Negativity bias

It’s a new piece of jargon but it reveals a valuable insight. 

The PASC probe into ‘Good Government’ today  had a great session with professors and pundits.

Professor Hood explained that ‘negativity bias’ was the phenomenon that good news is scarcely visible and quickly forgotten. Bad news is indelible, magnified, multiplied and never forgotten.

We remember Government’s for their foul-ups not their successes. A recent case was the megaphone reporting of the innuendoes against Peter Hain and the micro reporting of his innocence. The unforgettable sin of Thatcher was the Poll tax, Blair the Iraq war and Brown, the 10p income tax. They all had their successes. Who remembers them? 

It’s negativity bias.

Another witness Tony Travers made several telling points.  One was the dislocation between the understanding of life by civil servants who make laws and the population that suffers from them.

Some civil servants believe that Tax Credits designed to overpay allowances and then claw them back at the end of the year believed that this was a workable tax. It was based on the belief that the average family had a working balance of £1000s in their bank account to deal with these adjustments.

They did not know that most families live from week to week and adjust their spending accordingly. The demands for the repayment of overpaid allowances have caused widespread distress and debt. A good well-meant tax inflicted anxiety on many families.

There are many other examples of Patrician Government imposed their life concepts on the mass of Plebeians. This is very bad government.

Stung

Jacqui Smith produced a waspish reply to a topical question from Independent MP Andrew Pelling. He was elected as a Conservbative in 2005. In 2007 Pelling was investigated over allegations of assaulting his pregnant wife. His 26-year-old second wife alleged her husband assaulted her at their home in September 2007.

Pelling was suspended from the Conservative Party after his arrest and sits as an Independent. The new topical oral questions allow MP to raise matters of immediate interest. Hansard records yesterday’s exchange.

Mr. Andrew Pelling (Croydon, Central) (Ind): If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jacqui Smith):  Domestic homicide of women is at the lowest rate for 10 years. Conviction rates for domestic violence cases have risen from 46 per cent. in 2003 to 72.5 per cent. in 2008. Between 1997 and 2007-08, there was a 58 per cent. fall in domestic violence incidents. Despite all that, we know we must do more, particularly at the Christmas period when women are at increased risk. For many, Christmas is a family time but for some it is a time of fear, violence and isolation……..

Jacqui could have answered this question in a hundred different ways. No doubt, it was sheer coincidence that she homed in on violence to women.

Brian Rix

Great to see the familiar face of Whitehall farce actor Brian Rix in parliament today.

He is here to chair an AGM of the parliamentary Mencap group. Following his long career making the nation laugh in the early days of television, he devoted decades in working for the mentally handicapped.
He had a personal interest with his child who had mental health problems. Sadly one of his seven grandchildren has some similar difficulties. ‘Although he is a great swimmer’ Brian told me with pride.
At the aged of 85 Brian still fulfils a full programme of work as the President of Mencap. 

He is great example to us all.

Security threatened ?

Some were cynical that Damien Green’s arrest could not possibly involve national security. Tonight's report suggests that there was a basis for an arrest.  One civil servant’s leak certainly did. 
A Scotland Yard employee was jailed for eight months for leaking secret information about a planned al-Qaeda attack to the Sunday Times.

Thomas Lund-Lack, 59, a civilian member for the Metropolitan police's specialist operations in the counter-terrorism command, had last month pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to wilful misconduct in a judicial or public office. He disclosed secret documents - a Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre report - to a journalist from the Sunday Times, which ran a report on April 22. "Disclosure of this nature should and ought to attract immediate custody," said Mr Justice Gross, when handing down sentence today in Kingston Crown Court.  "I shall impose such a sentence in this case with no little sadness but equally no hesitation."

Civil Service Supremo Gus O’Donnell quoted this case in his justification for calling in the police in Green’s case. The judge in this instance reminded civil servants of the perils of leaking to the press. The maximum sentence for such an offence was life behind bars. The Sunday Times claimed on April 22 that Iraq-based al-Qaeda leaders were planning terror attacks in the UK. Mr Justice Gross said: "Mr Lund-Lack will understand the need, as anyone in court will understand, that to protect your free society it is essential that some intelligence must be kept secret. Secrets must be kept and they cannot be kept if an insider breaks his bond of secrecy.'

Comments

[Graham Marlowe]

Paul You can make the same example about Jaguar.

And many experts don't believe this to be a "transient" crisis.

I note that you have nothing to say about Mandleson: that's right, lets all rally round - AGAIN

You are (like so many of your colleagues) being intellectually dishonest, because you know damned well that if a Tory or a LibDem had been so insensitive as to tell 27,000 people being made redundant at the worst time of the year to look on it as an "opportunity" you would have been puffed up with moral indignation - quite rightly. You like so many other so-called "Labour" figures show astonishing arrogance and contempt. That is the penalty for a government that has been in office too long.

[Paul Flynn]

Graham, is your argument that the Government should intervene to save all jobs regardless of their viability? Woolworths and MFI have been in the doldrums for, at least, the past three years.

THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN IN TROUBLE WITHOUT THE FINANCIAL CRISIS.

It is more sensible to intervene the strong companies that risk being terminally damaged because of a transient crisis.

[Graham Marlowe]

I'm very sorry Paul appears to have gone missing, because I would be interested to hear his opinion of what mandelson told Woolworth employees yesterday:

“The ability to find jobs elsewhere in the retail sector will provide an opportunity for many of those who have lost their jobs in Woolies”.

"Brown has done many lamentable things, but by far the worst was to bring back to government - unelected - that oily little Ponce Mandelson.

So being made redundant at Xmas and with a recession, and many other retailers in serious trouble, this self-aggrandising idiot considers it “an opportunity”. Try telling that to the older women who make up Woolworths part and full time staff.

What angers me is if Tebbitt or one of the other Thatcherites had said the same thing Paul would have been (rightly) full of anger at the kinsensitivity, but because it's a Brown-toady it's OK.

[GrahamMarlow]

No Kay TYie, I'll tell you exactly who I mean - people like the 27,000 who work for SWoolworths - until next week when they will be unemployed. Many of these people work for minimum wage, or very little more, many are ladies who work part time and have worked there for years. It's people who work as road sweepers, or in Remploy or people who have not gained from ToryLites sycophancy to "Middle England". A lot of these people are probably not Labour voters. I used to be, but Blair and Brown (aided and abetted with right wing crawlers like Hutton, Purnell and Mandelson have virtually turned it into a second Conservative party)

I would like Paul to explain, for example, why the governmment did virtually nothing to help Woolworths - whose customer base is of poorer people, and yet are apparently considering pouring millions into Jaguar who is no longer British owned and are making cars nobody can afford to buy (or perhaps even WANT to buy). Perhaps I know the reason already - perhaps Mandelson has been promised a shiny new Jaguar as an Xmas present

[Kay Tie]

"Hopefully in 2010 Labour will get what it needs - a period in opposition to sort out it's true values, and to ditch some of it's policies (and ministers) who have so betrayed the working class"

Yes, because that did wonders for Labour after losing in 1979, didn't it?

Could you tell me just who these "working class" people are in 2008? Is it anyone with a job? Or those with jobs who don't manage staff? I'm beginning to suspect that "working class" really means "people who vote Labour".

[Graham Marlowe]

The best thing Blair did was resign. Like his name-sake Ian Blair it was far too long coming.

The good thing about Brown is that each day he nails another nail into the coffin of "New Labour" with his little bunch of crawlers pursing a Tory agenda.

Hopefully in 2010 Labour will get what it needs - a period in opposition to sort out it's true values, and to ditch some of it's policies (and ministers) who have so betrayed the working class

[Kay Tie]

"We remember Government’s for their foul-ups not their successes."

Sort of. I suppose it's because we 'bank' the good things and then demand more.

Everyone can find a list of good things various governments have done. The Thatcher government certainly had a lot of poop to scoop (particularly with the trade unions and the sclerotic economy). The Major government did some good things (can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure there were). Blair's administration has had some real successes (devolution for Scotland has been excellent - still unfinished for England, of course).

As a general principle, though, I prefer less government because individuals know their own interests better than the patricians in government. Interestingly, the particularly successful things from Blair's government have been the things that constrain government (FoI, HRA, devolution).

[Huw]

I think Paul had something in mind like
"well he may be a war criminal but on the upside he got the trains to run on time"
or similar good news from Blair's premiership.
Like the long needed investment in the health service, slightly more money for pensioners.
To me it all pales to insignificance when on the other side theres a death toll.

[Patrick]

Thought i would put forward a 'Successful PM'.Blair must be regarded as the most successful PM in British history. To be partly responsible for the deaths of well over a Million human beings and to still have his liberty.

[Graham Marlowe]

"There is no point in banging on about the obvious issues every day.

I blog only on thoes thingswhich are of new interest."

Season of goodwill and all that jazz Paul, but you are in severe danger of being awarded the Clive Soley Cup for outstanding blind-eye-turning to gthe government.

Mandelson's plan IS "new"news in the sense that he only came out (so to speak) yesterday, with ideas that have been fermenting in that little brain for a decade and would no doubt have come to pass all those years ago had he not been forced to resign in disgrace. It won't bother him if thousands of people lose their jobs, any more than those low paid workers at Woolworths - though I hear today we may bail out the banks YET AGAIN. Still, thats far more "New Labour" isn't it?.

THis is an important story, and may I say how welcome it is to see that Jim McGovern is a man of integrity, and has resigned his PPS job in portest at the plans of this unelected minister.

It would be nice to think other "Labour" MPs showed the same degree of integrity, and the courage of men like Bob marshall Andrews, John McDonnell, and Jeremy Corbyn, instead of the blind-eye treatment at the excesses of this increasingly putrid quasi-Tory government

[Paul Flynn]

There is no point in banging on about the obvious issues every day.

I blog only on thoes thingswhich are of new interest. I've had a lot of hits today because Andrew Sparrow on the Guardina blogs gave 'Negativity Bias' a plug.

[Paul Flynn]

They are not meant to be comparisons in the harm that these three PMs did. Only the main foul-ups we will remember them by.

Any sucesses remembered? Apparently not.
Point proved?

[Huw]

Sometimes you do have a bit of kennel blindness about you Paul.
"The unforgettable sin of Thatcher was the Poll tax, Blair the Iraq war and Brown, the 10p income tax. They all had their successes. Who remembers them? "
There was no one thing that Thatcher did that was unforgivable (there were many), but it is the sum total of what she did that still raises the hackles and brings out utter hatred in the people her right wing policies and society denying attitudes damaged and hurt.
The poll tax was merely an arrogant straw that broke the camel's back for many.
Brown's 10p income tax fiasco was simply blindness and stupidity, as if anyone would ever think that a tax cut paid for by specifically the least well off would be a vote winner.
But Blair, Blair is a different matter.
You lump his insistence and drive to an unwarranted, unjustifiable and illegal war which caused the deaths of well over 100,000 people as being in the same category
as the poll tax, and abolishing the 10p tax rate.
If you genuinely consider Blair's crimes to be on a par with the other two cockups then you genuinely leave me at a loss for words.

[Graham Marlowe]

I am a bit surprised Paul, that you can revisit Green, post a picture of the raddled Ms Smith yet you have NOTHING to say about Mandelson's plans to part-privatise the Post Office!. I sometimes wonder if you are QUITE so left wing as you make out!

Mandy, of course, wanted to privatise the Post Office a decade ago, before he had to resign for taking an undisclosed loan of £373,000 and telling lies on a mortgage application form. Now it seems Mandy has returned to carry this out, like a dog returning to it's own vomit.

As ever, no doubt, the public will pick up all the bills and DHL (or whomever it is successfully wines and dines Mandleson) will get all the profits, just to prove New Labour truly is so "business friendly".

Top marks though for publishing a picture of Brian Rix. Younger readers may not know that Sir Brian was at one time a farceur, and had many successful years at the Whitehall Theatre with what came to be known as "Whitehall farces". It is a comfort to know that Brown's Tory-Liters like the unctuous Mandy are keeping the tradition alive.

[Graham Marlowe]

Here we go again,Paul - you obliging your New Labour masters:

There is a world of difference between a leak regarding al-Qaeda, and one which showed the government to be economical with the truth about immigration. One does involve national security and the other does not.

I have said it before, but you really should excuse yourself from this case on your committee - you have already pre-judged it.

If you are not very careful you will end up in the Lords sitting next to our dear friend Clive Soley!