Another one down

NATO says a helicopter has been shot down in the Sangin district. Four troops have been killed. The Taliban claims responsibility.

The Times is reporting that the aircraft was a US Blackhawk, attempting to pick up a British casualty. It came under fire around midday over Forward Operating Base Jackson, near the British-held town of Sangin.

With others, the BBC is reporting that the aircraft was brought down with an RPG and that it crashed in the Sangin district bazaar.

This seems almost an exact re-run of the Mi-26 downing in Sangin last July. It too was brought down by an RPG as it was approaching FOB Jackson - in apparently much the same area.

The current incident follows the recent downing of a Sea King as it came in to land at a checkpoint in Nad-e Ali, also struck by an RPG. The hit was described at the time as a freak "lucky shot." Five soldiers were injured.

However, since the soldiers in this incident are American and it was a US helicopter that was lost - albeit in a British area of operation, coming to the aid of the British - the notoriously parochial British media is barely reporting it.

It would have been a different matter entirely if a British helicopter had been shot down, and four Brits killed - but there you go. Who are we to question the news values of the British media?

COMMENT THREAD

Slime shall feed upon slime

It is so comforting to see the Cleggerons maintain the standards set by their predecessors, the Blairs, whose probity was unparalleled and their concerns for self-enrichment public service beyond measure.

But, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Miriam Gonzalez - the City lawyer who just happens to be married to deputy Cleggeron leader Nick Clegg - joining the board of Spanish infrastructure group Acciona.

And the fact that this group specialises, amongst other things, in developing wind farm sites will have no effect on the thinking of Nick Clegg. He is after all already supportive of this stupidity, rather like his boss, the Boy Cameron.

One thing for sure, though - the very tidy income the Cleggies now pull in will allow them to weather the financial crises that they and their ilk have helped create. Hardship, like rules and taxes, is for the little people. The slime look after themselves.

COMMENT THREAD

Statements of the obvious

Having started the day yesterday at four in the morning, to catch a train to get to London for a meeting starting at nine, and then to catch the 11.30pm back to Leeds, falling into my pit at three this morning, that has given me a comfortable 23-hour day.

Under the circumstances, blogging is not going to be totally coherent for a little while – which possibly makes for an improvement. Nevertheless, a quick comment on this piece in The Times is irresistible, especially in view of the post I wrote here.

In my piece, I remark on the parallels between the conduct of the French campaign in IndoChina and the current fight in Afghanistan, noting the propensity to under-estimate the enemy. With that observation in mind, we now read in The Times of a "two-month investigation" which includes interviews with 32 senior military, political and Civil Service figures.

It "reveals" that there was deep disquiet over the handling of the mission from the start, with top ranks within the MoD and other Whitehall departments accused of – in particular - "grossly underestimating the threat from the Taleban".

But you didn't need two months and 32 interviews to tell you that. It was obvious from the public statements of the players, the press reports and observations of tactics and equipments. And it was obvious years ago when we could see that the Taliban was losing the conventional battle and would turn to the IED as the weapon of choice.

Other failures claimed were, " ignoring warnings that planned troop numbers were inadequate" and "offering only the military advice they thought ministers wanted to hear", the latter often involving second-guessing the minister's preferences and getting them wrong – assuming the minister wanted to hear good news when, in fact, he was struggling to get unvarnished opinion.

Most damning though is the observation from a senior serving officer who asked not to be named. He said of the planning stage: "There was institutional ignorance and denial. We who had bothered to put a bit of work in and had done the estimate realised that we needed much more than we were being given."

Another source said that the military was pushing hard for the mission despite warnings that preparations were inadequate. "The advice to ministers grossly underestimated the risks," he said. "The few people who were doubters were either too cowardly or too cautious to say what they really thought."

That may be true, but only within the military. Outside the loop, there were people warning of the risks, and what was needed. But they were ignored and, years later, we get a popular newspaper making statements of the obvious. It is a pity, really, that it wasn't saying these things four years ago.

And yet, some people (pictured) still think we're winning. Could they possibly be right?

COMMENT THREAD

Still preoccupied

In London today – having to deal with this (first para), so blogging is a bit difficult at the moment. I gather there is still a real world out there but, after several hours of lawyers, one loses the will to live.

COMMENT THREAD

A "difficult" day

Associated Press is reporting that twelve foreign troops were killed in Afghanistan yesterday in what it is calling the "deadliest day" this year.

Casualties included seven Americans, five of whom were killed in a single IED blast. Separately, a US civilian police trainer and his Nepalese security guard died in a "brazen suicide assault". One French and two Australian soldiers were killed. The nationality of the remaining two has not been specified, although the MoD is saying that no British troops were killed.

The Canadians (pictured) are counting their losses from a previous day, their total deaths now standing at 147 compared with 292 for the British and well over 1,000 for the US.

US Lt-Gen David Hurley was anxious not to overplay the significance of the numbers, telling reporters: "I think we're just seeing a hard day in theatre," he said. "There are a lot of troops in action, a lot going on at this present time, and this has just been a difficult day for us."

However, the brazen nature of the attacks has stunned observers. The American police trainer was killed when a team of three suicide bombers attacked the main gates of the police training centre in Kandahar. One bomber blew a hole in the outer wall, enabling the two others to rush inside.

US commanders are warning of more casualties as NATO forces gear up for a major operation to secure Kandahar, but the ferocity and persistence of the Taliban attacks bode ill for the continued operations.

This type of "targeted" suicide bombing is, of course, not new – but one previous appearance of the tactic should provide some warning. Contrary to popular belief, this is not confined to Muslim or even religious groups, and was seen in the late 40s and early 50s in French IndoChina, employed by the Communist Viet Minh.

Then as now, Western forces are not dealing with an "ordinary" enemy, one which would respond to the "normal" political calculus, or even extravagant casualty rates.

And nor is the optimism of ISAF forces at all reassuring. It is germane to note that, prior to its fall, the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu had been the object of an unprecedented number of high level visits. Yet, as French Commander-in-Chief Gen Henri Navarre observed:

... not a single civilian or military authoritative person, including French or foreign ministers, or American generals ... ever to my knowledge, admitted any doubts before the attack on the ability of Dien Bien Phu to resist.

As before, one can rely on the premise that "everybody" can be wrong. What particularly marks that campaign was the dismissive treatment of the "amateur" general Vo Nguyen Giap, and the tendency to under-rate the capabilities of the Viet Minh. That gave the French in 1953 an uncomfortable number of "difficult" days and led to their eventual defeat.

More than fifty years later, we seem to be travelling the same path.

COMMENT THREAD

A travesty of justice

For all the hyperventilation and anti British rhetoric by the American greenies over the Deepwater oil spill, they do at least have in BP a company that has devoted considerable resources and expense to dealing with the ensuing crisis – and which has taken full responsibility for the damage done by er .... US drilling contractor Transocean.

However, with a criminal investigation now in the offing, it is perhaps apposite to note the outcome of a trial in Bhopal Magistrates' Court yesterday.

This comes twenty-six years after the world's worst industrial disaster, on 3 December 1984 when 3,500 people died immediately and over 15,000 in the days afterwards when a giant poisonous cloud of methyl isocyanate leaked from the factory and rolled into a neighbouring slum.

Now, seven former managers of Bhopal's Union Carbide pesticide factory have been found guilty of causing death by negligence. But, because the charges pursued against the executives were reduced by the Indian Supreme Court in 1996 from culpable homicide to death by negligence, the local court could only hand down a maximum sentence of two years in jail (see video report below).

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Even then, the guilty men were able to leave the court after a few hours, armed with bail orders after furnishing bonds of 25,000 rupees and personal sureties of the same amount (totalling about £700 each).

Victims' relatives and activists protested that the verdict was a travesty of justice and an insult to those who died. They say up to half a million people have had their health affected, including children who continue to be born with disabilities. "For 25 years we waited and now after two hours this morning these men have effectively been set free," said one relative.

And, after all those years, there is toxic waste still on the factory premises. The state government has failed to remove huge quantities of chemicals and pesticides from the factory and its evaporation pond nearby.

No concrete steps have ever been taken to remove or detoxify the waste and, while the Supreme Court has recently ordered that the 300 tons of packaged waste should be disposed of at the district disposal facility, the incinerator there has just begun its trial run.

But what is most remarkable about this whole affair is the treatment of Warren Anderson, chairman of the US-based Union Carbide Corporation at the time of the incident. Three hours after he had been arrested amidst high drama in 1984 on the charge of causing death by negligence, a mysterious phone call to the then chief minister of the state government secured his release on a personal bond of Rs 25,000 (£350).

Anderson was put on a state government aircraft and flown to New Delhi. In his bond, Anderson promised to return to India to stand trial in the case whenever summoned. He never did. The courts failed to get him extradited and the Government of India has admitted it was impossible to bring him back. Today, he is an absconder, the only accused in the criminal case against the Union Carbide to escape trial.

Now 89, Anderson lives in luxurious retirement near New York, having taken no personal responsibility for the disaster.

With US protesters now calling for the prosecution of BP chief executive Tony Hayward , a British citizen who has been at the centre of the clean-up efforts, they perhaps should be looking a bit closer to home before they start shrieking - as they are doing - about wanting justice.

COMMENT THREAD

A partial explanation

One of the reasons why we do not yet have an all-out currency crisis (yet) is – or so it would seem – for the rather banal reason that traders are not yet quite sure what to panic about.

For sure, the euro sank again today, reaching a fresh four-year low, well under $1.19 against the dollar in early trading, egged on by Kermit leader François Fillon who saw only "good news" in euro-dollar parity. But the targeted destruction of debt-ridden economies is not proceeding apace. Instead, it seems, traders are mulling over the eurozone's prospects and the structure of the single currency, wondering what the hell to make of it all.

"I really don't know what the outcome of all this is," said Simon Derrick, a senior currencies analyst at The Bank of New York Mellon in London. "I genuinely can't see how any member of the currency union would leave -that would be like trying to unscramble an omelette. But I can't see how Germany would agree to greater fiscal union," he said, adding that for as long as these basic tensions persist, the euro is likely to keep falling.

Many analysts now believe that division amongst eurozone members about how to rescue the currency are too deep for agreement to be reached so, rather than move attention from one debtor country to the next, investors are casting a critical eye over the whole system before making their plays.

The clue as to this happening, we are told, is the movements in the eurozone bond markets over recent weeks. As nerves over the euro have intensified lately, bonds from countries that have previously proven to be immune to these stresses - notably from France, Austria, and Belgium - have all been hit.

What we have been seeing, says Steven Barrow, a currencies analyst at Standard Bank in London, was "the market pressurized the whole of the eurozone."

This, he says, "raises the rather daunting thought that rather than the crisis moving on from Greece to one other country, like Portugal, in a domino-like fashion, the market might just apply pressure to the whole euro zone bond and credit-default-swap market, looking to flatten all the dominoes at once."

There's now a "pretty good chance" of a "precipitous" decline in the euro from current levels, Barrow adds. And since key politicians appear relaxed about this possibility, and some have even welcomed it, official intervention to push it back up extremely unlikely.

Of course, the relaxed stance is predicated on the euro reaching parity with the dollar, but there is no immutable law which says that, having got to that level, the euro will bottom out there. And if it keeps going, what then?

EURO CRISIS THREAD

Keeping up the standards

It is so nice to see the Cleggerons keeping up the standards of probity that we have come to expect of them.

This is the employment of Lord Browne, a man who resigned as BP chairman in 2007 after being caught lying to a court about his relationship with Canadian boyfriend Jeff Chevalier, a man renowned for cultivating senior politicians.

He was ennobled by Tony Blair, though in his first year as a "People’s Peer" he attended the Lords only twice. "I view it as no more onerous than a nonexecutive directorship," he said at the time. He has often been pictured with key New Labour figures and was once photographed shaking hands with Blair in front of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Blair's former No10 gatekeeper Anji Hunter left Downing Street in 2001 and took a £120,000-a-year job with Lord Browne as BP's communications director. One of her key roles was to maintain close links between BP and Downing Street. She left BP shortly after Lord Browne. Last year Lord Browne agreed to lead an inquiry into university tuition fees for Gordon Brown.

Now appointed as the new administration's "super director", it does make you wonder quite what you have to do to be barred from public office.

COMMENT THREAD

Here we go again

Reuters is playing its games again, manipulating pictures - this time cropping images to remove incriminating evidence (click on the pic to see what they left out).

And then you have that idiot Hague call on Israel to agree to a "credible and transparent" investigation into this "deadly raid" on an aid flotilla as activists whose ship was blocked from delivering relief supplies to Gaza returned home today.

Speaking alongside Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister for the Kermits, Hague said there should be an "international presence at minimum" in an inquiry into the deaths of nine "activists". No doubt he too would be happy to see Reuters processing the evidence for such an inquiry to use.


One thing is for certain though ... Reuters little games are not going to be reported by the MSM. As with Qana, they will close ranks and pretend it never happened. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, in today's print edition, has the cropped version of this photo (above).

While the original clearly showing the knife in the right foreground, the Reuters version omits this detail but the Telegraph crops the frame even tighter (below), giving not the least hint of the presence of a knife - attributing the pic to Reuters.


Reporter Adrian Blomfield, then commenting on the picture, notes that the soldier's uniform is "splattered with blood" and "he appears to have been dealt a blow to his nose", completely ignoring what appears to be abdominal bleeding, compatible with a knife wound.

Then, without a hint of apology or correction, the uncropped version appears online, this time attributed to AP rather than the Reuters attribution in the print edition. The incredibly bland caption reads: "An (sic) wounded Israeli soldier on the Mavi Marmara".

Never can it be admitted by this paper or the rest that the photographs they use are routinely manipulated - as is the written copy - all to ensure that the "great unwashed" are only told the "right" things. But for the "derivative" blogs, nothing of this would reach the wider public.

PROVOCATION THREAD

Treating us as if we were morons

Do our politicians really think our memories are so short that we cannot remember how little the economy played in the general election campaign, and how reluctant both major parties were to talk about "cuts"?

But now with the election safely out of the way – as we always knew they would – we have The Boy poised to tells us that things are "even worse than we thought" and draconian cuts must now follow.

If the Cameron and his little mates are genuinely taken aback by the size of the deficit and its effect on government finances, then they can be the only sentient people in the whole of the UK to be thus afflicted. Booker put the position with utmost clarity on 10 April, then noting the reluctance of the parties to talk about the issue.

So, with weary predictability, we must watch the politicians go through their little charades and pretend how shocked they are, and then listen to them tell us how they are going to sort it all out. And maybe this lot will do a marginally better job than the last lot – or maybe not.

One does, however, wish they would not treat us as if we were morons. It is not possible to be as stupid as these ghastly creatures make out and have enough brain cells to stay alive. After all, no one but a politician could seriously argue that things are "even worse than we thought" and expect people to keep straight faces.

COMMENT THREAD

A "deadly raid"?

Israel we are told is defying "mounting international pressure" to subject its "deadly raid" on a Gaza-bound aid ship to international scrutiny, when it rejected calls for a UN-backed investigation.

This, presumably, is the Telegraph's idea of objective reporting – shared by most of the Western media. But since when was a boarding party carrying out action to enforce a blockade ever been considered a "raid"? Even in a technical sense, the description is wrong.

Further, while the Gaza-bound ships were carrying "aid", that does not make them aid ships. Technically, they were blockade runners. The intention of their owners was to embarrass the Israeli government, to which effect aid materials were also being carried, as a transparent ploy to legitimise the action.

Given that the media cannot even begin to get it right, Israel has every reason to expect that a UN-back investigation will be equally prejudiced and – almost certainly – fail to conduct an impartial investigation. Under the circumstances, therefore, the Israeli government is right to resist demands for "international scrutiny".

However, it should commission its own investigation, it should ensure that work proceeds quickly and is well conducted, and it should publish the results in full.

PROVOCATION THREAD

Not dead yet

The single currency is in its death throes and may not survive in its current membership for a week, let alone the next five years. So say twelve out of 25 "leading economists" questioned by The Sunday Telegraph. Eight believed the euro would survive and the remaining five were undecided.

This sounds rather like the embodiment of the old joke: if all the economists in the world were laid end-to-end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. But how this information helps us understand the current predicament of the euro is less clear.

What is increasingly clear, though, is that debt is creating massive stresses on the banking system, with the ECB's Financial Stability Review pointing out that eurozone banks could face a credit crunch as they compete with governments for funds in coming years.

The prospect of banks and sovereign borrowers competing head-on for funding is not a happy one, with the concomitant risk of public debt crowding out bank borrowing.

But what is getting bizarre to the point of being surreal is the increasing difficulty in separating the two. In 2009, countries borrowed more than €800 billion, partly to bail out banks, which in turn then bought public debt that had been driven up by the bail-outs.

Carsten Brzeski, a senior economist for ING, thinks we should "really take this seriously." The process of banks buying public debt after being bailed out with state funds resembles the shady practice of using multiple bank accounts to cover "rotating overdrafts". This is a parallel "which holds very well in terms of the inner eurozone circle," he says.

Brzeski adds that "pushing it from one to another and back is kind of a multiplier effect", but notes that governments held underlying assets and their economies generated value that underpinned the process. "It only works if the underlying fundamentals are healthy," he cautions. "Otherwise it just goes up in smoke."

It takes no great expertise, however, to realise that the "underlying fundamentals" are very far from healthy, a point reinforced by the New York Times.

This paper tells us that, while foreign banks and other financial companies have lent $2.6 trillion to public and private institutions in Greece, Spain and Portugal, no one - not investors, not regulators, not even bankers themselves - knows exactly which banks are sitting on the biggest stockpiles of rotting loans within that pile.

With this in mind, the FSA has asked UK banks to model a number of disaster scenarios, including Greece defaulting on its loans. Analysts estimate that British banks have a total exposure of more than £100 billion to Greece, Portugal and Spain.

The situation gets even more murkier when, as Spiegel reports, the ECB has been buying up Greek bonds by the bucketload, even though Athens is already getting money from the rescue funds set up to bail it out. German central bankers, we are told, suspect a French plot behind the massive buy-up - giving French banks the perfect opportunity to get rid of their Greek assets.

Small wonder Václav Klaus was recently telling the Wall Street Journal that the eurozone has failed and Richard Woolnough, M&G Optimal Income Fund Manager, was in The Daily Telegraph asserting that "the possible demise of the euro is now very much up for debate."

The debate may well erupt this week as Belgium, Holland, Austria, Portugal, Spain and Italy collectively test market confidence this week when they try to borrow a total of €20 billion on the bond market. However, with Reuters suggesting that the euro will be down to $1.17 by the end of the month, it does not seem as if the single currency will be collapsing this week.

How much longer Greece will still be on board is another question.

EURO CRISIS THREAD

The more we pay, the less we get

So often these days, the point made about public sector salaries is that, to compete with the private sector and to be able to hire the best, huge sums of money must be paid.

Notwithstanding that a considerable number of people in the private sector are grossly over-paid, the point made by Booker in his column this week is that the grotesque inflation of salaries has gone hand in hand with a deterioration of almost every public body. We've all heard the old saw, "pay peanuts, get monkeys" but we are paying gold bars and getting monkey droppings.

One glaring example of this, notes Booker, is the BBC, the head of which, Mark Thompson. He now receives a staggering £834,000 a year yet, twenty-odd years ago, the director-general was paid a mere £80,000. Yet in almost every respect over the same period, the performance of the BBC's bloated empire, awash with £3.5 billion a year of licence-payers cash, has declined, to the point where it has become a national scandal.

The more its professional standards have fallen, the more puffed-up and pleased with themselves its grossly overpaid executives and celebrity presenters have become.

Another once-respected body which has suffered a catastrophic drop in its reputation is the Met Office, currently run by John Hirst. He gets £170,000 a year to preside over the hugely expensive computer models that have become such a laughing stock that it was recently forced to drop its wildly inaccurate "seasonal forecasts" altogether.

Yet these are the same models which for years have been relied on by the IPCC to drive its great scare over global warming, by forecasting what the earth's climate will be like 100 years into the future. The Met Office and its discredited computer models were also recently part of another massive official system failure, the volcanic ash fiasco, which in April cost the airline industry more than £2 billion.

But the real problem here was that the official bodies responsible for air safety, including our own Civil Aviation Authority, were relying solely on the Met Office's modelling – all under the aegis of "quango queen" Deirdre Hutton, receiving £130,000 a year, just for turning up at the office two days a week.

Another example of casting pearls (or gold bars) before swine is Adam Crozier. Having recently stepped down as head of Royal Mail, he had presided over a disintegrating postal service and an industry in chaos, with post offices closing almost as fast as the price of stamps has risen. Yet his pay package last year was an astonishing £2.4 million.

Strangely though, the department with the most officials on the inflated-salary list is the Ministry of Defence, headed by the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, on £245,000 a year.

Yet, writes Booker, this is a ministry whose record in recent years has been one of almost unmitigated failure, ranging from the humiliations it has presided over in Iraq and Afghanistan to the billions it has wasted on buying inappropriate or wholly unnecessary equipment.

Unlike the loathsome Hutton, who simply milks the system and leaves others to do the work, people like Stirrup on his inflated salary are responsible for the lives of personnel under their command. And, in Afghanistan, where eighty percent of the casualties are from IEDs, nothing characterises the campaign more than the failure of British forces to get to grips with this threat.

With more senior officers employed, pro rata than ever before in the history of the armed forces, at salary levels never so high, we have a situation where we are less well equipped to deal with the threat than we were 20 years ago, when with officers on a fraction of the current rates, Britain was leading the world in protection equipment and systems. Thus, as our capabilities have degraded, so have the wages increased.

At the heart of that very obvious failure is the Chief of the Defence Staff, the one man with sufficient clout to over-ride the petty jealousies, back-biting and incompetence of people like Gen Dannatt (who is now a Tory defence advisor), who could have ensured that the right equipment reached theatres.

Yet, even though the MoD announced that it was belatedly proposing to equip our troops in Afghanistan with Buffalos, available "off the shelf", as long ago as October 2008, they still have not arrived – but Stirrup just goes on being paid his £245,000 a year – plus perks.

So it is, Booker concludes, the more all these public servants are paid, the less they understand what it is the rest of us are paying them for.

COMMENT THREAD

All to keep the men in Brussels happy

Tim Worstall has picked up the report in The Daily Telegraph on Sir Peter North's review.

This is the review of drink-drive laws ostensibly commissioned by the last government but in fact, as we all know – except, it seems, The Telegraph - a smokescreen to conceal the EU involvement which goes all the way back to 2004.

Before coming into office, the Tory component of the Cleggeron administration had said it was "not minded" to reduce the drink drive limit – one of the target requirements of the EU included in the North recommendations. But the current secretary of state has now been told who his bosses are, and is thus understood to be studying Sir Peter's recommendations (i.e., EU requirements) closely.

Why we have to go through these dismal charades, God only knows, except that the transparent deceit is plainly sufficient to gull the Telegraph's motoring correspondent, who seems determined to remain blind to the EU involvement.

Instead, we get him having Sir Peter saying that there is a "persuasive" case for cutting the limit, with an estimated that this could save up to 168 lives in England and Wales every year. That is a highly contentious guesstimate which takes no account of the distortions arising in policing priorities, as more man hours are devoted to drink-drive enforcement.

More could perhaps be achieved for less if efforts were made to reduce the annual carnage on the road caused by police drivers, with another two pedestrians killed yesterday by a speeding police car.

However, that would not afford the police the same opportunity to misuse their powers, nor display their usual level of obnoxiousness to the travelling public. It might also require police constables to take some responsibility for their own actions – to say nothing of their largely over-paid senior officers. And that will never do.

So, the "in Europe but not ruled by Europe" Tories look set to deliver another pile of grief in the name of public safety, all to keep the men in Brussels happy. And why are we not surprised?

COMMENT THREAD

Yea, right!

The Daily Telegraph would have had me spluttering in my cornflakes this morning, if I actually had breakfast ... or the luxury of a newspaper delivered in time to read it over breakfast.

First, we have Charles Moore in the op-ed under the heading: "Why has Israel disarmed itself in the battle for world opinion?" with the strap line: "Islamist fanatics were allowed to use the 'humanitarian' flotilla as a weapon, says Charles Moore."

And so the great Moore thus opines that, "One would be perfectly justified in writing an entire column attacking the way Israel has been misrepresented over its fatal raid on the flotilla bound for Gaza on Monday."

Then we have the lead editorial which actually has the bare-face cheek to state: "Israelis must escalate the propaganda war." This is the newspaper which is quite happily repeating the jihadist propaganda lines that the IDF mounted an "attack" on these poor little innocent "aid" workers.

But, of course, the paper is right. Israel needs to up its game and my erstwhile co-editor, with more patience than I, makes that point on her blog. But that was the point which I was making again and again in August 2006 when, as I recall, one of the high-profile cheerleaders for the Hezbollah "victims" was the gobshite Daily Telegraph, printing the propaganda photographs on its front page.

There should be much joy in heaven when a sinner repenteth, but there is also much sourness back on earth when a slimy Johnny-come-lately jumps on a bandwagon.

And as for us ... we did say it in 2006, and went on saying it behind the scenes, to anyone who would listen. But they didn't listen – they never effing do ... too much up their own arses, too full of their own importance, too clever by half.

And so, we are back again where we started. We write another blog post, pointing out the obvious, and another and another, ad infinitum. Does anyone wonder why we have a certain understanding of what drove Derrick Bird?

PROVOCATION THREAD

Linkage

Viscount Monckton seems to be taking some flak but also has an ally and a friend in Delingpole.

The controversy over the man has been ramped up by Moonbat, who champions a put-down by Professor John Abraham who in turn relies, in part, on the WWF to demolish said Monckton – no contest.

Interestingly, Monckton has recently accepted the position of UKIP deputy leader, which makes him a swivel-eyed loony on two counts – according to his many detractors. That, though, ties in two closely allied issues – climate scepticism and EU scepticism, which is where we have been for some time.

How far this formal linkage will prove beneficial is difficult to say but, at least, the cross-fertilisation may prove entertaining. And if it winds up Moonbat, that has to be all good.

COMMENT THREAD

PHIIGS?

Despite the low-key treatment in the British media, the euro crisis has not gone away. In fact, it just got worse with the single currency dropping below $1.20 for the first time in more than four years. It fell to $1.1994 in late European trading before edging back up to $1.2006. That was its lowest level since March 2006.

As significant was the situation in Hungary, where the currency, bonds and stock market "reeled" today as the new government tried to reassure investors that it was not about to slide into a Greek-type crisis.

It had not been helped by Lajos Kosa, deputy chairman of the governing Fidesz party, who had said on Thursday that the country was facing a Greece-like financial meltdown. Former Fidesz finance minister Mihaly Varga added to the disarray with a warning that the deficit could reach 7-7.5 percent of GDP, about twice as much as planned for 2010 by the previous government.

The new government was sworn in last Saturday after winning a landslide in April's elections. But its talk about a massively revised budget gap was eerily similar to the situation in Greece. There, the 2009 deficit went from a planned 3.7 of GDP to 13.6 percent of GDP by year's end and led to the financial crisis, which saw Greece get a €110 billion rescue package to save it from bankruptcy

Unsurprisingly, international markets reacted quickly to the parallels drawn, although some experts are dismissing the panic, stating that Hungary's short-term debt amounts to a mere 2.4 percent of GDP, which is easily manageable.

Nevertheless, pundits who have got used to referring to Europe's financial crisis by reference to the acronym "PIIGS" are now having to consider whether Hungary should be admitted to the bad debt club. In that case, presumably, the club becomes "PHIIGS". At what point, though, do the acronyms become dangerously unstable and we move into panic mode?

EURO CRISIS THREAD

A question of attitude

Technology may be about to resolve the problem of volcanic ash, thus rescuing the hard-pressed airline industry – which is as it always has been. This is through the use of a system called AVOID (Airborne Volcanic Object Identifier and Detector), which has been around for some time, but has never previously got off the ground – so to speak.

The equipment – in essence, modified infra-red detectors which can pick up volcanic dust clouds, relying on their IR absorbency characteristics – is to be trialled by easyJet, which has put £1 million into a research pot in the hope that its use will minimise future disruption from volcanic ash.

These data provided by the kit will, in theory, enable pilots to detect ash clouds up to 62 miles (100 kilometres) ahead of and at altitudes between 5,000 and 50,000 ft, allowing pilots to make adjustments to flight paths if needed. Data can also be transmitted to a ground station, allowing real-time plots of ash-clouds to be built up, reducing the reliance on Met Office predictions.

The technology had yet to be fully validated for commercial use, much less approved by safety regulators, but the attempt by easyJet to find a solution makes for a interesting contrast with the Civil Aviation Authority, which is actually charged with the job of ensuring the safety of UK airspace.

Its chief executive, Andrew Haines, commends easyJet for investing in the trial and "welcomes the fact that airlines are considering innovations such as this". Haines adds that the CAA will "do all we can to facilitate them," perhaps in the knowledge that a successful trial will get his useless organisation off the hook.

In fact, Haines still seems to be more interested in defending the CCA and its decisions to close sections of UK airspace. We could have "wet a finger and taken a punt with the weather" or sought proper solutions, he says, once again relying on the canard that: "There was no information from aircraft manufacturers about what was a safe level of ash."

"Until we could get a clear assessment, we were absolutely justified in taking the actions we took," the man claims. "Otherwise it would have been a case of keeping our fingers crossed and I don't think anyone would have thanked us for that."

Even more extraordinarily, as recorded by The Guardian, Haines has the nerve to accuse the industry of "buck-passing" by attempting to blame regulators for the ash shutdowns.

Thus, his welcome for this easyJet initiative is actually couched in terms the industry catching up, with Haines saying: "I very much hope that this is a sign that the industry is ready to play its part in finding a fundamental solution ... rather than pretending that the problem does not exist."

And there you have the classic divergence in attitude. The industry, which has to keep the show on the road in order to make money, gets on with finding solutions to problems, while the regulator concentrates on covering its own arse and bitching that the industry has not been doing enough.

For that, incidentally, Deirdre Hutton, the part-time chair of the CAA, gets paid £130,000 per annum for a two-day week. Nice work if you can get it.

COMMENT THREAD

The final straw?

Several newspapers note that the Cumbria killer Derrick Bird (pictured) may have been in trouble with the tax authorities and feared being made bankrupt by them. There is thus speculation as to whether this was the final straw which triggered his lethal rampage in which 12 people ended up dead.

Certainly, there is good evidence that being on the receiving end of the implacable ministrations of the authorities is indeed enough to trigger a violent response.

If that was the case here, as my newsagent remarked yesterday before even this was known, it was a pity Bird expended his energies on largely innocent people. It was a shame, he said, that he had not put his anger to more productive use and run amok in the Inland Revenue offices or the local town hall.

With a bill for £1,210.33 sitting on my desk – the latest peremptory demand from Bradford Council for its Council Tax – I would quite endorse the choice of the latter target, where the idea of contributing to the £182,000 annual salary (plus pension, perks, etc) of a useless chief executive is not at all appealing.

If it was the contact with officialdom which triggered Bird's rampage, I can quite understand. Reaching into the depths of my own soul, I can touch a portion of my psyche which reserves the blackest hatred for the insouciance of mindless officials, calling themselves the "Department of Customer Services", who would have me committed to jail for failure to yield to their extortion.

And extortion this is. Unlike any other debt, failure to pay this one results in an automatic prison sentence. It makes a total mockery of the idea that we are free men. We are out on license, on payment of an annual fee to the authorities – failing payment of which the forces of the State are despatched to root you out, with unrestrained violence, to arrest you and commit you to jail.

Yet steal as much and you are unlikely to be treated as harshly. If you are an MP you can steal £40,000 and still be called "honourable", while you keep your job which you gained under false pretences.

Fortunately for these mindless, faceless officials, we are civilised people – we do not (yet) come for them and slaughter them in their beds, even when we should. And when a creature like Bird finally snaps – if that is what happened – usually the wrong people get killed.

But, that will not always be the case. There are people who have the effrontery to call themselves "consumer services" as they steal our money. For that alone they should be slaughtered. Societies, as well as people, have their breaking points. Ours cannot be far away.

Israeli "attack"

Actual footage taken by the peace-loving activists as they welcome the Zionist aggressors aboard the Mavi Marmara.

PROVOCATION THREAD

That amazing "own goal"

In the not too distant future, when the Cleggeron administration crashes and burns, one of the key stresses that will have brought it down will be the totally unforced error made by David Cameron in adopting the previous government's Afghan policy and thus locking himself in to an unwinnable war.

Quite how politically crass this move really is can be seen from two similar articles, one in The Daily Telegraph and the other in The Guardian. The theme is identified by the headline from the latter, which tells us: "Afghan police failings fuelling Taliban recruitment, say UK army chiefs," painting "a devastating picture of the corrupt and ill-disciplined local police force."

What one has to appreciate is that the role of the Afghan police is absolutely pivotal to the success or otherwise of the current strategy. Not unless or until the police are able to take the load can we – according to the agreed doctrine – even think about withdrawal. But, not only do we have the British Army cast serious doubts about whether the force is at all capable, this comes on the back of the complaints by the US Forces in the New York Times earlier this week.

Then there is another piece, this one in the Washington Post, with a US commentary which notes: "Afghanistan Police: Still Corrupt After All These Years." The WAPO narrative runs as follows:

"The hardest nut for us to crack is to build faith in the institution of the police," said Haight, the regional commander. During home searches for weapons or insurgents, he said, Afghan police often "shake down the house like criminals." In terms of training and morale, he said, the police are about five years behind the army. "We have to show them what right behavior is, to secure the people instead of being corrupt and victimizing them," he said.

This in turn elicits the comment: "It's not unreasonable to wonder why, if the culture hasn't been amenable to change after years of intensive efforts, why it ever will." But the "killer point" here is the date – 8 March 2009. More than a year ago, exactly the same things were being said that are being aired right now.

In the current Guardian piece, we get Brigadier James Cowan, commander of 11 Brigade stating that the police are "most often cited as why there is a problem and why people joined the Taliban", the problem being compounded by Taliban propaganda. Taliban fighters wore Afghan police uniforms as they stole money and possessions from innocent people at checkpoints.

Afghan security forces appear in many ways to be as much part of the problem as the solution, Cowan says, and his comments are echoed by Lt-Col Roly Walker, commander 1 Bn Grenadier Guards, with an added twist. He says the Taliban exploited grievances to "incite insurrection" but then adds that the Taliban are not the biggest obstacle to success. Rather they are "consequences of much deeper social and political grievances".

And that is very much the case, all of which stacks up to the fact that Cameron has indeed shackled himself to a policy that cannot succeed, no matter how much resource he throws at it or political capital he invests in it. If he is going through the motions, despite having told parliament (and through that the nation) that he would fully support the military, then he has the worst of all possible worlds – a failed policy for which he has accepted full responsibility.

You don't get much more crass than that. Yet, bizarrely, the Tory Boy Blog believes this is an achievement. You can see how the Tories managed to win the election so convincingly.

COMMENT THREAD

Suicide activists

The "new" tactic – trading lives for publicity against Israel. And the Western media is in the market ... although the truth is beginning to emerge, even in the British media .

PROVOCATIVE THREAD

Not drowning but waving

"Pacific islands 'growing not shrinking' due to climate change," headlines The Daily Telegraph, one of several media outlets to carry the story of a new study that has revealed significant growth in coral island chains.

Some islands, it appears, have grown by almost one-third over the past 60 years. Among the island chains to have increased in land area are Tuvalu and neighbouring Kiribati, both of which attracted attention at last year's Copenhagen climate summit.



These have been very much the "poster child" for the warmists, and the subject of numerous stunts, not least the holding of an underwater cabinet meeting last year (see video above) to highlight the threat from rising sea levels as a result of global warming.

Much to the discomfort of Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, seven islands in Tuvalu actually grew, one by 30 percent. In Kiribati, the three of the most densely populated islands, Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai, also grew by between 12.5 and 30 percent.

Professor Paul Kench, of Auckland University, co-author of the study with Dr Arthur Webb, a Fiji-based expert on coastal processes, said the study challenged the view that the islands were sinking as a result of global warming. "Eighty per cent of the islands we've looked at have either remained about the same or, in fact, got larger. Some have got dramatically larger," he says.

If there was any justice, the Nasheeds of this world, who have been making a living out of milking concern for global warming, are now going to have find something else to bring in the cash. All that crap about "drowning" was, it seems, only waving. But then, we already knew that.

COMMENT THREAD

Those "peace" activists

From the security cameras aboard the Mavi Marmara: the passengers of the Gaza flotilla are seen here preparing for confrontation with the IDF. They put on gas masks and arm themselves with rods, slingshots, broken bottles, metal objects, and water hoses. As the IDF approaches the ship they attack the forces by hurling these objects at them.

PROVOCATIVE THREAD

Brain dead

Simon Hoggart, political correspondent for The Guardian dismisses the first PMQs of this parliament as having "all the excitement of a good game of cribbage". However, in a session that one could say was "nuanced", we saw – amongst other things - The Boy take possession of the Afghan War in a way that he will come to regret. Thus, we heard:

Afghanistan is my top priority ... we are six months into the troop surge ordered by President Obama. We back that strategy, and we must give it time to work ... we have to support that military strategy with a political surge, of which the peace jirga being launched in Kabul today is an example. I spoke to President Karzai about this yesterday, and stressed to him the importance of working towards a political solution in which everyone in Afghanistan feels that the Government of Afghanistan are a Government for them.

The current strategy of counter-insurgency is about trying to protect the public in Afghanistan from the insurgency and enlarge the area of that country in which normal life can continue. What is in our national interest - that is what we should focus on - is an Afghanistan stable and secure enough for us to bring our troops home. That is what we want to achieve ... we have to give the current strategy time to work.

For sure, entirely missing were some of the "biff-bam" soap opera elements, and the session was thus largely (but not entirely) devoid of the moronic braying that has characterised sessions fronted by Gordon Brown. But in its place was much material for thought and analysis, as we watch a new leader pave the way for his own political suicide.

That it was thought to be dull says as much about the brain-dead political claque, represented by Hoggart, as it does the Cleggeron leader.

COMMENT THREAD

Cameron's War

Although much hailed before the event, getting information on yesterday's meeting of Cameron's national security committee is proving extraordinarily difficult. All we have so far is a very limited statement from a Downing Street spokesman, telling us that: "There were wide-ranging, intensive and productive discussions during the extended session on this, the Government's top foreign policy priority."

"The Prime Minister and the NSC," we are also told, "expressed their great admiration and support for our troops serving in Afghanistan and paid tribute to the essential contribution that they and their civilian colleagues make. The NSC will now continue its work to ensure that the UK does all it can to support the agreed Nato strategy in Afghanistan to succeed."

Separately, we have a report in The Guardian which makes the claim – attributed to officials - that Britain is putting pressure on Afghanistan to assume full responsibility for its own security as soon as possible.

If that is true – and there is no reason why it should not be – it quite possibly represents the ultimate example of hope triumphing over experience, there being any number of accounts which attest to the incompetence of Afghan security forces.

The latest of these comes in the New York Times which describes the Interior Ministry's most promising force, which has been "undercut by drug use, petty corruption and, at times, a lack of commitment in the face of the ordinary hardships and duties of uniformed life."

This piece deserves to be read in full but particularly relevant is the observation that many of the police from the force profiled were Tajik, and did not speak Pashto, southern Afghanistan's dominant language. Unsurprisingly, one of them complained: "Nobody can find a lot of information about the Taliban."

What, of course, this destroys is the facile idea that the southern, predominantly Pashtun population is ever going to accept the rule of Kabul, bolstered as it is – and has always been historically – by the northern tribes of an entirely different ethnicity.

Thus Simon Jenkins is telling us in The Guardian that Cameron should take the opportunity of the switch in Helmand from British to US control to admit the obvious and start to plan how best to leave. It is idle to pretend, he writes, that Britain's 2006 expedition to bring Helmand under the control of the Kabul regime has anything but failed.

Yet, rather than take that opportunity, the Cameron stance has been to support the last administration's policy and, as he did during the session allocated to PMQs in parliament today, commit to providing the military with "whatever they need", thereby effectively taking ownership of the conflict. It may have started off as Blair's war, then to become Brown's war, but it has now undergone a glacially smooth transition, on its way to becoming Cameron's war.

There is no obvious political reason why the Cleggeron leader should so recklessly assume responsibility for this conflict – other than, perhaps, he has been unduly influenced by today's leader in The Daily Telegraph, which intones that "tangible results" are "desperately needed" to reassure an increasingly sceptical public that the war is winnable - an outcome which only that newspaper can believe is possible.

"Providing clear and unequivocal support for the military effort would be a good start," the paper says, advice which Cameron seems to have taken, unwittingly falling into a trap from which he will find it difficult to extract himself.

As a harbinger, the significance of which it is unlikely he would understand, yesterday we learned of the death of another Danish soldier, since identified as 22-year-old Private Sophia Bruun. She was killed close to Bridzar military base in Helmand, after a Piranha armoured personnel carrier was hit by an IED.

The point that will escape Cameron is that this vehicle type was intended to be the base for the FRES utility vehicle which, given a choice, the Army would have preferred to the Mastiff and other protected vehicles. Affording the Army "unequivocal support" may prove to be unwise, given that it most often has no real idea what it really wants and, in any event, should be given what it needs rather than what it wants.

In return, however, the one thing Cameron need not expect is "tangible results", other than seeing the number of deaths climb from today's figure of 290 – with yet another Royal Marine killed by a bomb in Sangin – to 300 in the very near future. For his first performance in the PMQ slot today, he had to read out three names. Already, he has another for next week's list and soon enough he will be dealing with the torrent of media "celebrating" that macabre third century.

By then it will truly be Cameron's war. And if he makes 400, it will be the only thing he "achieves" from it.

COMMENT THREAD

The same old stench

This is the sort of day when there are lots of things to write about, but mostly ongoing stories rather than brand new issues. One of those is the David Laws story, which we have already visited several times.

There cannot, you might think, be much more to say on the subject, except that Heffer in The Daily Telegraph op-ed finds a great deal to say – mostly about what the affair tells us of the "new politics" espoused by the Cleggerons.

As always, there is no point in reinventing the wheel – let Heffer's words speak for themselves. But one has to say on this that he is right. The Law affair tells us a great deal, not least about the "us and them" divide which now separates us from the political classes.

The response of "them" has been highly instructive – they have rushed to defend one of their own, and in so doing have illustrated with absolutely clarity how different mores apply to those who are "above the line". Thus, we find, with absolutely no surprise, that new politics or not, we have the same old stench.

LAWS THREAD

Ryanair joins in

With easyJet considering taking on the government over the volcanic ash debacle, we now have Michael O'Leary (pictured), the head of Ryanair, getting in on the act.

This is good to see as, when I first raised questions about this, I was rather out on a limb. The bulk of the comments were distinctly hostile to my thesis and there was only limited support for my view that the closure of the airspace was an over-reaction.

Anyhow, from a safe distance after the event, O'Leary has now rounded on the Met Office's Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre for its handling of "aviation's biggest crisis since the war", launching a "vitriolic attack" on their forecasters. Met Office charts, he says, "suggested the that the big black plume of volcanic ash had spread from Iceland all over the southern Atlantic, much of continental Europe and half way across Russia as well as over a large part of the arctic circle."

"The fact is the sun wasn't blocked out in any of these areas and none of us could see a bl**dy thing didn't seem to worry the Met Office, where we suspect the only place that there was volcanic ash was in the basement of the Met Office or in between the ears of the people who produced these charts," he said.

"I don't mind paying passenger right to care when it is our fault. But if it is not our fault and some stupid regulator or government has closed down airspace, because some idiot in a basement in the Met Office in London spills coffee over the map of Europe and produces a big black cloud, we shouldn't be paying for your right to care," O'Leary continued.

"They made a complete dog's balls of it yet passed this cost onto the airlines. We paid compensation for their mismanagement for and incompetence," he then concludes.

O'Leary, though, has got it wrong – as he did with the Irish referendum. As we pointed out earlier, it was not the Met Office, per se that was wrong, but the regulators relying on the Met Office models, without insisting on independent, physical verification of data – using direct measurement from airborne sampling.

Picking on the Met Office alone is bound to be highly entertaining, but it isn't going to win a court case. For that, the actual decision-makers need to be identified, which is not going to be that easy, given the way responsibility has been diffused.

Also, the airlines are not going to be able to walk away from their own responsibilities. They had plenty of opportunities to comment on the IACO contingency plan and one wonders how many – Ryanair included – complained about the inadequacies and the lack of resources, before the event.

And how many now really understand why and how the system went wrong? It doesn't look as if O'Leary has quite got a handle on it. If he is not careful, there will be another "dog's balls" in the making – only it will be his this time.

COMPUTER MODELLING THREAD

An ex parrot

Notice how John Major (on 1:20) does not applaud.

COMMENT THREAD

David Laws is a thief and a liar

"My problems have been caused by my unwillingness to be open about my sexuality and not by any intention to exploit the MPs' expenses system," says David Laws.

"James Lundie and I were aware that we could have been far better off financially if I had been willing to be open about our relationship - but I was not," he adds. "I decided, therefore, to keep my sexuality secret, and the further time went on the more difficult it seemed to be to tell the truth."

"When the rules changed in 2006 to prevent MPs from renting from partners, I should probably have changed our arrangements. I could have done so without any financial cost, but getting a mortgage and buying a house together would have meant revealing our relationship - which I was not prepared to do."

But says Laws, his lover never used the parliamentary entitlement to travel for partners nor any financial entitlement that would result from the "formal recognition of partnership". And: "That is why I thought it would be all right for him to be treated as just a friend, when actually we were much more than that," he says.

So, rather than revealing his relationship, David Laws decided to break the rules ... his choice. He decided to take money under false pretences, pretending that his lover was not a "partner", when he knew damn well he was, and has now admitted as much.

That means he was not entitled to the money he claimed, under the specific terms under which he claimed it – and he knew that to be the case, at the time he made the claims. It is no defence to say that had he made a different application, he could have claimed more money, perfectly legally. He did not so claim. His choice was to make a false application. That makes him a thief.

His rival at the general election, Tory Kevin Davis, would have him as a liar as well.

"David (Laws) chose to base his whole campaign against me on two premises. He based his campaign on his image and comparison with me and not on policy," says Davis. "The first premise was that he was a squeaky clean MP on expenses. The second premise was that I did not live in Yeovil but lived in London. The first premise has now turned out to be a lie. The second one is hypocrisy."

We need to spell this out. David Laws is a thief and a liar. He is also (still) an MP - and "Call me Dave" thinks him "honourable".

LAWS THREAD

You can't blame the Messenger

The Cleggeron administration has at least provided one useful service in publishing the Civil Service "rich list" – the names of the 172 senior civil servants who earn more than £150,000 a year.

Included in that number (although not exactly a civil servant) is CDS Jock Stirrup, one of 22 MoD officials earning more than £150,000. He is currently on the pay band £240,000 - £249,999. This, of course, does not include his perks which include full-time servants, limousine and chauffeur provided at public expense.

On current performance, however, Stirrup is being paid probably ten times what he is worth, not least as a greater part of his responsibility – the campaign in Helmand - has just been removed and handed to a US general, Maj Gen Richard Mills, of the USMC.

Whether that will lead to any improvement in the conduct of the campaign is moot, although given the objective declared by British theatre spokesman Maj Gen Gordon Messenger, it is unlikely that it could make things worse.

Messenger's view of how to win, as expressed to the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme, comes straight out of the Janet & John Book of Counterinsurgency (budget edition). It is all about providing security, he says, which is the "bedrock" on which a peaceful Afghanistan would be built. "Ultimately," he prattles, "the key to this is the allegiance of the population. When the population demonstrate their allegiance to the Afghan government, we will have done our job."

The funny thing is, you could have given this man a job with US public affairs in Vietnam in the 1960s and he would have been saying much the same things. But, with a dismal and highly-overpaid boss like Stirrup, even now you can't blame the Messenger.

COMMENT THREAD

Computer modelling in the dock?

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, the credibility of the Met Office as an organisation will be on the line, as a central part of any case will be to show that it placed unreasonable faith in the accuracy of its models, and that the models were flawed. The parallel with climate change is all too obvious, and much too important to ignore.

COMMENT THREAD