That's not a hack - this is a hack

As I mentioned back in July The Age, the Melbourne based sister paper of Sydney Morning Herald, was all over the News of the Screws phone hacking scandal like flies on a piece of shit.

The thing is that Gingery Dullard, unlike the Yanks, may have rather more cause to investigate the Aussie media. And interestingly it's not the Murdoch owned mob but their competitors, the Graun friendly, lefty-loving, phone-hack hating Fairfax group, who have been accused of being up to no good.

THE editor-in-chief of The Age, Paul Ramadge, has refused to detail his personal involvement in the newspaper's unauthorised access of an ALP database now being examined by the Australian Federal Police.

And how did this happen?

The Age accessed the database from its own computer terminals using an unauthorised password provided by an undisclosed source.
"This story came through entirely appropriate journalistic methods," Ramadge said. "Entry to the ALP database came via a whistleblower who raised concerns about private information held on it.
"This whistleblower had authorised access to this material and we reported in the public interest."
[...]
The Age used material obtained from the database to inform a story run in the final week of the Victorian election campaign about Labor keeping a "secret" file on citizens. Several people whose details were accessed were contacted by the newspaper before publication. Others, such as Mr Faris, were contacted after publication and assured their information would not be stored or misused.

Okay, so they may have had good reason but it sounds like it's fair to ask the question. And even if they have good reason if they commit a crime in the process does it somehow un-crime it? I'm not sure a good reason would let me off something as trivial as a speeding offence - actually I'm pretty sure it wouldn't - so I can't help thinking that if a crime has been committed with good intentions it's probably still a crime and that there'd be a case to answer.

And this week a police investigation looks more likely as the body overseeing elections in the state have got involved at the same time as a member of the public has placed the blame squarely on the newspaper that was so tumescent with joy when bashing the Murdoch rags in distant country for listening to people's voicemail.

A VICTIM of The Age's hacking of an ALP database has come forward claiming the newspaper breached her privacy, as The Weekend Australian reveals the Victorian Electoral Commission asked police to investigate the claims of illegal activity.
Claire Watson, 24, has expressed her concerns about how and why The Age accessed personal information about her, which she had agreed to share with a local MP but not with the newspaper. The public servant, who appeared in a story by Age journalist Royce Millar last year as part of the broadsheet's investigation into the ALP database, said her views had been "distorted" and "words had been put in my mouth".
"I feel my privacy has been breached by the journalist, not the ALP," she said. "I agreed to share information with the ALP, but not with The Age. He seemed dodgy and was pleased with himself. He was so indignant with the ALP, but it is clear he was hacking my file. He was trying to whip me into outrage about it."
[...]
"The journalist kept trying to put words in my mouth; he was saying it was outrageous, but I didn't think it was outrageous," she said. "The whole thing was weird. I tried telling him I wasn't outraged as I understood large organisations keep that sort of data. I think it is reasonable and good practice to keep the data."
She said she was more concerned Millar had then accessed the information.
"He knew a lot about me - my date of birth, where I lived, my phone number, opinions I had shared with a local MP . . . he was hacking into my file."

As with the voicemail thing 'hacking' seems to be an inappropriate term for what looks awfully like a simple, old fashioned leak, but for whatever reason people seem to want to believe that any electronically stored information that isn't given out voluntarily must have been hacked. I think this is a bit like insisting that when you can't find your car it can only have been stolen rather than thinking that you just forgot where you left it or you parked in a tow away zone, but the real point is that if this is all hacking how did The Age have the front to throw so many stones at the Murdoch media for the phone not-hacking when they too had been accessing information they had no bloody right to? Was the temptation to throw those stones and hopefully damage their competition at the Melbourne Herald Sun and The Australian so strong that they forgot they lived in a greenhouse?

An injunction by The Age against Victoria Police to stop the removal of computer equipment remains in place since Thursday's eight-hour raid. Two detectives from the e-crime squad remained at The Age overnight to ensure none of the computer equipment, which had been pulled apart, could be tampered with.
A spokesman for the Victorian Electoral Commission confirmed to The Weekend Australian that it had been the first to raise the issue with police.
Electoral Commissioner Steve Tully is believed to have been concerned about the manner in which the database was allegedly penetrated by The Age.
[...]
The Weekend Australian believes that police have been given access to ALP records and computer equipment but that there are mixed views in the party about how to handle the hacking issue. This is because of the potential blow-back on the Labor Party if The Age were to campaign against the party. "It's not something we wanted. There are some senior people who just want it to go away," a source said.
However, the fact the VEC approached police means investigators will have to push ahead with their inquiries. Either way, it appears police were honour-bound to proceed given the potential offences at stake and the role the VEC plays as an independent and impartial statutory authority.

And as I said back in July, since The Age isn't part of the Murdoch press and is fairly strongly left leaning politically this is not something British readers can expect to see in The Grauniad. You kind of get the impression that bashing lefties for their misdeeds and alleged misdeeds is against some kind of lefty journo code, but it's only fair to give The Age a little credit for running the story themselves.

Click for link - incidentally, I don't know if Paul and Royce Millar are related

Now, remind me. In all those column inches in The Graun slagging off companies for perfectly legal tax avoidance and minimisation was it ever mentioned that Guardian Media did the same thing or did we have to find out from Guido?

It's not wrong if lefties doing it - UPDATED

Compare and contrast. First, something that needs no source and which the Righteous and right-on are saying is very, very bad, though as we should all know by now is lacking in context.

Frankly, I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families.

Second, via Churchmouse writing at The Orphanage, and which he notes has gone entirely unremarked and without complaint by the Righteous and right-on in general and Unison in particular, something from the Birmingham Mail reporting on the public sector strike activity in their area.

A small group of protestors carried a mocked up guillotine with images of Nick Clegg and David Cameron, with a slogan saying "heads will roll".

I do hope that's cleared things up for everybody.

UPDATE - Churchmouse has left another example at the Orphanage, this time of an overdrive of leftie foam-flecked. outraged, offence seeking because some student Conservative Society burned an effigy of the Obamessiah, preceded three years ago by a deafening silence when someone else burned an effigy of Sarah Palin. And not forgetting that Camermong/Clegg guillotine thing.

That what's good for the goose is also for the gander is something the left and right alike struggle with, though I'll credit the right with less absurd examples of hypocrisy, while those libertarians who've been similarly hyperbolic have tended to be consistent and asked for enough lengths of piano wire to string up left and right wing statists all at the same time.

A question for the public sector strikers

Yeah, but why is it that for most people you can only get one if you join the public sector?

Pots and kettles

Half inched from Zerohedge.

From the Mail:

Countries will be forced to submit their budgets for EU approval before they go to national parliaments, will have to sign up to strict new rules on the size of debts and deficits and will be sued for any breach in the European Court of Justice.

Mrs Exile comments, wondering if this would be the same EU that hasn't had its books signed off by the auditors for 17 years in a row. Damn good question. But in the absence of any sane answer I'd say that countries all over Europe can look forward to seeing headlines like the Irish did a couple of weeks ago.

Unless the whole bloody Euro train wreck finally comes off the rails first, of course. Who knows, that might even have happened by the time this post goes up.

Contrasting receptions

Peter Costello, former Liberal party MP and Federal government Treasurer for the Coalition under John Howard, writes in The Age on an interesting difference in receptions given to US Presidents.

When the American president addressed joint Houses of the Australian Parliament back in 2003, Greens Senator Bob Brown interjected. In fact so worked up was he that the Speaker ordered his removal from the chamber. He was yelling about Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

This time Brown joined a conga line of MPs clamouring to shake hands with the President, Barack Obama. He had to jostle with Greens MP Adam Bandt (who has a PhD on Marxism) to get his chance. Both of them were beaming. It was a good speech. The President declared America's commitment to a military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, including a new proposal to train up to 2500 marines in the Northern Territory. One can only imagine what Bob's reaction would have been had George Bush announced that 2500 US marines would be stationed on Australian soil. They would have had to cart him out of the House of Representatives.

[...]

Bob Brown was all worked up about Guantanamo Bay when George Bush visited Australia, but he does not seem to worry so much now that Obama is in charge. Julia Gillard used to complain that Australia was subservient to America. Now she claims she has made our alliance stronger than ever before.

In opposition, Labor harvested votes on the left. In government it wants to appeal to conservatives....

[...]

Labor MPs may feel happy to see Obama and Gillard standing in front of troops in the Northern Territory - it is a great photo opportunity for their side of politics. But alliances are between countries. They are designed to outlive the political office-holders of the day. In the future it could be Newt Gingrich and Tony Abbott standing there being cheered by US marines in the NT. The principle is either right or it is wrong and it doesn't turn on who happens to be in office.

That is why it is so useful to have the left of Australian politics now locked in to traditional Coalition policies. Bipartisan support has been firmly established. And in the future if there is ever a complaint about marines based in Australia, just pull out the footage of a beaming Bob Brown grasping the hand of the president who announced it.

Some excellent points made there, and while I have no more love for Peter Costello's party than the ALP - in one sense rather less love because the bastardisation of the word 'liberal' to describe a party of paternalists that like telling other people how to live their lives simply infuriates me - I can't argue that Leftists can be pretty inconsistent if not hypocritical when it comes to the US. The bottom line is this: all the things I disliked about George W Bush, the wars, Gitmo, the loss of individual liberties, cosying up to big business and lobbyists, have by and large continued under Obama.

I'm aware some that Rightists care less about what is done than that it's one of their men doing it - witness David Cameron's actions of late and the deafening silence from his supposedly right of centre party - but if anything it seems to be even more true of Leftists. Is something bad done by a right winger made less bad when a left winger takes over and carries on?

All I'll want for Christmas...

... is a new cognitive dissonance meter. After replacing the one destroyed by Deborah Arnott earlier this year my shiny new one has just exploded after reading Quiet_Man's most recent post over at the Orphanage.

In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black Labour have accused the government of intending to borrow more than they originally intended. This would be the same Labour party behind the tax and spend initiatives which have pretty much left the country bankrupt and needing to borrow in the first place.

BBC.

The government could borrow over £100bn more than it planned to up to 2015, according to Labour.
The party compared Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts from November 2010 with the latest estimates.
Labour said it showed the government’s plans were “reckless” but Economic Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke said the claims were “nonsense”.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Ed Miliband will later urge ministers to change course away from economic austerity.

So we have a case for Labour accusing the government of borrowing more and the leader of the Labour Party calling for an end to austerity economics, which I suspect would mean the government borrowing more. Clearly a case of open mouth, insert foot, after all if I can see it, what are real economists going to think?

Yep, if anyone's going to display meter wrecking cocknitive dissonance it's going to be politicians, and Labour are the league champions at it. I suppose it's my own fault for buying a cheap one. While I go look for a replacement do pop over to the Orphanage and read the rest of Quiet_Man's post if you haven't already.

Occupational therapy

From Watts Up With That.

Chuckle. Do go read the rest.

More from the Labour wimmin

Having already knocked everyone for six with Yvette Cooper's fucking hilarious claim that Labour is the party of law and order (as distinct from the party that creates a lot of unnecessary law and likes to order everyone around) the Labour party conference's innings of hypocrisy continues with Harriet Harman at the crease, and she's already swinging for the boundary.

Harriet, please shut the fuck up. The Labour party has enjoyed an electoral bias for fucking years. It's so well known that in opposition the Tories need a swing of ≈5% just to draw level with labour that even your unofficial mouthpieces at the BBC don't try to hide it, and indeed have discussed it openly while covering every general election I've watched. Oh, I don't doubt that the Tories will benefit from any change and would love to gain a measurable advantage over you, just as your shower of hypocritical cunts have enjoyed such an advantage over them for years, but to gain any real advantage would require changes that politically they probably don't think they can get away with. Redressing the balance and getting something that's more or less parity is about as much as they'll get away with this time.

So I repeat, Harriet: please shut the fuck up. Because this is the second time this week I've felt the need to defend the Tories against pot and kettle bullshit from Labour and it makes me feel like I need a wash. If you felt so strongly about this, if you had this wonderful love for democracy, why didn't you attempt to fix it while your teams were in orifice? Why didn't you even speak out about it?

Sauce for the goose, Harriet. By all means come back and whine about it when Labour's been hamstrung by 5 or 6 points for a decade or so, but until then, fuck off.

P.S. - I should add that this idea about not having to be on the electoral roll is just formalising things for all those millions who don't vote at all, and judging by a look I once had at MPs who were elected on less than a 50% turnout in their constituencies these dedicated non-voters live mainly in seats which are fairly safe for Labour. Doesn't seem likely to hurt Labour very much and from the point of view of the individual voter the effect on democracy is about zero. After all, what's the difference between them being registered and not voting for anyone and being not registered to vote at all?

P.P.S. - Guido points out that Harperson is basically suggesting that Labour voters are too thick to fill out a form all on their own and need the brightest person in the household to do it for everyone. Not sure she's looked at it quite that way.

Climbdowns

Yeah, but is Gordon?

And more damned lies

Toby Young, writing in The Telegraph (yes, I know I keep taking the piss out of it but some of the blog writers there are pretty good) dissects Gloomy McSnotmuncher's speech. It was good to see that a couple of MPs brought him up on the McBride-Whelan business and asked why the Browns were still pally with the Murdochs and with Rebekah Brooks two and three years after the story on their son ran, but there was another little oddity that I'd missed elsewhere.

If, as Brown claims, the Cabinet Secretary obstructed his efforts to order a judicial inquiry into the dastardly goings-on at News International, why did Sir Gus O’Donnell issue a denial immediately after the speech claiming that the decision not to launch an inquiry was Brown’s and Brown’s alone? Sir Gus is now seeking permission to publish the confidential advice to rebut the allegation.

Well, I can't see how the two sides of that story can both be true. I have no idea how much light it might shed on things but still, let's hope Sir Gus O'Donnell gets the okay to back up his version of events, or failing that publishes it anyway. There'll be a replacement for the NotW soon enough though if technically it's not supposed to be published they might not want it. Bit soon, really.

Gordon Brown's or Sir Gus O'Donnell's? Place your bets.

H/T to The Libertarian Alliance.

Could you narrow it down a bit please?

Via Guido, The Grim Reaper, Constantly Furious and others, a headline that could have been used perhaps a couple of times a month for most of the last decade or more, and which in the days of movable type would probably not have been unset but left on a handy shelf for when they were needed.

And actually this sounds to me like more than merely being honestly mistaken about the means by which the story was obtained. It's not just that the source turned out to be nothing at all to do with not-actually-hacking but the rather low tech man-talks-to-journalist technique, but The Sun say they had the Browns' consent to run the story. Now assuming that's true - and I'm not holding my breath for an outright denial from McSnotty - wouldn't you expect the Browns to first ask where the story had come from? Perhaps not if gently broken by a friendly and sympathetic journo, and of course Labour and The Sun were very pally at the time, but then the question becomes why, if the Browns weren't all cut up at the time, they're so upset now and why they didn't tackle it when it happened? As Guido puts it:

If Gordon wanted he could have gone to the PCC and invoked 6 (v) of the PCC code, which would have killed the story, or complained afterwards. If Rebekah Brooks made him cry it seems odd that he subsequently went to her wedding, attended her birthday party and got Sarah to host a “girls” sleep-over at Chequers with Rebekah Brooks and Wendi Murdoch.

Yes, it seems very odd indeed. And given Guido's earlier point that the cyclopean nightmare of Downing Street's pet think tank was being investigated right at the time the story about his son came out this remark of The Sun's is particularly interesting (my bold).

On receipt of the information, The Sun approached Mr Brown and discussed with his colleagues how best to present it.

Not that I'd take their word for it either but again if true - stressing 'if' - it sounds a lot like Nokia's favourite customer was happy for The Sun to run a story that would generate sympathy for him and his family. And now he's not.

Ah, who knows? Perhaps someone's just missing the limelight.

Is this Murdoch's "Gerald Ratner moment"?

Er, no. He may have had to shut down the News of the Screws (though as pointed out here that just means a lot of P45s to people who had absolutely nothing to do with the phone illegal-but-really-not-hacking scandal) in much the same way as Ratner's infamous 'crap' gag made his own store's name so toxic that they all had to close, Gerald Ratner himself had to go and the remainder of the group had to rebrand itself. And there's the reason why it's not quite a Ratner moment - that was all that happened. Nobody at Ratner's broke the law, nobody was arrested - which is unlikely to be the case this time - and the person in charge and responsible for dropping the whole company into the mess - different people in this case, the same individual at Ratner's - took the responsibility for it. I don't think it dragged on for eight years either.

Not only that but Ratner was in fact being honest, though perhaps to a foolish extent. He was just saying that if someone wanted something cheap and tatty with gold plating a handful of atoms thick then he was happy to sell it. He didn't have people roaming the streets surreptitiously picking pockets and leaving hilariously fragile jewellery in place of what was taken, he just sold really cheap stuff to people who wanted really cheap stuff but didn't want to be reminded that it was really cheap for a reason. That's not in the same league as prying into the voicemail messages of a murdered teenager and screwing up the police investigation by deleting them and making it look like she's still alive.

Motherfucker, it ain't even the same sport.

In fact all that the NotW scandal has in common with what happened to Ratner's all those years ago was that a well known name is being shut down, a bunch of people who weren't at fault are going to lose their jobs, and it's all because the gutter press wanted a juicy story.* Oh, and also because there's still a very strong market demand for crap and the today's gutter press is just as happy to oblige.


* I'm not certain but I seem to recall that it was one of the redtops that broke the Ratner story.

Permitted discrimination

We all know that we're not allowed to discriminate against almost anyone these days, even though discrimination is, when you get right down to it, someone just making a choice. It might well be a choice that I think makes them an arsehole but the point is that it's their choice. Still, when it comes to people who might look different, have different body parts in their underpants, worship a different sky-being or even worship the same one in a different way, it's a choice you're expected not to make anymore.

No, not even if they are ginger.

Not a bitch, okay?

However, the operative word in that opening sentence up there is 'almost' because the other thing we all know is that discriminating against the English is just fucking fine by everybody.* And so I see that Scotland have discriminated - in the sense of a choice and in the spirit of take and take - to take the fifteen hundred quid a head extra they get under the Barnett Formula and at the same time charge English students the thick end of ten grand to go to a Scottish uni.

But only English students.

Education Secretary Michael Russell this week announced that Scottish universities would be allowed to charge students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to £9000 (A$13,500) a year from 2012-13, after England and Wales raised their own tuition fees.
But Mr Russell reiterated his commitment to keep higher education tuition-free for Scottish students.
This means students from the other 26 European Union member nations can study for free too, because EU laws essentially preclude members from discriminating against citizens of partner nations, but leave them free to discriminate within their own country.

So there you have it. England and Scotland, not partner nations. The Act of Union is over 300 years old and the Union itself a century older, the two countries have benefitted from each other down the years, and currently one derives a not inconsiderable financial benefit - not just the Barnett Formula but the large public sector north of the border - but whatever that makes them they're certainly not partners because the EU says partner nations' governments can't screw each others' citizens. Screwing their own is okay, and of course that's a principle function of government. And therefore screwing different groups of citizens is presumably a domestic issue that the EU isn't too interested in. It's discrimination, sure, but it's officially sanctioned discrimination which means it's perfectly fine and above board.

So suck it up, fellow countrymen, and pay up without complaining. And please remember not to take it out on any gingers even if it seems like they deserve it.

No, look, it doesn't go up your nose, it's ... oh, nevermind

* Presumably not fine by English students wanting to study in Scotland, but I imagine they don't really count anyway.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha... - UPDATED

... ahahahahahahahaha!

Johann Hari, a multiple award winning political journalist who writes for newspapers around the world, was exposed after a reader noticed that a quote in one of his stories had been cut and pasted from a book.

Ahahahahahahahahahaha.

Such was the controversy that he was forced to respond in a personal blog, but his defence only further fuelled the intensity of the attacks against him.

Ahahahaha.

On Twitter, the micro-blogging website, users posted a series of jokes in which famous sayings in history were re-created as if Mr Hari had been told them in intimate interviews, while blogs from rival journalists accusing him of so-called "churnalism".
At one point his alleged plagiarism was the second most discussed topic on Twitter and even became the subject of a doctored clip from Downfall, a film about Adolf Hitler's final hours.

Ahahaha? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Hooooo.

The backlash began when a left wing website analysed an interview Mr Hari conducted with Antonio Negri, an Italian Marxist, in 2004. The blog found that Mr Hari used a quote in the interview which appeared to have been taken from Negri on Negri, a book published a year earlier.
[...]
The blog goes on reveal that a passage from pages 100 and 101 of the book is almost identical.
Brian Whelan, another blogger, subsequently found a further example in a 2010 interview by Mr Hari with the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. He found a passage that appeared to be composed of sentences that had appeared in a column written by Levy the previous March.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaohfuckithurtsnow.

[Hari] claimed that he had only used the quotes to make his interviewee appear more articulate, and said he had not received a complaint in a 10 years.
He wrote: "So occasionally, at the point in the interview where the subject has expressed an idea, I’ve quoted the idea as they expressed it in writing, rather than how they expressed it in speech." However the response failed to dampen the backlash against him.

Ahahahahahaha. Ahaha. Aha. Okay, I'll be okay. Heheheh.

Last night the Media Standards Trust, which funds the Orwell prize, demanded an investigation to see whether he should be stripped of the award.
It said that the issue had "the potential to damage its reputation".
The organisers of the award said they were following a "process" normally carried out in "situation such as this".

And so the lesson is quote by all means - and I do it extensively myself - but be honest and open and fucking source it.* This seems to be pretty much par for the course in the blogosphere and I thought it was for the MSM too. Perhaps not so much anymore.

UPDATE - can open, worms everywhere.

He also falsely claimed that none of his subjects had ever complained following the publication of one of his interviews. In fact, Noam Chomsky complained bitterly.

It now appears that Mr Hari has made quite a habit of pinching quotes given to other interviewers, and claiming that they were given to him.

Admittedly I've not read a lot of his stuff and this may be miles off, but I've got the impression that if Hari caught a journo from the Wail or the Teletubbygraph or somewhere else in the non-lefty bit of the media he'd call them on it in a heartbeat.

UPDATE 2 - And he's now been Mashed.

The criticism came after Hari used a revolutionary new interview technique that involved pretending people had said things to him and then imagining what his reaction would have been if they had have said those things to him, which they did not and in fact said to somebody else years ago.

Gold.


* Though I realise I may not be the first person to say that.

Cobbleition out-Labouring Labour for the second time this week

It was less than 48 hours ago that I was sitting here abusing the Cobbleition for being as bad a bunch of bastards as Labour was because, like Labour, they're sticking the details of innocent people into a police database. Now I'm going to have to do it again.

This is Chancer of the Exchequer George Osborne speaking in 2006 on the then Chancer Snot Muncher McDoom's decision to impose a stealth tax on private pensions shortly after Labour came to power nine years earlier.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said: "Gordon Brown's pension raid was one of his first and worst acts as Chancellor. Pensioners will be paying a heavy price for many, many years to come."

So I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say to justify this news:

George Osborne, the Chancellor, is considering a £7 billion "raid" on middle-class pensions perks.
[...]
Discussions have begun at the Treasury over the move which would see the axing of tax relief currently paid out on pension contributions by people who pay income tax at the higher rates of 40 per cent and 50 per cent.
[...] The Sunday Telegraph understands that the plans for ending so-called “higher-rate” relief have restarted as Mr Osborne targets immediate cash flow savings as easy “wins”.
[...]
Some Conservative MPs expect the axing of higher-rate relief to be merely the first stage in a more extensive and radical plan which would end up with all tax relief – including on contributions made by people paying the basic 20p rate of income tax – being abolished, saving £22 billion a year in total.

So, Gordon took £5 billion a year and it was, according to The Boy George, one of his worst acts as Chancer and one for which pensioners would pay for years to come, and now the hypocritical shit is thinking about taking £7 billion - which is more or less exactly the same fucking amount after adjusting for inflation (38% since 97). Like I said, I'm looking forward to hearing how Georgie justifies this. I mean, what the fuck is he thinking of by even considering it? I know the country has money problems, thanks in no small part for the profligate spunking away of other people's money by the aforementioned connoisseur of nasal effluence, but you know what, George? You could try maybe spending less fucking money instead. The Telegraph even tells you how.

Saving £7 billion a year would be the equivalent of axing three government departments – Energy and Climate Change, whose budget is £2.9 billion a year, Environment Food and Rural Affairs, also £2.9 billion, and Culture, Media and Sport, (£1.5 billion).

Depending on your point of view one of those departments has a track record of incompetence that would have seen it chopped long ago had it been in the private sector, another appears to be so busy plotting Britain's economic destruction that it can only save a fortune in the long run by abolishing it now, and the third appears not to be a fucking government function anyway. Alternatively you could make the supposed bonfire of the QUANGOs into an actual fucking bonfire by getting rid of the fucking lot, rather than the entry level Foreman Grill of the QUANGOs that still left billions being spent on rent seekers and time waster. And the EU, oh George, do we even need to go over yet again how much money Britain's membership of this Debt of the Month Club is costing everyone in the country? It's not even just the regular annual cost these days but the additional costs of the bailouts and loans to other member nations whose creditworthiness is considered too risky for them to be able to borrow money from the usual sources.

Lots of options, George, but the one that seems to find most favour at the moment involves screwing yet more money out of Britain's dwindling stock of economically productive citizens. That you're going for the well off, people who've on salaries far larger than I've ever been lucky enough to earn, is neither here nor there. The message is coming through loud and clear, George: if you're a high earner you're better off not earning it in Britain, because the government is eyeing your fucking wallets again. Once again I'm singing the same depressing chorus - it's like Labour never really went away, isn't it?

Fucking exactly like it.

And the devious, hypocritical, tax-happy, thieving shower of cunts call themselves Conservatives? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

How do you know when a politician isn't lying?

When he's saying that lots more got away with what he was sent to prison for.

Eric Illsley, an MP jailed for expenses fraud and released after just four months of a year-long sentence, has immediately proclaimed that he was a “scapegoat”.

A third of his sentence? Someone remind me, is that more, less or about the norm these days? Even if they have given him a Peckham Rolex to wear. Not that he's a danger to the public or likely to be in a position to do it again, but it still seems like he shouldn't be whining the second he's out. Though given what he's whining about he does have a point.

The former Labour MP for Barnsley Central said there were “lots of MPs” who had cheated the expenses system in the same way as him and his case should never have been heard in court.
[...]
“My case shouldn’t have been brought before the court,” said Illsley. “There are so many others who have walked free and nobody is going to say a dickie bird about their situation.”

What a brilliant defence! Shame he only thought of it just now otherwise he could have suggested it to the toughing bastards who tried (and eventually failed) to use the Bill of Rights to avoid court. If only they'd thought to use the brilliant defence of "But everyone else is doing it so why should we have to stand trial?" they could have avoided all that unpleasantness. I'm sure every other criminal will be walking free from court from this week on simply by pointing out that the crime of which they're accused is not unique and that therefore they shouldn't have to answer to a court at all. Mind you, this might even work with some judges.

Sarcasm aside, Eric, I'm sure you're right that you were just made a scapegoat of, but even if every single last one of your fellow MPs had ripped off the taxpayer to an even greater extent than you did - and this is demonstrably not the case - it doesn't fucking excuse whatever level of thieving or fraud, call it what you will, that you yourself were up to. It just doesn't, okay?

Other than that Eric makes a good point and I'm inclined to believe him that there probably were a lot of guilty parties who went unpunished. And of course it's hard to believe the expenses fiddling has actually gone away.

In a veiled reference to David Laws, the former Cabinet minister, Illsley said: “I should have been allowed to apologise to the House of Commons and get on with my career.”

Boom, headshot!

You're still a cunt in my book though, Eric.

Greenpeace: not a charity, and that's official

Or at least it isn't in New Zealand where the not-a-charity-really-a-political-lobbying-group has just lost its charitable status there and been told by a court that they are in fact, well, not a charity but really a political lobbying group.

Watts Up With That has more. All I have to say is that it's high time someone somewhere recognised Greenpeace for what they are today rather than what they used to be. Oh, and one other thing:

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Climate memory hole - UPDATED

Watts Up With That has caught out the UN in another bit of climate exaggeration followed by a clumsy attempt at revisionism.

In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.

...

It so happens that just a few of these islands and other places most at risk have since had censuses, so it should be possible for us now to get some idea of the devastating impact climate change is having on their populations.

The short version is that far from crashing populations as the people living there escaped their drowning and/or parched lands and fled Gaia's fury, populations in the examples given have gone up. Hardly evidence of a number of climate refugees as large as the population of England.

After Asian Correspondent posted the story on April 11th, it was picked up by news outlets around the world such as Investor News, American Spectator and was cited in the Australian newspaper. It was also a report on Fox News.

Since that story appeared, the “handy map” he cites in his original story, which has this URL:

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-refugees-by-2010

…seems to be gone down the memory hole.

Yep, they 404'd it. But as WUWT reports it's not 404'd by Google Cache, which still has a copy of the original albeit minus the map. However, WUWT also points out that the page where the map lives has not been deleted and so it can still be downloaded from http://maps.grida.no/library/files/storage/11kap9climat.png - at least it can until they wake up on Monday, have a look at their feeds for WUWT and rush to memory hole the map as well. Bit late since Anthony Watts has already put both it and the page up on WUWT.

Click to biggerfy

Go read the whole thing, including how the 50 million climate refugees by 2010 claim has been quietly repackaged and re-released as 50 million by 2020 - a nice touch that - and I'd suggest you grab copies of the map and the page while you're at it so you have the evidence at hand with which to call bullshit when some warmist ecolyte regurgitates this claim at you.

Of course this means I need to update my too infrequently revisited list of bogus claims of ecotastrophic carbon driven warble gloaming disaster. The list is now as follows:

• Probably should have happened by now - New York's West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater - Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• Probably should have happened around 2005 ± 1 yr - British children will not know snow in their own country - Dr David Viner (Independent, Mar 2000)
• "Imminently" - loss of world's coral reefs - David Attenborough in July 2009 ('world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed')
• By 2010 - 50 million refugees climate refugees (UN Environment Program - currently no link for UNEP site but Watts Up With That has details and evidence of claim)
• Late 2013 - ice free Arctic - Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years')
• 2014 - the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair - WWF.
• Dec 2016 - the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair - the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Dec 2016 - loss of 'the levers of control' for the climate - the Prince of Fails... again.
• Late 2019 - ice free Arctic - Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 - the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair - UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 - loss of Great Barrier Reef - marine scientist Charlie Veron ('global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years')

We are now a third of the way down that list. Please remember that I don't put vast amount of time and effort into this so I'm sure this list of warble gloaming dates for your diaries is far from complete, not least because we probably won't have long to wait before one of them predicts something else that then doesn't happen. I'd like to add to it if either of my readers knows of a catastrophic warmist prediction that isn't on the list and which has already been proven wrong by dit of the predicted date passing by with nothing at all happening, or which is only a few years off and can be waved at the doom mongers if (I'll allow the possibility and not say 'when') it proves as false as NY's West Side Highway being underwater and covered in the boats of climate refugees. Let me know in the comments or via the contact me form.


UPDATE - starting with the 50 million climate refugees claim Watts Up With That has added a permanent feature along similar lines to my list of warble gloaming dates for your diary. The WUWT Climate Fail Files will detail specific claims with link(s) to where it was made - or evidence that it was - and by whom, in what way it has failed to materialise, and if applicable how the goalposts have been shunted to account for the fact that disaster hasn't happened on schedule... again. I'd still like to add to my list but WUWT is a more specialised site and gets much more traffic than I do, so if you do have anything along these lines please consider sending them to WUWT, currently via the comments section of this post, either instead of or as well here. Cheers.

There is only one appropriate word...

... and it is 'bastards'.

Actually, no. The more I think about it the more I can come up with lots of appropriate words.

Contract traps

Back in January I blogged about the upcoming Melbourne Grand Prix, its ongoing cost to Victorian taxpayers, the fact that we were stuck with it because the previous Premier, John Brumby, signed a contract which Bernie Ecclestone is, not unreasonably, expecting the government to stick to, and that I thought this was very, very wrong.

... I do, reluctantly, have to side with Bernie Ecclestone when the unpleasant little prick points out that he has a contract.

Mr Ecclestone, chief executive of the London-based Formula One Group, told 3AW yesterday that the amount of money the Victorian government had to pay to his organisation for the rights to the race could not be re-negotiated.

''Whatever the contract says is what it will be,'' Mr Ecclestone said.

And though I loathe the man both for screwing Victorian taxpayers and for adding more negatives than positives to what was once one of my favourite sports, he's absolutely right - a contract entered into honestly must be kept, even when it's not doing one party any favours. If we lose contracts, if agreements between parties can be rewritten unilaterally by one of them, then we're all fucked.

But saying that is it right that a contract can be signed that affects third parties against their will? I'm not talking about the way governments commit taxpayers to shell out for things they might feel they neither want nor need, or at least not just about that. But here we have Bernie Ecclestone pointing out that he's got a contract with someone who did not sign it and who seems unhappy with the uneven terms he's been committed to by his predecessor, and, since the contract is until 2015, the year after the next state election is due, might not even be in office when it comes time to renew it. ...

Now that can't happen in normal life, but because it's a government signing deals it's believed that it's different for some reason. ... With a government it affects everyone whether they like it or not, and the opportunities to oppose moves are limited to protests that may be ignored and elections several years apart. In this way in 2008 the last Premier, John Brumby - who was not even elected Premier by the people of Victoria but was voted in by his own party to replace Steve Bracks, the guy who actually won the election and then resigned less than a year into the term - was able to sign Melbourne and Victoria up for a further five years beyond 2010, the year in which the Grand Prix contract would have expired.

But I'm not completely unreasonable and felt that there could be a fair solution.

So if Ted Baillieu is pissed off about this and also wants to make a mark as Premier I have a suggestion for him. It won't fix the problem for him but it is something radical that will prevent subsequent Premiers from screwing their eventual successors the same way. ... Make all contracts signed by the government constitutionally limited to a maximum of four years or two years beyond the date of the next election, whichever comes first, unless approved by a referendum. This prevents a government from cursing the one after it with the need to abide by shitty contracts that it can't change for the whole term or possibly even longer. At the worst this would mean a half term of being stuck with a poor deal, though a new government committed to ending it would be able to prepare to do so long before that, and while electorates still remembered who'd signed the thing in the first place. But it would still allow medium term contracts of 2-3 years to be agreed late in a parliamentary term, which should be a motivator for the contractor to provide something of value in order to maximise their chances of seeing it renewed by the next government. And if something really, really has to be agreed for a longer term there's still a mechanism to allow for it - simply agree pending a referendum and put it to the voters themselves.

And the reason I bring all this up again is that another one of John Brumby's timebombs is ticking away in our laps: the Wonthaggi desalination plant.

I've mentioned this white elephant in passing once or twice before, and blogged briefly on the hare brained idea to use taxpayers' money to compensate the losing bidder and the irony that something designed to secure Melbourne's water supply against warble gloaming induced drought has been damaged by flooding months before it's even ready to be switched on, and I'm sure I've mentioned that the cost is $5 billion or so. What I may have missed out is that once again Victoria and it's current government were contractually committed to the bloody thing by - wait for it - the previous government under John Brumby, now comfortably in opposition and one step removed. And because the news is quite recent I'm quite certain that I haven't mentioned that the builder is now expected to miss the agreed December opening as construction is six months to a year behind, partly because of all that rain we're not supposed to get anymore and the lack of which requires a five billion dollar desal plant to cope with.

Now let me ask you this: if you were signing a contract to have something delivered by a certain date, and subsequently the whatever it is turns out to be so far behind schedule that there's no hope of it being ready on time (and possibly, though only incidentally, no longer necessary), wouldn't you expect to be able to get out of the contract without penalty or at least to be compensated for the late delivery? I bloody would. I mean a day or two and I'd probably just bitch and moan and give them a bollocking about it when they finally did arrive, but there'd come a point where I'd be on the phone telling them that either I get a refund or a sufficiently large discount to make me forgive their failure to live up to their end of the deal. But of course the less than wonderful world of government doesn't work like that, and just as Britain's Ministry of Defence signs contracts that mean they don't just have to pay for late delivery but actually have to pay extra so Victoria's last government signed a contract that the contractor seems to believe makes the fucking state rather than themselves liable for the delay. And so they're making noises - and the fucking front this must take must be almost unquantifiable - about suing the state of Victoria because they're now expecting to make only about $6 million profit.

Construction giant Leighton yesterday acknowledged the project had become a physical and financial quagmire, dogged by bad weather, poor productivity and extraordinary underestimates on design, construction and materials costs.
...
The company revealed it now expected to make just $6 million profit from the desal project, a fraction of the initially anticipated $288 million.
It would not rule out suing the state government, raising alarm bells for taxpayers already facing a $24 billion bill over 28 years for the controversial public-private partnership project. ''[We] will be pursuing our rights to recover what we believe we are entitled to,'' said Leighton chief executive David Stewart.

The mind just fucking boggles. Look, I'm terribly sorry to hear that their investment isn't going to deliver the kind of profits they'd hoped, but my sympathy is tempered by the fact that the taxpayers are still going to have to shell out on it and the fucknuts who signed us up to this will be in his 80s by the time its 28 years are up. Oh, and also by the fact that they do still expect to make a profit, even if it is much less than hoped for because of the cost overruns and because, slightly to my surprise, the last government did put in a penalty clause.

As forecast in The Age last week, Leighton said it was unlikely to meet the December deadline to produce desalinated water, and had allowed for a $15 million penalty.
Mr Stewart said the company would ''target'' a second deadline of June 2012 for full operation. But a senior insider described this as ambitious.
The company faces $1.8 million a day in penalties from June if the plant is not fully operational by then.

And now they want to sue the state government, which isn't the one that actually signed the contract, and by extension the taxpayers who weren't asked if they wanted to be sent the invoice but were always going to be the ones who had to pay? Because of bad weather, which you'd expect a contractor to allow for when submitting their tender, below forecast productivity rates, which you'd also expect them to allow for, and massive underestimates, which are surely nobody's responsibility but their own, they want to sue us all for the money they think they should have made if everything had gone according to their sadly unrealistic plan. Their balls must be the size of the fucking moon.

So no matter whether he has stones big enough to tell them where to go, and to advise them exactly how much government work they can expect to be considered for in the future if they don't take responsibility for their own late delivery of what has always been a contentious project, I repeat my earlier advice to Premier Ted Ballieu. Write an amendment to Victoria's constitution which restricts the ability of the current government to sign a contract which binds its successors for more than half the next term unless approved by voters. As I said before, it doesn't stop you doing long term deals with industry but it does oblige you and your successors to ask the people who'll have to pay for it before you're able to commit the next government to it as well. Write the amendment and submit it for referendum as soon as practical. If it was me I'd aim for sometime around a year from now - just after the 2012 Melbourne Grand Prix which we're contractually obliged by the last government to host at great expense and just before the Wonthaggi desal plant is now hoped to be operational, and for which we're also obliged to pay thanks to your predecessors.

You, your government and everyone living in the state are stuck with anything and everything Brumby and his predecessors agreed contracts for and which are still going today. We can't do anything about that now without changing contract law and wrecking the principle that an agreement someone puts their signature to is a binding agreement, and despite the short term attraction that really is a can of worms we're much better off not opening. But if you're prepared to rise above politics and sacrifice your ability to stiff whatever government comes after yours the same way yours was stiffed by the last Labor governments - and no doubt they in turn were stiffed by the Coalition government before them - then you can give us all the chance to break the cycle.*

Come on, Ted, what do you say?

The Angry Exile checks skies for flying pigs, crosses his fingers and waits... more in hope than expectation, sadly.


* In fairness to Brumby, and Bracks and Kennet and so on, I'm not suggesting that any of them did deliberately sign a shitter in the expectation of making life difficult for whoever came along next. I'm sure that nearly all politicians really believe that they're acting in everybody's best interests when they do this kind of thing, but unfortunately they are often poor judges as to what's in the best interests of millions of disparate individuals. In addition as long as the ability to sow poison for your opponents in office exists you can be certain that now and again there will be someone willing to do so. Better for all that governments of all stripes lose the ability altogether.