Interesting Links for 21-02-2013

[fearmeforiampink]

• Prime minister's private dinners net Tories £700,000 | Politics | The Guardian
  'Conservatives accused of taking cash for government access as Labour insists receptions for its donors are different'
  (tags: party funding politics posttofacebook corruption Conservatives money image interesting Westminster )
• How one man's lies almost destroyed the comics industry
  'A new investigation of Wertham's papers by University of Illinois information studies professor Carol Tilley has revealed that the psychiatrist fabricated, exaggerated, and selectively edited his data to bolster his argument that comics caused antisocial behavior.'
  (tags: posttofacebook violence psychology via andrew ducker interesting comics lies damn lies and statistics culture )
• Why do we let the Prudocracy police our sexual fantasies?
  'I masturbate. You masturbate. Let's not get our knickers in such a twist about it'
  (tags: law journalism sex posttofacebook porn image interesting media culture )
• Juries could be open to more scrutiny, two top lawyers say - Telegraph
  'Lord Woolf, a former Lord Chief Justice, and Lord Macdonald, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, said the system could be improved after a jury was criticised for showing "fundamental deficits of understanding" during the trial of Vicky Pryce.'
  (tags: law UK interesting )

Comments

[dainul.livejournal.com]

First story shot itself in the foot somewhat what with having no break-down of the numbers. I can't take the 'revelation' that Tore peers donated to their own party and got to have dinner with the pm particularly seriously. I might have taken it a little more seriously if they at least factored out the money raised from that group (and the result was still large)

[fearmeforiampink]

Depends which peers. There's the ex-MPs and councillors and suchlike. And there's those who were in business/whatever, donated a load to the party, and then got offered a peerage.

Depends which peers get invited to see the PM more; I'm going to guess the donors (assuming they're still donating) get more invites.

It's old data and there was a limited amount we had to go on, but something from a year or two back; the averages for the 47 Lords who'd donated out of a group of 258 we were looking at. All have never been MPs, non-hereditary peers, and I think we might've excluded councillors and suchlike too.

Overall, of those who have donated at all:
Mean donation is: £182,522.15
Median donation is: £11,307.00

Of those who donated and are Conservatives:
Mean donation is: £370,558.78
Median donation is: £40,000.00

Of those who donated and are Labourites:
Mean donation is: £141,621.67
Median donation is: £22,500.00

Of those who donated and are Liberal Democrats:
Mean donation is: £107,223.64
Median donation is: £6,324.00

[fearmeforiampink]

Also, another thing to note; this have been published with them thinking "This data has just been released, lets have a look at what we can draw out of it immediately."

[dainul.livejournal.com]

Eh, maybe I'm just more suspicious of conflating correlation and cause.

To take Lord Sainsbury as a named example: he has been donating to and actively supporting the party for what 20+ years? At least. He continues to donate to the party. In that time, he has also apparently made friends with at least some of the ranking members of said party. Is that really surprising? Sinister?

Replace 'party' with 'charity' in the above scenario. Would it be suspicious for someone who has donated millions to Oxfam to be on first-name terms with their director of strategy or whatever?

I neither like nor trust Cameron, but I'm not of the opinion that he's not allowed to have a social life since he became PM.

I am not saying that there is no issue, just that this data contains no proof that I can see of wrongdoing.