CentreRight

It is good news that Michael Martin is going to resign.  His credibility was destroyed when he tried, in vain, to use taxpayers' money to prevent taxpayers discovering the details of MPs' expenses claims.  With the scale of the abuses uncovered by the Telegraph, it is now quite clear that was nothing more than a taxpayer funded cover up.  After that, there was never any chance that Michael Martin could lead the reforms needed to restore the reputation of parliament.  Douglas Carswell deserves huge credit for his strong and early stand on this issue.

There are now three things that need to happen:

1. MPs' can't assume that the resignation of the Speaker draws a line under this affair.  He bore a significant measure of responsibility but so do the MPs' who made the unethical claims in the first place.

2. His resignation has to be immediate, he can't get a big payoff and there can be no question of shuffling him on to the Lords.

3. The next Speaker needs to be someone committed to transparency and democratic accountability.  We can't just have a new face leading the same old attempts to hold back reform of the system.

The TPA has issued a statement.

Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“Michael Martin has been an awful Speaker and his arrogance and incompetence have betrayed the interests of taxpayers and Parliament, so his resignation is welcome. He has allowed MPs to get away with outrageous expenses claims, and wasted taxpayers’ money on legal action to try to keep those expenses secret. His resignation should be immediate, he should get no payoff and he absolutely must not be elevated to the Lords. The next Speaker must have a commitment to full transparency and democratic accountability.”

"Melanchthon" has written a defence of MPs' extravagant expenses claims on the Platform.  His argument starts from the premise that MPs' do need to have some kind of provision for having two homes.  I'm not sure anyone disagrees with that, except when they don't attend Parliament for ideological reasons or live close enough to London that many of their constituents commute.

From that, he argues that we should, except in those cases where actual fraud has been committed, stop attacking MPs whose claims appear excessive because that's somehow just the way expenses work.  Apparently everyone claims for things that aren't necessary to do their job, so we should shut up and stop whining when politicians do the same with taxpayers' money.

Clearly, penny pinching could be taken too far.  But, no one is yet suggesting that MPs sleep in tents on the floor of Westminster Hall.  The basic standard that most people appear to be working to is that, just because the MPs are away from home, ordinary people shouldn't be expected to subsidise a lifestyle for their elected representatives that is significantly more luxurious than their own.  That isn't too much to ask.

For most people, around £700 is a pretty large amount to spend on a television and thousands of pounds is taking the piss.  As such, they find the idea that Shahid Malik submitted a claim for that offensive.  Equally, most people don't have moats and MPs' homes are supposed to be just that, not the kind of ambassador's residences that "Melanchthon" suggests they are.

Most companies aren't nearly as generous as "Melanchthon" pretends.  Certainly, at the TaxPayers' Alliance, it isn't seen as acceptable to claim your meals as expenses just because you happen to be on a work trip.  And it isn't just us, plenty of people from all walks of life have written into their newspapers making it clear that MPs are enjoying, at taxpayers expense, treatment ordinary people would never expect where they work.

Thanks to the Telegraph's devastating exposé, the cat is now completely out of the bag.  Serious action needs to be taken by the individual MPs and parties with excessive claims returned, some MPs may need to be fired if they have lost the authority they need to do their jobs and the system needs to be reformed so that similar scandals don't arise in future.

Before that, we need the record set straight.  The Telegraph shouldn't be the only source for this information and an official release of all the information the High Court ruled should be public is still absolutely necessary.  By continuing to delay the official release of the full details of the expenses claims, even after the Telegraph has printed the most embarassing secrets, the Commons authorities aren't doing any service to MPs.  Having everything out in the open might help to stem the collapse in the moral authority of Parliament.

It shouldn't just be the Telegraph, with access to a leak, who can sift through the details of MPs' expenses.  The newspaper has done an invaluable public service in breaking the story and putting an end to the Speaker's attempts to keep this information from ordinary people but people should be able to look at all the details in the record and make up their own mind, and the scrutiny of thousands of interested taxpayers might uncover issues that the Telegraph haven't discovered.

We've organised a petitition with freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke calling on the Commons authorities to release the information.  Go here to sign it.

At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we've spent the day going through the Budget.  It's still early days yet but it is already clear that the rhetoric in Alistair Darling's speech - and even some of the figures presented in the report - don't remotely represent the reality of the position we're in.  We've found a number of critical problems with a Budget not even a day old:

At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we've just released a new calculator that allows people to work out the amount they're paying in green taxes and regulations.  With the effects of so many taxes and regulations, like the Renewables Obligation and European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, hidden in prices hopefully this tool will shed some light on them and stop a political race to ever stealthier ways of imposing big costs on the public for policies that do little to achieve their stated objectives.

If you have a website of your own, there are lots of options to let other people know what they're paying.  You can link to the calculator with text or an image, embed the calculator itself on your site, or embed or link to your own results.  Those options are all available from the calculator's results page.

Over on the Platform, John Leonard argues that calls to reduce the number of MPs are misplaced.  In particular he responds to Iain Martin making one of the more radical calls so far to reduce the number of MPs.  Martin calls for the number to fall to around 400.

It seems worth looking a little into the analytical issues raised by cutting the number of MPs or maintaining our present number of representatives.  There are a number of questions to consider in assessing the number of MPs that is appropriate.

I think Peter is quite right to highlight Jonathan Porritt's renewed call to cut the British population.  There is a horrible sense that such a view is becoming ensconced as another unquestioned prejudice of our tranzi elite.  After all, the Times couldn't even find someone in their address book of the influential and powerful to actually criticise Porritt's position.  The closest we got was George Monbiot arguing the toss over whether people or prosperity are the greater problem.  No one was given a chance, or took the chance, to stand up for prosperous human beings as a good thing.

All this shows the ideological roots of the modern environmentalist movement.  The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth are canonical works for that movement, arguing that the incredible achievements of free market capitalism in doubling incomes every generation alongside massive increases in population cannot continue and will run into inevitable and awful Malthusian blocks.  Those books were proved dramatically wrong and the author, Paul Ehrlich, of the Population Bomb lost an expensive bet on his theory.  In light of that, the theory has been reinvented.  Now the problem isn't that we can't keep increasing human prosperity and population but that we can, and that is a bad thing as global warming provides Gaia with a means to take revenge.

As reported earlier this week, George Galloway's disgusting support for Hamas - he boasts about financing a group most Western countries have rightly designated as terrorist - has got him banned from Canada.  The AFP reported at the time:

Today the TaxPayers’ Alliance has released a new study looking into British aid spending in the Palestinian territories and what that money supports.  We’ll be launching the report, along with versions in German, French, Italian, Swedish and Slovakian, in Brussels later this week as a lot of the aid goes through the European Union, as this is taxpayers’ money and it is time this issue moved up the policy agenda.

In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, both sides pledged to seek a two state solution to the conflict.  Since then we’ve had the conflict in Gaza.  It should be very clear that negotiations are not the only critical step in obtaining peace in the region, as they are often made out to be.

Even the best treaty will quickly be rendered worthless if the populations of Israel and the Palestinian territories don’t reject the cries of those who attack any peace deal as an unnecessary compromise.  Particularly important are the 42 per cent of the Palestinian population who are under 15.  That huge young generation’s attitudes will be critical to whether or not a stable peace can be achieved.

There are obviously plenty of reasons for Israelis and Palestinians to hate each other.  The same is true of the populations involved in most protracted conflicts.  However, it is vital that everything possible is done to minimise that hatred.

Unfortunately, the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza do nothing of the sort.  On television and radio, in newspapers and even in school books the Palestinians are encouraged to see an ongoing violent struggle as preferable to a peaceful compromise.

Eamonn Butler recently wrote an article for the Times arguing that regulation's role in creating the financial crisis has been underappreciated.  Chris Dillow has responded arguing that, as banking crises have been a feature of economic life since the Industrial Revolution, this is a bit of a red herring.

The problem with the argument Chris puts forward is that he is conflating the relatively high frequency of banking crises around the world with the systemic stability of the British financial system.  While banking crises may be fairly commonplace the modern British financial system has actually been quite stable.  The last serious deposit bank failures were in 1878 when the City of Glasgow Bank and the West of England & South Wales District Bank failed.  That means there is an important question to be asked about why a system that has been quite stable for more than a hundred years has failed on such a spectacular scale; we can't just put the financial crisis down to the inherent instability of the system and do need to work out what went wrong.

That's where a report I wrote last year comes in.  It put forward a comprehensive account of how inept regulation and poor policy choices drove the financial crisis.

The main Conservative criticism of the Government's plans for the Royal Mail should be similar to their criticism of its education plans a few years ago.  The Labour Party's back benches won't allow the full reform that is necessary and the watering down they are insisting on is limiting the gains for consumers and taxpayers.

As well as Jonathan Sheppard's excellent post on the Platform, I thought a post on the TaxPayers' Alliance blog by my colleague Ben Farrugia very effectively answers the criticism levelled by people like Daniel Kawczynski MP, that privatising the Royal Mail hurts the consumer interest.

Ben points out that, in countries with privatised postal services, even rural areas tend to enjoy far better standards of service than they do here:

"Nowhere has found a magic formula, but in both Germany and the Netherlands services improved following total privatisation and the end of direct Government involvement. In both countries a monopolistic provider remained (Deutsche Post in the former, TNT in the latter) following privatisation, just as it would here. But with a different set of incentives, efficiencies were found and innovation introduced. In Germany they have established a 'travelling post office' for the more quiet rural areas, travelling around a prescribed area and offering customers the services they enjoyed at their local branch, including some banking services right on their door step. 95 per cent of letters posted in Germany (to a German address) are delivered the next day. 99 per cent of all mail is delivered within two days. And that is all post, not just 'special delivery'. It is not cheaper, but considering the rises in UK stamps, it is not much more expensive either."

If reform could mean consumers can enjoy improved services and taxpayers can avoid having to write yet more subsidy cheques, it seems pretty clear that the Government's main failure is fudging the issue to sate the demands of their backbenchers.

Hamas television (Al Aqsa TV) programme Tomorrow's Pioneers has paraded a series of cuddly but angry characters before Palestinian children.  First there was Farfour the mouse, then Nahoul the bee, then Assoud the rabbit - who pledged to "finish off the Jews and eat them".  Now, there is Nassur the bear who discusses with the host, 11-year old Saraa, how they are ready to "sacrifice ourselves for our homeland!"

This is the kind of material that builds attitudes that make a long term peace in Israel-Palestine far more difficult.  Over 40 per cent of the Palestinian population are aged under 15 and this kind of hate education makes it far less likely that it will be possible to convince them, as they grow up, that peaceful compromise is preferable to an ongoing violent struggle.  Previous episodes, particularly the death of Farfour, centred around the idea it would be immoral to accept even Tel Aviv remaining a part of Israel.

While Britain doesn't donate directly to Hamas, there is plenty of similar - if less extreme - material on Palestinian Authority television and radio.  At exactly the same time as the Palestinian Authority leadership were negotiating for a two state solution at Annapolis their TV station was showing a map of Israel and Palestine all draped in the Palestinian Authority flag, building the idea that the Palestinian's objective should be the destruction of Israel rather than peaceful coexistence.  Equally, while we may not fund Hamas itself we pay for services in the Gaza strip that Hamas would otherwise be expected to provide (through the Temporary International Mechanism and its successor PEGASE).  That leaves more money in their budget to spend on things like the programme above.

We need to take responsibility as donors and put pressure on the Palestinian authorities to end this hate education.  Look out for a new TaxPayers' Alliance publication on this subject, coming out soon.

I think Tim is absolutely right about this:

"We need a serious and big picture statement from Greg Clark or even David Cameron himself on how they plan to reconcile their extraordinarily ambitious targets to cut the UK's carbon emissions with the number one priority of the British voter; a return to job-creating, income-enhancing economic growth."

As well as a speech, I think the Conservatives need to show that they are willing to scrap some of the more ineffective and economically destructive of Labour's environmental policies.

At the moment, a cocktail of policies are in place that pose a huge burden on employers. 21 per cent of the average industrial electricity bill is the result of climate change policies (PDF, 10.5.3). Manufacturing industries, and they still employed 3 million people in the UK at the start of 2008, are competing with one hand tied behind their back.

These policies aren't delivering a major reduction in emissions. Emissions are up 1.6 per cent between 1997 and 2006 as I've discussed in a previous post. Despite massive subsidies under the Renewables Obligation major energy companies are abandoning UK schemes and focussing on the American market. Even Greenpeace have condemned the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation for, among other things, contributing to the destruction of rainforests and have called for the scheme to be scrapped. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme has been such a farce that environmentalists are now calling for prices in that market to be fixed.

If the Conservatives start pledging to scrap some of these dreadful policies then notional commitments to environmental policy that doesn't imperil the prosperity of ordinary Britons will start to become more credible.

Jonathan asks why other cities don't shut down, the way London has, when it snows.

While I'm not going to discount a bit of good old fashioned bureaucratic incompetence, I think that the main cause is that these days are rare in most of Britain. Unlike in Moscow, Oslo or New York we don't get many days of snow each year, often we'll have none. When they do come along people, organisations and equipment in those cities are well prepared.

Research for the International Journal of Biometeorology showed that a similar phenomenon exists with respect to heat waves. Isolated heat waves can be incredibly lethal - in 2003 a heatwave killed nearly 15,000 people in France and over 2,000 here in the UK - but as they increase in frequency the number of deaths tends to fall rather than rise "because of adaptations: increased use of air conditioning, improved health care, and heightened public awareness of the biophysical impacts of heat exposure." That's one reason why Global Warming is unlikely to lead to a marked upsurge in heat-related mortality.

On the other hand, tens of thousands of Britons die each year thanks to the cold. Excess winter mortality in the winter of 2007-08 was 25,300. That figure has been fluctuating between twenty and fifty thousand since the seventies. That is far more than the 8,724 alcohol related deaths in 2007. Given the severity of this winter, it is quite likely that the number of deaths will be tragically high again. British rates of excess winter mortality are roughly double those in Scandinavian countries.

Our failure to use growing incomes in the last decade to adapt to the months of winter cold is a more telling failure than our infrastructure struggling to cope with weather we only experience once or twice a year. Adding 14% to domestic electricity bills and 3% to domestic gas bills through climate change policies (BERR's estimate, PDF, 10.5.3) and, thereby, making it more expensive for people to keep the thermostat up might have something to do with that.

Just over a fortnight ago, I wrote that "we will need to have a reckoning over whether the Conservative Party is in favour of letting ordinary Britons enjoy a holiday abroad, or not."  Is the Conservative Party only against expansion at Heathrow, as Boris appeared to be, or against airport expansion in general, as Theresa Villiers appeared to be?

The water is even muddier today.  We've had Theresa Villiers writing, on this website, that:

"And what about the Government’s promise to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050? Despite rushing out yet another empty promise to reduce emissions from planes by 2050, the Government have come up with no concrete plan to explain how a 46 per cent increase in flights will be reconciled with the international fight against catastrophic climate change."

Then, the Times reports - from yesterday's debate:

"The Tory attempt to embarrass Labour during the debate backfired when Ms Villiers said during the opening exchanges: “We don’t rule out South East expansion.” Later, she added: “Nor are we against flying.”

This is Ms Villiers’s most explicit statement so far that the Conservatives would be prepared to see expansion in some parts of the South East."

Apparently the favoured airports for expansion are Luton, London City and Southend.  Emissions from a plane flying from Luton will have much the same impact on the climate as emissions from a flight from Heathrow.  It isn't just that the Conservative Party is more divided than its opposition to Heathrow suggests but that Theresa Villiers herself appears to be unsure whether an increase in international flights is acceptable.

If the Conservatives' opposition is to expansion at Gatwick, Stansted or Heathrow then it appears almost calculated to prevent the UK having a hub airport.  We'll have lots of airport capacity from small airports that will fly to hubs at Frankfurt or Paris, then we'll rely on them to access the rest of the world.  That wouldn't be good for London's competitiveness or for ordinary Britons wanting to fly abroad conveniently and affordably.  However, at the same time it won't prevent emissions rising.

I've written about the third runway quite a lot on this website.  The Government made the right decision today in enabling the principal London airport to grow.  Heathrow is of vital economic performance and critical to Britons being able to see the world and come home again without too much fuss or expense.

What is, I think, under appreciated is that this debate is not simply two-sided.  You can't really understand the politics of a third runway at Heathrow until you realise there are really three broad groups in play:

It looks like CentreRight was well represented at the End Hamas Terror rally.  Douglas gave a great speech.  I met Peter Cuthbertson in the crowd and plenty of the commenters in Rob Halfon's post appear to have been at the rally.  The event was well organised and very well attended.  Apart from some anti-Israel protesters causing trouble for the police, it was genuinely peaceful and included an appeal to text and make a donation to save lives in Israel and Gaza.

It was made clear at every step that the enemy was Hamas, which put Israel in a position where it had to act to defend its citizens.  This quote, from Golda Meir after the Six-Day War in 1967, sums it up: "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."

First, I think I need to correct Tim's argument, which Charlie links to, that opposition to the third runway is "crucial in the battle to win many seats under Heathrow's flightpath".  The evidence for that statement is very weak.  Anthony Wells, at the excellent UKPollingReport blog, highlights the underlying figures in Greenpeace's poll on the subject: "Of the people who say it would make them less likely to vote Labour, the large majority say they would vote Conservative or Lib Dem tomorrow anyway. Too many people in questions like this are committed voters who are just using it to send a message, not people whose vote is actually up for grabs." 

Many voters under the Heathrow flightpath, in West London marginals, may dislike the idea of another runway but those who care enough to even think about changing their vote on that basis are already voting Tory or Lib Dem (and the Lib Dems also oppose the new runway).  On the other hand, there are Labour voters, in those very marginals, who are more committed to that party because of the possibility of a third runway: "Of the people who say a decision to build a third runway would make them more likely to vote Labour, the overwhelming majority are people who say they would vote Labour already."  Unless we really think that the Conservatives' primary objective in West London should be to defend their core vote, the policy isn't a political winner.

I've written, at length, before about the policy of putting in place a high speed rail link and blocking a new runway at Heathrow.  There is a huge range of reasons why the policy doesn't stack up:

High speed trains aren't a green panacea.  George Monbiot, who hates flying so much he compares it to child abuse, has said that high speed trains create more emissions if powered from conventional sources (which they would be in Britain).  Getting major new rail lines through the various stages of planning will take forever, Britain will suffer a shortage of capacity in the meantime.  Planes circling above London waiting for a landing slot aren't doing much to reduce emissions.  New rail lines will represent an extremely poor substitute for a new runway if and when they are completed.  You won't avoid the need to upset locals, and use compulsory purchase, as the line will need to be driven through hundreds of miles of countryside and into the major cities the lines are supposed to connect.

The question I'd ask Charlie, in particular, is why should anyone on the centre right be in favour of using regulations to block private industry spending £13.3 billion on a major infrastructure project, just so that £15.6 billion of taxpayers' money can be spent instead?

On Friday Charles Krauthammer wrote a superb article about the conflict in the Gaza strip for the Washington Post, the beggining is particularly telling:

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.

-- Associated Press, Dec. 27

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

If France were firing thousands of rockets and mortars, month after month, across the channel at Sussex how would we react?  I'd expect we would respond much the same way Israel has.  That might be why a spokesman for the Czech EU Presidency has said that they understand Israel's actions as "defensive, not offensive".

42% of the Palestinian population are under 15 years old.  Hamas hope that if they keep using the education system and media to radicalise the Palestinian population (supported by our money - PDF) then that huge young generation of Palestinians can be encouraged to fight a slow war of annihilation against Israel.  They are relying on international opinion preventing Israel from defending itself due to admirable, but misdirected, anger on behalf of the Palestinian people who suffer when Hamas succeed in getting them bombed.  As Krauthammer says: "For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians."

I have written a brief article for this morning's edition of the Scotsman on the prospect of a bailout for Jaguar Land Rover.  Unfortunately, it is only available to subscribers but these two sections seem relevant to Ridley Grove's post:

Cllr Ken Meeson, from Solihull Council writes for the Local Government blog accusing the TaxPayers' Alliance of getting our facts wrong and only knocking councils, not praising those that do a good job.  His article is a mix of distortion and ignorance about our work.  Tellingly, while Cllr Meeson has responded by bashing our study, Eric Pickles, Conservative Local Government spokesman, responded to our report with a press release saying "I welcome the publication of this information, as it will help the press and public hold their councils to account for the spending of taxpayers’ money" and attacking Government plans that could weaken controls on council publicity spending.

We have praised councils when they do good work.  Hammersmith and Fulham's cuts in council tax, for example.  In the most recent edition of the report which Cllr Meeson seems to be responding to, TPA Chief Executive Matthew Elliott was quoted as saying that "we salute the 217 councils who have cut spending on publicity."  That praise is extended to Solihull council - we included them in our list of the "20 councils with the greatest decrease in spending on publicity from 2006-07 to 2007-08".  Unfortunately, 225 councils have increased their spending on publicity and many others are still spending eye-watering amounts.

The security services have, for some time, been painting a pretty dire picture of the scale of the home grown terrorist threat facing Britain.  Even so, if the reports the Evening Standard are getting from India, that two of the terrorists in Mumbai were British, are correct then that will raise a huge number of questions about whether we're doing nearly enough to confront radical, violent Islam in Britain.

In the short term, it makes the arrest of Damian Green look like an even more dismal episode.  While British born terrorists were running amok in Mumbai, British counter-terrorist police were busy harassing opposition politicians for embarassing the Government.

We've just put out a TPA press release setting out how Darling is planning on borrowing twice as much as Britain did in order to win the Great War.  William Norton sums it up:

"British taxpayers enter this downturn like lions led by donkeys.  Not only will full recovery take twice as long as the First World War lasted, but we are going to take on twice as much debt.  Alistair Darling is sending the taxpayer over the top to face a financial Battle of the Somme."

It is important that we find a way of getting across to the public just how much the Government are planning on borrowing.  The Daily Mash's satire shows the danger that billions, and even trillions, can become a bit meaningless after a while, with so many large numbers being thrown around:

"BRITAIN'S national debt will rise from No Way to Christ On A Bike, chancellor Alistair Darling announced yesterday."

There is some good news in the Pre-Budget Report.  The VAT cut is good news to the extent that it puts money back in the hands of ordinary people.  With the tax burden having increased (PDF) by 51% in real terms in the last ten years, with charges for many services rising at the same time, we deserve a break.  If people can be encouraged to increase their spending a bit that might provide some relief to retailers, in particular, as well.

I spent yesterday out with Sky responding to changes in motoring taxes, hence this post arriving somewhat late.  The delays to the changes in Vehicle Excise Duty are also welcome.  At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we have been pointing out how these changes will hit ordinary motorists since the day of the budget and any delay in their introduction will ease the burden .  Sadly the Chancellor is once again giving to motorists with one hand and taking away with another, putting through a rise in fuel duty at the same time.

Unfortunately, beyond the immediate tax relief there is a mass of bad news and utterly disingenuous statements in the Chancellor's speech.

“But a crisis which began, as America itself has said, in the US housing market has seen these benign conditions undermined.”

This statement is akin to the Kaiser standing before the pearly gates and blaming the First World War on Serbian nationalism.  While it might have had little to do with what triggered the crisis, the Government is deeply implicated in the various policy and regulatory weaknesses that meant a fall in the value of some houses in the United States led to the greatest financial crisis to hit the United Kingdom in well over a century.

At the TaxPayers’ Alliance, we released a major report (PDF) over the weekend on the causes of the financial crisis.  We set out how policy choices – particularly around interest rates – drove the build-up of the crisis; how regulators failed to respond effectively and how international regulations exacerbated the crisis once it got underway.  The Government’s unending attempts to try and pretend the present crisis is some kind of exogenous bolt from the blue striking their well laid plans are utterly misleading.