Had a reminder that the Pakistani opposition politician, Imran Khan was going to be giving a talk in one of the Committee Rooms in our Parliament, and as the complexity of the political situation there quite fascinates me, I took the chance to hear his views on the matter.

I gather that he is also some sort of cricketing personality as well – which possibly explained why the room was packed, and rather more people than usual were taking photos of the person giving the talk.

I wont go too deeply into what he said, as he really just reiterated what anyone who follows the situation there would already be aware of. Of course, people who get all their international news from the likes of The Sun would have probably been astonished to learn that there really isn’t a Taliban insurgency going on in the North-West tribal areas, and that it is more a Pashtun nationalism that rather objects to foreigners interfering in their homelands.

The endemic corruption is probably quite well known about, and Mr Khan rather cunningly switched between small dollar numbers and much larger rupee numbers which make the financial situation sound worse than it is (which is pretty dire anyway).

I tend to disagree with his view that getting a clean government elected will start the process of sorting out the country’s mess, as the army is just too powerful and has vast economic interests that it wont give up at the say so of “mere” politicians.

I also laughed slightly at his talk of the country having a free press – which is correct so long as you consider periodically blocking YouTube/Facebook etc to be acceptable behaviour.

That said, his idealism is a refreshing change and it was interesting to hear him speak. However, one questioner was less impressed and said that another talk by the former Pakistani President, General Musharraf was much more interesting.

The biggest laugh of the talk though came from an old stereotypically ex-army sort who explained the difficulty he had in choosing which cricketing tie to wear – but then asked if Pakistan and India would ever be reunited again. Mr Khan skilfully dealt with that by pointing out that the popularity of cricket matches between the two countries rules that out as abolishing them would cause an uproar.

An uproar only slightly louder than the laughs in the room.

Thanks to the Henry Jackson Society for arranging the talk.

Wandered over to an interesting talk last night entitled Europe and America – Worlds Apart? that took took a statistical look at the differences between the two population blocks.

A lot of people, myself included will presume that Americans are staggeringly different from us and that democracy and free-markets aside, there is little that unites us.

The reality in statistical terms is quite surprising.

In a tour-de-force of graphs and charts, Professor Peter Baldwin (Professor of History at University of California) charged though the issues at a breakneck speed to show that America is actually not that different in end outcome from Europe.

America is considered to be a very unequal country with strong concentrations of wealth – although it is actually fairly similar to Sweden in that regard. I think that in the UK we tend to forget that many of Europe’s dominant firms are actually controlled by founder families, with only limited voting shares available on the stock markets.

In areas of absolute poverty, again the USA is about average when compared to the countries that make up the European Union. Some parts of Europe have less poverty, and some have more.

America is generally considered to be very religious, but actually it is about the same as most of Mediterranean Europe – and that outlier of Catholicism, Ireland.

In terms of social spending, if you include the strong tradition of philanthropy in the USA, then you actually get a net expenditure in the US which is roughly average with Europe. In Europe we may mandate the spending through taxes, and in the US more is voluntary – but so long as the end result is the same, does it matter if the money comes from donations or taxes? Personally, I think not.

Surprisingly – and this drew a heckle from the audience – car ownership in the US is comparable to Europe. However that statistic was rightly pulled into question by the fact that it doesn’t include SUV ownership, which is markedly higher in the USA. Likewise statistics about private vs state schooling, although he did point out that regardless of how you define a privately funded education (and that is a contentious issue), the US and Europe do tend to be roughly similar.

On the environmental issue – I am sure we all know that the USA is evil incarnate and that their emissions per person are massively greater than the rest of the world.

However, if you take emissions per unit of GDP generated by each person, then the US is not much different from Europe. This is not fiddling with the figures – but a quite serious issue. If, for example, the UK’s economy was as efficient as the USA’s, then our carbon emissions could be comparable. The reason we emit less per person, is that each person is less productive at work.

Another one which surprised me was road vs rail transport.

The USA has a rail network that is comparable to Europe’s, but it is put to a totally different use. In Europe humans travel by rail, but cargo travels largely by road. In the US, it’s the other way round. You can reasonably argue that the US and Europe are similar in transport, albeit with a different focus on what/who is moved.

In fact, the only area where there is a significant difference between the USA and Europe is in the triumvirate of guns/murder/prisons. Excluding murder, the crime rate in the USA is again similar to Europe – but murders are staggeringly higher, as is prison incarceration rates. Add in that the USA has a much higher rate of gun ownership, and you can draw the obvious, if contested, conclusion.

The question that wasn’t really addressed in the talk is that with a wealth of data showing that the US and Europe are actually quite similar, why are we convinced there are huge differences.

My personal gut instinct is one of enthusiasm. I find most Americans I have met/known tend to be incredibly enthusiastic about whatever issue they latch onto. Americans may be as religious as Europeans, but those who are religious tend to be strongly religious. The same for with business – people trying to set up a business in the USA are vastly more driven to be a success than I notice in European small businesses.

A key cultural difference is that in the US, in general if you set up a business that fails, you are an entrepreneur and an adventurous person. All to often in Europe if you set up a business that fails, then you are a failure. Setting up a business in Europe that succeeds can almost be worse!

I have also often noticed that a society that claims to be very individualistic can also give considerable authority to fairly minor functionaries in an almost militaristic style. I personally find it slightly amusing how even the most basic of municipal workers can wear uniforms that have badges all over the place, epaulets, and where a small brand sign might be expected, you will find a huge crest or coat-of-arms, with moto and the related paraphernalia of a military uniform.

These are the more subtle differences that can’t be represented in statistics – and is why the perception of strong differences between the two sides of the Atlantic are deeper than mere numbers.

As an aside, Lord Howe was in the room and he also commented on the social differences – recounting a story about when the US accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. The Chinese people stoned the US Embassy in Beijing in protest – and as the UK is seen as the US patsy, the UK Embassy was also pelted with stones.

The US offered compensation to the Chinese, but demanded compensation back for the damage to its Embassy. Everything was formal and legal with financial matters to the fore.

When then Chinese asked the British Ambassador if the UK would demand compensation – he responded that he was quite untroubled by the incident as the stones had been used to make a delightful new rockery in the garden.

That says more about the differences between the UK and the US than any collection of slides and statistics could ever achieve.

Thanks to the Henry Jackson Society for setting up the event.

I had the opportunity last night to listen to a presentation regarding one of the most famous, and subsequently, controversial episodes in the Israel/Palestine conflict in recent years. A now infamous piece of film-footage is now widely considered to be at best, rather dubious and at worst, an outright fraud. While I am really not a fan of conspiracy theories – I do try to keep an open opinion about the issues they raise.

After a slightly fraught afternoon – no I can’t go, yes I can go, the meeting room is moved, the meeting is delayed – a shockingly long queue at security – I just about managed to get to the Committee Room only have arrived early!

The image of the incident that most people will probably recognise is below:

This is part of a short new story shown on a French news channel, which became a totemic issue for Palestinians and Arabs generally as an example of the Israeli army’s aggressive tactics. In short, the film appeared to show a father and son cowering behind a barrel sheltering from gunfire. The son died and was proclaimed a martyr, while the father survived with 12 gunshot wounds.

A lot of inconsistencies exist with issue, such as doctors disagreeing which leg a bullet went into, what time things happened etc – most of which I am personally willing to put down to an acceptable level of inaccuracy due to the situation at the time. It is very rare for witnesses at a British road accident to give identical opinions of what happened at an event, so I think we can be forgiving of mistakes in the middle of a de-facto war zone.

There is also unbroadcast footage of the dead son lifting his head and moving around a bit, although I would be tolerable of arguments that this is reflex actions or the results of impacts from later gunshots.

For me though, what certainly peeked my interest was that two people next to a wall and hit with 15 high-calibre bullets tend to leave rather a lot of blood on the wall. There is absolutely no blood at all at the scene of the attack as shown in the film footage. That is bizarre. Also, if shot with over a dozen military grade rifle bullets, you tend to have very little of the person left intact. Unlike the handguns seen on movies, military rifles tend to use much larger bullets – the sort that shatter limbs and kill very effectively. However, not only did the father survive, but his wounds are totally unlike what bullet wounds should look like. Medically, this is just an impossibility.

The question being raised is whether a minor incident occurred that was then expanded upon to create a propaganda story – or was it in fact an outright fraud and the whole thing a “hollywood” production.

The presentation last night was given by the French journalist, Philippe Karsenty who comes down very firmly on the fraud side of the debate, and is currently in the middle of legal action in France over his views – which have been supported by other news media outside France.

My personal opinion is that there is something seriously wrong with the footage, and if you see the unedited raw films, more questions are raised. Not just about the Palestinians, who have an understandable desire to spin a news story to their favour, but more worryingly, the actions of a French news channel in reporting the story, knowing that the story reported differs significantly from the raw footage. Apparently, CNN turned down the story when presented to them due to its dubious quality.

So, an incident some 10 years ago was talked about last night. So what?

The reason it matters is an area which interests me in general – and that is how a media story becomes The Truth, even after the facts show it to be otherwise.

Show most people the above photo, and they will tell you it shows the Israeli army killing an innocent family – but wont be aware of the later controversy about its origin.

Another favourite of mine is the Paediatrician who was attacked by a mob who didn’t understand that a Paediatrician is not a Paedophile. Although a home was vandalized by idiots, there was never a mob. Nonetheless, the story of the Mob attacking a home still recurs as an example of the dangers of vigilantism in tabloid newspapers.

I find it fascinating, in a slightly morbid sense, as to how people can be whipped up into a fury about something, but these same people don’t seem to care about the facts of the matter. To quote Yes Minister; “Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it.” However, as pointed out – doing nothing is often better than doing the wrong thing.

Why, I wonder, are people able to be so incredibly passionate about a topic – and yet at the same time utterly indifferent as to the details and facts that underpin it?

Are we as humans driven by an urge to seek the satisfaction that comes from “doing something”, even if that something actually makes matters worse? Disaster aid agencies are well aware of the problems that can be caused by too much aid turning up and causing overlaps or delays due to congestion. Yet the public were outraged when charities cried “Stop!” when flooded with donations following the Boxing Day Tsunami, and is starting to happen with the Haiti earthquake.

I don’t know the answer, but do find it curious.

Anyway, back to last night – a vastly more detailed overview of the complex controversy surrounding the al-Durrah incident can be found over at Wikipedia.

Also, thanks to the Henry Jackson Society for pulling the presentation together, and squeezing me in at the last minute.

Sorry for the flood of political posts recently, I’m sure they’ll dry up shortly!

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Last night I wandered over to a debate hosted by Delib and the Henry Jackson Society on the issue of if “technology, not policy, will win Election 2010″.

The matter is topical thanks to the ongoing flood of debate within political circles about the rise of blogs, twitter etc and their effect on political campaigns. What was once very much a top-down process of commands from the center being actions by activists in local areas is increasingly being blurred by the rise of informed (and not so informed) internet chatter that can spread like proverbial wildfire within minutes.

As Guido Fawkes noted recently, we are moving away from a news system where stories are broken usually by common consent between the parties and has defined moments of incident to one where there is a constant flow of news commentary and gossip about the political establishment.

The ongoing change in how political news and opinion is being disseminated is what lead to the core of the debate – is the technology starting to become more important than the policy.

Certainly for those who are interested in politics, a heck of a lot has changed over the past couple of years in how we get information and in turn regurgitate that to our friends. What was once a process of sending an email with a weblink to a few friends can now be magnified where a single click of “retweet” on Twitter can broadcast the same short message to thousands of people in a second.

For me though, the pertinent issue is how the wider public see the issue. Is Mr Average really that affected by the gossiping and fighting on Twitter etc? Labour’s Twitter Czar, Kerry McCarthy pointed out that around 40% of the population lack access to a computer, so the online campaign is invisible to them. Personally I am a bit dubious about that statistic, but even if it is correct, then that 40% are still going to know people who are using computers and will be getting the echo that filters from the online world into staff canteens and the like.

A point made by Bruce Anderson, who seemed to be a bit of a luvvie with his many reminiscences about the good old days was that the electoral campaign itself rarely makes much difference to the outcome. Most people are already pro-this or anti-that and their views are unlikely to be significantly changed.

So, can online chatter really do anything more than just mobilizing the troops?

The Tories head of online, Rishi Saha made a good point that for all the chatter about the Obama campaign being dominated by the internet, some 90% of the media spend went to the old-media world of traditional television adverts. Online certainly mobilised the activists and fans – and raised a lot of money – but in the end the election was won in the old-media land.

In light of this, the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones (who has considerably less hair than his BBC photo suggests!) raised a good question as to who holds the reigns of power within the political parties marketing departments. In the Obama campaign, the new and old media bosses were equal – is that the same in the UK? One point worth commenting on is that the Obama campaign was however very good at using email and had the necessary IT infrastructure to support such a system. My feeling from previous debates is that in the UK, too many MPs manage their own IT systems, when it really should be centralised. Not the political message, just the back-end computer systems.

An MP is going to get proverbial egg on their face when their home computer holding their email campaign flops over and dies, or more worryingly is hacked, or blocked due to geekish rules about email spam filters that only professionals understand.

Also, while the new media environment has the advantages of low-costs, speed etc., it is also prey to a very dark side as well.

The Mob

Considering how easy it is to forward messages and whip up a fury online, there is a danger that this can lead to vindictive mobs with their Twitch Forks and Burning Tworches rampaging against some slight or other. In that situation, the ability for the online managers at the parties to respond, and respond super fast is vital. Not just in putting out their side of the story, but also in ensuring that their online activists themselves forward the other side of the message as widely as possible.

A small example of this was the other day when a question on Twitter was asked in a way to throw doubt on an issue. I replied pointing out the incorrect assumption, and to his credit that person then rebroadcast my answer to everyone who would have read the original question. Not everyone does that, and so an incorrect presumption becomes more widespread.

A couple of years ago there was an online campaign to stop Westminster Council from banning outdoor drinking – except that they had so such intention. People blindly signed the petition, and even when the facts were known, people would respond with “well, they might in the future” to justify signing a petition they knew to be false – and maliciously created.

We, the members of the Mob have a power, but do we accept that we also have a responsibility?

Personal Space

A lot of people – and it horrifies politicians to hear this – are bored of politics. Generally, what is seen on the old media is the edited highlights of Prime Minister’s Questions or politicians avoiding questions in interviews. It looks antagonistic and venal. To then have the news media invade what is, despite its public nature, often considered a very personal space online, as people start forwarding political messages around or politicians broadcasting to social accounts could lead to yet more disengagement from the political process.

I personally love PMQ’s on a Wednesday lunchtime as it is good fun to watch – but I would be horrified with having that sort of argument going on all day, every day AND in my personal space. That is too much. Some politicians and activists though seem to treat the online space as just another channel to continue the good fight.

I follow a fair number of politicians online, but there are some I wont follow anymore. The ones who use Twitter to rage against the enemy all the time, or who do nothing but parrot out their latest press release or try to leap onto bandwagons as they charge past. It’s just dull.

I, like most people I know, are less interested in policy debate (and how can you debate a policy in 140 characters?) and more after the silly stuff, the gossip, the stuff we can laugh about down the pub. No one wants to be perpetually fighting the political fight, do they?

The best political commentators and politicians are the ones who mix a good dose of politics with the silly stuff. The Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh has carved a good line in reporting the gossip as well as the more serious stories, while the late much lamented Parliament Spy was starting a great job in conveying the really silly stuff that most people love to hear about.

The more of them we have online, then the more chance there is that people will be interested in what they have to say – oh, and they might pick up a bit of the sales message amongst the gossip.

To be entertained and informed in one neat 140 character package, what’s not to like about that?

Let me tell you a story – was how a talk this lunchtime by Prof. Steven Levitt started as he gave a talk about economics and some of the weird but true facts he has come across in his research.

He is noted for being the co-author, along with Stephen Dubner of best selling book, Freakonomics and is in the UK promoting the suitably titled sequel, Superfreakonomics.

A quick run though of some of the more interesting or plain funny anecdotes started with the tale of John Szilagyi.

Mr Szilagyi, who worked at the US tax office wondered why American children were being given increasingly weird names and had a suspicion. After some effort, the tax returns form was changed to require a social security number to be placed alongside each child being reported by parents when claiming their $250 child’s tax credit.

In 1986, some 7 million children “vanished” from the USA, including as it later transpired, a non-existent brother and sister to Prof. Levitt. The moral was that if you create an incentive, then people will find a way to abuse it.

The purpose of the talk, and the book, is to expand on how simple insights into information and human behaviour can lead to surprising outcomes.

For example, the oft-cited, but not acted upon finding from studying the data that special seats for children in cars make no difference to fatality rates in car accidents when the child is more than 2 years old.

Unfortunately, the politicians felt the facts disagreed with their political policy and not only disregarded the findings, but actually attacked them. Although the talk was being given in a House of Commons Committee Room, no mention was made of a more recent episode of politicians and facts conflicting – this time the recent Nutt sacking over drugs policy.

A more recent bit of work he has been engaged in lead to the title of this blog post – and that was the analysis of bank account activity (with necessary privacy issues dealt with). Not the big stuff that governments like to worry about, and pass silly laws on – such as money laundering etc.

How about monitoring when a person uses a cashpoint machine? If they never ever use one on Friday evenings, is there a chance that they are Jewish or Muslim? What if they lack life insurance or other long term financial plans?

It’s a lot more sophisticated than that – but out of 10 million accounts enough data existed to identify around 30 accounts that had particularly unusual behaviour.

He said that any suicide bomber seeking to evade detection prior to their crime should simply take out a life assurance policy. You can bet the security services have a few other key items they are watching that haven’t been put into books though. Indeed, they might be watching for a spike in people who never use ATM’s on Friday evenings suddenly taking out life assurance policies!

During the Q&A session, much time was spent dealing with their fairly controversial views on climate change – but if you get away from the tabloid media hype, their views are not actually that weird and indeed make a lot of sense.

In essence, it will cost a fortune to reduce CO2 emissions, and whatever we do will take 50+ years to have an effect. Or, we could spend a comparatively tiny amount on geo-engineering which can have an effect almost immediately and if it doesn’t work, we haven’t really wasted any time.

He is arguing that we should look at mitigating CO2 in the short term, and spend the money saved on developing the low-carbon economy that we will need in the future.

Hardly controversial, but the way some in the green-lobby have reacted you would think he was one of the climate change deniers. He isn’t – he just thinks that spending $1 trillion per year on reducing CO2, when alternatives costing maybe $200 million are available seems a bit odd.

His metaphor was that of an approaching asteroid.

One team of scientists come up with a plan that costs $1 trillion, takes 50 years to work and requires every human on the planet to be involved.

Another team comes up with a plan costing $200 million, can be tested in just one year and involves a few thousand people.

Lacking a Bruce Willis to save us, which option would you try first?

If you want to know more, then the duo are giving another talk, this time tomorrow at the RSA, and they will be broadcasting it over the internet.

Tune in, it will be entertaining (especially if he includes the potty training story), and quite possibly enlightening.

Thanks to the Henry Jackson Society for the invite to the event.