What is the mystery over Ken’s congestion charge poll?
February 15th, 2008
Why has the British Polling Council decided to investigate?
A week before Christmas, on December 18th, the above press release was issued by the GLA about a poll showing that 38% of Londoners “strongly supported” plans to increase the congestion charge to the most polluting cars with 21% opposing the scheme.
In the normal course of events within two days the pollster, Ipsos-MORI, would have published full data from the survey on its website as part of the transparency arrangements that all members of the British Polling Council adhere to.
That hasn’t happened and now, nearly two months later with the detailed data still being unavailable my understanding is that the British Polling Council is establishing a formal panel to look at the situation. This is the first time that this process has ever been applied since the Council was established in 2004.
So why is there the hold-up? I cannot believe that the problem is with the pollster which has an impeccable record in this area. Could it be that the blockage is with the mayor and there is something in it that Ken does not want us to see?
Given the proximity of the mayoral election one can only speculate over what that could be. This would have not got to the stage where a formal process has had to be initiated, surely, unless there was a good reason.
To give an idea of the importance that is being attached to this the BPC panel is likely to consist of major figures from the media, the polling world and academia. My understanding is that the names being proposed are the YouGov boss, Peter Kellner, Peter Riddell of the Times and the political scientist, Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University.
A good example of why seeing the full data matters came during Labour’s Deputy Leadership election. A YouGov survey found that 15% of voters said they would be “more likely” to support Labour if Harriet Harman was Gordon’s deputy leader and her campaign made great play of this finding. The poll had in fact been funded by the Harman campaign and when the full data became available a very different picture emerged - for an equal proportion, 15% - said they would be LESS LIKELY to vote Labour with these two in the jobs. No wonder the last part was suppressed .
The whole purpose of the BPC disclosure code is to protect us from poll findings being presented in a misleading way or for aspects to be hidden. All strength to the council’s elbow I say and it is good to know that it will take steps to enforce its code.
The latest mayoral race betting has Ken as the 0.73/1 favourite with Boris on 1.56/1.
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Good spot Mike, at first sight it does seem extaordinary that such penal proposals, generally viewed simply as a further extension of this tax on Londoners, had been opposed by only 21% of those polled. After all, most people are reasonably fair minded.
I have to say I’m puzzled - you say above that it is the responsibility of Ipsos Mori to publish the full data and if they have failed to do so on this occasion, then surely it is their responsibility. But you then go on to say “I cannot believe that the problem is with the pollster which has an impeccable record in this area.”
[221 previous thread] - One of the results I found striking to come out of “Super Tuesday” was that Obama won more delegates in the “small” state of Georgia than Clinton won in the “big” state of New Jersey. Consequently, putting the two states together, Obama comes ahead on delegates, even though he “lost” the more important larger state.
Obama has been winning a decent number of states by very impressive margins, whereas most of Clinton’s victories have been by tighter margins.
The cunning outrages of Red Ken merely fuel the legend, methinks. Like poaching, fiddling with polling number is a rather technical crime, as befits a modern day Robin Hood.
What is more corrosive is evidence of serious problems with public services under the mayor’s control, plus any truly significant slippage in the general perception of most Londoners as to his job performance.
That’s where I’m not very sure what the true situation is out there among all you Great Wenners.
The other big question, is whether Boris Johnson can keep knuckling down and demonstrating both an interest and knowlege of mundane civic issues.
Based on his recent crime policy annoucement and press conference, indeed appears that Boris is heeding the high-priced advice of his Oz consultant. Which is surely the smart thing for him to do, leastways at this juncture.
Because if Boris cannot make voters STOP laughing, they won’t take him seriously as a actual potential Mayor of London.
2 Which makes sense when you consider that the Democratic presidential nomination campaign is a series of proportional elections, with proportionality determined by congressional districts as well as statewide.
The Big State are themselves collections of diverse regions, essentially a collection of smaller statelets that might have been states themselve except for the accidents of history & geography. So its no wonder that the results from different, far-flung power centers in the large states often tend to balance each other out.
3 “That’s where I’m not very sure what the true situation is out there among all you Great Wenners.”
forgot to say, of course that’s where accurate numbers such as the Boss is enquiring about would be most useful!
Politician economical with the actuality? Who would have thought it.
Will we get to the see the surpressed data?
I think Timothy has nailed it: when Obama has won, he has often won big. The lead that Clinton got in her home state of New York was 46 delegates. A big lead in a big state, right? And in California, it was a 43 delegate lead.
Well, the problem is that by running up big, big leads in smaller states, Obama has neutralised this problem. He won by an astonishing 35 delegates in Georgia, and by 12 in tiny Idaho. In Minnesota, it was a 12 seat lead, and in Colorado it was 19. The most recent ‘Potomoac primaries’ re-emphasised the point: winning big in small and mid-sized states is at least as important as a 10% margin in California or New York.
7. “winning big in small and mid-sized states is at least as important as a 10% margin in California or New York”. It is now; it won’t be in November.
It could be that there are voting intention figures he didn’t want us to see.
Ken trying underhand tactics to prevent us from learning the truth about something important? I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before…
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
PfP at 1: The general pattern of polls on taxes with a green flavour (noted by Anthony Wells many times) is that most people are strongly in favour if they think someone else will pay, at best equivocal if they expect to pay themselves. If the question suggests that large gas-guzzlers would pay more, I’d expect a large majority in favour, because most people don’t think they drive cars in that category. This isn’t anything to do with my personal view (which is strongly pro-CC, and MPs pay it like anyone else), it’s just how polls work.
On a related topic, the Times has a very odd editorial today about the Mayoral race. It repeats the platitudes of Christmas time without any recognition that the race has moved on.
Very interesting indeed.
I am still wondering: when are ICM (also a member of the British Polling Council) going to publish the data tables from their regional breakdown published by The Guardian in August?
It is impossible for us as ordinary members of the public/media/political classes to see where on earth ICM got their findings from, because all of the actual published polling data from which the regional breakdown is supposed to derive only use 3 “regions”: “North”, “Midlands”, and “South”; whereas the regional breakdown published by The Guardian in August has mysteriously come up with a different set of 6 “regions”: Scotland, Wales, London, North England, Midlands and eastern England, and Southern England.
As ICM says on its own website:
And this is the nonsense they publish as an explanation of their methodology:
… which is clearly untrue, because they also conduct fieldwork in Scotland and Wales, neither of which is a Government Office Region.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/dec/21/politicalnews.uk
http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/1021
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/media-centre-polls.php
You are Andrew Gilligan and I claim my £5!
This is an interesting piece from Drudge:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/02/superdelegates
Very Peter Hainesque!?
14. Augustus Carp
Who? Me or Mike?
(Sorry Mr Gilligan if you happen to be reading this, but I have never heard of you before, but I will away and Google you right now… )
Oh, him! I do vaguely remember the name now you come to mention it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Gilligan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3082323.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/jan/21/huttoninquiry.davidkelly
Andrew Gilligan is the ex-Radio 4 Journalist who got tangled up in the Dodgy Dossier Affair. After he got the sack he went to the London Evening Standard, where he seems to be contractually obliged to write a two-page expose on Ken Livingstone every day.
16: God give me strengh and they say an independent Scotland wouldn’t be a parochial backwater.
16,
Think dodgy dossier and the Hutton report. Our Evening Standard reporting
19. His Eminence
You may be surprised to hear this Mr Eminence, but come an independent Scotland it is actually highly likely that you and I will be members of the same political party! (I understand from a previous post that you formerly held a senior position within the Scottish Tories: is that correct? Did you not have the responsibility for filing post-1999 Holyrood election papers to the appropriate Returning Officers?)
I am a liberal (in the correct, classical, European meaning of the word, not in the way the Lab Dims abuse that fine word) and am thus strongly inclined to join the principal centre-right party in the immediate post-independece era. My only criteria for when I leave the Scottish National Party and join a centre-right grouping (whether it be wholly new or a descendent of the Tories), will be that my new party must be solidly committed to the on-going statehood of Scotland, and not harker back to the recently deceased Union.
I want Scotland to be a normal country, and not the parochial backwater that it has allowed itself to be far too often.
Pleased to hear it and delighted to read your prediction that there might be more than one political party in an independent Scotland.
a bit of parocial news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7245995.stm
Good Morning all
Last year, the Open Rights Group sent 25 volunteer election observers to observe electronic voting and electronic counting pilots in England, and to observe the electronic count in Scotland. The resulting report (http://www.openrightsgroup.org/wp-conten…) raised serious questions about the future of e-voting and e-counting in British elections, questions which were echoed in the Houses of Parliament and by the Electoral Commission.
This year, votes in the elections for Mayor of London and for the London Assembly will be electronically counted. Despite the recommendations of the Open Rights Group, the body that runs the London elections has declined to include a sample manual recount of e-counted ballots in their process. This makes independent scrutiny very difficult, and even more vital.
To make sure that we get a true picture of how the May 2008 London elections are run, we need people on the ground in the three count centres across London: in Alexandra Palace, Excel and Olympia. The count starts at 9am on 2 May 2008.
We’ll provide you with full instructions on the kind of things that will be expected of you on the day. We’ll also supply a factsheet of what to look out for. We’ll expect you to stay at your allocated count centre until the count has finished, and to turnaround a quick report for us afterwards.
Contrary to Tory belief I think Nick is right… there will be widespread support for admittedly crude measures like this.
I wonder if Ken is setting Boris up to make an idiot of himself and ensure the second prefs and cross party support for Livingstone remain as before.
At the moment I will be supporting Paddick (of course - he seems to be doing quite well actually and even got Elton John to host a fundraiser) but Boris has the second pref. Whilst he is right that bendy buses are an utter fiasco if there is any sign of an attack on the congestion charge than it will be back to Ken. I suspect many LibDem voters are in the same position.
Lab Dims. I’ve not seen that one before. Very Good.
I can’t believe anyone who uses this site has never heard of Gilligan!
Ken has always had one strength, despite his idiosyncratic behaviour, he’s always done, ’something’, (Fares Fair, Congestion Charge) so voters have overlooked the rest and given him the benefit of the doubt.
When I worked at Marble Arch (23 years) prior to the CC, every evening: Edgeware Road, Bayswater Road, Park Lane, solid with traffic. When I visit London today, (despite what you may think) its a far better city now than it was in the 70/80’s.
Boris’s problem is, people don’t know what he is, is he a politician, an entertainer, a journalist, a writer, what? Does he know himself?
Can I add a comment to Nick Palmer (237) in the previous thread. He rightly observed that in the E Staffs DC b-election the BNP and LibDems both did well, whereas the Tories and Labour votes halved. I have looked at 8 contests involving the LibDems and the BNP from November onwards. Admittedly, each contest has its own local factors but a few interesting points emerged:
Lab Con Libdem BNP other
Change in vote -8 -5 +15 +11 -13
Interestingly, perhaps, the Libdems did well in these seats where the BNP stood. I wonder if the two feed off each other. For every voter that thinks the BNP is bravely addressing issues the main parties choose to ignore, there is another that thinks they are a bunch of fascist thugs that must be stopped as soon as possible. Whereas the Tories and Labour might want to ignore the BNP as irrelevant, the Libdems seem deliberately to confront them. In Welham Green on 3 January where the Libdems did well, part of the reason for the extra effort was because “we were determined not to let the BNP get a foothold, so colleagues from Hertfordshire piled in to help.” Turnout was also very high as consequence.
The most disappointed party must be the Tories who failed to pick up seats they had hoped and expected to gain, perhaps because they lost votes directly to the BNP but also because potential supporters moved over to the LibDems to make a statement against the BNP.
My experience in polling suggests that if a sample size of that size has been commissioned the clients (KL) will have taken the opportunity to ask a number of other questions.
I find the result published plausible, so it could well be that some questions about Ken or Boris or other policies and strategies, including for the election, are hidden there to that the client does not want everyone to see - or at least the answers.
There has also been controversy, has there not, about using public money in a partisan manner.
15 re Clinton and Obama giving money to superdelegates. Especially Obama.
Blimey.
It certainly looks corrupt but maybe it is business as usual there.
re 16. Andrew Gilligan is one of the great heroes of our time.
More parochial news from multi-party North Britain:
- “London muscles in just when Wendy thought she was safe”
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/London-muscles-in-just-when.3777141.jp
- “Civil war threat for Labour as MP rounds on Alexander’s plan”
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2042902.0.Civil_war_threat_for_Labour_as_MP_rounds_on_Alexanders_plan.php
- “Outcry at Minister’s Holyrood Tax Snub”
http://www.thisisnorthscotland.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=149212&command=displayContent&sourceNode=232919&home=yes&more_nodeId1=149221&contentPK=19860136
23 re former MSP nicked for perjury in Sheridan case.
Please excuse my reverse Gilligan moment but will this matter in Scotland?
Could be a good time to ask them to pay a little more tax!
http://tinyurl.com/37wuh2
How many are nom-doms do u think?
26. Yellow Submarine - “Lab Dims. I’ve not seen that one before. Very Good.”
It is especially apt for Scots, following our eight years of the Lib Dems being simply Labour’s lap-dogs in the Lib-Lab coalition executive. It will take the Lib Dems puppies years to shake off the foul smell of soggy, stale bitch labourador pelt.
In a similar vein, after the Wendy Alexander illegal donation whitewash by the Electoral Commission, somebody (can’t remember where) started calling Labour’s quango the “Selectoral Omission”
33. John L
No. The far left have disappeared off the radar in Scotland. Only the Greens remain, and they will soak up a fair chunk of the old SSP/Solidarity voters, perhaps helping them to steal the Lib Dems sole Scottish MEP next year.
Argh! I remember reading a blog report on this very survey only a few days ago. It wasn’t one of my regulars, and I can’t remember where the dam thing was.
The report said that something like 50% actually opposed the scheme but it was buried and hidden in the poll. I’ll try and go find that report.
Cuts threaten UK intelligence, allegedly:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk/7245917.stm
Leaving aside the merits or otherwise of the case, what is startling is the sheer political ineptitude of the government which simultaneously wants to lock people up for 90 days without charge for reading web sites without intent in order to portray its opponents as soft on terror.
37, blimey, I actually found it quite quickly.
http://philtaylor.org.uk/?p=1104
I think it’s the same poll, same company and same subject anyway.
39 - That would be interesting!
36 thanks. I did wonder if it looked a bit “two years ago”.
31. Mike Smithson - “Andrew Gilligan is one of the great heroes of our time.”
I’m sorry, but it is just that I very, very rarely read the London media, or watch BBC, ITV or Sky’s main news stuff. Apart from Scottish media, I only read The Economist and some foreign-language or US media.
Although I do vaguely recall the name Gilligan from a few years ago, it is not a name that I have ever come across much. I am sure that he is a wonderful chap who has done something amazing, but is it really so surprising that I did not immediately recognise the name?
Just go out in the streets of Bedford right now and ask 100 passers-by who Seymour Hersh is!! I would be amazed if even one respondent had the faintest idea (no Googling on respondents mobiles would be permitted).
re 42. I think that you ought to broaden the range of your reading matter. The idea that somebody with a keen interest in politics is not aware of Andrew Gilligan I find amazing. …you do remember the Iraq war don’t you? Of course Scottish soldiers were involved.
Is it possible that the recent shootings at universities will raise the issue of gun control for the November election?
Is there any change in public opinion over this, or does the NRA still hold sway?
42: Stuart, the point is you would know who Andrew Gilligan is if he was the knitting correspodent on radio Scotland. Seriously, if a bright politically interested guy like you does not know who he is or the major role he played in the biggest political controversy in recent years it does not say much for the prospects of an outward looking internationist independent Scotland.
42. Being deliberately obtuse there methinks
Do you really think of Andrew Gilligan as a hero, Mike? I think he put out an inaccurate story in an attempt to further his career and hasn’t stopped whinging about it since. It is particularly galling as somebody lost more than his job over what was essentially a “who can pee higher” contest between the Beeb and Number 10.
39: Nope, not the same. The stuff Phil Taylor has got was a public consultation carried out by MORI (i.e. everyone can participate and have their say, but it makes no claim to be representative of those people who don’t contribute); the press release refers to a opinion poll by MORI. Sample size/number of submissions don’t match anyway.
Well, of all the odd attacks on me here at pb.com, I must admit that I am a little surprised that the most uproar has arisen due to my only vague awareness of a BBC/Spectator/London Evening Standard journalist
I would have thought you lot would have better things to worry about than my taste in reading material (I almost never watch the tv news or listen to the radio any longer - partly due to my tv being permanently on the bloomin D!sney Channel). There is more to life (even political life) than the London media you know.
Maybe the questions asked were similar to those in the public “consultation” on the extension of the Congestion Charge zone. This was so brazenly rigged that it cannot even be called sneaky. There was no question on whether you were in favour of the proposals or not! But it did have a completely irrelevant section on what you, the respondent, were personally doing to reduce CO2 emissions. So anyone who was in favour of reducing CO2 emissions in general was taken as being in favour of the proposals. Greenpeace rolled over with excitement at the prospect of 4×4 driver bashing and gave their enthusiastic support, even though the official prediction of the effects indicated that the likely environmental benefits were not very great and not even certain. But that was a long boring and complicated document.
49
Bloody heretic!!
Article in today’s Times, claiming a Clinton victory is still possible.
http://tinyurl.com/3cva8r
Dr Kelly’s death was a tragedy for all concerned. We should however remember, he had signed the Offical Secrets Act. Dr Kelly was not at liberty to discuss confidential matters with anyone, not bound by that act.
Sarah Tisdale, who committed a similar offence when Heseltine was Minister of Defence, went to prison.
I’m not a supporter of the act, but while its there, you must obey it.
44. Incidents like this simply strengthen both sides of the argument.
The anti-gun lobby will say it was too easy for the shooter to get a gun.
The pro-gun lobby will say if there more people with guns the shooter would have been taken out earlier.
48, oh. I feel like a fool now. Well, it’s still, er, useful in the context of this thread and ongoing discussion.
The fatc remains that the lack of detailed data from the actual poll is somewhat odd. Then again, Ken’s manner of doing many things is odd.
Phil “the power?” Taylor is also completely wrong in analysing the report - 60%+ saying it would not change their behaviour does not mean anything.
Those without 4×4s won’t be planning on changing their behaviour.
Those with chelsea tractors will see an opportunity to further their case by claiming it won’t make any difference.
It’s a bit like those ridiculous debates on petrol pricing and tax, loads of “he thinks its going to stop me driving everywhere, well he’s totally wrong, but this tax is going to bankrupt me”
44. Are you somehow implying Dr Kelly ‘deserved’ his fate?
49: Come on stop digging. The single biggest political story of the last 10 years by far is Iraq, and in Britain easily the biggest part of that was the dodgy dossier, exposed by Gilligan, the subsequent Hutton whitewash and the death of David Kelly. Gilligan had a huge part in Blair having to leave office early many would say, and tarnished his and New labour’s reputation indelibly. BBC vs NuLab, Gilligan vs Blair, defined politics for months. I can remember with absolute clarity where I was when listening to Today when Gilligan was reporting about it all. In 50 years historians will name this when asked to name one defining story.
To say you haven’t heard of him is really absolutely incredible. I am trying to think of reasons why you would pretend not to have done so, since I can only half believe you haven’t heard of him. If you are trying to make some point about Scottish indepnedence or detachment it is very lame.
Andrew Gilligan is quite a minor and very forgettable figure to be honest.
Anyway, this is a bloody silly idea. First it was about cutting congestion, and now they’re banging on about saving the planet but only 7k tons out of 800k tons of car pollution come from 4×4s.
All it is is a way of raising money by taking advantage of the general (and probably wrong, in my view) man-made global warming doomsday scenario.
Apparently those within the zone will be charged as well. So, basically you get taxed for driving your car (unless it’s made of cheese and runs on prune juice) if you live in certain parts of London. It’s crazy.
Am I wrong in assuming that “chelsea tracto” and “4×4″ is actually merely a shorthand for “emissions over 225g/km”?
If so, were the people being asked questions informed that “chelsea tractor/4×4″ included cars such as:
Vauxhall Zafira
Hyundai Trajet
Some Audi A4s, A3s and A6s
Honda Accords
Peugot 407s
Skoda Superb
… and several hundred others
Now, you may well criticise owners of such cars for their taste (:-) ), but I must admit that I’d never have thought “Audi A3″ when someone said “Chelsea Tractor”
Lee Jasper suspended
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/15/livingstone.london
59, you’re correct. And it doesn’t cut pollution, it cuts a greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide). The new rules will not cover any sort of emission directly harmful to human health.
Well, I’m not sure what perecentage of Londoners drive - it’s certainly a lot less than elsewhere in the country. I think Ken can carry his proposed £25 charge if he also gives an undertaking not to extend the zone geographically during his next term: the proportion of Londoners who drive in the zone during charging hours can’t be much more than 10% - 20%, surely. And few of them will ever have voted for Ken.
56. Jon C
It must be about 7 or 8 years since I last listened to the Today programme on Radio 4. Even back then I would only have listened to about 5-10 minute snippets every 6 months or so. In my entire life I have perhaps listened to short snippets of the Today show on about 20 occasions, max.
Why on earth would I lie about my awareness of a journalist? Conspiracy theorising gone bananas…
[60] Quelle surprise
the racist conspiracy continues (!)
63 - You can’t have a conspiracy of one person. I think the accusation is simply that you are pretending not to know about the Gilligan affair for effect. It was hardly a London media village story - it was a huge story on all news outlets for months. I have no idea whether the accusation is true or not, but it is hardly outlandish.
[58] - You are right that, as a way of reducing CO2 emissions, the proposal leaves a lot to be desired. To a certain extent it depends on what is done with the money raised. If that money was used to fund improvements to the tube, then it might help.
This raises an important point (which the Lib Dems have flunked). Green taxes should be intended as temporary taxes to raise funds to invest in better alternatives, rather than as a way to raise funds to cut income tax. The latter is dishonest and undermines the notion of collectively paying for social goods (such as universal healthcare) by progressive (but still universal) taxation.
On global warming I invite people to peruse the IPCC report at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm Not good news I’m afraid.
re 47 what was inaccurate about Gilligan’s story? The dossier was sexed up and any independent observer could see that. The government picked the right man for the job when they chose Lord Hutton.
re 42 I don’t think much of the Scotsman or the Herald if they didn’t cover the Gilligan story - even the Scottish Sun might have managed it. You’ll be telling us next that you’ve never heard of David Kelly.
68. Who?
Quite a lot of superdelegate defections to Obama, endorsements and new union backing for Obama in the last 24 hours…
Superdelegates;
Christine Samuels - Switches H-O 14/02 - (New Jersey)
John Lewis - Switches H-O 14/02 - Key Black HRC supporter.
David Wilhelm - Announces for O 13/02-
Unions
United Food & Comm Workers - 1.1mm members
SEIU (expected) 1.9mm members
Wikipedia has a nice Superdelegate tracker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2008_United_States_Democratic_Party_Superdelegates
Currently
HRC 149
BO 108
Undec 486
- I understand these numbers are higher elsewhere but these have been verified in the least biased way in my opinion - open to Wiki for realtime scrutiny.
So, Barack only needs a handful of further switches to be even on announced superdelegates - a lot closer than the consensus. In Wisconsin for example of 16 SDs, Obama has 4 announced to Clinton’s 2.
re 59 my Skoda Fabia will get me (and 4 others) easily from A to B comfortably and safely at 120g/km, so why don’t the whingers shut up. There’s no reason for having an ultra polluting car these days.
I had heard/read about him! It is just that it was several years ago, and I happened to have forgotten the name of the particular journalist involved. Sheesh…
He who has never forgotten a name or a face may cast the next stone…
71, there’s no reason not to, unless you subscribe to the man-made global warming theory. And you aren’t really referring to pollution, but carbon dioxide, which humans also breathe out.
The fact is that the man-made aspect of global warming has been so widely accepted that this silly and punitive tax is accepted by many and welcomed by some.
68 The problem with Gilligan wasn’t his story but that he broke the one moral rule my grubby trade has and betrayed his source (who then committed suicide). Mind you, for all the howls of ‘propaganda’ he’s causing his reports on the corruption of the Livingstone regime are faultless examples of investigative journalism.
74, no he didn’t. The Labour Party said “We won’t tell you who the source is but we’ll tell you who he isn’t” and journalists just worked through a list and then discovered his name.
Here is the BBC story on the suspension of Lee Jasper ()that’s Ken Livingstone’s sidekick, for the information of anyone outside London)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7246468.stm
Jasper makes a curious point towards the end - that the newspaper should have taken their “evidence” to the police. Is that right? Hasn’t the paper done its job by putting it all into the public domain? It’s up to the people affected (i.e. the London Authority) to take it up with the Met?
60,76. For all the bluster, it’s game over for Lee Jasper.
New market up at ladbrokes
Wisconsin
1/6 Obama
7/2 Clinton
The last couple of days have seen a few people finally backing Clinton here.
actually it is astounding how few people accept it despite strong scientific evidence going back to the 60s and mounting all the time.
as for the list of supposedly normal family cars that will have to pay £25, they are generally the models that have ludicrously oversized engines.
if people were half as keen on it as they are on “studies” that tell them their weight problems aren’t caused by overeating, etc. etc., we’d all be living much less polluting lives.
there is also plenty of evidence that less polluting lives are more stress-free, enjoyable, and healthier. so it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
74 Are you the Nick Cohen who also writes for the Evening Standard?
70 re superdelegates. In the light of the Boston Globe story (link at 15) that both sides have been giving money to superdelegates, it will be interesting to know if they are getting value for money.
The Globe says Obama has paid more than three times as much to superdelegates so I suppose it is only fair if he gets more of their votes.
i found this article about american political betting on intrade interesting, it has echoes of some of Mike’s regular themes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/business/13leonhardt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
79 - The accepted view in the 70’s was that the planet was cooling not warming. There is in my opinion evidence in both directions and to be as sure as some people are that climate change is man-made requires a leap of faith that the same people deprecate with regard to organised religion.
71. Much of the recently emerging scientific evidence shows that driving from London to York is a considerably more pleasant experience in a BMW M6 than a Skoda Fabia.
79, strong scientific evidence, eh? There is some scientific evidence for it but conclusive it ain’t.
Take Al Gore’s famous ice-core/temperature graph. It shows an incredibly close correlation between the temperature in the past and the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the time. Unfortunately, a correlation absolutely does not prove a causal relationships, and nor does it prove carbon dioxide precedes high temperature. Given also that the ice-core carbon dioxide records have several centuries’ margin of error, we can’t be sure.
In addition, recent weather in Alaska, where it has been hitting -45F, and Prince Edward Island in Canada, where it was so cold the schools were closed for the first time in living memory,a re hardly indicative of worldwide warmth. Finally, China has had the worst winter for fifty years.
Then we have the fact that it used to be much warmer than it is now, and industrial activity has only occurred for a couple of centuries. It’s not impossible that we’re having an effect on the climate, indeed it’s likely. But that effect is probably tiny, and is immeasurable.
Also, carbon dioxide isn’t pollution. It doesn’t harm human health at all.
Global warming’s popular because:
1) it gives the greens something to jump up and down about
2) it allows government to tax you for Evil Carbon actitivites
3) the massive consensus of the mainstream media, especially the BBC, has promoted it endlessly
The climate has always changed and we cannot possibly say whether present changes are man-made or natural.
80. It is, yes.
It was the Labour Government who betrayed the source (David Kelly), not Gilligan. Gilligan may not have been the most likeable person, but in the titanic battle of Alistair Campbell (Govt) vs Andrew Gilligan (BBC) it was perfectly clear who were the good guys and who were the bad guys…
As for his original report, I cant believe anyone out there (except a few die-hard Labour MPs) still thinks it wasn’t spot on in almost every way!
70,81 re superdelegates: the money works.
The Globe links to http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=336
“Yet the Center for Responsive Politics has found that campaign contributions have been a generally reliable predictor of whose side a superdelegate will take. In cases where superdelegates had received contributions from both Clinton and Obama, all seven elected officials who received more money from Clinton have committed to her. Thirty-four of the 43 superdelegates who received more money from Obama, or 79 percent, are backing him. In every case the Center found in which superdelegates received money from one candidate but not the other, the superdelegate is backing the candidate who gave them money.”
Colour me gobsmacked.
[73] - “And you aren’t really referring to pollution, but carbon dioxide, which humans also breathe out.”
That’s an absurd point. What matters is if the levels of CO2 change. The carbon in the CO2 you breathe out has come from the food you have eaten, and consequently the food that the animal ate, and ultimately from photosynthesis - ie taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
Thus it is in balance and the net effect is nil.
The problem with fossil fuels is that this is carbon that has been buried for hundreds of millions of years. When you burn it, you realise *extra* CO2 into the atmosphere and have a net effect on CO2 levels. Which then has an impact on the radiation, leading to a warmer planet.
I really don’t understand why you would make yourself look so stupid by making such a facile non-point. Either you haven’t taken any time to think it through, which is astonishing given the [potential] importance of the subject, or you are [subconsciously] desperate to find any comforting non-truth to which you can cling and avoid having to think about it.
Seriously. Think about it.
70.I wonder what it costs to get a superdelegate to switch sides?
I refer again to:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/02/superdelegates.html
84,
Personally, I wouldn’t knock the Skodas - they’re now quite closely related to Audi/Volkswagen/SEAT, and are, by all reports, pleasant cars to drive in (as well as usually quite affordable).
I’d say that the evidence of climate change is pretty much overwhelming, although some people tend to overegg the speed at which it is happening and even disregard conclusions of the IPCC (I’m mainly thinking of the SRES scenarios) in order to push their own ideologically-based proposals.
I’m more in favour of incentives for lower pollutants (carrot rather than stick) as it tends to get people more on-side.
Plus zebra-fan Timothy above has pinpointed an issue with all of the parties seeing green taxes as an acceptable moral way of raising income - if it’s successful, then the income stream will be transient and should also be aimed at providing greener alternatives.
Nothing put out by Livingstone should ever be trusted.
It’s good to see his henchman Lee Jasper has been suspended, as the police investigate where all the missing money for black causes has gone.
89, in that case, as the past has seen enormous climatic changes, either carbon dioxide changes can be caused naturally, or there are more important factors at play (or both). How can you be certain that the current climate is not simply a natural change?
Carbon dioxide is as much pollution as methane or water vapour are, only carbon dioxide is a less potent greenhouse gas.
[83] - That simply isn’t true. There have been literature reviews of the published peer-reviewed literature and there were only two papers [two!] that raised the possibility of the cooling trend continuing. This was picked up on at the time by some news magazine, or something, giving rise to this myth that there was a consensus that we were heading to an ice age.
As it happens the US Academy of Sciences wrote a report in the 70s which basically said that at the time there was not enough evidence to say what was going to happen (a fair assessment at the time). A few years ago the National Academies of Science of the G8 countries released a joint statement declaring that the evidence was now there for anthropogenic global warming theory.
Once again, I invite people to look at the evidence themselves, http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm
chet @ 92 re Ken/Jasper/fraud — weren’t there similar problems under the GLC?
I’m not convinced this touches Jasper though, still less that it will harm Livingstone. I’ve not read all the reports but the money seems to have disappeared a long way down the chain. The suggestion is not that Ken is pocketing the dosh.
So far you can make a better case for Darling resigning for junior civil servants losing personal data on CDs. And that never looked likely.
93 - I would recommend that people make a cursory study of the Permian-Triassic extinction even where the planetary temparature was raised by 10 degrees wiping out over 90% of all life on earth, and there wasn’t a 4×4 or Chelsea Tractor in sight. Man’s ability to alter the climate is marginal compared to the ability of natural phenomena, to elevate man’s powers in this sphere is a bit of a conceit.
re 73 no I’m not a great fan of the global warming theory which is pretty much overdone - the sun is far more a variable star than anything humans can do, but it’s an incontrovertible fact that too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is bad and we should do everyhting we can to try and reduce the rise. There is no need for anyone in London to own a 4 wheel drive car capable of doing 120mph - unless of course the streets have been reduced to muddy tracks after 8 years of Red Ken.
re 84 in what way is it more pleasant?
87
Is it the intention of the next Conservative government to scrap the Official Secrets Act? Will the next Conservative government give an assurance it will not prosecute any public servant that, ‘whistle blows’ on its dubious behaviour?
[85] - We know that carbon dioxide causes an increase in temperature because we know from laboratory experiments that it absorbs the outgoing radiation from the Earth’s surface. The doubt that exists is in terms of what the feedbacks are, in terms of whether the new equilibrium reached will be a lot higher temperature than now, or a little higher temperature.
Even then the science has advanced to the point where this range can be usefully constrained, to the extent that the greater uncertainty is in terms of how much GHGs we decide to emit.
Pointing to one or two locations does not disprove a global rise in temperatures. Mathematically it is very easy for the mean to rise and individual data points to fall. A political analogy would be the few council seats that Labour gained, or the Tories lost, against the tide of large Tory gains and Labour losses at the local elections last year.
Go and look at the actual evidence in its entirety, not just one or two cherry-picked data points that happen to agree with your pre-conceived worldview.
100, just found this from http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html
“Met Office forecast for global temperature for 2008
Global temperature for 2008 is expected to be 0.37 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C, the coolest year since 2000, when the value was 0.24 °C.”
Four decades is considered longterm? That shows what a short-term view pro-global warming people have. The climate has existed for 4,000,000,000 years or so. Taking one ten-millionth as a ‘longterm’ temperature is ridiculous.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, that’s undisputed. But what about other factors? The other greenhouse gases, forests, changes in the atmospheric layers, the Sun etc. You can’t single out one factor, and then only the man-made contribution of it, and say “THIS causes global warming.”
As has been said, in the distant past temperatures have been hugely higher and hugely lower, before the Industrial Revolution. It could be that we’re having a significant impact, though I don’t believe we are, but to pretend it’s self-evident and obvious is to seriously overstate the case.
63: Well amazingly given the hugeness of the story, it wasn’t ONLY on Today, but every radio and TV channel, every newspaper, every news website…
OK so you don’t remember it. Fine. I am however still amazed given your deep anorak tendencies. It is to me roughly on a par with someone saying “Oh has Diana died? I hadn’t heard that”.
97 - But we have observations of the sun that show it has not increased in brightness over the last few decades, when temperatures have been increasing.
Modern climate science can take all of the factors into account and so it is now reasonably well-established that the warming in the early 20th century was caused by an increase in solar activity (and a decrease in volcanic activity).
The mid-century cooling was caused principally by sulphate aerosols, but these have a residence time of only about a week, so do not accumulate in the way that CO2 does (think of the difference between a savings account when you withdraw the interest, or one where you leave it in to take advantage of compound interest). Eventually the effect of the CO2 grows to eclipse that from sulphate aerosols, which is what has happened since the 1970s.
This is all in the IPCC reports.
And, yes, there are other important GHGs (methane, nitrous oxides), but human activity has played a large role in increasing their concentrations as well.
Water vapour is actually a feedback, dependent on the temperature, as any excess would rapidly rain out, and any deficit be replenished by evaporation. It is one of the feedbacks that amplifies the initial warming caused by GHGs. This is all captured by the climate models.
98. People don’t confuse you for a poor person.
Gilligan admitted in his own evidence to the Hutton Inquiry that he was wrong to claim the government “probably knew” the 45-minute claim was “untrue”.
Plenty of opponents of the war, myself included, accept that the Government believed Saddam probably had operational WMD. The fact he didn’t doesn’t make them liars. The better criticisms of the war are that the inspectors had not had time, it increased instability in the region and was always likely to on a proper analysis, the “beacon of democracy” agenda peddled by Bush was misconceived, the war was “sold” simplistically as being about WMD when it was not and so on.
The whole Gilligan affair was grubby on all sides. But he makes out he was some sort of crusader who history will judge as having been the UK’s Woodward and Bernstein, which (like his journalism) isn’t particularly accurate.
101 - Look at the damn IPCC reports. All of the factors and their relative importance are assessed. Scientists have been working on this problem for a lot longer than politicalbetting.com has existed. These questions now have reasonably good answers, with error estimates as well.
Again, the IPCC reports consider a wide range of different timescales.
There were lots of things different in the past (arrangement of the continents, for example) that aren’t changing now. You have to consider all the differences.
This is what the science is actually doing.
96 - “to elevate man’s powers in this sphere is a bit of a conceit.”
I’m pleased to see someone else saying something I’ve long thought. The idea that 200 years of mankind burning some stuff can ruin a planet that’s existed for 4,000,000,000 is jaw-droppingly arrogant. That alone is reason for a healthy scepticism when governments come along hungrily eyeing the contents of our wallets under the guise of a great moral crusade to Save The World.
The famous IPCC again?
Man-bear-Pig is a real threat. I’m totally serial!
It’s half man, half bear and half pig.
I used to be the Vice President you know.
106 - “There were lots of things different in the past (arrangement of the continents, for example) that aren’t changing now”
Tectonic drift is still occurring.
Astonishingly, the Lee Jasper story doesn’t appear anywhere on the BBC News politics page. The priorities of the BBC News team baffle me.
As for the natural versus human-caused influences, it’s undeniable that there are natural influences (solar radiative forcing) pushing the temperature upwards, but this does tend to be cyclical.
One analogy would be to consider oneself on an escalator that is slowly moving upwards, but has historically changed direction over long timescales. We’re on that slow-moving escalator, but are unfortunately stepping upwards at the same time, at several times the speed of the escalator.
As an aside, does anyone here know if the SRES scenario families A2, B1 and B2 have ever been split down further as the A1 was? It would be good to see a B1T family extrapolation, as that would effectively be the ideal scenario (increased environmental awareness, high globalisation, focus on technological solutions). Although come to think of it, B1 might imply B1T automatically …
[96] - That is a logical fallacy. What you are effectively saying is:
“Look! This other man one hundred years ago was killed by drowning. Drowning! Not murder. I wasn’t even born then. M’lud, I put it to the prosecution that this proves I could not possibly be responsible for this supposed murder of my, very regrettably deceased, rich wife which he accuses me of.”
It’s ridiculous. Just because a past event had other causes, does not mean that different causes can not cause a similar event now.
Such weak arguments.
74 Thanks Nick, that’s very good to know.
My problem with the reports from the Evening Standard has always been that it destroyed its own credibility with its persistently hysterical anti-ken line. Now they are confirmed by others they are much more likely to be taken seriously.
110
You obviously aren’t looking very hard!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7246468.stm
114 - I saw that link up above. But it does not appear anywhere on this page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/default.stm
Or not in my version of it anyway. I would have thought it was a little more important than most of the stories on the politics page, and a bona fide politics story to do with an important pending election.
Hello All,
I see that old dead sheep Geoffrey Howe is to lead yet another Tory review on tax simplification.
I guess that means we can expect VAT to be “simplified” up to 20% or 30% if Cameron gets in. We’ll hear nothing about it before an election though.
Here’s their form…
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19960103/ai_n9632622
106. But if there turned about to be nothing wrong, what would all these scientists do with themselves, eh?
You can see this effect by reading the stuff put out by some of the scientists who investigated CJD - still claiming a massive epidemic could be just around the corner, years and years later, when actual cases have dwindled to almost zero.
[107] - Think for a moment. We only started to burn oil in a serious way in the last hundred or so years. Yet now geologists tell us we may have reached the peak in the rate at which we can extract it. How can this be? How arrogant of these foolish geologists to tell us that, in just a couple of hundred years, we could burn oil that took hundreds of millions of years to create…
Also, we would not “ruin” the planet. We might cause a mass extinction event. But, taking the long-term view, evolution would kick in, and you would get all sorts of new species adapting and so on and so forth. The planet would do just fine. Human civilisation, on the other hand, would have a harder time adjusting. Take a look at a map and consider how many large coastal cities there are. What would happen to New York if there were a sea level rise of a few metres?
95 I can’t say about Livingstone, but Jasper is surely finished.
118 - Again what is so special about humanity, over species will have to survive anything that nature throws at it. Humans alone are arrogant enough to think that rather than adapt to prevailing conditions the prevailing conditions should be adapted to them.
116 - I take it you assume that the Conservatives would take Britain out of the EU. The maximum rate of VAT in the EU is 25%.
77
Unfortunately it may just be temporary,if Livingstone wins in May then I am sure Lee Jasper will be back.
121 Anything is possible with these guys. Great article on Cameron by Nick Rob. We just don’t know what the man really thinks.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2008/02/cameron_and_dej.html
119 — I’d like to see Jasper go because I think he is wrong too often. But I’m not rushing to back Boris on the basis of it.
i’m afraid the heads-in-sand argument is full of such fallacies. the basic problem is that people are determined to just carry on living the rubbish lifestyle they have now, because they don’t know any better. any evidence that it is a really really bad idea falls on deaf ears.
* whether other factors have a bigger effect or not at any given moment, it is a fact that humans are doing irreversible harm now, unnecessarily in an awful lot of cases.
* global warming theory predicts that certain parts of the world will in fact cool, and others will stay roughly the same but be subject to many more cases of extreme weather events. all of this over a long period of time.
* claims that the media over-hype this are incorrect in my view. definitely the green lobby are often guilty of over-hyping things (usually because they are fighting a losing battle against entrenched commercial/oil interests). however, in my view a lot of the most serious claims in the papers and on the BBC are underestimating the effects that global warming would have:
- i saw BBC news recently run a long piece about how there was likely to be a serious heatwave, killing thousands, in britain in the next 5 years and that by 2050 that would be the norm not the exception. the story was completely trivialised with pictures of people sunbathing on the beach, and extremely frail old people being taken to hospital (i.e. thousands will die, but it won’t be you)
- a lot of reports in the papers refer to carbon dioxide emission measured in tonnes. it is hard to even explain quite how much a tonne of carbon dioxide that is - an awful lot though. the units are used to make things sound less scary (small and relatively meaningless numbers). the obsession with carbon at the expense of ignoring all other pollutants is a big mistake, in my view.
118 - as it happens I DO live in a city that’d be at grave risk if sea levels rose, one that flooded quite spectacularly last summer in fact - but I have complete faith in mankind’s ability to adapt and survive, and a considerable lack of faith in doom-mongering scientists and politicans.
Funny isn’t it…..
antifrank
” I saw that link up above. But it does not appear anywhere on this page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/default.stm”
Nigel Waterson’s arrest was blazed on the front page as ‘breaking news’.
Incidentally, the grubby little f*ckers at The Guardian have taken out google ads for ‘Nigel Waterson scandal’. Surely that is libellous? It appears at the top of every google page. That is clearly damaging to his reputation.
[120] - Well, yeah. Isn’t that basically what differentiates us from the rest of life on the planet? Isn’t that the point? We alone have the capability to plan, cooperate and make decisions to choose what future we want to have. Or that’s the propaganda, human history is littered with evidence to the contrary, unfortunately.
Since it would be considerably easier to avoid having to adapt, rather than adapting (eg by moving a large proportion of the world’s population to new cities), I suggest that the sensible thing to do would be to deploy the technology to reduce GHG emissions.
Perhaps Agent Smith was right? Maybe it is all delusions of grandeur and we are merely a viral infection upon the planet…
re 104 just a foolish one for spending £30k on a car when one costing £10k will be more environmentally friendly and do exactly the same job equally as well. I’d rather spend my money on something much more pleasureable than a slowing rusting heap of metal.
126. Adapt and survive - probably. Adapt, survive and maintain a aquality of life even remotely close to what we have now? Much more uncertain. Civilisations have collapsed in the past. What makes this one, built on finite natural resources, so special?
This, in fact, is very much the nub of the debate. Many other species can adapt rather more readily than humans can - they simply change where they are living or which times of the year the hibernate in (I saw a couple of bees last weekend - this is in the Pennines). Humans have spent two hundred years putting together the infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle we currently enjoy. That infrastructure cannot easily be altered. Even if it is true that massive climate changes in the past were caused by natural phenomena (and it is), it is surely sensible that we try to avoid causing even modest climate change, given the consequences that the best predictions show would be likely to follow.
117: Spot on. Every time CJD was mentioned on thenews, and some scientist was interviewed, the whole point of the interview was to justify more research funding. Having done a PhD myself I know a bit about how the funding game works.
There are apparently ‘tens of thousands’ of cliamte scientists. Well they’d all be out of a job if their research showed that it is all b****cks. Hmmmmmmm……
Maybe they are right, but I am in the ‘adapt and survive’ camp like Andy D. Given what’s happening in China, envy-driven ‘congestion’ charges on ‘gas guzzlers’ are entirely pointless, just an excuse for yet more taxation
I don’t see why we should all hairshirt ourselves back to the stone age and make ourselves miserable and grey when it won’t actually make a blind bit of difference.
123 Jonathan you are just googling any anti-Conservative stories you can.
Do you think you can change the mind of someone one out there? Perhaps an ex-Labour voter, unhappy with what Blair, Brown & Labour has done… Perhaps?
Or perhaps a Conservative voter who may consider voting Labour?
With all the corruption, incompetence and treason committed by Labour, do you think anyone cares about your little stories?
No they dont. They just think that Labour has ruined their country and is now trying to bore them to death.
130 - the way forward was shown in the words of those great philosophers, Busted: “I’ve been to the year 3000. Not much has changed but they live under water.”