I have to admit that, when I first read that scientists had written to Mark Durkin to ask him, out of the goodness of his heart, not to make DVDs of the Great Global Warming Swindle available for sale (credit: Rob), I blanched. I could more or less have predicted what a drama queen like Durkin’s response would be:

“I don’t believe they are interested in ‘adequate quality control’ when it comes to the reporting of science, or in a ‘balanced debate’ about the issues. Too many scientists have staked their reputations ­and built their careers on global warming.

“There’s a hell of a lot riding on this ridiculous theory.”

I hope, at least, he’s grateful to them for all the extra free publicity.

Having blogged today about the political genius of John Sentamu, I do wish my own ‘team’ would sort itself out sometimes. In my view, the proper response would have been to ask Durkin, since he’s so keen on opposing ‘censorship’, to allow a group of scientists to record an alternative commentary to the film and distribute it on the DVD. It is no a moot point as to whether he would have let them or not: either way, it would have been a win. Either he refused, and we could all point fingers at him and make him look silly, or he’d capitulate, in which case the DVD would be more balanced.

Meanwhile, I do recommend a read of this rebuttal of the Swindle film by the same group of scientists.

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A loathsome backhanded compliment in the Brendan O’Neill’s editorial in this week’s Spiked email newsletter:

Bloggers made the news this week instead of simply leaching off it. There’s talk of a ‘code of conduct’, ‘warning signs’ if blogs contain crude content. But blogs aren’t the place to go if you want erudite debate; they’re the online equivalent of a loud’n’rowdy student bar. Why would you impose codes on something like that?

Bloggers often don’t have much to say of note, but I’ll defend to the death their right to say it to their three readers.

I’m sure we’re all very grateful for their protection.

For those of you who don’t know, Spiked is the internet successor to Living Marxism, which itself was the mutant spawn of the Revolutionary Communist Party. They are very shy of admitting to this* (unlike, ahem, the successor organisation of the CPGB), but are not very shy about their sense of self-importance:

spiked is an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms. spiked is endorsed by free-thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, and hated by the narrow-minded such as Torquemada and Stalin. Or it would be, if they were lucky enough to be around to read it.

I occasionally dip into it because I do think writers like Frank Furedi do speak a lot of sense and are broadly on the side of the angels. But that sophomoric sense of self-importance runs through it like words in a stick of rock and makes it impossible to actually like. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a massive rant about its support for politbureau-style elective dicatorship as an alternative to liberal democracy which my internet connection sadly ate (thank the Lord for Wordpress 2.1 and its auto-save function) - maybe I’ll return to this topic another time.

For Spiked to accuse bloggers of leaching off the mass media is a very queeny case of pots and kettles. The entire website is a temple dedicated to the church of print and broadcast journalism. Sure, they spend all their time slagging it off (doesn’t everyone?), but it is quite clear that they are smitten (I could make an incredibly geeky comment about Buffy and, erm, Spike, but that would be intolerable. So I won’t).

But in the meantime, I simply ask this: who, aside from myself and Jonathan Calder, actually reads the thing? Is it really in any position to cast aspersions about the number of people who read weblogs? I don’t have any stats to back up my instincts, but somehow I doubt it, or they wouldn’t whinge every other week about how they need more money.

* Having said that, there is a section expounding the glory days of the RCP and LM in their hagiographic interview with fellow ex-RCPer Mark Durkin, maker of C4’s Great Global Warming Swindle.

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No-one can deny that collective bargaining has brought ordinary people very real rights that they could never have acquired through other means. Every employee in the country has a lot to be grateful to the Labour Movement.

But there comes a point where the disadvantages of the hive mind approach starts to outweigh the advantages. Arguably, that point was reached in the 1970s when the Unions began to behave as if they could order governments around, whether Labour or Conservative, which inevitably resulted in a backlash and thus their nemesis, the very much undead alive Mrs T.

I would argue that another example of its limitations is going on right now. For the last ten years, local authorities have been obliged to pay female workers on the same rates as male workers. Yet, fearful of job cuts, trade unions have been negotiating pay deals which undermine affected women workers, to the point that they have been frequently shown to be illegal.

In this case, collective bargaining has meant that unions have compromised womens’ rights, many of whom were never even consulted. Now, you might argue that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but the law’s the law, and the union-brokered deals have relied on these women, some of the most vulnerable in society, being ignorant of their rights.

Women have had no recourse but to get solicitors to fight their corner, and there are plenty of solicitors willing to take these cases on on a no-win no-fee basis (not least of all because they have pretty cast iron cases).

This is, in fact, a classic example of capitalism working to empower and protect people’s rights. A cause for celebration? Well, according to trade unionists, the lawyers who are helping these women are, to quote Chris Mullin, “parasites”. This view was echoed by Phil Woolas on the Today programme on Tuesday. That vanguard of socialism Nick Cohen says much the same thing.

Some of us happen to think that rights are indivisible; if there is a genuine tension as in this case, then local authorities should consult with the whole workforce, not leave it to their buddies in the unions to stitch it up for them. If Labour truly believe that women’s rights can be negotiated away by (predominently male) trade unionists, they should simply put their money where their mouths are and scrap the Equal Opportunities Act. After all, we know they only consider their much vaunted all women shortlists a priority if one of Gordon Brown’s pals doesn’t want the seat.

The most grimly ironic thing about all this though is that it was Labour who introduced pro bono in the UK as a first step to their dismantlement of legal aid. Overall, I’m sure they will be comforted in the knowledge that where trade union incompetence hasn’t left them so open to legal action, vulnerable people will have much less recourse now.

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Trevor Phillips was confidently telling Sunday Times readers this weekend that Muslims will be rioting in the streets as a direct result of politicians saying beastly things about veils.

The thing is though, Phillips seems to have been predicting race riots about pretty much everything, from Polish plumbers to the 7/7 attacks, for the past five years. It’s become his catchphrase, causing me to do that most rare of things, agree with Ken Livingstone.

I’m not convinced that this is a responsible sort of thing for the Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality - or anyone for that matter - to say. When riots do happen, they happen for lots of different reasons and the biggest factors tend to be local. Talking them up merely increases racial tensions and, if anything, actually increases the chances of them happening.

40 years ago some bloke started making confident predictions about racial unrest. Instead of ’streets of fire’ he talked of ‘rivers of blood’ (actually a misquote IIRC). He was accused of stoking up tensions and completely ruined his political career. Trevor Phillips on the other hand is about to get a promotion.

It doesn’t seem to be the colour of Phillips’ skin that makes him immune from the sort of public roasting that Enoch Powell endured, as this sort of rhetoric is becoming increasingly common from politicians of all racial backgrounds. But we do appear to have crossed an invisible line that we wouldn’t have dreamt of crossing 20 years ago. Perhaps that will ultimately prove to be a good thing in the long run, but it is producing a lot of confused nonsense at the moment. For example, it is deeply ironic that Phillips in condemning politicians here, seems to be committing the very act that he claims to disapprove so much of.

A few weeks ago, I was inclined to defend Jack Straw and his position on veils. I did think the stuff about asking women to remove their veils before talking to him was a bit off, but he was careful in his language. The fact remains that has triggered a lot of nonsense. In the long term, debates such as this can be healthy, but the onus is on everyone to use measured language. Even the CRE/CEHR Chief.

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A couple of things to say about Tommy Sheriden’s new party, Solidarity - the Scottish Socialist Movement.

• Solidarity from a splitter? He he he, at least he hasn’t lost his sense of humour.
• How long will it be before its name gets contracted to SM - one of the few things that Sheriden hasn’t been accused of?

Oh, and before I forget, here’s a bit of Sheriden humour that I forgot to blog about last week:
Q. What’s pink, hard and obsessed about by Tommy Sheriden? A. Click here.

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I’m not sure what’s worse. The idea of a bunch of trots politicising an obscure cricket match (Peter Hain, you have a lot to answer for), or the thought of Scotsmen attempting to play cricket. Won’t the lack of holes and flags confuse them?

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Tommy Sheridan’s only vices are apparently sunbeds - and Scrabble.

I bet he’s great at triple scores though.

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When the history books on New Labour are finally written, one subject that will fill volumes will undoubtedly be why it is that Labour are so obsessed with technological solutions to everything, and yet simultaneously so bloody awful at them.

So it is that their new passport system has fallen over after just 18,000 applications. Child Support Agency? Same story. Tax credits? Check.

Yet still they persist. We’re to have ID cards eventually, even if the date does keep getting pushed back. And John Reid insists he’s pressing ahead with merging police forces, claiming it will be more efficient, despite his unwillingness to spend a penny on the project.

At some point, surely, you would have thought they would realise that government is about more than just filing and categorising everything, and that the ICT companies have been laughing behind their backs (and all the way to the bank) for years now. Yet they press ahead.

It is even a characteristic of their backbenchers, with Claire Curtis-Thomas’ magic solution to the ills of lad mags being heaps of regulation and a quango to oversee it all. No doubt, were such proposals to be fully realised, they would include the creation of a National Grotmag Register, costing hundreds of millions of pounds and so ineptly built by Capita that it explodes the first time somebody attempted to scan in an image of Jodie Marsh.

All of this refutes the trendy notion in the 1990s that New Labour had abandoned socialism. While it is true they have finally come to reject the notion of a centralised, command-and-control economy, they continue to pursue this philosophy in all other areas with a passion that would make Stalin blush. It doesn’t work, but it is going to take a heavy defeat before it will be stopped. The ID card is the 21st century equivalent of the Ukranian tractor factory. And they call themselves progressive.

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I’ve blogged about this before and I’m sure I will again, but what is Nick Cohen’s problem with liberalism? He has never spelt it out beyond complaining that reality rarely meets the ideal, but that is true of all ideologies, and yet he returns to the subject again and again.

This week, Kate Winslet’s Number One Fan is attacking “Europe” (whatever that is…) for not being as liberal as it claims to be. In doing so, he cites Simon Jenkins - an arch Tory - and Franco Frattini - Sylvio Berlusconi’s personal appointee to the European Commission. He laments the prohibition of Holocaust denial and laws to prevent criticism of religion, both of which are predominently advocated by socialist parties. He suggests at the end that the people of Europe are becoming contemptuous of hypocritical politicians who espouse liberal ideals yet fail to observe them in practice, yet that is an argument for more liberalism, not less.

More to the point, this Euston Manifesto supporter fails to come up with something even vaguely resembling a leftist alternative. Indeed, that manifesto includes plenty of exhortations to freedom which, last time I looked, was the alpha and omega of liberalism. Euston can be read as a wholesale surrender of the left to come up with a better model for society than liberalism after two centuries of wasted effort. Yet for Cohen, it continues to be the root of all evil.

I should probably stop reading these columns as Cohen has become so idiosyncratic now that they are seldom worth the time. But one day I would love to see him attempt to come up with answers. Polly Toynbee may be consistently wrong, but at least she tries. The polemicist schtick has got old, Nick.

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The debate raging over anti-semitism is confusing at the best of times. Generally speaking I have quite a lot of time for the argument that it is creeping back into fashion by the back door and that we should be less tolerant of lazy rhetoric that blurs the lines between judaism, zionism and the state of Israel. This quote by Sue Blackwell taken from Hirsh’s own website illustrates the scale of the problem quite succinctly:

…increasingly these days I find myself having acrimonious exchanges, usually by email, with people whose messages start by expressing their support for my stand on Palestine and then continue with ‘I think you ought to read this.’

‘This’ often consists of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which for a document over a hundred years old has weathered remarkably well. It crops up everywhere on the internet, including the weblogs of people who claim to be campaigners for Palestinian rights. I had a graduate student in my office not long ago, a highly intelligent young man who is a member of a socialist party in the UK. He told me in all seriousness that I really ought to read this incredible exposé of a world Jewish conspiracy, which was apparently new to him.

Dave Hirsh however crosses the line into batshit craziness. I would have agreed with him if his argument about this article by Chris Davies MEP should not have made crass comparisons between Jews being burnt in Auschwitz with the Palesinian situation. Why does the fact that 6 million Jews were wiped out by the Nazi’s make it incumbant on any Jews to behave with more humanity than anyone else? There’s also a wider double standard here that sneaks into lazy thinking (which I’m not accusing Chris Davies of): the horrors of the Holocaust are supposed to have taught the Jews a lesson on how to behave, while the comparatively less horrific (though doubtless intolerable) experience of the Palestinian ghetto, according to some, lets suicide bombers off the hook.

Unfortunately though, Hirsh decides to overegg the pudding quite appallingly. Not content with a mere critique, he comes up with the extraordinary premise that if you squint a little bit, take a quotation out of context and disengage your critical faculties for a second, what Chris Davies is actually saying is that all Jews, not the state of Israel, “appear not to care that they have themselves become oppressors.” This is transparent nonsense. Whatever my doubts about the efficacy of raising the Holocaust it is quite clear that Davies is referring to Israel and not “all Jews”. In fact, he doesn’t use the word “Jews” anywhere in the article. Despite this, Hirsh puts “Jews” in quotation marks in this article a grand total of eight times. This is a wilful misinterpretation, and given this and the fact that Hirst is explicitly calling him racist, I suspect that Davies would have quite strong grounds for legal action.

How does this sort of over the top nonsense actually help anything? By all means be critical of Davies here - I have - but screaming “RACIST!!!” at the drop of a hat does nothing to help understanding on either side. It is quite simply pathetic, a partisan broadside that is intended to cause a ruckus.

In Hirsh’s commentisfree profile, he states that he “endorses the manifesto.” Yes, in Hirsh’s world, the Euston Manifesto - in less than a fortnight - has become THE manifesto, suggesting that he is not only obnoxious, intellectually dishonest and lazy, but quite unbearably pretentious as well. If this is the sort of rot that the “new left” comes up with, I don’t fancy its chances.

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