Richard Tol gets a kicking in the comments.

Via Plato Says; "Venal, secretive, sloppy environmentalists - staff at the CRU"

Professor Richard Tol writes: Public trust in climate science hit by 'Climategate'

"Climate change is a complex problem. We will need 50, probably 100 years to resolve it. We will need global co-operation. We will need to spend hundreds of billions of euro. This cannot succeed unless the debate is fair and based on rigorous scientific results that do not hide that there are still many things about which we simply do not have a clue."

In a nutshell this is policy based evidence making. You have decided that climate change *is* a problem based on nothing concrete. You have decided that much *must* be done based on that flim flam and worst of all, you have decided a great many people's living standards must fall to satisfy your position.

Is the science settled or not? The CRU science has not been replicated as required by the scientific method - this dictates that data and computer code is released so that other people (expert or not, qualified or not it does not matter - science is not meant to be a closed shop) can pick over the guts of your paper. It is a combative process and getting a paper published is only the start of it. CRU and other groups have proclaimed that peer reviewed science is settled science. It ain't. Worse than that they actively attempted to deny competing theories and deconstructions of their work being published. That is not the actions of grown-ups who are confident of their position but of bullies confident of their authority.

There two crucial facts that are glossed over. Firstly the bulk of the data CRU used comes from the self same data other climate science centres used to get surprisingly (or suspicously) similar results. The competing centres cannot be said to have independently confirmed the CRU output because their starting point was the same as CRU. Nor have they replicated the CRU method because they picked different sites, adjusted them differently and used their own computer code. Secondly there are quality and longevity issues over the data all these climate scientists use - stations are moved, instruments updated, stations drop off the network or have only recently been put on it. Adjustments for urban heat island are sometimes quite major despite the UNIPCC backed scientists proclaiming UHI is a minor effect. Other adjustments defy belief. There is a great lack of consistency in the data that underpins the science of climate reconstruction and prediction.

The precautionary principle holds a lot of sway here - that we must stop what we're doing unless we can prove it is safe. That is arse first thinking, anti-progress, anti-efficiency and plainly anti-human. If the science is uncertain logically we must take a course of action that does not put at risk competition, progress and wealth creation. A wealthier world is a more adaptable world. Even Nicholas Stern agrees with that. The politics of climate change appear to me to be a mechanism for goverments to regain some of the control they have lost through globalisation.

Look at what is being called for - a fund to move money from the productive to the unproductive at the whim of a priviledged, unaccountable few. Wouldn't it be better for poorer nations to trade their way to prosperity and to adapt to climate change on their own dollar? Free trade would redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor *by choice* without needing a Government at either end to cream off their fees. Our cost of living would fall. The living standards in producing nations would increase as the people (rather than their Governments) become richer. Richer populations are healthier and have fewer children - they are too busy to work to keep popping out sprogs, plan having children because it affects their ability to earn a living and they do not need a football team of offspring to ensure a couple or three survive long enough to care for the parents.

In the long term a richer world is a less populated one without the need for warfare or eugenics. Competition for resources will still drive up prices which continue to make people seek to be more efficient and look for alternatives. All without needing Government micro-managing.

People by and large make rational choices. When we spend our own money that is. Government spending is rarely good value or has the desired effect and an association of Governments deciding how much and on what a global climate fund should be spent will never be an efficient solution.

By far the most pernicious aspect of the things being discussed at Copenhagen is that it attempts to maintain the status quo. Poor nations reliant on handouts and rich nations paying to soothe the consciences of their politicians. All based on not much at all.

As a professor of the economics of climate change I assume you know that the computer model climate projections are based on the various families of economic predictions. We now know the climate science is very suspect. What if the economic assumptions that those computer projections are reliant on are wrong as well?

Labour launch an insurgency campaign.

Gordon Brown: we are the insurgents now.

Admitting the odds are against him and his party, he said: "I accept we are the insurgents, we are not the incumbents."

Distasteful.

"Everything has been hard. My life has been about fighting against difficulties that sometimes appear insuperable."

Bollocks. Apart from health matters many of Brown's difficulties have been of his own making.

"Sun readers, when they get a chance to hear what we are saying on anti-social behaviour, on cancer, they will see that this is very much in line with the mainstream middle of this country."

Surely Sun readers, like most of the rest of us, have been waiting 12 years for headway to be made on these issues.

"I am as open and honest as possible. I don't parade my family around the place. I came from a pretty ordinary background in Scotland."

You're not. You do (including the dead one). You don't.

In a BBC television interview, Mr Brown said that his economic policies have not yet paid off, but when they do, Labour's position will improve. "When people see that the action we took, which was quite unique, they will be able to see results."

But you've already claimed to have saved the world. What more is there to come? Presumably all the results are scheduled for 'after the election' and if the nasty Tories get in will somehow be derailed or destroyed. If there are results to be had and they are set in stone a change of Government won't put them at risk.

In his speech to the conference on Tuesday, he pledged voters will be given the power to throw out MPs who break the rules under a series of reforms designed to win back public support in the wake of the expenses scandal.

Only after a quango gives us permission to recall an MP that is.

"However, he failed to address substantially the question of Britain’s growing public debt and the continuing impact of the recession.

In a repeat of last year’s conference appearance, Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister’s wife, introduced her husband, hailing him as “my hero”."

Reheat. Repeat. Rehash. Even homes for harlots is a decade old plan.

Nadine Dorries is back!

Yay. Good for her. The last thing we need is for MPs keeping their mouthes shut and trying to hide in the shadows.

Anyhow, Ms. Dorries says at the end of her piece:

"Because if democracy is damaged as a result of the increased wealth of two men as a result of a minority of fraudsters and crooks, we will all in the long term be much worse off than we are today."

To those outside the Westminster bubble the fraudsters and crooks are not the minority in Parliament (as so many MPs are simply not doing their duty to hold Government to account) and the damage to democracy was done years ago, either when a sovereign Parliament was utterly undermined by this centrist, statist Labour Government and civil service, or even earlier when Parliament began offloading as much responsibilities as it could to outside bodies. Quangos, the EU, 'expert opinion', consultants or whatever. You get the pay and perks but you do not want to shoulder the responsibilities. You engineer a position where there is always someone else to blame. This must end.

As Harold Macmillan once said: "We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts."

Sovereignty remains with Parliament because they are who we vote for. Far too many MPs believe it doesn't or refuse to exercise it. I suspect the reason voter apathy is rife is not that people are content but that they know Parliament is no longer there to defend us and this nation. Our membership of the EU is just a symptom of this problem. We never voted for it in this way, MPs did. We were even promised a referendum and things were fiddled to get MPs off the hook. This is not some crackpot anti-EU bile I am venting but railing against what I know has been and is being done without our permission. Too few MPs realise quite the mess they have got into and got us into. Stop dictating what you think is best for us and do what we expect - represent us in Parliament and protect the freedoms and liberties we earned long ago. On the latter score Parliament is losing badly. Rights and freedoms are not things gifted to us by the Government. They are ours. The move from Habeus Corpus to Corpus Juris is unseen and unchecked.

We are in charge not you. Or at least that is the way it is meant to be. I believe voter apathy is rife because we have 3 main parties who are all decidedly pro-EU. What kind of choice is that? Parliament dare not ask the question because the answer is simply not to their liking.

The most promising signs of the human resistance is Douglas Carswell. Not even flavour of the month in his own party but a he is at least, a young, thrusting Parliamentarian first and Conservative a distant second. He sees the rot. He knows a potential solution. It is immensely depressing that so few of his Commons brethren dare wonder 'Is Parliament still sovereign?' or 'Do we still represent the people?'. Not just on an EU dimension but on a UK Government one as well.

What Stephan said and Martin Bell knew

A post on Nadine Dorries blog.

During an interview on the R4 Today programme (and about a dozen times since) I said the following - ish:

" No Prime Minister has ever had the political courage to award MPs an appropriate level of pay commensurate with their experience, qualifications and position; as recommended by the SSRB, year after year.

Prior to my intake in 2005, MPs were sat down by the establishment and told that the ACA was an allowance, not an expense, it was the MP's property, in lieu of pay; and the job of the fees office was to help them claim it."

etc

A comment from me:

"No Prime Minister has ever had the political courage to award MPs an appropriate level of pay commensurate with their experience, qualifications and position; as recommended by the SSRB, year after year."

What price an MP?

The SSRB say "...there is little or no difficulty in recruiting sufficient suitable candidates to stand for election. There does not appear to be a problem of retention. We heard no evidence to suggest that MPs are leaving the Commons because of inadequate pay."

Your position is in great demand and it requires no qualifications. Perhaps you are getting paid too much and/or doing too little.(Parliament as a body certainly isn't doing what it should - standing up to the Government) At every turn MPs seek to shirk their responsibilities with quangos and hide behind external bodies. You are our voice. You have the authority because we have lent it to you but many of your colleagues simply never exercise it. Time and again political points are scored that do not help protect us from the Government.

If MPs thought they deserved the extra income the ACA gives them (and this system has been in place nearly 40 years) how pathetic is it that few have ever attempted to make the case for it and so many of you consciously agreed to hide it and exempt it from taxation. You as Parliamentarians have always had the power to put this right. You need not wait for the PM to stick their oar in.(Or is Parliament now so emasculated it is subordinate to Government?) Of this discretionary £40k (equivalent) bung not all MPs claim everything going either.

There was nothing to stop each MP publishing their own expenses by their own initiative long before now. There was nothing to stop MPs from campaigning for a more honest and upfront pay. That so few did says a lot to me. We have become a culture where rules is rules and officious compliance is the most important thing rather than exercising common sense and having a conscience.

Apologies if this message has appeared twice.

The slug is leaving the cabbage patch.

Martin is allowed to resign? He has been the Executive's bagman for nearly a decade. Plainly partisan, plainly incompetent. A thug, a child and a key figure in the expenses coverup. He should have been removed long before now but too many MPs have been happy with the status quo. Too many MPs have been content to let Government ride roughshod over Parliament.

Why is Parliament dancing to the Executive's tune? Again.

They could have removed him themselves had they the wherewithal to do it. The Government is being allowed to dictate terms to our representatives in Parliament. We have authority and vest it in our MPs. Why will they not exercise it?

It is high time MPs were educated about their duties to us and about the extent of the authority they have abandoned.

Parliament should lead Government in the direction the people desire, but the political class are happy to spend time lurching from crisis to crisis, seeking to pretend that they are in control. Yet the Civil Service has go so out of control. MPs simply aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing.

If Ann Widdicombe or whoever else can make Government answer questions and ensure the opposition ask them, we might begin getting somewhere.

This is not so much an elected dictatorship as one allowed by the inaction of Parliament. How much legislation is Parliament allowing to come to be without their scrutiny? How many policies have been announce on tv rather than in Parliament? Martin should have publically rebuked MPs for doing that.

A simple notion.

The Government fails when Parliament lets it.

From a blogpost on EUreferendum.blogspot.com

At last, elements of the Vector story are emerging, drowned in the torrent of stories on MPs' expenses, even though we are seeing the waste of £100 million – roughly the sum paid to all 648 MPs in a year – the unnecessary deaths of at least five men and many more very badly injured.

...

Thus, while [Liam] Fox so casually lays the blame – all blame – at the feet of government, he too shares the blame, with his parliamentary colleagues. They all had the opportunities and power to bring the MoD to book, and failed to do so. In our constitution, the buck stops with Parliament. In this case – and in so many – the institution failed to do its job.

And this really is the nub of the issue, which takes us beyond the child-like tendency to load all our ills on "government". Parliament must accept responsibility for its own mistakes and then it must improve its performance. Otherwise, there is no point in having it at all – at any price.

Defective regulators as far as the eye can see. The FSA let bankers run riot. Parliament has allowed the Government to do the same. Squeaker Martin has allowed, nay encouraged by example, Parliamentarians to twiddle their thumbs and fiddle their expenses. In this particular example Liam Fox himself as the shadow Defence Secretary, the Defence Select Committee and other interested MPs have not used their authority to help the MOD do a good job.

What is democracy?

We seem to have so much of what the political class would call democracy. Votes coming out of our ears. 'Representation' at 6 or 7 different levels of elected Government. Yet the will of the people is routinely ignored. How can this possibly be? We have never had so much democracy! There is little genuine choice when the best you can hope for is choosing between 3 statist parties. They know it. You know it. We know it.

Democracy is dying on it's arse here. Democracy is not just voting once in a while, it is people being involved in politics and Parliament doing the will of the people. Protecting us from the excesses of the State. We have not had that in a long time.

We have too many politicians who talk the talk and wave bits of paper at each other (though leave the Commons strewn with rubbish) but when serious concerns raise their head they are propping up a bar waiting to vote the way they have been told.

Each and every MP has a duty to Parliament, the nation and their constituents that surpasses any allegience to their party and any self serving nature. If they cannot and will not exercise the authority still vested in them despite their gross attempts to pass it to quangos and the EU, it says a hell of a lot about the standards of our politicians.

How many debates have been curtailed? Far, far too many.

How many MPs have spent their careers voting the way their party tells them? Far, far too many. This is not democracy it is a corporatist thugocracy. Too many MPs clearly do not care for the standing of the job they are there to do. Many of them would not be missed if the number of MPs and Lords were halved.

It is through the failings of Parliament, particularly in it's role of holding the Government to account, that so much has crumbled under Labour. The civil service has gone unchecked because the Government was too self-absorbed. The battle between Blair and Brown has been a massively costly one in terms of money waste, opportunities lost and crushing future taxpayers with a millstone of debt. The other 500-odd MPs who are not in Government could have done better to protect us and our way of life. They have largely been happy with the appearance of status quo.

A hell of a lot has been lost while politicians played with themselves. It will take a long time to regain what we have lost. Liberties, jobs, lives and reputations. Squandered, and for what? A few grubby pounds here, a few grubby pounds there, a jolly abroad now and then and free biscuits when you go to the BBC.

We will only have democracy when we can elect MPs who know what it is. This isn't it.