Computer modelling in the dock? - by Richard... Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Computer modelling in the dock? - by Richard... Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Too many people, in my view, got off far too lightly from the debacle over the closure of UK airspace following the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. But, it seems, there may be a reckoning after all.

EasyJet, we are told, is planning to bring a class action lawsuit to win compensation for flight bans imposed in April and in May, the details having emerged from CEO Andy Harrison who told the German Wirstschaftswoche magazine that the budget airline was talking to other carriers about a legal claim.

The original five-day closure of European airspace cost the airline between £50 million and £75 million, and Harrison believes that, although the eruption was a natural catastrophe, there was no reason why the consequences should have been borne by the airlines alone, "particularly when it became apparent afterwards that a closure of that size was unnecessary."

An easyJet spokesman said that the company believed it could make a good case for compensation. "We are still talking to the Government about it but it is also quite natural for us to look into the legal avenues of redress, " he said. He would not say which other airlines would be involved in bringing a case against the safety authorities, because they did not wish to be identified.

Should this ever come to court, it will be a highly significant case, not least because the closure advice rested with the UK Met Office which in turn relied on computer modelling for its risk assessment. For the first time, therefore, we could be seeing computer modelling in the dock, with some implications for their continued use in climate predictions.

With their legitimacy challenged over the short-term, it will be much harder for the Met Office to claim that similar technology has any validity in telling us what the climate is going to be like fifty years hence. 

More to the point, though, with the Met Office in the frame, its credibility as an organisation will be on the line, if it is shown that it placed unreasonable faith in the accuracy of its models, and these can be shown to have been flawed. The parallel with climate change will be all too obvious, and much too important to ignore.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Deliberately provocative - by Richard... Monday, May 31, 2010

The so-called Israeli "attack", meanwhile, has elicited a a statement from the Cleggeron administration. It has also sparked "international outrage" which, of course, was the whole purpose of the exercise.

For the record, it is necessary to note the events in the eastern Mediterranean last night, arising after six "aid" ships, carrying more than 600 pro-Palestinian activists and 10,000 tons of supplies, had left for Gaza on Sunday.

Defying a radio warning from the Israeli navy not to approach the region, the ships then ignored Israeli government instructions to steer for the port of Ashdod, their crews stating their intention to land in Gaza and disembark cargo.

This resulted in the predicted, expected and deliberately provoked boarding of the vessels by IDF personnel, in international waters. Subsequently, nine or more activists were killed and an unknown number injured. At least six IDF personnel were also injured, at least one seriously.

Israel's Defence Ministry has blamed the violence on activists aboard the flotilla, who they said had attacked soldiers with knives, metal bars and snatched rifles, and had tried to "lynch the security forces". 

The greatest violence appears to have taken place on the Mavi Marmara a vessel sponsored by the Turkish Islamic aid organisation Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), which Israel says has links with Hamas. 

Turkish television footage, we are told, showed how one by one as Israeli commandos descended by ropes to the deck they were ambushed by waiting passengers armed with what appeared to be metal bars, sticks and in one case, a table. 

The reception for two commandos descending from a helicopter was brutal (above - h/tWitterings from Witney) – the first was battered to the ground and heavily beaten and the second, landing seconds later, was assaulted by a man with a bar and forced to retreat into a doorway before fighting back out.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, accused Israel of committing "inhumane state terror". "It should be known that we will not stay silent," he said in live televised remarks ahead of his departure from Chile to Turkey, cutting short a Latin American tour. "International law has been trampled underfoot," he added.

In Istanbul more than 10,000 Turks converged on Taksim Square in the centre of Turkish capital to voice anger at Israel's use of force and pray for the dead. Elsewhere in Turkey, families showed their usual respect for the sanctity of human life.

The so-called Israeli "attack", meanwhile, has elicited a a statement from the Cleggeron administration. It has also sparked "international outrage" which, of course, was the whole purpose of the exercise.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Slowly unravelling - by Richard...

Australians are losing interest in global warming, according to an opinion poll by Sydney's independent Lowy Institute, released today. It shows 46 percent of respondents are "really worried" by climate change, compared with 68 percent four years ago.

Thirteen per cent of the more than 1,000 respondents said the science of climate change was still in dispute, up from 7 percent in 2006 when the poll series started. One-third of respondents said they were not prepared to pay anything to address what prime minister Kevin Rudd famously called the "greatest moral challenge of our time." That compares with 21 per cent when the same question was asked in 2008.

Slowly, slowly, the great global warming scam is unravelling, leaving the politicians stranded, trapped by their vacuous obsession.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

You can't fault the logic - by Richard...

"Once an individual claims any kind of state subsidy, his privacy is forfeit: the humblest benefits recipient could confirm that," writes Gerald Warner. Simples really, so it is quite amazing that a politician like David Laws, slated as the "pocket genius" by The Guardian, couldn't see it. But then, he lives in the bubble and, as we keep saying, in the bubble they are blind.

Warner states the obvious: "The one certain way to have preserved his privacy was for Laws to have claimed no money – as he could easily have afforded to do. Laws is a multi-millionaire as a result of his previous career in banking: he was a vice-president of J P Morgan and then the managing director of Barclays de Zoete Wedd, before he was 30." 

But then, if you are going for public office, it's not so clever expecting privacy, and more so if you are taking public money. "That an MP with that kind of personal wealth elected to take more than £40,000 from the taxpayer says it all about politicians' sense of entitlement," says Warner. It also says the man was so far up his own backside (to coin a phrase) that he could not see how his actions would play in the real world, especially as he was far from being the innocent that he would have us believe.

Warner avers that it was the sense of entitlement that brought him down. You can't fault the logic. His private life was revealed by Laws himself, in a transparent attempt to claim victimhood. 

To some degree that ploy succeeded, as the Dianafication of the former Chief Secretary among his colleagues and some elements of the media over the past 24 hours testifies, Warner adds. Cameron's letter also said: "Your decision to resign from the Government demonstrates the importance you attach to your integrity." It is good to have that on record, Dave, Warner notes. Otherwise we might have imagined it had something to do with greed, media exposure and public anger. 

And, if you want to pick any one, try the last. It is quite fun to watch the likes of Iain Dalesquirming, not least because it confirms that they (the political classes) still don't get it. Even more is this confirmed by fellow homosexual Matthew Parris who describes Laws as having "made an error of judgment," for which he should not have had to resign.

He made an "error of judgement"?! HE BROKE THE FRAKKING RULES, PARRIS!

What we have been trying to do on this blog - what Warner and others do routinely - is convey to the denizens of the Westminster bubble how loathed they are. This is not something we make up, that we pluck from thin air - that somehow, we woke up one day and decided "we hate the political classes". It is something we pick up, from the real world. The one the political classes don't inhabit. 

Thus, when something like the Laws affair erupts, normal rules don't apply. People have been sensitised. They are already of the firm opinion that the political classes are a bunch of self-serving shits. That is the "default" mode. Episodes like this simply confirm that which is already held to be true.

How the political classes break out of this death spiral (if, indeed they can) is going to be interesting to watch, but simply whingeing about the injustice of it all – à la Dale, and that idiot Parris - isn't going to cut it.

LAWS THREAD