The Right Dishonourable – Page 102 – As truthful as resources permit

Charlotte Church is right to say climate change could have fuelled the Syria conflict

Posted on 2 October, 2015 by Jimmy Nicholls

Scribblers from both the Spectator and Guido Fawkes are having a dig at musician Charlotte Church for her contributions to Thursday night’s Question Time, where she brought up the role of climate change in the Syrian conflict.

“Another interesting thing with Syria – lots of people don’t seem to know about this – there is evidence to suggest that climate change was a big factor in how the Syrian conflict came about, because from 2006 to 2011 they experienced one of the worst droughts in its history.

“This of course meant that there were water shortages and crops weren’t growing, so there was a mass migration from rural areas of Syria into the urban centres, which put more strain [on things]…which apparently did contribute to the conflict there today.

“No issue is an island, so I also think we need to look at what we’re doing to the planet and how that might actually cause more conflict in the world.”

Church may well be referring to a piece of research from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, which linked climate change to the Syrian conflict as follows:

“There is evidence that the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers.

“Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone.

“We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.”

As with much in academia, the conclusions are softer than the headlines that journalists like to write. The authors of that study use the word “implicated”, whilst Church used “contributed”, rather than suggesting climate change is the sole or only cause.

This has not stopped Guido Fawkes running with the headline “Charlotte Church blames Isis on climate change”, whilst the Spectator quoted a number of tweets that fudged what Church had said:

Charlotte Church has actually just said that climate change caused the civil war in Syria…

— Ryan Thomas (@RyanThomas_94) October 1, 2015

The view that mankind has had a role in affecting our climate is not disputed by scientists, though the specifics of it remain contested, as is common of just about every subject science bothers to investigate.

How that precisely relates to the drought in Syria between 2007 to 2010 is an issue that Fleet Street hacks and musicians are unequipped to answer – but it seems a plausible statement to make and has been suggested in studies other than that quoted above.

Image Credit – Drought, April 2009 by Bert Kaufmann

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Zac Goldsmith smashes Tory rivals, winning 70% of votes to contest London mayoralty

Posted on 2 October, 2015 by Jimmy Nicholls

The Tories chose Zac Goldsmith to contest the London mayoral election on Friday, as the Richmond and North Kingston MP smashed the competition to secure 70 percent of the votes cast.

Goldsmith’s nearest rival and MEP Syed Kamall failed to secure even a quarter of the ballots of the winner, with deputy mayor for crime and policing Stephen Greenhalgh and London Assembly member Andrew Boff limping into third and fourth.

Candidate	Number of Votes	Percentage
Andrew Boff	372	4%
Zac Goldsmith	6,514	70.6%
Stephen Greenhalgh	864	9.4%
Syed Kamall	1,477	16%

The extent of Goldsmith’s victory emphatically confirms expectations that he would contest the London mayoralty against Labour candidate Sadiq Khan, with some speculating that the Tories deliberately chose weak rivals to ensure his candidacy.

Goldsmith and Khan will face the Lib Dems’ Caroline Pidgeon, Ukip’s Peter Whittle and the Greens’ Sian Berry, interviewed by the Right Dishonourable last month.

The Richmond and North Kingston MP has earned public attention for his opposition to expansion at Heathrow Airport, as well as his considerable personal wealth, which is estimated at £280m.

Many see him as a continuity candidate for the current London mayor Boris Johnson, and Goldsmith has even hired Lynton Crosby to run his campaign, a move Johnson made back in 2012 and David Cameron made in the recent general election.

Image Credit – Zac Goldsmith, June 2013 by Policy Exchange

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Jeremy Corbyn’s first party political broadcast: bent talking, dishonest politics

Posted on 2 October, 2015 by Jimmy Nicholls

Jeremy Corbyn, newish leader of Labour, has put together his first political party broadcast, which can be watched on the YouTube clip below:

Truth fans will be amused to hear Corbyn’s claim that his supporters engaged in “no personal abuse, no personal slanging matches” during the leadership contest, which will be news to the “Red Tory” Liz Kendall who many Corbynites branded a traitor to her party.

Much of the rest of video is the same meaningless guff any politician spouts – “peace”, “justice”, “democracy”, repeat until dead.

Where Corbyn starts to differentiate himself is in attacking Tories for giving tax breaks to the rich (though one notes the Conservatives, at the behest of the Lib Dems, raised the threshold at which one starts being taxed on income last parliament).

He goes to talk about a “real living wage”, chancellor George Osborne having nicked the phrase “living wage” shortly after the general election, and how the Tories’ refusal to adopt it will “damage the interests of the very poorest”.

But the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that even Osborne’s more modest increase in the minimum wage is likely to cost the country 60,000 jobs, with a further hike likely to take out even more low-paying work – not exactly in the “interests of the very poorest”.

“We’re now the biggest membership we’ve almost ever been,” is Corbyn’s next dubious claim.

Total party membership was said earlier this week to stand at 360,000, a bigger figure than the 270,000 reported in Parliament’s latest report, but still quite a lot smaller than the million that the party could boast in the early 50s.

Source: House of Commons Library

So much for “straight talking, honest politics” then…

Image Credit – Jeremy Corbyn, Straight Talking, Honest Politics, October 2015 by Labour

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Jeremy Corbyn’s attitude to immigration will do nothing to win back those Labour left behind

Posted on 1 October, 2015 by Jimmy Nicholls

Politics, despite the mawkish sentiments of some, is as much about division as it is about compromise.

In its starkest terms this is seen at the ballot box, which after all the campaigning, speechifying and nonsense asks voters to pick one candidate or another (or, should they abstain, none at all).

And it’s with that in mind we look at Jeremy Corbyn, new leader of Labour, who this week set out the programme that will go some way to deciding the fate of his party, and the left at large, come May 2020 when the next general election is held.

Corbyn’s views are notably fringe on many issues. He is, like me, anti-monarchy. He is also wants to ditch nuclear weapons and leave Nato, and continues to support a united Ireland.

Not all these issues are binary. Most people who support the royals are not ardent fans of the Windsors, but think the system we have roughly works.

Likewise many people are sceptical about the cost of the Trident nuclear subs, or Britain’s pretensions at being a major rather than minor power. One suspects that most Britons would accept Irish unification if the democratic will was there to make it happen.

Some of these issues are important for political geeks, but political geeks do not make up a majority or even a significant proportion of the voting public, even if they control the press and set the agenda.

Few people are going to be offended enough by Corbyn’s support for dialogue with Argentina over the Falkland Islands to dismiss voting for him on that alone. But what will change their minds is Corbyn’s views on the bigger policies: the economy, health – on which Labour is still ahead – and migration.

On the last of these there is ample evidence that Corbyn, with his pro-migration views, will struggle to reach out beyond the Islingtonites that are his most natural constituency. This week John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, told Politics.co.uk:

“My evidence is that if you’re in a trade union and you’re a man, at the last election you are much more likely to have voted Ukip. Not not voted, [or] not voted Labour, but voted Ukip. That is the private feedback that unions are getting internally but are very reluctant to share.”

There has long been a streak of social conservatism among Labour’s working class voters that divided them from the intellectuals who more often run the parliamentary party. In the general election Ukip did greater damage to Labour than to the Tories, often in seats where the “left behind” voter that used to vote Labour switched. And lots of them cared about migration.

This is not merely a Labour problem. Britain has a taboo when it comes to discussing migration, generated both by bigots who cling on to old prejudices and hysterical leftists who threaten to lynch you at the merest suggestion that diversity has some drawbacks.

This has not prevented people from commenting on it, but it has made some conclusions more revelatory than they should be. Martin Wolf, writing in the Financial Times this week, came to this rather banal conclusion on the migration debate:

“Our countries will end up neither closed nor totally open. Striking the balance is hard. In doing so, it is perfectly reasonable for countries to argue that their own citizens always come first.”

This may indeed seem “perfectly reasonable” to many, but it is unlikely that the left that Corbyn represents, with its internationalist outlook, will find the notion agreeable, especially given the thousands of refugees travelling across Europe at this point.

2020 is of course five years away, and much can happen in that time. John Curtice, a political scientist from Strathclyde University, last month told an audience in Westminster that the EU referendum may reshape British politics as much as the Scottish referendum changed things north of Hadrian’s Wall, a view that sounds credible.

But for now it appears Corbyn is isolating the Labour Party, pushing the market-friendly Blairites to the fringe and alienating the working class voter base that the Labour was built on.

Politics is indeed about division. And in that respect Corbyn’s reign has got off to an exceptional start.

Image Credit – Jeremy Corbyn caricature by DonkeyHotey

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British charities warned after assets found in terrorists’ possession

Posted on 1 October, 2015 by Jimmy Nicholls

The third sector got a stern warning from the Charity Commission on Wednesday after banned terrorist outfits laid hands on goods and funds belonging to British charities.

A statement from the commission reminded charities and those working in the third sector that they are obliged to report suspected terrorist funding offences during the course of their work, following a “small number of recent cases” in which charity assets were lost to terrorists.

“The commission is alert to the risks charities and their staff face when working in unstable and dangerous countries and locations and recognises the potential risk of loss to terrorist groups,” the statement read.

“It is for this reason that all charities working in areas where there is a risk of terrorism need to assess and manage the risks whilst always acting reasonably and in the best interests of their charity.”

According to the commission, an investigation by Counter Terrorism Command into the recent cases found “there was no indication that the charities involved had knowingly allowed their assets to be used for terrorism.

“However, whilst the charities had their own policies and procedures for reporting such incidents and losses internally, these did not include reporting such instances to a ‘constable’ in accordance with section 19 of TACT [the Terrorism Act 2000].”

In one instance an apparent offence was identified by Counter Terrorism Command because of a delay in reporting the incident to the police, but the unit took the view that it was not in the “public interest” to prosecute, an assessment the Crown Prosecution Service agreed with.

Charity staff and volunteers are obliged to report such incidents as soon as possible to police and the Charity Commission, and charities should train staff and put in place policies to facilitate such reporting.

Image Credit – Gunpowder plot, public domain , edited by the Right Dishonourable