In the European Parliament the choice is to either be in a group and receive speaking time and funding or not. In the same way that people attack UKIP for being in the EFD the Tories and other parties are under similar pressures for 'group issues' too - can't remember the exact reasons. It is common for detractors to make the point that if one party is in a group with another then both parties must automatically think the same way in every respect. In many cases the actual truth of the matter is that when it comes time to form a group you have to choose which of the available groups you want to join or play a part in forming. Unlike the English parliament there are lots of un-grouped individuals and MP's. In some cases the un-grouped members are such vile and disgusting individuals that they can't actually be part of any group because people don't want them.

At this point, where the parliament is still relatively young it is better to think of the groupings as an opportunity to access the money and the speaking time. That's the incentive for us. The groups are not ideologically/politically pure and all individuals or single parties are not aligned.

What is nice about the EFD is that it stands for Europe of Freedom and Democracy.

Lord Monkton has riled warmists something rotten. What is unusual about Monkton is that he dares to get involved in the debate. Probably, with hindsight he may have chosen not to. Arguing against climate change is very difficult. Not so much because the case is certainly proven beyond doubt that man controls the climate but because the rhetoric being used and the rules of the debate are extreme.

What it comes down to at the end of the day is who is right and who is wrong. Lord Monkton may be guilty of putting a step wrong in one or two places but he has also helped provide a sensible balance against the hysteria that surrounds the issue. At the Oxford Union (ancient debating society at Oxford University) he actually won the argument and students there voted in favour of Monkton's team rather than the opposing side. On the other side of the table you have the bed wetters. Their mistakes have been much more controversial. The whole business of the East Anglia leaks was a tragedy for the warmist agenda. There have been mistakes on both sides. The UKIP position is that we don't know enough about it to make policy on it. If you did you would be either fraudulent for guessing, collecting green taxes and repressing the population. If you ruled it out completely like some parties have then you are shutting the door on reason which is ignorant and dangerous. Nigel Farage, since you mentioned him earlier, actually voted Green before. He is a liberal and his beef with the EU mainly surrounds the issues of self-determination. i.e. he believes more than nothing else that we should have the right to choose our own direction in life.

As to whether or not Monkton is a Peer. Well actually he is. Monkton is one of the hereditary peers who was kicked out when Tony Blair decided to cut the heart out of the upper house. What was done was illegal. There was no legal basis for removing the hereditary peers and actually there were laws in place protecting the supremacy of the upper house. The upper house is designed to keep a check on radical parliaments. Tony Blair had a whole list of things he wanted to do and he saw the upper house as a barrier which needed to be removed in order that he push through the changes he wanted. He thought that if he had to put every bill through the upper house and each one was subject to approval by people who were not part of his sect that he would never achieve any of what he wanted to achieve. The nature of an upper house being based on the idea that it would be made up of 'normal' people or the 'averages of nature' if you prefer - (i.e. you could never tell who would become a lord in the upper house because it was down to which ever egg collided with which ever sperm) - There is no higher level of democracy than this. 750 random people. They decide whether a new law is right for the country or not. Tony saw this as a threat and so took out as many hereditary peers as he could and replaced them with as many of his own people as he could get away with. Thereby rendering the upper house ineffective!

Because the hereditary peers cannot be legally removed they are still peers. What has been done is to remove their security passes so they aren't physically able to enter the upper house. In the same effort they have asked that the excluded peers do not call themselves peers. Monkton has not accepted their decision to exclude him or the others. There is a fairly large group who are in the process of going through the relevant legal action to reverse what they see as a temporary mistake and get their access and privileges back. In the meantime Monkton has two fingers up to them and that's it.

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Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
"Emmett is able to write fairly well, he clearly isn't unintelligent overall" - Quote MALCO - Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:57 pm

So, you're saying your principles are less important than money? Good to know....

It's money for activities and promotion. Not money to put in your pocket. We take the money and spend it on anti-EU propaganda. It's a loophole. They hadn’t thought that this would happen. The rules allow the money to be filtered through to the nations where it can be spent on propaganda. For parties seeking to further EU causes it probably isn't so important to them but they could spend it on printing leaflets which say the EU is great. For us, as a smaller younger party we take the money and spend it on promoting our argument as the rules allow. It's the best we can do to ensure our principals are known. Not being part of a group would mean we wouldn't get that funding. We also couldn't speak to the parliament so there would be no speeches.

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Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
"Emmett is able to write fairly well, he clearly isn't unintelligent overall" - Quote MALCO - Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:57 pm

So again, the money is more important than your principles.

"Warmist".

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MY COMMENTS ARE FROM THE HORSES MOUTH AND ARE ALL FACTS

UKIP in wasting tax-payers money on propaganda outrage.

And you still haven't answered my question.

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Not really random, though, is it? 750 people placed there by reason of inherited wealth and the actions of their ancestors. If it was 750 people picked by ballot from the entire population you may have a point. As it was it was 750 people put there by reason of a stratified system of class and wealth which they had every incentive to protect.

"What it comes down to at the end of the day is who is right and who is wrong. Lord Monkton may be guilty of putting a step wrong in one or two places but he has also helped provide a sensible balance against the hysteria that surrounds the issue. At the Oxford Union (ancient debating society at Oxford University) he actually won the argument and students there voted in favour of Monkton's team rather than the opposing side. "

Yes. Which is a classic example of why a debate forum is not how we decide science. It's a job for evidence, not rhetoric. That's why you'll see those on the evidence-light side of a factual "controversy", viz. Creationists, Anti-Vaccine alarmists, Homeopaths and Alt-Med kooks &c. calling for debates to settle issues. The debate format allows them to eliminate the gap in evidence. That's why the aforementioned also win debates, despite being obviously, provably, demonstrably wrong in real, factual terms. The case with Monkton may not be as clear cut, but citing debate wins as proof of a scientific thesis is, for the reason stated, for the fucking birds.

"The whole business of the East Anglia leaks was a tragedy for the warmist agenda."

I wouldn't say so. In the cold light of day, when the dust settled, extensive investigation revealed that the scientists in question had done nothing untoward, dodgy or fraudulent. They were guilty of (gasp!) informality in private communication, the absolute bastards. Sure, there'll be those who'll happily cite over and over again the (non-specific) accusations of (again, unspecified) wrong-doing "proven" (actually, comprehensively debunked on investigation) by the leaks. They'll be on a par with those who parrot other such mythical wrongdoings, like Christmas being replaced with Winterval, or how the EU are forcing new rules on bananas. That is to say, a bundle of credulous fuckwits who can safely be ignored by anyone with two brain-cells to rub together.

Rather, if we have to talk about who the "scandal" looks bad on, it'd be the folks who produced a bunch of wholly innocuous e-mails of personal and private correnspondance they'd nicked like a rabbit from a hat, a holy grail. And then looked through it, and found next to shot all to complain about, really. Even at the time, the accusations levelled were piss-weak. And this was from motivated, ideologically driven folk trying to find problems.

"Look, this proves they're all liars, and doing bad things"
"Really? What lies and what bad things?"
"Erm,erm, yeah, they use the word "trick" as a synomym for technique", and they exclude something called bad data
"Aye, grand, Big Lad. That's me convinced, so. That's a fuckin' swiss watch you've got there"

If you can cite a single example of actual wrongdoing revealed by Climategate, though, or construct a response to the paucioty of concrete evidence of wrongdoing it "exposed", not involving some kind of "establishment" "conspiracy" or somesuch evidence-free bollocks, £50 to the charity of your choice.

Massively disappointing, Emmett. Not one opinion out of place. You towed the party line like a good little boy and you used insults and cheap shots while doing so. Warmists? Bed wetters? Pathetic. If you can't even make a position statement without getting derogatory, don't bother.

Monckton is plainly and simply wrong. He's been caught out repeatedly. And as been stated, winning a debate on something does not make your opinion fact or alter the true facts of the situation.

You don't "give it straight", you unthinkingly reel off what you've been told to say by party superiors. Don't kid yourself you're even slightly different to any other party political type in the "three old parties" or any other. You're just another drone.

As I say, massively disappointing.

Oh dear.

Yes Emmett, arguing against climate change is very difficult, like seeing what acid tastes like, very dangerous and mind bogglingly stupid!

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'Because we've reached the limits of what rectal probing can teach us'

Not to mention those awkward facts.

Being as I had a quieter morning than I thought work-wise, I decided what the heck:


Being poorly informed - just what everyone wants in a politician.



So what if there are ungrouped, unpleasant people? You want brownie points for not being chums with them? Fact: your lot are in a group with some unpleasant people. So unpleasant, that members of your party have left those groups and indeed one has had the whip withdrawn (partly for that, partly for the accusations she made of homophobia and the sexual discrimination case she brought against members of your party. Which, as I'm sure you know, she won). As you've told us, the reason for being in groups is access to money and speaking time. So what impression do you think all that leaves us with, other than money is more important than principle, and stepping out of line gets you thrown out of the club?



Aah, how sweet. Does that excuse the corruption, nepotism and extremism in the Slovak party? The racism and xenophobia shown by some members of Lega Nord? The anti-semitism and homophobia of the Popular Orthodox Rally? etc. No one has suggested UKIP think the same. Just distaste that they're comfortable being in the same club for reasons you yourself have stated are simply about money and speaking time.



Yes, he has riled "warmists" something rotten. You know why? He takes their work, because he has done none of his own, deliberately misinterprets it and misunderstands it, and repackages it unreviewed through his own publishing front as "evidence" for his opinion. If someone was doing that to publish pro-EU academic articles, you'd be at their throats, but apparently it's fine for him to do it.

You know what's worse than "shutting the door on reason"? (whatever that soundbite is supposed to mean.) Ignoring evidence because you can't be bothered to change or because it doesn't suit you. Or because you don't understand and can't be bothered to listen to people that do. I don't actually care whether Monckton is just an idiot, or selfish, or lazy, or paid off by Koch Industries or all those things. I care about the fact he abuses a position of wealth and (some) influence to spread misinformation and confusion about a vitally important and very complex issue.

Oh, and the accusation was never whether he was a peer or not. It was that he was claiming he was something he was not - a member of the House of Lords (and as an aside, you clearly don't understand what "random" means if you think selection for the Lords is in any way a random process). He's even got in trouble because he used a logo a bit like the House or Lords one on his personal stationary, which suggests a truly hilarious level of vanity and desperation for recognition and credibility:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010 ... rds-claims

Oh, and here are a few links to people completely demolishing his "science". And I don't mean debating, I mean dismantling:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-response.pdf

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05 ... bunked.php

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... ipulation/

There are plenty, plenty, plenty more where they came from because he's made the habit of being wrong an awful lot. And just a reminder - he's not a scientist. He has no training in the field at all, let alone in climate science. He is not an expert (or indeed a nobel laureate as he once claimed, or a science adviser to Mrs Thatcher). And when he gets caught, does he fight back with evidence and data? No, he threatens legal action, demands apologies and retractions, and tries to start letter-writing campaigns to get people like John Abraham (who's dismantling of Monckton's claims is absolutely meticulously done and incredibly airtight) disciplined by his institution. Yes, what a debating hero he is, eh? Lucky he didn't lose in Oxford - he'd probably have demanded his opponent be arrested.

What's unusual about Monckton is not that he gets involved in the debate, it's that he's so spectacularly ham-fisted in the way he goes about everything. Still, good bloke to have on board eh?