WhirledView

The Lady in Red versus the Man in the Clown Suit

By Patricia H Kushlis

Last spring when I was in London, I watched the run-ups to the British local elections in April and the Brexit referendum in June. The politicians who most impressed me were the up-and-comers - human rights lawyer, Sadiq Khan who was elected mayor of London, Muslim son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver and seamstress mother, and three very smart and articulate Scottish women including Nicola Sturgeon, head of the Scottish National Party.

The least impressive were the silver tongued Nigel Farage and eccentric former London mayor Boris Johnson who lied their way to an outcome they had not expected and were completely ill-prepared to handle - leaving the clean-up to a woman, in this case, Theresa May, elected the new head of the Tory Party in the wake of Cameron’s biggest colossal blunder of his life. The Tory Party needn’t have held the referendum in the first place: it was an intra-party feud, should have stayed that way and Labour, under Corbyn, didn’t bail them out for a change.

On the other side of the aisle, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s left wing leader who was recently re-elected by a vote of party members, was about as impressive as Farage and Johnson, just far less glib.

Fast-forward to fall 2016 and the US.

Donald Trump, the GOP presidential candidate, comes across as the third clown in the third ring of Barnum and Bailey’s three ring circus. But circus clowns intentionally make mistakes to make the audience laugh. The best ones draw sympathetic laughter - don’t we all make mistakes and hope that those observing us in the process are forgiving - laughing with us, not at us. Trump, in comparison, draws attention to himself - well apparently to draw attention to himself presumably under the misapprehension that any free publicity is good publicity regardless of the kind.

That may work for golf courses, but not for elections. Then he blames everyone but himself when his behavior produces the laughing at, not laughing with, kind as happened most recently during his first debate with Hillary Clinton. Yet no one on the GOP side of the aisle had been able to counter him effectively resulting in his unlikely nomination.

What made Trump think that he, a novice to debate and US policies and politics, could amble in unprepared and score simply by throwing spit balls at an experienced well schooled lawyer and former cabinet secretary who had studied and practiced assiduously before appearing on the stage? Let’s face it, American women still face gender discrimination as they climb that professional ladder and the best way - and perhaps only way - to overcome it is to be better prepared and experienced than the men against whom they are competing. What did Trump expect? For the first time he had met more than his match.

As it turned out, his performance was an embarrassment to the country - not to mention the party, his campaign staff and his own family - and polls are now reflecting that voters are catching on.

But how accurate are the polls? They weren’t in the UK in June. Or does it matter? Is Donald Trump being held to a different standard simply because he is a political novice even at his advanced age?  

The problem is that a Trump presidency is no laughing matter and there are still five weeks to go in this seemingly interminable election cycle. He has important, if unsavory, allies including the men in the Kremlin, the publisher of WikiLeaks as well as the same men who brought Brexit upon Britain in June. So who knows what spit balls he’ll find in his arsenal to lob during the next few weeks.

Yet, the man is totally unqualified for the oval office - and media investigative reporting finally is underscoring his lack of qualifications and temperament for business as well as politics. Is it any surprise that the Democrats are having their best month in terms of fund-raising - taking full advantage of Citizen’s United which the GOP brought upon this country thinking albeit erroneously that it would be to its benefit? So who’s having the last laugh now?

Trump should never  have won the GOP nomination but the fact that he did tells a lot about the strange state of that party’s coalition of very wealthy business men and under-educated, angry white males who have come to dominate its two wings. From an ideological perspective, this makes no sense at all. It’s purely tactical - and in the past the former have controlled the latter but not this time around.

Nevertheless, perhaps if the GOP nominating committee had simply set a couple of basic requirements - namely anyone running for the GOP nomination would need to agree to public release of his or her tax returns plus make public the results of a thorough physical (including mental stability) conducted at a place like Walter Reed or another top tier hospital like the Mayo Clinic before a candidate could become a candidate the GOP would be set to take over the White House in January. Come to think of it, shouldn’t these also be qualifications for all presidential candidates in the future including of course, the Democrats but the minor parties as well?

 

Letter from London

By Patricia H Kushlis

London May 8. I spent May Day in London including ten minutes or so observing what amounted to a minuscule Socialist Workers demonstration whose participants had assembled on a small green near Karl Marx’s house in Islington and the pub across the street where, I was told, Marx and Lenin met. The demonstration also took place in front of the London Philharmonic Society’s office. A curious juxtaposition to say the least.

I saw the demonstration enroute to a far more popular sort of walking street next to Spa Lane where sidewalk cafes served fresh squeezed orange juice, lattes and baked goods and provided sunny respites from this year’s frigid spring. I can only presume that a far larger workers’ demonstration had been organized for Hyde Park or somewhere else because if this was the best the Far Left can now do, it might as well hang up its banners and go home.

Meanwhile, British politics seemed consumed with itself but not in the ways I would have expected. Last week’s Tempest in a Teapot story involved a couple of ill-considered comments on Facebook by a young Labour MP. They were certainly anti-Israeli government policies but were also being considered to have  anti-Semitic overtones.  Regardless, not a good thing to have had happen in the run-up to Britain’s local elections but my guess is that the pre-election fervor had something to do with the public revelations. 

The young woman's FB posts were made a couple of years before she first ran for office. So take heed if you haven’t already figured this one out: the Internet is like living in a fishbowl. Think of the unintended consequences before you write even to your nearest and dearest friends.

Her most offensive observation with which the media made hay?

That the state of Israel should be picked up and dropped into the US. Well, not a smart thing to write on Facebook or elsewhere especially in a country where its Jewish population has been a respected part of the society for generations - but still it’s far from wishing for the return of the Holocaust.

It’s certainly embarrassed the Labour leadership if that’s the goal of whomever resurrected the FB comments but should it really have be the lead story 24/7 for a week when the British will be voting June 23 on whether to stay in or withdraw from the EU or in the run-up to last week’s race for the mayor of London? Hopefully, this story has now disappeared but the chances are good it will simply be replaced by some other scandal.

Sadiq Khan, London's new mayor

Moving right along: In the meantime, Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major European city, has just replaced Conservative Boris Johnson as mayor of London. Khan is fascinating and telegenic: he is the son of Pakistani immigrants - a unionized London bus-driver  and a stay at home seamstress. He saw his father profit from his union membership and his mother lose out from doing piece work at home.

Seems to me that Khan represents the face of this now multi-ethnic city far better than Zac Goldsmith, his Tory opponent.  

Khan was favored to win - and he won big. He’s media savvy and ran a smart campaign that included distancing himself from controversial Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who nevertheless has likely profited from Khan’s win especially since Labour did poorly in Scotland, a piece of this country that continues to edge towards the exit.  Khan, a human rights lawyer and politician, had been involved in Labour politics from the time he was 15.

Goldsmith ran what amounted to a campaign with increasingly racist overtones - claiming that Khan had associations with terrorists aka Islamist ones. This was a mistake - at least in a cosmopolitan city like London: whoever gave Goldsmith, a man with the reputation for being decent and presumably well liked, this poor political advice should be fired.

My guess is that Khan’s election to this powerful position will only help the moderate Muslim cause in the UK, if not more widely in Europe, because, if nothing more, it demonstrates that second generation Muslims whose families immigrated to Europe for economic reasons can make it big despite their hard scrabble beginnings.

 

 

 

Jonathan Powell’s Terrorists at the Table - Book Review Essay

By Patricia H Kushlis

I was skeptical about the durability of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement when I first saw the news of its signing.  It seemed to be too good to be true. The bitter civil war between the Ulster government and the IRA that had engulfed Northern Ireland for twenty years appeared endless – one of those never ending intractable sectarian and destabilizing conflicts.  Yet a friend of mine who knew the negotiations intimately told me that he was optimistic that the peace would hold.  That both sides were exhausted, a reasonable deal had been reached and that, in fact, the US mediation efforts under George Mitchell had primarily provided a cover for a peace accord in the making.  He was right.

Jonathan Powell was then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff and his point person on those difficult negotiations.  Powell’s latest book Terrorists at the Table:  Why Negotiating is The Only Way to Peace to be released in the US June 30, 2015, tells the Northern Ireland story from the position of one of the major negotiators.  But he does much more. He uses it as a vehicle, an example of lessons learned (and too often forgotten), to argue that there are times when governments need to talk with an opposition that uses violence to fight for its goals because, he argues, violence is not an end in itself but a means to an end and that end is foremost political and access to the state’s scarce resources.       

Powell is a practitioner, not an academic theorist.  

He writes from real world experience – his own as well as those of other experienced international mediators and negotiators.  He draws, however, on selected scholarly work as needed but in particular highlights Nelson Mandela’s role in leading the ANC and Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari’s experiences as an international mediator in helping nudge various seemingly endless conflicts to closure.      

Powell makes most of his points using examples from lengthy real world conflicts including the ANC and South Africa, ETA in Spain, the FARC in Colombia, the Aceh rebellion in Indonesia, the Bangsamoro (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) in the southern Philippines as well as, of course, Northern Ireland.  In all such conflicts the disputes have involved significant parts of a country’s population whose leaders have turned to violent “solutions” for economic and political redress from which they were blocked through nonviolent means.

In essence, these were civil wars that occurred within national boundaries although many had international dimensions as well. Their resolution often involved devolution of authority from a central government, demobilization of the armed group and increased minority rights for the affected regions.  

Such disputes may take years and any number of failed attempts to resolve – but, Powell argues, even failed attempts can build a path to future peacemaking.   A natural disaster – as happened in Aceh or a generational change in leaders – may turn the tide.  Other disputes remain frozen in amber like the Cyprus impasse or the Arab-Israeli dispute but roadmaps are there waiting for political leadership on both sides to put reconciliation and peace beyond short term political goals.      

Powell’s chapter on the Art of Negotiation (and in my experience he’s right – negotiation is an art learned through experience under the tutelage of skilled mentors) is particularly noteworthy for negotiators, mediators and would be negotiators or, for that matter, anyone interested in understanding how government negotiations and negotiators function – including the importance of secrecy before a deal is done. 

Moving parts and trade offs

If nothing more, negotiations involve far too many moving parts and trade-offs that have to be worked out far from the media’s eye.  This is particularly true of multinational negotiations but even the simplest and most straightforward bilateral ones are unlikely to survive public scrutiny simply because of conflicting vested interests prior to their conclusion.

Terrorists are not likely to hang out shingles

Powell emphasizes that the most demanding challenge is the negotiations that take place within a government or an armed group.  It seems to me that the very practical problem of just locating and engaging the group’s leaders come a close second and Powell addresses the problem well.  That is, unless the leader is in jail – as is the case of PKK head Ocalan who was imprisoned in 1999 and has subsequently been in talks with Turkish authorities or Nelson Mandela – just finding the leader or leaders is often difficult.  After all, groups using terrorism are unlikely to hang out shingles that publicly identify their whereabouts.  Powell also argues that both sides need to possess the motivation to settle and that both need to realize that neither has the ability to prevail. 

Perhaps most importantly, Powell concludes that it is possible to learn from experience, that there is no such thing as an insoluble conflict but that conflicts won’t be resolved if people sit around waiting for them  “to  ripen” or “the forces of history to resolve” them.   In short, this is an excellent and readable book which I would highly recommend to students and practitioners of international affairs and negotiations.  Academics and journalists could and should learn a lot from it as well. 

Jonathan Powell, Terrorists at the Table:  Why Negotiation is the Only Way to Peace, Palgrave-MacMillan, June 30, 2015, pp 301.

Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices: A Must Read

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Take the time to read Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices.  Read it carefully and take it seriously, as many critics have not.  Instead, having salivated in anticipation of  its publication date, they swooped in, intending to gorge on juicy (but highly unlikely) revelations, then panned the actual book.  It isn’t the tell-all exposé they’d prayed for.  

Gossip’s Not the Point

For one thing—and wisely, not coyly, as some critics believe—Clinton, in these pages, limits herself to confessing she’s still weighing the pros and cons of making another run for the presidency.  Whether she’s even leaning this way or that, she doesn't tell.  And thank goodness for that!  Spring 2014 is way too early for presidential hat-tossing. Her reticence is a grace note for ordinary Americans who feel that presidential campaigns are much too long.  

Meanwhile, others sneer that Hard Choices is “merely” a campaign tool allowing Clinton to test the waters while ostensibly just signing books.  But there’s nothing wrong with that.  Nor with the fact that little or nothing on any page can hurt her much.  What kind of an idiot commits political suicide?  Should she decide to run, however, there’s much worth gleaning here.  Above all, voters would know beyond a doubt that  we’d have with her, for the first time since George H.W. Bush was on the scene, a president who understood from the get-go how the world works and how to work with it.
    
So Hard Choices is not gossipy. It's certainly not a long delayed sob story, even as Monica Lewinsky attempts to rake up the sordid sex life of the 42nd  president.   Never ever expect Hillary Clinton to spill her guts about her partnership with Bill, although she does expose her deep love for her daughter Chelsea.  Unlike the recent memoirs of Robert Gates, it’s not sprinkled with snarky put downs of erstwhile colleagues either.  Yet, for all that she avoids gratuitous personal pot shots at political opponents, Clinton does, as relevant,  acknowledge differences of opinion on policy-making.  

 What’s Wrong with Solid and Reliable?

Some would say that Clinton is simply playing it safe in Hard Choices.  I don’t think so.  The Hillary we get here is the real thing.  Intelligent.  Conscientious.  Earnest.  Hard-working.  Intense.  Straightforward.  Principled and pragmatic.  Not flamboyant.  Not bombastic.  Not vicious.  And so, maybe, a trifle boring, as serious people are often held to be.  

No, Clinton’s not a drama queen, and thank god for that.  There’s already enough drama in today’s world.    To those who think they’d prefer a more exuberant political performer at center stage, I suggest a hard look at a powerful  politician who dominates Europe without pizzaz or a wasp waist: Angela Merkel.  She doesn’t seem to have a unified grand theory of diplomacy either, but wow!  Whether or not you agree with her all the time, Merkel, these days, puts every other European politician in the shade.

What!  No Grand theory?

Hillary Clinton set out to write a book about her role in the formation (maybe not so much) and carrying out (tirelessly) of U.S. foreign policy as Secretary state in the first Obama administration, a task at which some say she failed.  The dreadful deficiency?  She never evolved a grand theory to guide the Obama administration’s encounters with the rest of the world.  The touchstone for this criteron?  Something on the order of George Kennan’s policy of containment, which worked so well during the Cold War.   

These critics don’t seem to have noticed how much simpler the world was back then.  Bipolar is the modern word for it.  Facing a credible threat of nuclear war, it fell to the U.S. to blunt the U.S.S.R.’s geographic and ideological ambitions until that sudden implosion in 1989.  To a very large extent the richer state won, although it feels much better to say that the better system won, which I can’t help thinking was no less true.  Unfortunately, today’s world is anything but  the harmonious unipolar system imagined by American triumphalists contemplating the rubble of the Berlin Wall.  For one thing, they overlooked the possibility that countries getting richer—China, Brazil, et. al.—would seek the equivalent in power and influence as well.  Worse, who dreamed that the U.S. would also have to deal with a proliferation of non-state actors whose tactics, weapons and dedication make for a serious threat? 

In Tribute to John Charles Dyer (November 22, 1948 – November 21, 2013)

By Patricia H Kushlis and Patricia Lee Sharpe

With great sadness, we must report that our UK correspondent John Charles Dyer died on November 21, 2013 in Lytham, St. Anne’s, a village next to England’s Irish Sea just a day short of his 65^th birthday, after a several month struggle against aggressive brain cancer.

John’s political astuteness and analysis, his wit and way with words, his voice of conscience for the underrepresented and his ability to explain UK politics to a foreign audience made John’s weekly WV commentaries significant parts of this blog’s voice.  So too, did his lighter travel posts in which he transported us by bus, rail, car and foot to less visited places in the UK and the US through personal stories and glorious photographs.

His posts are part of this blog’s permanent archives and will remain an important part of WV.  They are accessible through the following link: http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/john-c-dyer/

He described himself on WhirledView as follows:    John C. Dyer, UK correspondent Public Policy "wonk" with over 34 years public service experience, over 17 as state level policy counsel, legislative advocate and analyst.  Writer.  Poet.  Dual citizen relocated to UK 2010.

What John did not say is that throughout his lengthy public service career he was Chief Counsel to the California Department of Food and Agriculture from April, 2004 through August, 2007, and prior to that he was a counsel for the department from July, 1996. This special expertise is reflected in the first two posts he wrote for WhirledView. Entitled “How Is Water Like Booze” they appeared on February 11 and 18, 2010 and placed in perspective the contents of a feature in the Economist on water problems in California’s heartland. 

His poetry was published in Poetry Cornwall while he was living in Florida before relocating to the UK – another ambition achieved.  

John Dyer grew up and was educated in California’s Central Valley – he graduated from the University of Pacific’s Raymond College and McGeorge Law School - but he was also a dual citizen, had traveled extensively in the UK prior to relocating there and, in truth, always had a foot on both sides of the Atlantic.  His all too short marriage to Victoria Buchan brought him much love, caring and a special safe haven for the last three and one-half years of his too short life.  So did his close relationship with Ed and Jessica Dyer, his two children, and grandchildren Rickie Surber and Haley Dyer.   

 May he rest in peace.  We will sorely miss him.    

(Photos of John Dyer by Victoria Buchan, of Victoria and John by Jessica Dyer and of the gull over the Irish Sea by John C. Dyer.)

A Deadlocked America Dealing with Iran: No Paradise for Diplomats

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Some Right-leaning members of Congress take an all or nothing approach to policy and legislation. To them compromise is a violation of principle with connotations of betrayal and heresy. The martyrdom of starvation is infinitely preferable to gaining half a loaf.

Neither Bombs nor Bombast

Hard-nosed to the bitter end, such ideologues also find it difficult to embrace the art of diplomacy. Regarding Iran, they prefer bombs or missiles to what they see as time-wasting bombast, an echo of the motto here at home: don’t stoop to improving an imperfect government; starve it; destroy it.

If negotiation leading to compromise equates to moral defeat among Tea Partiers and their camp followers, how can signed-and-sealed win-win agreements or treaties be viewed as anything but a ceding of sovereignty, a kowtowing to the enemy, a clipping of the national wings, even when the equalizing consists mainly of polite words: a diplomatic victory not crowed about but delicately expressed to avoid humiliating the weaker side, which otherwise might not have signed? When articles of secular faith are at stake, evidently, no face-saving concession is too minor to oppose—and yet, without civility, how is diplomacy with Iran (or any other country) possible?

It’s not, which greatly pleases the Israel lobby in Washington.

The Manichaean Fallacy

Adding to the psycho-philosophical difficulty that impedes inter-party cooperation in Congress is the Manichaean religious sensibility that underlies much contemporary American conservatism. There are Catholic and Protestant variants, but in either case the problem presented is this: those defined as evil don’t get pardoned and asked to dinner; they have earned eternal damnation. Ronald Reagan may be long gone, but to many Republicans as well as  other conservatives Iran is still an Axis of Evil from which no good can ever be expected. Iran cannot, ever, be trusted—and Iran is certainly not to be trusted to uphold an agreement inhibiting its development of nuclear weapons.

Oddly enough, the religious right in Iran is of the same mind. The U.S. is the Great Satan with whom the new president of Iran should not be negotiating. Instead of dealing with America Rouhani should be joining in a far from uninimous chorus of “Death to America!”

So American and Iranian hard liners are utterly in accord on perpetuating eternal enmity. Neither, I suppose, would appreciate the humor of this situation.

The Israel Factor

But there’s a third obstacle to successful nuclear negotiations with Iran. Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose Iranian policy consists of bombs, bombs and more bombs, is working over the U.S. Congress, which all too often behaves like a sub-committee of the Knesset. And thus, ever subserviant to Israel, U. S. conservatives are expressing shock! shock! that U.S. negotiators have made some inconsequential concessions to Iran during preliminary talks whose ultimate goal is going to be very hard for Tehran to swallow: crippling Iran’s ability to become a credible nuclear threat.

The truth is that the Obama administration and the conservatives—and even Mr. Netanyahu—all have the same goal: no nukes in Iran. Another truth is that economic sanctions have actually worked. Iran’s economy is in such poor state that its leadership is willing to talk. The complexities are many and I do not plan to discuss them here because nothing is possible if the U.S. Congress cannot give itself a crash course on how effective diplomacy is conducted. Conservatives need to learn how to interpret language that does not include an ultimatum.

So here’s the conundrum for the Obama administration. Both America and Iran need to sound relatively hawkish to satisfy their at home hard-liners, but overdoing the vitriol will cause problems for the diplomats on the other side of the table who can’t afford to look as if they are weakening under threat.

The Danger from Diplomatic Illiteracy

In order to get things going, the U.S. has dangled a modest little carrot whose significance must be magnified to convince Iranian hard-liners that Iran is already getting something, although Iran’s savvy diplomats surely know how modest the offer really is. The danger is that Congress will misconstrue the tactical magnification, which sadly is already happening. Conservatives, primed to believe that Obama will give away the store, are looking at legislation to limit the flexibility of our own very clever diplomats.  This would turn them into puppets unable to seize a terrific offer from the Iranians should it appear in a guise not foreseen by a fearful Congress.

And so, thanks to a distrust-ridden, dead-locked American political system, another round of talks would go down the drain.

Does all this sound too complicated? Welcome to the world of diplomacy. When you are negotiating, you have to be aware of countless interacting possibilities and correlative hazards. Getting through the tangle is never easy. But if you have to negotiate the briar patch with your hands tied and your mouth muzzled by cut-throat politics on your own side, it’s a lot harder.

Maybe President Rouhani will turn out of be an evil bag of hot air intent on protracting negotiations while his centrifuges turn out ever more potent fissile material. But maybe he’s not a devil.

The only way to know is to give serious negotiations and competent diplomats a chance.

There’s an Asterisk in that “Nascent Economic Recovery”

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

18 May 2013.  The theme du jour seems to be “nascent economic recovery.”  That phrase popped up everywhere late April, accompanied by analyses of economic indicators allegedly supporting the theme.  15 May 2013 the Bank of England became the latest, projecting a “modest” but “sustained” recovery for the UK. 

It would be very welcome if true.  Everyone hopes for the best. No one hopes for the worst. No one enjoys debunking hope. No one wants to bring the economy down by "talking the economy down."  

Nor do we want to fool ourselves. 

Read the fine print  

Commentators seem to rely at least partially on a recent ONS estimate of GDP. ONS estimated the economy grew 0.3% in the First Quarter of 2013 over the previous Quarter and 0.4% over the same Quarter in 2012.  But there’s an asterisk for those estimates.  

“...  this estimate is [based on] around 44% of the total required [information] ... [ONS had] good information for the first two months ... [and an] estimate for the third month which takes account of early returns to the monthly business survey ... [ONS had] between 30-50% at this point ... [Therefore the] estimate .... [is] subject to revisions ... typically small (around 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points ... .”  

A lowering by 0.2 would change growth to 0.1% over last Quarter of 2012 and 0.2% over the prior year.  Nor is this asterisk the only caution.  The final estimate will be based on what actually happened during the quarter.  ONS has already published reports in May that cannot be fairly read to indicate growth. 

Fact check 

You can’t rely on headlines.

Take for example a 10 May release from the Office of National Statistics concerning first quarter 2013 construction.  According to the BBC the headline implication was, “Construction data suggests UK avoided a double-dip.”   Unless one read the ONS report itself one would not know ONS characterized the data as showing construction during the first quarter was at its lowest level since 1998.  

As it happened, the story did not receive a lot of coverage. Originally scheduled to come out Monday it came out instead on on “Take out the Trash” Friday.  

The same day provided another example. ONS released reports on the trade balance between the UK and the Europe and also the UK and non European countries. BBC dwelt on the increase in trade with non European countries.  As to trade with Europe, BBC characterized that as “flat,” again “suggesting” no double dip last year. 

This is what ONS actually reported about trade with Europe: 

“There is an increase of 31.8 per cent in the trade gap, the difference between UK imports from the EU and exports to the EU. This is the biggest increase in the trade gap in recent years. This difference is now £6.1 billion.”  

Then there was manufacturing and production. BBC described this as “industrial output beat forecasts.”  It did -- from February to March of this year -- but year-on-year -- according to ONS -- both figures were lower March 2013 than March 2012, which was lower than March 2011. As an ONS graph makes plain, while there were multiple ups and downs over the last 2 years, the slope of the curve has been down throughout. 

The final example is employment. ONS released its report 15 May 2013. BBC focused on a 15,000 increase in the unemployment rate while noting a 43,000 decrease “in employment.”  In an online piece BBC noted these statistics aren’t consistent with a picture of a recovering economy. But even this piece did not note the very first thing ONS wrote  -- the rate of of working age adults actually in work fell. 

I call attention to this statistic regularly.  It's not the same as the number of unemployed. It's far more significant in that it puts employment in context. The population grows. The need for new jobs grows, a fact often glossed over in discussions of increases in the absolute number of people in work.  As documented previously, the rate of working age adults actually in work declined steadily during 2008-2013.

BBC also noted total pay rises were at lowest levels since 2009. But BBC did not mention regular pay rises were at the lowest level since comparable records began (2001).   

15 May 2013 BBC News at 1 led with the Bank of England forecast.  BBC News at 6 did mention regular pay rises declined, but folded that information into the tail end of its coverage of the Bank of England’s forecast without highlighting rises were at the lowest level since 2001. 

BBC's online piece did not offset the employment news with the Bank of England forecast. The piece painted a fairly bleak picture. But unless you went to the ONS site and looked up the actual ONS report, you would not know even from this piece how seriously ONS itself rated the employment developments it tracked.  

Don’t bet your children’s future on hopeful pronouncements 

The indicators raise serious red flags concerning both the final First Quarter GDP estimate and the Bank of England’s optimism. It’s understandable why one might prefer good news, why one might search for “green shoots” in all those brown stalks. But before you bet your children’s future on hopeful pronouncements, fact check the headlines for yourself. ONS publishes its own take on its own statistics, readily available on line. That take speaks volumes. 

 

What do the 2 May local election results tell us?

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

3 May 2010. This week the UK demonstrated one old political maxim - all politics is local -- and one new one -- all spin is national.   

In yesterday's local elections Conservatives and Liberal Democrats suffered significant losses.

Now for the spin.

Conservatives, who lost most, “got the message.”  And the message? The Conservatives are right, of course. The electorate want what Conservatives are doing. The electorate are just “impatient” for it. Never mind the losses, the government just needs to do a better job messaging. Time to put UKIP under "scrutiny."    

Pundits had a field day. The only thing better than egg on a politician's face is a story of dramatic political change.  

Their "big story” was UKIP’s performance 

UKIP did well and better than predicted.  It certainly is a story that should be told. UKIP’s share averaged 25 percent, a substantial increase from last year's 7% in national polls or the 13% reported in the Sun poll this morning. 

More importantly, there are now four Stallions in the corral with the mares. 

UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, claims a “C-change” in UK politics.  Many pundits agree. Others say it could be the start of something big. Maybe they'll prove right. But maybe it's overcompensation for not taking UKIP seriously enough in the past. 

I agree most with Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon. Gibbon said the one thing clear to him is there's increased potential for a hung Parliament.  

But there was another story

The progressive Labour and Green Parties also made gains. In fact, at 291, Labour picked up more than twice as many seats as UKIP.  Green also gained.  But the story commentators told was Labour disappointing expectations by some measure or another.  

BBC further turned speculation into news. BBC reported their projection of what the results would have been nationally if it had been a national election, which it wasn't, and if  UKIP's share remained constant, which is dubious, as if this projection was somehow news.  BBC ignored Chuka Umunna's point that most of yesterday’s races were in previously Conservative jurisdictions.  How does one turn a gain twice UKIPs in previously Conservative jurisdictions into a Labour disappointment? If UKIP’s victory was a potential C-change, it seems more than odd that results nearly twice as large only disappointed.  

Why is this important? 

This is important because politcos and the electorate now consider the election's political and policy implications.  

Commentators who only the day before failed to predict the outcome spent the entire day today telling the public what those implications are.  Some argued Parties will have to shift to the Right. Others argued that at the very least Parties will have to address UKIP’s focal issues differently.  Many questioned whether one could consider Labour a true contender to take power in 2015.  While Labour’s success rose throughout the day the story line remained essentially unchanged.   

Premature

It seems premature to me to come to such conclusions.