A Dearth of Hard Facts In The Charities Furore

The aspect which seems to Clameur de Haro to have been completely overlooked in the recent furore about Mr Edward Trevor’s ill-judged utterances on charity collecting is whether or not there is factual substance to his remarks, however inelegantly expressed, about the precise sources of HIV/AIDS infection in the Western world.

Mr Trevor did not, to put it mildly, express himself well in any event: but in conflating the issue of infection source with the issue of who should or should not be collecting for which particular charity in alleged competition with the Joint Charities Christmas Appeal, he was incredibly foolish, and thereby opened himself up to the emotion-based and fact-free criticism which duly ensued.

It sheds however an interesting light that, during the time which has elapsed since all the criticism about the tenor of Mr Trevor’s comments, and in all the personal odium heaped upon him, there has been no discernable rebuttal, based on established statistics, of his factual claims.

Deconstructing those from his opinions, what he claimed, if the reports in the Jersey Evening [sic] Post and its transcript of his BBC Radio Jersey interview were to be believed, was that the primary causal sources of HIV/AIDS in Western countries are, with the exception of blood transfusions, behaviours over which the individual is able to exercise control or choice.

This is, or ought to be, a simple issue of fact, easily verified from readily available statistical sources, and publishable. Yet on this purely factual issue, there has been silence – including from ACET itself, which might reasonably have been expected in the circumstances to have issued an unequivocal factual rebuttal, and which would have been far more persuasive.

If accurate statistics showed that the primary cause of acquiring HIV/AIDS in the Western world is involuntary or accidental, and is unrelated to self-directed behaviours, then the criticisms of Mr Trevor would have been factually vindicated. If however, Mr Trevor’s claims turned out to be factually accurate, that may well be uncomfortable reading or listening for some, but should not on its own be sufficient reason for the virulent abuse hurled at him.

That abuse seems to have been motivated primarily, not just because of his opinions differing from those of his detractors, but due to those opinions being outside the spectrum of permitted thought as defined by the bien-pensant cultural left, a point which was picked up by several of the more astute on-line commenters to the JEP.

This is the true danger of political correctness (or Frankfurt School cultural marxism to give it its more descriptive and accurate name), the top-down imposition of curtailment and restriction of freedom of thought and speech by which whole areas of opinion are sought to be rendered incapable or forbidden of expression.

For the JEP to aver that Mr Trevor’s remarks were “unacceptable” is profoundly disturbing, for a responsible media outlet should not be, or be perceived to be, curtailing legitimate freedom of speech in this (or indeed in any) way. Equally, the statement attributed to Mrs Rosemary Ruddy of ACET, that Mr Trevor’s views were “untenable”, is plainly nonsense, since all any view held is by definition tenable, however repugnant it may be and however much it may offend the recipient.

HIV/AIDS, however acquired, is an unfortunate fact of life, and ACET is a valuable charity, dispensing advice and support in an admirably non-judgmental way: Jersey is undoubtedly the better for existence. But Clameur de Haro wonders if the lady doth perhaps protest too much? He trusts that the executive director of a HIV/AIDS charity in particular, in describing as “untenable” views such as those unwisely articulated by Mr Trevor, would not seek to use the dubious techniques of political correctness to divert attention from statistical facts which many might prefer not to acknowledge and which might risk – however unjustifiably – mitigating against the valuable service which ACET provides.

Mrs Ruddy, together with Mr Trevor’s numerous other detractors, might have been better advised to counter his ill-advised and poorly expressed remarks with statistical data proving them to be, quite simply, untrue, rather than with opprobrium heavy on opinion but light on hard fact from impeccable, and verifiable, sources. Presumably ACET possesses this information - it might still at this stage put the matter to rest by publishing the hard statistical data on the actual sources of infection in Western countries, and the extent to which there is, or is not, a correlation with multi-partner sexual activity, so that the public could with hindsight better judge the extent of Mr Trevor’s transgression.

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Treating the Teenage Thugs With Kid Gloves – Yet Again

In this blogpost back in mid-October, Clameur de Haro railed against the iniquity of giving a 16 year old thug with an appalling litany of violent crime, theft and anti-social behaviour to his name the protection of legal anonymity because of his age, thus preventing him being identified and shamed – although CdeH doubts, sadly, that the notion of shame at committing wrongdoing to others would have figured very much in the largely non-judgmental, morally relativist instruction he probably received in Jersey’s cultural-left dominated schools system.

So CdeH was heartened therefore, a few days after that mid-October post, by Deputy Trevor Pitman’s proposition to give the juvenile courts the power to curtail or set aside the protection of age-related anonymity in cases of serious assault, and to establish a legislative presumption in favour of naming - and was then subsequently even more heartened on receiving e-mails from more than one member of the Council of Ministers, saying that they welcomed and intended to support the Pitman proposition.

Amendments proposed since then both by Senator Ben Shenton and by Mr Pitman himself would restrict the liability to be named to offenders aged 16 or over, and would add other serious crimes to the list of offences where withdrawal of anonymity was applicable.

Accepting both the Shenton and Pitman amendments would mean, therefore, removing the restriction on naming, and the protection of anonymity, in cases of conviction for serious assault, murder, manslaughter, rape, or robbery, where the offender was aged 16 or over. Hardly unreasonable, Clameur de Haro would have thought, given the extent of public concern at rising levels of serious and violent crime among a determinedly recidivist section of the Island’s sub-18 youth.

Disappointingly however, CoM members are now resiling from this commitment, backed up by the Home Affairs and Education, Sport & Culture Scrutiny Panel.

The Panel oscillates between wanting to consider this issue, not in isolation but as part of a wider, more holistic approach to juvenile justice generally (translation: kicking it into the long grass and forgetting about it) and wanting to deflect the focus on to the question of parental responsibility.

But Mr Pitman is right when he says that many parents try extremely hard to keep their wayward offspring on the straight and narrow, and deserve more support. The Panel would perhaps be better employed in recommending strategies to bolster such responsible parental authority and supporting the exercise of it in any event, irrespective of any temporary and specific focus on the subject of juvenile justice - because all too often, as several of CdeH’s acquaintances have found to their dismay, the default setting of too many social services practitioners is almost always to take the child’s part against its parents and undermine parental authority.

The objections of the Ministers as articulated by the Minister for Health & Social Services are predictably, but no less disappointingly for that, based on the twin incubuses of firstly, the warped interpretations of the malevolently omnipresent international human rights industry, and secondly the predominantly child-centred, rose-tinted approach to juvenile criminality and justice which bears such a heavy responsibility for the explosion of juvenile crime over the last 30 years.

If the prescriptions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are an obstacle because Jersey’s Children’s Law does not contain the equivalent UK legislation’s distinction between a child (under the age of 14 years) and a young person (under the age of 18 years), then the remedy is surely to introduce a similar distinction into Jersey law, not for the community to wring its collective hands and say nothing can be done. Let’s not forget that the Convention was drafted in the mid-1990s, when perceptions of maturity and responsibility for criminal actions were different from those now applying.

As regards assumed conflict with the ECHR and Jersey’s 2000 Human Rights Law, that objection may not last if the incoming Cameron administration in the UK stands by its presently indicated commitment to repeal the Human Rights Act in its current too-pervasive and pernicious form, in favour of a statute less favourable to miscreants and charlatans but still protective of the rights and freedoms that the original ECHR was intended to safeguard.

We can be sure that the “all-children-are-angels” and “crime-caused-solely-by-social-conditions” lobbies would be gratifyingly discomforted were Jersey to say that, in the case of persistent violent offenders over 16, identification would not be restricted, and that the right of the overwhelmingly law-abiding public to be aware of the threat posed by repeat-offender young violent criminals in their midst justifies a derogation from the more undesirable consequences of international obligations in these circumstances. Perhaps, for once, we should just try it, rather than presuming we have no alternative to mistakenly treating repeated young violent criminals with a lack of resolve in many cases will send merely a signal of either only mild disapproval or weakness.

The Minister for Health & Social Services, interestingly, recommends both that the debate be deferred, and that the proposition be rejected – in successive paragraphs. The confusion inherent in this is consistent with the arguments advanced in the main body of her comments which (where they do not merely parrot the views of the HA & ESC Scrutiny Panel and the Law Officers), rely heavily on the discredited philosophies of seeking to understand and excuse criminality rather than dealing with it.

Although Clameur de Haro is no hanger’n’flogger, and although the range of subjects on which Clameur de Haro and Deputy Pitman would share the same opinion is probably, to say the least, somewhat limited, the Deputy has undoubtedly got it right on this one, and is more in tune with the mood of an anxious and frustrated public than his opponents. As he says when he advocates -

“……the norm becoming that those young people who choose to engage in vicious attacks that go as far as to put another’s very life at risk can expect to see their identity held up for all the community to see. Government simply must show itself to be in charge and finally act. The public expect no less.”,

this is -

“……an issue wholly side-stepped by the authorities who should have been seeking answers to the problem…”.

Remember, if you’re 16, then you’re 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 to vote. You are not a child, whatever the legal definition.

The Pitman/Shenton proposals and amendments in tandem do not mean hanging children of 10 for sheep-stealing, although from some of the comments made, you could be forgiven for thinking they do. They would mean merely removing the restriction on naming, and the protection of anonymity, in cases of conviction for serious assault, murder, manslaughter, rape, or robbery, where the offender was aged 16 or over. That is an eminently sensible compromise, and all States Members should support it.

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“I Didn’t Understand It – So It Must Be Bigoted”

That seemed to Clameur de Haro to be the thrust of the argument (if one can dignify the content with such a complimentary term) advanced by Ben Queree, the Jersey Evening [sic] Post’s somewhat optimistically-named political correspondent in his column last Monday about the contribution of Senator Ian Le Marquand to the civil partnerships debate.

Mr Queree said this of Senator Le Marquand’s contribution -

His was a strange speech. He said that he could not support the proposals because they were too much like marriage – although he preferred an arrangement extending civil partnerships to straight and gay couples. No, I can’t figure it out either.

The argument was too fragmented, too disjointed. It gave the impression of a fig-leaf – an article held up to protect something that the wearer did not want to be seen.

Senator Le Marquand was not the only Member who struggled with his faith, his public mandate and the proposition – and nothing should be said to minimise that struggle, or to trivialise it.

But what Senator Le Marquand has to accept is that his vote against the proposal was a vote in favour of the discrimination against gay couples.

In this, he was of course doing no more than faithfully following the earlier lead of his editor, about which CdeH blogged last week, especially in his snide little comment about a fig-leaf designed to conceal something the wearer did not want seen.

Well, Clameur de Haro listened to the debate, including Senator Le Marquand’s speech, and unlike our esteemed political correspondent, experienced no problems at all in “figuring it out”. What the Senator appeared to be saying was that, despite the need to eradicate manifestly unfair discrimination as widely as possible – which, Mr Queree, was illustrated in his point about extending full civil partnership status to both homosexual and heterosexual couples – the advantages to society overall of reserving to heterosexual marriage only just a few legal, civil and fiscal privileges available to no other form of union comprised a prevailing counter-argument.

It was a complicated, but thoughtful and nuanced exposition of opinion: but if those qualities were the reason for Mr Queree’s finding some difficulty in understanding it, that does not augur well for political reportage.

With a few moments’ thought, it might occur to Mr Queree that Senator Le Marquand, in his previous role, was probably presented on a fairly regular basis with the results of the cultural left’s 30+ year attack on the institution of marriage and the traditional family – and that it may well have been that experience which informed his view, rather than the religious or homophobic prejudice which Mr Queree clearly assumes, and none-too-subtly implies.

In voting against the full proposal, the Senator was not positively discriminating against homosexual couples – if the JEP supplies you with a Mercedes, Mr Queree, while supplying your editor with an Aston Martin, you are not a victim of discrimination – but seeking to uphold the status of traditional heterosexual marriage as the principal societal unit, and for valid reasons.

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A Nasty Little Inference In Chris Bright’s JEP Editorial

Clameur de Haro found it disturbing to see yesterday’s JEP editorial borrow an ugly argumental tactic straight out of cultural marxism’s handbook of debating methods: and hopes that it will indeed be merely borrowed – temporarily - and not become a regular feature.

Writing about the proposition on civil partnerships which was piloted, sensitively in the opinion of CdeH, through the States today by Senator Philip Ozouf, Chris Bright said much that is accurate about the need to eliminate unfair discrimination towards homosexual couples. But Mr Bright also said the following –

“….it is generally true that this proposal will not find favour with all Islanders. Like it or not, homophobic prejudice remains far from uncommon in our society……"

Thus did Mr Bright seek to insinuate that no objection to the proposal could possibly originate from anything other than homophobic prejudice – an accusation which he will, if he follows the logic of his own argument, presumably now be laying, rapidly and publicly, at the door of Senator Ian Le Marquand.

Clameur de Haro blogged recently about this typical tactic of the cultural left: it is known as “closing down the argument”, and is much used to circumvent debate and choke off the expression of a legitimate contrary view at source. My opponent, it seeks to imply, is by definition so unspeakably vile / prejudiced / homophobic / racist / whatever, that his views cannot possibly be accorded a hearing, never mind taken seriously. We see it in one of its most virulent forms in the equating of anthropogenic climate change scepticism with Holocaust denial.

There are in fact perfectly valid objections to according homosexual couples identical rights to married heterosexual couples which have nothing at all to do with prejudice, or homophobia, but much to do with the objector’s conviction that, despite the acknowledged need to eliminate as much harmful and unfair discrimination against homosexual individuals and couples as possible, society overall nevertheless benefits from a special status being reserved to the traditional heterosexual family. This view was elegantly articulated today by Senator Le Marquand, who deserves a substantial plaudit for taking the lone stand that he did, not from prejudice, but from principle.

To some who believe that the status of the traditional married heterosexual family as the bedrock of a free society is deliberately threatened – under the cloak of ending perceived discrimination - from both the state and the non-state cultural left, the wish to reserve to it alone just a few legal, civil and fiscal advantages available to no other form of union is a societal judgment, not a homophobic one. Treating non-married couples, whether homosexual or heterosexual, identically, as well as eminently fairly and justly, save for a few advantages enjoyed only by married heterosexual couples, can legitimately be argued from a standpoint which is neither prejudicial nor discriminatory.

Clameur de Haro does not necessarily adhere to the views described in the two preceding paragraphs: but he does however adhere to the view that their opinions deserve a rather more respectful critique than Mr Bright’s rather crude attempt to denigrate them as being merely rooted solely in homophobic prejudice.

CdeH can find that in the Guardian and other organs of similar ilk any day of the week – not, please, in the editorial columns of the Jersey Evening [sic] Post.

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Greenist Tolerance of Dissenting Opinion #39

From Toby Harnden, US editor of the BarclayTorygraph, comes this piece (written in September, hence the reference to “next month”) about the reaction of militant environmentalists to the next project of two Irish filmmakers –

Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, whose film Not Evil Just Wrong is due to premiere next month, have been subjected to a slew of death threats and instances of disgusting abuse from the environmental Left. One commenter branded them “Hitler’s Henchmen”.

Their crime? Their film dares to challenge the conventional wisdom about global warming – they prefer to call it “global warming hysteria” – and take on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Rather than try to rebut the arguments of the couple, it seems, their opponents want to shut down any debate.

One environmentalist sent McAleer and McElhinney an e-mail describing them as “stinking, selfish, sociopathic fascists” and expressed a desire for them to be executed. “It is one of my fondest hopes that whatever remnants of human civilization exists at the end of this catastrophe is able to put people like you on trial for crimes against humanity and give you the same treatment Hitler’s henchmen got at Nurnberg a long drop at the end of a short rope,” the email stated.

A commenter on YouTube wished that McAleer and McElhinney’s children be born handicapped because they were not campaigning against “pollution”. The most vitriolic comments have been deleted by YouTube.

McAleer said he was disappointed by the taking down of the comments. “We wanted to keep the comments so that people could see for themselves the hate being directed at those who dare to ask questions about liberal orthodoxy.”

The couple have been called “hillbillies,” “rednecks,” “zombies,” “dimwits,” “brainwashed idiots,” “muppets” and “slaves to greedy elitists”.

One commenter suggested a tactic for discrediting the couple, writing: “Slander them as tools of big oil/coal. Insinuate they’re on a par with Holocaust deniers.”

Remind you of any comments you’ve seen about Clameur de Haro’s blogposts on green issues?

The film premieres on 18 October.

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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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And The Greenists Still Deny That Theirs Is A Religion??

Anyone still harbouring any lingering doubts that activist Greenism is more fundamentalist religion than measured, reasoned, environmental concern should have had the scales irrevocably lifted from their eyes this morning by this revelation from the Oxford Mail brought to Clameur de Haro’s attention.

H/Ts - The All-Seeing Eye and An Englishman’s Castle

Tim Nicholson, the former Head of Sustainability (pass CdeH the sick bag, please, and quickly) at Grainger plc, claims that he was unfairly dismissed because of his philosophical views on climate change. At a preliminary hearing in March, he was granted leave to take his claim to an Employment Tribunal, but this ruling is currently being challenged by his former employers on the grounds that greenist views should not be accorded equivalent status to religious or philosophical beliefs in law, so cannot therefore serve as either protection from unfair dismissal, or reason to claim unfair dismissal.

Mr John Bowers QC, representing Grainger, said: "A philosophical belief must be one based on a philosophy of life: not a scientific belief, not a political belief or opinion, not a lifestyle choice, not an environmental belief and not an assertion of disputed facts". The firm claims that whereas philosophy seeks to answer the fundamental questions of human experience, environmental concerns are rooted in scientific data (however selectively they are misinterpreted, thinks CdeH).

Mr Nicholson, characteristically, is protesting this, arguing that his greenist views should be acknowledged as possessing equivalence in law to profoundly-held religious belief. He refuses to travel by air (at all), claims that his views on climate change affect his whole lifestyle, and says “I have a strongly held philosophical belief about climate change and the environment. I believe we must urgently avoid catastrophic climate change. This affects how I live my life ... I fear for the future of the human race." He admitted that his constant proselytising of his strong green religiosity caused clashes with senior colleagues.

Like other commentators, Clameur de Haro suspects that Mr Nicholson was (rightly) given the elbow because he was actually a first-class internal rectal affliction of regal proportions, who felt it his sacred mission to spend his time attempting to convert all the heretics rather than do the job he was paid to do.

But isn’t this case instructive as a means of highlighting the multiplicity of similarities between Greenism and fundamentalist religion?

The investing of the planet with all the faculties and emotions of a deity, the sins committed against whom must be expunged by sacrificial atonement.

The unshakeable, dogmatic belief, despite all the questionable evidence, and whatever the arguments to the contrary.

The assumption of a divine mission to indoctrinate the pagan masses.

The warnings of imminent apocalypse unless all the tenets of the religion are forcibly imposed.

The refusal to consider alternative explanations for the phenomena which form the basis of the creed.

The fanatical and vituperative disparagement of unbelievers or sceptics as evil deniers, malevolent heretics, and moral reprobates.

The suggestion that sceptics should either be put on trial or locked up as insane.

So many structural similarities to the fundamental theistic religions, and of course also to marxism, that other secular religion. Coincidence? Not a chance.

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A Greenist’s Dilemma!!

What a truly exquisite dilemma is posed for the doom-mongering proselytizers of the Green Religion by the revelation that, if Arctic ice sheets really were in the cataclysmic permanent decline which they claim, one of the consequences would be to open up access to substantial reserves of currently untapped oil and gas – as much as 13% of the world’s previously undiscovered oil and no less than 30% of its previously undiscovered natural gas.

Not that it’s going to happen any time soon, of course.

The latest data and models from the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre show that, even though the rate of seasonal summer ice-melt is up (although it’s lower this year than in 2007 and 2008), the rate of over-winter recovery is such that total ice coverage has only decreased at the rate of 2.6% per decade (yes, that’s right – about a quarter of one per cent per year) over the last 30 years – hardly the cataclysmic decline that the alarmists postulate.

What’s more, polar explorers have been observing fluctuations in Arctic ice coverage and temperatures for 200 years. The data readings entered in the 1818 ship’s log of the HMS Isabella, recently released from the records of the National Archives as part of the UK Colonial Registers and Royal Navy Logbooks Project, suggest that there has been minimal or even no significant change in sea temperatures in large parts of the Arctic. The ship’s log of the HMS Dorothea from its 1818 expedition to the Norwegian Arctic show that the summer weather of 1818 in the high northern latitudes was not significantly cooler than that of the last 30 years.

However, Clameur de Haro must acknowledge that there is a contrary view, for he is aware of the alternative report submitted to the Admiralty which contained the following –

“A considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place, by which the severity of the cold that has, for centuries past, enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been, during the last two years, greatly abated. This affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened.”

The date of this? November 1817. That’s right, 1817. It seemed to be getting warmer and ice coverage seemed to be decreasing. Must have been the carbon footprint of all those Laplanders and Inuit importing their polenta from Tuscany and their winter strawberries from Kenya, and driving their 4x4s to Starbucks on their way to their EasyJet holiday flights.

And even the Hadley Centre, in its latest report bout of scaremongering, can do no more than confine itself to warning that the Greenland ice sheet could recover to only (yes, only) 80% of its current size were it decrease through ice-melt by 15% over the next 300 years – and it could even disappear entirely over several thousand years.

Clameur de Haro couldn’t hope to top the erudition of the scorn rightly poured on this by Tim Worstall here, so a grateful H/T to Tim for this one.

But - oh dear, oh dear, whatever will the Peak Oil doomsters do now? If the “Greenland Ice Melt Through Catastrophic Man-Made Climate Change” part of their faith comes to pass, that blows an even bigger hole than the one that exists already in their Peak Oil belief, because substantial additional reserves become economically extractable. But if they want to continue to adhere to their Peak Oil credo, those additional reserves have to remain discounted from their calculation of remaining finite resources - which requires them to admit, ahem, that the Arctic ice sheets won’t actually be melting to the degree predicted.

Not that Clameur de Haro thinks that any of this will deter the Greenists of course - after all, mustn’t let the Inconvenient Truths of science and reason get in the way of the true religion…..

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Climate Change Nonsense No 106 – Birmingham To Boil This Century

Clameur de Haro notes that, according to the latest press release put out by the departmental acolytes of the eco-mental UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change [sic], the distinctly shifty and snivelling Ed Miliband, busily applying as much as possible of the cultural marxism learned at the knee of his marxist-historian father, the unfortunate inhabitants of the West Midlands are going to have rather a torrid time of it in the coming decades.

For Milipede’s minions predict that by 2080, the temperature for the hottest day of the year could increase by 100°C. And no, you didn’t misread that - 100°C – it says so here. It sure is going to be hot over there in Birmingham, England.

Yes, of course it's a typo. But considering the ridicule justifiably heaped on the UK Met Office for its predictions of a “barbecue summer” (according to the National Environment Research Council, July was (1) “distinctly autumnal”, (2) the third wet July in succession, and (3) the wettest since 1888), and the opprobrium rightly poured on the Hadley Centre for attempting to keep its climate record data (inconveniently verifying general cooling since 1998) secret, CdeH would have thought that the useless DECC might have hesitated just a little before predicting a rise of even 10°C.

It’s enough to make your blood boil – which, apparently, it will……

Still, the eco-fascists can’t let science get in the way of propagating the Green religion, can they? That would never do.

Hat Tip - Dizzy

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The Curious Inconsistency of Pink and Green?

Clameur de Haro was, like very many people, horrified this week to read the details of the appalling murders committed by a schizophrenic psychopath, the last after having been released – as a result of a long litany of failings by psychiatric and social services – to live in the community as an outpatient, despite previous convictions for murder.

It’s noticeable from this and other cases - nearly 30 in the 10 years to 2007 - of convicted killers released from jail who have then gone on to kill again, that a significant factor in the eagerness to release was the intolerable violation of the human rights of one person judged to be perpetrated by keeping him incarcerated, just to protect the public from the mere off-chance that he might kill again. A classic world-view, in fact, of the Gramscian cultural left.

Yet many of that self-same Gramscian cultural left are among the most ardent proselytizers of the fundamentally illiberal, authoritarian socialism-by-another-name, policy prescriptions of the Green religion, who harbour no qualms at all about imposing, on billions of people, the most drastic restrictions and penalties on individual freedom, economic liberty, and human advancement, ever seen, just to protect the planet from the mere off-chance that their increasingly discredited and desperate predictions of impending climate apocalypse might turn out to be one-percent true.

A curious inconsistency indeed……or, given that both policies necessitate the subjection of the majority to the views of the unrepresentative minority, possibly not………

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Maybe The Kids Are Not Quite So All Right……

Is there a cultural left bias in Jersey’s Health and Social Services towards subverting parental authority and undermining the role of the family by condoning under-age sex?

Tracking at random through a few recent back editions of the Jersey Evening [sic] Post, Clameur de Haro’s eye was caught by one of the facts given by Brook Jersey executive director Bronia Lever on the numbers of teenagers and young adults said to be seeking contraception advice and emergency contraception, “…some as young as 12….”.

For the record, and in case anyone should allege otherwise, CdeH thinks that Brook generally, and its Jersey clinic in particular, fulfils a vital function in the community, and that the advice and contraception sensitively dispensed by the Brook counsellors contribute significantly to reduced incidences of, particularly, early to mid-teen pregnancy – and also that it obviously discharges its functions in a very caring and empathetic way, the very numbers seeking Brook Jersey’s services being, apart from any other implications, a visible testament to its success.

But what we were not told by Ms Lever, however, is how many of those recipients or requestors of contraception advice or emergency contraception were under 16.

Now CdeH is no prude, and recalls with a contradictory mixture of wistful fondness and acute embarrassment his own adolescent fumblings, undertaken, on one or two occasions, while hoping to heaven that his co-fumbler’s assurances that she was 16, yes really, might just be truthful. But at the risk of appearing antediluvian, let’s not forget that 16 remains (until it’s changed by the legislature) the legal age of consent: so it follows, surely, that in the case of a sub-16 female client requesting post-coital emergency contraception, there is prima facie evidence before the clinic and its counsellors of the statutory offence of unlawful sex with a minor having been committed.

CdeH’s original intention, when the idea for this post was taking shape, was to pose the question – “Given that the law of the land has clearly been broken in such a case, to what extent is any judicial process invoked?” – because the idea of a public authority turning a blind eye to a serious breach of law isn’t an easy one to feel comfortable with. But recalling that Jersey seems to be considering the creation of a Sexual Offenders’ Register (of which subject more on another occasion), and then reading in this special briefing in the current issue of The Economist the often appalling consequences for people who can be placed on such a register for comparatively minor “technical” misdemeanours, it strikes CdeH that our local Brook counsellors are probably better using their discretion in mostly declining to get PC Plod involved.

But possibly even more importantly, when and to what extent, in the case of the very sub-16 clients, are the parents brought into the process?

CdeH of course acknowledges the confidentiality argument, and the reality that many of Brook’s clients would probably not consult it at all – with adverse consequences in some cases - if they thought their parents would be informed. But on the other hand, and writing as an erstwhile parent of daughters, it’s also not easy to feel entirely comfortable with the idea of a public authority concealing from loving, concerned, and would-be responsible parents its condoning, to the point of even facilitating, their offspring’s under-age sex.

What also disturbs Clameur de Haro here is the danger that all this isn’t just about sexual health advice and preventing unwanted teenage pregnancy – that it’s also, more insidiously, about furthering, even unwittingly, the cultural left’s agenda for the state to undermine parental authority and the position of the family as the principal societal unit, and to eventually supplant it as the prime nurturer of future generations.

Cultural marxism frequently seeks, whether via economic or social policy means, to weaken the position and authority of the unitary family as a discrete social unit, and to undermine parental rights and responsibilities to this end: it does this because the strong individual family unit, secure against the depredations of the state, is one of the bedrocks of a free society and therefore an inherent threat to the belief that only state activism can guarantee desired social outcomes.

Given the prevalence of cultural left attitudes in the UK social services, and the extent of recruitment and secondment from the UK that Jersey practises, it would be surprising if some of those attitudes had not found their way, either openly or covertly, into our social services locally. Indeed, there have been grounds in recent years for believing that this is so.

Should we therefore be worried that our justified focus on the numbers and youthfulness of some of Brook Jersey’s clients may in fact be masking the less apparent, the less immediate, but the no less significant danger that the role of parents is surreptitiously being diminished?

Clameur de Haro recalls Ms Lever’s, and Brook’s, endorsement a couple of years ago for the initiative launched by the Jersey Police to encourage parents to take greater responsibility for their children. Would it not be unfortunate, to say the least, if a misplaced sociological view of a vulnerable minor’s absolute right to confidentiality contributed to putting obstacles in the way of parents who want to do exactly that?

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Pikeys, Tessa and Toby

A fine example of uptight bien–pensant political correctness’ continuing assault on legitimate freedom of expression in this righteous indignation offering from Guardianista Jodie Matthews last week.

Ms Matthews, it seems, found the epithet “pikey” (in this case by Richard Hammond on Top Gear) deeply offensive and inappropriate (ah, that wonderful catch-all adjective of the thought police), and professed it to have been used (naturally) solely as a racist slur.

For the record, Clameur de Haro has no truck with racism, and neither commits it nor condones it: certain people, or certain ideas, or certain values, may be offensive, but whole races and religions are not offensive per se (although that does not mean they should be exempt from legitimate criticism).

Ms Matthews however seems to have deliberately ignored the overwhelmingly modern usage of the term “pikey” not as an epithet of racist abuse or presumed ethic origin, but as a convenient shorthand for a disparaging value judgment on the target’s lifestyle, ethics and behaviour. In this modern usage it’s equivalent to “chav” – the connotations it conveys are those of disapproval, not of race or even socio-economic group, but of coarseness and vulgarity, cavalier law-breaking, aggression and inconsiderateness toward others, and cynical manipulation of the welfare system.

But that, of course, is precisely the point of Ms Matthews’ article. Like any right-thinking social commentator on the Grauniad, she presumably recoils in horror at anyone making a value judgement about anyone or anything (unless of course it’s a value judgment she agrees with) as being an infringement of enlightened and progressive non-judgmental attitudes.

No doubt then, she will be suitably castigating the producers of the latest UK DCSF storybook for children for making a value judgment of their own that Tess and Toby the Pikeys Travellers are really just nice, misunderstood, and fun people.

Or possibly, bearing in mind they should tick quite a few of her boxes, she won’t be.........

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