Beware Proxy Problems and Correlation Cons

I receive email notifications of new posts on the Realclimate blog, a forum for discussion of the science of climate change, run by real climate scientists! Usually there is one post every few days, so I was slightly surprised to be notified about a second post last Friday (20th).

I was stunned when I saw that the second post was on the topic of the release of internal emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England.

A single passage in tens of megs of emails has become the focus of the mudslinging. The Realclimate guys have this to say:

“No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded ‘gotcha’ phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that ‘I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.’ The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term ‘trick’ to refer to a ‘a good way to deal with a problem’, rather than something that is ’secret’, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the ‘divergence problem’–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend [sic] not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.”

I’m afraid the explanation of the use of the word “trick” makes me squirm! And to say the data were manipulated “to hide the decline” is unfortunate to say the least. The Guardian notes that “[t]he scientists [sic] who allegedly sent it [the 'trick' email] declined to comment on the email.” Well, if you ask me, they ought to be commenting, PDQ.

The ought to comment, because it’s important to get to the bottom of the issue. I have no doubt we are seeing spectacular climate change. What bothers me, though, is how little we know about past climates.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my puzzlement that the scientists are now saying that temperatures were considerably (3-4C) higher than at present during the last interglacial. Then, last week, I read this in the Telegraph:

“Louise Sime, lead of the British Antarctic Survey study, looked at ice cores to see how temperatures changed during periods of high carbon dioxide[.]

She found that during the last period of high CO2, 125,000 years ago [125 kya], temperatures were up to 6C higher than present day levels.

Such a hike in temperature could lead to a rise in sea levels of between 4 to 6 metres over hundreds of years as the ice sheets melt.

‘We didn’t expect to see such warm temperatures, and we don’t yet know in detail what caused them. But they indicate that Antarctica’s climate may have undergone rapid shifts during past periods of high CO2.’

Dr Sime said the study suggests that current high levels of CO2 could also cause a rise in temperature. She said further research could predict the affect on sea level rise.

‘If we can pin down how much warmer temperatures were in Antarctica and Greenland at this time, then we can test predictions of how melting of the large ice sheets may contribute to sea level rise.’ “

It might be worth pointing out that the “high CO2″ 125 kya was nowhere near as high as it is now – 300ppm tops, compared to ~390ppm today (and the other greenhouse gases [GHGs] we’ve emitted make the present situation even worse).

The point is that if the climate system is more sensitive to elevated CO2 levels than we think, we have to revise our targets, as I’ve pointed out before.

If the more recent Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) were real events then we need to find out exactly what caused them. I suspect changes must have been triggered in the ocean circulation. Maybe we simply haven’t yet been cooking the planet long enough to disturb the system, or maybe, as I suggested before, the continued warming counteracts the planet’s normal negative feedback response to a period of warming.

What bothers me about the CRU leak is that it makes no sense at all to me to use a proxy for the temperature record when you actually have an instrumental record (or can even construct a record from historical documents). The instrumental record should be used to determine which proxies are valid for dates earlier than you have records for. It sounds as if the link between one possible proxy (Briffa’s tree-rings) and temperature doesn’t hold, so that particular proxy should simply be discarded altogether, not just for the period from 1961.

Lots of proxies have been used to reconstruct past temperatures, which is clearly a seriously complex and difficult exercise. Maybe the scientists need to explain a little more clearly exactly what these “temperature” series tell us.

The CRU hack controversy is a bit of a shame because it’s completely overshadowed the earlier Realclimate post on Friday. A Problem of Multiplicity currently has just 28 comments compared to 913 and counting for The CRU Hack, but in fact makes a much more important point.

If I interpret it correctly, A Problem of Multiplicity basically points out that if you compare enough sets of data you’re bound to find some correlations. This is not entirely disconnected, of course, from the problem of reconstructing past temperature records, though the area of research being criticised is the persistent attempt (often associated with a global warming scepticism agenda) to identify possible effects of solar cycles on climate.

I remembered A Problem of Multiplicity when I read Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in yesterday’s Guardian. It’s obvious, now Realclimate has pointed it out, that just by chance any drug is going to be associated with some side-effects. What’s needed is to use this initial detection as a hypothesis, and examine an entirely different set of patients to see if a statistically significant correlation is found. Tricky business. Maybe the NHS (or other organisation representing patients, not Big Pharma) should provide a website detailing exactly how possible side-effects have been determined. Because if you worried about everything listed on the leaflet in the packet you’d never take anything.

Back to climate. I don’t envy the scientists their job in trying to get their message across. I’m beginning to suspect the message needs to be a lot simpler. Especially when they’re up against this sort of thing from David Bellamy:

“I’m sceptical about man-made climate change. There’s absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide will kill us all. It’s not a poison, it’s the most important gas in the world. Carbon dioxide is an airborne fertiliser. How can farmers grow increasing amounts of food without a rise in CO2?”

Quite easily. Plant growth is rarely limited by CO2 availability, since they have adapted to the level that’s been in the atmosphere for the past 20 million years or so. Much better ways of improving plant growth are to improve the availability of other factors, e.g. water and mineral nutrients.

As I see it, responsible citizens have a choice. They can either accept the scientific consensus or they can delve deeply into the science themselves. I’m afraid I don’t see a lot of middle ground.

If people do decide to get to grips with the science they won’t be unduly alarmed by the dumb things scientists sometimes do. Just like the rest of us. Let alone the myriad mistakes regularly made, just as a random example, by economic policy-makers, their political masters and, of course, bank executives.

Informed responsible citizens will also realise that science is never the finished article, but continually evolving. Quite interesting really.

Unfortunately, as the science gradually changes, so must policy. And it seems to be becoming fairly clear that our targets for safe CO2 (and other GHG) levels are far too optimistic.

Monbiot on Morality

I decided to set up some sites in Google Reader earlier and when I went to check up had popped a piece by George Monbiot on the morality of green consumerism. It was enough to distract me from “Carbonomics”.

George makes some sound points, in particular, of course, that political rather than consumer action is what’s going to make a difference.

But George has been seduced by some psychological research which seems to me to be of somewhat limited value in helping us understand moral behaviour. Taking a behaviourist approach, the researchers, as George notes, show that moral, “green” behaviour may be followed by apparently selfish behaviour.

There are various problems, not least that the experimenters used money as a reward. The use of something more directly pleasurable (a sweet or something) would have been better, since money is very complex. It represents the power to consume or to give to someone else, not consumption itself.

On George’s blog, SteelyGlint pointed out that someone believing themselves to be moral may not be selfish, but may simply believe they are the better person to take control of resources. The experimental set up could have tested this possibility by varying the “morality” of the alternative to keeping the money.

But there is a much more fundamental problem. A moral code is not necessarily rational. In fact, that is one of the least important aspects of it. Morals are all about group behaviour. Group cohesion is maximised when everyone follows the same moral code. Groups therefore try to align their morals, by policing them and by rejecting those who won’t adhere to the code. No wonder Monbiot observes in an otherwise incoherent conclusion that:

“Campaigners are constantly told that guilt-tripping people is counterproductive: we have to make people feel better about themselves instead.”

Too right. Laying on a guilt trip is tantamount to saying: “You’re not one of us”, or at best “You’re not a very good member of the group.”

And it gets even worse. Moral codes are not necessarily rational. Generally speaking they’re based on grains of truth (I need to study his ideas a bit more, but I understand this is what Daniel Dennett says in Breaking the Spell – btw there’s scope for improving your home page, Professor!) or some self-serving belief (often that people of one region or type are superior in some way to others).

In the green moral code there are numerous distinctly irrational positions. I mentioned only the other day the contradiction between using wood as a fuel in the UK (good, apparently) and in Africa (bad). I’m always harping on about how feed-in tariffs will lead to a distinctly sub-optimal allocation of resources. And the entire localisation agenda is distinctly dubious. It is nowhere near a given, for instance, that, even in the narrow terms of directly attributable greenhouse gas emissions, it always or even most often makes sense to consume locally grown produce.

So what’s actually needed is a way of determining the “best” course of action in a given set of circumstances. As far as I can see the only way to do this is to assign values to the various costs of every form of consumption. We must add in:
- the labour cost (having ensured that all are paid fairly), including research and other inventive effort that went into producing the product – because these represent someone doing something they didn’t really want to do, that being the reason society has to pay them;
- the scarcity cost of materials and other resources (land, water – unless we count this as a material… whatever – and so on) that were required to produce the product or components of it;
- environmental costs associated with the product, e.g. pollution including greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity losses resulting from production of the product and so on;
- the cost of delivering the product from the point of production to that where it is bought (or as otherwise required by the purchase agreement);
- the scarcity value of the product itself (aka profit, which could be negative).
We then arrive at the appropriate “price” for the product. The higher the price for the product, the less incentive to consume it.

In fact, we already have sophisticated mechanisms for determining the appropriate price that should be paid for a product. The problem is that the price does not include all the costs. Those it doesn’t include are usually termed “externalities”. All we have to do is internalise these costs. The debate should be solely about how best to do this. There’s nothing else to discuss.

What’s happening instead is that irrational behaviour is taking over. “Surely”, the moralists think, “we could solve this problem if everyone did the right thing?”. No. Most people will only do the right thing if they actually want to belong to the group; and if they think they’re being watched; and if they think everyone else is also doing the right thing; and if they don’t think they’ve already done their fair share; or if they want to appear to be a moral leader of the group. What’s more, we don’t even know what the right thing is.

Then, for the group to function, for there even to be a group, virtually by definition there have to be those outside the group. In particular, there are always those ambitious types who see the leadership cadre of the group as oversubscribed and set themselves up in opposition, with another set of beliefs and values.

We’re already seeing the influence of the moralists on policy. Instead of embedding green policies in an over-arching political framework, they want to “sweep away” “capitalism” or “the market economy” or some such nonsense, or, at the very least, implement policies that, by over-emphasising one possible solution – the obscenity of biofuels, say, or feed-in tariffs for micro-generation, that ideal policy for conspicuous advertising of moral credentials – leave us further away, not closer to solving the overall problem. Global warming is too complex a problem to solve by edict. Don’t let the moralists capture the political process.

NHS Nutters

The British electorate would be well advised come next June to forget about traditional political affiliations and whether or not we “need a change” and choose their next Government on the basis of the apparent sanity of its leadership.

Unfortunately, the British electorate is unlikely to take my advice and will instead elect a party which admittedly does boast some front-bench talent. But the wit of William Hague and wisdom of Ken Clarke will have to play second-fiddle to the Etonesque eccentricity of Messrs Cameron and Osborne. The key word in their bizarre philosophy is “localisation”.

Here’s a headline: “Tories vow to save money by scrapping national NHS database“. Having spent billions so far, this would seem a remarkably drastic step. The Tories are responding mainly to concerns about patient confidentiality, it seems. Instead of a centralised database, “Stephen O’Brien, a shadow health minister, said that the Tories would instead decentralise IT provision in the NHS, allowing trusts to buy their computer systems provided that they were compatible with others in the health service.”

Now, it seems to me that one reason the NHS IT project has overrun is because it is so monolithic. It would have been much less risky in many ways to set standards so that disparate systems could communicate, and implement them locally. But I see why a “key part of the programme involves the clinical records for every patient being stored on a ‘personal spine information service’.” If you have local systems, the data exchange issues are much greater.

One of the major benefits of computerisation is that patients’ records can be called up wherever they happen to be. And there’s also a huge benefit of computerisation in that the data is so much easier to “mine”. I read today of a careful study on migraine-sufferers. “Link between migraine and stroke” said the Independent. Worrying, so I read further:

“Young women who suffer from migraines with visual disturbances and who smoke and take the contraceptive pill are at a higher risk of stroke, research suggests.

Migraine doubles the chances of a stroke if accompanied by aura (temporary visual or sensory disturbances) according to the research, published online in the British Medical Journal.

Other factors that heighten the chances of a stroke include being younger than 45, a smoker and using contraceptive pills containing the hormone oestrogen.

Researchers led by a team from Harvard Medical School said there was no evidence of an increased risk of stroke among people having migraine without aura.

About one in five people suffer from migraines, with up to a third having an aura. The authors pooled the results of nine previous studies on the link between migraine and stroke to come up with the findings. “

Maybe the drugs prescribed for the migraines have caused the strokes – especially as my impression is that not so many years ago you needed the aura to call it a migraine and qualify for the drugs. Who knows? Hopefully the medical sleuths are on the case.

Anyway, my point is that with a comprehensive national database – however it’s implemented – you wouldn’t need elite medical professionals to determine correlations of this kind. School-level statistics skills would be sufficient. The big pay-off from an NHS database is this sort of data and the resultant medical progress. You want to work the database. That, I suspect, is why a centralised design was chosen. (And I haven’t even mentioned Shipman – detecting similar individuals would surely be worth the cost of a few computers).

How do the Tories deal with this issue?, I wonder. This is what their report has to say (apologies on their behalf that parts of the key passage are barely comprehensible gibberish):

“In order for patients to reap the benefits of information technology in relation to their healthcare, there must be a change in the way information technology is supported: the Executive must not regard health informatics [they're using this grandiose term confusingly - to me at least - to mean all NHS IT services, whereas I'd use it specifically to refer to knowledge engineering] as a tool to extract data [as if it's being stolen - isn't language great?] from the National Health Service but as a way of organising health and social care information around the needs of the patient [as if sharing data across the system isn't in patients' interests]. Systems must be able to deliver clear benefits to the care of the patient and the work of the clinician in delivering this care. They must not be seen by clinical staff as solely [sic - really, would they?] systems for data collection. The dataset mentality – where the bulk of data collected bears not [sic, I presume they mean "no"] relevance to patient care – should be abandoned. Clinical systems should be built to focus on the patient, not the disease, procedure, specialty or service providing care. These requirements should be met by developing appropriate views on the patient-focused record according to the context in which the patient is seen.”

Actually, it’s not just the words I’ve highlighted which are gibberish, the whole thrust of this paragraph is completely barmy. Call the men in white coats. Several of the individual sentences make little sense, but I can find no way of avoiding the conclusion that the Tories want to throw out many of the enormous benefits of computerisation. Cameron apparently elaborated the full mad starey-eyed “vision” at the Tory Party conference:

“Now I want you to imagine how we’d have gone about [updating NHS computers], if we’d had the chance.

We would have said: today, you don’t need a massive central computer to do this.

People can store their health records securely online, they can show them to whichever doctor they want. [I love this bit - not if you're in a coma, you can't].

They’re in control, not the state. [Puerile, absolutely puerile].

And when they’re in control of their own health records, they’re more interested in their health, so they might start living more healthily, saving the NHS money. [Yeah, well, now I know the doctors are going to wait for me to come round so I can log them on to my medical records, I'm certainly going to do everything I can to avoid entering hospital horizontally].

But best of all, in this age of austerity [oh, please], a web-based version of the government’s bureaucratic scheme services like Google Health or Microsoft Health Vault cost virtually nothing to run. [Probably 'cos they're crap as Gerald Ratner would have said].

So this is where some really big savings could be made.”

Well, exactly. I can save the tube fare if I walk 8 miles to central London.

David Cameron, of course, is a direct descendant of Thatcher – as if through the intervention of some kind of incubus – and for her “there was no such thing as society”. This is now dressed up as a philosophy of “localisation” – the heading in their report is “8 action points to bring about localisation in NHS IT” – who could possibly be against that? Well, I am, if it means that I don’t benefit from the medical experience of others, and the outcome of any treatment I have is not used for the common good. Hey, why not go the whole hog and give up on the blood transfusion service? We could all have our own private blood-banks.

My experience is that the NHS is already far too localised. GP surgeries are a law unto themselves. Take registering. My local GP, first of all, only accepts registrations up to 4pm, despite being open until 5; they require two proofs of address + photo-id; and, worst, refuse to let you take a form to fill out and bring back when you get there and find you don’t have the right id, so you find when you eventually do come to fill it out that you don’t have all the information required (NHS number and former GP surgery address). Plus, they’re just plain rude with it. Our taxes are paying for an army of these receptionists, who have no medical training whatsoever. This is where we should find our first cost-savings when we finally get our records out of the 1940s, off paper and onto magnetic media.

My recent experience of trying to register with a new doctor (having moved recently) agitated me so much that I thought I’d try to find out how I should be treated.

Well, try as I might, I could find nothing on the NHS website. Surely, I thought, GPs surgeries benefit hugely from being part of the NHS, there must somewhere be a detailed set of obligations as to how they should go about their business. In the end, I thought, I’ll drop them a line. But this is what I found:

“Since April 2009, the NHS has run a simple complaints process, which has two stages.

1. Ask your hospital or trust for a copy of its complaints procedure, which will explain how to proceed. Your first step will normally be to raise the matter (in writing or by speaking to them) with the practitioner, e.g. the nurse or doctor concerned, or with their organisation, which will have a complaints manager. This is called local resolution, and most cases are resolved at this stage.
2. If you’re still unhappy, you can refer the matter to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, who is independent of the NHS and government. Call 0345 015 4033″

This is simply not fit for purpose. Neither of these options is appropriate.

Here’s the first paragraph of “Things to think about when you’re complaining” (from the NHS complaints page):

“If you decide to make a complaint it’s important to consider what you want to happen. Are you content with an apology, do you want action to be taken against a member of staff, or do you want a change to the system? Whatever action you’re seeking, make this clear.”

Well, someone, somewhere has realised that I might want “a change to the system”. So why has my ability to complain been “localised”? My only recourse it seems is to write to the Department of Health.

For the record, I would have thought the GP surgery registration process should follow a clear set of rules so as not to exclude those unable to attend during the day and expedite the registration of new arrivals to the area.

Otherwise, the right to choice in the NHS is somewhat limited.

“Blair for EU President!”, say Tories

There are only a few of the Tory front-bench who don’t induce waves of nausea in me. William Hague is one of them. And he seems to be part of a cunning plan.

Clearly, for the Tories the least worst option of the credible candidates for EU President is our very own Tony Blair. But they can’t be seen to support him. Domestically, this would be seen as endorsing the opposition ahead of an election. But the Tories have few friends in Europe, as David Miliband has taken to reminding us on a daily basis. Since the Americans are reportedly not very impressed either, Hague will be “Foreign Secretary William No-mates” if his party does win next year’s election. Perhaps he started pondering after reading that Berlusconi’s support “could prove a fatal blow to the Blair cause”.

2+2…

Yeap, given the Tories’ reputation with the people who matter in Europe, urging them not to support Blair would definitely help his candidacy.

Of course, it would all work better if Downing Street played along…

Maybe the whole operation was dreamt up by a wily civil servant. I can picture the scene in the New Year:

“Good result on the EU Presidency! UK 1, Franco-German axis 0, eh?”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

Bus Fares, the Minimum Wage, Pensioners, and the Nonsense of RPI and CPI

BBC Radio 4 is more than usually surreal this morning. Unless my ears deceived me, they just broadcast a nursery school teacher asking her young charges: “What rhymes with ‘bucket’?”. Recipe for disaster, I’d say. Earlier they’d announced that “Google, the world’s biggest search engine” has an opinion. No, the company may have an opinion, or, better, the CEO, but, unless the internet has become self-aware overnight, search engines do not have opinions.

So I decided that, rather than slob about, I’d make a point I’ve been dwelling on overnight.

On the BBC London News, after News at 10, the reporting of the London Transport fare rises brought home to me the scale of the price rises. Bus fares are going to rise by 20p. At the moment my Oyster is charged £1, now it will be £1.20. That’s 20%. Previously I’d only skimmed a BBC report that noted that:

“Bus fares are to go up by 12.7% and Tube fares will rise by 3.9%.”

I hadn’t really taken in the rest:

“Oyster card pay-as-you-go bus journeys are to rise from £1 to £1.20. … and the price of a seven-day bus pass will also jump from £13.80 to £16.60 but London Travelcard prices will be frozen in the vast majority of cases.”

This makes me suspicious. I’ve just downloaded the PDF from the BBC’s report. Yeap. The 12.7% and the 3.9% are spin – well, they’ve been constructed somehow, but without any information as to how, they are virtually worthless.

Like RPI and CPI, these % increases mean little. They do not reflect the effect on specific individuals.

In fact, the fare rises are ludicrously unfair. Is this the start of a Tory assault on the poor?

The key point is that fare rises on buses are much greater than those on the tube. The result is that the cost of living increases fastest for the poorest. Boris may not realise this (Ken did, apparently), but he shares London with people who catch the bus because they can’t afford the tube.

Let’s consider first how the fare changes affect those struggling on the minimum wage. Let’s assume Mr Minimum catches a bus to and from work 5 days a week. That’s 10 fares now at £1.20 rather than £1 – £10/wk now but £12/wk after 2nd January – a 20% increase as already mentioned. Now, the minimum wage recently increased from £5.73 an hour to £5.80, that is by 7p an hour. If Mr Minimum works 40 hours a week, he’s better off by £2.80/wk (before tax) because of the pay rise, but worse off by £2/wk because of the bus fare rise. That’s right – the fare increase has wiped out all but 80p, or (200/280)*100 = 71% of the rise in the minimum wage.

Maybe that’s not incredibly realistic. Mr Minimum might have to take 2 buses to work and 2 back. In that case he’d reach the daily fare cap on the buses. But this has risen from £3.30 to £3.90 or by 18% (exactly where did this 12.7% come from?). More to the point Mr Minimum will have to pay 5*60p = £3 extra per week to get to work. Wiping out his entire annual pay rise plus an additional 20p.

But, of course, if he used the bus to travel to work 5 days a week, Mr Minimum will most likely have taken advantage of the weekly Bus and Tram pass. How has this increased? From £13.80 to £16.60, that is by £2.80 or just over 20%, that’s how. Unbelievable.

If Mr Minimum works a 40 hour week, the bus fare increase wipes out his entire annual pay rise.

On the other hand, fares for most tube commuters will not increase at all – some peak fares and more to the point 7 day Travelcard prices are (mostly) frozen.

Bizarrely, off-peak tube fares have risen more than peak fares. The way to use the system more efficiently is to spread the load more. I would have thought a greater differential was called for. Train fares are punitive at peak times. Maybe both could converge on a happy medium.

I was going to mention pensioners, who have just been awarded a £2.40 weekly rise. Then I realised that pensioners can travel free on the buses anyway. In fact, pensioners are now rather more than £2.40 a week better off, since they would have been entitled to no rise at all based on RPI, which is negative. In general the increase in the state pension is based on an inflation index that includes transport costs, even though they pay less for transport than the general population.

What’s actually needed are indices that reflect the cost of living rises for different segments of the population, to be used for different purposes.

But there’s a bigger issue. When are we going to start treating the low-paid fairly?

Maggot Madness

I was more than usually bemused by this report on the Cambridge Evening News website.

“Horrified pensioner Anne Flack, of Chartfield Road, Cherry Hinton, felt revolted when she found maggots crawling in the bottom of her black bin after it was emptied this week.”

“Another city resident, Joscelyn Carroll, of Sleaford Street, who has previously found maggots in his black bin, said: ‘I find it ridiculous that with ever increasing council tax they cannot provide a weekly rubbish collection in this heat.’ ”

[My emphasis].

Whilst I very much agree with the sentiment that the bins should be emptied weekly – I’ve even said as much en passant to my local Cambridge Councillor – the issue is (or should be) the green bins. We have black boxes for papers, newspapers and cans; blue boxes for plastic bottles; collection points for batteries; charity shops for old clothes and crockery; procedures for dealing with fridges (even if these would fit in a black bag! [obliquely referencing Doug's recent anecdote]) and other electrical goods; green bins for garden and kitchen waste as well as cardboard – that is, for those with no biology qualifications, practically everything that could support the typical maggot lifestyle; and black bins for everything else, which should be eff all.

So, the Cambridge Evening News reader might well wonder, why aren’t Anne Flack, of Chartfield Road, Cherry Hinton and Joscelyn Carroll, of Sleaford Street following the instructions of the Cambridge Soviet to the letter? Aren’t they putting their food waste in the green bins? As well as compostables (including “all kinds of cardboard”), I dutifully separate out bottles (glass and plastic), paper, tins and even batteries. There’s absolutely nothing in my black bin to support a maggot-dominated ecosystem. It contains little but inert packaging, much of it the same plastics as in the recycled bottles (not forgetting shiny Christmas wrapping paper – future civilisations millennia hence will wonder at the purpose of this least degradable of all human artefacts). Incidentally, guess why they only recycle plastic bottles? Because the sorting machine can only deal with rolly things! (Pointing out the absurdity of this was the substance of my letter to the Councillor).

Of course, no-one knows (as they say) what happens to the waste in the green bin. One suspects the answer is that it goes somewhere similar to the contents of the black bin – landfill, incineration or a layby on the A14. I find the idea that the waste from everyone’s green bins is pure enough to grow food in to be rather implausible.

Here’s what the Council has to say by way of “clarification”:

” ‘Despite rumours, there is no public health risk associated with putting food waste in green bins in Cambridge and it is completely safe for people to do so.’ ”

Que?, as Manuel would say. Rumours? What rumours? Can you catch swine flu or something from this “food waste”? The green bins are intended for food waste, not just garden waste (hey, wouldn’t it be better if those with gardens maintained their own compost heaps, anyway?). At least that’s what Cambridge Council have been telling me for the last 5 years.

“The council’s advice is to get a kitchen caddy – which is free for Cambridge residents – to collect food waste in the kitchen. Wrap all food waste in paper, rinse off food packaging, and keep wheelie bin lids closed.” [NSS* on the last bit!].

Thanks for letting me know before. But what exactly is a “kitchen caddy”? I use an old plastic food container – the kind the Council won’t recycle. It seems to do the job.

And here’s the screamer:

“Residents are also encouraged to put food waste in their black bin one week, and green the next, to get a weekly collection of food waste.”

Unbelievable. What are we saying now? After all this, it doesn’t really matter what goes in what bin?

—-
Maybe this is a good time to mention that the whole national recycling strategy is, of course, entirely misconceived. Government should simply take steps to create a market for recyclables (e.g. by acting as the buyer of last resort) so that suppliers to recycling companies buy the stuff off us (maybe via enterprising school-kids). Every newspaper, bottle, tin, potato peeling and so on that is recycled saves the landfill or other disposal cost so recycling could even be subsidised, though I’m convinced that, once established, the recycling industry would be profitable. And what’s more, you might find people clearing the bottles, cans and other trash from Parker’s Piece for nothing!

Give people clear incentives to do the right thing and we don’t need to try to run our lives on the basis of contradictory local council diktats.

*NSS = No Sh**, Sherlock! – of course!

The Perils of Efficient Diplomacy

Ahead of the G20 summit, I was struck this week by a comment by Angela Merkel, in a very interesting piece in the NYT:

“ ‘International policy is, for all the friendship and commonality, always also about representing the interests of one’s own country,’ Mrs. Merkel said in an interview with The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune.”

Germany seems hell-bent on blocking new stimulus spending to try to lift the world out of recession. Merkel is playing hard-ball, even (allegedly) trying to spike plans for a $2trn stimulus package by leaking it to the press at the weekend. France seems to agree, but Sarko emphasises the regulatory agenda, and is even threatening to take his ball away if he doesn’t get what he wants. Nicolas and Angela, hitherto badmatch.com incompatible have even managed to cosy up together.

But what are the French and Germans trying to achieve? There appears to be a G20 majority in favour of a stimulus. The population (and GDP) of the US, UK and Japan, who are all clearly for it far exceeds that of Old Europe or even the EU as a whole. And it’s hard to believe that the developing countries – including potential Franco-German EU partners in Eastern Europe – wouldn’t be very much in favour.

And surely the spillover effects of economic dislocation and political instability and extremism in Russia and the countries it considers fall within its sphere of influence would not be in the interests of Western Europe.

At the end of the day, much of the G20’s output will be just words. Compliance with a woolly agreement such as a fiscal stimulus is hard to verify and there are no effective sanctions. Countries are ultimately going to make their own spending decisions.

If France and Germany find themselves in a small minority, they will be forced to go along with a stimulus, and their leaders will lose face at home.

But if France and Germany succeed in blocking an agreement to take action, they will most likely also fail to achieve agreement on the regulatory changes that are so important to them. And agreements to establish regulatory organisations and protocols are more concrete, verifiable and permanent than spending increases compared to uncertain baselines.

Old Europe seems to have put itself in a lose-lose position. And perhaps they should bear in mind that this is the G20 and not the G7. Indeed, they may have already been outmanoeuvred (for once) by the Anglo-Saxons into a diplomatic forum where it is more difficult for them to block progress than the G7 or to get their own way as in the EU.

It could be very interesting this week. The cards are up in the air. How will they fall? If the emerging countries use the (I suspect temporary) “multipolar moment” to assert their influence, then France and Germany could be the losers.

Perhaps Old Europe is adopting a negotiating position. But the US will remember that their position on Iraq did not turn out that way. And freeloading in Afghanistan, with German soldiers notoriously not allowed out after dark, is a source of continued irritation. From a UK perspective, the French and Germans have stacked the decks in the EU for a long time. The common understanding here and in much of the world is that the CAP is an outrageous subsidy to the wealthy. The fear must be that France and Germany intend to use all their diplomatic weaponry to try to achieve their own national goals, regardless of collateral damage.

But the worst aspect is, win or lose, Franco-German obstructionism might change the mood. At a time when the world needs greater international cooperation on a host of issues.

Ango and Sarki really should take a step back and think about what they are doing. They are saying they are worried about agreeing to concerted international action that might damage their economies. In a few months, at the Copenhagen climate negotiations, the boot will be on the other foot. They will be hoping the US, China and India will agree to concerted international action that might damage their economies.

Merkel’s attitude rather reminds me of transport decisions in Cambridgeshire, where, as I reported, South Cambridgeshire District Council opposes plans purely on the grounds of their perception of the narrow interest of their own residents.

Many difficult collective decisions can only be made if the interests of narrow constituencies are put to one side.

Come on Angela, Nicolas, let’s have a bit of give at the G20, as well as take!

PS Nic, Ang, here’s another bit of pre-G20 reading.

The Age of Stupid Planning Processes

Back in 1998, McKinsey published a famous report: Driving Productivity and Growth in the UK economy (pdf, free registration required), which noted the detrimental effect of inflexible and onerous (my words) land use regulations on UK productivity. They note, for example, that:

“land and property regulations … constrain the hotel and software industries… [T]heir effects can be seen in industries as diverse as airlines, banking and general merchandise retailing. By contrast, the combined effect of deregulation in capital markets and a liberal approach to the use of land in London’s Docklands during the 1980s fostered dramatic growth in investment banking and securities, a field in which the London market now leads the world.”

Whilst the McKinsey consultants were writing their report, a team of film-makers on a shoestring were working on McLibel, eventually released in 2005. A decade on, the same team have released The Age of Stupid, which I found most notable for demonstrating that onshore wind-power generation should be added to the list of industries throttled by the UK planning process.

***** PLOT SPOILER WARNING *****

The film is based around a future Pete Postlethwaite looking back on the current era from 50 years hence, when global warming has left London flooded and the world in anarchy. Postlethwaite views video footage which includes the stories of 3 particular characters. One was a New Orleans resident oil industry worker and hero of Hurricane Katrina. The point of continuing the reportage into the character’s retirement was lost on me. I was expecting him to denounce the oil business, but that never happened.

The other two stories were much more effective. At times the film achieved what I call “cringe humour”, as perfected by Alan Partidge, David Brent and Borat. The founder of an Indian budget airline created his own episode of The Office when he berated and threatened to fire his staff.

But the film is worth seeing most for the battle of David Cameron, sorry, Piers from Cornwall, a caricature of the upper-middle-class eco-nut – and I mean that in the nicest possible way – with a family to match. Piers’ partnership with a farmer was straight out of The Fast Show. The team wanted to build a wind-farm. But Piers was reduced nearly to tears (on the phone to his mum) by the nimby country-folk – some even more upper-class than Piers himself – who block his plans.

As The Age of Stupid demonstrates so eloquently, the UK planning process is completely dysfunctional. It effectively gives people – local residents with a vested interest and time on their hands – the power to make decisions on matters of which they know next to nothing. There is only one possible decision they can make, which is to reject plans, so the process is obviously skewed towards this outcome. The critical concept in this charade is power. As The Age of Stupid shows, the reasons for rejecting plans are often irrational, bordering on the ludicrous. Since the majority of us who would benefit from a development, such as of a wind-farm, have no say in the process, there is no other way those involved can demonstrate their power than by turning planning applications down. It is utter, utter madness.

I pointed out the same problem with housing a while ago. It is entirely illogical for local residents to be given the right of veto over housing developments that benefit (among others) prospective purchasers of the houses, who have no say whatsoever in the decision as to whether or not they are built. Where did this right come from? Some of the objections to the wind-farm in Stupid were on (largely unfounded) grounds of noise nuisance. But someone could quite legally create a similar noise, say by driving up and down a country road. Quite apart from the failure of the planning process to weigh general benefit to society against cost to individuals, it gives more weight to those nuisances (or imagined anticipated nuisances, or psychologically constructed imaginary possible nuisances) that arise from construction activity than arise in other ways.

Here are 3 possible responses to this situation:
1. Confront the problem head-on: tell people they do not have the right they think they have. Take planning decisions at a higher level, weighing the general interest of the population against that of those near a development and achieving objectivity by excluding (either explicitly or by modifying the electoral process, i.e. introducing PR) directly elected representatives for the locale affected. Tightly constrain the grounds for objection, explicitly challenging, for example, the “right” to a particular view, the value of which before and after a development is purely subjective and subject to irrational fears. To put it simply, people get used to, and even appreciate, new features in their environment.

2. Spineless, self-serving politicians are unlikely to take sufficiently drastic action in removing the rights local residents have somehow acquired, so another tactic is to buy off the opposition. Simply pay people compensation, according to a formula, for the inconvenience of – say – being within a certain distance of a new wind-turbine.

3. Developers need to get wise. A lot of objections are entirely irrational. They arise, in part, because people want to feel they have power and are not helplessly subject to developers’ whims. It is essential to engage in the right way with the Residents’ Associations, local councillors and unaffiliated busy-bodies who are likely to block developments. They have to be involved in the process, so that they feel they have power over the shape of the development. I expect there are consultants specialising in this sort of exercise. We probably need more.

A full solution will involve aspects of all three of my proposed responses. Some changes to the UK’s planning regulations have taken place for large projects since McKinsey’s report. But much more needs to be done if we are not to become a nation of ever-poorer people, living in increasingly expensive houses, heated by energy that is both unnecessarily polluting and in shorter supply than necessary. Perhaps The Age of Stupid will provide a little more impetus for change. Go see this movie.

Who Watches the Watchmen?: A Letter from a Lloyds Shareholder

Dear David Howarth MP,

I am writing to you not only as a stunned longstanding Lloyds Group shareholder and former employee in Lloyds Bank, but also as a potential Lib Dem voter in the next General Election, in which I presume you will be hoping to win a second term as the MP for Cambridge.

Over the last fortnight it has gradually become apparent that shareholders in Lloyds are, for the second time, about to lose a large part of their stake in the future earnings of the Group. Details had still not emerged by Friday evening, when I realised I needed a little film therapy. I found myself in a packed cinema watching the tremendous Watchmen. Maybe you won’t have a chance to see it, so I’ll explain where the title comes from – though you may be able to guess. It’s the ancient philosophical problem, of course, dating back to Plato, Socrates and Juvenal: “Who watches the watchmen? Who guards the guards?”

I’ve grown up with the understanding that the UK government is accountable to the House of Commons. Furthermore, in our system, the role of the Opposition in the House is to hold the Government to account. The question I therefore want to ask you, as the British state assumes more control of its banking system than any other country, in the process expropriating shareholders’ assets, is simply: “Why is the Government not being held to account?”

I see the Labour Government exercising blanket powers – foolishly granted to it by Parliament at the time of the Northern Rock fiasco – to progressively seize control of the banking system, it seems as a specific goal in pursuit of a strategy to pull the UK out of recession. One hardly needs to be even a mild cynic to conclude that the electoral timetable motivates many of the drastic measures being taken – a recovery by early next year could yet keep Gordon Brown in Downing Street. Of course, it would only be right that he does now secure a mandate, albeit somewhat belatedly, since the context in which Labour won the 2005 General Election was that Tony Blair had given an explicit undertaking to “serve a full term”. You’d think the Opposition parties would be pointing this fact out on a daily basis. But no, they no longer care to oppose. A new consensus has arisen – partly, perhaps as a result of the UK’s ridiculous first past the post system – it is, I suggest, now seen as reckless for parties to go around opposing policies, or even presenting their own solutions to the issues of the day. Instead they minimise risks by manoeuvring and attempting to outflank the others. It’s far safer to blame the Government for “not going far enough” than to question the direction they are leading us all in. So we see the Conservatives unable to present a clear plan, and the Lib Dems outdoing Labour in calls for nationalisation of the banks.

Let me make a few suggestions as to what the Opposition parties should be saying. I’ll start by quoting the Lib Dems lead spokesman on business issues, Vince Cable, who, like John McFall, the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, is presented in the media as an expert only because fellow MPs are even more ignorant. As they used to say: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Here’s what the Lib Dems one-eyed man had to say to the BBC this weekend:

“The government can’t now just sit back as it has with the other banks that it’s taken over and just watch them – it has to make sure that they are run in the national interest.”

The article in which Cable’s quote appeared had begun:

“The deal giving taxpayers a 65% controlling share of Lloyds Banking Group is a ‘vital step’ to get banks lending more, the chancellor [Alistair Darling] has said.”

Here are some questions Cable might have asked instead:

1. Why should the banks “lend more”? The problem we have is a result of an unsustainable asset boom, principally in residential property. Surely, if prices fall, less lending will be required in that sector, yet the Government is demanding that the banks increase lending. This does not compute. Surely, too, the commercial property sector needs to retrench, and, in many other business sectors, businesses need to reduce their borrowings to a level where they can be profitable over the entire business cycle. Some businesses may need to fail. What are the precise objectives of the renewed lending the banks are being ordered to make? Is it wise to insist they throw good money after bad?

2. Is the state really best placed to make lending decisions? Surely the system that has developed over the centuries is that those lending money must judge how much to lend in total and to whom, on the basis that such lending is likely to be profitable. Why would we want the state to control the banks? How does this support the principle of lending only to those likely to pay it back?

3. The implication of Alistair Darling’s celebration of having achieved control of Lloyds Group (as well as RBS and Northern Rock), in particular, is that the process of insuring potentially bad loans on the books of Lloyds Group has been manipulated to produce just this outcome. If so, this would be an abuse of power of the highest order: not only is it against British tradition to seize property, in this case shares, without adequate compensation, it is also contrary to international undertakings the UK has given, for example, in ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights. There appears to be a motive, as well as a wealth of prima facie evidence. Has there been a crime?

4. The nightmare for Lloyds shareholders has arisen in large part from the decision to take-over HBoS last October. After this, and Bank of America’s rescue of Merrill Lynch, I can tell you now that no bank will ever again support a government in the sort of cosy backroom deal that the insufferably smug Mervyn King bemoaned was not organised at the time of the Northern Rock fiasco. “Why”, Vince Cable should perhaps be asking, “was Lloyds not given adequate time to perform due diligence?”

5. And, given that Lloyds did step up to the plate, why have draconian terms been imposed on them for participation in the Asset Protection Scheme? As a shareholder, I understood that the banks had been stress-tested in October 2008, and capitalised to withstand the worst of downturns. I simply do not understand why further action is necessary to save Lloyds. If it is the economy (or Government) that is being saved this time (which is what Gordon Brown keeps saying), why should Lloyds’ shareholders pay for it?

6. There are many agendas at play in the Government’s handing of the banks. Two of these are to:
(a) Ensure the banks “resume lending”;
(b) Minimise the risk to and maximise the profit for the taxpayer.
Why is (a) the concern of individual banks? Where does the obligation to behave in a way that may be expedient to the Government come from? Especially as much of the “problem” is a result of foreign banks exiting the UK. And if a bank such as Lloyds is required to lend more than its management might otherwise judge is in the best interests of its shareholders, then surely they should be compensated, not pay for the privilege.
As regards (b), how do I know that paying something around £10bn for insuring £260bn of loans is a good deal? Especially as the excess on the insurance is no less than £25bn! I understand that the loans would have to be worth on average less than 86p in the pound for this deal to be of any value to the bank – that is, before the excess and the fee are covered.

7. But the bank is being forced to pay for the insurance in shares issued at around 40p each (compared to more than 10x that much before the credit crunch). The bank is legally obliged to act in the general shareholder interest, a principle which the Government appears to be riding roughshod over, and any company would only dilute its shareholders in such a way as a last resort. This is on top of the simultaneous dilution caused by the conversion of the extortionate prefs the shareholders were forced to take in October. The purpose of the insurance is to ensure the bank survives and that the shares are worth more in future. But the majority of this benefit will accrue, not to the existing shareholders, but to the Government. “Why”, perhaps Vince should be asking, “is the Government penalising shareholders because it is having to support the financial system?” Surely the Government should be ensuring the smooth operation of the banking system anyway, not charging for the privilege?

After Tony Blair’s honeymoon period, there was a huge reaction against New Labour spin. Now the self-serving scape-goating of the banks by the political classes has gone unchallenged, not just by the Opposition parties, but also by the media. It is the government and regulators who are responsible for the oversight of the UK’s financial system. They are not being held to account.

Who’s watching the watchmen?

I await your response. Please confirm that you agree that I may make it public, in part or in its entirety,

Yours sincerely,

Tim Joslin

Goodwin and getting away with it

Kids, remember what you learn in the school playground, because the grown-up world is… just the same.

Last week, I mentioned the absurdity of the attempts to bully Fred Goodwin, sorry, prevent him from receiving his entirely undeserved pension.

Never mind that we have numerous laws to protect minorities from arbitrary discrimination.  Clearly none of these apply to overpaid, failed bank chief executives.

But before break, the kids in the playground may have learnt that in 1215 the Magna Carta limited the powers of the state. Nevertheless, according to Harriet Harman, Fred Goodwin is so evil that the law should be suspended in his case.

I find it almost beyond belief that an issue as peripheral as Fred’s payoff is still in the news. The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee is to grill the Chairman and Chief Executive of the UKFI (charged with no less a role than managing the UK’s now vast state-owned banking assets) later this morning – I may try to get away with watching a bit of the meeting, as they have their own little TV channel on the internet.  (09:45 – the actual broadcast is here, but it is either not working or late – BBC Parliament, for reasons that are unclear, prefers to run repeats than broadcast Select Committee meetings; 09:52 – finally starting late – pathetically – though it’s also on BBC News 24).

I listen to the BBC, which is to a large degree setting the agenda.  Once again I am stunned that the organisation has scaled new heights of arrogance.  Remember, we’re talking about an institution that can’t even run a quiz in a sensible fashion.  As Bamber Gascoigne (I gather Paul was available but would have gone too far in taking the piss, and Bamber had the edge as a former University Challenge compere) pointed out on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, it’s completely nuts for a university quiz programme to be filmed over two academic years!

Today also admitted this morning that Goodwin’s pension may not have been discretionary in the first place.  Now, as I pointed out last week, I have an inkling that the misunderstanding was all the fault of the school sneak, Robert Peston.  Everyone’s covering for him, and he’s not admitting on his blog that he’s misled everyone.

Then there’s Lord Myners, who’s incompetence in being unsure whether Goodwin’s top-up was discretionary or not is truly breath-taking.  Has he simply trusted Peston?  I fear so, because that’s the sort of thing that happens in the real world.  Nobody’s going to snitch on the Pest because doing so would also expose their own idiocy.

This entire storm in a teacup is of course part of the Government’s smokescreen, which the credulous media are simply lapping up.

Now we have revolting sight of the odious Alistair Darling trying to seize the moral high-ground.  His idea of humility is to say, in effect: “it was someone else’s fault and we should have done more to stop them”.  No Alistair, you created an environment – principally by allowing a property asset bubble to continue unchecked – in which financial disasters were bound to occur.

The real world, kids, is like this: very few are distinguished by being more or less incompetent than anyone else.  Those who “succeed” are simply those who manage to escape the blame for their mistakes.  Those who “fail” were, by and large, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

PS (09:56): The Treasury Select Committee is hilarious.  The UKFI doesn’t have specific information on bank pay-offs.  Headmaster John McFall is giving them a good ticking off.  Bring back the cane, that’s what I say!

(09:57): Now we’re onto the Fred Goodwin issue: it’s quite clear – Goodwin could have been fired (12 months notice/gardening leave – which would itself have likely led to a scandal, of course) rather than early retired.  But the media coverage is a fudge – the pension top-up simply wasn’t discretionary as Peston claimed – the situation would have had to have been handled entirely differently.

(10:08): Still discussing it!  The screw-up, if there was one, was that Goodwin was allowed to retire early, not fired.  These guys are completely mad: the mood was entirely different on October 11th – Fred’s compensation was not a big issue, the important thing was to get him to go quietly.  Myners is not looking very good…  But I’m getting bored.  I expect everyone else is too, so likely Myners will survive.

(11:23): It seems they’ve returned to the Goodwin pension issue many times as each Treasury Select Committee member has to have his ha’porth.  Unbelievable.