Longrider

Via Craig Murray, this article by James Purnell.

The last few weeks have been deeply uncomfortable for anyone who believes that politics is not a means for enriching yourself but a vehicle for us to change our society. All politicians are under scrutiny and will have to answer to their constituents. For two weeks we have looked inwards. But now, as the whole country starts to recover from the shock of moats and mystery mortgages, it is time every member of parliament starts to contribute to the debate of what comes next.

Well, yes… Getting rid of them via a general election would be a start.

Everyone agrees we need to reform MPs’ expenses. A growing number agree we need to open up democracy. But the long overdue process of introducing transparency to the expenses system should only be the start of opening up politics.

I’m undecided on the matter of electoral reform. For a while I wanted to see the back of FPTP in favour of PR. Now I’m less certain. Still, James doesn’t stop there:

Yet a debate on constitutional reform alone would ignore the elephant in the room – money. Without recognition that in our society and in our politics money buys power and dictates influence, any talk of “power to the people” will be meaningless.

Ah, yes, money. Whose money? Why our money of course. You know where this is leading, don’t you?

Amid the current anger at politicians and politics we must bite the bullet of state funding for political parties…

No, no, no! A thousand times, NO!

If a party cannot secure funding from people who want to support it because they believe in its values, then it fails, pure and simple. I do not support the core values of the three main parties, I therefore do not want a penny of my money used to fund their election campaigns. Parties survive or die because of their grass roots support. If they alienate that support, then they must pay the price. I used to be a Labour party member and happily paid my membership fees. When I realised that the Labour party did not share my standards of ethical behaviour, I withdrew that support. I’ll be damned if they should take it back by force, which is what Purnell is proposing. This is highly unethical. If they cannot survive without voluntary funding from members and donors, then let them perish and good riddance to them. The commenters on the piece seem to agree with me.

I was going to comment on this remarkably stupid story yesterday, but became distracted by real life. In the meantime, Bishop Hill got in before me and cites a rebuttal. The story struck me immediately with the reaction; “WTF!?!” rapidly followed by “where’s the evidence for such a remarkable claim?”

Climate change is already killing 300,000 people a year in a “silent crisis” that is seriously affecting hundreds of millions more, an influential humanitarian group warned today.

A report by the Global Humanitarian Forum, led by Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, says that the effects of climate change are growing in such a way that it will have a serious impact on 600 million people, almost ten per cent of the world’s population, within 20 years. Almost all of these will be in developing countries.

“Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” Mr Annan said.

“As this report shows, the first hit and worst affected are the world’s poorest groups, and yet they have done least to cause the problem.”

The report claims that 90 per cent of the deaths are related to gradual environmental degradation caused by a warming climate, which exacerbates existing threats — mainly malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria. The rest are said to be the result of weather disasters.

Never mind that natural disasters and disease predate AGW by several millenia, let’s run a completely made up story and dress it up as a report. With Kofi Annan’s name in the frame, I can’t say I am over surprised by the alarmist tone backed up by fuck-all evidence.

What is disturbing, as BH points out, is that news agencies trot this stuff out without bothering to challenge the reliability of the claims being made. As Bishop Hill says:

The report is clearly a travesty. Who is going to mourn the newspapers that publish it?

Quite so. And I won’t.