Sir Simon Jenkins fails again

Simon Jenkins' most recent opinion piece continues his long, glorious tradition of making an utter fool of himself.

In it he lays into Michael Fish and the Met Office for the incorrect forecasts of "barbecue summer" that the press had been bleating about over previous weeks.

One of the many points Fish makes here in defense of the Met Office is that "A lot of blame has to lie with the media who misinterpret the forecasts."

The Met Office, being composed of scientifically trained professionals, in fact said: "there is a 65% chance of above-average temperatures."

Jenkins, however, goes off on one about how the Met Office shouldn't be paid for by the taxpayers if it can't even guarantee "barbecue summer."

Ignoring basic probability theory (that if there is a 65% chance of something happening then there is a 35% chance of it not happening) Jenkins essentially blames the Met Office for the failure of the media to report what the Met Office actually said.

The money quote is where Jenkins says:

We listen uncomplaining to this drivel from one day to the next. We are British. Weather forecasting is like abstract art, any fool can do it once he has got the job.

Ironically, his description of weather forecasting perfectly encapsulates his own "profession" of overindulged, pompous columnist.

Jenkins' piece really is a classic of a certain kind of opinion journalism, based entirely on prejudice and bumptious "common sense" with no reference to actual evidence, statistical theory, or human psychology, and with an hilarious lack of awareness of how much of an innumerate prat he comes across as.

My contribution

Opinions, in the wise words of Chris Dillow, are mere arseholes. Everyone has one but I don't want to hear them.

Now being as I have access to little special knowledge or empirical data not available to everyone else, and being as my thoughts are largely the opinions of other people this leaves me in something of a quandary.

What do I blog about? There are so many topics I need to learn more about before I am qualified to analyse the relevant data: what can I contribute?

The obvious answer is that I can simply ask questions.

Surprisingly few blogs concentrate on defining the terms of their own ignorance as opposed to ranting on about their opinions.

Therefore from now on I will concentrate on asking questions and attempting to come to conclusions.

Opinions

Who you are affects what you see as important and what opinions you have.

Recently there has been a debate on the comments pages of the main newspapers concerning Gordon Brown's obsession with "Britishness" and our "shared values."

It occurs to me that for the men and women of letters who, unsurprisingly, occupy the op-eds, editorials, and comment pieces in the mainstream media what matters are words, descriptions, names, titles, laws, treaties, phrases, syntax, semantics, symbolism, narratives, stories, and speeches.

If electrical engineers had such a powerful channel of communication then they would undoubtedly place more importance on practicalities such as how the national grid is set up, electrical component efficiency, and all manner of other eeng topics.

That is not to say that they would only talk about these topics, just as some commentators (most notably the excellent Johann Hari) occasionally deign to discuss practical topics.

Businessmen will opine on business matters, scientists will opine on scientific matters, and bloggers will rant about anything that takes their fancy (and perhaps occasionally stumble across something worthwhile in a million-monkeys-on-a-million-typewriters sort of way).

My point is that different people will always have different perspectives, as well as different ulterior motives.

Britishness is not something I personally give a damn about. I appreciate the arguments as to why Britishness is considered important but I still feel that it is being seized on as important not because it actually is but rather because it lies within the intellectual comfort-zone of the sort of people who write in newspaper editorials.

[Meta-commentary: damn, this came out all wrong. I'm pretty exhausted on account of having just come back from a week-long training junket, more on that and my new job later... Also I'll discuss Ubuntu later as well...]