Blog move

Now here: http://www.peterrisdon.com/blog/.

Cognitive dissonance

Mine, this time.

Political Betting suggests that opinion poll success depends on parties being in the news; recent Tory poll setbacks have been the consequence of a period of news dominance by the Labour Party.

This suggests that the more the public sees of a given group of politicians, the more they like them.

I'm reeling.

Broadband issues

Screenwriting software nowadays includes some very nice structures for collaboration online. So, there I was this morning, collaborating away in a scheduled work session with someone involved in a project I'm working on, when everything stopped functioning. I opened a web browser and saw a message from British Telecom.

My most recent BT broadband bill was issued on the 11th Feb, about two weeks ago. The screen I was looking at told me the service was suspended to show me a warning that the bill was about to go red. There was a link for me to click to acknowledge this, after which the broadband would be restored.

Great. Scheduled work session screwed.

I called BT and asked if this is a new system. Yes, it is. The woman explained that if customers didn't respond to the email they were sent, saying the bill is about to go red, then this online suspension/warning happens automatically.

I had received no email. What address was it sent to? The btconnect one they issued me years ago. In those years, I have called them at least ten times to explain I don't want their lousy email address and I have my own domain. Each time, they sent mail to my domain for a while, then reverted to the btconnect address. I don't even know what the address is any more.

So. My service switches to a new broadband supplier in ten days. And the voice line goes with it.

Rape - a case study

This has just happened to someone I know, slightly.

Less than two months into his marriage to a Turkish woman, this man was accused by her of rape. They were living in a shared flat (both in mid-twenties) and the evening of the alleged attack, after the alleged attack, she was sitting happily with her husband and their house mates, chatting until bed time. She went to bed with her husband, who had allegedly raped her earlier, made him breakfast in the morning, again interacting with housemates perfectly happily, then she disappeared, as it turned out going to the local police station to make a complaint.

About a week before making this complaint, the woman had discovered that her application for permanent residency here would be fast-tracked if she was thought to be the victim of domestic abuse. The marriage itself had been fast-tracked because she had visa problems and she needed it to stay in this country.

So, after interviewing everyone, the police knew that the woman had a motive for making a false allegation, that it had taken her 12 hours from the alleged attack to report it, during which time she was with her alleged attacker and others, happy and laughing, and that between the time of the alleged attack and the complaint she had slept with her husband without any alleged coercion and eaten two meals with him. There was no physical evidence of rape.

The police charged the man with rape.

Then the husband withdrew his support for the woman's current visa application.

She called him, it was all a mistake, she hadn't meant it, didn't know why she had spoken to the police, would withdraw her complaint. This and half a dozen other calls were recorded by the husband. She followed him around, went to his house, slept with him repeatedly, promised to withdraw the complaint - all these things entirely of her own initiative. I think he was unwise to sleep with her under these circumstances, but she is extremely good looking and he is besotted.

The police were notified that all these things had happened. The CPS decided to proceed anyway and he had to attend court and enter a plea.

Then the woman withdrew her complaint. The case has had to be withdrawn. In my view, if the alleged offence had been anything other than rape, no charges would have been brought. As it stands, I suspect that because he had actually appeared in court, this will count as a "failed" prosecution.

There might be other problems with the legal handling of rape cases, but over-prosecution is one reason why the conviction rates are low. As an ex-policeman explained it to me, nobody wants to be accused of failing to take rape seriously. The police pass the buck, to the CPS, by referring flimsy cases to them. The CPS passes the buck to the courts, and the courts then have to acquit in situations where no prosecution should ever have been brought. Then the courts get blamed for this apparently high acquittal rate.

In this case, there might also be an example of the Law of Unforeseen Consequences. Fast-tracking residency claims for abused women of foreign origin who find themselves in abusive marriages here, dependent on the abusive husband for their visa, is an excellent idea, in principle. Where people do not freely choose their own spouses, for cultural reasons, this might be a problem that requires action. But the unforeseen consequence of the action that has actually been taken, the fast-tracking of residency applications, is that it has created an incentive for false claims of abuse.

New hockey stick graph

Click image to see full size.

By Zombie

Mildly interesting

Ever tried to open a local file in Google Chrome? Eh? I fell back to Firefox.

The mandatory Darius Guppy post

Now, I see Guppy has been in The Telegraph. The thing is, um... that is... eyes feel heavy... I ...

    rtyuio
   dfghjkl;
    cvbnm,

Hmmm? What? Ah. Sorry. I must have dozed off and fallen face first into the keyboard.




© P. J. O'Rourke

Fettered democracy

Good post from Squander Two. Two related points from it:

I'm all for constraining democracy within awkward undemocratic boundaries, as, for instance, the USA's system does. Imagine how much better British governance could be if the Deputy Prime Minister were always the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister were forced to work with him.)

And, possibly more tongue-in-cheek:

Anyway, the whole point of the Northern Ireland Assembly is that the views of all Northern Ireland's political factions are represented, to encourage them to get involved in democratic politics rather than terrorism. So, by its very definition, the Assembly is supposed to contain at least one member who approves of this bombing. When every member of the Assembly condemns this attack, what that demonstrates is that they've set up the Assembly wrong.

The view from UEA

According to The Telegraph:

In a submission to Parliament's Science and Technology Committee, which is investigating the disclosure of climate data from the unit, the university said it ''strongly rejected'' accusations that it had manipulated or selected figures to exaggerate global warming.

The university also denied suggestions that it had breached Freedom of Information rules by refusing to release raw data.

And it insisted the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had not lost any primary data gathered from monitoring stations around the world.

According to the submission, allegations that scientists hid flaws and research findings were the result of misunderstandings of technical jargon or statistical analysis.

On the other hand, I have been contacted by someone in the University, who tells me of a lecturer there in a scientific discipline, who told her students "that there were now nearly 50 people employed by the CRU (up from 5 or 6 10-15 years ago) and that, for them denying climate change would be like turkeys voting for christmas."

My source added: "There seems to be a general scepticism among students... I think UEA on the whole is standing by the "we did nothing wrong" line."

"We" being those staff not employed by the CRU.

I think it's unlikely that the UEA will throw the CRU under the bus, but less unlikely than it seemed before I received that communication.


If anyone finds this googling and has anything to add, I do preserve anonymity of sources.

Keeping in touch with customers using SMS

My replacement mobile broadband modem arrived today, which is nice. An hour later, I received a text from the supplier, telling me that the replacement modem was now ready for despatch and would be with me in 3 to 5 days. A few minutes after that, another text told me they had received the faulty modem, which is sitting on my windowsill waiting to be posted, and giving me a url where I can track the repair.

Avient Air in Venezuela

The above photograph was taken in Venezuela yesterday. It shows a McDonnell Douglas MD11 coming in to land at Barcelona airport. The livery is that of Avient Air.

Avient is a controversial company. Based in Wiltshire and run by former British Army officer Andrew Smith, their activities in Africa were highlighted by Amnesty in 2003 here:

In the government-controlled area of DRC , the UN found that a mining company, Oryx Natural Resources, had a close working relationship with Avient Air, a military company which supplies services and equipment to the Zimbabwean and DRC military.
The UN found a record of a payment in September 2001 of US$35,000 from the Oryx account at Banque Belgolaise to Avient Ltd., Avient Air’s sister company based in the United Kingdom.
In April 2002, Avient Air brokered the sale of six attack helicopters to the DRC government. Under the management of a former British army captain, Avient Air had been contracted to organize bombing raids into eastern DRC in 1999 and 2000. At the same time Avient Air organized logistics and transportation of mining equipment for Sengamines – a partly Zimbabwean-owned venture which is closely associated with the Zimbabwe Defence Force (ZDF) and in which Oryx Natural Resources is a shareholder – and was granted exclusive rights to two of DRC’s richest diamond concessions in 1999 by the then DRC President, Laurent-Désiré Kabila.

And here:

Another example is the Zimbabwean company, Avient, with management links to the UK, which was reported to have hired Russian aircraft and air crew to support the government of Laurent Kabila in the Congo with “air drops”, and also admitted to repairing and maintaining Russian MIG fighters for the Kabila regime.
[...]
In October 2002, a report of the United Nations Security Council accused two UK residents, John Bredenkamp and Andrew Smith, of illegally providing services and military equipment to the Zimbabwean Defence Force (ZDF) for use in the DRC. The UN said that Bredenkamp, a Zimbabwean businessman and one of the richest people in the UK,217with a personal fortune estimated at £720 million, was breaching EU and British sanctions against Zimbabwe through his arms brokering company Aviation Consultancy Services (ACS), in which he holds an active investment.218

ACS had offices in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the UK, and has worked with Smith’s company Avient Air. According to the UN, ACS has acted as a representative for major European arms contractors such as Agusta of Italy and BAE Systems of the UK. In the early 1980s, BAE supplied 12 Hawk jets to the Zimbabwe Defence Force (ZDF). But the UK and the EU respectively imposed an arms embargo on the country in May 2000 and February 2002. Contrary to those arms embargoes, the UN Report alleged that BAE spare parts for the ZDF Hawk jets, worth $3 million, were supplied by ACS in 2002. In addition, the UN obtained copies of invoices from Raceview Enterprises, a company controlled by Bredenkamp, for deliveries worth $3.5 million of camouflage cloth, batteries, fuels and lubricating oil, boots and rations.

And subsequently in a number of questions in the Lords in 2003:

The Lord Avebury—To ask Her Majesty’s Government what response they have made to the allegations against a United Kingdom-based company, Avient Limited, in Annex 3 of the initial United Nations Expert Panel report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, published in October 2002. [FCO] (HL4881)

The Lord Avebury—To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they had prior knowledge of contracts between the United Kingdom-based company, Avient Limited, and the governments of Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo to supply military services, as claimed by Mr Andrew Smith, a director of the company. [FCO] (HL4882)

The Lord Avebury—To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will give the dates and subjects of discussions between representatives of the United Kingdom-based company Avient Limited and the United Kingdom High Commission in Harare. [FCO] (HL4883)

The Lord Avebury—To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they informed Rights and Accountability in Development and its Congolese partner, Action contre l’impunité pour les droits humains, that they had been accepted as complainants against the United Kingdom-based company, Avient Ltd, in respect of alleged violations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s guidelines for multinational enterprises. [FCO] (HL4924)

The Lord Avebury—To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will give further details of the operations by an MI 24 attack helicopter in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said by the United Kingdom-based company Avient Limited to have been involved in the relief of isolated places; and what steps were taken by the National Contact Point for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Guidelines to obtain independent corroboration of the company’s account of the use made of this machine. [FCO] (HL4980)

A report in 2006, in the Sunday Times, added detail:

Under a crewing agreement [Andrew] Smith had signed with General Joseph Kabila, the future president of the Congo, on September 21, 1999, Avient undertook to provide aircrew who would “operate along and behind the enemy lines in support of ground troops and against the invading forces”.

Pelham claims he found that Ukrainian and Russian aircrews recruited by Avient on behalf of the Congolese airforce were flying blanket bombing raids that in all probability were killing and maiming civilians caught in the war zone thousands of feet below.

Rudimentary bombs made from industrial gas cylinders filled with TNT were being rolled out of the backs of giant Antonov transport aircraft flown at high altitude in indiscriminate raids, according to Pelham.

The crewing agreement signed by Smith and Kabila noted that Avient was acting as an “intermediary to facilitate the supply” of aircrew and said the company could not be held accountable for the individual performance of crew members.

Pelham says that the reality was different. He alleges that Avient was providing crews for aircraft involved in military activities, including Antonovs and an MI-24 attack helicopter gunship, and that Smith knew what they were doing.

In 2008, Avient was accused of helping import Chinese arms into Zimbabwe. There was a fascinating comments thread at This is Zimbabwe at the time. Scroll down to comment 29 and later.

The earlier allegations against Avient were investigated (.doc) by the DTI, as it was at the time, and rejected after the UN failed to offer any evidence.

I emailed Avient to ask what one of their planes was doing in Venezuela and, after complying with a request that I supply my home address and telephone numbers to them, I received the following mail from Andrew Smith. I had of course made it clear in advance that I would publish our correspondence:

Dear Mr Risdon

I am aware of the various accusations which have been made and they are all unfounded,

The authorities including Customs from whom we receive permission to load and depart from Europe are responsible for supervising the export of all goods.

Since the aircraft was loaded in Copenhagen International Airport for a flight to Venezuela, you can be assured nothing was untoward. The Freight Forwarder involved is Major Multinational Organisation, and that is whom we have contracted with to carry this cargo for the oil industry

Thank you for providing your details, should you feel inclined to take further interest may I suggest you direct your enquiries to the Customs Authorities in Copenhagen.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Smith

The suggestion that the cargo was related to the oil industry is plausible. Barcelona is probably the best-placed airport in Venezuela for goods destined for the Orinoco oil belt, one of the largest oil sand deposits in the world, and one that is moving into large scale production at the moment.

Avient has a strong presence in Zimbabwe, indeed it is sometimes described as a Zimbabwean company. I don't imagine it could have hurt their chances of getting this sort of contract that Chavez regards Mugabe as his "brother".

Africa watchers tend to pay special attention if Avient's livery is spotted in a trouble spot. Given Chavez's penchant for sabre rattling, I'd say this situation is worth monitoring.

And I wonder what the usual supporters of the Venezuelan regime would have to say if a business with these sorts of currents swirling round it were flying into, say, Israel with supplies.

James Paice MP on libel reform

I just received this email from Mr Paice, my MP (and generally one of the good guys):

Dear Mr Risdon,
Thank you for writing to me about EDM 423 and libel law reform. I should explain that Early Day Motions are for backbench MPs and therefore as a Member of the Opposition Frontbench, I am usually unable to sign an EDM regardless of my views, unless it has been officially tabled by the Opposition.
I understand your concerns on this issue. It is important that those who contribute so much to research and culture in this country do not feel restricted from publishing intellectually challenging and informative articles. Fear of libel action should not curb debate by scientists, academics and journalists. Freedom of expression is the hallmark of a free society, and must be strongly protected.
If libel cases do succeed, the costs are often so crippling to defendants that even large newspapers are in difficulty in resisting some claims. It is evident that Britain has become an attractive place for individuals to bring about speculative libel action since lawyers will often bear the brunt of the costs in exchange for the potential awards available to winning litigants.
You may be aware that the Secretary of State for Justice, the Rt. Hon. Jack Straw MP, has recently announced that the Government is currently drawing up plans to alter libel law. Let me assure you that my colleagues on the Shadow Justice Team will continue to press the Government on this issue, to ensure that any changes to the law adequately protect individuals without placing too great a burden on, for example, scientists, academics and journalists.
Thank you for taking the time to write to me.
Yours sincerely,

James Paice, MP

Promising, I'd say.

Nooooo!

Another email from the libel reform campaign:

Dear Friends,

We’re grabbing this chance while we have a quiet 10 minutes to give
you a bit of advance notice of the biggest, most important, and
hopefully the funniest, event in the libel campaign so far this year.

Later on today we are going to publicly announce ‘The Big Libel
Gig’ when some of the biggest names in UK comedy, science and human
rights will be sharing a stage to tell us that England’s libel laws
are unjust, against the public interest and need to be reformed.
‘The Big Libel Gig’ is at the Palace Theatre in London’s West
End at 7.30 pm on Sunday 14th March 2010.

There will be a very eclectic line-up of famous names including Dara
Ó Briain, Robin Ince, Tim Minchin, Shappi Khorsandi, Marcus
Brigstocke, Ed Byrne, Professor Brian Cox and Professor Richard
Wiseman.

The Big Libel Gig will also include a chance to hear from Drs Ben
Goldacre, Simon Singh and Peter Wilmshurst, who have all felt the full
force of England’s libel laws. They’ll talk frankly about how the
libel laws have affected them personally.

This is a one-off benefit event to raise money for the libel reform
campaign being run by the Coalition for Libel Reform, established by
the charities Index on Censorship, English PEN and Sense About
Science. If you can’t make the gig, other ways to support the
campaign include donating through the dedicated JustGiving page
http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQHUQgKDlAYBQZJBAAKVVw%3D
or email donate@libelreform.org for more information.

Tickets are now on sale from
www.seetickets.com/see/event.asp?e|artist=the+big+libel+gig&filler1=see&filler2=BLG

, at the theatre’s Box Office in person and by telephone on 0844
4124657. This has not yet been announced publicly, so beat the rush,
buy the best seats in the house and support libel reform.

We look forward to seeing you at the campaign’s most important,
funny, thought-provoking and staggering event of the year so far.

Best

Mike & Síle

The Libel Reform Coalition

http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQHUQgKDlYYBQZJBAAKVVw%3D

The Libel Reform Campaign is a coalition of English PEN, Index on
Censorship and Sense About Science.

So far, 197 MPs have signed our Parliamentary Early Day Motion
calling for libel reform and the Justice Secretary Jack Straw has
formed a working party that the Libel Reform Coalition is represented
on.

Marcus Brigstocke?

Quote of the Day

From Eric Raymond, in a post titled Who bears the cost of moral vanity:

I was born and educated into the class that produces “gentry liberals”, but I’ve come to loathe them. This is why. It’s always someone else who pays the cost of their posturing. Very often, it’s the people they claim to be helping: the black teenager who ends up in a drug posse because because minimum-wage laws would force the small businessmen in his ‘hood to take a loss if they hired him for a legal job; the coal miner who gets pneumoconiosis because nuclear-plant construction was strangled in environmental red tape; the woman found in an alley strangled with her own pantyhose, because the handgun she could have shot that rapist with was denied her by force of law.

They’re so very, very convinced of their moral superiority, they are. The pious anti-torture crusaders, the “economic-justice” cod-Marxists, the no-growth environmentalists, the gun banners, and all their kin in the tribe of wealthy white left-liberals. Armored by their certitudes and their sheepskins and their class privileges, they sail serenely above the deadly consequences of their meddling. Not for them any need to worry about second-order effects or process costs or who actually pays the cost for their delusions, oh, no. They are the anointed, and lofty intentions are their sovereign excuse however much damage they do.

Truly, I hate them all. Perhaps I hate them more intensely because I so narrowly escaped being one of them. But it’s really the invincible stupidity and myopia that gets me, and the way their “compassion” stinks of narcissism. If I could have just one wish, it would be this: let their folly come back on their own heads.

Physician, heal thyself

Mick Hartley is, as usual, spot on in his criticism of a recent Peter Singer piece. But what strikes me is that Singer, a Professor of Philosophy, has committed a simple logical error when he asks:

Why do people give generously to earthquake victims, but not to prevent the much larger number of deaths caused by poverty?

Singer is begging the question. He is assuming that giving money to disaster relief is functionally similar to giving money to alleviate poverty when this is in fact a case he has to argue.

A simple, well known, logical error. How strange, from someone in his profession.

Self defence

A characteristic snark from Blood and Treasure:

Incidentally, I believe this is in line with current Tory policy on reasonable self defence.

"This" being a BBC report:

A Russian farmer has been convicted of planting landmines around his field to ward off trespassers.

Bovine partisanship aside, for of course Tories are no more likely to approve of this than Labour voters (which is to say some of each might but not many), what would be a reasonable legal position when it comes to the situation a householder might face when waking at night, alone, in an isolated farmhouse, and hearing sounds from downstairs?

I don't see why the householder, as a result of someone else deciding to break into their house, should be expected to accept any form of risk to their personal safety. There's no reason why they should have to get into a fight that is in any way fair. That is, a fight the burglar has an even chance of winning. The only sort of force that is reasonable in these circumstances is overwhelming force, force that keeps the householder as safe as they were asleep in bed before anyone broke in.

The only test that should apply is whether or not they were still at risk when applying the force. So if a burglar is running at them, screaming, the householder should be able to shoot them without suffering any repercussions. If a burglar is running away from the householder, screaming, then to shoot and kill would be murder, to shoot and wound would be assault.

This approach would have been of little help to Tony Martin, who shot and killed a burglar who was running away.

Simon Singh's weird idea

An email arrives from the libel reform campaign:

Dear Friends,

I’ve had an idea – an unusual idea, but I think it might just
work.

As you know, England’s chilling libel laws need to be reformed. One
way to help achieve this is for 100,000 people to sign the petition
for libel reform before the political parties write their manifestos
for the election. We have 17,000 signatures, but we really need
100,000, and we need your help to get there.

http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQFWggKBFYYDEgEDAEBXg%3D%3D

My idea

My idea is simple: if everyone who has already signed up persuades
just one more person each week to sign the petition then we will reach
our goal within a month!

One person per week is all we need, but please spread the word as
much as you can. In fact, if you persuade 10 people to sign up then
email me (simon@simonsingh.net
) and I promise to thank you by printing your name in my next book
… which I will start writing as soon as I have put my own libel case
behind me. I cannot say when this will be, but it is a very real
promise. My only caveat is that I will limit this to the first
thousand people who recruit ten supporters.

When persuading your friends remember to tell them:

(a) English libel laws have been condemned by the UN Human Rights
Committee.

(b) These laws gag scientists, bloggers and journalists who want to
discuss matters of genuine public interest (and public health!).

(c) Our laws give rise to libel tourism, whereby the rich and the
powerful (Saudi billionaires, Russian oligarchs and overseas
corporations) come to London to sue writers because English libel laws
are so hostile to responsible journalism. (In fact, it is exactly
because English libel laws have this global impact that we welcome
signatories to the petition from around the world.)

(d) Vested interests can use their resources to bully and intimidate
those who seek to question them. The cost of a libel trial in England
is 100 times more expensive than the European average and typically
runs to over £1 million.

(e) Three separate ongoing libel cases involve myself and two medical
researchers raising concerns about three medical treatments. We face
losing £1 million each. In future, why would anyone else raise similar
concerns? If these health matters are not reported, then the public is
put at risk.

My experience has been sobering. I’ve had to spend £100,000 to
defend my writing and have put my life on hold for almost two years.
However, the prospect of reforming our libel laws keeps me cheerful.

Thanks so much for your support. We’ve only got one shot at this
– so I hope you can persuade 1 (or maybe 10) friends, family and
colleagues to sign.

Massive thanks,

Simon

http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQFWggKBFYYDEgEDAEBXg%3D%3D

The Libel Reform Campaign is a coalition of English PEN, Index on
Censorship and Sense About Science.

So far, 188 MPs have signed our Parliamentary Early Day Motion
calling for libel reform and the Justice Secretary Jack Straw has
formed a working party that the Libel Reform Coalition is represented
on.

Please also considering donating to keep our campaign going:
http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQFWggKBFcYDEgEDAEBXg%3D%3D

Irony alert

Sunny Hundal:

People reading political blogs generally seem to hate nuanced positions, but I’m going to try anyway. For that it’s likely I’ll get slammed by both sides but that’s fine. I need to get this out of my system.

And later in the same piece:

Nick Cohen is also having a go – the very same who on record as supporting the torture of detainees in certain circumstances, and has wrongly criticised feminists themselves in the past. With friends like these…

If you follow those links, you'll not see Nick Cohen supporting the torture of detainees, nor being wrong about feminists (all of them, Sunny?). But you will see him making arguments that are, well... nuanced. Too nuanced for Sunny, unfortunately.

Surface stations

I just left this comment at John Graham-Cumming's blog. The Neo-Nazi revisionist bit refers to his use of the term "denier", which is always contemptible. The bit I've bolded is the important point:

Noise and uncertainty simply exist, for scientists and laity alike (comparing Freeman Dyson to a Neo-Nazi revisionist is unworthy of you). Pretending certainty that does not exist is not scientific, though it is the province of the fanatic.

People you call sceptics - a term of approval in a sane world - are not trading in obfuscation, but rather in terms of broad, sweeping issues. Without proxies, we can't reconstruct the historical record. Without a good measured temperature record, we can't calibrate proxies. We do not have a good directly-measured temperature record. This is not some niggly detail.

UPDATE: It looks as though jgc does not want to publish this comment. It's not on his site yet, though a later comment from someone else has appeared. Going out to bat for climate milleniarism does unfortunate things to people.

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