How about it Mr Brown?

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

How about it Mr Brown?

Three soldiers in The Rifles have today been reported killed in Afghanistan. Early indications are that they were killed by an IED while riding in a Land Rover Wimik.

Now, let's see. You were prepared to suspend parliament until 12.30 today over the death of a six-year-old child, for whom you bear no responsibility. The deaths of these three, the children now of grieving parents, are partly your responsibility. Your government sent them to their deaths in equipment which is not even fit for a scrap heap.

Given your fine sensibilities, what shall we suggest? Shall we suspend Parliament for three days, or should it be longer? And are you going to wear a black tie for three sons, the deaths of whom you are partly responsible.

And, with Parliament in suspension, perhaps you will have time personally to visit the parents and explain to them how and why their sons died – and how theire deaths could have been prevented had they been equipped with more suitable vehicles?

And while you are there, no doubt you will want to repeat those fine words you used today: "No parent should ever have to endure the loss of a child." I am sure the parents will be mightily comforted.

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No, it is not a national tragedy

We were not going to comment about the tragedy that has hit the Cameron family. The death of a child is always terrible and one can feel nothing but sympathy for David and Samantha Cameron at this time.

However, the death of six-year old Ivan is nota national tragedy. This needs to be said before the country is overwhelmed with the kind of sentimental schlock that paralyzes all public activity.

In 1916 the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's son was killed at the Somme, a great blow to his father who was being attacked by all and sundry in the House of Commons and outside it for his perceived inability to conduct the war well. It would not have occurred to him or anyone else to suspend proceedings in the House even for an hour.

As Michael White reminds us in the Guardian, the House of Commons was not suspended on that terrible day in 1966 when well over 100 children were killed in Aberfan.

Other, perhaps less tragic, examples can be found throughout history. It has always been accepted that private and public life are separate and one does not and should not intrude on the other.

The idea of cancelling parliamentary proceedings because the six-year old son of the Leader of the Opposition has died is the sort of self-indulgent sentimentality that we, as a country, can ill afford.

It would have been understandable if David Cameron had found it impossible to attend and, indeed, according to this article in The Independent, the Conservative Party was, rightly, preparing to put William Hague in the lead. A few words of sympathy would have been in order and then it is business as usual - there are important issues around us that need to be dealt with.

Instead, Gordon Brown's office suggested the suspension of proceedings and the cancellation of PMQs. The Opposition ought to have refused and insisted on carrying on as usual. Indeed, it ought to have told the Prime Minister not to be such a self-indulgent ninny.

As The Independent points out, "The suspension of PMQs and normal Commons business usually only follows the death of a party leader or former premier."

The last time this happened was in 1994 after the death of John Smith, then the leader of the Labour Party. That is acceptable, in the sense that the death of a party leader or a fomer premier are parliamentary matters. The death of a child, tragic though that is for the parents, is not.

After all, we do not suspend parliamentary procedure every time one of our soldiers is killed and they, too, are somebody's sons and daughters. Furthermore, their death is in the service of this country. But, rightly, we do not think that parliamentary procedure is something with which we should play about with.

However, it seems that that is exactly what our MPs think - that Parliament and its procedures are their private games and a stage on which they can display their sensibilities for all the world to see.

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Comparable with ancient astrology

The Register has pulled off a coup, translating the work of a group of key Japanese climate scientists, who are somewhat less than impressed with the work of the IPCC.

Their findings have been published by the Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER). Lead author is Kanya Kusano, Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC).

He focuses on the immaturity of simulation work cited in support of the theory of anthropogenic climate change and, using somewhat undiplomatic language, compares the IPCCs conclusions with ancient astrology.

After listing many faults, and the IPCC's own conclusion that natural causes of climate are poorly understood, Kusano concludes: "[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to show a continuous, monotonous increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis."

Three of the five researchers in the Japanese report disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, we are told, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside. 

Not only does one of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology, others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis. Furthermore, they declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased. 

The report is considered to be an "astonishing rebuke" to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. 

JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel. The report appeared last month but has received curiously little attention. So The Register commissioned a translation of the document - the first to appear in the West in any form. 

Needless to say, our milkmaids in parliament and elsewhere will studiously ignore these findings. No doubt most of them are too busy in the Commons tea room, studying the dregs of their beverages in order to predict the next increase in their pension plans.

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It's official - the law is different for them

Two recent cases of fatal accidents in which the perpetrator had been sending and receiving texts prior to crashing into a stationary car and killing its driver have come to notice. One was that of the waitress, Philippa Curtis who killed Victoria McBryde on the A40 near Wheatley in Oxfordshire. She was given 21 months in prison and was banned from driving for three years.

The judge used suitably tough language even though Ms Curtis sounded shattered by her experience (as well she might be):

Judge Julian Hall said it had been "folly and madness" to use a phone while driving and it had been "disastrous" for Curtis, Ms McBryde and her family.

Ms McBryde's family are campaigning for tougher penalties for people who use mobile phones particularly to send and receive text messages (try doing that while keeping your eye on the road).

Let's not get overexcited. The second case concerns that pillar of the Establishment, Lord Ahmed, last heard of strenuously trying to prevent the Dutch politician Geert Wilders from making his case in the House of Lords and succeeding with the help of our own special idiot of a Home Secretary.

Incidentally, Lord Ahmed sees nothing wrong with him inviting controversial speakers to the House, as David Pryce-Jones points out on his blog.

Two years ago, Lord Ahmed invited Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a Palestinian previously detained on suspicion of fundraising for groups associated with al-Qaeda, into the House of Lords. It was his parliamentary duty, he told critics, to listen to what Abu Rideh had to say.

He has also hosted a book launch for a well-known anti-Semitic writer, Israel Shamir also known as Jöran Jermas. But freedom of speech goes only so far with the noble peer and in this he seems to be supported by those brave souls in the Home Office.

However, the latest news is that Lord Ahmed has finally been sentenced for his dangerous driving during which he sent and received text messages and at the end of which he killed a man. Precisely the same sort of behaviour that earned Ms Curtis 21 months in prison.

So, if a barmaid gets 21 months and a three-year driving ban, a peer of the realm who is much in the public eye and ought to be an example to many people, not least Muslim young men, gets ... 12 weeks.

Well, you see, he had finished texting a little while before the accident, though, as the judge pointed out, he had actually been conducting a long conversation with a journalist via his mobile phone's texting facility (or possibly his Blackberry but that hardly matters). And anyway the chap who was killed had been drinking. Well, yes, the vehicle was stationary but ... ah well, you know, these things do happen and we can't have the first Muslim peer going to gaol for a long time and possibly losing his peerage.

Actually, he is not going to prison for even that long as he will serve half the sentence on licence. Well, one wouldn't want to inconvenience his lordship too much, would one. He has also been banned from driving for a year and ordered to pay £500 of prosecution costs. His solicitor seems to think this is all a terrible injustice.

Outside court Lord Ahmed's solicitor, Steve Smith, said he thought his client had been used as a "scapegoat" by those attempting to drive home the message about not using a mobile phone while at the wheel.

He said he was launching an immediate appeal against the sentence.

He said: "I've been with him. He's very philosophical. He's approaching it with great dignity."

Goodness, I am so glad that he is exhibiting great dignity in the face of the terrible injustice of a six-week gaol sentence for killing a man through careless and dangerous driving.

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