingly floats reasons of public propriety as an unconvincing camouflage for its innate protectionism.

Mr Peter Wilby, the former editor of the New Statesman, referring to MEP Daniel Hannan’s monstering of Gordon Brown in the European Parliament which became such a hit on YouTube, is on record as saying “The online success of Daniel Hannan’s speech…………proves what we knew: the internet lacks quality control”. Echoes of Ms Christine Herbert there, methinks.

To quote Daniel Hannan (and with a large H/T to J-24/7 for directing CdeH to it) in reply -

“Yup. That’s the thing about the internet: it turns the quality filters off. Until very recently, few of us could get political news direct from source. It had to be interpreted for us by a BBC man with a microphone or a newspaper’s political correspondent. Now, though, people can make their own minds up. The message has been disintermediated. What Mr Wilby seems to mean when he complains that the internet “lacks quality control” is not that my speech was ungrammatical or shoddily constructed, but that its content was disagreeable. The quality filters he evidently has in mind would screen out points of view that he considers unacceptable”.

Or to quote Douglas Carswell MP -

“….the web should put a smile on our face – it provided the means to change. The web will do to the princely quangocrats and the priesthood of professional politicians who preside over us what the printing press did to their forebears. It’ll smash concentrations of power in our political system – just as it’s doing in retail and the media. Barriers to entry in politics will go. Clear distinctions between amateur and professional will blur. A few years ago, (Polly) Toynbee and co formed an unchallenged aristocracy of commentators. Today, often to their consternation, they have to keep up with the likes of Guido Fawkes and a democratised commentariat.”

Messrs Hannan and Carswell express the MSM’s (and the JEP’s) fears in a nutshell, Clameur de Haro suspects. The fundamental point – and benefit - of internet journalism is precisely, as Mr Hannan puts it, that it does disintermediate the message: so that the MSM is no longer the only interpreter, the only route and the only filter through which the public has to accept its news and comment without an alternative source.

So the genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and the game and its rules have irrevocably changed. And we’re starting to see instances of governments and organisations admitting this fact, recognising that the definition of “the media” has broken open and widened for all time, accepting that it’s better to acknowledge and provide for this rather than try and ignore it or thwart it, and changing their media practices to acknowledge the role and reach of the new, “social” media.

As recently as 16 November, for example, the UK announced a review of the government briefing / parliamentary lobby system to end the predominance of Dead Tree Press journalists in the lobby and accommodate in future all forms of new media in briefings about government and parliamentary business. And on 07 December, NATO held its first ever briefing for political bloggers, inviting several authors from the UK political blogosphere to NATO HQ in Brussels for a day-long briefing with senior personnel, mostly about Afghanistan.

Jersey’s government needs to make sure that it’s not left behind the curve on this subject, by resisting the likely blandishments and objections from the MSM and embracing both the distribution and reporting possibilities that Jersey’s new media and its practitioners open up.

Admitting local political bloggers to the hitherto closely-guarded and jealously-protected ranks of the accredited media is vital to increased transparency (which politicians are fond of talking about), because it enables the message to be taken directly to the electorate without it being subject to the necessarily one-dimensional filter of the monopoly MSM’s interpretation of it. CdeH suspects, for example, that two or three local bloggers, irrespective of their individual political leanings, might well make a considerably better fist of reporting Scrutiny hearings and the like than JEP reporters subjected to firstly, space constraints imposed by the need to sell advertising space and secondly the whims and prejudices of the sub-editor.

So Clameur de Haro is inclined to spend a little time during those dog days between Christmas and New Year preparing a submission to the Media Working Party arguing strongly for the local blogosphere to be regarded unequivocally as an integral part of the media and accredited as such, with all the privileges – and responsibilities – of access which that entails. Comments, ideas, and contributions from fellow-bloggers welcome.

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The Inconvenient Truths About “An Inconvenient Truth”

Hearty congratulations and support from Clameur de Haro to Deputy Phil Rondel, who in the States last Tuesday warned the increasingly supine Minister for Education Sport & Culture, James Reed, that “An Inconvenient Truth”, that provenly inaccurate, meretricious farrago of cod science produced by that execrable peddler of false green eco-wackery propaganda Al Gore, should not be shown in Jersey schools.

Mr Rondel’s reported comment about the judicial objections to its showing in UK schools, while correct, doesn’t go halfway towards describing the full extent of the criticism heaped on it from the Bench.

In 2007, Mr Justice Burton, sitting in the Administrative Division of the High Court, ruled that showing the film, without both correction of its errors and presentation of the alternative hypothesis, breached the 1996 Education Act and constituted political indoctrination. Not only did nine inaccuracies specifically have to be drawn to the attention of school audiences, but more importantly, not all of the film’s inaccuracies were considered, as Burton J requested only a sample for the purposes of considering the case.

Clameur de Haro’s readers can see here the summary of the judgement, and the links to the ancillary submissions. They really should be read, in full, to derive a complete picture of the extent of the errors and fallacies peddled as incontrovertible truth.

Since that time, even more, and serious, flaws, both scientific and in biased selectivity of data, have come to light. To recount just a few -

Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph, on which Gore relied so much, was confirmed and subsequently accepted even by the IPCC as being a fraud: firstly omitting, then dramatically under-representing the Mediaeval Warming Period, and secondly being based on a computer algorithm which generated the desired headline-grabbing hockey stick result no matter what data was fed into the algorithm.

In claiming far more frequent use of the Thames Flood Barrier and increased flooding on the East Coast of England (due, naturally, to global warming [sic]), Gore presented flood instance statistics going back to 1930. Highly selective, and suspiciously so – had he gone back just two years earlier, to 1928, he would have had to include the worst Thames flood on record, which occurred during a period of cooling temperatures, and he neglected to mention that the East Coast of England has been geologically sinking at the rate of several inches a year, both from general slow subsidence and the extraction of water from naturally-formed underground reservoirs.

His apocalyptic predictions for the melting of the entire Antarctic ice sheet turned out to have been predicated only on data for the c.7% of the entire Antarctic land mass constituted by the Antarctic Peninsula, but which Gore then extrapolated to apply to the whole. The Antarctic Peninsula is now considered to merit a different climate classification from the rest of the continent under the Köppen climate classification system, due to the influence which the Antarctic Circumpolar Current has on it, while the main ice sheet of the entire Antarctic Continent, accounting for something in excess of 80% of all the world’s ice, is both thickening and cooling.

The best summary of all the main scientific errors and all the flawed conclusions can be found in this paper, entitled “35 Inconvenient Truths – The Errors in Al Gore’s Movie” prepared for the Science and Public Policy Institute. It too should also be read, in full, by anyone with even the remotest connection to the possibility that Gore’s discredited fallacy-fest should be foisted on to impressionable young minds as though it was established and undisputed fact, and without any qualification.

According to the Jersey Evening [sic] Post’s report, Mr Reed responded with nothing more than a typically weasel-worded reply to the effect that he would pass on Mr Rondel’s concerns to his department.

That is just not good enough. Mr Reed is, whether he likes it or not, the repository of both a statutory duty and a moral responsibility to deliver an education system to the Island’s children free from the blatantly biased and inaccurate propaganda of the type of which Gore’s film is such a baleful example. And with the scandal of Climategate and the revelations of data manipulation and concealment in the Climate Research Unit currently breaking all around us (has he not heard of this?), for him not to undertake to give it his urgent personal attention and ensure that the film is not shown in schools without further reference back, is little short of a grave dereliction of duty.

At one time Clameur de Haro was disposed to think quite favourably of Mr Reed, but no more. Recent events, in particular his reactions to the suspensions/discipline issue, his denial of falling primary school standards, and his falling in with the majority criminality-excusing view on the withdrawal of anonymity from young violent offenders, give the distinct impression of a minister who has gone native and become house-trained, and a minister who has quite visibly been captured by the triumvirate of producer interests which dominate the education industry – his department’s civil servants, the teaching unions, and the fashionable educational theorists - so his reaction is, regrettably, not surprising. He is beginning to look ineffective, and out of his depth.

So – once again – plaudits to Deputy Rondel for raising this issue: Clameur de Haro pleads with him not to let the matter rest.

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Wimberley Runs Up The Red Flag

Clameur de Haro was not remotely surprised to see the traditional banner of redistributive tax-and-spend socialism unequivocally hoisted to the Daniel Wimberley masthead this week. In his letter on Tuesday to the Jersey Evening [sic] Post about the Angry Men, Mr Wimberley rehearsed all the predictable mantras associated with the philosophy.

We had, most notably, the attempted excoriation of what he terms as the low-tax, low-spend ideology implemented over the past three decades, and which according to him must be resisted. Apart from providing an explicit statement of his predatory stance on public sector finances, it is also less than accurate.

Does Mr Wimberley really believe that we have had a low-spend government? If only we had been so blessed - we might not be in the position that we now are. The problems we face at present are in very great measure due to the runaway, uncontrolled public spending and public sector growth that we have seen in the last ten years, and the inability or unwillingness of most politicians to tackle it.

He then follows the usual scare tactics of the political left by implying that the Angry Men favour curtailing public expenditure by abandoning respite care for the disabled, the Town Park, and the problems of Bellozanne, and essential infrastructure maintenance. But nowhere in Mr Trower’s conversation with the JEP’s Ben Queree is any of this even hinted at.

What Mr Trower and his colleagues quite rightly protest against is the sheer size, reach, dubious utility and uncontrolled expense of much of the bureaucratic empire, allied to inadequate financial and budgetary discipline – and the inclination to tax in order to fund it, rather than address the underlying problem. Remember the contract for the incinerator, Mr Wimberley? Advocates of a smaller, leaner, less activist but more efficient government have been saying for years that the public sector does too much that is unnecessary, and does it at far greater cost than necessary.

Mr Wimberley appears to recoil in horror that States’ departments were forced to make efficiency savings in order to limit the necessity for taxation increases. Obviously he adheres to the collectivist assumption that public spending is somehow a good in itself, and finds the notion that individuals should be able to retain more of their own money as heresy.

He needs to be reminded that the state, and the public sector, has no resources of its own other than what it confiscates from individuals and firms by way of taxation. As Ludwig Von Mises put it -

“At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production - that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects - and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes.

This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending.

As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens - and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.”

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Don’t Put Your Data With The State, Mrs Worthington!

Several more examples of firstly, the way in which the authoritarian state continues to acquire data of questionable legality on law-abiding citizens, and secondly, a cavalier attitude by corporates and public sector bodies alike to data protection, and the security and privacy of individuals’ personal data, came to Clameur de Haro’s attention in the past week.

In the financial world, Zurich Insurance finally admitted losing the personal account details for over half a million people, more than a year ago. The personal details of no fewer than 51, 000 British customers were among data backed up on a tape which was on its way to a South African data storage centre when it was lost in August 2008.

That’s bad enough, but at least people can choose to place their business with an alternative provider and not with Zurich if they feel its custodianship of their personal details is negligent or deficient. Unfortunately no such choice arises in the case of data required to be held by public sector or government agencies. 

The Home Office, in a written answer to a Parliamentary question, admitted that the estimated number of people whose DNA profile is stored by the government has, for the first time, gone through 5m, with some 5,094,568 individuals now thought to be represented on the National DNA Database: on an estimated replication rate of about 13.8 per cent, this means that the number of actual DNA profiles is 5,910,172 - about one for every ten people in Britain.

This unrestricted growth of what is, on a per capita basis, the world's largest repository of human DNA information has continued despite the New Labour regime’s defeat at the hands of the European Court of Human Rights last December, when the ECHR ruled that the policy of retaining – permanently - the DNA profile of every single person ever even arrested (not charged or convicted) in relation to any offence, no matter how comparatively trivial, was manifestly illegal. So far the New Labour regime has taken no action to comply with the ruling.

The UK Information Commissioner revealed (tellingly, only as a result of a demand under Freedom of Information legislation) that there are more data loss reports being submitted to him from companies and governments than ever before – 356 for the period November 2008 to September 2009, compared with 190 in the equivalent period in the previous year. The biggest cause of loss, in 198 incidents, was lost or stolen hardware, usually laptops and memory sticks, while 78 were due to data disclosed in error, typically discs or memory sticks being mis-addressed.

The most recent figures released by the Commissioner in normal course (October 2008) also showed that, of 277 incidents since HMRC lost the entire UK child benefit recipients database a year earlier, no fewer than 197 came from the public sector.

Then it emerged that the UK's Rural Payments Agency (RPA), five months ago, lost tapes which contained the payment details of more than 100,000 farmers in the UK. The agency told DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), but DEFRA told nobody else, and certainly not the farmers affected.

DEFRA appears to be trying to finger IBM for the loss. Apparently, 39 backup tapes were transferred by the RPA from its Reading offices to Newcastle, following which the tapes then “went missing”: 37 were subsequently found, but not the other two. DEFRA is alleging that the tapes were simply placed on the wrong shelf by the IBM staff who actually operate the RPA data centre in Newcastle.

The last definite record of the tapes' existence was in June 2008: it was only in May 2009, according to the report seen by CdeH, that IBM staff realised the tapes were missing and reported the loss to the RPA, who then told DEFRA. DEFRA has suggested “that it is likely that the lost tapes have been destroyed without anybody realising”. Vaporisation perhaps? Spontaneous self-combustion, maybe?

While bad, none of this should have been too serious in practical effect however, because the tapes and the data on them would have been encrypted and passworded, surely? Er………no, ‘fraid not, this is a government department we’re talking about, after all.

DEFRA has tried saying that all this doesn’t matter, because “extremely specialised equipment” would be needed to extract the data off the tapes. Clameur de Haro’s techie adviser, when asked about this, just laughed – seemingly, said “extremely specialised equipment” basically consists of a tape drive and backup software, the kind of equipment stocked by every tape-using IT store and freely purchasable over the internet.

This may all seem a bit remote from Jersey – but just how comfortable can we be that, somewhere within the vast edifice of personal data held by the States, there isn’t a similarly cavalier approach to data security, or worse, a similar debacle already perpetrated but being feverishly concealed from public view?

Meanwhile, the only sensible approach seems to be to give the state as little personal data as possible.

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Mr Rogers Has Ideas Above His Station

Clameur de Haro was, to say the least, unimpressed by the both astonishing and disturbing exhibition of presumption, going beyond the remit of one’s office, and straying into the political arena by a supposedly impartial public servant, provided recently by Mr John Rogers, the Acting Head of TTS.

According to this report from BBC Radio Jersey (not always, it has to be said, the most accurate of media outlets), Mr Rogers has taken it upon himself to pronounce it “essential” that an environmental tax is introduced, and has also proposed the levying of taxes on fuel or (did he mean “and”? wonders CdeH) vehicle emissions.

Mr Rogers is clearly a devoted adherent to the Green Religion and its CO2 articles of faith, at one philosophically with the enviro-authoritarians who wish to either police us or tax us into behaving as they think we should, rather than persuading us.

He should perhaps be reminded that a unified set of policy prescriptions stemming from all-pervading Greenism have not been explicitly approved by either the States or the general public, and that candidates who have stood for election on an overtly Greenist platform have been roundly rejected by the electorate.

Were he, moreover, to pause for a few moments’ reflection in his crusade to direct us all how to live our lives, two things might just occur to him. Firstly, that adding further costs to travel and distribution in a island with poor public transport is both ineffective, inflationary, and fiscally regressive: and secondly, that positive, market-driven incentives to recycle are much more desirable socially, and much more likely to succeed practically, than illiberal coercion. A system of tax relief vouchers for regular recycling, for example, might well be far more effective, and should not cost upwards of the quoted £0.5m (plus no doubt an additional clerical “resource”) to administer.

In recent exchanges with Clameur de Haro, one senior States’ Member has unequivocally asserted to him that, contrary to popular opinion and concern, public policy in these challenging times is not made by unelected and unaccountable civil servants, but is exclusively the preserve of ministers and politicians answerable to the electorate at the ballot-box. That this should be axiomatic especially in the case of new taxes, should go without saying.

Mr Rogers however appears not have heard this, or to have unilaterally decided that this need not and does not apply to him. Perhaps his political masters can enlighten him – and ensure that his Acting status remains precisely that, and that only.

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One (Authoritarian Socialist) World Government with the Copenhagen Climate Treaty

Clameur de Haro finds it utterly chilling to contemplate the all-pervading, cross-border, national sovereignty-disregarding, worldwide socialist regime that is going to be imposed on us, irrespective of whether we want it or not, and before we are very much older, if the treaty being hawked around for the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is actually signed.

A world government, massive redistribution of wealth, and supra-national enforcement regime are all openly and expressedly envisaged as the first three purposes of the draft treaty -

a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change, including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, (c) a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions

c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; (c) a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange

You can read the entire draft treaty here.

This became horrifyingly and undeniably clear in the presentation given last week to the Free Market Institute of Minnesota by Lord Christopher Moncton. In the 1990s, Monckton was one of the principal scientific advisers to the British Government, and he is acknowledged as a true scientific expert on the entire subject of so-called global warming and anthropogenic climate change – so much so that the high priests of the Green Religion, from that inveterate junk science peddlar Al Gore downwards, refuse to engage in debate with him. His presentation, amplified by a multitude of peer-reviewed data, charts, facts and figures, comprehensively demolished the warmist-alarmist case, but it’s the end of his presentation on the political run-up to Copenhagen which should shock anybody.

Watch it, and weep for our freedoms which the international Green-Left alliance are going to sign away.

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How Much Is Big Brother Watching The Class?

Did anyone else, wonders Clameur de Haro, catch a TV news snippet in the past couple of days about the extent to which the deployment of CCTV systems in schools is increasing dramatically?

The item featured the UK organisation Classwatch, which openly markets itself as “the answer to effective classroom management”.

What was shown was not just a passive function, i.e. creating a record to be available in the event of either a crime or serious misbehaviour occurring, but an active, virtually real-time, management of the tuition delivery, from a remote control centre. So that the remote controller was actually monitoring and correcting the teacher in her teaching technique, and directing what aspects of the subject material for that lesson she should be according greater or lesser emphasis.

Classwatch, moreover does not come cheap – a system for one single classroom costs about £50 per month on lease, and about £3000 to buy.

The whole item raised in CdeH’s mind some uncomfortable questions about invasion of privacy through excessive, pervasive surveillance, which all too often seems to be imposed on a unwilling, or even unaware population, whether students in school or shoppers in the precinct, either on spurious security grounds, or in an exaggerated response to a perceived threat. So perhaps Jersey’s Education Minister might be moved to answer the following -

To what extent, and in what areas, is CCTV used in Island schools? And if so -

Has its precise use been cleared by Data Protection? Have parents had all the intended uses explained to them, and been specifically to give consent to their children being under surveillance?

Is it used purely in a passive role, or actively to monitor and correct teacher and pupil behaviour / performance?

If so, for how long, and under what conditions of security, are the records retained?

Have the teaching unions been consulted and acquiesced in the remote monitoring of their performance?

And of course, what costs have been, and continue to be, incurred?

No-one, not least Clameur de Haro, would quarrel with the advisability of using CCTV to keep school perimeters secure. Too often, however, meeting a basic need like that provides a convenient cover for a grossly excessive and invasive extension of surveillance, to the ultimate detriment of all our freedoms.

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Plaudits for Environment and Data Protection!

Back in September, Clameur de Haro blogged about the further example of the intrusive state and its cavalier approach to data protection which seemed to be represented by Environment’s apparently selective targeting of oil consumers for an advisory about the steps necessary to prevent oil spillage pollution.

Data Protection actually responded to the blogpost very quickly, and (with due apologies for the time gap) CdeH is delighted to thank them and share the information they provided –

Distribution of the Oil Care Sticker

The Oil Care Group was established in 2008 in conjunction with Environmental Protection’s ‘Oil Care Campaign’. The group provides a forum for the oil industry (including the Island’s three fuel distributors and a number of boiler engineers) and Environmental Protection to discuss oil related issues and develop environmental best practice with regard to reducing the risk of oil pollution of the aquatic environment.

The Oil Care Sticker aims to provide simple and practical advice to domestic oil tank owners on how to stop oil pollution occurring and what to do if oil is lost to the environment. The Oil Care Group agreed that the best way to distribute the stickers to householders was through the fuel companies. Environmental Protection provided the oil companies with pre-packed sealed envelopes, which contained the sticker and an advisory letter from Environmental Protection. The letter was written on 26 June, 2008 and does not contain any address data. This method of distribution was decided to avoid data protection issues associated with the provision of personal information.

Oil Care stickers are only sent by the fuel companies to their customers if they do not have an oil sticker visible on their tank. To date approximately 10,000 stickers and advisory letters have been given to the fuel companies for distribution.

Distribution of an advisory letter providing information regarding single-skinned oil tank

Following a request from one of the fuel companies, a further advisory letter has been produced to advise people of the environmental risks of owning a single-skinned oil tank. The advisory letter is distributed at the fuel companies’ discretion and aims to support them in reducing the number of high risk oil tanks on the Island. The single skinned oil tank letter was written on 22 August, 2009, with approximately 50 letters provided to the fuel company.

So it appears that, in deciding the best method of distribution, both Environment and Data Protection had very much of the forefront of their minds the need for the protection of the oil distributors’ customers’ confidential personal data. A large Clameur de Haro plaudit to each of them.

A large raspberry, however, to those oil distributors who clearly didn’t feel it remotely necessary to reassure their customers that receiving a targeted advisory from Environment did not mean that confidential customer information had been disclosed.

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Into The Lion’s Den With Daniel

Reluctant though Clameur de Haro is to compete with Daniel in the confines of the Lion’s Den, on examining more closely Mr Wimberley’s comments on some of the Greenism issues aired in CdeH’s recent post On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………, it does strike CdeH that Mr Wimberley’s response is, interestingly, equally significant for what he doesn’t say, rather than what he does.

Looking at some of these in more detail (with the original post in blue and Mr Wimberley’s comments in green) -

"The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen" –

which uses exactly the same techniques as he accuses Nick Palmer of using.

"scare" –

errr well no, actually thousands of peer-reviewed articles written by scientists who are each of them would just love, wouldn't they, to become famous by DISPROVING or throwing at least a little spanner in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

"industry" –

Oh, since when were Exxon paying Hansen et al to do their work? On no, sorry, silly me, "industry" refers to the support given by those industrialists who cannot put the common interest above their own narrowly defined interest, to people who can be paid to spread doubt, the key weapon, (exactly as was done by the tobacco giants, which is why I am justified in talking about "industry" and about "weapon")

"Godfather" –

well we know who that was. . .

These are eminently fair points in response to normal journalistic knockabout, but Mr Wimberley did not attempt any rebuttal of CdeH’s salient point, which was the castigation of Hansen’s demand that any who merely question the claims of catastrophic warming should be put on trial.

Mr Wimberley did not rebut CdeH’s condemnation of the 2006 proposal of David Marxiband Millband that we should all be forced to carry a personal carbon footprint use swipe card.

He did not deny the proliferating use of CCTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits.

He did not question, or attempt to justify, the use of children by local councils for enviro-enforcement espionage.

He did not actually deny or rebut the similarities between current Greenist policy prescriptions and those of the 1970s hard-left marxists.

"authoritarian restriction on private behaviour "

= green taxation or taxes on carbon or a carbon rationing system. Perhaps Clameur thinks it is more rational to tax labour when what we have is a surplus of people needing things to do which are paid, and what we do not need is to consume more. I rather think that ANY tax is seen as some kind of restriction by CdeH

Indeed - but only “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. Any kind of tax, being the state’s self-legitimated appropriation to itself of a private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, is by definition a restriction on the citizen’s freedom to dispose his wealth as he sees fit. But that does not mean that CdeH advocates no taxation – on the contrary, he readily acknowledges that there are economic goods and public services needed by some or all of the population which only the state can or will fund, and that taxation is both an acceptable and the most practical way of raising the revenue needed.

The problems arise, and CdeH’s objections kick in, when states over-reach their remit or fail to control adequately their own spending, and use increased taxation as a prop – or when taxes are cloaked in a supposedly more acceptable colour conveniently to conceal their underlying purpose.

Mr Wimberley did not however deny the co-incidence of the impetus in vehement environmentalism with the collapse of communism.

He did not attempt to refute the explicit support of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity offshoot Green Left for an electoral pact with the Green Party.

"Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party," –

well no actually, there is no such thing. Poor old Clameur, it never does to check your facts, might get in the way of a nice sneer. The Green Party has a male speaker and a female speaker - or did until they voted recently to go for a single party leader, like the other parties, not sure what they have decided to call this person.

Again a fair point about the precise designation of Mr Wall – but what Mr Wimberley does not rebut is the more serious point about Mr Walls’ enthusiastic advocacy of growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement, in the interests of both.

Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.

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He Isn’t A Child – Name Him!

Like many readers will have been, Clameur de Haro was appalled to read in last night’s Jersey Evening [sic] Post of the litany of crimes committed by the 16-year old miscreant with a history of violence whom the Youth Court on Tuesday sentenced to a restorative sojourn of 9 months at La Moye – although with any time already served, and with no doubt sympathetic assessments from probation officers and social workers bending over backwards to be non-judgmental, he will probably be back on the streets a lot sooner than that.

The youth’s crimes included participating in a vicious gang assault which left the victim with serious injuries, assaulting a police officer, vandalism in Coronation Park, being drunk and disorderly, racist insults to a member of the public, attempted assault on a police officer (again), theft of his grandmother’s keys and car, and violently resisting arrest (again).

And yet, because he is only 16, he cannot be named, because he is regarded judicially as a child.

How ridiculous. We invest children far younger than he with the rights and attributes of adults. Back in August, for example, CdeH blogged about Brook Jersey’s practice of not involving parents in the distribution of emergency contraception and contraceptive advice to “…..some as young as 12”. In what way does this criminal deserve the protection of anonymity on the grounds of childhood?

Jersey’s legislature has recently approved the establishment of a sex offenders’ register. Quite right too, although Clameur de Haro has reservations about the potential for mistake and misidentification, with all the horrendous consequences, and also about the ability of administrative departments to keep the data confidential, if confidential it is to be. But eventually, and hopefully with due safeguards if so, it may be in the public domain, irrespective of the dangers to paediatricians whom the dim may be unable to distinguish from paedophiles.

CdeH however would far rather be aware of the potential danger posed to himself, his neighbours, and his possessions, by the presence in the vicinity of a thug like the one sentenced on Tuesday. Said thug’s potential future employers might appreciate the knowledge too.

If he’s 16, then he’s old enough to have a motorcycle licence. Old enough to get married. Old enough to leave school and get a job. Old enough to join the Forces. Old enough (Heaven help us) to vote.

He’s not a child. Name him.

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Clameur De Haro's Political Compass

With fellow bloggers St Ouennais and Nick Palmer both having been kind enough to reveal their positions after taking the assessment questionnaire on The Political Compass, Clameur de Haro can hardly refrain from showing his own.

Attempting reverse analysis here is an inexact science, because the answers do not have corresponding scores on each of the axes, but for what it's worth, CdeH guesses that on the Authoritarian - Libertarian scale, the scoring from his antipathy to excessive state power and legislative restrictions on personal freedom is probably pulled back a little by the scoring from his support for a robust stance on both defence and the protection of the family as the principal societal unit.

But - wouldn't it be interesting and revealing if we could persuade all States' Members to take the test - and then publish the results so that we can all see exactly where they stand? Do any of them have the cojones to take up the challenge?

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A Comment From Daniel Wimberley

Possibly due to an undetected last ditch reaguard action on the part of the gremlins which have recently aflicted Clameur de Haro's comment moderation facility, a comment from Daniel Wimberley on his post "On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs and Definitions.........." was not highlighted for moderation.

CdeH therefore presents it as a separate post below -

Begins:

"The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen" –

which uses exactly the same techniques as he accuses Nick Palmer of using.

"scare" –

errr well no, actually thousands of peer-reviewed articles written by scientists who are each of them would just love, wouldn't they, to become famous by DISPROVING or throwing at least a little spanner in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

"industry" –

oh since when were Exxon paying Hansen et al to do their work? On no, sorry, silly me, "industry" refers to the support given by those industrialists who cannot put the common interest above their own narrowly defined interest, to people who can be paid to spread doubt, the key weapon, (exactly as was done by the tobacco giants, which is why I am justified in talking about "industry" and about "weapon")

"Godfather" –

well we know who that was. . .

"authoritarian restriction on private behaviour "

= green taxation or taxes on carbon or a carbon rationing system. Perhaps Clameur thinks it is more rational to tax labour when what we have is a surplus of people needing things to do which are paid, and what we do not need is to consume more. I rather think that ANY tax is seen as some kind of restriction by CdeH

"Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party," –

well no actually, there is no such thing. Poor old Clameur, it never does to check your facts, might get in the way of a nice sneer. The Green Party has a male speaker and a female speaker - or did until they voted recently to go for a single party leader, like the other parties, not sure what they have decided to call this person.

Ends

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On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………

Clameur de Haro is prompted by recent comments on his posts to muse at length on the potential for confusion stemming from the epithets and labels applied to beliefs, and the benefits of more precise definitions.

Mr Frank Binney (a new commenter, and most welcome) raises the issue of how accurate, or otherwise, it is to apply the “left” or “right” label to the Greenists? Tony The Prof, in his courteous and erudite way as always, highlights the undesirability of debating climate issues with ad hominem arguments. Both comments, and the reasoned, courteous tone of them, merit a full response.

CdeH subscribes to the view of The Political Compass that the traditional “left” and “right” label is no longer sufficiently adequate to describe positions on the political playing field, because the continuum is one-dimensional, and predominantly an indicator of economic position – ranging from communism or overwhelmingly statist collectivism (on the left), to unfettered, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism (on the right). And that a more sophisticated and illuminating definition of politico-economic philosophy can be made by complementing location on the economic dimension with a statement of position on the social, authoritarian-to-libertarian continuum, ranging from ultimate authoritarian (fascism, in fact) to ultimate libertarian (virtually anarchy).

It should come as no surprise to Clameur de Haro’s more careful and perceptive readers that CdeH finds himself in the area of the 4-o’clock position in the bottom right-hand quadrant of Libertarian Right – being unequivocally in favour of small government, free trade, free markets, low taxes, but light-touch regulation on the economic continuum, and with a moderate libertarian slant on the social scale, believing as he does that the state aggregates too much power to itself and then often proceeds to exercise it illiberally, and has no business, for example, interfering in willingly-undertaken social transactions between competent, consenting adults, provided that others are not harmed thereby.

Not a million miles from the Hayekian and Friedmanite positions, it would appear, which probably accounts for CdeH’s intuitive listing of Friedman’s “Free to Choose” and “Capitalism and Freedom” as among the most influential formatives of his political / economic thinking.

CdeH frequently has the label “right-wing” hurled at him as an insult. On The Political Compass’ economic continuum, of course, this is, as far as it goes, a more correct than incorrect identification of his economic and fiscal philosophy (although quite why the belief that government is not per se automatically efficient and that taxpayers should be entitled to keep more of their own money, should be a cause for insult, is mystifying).

But on the social policy scale, and when hurled at a commentator who -

(1) naturally inclines to concern at the accretion and abuse of power by the authoritarian state and its agents;

(2) has been appalled at the implications for our liberty as citizens of Labour’s 12-year attack on habeas corpus, the right to jury trial, the right to silence, and the presumption of innocence, all on spurious grounds; and

(3) would choose La Moye rather than be forced to carry a show-on-demand ID card or render up his DNA without just cause, believing that it is his property and not that of the state,

the epithet “right-wing” as an insult is hilarious in its inaccuracy (as Clameur de Haro’s friends who know his views on privacy and personal freedom issues tell him), and betrays rather more about the insulter that it does about the criticised.

Where does this take us on the subject of applying labels in that area where politics and Greenism meet?

CdeH has good friends, occupying varying locations on the left-right economic-fiscal spectrum, who are very environmentally-minded but who equally accept that scepticism on green issues is valid, healthy, and should in a free society be widely aired, and that this is all very much a matter of private, personal choice, not public coercion. In no way could they be described as fundamentalist Greenists. On this specific point of socio-political philosophy, we would have to place them in the libertarian half on the authoritarian–libertarian scale.

But others – indeed, many others - appear, regrettably, to be much less tolerant. Consider just the following examples –

The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen, being on record as averring that anyone who even questions the postulate of catastrophic warming should be put on trial. Not positively counter-argues it – merely questions it;

The proposal of David Marxiband Milliband, when UK Energy Secretary in 2006, to force the entire population of the UK to carry a swipe card to be presented on every transaction, with every single person in the land being expected to render account for their carbon footprint and being allocated a personal annual carbon allowance – enthusiastically endorsed by the then environment correspondent of The Guardian (now there’s a surprise) in the following terms –

“The move marks the first serious step towards state-enforced limits on the carbon use of individuals……….extends the principle of carbon to consumers, with heavy carbon users forced to buy unused allowances from people with greener lifestyles” ;

The proliferating use of CTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits;

The admission of Ealing Council in West London that “hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged eight to 10, [have been] trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues” and that of Harlow Council in Essex which has said it has “25 ‘Street Scene Champions’, all aged between 11 and 14, who are encouraged to email or telephone the council if they suspect that an ‘enviro-crime’ has been committed” ;

The examples of prominent EU Greenists with hard-left, marxist, pasts: those of us of a certain age, (pace Tony The Prof) remember, for example, Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit propagating in the 1970s, revolutionary socialist prescriptions eerily precursory of much of both the authoritarian restriction on private behaviour and freedom, and the “for-the-sake-of-the-environment-and-the-planet” taxation that the Greenists espouse today. Is it really just a coincidence that aggressive environmentalism really started to take off in the early 1990s when communism was finally consigned to the scrapheap?

The rallying call of Green Left - an offshoot of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity - for an electoral pact in Birmingham with the Green Party “……….to give a progressive and environmentally aware candidate the chance of taking the seat, and a victory for all those opposing the policies of privatisation, war, greed, racism and environmental destruction. We are firmly of the belief that this will benefit both the Green and progressive movements in this country……….” ;

The author of this, intriguingly enough, is one Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party, who in another incarnation also comes up with this explicit summary of the advantages from the growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement -

“The creation of an Eco-socialist International network seems a good institutional basis for making European Green Parties more radical and I would like to see EU Greens working with the Nordic Green Left. I hope that it builds an eco-socialist network that links activists in every single state on this planet and, as we agreed in Paris, to work to make greens redder and reds greener.”

This, and plenty more of the same, can be viewed at http://www.climateandcapitalism.com/.

All of which suggests to Clameur de Haro that, far from the idea of Greenist Fundamentalism being an exaggeration, when taken overall, ample justification exists for that upper left Authoritarian Socialist quadrant of The Political Compass being the correct location for the activist, militant Greenism most often propounded by the save-the-planet-warriors. This is what he refers to when he speaks of Green Fundamentalists. As we can see, there’s a lot of it about.

And yet CdeH is mocked by a commenter for displaying a “Green is the New Red” logo on his sidebar?

Which brings us inevitably on to Mr Nick Palmer, Clameur de Haro’s most frequent commenter, and serial ritual abuser. Mr Palmer is fond of labelling CdeH as a recidivist perpetrator of what seems in his lexicon to be that most heinous of all crimes, far, far worse than mass-murderer, or child-abductor, or financial swindler, or…………………well, worse than anything at all really, namely being a “global warming denier”.

It sheds, firstly, an interesting perspective on the more strident advocates of radical environmentalism that mere scepticism, inherently just a manifestation of thought or opinion, rather than any illegal actions or criminal deed, should be judged so deserving of such calumny. But given on the one hand the inclination so prevalent in Gramscian cultural marxism (to give the colloquial, more familiar, label of political correctness its ideological origin) to establish, define, and prosecute crimes of thought and opinion, and on the other hand the correlation between Gramscian thought and militant Greenism, CdeH is relatively unsurprised by this.

The attaching to sceptics of the term “denier” in this context is quite deliberate, and no mere accidental or careless use of language. Its users are employing one of the classic tactics of cultural marxism – closing down the argument and thereby circumventing debate. It’s exactly the same technique which accuses someone of racism if they attempt to discuss whether current levels of immigration are sustainable, or of elitism if they suggest that a few more grammar schools with scholarships might actually benefit bright children from modest backgrounds, or of xenophobia if they suggest that handing over sovereignty to an unelected and unaccountable supranational authority might not be a terribly good thing for democracy. By seeking to equate enquiring scepticism about anthropogenic climate change with something as repellent as (primarily) Holocaust denial, they try to convey the idea that their target is so irretrievably and unspeakably vile that anything they say should not even be given a hearing, never mind taken seriously.

For the record, Clameur de Haro does accept that there has been an upward movement in average global temperatures over significant periods of the past century-and-a-half or so, but equally is persuaded that this has not been the case since 1998. As indeed, even the warmists – from the IPCC, who acknowledged that its first apocalyptic predictions omitted the Medieval Warming entirely, through Mann, who eventually conceded the fundamental flaws in the algorithms which generated his infamous hockey-stick, to the Biased BBC, which has just reported that for the last 11 years no increase in global temperatures has been observed and that there could be 30 years of cooling due to falling ocean temperatures - have had to admit.

Noticeable, isn’t it, how in the last few years, it’s all become “catastrophic climate change” rather than “catastrophic global warming”?

He has yet to be convinced, also, by the entire man-made / CO2 argument, having seen too many graphs of data sets showing non-correlation between temperature and CO2 output, temperature cooling during periods of rising CO2 output irrespective of whichever time lag is attempted, and studies suggesting that CO2 levels may be the consequence, not the cause, of temperature movements.

And he feels unable to ignore the peer-reviewed evidence that the Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history (and that a mere 30 years ago, some of today’s warmists were ardently warning of catastrophic global cooling and the strong danger of a new ice age). Climate change isn’t unlikely – it’s guaranteed, as it has been for the last x million years, mankind or no mankind, and CdeH is presently unconvinced that human influence on it, while possible, is nevertheless other than peripheral. The notion of “combating climate change” CdeH suspects, is about as feasible as combating tomorrow morning’s sunrise or combating the advent of next Christmas.

So, the correct term for Clameur de Haro is actually “anthropogenic climate change sceptic”. But then that’s so much less emotive as a term of derision than “global warming denier”, isn’t it? Perhaps those who inadvertently - or more likely deliberately - conflate the two need to put “dictionary” at the top of their Christmas List.

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Great – But Not The Line In The Sand That Some Will Want To Believe

Clameur de Haro was delighted to join with 7000 of his fellow islanders at St Ouen’s Bay yesterday in protesting the despoilation of our beautiful coastline by some truly hideous over-developments, for he seldom views the architectural excrescences at La Coupe, Portelet, Le Hocq and above St Aubin without shaking his head in disbelief at how they could have secured planning approval. So - many congratulations to Mike Stentiford and all his colleagues.

CdeH was particularly heartened also by the Planning Applications Panel’s decision unanimously to reject the proposed development of 73 chalets at Plemont. He found it disturbing however that the department’s civil servants apparently recommended its approval on planning grounds, for how anyone could envisage 73 chalets to constitute a substantial environmental gain defies belief. This is surely an area for an independent enquiry into the internal departmental processes.

But – a small word of warning. CeH noted the presence on St Ouen’s Bay of one or two politicians from the left-green end of the political spectrum, for whom the protection of the natural heritage is just part of a wider and more radical agenda for anti-business, heavily-taxing, aggressively redistributive economic and fiscal policies, and the imposition of either curbs or costs on individual freedom, advocated in the cause of environmental rectitude but equally in line with the collectivist ideologies to which they subscribe to greater or lesser extent.

The overwhelming majority of those to whom Clameur de Haro spoke were not in this category – they were there to protest against unsympathetic coastline encroachments (and rightly so), but that was all. So the left-green activists should beware – there is, justifiably, a huge mandate for resisting some of the planning approvals coming from the pen of Greenwash Freddie The Environment Minister, but that does not mean a 7000-person mandate for socialism.

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And The Public Sector Gravy Train Just Keeps On A-Rollin'………

Yet another example reaches Clameur de Haro's in-box of questionable workforce expansion done with a cavalier disregard for its impact on the public finances.

This time it's in Harbours, and involves the recent recruitment, apparently, of an assistant to the so-called Development Director, Myra Shacklady.

Clameur de Haro has not met the lady in question, but his friends in diverse parts of the maritime community assure him that throughout their particular world the prevailing view of Ms Shacklady's demonstrated expertise and competence is one of near-total derision: "complete waste of space" being the phrase most often employed (and also, it has to be said, the politest).

In the current straitened condition of the public finances, one might have thought that with precious little States-funded development likely to be undertaken in the Harbours in the next few years, the need for a full-time so-called development director was debatable, and that the responsible course of action would have been to reduce the role to a 3-day week, with a 40% salary cut. That, after all, is the kind of measure that many businesses in the hard-pressed private sector, both here and in the UK, are being forced to take as they struggle to survive.

But, of course, this is the public sector, and Jersey. Where not only has it been decreed that this kind of cost-saving in the public interest is unthinkable, but that moreover Ms Shacklady actually requires an assistant director, no less. And where Harbours' business case for the additional post was allegedly signed off by a Treasury Minister otherwise exhorting (not too forcefully, it has to be said) curbs on spending.

It gets worse. Clameur de Haro's source reveals that the preferred candidate found the maximum salary for the post's advertised grade to be insufficient and unacceptable, whereupon the salary offer was raised by about 10% to secure the candidate's services.

No doubt all those people affected by the redundancies announced so far this year in the private sector will be comforted by the knowledge that the direction of Harbours development is at no risk of being under-resourced.

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