Recent Articles
How you can help deflate the British ‘carbon bubble’
by Emily Kenway
As we focus on coping with the cuts and hoping for an end to Osbornomics, there’s a new threat on the horizon with the potential to eclipse the subprime mortgage blowout.
A new report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative out last week explained the systemic risk posed by the ‘carbon bubble’. Put simply, the valuations of fossil fuels companies are partly based on the reserves of coal, oil and gas they have in the ground waiting to be developed.
But if we are to restrain carbon emissions enough to have an 80% likelihood of limiting global warming to 2 degrees, we can only burn 20% of those reserves.
So the valuations placed on those companies – which make up a large chunk of the stock markets – are based on a fatally flawed assumption: that we can burn 5 times more carbon than that limit allows.
Not only that, but the report shows that instead of getting less carbon-intensive, the London Stock Exchange has increased its total CO2 exposure by 7% since 2011.
In last week’s Guardian report on the carbon bubble, a roll call of important players lined up to ring alarm bells, with Lord Stern describing it as “a very big risk indeed”. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, accepted last year that there needs to be investigation into its potential threat.
You may not realise it but pension funds are a crucial lever, using the £1.89 trillion invested in them in the UK alone to shape our economy. And at the moment, most of them are heavily invested in fossil fuels. This not only puts our environment at risk but our savings too, because if the carbon bubble bursts the value of those companies plummet and so do our pensions.
It’s vital that our investment institutions use their money to fund a sustainable, low-carbon future. It’s equally vital they use their influence as shareholders in these companies to pressurise for a change in strategy.
That’s why we’ve created a new online action targeting pension funds at www.shareaction.org/carbonbubble.
You can send an email to your fund quickly and easily to demand that they wake up and start deflating the carbon bubble, protecting our planet and our savings in the process.
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Emily Kenway works on campaigns at ShareAction, the movement for responsible investment
Will this be used for UK intervention in Syria?
Yesterday the White House said its intelligence agencies believe with “varying degrees of confidence” that Syria has used chemical weapons against its own people in recent months.
A lot of our readers will, of course, take that with a pinch of salt.
But keep in mind that Saddam Hussain did use chemical weapons on his enemies – so this is not beyond the realm of possibility.
But today’s front-page splash in the Times has photographic evidence of chemical weapons being used in Syria. This significantly raises the stakes.
It was also revealed that the UK has sent a letter to the United Nations requesting a formal investigation, citing three suspected attacks: two on March 19th in a village west of Aleppo and on the outskirts of Damascus, and one on December 24th in Homs.
Syrian citizen journalists have posted several videos online to show the aftermath of chemical attacks on the 19th.
Warning: video is gruesome
The cameraman says:
“A new massacre of civilians has been committed in the town of Ateibeh during a chemical strike on the town”.
He then show two more men in the room, one lying on a clinic bed and another breathing through an oxygen mask.
(via the NY Times)
The cameraman also says the date is March 19th, 2013.
Another video shows the effect of a chemical attack on others (warning: graphic)
More videos here.
It’s not confirmed yet that the Syrian government used these chemical weapons against its people, but it seems to be the most likely case.
It’s likely that the United States and the UK will now pusher for stronger action, perhaps in the form of a no-fly-zone, as an actual ground invasion has been pretty much ruled out.
The right-wing tabloids aren’t serious about reducing the welfare bill either
I said earlier that Conservatives aren’t serious about cutting the welfare bill, primarily because they don’t focus on its biggest components: lack of jobs and pensions. I add to that the unwillingness to reduce housing benefit by building more social housing.
For all their huffing and puffing, many parts of the press (Mail, Telegraph, Express) aren’t serious about this issue either.
That’s the only conclusion I can reach given they keep publishing blatant lies by Iain Duncan Smith about how he’s getting people off welfare.
In the Economist, Daniel Knowles blogs about IDS’s “questionable numbers”. He implores:
The welfare reform [sic] does indeed need reform. But the whole point about government statistics is that they are meant to be at least sort of objective. Ministers can quote the ones which support their case—but they shouldn’t manipulate them and distort them to tell stories that aren’t actually true. There is plenty of evidence to support welfare reform without resorting to such disgraceful abuse of numbers.
This blog by @spoonydoc sets out recent errors in point form.
But the key point here isn’t that IDS has grossly manipulated stats – he’s only continuing to do so because the newspapers go along with the façade.
I find this behaviour by newspapers a bit baffling. If a Labour minister was abusing statistics like this they’d be outraged, because IDS is trying to create the illusion that his policies are working.
It’s like the Workfare schemes that they also backed to the hilt – despite evidence that its worse than doing nothing.
If the newspapers were serious about cutting the social security bill, they would ask IDS why he’s lying to them. They would consider serious solutions to reduce the welfare bill and ask what the government is doing to create jobs (the rise in unemployment barely made the top story last week).
Instead, they’re happy to promote IDS’s façade that his plans are working, even when they know its full of accounting tricks. I can only conclude they’re doing this because they want to demonise people are who are forced to rely on welfare benefits through no fault of their own, rather than accepting it as a necessary part of a civilised society.
Boris to spend £160k asking why he’s not more popular
London Mayor Boris Johnson is spending £160,000 of taxpayers’ money to learn why more Londoners don’t think he’s listening to them.
No, seriously.
The details were revealed today by London Labour, who said they were “stunned” that Boris was wasting money on such research while cutting London’s police and fire services.
Details of the research project are outlined here by the Greater London Authority.
The aim of the £160,000 research project is increase the “perception that the Mayor listens to the views of London”.
The aim is to raise “awareness, knowledge and therefore satisfaction with the mayor”. It will cost the Greater London Authority £160,000.
In other words Boris is spending £160k of our money to find out how he can look more in touch and popular. The annual survey of Londoners’ views in 2011 suggested 20% felt informed about the work of the mayor and the GLA, compared to 37% in 2007.
Leader of the Labour Group on the London Assembly Len Duvall AM said:
At a time of austerity and deep cuts to our police and fire services, I am stunned that Boris is spending £160,000 on surveys to find out what Londoners think about him. What planet is he on if he thinks this is a priority, it is completely egotistical. Does this have anything to do with him going for a national seat in London?
It isn’t the first time Boris is accused of wasting money on vanity projects.
He launched a ‘New Bus For London’ – which cost over £11 million for the first five vehicles versus £350k each for off-the-shelf hybrid double deckers
He also blew tens of millions of our money on a cable car ride across the river, which hardly anyone uses and has to be subsidised by taxpayers.
We avoided a triple-dip recession but this is not good news
Today’s GDP figures were certainly better than expected, with growth of +0.3% topping the estimates of most economists. But noting that something was better than expected does not mean it qualifies as ‘good news’.
The fact that avoiding an unprecedented ‘triple dip’ is celebrated as a sign of success suggests that expectations really are on the floor. This is like coming last in a race and announcing ‘well, at least I didn’t fall over and break my leg’.
Growth of +0.3% takes the economy back to where it was 6 months ago, before the fall in Q4 2012. We have had no growth in the past 6 months, only 0.4% growth in the past 18 months and just 1.8% in the 11 quarters since George Osborne’s first Budget.
Since the Government took office, the manufacturing sector has contracted by 0.3%, construction output is down a huge 9.7% and the service sector has grown by 3.6%. There are no signs of the much hoped for ‘rebalancing’.
As Will Straw notes at Left Foot Forward this is an historically weak recovery.
The recovery is also much, much weaker than the OBR originally expected. The original estimate for 2013 growth was 2.9%. Even after today’s figures we’ll be extremely lucky to get even half of that.
And for all the talk of a ‘global race’ – our growth compares very poorly to other large economies.
Whether measured by historical experience, expectations or international comparisons the UK’s recent economy performance has been abysmal.
Convictions for rape: how the Crown Prosecution Service is misleading us
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, rape convictions have hit an all -time high:
The Crown Prosecution Service has today published new figures that show the conviction rate for rape and domestic violence prosecutions increased once again last year.
The statistics show that the conviction rate for rape prosecutions has continued to rise to the highest on record, from 58% in 2007/08 to 63% in 2012/13. CPS recorded data on rape prosecutions includes all cases initially charged and flagged as rape, including those cases where a conviction was obtained for alternative sexual offences or serious offences of homicide or offences against the person.
Ah, but have you noticed the caveat in paragraph 2?
In the parallel universe that bureaucrats inhabit a ‘rape conviction’ is not actually a conviction for rape, it includes any conviction is a case that was initially charged and flagged as a rape, even if the actual rape charge was dropped before the case reached court or the defendant was acquitted of rape but convicted on a lesser offence.
In short, however good the overall conviction rate in these case might now look on paper, the claim that rape convictions have hit an all-time high is bullshit, a point that I made back in March 2012 when they tried the same bullshit arguments.
I’ve pulled together this [hopefully] handy infographic which lays out the truth about rape – from the British Crime Survey estimates for annual prevalence of rape and other serious sexual offences, to the CPS’s own audited figures for outcomes (for cases initiated in 2009).
Starting from a annual baseline of 85,000 completed or attempted serious sexual offences against adult women in England and Wales, plus around 10,500 rapes in which the victim was a female child (i.e. under 16), the criminal justice system delivered just 802 actual rape convictions.
I.e. where a defendant was actually convicted of rape and not a lesser offence, of which over half (415) came by way of a guilty plea and just over half were for offences against children.
In short, in that audited data, less than 400 actual convictions for rape related to offences in which the female victim was aged 16 or over.
Full file here (large 6mb PDF).
Copyright notionally creative commons non-commercial licence, but I can also waive that if the poster’s being used for fund-raising purposes by a non-profit organisation.
UKIP MEP: I’m don’t hate ‘girls’, I pose with them!
Is UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom a misogynist?
Well, we haven’t asked the question lately but he seems to be eager to answer the question himself.
Bloom has a page on his website titled ‘The Misogynist?‘ (h-t @leohickman)
So how does he respond to the point?
By, er, posting pictures of himself with women. No, really! Screenshot below.
Why Maria Miller’s demand we show the economic value of arts makes no sense
by John Clarke
The Government’s interest in fiction seems only to apply to economics. Now we have the Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, demanding, in a speech this morning at the British Museum, that leading figures in the arts show the value of culture to the UK economy.
It sounds like a sensible idea. Unfortunately, but to a large extent it’s impossible to do.
And I don’t just mean in the sense of how cultural activities enrich our lives, I mean at the crude economic level Maria Miller is talking about.
The problem is that looking at arts through an economic lens means making predictions about future performance. In reality you can’t predict winners in the arts industry.
Research done on the US film industry tells us that the economics of this is essentially unpredictable. Arthur De Vany, Professor of Economics at the University of California, has written extensively on film economics.
In Hollywood Economics De Vany writes: ‘Anyone who claims to forecast anything about a movie before it is released is a fraud or doesn’t know what he is doing. The margin of error is infinite.’
The variables are huge. This is because capturing an audience is difficult. There are so many different things to consider. What if the artistic product is simply a bomb? What if cultural interests of the public change while the product is being developed? What if they product is good but it doesn’t get the word of mouth or the coverage in newspapers necessary for people to learn about it?
His arguments can also apply to plays, television, music or any other art form you care to mention.
On Radio 4′s Today this morning it was pointed out that huge successes like One Man, Two Guvnors and War Horse were only taken on by the National Theatre because no commercial producers saw them as financially viable.
Indeed, there are so many failures that the successful products often end up covering for the flops. The more activity there is in the arts the more likely there is to be major successes like The King’s Speech.
Just look at what happened when the UK Film Council was abolished in 2010. Film production in the UK is down 30% on 2011 levels. While there are broader economic factors at play, Paul Brett, a director of the film production and financing company Prescience, puts it down to the scrapping of the Council.
This is not to say that money should be chucked at the arts without any accountability.
The money needs to be allocated in a sensible way by experts, but doing this expecting a strict return on investment is self defeating.
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John Clarke is chair of Islington Fabians. He tweets from here and blogs here.
Gove is dismantling teacher-training: you should be worried for the sake of your children
by Natacha Kennedy
Michael Gove’s outburst on lengthening the school day, like most of his pronouncements, obscures something much more sinister. His plan to see kids kept at school through long summer days and into the evenings will obviously appeal to the Gradgrinds of the New Right.
Yet behind the guise is a deliberately hidden reduction in teaching quality – not merely through allowing unqualified teachers to work in academies and “free” schools, but by removing teacher training from universities and placing the responsibility for this onto individual schools.
This was the conclusion of Prof Sir Tim Brighouse in a paper published last week about the future of teacher education.
Sir Tim is blunt about the damage Gove is doing to schools through the destruction of teacher training. Yet Ofsted has shown, using hard data, that university-based teacher training is far superior to school-based routes (p76).
For example, Finland is consistently one of the best performing countries in the PISA international comparisons. Teachers in Finland are all university-trained to Masters level and this is reflected in their pupils’ academic achievements in schools.
Of course training teachers at universities does not mean student teachers don’t spend a lot of time in schools; in fact they spend almost the same amount of time in the class as if they were on a school-based route anyway.
So the loss is of the tried and tested input they get for the rest of the time, seminars and tuition sessions which develop students into reflective practitioners able to continue to develop their practice as professionals.
In May 2010 Michael Gove said that the current generation of teachers were “the best trained ever”. Almost all of those were trained by university departments of education.
In other words Gove is dismantling, as fast as he can, something even he recognizes as a particularly successful system for training teachers.
The issue of teacher training appears to be one that is irrelevant to most people, but ultimately it comes down to a choice: what would you prefer for your children, long hours of rote learning which bore and demotivate them, or a smaller number of stimulating and inspiring lessons?
Is the govt ignoring Brits at Guantanamo?
Is the UK doing enough to secure the return of British residents in Guantanamo Bay? Evidently not.
Today Parliament will feature a debate on the plight of detainee Shaker Aamer, as hunger strikes at the US detention centre spread.
Amnesty International has issued a new call for the UK government to act on Mr Aamer’s behalf. The 44-year-old former UK resident has been held at Guantánamo for over 11 years, is one of 84 of the camp’s 166 detainees currently on hunger strike.
Though held for well over a decade, Aamer has never been charged or tried, and he remains detained despite the US authorities officially approving him for transfer out of the camp in 2009.
In February Amnesty took a 20,000-strong petition to the US embassy in London demanding justice for Aamer, but there has been little response from the government.
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:
As the hunger strike at Guantánamo accelerates, the UK government should answer the question – is it doing enough to get Aamer out of there?
Like all of the indefinite detentions at Guantánamo, Shaker’s plight is a travesty of justice. It is patently obvious that the US government has no intention of charging him with a recognisably criminal offence. In the absence of a fair trial, he should be released back to his family in Britain without further delay.
According to Amnesty, 779 detainees have been held at Guantánamo since 2002. 166 men still remain at the detention centre and nine have died in custody.
Seven detainees have been convicted by military commissions, five as a result of pre-trial agreements under which they pleaded guilty. Four of them have been repatriated.
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Article mistakenly called Aamer a ‘British citizen’ earlier. This has been corrected.
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