FlyTheNest

Angela Rayner
‏@AngelaRayner

Tory mess on #Windrush the arrogant dismissal of parliament on #Syria bombing, a big defeat in the Lords on #Brexit tonight, Parliamentary investigation into the health secretary. A year ago the PM announced a general election after a walk, maybe time for another walk l think?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... orbyn-says" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/ne ... view-55851" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tarquin checling lawmower o.k. ready for Cable,Truss and Dale,invasion.

(Question Time)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... are_btn_tw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... CMP=twt_gu" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Morning all.

'Er indoors and my 32nd wedding anniversary today so we're off to Kew Gardens courtesy of tickets bought for Mother's Day by our daughter.

Have a great time.

30th "Anniversary" of first meeting 'Er now "upstairs" today as it happens.Her initial reaction was "strange man"when I say "initial"...

Can't remember why I was hopping and wearing a teacosy on my head,but I a sure there was a good reason.

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:Angela Rayner
‏@AngelaRayner

Tory mess on #Windrush the arrogant dismissal of parliament on #Syria bombing, a big defeat in the Lords on #Brexit tonight, Parliamentary investigation into the health secretary. A year ago the PM announced a general election after a walk, maybe time for another walk l think?

She is good, you know.

Welfare critic under fire after correcting ‘shockingly bad’ errors

‘Junk science’?: author defends paper arguing that the welfare state stimulates the growth of the ‘employment-resistant personality profile’
An academic who argues that the welfare state will stimulate the growth of an “employment-resistant personality profile” by increasing the number of children born into unemployed households has published corrections to one of his papers, prompting one critic to label his work “junk science”.


The 2013 paper, “Personality and occupational markers of ‘solid citizenship’ are associated with having fewer children”, was published in Elsevier’s Personality and Individual Differences. Dr Perkins, lecturer in the neurobiology of personality at King’s College London, and five co-authors looked at two existing studies, including one on the honourable/non-honourable discharge status of about 15,000 men who served in the US military during the late 1960s.

The authors found that the non-honourably discharged men “fathered significantly more children and also experienced significantly greater unemployment” than those honourably discharged.

But a corrigendum, published last month, makes clear that, in the summary of results in the main text, the interpretation of adjusted R-squared, a measure of goodness of fit, was overstated by a factor of 10 on two occasions.

For example, adjusted R-squared in the model predicting risk of unemployment in relation to discharge status was stated as “.031 or 31 per cent of the variance in risk of unemployment” in the original paper. But this should be changed to “.031 or 3.1 per cent”, the corrigendum says.

The corrigendum also corrects a number of references in tables to “p < 0.000” to “p < 0.001”.

Dr Perkins and his co-authors concluded in the paper that their results “provide support for previous findings…that the human personality profile in developed countries such as the USA may be gradually evolving by natural selection towards lower levels of personality traits that predispose an individual to be a solid citizen”.



In 2016, a lecture by Dr Perkins at the London School of Economics was postponed after fears that it might be disrupted by disability activists, before later going ahead.

Toby Young wrote in The Spectator that year that Dr Perkins had become a victim of “liberal McCarthy-ism”. Jenni Russell, writing in The Times, praised Dr Perkins for “at least daring to think the unthinkable”.

Andy Fugard, senior lecturer in social science research methods at Birkbeck, University of London, was the first to highlight the errors. He said that it was “shockingly bad” that they had made it into a peer-reviewed journal.

“The relationships between the variables that he [Dr Perkins] looks at are just tiny,” Dr Fugard added. “Because the data that he used had such a big sample size, then basically pretty much everything will be statistically significant.”

Dr Fugard said that Dr Perkins “leans a lot” on the findings of this paper for the arguments in The Welfare Trait.

Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s, said that the paper’s conclusions were drawn “on the basis of the most astonishingly flimsy, indirect and, it turns out, flatly erroneous evidence”.

He added that some journalists “appear to be quite happy to validate and promote obviously junk science when it supports their ideological position

3m ago 11:01
Jessica Elgot


John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has been at the heart of the City this morning pledging a “new start” for Labour’s relationship with the finance industry, though he warned that bankers may not like Labour’s policies on income tax, corporation tax or a financial taxation tax.

McDonnell said that Brexit was one issue where Labour and the financial services industry had aligned interests, saying the party was disappointed that economic factors had fuelled the leave vote. He said:

I think few people now dispute that these economic failures also contributed to the vote for Brexit in 2016, which we deeply regret. (Politics Live, Guardian)

Leaving it (accidentally?) rather open to interpretation which bit "we deeply regret"!

Seems fairly clear to me?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 11941.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In his article Mr Khan wrote: “It’s right that the Prime Minister has apologised, but the impression has been created that this disgraceful episode is an anomaly – which simply isn’t true.
“Instead it is the product of deliberate and consistent behaviour from a party that is increasingly willing to treat all immigrants and refugees with suspicion and hostility, and to fuel division within our communities for their own political gain.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... zi-germany" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"May's immigration policy seen as 'almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany'"

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Seems fairly clear to me?

I do see what PF means

He could be deeply regretting the economic failures.

He could be deeply regretting the Brexit vote.

Or, he could be deeply regretting that people voted Brexit because they thought it would be better for the economy.

My first reading was the last interpretation. The "we" is a bit odd too. We Labour? We the country? We the Remain campaigners?

tinybgoat wrote:https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... zi-germany
"May's immigration policy seen as 'almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany'"

I saw Kerslake on Newsnight last night, it's reasonable to assume that most of the ministers concerned were Lib Dems, right up to the point where they voted for it, but I wondered if Osborne might have been against it as well. You can dismiss his ES editorial as his usual animosity to May but the 'hostile environment' might have been where that started, he is known to be socially liberal.
You can only marvel at his brass neck.

The treatment of the Windrush generation was not a mistake or an oversight by an unwieldy bureaucracy.

It results from a deliberate act of policy. It was Mrs May, as Home Secretary, who pursued a relentless drive to make life in Britain impossible for those who, her department believed, were here illegally — all in pursuit of an arbitrary and elusive target of reducing net migration to below 100,000.

gilsey wrote:

tinybgoat wrote:https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... zi-germany
"May's immigration policy seen as 'almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany'"

I saw Kerslake on Newsnight last night, it's reasonable to assume that most of the ministers concerned were Lib Dems, right up to the point where they voted for it, but I wondered if Osborne might have been against it as well. You can dismiss his ES editorial as his usual animosity to May but the 'hostile environment' might have been where that started, he is known to be socially liberal.
You can only marvel at his brass neck.

The treatment of the Windrush generation was not a mistake or an oversight by an unwieldy bureaucracy.

It results from a deliberate act of policy. It was Mrs May, as Home Secretary, who pursued a relentless drive to make life in Britain impossible for those who, her department believed, were here illegally — all in pursuit of an arbitrary and elusive target of reducing net migration to below 100,000.

TMay just wanted warm bodies . Anyone would do. Even better if they were useless mouths meriting pensions, OA care, and NHS treatment. And black too !

I've always found Jonathan Cook very reliable --

" So the Guardian appears to have intentionally blocked its readers from learning about the Fisk report, even though it is highly relevant to an informed debate about western actions in Syria, actions that are themselves part of a political debate being led by Corbyn. Denying this information to its readers means the Guardian is actually helping to weaken Corbyn in his battle to hold May to account.

But it does not end there. The Guardian does briefly reference Fisk, it just does so without naming him. At the same time, the Guardian seeks to discredit his reporting using the very same, highly compromised sources that have been relied on till now from Douma. In short, the Guardian appears to be carrying out a damage limitation operation, refusing to report transparently Fisk’s revelations in an attempt to shore up the existing narrative rather than test it against the new narrative offered by Fisk."

/fisk-puts-to-test-the-free-press-myth-in-douma/


https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018 ... -in-douma/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

moonofalabama.org/2018/04/syria-who-holds-up-the-opcw-investigation-in-douma.html#more

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/sy ... .html#more" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The line-up of sceptics also includes a former First Sea Lord and a Maj Gen commander of UK Special Forces --

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-gas.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Perhaps, just perhaps, Jeremy Corbyn was right in not supporting immediate reprisals !

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Seems fairly clear to me?

So which of the possibilities are you going for?

38m ago 14:24
Lunchtime summary

Theresa May next week faces a show of support from MPs fighting to keep the UK in a customs union with the EU, after 10 select committee chairs tabled a motion that will force a vote on the issue.
(Politics Live, Guardian)

This is very (probably deliberately?) strangely (deliberately misleadingly?) worded, too! Makes it sound as though Theresa May is to be given a show of support from those MPs mentioned - when the opposite is the case.

"We regret that these economic failures contributed to Brexit"

(the "we" there could be an admission that Labour governments were also complicit in them)

There's a pretty damning time-liney thing, over at the Guardian's Politics Live, on the "Go Home" vans.







Edited - typo

https://labour.org.uk/issues/housing-for-the-many/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Housing for the many"


You can respond.

HindleA wrote:https://labour.org.uk/issues/housing-for-the-many/

"Housing for the many"


You can respond.

OK I will.

Not sure housing for the many works for me. Houses for the many?

May is in trouble.

Even BBCLauraK says the episode is "extremely awkward" for her.

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:May is in trouble.

Even BBCLauraK says the episode is "extremely awkward" for her.

Which "episode" is this then? There a few possibilities to choose from right now, after all.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:May is in trouble.

Even BBCLauraK says the episode is "extremely awkward" for her.

Which "episode" is this then? There a few possibilities to choose from right now, after all.

Indeed.

I think Windrush.

Twitter is alive with a clip from May in the Commons a few years back saying "Deport now, deal with appeals later", which doesn't show her in the best of lights!

Question Time 2004

Question: “Has the government lost control of its immigration policy?”

Theresa May: “Yes I think the government has lost control of its immigration and asylum policy. Frankly I think we see a degree of chaos in what is happening and what is perfectly clear from what has taken place and been admitted by the Government and by Beverley Hughes in particular at the beginning of this week is that we have in this Government Ministers who simply don’t know what is going on in their Department, we have Departments that deny the truth and have to have it dragged out of them.”

David Dimbleby: “What’s the political remedy?”

Theresa May: “I think there are two things. I do think Beverley should resign as Minister on this particular issue. And I find it absolutely extraordinary that she has said in front of the Select Committee and in the House of Commons she blamed officials in her Department for this particular decision having been taken.

“I find it extraordinary that a Minister isn’t willing just to step up to the plate and take responsibility and it seems to me that you don’t have to take a Ministerial job, you don’t have to take the care and the extra pay and so forth. But when you do there is responsibility that has to be taken with it. And I’m actually sick and tired of Government Ministers in this Labour government who simply blame other people when something goes wrong and are not willing to take responsibility for what is happening under this government and their decisions.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/th ... 6.html?amp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"Stop being so hard on Theresa May – we all make mistakes. Some of us spill lemonade, others accidentally deport people"

But we should probably be gracious, and accept the prime minister’s apology. To start with, this was all a long time ago. She defended the decision to deny Albert Thompson’s cancer treatment as far back as March, almost a month ago, when times and attitudes were different.

(Mark Steel)

And there you have it

Jessica Elgot
‏@jessicaelgot
2m2 minutes ago
More
How does one apply to be the next leader of the Commonwealth? @JohnJCrace would like to know if there's still time for a late application

Which FTN member(s) should apply?

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:Jessica Elgot
‏@jessicaelgot
2m2 minutes ago
More
How does one apply to be the next leader of the Commonwealth? @JohnJCrace would like to know if there's still time for a late application

Which FTN member(s) should apply?

My application has already been rejected. Apparently, I'm overqualified in the Common department and underqualified on the Wealth front. Previous applicants need not reapply, I'm told.





Edited - typo

Some decent opportunities to unseat Tory councillors tonight. Just three, but all Con defences

Can't read further than the headline and the beginning of the story, but still - from the telegraph

Exclusive: EU rejects Theresa May's Brexit Irish border solution as doubts grow over whether UK can leave customs union

The EU has comprehensively rejected British proposals for avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland in a move which will cast serious doubt on the UK’s ability to leave the customs union, The Telegraph has learned.
Senior EU diplomatic sources said that Mrs May’s plan for avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland was subjected to a “systematic and forensic annihilation” this week at a meeting between senior EU officials and Olly Robbins, the UK’s lead Brexit negotiator.
“It was a detailed and forensic rebuttal,” added the source who was directly briefed on the meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. “It was made clear that none of the UK’s customs options will work. None of them.

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FRIDAY'S TELEGRAPH: Ireland Brexit proposal in tatters #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers (via @hendopolis)

@Adam

snap

This sounds fun...

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Heather Stewart
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More Heather Stewart Retweeted Cllr Arjun Mittra
Blimey, looks like it's all kicking off in Barnet tonight: deselected Tory councillor hits out at "hard Brexit" leadership of his own party; says the vast Capita outsourcing contract is "falling apart at the seams". Gift for Labour...

Outsourcing "falling apart at the seams"?

Surely not - I can't believe it...

Question Time was in Chesterfield tonight. And we had Emily Thornberry (again) being her bullish self not making many friends and essentially sticking two fingers up to a somewhat hostile audience which I kind of admired. Her problem I think is her legal background means she's perfectly happy to go into nuances and technicalities rather than keeping it simple, which is admirable but often fruitless when confronted by the great British public. For the government we had her opposite in Liz Truss, who did her very best impersonation of a slightly worried looking rubbish muppet. At no point was I convinced she was an actual conscious human being. I don't know why someone would create a slightly worried and vacant looking puppet but it would seem they have and now it's a minister in a Conservative government which should probably concern us all.

Also on the bill was Vince Cable who, much as I like the guy because he was nice to me once in a previous life, said absolutely nothing of consequence. And Iain Dale, who does what all right wing commentators do on QT, which is tone themselves down and play to the audience as a concerned man of the people.

Which leaves the star of the show, Guardian journalist Nesrine Malik, who sat back, took the whole thing in her stride, and said what needed to be said. A very impressive lady.

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit- ... fixes/amp/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
" EU rejects UK’s post-Brexit customs fixes for Northern Ireland"

Responding to EU diplomats’ skepticism to the U.K.’s customs proposals, a U.K. official said: ‘We have put two sensible and practical solutions on the table and are working constructively towards getting this solved by October. We’re just waiting for the Commission to engage with the same spirit of cooperation.”