Just Thinking

BDS Getting Desperate

2012-03-06T18:49:00.000Z

You know things are bad for a campaign when it has to go back to past events. But how bad must it be when their latest victory is 9 years old?

London BDS posted the following tweet last night:

Follow the link and you'll see that the event referred to happened in 2003!

Yet Another Council Declares BDS Illegal

2012-03-04T21:01:00.002Z

First there was Leeds City Council, then the North London Waste Authority now its the turn of Canterbury City Council. All three have explicitly and publicly told BDS campaigners that their attempt to have Veolia excluded from public contracts is illegal. In the most recent example, Larissa Laing, head of Canterbury's neighbourhood services said:

Canterbury must choose its waste collection contractor under procedures laid down by Europe and adopted by this country under the Public Contract Regulations 2006. We do not think that activities in the Middle East relate to what we are considering in this contract.

Will the BDS campaigners listen? No. As I've explained before, the BDS campaign chooses to focus on Veolia because it guarantees them things they can call victories. Whenever Veolia doesn't win a tender the campaign leaders can declare it a victory and everyone agrees and congratulates themselves. This is one of the reasons why Normal Finkelstein calls the campaign a cult.

So you can be sure that this latest inconvenience of a council pointing out that BDS is illegal - and thereby also showing that not a single "victory" is actually real - will be ignored.

Where to Draw the Line?

2012-02-24T11:17:00.002Z

Obviously Israel must be able to decide who is allowed into the country of Israel and that means that there must be a hard border somewhere around it, with fences and crossing points etc. As I see it, there are four possible options for approximately where that line might be drawn:

1) Along the River Jordan
2) Along the Green Line but east of Jerusalem
3) Along the Green Line and through Jerusalem
4) Along the Green Line and west of Jerusalem

Which is the best? How do we judge?

I think that the following criteria must form the basis for any evaluation:

1) How successful would it be at ending the fighting?
2) Would it ensure that both sides have their legal rights?
3) How easy is it to practically implement?
4) How easy is it to politically implement?
5) Is it economically and socially beneficial to the individuals most affected?

With those criteria I think that option 2 fares best and here's why.

Placing the border along the Jordan River (1) is simple to implement practically and most beneficial to the individuals since it proves everyone in Israel and Palestine free movement. It may be possible to ensure that both sides have legal rights with some kind of federalised system. However, politically it is extremely difficult and most importantly it will not end the fighting.

A border running through Jerusalem (3) is bound to be difficult to implement and will be extremely bad for the economy of the city. It will end the fighting and should ensure national rights to both sides. Politically, though, there is no appetite for physically splitting the city in two. That goes for international opinion as well. Europeans who celebrate the collapse of the Berlin Wall aren't going to support the construction of a Jerusalem version.

Placing the border west of Jerusalem (4) would not end the fighting, it would only localise it to the city. Everyone inside the city would suffer from economic difficulties and there is no chance of political implementation. Sharing the city would lead to tensions that would probably eventually boil over into outright war between the sides.

If the border runs east of Jerusalem (2) this would end the fighting, be simple to implement practically and be beneficial economically to all residents of the city. Both sides would have their national rights. Politically, it is difficult to implement.

In my view, of the four options only the second one is feasible. All the others present real physical problems whereas the second presents only the challenge of convincing people to accept it.

I'm sure many (maybe most?) readers will disagree and I urge you please to lay out your counter-arguments in the comments or by email.

BDS Fails to Impress in Liverpool

2012-02-23T21:02:00.000Z

A planning meeting in Liverpool was left distinctly unimpressed by BDS campaigners. Here's the report from local paper the Liverpool Daily Post:

At this week’s meeting, proposals for a new waste gas burning centre in Garston stirred up objections from the local branch of Friends of the Earth and Friends of Palestine, owing to company Veolia’s record running a controversial landfill in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine.
While the not-in- my-backyard brigade are often out in force at council planning meetings, the concerns emanating from within the kaftans of the objecting 50-somethings of Garston were seemingly a backyard too far for planning chair John Mackintosh, who in his own inimitable way tried to steer business back to more local issues.
At the point at which the lady objector warned that “what is happening in Israel could happen in Garston” (not, sadly for some, the building of a large wall around the district, but questionable waste disposal policies and their health risks), Big John felt compelled to remind her and the committee that “We’re talking about Garston here, not Gaza” – although his Everton drawl did make the two places sound indistinct, if only in name.
Development control manager Mark Loughran perhaps summed it up most succinctly when reminding the committee that “morality, ethics and human rights” were not really considerations for planners – without doubt a view that many of those present at the meeting to unsuccessfully oppose developments in their own backyards would ruefully concur with.

The planning application was approved and the official report [pdf] on the meeting makes absolutely no mention of anything remotely to do with BDS.

Another Council Declares BDS Illegal

2012-02-22T18:36:00.000Z

The most important target of the BDS 'cult' is the French multi-national Veolia. Unfortunately for them, their demands that councils exclude the company from public contracts is completely illegal. Leeds City Council told local campaigners as much last year.

Now the North London Waste Authority (NLWA) has reiterated reality.

NLWA said it had received “letters and representations” on the issue, while it faced protests at its meeting last week. But the authority said: “The legal position is very clear and these are not issues that the NLWA can or will in any way take into account"

Will the BDS 'cult' listen this time?

Jerusalem: The Main Obstacle to Peace

2012-02-21T20:34:00.001Z

It is well understood that the only viable way to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians is to go back to the original plan and have two distinct countries. This is the stated position of world leaders and the UN. It has been accepted by both sides in the conflict.

Two major issues remain, though: refugees and Jerusalem. Palestinians want Israel to grant citizenship to the millions of Palestinians registered as refugees by the UNRWA and Israel flatly refuses. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be their capital and Israel flatly refuses. However, there is a crucial difference between these issues which makes one a major obstacle to peace and not the other. This is the question of consensus.

In the same way as the two-state solution has gained unassailable consensus in the international community, so too has the solution to the refugee issue. Everyone understands that Palestinians will not become Israeli citizens and must accept compensation instead. The refugee issue is not a major obstacle to peace since the solution is there and agreed upon. All that is required is for the Israelis to agree to a proper level of compensation and for Palestinians to accept the inevitable. Those are not trivial requirements but nevertheless the starting point is known.

When it comes to Jerusalem, however, thinking is confused and unclear. The consensus appears to be that East Jerusalem should serve as the capital of a future Palestine. But does that mean that the city is to be divided into two separate cities with a border snaking through it? Should the city be shared with free movement between its two parts? Should sovereignty be divided or held by one side with some form of autonomy granted to the other?

These important questions have not been addressed and no consensus exists. There is, therefore, no viable plan for peace that could be implemented. Instead there is hand-waving and wishful thinking. The so-called Road Map for Peace leaves the issue of Jerusalem as a matter for negotiation, offering not even a hint at what the city might look like once peace is concluded.

Until there is a consensus on what Jerusalem will look like once a Palestinian state has been created, there is not much prospect for peace. It is, of course, a very complicated issue which is probably why there is such reticence to discuss it. But if there is to be peace, then there must be an international consensus on this issue, just as there is with regards to the refugees.

Without it, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators will each state their claims and reject whatever the other proposes. With it, the sides enter negotiations with a firm peace plan on the table and their job is to tweak it until it is acceptable.

There is also the question of public opinion. People cannot be convinced to agree to a non-existent plan. But, if there is consensus on a specific deal, then people can work to change public opinion in favour of it.

This is why Jerusalem is now the biggest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

EDM Proves Illegality of BDS

2012-02-20T20:05:00.002Z

A couple of weeks ago Jeremy Corbyn sponsored an Early Day Motion in the House Commons. It has so far attracted 13 signatures. The motion calls on the Government to:

facilitate and support effective EU legislation to ensure ... that economic operators aiding and abetting the building, maintenance or servicing of illegal Israeli settlements be excluded from public contracts in the EU.

This proves that the main thrust of the BDS campaign is illegal.

The BDS campaign primarily focuses on trying (and failing) to get Veolia excluded from public contracts and does so by citing current UK law:

Under the Public Contract Regulations (2006) a contracting authority may exclude an economic operator from bidding for a contract or may reject any such bid where it is found that the individual or organisation in question has “committed an act of grave misconduct in the course of his business or profession” (section 23(4)(e)).

The Public Contract Regulations are the UK's implementation of EU Directive 2004/18/EC. So if the EU already has legislation that allows for BDS why is there an EDM asking for it?

The reality is that BDS in public contracts is actually completely illegal. The "grave misconduct" clause that the BDS 'cult' relies on does not apply here. The preamble to the EU legislation states:

If national law contains provisions to this effect, non-compliance with environmental legislation or legislation on unlawful agreements in public contracts which has been the subject of a final judgment or a decision having equivalent effect may be considered an offence concerning the professional conduct of the economic operator concerned or grave misconduct.
Non-observance of national provisions implementing the Council Directives 2000/78/EC(15) and 76/207/EEC(16) concerning equal treatment of workers, which has been the subject of a final judgment or a decision having equivalent effect may be considered an offence concerning the professional conduct of the economic operator concerned or grave misconduct.

Thus it is clear that the clause only comes into effect when a final judgement has been made finding the tenderer guilty of breaking a law. This has not happened in the case of Veolia and there are therefore no legal grounds for excluding it.

This understanding was confirmed by Leeds City Council to local campaigners who refused to exclude Veolia and stated that the company had never been excluded from a contract because of BDS. The response was precisely what one might expect from what Norman Finkelstein labelled a cult - they simply ignored what they were told and insisted they were right and the council was wrong. Indeed, London BDS responded to Finkelsteins branding them a cult by dismissing him as a delusional Zionist.

Will the BDS Campaign now dismiss these MPs as Zionists too?

BDS Double Failure in North London

2012-02-19T22:38:00.001Z

The North London Waste Authority (NLWA) announced last week that Veolia had been short-listed for two lucrative contracts worth a combined £4.7 billion. The final decision won't be made until December.

BDS campaigners had tried hard to convince the Authority to exclude Veolia because of its involvement in the Jerusalem Light Rail which they hold to be illegal since it benefits Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem (ignoring the benefit to Palestinians living there). Excluding Veolia from the contract would almost certainly be illegal under European and UK law and clearly the Authority was not convinced by the BDS arguments.

What makes this a double failure (aside from the two contracts) is that the BDS campaigners have themselves given up on BDS. Rather than argue that the company should be excluded because of anything to do with Israel and the occupation, the BDS campaigners have focussed their efforts on other facets of the bid. A letter sent to a local paper a few days before the decision, reprinted on the London BDS website, called for Veolia to not be short-listed. But rather than focus on its involvement with the tram system, the letter argued that:

Only two of the bidders included practical solutions to the authority’s objective of combining heat usage in the project, known as CHP. On the other hand, Veolia’s solution is not and could not be CHP.
To confirm this, we researched information from other bodies, including the Infrastructure Planning Commission and the Environment Agency.

The issue of Israel was an afterthought:

Does it surprise anyone that Veolia, which has been accused of profiting from illegal Israeli settlements, shows such disregard for environmental objectives?

And in the comments on the London BDS website, reacting to their failure, one activist argued that:

Prior to the NLWA decisions on 10 Feb “Moody’s downgraded Veolia Environment’s senior unsecured ratings from A3 to Baa1″ [published on 8 February].
It is inconceivable the NLWA management informed the councillors Members of this significant development before the decisions on 10 Feb, as it failed to inform them that Veolia is not CHP and its grave misconduct in aiding and abetting war crimes.

It is most likely Veolia would have been deselected had the NLWA taken into account the true ratings of Veolia, but as with other evidence, the NLWA been withholding information from the elected Members as well giving inappropriate weightings.

When even the BDS campaigners won't put BDS at the centre of their campaign, you know they're losing and they know it.

Time to Refocus

2012-02-19T21:47:00.003Z

For a while now this blog has focussed on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It is one of the main organisations working to spread lies and misinformation about Israel intending to give the impression that a liberal, democratic country of refugees which has been under existential threat since its inception is actually the world's most evil group of people responsible for unspeakable and inexcusable crimes that are unmatched by any other country.

Fortunately for those who desire peace the campaign is suffering on three fronts. Firstly the extent to which it is infested with antisemitism and Holocaust denial has been exposed. Local branches have been forced to expel some important members because of their extremism and the national campaign released a statement claiming that Holocaust denial has "no place in the movement". This claim was rather undermined when 20% of the members refused to expel a Holocaust denier who told the AGM that the Holocaust was a myth.

The second problem facing the PSC is that it is now trying to claim that it is committed to the two-state solution. Up until recently the campaign refused to take any stand on the issue therefore being able to hide the fact that most of its members want to see Israel wiped off the map. But it has come under pressure to clarify its position and when forced to do so can only take a stand in favour of two states or lose any chance of becoming mainstream. Its members aren't happy about that.

Finally, the PSC's main campaigning tool is the boycott campaign and BDS is failing. It has failed to convince many Israel-haters let alone the wider public. Its targeting of Veolia is a sham as its members must know but won't admit. In the most recent blow, Norman Finkelstein blasted the entire campaign as a "cult".

So its fair to say that, as things stand, the PSC is likely to have a bad year. As will BDS. It's therefore time to move on and focus on something else. The PSC is still a horrid organisation whose members will gladly ignore the inconvenient fact that the Syrian regime has murdered more Arabs in the last year suppressing demands for democracy and freedom, than Israel has killed this century trying to protect its civilians from terrorism. It will still attempt to convince the world that Israel is especially evil. It will still campaign to get local councillors to break the law by illegally excluding Veolia from contracts. It will still lie about its commitment to two states and it will continue to attract and harbour antisemites and Holocaust deniers. And I will, hopefully, still be exposing as much of this as I can.

However, the Campaign is weak and need not be feared. It cannot be ignored but it doesn't warrant taking centre stage. In particular, it doesn't deserve to be on the front foot making arguments that others have to refute. It has nothing to offer that can lead to peace. No vision for the future. Only division and destruction.

Its time to refocus on the main obstacle to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Jerusalem.

PSC Members Find Place for Racism and Holocaust Deniers

2012-02-12T21:44:00.003Z

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) continues to have problems with antisemitism and Holocaust denial. At their recent AGM the delegates confirmed the expulsion of Francis Clark-Lowes, a former national chair and member of the Brighton branch, for Holocaust denial.

His problems started last April when he emailed the Brighton PSC mailing list declaring that he was

proud to call himself a ‘holocaust denier’

and then later that

I do not believe that millions of Jews and others were gassed in an industrial process of extermination

Those comments resulted in him being expelled by his local branch. Tony Greenstein claims that "not one voice was raised in his defence in Brighton PSC". Tony then reported his comments to the Executive in May who expelled him from the national PSC as well. He appealed at the AGM but lost.

Unfortunately for the PSC, rather than show the organisation as being strongly against such overt antisemitism, the opposite is true. Problems started immediately when it emerged that 20% of the delegates refused to vote against Clark-Lowes, despite him calling the Holocaust a myth in his appeal speech.

A couple of days after the AGM, Francis Clark-Lowes posted a response to Mr Greenstein in which he contradicted Tony's claim of unanimity inside the Brighton branch. Francis wrote:

Greenstein states that ‘not one voice was raised in his defence in Brighton PSC.’ He must know this to be untrue. One voice was raised forcefully in defence of my right to free speech at the meeting where my expulsion was discussed, and several other branch members contacted me later to declare their support.

It now turns out that several members of the Brighton branch have started a reading group to "study" the antisemitic ideas of Gilad Atzmon, contained in his book The Wandering Who. Among those involved are Brenda Brown, a former chair of the branch, and Penny and Jim Porter. Every month, these members of the PSC will join the expelled Francis Clark-Lowes to discuss the antisemitic text.

The PSC claims that

Any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust have no place in our movement.

So long as its members are happy to join Holocaust deniers to study racist books, the PSC shouldn't expect reasonable people to take their words seriously.

Mainstreaming and Slimlining

2012-02-02T21:58:00.003Z

The PSC's report on its AGM claims that, in 2012, the organisation will focus on mainstreaming itself. As I've written before it currently has virtually no impact on public opinion and when it does it is often negative. Ten years of BDS campaigning has not convinced more than a handful of people and aroused significant opposition.

Any attempt by the PSC to make itself mainstream will most likely result in it shedding active members. Last year Hugh Lanning was forced on at least two occasions to declare that the PSC supports the two state solution, despite Betty Hunter reassuring members that it doesn't. The more it tries to attract support from less extreme groups the more often it will have to make similar public declarations.

The problems of Holocaust denial and antisemitism among members hasn't gone away and is unlikely to do so. The PSC will find itself forced to move against more members in the future, expelling some and angering others. It will find it increasingly difficult to defend Hamas and other extreme Palestinian groups for whom antisemitism is an important part of their worldview. People will rightly ask how they can expel Holocaust deniers in Britain while supporting them abroad.

Virtually anything the PSC does to try and make itself mainstream will alienate its members. Eventually it might well become important but not before it becomes a reasonable voice in the debate at which point it will be listened to but have nothing to say.

If any example were needed of the PSC's inability to be both mainstream and a delegitimiser of Israel then we need look no further than the Olympics. The AGM report says that it will try to use the Olympics to "raise the issue of Palestine" (as if people are currently unaware of it). Apart from the fact that the Mayor's office has already made it clear that political activity will not be tolerated during the Olympics, there is something remarkable about the PSC's approach to the Olympics to date.

One of the main claims used by the PSC to attack Israel and justify its BDS campaign is that Israel is an apartheid state. Just as South Africa was the target of boycotts so Israel should be. Given that South Africa was banned from the Olympics for nearly 20 years, why has the PSC not called for Israel to be banned? The answer is that such a call would make it politically very difficult for the likes of Ken Livingstone and the Green Party to retain ties with the PSC.

So not only is the PSC irrelevant and the BDS campaign a failure, any attempt by the PSC to make itself more important will require them to end their delegitimisation and significantly water down their BDS campaign.

The Failure and Futility of BDS

2012-01-30T21:03:00.002Z

As part of my very short series of reasons not to worry about the PSC I explain how the BDS campaign has been a failure and is now completely futile.

The BDS campaign in the UK is more than ten years old now. According to the UK Foreign Office, Israeli exports to the Britain have grown every year in that period except during the first couple of years when Israel's economy faltered and again in 2009 for similar reasons. In 2010 it was worth just under £1.5bn representing a little over 4% of Israel's exports.

The campaign certainly hasn't captured the imagination of the British public. The only times that I can recall it being discussed widely in the UK media was when the notion was being thoroughly lambasted from all quarters. It's true that some trade unions have called for or even demanded a boycott but it seems doubtful to me whether even those hundred or so delegates who voted for the motions actually intended to follow it. If the annual campaign against Israeli dates during Ramadan is anything to go by, the BDS supporters are struggling even to convince Muslims not to buy Israeli produce.

As the movement failed to work on the masses the PSC has changed tack, deciding to focus almost all of its energy on a completely futile campaign that is guaranteed to provide it with a never ending stream of "victories". This is the so-called Bin Veolia campaign.

The campaign aims to convince local authorities to exclude Veolia from public contracts. However, under European and UK law it would be completely illegal for any government body to exclude Veolia's bid for political reasons. The PSC likes to claim that companies can be excluded if they're guilty of "grave misconduct" and that that clause applies to any company operating in the West Bank. Unfortunately, the clause only comes into effect once a company has been convicted by a court or tribunal of breaking the law.

Leeds City Council told their local PSC branch as much, going further by pointing out that the company has never been excluded by any council. The branch refused to listen, claiming that Veolia had "lost billions of pounds worth of contracts" due to BDS.

And this is why the PSC loves the campaign so much - they're guaranteed victories. Most people would quickly realise that no company is ever going to win every tender process it enters. Its obvious, therefore, that Veolia will fail in numerous bids. But for the BDSers, every time it doesn't win they can claim credit.

This is what the BDS campaign has become - lots of energy spent to achieve nothing except the continual victory claims. For example, last year the PSC claimed a victory after John Lewis stopped stocking Ahava products. Unfortunately, John Lewis then called the claim "false and misleading" and declared that the boycott campaign had had no effect on the sales of the products.

The national PSC must be aware that the campaign against Veolia winning public contracts can never achieve anything, so why do they spend so much effort on it? One possibility is that it's a very good way of appearing active, appearing to win and keeping the activists happy. Regardless, its good to note that if all the PSC can do is call for something that councils know to be illegal, then friends of Israel needn't get overly concerned.

PSC's Impact on Public Opinion

2012-01-29T22:22:00.001Z

Imagine that the PSC was a significant organisation, taken seriously and respected as an important voice in the pro-Palestinian camp. Would it be reasonable to assume that its opinion would be sought on the topic of the Arab-Israeli conflict? Might its senior members be invited to contribute to the debate? Would the media report some of its activities?

Judging by what I found when I looked, the PSC is virtually ignored by the mainstream press. Even the Guardian.

In the last 10 years the Guardian have published over 7,500 items on Palestine and 35,000 on Israel. During the same period it has printed a whopping 109 items mentioning the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Here's a closer look at them.

56 are letters, of which 2 just mention the PSC in passing and 3 are signed by someone who is a committee member of a local branch. 16 are letters with numerous signatures including some from the PSC. They can claim credit, though, for 7 letters whose signatories are either exclusively PSC or were almost certainly gathered by them. There are a further 28 letters signed by someone from the national PSC, virtually all of which are from Betty Hunter.

Of the 53 non-letters 26 are news articles and 14 are comment pieces. The rest are a mixture of local news reports (7), profiles (1), obituaries (1), diary entries (2) and running stories (2).

The news articles break down as follows. 6 mention the PSC in passing, 2 report in negative terms about an activity of the PSC, 1 in neutral terms, 1 is about their interruption of the proms and 2 are references to them inviting the anti-Semitic Raed Salah. In 14 other articles a quote is provided by the PSC, though 5 of these are quotes from Sarah Colborne about her being on the Mavi Marmara and in all likelihood would have been given without the PSC existing.

What is more interesting is the comments pieces. 5 of the 14 only mention it in passing. The other 9 are all hostile or negative towards the PSC. So far as I can tell, no member of the national PSC has been a contributor to CiF.

Perhaps the importance of the PSC to the UK's discourse is best summed up by the following two comments on the live coverage of the Mavi Marmara incident.

10.38am:
A source from the Free Gaza Movement has told the Guardian that 19 people are believed dead.
There were 27 Britons on board the ships, the contact says, including Sarah Colvin from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

11.08am:
Ben Folley has emailed to point out that I've erred in my 10.38am post, naming a couple of Britons on board. Sarah Colvin should read Sarah Colborne – she is director of campaigns at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

When the journalist for the definitely anti-Israel Guardian who is live blogging a major event doesn't even recognise the name of the Director of the PSC - perhaps its fair to suggest that they're not that important really.

Keeping Things in Perspective

2012-01-29T21:21:00.000Z

One of the dangers of focussing on a single issue is that you can lose perspective. Since I've spent some time rather focussed on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign I think its good to take a little time to remind myself of how the world really looks. So here are three reasons why the PSC shouldn't make anyone quake in their boots. In the coming few days I'll elaborate on each one.

1) The PSC has little impact on public opinion and when it does, it is often detrimental to the anti-Israel campaign. (Read more)

2) The BDS campaign, which the PSC spends such effort on, is a failure and its main element is a sham. (Read more)

3) The PSC will become increasingly toothless and incapable of de-legitimising Israel. (Read more)

Bristol PSC and Gilad Atzmon

2012-01-29T12:17:00.000Z

Last November, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was forced to distance itself from Gilad Atzmon. Its director, Sarah Colborne, told the Jewish Chronicle:

PSC has made clear ... that we have no links with Gilad Atzmon, and that Palestine Solidarity Campaign does not work with him.

You can read more details on the background here, here and here.

This message, though, didn't appear to get through to the Bristol branch who organised a meeting with Atzmon for this afternoon. Then, last week, a comment appeared from a representative of Bristol PSC stating:

Gilad is well known for his outspoken criticism of Israel and Zionism which will be of interest to many people. However his book focuses primarily on Jewish identity and is not directly relevant to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. For this reason this event is now organised independently.

I think it's fair to say that the statement is far from being a denunciation of his anti-Semitism. It doesn't enlighten us as to who is now organising the already organised event. The only people involved in the original arrangements were Bristol PSC, why did they not cancel the event?

More interestingly, it appears that nobody told Gilad that Bristol PSC was no longer organising the event. After an article written (published yesterday) by Atzmon, defending expelled Holocaust denier Francis Clark-Lowes, he makes the following comment (left today):

Interestingly enough I give a talk today at Bristol PSC. I will probably end up discussing those issues…

It certainly seems like an odd situation. First the PSC claims that it has nothing to do with Atzmon and then one of its branches organises an event entitled "Tea with Gilad Atzmon". Then the branch apparently has a change of heart but doesn't cancel the event, instead telling everyone that it is being organised by someone else. Yet Atzmon still thinks he's talking to the PSC.

Would it be going too far to suggest that the organisers of the event are still Bristol PSC and the attendees are still going to be PSC supporters and members and the only thing that has changed is that the PSC has tried to pretend that it isn't organising it.

Maybe someone from Bristol PSC can clear this up?

Holocaust Denial at the PSC AGM

2012-01-22T11:38:00.000Z

Yesterday the Palestine Solidarity Campaign held its Annual General Meeting. One of the first things it had to deal with was the expulsion of former National Chair Francis Clark-Lowes. Last year he admitted being a Holocaust denier and, after some pressure, was expelled. Mr Clark-Lowes had a right to appeal at the AGM and you can read his speech here.

What was the reaction in a room full of people claiming to be anti-racist when they were told:

"Put simply, the idea that Gentiles have an anti-Semitic gene, the story of Jewish suffering, the ‘Holocaust’ myth, Zionism, Jewish chauvinism, and anti-racist rhetoric have combined into an ideology which, because it is virtually unsinkable in its own terms, is immensely powerful."

or that:

"Instead of cowering in fear at the use Zionists might make of what we say, and desperately scouring every word uttered on this subject to root out supposed anti-Semitism, we should be challenging Jewish ideology."

The condemnation was less than inspiring. According to Tony Greenstein:

People literally gasped as they heard him describe the holocaust as a ‘myth’

But Jeremy Moodey says that everyone just listened politely (although the room cheered when they were told that the Occupy movement had taken over another site). When he finished speaking there was modest applause according to Paul Eisen who was apparently outside the room.

After the speech the AGM was asked to vote on whether this Holocaust denier should be expelled from the self-proclaimed anti-racist campaign. 1 in 5 of those present couldn't bring themselves to vote yes. The AGM went on to back a motion endorsing the following statement from the executive:

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign exists to build a mass solidarity movement on Palestine. It is founded on principles of justice, human rights, and opposition to all forms of racism. Any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust have no place in our movement. Such sentiments are abhorrent in their own right and can only detract from the building of a strong movement in support of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.

Words are cheap and in this case meaningless. When 20% of your organisation won't vote to expel a man who denied the Holocaust to their faces, you don't have much credibility claiming that such denial "has no place" in your movement.

Did the PSC Lie to Caroline Lucas MP?

2012-01-08T11:46:00.000Z

In June last year Caroline Lucas MP released the following statement to the Jewish Chronicle:

It has been brought to my attention that the PSC logo appears to reflect 1917, pre-creation of Israel, borders and as such could be open to interpretation by some as implying non-recognition of Israel's right to exist. I am following this up with the director of the PSC since I am quite sure that PSC does indeed recognise Israel's right to exist, and it is unhelpful and damaging if any other impression is given.

I did not see any update to this so emailed Ms Lucas in October and was told that she had given a follow-up statement to the JC:

After raising the issue directly with PSC, I am satisfied with the assurances I have received that the organisation does indeed recognise Israel’s right to exist – as I had expected – and that it remains committed to a two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

According to an article in the Morning Star also from June, the PSC was criticised at a TUC meeting for not supporting the two-state solution and Hugh Lanning (Chair of the PSC) responded.

He stressed the need for two states based on the 1967 borders - a demand recently backed by US President Barack Obama but consistently rejected by Israel.

However, in November Lauren Booth launched an attack on the PSC in which she quoted Sammi Ibrahem as saying:

I feel they (the PSC) have no right to represent the Palestinians’ he says, ‘Their policies are pro the ‘two state’ solution.

Obviously concerned by this, a member of the Bristol branch emailed the head office for clarification and received a reply from Betty Hunter, the President of the PSC. In her email she said:

We do not take a position on the 2 state/ one state solution as that decision must be for all Palestinians.

One possibility is that there is a real split in the PSC between those who support Israel's right to exist and therefore support the two-state solution; and those who aren't fussed and think it's up to the Palestinians (not the Israelis) to decide whether Israel can continue to exist or not. If this is true then it would be difficult to claim that the organisation is committed to a two-state solution.

Another, more worrying possibility, is that the PSC doesn't, in fact, take any stance on the issue as their President affirms. However, in order to gain support from trade union officials and Members of Parliament, they are willing to lie and tell them that they are fully committed to a two-state solution.

So did they lie to Caroline Lucas MP? Or is the PSC lying to its members?

A (small) Thank you to anti-Israel Jews

2012-01-01T10:26:00.001Z

If for every two Jews there are three opinions, it is hardly surprising that there is a distinct lack of unanimous support for any policy decision from any Israeliadministration. But, while most British Jews prefer to leave the public criticism to Israel’s many willing opponents, some feel the need to state their disagreements loudly and “as Jews”. Their apparent willingness to lend support to the complete delegitimisation of the Jewish state leaves the rest of us unsure how to respond and it is tempting to simply label them “self-hating Jews”. However, the truth is never so straightforward.
In many, perhaps most, cases the motivation to publicly denounce Israel is the desire to fight antisemitism. As the CST has observed, the number of antisemitic attacks in the UK is directly related to tensions and actions in the Middle East. Some believe that the support Israel receives from Britain’s mainstream Jewish organisations is a cause of antisemitism and the only way to fight that is to create Jewish anti-Israel organisations.

The founding declaration of Independent Jewish Voices, for example, places the fight against antisemitism at the heart of the organisation. Likewise, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) state that they “extend support to Palestinians trapped in the spiral of violence and repression” because they “believe that such actions are important in countering antisemitism”.

Unfortunately, these campaigns are naïve and counter-productive. Racists are generally not entirely rational people. The egg-throwing thug is unlikely to weigh up the probability that the man walking home from synagogue might disapprove of settlements. Nor is the desecrater of cemeteries going to check first that his victims haven’t signed an anti-Israel letter to the Guardian.

More likely is the attitude shown in a comment allegedly left by a member of the Reading Palestine Solidarity Campaign on a website that “not all adherents to the Torah are enemies of humanity” because Neturei Karta are not. By opposing any and every action by Israel, the impression is given that anyone not joining the public denunciations is fully supportive of all these policies. Far from destroying the impression of Jewish support for Israeli actions, their opposition reinforces it. And all this is aside from the impact of delegitimisation on our fellow Jews in Israel.

Nevertheless, very few anti-Israel Jews are self-hating. We should recognise this and make sure to keep them within the big tent against antisemitism rather than making them pariahs. They may be opponents of Israel but they can be our allies in the struggle against antisemitism.

An example are the Jews of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). The PSC is a leading force in delegitimisation, using trade unions to advance its call to boycott all things related to Israel. Its public meetings are often attended by Labour MPs and it invited the banned Sheikh Raed Salah to speak at one such meeting to be held in the Houses of Parliament. Many believe the organisation is incapable of distinguishing between criticism of Israeli actions and antisemitism.

However, during 2011 there has been something of a mini-purge of the organisation with some previously important members forced to resign because of their antisemitism. Those effectively expelled include a former national chair, the chair of one branch, the secretary of another and the webmaster of a third. Behind all these resignations appear to be rank and file Jewish members with support from a Jewish member of the Executive Committee. While the PSC itself may be unable to work our what antisemitism looks like, its Jewish members certainly can.

We have enough enemies already that we shouldn’t be looking to create more.

So long as anti-Israel Jews retain their sensitivity to antisemitism we can be sure that they are neither self-hating nor hate us. They remain allies in our struggle against antisemitism and in some ways are capable of achieving results in it that the rest of us cannot. We should thank them for that. If we don’t make enemies of them, we may find that we have more friends than we thought. May 2012 be a year of reconciliation and greater unity in our small community. We will all be better off for it.

This piece was published in the Jewish Chronicle.

Tony Gratrex of Reading PSC

2011-09-08T08:39:00.003+01:00

UPDATE: You can read this post and other similar ones on my new blog "Exposing Anti-Semitism".

Most of this has been reported at Harry's Place before. Tony Gratrex is involved with Reading PSC. He's listed as the contact for them in this pdf. Here he's mentioned as representing them at a branch meeting.

In the original report, Harry's Place revealed who Gratrex thought controlled the media and international banking:

You state that the jews do not control the media but that it is under self censorship.
This is patently wrong and only a cursory glance using the internet will show that a majority of the media is jewish owned or controlled.
During the interview you use the expression "who pays the piper calls the tune" and that is precisely the problem when one considers who controls the international banking system.

Here's another comment, not in the original report, that Gratrex left on an overtly anti-Semitic blog:

Not all adherents to the Torah are enemies of humanity.
You are forgetting the Neturei Karta Jews

Aside from the obvious anti-Semitism of calling all but a tiny handful of Jews "enemies of humanity", one wonders what attracted Mr Gratrex to this particular blog...

Bristol PSC and Cliff Hanley

2011-09-07T14:26:00.001+01:00

UPDATE: You can read this post and other similar ones on my new blog "Exposing Anti-Semitism".

Cliff Hanley is the Chair or Secretary of Bristol Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Their website is registered in his name and he is also the owner of their Yahoo group, under the username "fagbolt".

He is something of a fan of Holocaust denier Anthony Lawson. He has published two of his videos on his blogs. In his introduction to Lawson's video on wikileaks (which essentially argues that wikileaks was an invention of the CIA/Mossad and by the way 9/11 was an inside job of course) he says:

Anthony Lawson has produced another fine thought-provoking news-bomb

Hanley doesn't just repost extremism from others he also declares it himself. He told a local newspaper that:

Israel is not a true country. It is simply a flawed policy.

And what about Hamas?

Hamas does not want to destroy all Jews. 'All Jews' would include the Israelis who regularly join in the anti-wall, anti-occupation demos with their Palestinian friends, for instance.

But Mr Hanley is not alone among members of Bristol PSC for holding extreme views or indeed liking Anthony Lawson. His video in which he says that Holocaust denial is really "research" into "questionable aspects of the alleged events" is linked to in one message.

Another message is entitled "How the Jewish Lobby Works" and links to a YouTube video of the same name. There are also messages citing material from American Free Press and rense.com.

In this message Mr Hanley links to the (now removed) Facebook group "Third Palestinian Intifada" claiming that:

it's of more than passing interest

The group was removed (at least in part) because it advocated violence and stated:

Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews

Another message links to a video entitled "Israeli Terrorism and the Talmud" which opens with a fabricated quote from "Libbre David 37". No such Jewish book exists but the "quotation" is regularly used by anti-Semites the world over.

Ken Livingstone - New Leadership?

2011-09-06T17:54:00.000+01:00

An email sent out on behalf of Ken for London includes this great line:

London needs a change; it needs new leadership that puts London first. Ken Livingstone ...

Ken? New? He was leader of the Greater London Council 30 years ago!

The email footer says:

Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit for a new generation of leaders and creators.

Hard to see how Ken fits the description to be honest.

Holocaust Denial at Norwich PSC

2011-09-06T16:45:00.002+01:00

UPDATE: You can read this post and other similar ones on my new blog "Exposing Anti-Semitism".

Last week, Harry's Place revealed that the former Chair of the West Midlands Palestine Solidarity Campaign runs a website that publishes Holocaust denial. It turned out that he had been expelled as Chair because of it. Now it's the turn of Norwich Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

An article reprinted on the site is taken from the "Israel's stooges" section of the redress.cc website. It was published in 2009 and refers to the appointment of Ivan Lewis as Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The article states:

Mr Lewis is also a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust, a body founded in 1988 by British pro-Israel lobbyists Greville Janner and Merlyn Rees with the aim of maintaining a culture of gentile guilt and Jewish victimhood in British schools.

More worrying, though, is a video posted on the site entitled "Israeli Apartheid and the Nakba". It was created by Holocaust denier Anthony Lawson. Lawson said in an interview that:

it seems that there is no solid evidence that Germany put in train a plan to systematically murder Jews using gas chambers. I have no doubt that some Germans were as cruel as some of those bombing-raid planners, and that a lot of unnecessary deaths resulted from that cruel streak, which seems to show itself in so many humans, but I do not think that the facts support the planned systematic- extermination scenario that the ever-growing number of Holocaust museums claim was perpetrated by the Germans.

In the video, Lawson states:

All over the world Zionists build museums and memorials to their Holocaust and strive to put people in gaol for what is more properly described as historical research but which they call Holocaust denial or revisionism; an attempt to prohibit enquiry into even the more questionable aspects of the alleged events which took place in forced labour camps during the Nazi era.

While he is narrating these lines, the video shows photos of well-known Holocaust deniers Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf, Robert Faurisson, David Irving, Sylvia Stolz and Gerald Toben.

The webmaster of the Norwich PSC site is Khaled Sa'aran. He also works for Norfolk County Council (Children's Services. As the webmatser, he must surely take responsibility for what is published on the site.

A Year Out of Date?

2011-09-01T11:19:00.000+01:00

From Cormac Hollingworth at Left Foot Forward:

Today Ed Milliband called for an emergency meeting of the G20 in September, to restart the global recovery from a co-ordinated collapse in demand around the world. His call is backed up by an important year-long project undertaken by the IMF to outline an upside and downside for the world economy over the five years.

The IMF project is the Mutual Assessment Process (MAP). As far as I can tell the support is that the IMF found a scenario where alternative policies would be beneficial. The bit quoted by Cormac is this [pdf]:

[Its] well-designed, collaborative policy actions across the G-20 would produce better outcomes for all, including significant strides in global demand rebalancing.

So the MAP calls for "collaborative policy actions" by G-20 members. That's what Ed is calling for so the IMF support him.

Only problem I can see is that the bit Cormac quotes is from the first stage of the MAP process. The same report he cites then goes on to say:

The key take-away from the first stage of the MAP was that well-designed policy actions by the G-20 could increase growth, create more jobs, and reduce poverty across the world. As a result, G-20 Leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the MAP and agreed to identify policies that could bring everyone closer to the upside.
...
This set the stage for next phase of the MAP. At the Seoul Summit in November 2011 [should be 2010]...

It looks like the IMF report that backs up the need for collaborative action resulted in that collaborative action almost a year ago. I'm confused as how to that can now support Ed's call for different collaborative action.

Fly-Tipping Cost?

2011-09-01T09:18:00.002+01:00

Two articles reporting on a report from the Countryside Alliance about fly-tipping.

BBC:

Fly-tipping in England and Wales cost councils £40m in 2010 but only £692,000 was raised in fines, figures suggest.

Daily Mail:

Rubbish is illegally dumped at least once a minute, according to a report released yesterday. It found 656,000 incidents of fly-tipping were recorded last year, costing taxpayers almost £25million in clear-up fees.

Can't find the original report on the Countryside Alliance website as of yet but something strange here.

UPDATE: The Countryside Alliance have tweeted that their report is out giving links to the BBC, Daily Mail and Express but not to the actual report. The tweet says the cost is £40m but the Daily Mail is still reporting £25m.

Knowing What You're Talking About

2011-08-30T11:35:00.000+01:00

Eoin Clarke makes a post about the shortfall in the number of new houses being built. In the middle of the post he says that:

More than 40,000 people sleep on our streets every night.

Tim Worstall picks him up on it pointing out that actually only 1,768 people sleep rough in England. What's going on?

The answer is that Clarke is relying on the following line from the ONS report on Housing and Planning:

During 2009-10, local authorities made 89,120 decisions on eligible applications for housing assistance under homelessness legislation. Nearly half of these - 40,020 - were accepted as owed a main homelessness duty, 70 per cent lower than the peak in 2003-04.

However, he wasn't careful enough with what he's talking about. Elsewhere, the ONS has a page with "Notes and definitions for homelessness data" which states:

The term "Homelessness" is often considered to apply only to people "sleeping rough". However, most of our statistics on homelessness relate to the statutorily homeless i.e. those households which meet specific criteria of priority need set out in legislation, and to whom a homelessness duty has been accepted by a local authority.
Such households are rarely homeless in the literal sense of being without a roof over their heads, but are more likely to be threatened with the loss of, or are unable to continue with, their current accommodation.

So there are about 40,000 people considered homeless under the ONS definition but only 1,768 people sleeping on the streets.

Graduate Earnings

2011-08-28T11:03:00.000+01:00

Jonathan Hunt writes at LibDem Voice:

According to new figures published this week by the Office for National Statistics, graduates earn 85 per cent more than people with only GCSE qualifications over their working lives. Extrapolated over a 40-year career lifetime, graduates are likely to earn almost £1 million more than those on current average pay of some £25,000 pa.
...
When looked at from that end of the telescope, it does not seem too onerous for graduates to have to repay some £30,000 or so when as a result of that investment they earn many multiples of that sum. They will still be some £970,000 better off (before tax) than non-graduates by the time they retire.

He's been widely criticised there. He's made lots of mistakes in his methodology. Firstly, he picks GCSE as the comparator rather than the next-most qualified. Secondly, he ignores taxes. Thirdly, he ignores the extra years worked by those who stopped their education earlier.

Before correcting these mistakes it's also worthwhile pointing out that his chosen annual salary of £25,000 makes no sense. His source gives average hourly earnings for those who only have GCSEs as £8.68. In order for them to earn £25,000 a year they'd have to work for more than 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Not likely.

Anyway, the table below gives the values found from his methodology applied correctly with the points mentioned above (I assume 7.5 hours work a day for 230 days a year, or 1,725 hours a year):

	Median hourly pay	Annual Earnings (post tax)	Career Length	Total Income	Difference
Degree	£16.10	£21,248	40	£849,920	£0
Higher education	£12.60	£17,142	42	£719,964	£129,956
A Levels	£10.00	£14,092	43	£605,956	£243,964
GCSE grades A*-C	£8.68	£12,544	45	£564,480	£285,440

This report (pdf, page 3) claims that graduates earns £149,761 more over a lifetime. Other values I've seen range from £100,000 to £160,000. So Jonathan Hunt had the right idea but was sloppy in his application.

Clearly Paid Too Much

2011-08-26T15:22:00.000+01:00

Andrew Tindall at Liberal Conspiracy sent a FoI request to the Cabinet Office to find out how much the e-petitions website costs. Turns out it cost £80,700 to develop and £32,000 a year to maintain. Andrew concludes:

So there we have it, they clearly paid too much for what was such an unstable service, but it’s still one of the cheaper government initiatives we’ve seen in recent years.

But wait, how much did the old e-petitions website cost? According to this Commons report (pdf):

The Deputy Leader stated that the set-up costs of the Downing Street site were £17,500 and that the annual running costs are £109,100.

So after two years, this one would cost £91,000 less than the one produced by Labour and would continue to cost £77,100 less each year.

Mayor's House Record Missing?

2011-08-26T12:37:00.001+01:00

Does anyone know why Boris Johnson's purchase of a new house doesn't appear to be in the Land Registry's database anymore?

The Daily Mail reports:

Land Registry documents show Mr Johnson and Ms Wheeler bought the house jointly on June 12, 2009, and that they have a mortgage for the property in both of their names.

Yet searching the Land Registry website shows that no record exists for that date on the road Boris is reported to live on. Does anyone know what's going on? Have I missed something?

Council Staff Wasting Time?

2011-08-26T11:59:00.000+01:00

The Essex Chronicle reports:

ESSEX civil servants spent the equivalent of 2,200 working days last year on social network sites at work, a Chronicle investigation can reveal.
Our investigation shows that Essex County Council (ECC) staff spent 16,500 hours on Twitter and Facebook in the last 12 months – equivalent to one employee spending over six years on the two websites.
...
Since August 2010 staff wasted 342 working days house-hunting on property website rightmove.co.uk

Shocking, right? Wrong. How many staff does Essex County Council have? 7,539 according to a different report on the same figures. Let's do the maths:

for 16,500 hours to equal 2,200 working days we must have 7.5 hours per day. Now, total hours spent on social networking sites per employee comes to 2.2 hours. Over 12 months.

And house-hunting? Just over 20 minutes. Over 12 months.

I'm no expert but I reckon that that's pretty good actually.

Pictures of MPs Houses

2011-08-26T08:07:00.000+01:00

After people made a fuss about YourKen publishing an unidentified photo of Boris Johnson's house we now have Louise Mensch complaining about the Daily Telegraph publishing a photo of MP Simon Kirby's house and telling everyone that it's his house. She tweeted:

I hope Daily Telegraph will take down its online picture of Simon Kirby MP's family home and will not reprint it in its print edition tmrw

The only reason for not showing photos of MPs houses would be to keep their addresses secret. The problem is that even without the photo there is enough information in the article to find out Mr Kirby's precise address in a matter of minutes.

How? The article tells us how much his house is worth and approximately where it is and when he bought it. Use that information to find his house from the Land Registry. Simples. The only way to realistically keep MPs' addresses secret would be either to not include their info on public records or else ban people from publishing that information.

Do we really want to keep the activities of our elected officials a secret like that?

Higher Borrowing Under Osborne?

2011-08-24T17:55:00.000+01:00

Cormac Hollingsworth at Left Foot Forward claims that:

... the City now expects the coalition to borrow £10 billion more than the OBR prediction, blasting through Alistair Darling’s budget for 2011/12 by at least £5bn.

This claim seems odd indeed. Firstly, no source is given for the City's expectations. Secondly, this City prediction is being compared to the OBR prediction for the Darling Plan. Thirdly, the numbers don't appear to add up. Quoting from the article:

To repeat the numbers, the OBR prediction for Darling’s budget plans was for Total Managed Expenditure in 2011/12 to be £708.9bn and receipts of £581.5bn, generating a borrowing figure of £127.8bn.
The latest OBR prediction for the March Budget was TME £710.4bn and receipts of £588.6bn, a borrowing figure of £121.8bn that was already a rise from the June emergency budget of £116bn due to a downgrading of growth.

But if the OBR prediction is for £121.8bn of borrowing and the City expects £10bn more, that comes to £131.8bn. That's exactly £4bn more than under the Darling Plan, not "at least £5bn". What have I missed?

Of course, the OBR has not been continually updating its forecasts for the Darling Plan like it has for the actual plan being implemented. Their prediction for the Darling Plan assumed 2.6% growth in 2011. How much would that have to fall before borrowing under the Darling Plan became more? And would anyone argue that under Darling we'd have 2.6% growth given what's happening globally?

More on Taser Deaths

2011-08-24T12:04:00.000+01:00

On Friday I wrote about how no one had died in the UK (between 2004 and 2010 at least) from being hit by a police taser. Today I see this headline from The Guardian:

Man dies after Taser arrest near Bolton

Of course, read the report and you'll see:

A man who stabbed himself in the abdomen has died after being Tasered by police.
...
Greater Manchester police said the officers had been threatened. They entered the house and deployed a Taser. "After it was deployed, it became apparent he had a serious self-inflicted stab wound to his abdomen," police said in a statement.

So most likely cause of death, at this point, would not be the taser then. Of course, the headlines are accurate he did die after being hit by a taser. But then if you wait long enough everyone who has ever been hit by a taser will die. Why not a headline "100% of people hit by tasers will die"? As accurate and misleading as this one.

On Boris Johnson's House

2011-08-24T11:01:00.000+01:00

Further to my post yesterday regarding YourKen "revealing" Boris Johnson's house. The fuss is that the Ken campaign identified Boris's house and this is a bad thing. Now, clearly they didn't identify it because only those who knew whose house it was would have known whose house it was. In reality Guido Fawkes identified it as Boris's house.

More importantly - was it a secret? True, the exact address was not previously widely known. However, it's a simple Google search to find what street he lives on. The road name has been published by newspapers before. I won't reveal the information just in case.

However, his old address is easily found. How do I know? Well this website identifies his street name. And this website offers a photo of him outside his house with the door number clearly visible. You can confirm with Google Street View.

So just how secret is the address of the London Mayor supposed to be?

Mayor's House?

2011-08-23T16:17:00.002+01:00

UPDATE: Turns out he moved in July 09 between the Daily Mail pic and the new one. So no mistake from Guido, other than identifying the house as being Boris's of course.

Guido Fawkes claims that a photo on the YourKen website shows Boris Johnson's house. The picture has been removed from the YourKen website with the following comment from Michael Joslin:

We have removed a photo that appeared on this page earlier today – A spokesperson for Ken Livingstone said, ‘YourKen.org contains a range of photos of our volunteers campaigning across London, in this case Labour canvassers campaigning in the recent Islington byelection. No pictures identify the names of residents in particular addresses, including this one. As Harry Cole and the Guido Fawkes blog have chosen to reveal the name of a resident in this house we have decided to replace this photo.

But Ray Rodden points out that the Daily Mail has also published a picture of Johnson's house, even going so far as to identify it as his.

Now, here's the weird thing. The two houses look similar but are not the same. Crucial differences include the stairs up to the front door and railings outside the house. From memory the door number on the picture from YourKen is different to that in the Daily Mail pic. Both houses are reported as being in Islington and the YourKen guys have seemingly acknowledged that it was Johnson's house.

So what's going on?

Am I wrong and the two houses are the same? Has Boris moved from one house in Islington to another in the last two years? Did the Daily Mail get it wrong and take a pic of Johnson standing outside someone else's house? Or did Guido make a mistake, jump to a conclusion and scare YourKen into removing the picture?

Very Delayed Summer

2011-08-22T14:28:00.000+01:00

Graduate Fog asks where all the unpaid interns are after the HESA published a report saying that only 5,235 university graduates are in unpaid work. The problem is that the IPPR published a report that 280,800 companies were looking to take on interns and 18% of those would not be paying them.

Here's the key point though. From the HESA report:

The publication provides detailed results of the Destinations of Leavers from HE survey, which asks graduates what they are doing six months after graduation.

From the IPPR one:

This is the equivalent of 280,800 organisations across the UK, potentially offering a quarter of a million internship places over the summer.

Normal university degrees finish in May-July so six months later is November-January. Definitely not summer time. Problem solved.

Police Cars or Guns - Which is Deadlier?

2011-08-22T09:08:00.000+01:00

At LabourList, David Talbot writes sensibly that police forces will always claim to need more money and always claim that a reduction in their budget will mean more crime. However, in his article he claims:

The police continually say that any reduction in funding will damage public safety and reduce frontline effectiveness. It does not mention that speeding police cars now kill twice as many members of the public as die from gun offences.

In fact this claim is untrue. Home Office figures on deaths caused by road traffic incidents involving police cars in England and Wales can be found here. Figures for fatalities from firearms can be found here (page 59 of the report). Below is a graph of the two showing that, in fact, more people are killed by guns than by RTIs, not half as many as was claimed.

How Dangerous Are Tasers?

2011-08-19T17:27:00.001+01:00

Cat Smith at Labour List writes that tasers are dangerous, possibly illegal, and should not be used. This comes after a man died after being hit by a taser 3 or 4 times. However, she admits that the last time the IPCC felt the need to investigate the death of someone after they were hit by a taser was in 2006 and in that case it was ruled that the taser was not the cause of death.

According to the Home Office tasers have been used 8,599 times between 2004 and 2010. And yet no one died because of tasers in all that time. And if a taser doesn't kill you it does no lasting damage. Compare that to a baton which can cause death (has caused death) and also causes lasting damage every singe time it is used.

To add some context, according to this site 143 people died while being chased by police and 215 people died in custody between 2004 and 2010.

UPDATE: This report from the IPCC (pdf, section 7 on page 3) confirms that since 2004 only one case involving death was investigated with respect to the user of a taser and it was concluded that the death was not attributable to the taser use.

Migration Watch Figures Out by 50%

2011-08-18T14:35:00.001+01:00

Migration Watch claim that over the 25 years from 2008 to 2033, social housing for immigrants will cost £25bn. One key part of their calculation is that the government will pay £60,000 for each unit of social housing. However, in the Spending Review of Oct 2010 the government announced that it planned to pay for 150,000 new social houses over the period of the review. In this letter from the Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, he says that spending on new social housing will be £4.5bn over the period of the review. That works out at just £30,000 per unit or half what Migration Watch were assuming, therefore reducing their final value by half to £500m a year.

Could Green-Belt Land Help the Economy?

2011-08-17T21:04:00.001+01:00

Anecdotally, I get the impression that there are lots of people who would like to buy a house if only they could afford it. So, how about allowing new houses to be built on green-belt land? Here are some calculations:

There are 22.3 million dwellings in England. There are also 1.64 million hectares of England defined as green-belt land. According to this document from the government (pdf), houses should be built at a density of between 30 and 50 houses per hectare. Let's take 40. In order to increase England's stock of houses by 10% (2.2 million) we would need 55,000 hectares. That's about 3.4% of current green-belt land and about 0.4% of the entire land surface of England.

Without thinking about this too deeply it seems to me that doing this would have the following benefits:
1) Increase growth
2) Reduce inflation
3) Reduce unemployment
4) Costs nothing (possibly raises revenue)

The costs are that house prices fall. Well, that could be a good thing in the long run couldn't it? Of course people who already own a house or have a mortgage lose out but it's for the greater long-term good of everyone in the country. Or have I missed something?

NB: I've used figures for England only because they were the easiest to find.

Thanks to Tim Worstall for getting me thinking about this point.

On Crime, Rioting and Sentencing

2011-08-17T13:38:00.000+01:00

A lot of fuss going on about unfair sentences for those involved in the rioting. But consider this: why do people commit a crime? Assuming it's not a crime of passion it's because the following calculation returns true:

chance(caught)*cost(caught) < benefit(crime)

That is, the perceived chance of getting caught combined with the perceived cost of getting caught is outweighed by the benefits of committing the crime. In short, they think this crime would probably pay. It's worth the risk.

During the rioting people perceived that the chance of getting caught was very low and therefore they decided to take the risk. There will come times again when the perceived risk of getting caught is low. In order to stop people committing crimes in those circumstances, the other half of the calculation must be balanced. The cost of getting caught must be higher. There therefore appears to be a perfectly sound reason for giving unusually harsh sentences after the rioting.

Of course, this assumes that the primary purpose of punishment is to deter others. It also assumes that in times of need the requirement that the punishment be proportional to the crime can be relaxed.

"Britain leads the world in international aid"?

2011-08-17T10:17:00.000+01:00

Amy Pollard from CAFOD argues that Britain shouldn't cut International Aid. The article extols the virtue of giving but seems to confuse voluntary giving with being forced to give. Anyway, she makes the following claim:

Say it proudly – Britain leads the world in international aid.

Then go here and see the facts. Britain is fifth, behind the USA, Japan, France and Germany in terms of Gross Assistance. It ranks only 7th when looking at aid as a percentage of GNI. Leading the world might be overstating things a little.

Domestic Flights Fuel Duty

2011-08-16T20:12:00.000+01:00

On Left Foot Forward is a post recommending that domestic air travellers subsidise rail travellers. In the article, the author claims:

If the tax was introduced at the same rate as motoring fuel tax, it would raise around £460 million a year – enough to make up for revenue lost by cutting rather than increasing train fares.

I'd like to know how that figure was reached.

According to CAA statistics (Table 0 1 7 4) there were 7.7 billion seat-km of domestic flights in 2010. According to this site planes uses between 0.035 and 0.05 litres per seat-km, a range confirmed in this wikipedia article. That gives a range of between 270m and 385m litres of fuel used in 2010. The current fuel duty rate is 58.95p per litres.

Thus a duty on aviation fuel would generate between £160m and £227m. That's between 35% and 50% of the claimed amount.

Exercise and Immortality

2011-08-16T12:06:00.000+01:00

I was reading an article by Fergus Walsh on the BBC about a study linking watching TV to life expectancy. Fairly sensible looking article, was only skimming it. Came across this excellent sentence though:

In the Lancet online, they suggest that 15 minutes of physical activity per day can reduce a person's risk of death by 14% and increase life expectancy by three years compared with inactive people.

Expect new adverts from gyms - join our gym and you could become immortal!

Of course, somewhere a time-frame is missing. Presumably the 14% reduction is within a given time frame. The abstract of the article doesn't mention a time-frame. Definitely something wrong here though.

How do you Enforce a Curfew?

2011-08-16T11:50:00.000+01:00

So the Home Sec wants to give police stronger/new curfew powers to help in future riots. Just one question - how do you enforce a curfew?

Oh yes, by arresting people and removing them from the streets. If the police were in any position to arrest people and remove them from the streets during the first nights of rioting then they could have done just that. Fact is they weren't. So how would a new law help them if they can't enforce it?

Stealing Stolen Lines

2011-08-16T08:02:00.001+01:00

Sunny gets excited because Cameron stole a line from an Obama speech.

Here's Cameron:

"There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ – there is us."

Here's Obama:

"There’s no them and us – it’s just us."

But here's Clinton in 1992 (page 35):

"We're all in this together. We all have to change. There's no them and us in America. There's just us."

Clinton used that line in his stump speeches meaning he said it a lot. And Clinton's version has made it into at least one list of quotations.

Supercop and Gangs

2011-08-15T07:54:00.000+01:00

From the BBC:

UK police chiefs have reacted sceptically to plans for US "supercop" Bill Bratton to advise the government.
...
Association of Chief Police Officers' head Sir Hugh Orde said: "I am not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them."

Aside from the nonsense of looking at how many there are currently and not how many there were in the past and how effective Mr Bratton has been at reducing crime (quite effective by all accounts), the numbers are wrong.

Bill Bratton was police chief of both NYC and LA, I'm not sure which one of these Sir Hugh refers to with the 400 gangs. But either way Sir Hugh's numbers ignore an important consideration - population. NYC has an urban population of 18m and LA has 15m. London has only 8m. Yet London has 169 gangs. Taken as a proportion of population that gives 22.2 gangs per million for NYC, 26.6 for LA and 21.125 for London. Not a huge difference there Sir Hugh.

Met Office Temperature Data

2011-08-14T11:36:00.000+01:00

The Met Office released historical data from their weather stations some time ago now but I've only just got around to looking at them. So far I've looked at the mean daily maximum temperatures for Oxford and Armagh in June and December. Oxford and Armagh are the two oldest stations in the set.

The results show no trend change over time. In other words, since the mid-1800s the mean daily maximum temperatures have fluctuated within the same bounds. There does not appear to be any gradual increase in the temperatures at all.

Does anyone know if this data set has been studied in the context of climate change? And if so, what are the conclusions that one can draw from the set?

How Fast Do Riot Trees Grow?

2011-08-14T11:12:00.000+01:00

So we're now to have a discussion (a "national conversation" according to Ed Milliband) about the "root causes" of the rioting and looting. Many on the Left will blame the cuts. But since the cuts are about a year old how fast must these riot trees grow for the cuts to be their root cause?

Average UK Student Debt - Dodgy Numbers?

2011-08-12T10:22:00.002+01:00

It's being widely reported this morning that average UK student debt could reach £53,000 for students starting when the new fees kick in. Example here from the BBC. The figures come from some organisation called Push. The relevant page is here.

The only problem is that I cannot work out how their numbers are derived. Each year they take a survey of student debt across the UK. That's fine. This year they found that the average debt for the UK was £5,681, an increase of 6.4% on last year. They're projecting that average debt will be £6,043 next year, an increase of about 6.4% again.

However, for those starting in 2012 the average debt in their first year is predicted to be £15,581 assuming tuition fees of £8,630. If we deduct the fees then projected debt is £6,951. If we deduct the fees from their projections of those starting this year (ie £6,043 - £3,290) we get £2,753. So that means that not only will fees rise by about 2.5 times but also all other expenses will increase by the same amount. That doesn't seem right to me.

I've emailed the organisation for an explanation and will see what comes.

UPDATE: Johnny Rich from Push emailed me the following:

We don't say the first yr debt in 2012 is £15,581. We haven't calculated that figure. The discrepancy that's troubling you may arise from the fact that the £53k number stretches over an average course of 3.43 years (the average in our survey) and we projected compound increases in living costs over the same period.

On the first point I appear to have made a mistake. The £15,581 is not debt in the first year but average debt over the 3.43 year course. However, I'm still very confused. Partly this is because the £26,100 debt accrued by someone starting this year must be spread over 4.3 years to give an average of £6,403. But I'm also now confused as to how the figures are arrived at.

The logical way to do this, as far as I can see, is to work out the average debt per year and then sum them. Average the result if needed. Assuming a constant rate of increase of 6.4% per year (which is not a safe assumption in itself in any case) we would not get £53,000 for a 3.43 year course. Instead we'd get something like £44,000.

I'm very surprised that they haven't calculated the figure for the average debt in 2012/13. How did they generate their results?

It's all a little unclear and Push should really publish the details of their methodology. I notice also that I'm not the only person doubting the figures. Wes Streeting, former NUS President, also doubts them on his twitter feed.

Those Involved in Rioting not Rioters

2011-08-11T22:26:00.000+01:00

I read a couple of days ago Tim Worstall suggesting that people don't get arrested for the crime of rioting because doing so requires the police to have to pay for the damage caused. And then today just as I got in my car and turned the radio on Frank Dobson asked the following question in the House

In response to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), the Home Secretary said that no one had been charged with riot because the particular circumstances of riot had not arisen, or the charge was inappropriate. Will she confirm that that fact will not be used by the Metropolitan police to weasel out of providing the compensation that should be provided under the Riot (Damages) Act?

The response was:

I think I can provide that guarantee to the right hon. Gentleman.

So it looks like Tim was half right, maybe. No one arrested for riot but the police will still have to pay out. Not entirely convinced that no one has been charged with riot. The original question from Mr Burrowes stated:

Does she share my concern that, although we talk about riots, the number of people charged with riot is very small?

and the Home Sec replied:

My hon. Friend refers to the fact that no one has been charged with the very specific offence of riot. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service are making the right charging decisions, and they are doing so in the context of ensuring that they recognise the impact that people being on the streets can have.

It isn't obvious from that that she is stating categorically that no one has been charged with riot, it looks more like she's simply parroting what she thought the questioner had said.

The Hansard source is here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmtoday/cmdebate/c_08.htm#342pm

Did the Daily Mail Contribute to the Riots?

2011-08-11T08:14:00.000+01:00

By now most people have probably heard this interview:

The basic explanation for the looting was that the people involved thought there was very little chance of being caught and even if they were caught they wouldn't get a serious punishment, maybe just an ASBO.

So part of the motivation for looting was the perception that the British justice system is not punishing people properly for crimes. This is precisely what the Daily Mail and others like them keep telling us. Has that message got through and had the unintended effect of convincing people that crime pays?

Or are they actually right? Given that the first people convicted (in Manchester at least) got seemingly light sentences (one got 10 weeks the other 16 weeks in youth custody) maybe the justice system really isn't providing a deterrent?

Rioting and Laws

2011-08-10T17:16:00.000+01:00

Watch Gove and Harman arguing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LpPym_4wc8

Harman implies that cuts to EMA and the increase in tuition fees led to the riots (yeah makes no sense to me either). Gove blames Labour. But the key point is that both of them agree that government laws have indirectly led to the riots. So we have a situation in which both major political parties in this country acknowledge that passing laws can lead to very bad unintended consequences.

Will they think harder and longer the next time they think up a law to pass? What do you think?

The BDS Campaign is Wrong Because of BDS

2011-08-10T14:26:00.000+01:00

Let's assume for the moment that you think the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is really terrible and one of the most important things to get sorted. Suppose also that you think that the present Israeli government is not serious about ending it. And finally let's suppose that you think the PNA is willing and able to come to a negotiated peace. You might be tempted to join the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel. I think that even with these assumptions the BDS movement is wrong because of BDS - Bilateralism, Democracy and anti-Semitism. Let me expand:

1) Bilateralism - It seems obvious that any sustainable and acceptable solution to the occupation will need to be the result of negotiation between the two parties. But the BDS campaign only puts pressure on Israel. If it were ever successful then Israel would be in the position of being desperate to end the occupation. So what can it do? It could try unilateralism which is, presumably, not what supporters of the BDS movement want. But the only other choice would be to go to the negotiating table while desperate. And there'd be nothing to stop the PNA from asking for more and more and more. A boycott against one side encourages unilateralism.

2) Democracy - Israel is a free democracy. There are Israelis who support the occupation and some who campaign against it. The BDS movement is blind to these subtleties. The boycott campaign hurts those who have the same aims as the BDS campaigners as much as it hurts those who don't. If we want to be emotive about it we might as well call it "collective punishment".

3) anti-Semitism - I'm not suggesting that all BDS campaigners are motivated by anti-Semitism. I'm sure some are but not all. However, the BDS movement will inevitably result in anti-Semitism. This is for one simple reason: The BDS movement is not going to boycott Israeli Arabs. No one can seriously imagine that the PSC or any other pro-BDS group will add a company owned and operated by Israeli Arabs to the list of those worthy of boycotting. Thus the BDS movement will only be boycotting Jewish people. I think it's probably fair to call that anti-Semitic.

Thus I conclude that even if you think that the occupation needs to end and the Israeli government is unwilling to end it, the BDS movement is not the right way to go about doing so.

Prevention is Better than Cure

2011-08-10T14:13:00.000+01:00

The riots will no doubt cost the country, and by that I mean taxpayers, a lot of money. And we've already had people pontificating on the wider underlying factors that caused the riots. Most of those people will be telling us that the only way to stop this happening again will be to stop the cuts, spend more on services for young people, reform the police and courts, etc etc.

Now, I don't know for sure that they're wrong. I think they probably are wrong but I don't know. No one really knows. But what I also don't know is whether the cost of their cure will be less than the cost of the riots. I highly doubt it will be. And if the prevention is more expensive than the cure why bother with it?

100%+ Tax Rates?

2011-08-05T10:43:00.000+01:00

I came across this organisation called "false economy" that argues that the cuts are wrong. On one page they argue that dealing with the national deficit/debt cannot be compared to dealing with credit card debts. They explain that you can spend less on your credit card without affecting your income but not if you're a country. True. But this claim seems to totally not hold water:

If a country spends less, then it also has an effect on its tax income. This can even cancel out the cut.
...

Let's investigate why. A cut in orders means that the construction companies will make less profit and pay less corporation tax. They will buy fewer bricks. They and the brick factory will cut their staff.
In turn these newly unemployed will pay less income tax as they become unemployed. They will also spend less in supermarkets, thus hitting their profits and ability to pay tax. Other tax payers will face a bill for their unemployment benefits.

So if the government gives £100 million to a construction company that money flows around the economy and the government recoups some of it through taxes when it pops up in various places like profits and wages. But unless the combined tax rates come to at least 100% there is surely no way that cutting that £100 million ends up costing the government £100 million in lost tax revenue.

Sunny Hundal is an Idiot

2011-08-04T18:12:00.000+01:00

The government launches an e-petition website with the promise that if any petition gets 100,000 signatures then the topic will be eligible for debate in Parliament. Lots of people put up petitions about reinstating the death penalty, to get that topic discussed. Someone else puts up a petition to retain the ban. Sunny encourages his readers to sign the second petition because he opposes the death penalty.

Hello, Sunny, are you an idiot? If 100,000 people sign the petition to retain the ban, the topic of the death penalty still becomes eligible for discussion in Parliament. You're just helping the people you oppose.

And if those who want to see the death penalty brought back don't sign both petitions then they're also stupid.

Source

UPDATE: At the time of writing the main pro-capital punishment petition has 1,221 signatures. The one against has 2,902. Not only are those opposed helping, they're working harder to get it discussed than their opponents!