I have only come here seeking truth

[andrewducker]

Over on my post about the awful conditions in the Conservative's "model" council channelpenguin asks if it would be easy to find a Labour council that would be as bad.

And I don't know. But I sincerely hope that if I put up a post here trashing the Tories and it's wrong, or if there are equally good examples against other parties, then there'll be responses here telling me that Johann Hari as his facts wrong (with links to a rebuttal) , or that the situation isn't the fault of the local council (with links to the reasons why this is true).

Yes, I have opinions, and I will defend them - but I'm not dogmatic about them, and I'm delighted when someone presents me with evidence of my wrongness. This actually happens on a semi-regular basis, and the great thing about it is that I get to change my mind and be _less wrong_.

If I find something interesting, I link to it. And sometimes I find something interesting, but not entirely persuasive. So I link to it in the hope that someone will tell me why it's rubbish, or provide more information to make it more persuasive. Either is fine by me - I'm just using you all to my own ends :->

Comments

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

:-) I'm not at all a political animal, just making a point about reporting (or reading?) bias.

I doubt that your readership contains a high proportion of people who habitually read more right-wing media and so might more easily get on the trail of a counterexample. Someone would have to go deliberately digging... how likely people are to go digging for information that might contradict their own current views and political biases I leave you to ponder - I am sure you have read enough on, and experienced enough of human nature to form a likely opinion... Put it this way - you are one of the most likely people to do so that I know - and you haven't done so. I am another - and *I* haven't done so (but I have no real political axe to grind).

I found the article itself really selective, anecdotal and taking every interviewee's opinion/interpretation as if it were fact. I detected very little by way of actual analysis or critical thought. Naive. Seemed a bit of a case of deciding what you want to find and, golly gosh, finding it. (What's that called when you do it in science? Besides 'A Bad Idea'. Confirmation Bias?). Nor did any of your commenters seem to add any of their own - so I just thought I'd inject a little reminder that critical thinking is really is a good idea...

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

The Councils with the very worst records on child protection are disproportionately Labour, SFAICT, though certainly not exclusively.

To be fair to Labour, the national party generally distances itself very strongly when terrible failures come to light. And, of course, it's more than likely that it's not their fault - the correlation is probably due to a third factor: grim/deprived areas tend to produce both difficulties in effective administration (including, but not only, shortage of cash) and Labour voters. Less creditably, voting the same party in unchallenged for decades also erodes effective administration.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

That seems to be a reasonably accurate evaluation of your Attitude -- and explains why I "Friended" you after checking-out several cites from Arthur Hlavaty/Supergee.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Doncaster is probably the worst Labour council (although it has an English Democrat for a mayor now).