Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

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“Unless there is sufficient evidence of a change in management’s attitude, local agreements being reached and significant progress towards a full and final agreement, then we will have no alternative other than to return to strike action before Christmas.”

- Billy Hayes, the Communication Workers Union general secretary, written to his members as the postal workers threaten to bring chaos to Christmas deliveries with a new wave of strike action next month.  The letter goes on to claim that “a strike-free Christmas” was not part of the original peace deal – in apparent contradiction to earlier statements from union leaders promising that millions of present and card deliveries would be unaffected.  Last month Brendan Barber, the TUC general-secretary, said that the interim agreement “provides for a period of calm, free of industrial action”.  He added: “The delivery of the terms of this agreement means that Royal Mail services will be free of any disruption up to and through the Christmas period.” (full story HERE)

So what do we know about Lord Pearson of Rannoch?

We know he is the new leader of UKIP.

We know he has a stupid name.

We know almost 50% of UKIP members wanted him to succeed Nigel Farage.

We know he is the first peer for a century to head a major party.

We know he was made a Conservative life peer by Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

We know he had the whip withdrawn after telling voters to support UKIP in the 2004 Euro elections.

We know he was the bloke who invited Geert Wilders to Britain earlier this year to screen his contentious film about Islam.

1. Ad Infinitum thinks UKIP are going for a hung parliament.

2. Bishop Hill keeps up the pressure after Climategate.

3. Enemies of Reason says you just can’t win when it comes to the Daily Mail.

4. They Are Joking has what he claims is the best BBC headline ever.

5. PJC Journal thinks Alistair Darling is about to go back into hiding.

“This falls well short of what is required. It is a game of Monopoly – pass Go and collect £200.”

- Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP, reacting to the news that peers will receive a tax-free annual salary of nearly £30,000 on top of allowances worth £20,000 under reforms to be introduced following a series of expenses scandals.  For the first time, Lords are to receive a daily fee of £200, described as a “contribution to income,” for clocking in at the upper chamber, even if they stay for only a couple of hours.  The reforms involve an effective £3,000-a-year pay rise, as under the current system peers can claim up to £26,000 in subsistence and office allowances, the equivalent of £180 a day.  And the salary is in addition to £140-a-day in overnight costs for lords who do not live in London. (full story HERE)

Dear John Bercow,

Now that your wife is making headlines for all the wrong reasons, it is clear that you’re feeling a bit left out so you’ve decided to start making headlines for the wrong reasons too.  Your latest wheeze is to force political parties to declare how many women, ethnic minority and disabled applicants they reject as candidates in an attempt to change Parliament’s image as a club of middle class, middle-aged men.  Oh dear.

In future, parties will publish online every six months details of the candidates they are selecting for the next general election. An amendment to the Equality Bill, now going through Parliament, will ensure there is “public accountability” to the secretive process of candidate selection.  The all-party Speaker’s Conference said parties were the “gatekeepers” to the Commons and had to be the agents of change but that their record on promoting diversity was “uneven”.  Its inquiry found that while more women and black and Asian people were trying to become candidates, “the fact remains that at present the House of Commons continues to be largely white, male, middle-aged and middle class.”  It added: “People from under-represented groups who are putting themselves forward for selection are still proportionately less likely to be selected, or to be selected for a seat the party thinks it can win, than their counterparts.”  The inquiry found that parties only monitored their progress internally, so there was no public accountability. It said: “Unless the performance of different parties can be compared with each other (and with the performance of parties throughout the world) there is likely to be insufficient pressure for the political parties to pursue the cultural change which is needed from them before we can have a House of Commons fit for the 21st century. …To monitor progress properly requires data from all stages of the selection process, from the initial call for applicants to the final outcome.”

Great, just great.  Using discrimination to end discrimination is always one of those topics that leaves me dumbfounded.  How is it that the Speaker of the House of Commons could demonstrate such spectacular naivety when it comes to candidate selection?  Firstly, it will take years for the greater number of women, black and Asian applicants to become candidates because it is normal practice for people to keep applying for seats over the course of one, if not two or three, general election campaigns before they are adopted as a candidate.  This is largely because it is very hard for a candidate to demonstrate their campaigning experience unless they have been involved in politics for several years, hence why new waves of applicants will often have little impact.  This is not evidence of discrimination, it’s called common sense on the part of political associations who need their candidates to be top-class campaigners.  Introducing new legislation to emotionally blackmail parties into taking on inexperienced and poorly qualified candidates, regardless of their gender or the colour of their skin, will almost by definition result in lower quality candidates being selected.

Secondly, why should political parties be bashed over the head with “public accountability”? They are not funded by the taxpayer, so why should they be told what to do?  If the parties refuse to change their image and intake, it is their loss.  Saying that without interference in their operations there will be “insufficient pressure” on them to change is just ridiculous.  Have you seen how much David Cameron is irritating the Conservative grassroots by interfering in their operations and forcing unqualified or unsuitable candidates on them?  Do you actually think this is helping anyone or giving politics a good name by foisting female or Asian candidates onto local associations when they are better qualified and more talented candidates available?  If MPs start appearing from minority groups simply by virtue of their skin colour, background, disability or gender rather than being selected on raw talent (which, as I said above, takes years to acquire in most cases) then Parliament and democracy will be the biggest losers.

As I have said countless times on this blog, ending discrimination and promoting opportunities for minority groups takes time.  Of course Parliament is full of white middle-class men – the system has been designed badly and needs to change, but the results of any changes will and should take years to manifest themselves on the hallowed green benches.  Forcing parties to take on minority candidates is blatant discrimination against white males and if your standards and intellect are so low that you think ’doing a Harman’ by using blatant discrimination to end discrimination is acceptable then you simply do not deserve to hold the position of Speaker.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. John Ward wishes Ed Balls would show some maturity once in a while.

2. Man In A Shed despairs as we enter ‘the age of pussyfoot’.

3. The Adam Smith Institute wonders where devolution is heading.

4. Daniel1979 discovers the US government taking Climategate more seriously than our own.

5. Adam Collyer has the inside scoop on the Lloyds/HBOS loans.

“What would Margaret Thatcher have done? I think she would have insisted on a coherent diplomatic and political strategy.”

- Sir Christopher Meyer, then British Ambassador to the US, speaking to the Iraq Inquiry about Tony Blair’s meeting with President Bush at his Texas ranch in 2002, which Sir Christopher claims was probably the turning point when the Prime Minister “signed in blood” Britain’s support for the Iraq war. He added that the high point of Britain’s influence on the Bush administration was encouraging President Bush to publish a road map on the Middle East but that “led to bugger all, let’s be frank”. (full story HERE)

Dear Eric Pickles,

As you seem to spend most of your time running round the country trying to dampen local political fires such as the row over the ‘Turnip Taliban’, I can’t say for sure how much time you actually dedicate to election planning.  Rumours of a general election in March continue to circulate, yet the Conservatives potentially have a lot to gain and a lot to lose if this does indeed come to pass.

According to recent reports, senior conservatives believe that Gordon Brown may call a general election in March to head off the prospect of bad economic statistics scuppering his claim that he had guided Britain safely out of recession.  The economy is expected to grow in the final three months of this year, with the official figures due to be released in January. But if that growth is not maintained when figures for the first quarter of 2010 are issued in April, it would clearly deal a devastating blow to the PM.  “There is a real possibility that, after one quarter of growth, Britain slips backwards,” said one Tory frontbencher. “If that happened, there would be fears about a double-dip recession. It would blow Brown’s credentials as the man who steered us through the storm out of the water.”  Labour certainly suffered a setback last month when the ONS said the economy contracted by 0.4% in the third quarter of this year. 

One argument in favour of an early election is it would be before new tax rises take effect in April (including the controversial 50p top rate).  However, a March election would almost certainly prevent a Budget being held in the run-up to the election and you’d probably welcome Labour not having the option of a few headline-grabbing ‘goodies’.  That said, under the fiscal stability code that Brown introduced in 1998, there must be a gap of at least three months between the pre-Budget report and the Budget.  Alistair Darling will present his PBR on 9 December, so the Budget could not be held until 9 March, preventing a 25 March election being announced at the start of the month – although, let’s be honest, Brown has a track record in ignoring his own economic rules.  Furthermore, if an election is called without a Budget being held, you could easily accuse Labour of “running scared” and trying to “hide the truth” about the state of the economy.

But is it really that one-sided?  Could Labour gain from an early election as well? As he did with the G7 summit, Brown’s appearance on the international stage manages to kid a few voters that someone somewhere actually listens to him.  Unfortunately for the Conservatives, Brown will attend next month’s Copenhagen summit on climate change, host an international conference on Afghanistan in January, host an international investment conference in London in February and attend a Washington summit on nuclear disarmament called by Obama in March ahead of a review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  This could give him another opportunity to strut his stuff, so to speak.  Then again, the fact that these summits and conferences always end up with nothing more than a few soundbites might leave some voters even more disillusioned.  No doubt you will be readying the troops for electoral battle in case a snap election is called.  Even so, the fact that Tony Blair won the 2005 election by a mile with just 35% of the vote emphasises how disastrous a late Brown-boost close to election time could be.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. Hatfield Girl suspects the Iraq war might have been caused by fishing.

2. Anna Raccoon explains to Harriet Harman why her latest feminist mission is wrong.

3. Diary of a Geek reveals that Dr Evan Harris MP has suffered an unfortunate Prioritiesectomy.

4. Tory Politico says the only fool he pities is the fool who votes for Brown.

5. Next Left wonders if David Cameron wants to ban the BNP.

“The party faithful have been grotesquely caricatured over the last week or so by metropolitan journalists who couldn’t tell a swede from a squash”

- Michael Gove on the ‘Turnip Taliban’ row over South West Norfolk Conservatives

Dear Alex Salmond,

Seeing as ‘broken promises’ are pretty much a given with most political parties these days, it is no surprise to see you clutching at straws to keep your political integrity in tact.  After the humiliating u-turn that you were forced into on abolishing council tax – your main election pledge – earlier this year, you now have to face up to a few more harsh realities.

You were obviously feeling quite chipper about becoming a significant force in Scottish politics and have not been shy about setting lofty objectives for the SNP.  First, you set yourself a target of reaching 20 seats in the Scottish Parliament from the current 7, and second, you repeatedly declared your absolute commitment to Scottish independence.  On the first issue of reaching 20 seats, it’s not looking good.  24% of Scots now say they will vote SNP at the general election, down from 36% recorded by a YouGov poll conducted in August last year.  This represents an increase of 6% from the 2005 general election, but is not even close to the level required to meet your target of 20 SNP MPs.  What’s more, Labour has seen a sharp revival in its fortunes north of the Border, with support increasing ten points to 39% since the August 2008 poll.  Tom Harris, Labour MP for Glasgow South and blogger extraordinaire, said: “Coming on top of the SNP’s collapse in Glasgow North East, these figures show that Salmond’s target of winning 20 seats is a fantasy beyond fiction.”  On the second issue of Scottish independence, a new poll for the Daily Telegraph found that 57% of people (+4) would vote against breaking away from Britain with only 29% (-2) in favour. In a further blow, only 12% said they thought a referendum was one the top priorities on which the SNP administration should be concentrating. Ouch.

Needless to say, any rational individual would take stock at this point and consider what would be the most appropriate, measured and composed response to such disappointing figures.  Sadly, you’re not rational.  The Government is about to unveil plans to transfer more powers from Westminster to Holyrood, but you have decided to publish a rival blueprint next Monday on your preferred option of an independence referendum, which you want to hold next year and is expected to cost around £9 million.  The fact that all three main Unionist parties are vowing to vote down the legislation plus the fact that nine out of ten Scots do not consider the referendum to be a priority right now is evidently not enough to curb your unjustified enthusiasm.  Annabel Goldie, Scottish Tory leader, said: “This is another terrible setback for Alex Salmond and the SNP. Mr Salmond should stop wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on his obsession with an independence referendum, ditch his doomed bill and get on with the job people elected him to do. The figures on separation are even more stark. Separation remains a minority sport and Alex Salmond should abandon his damaging referendum now.”  Quite.

1. Leg Iron thinks that 2 in 1,000,000 is a rather small amount.

2. Croydonian discovers that ‘French sportsmanship’ does indeed exist.

3. Ranting Stan rants at the mainstream media elite.

4. 13th Spitfire watches in horror as Brown sells us down the EU river again.

5. Moments of Clarity says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been fundamental failures.

“This year the choice was unanimous. Rod Stewart, Brian Jones, Keith Richards in their prime were schoolboys compared to him.”

- Rolling Stone magazine’s Italian editor Carlo Antonelli, explaining why Silvio Berlusconi has won the ’Rock Star of the Year’ title.  The Italian version of Rolling Stone magazine chose the 73-year-old prime minister and media tycoon for “a lifestyle for which the words ‘rock and roll’ fall short”. “Silvio Berlusconi’s daily behaviour, his furious vitality, his inimitable lifestyle have given him, especially this year, incredible international popularity,” he added.

Dear feminists,

Despite the media-friendly messages spouted by your treasured organisations and public figures, the notion that you believe in pursuing genuine ‘equality’ has always been a gross misrepresentation.  I have now discovered yet another manifestation of your lack of interest in equality to the point where you publicly display your hatred of men yet again.

Manchester University has created the first official MENS Society, or Masculinity Exploring Networking and Support, while Oxford University has seen the formation of ‘Man Collective – Oxford’ (MC-O) – both launched “as a response to the current state of masculinity” in the form of a male support group.  Alex Linsley, founder of MC-O, said: “There is so much conflicting information for men. There is massive confusion as to what being a man means, and how to be a good man. Should you be the sensitive all-caring, perhaps the ‘feminised’ man? Or should you be the hard, take no crap from anybody kind of figure? Neither of those are particularly useful paradigms. But there’s perhaps things we could learn from both perspectives”.  Alex believes that men, who could feel pressured to “man-up” in a mixed gender environment, might feel less vulnerable discussing such issues in a male-only setting.  The Merton college student admits launching his organisation with the testosterone-fuelled invitation – “Have you got balls? Literally. If you have how does that make you feel?” – has drawn stinging criticism.  Kat Wall, the Oxford University’s student union vice president for women, accused him of gender stereotyping, but Linsley - who started MC-O after being struck by the number of male students committing suicide in Oxford – has also received positive feedback.

In Manchester, the MENS Society, which despite its name has women among its 306 members, claims it highlights not just masculinity issues but also raises funds and awareness for men’s mental health, testicular and prostate cancer as well as male rape and domestic violence issues.  Its campaign for official ratification from the student union’s societies committee has provoked furious debate. Founder Ben Wild, a politics and modern history student, said he was “relieved that the societies committee has acknowledged the importance and promising benefits of this new society, the first of it’s kind in a UK university”. “Why have one? Because so little was being done on raising awareness on issues specific to men, such as male depression, which occurs because they can’t live up to this very idealised traditional masculine role,” he said.

I would have thought that, given the prevalence of female support groups at university and beyond, you would have little objection to men starting up their own support networks – but wait, you’re feminists, so anything even remotely male-centric must therefore be distrusted and hated.  Olivia Bailey, NUS national women’s officer (no NUS national men’s officer, presumably? – Ed.), said: “Discrimination against men on the basis of gender is so unusual as to be non-existent, so what exactly will a men’s society do? To suggest that men need a specific space to be ‘men’ is ludicrous, when everywhere you turn you will find male-dominated spaces.”  What an enlightened and charming individual Olivia is.  Caitriona Rylance, chair of Manchester Communist Students, said that while the society now claimed to be about “self-betterment”, it’s original aims were “Top Gear shows, gadget fairs, beer-drinking marathons and Iron Man competitions”. Ben Wild responded: “There has been so much false information peddled. I’m teetotal, and our first event was a sober pub crawl. And we’ve compromised on our beard-growing contests to make it more inclusive.”  Whenever you have to wheel out a communist to support your cause, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, and seeing as these men’s networks are brand new I would like to think that common sense suggests giving it time to show its true colours rather than publishing more man-hating press releases.

Ironically, Martin Daubney, editor of the lads’ magazine Loaded, was almost as cynical as you were. “I don’t think men are remotely confused about what it takes to be a man. They just get on and do it. My generation would not sit round and build a website about being confused. It’s complete navel-gazing bullshit.”  Again, I wonder how he can make such a judgement after these networks have existed for no more than a few weeks.  In any case, the hostile response from your ranks just goes to show how little the welfare of men, of boys, of fathers and of families really means to you.  Your vicious attacks on the prospect of men simply having discussions with each other demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt how divorced you are from a real ‘equality’ and equal rights agenda and how divorced you are from any sense of promoting happiness and well-being.  How very sad.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. Constantly Furious thinks Sally Bercow and Labour were made for each other.

2. Dick Puddlecote has found something else that we can tax.

3. Heresy Corner thinks Sarah Palin is pure entertainment.

4. Longrider says the end of blogging is definitely not about to happen.

5. Shane Croucher is in disbelief at Labour’s justification of a DNA database.

“Public spending on eating and drinking is a waste of social assets.  We need to criminalise this by law, so I proposed amending the criminal law and introducing the ‘crime of wantonly squandering public funds’.”

- Zhao Linzhong, a delegate to the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament.  Having become fed up with lavish banquets and official wining and dining, he has proposed making the “squandering of public funds” a crime.  Throwing lavish banquets has long been a Chinese tradition, both in government as well as business.  According to the official People’s Daily, China spends up to 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) a year on public wining and dining – a sum larger than the cost of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest hydroelectric project. (full story HERE)

Dear Tony Blair,

As your bid to become EU President stumbled in a very public fashion, I wondered whether European leaders were nervous about the impending inquiry into the Iraq War.  Yesterday’s revelations in the Sunday Telegraph that military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by your attempts to mislead the public make it clear that you are not fit for office and not fit to be given the time of day.

To describe the documents leaked to the Sunday Telegraph as ‘damning’ simply would not do them justice.  The documents are “post-operational reports” and “lessons learned” papers compiled by the army and its field commanders.  They refer to a “rushed” operation that caused “significant risk” to troops and “critical failure” in the postwar period – otherwise known as a complete shambles.  One commander, describing the supply chain, added: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert”.  Some troops were deployed in civilian flights to countries neighbouring Iraq with their equipment “brought in by hand baggage”. Items considered dangerous, including penknives and nail scissors, were confiscated from them.  Interviewed for the postwar report drawn up by the MoD, Brigadier Bill Moore was asked: “Did you receive the correct level of advice for the nation-building you faced?” He replied: “We got absolutely no advice whatsoever. The lack of advice from the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], the Home Office and DFID [the Department for International Development] was appalling.”  The “lessons learned” report stated: “Never again must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle”. However, many of the failures recounted in leaked documents and given in evidence to Commons committees, notably relating to equipment, were repeated in Afghanistan.

Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted – that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert parliament and the UN that Blair was already determined to go to war.  The documents add: “In Whitehall, the internal operational security regime, in which only very small numbers of officers and officials were allowed to become involved [in Iraq invasion preparations] constrained broader planning for combat operations and subsequent phases effectively until Dec 23 2002.”  In effect, you wanted to hide your true intentions by only informing a few officials.  You blatantly lied to MPs by claiming as late as July 2002 that the goal was “disarmament, not regime change” when you had already promised George Bush that you would join the US-led invasion (the leaked documents reveal that “from March 2002 or May at the latest there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation”).  Of course, we already know that this came despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that the “desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.”

For military commanders to speak so candidly shows the scale of their disgust about your politicisation and interference.  You did everything you could to deceive MPs, deceive the public, deceive the UN and distort the reality of what you were planning with George Bush.  Indeed, the military commanders were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict.  Sir John Chilcot, the Iraq war inquiry’s chairman, promised to produce a “full and insightful” account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict and said he and his team would not shrink from making criticisms of individuals or organisations, but he stressed the inquiry was not a court of law set up to determine issues of guilt and innocence.  I know that you will avoid jail for your lies and treachery, but in my eyes you will always be a criminal.

Yours in disgust,

A.Tory

“Whichever party have the strongest mandate from the British people, it seems to me that they have the first right to try and govern, either on their own or with others.”

- Nick Clegg, who has finally made his mind up and declared that he will support whoever is the largest party in the event of a hung parliament (full story HERE)

Thanks to Paul Baines for emailing this across. You can even buy a full size print version from his website.

1. Laban Tall listens to the Left go rather silent when it matters.

2. John Redwood looks back on a seismic shift in politics this week.

3. Obselete reports on the government’s war against evidence of torture.

4. Samizdata discusses the joys of climate change tyranny.

5. Unenlightened Commentary finds evidence that Harman’s crime rampage was premeditated.

“Snobbery has to start somewhere and if you can’t be snobbish about Katie Price then it’s the end of the world”.

- writer Martin Amis, who once described the glamour model, aka Jordan, as “two bags of silicon”.

“If you looked through any organisation’s emails from the last 10 years you’d find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world’s leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke.”

…or so says a spokesman for Greenpeace, who are fighting back in the furious row over hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world’s leading climate scientists during the past 13 years that have been stolen by hackers and leaked online.  The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on climate change and lead by Professor Phil Jones.  Climate change sceptics allege the emails provide “smoking gun” evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by mankind. In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”  Some of the other incriminating email remarks, listed in full at Bishop Hill’s blog, include:

Michael Mann (creator of the infamous and now discredited ‘hockey stick’ graph showing global temperature rises in recent years) discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.

Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results.

Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as “cheering news”.

Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.

Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.

Mann thinks he will contact BBC’s Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.

Kevin Trenberth says they can’t account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can’t.

Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn’t matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too.

Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to ‘”contain” the putative Medieval Warm Period’.

Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.

Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it’s insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre’s sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many “good” scientists condemn it.

Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.

Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at the Real Climate blog.

Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them”.

Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.

Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the “increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage” he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.

Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman’s admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit website findings.

Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather and has threatened to resign.

Reaction to McIntyre’s 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. [Note - Saiers was subsequently ousted]

Jones says he’s found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.

Wigley says Keenan’s fraud accusation against Wang is correct.

Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4]

Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn’t be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don’t want in the hands of those who might distort it.

Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of “apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data”. Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.

Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner.

Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.

Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.

Funkhouser says he’s pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn’t think it’s productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.

Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible.

Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.

Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.

Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.

David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn’t be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.

Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it.

Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.

If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the climate change ’sceptics’ salivating in unison.  Even as a relatively undecided blogger when it comes to climate change theory, I can see that this is big - really really really big.

1. Lobbydog says common sense is here today and gone gun tomorrow.

2. Adam Collyer thinks work should pay in self-respect as well as money.

3. John Ward finds a bunch of Labour candidates clasping at electoral reform.

4. Next Left thinks Eurosceptics resemble something of a parliamentary Taliban.

5. Tory Outcast highlights more Labour media inaccuracies.

“Everything about this process rubs our noses in how undemocratic the EU is. It’s not just the way Baroness Ashton was appointed; it’s her whole career. Lady Ashton is a lifelong quangocrat who has never once been elected to anything. She went from running a health authority to working at the National Council for One Parent Families to being a Labour life peer, to leading the Lords, all without facing the voters. She steered the Lisbon Treaty through the Upper House, cancelling the referendum on it that all three parties had promised. She was then appointed to the European Commission because Gordon Brown wanted to avoid a by-election. Now, she gets the top job as a kind of compensation to Labour over the rejection of Tony Blair. Every chapter in the story is a denial of the democratic principle.”

- Dan Hannan takes aim at Baroness Ashton, newly appointed EU foreign affairs supremo (full article HERE)

Dear Harriet Harman,

Despite the Guardian and BBC’s best efforts to bury the story, the news that you are to be prosecuted over a minor car accident in your south London constituency is to be welcomed.  Even so, I have this bizarre sense of sympathy for you all the same.

You face prosecution for allegedly driving without due care and attention and driving while using a mobile phone, as the Crown Prosecution Service has said there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to prosecute.  “I’m Harriet Harman – you know where you can get hold of me” is what you allegedly said to a witness who approached your car after you hit a parked vehicle while talking on your mobile phone.  The accident happened in Dulwich, south-east London, not far from your home on July 3rd.  Your car is said to have collided with another vehicle, which was parked beside the kerb. The sound of the collision drew a small crowd of bystanders, and witnesses saw you ending a phone conversation and a neighbour of the person whose car was damaged then approached your car.  The 1988 Road Traffic Act states that drivers must stop and give their name and address, details of the vehicle’s owner and its registration number, but instead you drove off.  Your spokeswoman said that you ”strongly refutes the allegations and will deny the charges”.