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Prospects for Monday 15th September, 2008

ADMIN USE ONLY | 10:09 UK time, Monday, 15 September 2008

With prospects for tonight's programme, here is today's output editor, Simon Enright.

Hello All,

It's worth having a read of Paul's blog if you want to know about today's story. Paul will be in Wall Street tonight. What key questions do you want to know about last nights wobble on Wall Street?

Clearly we need to make sense of this story so will need to give a lot of the programme over to it.

We are also at the Liberal Democrat Conference with Michael Crick. And have an interview with Nick Clegg. He's taking his party in a new direction - from public spender to tax cutter. What do we ask him?

We have an interview with the US Deputy Energy Secretary - another facet of the crunch. What should we ask him?

We also have a dramatic film from Afghanistan by Kate Clark which includes an interview with the Taleban.

What do we about the power-sharing ceremony in Zimbabwe?

And finally where should we take the Labour story today? The Brown dissenters have made their statements but what support do they now have and what will happen at tomorrow's NEC.

Let's talk it all through at 10.30.

Simon

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    LOVE OF MONEY? NO - MONEY ITSELF!

    As I recall, J Gordon Brown was very advanced as a student. According to the Big Brown Book of Prudence, he was an outstanding Chancellor. He is a long standing USAphile and took holidays 'stateside'; where one might expect him to have spent endless hours talking money and getting a handle on how it works in the USA. BUT HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS COMING. It was an UNKNOWN UNKNOWN.

    The world has never been where we are now. The Spanish Inquisition is but a vicarage tea party. Why is Paul Mason not gibbering in a corner, as he stares with unseeing eyes at the UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS that are now predictably out there?

    Isn't it possible, that from its inception, money and the mind of man, comprised an unstable mix THAT JUST CANNOT BE STABILISED? Global money - the more so.

  • Comment number 2.

    NICK CLEGG - SAVIOUR

    What's in a name? Nick is a breath of fresh air, but one breath will not save him or his ideals (or us) from the fetid air of Westminster corruption.
    Please ask if he subscribes to: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Would he relinquish power for the greater good? What is his strategy for avoiding personal corruption (e.g. clinging on to office when unpopular)? How will the LibDems get funds to fight dirty campaigns without cosying up to Big Money in exchange for quid-pro-quos?

  • Comment number 3.

    On the Lib Dems I actually like a lot of the repositioning especially on Europe where they have always been too "happy clappy". I do question the tax cutting when we are still facing exceptionally uncertain economic challenges that are not clearing up.

    What happened to the Woolas GM debate? Perhaps he now understands that debate when the overwhelming majority of the public reject GM is pointless.

    On Energy does the possibility of $200 a barrel of oil mean "globalisation" could unravel? Its underpinned on viable transport. Could there be a positive flip side and less developed countries prosper because local goods are cheaper? I think that is happening to an extent.

    On Wall Street its not the bank or possibly not even the money but I assume that "liquidity" will be further harmed as other banks become even more cautious?

    The Taliban story could be very interesting as they seem to be quite arrogant and open.

    The Nightmare on Downing Street is only going to get worse. Personally I think they have it coming big time.

  • Comment number 4.

    Paul Mason once called the banking system "a nesessary fiction", he may have even coined the phrase, it sums up the financial banking system and all it represents very well; a virtual reality game played by greedy financial institutions that for many years encouraged massive debts on its customers. In the meantime banks borrowed and lent to each other, and in turn find them selves not unlike their over- stretched customers and are now going to the wall... good! and i hope more banks experience this downward trend ( and with out the aid of any taxpayer bailout) .. and then we can all go back to the barter system. The economical banking system we are all familair with is actually close to an esoteric dark magic that is confusing to many.. but as long as we get the mortgage or loan, we ask no questions. A quick explaination of how the banking system works: banks lend money, money that does not exist, the customer then pays back the loan plus the interest through his/her time, effort and sweat which does exists, and if you default on the loan, they get your house/car ect..which also exists. Call it what you want but in my book it can only be called fraud, an exceptable and respectable fraud.

  • Comment number 5.

    Barrie, as I have blogged in the previous posting on the financial crash and Brown, Brown reminds me of Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny.
    I wonder when the Officers (Cabinet) will finally relieve him of command, who themselves appeared in a bad light at the inquest due to their dithering.

    At present all the so-called Brown supporters are suffering from "Cognitive dissonence" which is saying one thing and believing another.
    How is it the saying we all hang together or we will all hang seperatley keeps coming to mind?

  • Comment number 6.

    if a habitual burglar, mugger, drug dealer,fraudster etc moves into a town then the people should be told. why should habitual criminals get protection so they may continue to operate among the unsuspecting?

  • Comment number 7.

    WHO WANTS REGULATION OR A NANNY (NAZI) STATE?

    bookhimdano (#6) Because in free Liberal-Democracies everyone is presumed equal, so the only unsuspecting people must be 'lazy' people who deserve no protection, as like everyone else, they were given equal opportunities but 'chose' not to take them (more fool them...)?

    The free-market golden rule (which people democratically voted for after all) is: 'caveat emptor' (and freedom from regulation so they can make money and 'get on').

    Presumed equality is very convenient as it means that one doesn't have to worry too much about annoying details like the fact that lots of people have rather low reading/numeracy 'ages' (and that sector is growing). In fact, 'caveat emptor', the more of them the better (opportunity to indebt them).

    They should just know better. Please don't mention genes, or , as that would be 'nazi', and we all know .

  • Comment number 8.

    On the Searchlight magazine website you can read all kinds of things.

    Theres
    "...we explain why the BNP are the same old nazis they always were. We broadcast a video, shot only four years ago, which shows leading BNP officials singing racist songs and giving a Nazi salute. We reveal the nazi and terrorist links of the BNP leadership and we explain, in the "Us and Them" section, just why the BNP does not stand in the great British tradition of tolerance, equality and compassion.

    In a new section, we also reveal the nazi links of BNP leader Nick Griffin.

    The BNP is dedicated to imposing apartheid-style rule in Britain. It wants to create a system that is based on the nonsense that white people are superior to all others. Black and Asian people would become second-class citizens under the law. ".

    I like Searchlight.

  • Comment number 9.

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

  • Comment number 10.

    1.Morton Sobell was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges.Through it all, he maintained his innocence. In an interview, he admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.

    2.The US has offered USD 7m to the pirates, who hijacked an Iranian ship in the Gulf of Aden, to receive entry permission and search the vessel. The US the naval fleet off the Somali coast alleges that The Iran Diyanat was carrying 'uranium and chemical weapons' ...

    a strike must be close?

    3. MI5, the UK's internal security service says in a rare public statement that it will start sending e-mail 'terror alerts' to the public. This follows talk of unions...

    are these signs of a ' cuddly secret police' makeover for 5? What next? Branded teddy bears?

  • Comment number 11.

    THE PARADOXES OF EQUALITY AND HEGEMONY

    thegangofone (#8) " It wants to create a system that is based on the nonsense that white people are superior to all others. Black and Asian people would become second-class citizens under the law."

    If the BNP wants such a system, I suspect they won't get very far, as presumably Black and S. Asian British won't vote for them, and as the latter's numbers are growing (high TFR) they should have little to worry about. Having said that, I'm not sure what the word 'superior' means in the above context. It's certainly true that on average, the S. Asian and Black British tend to come lower in the SAT tables every year (on average) than do White British, but then British Indians, Chinese and Jews do better on average than other White British. Oddly, the people who have campaigned most vociferously and irrationally given the data) against group differences in IQ (and proxy measures like SATs - IQ tests like the NFER CAT are used nationally to predict English, Maths and Science Levels) have largely been Jewish academics, but then, maybe they just don't want too many other groups cottoning on to the clear benefits of selective, endogamous, marriages/breeding given the high correlation between IQ and SES?

    What do you think?

    PS. Searchlight is a communist (Trotskyite) publication is it not? Don't they rather like grass roots, Worker's Democracy and the free-market?

  • Comment number 12.

    #3

    Lisbon Treaty and Lib Dems -

    Their 2005 election manifesto promised voters a Referendum.

    Then in the House of Commons they staged a walk out, wanting to change it from a Referendum on the Treaty to a "In or Out" question.

    Then later in the House of Commons they abstained from the vote for a Referendum on the Treaty.

    Then in the House of Lords they voted against holding a Referendum on the Treaty.

    In my personal view they were completely dishonest with the voters.

    Are they still committed to holding a Referendum on joining the Euro ?

    Could you believe their election time promise on it ?

    In my personal view they are as untrustworthy as Labour are on the issue of the EU Super State and Euro !

  • Comment number 13.

    #8

    "The BNP is dedicated to imposing apartheid-style rule in Britain. It wants to create a system that is based on the nonsense that white people are superior to all others. Black and Asian people would become second-class citizens under the law. "

    I don't know what the BNP stands for, I've never heard them on television explaining their policies and yes their policies being challenged.
    All I have heard has been 3rd or 5th hand information, dished out by the Liberal Elite.
    I would like to hear first hand what their policies are, the same as I do any other register political party.

    Your quote that states they want to bring in an "apartheid-style rule", is this the same as Harriet Harmon wants to do in the work place for people of light skin tone ?

    I don't care if you think I am racist, tho I would be disappointed, as I believe in Equality and Liberty for all British Citizens, regardless of their skin tone or hair colour.

  • Comment number 14.

    When you say that "the people who have campaigned most vociferously... against group differences in IQ... have largely been Jewish academics", is that assetion supported by a statistical analysis of academic papers (in which case, can I have the link, please) or only by anecdotal 'evidence' (or, heaven forfend, is it 'nefarious rhetoric')?

  • Comment number 15.

    DrKF77 (#14) It's a fact and it's a very well known if not infamous one in the field of intelligence research.

    Read 'Not in Our Genes' for a start (or you could try Gould's book 'The Mismeasure of Man'), but be sure to read .

    This is a well known political issue and it's one they've lost (see the recent review by Rushton and Jensen). Herrnstein (Jewish) allegedly once referred to it as a 'liberal' conspiracy.

  • Comment number 16.

    CAVEAT EMPTOR (borrowed from JJ #11)

    If I become a shopkeeper and put 'caveat emptor' over the door, only those who know their Latin will sense that I have a cavalier attitude to customers.
    Few children are schooled in the crushing iniquity of a Britain awash with booze, gambling, debt, easy money, devious banking, devious government and 'entertainment' of a violent and nihilistic nature; they are not taught the 'Latin' of awareness and survival.
    Instead, guided by government, the young inexorably 'BUY INTO education, education, education, never attaining maturity, maturity, maturity.
    Give children back their mothers, and were possible their fathers, and dedicate the years up to puberty to attainment social maturity. IQ notwithstanding, this would launch the highest yield of non-dupable adults into society. They would be sure to challenge the evils above and kick out (indeed - never vote in) the political ciphers we currently languish under. We would have a higher calibre of MP from whom to deliver quality PMs.
    Today's multifaceted mess would be impossible in a society of competent individuals with high awareness and consequent high ideals.

  • Comment number 17.

    Then there will be statistical analyses of academic papers to substantiate the claim, no?

    I wouldn't expect bald assertion, anecdote and rhetoric to suffice for you.

    I'm sure you've said something about all of those before vis a vis evidence.

  • Comment number 18.

    BREEDING/EXPANDING THE SUB-PRIME 'MARKET'

    Barrie (#16) Do you reckon Newsnight dare ever pick up on, and run with, the empirical fact that policies such as 'education, education, education' plus almost uncontrolled immigration (of the relatively low-skilled) just serves to do the opposite, i.e. to swell the proletariat (aka an easily duped consumer base)? It doesn't matter whether this has been done by accident or design, the fact that it's happening is surely indisputable given the available OECD PISA data and our own SATs? I've said before that when Singapore tried to reverse their dysgenic trend from the 60s through 90s, the government was vilified by some amongst the intelligentsia as fascist. Since 1995, China has eugenically engineered its population and has the highest mean IQ on the planet, with an economy which is growing as one would predict. Here, nd in the USA, we have to endure voices clearly ignorant of the empirical facts who deny what the data shows simply because it . It really is usualy as bleak and as exasperating as that. The socio-economic consequences were predictable, and the fallout is endemic, extending much further than the sub-prime fiasco. See my remarks on the NN political panel.

  • Comment number 19.

    DrKF77 (#17) "Then there will be statistical analyses of academic papers to substantiate the claim, no?"

    If you knew this field you wouldn't need to ask that question. I suggest you read the references that I have provided and follow up the links. This is well researched issue.

  • Comment number 20.

    POPULATION BASE RATES

    DrKF77 (#17) The thing to take on board about (H0) statistical testing is that the Null Hypothesis is almost always false, which makes statistical rejection effectively little more than a function of sample size.

    However, the data which I've been referring to is population level data which makes inferential statistics irrlevent, and those data are easily found if one goes looking for them at government websites.

    Those who have been making out that mean group differences (which have important consequences at the tails) are not the case are empirically wrong (not that that this has ever stopped them from arguing or stooping to nefarious rhetoric in order to perpetuate an egregious, group self-serving, political agenda, or just trying to protect their narcissistic egos (take your pick)).

    In logic, some=not(all) and all=not(some), which is why what I've had to say on this matter is actuarial (look at the ethnic composition of the House of Lords by population base-rate frequency and explain how it's democractic given the school performance of British Chinese).

    Like it or not, what I've said on this matter is non-trivially true. Along with many others (see the USA's ETS report and Leitch here), I fear there will be dire consequences if it's trivialized or if it's ignored, as history has a habit of repeating itself if one doesn't learn from it.

  • Comment number 21.

    DO NEWSNIGHT DARE . . . (JADED JEAN#18)

    My considered opinion (despite my wilder postings, when in denial) is that Newsnight is now part of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã candyfloss division, such that nothing they do is about 'daring'.
    Further, this blog is disingenuous in its apparent address of outside intelligence.
    I keep repeating Havel's 'living inside the lie' but feel like an invisible, inaudible ghost, shouting warnings to a room full of overfed, drunken revellers.
    The poignant thing is that unreal money has just got its come-uppance. Might unreal 'news' (news put through various filters at various behests) shortly join money? Is the Newsnight consciousness (!) even capable of realising that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã emperor has been nakedly espousing mediocrity for a long time, and dressing everything up with son et lumiere to suit couch potatoes with pudding brains?
    But then, we know that, just as the Olympics have been reduced to money, so public service broadcasting is reduced to ratings. As the number of individuals capable of rational thought declines, so any interest the Ö÷²¥´óÐã might have in us, as an audience, falls away. After all, to serve a minority would amount to 'public service' achieved!
    So in answer to your question JJ - no. Newsnight will not dare, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã will not deign, and no flightless pig will show enough style to get me to where I want to be.
    Fundamental truths have gone right out of style. Immeasurable qualities have no value.
    Human attributes are being eclipsed by animal ones as the Asberger end of the bell-curve build more and more complex gadgetry to dazzle ourselves to the stars and nowhere - simultaneously.
    Does anyone at Newsnight know what I am on about - or give a ?

  • Comment number 22.

    Whether by accident or design, I rather think you have missed the point.

    You stated that "the people who have campaigned most vociferously... against group differences in IQ... have largely been Jewish academics".

    All I wanted was some evidence to substantiate *that specific claim*.

    I can't accept the 'everybody knows' argument, which you use above - because, after all, "everybody knows" the Holocaust happened - but we know that argument gets short shrift elsewhere.

    In the presumed absence of statistical analyses of academic papers (to determine how many Jewish academics, vis a vis Gentile academics have published papers critical of groiup differences in IQ), upon what, other than hearsay, bald assertion, anecdote and so forth does your claim rest?If it really is no better than "everybody knows" I suggest, as you so eloquently put it to another contributor to this blog some time ago, that you carefully examine what it is you think you know and see whether there is any *evidence* to substantiate it.

  • Comment number 23.

    DrKF77 (#22) "All I wanted was some evidence to substantiate *that specific claim*."

    And I listed two books and provided links to material which links to papers written in response which you appear to have ignored. These are classics. I've done you a favour by highlighting what's been going on. Over the past couple of years, the politicos have effectively caved in under the weight of population level (international) evidence.

    This issue has been at the centre of psychometrics for several decades now, and those who know the field DO all know this. It led to crippling legislation in the USA. I therefore suggest that you make a start on the literature if you're genuinely interested. It seems to me from what you write here that you just don't know this field or its history (which has, incidentally, long been the political agenda - read on fraud.

    Whilst you are at it, look up IQ and Lysenkoism.

  • Comment number 24.

    My thanks - and my apologies, as I assumed you were avoiding my question (which has been perfectly specific).

    It's a shame you couldn't direct me to which of those sources in particular proves that "the people who have campaigned most vociferously... against group differences in IQ... have largely been Jewish academics", although I take from the foregoing that it is there - ideally, as I said, in the form of a statistical analysis of academic papers - although some other form of actual evidence (ie not anecdotal, etc.) will suffice to demonstrate the numerical superiority of Jewish academics vis a vis Gentiles who have campaigned in the manner you suggest.

    (A shame because it will take me a while to get through all that reading, and I might have hoped you'd have a more specific reference to hand - I have papers in my own field to read and to write, after all - but it always pays to expand one's horizons. I rather think you'd get a lot out of Tony Judt's 'Post-War', even if it is a little breezy in places. Or maybe not, eh?)

  • Comment number 25.

    SPOON-FEEDING: A DYSGENIC SIGN OF THE TIMES

    DrKF77 (#24) 'It's a shame'....

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