Talk:Joan Ruddock

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[edit] Comments on Partha Dasgupta, Robert Mendelsohn, William Nordhaus, Richard Tol, Martin Weitzman and Gary Yohe

I propose that the sentence about Ruddock's views on these ecomonists be deleted. I have already deleted references to this point on the respective pages for each of them: quite aside from the obvious NPOV issues, with the best will in the world, Ruddock's views are not of sufficient weight to merit inclusion on Wikipedia.

It is slightly different of course on the page about Ruddock herself: a reference to her views on a given topic will not raise the same NPOV issues.

That said, are the contents of a departmental memorandum of sufficient importance to warrant inclusion? If they are, then the article should perhaps set out more clearly why this is the case.

Informed Owl (talk) 14:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)Informed Owl

I think that relevance depends on the context. It seems to me that you were quite right to remove this info from the articles on the economists, but that's a difft matter from having it here.
As with most MPs, Ruddock's article is regrettably stubby for someone with 21 years in the House of Commons and several years of public prominence before then. It tells us very little about what she thinks or does, and while this snippet may be a little obscure, at least it says something about her current stance. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:02, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for the response. I am glad I asked first rather than just deleting as I had with the other references. I agree with you that the article is stubby. It was partly why the quotation really stood out so much: in a very short article covering quite a long public life, the very specific reference to these economists seemed unduly prominent.
Another point occurs to me. The quotation "a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of formal, highly aggregated economic modelling in evaluating a policy issue" comes from the briefing note attached to Ruddock's letter. It was prepared by departmental officials, not by her. While she can probably be taken to have accepted the contents of the briefing (why else send it on?), essentially what we have is one sentence taken from a 5 page note which was sent to Ruddock being taken to be of sufficient importance to warrant inclusion in the article about her. Informed Owl (talk) 16:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)Informed Owl
Having just read Ruddock's letter and the start of the briefing notes, I think you are right that this item should be deleted. Even if the subject of that correspondence is relevant, that point is a bizarre way of summarising it, and the substance of the it is "Minister's correspondence defends the Stern review against critics", which is about as surprising as noting that she has an office in westmninster. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:57, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


I like the way you put it! For the record, I have deleted the following comment:

"She has argued that the economists Partha Dasgupta, Robert Mendelsohn, William Nordhaus, Richard Tol, Martin Weitzman and Gary Yohe suffer from "a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of formal, highly aggregated economic modelling in evaluating a policy issue""

together with this link to the letter and briefing notes to which I and BrownHairedGirl have referred: http://www.fnu.zmaw.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/publication/tol/Ruddock.pdf Informed Owl (talk) 22:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)Informed Owl