Lawyers, Guns and Money

Lawyers, Guns and Money

So Ukraine gets Tanks. Lots of Tanks, well not so many but let’s see what Poland does. I wrote this over a couple of week and wondered if it was worth saying and or if my readership wanted something like this, but the Guardian ran a similar story so I decided to go-ahead.

Two weeks ago the UK Government, agreed to send a dozen 20 year old tanks to Ukraine. Ukraine had been asking the German government for permission to take the German Leopard from Poland and it seems the UK offered some of theirs. The Challenger 2 has a different gun to the rest of NATO, the British Gun is not designed for anti-tank use, and will require specially trained personnel. It’s possible that Ukraine would prefer the Challenger because of its gun, as it is designed for infantry support but there are reasons that we plan to replace them; the age of the vehicles and the technology being two reasons.

And the jets? The UK has two warplanes in its inventory. The US F35 Lightening and the Euro-fighter, Typhoon. The former might be best obtained from the US as the ones the Brits have bought have been customised for specific purposes i.e. STOL although this may make them suitable to perform the role for which Ukraine is asking for F16s. Both are multi-role warplanes, but the British are still acquiring the planes from the US as we do not have enough, although the need is alleviated by the Prince of Wales’ reliability problems.

This leaves the Typhoon. The oldest of the Typhoons in service with the RAF were optimised for air-defence and have a weaker air-to-ground capability. The Typhoon is a notoriously hard plan to fly and will again, require long training periods but it is in use with the German, Italian and Spanish air forces. It’s highly likely that to let the Typhoons go to Ukraine, will require the permission of Germany Italy and Spain, our development partners. Most of its users are considering replacements. Do Ukraine really want 15 year old Typhoons, although 15 years is not so old for a warplane and they want planes for air-to-air combat against planes and drones? (The Guardian’s sources disagree and think that ground attack is the priority.) Maybe, but they are asking for F16s. Can an air force the size of Ukraine’s cope  with the logistics and personnel issues in flying two such warplanes, although its personnel cadre is roughly the same as the RAF and it flies two such planes.

This last fact shows the damage done to the UK’s defence capability by 12 years of Tory rule; the 2021 White Paper, with its ambition to return east of Suez effectively reduced our capability of defending our European allies. The reduction in the Army & RAF personnel and the reliance on US supply chains weakens the UK’s real defence capability and Brexit has weakened our capability of co-operating with other European powers in the extra-NATO European military co-operation regimes that the EU is slowly building.

While Sunak has asked the MOD to look at options for shipping warplanes to Ukraine they have also said only if it can be done safely for British lives and the Guardian reports that the MOD is not happy as the Typhoons are exceedingly busy. Will we give Ukraine the tanks and jets it’s asking for? Probably, but the gifting is more symbolic than effective, which is why Zelenski is asking us for them.

All this militaristic bravado diverts from, and hides, the questions of Russian money in British politics, sanctions against war criminals, and support for the Russian peace movement and draft dodgers. Westminster is ignoring things we can do to help; we can and should do more than just ship the Ukraine some old shite we don’t need any more.

The featured image is CC0 from https://www.publicdomainpictures.net. …

Ruling through fear

Have they cowed the Judges? The Economist has just issued its Democracy Index and I have had another go at scoring the UK. It asks questions about redress and petition which took me to Judicial Review which clearly by observation is failing and more dramatically but less visibly away from the corridors of power. In this review, I stated that Judges are appointed by, promoted by and paid by Governments. These views or at least those that question the committent of the courts to the rule of law, it seems are shared by Jo Maughn who makes his point in a tweet thread, which I have gathered into one place using threadreaderapp and copied here using a rather neat wordpress tool. Please use the 'read more' button to see his powerful and frightening words ... ...

Online Safety Bill progresses into the Lords

This article is repost of a the Open Rights Group newsletter. Please look at this, it's really quite short but I am quite shocked at just how far the government plans to go, prior restraint, ministerial decrees on acceptable content, encryption breaking surveillance, and more. Please use the read more button to see what the Govt is up to and how you might help in stopping the worst of its proposals.

Going down, the UK’s reputation

Going down, the UK’s reputation

Transparency International report that the UK drops five places, in their Corruption Perceptions Index. Daniel Bruce, their CEO, blames  public procurement corruption, the questionable and partisan decisions on the levelling up fund grants, the multiple breaches of the ministerial code, and the growing visibility of cash for peerages and the crony funding of the Tory Party.

Daniel Bruce’s comments do not mention the reputation of the Police which will have fallen given the proven criminality in the Police, its growing reputation of a return to institutional racism to which they can now add misogyny as illustrated by the harsh policing of the Sarah Everard vigil, herself a victim of illegal police violence, and the dismissal of the Met Police commissioner for losing the confidence of the Mayor. We can also add their persistent failure to satisfactorily pursue Johnson over the Arcuri affair, other issues of corruption at City Hall and even the slow progress on Partygate.

The last time I looked at this, I said, “ Prof. Daniel Hough also finds it strange that we score so well but observes that TI are mostly interested in public sector corruption and so the cesspit that is the City of London’s money laundromat and the secrecy of the London property markets do not count against the UK’s score.” …

Maths at 18

Maths at 18

Sunak has proposed that Maths should be taught to 18. I think this ambition i.e. of better equipping people to understand data and draw conclusions needs redesign earlier in the curriculum and would be informed by a study in the UK’s failure to adopt the Baccalaureate. Some say that they’ll need more [and better paid] teachers, which they seem unwilling to fund. I think this is just revisiting failed reforms of the last half century. I seem to remember some nonsense in the 70’s about scientists in the Civil Service, and after a bit of looking around came upon this review of the Fulton Report; it made little difference.

A common question has been how much have I used my A level and 1st year graduate statistics education. The answer is a bit. Linear & Quadratic correlation has been useful a couple of times, queuing theory at least once, and I had to mug up some hypothesis testing for that one project I did using 6 sigma. More than most maybe. Although at least once, my then manager’s own poor statistical education led to him putting it in the bin, because he didn’t have the confidence to sell the results.

Simon Pegg on twitter is more succinct and sweary in his defence of the need for arts.

When doing the 6-sigma project I discovered that many of the distribution tables needed to perform the statistical tests were encapsulated in costly software. I amused myself by bringing in my uni. text book, which had the distributions printed but which was older than many of my colleagues. They had remained useful, the tables that is, and I still have the book on my book shelf.

For my foreign audience, in the UK, students from 16-18 study 3-5 subjects often reducing their subjects studied at the end of the 1st year. There isn’t really room to push Maths into that time table if a student has made otherwise sensible contiguous choices. This is supported imposed by the Universities who claim that early specialisation leads to our graduates being better qualified at the end of the first degree. I suspect that most US university academics would disagree, For my British readers, the early specialisation, at 16, is unusual, with other countries using other curriculum design techniques to provide a broad 16-18 education. Also the fact of a Prime Minster in the 21st Century educated at University in Greek and Latin must have been a source of amusement to the French graduates of the Ecole National d’Administration, an amusement enlarged by calling it Greats!

All this on the day when Starmer flags his second thoughts on Labour’s promise of abolishing student tuition fees.  …

Polling Leads over time

Labour’s current lead in the polls is suggesting that there will be a Labour landslide at the next election but I made a chart of the polling history of Westminster election intentions since 1984. This is an attempt to put this in historical context.

The history of UK Polling data for Westminster elections; from 1984

As of today Labour would seem at elections to underperform its polling results. Some say this is down to low turnout.

I was interested answering two questions, the first is that no Party with such a large polling lead has ever lost the following election. This would seem to be false. Johnson threw away a huge lead and while it took Blair over two parliaments, his lead fell from a max of 39% to -14%. Only Blair and Johnson have had leads over 20%. Only Major, Brown and Sunak have increased their party’s polling lead. The other question is about whether the allegation that Corbyn was substantially less popular than Labour deserved.

I have made an Open-Hi-Lo-Close chart of the PM’s leads and added Corbyn. To truly understand if Corbyn was worse than others, I’d have to show the other Labour leaders.

To remind us how to read these charts, if the entry is black, then the lead fell, the opening value is the top of the box, and the close value the bottom. If the box is white, then the value increased and the open value is the bottom of the box, and the final lead the top of the box. The lines above and below the box illustrate the high and low values, which in the case of Truss and Sunak are the same as the open/close values. Blair’s high number above the opening value was achieved on day one, and illustrates the difference between the poll and the general election vote. (I wish I could add red and blue colours to the chart, but it’s a restriction on the tool.) I’d say Corbyn while not good, was not appalling at least that’s what the number’s say, although he had become an issue by 2019.

It seems that Redfield and Wilton have also produced a chart, but only for the last 18 months. These numbers come from my interpretation of politico.eu’s poll tracker, using the Guardian ICM numbers from 1984 to 2016. My spreadsheet is here. …

On Labour Conference representation for CLPs

a red rose

At Conference 2022, the rules on CLP representation was changed and this will impact representation at regional conferences too.

This is Rule, C3.I.1.B which now says, (non-italics is the new text, strikethrough is deleted,)

Delegates duly appointed by CLPs to the number of one delegate for the first 749 individual members in the constituency or part thereof paying their membership dues as of 31 December in the previous year, and one further delegate for every additional 250 individual members in the constituency or part thereof. No CLP shall be represented by more than 6 delegates in any given year. CLPs must also have paid any outstanding insurance premiums and other levies due before their delegation shall be accepted. To increase the representation of women at Party conference, at least every second delegate from a CLP shall be a woman; where only one delegate is appointed this must be a woman at least in every other year. In a year where a CLP is required to send a female delegate, following a male delegate in the preceding year, but is unable to find one, they will not be entitled to send a man as delegate. In the following year, permission may be granted to send a male delegate if they demonstrate to the conference arrangements committee that they have made every effort to seek a woman delegate.

Labour Rules C3.I.1.B

Paragraph C, the next rule says, bold is my emphasis.

Where the individual women’s membership in a constituency is 100 or more, an additional woman delegate may be appointed. Where the individual Young Labour membership in a constituency is 30 or more an additional delegate under the age of 27 may be appointed.

Labour Rules C3.I.1.C

I say, the woman and youth delegates are additional, so the maximum delegation size is 8, , which a CLP become entitled to at 2000 members, if they have 100 women and 30 young people. Also note that the representation rule is mathematically one delegate per 250 members.

This, “at least every second delegate from a CLP shall be a woman” is nonsense, the number of women to be elected depends on whether the number to be elected is odd, or not, and whether the first delegate elected is a woman or not.

Source: CAC 1/2022

You might like to see, Labour Conference: Delegate &-member power which looks at how representative the hand vote is, and Delegates to Conference, which explores the meaning of the conference representation rule in terms of gender quotas, both articles on my wiki. …

New Britain, new Britcon

New Britain, new Britcon

Gordon Brown’s Commission on the constitution of the UK has finished its report. Much of the press focus on the proposal to abolish/reform the House of Lords but it is much more comprehensive than that. I originally wondered if in its way it is as ambitious as the Chilean constitution that failed to win approval in 2022. On reading it fully I conclude that it is not. They do however, propose a new constitution, with entrenched individual rights, of health, education and housing and a duty of the state to ensure no-one is poor. For all their controversy in this country, these rights are commonplace around the world. I summarise the report, commenting on parliamentary sovereignty, the devolution settlements, money and cleaning up Westminster, and make a comment on their civil service reform processes. There's more overleaf. ...

Not so fast!

Not so fast!

The High Court has ruled that the Government’s plan to send refugees to Rwanda with a one-way ticket, is legal. Suella Braverman is claiming this as a victory but there is a sting in the tail of the ruling, which I have not yet read in full. The decision is reported by the BBC who quote Braverman as vowing to continue and Yvette Cooper who called the policy "unworkable, extortionate and deeply damaging", but not immoral nor criticising the hostile environment; she leaves it to Alison Thewliss, the SNP's home affairs spokesperson. PCS & Care4Calais plan to appeal, so we’ll see and of course there remains the ECtHR injunction to consider. Although the desire to manipulate international law with respect to immigration (and labour) law is bi-partisan. There's more overleaf ...