“There is currently no way of systematically studying the problem of taxpayer funded lobbying and political campaigning in its entirety”

In which case, should they really and deliberately making such high-octane press headlines suggesting otherwise.

But let’s be honest – “we think there might well be a problem, it’s worthy of investigation but we can’t be sure without more detailed figures” doesn’t get them the press and influence that “It’s a Disgrace and a Scandal!!” does, even if it is closer to the truth.

Genuine social scientists shouldn’t engage in overselling, much less misselling – and if a pressure group oversells, or missells, it is legitimate to weigh their partisanship in the balance when considering the factuality their press releases. To my mind, there’s a hint that TPA try to have it both ways – they want to be allowed to sell hard like a lobby group (fine on its own), but demand the respect, deference and attention of genuine social scientists (also fine on its own) – but the two are clearly incompatible. You have to choose.

It appears, with respect, that Matthew wasn’t to happy about being put to the choice. And Mick and I both caught some flak and baseless allegations for our troubles. Which was a pity, but leads me more strongly to the view that they, and their work, properly belong in the lobby category, not the research/social science one. Which is a pity, because it’s the science we need right now to identify just where the waste is happening.

It’s the only case I’ve been making since the beginning. And it’s a pretty simple, and limited one. The rest was simply laying out why I’ve taken the ‘position’ I have.

You’re overstating the case for the prosecution. The TPA didn’t claim in their report that all of the money paid to these groups went on lobbying: they claimed that the money was paid to groups “whose [i]primary[/i] focus is campaigning for policy change.” Primary clearly implies that there are other functions performed by these groups that could have been the intended purpose of the grant, so there is no claim made that a particular grant must have been for lobbying – rather that such was the likely purpose of the grant.

They also made it clear that they had other sources for information apart from using a Freedom of Information request, stating that FOIs were “used to obtain [i]some[/i] of the original information contained in the reports.” Some, obviously, does not imply all.

In addition, the report is littered with caveats such as “There is currently no way of systematically studying the problem of taxpayer funded lobbying and political campaigning in its entirety. Some of the figures used in this report were available in official documents, but others could only be obtained by submitting Freedom of Information requests.”

I see your points. all of them. I honestly think I made some of them first .I would only reply by reiterating my original point – I actually have a fair amount of time for some, though not all, of the ideas of TPA. The Eurosceptic edge worries me; the tax stance (more or less “all tax is bad tax”) seems doctrinaire, but the healthy scepticism on public spending is much needed. Indeed, there’s a genuinely good point to be made on the subject of this circular lobbying. But the TPA lost that point somewhere between the inaccurate information and the invective that greeted challenge.

As for the point I make by referring to their roots, it’s not that those roots are somehow improper (they aren’t, and to argue such, in my book anyway, would be ‘bollixology’) but that the TPA appears to be somewhat disingenuous about its roots.

In other words, it’s not the conservatism that worries me, it’s the possible dishonesty, or at least disingenuousness.

TPA presents its reports more or less as impartial original social science research. “These are the facts and figures, mate – no arguin’ with ‘em!”

But it just wasn’t true – at least, not in the academic, dry and impartial way most people expect scientific research to be undertaken.
Carelessness with the data is more or less professional death to any social sciences researcher. Should TPA be immune?

It’s a polemic. Which is fine, if you’re at least honest about it.

The SE example was instructive, not simply because it was a silly mistake in and of itself, and thus reduced the credibility of the report.

But it was Matthew’s response that worried me more, and really got me digging at TPA, because it seemed too personal, too partisan to be a defence of science – it was simply a defence of TPA. As if it was not the facts that were important, it was the cause.

A quick ‘mea culpa’, with a firm but humble explanation would have got most people back to a pre-cynical position. But Matthew took the road more travelled by, and that has made all the difference.

AS for myself if Mick feels my nosing about has sailed too close to man-playing, I apologise. But, as my friends are known to say, the questioning goes to character, m’lud, and character (or at least reliability) is a live issue in the case.

One of the reasons Slugger has attained the reputation it has in a highly contested area like Northern Ireland is that we don’t care ‘who’ makes ‘what’ argument, so long as they abide by the rules of civil engagement.

For me, one of the most damaging conceits of the modern liberal era of politics is that there is some kind of politically correct elite who know what’s what and constantly take upon themselves to correct the errors of the terminally politically incorrect.

This, in my view, has led to the ‘progressive’ demonisation of anything to the right (in absolutely current terms) of Harriet Harman. It’s something I have tried to push against, not by propagandising in the opposite direction but by rigorously reinforcing the idea that arguments should stand on their own merit, rather than resiling to established notions of who constitutes an ‘expert witnesses’ and who doesn’t.

In other words, anyone can become an ‘expert’ if their ideas are good and resilient enough under the consistent critical scrutiny of their peers.

In Northern Ireland we have to deal with elites that are much more entrenched than anything you may believe you are tackling in Westminster. You guys can vote people out. We can only change the proportions by which people hold executive power.

It’s a system that was invented for a particular laudable end, but it may, at the heel of the hunt, simply fall apart under the weight of its own considerable contradictions.

Such speaking of awkward truth unto power has been Slugger’s stock in trade. It means that whilst we are not often liked by powerful elites, we are, generally, respected for the bluntness and the honesty of our speaking, even by those upon whom we may have inflicted considerable embarrassment or pain.

Whilst others have become obsessed with the issue of who backs the TPA, I simply do not care who funds you, nor whose interest you may be serving. All I care about is whether what you say stacks up to what you say it does. If it does, or in this case, if it did, then kudos to you.

It is good for those in power within a representative democracy to have their collective feet held to the fire and, if proportionate, severely burnt. Or, if not for them, it certainly is for the rest of us whom they would mostly prefer to keep in the dark.

Which brings me to the reason why this report is a story in and of its own right.

You are right to be infuriated. But not with Scottish Enterprise. Whether it was SE’s fault for misreading or misdirecting you, it was you who ended up putting that particular piece of misinformation into the public domain.

I rather admire your media (and blog) friendly approach. But your mistake here, as I have said several times before, was that you collated secondary information (the amount of government expenditure on consultancy is a modest but important story in itself) but went on to make claims that could only have been firmly deduced from primary details that were not subject to your FOIs.

Would that such information could be routinely available. But we shall have to wait for the next Tory government to make good on their promises to open up such primary financial data.

In short you took a punt. And, being fairly certain that during the doldrums of the silly season most journos would buy such a story without looking too hard at the detail, you were rewarded by getting it shifted up to the next rung of the news ladder.

To paraphrase in a knowing, post modern, early Seventies’ sit com sort of way you were telling them (and now us): “Never mind the quality, feel the width…”

That’s not intended to be a glib riposte by the way. I read you when you were a common or garden blogger, and I developed a huge respect for your work.

At this point you might do better to favour us by not treating our readers as though they were just another bunch of dumb ‘opposition’ hacks. Or worse, idiots.

hmmm – 33 weeks. Would that be the usual gestation period for a Belfast Telegraph or other MSM apology? BTW, the PA reporter’s name has, er, vanished into the ether.

It appears I owe TPA a little apology.

I rather flippently used the word incestuous, obviously only by way of analogy, to describe the key members of the organisation – but in fact it appears the group is a little more self-selecting than I first envisaged!

Matthew Elliott and Florence Heath are in fact married! Congratulations to them; I’m sure they won’t take my use of the term as in any way aimed at their happy union. (If I now find they have split I’ll be mortified!)

BTW Malcom, if you’re reading – please see the excellent SourceWatch which does a very good job indeed, if not a media friendly one, of what we have discussed on this blog.

“The TPA thinks ahead as to how its stories can have as long a tail as possible, rippling across local media outlets with the help of the activity of a network of 2,500 grass-roots supporters. “We tailor our reports to encourage local participation,” says Elliott. “For example, by ranking local councils by waste or salaries we encourage local papers to pick the story up. This in turn causes a stir locally, which gets the locals groups agitated and brings us new members and supporters.”

Very very clever.

You will note that on Monday past, the Belfast Telegraph felt “so moved”…

Just search for the usual..

You take it quite correctly on all counts(;-))

By the way, as far as my Latin goes, it’s “Nostra Culpa”.

PS What’s the Latin for ‘our fault’ (just in case any organisation feels so moved)?

Fair enough. Mea Cupla. (See, it’s easy!)

I’m sorry Matthew, but that is just man-playing. First Mick, now me. I don’t think a stonewalling denial of responsibility amounts to engagement in any person’s book. And what exactly is the abuse – and what’s unwarranted about it?

Look, a reputable research body lives and dies by the accuracy of its work. That’s just the rules of the game. Do you deny this.

I can only assume from your reply that the answer to my second question is ‘no, we did not call Strata/egem, even once, to verify or question the figure.’ That speaks rather loudly to me, and for your information, I know a reasonable chunk about social sciences. Not as much as I’d like, but enough to spot spoofing. Even for my undergraduate dissertation (child sexual abuse figures) I double sourced my figures – and I was 20 yrs old and an amateur.

AS for the LSE conspiracy theory – please don’t put words into my mouth. I note, quite correctly, that for a grassroots organisation, the founding base is extremely narrow, limited as it appears to be to former Conservative student politicians from two specific universities. am I wrong in this, or do you simply not like me stating it?

That’s fine. I have no quarrel with such an organisation existing. LSE is a fantastic school, I’d love to have gone there in retrospect. (Imperial is exceptional too, but my A-level interest in the pure sciences has long since vanished). I’m not claiming you’re Bilderberg for goodness sake! I just want some honesty about your beliefs, your doctrines, your rasion d’etre.

You seem to have interpreted that as some sort of feral attack on your right to exist (which it clearly isn’t), and you’ve come out snarling.

I appreciate your considerable history as a debator. You should know better then than to make ad hominem attacks or to create and attack straw men. That is not valid engagement, it’s the politics of personal destruction, and it doesn’t reflect well on you or your organisation, which given Mick believes you and your organisation are generally worthy of respect is a very sad thing

I will simply repeat, Matthew:

Can you publish the correspondence between yourself and SE for verification?

Do you accept that the responsibility for the contents of a piece of work belongs in the first instance to the author?

My initial reaction, Spectator, was that indeed it was a Matthew Elliot quote; my second was that the paragraph was composed by the reporter.

Using quotes and the Paul Lashmar name would have removed the ambiguity and resulting confusion.

This is ridiculous. The vast majority of research in the social sciences works with existing data from official sources. We can’t establish ourselves how much Scottish Enterprise paid or didn’t pay Stratagem, we have no power to bust into their offices and look at their financial records. Our responsibility is to collect, analyse and present the information produced as accurately as possible and check when things look dodgy. We did that by calling the source. Some other call that, with hindsight, might have helped is irrelevant. There is a limit to what it is reasonable for us to do checking a single figure.

I won’t be responding to any further comments on these threads. I’ve tried to engage but I’ve got better things to do with my time than hang around to take unwarranted anonymous abuse. Clearly you have no idea how research in the social sciences is conducted and are just interested in fleshing out some absurd theory about the TPA being some kind of LSE conspiracy theory.

Best,
Matt

Thanks. I was aware of that. I just did not want to give the impression that the second paragraph was a further quote from Matthew Elliott.

Matthew

“I’m not saying that Scottish Enterprise have to do our jobs for us. “

Well, you’re blaming them entirely for the errors you published, so I’d say that’s exactly what you are saying.

If we make a mistake, I’ll acknowledge that.

You did. You haven’t.

there was no error in how we collected, analysed or presented our data.

But, Matthew, there is an error. A £1million pound error. The collection can perhaps be blamed on SE (perhaps), but the analyis and presentation lie entirely on your shoulders.

Getting all high and mighty about where the buck stops entirely misses the point.

Leaving aside the juvenalia of “All High and Mighty” – where the buck stops is entirely the point. You published bad figures. You tried to make hay out of them. You shouldn’t have done so. Your fault. The trustworthiness of your further figures are thereafter fatally undermined, because we simply cannot trust that you haven’t made other cock-ups.

And your response to challenge reinforces that we can’t even trust you to own up to the mistakes, even if you do find them, presumably because it is too damaging to TPA. Again, the public profile of TPA is trumping the truth. It’s neither big, not clever, Matthew.

I’ll repeat again:

Can you publish the correspondence between yourself and SE for verification?

Did you attempt to contact Strata/egem at any point in this debacle to verify figures that were, by your own admission, extraordinary?

And I’ll add for good measure:

Do you accept that the responsibility for the contents of a piece of work belongs in the first instance to the author?