Sunday 22 November 2009

CRU emails no 12 - misleading parliament?

It's never good when a public agency receiving money from the taxpayer misleads parliament - whether it was inadvertent or not.

From: Phil Jones
To: santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: A quick question
Date: Wed Dec 10 10:14:10 2008

Finally, I know that DEFRA receive Parliamentary Questions from MPs to answer. One of these 2 months ago was from a Tory MP asking how much money DEFRA has given to CRU over the last 5 years. DEFRA replied that they don't give money - they award grants based on open competition. DEFRA's system also told them there were no awards to CRU, as when we do get something it is down as UEA!

Yes, that's very clever. They could say that they abided by the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Just because DEFRA logged everything into their financial system as going to the parent university rather than to CRU doesn't change the fact that it looks like DEFRA gave CRU funding, whether it was direct or indirect.

People get sacked for this sort of thing.

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Thanks - title fixed.

1 comment:

Brian Micklethwait said...

Don't you mean CRU emails no 12?

Apart form that nitpick, very useful work. If enough bloggers like you sift through all this stuff and highlight the highlights, it will get around, and even if the mainstream media just do a damage limitation job, such bloggings will change a lot.

The thing is, this is one of these debates where a huge number of people are in the don't-really-know waiting-to-be-convinced category. It's not like free-markets-versus-the-state, where most who care about having an opinion have already arrived at it. All this stuff will change minds.

So, thanks and keep it up, if you can.