Acting job

"I'm not in the business of making predictions" said David Miliband on Andrew Marr's show this Sunday morning.

Really, David? How about this one.

"Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to significant changes in the global climate system with a projected warming of the planet over the next twenty years of about 0.2 degrees C per decade."

Sounds like a prediction to me. Or what about this one.

This is likely to result in snow cover contracting; sea ice shrinking in both the Arctic and Antarctic; and it is ‘very likely’ that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation will continue to become more frequent.

Is that not a prediction, either? Maybe this one will strike a chord.

Mr Miliband stressed that there was no "safe" level of climate change, with even the proposed action to limit the rise in global temperatures to only two degrees resulting in regular 50-degree summers in Berlin and continental Europe by mid-century.

I don't know what else you could call forecasting heat waves and 50C summers other than predictions. What he really means when he says "I'm not in the business of making predictions" is that he is only going to make predictions that suit his propaganda.

Like most career politicians, David Miliband does not actually think about anything he says. He just talks in sound bites - carefully selected chunks of speech that are designed to make him sound knowledgeable about a topic which he actually knows nothing about. Watching him this morning made me realise just how far our political system has fallen - it was like watching someone "acting" the part of a serious politician (and not doing a very good job). The carefully staged pose to make it him appear keen and interested, the steepling fingers and practiced pauses to signify "thinking" and the earnest look of concentration designed to convey "I really mean what I say".

He isn't a serious politician, he isn't knowledgeable - he is a careerist weasel.