Green MP uses abuse rather than debate

What happens when you challenge the co-leader of the Green Party in one of his blog posts?

He resorts to name calling.

Take this thread, where Russel Norman gets hysterical about cellphone towers, with scaremongering about them being near children's bedrooms etc.

The bogey is non-ionising radiation, and of course the Greens have decided the target on this one are cellphone towers which are commissioned by another bogey - evil privately owned telecommunications corporations (oh if only it was the Post Office, we'd still be testing to see if cellphones are safe or we'd have our own bespoke system with no roaming to rip people off when overseas).   Russel even claims the group of bureaucrats and industry representatives involved in setting standards for such things was:

another committee dominated by industry and government departments with one health professional. A group dominated by those trying to reduce costs for telcos.

So a conspiracy of those who don't believe the pseudo-science. Playing the ball not the people again.   If these people don't take it seriously then it must be vested interest, rather than being wrong.

Now let's be clear.  I do think there can be issues with continuous high concentrations of non-ionising radiation from sources like cellphones or laptops.   There is some evidence around very high volumes of cellphone use and effects on tissues that frankly tell me just to be cautious.  However it is about handsets NOT transmitter towers.

Why?  Well humanity has been testing non-ionising radio transmitters since the 1920s, and at transmission power many many many times that of any cellphone tower.  West Auckland has been bathed in high powered TV transmissions from Waiatarua since the 1960s, as has Khandallah and Johnsonville in Wellington from Kaukau.

So I wrote:

Suggest you shut down the AM transmitters for National Radio, the AM Network and Newstalk ZB in Titahi Bay since they have been transmitting non-ionising radiation blanketing Porirua City at levels of over 100x the strength of cellphone transmitters since the 1940s. Mt Victoria has had radio transmitters on it for some years as well, and then Khandallah and Johnsonville have had nearly 50 years of Kaukau blanketing them. 

I have a friend who was part of a detailed study into levels of non-ionising radiation in Australia. A group of unscientific cellphone site phobics demanded readings be made in one town, and it was found the local TV transmitter on the hill exposed residents to much more continuous exposure at higher volumes than those who would live within a radius of the cellsite. She told them the TV transmitter and local FM radio stations would need to be closed first before removing cellsites – naturally there was an outrage and people couldn’t stand losing TV and radio.

However, don’t let science and the fact that human beings have been bombarding each other with high levels of non-ionising radiation for a couple of generations get in the way of renewing scaremongering over something that hasn’t been remotely demonstrated to be dangerous to human health. Don’t confuse it with the issue of cellphone handset exposure to brains, which does have some merit as an issue (as people haven’t been doing that).

I’m amazed you haven’t jumped on cordless phones at the home, wifi base stations at home, electric blankets (sleeping on an electrical element), the people sitting in front of cathode ray tubes for the last couple of generations (LCD, Plasma and LEDs are ending this). How many of the people who you’ve scaremongered about cellphone towers happily have any number of these devices and let their kids use them and don’t think twice about it? 

Or is this really about beating up privately owned telcos instead of a balanced rational debate about science? Otherwise you would have long campaigned for National Radio’s 500kW transmitter at Titahi Bay to be shut down years ago.

 

However, that doesn't matter to Russel.  He doesn't want to tell people to turn off the radio stations or TV.  It's a war against corporations as you can see by his response to me here:

I’m interested that a blogger called Liberty Scott seems to have so little concern with freedom. The state ties people’s hands over the control of cellphone towers so they can’t resist telcos and you applaud – rather typical Act Party position – freedom for corporations and no rights for individuals. CaptivityScott might think that the people are illinformed to be concerned about a cellphone mast outside their kids bedroom, but genuinely freedom loving people would defend their right to tell the state and corporations to move away, as the courts have done in france.

Kadin, bj and Kerry, there are of course many other sources of non-ionising radiation already present. The question is should we be concerned at adding to the increasing background level. We are doing it with wifi quite extensively at the moment. And there are studies raising issues around it. I say keep an open mind.

So he lazily associates me with ACT, and then starts engaging in childish name calling, then claims to want "the state to move away", which of course is the antithesis of his politics.   He then admits there are other sources, but that it is about adding to the background level.   This is scientific hogwash.  The issue, if there is one, is not lots of radio signals on different frequencies, but intense application of one continuous transmission over a long period. 

Sue Kedgley then lifts it to her usual heights of calm reasoning by claiming conspiracy.  Even Radio NZ must  be in on it:

The whole saga is a classic example of vested interests manipulating the policy process in Parliament. The media are also complicit. When the Green party tried to alert people to the so-called National Environmental Standard, and its effects, the media completely ignored it. Only the Wellingtonian reported on it. Could this have anything to do with the massive advertising by our telecommunications companies?

Didn't occur to her that most people don't believe the scaremongering and that being ignored can simply mean people have rolled their eyes and decided they have better things to worry about.
 
Without me responding, Russel plays the man not the ball again:

 It seems that you and DungeonScott are very proactive talking about freedom except when the rubber hits the road you are all in favour of restricting people’s rights and increasing corporate rights. the freedom you are after is the antithesis of human freedom, it is corporate freedom.

Well done Russel, you refuse to consider the issue on its merits.  You have hitched yourself to a bandwagon embraced by all sorts of snake-oil merchants because it suits your big company bashing agenda.  You can't actually answer the counter-claims about non-ionising radiation partly because you know nothing about it, but also you don't appear to have the humility to admit you (and Sue Kedgley, chief scaremongerer) are wrong.

North Korea's winter of starvation, discontent and being ignored

While the usual suspects hop on the trendy bandwagons of embarrassing the USA, there remains a story of horror, death and misery they largely ignore. 

Oh and by the way, she's dead now.  

If this has upset and angered you then go tell Professor Tim Beal, who takes the North's side on the recent attack on Yeonpyeong Island, and claims that his own observations of how well things look in Pyongyang (which is true) are representative of the whole country.  He is closely associated with North Korea's useful idiot in New Zealand, the Reverend Don Borrie who has visited the country frequently and given glowing paeans about Kim Il Sung.   This NZ-DPRK Society campaigns in favour of the US withdrawing from South Korea, against New Zealand supporting the liberal democratic capitalist South Korea in the event of a military conflict and for the full legitimisation of this slave state at an international level.  

Who knows if these men are simply useful idiots, incapable of understanding the fundamental evil and vileness of a regime that complete and utterly destroys individual thought, initiative and goals, whilst sucking up enormous resources into a combination of empty lie-infested personality cults and a futile partly racist ultra-militarism towards the south, USA and Japan.  Maybe they are themselves sucked into the propaganda and the thin veneer of niceness that pervades and surrounds what North Korea presents to outsiders.

By the way this is one reason I no longer give any financial support to Amnesty International.   Its website almost ignores North Korea.  It campaigns against many things quite rightly, but virtually ignores North Korea.  A search of its website shows it campaigns in FAVOUR of more UN agency based aid going to North Korea despite extensive evidence of such aid being co-opted by the state for the army and party.  It's only press release about North Korea this year was about the health system collapsing and the need for the regime to get help to save it.  Why would it nearly ignore a country that is second bottom in press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders and ranked in the bottom country by Freedom House?  How hard is it to get around your heads that this country imprisons small children for the political "crimes" of their parents?  

What sort of human rights organisation campaigns for aid that assists a totalitarian dictatorship the likes of which is almost unparalleled in human history for its Orwellian enslavement of an entire people?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, that the UN should provide aid to the regime's "health system"?  Would Amnesty have said, in response to the Holocaust, that there should be aid to help ease the plight of the Jews?

So ask yourself this?  Why is this starving, murdering slave state continuing to be treated with kid gloves by the left-oriented supporters of human rights (the same ones who damn Burma to hell and damn China far more now than they ever did when Mao was in power)?  I don't believe any of them embrace the Juche Idea or the North Korean regime (although some do like the UK based Stop the War Coalition), but their continued unwillingness to actively campaign against it speaks volumes .  Is it because virtually no foreign companies (the true evil in their heads) have a commercial presence there?  Is it because damning North Korea would appear to put one on the side of the relatively free, open and capitalist South Korea and the US?

Bad parenting, not lack of money is harming poor kids

"Chinese children from poor families as a group do better than all other non-poor children (except non-poor Chinese children). Growing up in an ethnically Chinese family in England is enough to overcome all of the disadvantages of being poor. This surely has much to do with parental aspirations and attitudes. It would be a betrayal of all our children if we were to say that what this group already achieves cannot be achieved by all British children."

This is a report written by British Labour MP Frank Field, who was commissioned by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition to investigate child poverty.   It has produced a muted response in leftwing circles as he has effectively destroyed the myth that intergenerational poverty can be fixed by increasing benefits.  The report in full is here (PDF).

One of the standards of the left is that one of the biggest issues in modern society is child poverty.  That doesn't mean children who are malnourished (in fact many of them are overweight), it doesn't mean they are homeless, or lack access to health care or schooling.  No, it is about relative poverty, so it means households where children don't get to go on holiday, where they have few choices of clothes, they might not have a Playstation/Wii/XBox, they might not have broadband internet access, there might not be a family car.   In fact, poverty today would have been middle class comfort a couple of generations ago, and positively wealthy for most people on the planet.  

Frank Field agreed to help the government, much to the chagrin of his Labour colleagues, he agreed, largely because he was more interested in getting results than in snarking on the opposition benches.  He has a particular interest in child poverty, but his report also indicates his own increased disaffection with the "more welfare fixes poverty" school of "thought":

Since 1969 I have witnessed a growing indifference from some parents to meeting the most basic needs of children, and particularly younger children, those who are least able to fend for themselves. I have also observed how the home life of a minority but, worryingly, a growing minority of children, fails to express an unconditional commitment to the successful nurturing of children.

The issue about child poverty is not about kids not getting enough stuff, it is about whether being raised in families with low incomes damages their "life chances" and whether the opportunities for children to develop, excel and pursue lives that realise their potential are significantly harmed by poverty.    

The standard leftwing answer is that it is all about money.  Groups such as the self-styled "Child Poverty Action Group" campaign for higher benefits, essentially claiming the solution is simply to give the parents of such children more of other people's money.   In particular they support such money being without conditions, but simply about "fairness" (as if it is unfair to make more money than others).   In other words if only poorer families got more money then their kids would perform as well as families from middle income households.

Field's report disputes this saying that the real indicator of a child's life chances is not money it is quality of parenting.   That factor above all others is critical.  His report makes for stark reading and has thrown the proverbial cat among the pigeons for statements like this:

(This report) questions the almost universal assumption over the last hundred years that increases in income alone will automatically lead to social progress. Over the post-war period we have experienced a considerable increase in the real incomes and yet we still find that too many children now start school who are unable to make the most of their school lives. It is from this group that tomorrow’s unemployed and low paid will be overwhelmingly drawn.


Why should this be so? The Foundation Years argues that the exclusive concern of the adult world about how financial poverty affects children’s life chances has prevented a more comprehensive understanding of why life’s race is already determined for most poor children before they even begin their first day at school.

In other words, despite massive improvements in real standards of living, there is still an underclass of children who grossly under perform at school and then end up being those who end up being the poorest adults (and the cycle repeats). 

Minette Martin in the Sunday Times (subscription only) noted that parental lack of attention and ignorance is a core issue.   Apparently children from poor homes in the UK hear 616 words spoken an hour on average, compared to 2,153 words an hour in more wealthier homes.  She points out that by age 3 this is 30 MILLION less words that the poorer children are hearing, and learning and remembering.   A gap in language and understanding that is almost impossible to get back.   

Field also notes the role that planners and state intervention in housing has had:

Post-war housing policy has also enjoyed more than a walk-on role. Mega developments, sweeping up communities, shaking them around, and scattering them onto new estates, often on the periphery of the towns where they had long established roots, also played a major part in the break-up of the extended, matriarchal family hierarchy and in so doing destroyed the support that this informal network provided for couples as they began the process of starting a family.

He doesn't note that this was driven by the Labour Party, and Conservatives happily went along with the clearance of the poor into estates that were away from their voters.   Field notes how little is done to make fathers pay for their children:


communities have insisted from time immemorial that men who beget children should be made to support those children and the children’s mother, usually by marriage. In a fit of what at best can be charitably described as absent mindedness, or of not wishing to cause a fuss, a whole number of governments forgot that one of its primary duties in safeguarding the wellbeing of children is to enforce the father’s financial responsibility.

Absolutely key is parents being interested in their child's education.  Field's research indicated this is
independent of the parents' own education.  The report noted an effect of the early home learning environment on age five outcomes over and above parental background factors such as socio-economic status, maternal education and family income.







Yes in other words parents who give a damn, who read to their kids, who are involved in their education and help them make far more of a difference than money.   Single parents families are also an issue as:

Fathers’ interest and involvement in their children’s learning is statistically associated with better educational outcomes (higher attainment as well as more positive attitudes and better behaviour) even when controlling for a wide variety of other influencing factors. A number of studies both from the United States and the UK have shown that father involvement has an independent effect from mother involvement and effects have been demonstrated both for younger children and for later educational outcomes.
 
However, this doesn't fit the Marxist monologue that it is all about wealth and if only the rich had more of their money taken and given to the poor unearned, it would all be better. 

Education doesn't get off the hook either:

Most studies also find that schools, and in particular teachers, have an impact on the gap in attainment between the richest and the poorest...Teaching quality was a significant predictor of progress in both reading and mathematics over Key Stage 2. Analysis of the attainment of older children showed that being taught by a high quality (top 25%) rather than low quality (bottom 25%) teacher added 0.425 of a GCSE grade per subject

In other words the fatuous self-serving nonsense peddled by teachers' unions that they can't be paid or judged on performance is just that.   Good teachers make a difference, which means setting their pay by some central government fiat is as nonsensical as setting the pay of chefs by the same means, but far more damaging.

No person who genuinely gives a damn about fixing child poverty would simply reject these findings out of hand and continue with the mindless belief that the welfare state can fix the problems of intergenerational poverty.  It is about parents, it is about education, it is not about money.
 

Frank Field's recommendations are heavy on intervention.  He wants monitoring of children in what he calls the "Foundation Years" (the first five years of life) and a concentration on support of parents and training of parents for those years.   He recommends freezing child benefit (which gives parents money for having children at all income levels, but which the government will be capping at parents who earn no more than £44,000 p.a. (well above the average income in the UK) and redirecting money towards services for children in the first five years of life.   I think far more needs to be done to change the incentives around breeding when one can't afford to do so,  and that education needs to be freed from the shackles of state control and direction.   

Yet what is more important is to finally ditch once and for all the Marxist based myth that the reason children from low income backgrounds do badly is about money (and the solution is to pillage money from other people), when it is about parenting.   If groups like CPAG really gave a damn about child poverty they would cease their obsession with increasing taxes and benefits, and engage in hands on assistance for parents who need help, and encourage people who are in poverty to concentrate on improving their own lives, not on breeding. 

How impartial is Wikileaks?

As interesting as it is for Wikileaks to publish stolen communications from US diplomatic sources, are there not similar communications being made available for Wikileaks to publish from countries that are not Western liberal democracies?

Will it receive such uncritical coverage if it publishes British diplomatic communications regarding strategy with the European Union? How about New Zealand's diplomatic communications on trade access issues?  How about South Korea's diplomatic communications about north Korea defectors?

Would it not be at least as interesting, and indeed more valuable if Wikileaks also gained access to material from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba etc?

After all, what has happened so far has undermined confidence in US diplomatic communications, but not that of others.  

Not that Wikileaks has an agenda, no.  Surely not.  I hope not.  Maybe it is more a factor that Wikileaks is anglo-centric?

Idiot Savant wrong about London student protest

I’m fascinated about the authority Idiot Savant claims to talk about a protest in a city he wasn’t in, based on media coverage he was selective at looking at.  From his post you’d get quite a distorted picture of what happened, but then he couldn’t possibly know.  Not even the Guardian and Independent articles he quotes support his distorted propagandist view of what happened.

He’s either stupid, lying or just wilfully blind.   You see I actually am IN London and SAW the protests.

Let’s start. 

He said “The UK government is currently trying to balance its budget by shifting costs onto the young, through a trebling of university fees. This will prevent many kids from poor families from going to university”.  Bearing in mind this is shifting costs from future unborn taxpayers to current students.  However, he is wrong about it preventing kids from poor families going to university as they can get student loans to pay for fees, that they do not have to start paying back until after they earn the average wage.   A barrier to poor students?  Hardly.  In fact, the threshold to repay the loans is being increased as well, but that fact spoils the tale the socialists are stringing out to justify their protests.   That’s just him swallowing the spin of the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Then he claims that the protest was kettled (when the Police surround a group and confine them) and THEN the students rioted in response.

No.  Quite where he got this from is curious, as none of the major media reported this either.

In Whitehall a group descended on an unused Police van and vandalised it, others vandalising bus shelters and ticket machines, Transport for London reported objects had been thrown at buses carrying passengers at Trafalgar Square, smashing windows.   Buses were diverted away to avoid further incidents.  Some spray painted slogans on buildings.  To be fair a handful of schoolgirls who were skiving off school tried to stop some of this, but to no avail.

The kettling happened after this as the group descended on Parliament.  The Police responded appropriately to protect property and the public, and it isn’t surprising why.  There are reasonable grounds for opposing kettling, but to keep a protest contained when it has become violent is quite acceptable.  However, Idiot Savant is painting a picture of students surrounded, kept confined and THEN lashing out - which is completely wrong.  He should know better, but he isn't driven by reporting the facts, but by his own socialist agenda.

You see he completely ignores what happened on the last protest, when students ran amok, vandalised the Conservative Party headquarters, occupied the roof and one threw a fire extinguishers onto the Police below narrowly missing them (that person has since been charged).   Does he really think the Police should stand by and let private property be destroyed and peaceful citizens be threatened and intimidated by a mob?

No.  He wasn’t there.  I have seen both protest marches and the aftermath.   I know what the policy is (and I didn’t vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat) and it isn’t keeping the poor out of university education.  This is largely a group of naïve middle class students who are bemoaning the fact that when they start earning above average incomes, partly due to their education, they might have to pay the majority of the costs of that education.   These protests are hijacked by violent criminals (anarchists who don't recognise property rights).  The Police acted appropriately.  

Maybe Idiot Savant should concentrate on protests on cities where he is actually there, or maybe he should either report what actually happened rather than undertake a Gramscian reworking of the facts to fit his political agenda.

Oh and if students want something to protest about, how about that university education in Scotland has no fees, that this is funded from Westminster and on top of that the European Union demands Scotland offer the same education to students from any OTHER EU Member State.  That does NOT include England, because England is deemed to be in the same Member State as Scotland (which is true).

So English taxpayers subsidise free Scottish tertiary education so that Bulgarians, Romanians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Poles, Finns, Swedes, Danes, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Austrians, Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Cypriots, Maltese, Portuguese, French, Belgians, Luxembourgians, Dutch and the Irish can get a free tertiary education - but they can't.


That's a serious reason to be pissed off with the European Union, the Scottish government and the whole devolution experiment.   However, socialists love the European Union because they think it can help make everything "free".