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Prospects for Monday, 21 July

Brian Thornton | 11:14 UK time, Monday, 21 July 2008

Good morning, here are the early thoughts of programme producer, Dan Kelly:

"Some good stories today.

Obama is in Iraq at the beginning of his Middle East and European tour. The trip is designed to show US voters that he can be a convincing Commander In Chief, so can he? And what dangers are there in this unusual style of electioneering? What guests would you like to see on this?

In Zimbabwe, Zanu PF and the opposition appear to be close to signing a deal outlining a framework for talks. Mbeki has flown in to Harare, but the rest is unclear.

The Madeleine McCann case is due to be formally shelved today after a statement by Portugal's public prosecutor this afternoon. Caroline Hawley is in Portugal to look at the police failings in the case (she's also there for the News Channel so has some practical constraints). The piece will need to be put together here.

The heavily trailed Welfare Green paper comes out today - how would you like us to cover this, if at all?

An Ofcom ruling on Channel 4's "The Great Climate Change Swindle" comes out this morning. The broadcaster could be formally censured. Environmental scientists say that the programme misrepresented "expert" voices and has caused widespread public confusion about the dangers of climate change (they point to recent MORI polling), but do polemics not have a proud place in British culture? Who would you like in a discussion?

Guest ideas, treatment ideas, and play out suggestions are all welcome.

Dan"

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    "The heavily trailed Welfare Green paper comes out today - how would you like us to cover this, if at all?"

    Live - from Glasgow East perhaps?

  • Comment number 2.

    This was The Herald scoop on welfare this
    morning ....... plans to pilot this in Glasgow
    being shelved till after the byelection say
    the public sector unions?

  • Comment number 3.

    Another possible line might be: "When McAvity's addressing The Knesset the
    mice left minding the store introduce
    'work-fare' to get Lazarus out of bed
    and into a polling booth by Thursday?'

    Cameron's line is interesting too - he's
    telling voters in Glasgow East Labour
    has stolen our ideas .......... Ouch!!!!!

    This may reduce the number of undecided voters in the constituency in Britain with the largest number of people on incapacity benefits ............

  • Comment number 4.

    Another possible line on welfare reform might be: if Labour have no objections
    anymore to handing this over to private
    bounty hunters, why are they implacably
    opposed it seems to devolving welfare
    policy to Scotland? Frightened that the
    SNP Government and Scottish local authorities might eradicate poverty?

  • Comment number 5.

    Love And Peace be apon us ALL
    God Willing


    Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and Smile. X


    Happy Hols Gordon you deserve it, been a rough old ride eh


  • Comment number 6.

    The no is 2 ALLways has been.

  • Comment number 7.

    Purnell's Welfare Reforms come straight out of the Corporate Nazi stable. Its a bit like 1930s Germany with all the followers suggesting radical proposals to please the Fuehrer. It is the thin end of a wedge to privatize disability benefits, ultimately using the current no win no fee cases being brought after accidents. All it can eventually hope to achieve is to transfer the current tax burden to employers insurance premiums and motor insurance.

    Everyone will experience a significant " private tax " rise whilst the new " employment " companies involved will soak up any theoretical cut in benefit payments. The stock market parasites love the idea, force more low income people into wage slavery where the banks takes their cut every month. Anyone too defective to become a reliable wage slave will be starved into an early death, thus saving on the OAP budget later in the life of the population. NHS investment " Saving " even more premature babies and road accident victims can fiddle the life expectancy figures so that nobody notices when people start dropping dead in their fifties after years of being unable to afford decent food and fuel to keep warm in winter.

    There will be plenty of employment opportunities for the likes of Dr Mengele as the benefits medical advisory service is turned into a virtual concentration camp. Meanwhile the stock market parasites will be able to introduce expensive private disability insurance schemes even covering prospective children. Modern medicine and road safety policy will provide a constant flow of new severely disabled people for farming in private care homes and thus allow the stock market to plug itself directly into the remaining welfare state. Its all going to cost everyone more either directly or indirectly, the perfect Corporate Nazi scam.

  • Comment number 8.

    Why not get Michael Moore to comment on Obama's 'Commander in Chief' training op?

    The film-maker that is not the Acting Lib Dem Leader in Scotland!

  • Comment number 9.

    On climate change I doubt very much the motives of the film makers but I do hope Channel 4 aren't boshed too hard as its always good to challenge the consensus - if there is a factual basis.

    On the McCann's I assume the British police (Leicestershire?) will still continue their effort? Did the media help or hinder the search? You seem to get problems when you have a high profile media case and under-pressure police there are mistakes. Guildford Four, Birmingham Six, OJ (although I think he did it), Murat (I thought he got hell-ish treatment) etc.

    On Zim I hope that this idea of more "help" for Mbeki via the UN, AU and SADC is amplified.

    I'm pro-Obama, no vote obviously, but I would like to see some indication as to whether he is letting himself become a puppet of his advisers. Being seen to be a leader and being a leader aren't the same thing.

  • Comment number 10.

    Bonnie Greer might also have views on the Obama story - boys with toys etc trying to look like Commander in Chief material etc
    - and I think she comes from a military family background ...... as indeed does
    Germaine Greer? Christopher Hitchens
    would also be provocative no doubt as
    well if he's recovered from his last item.

  • Comment number 11.

    INFANT TERRIBLES AND CASH-COWS

    So, the IPCC (Irritatingly Politically Correct Consensus) made a complaint about bias in the CH4 programme TGGWS did they? Now there's a surprise! More publicity for a flagging cause.



    It's just as well the Lords' report wasn't broadcast then. there's no point complaining about the IPCC glossies and especilaly not the Stern Report I suppose?

    [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]


    If this lot don't drive you to visit your GP for SSRIs to treat your GAD/MDD or whatever, or drive you to stock up on booze at your supermarket, no doubt the bird flu pandemic alliance (or some other scaremongers' cause) will.



    Just remember, your misery is good for their economy.

    Headline grabbers.....narcissists (infant terribles).

  • Comment number 12.

    BANDWAGON SCIENCE (fun but folly)

    Good science is rooted in the maintenance of unbelief.
    Names like Hubble and Einstein (and many more) now have dogma attached to them; dogma with a religious certainty, YET THOSE SCIENTISTS WERE NOT CERTAIN. The lesser minds of science have sold out to certainty, they take the false view that consensus is truth. IT ISN'T. Every age has it certainties - few last. The IPCC have no PROOF of their rightness, any more than the millions who 'know' god exists, have proof. In science, FAITH WILL NOT DO. From time to time I invite bloggers to sample the alternative cosmology developed over 50 years, found under 'Electric Universe' or



    Not only does it offer a plausible alternative to Black Holes, Bing Bang etc it also provides A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE CAUSATION IN THE MATTER OF GLOBAL WARMING. Many things are now routine, that were declared impossible by consensus-science in the past.
    Much of today's certainty EVEN SHARED BY A THOUSAND 'TOP' SCIENTISTS will be proved false in the future. PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN NUMBERS, whether in the head of Stephen Hawking or head-counted in some grand gathering. Band-wagons and Al Gore presentations are heady stuff, but remember the primary tenet of Taoism: 'IF YOU ARE SURE, THEN YOU ARE SURE TO BE WRONG'. Politicians and media take note.

  • Comment number 13.

    Get Al Gore on to explain the spanner in his theory- the medievil warm period.
    I had a mind-meld with a non EU specification cucumber and it tells me that global warming is not mans fault but...its all down to the Sun ( a star).
    If you've got time Newsnight, can you do a story on that mag 'Searchlight' and expose it for what it is-a fascist hard left rag for nazi hunters with way too much time on their hands and a paranoid disposition that leaves any rational debate on immigration difficult with the consequence of the rise of British nationalism growing even larger... Thanks Searchlight -you serve a purpose of not what you intended.

  • Comment number 14.

    AA MILNE LIVES

    Whatever's the matter with Jaded Jean?
    It's a lovely day she should be on the scene.
    Why keep putting her down when we know where she's been?
    Whatever's the matter with Jaded Jean?

    Whatever's the matter with Jaded Jean?
    She's back in the bin where a sign shouts UNCLEAN!
    She's a breath of fresh air not deserving your spleen.
    Whatever's the matter with Jaded Jean?

  • Comment number 15.

    HEDONISM ANN NARCISSISM

    Barrie (#12) My 'referred' contribution above was similarly sceptical but evidently far less acceptable. Neglected infants terribles tend grow up craving the limelight. Sadly that means we get 1) politicians, 2) media and 3) a pitiful new breed of 'scientists' colluding for narcissistic supply at the expense of a) effective government, b) critical reporting and c) the pursuit of truth.

  • Comment number 16.

    Could anyone do worse than George Bush?

    What is McCain's actual experience directing combat? For grand strategy, he still insists American should have stayed in Viet Nam!

    Then we come to Britain's weighty involvement in Iraq.

    Let an intelligent leader emerge and and lead us away from the World of Bush/Blair.

    _________________

    It appears that welfare reform is more in the ambit of NEWSNIGHT.

  • Comment number 17.

    BIN THINKIN'

    Move over Jaded Jean, I want to ponder apparent decline in acquisition of basic skills in the young (in spite of supposed better schooling).
    Left to herself, Nature applies eugenics all the way from egg choice and sperm success, throughout gestation by aborting the faulty foetus and on into life by making the group (unconstrained by PC culture and law) nasty to the halt and lame and compounded by linking the immune function to self-esteem. In recent time, we have interfered with this process such that there must be ever-increasing 'poor specimens' finding there way into the world-of-function, where structured teaching detects their truncated faculties.
    (I hasten to add I would not have lasted five minutes, un-propped by modern tricks.)
    Are we heading into a crazy future where an ageing top end of society are looking to an incompetent bottom end to keep them in pads and frames?
    Are there any statistics regarding what percentage of live births today would have failed to join the gene pool a few decades back? If we had an ounce of primitive belief left, we would be in no doubt why God (or perhaps Mother Nature) is working up to the next flood!

  • Comment number 18.

    Β£17 Bin Thinkin'

    Have no doubts Barrie, when Gaia has had enough of us we will be shown the door. We will die out, we will cease to be. ("Hurrah", I hear the rest of the biosphere cry). This is of course a simplified notion pretty much following the detailed science explained in much detail by JJ. Hopefully we will go quietly and not take the rest of mammalian kind with us. But I guess that Gaia, if necessary, will generate some Extinction Event which the ants might be grateful for.

  • Comment number 19.

    BIN SAYING (DON'T ASK)

    Barrie (#17) - There are statistics on this, and there have been for decades. In fact, the eugenics movement was started precisely to compensate for the likelihood of a dysgenic trend recognised very shortly after Darwin published his magnum opus. In part, it's why Galton, Pearson, Spearman, Fisher effectively created quantitative genetics and the statistics which subsequently became central to the biological and social sciences. yet as I have said elsewhere in the archived blogs this has all been oddly censored since the 1960s even though it was de rigueur in the 1930s (Parliament was concerend about the birth rate in the war years). An entire sub-discipline (Individual Differences or Differential Psychology as opposed to 'mean effect size' psychology) appears to have disappeared from the horizon as a function of 'don't ask' political correctness. Cattell (who did seminal work in the 1930s) was deprived of his APA life-time achievement award in the 90s (and many like him have suffered from the slings and arrows of the politically correct (Marxists) for reporting the facts and drawing obvious conclusions which they don't like. It pays to breed consumers.

    For an example of just how odd this gets, check out the price of a book called 'Dysgenics' at a popular vendor and take it from me, that the author has a hard time finding a publisher for his work even today (at least one other rather irrate psychologist) has had his book 'de-published' (not to mention losing his job - and there are many like him who know what not to study if they want grants/tenure).

    There are statistics which show on both side of the Atlantic what Herrnstein warned of back in 1989. These are official statistics - the implications have even been reported in the press, it just doesn't sink in.

    With the way we live today, i.e. sending our above average smarter females to 'university', we can expect a culling of the smart through delayed or refused parenthood (in pursuit of 'the good life) and a growth in the underclass for the inverse reason. Over 5 generations, expect a 60% drop in those +2SD above the IQ mean, and a 60% rise of those -2SD below the mean, with the mean creeping down as consequence. But note - it's been happening for some time now... and it's is made much worse by 'education, education, education' for what for some, still WON'T be an obvious reason (and even if they do, they tend to irrationally argue or just get angry).

  • Comment number 20.

    NEW LABOUR'S DEMOGRAPHIC/CLASS WARFARE?

    ..it's made much worse by 'education, education, education' for what for some, still WON'T be an obvious reason and even if they do grasp it, they tend to irrationally argue or just get angry as they aren't quite as smart as they think they are. This shows up in the upper tail of the Gaussian distribution as a consequence of a mean mean sex difference in general intelligence, and the sex-ratio becomes 'exponentially' greater as one moves to the right of the Gaussian distribution (2x as many males at IQ=120, and many more at 130 and beyond). So equal quotas are insane (just as they are for race).

    Natural selection has arranged it so that on average, one sex has a smaller brain (as well as being shorter and having less muscle mass). This is sexual dismorphism at work and there is wisdom to it if you think about it, i.e the wisdom of sex inequality in power is that it makes fecundity more likely where otherwise it might be reduced. There's a wisdom here which escapes the naively Politically Correct but is exploited by those who are bent on furthering their own interests and bringing about a dystopia for the rest.

    Unless this is reversed, all we can expect in the future is even more problems and less individuals with the sense to vote against the perpetrators and even less with the ability to solve the mess we're busy creating through not thinking through what we're doing.

  • Comment number 21.

    The goose steppers are active today.

    Searchlight is needed to expose the lies of the racist far right.

    Wolves trying to dress as sheep. Pretending to be democratic in the hope of securing some power.

    Not a chance!

  • Comment number 22.

    LIFTING THE RUG

    Hey Newsnight! There is a constant call from your producers-various, for other matters to investigate. There is a constant posting on this blog of some fundamental issues that, if fearlessly aired, might drop a gnat's earlobe on a gossamer thread over the side of mega-tanker 'Great Britain' and slow it by a nano-knot in it's headlong rush to ultradoom. I begin to divine that while you are happy for us 'passengers' to blog ourselves hoarse, it really is not your bag is it? Is there, possibly, one lurking among your wasteful hoards of news-tarts (perhaps a railing scout of second camera-tilter) who, actually, has within them an 'issue-grappler' trying to get out? Or might you sidle up to one such in the canteen (you know, the one with the silly lights and hideous (ly expensive) modern art, and get them to read the pitiful cries on here? They could go one better than 'Moral Maze' or 'Beyond Belief' with a program called 'Lifting the Rug' - reality radio, down and dirty. As you can deduce I am either off my medication or at the end of my tether. The world is no longer an 'oblate spheroid' as it was when I was a boy - it's bloody PEARSHAPED. I am robbed of any voice by British democracy but you have power. DO SOMETHING!

  • Comment number 23.

    There is a certain amusement to be had in reading the goose steppers on their mission. First the Newsnight blog then ... the world?


  • Comment number 24.

    Is the book club still extant? How about Barbara Ehrenreich's Going to Extremes?

  • Comment number 25.

    DEAR WINSTON SMITH

    @11 the '[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]' was a (working) link to:

    The House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs, 2nd Report of Session 2005-06 entitled: "The Economics of
    Climate Change" Volume I: Report, published 6 July 2005.

    Which can be found at the end of the Wikipedia article on Nigel Lawson.

    This is not the first time a link to a publicly available UK government document has been censored or removed (sent down a memory hole) by the BB oops NN moderators. May I respectfully ask for enlightenment as to which House Rule was breached so that similar transgressions/errors are not made in the future? Thanks for letting the rest of the post out of the sin-bin.

    Your humble user (no wish to visit Room 101)
    JJ

  • Comment number 26.

    THINKING OUTSIDE THE (GOGGLE) BOX

    Wow! How did blogs 17-22 get past the thought patrol? More enlightened staff joined the moderators?

    Perhaps the silent majority share those views but feel it not worth attempting to express that which has become regarded as heresy, due to pc and legislation banning free speech.

    I did express similar views in my memoirs published (privately) by Daily Mail several years ago, on the basis that although I didn't expect to get any readers in this stifled age, I hope that my descendants will see that I said " I told you we wasn't well! " in the 20th Century.

    When I taught Family History, I insisted that all my students left behind some memoirs of this period; not only to fully identify themselves to their descendants, but also to prove that we didn't all sleep-walk into a decaying society; many left it protesting.

  • Comment number 27.

    #26 hillsideboy

    Exciting isn't it? The truth getting bandied about in such a carefree manner! But being in a somewhat gloomy frame of mind today I rather wonder if our keepers are standing outside our containment zone content that no-one ever comes here to listen. What we need is the world's hugest wonder-wall which all will read and, as a result, start thinking.

  • Comment number 28.

    CULT PROGRAM

    From time to time, in some branch of entertainment - such as humour - an experimental format catches on and becomes a 'cult classic'. This is, surely, public service broadcasting getting it right?

    New Fazer (#27) suggests a Wonder Wall, but I would prefer to have a radio program dedicated to stepping outside the lie, calling a spade a spade, and looking at the fundamentals of human functionality. It would have an 'Open University' feel to it, with a House of Lords gentility. No trace of Moral Maze aggression or of Any Questions grandstanding. It might start off with very few listeners, but numbers do not matter if the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has the wit to understand the word 'Service'. My guess is that it would quickly draw in all those currently reduced to misery by the standard of media enquiry.
    Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps Britain is now 'mostly harmless' - rid of those odd folk who seek intellectual stimulation and aspire to wisdom. But worth a try?

  • Comment number 29.

    Barrie, (#28) You are far too much of a gentleman for this world and deserve a much better one (if you find it please can I come too). I fear radio is too low profile for this job (although I listen to radio more than I view TV). When I say 'wonder wall' I mean I want it painted on the sky in mile high text. "Wake up you lot, before it is too late! Here's the real deal." It might work, but so few look up these days.

  • Comment number 30.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 31.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 32.

    Posts #30 and #31 comprised an abstract and exerpt from the abstract of the 2005 Lords report entitled 'The Economics of Climate Change' where they expressed "some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process" as it was then. I am not clear why providing a link to a House of Lords report or providing the abstract or extract thereof violates NN House Rules when doing the same with material from other sources is acceptable.

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