Sleight Of Hand

Maybe you've been wondering why OFSTED can report that everything's ducky in most of the nation's schools even when anecdotal evidence indicates they're accerlerating downhill ? Wonder no more:

A radical overhaul of the school inspection system, making it harder for teachers to disguise their failings, was announced yesterday by David Bell, the head of Ofsted.

Instead of being given two months' notice of an inspection - time usually spent on extensive cosmetic preparation and writing meaningless documents, Mr Bell said - schools will now be told on a Friday to expect the inspectors on the Monday.

Two months notice ? That's enough time to bury any number of bodies. So, this sounds like a Good but, as ever, that's not quite the whole story.

To make the process less intrusive and burdensome for schools and teachers, the size of the inspection teams will be slashed - saving £10 million a year on Ofsted's budget of £70 million - and the inspectors will stay for one or two days instead of a week.

Instead of inspecting everything from the state of the lavatories to the religious content of assemblies, they will "focus on what really matters" - the effectiveness of the school's management and the quality of the teaching.

So anything less than unburied bodies stinking up the class room and Beardy-Weirdey is home free. But who cares anyway ?

The interval between inspections will be halved from six years to three, enabling Ofsted to monitor schools more closely and giving parents more up-to-date information about the quality of their children's education.

"Inspection will be more rigorous and the inspectors' reports will be briefer and easier to read," Mr Bell said. "This is Ofsted consolidating its role as the parents' champion."

Well, yeah, but without REAL school choice it hardly matters. Everyone knows which are the dive schools just as surely as everyone knows the good ones. But, as long as education is effectively run as a cartel it hardly matters. Without the discipline of the market we're stuck with people who say things like this:

The National Association of Head Teachers said it was concerned about the demand for "higher and higher standards" and the poor quality of many inspection teams.

Everyone knows continuous improvement is impossible, that's why the Ford Mondeo looks so much like the Cortina did back in the day. That's even before considering the irony in the self-same people demanding 'higher and higher standards' at OFSTED. Apparently, OFSTED aren't part of Big Education's happy-clappy commune.

Real Conservatism

Domestic policy may be a little erratic, but George W Bush has grasped the essentials of what America should be in a way that suggests he is a worthy successor to Ronald Reagan. Read this and see not only why Howard's attempt to take on Blair at his own game is doomed, but why he doesn't even need to try.

Ouijah Board Required

How zombiefied is the average member of the Conservative Party ? I mean, they elect a leader, he gets deposed in a coup and the new guy starts pushing through the very policies that the members implicitly rejected when they elected IDS.

We're not talking little stuff here. The Party's line on the EU is such a federalist monstrosity that even its own MEPs are rebelling. The War on Terror ? Howard's opportunism over Iraq has moved beyond the merely squalid to the positively dangerous. To paraphrase Mark Steyn: by demanding an impossible standard of evidence before action is taken, Howard is inhibiting the ability of future governments - including his own, of course - to wage war effectively against an enemy that rarely announces its intentions via an advert in the Times. As for social policy, Mel P sums it up perfectly.

So Howard has successively abandoned Euroscepticism, national defence and the family. Given all that, what exactly is left ? As far as anything recognisably Conservative goes, Howard seems to envisage the Tories as a kind of low tax pressure group. As for the rest of the policies Howard may as well fire the policy staff and let You Gov write the manifesto.

What's that squeak I hear ? 'Electability' ? No doubt Conservative MPs are prepared throw all manner of babies away with the bath water . At the end of the day, they're career politicians and as such will drink the full 26 flavours of Kool Aid if it means they can cop a swanky office in Whitehall. But Conservative activists ? What do they get out of it ? Why should they pound pavements and stump up cash merely to provide a collection of sleazy wooden men with top jobs ? Well, traditionally, the idea was to promote an ideology you believe in, but given that the Parliamentary Conservative Party has abandoned ideology isn't it time the rest of the party abandoned them ?

Can any Conservative really say that a Howard government would be better than a Blair government ? There's little to choose between them politically speaking. You wouldn't leave your kids with either of them. In fact, there's only one real policy difference between the two of them and that clearly shows Blair in a better light. Even while being quite possibly definitive proof of the stopped clock hypothesis, Blair showed real courage and vision in his Iraq policy. Howard on the other hand has managed to diminish himself every time he speaks. We are living through days that will define the world for centuries to come, and the leader of Her Majesty's Opposition is scrabbling around in the gutter trying to catch the PM with odd socks on.

So, I return to my original point: what kind of drones are Conservative activists ? If Howard finished up his next conference speech by mooning at them, would they get a clue then ? Conservative Party members: it's time to face facts - you are hated by your MPs. This bunch of snivelling, two dimensional, amoral scumbags regard Conservatism as a brand or image. Market share is an end in itself. Hence the hatred for activists: by bringing actual ideals into the equation, they interfere with the effective marketing of the Conservative Party PLC. Activists: if you genuinely want to promote Conservatism then you're wasting your time with the Conservative Party. Let the two-faced, conniving twerps deliver their own leaflets.

Anglican Church In PC Stupidity Non-Shocker

Sometimes Liberals commit Hari-Kiri merely by opening their mouths:

The Three Wise Men who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus may not have been particularly wise and could have been women, the Church of England has ruled.

A committee revising new short prayers, or "collects", for the Church's latest prayer book, Common Worship, said the term "magi" was a transliteration of the name of officials at the Persian court and the possibility that they were female could not be dismissed.

Apparently, there's no role for wise men in today's Anglican Church.

Who'd Have Thunk It ?

Pakistan's foreign minister has got the hump. No fair complaining about Pakistan's NukeMart says he, after all plenty of Europeans where involved too.

Who can he mean ?

Liberals - Fetch!

I get slagged! Excellent - it's about time. Anyway, stop me if you've heard this one before, but the Liberals are claiming they're not really Liberal. What did I say below about Liberals lacking confidence in the force of their arguments ? I got accused of reading too much Coulter - as if such a thing were possible - which is ironic since Coulter answered this very point perfectly when she pointed out there's more variation amongst dogs than Liberals, but Liberals don't insist on a half-hour discussion on the difference between poodles and Labradors before agreeing that actually 'dog' is a pretty useful generic term for the things that bark.

What's that ? Liberal once meant something different ? OK, I'll concede that providing the not-Liberals agree to only call Elton John gay when he's really happy. Otherwise can they just accept that language changes over time ?

Point two is even weirder: there are people on the Left who aren't Liberals. Like, really ? That's an excuse for Michael Meacher is it? The fact you can oppose Conservatism without being completely insane ? Principled leftists like Ann Clywd or Frank Field emphasise, rather than detract from, the nuttiness of modern Liberalism.

So what is it with modern Liberalism that none of it's proponents will actually admit to being Liberals ? Put it this way: think of a flagship Liberal policy, now think of a successful flagship Liberal policy. My critic claims that Liberalism tend to believe in the importance of education as a means of empowering people. They might believe that, but it doesn't change the fact that we've had thirty years of Liberals running rampant in the education system and it's a complete train wreck. They steered it onto the iceberg, no one else did, and we should remind people of that fact at every opportunity.

There is such a thing as Liberalism. It may be hard to pin down the exact details of the philosophy but that's mainly because it doesn't make sense anyway: try this one from the critic - '[Liberal's] desire to allow people to live their lives without interference from the state, other organisations and other people'. Surely if you want to protect the citizen from interference from other organisations and people you 're going to need a honking great state to do the protecting ? Besides, it's never that simple. The critic criticises Texans who refused to work on building an abortion clinic - yet what is the critic's answer ? Forced labour ? Who knows ? As ever with Liberals, there's plenty of outrage but no answers. The desire to have their cake and eat it is one of the defining features of modern Liberalism - and no group of people exemplify this more than the Lib Dems.

I've said this before, and no doubt I'll say it again, the Lib Dems aren't a political party in the sense of advancing actual policies. Voting Lib Dem is the political equivalent of getting a tongue stud. Their whole raison d'être is to bug the squares, shout rude words and moon at the grown-ups. Check out the excellent new blog, Liberal Democrat Watch, for more proof of that.

Nevertheless, there is a definable spine of ideological thought which can be summed up as Liberal. I was joking when I wrote this, but there is an underlying truth to it. If you believe that big business is more dangerous than big government, crystals cure cancer and mobile phones cause it, a householder killing a burglar is more serious than the other way round and George W Bush is worse than Bin Laden, you're a Liberal and that's that.

War On Some Terror

The worst thing about the influence of Liberalism on the legal system has been the politicisation of the law. Instead of upholding the law as passed by Parliament, every decision is now carefully weighed against political considerations. Is it any wonder respect for the law is going downhill when the law merely serves to provide an excuse to push the political idea d'jour ? So now we have the situation where police openly discriminate in favour of some victims and against others. Which leads to situations like this:

Huntingdon Life Sciences is preparing private prosecutions against militant animal rights protesters because it is not getting enough protection from the law.

Andrew Baker, the head of Europe's largest contract testing laboratory, wrote to Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, last week complaining at the lack of action against violent demonstrators who are harming his business by driving away suppliers and customers.

It is understood that the letter complains about the "abject failure" of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate crimes properly and to bring successful prosecutions against repeat offenders.

Not As Other Men

The Free Democrat has an interesting link from the US:

A few years ago, Jeff O'Holleran said he began to realize that he was different from the other boys he knew.
"I started having certain thoughts," said Mr. O'Holleran, 19, a student at the University of Colorado (CU). ..

Yesterday, he said, it was time to come out of the closet. In the middle of a crowded university dining area, he took to the podium and announced, "I'm Jeff, and I'm a conservative."

Of course, there's serious purpose to all this. It's a protest against academic bias. After all, there's a certain disconnect between Liberal rhetoric about diversity and their treatment of those with diverse views. I remember how over at this place some guy in the comments started boasting about how a class he was teaching had degenerated into a anti-Conservative hatefest. Think that one over: a guy at a site called 'Conservative Commentary' is quite happy to boast about how he allows schoolkids in his class to take time out to screech abuse about Tories. To him, that was normal. Somehow, I think he wouldn't have been too impressed if a colleague had allowed his class to openly express hatred of gays.

Yet, with all that, I'm wary about this sort of thing. No two ways about it, we should oppose bias wherever it exists but there are so many ways for students to be victimised that this sort of thing runs the risk of being a kind of political Charge of the Light Brigade. Martyrdom ain't our thing. More to the point though, it runs the risk of being counter-productive.

The problem is, as Jonah Goldberg put it, we don't want to encourage the 'Gorillas in the Mist' approach to Conservatism, the belief that Conservatives are some weird, exotic species. Unlike gay activists, we don't merely want to assert our identity or draw a reaction, we want to convince people. We don't want to be a minority group, we want to be a majority group. Equally, if we develop the attributes of a minority group then that automatically sets us apart from people.

We've got a mountain to climb though. For example, it says a lot about the reality of Liberal bias in the media and the Academy that people really believe that Nazis are right-wing. Hello ? National Socialists, anyone ? As Paul sums up perfectly, most of the BNP manifesto is indistinguishable from the Lib Dems. Indeed, the main point of contention appears to be that Nazis want to kill Jews, while the Lib Dems prefer to subcontract to the Islamofascists. Yet, still large numbers of people believe that wanting to privatise the BBC is the same as thinking Hitler was a pinko who wimped out. Say what else you like about it, but this is prejudice.

As with all prejudice the way to defeat it is to slap it in the face with reality. Maybe these ceremonies would help ? Would the mindless hatred of Conservatives on campus abate if Joe Kewl stood up and admitted he occasionally indulged in full-on Conservatism ? Possibly, or it could just confirm the Lefty libel that Conservatives are weird and alien.

Let's be clear about this: a lecturer, let alone a schoolteacher, who expresses hostile views on Conservatives (or permits others to) should be judged exactly the same as one who expresses the same views about gays. We don't need another PC victim group but it's entirely fair to question whether Conservative students can be fairly assessed by someone who believes they are Nazis. But, outside of that kind of official bigotry, we should recognise that this demonisation is a sign of weakness not strength. Here's modern Liberalism, it claims to the way of the future, but it's best argument is that Conservatives are Nazis. Really - it shows a certain lack of confidence in the force of their arguments.

The best way to defeat this prejudice is simply by day-to-day interactions. Live your life, don't hide your true beliefs but don't ram them down people's throats either. Sooner or later people will question why you don't have two heads or a swastika flag on your wall, like they were always told you'd have, and once they turn off the Kool Aid supply, then they're ready to listen, their minds are open, and with care and attention, you can seduce them to the Dark Side.

Bad Victim!

Sometimes it must be hard to be a Liberal. You try all you can to help out the world's unfortunates in their battle against poverty, disease and infidels, then they go do this to you:

An Afghan boy whose 14-month detention by US authorities as a terrorist suspect in Cuba prompted an outcry from human rights campaigners said yesterday that he enjoyed his time in the camp.

Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, who until last week was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, said that he was treated very well and particularly enjoyed learning to speak English. His words will disappoint critics of the US policy of detaining "illegal combatants" in south-east Cuba indefinitely and without trial.

Disappoint ? Cherie's on suicide watch.

Next But One Moral Panic

So, right, the latest moral panic is about replica guns and air weapons. The chattering classes are trying to convince us that they can easily be converted into working firearms (not that these people ever seem to actually attempt to do this themselves - not that easy apparently). 'Ban 'Em All' saith the guardians of public morals, after all, all the people who can now convert an air rifle to fire actual bullets will throw their hand in without a ready supply of gun-shaped things to start with. Right ? I mean, that's got to be true, hasn't it ?

If We Order Ice Cream, The Terrorists Will Have Won

If there's one cliché which has been flogged to death these last couple of years, then it's that one. Don't get me wrong, Blunkett bears watching at the best of times and the latest proposals are an atrocity. But, seeing as how Blunkett has not proposed mass conversion to Islam and a return to the fourteenth century, it's hard to see much for Al-Q to celebrate.

What it's all about, of course, is an attempt to shut down the debate rather than risk people realising that many of Blunkett's critics don't have any actual alternatives. The Left has either lapsed into full-on denial or actively lined up with the enemy, while the Libertarians generally support waging the war vigorously but differently, in some as yet undefined way. Horrible though Blunkett's measures are, at least he has recognised that things can't go on.

Still, the central problem remains. Trying to wage war within the confines of criminal law makes about as much sense as insisting that the Fire Brigade obtain search warrants before entering burning buildings. This isn't a theoretical objection: it was 1993 when Al-Q made their first attack on the WTC. Between 1993 and 2001 the US treated Al-Q as a law enforcement problem - even refusing a Sudanese offer to extradite Bin Laden since the US lacked enough evidence to charge him with anything. It's fair to say that the 'terrorists as criminals' approach got a fair old working out, with Sep 11 marking the failure of that experiment. Yet, still British policy remains stubbornly legalcentric.

The problem with the current British approach is perfectly summed up by the Gitmo farce. Here we have a number of British citizens captured on the battlefield while fighting for a terrorist organisation against our allies in time of war. You'd think that would justify a certain degree of jail time, but no, you see, there's no evidence: they might have been on holiday with Club Jihad, for example. Some of what the Islamofascists believe might strike us as strange, but insisting that no one can be classed as a traitor unless they've left a series of video diary entries speaking at length about how much they'll enjoy dropping anthrax over the FA Cup Final or the like - now that's really insane. Given that we're stuck with a legalistic approach to the war, it looks like our only option is the one Blunkett proposes: throwing out most of the basic assumptions of our legal system.

Against this background it is easy to see why the US has opted to rely on military tribunals. This measure avoids having to release scumbags because there are no eyewitness reports of the rat in question leaning over a map of central LA with a fistful of flags labelled 'bomb goes here'. Blunkett wants to go the other way: throwing out so many civil rights that every court may as well be military tribunal. This is the central paradox that the Left, mired in anti-Americanism, will not address. As Drake's Drum pointed out, military tribunals for illegal combatants serve to protect civil rights. By drawing a distinction between enemy combatants captured during operations and 'ordinary, decent criminals' the US has managed to resolve the tension between civil rights and national defence. When dealing with purely criminal incidents, there is no reason why the normal processes of law enforcement cannot take place. OTOH, within the very specialised situation of the battlefield (in the broadest sense), it is clearly ludicrous to expect combat soldiers to respect such legal niceties as 'chains of evidence' and the like.

Of course, if you've drank the full six-pack of Kool Aid, then you don't see the problem: there's no such thing as terrorism (except anything done by the West), everyone is innocent except for the Americans and Mossad blew up the WTC. For the rest though the central issue remains: our court system can't deal with Islamosfascism without significant changes. Blunkett has put before us his ideas, warped though they are, but the fact that so few others have been prepared to grasp the nettle exposes a deep flaw in our politics - their sheer lack of seriousness. We are faced with fanatics who want to impose an Islamic theocracy on the world and our political class are still throwing rotten tomatoes at each other.

You're Evil, But Your Money's Saintly

We on the Right spend so long bemoaning the fact the BBC extorts money from us to tell us how awful we are that we often forget there are other scrounging nogoodniks out there copping slander subsidies. The incomparable Mel P put us right.

That Was Last Week

I actually heard this program, embarrassingly enough. There's a certain irony here. The Beeb was helping to push a campaign to muzzle the press, justified by nothing more than a series of eye-scratchy attacks of the 'you're insensitive' type from the Perennially Outraged. Wasn't this the self-same organisation that was assuring us last week that being able to broadcast slanderous material was the very cornerstone of our democracy ? Which is it ? Is slander the mark of a free press or is being rude enough to warrant Big Brother clamping down ? We may never know.

Bias ? Us ?

Does the mainstream media tilt on the Israel/Palestine issue ? Perish the thought.

All The DU You'll Ever Need

I usually try and stay away from lefty sites: if I need to hear what the Kool Aid drinkers are saying, I figure I should get some use out of the disgrace I'm forced to pay my TV licence to support. So I'm particularly grateful to Frank J for supplying The Universal Democratic Underground Thread.

Who Can He Mean ?

So anyway, Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Brighton College, East Sussex, points out the basic hypocrisy of Leftoids who slam parents who go private while pulling an Alan B'stard with the state system to get their kids into top schools. I'll second that - after all, the Left's argument against private education relies on dippy arguments about 'the rich' using up all the good education so ordinary people have to study French military victories or something yet, as far as state schools go, every Liberal's kid that gets into a functioning school by subterfuge really does mean one more good kid on the scrapheap at Winston Silcott Comprehensive.

What's more, Tony follows this up by suggesting means tested tuition fees for schooling. The University fees boosters always make a big point of the supposed logic of their position, so it raises an interesting question. I didn't agree with them at Uni level, I don't agree with them here either, but for those who did agree with Uni fees: what's the diff ? Really ?

It's just a pity that Tony immediately jumps the shark. His justification for fees is this: 'parents who paid fees are more likely to take an active interest in their children's schooling'. There's the obvious objection that he confuses cause and effect: parents who scrimp and save to give their kids a good education are bound to be those who place a high value on education. But there's a deeper problem this idea exposes. Take this quote from Seldon:


Fee-paying parents demand a good service, and are closely involved in schools.
"Research shows that the more involved parents are, the better the performance of the school."

Teachers keep babbling on about how they're professionals, much like brain surgeons, only more talented. Yet every time the wheels come off it's because of the parents. Of course. Never mind that the head teacher of a comp pulls down £70 000 pa, the real problem is that police officers, nurses and entrepreneurs don't spend enough of their free time doing his job for him. So which teaching profession are we talking about anyway ? Is it the elite group of professionals or the group of hapless idiots who seemingly can't have lunch without parents cutting up their sandwiches for them ?

I could point out that parents already pay through the nose for Big Education via the tax system but, more than that, what is this about demanding good service ? The whole system is designed to insulate our hippy-dippy non-teaching profession from the people who pay their wages. How exactly can a parent 'demand a good service' ? Seemingly, to judge by the statistics on violence, it does no good for a parent to demand a safe environment for their kids let alone anything more ambitious.

This is where we came in. Seldon's customers can demand a good service because they can up stakes if they don't get it. Our Soviet style state system is designed to prevent anyone having that choice. Children are divided up amongst the cartel like slaves being split amongst the victors of some ancient battle. So parents try and fiddle the system to ensure the best for their kids ? How evil! They should be happy to play Russian Roulette with their kids education.

Parents are supposed to feel guilty about administering a sly tilt to a system which yearly condemns thousands of kids to a lifetime of underachievement (and usually five years of violence as well) ? Hello ? This isn't Vietnam or the Somme. Your country doesn't need your kids. Just let the bad schools sink already. There's no upside to our current system of commissars and cartels - unless you're some workshy, soap-dodging, drug-sodden, activist New-Age freak going through the motions until the Revolution comes. Take this quote from OFSTED's latest effusion:

Mr Bell said it was encouraging that fewer comprehensives had unsatisfactory behaviour - but the conduct of some pupils, especially boys, "remains a serious concern for many".

"Unwillingness to listen, to concentrate and to get on with their work continues to cause disturbance and to hinder learning," he reported.


To paraphrase the old line about the GDR, maybe the teachers should fire the pupils and hire some new ones. Boys make up half the population, schools aren't serving their needs and that proves the lads have a problem ? Arrogant, much ? Can anyone imaging Ford responding to a fall in sales to women by announcing that girls are stupid ?

Education is the Jurassic Park of modern Britain, where one can hear the authentic sound of 1970s nationalised industries. Our non-education system needs the same treatment British industry required back in the Eighties: none whatsoever. Enough with the bureaucracy and the blather and the avoidance mechanisms. Give the public real choice. Successful schools should be allowed to expand as big as they want. Failing schools should be killed with a shovel. That's it, that's all you need. Competition and the action of the market will do the rest.

Consequences

Ludicrous though I think all this post-Hutton manoeuvring by the Hate-America crowd is, Blair can't say he hasn't brought much of it on himself. In the run-up to '97 Blair couldn't cross the road without talking about Tory sleaze, fat cat conspiracies and Big Business plotting to do down the little guy. Right up until about 2:30 AM on May 2 Blair was the best thing that ever happened to the British tinfoil industry. But, amusing though it is to see him get beaten with his own stick, there are serious consequences to descending further into X-Files territory. Mark Steyn sums… well, it's Mark Steyn - it's hardly going to not be good is it ?

If he wants, Mr Howard can have some sport with Mr Blair. But, if he aids the perception that Blair took Britain to war under false pretences, the Tories will do the country a grave disservice. One day Mr Howard might be prime minister and, chances are, in the murky world that lies ahead, he'll have to commit British forces on far less hard evidence than existed vis à vis Saddam. Conservatives shouldn't assist the Western world's self-loathing fringe in imposing a burden of proof that can never be met. The alternative to pre-emption is defeat. If you want a real "underlying issue", that's it.

The Enlightened Strike Again

Yargh, RIIIGHT. Everyone knows Conservatives only criticise paedophiles because they think they'll pick up votes amongst ignorant fools who are too stupid to understand the nuances of how Liberals crack down on dangerous predators.

A Wakefield, West Yorkshire, last Friday, was arrested in Weymouth at about 1330 GMT on Wednesday.

He was caught in the town centre after a member of the public alerted police.

After being taken to Weymouth police station, McDermott was transferred to Dorchester Prison, where West Yorkshire police will question him on Thursday.

McDermott was on parole, and was said by police to present a particular danger to children. dangerous paedophile who has been on the run for six days has been arrested in Dorset.
John McDermott, 45, who absconded from a hostel in

Earth calling Liberals, Earth calling Liberals… how exactly does a guy get parole when he's so dangerous his disappearance causes a nation-wide manhunt. I mean, here's Tony Martin denied parole because he's a danger to burglars but now we have a guy who's described as a 'particular danger to children' and the Left does all but give him directions to the nearest primary school.

How did we get here anyway ? How did we get to the point where the L3 spend half their lives whining about Sellafield, industrial waste and car exhausts releasing toxins into the environment but the Parole Board can release predators and it's a faux pas to ask WTF ? Would the left give a toss if he smoked near some kids ? Or does the Left's egotism and snobbery preclude any common cause with the great unwashed, even to the point of aiding and abetting those who kill kids for sexual kicks ? Whatever, but until some Liberal can explain this to me, I'll keep translating 'nuanced policy' as 'juvenile ego-trips threatening innocent lives '.

Honest Liberal Found

Hey, don't be too hard on her. All she's doing is following Moonbat logic to its obvious conclusion.

She's not nuts, she's honest.

The Appliance Of Science

Here's a quick question for you: you're a member of a once great profession that served humanity well for centuries, yet your public image has been dragged through the mud as a result of a series of sleazy incidents in which members of your profession have behaved more like Mafiosi or members of a fanatical cult instead of committed public servants. Do you

A) Launch a huge PR campaign

B) Encourage members of your profession to forge links with the journalists by talking openly about what they do and how they do it

C) Call for the profession to adopt voluntary regulation, with codes of conduct, minimum standard, independent disciplinary panels and a requirement to document how you do business.

D) Call for the government to regulate the profession, in particular by setting up a national standards body with the right to carry out snap inspections, seize evidence and investigate misconduct

E) Call for your critics to be censored

This answers obvious, once you take a scientific approach.