Eye on Britain
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Patient to sue NHS over top-up drug
A woman's fight to halt the withdrawal of her free care could shatter goverment rules on drugs. But fancy having to sue to get the healthcare you have already paid for! I guess that's what's called socialist compassion
A WOMAN cancer patient is taking a landmark legal action against the National Health Service for withdrawing treatment because she has chosen to pay for a drug that the NHS does not fund. Sue Bentley, a potter, has had her NHS care withdrawn after paying privately for the drug Avastin to increase her chance of fighting lung cancer. The legal action will put pressure on the government to change its policy of penalising patients who try to improve their chances of survival by buying additional drugs.
An inquiry into the scandal, to be published at the end of October, is widely expected to propose that patients should be allowed to pay for additional drugs without losing their NHS care. Ministers will then consider changing the rules but patients such as Bentley say they do not have time to wait. Bentley, 67, from Monmouthshire, who was diagnosed with the disease last December, said: “We were told there was no way we would be allowed to top up and that we would need to opt out of the NHS and pay for everything. “It is quite frightening because, if I become ill, I know that we will need to pay up to $900 a day for me to go into hospital, as well as all the treatment costs.”
In addition to the Avastin, Bentley is also receiving two other drugs, cisplatin and gemcitabine, which are normally available on the NHS. She is now being charged for these drugs which are free to other NHS patients. She added: “Everyone else is getting the cisplatin and the gemcitabine for free. I am sitting beside them and I am being billed. It is horrendous.”
Bentley will challenge in court the decision by her hospital, Velindre NHS Trust, Cardiff, to refuse to allow her to pay for an additional drug without losing her NHS care. In previous legal challenges, the NHS has capitulated either by agreeing to fund the additional drug or by the hospital allowing co-payment. This is unlikely to happen in Bentley’s case.
Bentley’s solicitor, Melissa Worth, of Halliwells, the Manchester-based law firm, has a QC’s opinion stating that the NHS has no legal right to prevent Bentley paying for a private drug while continuing to receive her state-funded care. Worth said: “Ms Bentley has paid for her NHS care through insurance contributions and there is no bar to a patient purchasing a drug not ordinarily available on the NHS, bringing that to a hospital and having the NHS administer that drug. “These patients are not taking anything away from the NHS.”
Halliwells is not charging Bentley for its representation. Doctors for Reform, a group of 1,000 doctors, has a $70,000 fighting fund to pay any legal costs awarded to the NHS if Bentley loses her case.
Bentley’s companion of 24 years, Steve Rogers, 52, a conservationist, has paid for Avastin, which costs about $6,600 a month, from savings. He found trials on the internet showing that patients who add Avastin to their treatment are more likely to see their tumours shrink and will increase the time before their cancer returns.
The couple must also pay for the cost of the chemotherapy drugs, which would otherwise have been available to Bentley on the NHS, and the charges for administering them. Bentley’s oncologist, who is backing their decision to pay for Avastin, has waived his fees.
Velindre NHS Trust defended its decision to withdraw NHS care. Malcolm Adams, medical director, said: “Velindre’s policy is that patients cannot switch between NHS and private healthcare within a particular treatment episode. “The Trust awaits the outcome of this [Department of Health] review with considerable interest.”
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Health and safety team enters conker championships
This sounds like a bit of that old-fashioned eccentricity that was once the glory of Britain -- and to a degree it is. It is also however a significant backdown from the insane safety obsession that has had Britain ban almost anything that moves in recent years. The game of conkers is played by two players, each with a nut threaded onto a piece of string. They take turns to strike each other's nut until one breaks. The game is about as harmless as you can get but has nonetheless been banned from time to time in British schools etc.
The World Conker Championships have found a rather unlikely sponsor - the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. Keen to shrug off their spoilsport image and dispel the myth that they make children wear protective goggles for the playground game, health and safety officers have also entered a team in the tournament.
After years of being derided for banning such jolly pastimes as sweets being thrown into the audience at theatres and balloon modelling by clowns, the supposed killjoys have said enough is enough. Ray Hurst, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health president, said: "I'm looking forward to captaining my team to glory at the championships to show that health and safety people are not spoilsports. We like to have fun like anyone else. You just have to manage the risks, not ban them into oblivion."
About 500 other entrants from as far afield as Jamaica, the US, Brazil, the Philippines and Benin will compete to be crowned conker champion at the championships in Ashton, Northamptonshire, on October 12.
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Blind Greenie propaganda in "The Economist"
A comment in reply by Philip Stott, Emeritus professor of biogeography from the University of London
Your assertion that "global warming is happening faster than expected" exhibits a disturbing degree of cognitive dissonance ("Adapt or die ", September 13th). Since 1998 the world's average surface temperature has exhibited no warming, according to all the main temperature records. The trend has been a combination of flatlining and cooling, with a marked plunge over the past year; many countries, including Australia, Canada, China and the United States, experienced severe winters.
Moreover, recent work demonstrates that the Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for at least a further decade through the impact of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. In addition, the next 11-year cycle of solar storms-Solar Cycle 24-is late by more than two years. The sun is currently spotless, conditions that obtained during the "Dalton Minimum", an especially cold period that lasted several decades starting from 1790 and which was implicated in the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812.
Finally, one expert, Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, has gone so far as to give warning that the Earth may enter a new "Little Ice Age" for up to 80 years because of decreases in solar activity. The immediate portents thus point in the direction of a cooling period.
Whatever one thinks about longer-term trends in world average temperatures and their possible relationship with carbon emissions, it cannot be claimed that currently "global warming is happening faster than expected". It troubles me when a publication with the standing of The Economist permits such a gap between observed reality and political rhetoric.
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Be honest: we all love the sexist alpha male
By India Knight, an upper class British female, courtesy of the fact that her Indian mother married well -- several times
Many women will tell you that one of the most irritating things about life is that alpha males - great silverbacked gorilla types - strike us, maddeningly, as being rather more attractive than their kinder, gentler, more considerate dwarf-monkey counterparts. We know intellectually that it shouldn't be so, since the gorillas are often sexist pigs (just to mix the animal metaphors); but when push comes to shove and we're picking a boyfriend rather than a friend, few of us find beta males especially appealing.
In real life as in Georgette Heyer, the reprehensible, oddly sexy brute fares rather better than the sensitive flower. Now it turns out that the unreconstituted, sexist male chauvinist is not only more attractive to many women, but earns more money and is more professionally successful than the kind man who sympathises when you have period cramps and offers to make you a nice cup of camomile. Not fair, is it?
The Journal of Applied Psychology has just published findings from a University of Florida study based on interviews with more than 12,000 men and women. Between 1979 and 2005, they were questioned regularly about how they viewed male and female roles - whether they believed a woman's place was in the home, whether employing women led to more juvenile delinquency(!) and whether it was the woman's job to take care of the home and family.
Sexist men, the scientists found, made an average of $8,500 a year more than men who viewed women as work-place equals. Meanwhile, feminists earned more than their more traditionally minded female colleagues (but not a great deal more - $1600 a year, on average). And while there was only a small difference between the pay packets of "egalitarian" men and women, sexist men's wages outstripped everyone else's.
Surprised? Me neither. It's one of those stories that, even without being corroborated by the figures, has the horrible ring of truth about it: we've all worked in an office where the sexist monster is (a) very good at his job and (b) gruesomely and guilt-inducingly attractive despite his antediluvian attitudes.
The existence of such men is why sexism persists: it is obviously wrong on every level, as many an industrial tribunal will attest, but the combination of power and, shall we say, lack of political correctness can be a potent one - which is why everyone in Britain fell in love with Gene Hunt, the hulking great throwback in the BBC series Life on Mars, which was set in the 1970s. On paper the character was entirely despicable; in full flow he made his intelligent, evolved, sensitive sidekick look like a ladyboy. Men wanted to be Hunt; women wanted to be with him. This says a great deal about men's sense of being emasculated at every turn in modern Britain - a complaint that is, I think, pretty much justified and needs to be addressed before it does considerable damage.
It is surely no coincidence that men seem angrier than they have ever been; you notice it especially when it comes to pornography. Wanting to subjugate and violate powerless women used to be a specialist minority interest; it has now become mainstream. Nobody seems to mind much. I find that pretty alarming.
See also the extremes men now go to in order to punish their former wives or girlfriends: horrific news stories about fathers murdering their children and then killing themselves have become, if not quite commonplace, frequent enough to ring loud alarm bells. There was another one just last week. There's not much point in women saying, "Oh dear, how horrid - but anyway, about my right to breastfeed in public . . . " These are issues that need to be looked at urgently before the situation gets wholly out of control.
Women aren't powerless - au contraire. What is interesting about the sexist pay packet is that it doesn't happen despite women, but rather with their consent and, in many cases, their covert approval. The fact of the matter is that biology will always get in the way of gender politics; you can cogitate and reason all you like, but it isn't easy simply to eradicate attitudes and desires that have been hard-wired into us for millennia.
Wet men aren't generally considered desirable or attractive; manly men are. Manly men, knowing they are considered attractive, continue to behave in their retrograde way and are rewarded for it with popularity, success and, if they're good at their jobs, a heftier pay packet than anyone else's. And then everyone likes or admires them even more, secretly or otherwise: success, money, esteem - what's not to like, apart from the little matter of gender politics? And so it goes on.
Meanwhile, confusingly, everything we read and observe and are taught shows us that the object of our admiration is to be condemned and that being a victim of sexism is one of the most terrible things that can befall a helpless woman (in fact, it really isn't and we're not helpless: there are many worse things than people making jokes about your bosoms, especially if the jokes are quite funny. If they aren't, we all have a tongue in our head and, if need be, recourse to the law. Part of the problem with all this is the irritating assumption that women are constantly doomed to victimhood and need protecting from the big, mean boys).
No wonder people get muddled. So this is a little plea for the sexist alpha male - the one we all secretly think isn't as dreadful as he's made out to be. Isn't it time that we gave him a break from the full force of our disapproval? We live in a furtive sort of society where lots of women fancy men they feel they shouldn't and many men go through life pretending to be a great deal sweeter and more feminine than they actually are, because they've been told it's the only way to be.
It's unhealthy, really - smoke and mirrors masking the unavoidable fact that, underneath it all, women prefer manly men, even ones who make sexist jokes; and men prefer womanly women, even ones who whinge about being fat. Perhaps that's a terribly self-hating and sexist thing to say. Or perhaps it's just the truth.
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The moralistic myth of the `demon drink'
The UK government's list of nine types of heavy drinker is based less on scientific research than puritan zeal. It's part of a campaign that is both absurd and insulting
Do you drink to `unwind and calm down and to gain a sense of control when switching between work and personal life'? Perhaps your preferred way to `reconnect with old friends' is to meet up in a pub. Maybe you drink in `fairly large social friendship groups' and find a `sense of community' in your local pub, or perhaps you don't go out, and just drink at the end of the day when all your chores are done.
If any of this applies to you, and if you're over 35, you'll soon be targeted by a UK government health campaign, which, according to public health minister Dawn Primarolo, will help people `understand the effects of their drinking habits and help them make changes for the better'.
Underlying this forthcoming campaign is new research by the Department of Health (DoH) which has defined nine personality types of `heavy drinkers', that is, men who drink over 50 units of alcohol a week, and women who drink over 35 units a week. These types not only include `depressed drinkers' and `border dependents', which might well indicate potentially serious alcohol-related psychological problems, but `de-stress drinkers', `re-bonding drinkers', `community drinkers', `conformist drinkers', `macho drinkers', `boredom drinkers' and `hedonistic drinkers'. The DoH hopes to use this segmentation to, in the words of one report, `tailor its propaganda to suit all the target personalities' (1).
According to the report, alcohol serves many functions: it's the `shared connector' that helps people to get along with old friends; it's the means to `feel a strong sense of belonging and acceptance' or a `sense of community' at the local pub; it's the tipple of an evening born of boredom; or it's a way to express `independence, freedom and "youthfulness"'. The net effect of the research is to transform normal behaviour like relaxing after work, socialising with your friends, or just relieving your inhibitions and having a good time, into pathological conditions dangerous to your health (2).
Yet, as with all governmental lifestyle regulation, the basis for the DoH campaign is moral and political, not scientific or medical (3). The cod-psychologising about `drinking types' aside, even the notion of a `heavy drinker' is suspect, based as it is on government-defined unit limits that have no scientific basis. A former editor of the British Medical Journal involved in the process of setting the government's recommended drinking limits, which were first introduced in 1987, recently revealed that reports advising that moderate drinking above these limits was beneficial to health were simply suppressed in favour of `useless' limits that were `plucked out of the air' (4).
Instead, the government seems intent on commissioning scientists to try to produce evidence to back up its essentially moralistic obsession with how much we drink. This July, for instance, research at the North West Public Health Observatory (NWPHO) fuelled suitably scary headlines, warning that 15,000 people die from alcohol-related deaths annually, a leap of 80 per cent on previous estimates. Alarmingly, over a quarter of all deaths among 16- to 24-year-olds were attributed to alcohol. On this basis the DoH stated alcohol-related hospital admissions totaled 810,000, costing $5bn a year (5). But on closer examination of the facts, the continued politicisation of science becomes obvious:
* The NWPHO research identifies 47 conditions caused by alcohol - 34 of them `partially', like cancer, and accidents like falls. This is actually a reduction from the previous total of 53, which was determined by the Cabinet Office in 2003, and included various scientifically unsubstantiated conditions (6). Despite this, the government continues to use its own dodgy figures to estimate alcohol-related National Health Service (NHS) costs, thereby claiming an increase from o1.7billion to o2.7billion between 2003 and 2006/7 (7). Moreover, the government continues to peddle its preferred figures of 810,000 hospital admissions and `15-20,000 premature deaths' when the NWPHO report identified significantly lower figures: 459,982 admissions and under 15,000 deaths (8). When the facts don't fit, just use your own.
* The massive leap in alcohol-related deaths is almost entirely related to the inclusion of these `partially' caused conditions (10,283 deaths out of 14,982), for which the evidence is weak. Associated risk factors are drawn from two decade-old pieces of research and have no `confidence intervals' associated with them. In other words, we don't know how reliable these numbers are. Given that we are talking about a few dozen or hundred cases of some conditions, the risk could be statistically insignificant. Furthermore, these `partially' caused conditions are largely accounted for by `mental and behavioural disorders caused by alcohol'. While it is true that many mentally ill people have alcohol problems, it is far from obvious that they are mentally ill because they drink. However, the uncertainties and qualifications scientists are compelled to indicate tend to be ignored in media commentaries and government statements. When in doubt, obliterate doubt.
* Even if we accept the figures as given, when put into context, they look far less scary. While 14,982 deaths sounds a lot, it constitutes just 3.1 per cent of deaths in the UK. Booze accounts for over a quarter of deaths among 16- to 24-year-olds, but in absolute terms this meant just 446 people in 2005; the percentage is high for the simple reason that very few people die young. Again, 459,842 hospital admissions sounds a lot, but it constitutes just 2.3 per cent of all hospital inpatient and outpatient admissions (9). Given that 70 per cent of Britons drink, these figures suggest a generally low health risk, with serious problems being confined to a hard-core minority. Despite popular belief that Britain has a serious drinking problem, the international figure for alcohol-related diseases is four per cent.
* The NWPHO report even admits that drinking seems to help prevent some conditions like heart disease, and initially its authors found drinking even saved 8,838 lives in 2005 - though they subsequently try to scale this figure back, selectively using research that found little preventive benefit, rather than the opposite (10). Still, if the context dilutes the message, dilute the context.
* The NWPHO research actually finds little evidence to substantiate the government's obsession with `heavy drinkers' beyond re-telling the already-obvious: that sustained alcohol abuse increases the risk of diseases directly caused by alcohol, like cirrhosis of the liver, alcohol poisoning and throat diseases. For some `partially' caused conditions, the evidence is very weak. The research actually finds that the incidence of cancer, hypertension and pancreatitis do not vary with alcohol consumption among men, and are in fact `attributable more to lower levels of alcohol consumption' among women. Instead of therefore questioning the link between boozing and such diseases, the report `suggest[s] that there is a requirement for harm reduction strategies to target the general population, and not just high-risk drinkers'. A failure to find the link is thus transformed into regulation for the entire population, on the basis of three diseases that account for a mere 0.07 per cent of annual hospital admissions (11).
Such contortions illustrate that scientific research is being harnessed to a pre-existing policy agenda that is rooted not in hard medical fact but in moral concerns. Put simply, elites have a moral problem with people who enjoy drinking. They describe town centres as `no-go areas', express amazement and disgust at the revelation that 5.9million of us `drink to get drunk', and hope 24-hour licensing laws will moderate our barbaric customs in the direction of `European caf, culture'. This contempt for the masses, coupled with the vacuousness of their own visions for how to take society forward, produces moralising and therapeutic interventions designed to wean us from the bottle.
The DoH suggests heavy drinkers booze because of a `general sense of malaise in their lives' and to `give their lives meaning'. Perhaps they do. But is it really the state's place to psychoanalyse us, pathologise our normal social interactions, and scare us into `making changes for the better'? After the smoking ban left them without a focus for public health policy, it's actually health ministers who experienced a `general sense of malaise' and now resort to hectoring drinkers to `give their lives meaning'.
So if you receive one of the 900,000 leaflets and self-help booklets being targeted at heavy drinkers in the next few weeks, do the rational thing: bin it, and tell the `health promotion' lobby that really should get out more.
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UK's biggest school scraps homework
The dumbing down never stops in Britain. And these kids are backward already! It's just lazy teachers who don't want the hassle
A new school that will be the biggest in the country is to abandon homework because the head teacher believes it does not justify the detentions and family rows it causes. Nottingham East academy, which will have 3,570 pupils, claims it will be the first school to scrap homework. It will instead have an extra lesson and after-school activities such as sport, model aircraft-building and sari-making.
Government guidelines suggest primary schools should set pupils between one and 2 1/2 hours per week, while those at secondaries receive up to 2 1/2 hours a day. Many of the most academically successful schools in the private and state sectors prescribe three or four hours of homework a night for older children. Barry Day, who will be principal of the new academy, believes much of this time is wasted. "If you ask most heads what most detentions are for, they will tell you for non-completion of homework," he said. "Homework causes an enormous amount of home conflict and parents and the community certainly won't mind children coming home later. "It is often set simply because there is an expectation it should be set. It does not help with education at all."
Day's move follows news last week that Tiffin boys' school in Kingston, Surrey, one of the country's most successful selective schools, had slashed homework from two or three hours a day to just 40 minutes for the oldest pupils. [What you can get away with among bright kids can be very different from what works with average or backward kids]
Day believes his changes will be fairer particularly for children from poorer or illiterate families or those whose parents do not speak English. Nottingham East will retain some homework for exam revision and coursework, but otherwise will simply encourage parents to read books in a relaxed way with their children and ask the pupils to report twice a term what they have read.
Signs of moves away from homework were welcomed by Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, which is campaigning for an end to the practice at all primary schools. "A lot of the time, state schools are just competing with the independent sector in setting lots of homework as they think that is what the parents want," Bousted said. "It is perfectly possible to teach independent learning properly within the school day."
However, Professor Dylan Wiliam, deputy director of the Institute of Education at London University, said Day was going too far. "Research shows homework does not make much of a difference, but that is because it is not properly planned and is too often, for example, just finishing off what you did during the day. "Properly designed, it can help pupils develop their autonomy in learning."
Geoff Lucas, general secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of independent schools, warned that, if widely adopted, the policy would result in lagging comprehensives falling even further behind. "Private study and independent learning are vital skills for university and employment," Lucas said. "It seems a terrible shame to have a blanket decision like this. It will inevitably widen the gap between schools like this and our members and the best-performing state schools."
Kenneth Durham, headmaster of University College school, London, said he was an enthusiast for homework. GCSE pupils at his school were given about two hours a night. "It is an education in its own right," Durham said. "Well-managed homework programmes leave students better able to cope with independent learning and give them time management skills."
The new academy has been given the go-ahead by Ed Balls, the schools secretary, and will open next year, educating children from nursery age to 19. It will cost about $100m and will start life in former school buildings next September before moving into new buildings in 2011, when homework will be scrapped.
Nottingham East will make its vast size manageable by sharing children around three mini-schools on different sites. Balls approved it after a confidential review backed the plan in June, finding that education at one of the schools to be replaced, Elliott Durham, was "parlous". The school's head was quoted in the review as declaring: "The attendance rate is very low . . . swearing and shouting is [sic] common . . . students flout the rules openly."
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British Green heretic persecuted for his nuclear views
The climate change expert Mark Lynas has been scorned by eco-colleagues for daring to speak up for atomic power. He states his case below
I know I should be furious. The EDF takeover of British Energy means that four nuclear power stations could now be built around the UK, the first nuclear new build in a generation. As a long-standing Green party member, one who chops his own wood, grows his own leeks, keeps chickens and puts the kids in washable nappies, antinuclear indignation should spring easily to my lips.
After all, energy is something I care about. The last time I checked my carbon budget, I came in at a fifth of the national average. I rarely fly, even when booked to address faraway audiences about my personal obsession, climate change - a subject I've covered in three books. Whenever the word "nuclear" comes up at my talks, a shudder runs through the room. Because everyone knows that real environmentalists loathe nuclear power. It is just evil. Full stop.
Except, well, I don't believe that any more. Just a month ago I had a Damascene conversion: the Green case against nuclear power is based largely on myth and dogma. My tipping point came when I discovered just how much nuclear power has changed since I first set my mind against it. Prescription for the Planet, a new book by the American writer Tom Blees, opened my eyes to fourth-generation "fast-breeder" reactors, which use fuel much more efficiently than the old-style reactors, produce shorter-lived waste and can also be designed to be "walk-away safe".
Best of all, these new reactors - prototypes of which have already been tested - can produce power by burning up existing stocks of nuclear waste. As Blees puts it: "Thus we have a prodigious supply of free fuel that is actually even better than free, for it is material that we are quite desperate to get rid of." Who could object to that?
Just about everyone on the eco-scene, it turned out. I began to receive e-mails from friends and colleagues warning me off the topic. Did I really want to risk my entire reputation by alienating the green movement? The backlash to my first magazine article on the subject prompted my inbox to collapse, the blogs to drip with venom, the dirty looks to multiply.
A former Greenpeace campaigner posted on my website that I needed to show "a bit of humility" and "less arrogance". On Greenpeace's blog my views were mocked as "wishful thinking of the day". On Radio 4's Today programme, Green party leader Caroline Lucas accused me of having "lost the plot". When I argued back, she accused me of "just being silly". I was a traitor.
This was a moment I had been dreading for nearly three years, ever since I first suspected that much of what I had been brought up to believe about nuclear power - that it is, without exception, dirty, dangerous and unnecessary - was untrue. Science has moved on. The old figures just don't stack up any more.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nuclear is just as low-carbon a power source as wind and solar: the world's 439 operating nuclear reactors save the planet from 2 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, which would have been emitted had coal been used instead.
And those dangers? They're still there but we need to discuss them truthfully. Take Chernobyl. We all know it was a disaster: the Greenpeace website states a death toll of 60,000 already and predicts another 140,000 deaths in the future. But these statistics fly in the face of mainstream science: according to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 28 people died in the initial phase and several thousand more have suffered from nonfatal thyroid cancer because of the accident. The UN report concludes that "there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident" - so the real death toll from the world's worst nuclear accident is tiny. On a deaths per gigawatt-year basis, nuclear is safer than coal and oil.
Curiosity whetted, I searched the scientific literature for evidence to support the other great green charge levelled at nuclear power: it kills its neighbours. I sifted through piles of rigorous epidemiological studies from all over the world, searching for proof that people who live near nuclear sites are more prone to cancer and leukaemia. None of the reputable journals turned up a link. These are just two examples of eco-myths: there are many more. If only we were allowed to discuss them without being flayed for heresy.
When I e-mailed a senior ecological scientist with my conclusions, he agreed, but only privately. "Do not cite me as promoting nuclear," he begged. I am still shocked that people of his stature are too intimidated to speak out. The result of this fear is that the public is dangerously misinformed about nuclear power.
I have finally thought of something useful that I can do with my Green party membership card: I'll auction it on eBay and send the money to EDF - with a suggestion that it beefs up its marketing department. Any bids?
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A stupid priest who is so far out of his depth he is drowning "The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has spoken up in support of Karl Marx, defending key aspects of his critique of capitalism. Dr Williams warns that in the face of the credit crisis, the financial world needs new regulation and says that our society is running the risk of idolatry in its relationship with wealth. In an article in Friday's Spectator, Dr Williams compares today's debtors and financiers to the feckless young clerics and landowners described in the novels of Anthony Trollope. He writes: "Individuals find that their own personal financial decisions and calculations have nothing to do with what is happening to their resources, in a process for which a debt is simply someone else's wholly disposable asset."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
A woman's fight to halt the withdrawal of her free care could shatter goverment rules on drugs. But fancy having to sue to get the healthcare you have already paid for! I guess that's what's called socialist compassion
A WOMAN cancer patient is taking a landmark legal action against the National Health Service for withdrawing treatment because she has chosen to pay for a drug that the NHS does not fund. Sue Bentley, a potter, has had her NHS care withdrawn after paying privately for the drug Avastin to increase her chance of fighting lung cancer. The legal action will put pressure on the government to change its policy of penalising patients who try to improve their chances of survival by buying additional drugs.
An inquiry into the scandal, to be published at the end of October, is widely expected to propose that patients should be allowed to pay for additional drugs without losing their NHS care. Ministers will then consider changing the rules but patients such as Bentley say they do not have time to wait. Bentley, 67, from Monmouthshire, who was diagnosed with the disease last December, said: “We were told there was no way we would be allowed to top up and that we would need to opt out of the NHS and pay for everything. “It is quite frightening because, if I become ill, I know that we will need to pay up to $900 a day for me to go into hospital, as well as all the treatment costs.”
In addition to the Avastin, Bentley is also receiving two other drugs, cisplatin and gemcitabine, which are normally available on the NHS. She is now being charged for these drugs which are free to other NHS patients. She added: “Everyone else is getting the cisplatin and the gemcitabine for free. I am sitting beside them and I am being billed. It is horrendous.”
Bentley will challenge in court the decision by her hospital, Velindre NHS Trust, Cardiff, to refuse to allow her to pay for an additional drug without losing her NHS care. In previous legal challenges, the NHS has capitulated either by agreeing to fund the additional drug or by the hospital allowing co-payment. This is unlikely to happen in Bentley’s case.
Bentley’s solicitor, Melissa Worth, of Halliwells, the Manchester-based law firm, has a QC’s opinion stating that the NHS has no legal right to prevent Bentley paying for a private drug while continuing to receive her state-funded care. Worth said: “Ms Bentley has paid for her NHS care through insurance contributions and there is no bar to a patient purchasing a drug not ordinarily available on the NHS, bringing that to a hospital and having the NHS administer that drug. “These patients are not taking anything away from the NHS.”
Halliwells is not charging Bentley for its representation. Doctors for Reform, a group of 1,000 doctors, has a $70,000 fighting fund to pay any legal costs awarded to the NHS if Bentley loses her case.
Bentley’s companion of 24 years, Steve Rogers, 52, a conservationist, has paid for Avastin, which costs about $6,600 a month, from savings. He found trials on the internet showing that patients who add Avastin to their treatment are more likely to see their tumours shrink and will increase the time before their cancer returns.
The couple must also pay for the cost of the chemotherapy drugs, which would otherwise have been available to Bentley on the NHS, and the charges for administering them. Bentley’s oncologist, who is backing their decision to pay for Avastin, has waived his fees.
Velindre NHS Trust defended its decision to withdraw NHS care. Malcolm Adams, medical director, said: “Velindre’s policy is that patients cannot switch between NHS and private healthcare within a particular treatment episode. “The Trust awaits the outcome of this [Department of Health] review with considerable interest.”
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Health and safety team enters conker championships
This sounds like a bit of that old-fashioned eccentricity that was once the glory of Britain -- and to a degree it is. It is also however a significant backdown from the insane safety obsession that has had Britain ban almost anything that moves in recent years. The game of conkers is played by two players, each with a nut threaded onto a piece of string. They take turns to strike each other's nut until one breaks. The game is about as harmless as you can get but has nonetheless been banned from time to time in British schools etc.
The World Conker Championships have found a rather unlikely sponsor - the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. Keen to shrug off their spoilsport image and dispel the myth that they make children wear protective goggles for the playground game, health and safety officers have also entered a team in the tournament.
After years of being derided for banning such jolly pastimes as sweets being thrown into the audience at theatres and balloon modelling by clowns, the supposed killjoys have said enough is enough. Ray Hurst, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health president, said: "I'm looking forward to captaining my team to glory at the championships to show that health and safety people are not spoilsports. We like to have fun like anyone else. You just have to manage the risks, not ban them into oblivion."
About 500 other entrants from as far afield as Jamaica, the US, Brazil, the Philippines and Benin will compete to be crowned conker champion at the championships in Ashton, Northamptonshire, on October 12.
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Blind Greenie propaganda in "The Economist"
A comment in reply by Philip Stott, Emeritus professor of biogeography from the University of London
Your assertion that "global warming is happening faster than expected" exhibits a disturbing degree of cognitive dissonance ("Adapt or die ", September 13th). Since 1998 the world's average surface temperature has exhibited no warming, according to all the main temperature records. The trend has been a combination of flatlining and cooling, with a marked plunge over the past year; many countries, including Australia, Canada, China and the United States, experienced severe winters.
Moreover, recent work demonstrates that the Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for at least a further decade through the impact of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. In addition, the next 11-year cycle of solar storms-Solar Cycle 24-is late by more than two years. The sun is currently spotless, conditions that obtained during the "Dalton Minimum", an especially cold period that lasted several decades starting from 1790 and which was implicated in the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812.
Finally, one expert, Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, has gone so far as to give warning that the Earth may enter a new "Little Ice Age" for up to 80 years because of decreases in solar activity. The immediate portents thus point in the direction of a cooling period.
Whatever one thinks about longer-term trends in world average temperatures and their possible relationship with carbon emissions, it cannot be claimed that currently "global warming is happening faster than expected". It troubles me when a publication with the standing of The Economist permits such a gap between observed reality and political rhetoric.
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Be honest: we all love the sexist alpha male
By India Knight, an upper class British female, courtesy of the fact that her Indian mother married well -- several times
Many women will tell you that one of the most irritating things about life is that alpha males - great silverbacked gorilla types - strike us, maddeningly, as being rather more attractive than their kinder, gentler, more considerate dwarf-monkey counterparts. We know intellectually that it shouldn't be so, since the gorillas are often sexist pigs (just to mix the animal metaphors); but when push comes to shove and we're picking a boyfriend rather than a friend, few of us find beta males especially appealing.
In real life as in Georgette Heyer, the reprehensible, oddly sexy brute fares rather better than the sensitive flower. Now it turns out that the unreconstituted, sexist male chauvinist is not only more attractive to many women, but earns more money and is more professionally successful than the kind man who sympathises when you have period cramps and offers to make you a nice cup of camomile. Not fair, is it?
The Journal of Applied Psychology has just published findings from a University of Florida study based on interviews with more than 12,000 men and women. Between 1979 and 2005, they were questioned regularly about how they viewed male and female roles - whether they believed a woman's place was in the home, whether employing women led to more juvenile delinquency(!) and whether it was the woman's job to take care of the home and family.
Sexist men, the scientists found, made an average of $8,500 a year more than men who viewed women as work-place equals. Meanwhile, feminists earned more than their more traditionally minded female colleagues (but not a great deal more - $1600 a year, on average). And while there was only a small difference between the pay packets of "egalitarian" men and women, sexist men's wages outstripped everyone else's.
Surprised? Me neither. It's one of those stories that, even without being corroborated by the figures, has the horrible ring of truth about it: we've all worked in an office where the sexist monster is (a) very good at his job and (b) gruesomely and guilt-inducingly attractive despite his antediluvian attitudes.
The existence of such men is why sexism persists: it is obviously wrong on every level, as many an industrial tribunal will attest, but the combination of power and, shall we say, lack of political correctness can be a potent one - which is why everyone in Britain fell in love with Gene Hunt, the hulking great throwback in the BBC series Life on Mars, which was set in the 1970s. On paper the character was entirely despicable; in full flow he made his intelligent, evolved, sensitive sidekick look like a ladyboy. Men wanted to be Hunt; women wanted to be with him. This says a great deal about men's sense of being emasculated at every turn in modern Britain - a complaint that is, I think, pretty much justified and needs to be addressed before it does considerable damage.
It is surely no coincidence that men seem angrier than they have ever been; you notice it especially when it comes to pornography. Wanting to subjugate and violate powerless women used to be a specialist minority interest; it has now become mainstream. Nobody seems to mind much. I find that pretty alarming.
See also the extremes men now go to in order to punish their former wives or girlfriends: horrific news stories about fathers murdering their children and then killing themselves have become, if not quite commonplace, frequent enough to ring loud alarm bells. There was another one just last week. There's not much point in women saying, "Oh dear, how horrid - but anyway, about my right to breastfeed in public . . . " These are issues that need to be looked at urgently before the situation gets wholly out of control.
Women aren't powerless - au contraire. What is interesting about the sexist pay packet is that it doesn't happen despite women, but rather with their consent and, in many cases, their covert approval. The fact of the matter is that biology will always get in the way of gender politics; you can cogitate and reason all you like, but it isn't easy simply to eradicate attitudes and desires that have been hard-wired into us for millennia.
Wet men aren't generally considered desirable or attractive; manly men are. Manly men, knowing they are considered attractive, continue to behave in their retrograde way and are rewarded for it with popularity, success and, if they're good at their jobs, a heftier pay packet than anyone else's. And then everyone likes or admires them even more, secretly or otherwise: success, money, esteem - what's not to like, apart from the little matter of gender politics? And so it goes on.
Meanwhile, confusingly, everything we read and observe and are taught shows us that the object of our admiration is to be condemned and that being a victim of sexism is one of the most terrible things that can befall a helpless woman (in fact, it really isn't and we're not helpless: there are many worse things than people making jokes about your bosoms, especially if the jokes are quite funny. If they aren't, we all have a tongue in our head and, if need be, recourse to the law. Part of the problem with all this is the irritating assumption that women are constantly doomed to victimhood and need protecting from the big, mean boys).
No wonder people get muddled. So this is a little plea for the sexist alpha male - the one we all secretly think isn't as dreadful as he's made out to be. Isn't it time that we gave him a break from the full force of our disapproval? We live in a furtive sort of society where lots of women fancy men they feel they shouldn't and many men go through life pretending to be a great deal sweeter and more feminine than they actually are, because they've been told it's the only way to be.
It's unhealthy, really - smoke and mirrors masking the unavoidable fact that, underneath it all, women prefer manly men, even ones who make sexist jokes; and men prefer womanly women, even ones who whinge about being fat. Perhaps that's a terribly self-hating and sexist thing to say. Or perhaps it's just the truth.
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The moralistic myth of the `demon drink'
The UK government's list of nine types of heavy drinker is based less on scientific research than puritan zeal. It's part of a campaign that is both absurd and insulting
Do you drink to `unwind and calm down and to gain a sense of control when switching between work and personal life'? Perhaps your preferred way to `reconnect with old friends' is to meet up in a pub. Maybe you drink in `fairly large social friendship groups' and find a `sense of community' in your local pub, or perhaps you don't go out, and just drink at the end of the day when all your chores are done.
If any of this applies to you, and if you're over 35, you'll soon be targeted by a UK government health campaign, which, according to public health minister Dawn Primarolo, will help people `understand the effects of their drinking habits and help them make changes for the better'.
Underlying this forthcoming campaign is new research by the Department of Health (DoH) which has defined nine personality types of `heavy drinkers', that is, men who drink over 50 units of alcohol a week, and women who drink over 35 units a week. These types not only include `depressed drinkers' and `border dependents', which might well indicate potentially serious alcohol-related psychological problems, but `de-stress drinkers', `re-bonding drinkers', `community drinkers', `conformist drinkers', `macho drinkers', `boredom drinkers' and `hedonistic drinkers'. The DoH hopes to use this segmentation to, in the words of one report, `tailor its propaganda to suit all the target personalities' (1).
According to the report, alcohol serves many functions: it's the `shared connector' that helps people to get along with old friends; it's the means to `feel a strong sense of belonging and acceptance' or a `sense of community' at the local pub; it's the tipple of an evening born of boredom; or it's a way to express `independence, freedom and "youthfulness"'. The net effect of the research is to transform normal behaviour like relaxing after work, socialising with your friends, or just relieving your inhibitions and having a good time, into pathological conditions dangerous to your health (2).
Yet, as with all governmental lifestyle regulation, the basis for the DoH campaign is moral and political, not scientific or medical (3). The cod-psychologising about `drinking types' aside, even the notion of a `heavy drinker' is suspect, based as it is on government-defined unit limits that have no scientific basis. A former editor of the British Medical Journal involved in the process of setting the government's recommended drinking limits, which were first introduced in 1987, recently revealed that reports advising that moderate drinking above these limits was beneficial to health were simply suppressed in favour of `useless' limits that were `plucked out of the air' (4).
Instead, the government seems intent on commissioning scientists to try to produce evidence to back up its essentially moralistic obsession with how much we drink. This July, for instance, research at the North West Public Health Observatory (NWPHO) fuelled suitably scary headlines, warning that 15,000 people die from alcohol-related deaths annually, a leap of 80 per cent on previous estimates. Alarmingly, over a quarter of all deaths among 16- to 24-year-olds were attributed to alcohol. On this basis the DoH stated alcohol-related hospital admissions totaled 810,000, costing $5bn a year (5). But on closer examination of the facts, the continued politicisation of science becomes obvious:
* The NWPHO research identifies 47 conditions caused by alcohol - 34 of them `partially', like cancer, and accidents like falls. This is actually a reduction from the previous total of 53, which was determined by the Cabinet Office in 2003, and included various scientifically unsubstantiated conditions (6). Despite this, the government continues to use its own dodgy figures to estimate alcohol-related National Health Service (NHS) costs, thereby claiming an increase from o1.7billion to o2.7billion between 2003 and 2006/7 (7). Moreover, the government continues to peddle its preferred figures of 810,000 hospital admissions and `15-20,000 premature deaths' when the NWPHO report identified significantly lower figures: 459,982 admissions and under 15,000 deaths (8). When the facts don't fit, just use your own.
* The massive leap in alcohol-related deaths is almost entirely related to the inclusion of these `partially' caused conditions (10,283 deaths out of 14,982), for which the evidence is weak. Associated risk factors are drawn from two decade-old pieces of research and have no `confidence intervals' associated with them. In other words, we don't know how reliable these numbers are. Given that we are talking about a few dozen or hundred cases of some conditions, the risk could be statistically insignificant. Furthermore, these `partially' caused conditions are largely accounted for by `mental and behavioural disorders caused by alcohol'. While it is true that many mentally ill people have alcohol problems, it is far from obvious that they are mentally ill because they drink. However, the uncertainties and qualifications scientists are compelled to indicate tend to be ignored in media commentaries and government statements. When in doubt, obliterate doubt.
* Even if we accept the figures as given, when put into context, they look far less scary. While 14,982 deaths sounds a lot, it constitutes just 3.1 per cent of deaths in the UK. Booze accounts for over a quarter of deaths among 16- to 24-year-olds, but in absolute terms this meant just 446 people in 2005; the percentage is high for the simple reason that very few people die young. Again, 459,842 hospital admissions sounds a lot, but it constitutes just 2.3 per cent of all hospital inpatient and outpatient admissions (9). Given that 70 per cent of Britons drink, these figures suggest a generally low health risk, with serious problems being confined to a hard-core minority. Despite popular belief that Britain has a serious drinking problem, the international figure for alcohol-related diseases is four per cent.
* The NWPHO report even admits that drinking seems to help prevent some conditions like heart disease, and initially its authors found drinking even saved 8,838 lives in 2005 - though they subsequently try to scale this figure back, selectively using research that found little preventive benefit, rather than the opposite (10). Still, if the context dilutes the message, dilute the context.
* The NWPHO research actually finds little evidence to substantiate the government's obsession with `heavy drinkers' beyond re-telling the already-obvious: that sustained alcohol abuse increases the risk of diseases directly caused by alcohol, like cirrhosis of the liver, alcohol poisoning and throat diseases. For some `partially' caused conditions, the evidence is very weak. The research actually finds that the incidence of cancer, hypertension and pancreatitis do not vary with alcohol consumption among men, and are in fact `attributable more to lower levels of alcohol consumption' among women. Instead of therefore questioning the link between boozing and such diseases, the report `suggest[s] that there is a requirement for harm reduction strategies to target the general population, and not just high-risk drinkers'. A failure to find the link is thus transformed into regulation for the entire population, on the basis of three diseases that account for a mere 0.07 per cent of annual hospital admissions (11).
Such contortions illustrate that scientific research is being harnessed to a pre-existing policy agenda that is rooted not in hard medical fact but in moral concerns. Put simply, elites have a moral problem with people who enjoy drinking. They describe town centres as `no-go areas', express amazement and disgust at the revelation that 5.9million of us `drink to get drunk', and hope 24-hour licensing laws will moderate our barbaric customs in the direction of `European caf, culture'. This contempt for the masses, coupled with the vacuousness of their own visions for how to take society forward, produces moralising and therapeutic interventions designed to wean us from the bottle.
The DoH suggests heavy drinkers booze because of a `general sense of malaise in their lives' and to `give their lives meaning'. Perhaps they do. But is it really the state's place to psychoanalyse us, pathologise our normal social interactions, and scare us into `making changes for the better'? After the smoking ban left them without a focus for public health policy, it's actually health ministers who experienced a `general sense of malaise' and now resort to hectoring drinkers to `give their lives meaning'.
So if you receive one of the 900,000 leaflets and self-help booklets being targeted at heavy drinkers in the next few weeks, do the rational thing: bin it, and tell the `health promotion' lobby that really should get out more.
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UK's biggest school scraps homework
The dumbing down never stops in Britain. And these kids are backward already! It's just lazy teachers who don't want the hassle
A new school that will be the biggest in the country is to abandon homework because the head teacher believes it does not justify the detentions and family rows it causes. Nottingham East academy, which will have 3,570 pupils, claims it will be the first school to scrap homework. It will instead have an extra lesson and after-school activities such as sport, model aircraft-building and sari-making.
Government guidelines suggest primary schools should set pupils between one and 2 1/2 hours per week, while those at secondaries receive up to 2 1/2 hours a day. Many of the most academically successful schools in the private and state sectors prescribe three or four hours of homework a night for older children. Barry Day, who will be principal of the new academy, believes much of this time is wasted. "If you ask most heads what most detentions are for, they will tell you for non-completion of homework," he said. "Homework causes an enormous amount of home conflict and parents and the community certainly won't mind children coming home later. "It is often set simply because there is an expectation it should be set. It does not help with education at all."
Day's move follows news last week that Tiffin boys' school in Kingston, Surrey, one of the country's most successful selective schools, had slashed homework from two or three hours a day to just 40 minutes for the oldest pupils. [What you can get away with among bright kids can be very different from what works with average or backward kids]
Day believes his changes will be fairer particularly for children from poorer or illiterate families or those whose parents do not speak English. Nottingham East will retain some homework for exam revision and coursework, but otherwise will simply encourage parents to read books in a relaxed way with their children and ask the pupils to report twice a term what they have read.
Signs of moves away from homework were welcomed by Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, which is campaigning for an end to the practice at all primary schools. "A lot of the time, state schools are just competing with the independent sector in setting lots of homework as they think that is what the parents want," Bousted said. "It is perfectly possible to teach independent learning properly within the school day."
However, Professor Dylan Wiliam, deputy director of the Institute of Education at London University, said Day was going too far. "Research shows homework does not make much of a difference, but that is because it is not properly planned and is too often, for example, just finishing off what you did during the day. "Properly designed, it can help pupils develop their autonomy in learning."
Geoff Lucas, general secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of independent schools, warned that, if widely adopted, the policy would result in lagging comprehensives falling even further behind. "Private study and independent learning are vital skills for university and employment," Lucas said. "It seems a terrible shame to have a blanket decision like this. It will inevitably widen the gap between schools like this and our members and the best-performing state schools."
Kenneth Durham, headmaster of University College school, London, said he was an enthusiast for homework. GCSE pupils at his school were given about two hours a night. "It is an education in its own right," Durham said. "Well-managed homework programmes leave students better able to cope with independent learning and give them time management skills."
The new academy has been given the go-ahead by Ed Balls, the schools secretary, and will open next year, educating children from nursery age to 19. It will cost about $100m and will start life in former school buildings next September before moving into new buildings in 2011, when homework will be scrapped.
Nottingham East will make its vast size manageable by sharing children around three mini-schools on different sites. Balls approved it after a confidential review backed the plan in June, finding that education at one of the schools to be replaced, Elliott Durham, was "parlous". The school's head was quoted in the review as declaring: "The attendance rate is very low . . . swearing and shouting is [sic] common . . . students flout the rules openly."
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British Green heretic persecuted for his nuclear views
The climate change expert Mark Lynas has been scorned by eco-colleagues for daring to speak up for atomic power. He states his case below
I know I should be furious. The EDF takeover of British Energy means that four nuclear power stations could now be built around the UK, the first nuclear new build in a generation. As a long-standing Green party member, one who chops his own wood, grows his own leeks, keeps chickens and puts the kids in washable nappies, antinuclear indignation should spring easily to my lips.
After all, energy is something I care about. The last time I checked my carbon budget, I came in at a fifth of the national average. I rarely fly, even when booked to address faraway audiences about my personal obsession, climate change - a subject I've covered in three books. Whenever the word "nuclear" comes up at my talks, a shudder runs through the room. Because everyone knows that real environmentalists loathe nuclear power. It is just evil. Full stop.
Except, well, I don't believe that any more. Just a month ago I had a Damascene conversion: the Green case against nuclear power is based largely on myth and dogma. My tipping point came when I discovered just how much nuclear power has changed since I first set my mind against it. Prescription for the Planet, a new book by the American writer Tom Blees, opened my eyes to fourth-generation "fast-breeder" reactors, which use fuel much more efficiently than the old-style reactors, produce shorter-lived waste and can also be designed to be "walk-away safe".
Best of all, these new reactors - prototypes of which have already been tested - can produce power by burning up existing stocks of nuclear waste. As Blees puts it: "Thus we have a prodigious supply of free fuel that is actually even better than free, for it is material that we are quite desperate to get rid of." Who could object to that?
Just about everyone on the eco-scene, it turned out. I began to receive e-mails from friends and colleagues warning me off the topic. Did I really want to risk my entire reputation by alienating the green movement? The backlash to my first magazine article on the subject prompted my inbox to collapse, the blogs to drip with venom, the dirty looks to multiply.
A former Greenpeace campaigner posted on my website that I needed to show "a bit of humility" and "less arrogance". On Greenpeace's blog my views were mocked as "wishful thinking of the day". On Radio 4's Today programme, Green party leader Caroline Lucas accused me of having "lost the plot". When I argued back, she accused me of "just being silly". I was a traitor.
This was a moment I had been dreading for nearly three years, ever since I first suspected that much of what I had been brought up to believe about nuclear power - that it is, without exception, dirty, dangerous and unnecessary - was untrue. Science has moved on. The old figures just don't stack up any more.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nuclear is just as low-carbon a power source as wind and solar: the world's 439 operating nuclear reactors save the planet from 2 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, which would have been emitted had coal been used instead.
And those dangers? They're still there but we need to discuss them truthfully. Take Chernobyl. We all know it was a disaster: the Greenpeace website states a death toll of 60,000 already and predicts another 140,000 deaths in the future. But these statistics fly in the face of mainstream science: according to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 28 people died in the initial phase and several thousand more have suffered from nonfatal thyroid cancer because of the accident. The UN report concludes that "there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident" - so the real death toll from the world's worst nuclear accident is tiny. On a deaths per gigawatt-year basis, nuclear is safer than coal and oil.
Curiosity whetted, I searched the scientific literature for evidence to support the other great green charge levelled at nuclear power: it kills its neighbours. I sifted through piles of rigorous epidemiological studies from all over the world, searching for proof that people who live near nuclear sites are more prone to cancer and leukaemia. None of the reputable journals turned up a link. These are just two examples of eco-myths: there are many more. If only we were allowed to discuss them without being flayed for heresy.
When I e-mailed a senior ecological scientist with my conclusions, he agreed, but only privately. "Do not cite me as promoting nuclear," he begged. I am still shocked that people of his stature are too intimidated to speak out. The result of this fear is that the public is dangerously misinformed about nuclear power.
I have finally thought of something useful that I can do with my Green party membership card: I'll auction it on eBay and send the money to EDF - with a suggestion that it beefs up its marketing department. Any bids?
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A stupid priest who is so far out of his depth he is drowning "The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has spoken up in support of Karl Marx, defending key aspects of his critique of capitalism. Dr Williams warns that in the face of the credit crisis, the financial world needs new regulation and says that our society is running the risk of idolatry in its relationship with wealth. In an article in Friday's Spectator, Dr Williams compares today's debtors and financiers to the feckless young clerics and landowners described in the novels of Anthony Trollope. He writes: "Individuals find that their own personal financial decisions and calculations have nothing to do with what is happening to their resources, in a process for which a debt is simply someone else's wholly disposable asset."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Muslim gang tries to firebomb British publisher of Allah novel
Scotland Yard's counter-terrorist command yesterday foiled an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to kill the publisher of a forthcoming novel featuring sexual encounters between the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride. Early yesterday armed undercover officers arrested three men after a petrol bomb was pushed through the door of the north London home of the book’s publisher. The Metropolitan police said the target of the assassination plot, the Dutch publisher Martin Rynja, had not been injured.
The suspected terror gang was being followed by undercover police and the fire was quickly put out after the fire brigade smashed down the front door. The foiled terrorist attack recalled the death threats and uproar 20 years ago following the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and the worldwide protests that followed the publication in a Danish newspaper in 2005 of cartoons deemed offensive to Islam, in which more than 100 people died.
Security officials believe Rynja was targeted for assassination because his firm, Gibson Square, is preparing to publish a romantic novel about Aisha, child bride of the Prophet Muhammad. The Jewel of Medina, by the first-time American author Sherry Jones, describes an imaginary sex scene between the prophet and his 14-year-old wife. It was withdrawn from publication in America last month after its publisher there, Random House, said it feared a violent reaction by “a small radical segment” of Muslims. It said “credible and unrelated sources” had warned that the book could incite violence.
Random House reacted after Islamic scholars objected to its contents, saying it treated the wife of the Prophet as a sex object. One of them, Denise Spellberg, of the University of Texas at Austin, described the novel as “soft-core pornography”, referring to a scene in which Muhammad consummates his marriage to Aisha. She called it “a declaration of war” and a “national security issue”.
At the time, her warnings were dismissed by the author. “Anyone who reads the book will not be offended,” said Jones. “I wrote the book with the utmost respect for Islam.” However, Jones admitted receiving death threats after the book was withdrawn.
It was soon after this that the Met appears to have received a tip-off that the British publisher who had subsequently agreed to print it could be the target of an attack. A Met spokesman said three men had been arrested in “a preplanned intelligence-led operation” at about 2.25am on Saturday. Two of the suspects were arrested in the street outside Rynja’s four-storey townhouse in Lonsdale Square, Islington, while the third was stopped by officers in an armed vehicle near Angel Tube station. They were being questioned yesterday on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, a spokesman said.
Rynja, 44, could not be contacted yesterday. He is believed to be under police guard. Yesterday, Natasha Kern, Jones’s agent, said she was shocked to learn of the attack. She said the book had been misinterpreted by its critics and did not contain sex scenes, as had been alleged. “I honestly believe that if people read the book they will see it is not disrespectful of Muhammad, and moderate Muslims will not be offended. I don’t want anyone to risk their lives but we could never imagine that there would be some madmen who would do something like this. I’m so sad about this act of terrorism. Moderate Muslims will suffer because of a few radicals.” Kern said it was too early for her to comment on whether the book should be withdrawn. “That’s up to Martin, and I still need to absorb the fact that he was at risk. I’m just so glad he has not been hurt.”
Residents said they saw armed police break down the door of Rynja’s house, helped by firefighters. Francesca Liebowitz, 16, a neighbour, said: “The police couldn’t get the door open so the fire brigade battered it down.” Another neighbour, who declined to be named, said: “I was woken at about 3am and I looked out the window and I saw several unmarked cars with what I now think were police officers in them. These officers came out of the cars and there was huge screaming and shouting. Some of the police officers were carrying sub-machineguns. “I then saw a small fire at the bottom of the door at the house. I heard the police officers shout and scream and try to get neighbours out of the house.”
The Jewel of Medina is due to be published next month.
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Nasty British bureaucrats surrender! They knew that their petty harassment of private medicine would not stand up in court
IVF watchdog lifts ban on Mohammed Taranissi to avoid challenge in High Court. He was so successful he made the NHS look stupid: Unforgiveable!
Mohammed Taranissi, Britain’s most successful fertility doctor, has been cleared to continue running his London clinic by the IVF watchdog, after it agreed to rescind a disciplinary ban imposed last year. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will annul its ruling that Mr Taranissi was unfit to be in charge of his Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre (ARGC), to avoid a judicial review.
The doctor, who has long boasted Britain’s highest IVF success rates, was stripped of his right to be “person responsible” for the clinic last July, after an HFEA committee found that he had been practising without the proper licence.
Mr Taranissi, however, was granted permission to challenge the decision in the High Court, on the ground that the panel could have appeared to be biased against him. Rather than risk a defeat that would have been highly damaging to the authority, it will set aside the decision and pay his legal costs. The climbdown is the latest of a string of costly legal embarrassments for the HFEA over its handling of the doctor. In June last year the High Court ruled it had illegally obtained a warrant to search Mr Taranissi’s clinic, leaving the regulator facing a legal bill that could reach $2 million.
It was also forced to clarify in court comments made by Angela McNab, then its chief executive, in a BBC Panorama programme broadcast last January. Mr Taranissi is suing the BBC for libel over allegations in the documentary that his clinic put pressure on patients to pay for unnecessary treatments.
The HFEA’s climbdown will also encourage the doctor as he prepares to defend a General Medical Council hearing into complaints from two unnamed patients, which begins on Monday. One of the women alleges that the ARGC put inappropriate pressure on her to have particular treatments, and the other claims he failed to examine her properly and was insensitive to her husband. In both cases, he is also accused of failing to keep proper records. Mr Taranissi denies the allegations, which the HFEA investigated in 2003 and 2004 without ruling against him.
The HFEA’s action against Mr Taranissi followed Panorama’s claim that he treated patients during 2006 at a second London clinic, the Reproductive Genetics Institute, while it did not have the correct licence. Mr Taranissi has always rejected the charge, contending that he had been given special permission to continue therapy after the licence expired. He appealed against the sanction, which is among the toughest that the HFEA can impose, and which has been used only once before. The decision to strike out the licence committee’s ruling means that appeal will now not be heard. Instead, Mr Taranissi has been cleared to continue practising while he applies for a fresh licence. The agreement between the parties still has to be sealed by a judge, but this is expected to be a formality.
His application will be considered by six new members of the authority, who were appointed this month at the request of Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister. It was agreed that authority members who had deliberated on the doctor’s case before could not be involved without the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Mr Taranissi said yesterday: “I always maintained that the decision was wrong, and I am delighted it has been set aside. I hadn’t done anything wrong and I wouldn’t accept it.” He said his case had highlighted serious flaws in the HFEA’s appeals process. “It is impossible to complain about their decisions to anyone apart from the HFEA, and that cannot be right,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to be able to afford to take legal action, but most people won’t be. There needs to be a way for people to appeal to a third party, without having to go to court.”
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The moronic British ID card
The long-dreaded day has finally arrived: Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, revealed the first UK identity card last week. I have to admit that it didn't look particularly threatening. It was just an ordinary piece of plastic, the size of a credit card, with the holder's name, date of birth, immigration status, and a chip that holds fingerprints and a digital facial image.
As civil libertarians like to remind us, one of Hitler's first acts as chancellor was to impose compulsory ID cards on every German citizen. If the smiling Ms Smith's ID card was the beginning of the totalitarian state in Britain, it came not with a bang but a simper. Still, it has taken six votes in the Commons, and five defeats in the House of Lords, for the Government to get this far. And the price of getting around the legislative obstacle course has been that ministers had to give up their original hope of making ID cards compulsory.
Under the legislation that was passed by Parliament, they will be compulsory only for foreign nationals (people such as my Californian wife), who will need one to enter the UK, to work and to claim benefits. UK citizens will not be forced to carry one: the Home Secretary hopes that most of us will pay the £30 required to get one "voluntarily".
Dream on, Jacqui! Having dropped the requirement that the ID card be compulsory, the Government has destroyed its case for them, because it has ensured that ID cards can't possibly work as an effective tool for catching terrorists or criminals. Obviously, no self-respecting jihadi will carry an ID card voluntarily. There will be other refuseniks, such as those who object on principle to the idea of ID cards (and they include senior members of the judiciary, the House of Lords and all three political parties, as well as thousands of ordinary citizens). So the police won't be able to take your failure to produce an ID card as an admission that you are planning to detonate a suicide bomb.
How, then, will ID cards help the cops track the terrorists? The Government hasn't provided an answer - which may be why the Home Secretary insisted last week that their primary use is to control illegal immigration. And perhaps ID cards will make it more difficult for those not entitled to be in Britain to get through immigration control, although since many illegal immigrants are indeed illegal - that is, they arrive smuggled in lorries and do not come into contact with any of UK's border agencies - it is not obvious how much difference ID cards will make.
A more significant problem will be the inevitable proliferation of fakes. Anyone who claims that it will be impossible to copy or clone ID cards is not telling the truth: any system devised by a human being can, and will, be broken by another human being. The ID card system will not be "foolproof": if there is one certainty, it is that the criminal gangs who make fortunes smuggling illegal immigrants into Britain will find a way to clone and distribute fake cards. And that's without a government official leaving a data stick containing the ID details of 60 million people in Starbucks or on the train.
The system is currently projected to cost a cool $68 billion. You can be sure it will end up costing a lot more than that, and that it won't work as intended.
There is only one computer system in the UK on the same scale as the one proposed for ID cards: the National Programme, the system designed to centralise all NHS patient records. Almost a decade ago, when planning started, that system was budgeted at $10 billion. Then it went up to $12.4 billion. As of last year, it had cost $25 billion - and it still doesn't work properly. Its defenders cite "teething problems". Its detractors note that "some of the most senior officials in the NHS know perfectly well that the National Programme will never work properly - indeed, that many hospitals would now be better off if they had never taken part in the scheme in the first place".
The problems aren't limited to sudden crashes or disappearing data. Medical records have been inaccurately inputted with alarming frequency. Doctors routinely find that as much as 10 per cent of the information is wrong. Just imagine that degree of error transferred to the system for ID cards. If errors are not corrected, the system will be useless as a tool for fighting crime or curbing illegal immigration (never mind the number of innocents it will enmesh in criminal prosecutions). In the unlikely event that those errors are discovered, correcting them will clog the system to the point where it cannot function.
The objections to ID cards do not depend on positing mad, power-hungry politicians eager to snoop on all of us. We could have the most conscientious and morally decent rulers in the world: ID cards would still fail to be worth their cost, because human fallibility will inevitably intervene to ensure that the beautiful new system does not work. If there is one lesson we all should have learnt from the past 100 years, it is that even benign design can lead to pernicious practice.
Our present Government has not learnt that lesson - and it does not bode well for the future of liberty in Britain.
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Going over the top in the `climate war'
A recent BBC series showed how dubious scientific conclusions are weapons in the politicised debate over global warming
`Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand. The evidence is clear - the long-term trend in global temperatures is rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise.' (1) This emphatic statement from the UK Met Office yesterday is just the latest shot in the `climate war'. But in truth, the polarised and highly politicised nature of the current discussion on global warming features plenty of people on both sides with their heads firmly buried, using `science' to disguise the real debate about the future political and economic direction of society.
This was neatly illustrated by a recent BBC TV series, Earth: The Climate Wars, which ended on Sunday. Last week's episode, entitled `Fightback' was a particularly one-sided attempt to undermine the critics of the orthodox position on global warming.
Iain Stewart, professor of geosciences communication at Plymouth University, introduced last week's instalment with the words: `Global warming - the defining challenge of the twenty-first century.' The programme examined the arguments made by the two putative `sides' in the global warming debate, to show `how [the sceptic's] positions have changed over time'. But Stewart misconstrued scepticism of the idea that `global warming is the defining issue of our time' with scepticism of climate research. In this story, `the scientists' occupied one camp (situated conveniently on the moral high ground) and the bad-minded, politically and financially motivated sceptics the other. But there was no nuance, no depth and no justice done to the debate in this unsophisticated tale, and it did nothing to help the audience understand the science.
`At the start of the 1990s it seemed the world was united', Stewart told us. World leaders were gathered at the Rio Summit to sign up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the instrument that would pave the way for the Kyoto Protocol. He recalled the excitement felt by researchers at the prospect of the world being united by concern for the environment. `Even George Bush [Senior] was there. But the consensus didn't last.' Sceptics, it seems, are responsible, not just for the imminent end of the world, but also for corroding global unity.
Stewart's intention was to show that `the scientific consensus' existed prior to international agreements to prevent climate change. But the basis of the UNFCCC was not a consensus about scientific facts. It could not have been, because scientific facts about human influence on the climate did not exist in 1992, as is revealed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report in 1990, which concluded that `The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.' Even the second IPCC assessment report in 1995 did not provide the world with the certainty that Stewart claims: `Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors.' (2)
Instead of consensus and certainty, the UNFCCC was driven by the precautionary principle. Principle 15 of the Rio declaration states: `In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.'
Omitting the role of the precautionary principle creates the idea that scientists have always known that industrial activity caused global warming. So, with the benefit of hindsight, Stewart could lump various objections to the interpretation of controversial evidence which existed at the time into one `sceptic' category. Not according to the scientific substance of the argument, but according to whether the argument was later vindicated; not by the consistency of the argument with reality, but whether or not it `supported' the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
In 1992, the data simply wasn't available to conclude with any great confidence that global warming was happening. But by the logic of Stewart's argument, as long as you were right about global warming being a `fact' at that time - even if that meant in reality you were wrongly interpreting the evidence available - you were a `scientist'. But, if you were right about the unreliability of data in 1992, then you were wrong in 2001, because you were a `sceptic'. If this were just a debate within an academic discipline, such challenges would not have any major significance outside of it. But Stewart, like many others, takes routine and isolated differences of scientific opinion, and groups them to imbue them with political significance.
A warming world?
The first scientific debate Stewart presented concerned the reliability of data generated by compiling the records of tens of thousands of surface-based weather stations. Sceptics had argued that these installations were too sparsely distributed and data from them had been contaminated by urbanisation over the twentieth century. Stewart demonstrated that this is indeed a problem. He used the example of the temperature at Las Vegas Airport - home to a monitoring station and heavily urbanised since it was originally set up - and compared it with the temperature outside the city limits, which was markedly cooler. This suggests that making comparisons over time using data from many such stations, where the local environment has changed, may result in over-stating global warming.
The sceptics' argument was seemingly corroborated in the 1990s by satellite data that showed a slight cooling trend over the 1980s. Ten years later, it turned out that the satellite data had been flawed, Stewart told us. The satellite's orbits had been drifting downward, and the data they had produced improperly compiled. A correction to the data revealed a warming trend. `The sceptics had to admit the world was warming', said Stewart.
But here again, we see an artefact of the retrospective polarisation of the `climate wars'. The truth was that both `sides' were wrong while they had invested their confidence either in the surface station data or the satellite data; both sets of data were `wrong' - Stewart had just demonstrated it himself. But the nuances of the debate don't interest Stewart. `The scientists' are vindicated by any evidence which shows that `the earth is warming', regardless of its quality. The sceptics, on the other hand, are not vindicated for having pointed out that the surface station record was questionable.
The not-so jolly `hockey stick'
Stewart then examined the sceptic claim that an episode in Earth's history known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) shows that current temperatures are not unprecedented in recent geological history. This was countered by climate researcher Michael Mann, who reconstructed past temperatures where no instrument data were available. By analysing `proxies', such as tree-ring width, ice cores, and coral reefs, he produced a graph which apparently revealed that the MWP was not a global phenomenon, and showed current temperatures to be in excess of anything in the previous millennium.
`Sceptics hated it' announced Stewart. Indeed they did. Mann's study remains highly controversial for good reasons. But Stewart gave no time to explaining the objection to these reconstructions, other than to characterise them as `personal attacks' against Mann. The graphic had been the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment Report, used to demonstrate the unequivocal influence of human activity on the climate.
Yet perhaps one of the reasons it was so prominent - in spite of criticism - is that Mann himself was a lead author on the chapter which featured it (3). The IPCC is understood to be a meta-review of the available literature on climate change, but allowing authors to review their own work represents something of a departure from the scientific process. In 2007, following continued criticism of Mann's method, the IPCC were far more circumspect about the value of such reconstructions. Where Stewart presented these reconstructions as `proof' of todays high temperatures, the IPCC give the statement that `twentieth century was the warmest in at least the past [1,300 years]' just 66 per cent confidence (4).
Sceptical `guns for hire'
It is only Stewart's binary treatment of the issue into true and false and `scientists'/'sceptics' that allowed him to reach his conclusion: `There are a lot of people who don't want global warming to be true', he tells us. `Cutting back on greenhouse gases threatens the freedom of companies to go about their business.' According to Stewart, companies used the media to emphasise the uncertainties in climate science for their own ends - profit - a cause and strategy taken up by the Bush administration.
This is an almost verbatim copy of an argument put forward by a prominent climate change advocate and science historian at the University of California, San Diego, Naomi Oreskes. She had claimed that the `climate change denial' movement comprised the same individuals and network of organisations that had been instrumental in denying the link between smoking and cancer (5). By emphasising doubt and uncertainty in the claims of honest and decent scientists, Oreskes claims, `the tobacco strategy' aimed to influence public opinion to secure the interests of oil and tobacco companies, and the political Right. It should be no surprise then, that Naomi Oreskes was credited on the first episode of the series.
Stewart's and Oreskes' conspiracy theories depend on reducing scientific arguments to meaningless factoids, and casting the debate as one between goodies and baddies. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the film's closing moments. In order to demonstrate that `the sceptics' had changed their arguments in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, the film used footage from the Manhattan Conference on Climate Change earlier this year, a meeting that featured a large number of sceptical writers and researchers.
`For years, climatologist Pat Michaels has been one of the most vocal sceptics. And yet, today, he's in surprising agreement with the advocates of global warming', said Stewart. Michaels is then shown giving his talk, saying `global warming is real, and in the second half of the twentieth century, humans had something to do with it'. But there is nothing surprising about Michael's apparent turnaround, because it isn't one. A 2002 article in the Journal of Climatic Research, authored by Michaels et al argued for a revision of the IPCC's projections for the year 2100. Instead of saying that there would be no warming, the paper concluded that rises of `of 1.0 to 3.0 degrees Celsius, with a central value that averages 1.8 degrees Celsius' were more likely than the IPCC's range of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (6). Hardly climate change denial.
What could have been an interesting film was instead a fiction. It attached fictional arguments to fictional interests to legitimise the politicisation of the debate - exactly what it accused the sceptics of. Rather than concentrating on the arguments that have actually been made, Stewart invented the sceptic's argument to turn climate science into an arena for an exhausted political argument for `change' that has failed to engage the public.
The real `climate war' is between those who do not believe that our future is determined by the weather and those who think that `climate change is the defining challenge of our time' and define themselves - and everybody else - accordingly. Don't expect a documentary film about it any time soon.
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BBC investigated after peer says climate change programme was biased 'one-sided polemic'
The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented. Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a `potty peer' on a TV programme that `was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming'.
Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast on BBC 2, was billed as a definitive guide to the history of global warming, including arguments for and against. During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton. But the peer complained to Ofcom that the broadcast had been unfairly edited.
`I very much hope Ofcom will do something about this,' he said yesterday. `The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct. `I was interviewed for 90 minutes and all my views were backed up by sound scientific data, but this was all omitted. They made it sound as if these were just my personal views, as if I was some potty peer. It was caddish of them.'
Ofcom confirmed it was looking into a `fairness complaint' about the documentary. A BBC spokesman said: `We stand by the programme.'
Lord Monckton, 56, a former journalist and Cambridge graduate, says scientific data shows the world is cooler today than in the Middle Ages. He appeared alongside other sceptics including distinguished Florida-based meteorologist Professor Fred Singer, John Christy, a climate change expert and adviser to the U.S. government and the climatologist Dr Patrick Michaels, of the University of Virginia. All their interviews, he claims, were heavily cut so that they appeared as personal views.
`We do not dispute that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we do dispute its effects', he said. `The data shows that 2008 is the same temperature as 1980 and that the effects of these changes in the atmosphere are not negative but more likely to be beneficial.'
Lord Monckton played a key role in a legal challenge heard in the High Court in October 2007 in an effort to prevent Al Gore's film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, from being shown in English schools.
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How the culture wars killed free expression
Christopher Shinn, the writer of new political play Now or Later, explains how campus censorship strangles debate
In America and Britain, theatre has become a notable battleground on questions of free speech and free artistic expression. In 2004, the controversial play Behzti was cancelled in Birmingham after Sikhs protested that the play offended their community, while in America religious fundamentalists have objected to The Crucible and My Name is Rachel Corrie on similar grounds.
American playwright Christopher Shinn has followed, often in exasperation, the on-going discussions and debates on the rights and wrongs of staging controversial plays in the West. He decided to do something artistic about it: write a play called Now or Later that tackles campus censorship through the very topical lens of the American presidential elections.
Shinn's play is set on the eve of a presidential election. The Democrats are on the point of victory when news breaks out, via political blogs, that the would-be new president's homosexual son, John, has gone to a party dressed as the prophet Mohammed and his friend as the gay-baiting evangelist Pastor Bob.
As footage of the party circulates around the globe, sparking riots in the Muslim world, John is under immense pressure from presidential advisers to make a public apology. While John insists on the importance of free expression, and also that he was attending a private party, his friend Matt points out that he could be responsible for deaths around the world. Principle and pragmatism collide to fascinating effect. Staged in real-time, Now or Later carefully explores the anguish and arguments of this very contemporary concern.
When I meet the man behind Now or Later, he is dressed in casual t-shirt and jeans and overseeing the play's final rehearsals at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London. The Royal Court discovered Shinn 10 years ago - when he was just 23 - meaning that most of his plays, such as Dying City and Other People, have been premiered there, too. The theatre's director, Dominic Cooke, has programmed the play to coincide with the run-up to the real American presidential elections. Now or Later couldn't be more timely.
`I think the first thing I wanted to do was give myself a formal challenge', says Shinn carefully, `which was to write a play in real time and then I started to think, what could happen in real time that is interesting and dramatic? And in politics today, with blogs and 24-hour news channels, things can happen very rapidly. So I started thinking about politics in order to find a subject that was fit for formal challenge. In my mind, I had politics, power and issues of freedom of expression and, as a dramatist, I'm always looking for conflict.'
Shinn says that in Now or Later he is exploring conflicts and clashes between the West and Islam. As he puts it: `With Islam, it is perceived that the current administration is responsible for suffering in the Muslim world', says Shinn, `and therefore there can be no criticising of that world or how Muslims might experience that. The end result is to limit the conversations that Muslims can have about that themselves.'
Nevertheless, Shinn's well-crafted central protagonist in Now or Later, John, is motivated just as much by exposing the censorious nature of Ivy League students, as attacking Muslims in and of themselves. Surely, I ask him, the problem of censorship has its roots within the liberal left rather than any external threat to `Western values'? `Yeah, I think you're right,' says Shinn. `I think in many ways American campuses are a distorted and extreme way of dealing with problems in US culture. The left-wing ideology in these campuses doesn't seem to be related to the way the world is. The antics on campus almost have a feeling of play acting, as it's so divorced from people's lives. Nevertheless, the Ivy League students are the future politicians and opinion leaders so it's worth examining how they're getting a distorted picture of how the world is working.'
As a left-wing champion of free speech, and a fan and reader of spiked, Shinn is exasperated that it is often the left who are now the loudest advocates of blue pens and artistic clampdowns. He reckons that there was a sea change in universities back in the 1990s that has now become politically mainstream.
`As a gay man, I found the left's fight for free expression very beneficial', he says, `but that crossed over into identity politics. From there it was important to privilege the subjectivity of people who had previously been oppressed and marginalised. But instead of this emphasis on a diversity of voices, there became an unspoken rule whereby only people who experienced something, whether as a gay man or black woman, were allowed to speak about it directly. This created a real fracture where these oppressed groups, rather than finding commonality, separated out. These different groups ended up in these retreats which itself created paranoia and bad blood.'
Shinn's work seems to belong to a lineage of American playwrights and artists, from Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer through to Philip Roth, who offer an unflinching examination of the gaping holes in American society. Although European liberals love to dismiss American culture as rather candy-floss and dumb, no other Western nation produces art that is not only self-aware and self-critical, but resists the temptation of self-loathing. Shinn's work is no exception.
`Yes, it is one of the really good things about America', says Shinn cheerfully, `it thrives on that self-critique. You know, you even see it in relation to the Bush administration where a lot of extreme policy has been moderated due to the ongoing critiques and debates. The real strength of American culture is always in searching for ways of moving on from difficulties. That's something I'm proud of within America and what I want to achieve in my work as well.'
Naturally enough, Shinn has been eagerly following the US presidential election and is neither cynical nor goggle-eyed about Obama. `He has no track record so people are projecting all kinds of things onto him', says Shinn. `The Democratic Party haven't yet been in a position whereby they are explicitly running to the right in order to appeal to swing voters.' And as Now or Later deals with the question of a presidential candidate's children, the play unwittingly anticipates the furore surrounding Sarah Palin's pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, who is under pressure to conform to conventional morality. As Shinn says, `yes, all that does evoke the play in general, as it deals with children, sexuality and lies.'
At heart, though, Now or Later is a timely, not to mention, expert exploration of how censorship, and perhaps the need for self-censorship, is acting as a straitjacket within Western culture and politics. Although the play might seem a little didactic, Shinn doesn't marshal the audience into accepting any conclusive argument. Now or Later provokes thought rather than stymies it. `It is one thing to believe in freedom of expression,' he says, `but that may lead to the death of other people. So the play is asking: would you be responsible for that? And then what happens afterwards? So how badly do you believe in freedom of expression?'
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Scotland Yard's counter-terrorist command yesterday foiled an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to kill the publisher of a forthcoming novel featuring sexual encounters between the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride. Early yesterday armed undercover officers arrested three men after a petrol bomb was pushed through the door of the north London home of the book’s publisher. The Metropolitan police said the target of the assassination plot, the Dutch publisher Martin Rynja, had not been injured.
The suspected terror gang was being followed by undercover police and the fire was quickly put out after the fire brigade smashed down the front door. The foiled terrorist attack recalled the death threats and uproar 20 years ago following the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and the worldwide protests that followed the publication in a Danish newspaper in 2005 of cartoons deemed offensive to Islam, in which more than 100 people died.
Security officials believe Rynja was targeted for assassination because his firm, Gibson Square, is preparing to publish a romantic novel about Aisha, child bride of the Prophet Muhammad. The Jewel of Medina, by the first-time American author Sherry Jones, describes an imaginary sex scene between the prophet and his 14-year-old wife. It was withdrawn from publication in America last month after its publisher there, Random House, said it feared a violent reaction by “a small radical segment” of Muslims. It said “credible and unrelated sources” had warned that the book could incite violence.
Random House reacted after Islamic scholars objected to its contents, saying it treated the wife of the Prophet as a sex object. One of them, Denise Spellberg, of the University of Texas at Austin, described the novel as “soft-core pornography”, referring to a scene in which Muhammad consummates his marriage to Aisha. She called it “a declaration of war” and a “national security issue”.
At the time, her warnings were dismissed by the author. “Anyone who reads the book will not be offended,” said Jones. “I wrote the book with the utmost respect for Islam.” However, Jones admitted receiving death threats after the book was withdrawn.
It was soon after this that the Met appears to have received a tip-off that the British publisher who had subsequently agreed to print it could be the target of an attack. A Met spokesman said three men had been arrested in “a preplanned intelligence-led operation” at about 2.25am on Saturday. Two of the suspects were arrested in the street outside Rynja’s four-storey townhouse in Lonsdale Square, Islington, while the third was stopped by officers in an armed vehicle near Angel Tube station. They were being questioned yesterday on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, a spokesman said.
Rynja, 44, could not be contacted yesterday. He is believed to be under police guard. Yesterday, Natasha Kern, Jones’s agent, said she was shocked to learn of the attack. She said the book had been misinterpreted by its critics and did not contain sex scenes, as had been alleged. “I honestly believe that if people read the book they will see it is not disrespectful of Muhammad, and moderate Muslims will not be offended. I don’t want anyone to risk their lives but we could never imagine that there would be some madmen who would do something like this. I’m so sad about this act of terrorism. Moderate Muslims will suffer because of a few radicals.” Kern said it was too early for her to comment on whether the book should be withdrawn. “That’s up to Martin, and I still need to absorb the fact that he was at risk. I’m just so glad he has not been hurt.”
Residents said they saw armed police break down the door of Rynja’s house, helped by firefighters. Francesca Liebowitz, 16, a neighbour, said: “The police couldn’t get the door open so the fire brigade battered it down.” Another neighbour, who declined to be named, said: “I was woken at about 3am and I looked out the window and I saw several unmarked cars with what I now think were police officers in them. These officers came out of the cars and there was huge screaming and shouting. Some of the police officers were carrying sub-machineguns. “I then saw a small fire at the bottom of the door at the house. I heard the police officers shout and scream and try to get neighbours out of the house.”
The Jewel of Medina is due to be published next month.
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Nasty British bureaucrats surrender! They knew that their petty harassment of private medicine would not stand up in court
IVF watchdog lifts ban on Mohammed Taranissi to avoid challenge in High Court. He was so successful he made the NHS look stupid: Unforgiveable!
Mohammed Taranissi, Britain’s most successful fertility doctor, has been cleared to continue running his London clinic by the IVF watchdog, after it agreed to rescind a disciplinary ban imposed last year. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will annul its ruling that Mr Taranissi was unfit to be in charge of his Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre (ARGC), to avoid a judicial review.
The doctor, who has long boasted Britain’s highest IVF success rates, was stripped of his right to be “person responsible” for the clinic last July, after an HFEA committee found that he had been practising without the proper licence.
Mr Taranissi, however, was granted permission to challenge the decision in the High Court, on the ground that the panel could have appeared to be biased against him. Rather than risk a defeat that would have been highly damaging to the authority, it will set aside the decision and pay his legal costs. The climbdown is the latest of a string of costly legal embarrassments for the HFEA over its handling of the doctor. In June last year the High Court ruled it had illegally obtained a warrant to search Mr Taranissi’s clinic, leaving the regulator facing a legal bill that could reach $2 million.
It was also forced to clarify in court comments made by Angela McNab, then its chief executive, in a BBC Panorama programme broadcast last January. Mr Taranissi is suing the BBC for libel over allegations in the documentary that his clinic put pressure on patients to pay for unnecessary treatments.
The HFEA’s climbdown will also encourage the doctor as he prepares to defend a General Medical Council hearing into complaints from two unnamed patients, which begins on Monday. One of the women alleges that the ARGC put inappropriate pressure on her to have particular treatments, and the other claims he failed to examine her properly and was insensitive to her husband. In both cases, he is also accused of failing to keep proper records. Mr Taranissi denies the allegations, which the HFEA investigated in 2003 and 2004 without ruling against him.
The HFEA’s action against Mr Taranissi followed Panorama’s claim that he treated patients during 2006 at a second London clinic, the Reproductive Genetics Institute, while it did not have the correct licence. Mr Taranissi has always rejected the charge, contending that he had been given special permission to continue therapy after the licence expired. He appealed against the sanction, which is among the toughest that the HFEA can impose, and which has been used only once before. The decision to strike out the licence committee’s ruling means that appeal will now not be heard. Instead, Mr Taranissi has been cleared to continue practising while he applies for a fresh licence. The agreement between the parties still has to be sealed by a judge, but this is expected to be a formality.
His application will be considered by six new members of the authority, who were appointed this month at the request of Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister. It was agreed that authority members who had deliberated on the doctor’s case before could not be involved without the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Mr Taranissi said yesterday: “I always maintained that the decision was wrong, and I am delighted it has been set aside. I hadn’t done anything wrong and I wouldn’t accept it.” He said his case had highlighted serious flaws in the HFEA’s appeals process. “It is impossible to complain about their decisions to anyone apart from the HFEA, and that cannot be right,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to be able to afford to take legal action, but most people won’t be. There needs to be a way for people to appeal to a third party, without having to go to court.”
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The moronic British ID card
The long-dreaded day has finally arrived: Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, revealed the first UK identity card last week. I have to admit that it didn't look particularly threatening. It was just an ordinary piece of plastic, the size of a credit card, with the holder's name, date of birth, immigration status, and a chip that holds fingerprints and a digital facial image.
As civil libertarians like to remind us, one of Hitler's first acts as chancellor was to impose compulsory ID cards on every German citizen. If the smiling Ms Smith's ID card was the beginning of the totalitarian state in Britain, it came not with a bang but a simper. Still, it has taken six votes in the Commons, and five defeats in the House of Lords, for the Government to get this far. And the price of getting around the legislative obstacle course has been that ministers had to give up their original hope of making ID cards compulsory.
Under the legislation that was passed by Parliament, they will be compulsory only for foreign nationals (people such as my Californian wife), who will need one to enter the UK, to work and to claim benefits. UK citizens will not be forced to carry one: the Home Secretary hopes that most of us will pay the £30 required to get one "voluntarily".
Dream on, Jacqui! Having dropped the requirement that the ID card be compulsory, the Government has destroyed its case for them, because it has ensured that ID cards can't possibly work as an effective tool for catching terrorists or criminals. Obviously, no self-respecting jihadi will carry an ID card voluntarily. There will be other refuseniks, such as those who object on principle to the idea of ID cards (and they include senior members of the judiciary, the House of Lords and all three political parties, as well as thousands of ordinary citizens). So the police won't be able to take your failure to produce an ID card as an admission that you are planning to detonate a suicide bomb.
How, then, will ID cards help the cops track the terrorists? The Government hasn't provided an answer - which may be why the Home Secretary insisted last week that their primary use is to control illegal immigration. And perhaps ID cards will make it more difficult for those not entitled to be in Britain to get through immigration control, although since many illegal immigrants are indeed illegal - that is, they arrive smuggled in lorries and do not come into contact with any of UK's border agencies - it is not obvious how much difference ID cards will make.
A more significant problem will be the inevitable proliferation of fakes. Anyone who claims that it will be impossible to copy or clone ID cards is not telling the truth: any system devised by a human being can, and will, be broken by another human being. The ID card system will not be "foolproof": if there is one certainty, it is that the criminal gangs who make fortunes smuggling illegal immigrants into Britain will find a way to clone and distribute fake cards. And that's without a government official leaving a data stick containing the ID details of 60 million people in Starbucks or on the train.
The system is currently projected to cost a cool $68 billion. You can be sure it will end up costing a lot more than that, and that it won't work as intended.
There is only one computer system in the UK on the same scale as the one proposed for ID cards: the National Programme, the system designed to centralise all NHS patient records. Almost a decade ago, when planning started, that system was budgeted at $10 billion. Then it went up to $12.4 billion. As of last year, it had cost $25 billion - and it still doesn't work properly. Its defenders cite "teething problems". Its detractors note that "some of the most senior officials in the NHS know perfectly well that the National Programme will never work properly - indeed, that many hospitals would now be better off if they had never taken part in the scheme in the first place".
The problems aren't limited to sudden crashes or disappearing data. Medical records have been inaccurately inputted with alarming frequency. Doctors routinely find that as much as 10 per cent of the information is wrong. Just imagine that degree of error transferred to the system for ID cards. If errors are not corrected, the system will be useless as a tool for fighting crime or curbing illegal immigration (never mind the number of innocents it will enmesh in criminal prosecutions). In the unlikely event that those errors are discovered, correcting them will clog the system to the point where it cannot function.
The objections to ID cards do not depend on positing mad, power-hungry politicians eager to snoop on all of us. We could have the most conscientious and morally decent rulers in the world: ID cards would still fail to be worth their cost, because human fallibility will inevitably intervene to ensure that the beautiful new system does not work. If there is one lesson we all should have learnt from the past 100 years, it is that even benign design can lead to pernicious practice.
Our present Government has not learnt that lesson - and it does not bode well for the future of liberty in Britain.
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Going over the top in the `climate war'
A recent BBC series showed how dubious scientific conclusions are weapons in the politicised debate over global warming
`Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand. The evidence is clear - the long-term trend in global temperatures is rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise.' (1) This emphatic statement from the UK Met Office yesterday is just the latest shot in the `climate war'. But in truth, the polarised and highly politicised nature of the current discussion on global warming features plenty of people on both sides with their heads firmly buried, using `science' to disguise the real debate about the future political and economic direction of society.
This was neatly illustrated by a recent BBC TV series, Earth: The Climate Wars, which ended on Sunday. Last week's episode, entitled `Fightback' was a particularly one-sided attempt to undermine the critics of the orthodox position on global warming.
Iain Stewart, professor of geosciences communication at Plymouth University, introduced last week's instalment with the words: `Global warming - the defining challenge of the twenty-first century.' The programme examined the arguments made by the two putative `sides' in the global warming debate, to show `how [the sceptic's] positions have changed over time'. But Stewart misconstrued scepticism of the idea that `global warming is the defining issue of our time' with scepticism of climate research. In this story, `the scientists' occupied one camp (situated conveniently on the moral high ground) and the bad-minded, politically and financially motivated sceptics the other. But there was no nuance, no depth and no justice done to the debate in this unsophisticated tale, and it did nothing to help the audience understand the science.
`At the start of the 1990s it seemed the world was united', Stewart told us. World leaders were gathered at the Rio Summit to sign up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the instrument that would pave the way for the Kyoto Protocol. He recalled the excitement felt by researchers at the prospect of the world being united by concern for the environment. `Even George Bush [Senior] was there. But the consensus didn't last.' Sceptics, it seems, are responsible, not just for the imminent end of the world, but also for corroding global unity.
Stewart's intention was to show that `the scientific consensus' existed prior to international agreements to prevent climate change. But the basis of the UNFCCC was not a consensus about scientific facts. It could not have been, because scientific facts about human influence on the climate did not exist in 1992, as is revealed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report in 1990, which concluded that `The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.' Even the second IPCC assessment report in 1995 did not provide the world with the certainty that Stewart claims: `Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors.' (2)
Instead of consensus and certainty, the UNFCCC was driven by the precautionary principle. Principle 15 of the Rio declaration states: `In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.'
Omitting the role of the precautionary principle creates the idea that scientists have always known that industrial activity caused global warming. So, with the benefit of hindsight, Stewart could lump various objections to the interpretation of controversial evidence which existed at the time into one `sceptic' category. Not according to the scientific substance of the argument, but according to whether the argument was later vindicated; not by the consistency of the argument with reality, but whether or not it `supported' the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
In 1992, the data simply wasn't available to conclude with any great confidence that global warming was happening. But by the logic of Stewart's argument, as long as you were right about global warming being a `fact' at that time - even if that meant in reality you were wrongly interpreting the evidence available - you were a `scientist'. But, if you were right about the unreliability of data in 1992, then you were wrong in 2001, because you were a `sceptic'. If this were just a debate within an academic discipline, such challenges would not have any major significance outside of it. But Stewart, like many others, takes routine and isolated differences of scientific opinion, and groups them to imbue them with political significance.
A warming world?
The first scientific debate Stewart presented concerned the reliability of data generated by compiling the records of tens of thousands of surface-based weather stations. Sceptics had argued that these installations were too sparsely distributed and data from them had been contaminated by urbanisation over the twentieth century. Stewart demonstrated that this is indeed a problem. He used the example of the temperature at Las Vegas Airport - home to a monitoring station and heavily urbanised since it was originally set up - and compared it with the temperature outside the city limits, which was markedly cooler. This suggests that making comparisons over time using data from many such stations, where the local environment has changed, may result in over-stating global warming.
The sceptics' argument was seemingly corroborated in the 1990s by satellite data that showed a slight cooling trend over the 1980s. Ten years later, it turned out that the satellite data had been flawed, Stewart told us. The satellite's orbits had been drifting downward, and the data they had produced improperly compiled. A correction to the data revealed a warming trend. `The sceptics had to admit the world was warming', said Stewart.
But here again, we see an artefact of the retrospective polarisation of the `climate wars'. The truth was that both `sides' were wrong while they had invested their confidence either in the surface station data or the satellite data; both sets of data were `wrong' - Stewart had just demonstrated it himself. But the nuances of the debate don't interest Stewart. `The scientists' are vindicated by any evidence which shows that `the earth is warming', regardless of its quality. The sceptics, on the other hand, are not vindicated for having pointed out that the surface station record was questionable.
The not-so jolly `hockey stick'
Stewart then examined the sceptic claim that an episode in Earth's history known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) shows that current temperatures are not unprecedented in recent geological history. This was countered by climate researcher Michael Mann, who reconstructed past temperatures where no instrument data were available. By analysing `proxies', such as tree-ring width, ice cores, and coral reefs, he produced a graph which apparently revealed that the MWP was not a global phenomenon, and showed current temperatures to be in excess of anything in the previous millennium.
`Sceptics hated it' announced Stewart. Indeed they did. Mann's study remains highly controversial for good reasons. But Stewart gave no time to explaining the objection to these reconstructions, other than to characterise them as `personal attacks' against Mann. The graphic had been the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment Report, used to demonstrate the unequivocal influence of human activity on the climate.
Yet perhaps one of the reasons it was so prominent - in spite of criticism - is that Mann himself was a lead author on the chapter which featured it (3). The IPCC is understood to be a meta-review of the available literature on climate change, but allowing authors to review their own work represents something of a departure from the scientific process. In 2007, following continued criticism of Mann's method, the IPCC were far more circumspect about the value of such reconstructions. Where Stewart presented these reconstructions as `proof' of todays high temperatures, the IPCC give the statement that `twentieth century was the warmest in at least the past [1,300 years]' just 66 per cent confidence (4).
Sceptical `guns for hire'
It is only Stewart's binary treatment of the issue into true and false and `scientists'/'sceptics' that allowed him to reach his conclusion: `There are a lot of people who don't want global warming to be true', he tells us. `Cutting back on greenhouse gases threatens the freedom of companies to go about their business.' According to Stewart, companies used the media to emphasise the uncertainties in climate science for their own ends - profit - a cause and strategy taken up by the Bush administration.
This is an almost verbatim copy of an argument put forward by a prominent climate change advocate and science historian at the University of California, San Diego, Naomi Oreskes. She had claimed that the `climate change denial' movement comprised the same individuals and network of organisations that had been instrumental in denying the link between smoking and cancer (5). By emphasising doubt and uncertainty in the claims of honest and decent scientists, Oreskes claims, `the tobacco strategy' aimed to influence public opinion to secure the interests of oil and tobacco companies, and the political Right. It should be no surprise then, that Naomi Oreskes was credited on the first episode of the series.
Stewart's and Oreskes' conspiracy theories depend on reducing scientific arguments to meaningless factoids, and casting the debate as one between goodies and baddies. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the film's closing moments. In order to demonstrate that `the sceptics' had changed their arguments in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, the film used footage from the Manhattan Conference on Climate Change earlier this year, a meeting that featured a large number of sceptical writers and researchers.
`For years, climatologist Pat Michaels has been one of the most vocal sceptics. And yet, today, he's in surprising agreement with the advocates of global warming', said Stewart. Michaels is then shown giving his talk, saying `global warming is real, and in the second half of the twentieth century, humans had something to do with it'. But there is nothing surprising about Michael's apparent turnaround, because it isn't one. A 2002 article in the Journal of Climatic Research, authored by Michaels et al argued for a revision of the IPCC's projections for the year 2100. Instead of saying that there would be no warming, the paper concluded that rises of `of 1.0 to 3.0 degrees Celsius, with a central value that averages 1.8 degrees Celsius' were more likely than the IPCC's range of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (6). Hardly climate change denial.
What could have been an interesting film was instead a fiction. It attached fictional arguments to fictional interests to legitimise the politicisation of the debate - exactly what it accused the sceptics of. Rather than concentrating on the arguments that have actually been made, Stewart invented the sceptic's argument to turn climate science into an arena for an exhausted political argument for `change' that has failed to engage the public.
The real `climate war' is between those who do not believe that our future is determined by the weather and those who think that `climate change is the defining challenge of our time' and define themselves - and everybody else - accordingly. Don't expect a documentary film about it any time soon.
Source
BBC investigated after peer says climate change programme was biased 'one-sided polemic'
The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented. Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a `potty peer' on a TV programme that `was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming'.
Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast on BBC 2, was billed as a definitive guide to the history of global warming, including arguments for and against. During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton. But the peer complained to Ofcom that the broadcast had been unfairly edited.
`I very much hope Ofcom will do something about this,' he said yesterday. `The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct. `I was interviewed for 90 minutes and all my views were backed up by sound scientific data, but this was all omitted. They made it sound as if these were just my personal views, as if I was some potty peer. It was caddish of them.'
Ofcom confirmed it was looking into a `fairness complaint' about the documentary. A BBC spokesman said: `We stand by the programme.'
Lord Monckton, 56, a former journalist and Cambridge graduate, says scientific data shows the world is cooler today than in the Middle Ages. He appeared alongside other sceptics including distinguished Florida-based meteorologist Professor Fred Singer, John Christy, a climate change expert and adviser to the U.S. government and the climatologist Dr Patrick Michaels, of the University of Virginia. All their interviews, he claims, were heavily cut so that they appeared as personal views.
`We do not dispute that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we do dispute its effects', he said. `The data shows that 2008 is the same temperature as 1980 and that the effects of these changes in the atmosphere are not negative but more likely to be beneficial.'
Lord Monckton played a key role in a legal challenge heard in the High Court in October 2007 in an effort to prevent Al Gore's film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, from being shown in English schools.
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How the culture wars killed free expression
Christopher Shinn, the writer of new political play Now or Later, explains how campus censorship strangles debate
In America and Britain, theatre has become a notable battleground on questions of free speech and free artistic expression. In 2004, the controversial play Behzti was cancelled in Birmingham after Sikhs protested that the play offended their community, while in America religious fundamentalists have objected to The Crucible and My Name is Rachel Corrie on similar grounds.
American playwright Christopher Shinn has followed, often in exasperation, the on-going discussions and debates on the rights and wrongs of staging controversial plays in the West. He decided to do something artistic about it: write a play called Now or Later that tackles campus censorship through the very topical lens of the American presidential elections.
Shinn's play is set on the eve of a presidential election. The Democrats are on the point of victory when news breaks out, via political blogs, that the would-be new president's homosexual son, John, has gone to a party dressed as the prophet Mohammed and his friend as the gay-baiting evangelist Pastor Bob.
As footage of the party circulates around the globe, sparking riots in the Muslim world, John is under immense pressure from presidential advisers to make a public apology. While John insists on the importance of free expression, and also that he was attending a private party, his friend Matt points out that he could be responsible for deaths around the world. Principle and pragmatism collide to fascinating effect. Staged in real-time, Now or Later carefully explores the anguish and arguments of this very contemporary concern.
When I meet the man behind Now or Later, he is dressed in casual t-shirt and jeans and overseeing the play's final rehearsals at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London. The Royal Court discovered Shinn 10 years ago - when he was just 23 - meaning that most of his plays, such as Dying City and Other People, have been premiered there, too. The theatre's director, Dominic Cooke, has programmed the play to coincide with the run-up to the real American presidential elections. Now or Later couldn't be more timely.
`I think the first thing I wanted to do was give myself a formal challenge', says Shinn carefully, `which was to write a play in real time and then I started to think, what could happen in real time that is interesting and dramatic? And in politics today, with blogs and 24-hour news channels, things can happen very rapidly. So I started thinking about politics in order to find a subject that was fit for formal challenge. In my mind, I had politics, power and issues of freedom of expression and, as a dramatist, I'm always looking for conflict.'
Shinn says that in Now or Later he is exploring conflicts and clashes between the West and Islam. As he puts it: `With Islam, it is perceived that the current administration is responsible for suffering in the Muslim world', says Shinn, `and therefore there can be no criticising of that world or how Muslims might experience that. The end result is to limit the conversations that Muslims can have about that themselves.'
Nevertheless, Shinn's well-crafted central protagonist in Now or Later, John, is motivated just as much by exposing the censorious nature of Ivy League students, as attacking Muslims in and of themselves. Surely, I ask him, the problem of censorship has its roots within the liberal left rather than any external threat to `Western values'? `Yeah, I think you're right,' says Shinn. `I think in many ways American campuses are a distorted and extreme way of dealing with problems in US culture. The left-wing ideology in these campuses doesn't seem to be related to the way the world is. The antics on campus almost have a feeling of play acting, as it's so divorced from people's lives. Nevertheless, the Ivy League students are the future politicians and opinion leaders so it's worth examining how they're getting a distorted picture of how the world is working.'
As a left-wing champion of free speech, and a fan and reader of spiked, Shinn is exasperated that it is often the left who are now the loudest advocates of blue pens and artistic clampdowns. He reckons that there was a sea change in universities back in the 1990s that has now become politically mainstream.
`As a gay man, I found the left's fight for free expression very beneficial', he says, `but that crossed over into identity politics. From there it was important to privilege the subjectivity of people who had previously been oppressed and marginalised. But instead of this emphasis on a diversity of voices, there became an unspoken rule whereby only people who experienced something, whether as a gay man or black woman, were allowed to speak about it directly. This created a real fracture where these oppressed groups, rather than finding commonality, separated out. These different groups ended up in these retreats which itself created paranoia and bad blood.'
Shinn's work seems to belong to a lineage of American playwrights and artists, from Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer through to Philip Roth, who offer an unflinching examination of the gaping holes in American society. Although European liberals love to dismiss American culture as rather candy-floss and dumb, no other Western nation produces art that is not only self-aware and self-critical, but resists the temptation of self-loathing. Shinn's work is no exception.
`Yes, it is one of the really good things about America', says Shinn cheerfully, `it thrives on that self-critique. You know, you even see it in relation to the Bush administration where a lot of extreme policy has been moderated due to the ongoing critiques and debates. The real strength of American culture is always in searching for ways of moving on from difficulties. That's something I'm proud of within America and what I want to achieve in my work as well.'
Naturally enough, Shinn has been eagerly following the US presidential election and is neither cynical nor goggle-eyed about Obama. `He has no track record so people are projecting all kinds of things onto him', says Shinn. `The Democratic Party haven't yet been in a position whereby they are explicitly running to the right in order to appeal to swing voters.' And as Now or Later deals with the question of a presidential candidate's children, the play unwittingly anticipates the furore surrounding Sarah Palin's pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, who is under pressure to conform to conventional morality. As Shinn says, `yes, all that does evoke the play in general, as it deals with children, sexuality and lies.'
At heart, though, Now or Later is a timely, not to mention, expert exploration of how censorship, and perhaps the need for self-censorship, is acting as a straitjacket within Western culture and politics. Although the play might seem a little didactic, Shinn doesn't marshal the audience into accepting any conclusive argument. Now or Later provokes thought rather than stymies it. `It is one thing to believe in freedom of expression,' he says, `but that may lead to the death of other people. So the play is asking: would you be responsible for that? And then what happens afterwards? So how badly do you believe in freedom of expression?'
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
Try to define Britishness and not sound banal
There was once a set of ideas and customs that were characteristically British but years of being ground down under the millstones of socialism and moral relativism have destroyed most of that. Just as one instance: British justice was once a source of pride. But now all Britain has is political police who ignore threats to life and limb but pursue forbidden political speech with great energy -- and who refuse to acknowledge any culpability for executing an innocent Brazilian because the deed was supervised by a prominent Lesbian (the aptly-named Cressida Dick). Who could be proud of that?
To update Dr Samuel Johnson, it appears that "Britishness" is now the last refuge of a politician who hasn't a clue in what country we live. New Labour is obsessed with promoting a shared sense of Britishness, claiming anything from an Olympic yachtsman to a chicken tikka masala as a safe symbol of "what unites us". The latest chapter of this sad attempt to write a new island story is a pamphlet A More United Britain by Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister.
After a year consulting the public, Mr Byrne has come up with 27 ways to celebrate the British bank holiday proposed by Gordon Brown. One look at the list - Morris dancing, drinking in the pub, listening to a Queen's speech, looking at pictures of Winston Churchill, multicultural street parties, all to be done "cheaply" - might have many taking to the lifeboats for a day trip to France. Some have suggested Mr Brown could best bring everybody together on a Thursday, by calling a general election when they can unite to vote out the Government.
But could you do much better? I defy anybody to define Britishness today, without sounding as banal as Mr Byrne or as archaic as John Major rambling on about warm spinsters drinking beer while playing cricket on bicycles. It is not just new Labour's proposals that are vacuous. They reflect the way that any notion of "Britishness" is now empty of real meaning. National identities that count for something cannot be dreamt up by committees.
When the British had a strong sense of national identity, nobody had to ask what it meant. The "British way of life" was something whose shared meaning could be taken for granted. But any such sense of national superiority or self-confidence has long gone, along with the empire.
It is not only our new immigrant communities who fail to identify with Britain today. The obsessive search for Britishness through the Blair-Brown years shows that uncertainty about who we are and what we stand for goes right to the top. The more unsure they are of how or where we live now, the more politicans talk about our "shared values", although the only one they seem able to name is "tolerance" - ie, we accept everybody's values.
As one whose political loyalties have long been red, without the white and blue, I have no problems with the decline of the old conceited British nationalism. But what Mr Byrne and Mr Brown's banal celebration of both "Britishness" and "difference" reveals is that we have not found any universal values to replace it. I wouldn't want to drink to that on their "cheap" British bank holiday, even if the Prime Minister was paying.
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Britain's anti-citizenship education
According to a study by the National Foundation for Educational Research, children who have citizenship lessons at school - introduced in 2002 to boost pupils' civic pride and sense of social responsibility -- display less trust in authority figures and institutions and end up with a more negative attitude towards society.
Why is anyone surprised at this? I could have told them this would be the outcome. Indeed, I did tell them this would be the outcome. Repeatedly. I wrote column after column warning that the model of citizenship being adopted, drawn up by the retired politics Professor Bernard Crick, was actually a model of anti-citizenship. In 2004, for example, I wrote in the Mail that
Now we read in the Telegraph:
Well, there's a surprise. Let's raise our glasses once again to Antonio Gramsci, whose posthumous triumph in turning Britain's values inside out has surely been more spectacular than he could ever have dreamed.
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The revolting world of middle class prejudice
A new `protesters' handbook' is about as rebellious as the newspaper that published it: the Guardian.
In August, that well-known agitator for social progress, Prince Charles, was prattling incoherently about the `evils' of GM crops to a journalist from the UK Daily Telegraph. The BBC's news report on Charles' outburst was accompanied by stock footage of young protesters dressed in faux-science lab garb, awkwardly prancing around on fields where GM crops were being developed. Who would have guessed that being a supposed radical protester today would mean being on the same side as the mad and reactionary Charles Windsor?
Such is the peculiar state of what passes for radical politics, or what sociologists call `New Social Movements'. Increasingly, single-issue campaigns for the environment or against global corporations tend to win approval from the very elitists they claim to oppose. In recent years, these dreadlocked stilt-walkers have also joined forces with the fag end of the Labourist left to protest against the war in Iraq. Such developments apparently scotch rumours that `radicalism' is dead. Anyone who dares to question the political viability of all this protesting must be a black-hearted cynic, right.?
Indeed, to combat the pernicious influence of those who criticise today's supposedly radical protests - and to `shake you out of your apathy once and for all' - journalist and activist Bibi van der Zee has compiled Rebel, Rebel: The Protestor's Handbook. In each chapter, van der Zee outlines how to fundraise, how to demonstrate, how to lobby parliament and, with an eye on New Labour's Key Skills agenda, how to write a letter. Thanks for that.
And yet, the very manner of this handbook, even the fact that it exists, suggests that it is not very rebellious at all. In the 1980s, another type of protesters' manual - The Anarchist's Cookbook, which gave handy tips on how to use a catapult with ball-bearings on demonstrations, amongst other things - was only available under-the-counter at radical bookshops. By contrast, Rebel, Rebel is published and distributed by a national broadsheet newspaper, the Guardian, which columnist and Tory Party supporter Max Hastings has described as the newspaper of `the new establishment'.
Indeed, much of the ideological content of Rebel, Rebel echoes and champions the petty concerns of. well, the new establishment. Top of the agenda is concern about climate change and other `environmental issues', which are peppered throughout the handbook like an unwanted rash of measles. Perhaps van der Zee hasn't realised it yet, but with everyone from UK prime minister Gordon Brown to London mayor Boris Johnson to Tory millionaire Zac Goldsmith banging on about `environmental concerns', being green is not very rebellious. In fact, rarely has `rebellion' looked and sounded more like an unthinking, unblinking form of mindless conformity than when it comes to the green issue.
Van der Zee at least starts off at the right place. She cites John Locke's Social Contract theory and points out that protests and campaigns have long been central to the safeguarding and extension of our freedoms and rights. Van der Zee starts each chapter by quoting Hobbes, Locke, Marx and Engels, the Suffragettes and Martin Luther King to make a parallel between grand political visions of the past and the `how to' mechanics of organising a protest today. Yet where those illustrious radicals of yesteryear were motivated by a desire to liberate humanity from its constraints, Rebel, Rebel seeks to do precisely the opposite: to impose unnecessary limits and restraints on everyday human behaviour.
In the side-panels titled `Why I Fight', Joss Garman, an environmental activist, says he protests to stop people from flying abroad on holiday; Bernadette Vallely, founder of the Women's Environmental Network, wants to stop mums from using disposable nappies; Rebecca Lush Blum, an anti-road protester, wants to restrict people's mobility by car.
`Are you desperate to right a wrong?' asks the blurb on the back cover of Rebel, Rebel. And in almost every instance throughout the book, the `wrong' that apparently needs to be righted is the unthinking behaviour and poor choices of ill-informed plebs or those tacky `new money' types. So after Vallely was met by hoots of derision from time-stretched mothers who refused to give up disposable nappies - which, after all, were invented precisely to make mums' lives easier - she condescendingly writes, `They didn't seem to understand how privileged they are', as if she was talking about a bunch of spoilt five-year-olds.
Outwardly, the handbook purports to be concerned with combating global warming, but references to `these people' exposes, yet again, that green radicalism is frequently a transparent cover for banal and old-fashioned class snobbery. And the chatty, kids' TV presenter style of prose means that some very revealing, quite spiteful comments - such as `I started discussing politics recently with a London cabby (I know, I know - next time I'll remember to start chewing my own hand off first)' - manage to slip through.
Such barely concealed disdain for ordinary people leads inexorably to a form of campaigning where activists don't have to talk to Joe Schmo at all (and thus save themselves from getting gnarled hands in the process). Rebel, Rebel naturally salutes the direct action methods of Greenpeace and crusty rioters who find chainstore coffee shops so very offensive. Van der Zee makes a fanciful connection between these pantomime antics and Martin Luther King's civil rights campaigning in the 1960s. Yet where King took his argument to the white American working classes, to try to win them to his cause, today's direct activists prefer to shun democratic participation in favour of protesting `on behalf' of others: victims, the vulnerable, animals, the planet.
And where King campaigned for equal rights and better living standards for black Americans, today's `demands are NOT for more anything - more rights, more votes, more wages', says van der Zee. Instead `they are for something "different"'. In fact, after reading Rebel, Rebel, one becomes convinced that today's campaigners are freakishly demanding less and less of everything: less driving, less holidaying, fewer consumer goods. In essence, the desire to do `something different', as van der Zee describes it, is similar to that adolescent urge not to become one of the `rat race drones', which most of us grew out of in our late teens.
Rebel, Rebel has its work out cut out when it examines the former bˆte noire of middle-class liberals: trade unions. One chapter republishes a famous photo of a striking miner from 1984 squaring up to a policeman, yet the chapter's tone is one of relief that those days of class warfare and picket-line violence are long gone. Indeed, Rebel, Rebel is delighted that these old organisations are `relaxing the idea of trade-based unions and making them far more inclusive and adopting a new kind of internationalism that's not just about voting in a notion of solidarity but actually applying pressure in several places at once'.
In other words, trade unions are no longer sectional interest groups but rather morally altruistic outfits in tune with prevailing middle-class sensibilities. As van der Zee points out, sounding oddly like the old union-busting Tory minister Norman Tebbit, `the old stereotype of the "I'm All Right Jack" 1970s striker is slowly eroding' (er, slowly?). Elsewhere, Rebel, Rebel expresses delight that trade unions have devised `environmental representatives' in the workplace similar to traditional union reps. Of course, this particular chapter closes by advising readers to join unions, but only in the safe knowledge that they no longer aggressively fight for the material self-interest of their members.
If Rebel, Rebel is uneasy about trade unions, it is downright hostile to political parties. Van der Zee asks a question: `Is there really any point in forming your own political party?' After a brief history of the Labour Party's `betrayals', and the recent fiasco of the Socialist Worker's Party's RESPECT campaign, the answer to van der Zee's question is the same again and again: `Of course there's no point setting up a party!' It is true that the days of mass political parties are over, and it would be a waste of energy to mourn the demise of the Labour and Conservative parties as mass organisations. But what van der Zee really seems to object to is the idea of being partisan, of organisations being defined by their members' sectional interests, as the old mass parties once were.
In the sections on party politics, there is also a cynical and contemptuous undertone in relation to the mass of the people who, through the democratic process, hold parties to account. A book that champions middle-class individuals who hector busy mums about nappies, but which denounces political parties comes across as deeply anti-democratic. Indeed, protest is presented as a way of getting around and even controlling mass sentiment, rather than harnessing it and representing it.
Rebel, Rebel's preferred politician is Martin Bell, who in 1997 successfully defeated the Tatton Conservative MP Neil Hamilton. As both Labour and the Liberal Democrats withdrew themselves from the election in Tatton, Bell won by occupying the moral high-ground over the scandalised Tories. Van der Zee's message seems clear: one man-in-a-white-suit's subjective sense of `what is right' is preferable to old-style party politics and issues-based democratic engagement. The chapter on `Legal Action', which advises on how to get unelected lawyers and crusty judges to challenge government decision-making, further reveals the contempt of Rebel, Rebel for the democratic participation of the masses.
Little of this is new or surprising. Many of the issues in the handbook have been championed by the liberal intelligentsia and the new political elites for more than a decade. In particular, `saving the planet' and cancelling Third World debt are campaigns that have been supported by everyone from anarchists and radical lefties to Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Far from this handbook putting forward anything truly radical or rebellious, it is a bible of contemporary conformism and consensus. Why else would a national newspaper which in the past has expressed hostility to popular protest movements publish it?
And if there is so much common ground between political decision-makers and the contributors to Rebel, Rebel, it makes you wonder who exactly van der Zee is railing against.
Of course, the manual points the finger at global corporations and big business. Yet this sounds unconvincing, especially when you consider that many of today's global giants have rebranded themselves as green and ethical. Indeed, the rise of environmentalism has provided something of a boost to certain capitalist sectors, stimulating fresh demands for `ethical' consumer goods and enabling capitalists to restructure business practices and boost profitability in the process.
No, the main targets of the protesters lauded in Rebel, Rebel are those who are really seen as standing in the way of the middle-class, caring, ethical agenda: the unethical masses. Those who still shop at Tesco, fly abroad on holiday, drive 4x4s, and haven't got round to buying low-energy light-bulbs yet. Clearly, they don't understand how `privileged they are' and must be taught to rein in their unethical consumerism and follow the lead of more sussed individuals like van der Zee.
As the section in society that is most estranged from the production process, either as workers or as capitalist decision-makers, the middle classes have always found it difficult to relate to modern, mass society. Their response has usually been to adopt a detached bemusement at the two great competing classes, or to offer themselves up as society's `moral conscience' against both corrupt capitalists and materialist, oafish proles (but mostly against the proles).
Today, the middle-class activists' self-styled position as the `watchful ones amongst the slaves' - as one green-leaning author recently referred to himself - has been boosted as the traditional sources of elite authority and rule have diminished. Ethical activism has, slowly but surely, become a kind of amorphous, pervasive mechanism through which other people's behaviour can be morally judged as either `acceptable' or `unacceptable'. Far from offering progressive rebellion, the rebels of Rebel, Rebel seem really to be concerned with imposing and popularising these new behavioural standards across society at large.
In this context, protesting is recast as opposing those who do not conform to ethical standards of behaviour. Protesting against McDonald's, smashing up Starbucks or setting up camps near Heathrow airport are all designed to shame those who have bought the `wrong' type of burger or chosen the `wrong' type of holiday. The language of limits, which is dominant in this deeply cynical handbook, is really about placing limits on personal freedom via a new form of ethical and moral blackmail.
Rebel, Rebel is a handbook packed with the new establishment's prejudices and all of its petty, authoritarian concerns. Even by their own miserable standards, the middle classes have never sounded quite so revolting.
Source
BBC2 still furiously biased
The Climate Wars is at the centre of a new TV global warming row after four contributors claimed it misrepresented them.The complaints surround the 14 September episode of the three-part, in-house programme, in which presenter Dr Iain Stewart interviewed key global warming sceptics, including Lord Monckton of Brenchley.
Lord Monckton has made a formal complaint to Ofcom and the BBC Trust that the programme-makers unfairly misrepresented him in a 90-minute interview. "In the two minutes it [BBC2] broadcast, it omitted all my scientific points, including my criticism of the defective 'hockey-stick' graph which the presenter had questioned me about," Monckton told Broadcast.
Canadian climate expert Dr Tim Ball and fellow contributor Dr Fred Singer also told Broadcast that they would complain to Ofcom and another scientist, Dr Roy Spencer, said he was considering complaining to both Ofcom and the BBC Trust.
The row follows the controversy that surrounded Channel 4's 2007 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.
Ofcom said it had received four complaints from viewers about the 14 September episode of Climate Wars. The BBC said it stood by the programme.
Source
Sleepy British paramedic service kills woman
The evening of May 25 last year had all the makings of a great night for Rebecca Wedd. She had turned 23 the day before and was on her way to a summer ball to celebrate finishing her final year at college. Instead, it ended in her death.
Ms Wedd was knocked down by a car near Coates on her way to the party at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. An ambulance was called but it took 42 minutes to arrive. By the time she reached an A&E department, almost 40 minutes later, "it was too late", her father said.
Peter Wedd, 53, from Cambridge, said that his daughter had been let down in the worst possible way. "I had always thought that Britain's ambulance services were the best in the world. Clearly, I was wrong. I could blame anybody for her death. Becky was clearly in a position she shouldn't have been. The car driver didn't see her. But the fact is . . . Great Western Ambulance Service did not do its job."
The service's target response time for life-threatening emergency calls is eight minutes. "They missed it by 34 minutes," Mr Wedd said. "It's appalling."
The Healthcare Commission investigated Great Western Ambulance Trust over Ms Wedd's death. It found that the trust had "learnt lessons" from the case and made improvements to its service.
Mr Wedd said: "People should be aware of how the ambulance service failed that night. Services . . . should sit up and say, `This is not going to happen here'."
Source
Emergency NHS patients still waiting too long to see doctor, review says
Patients who need emergency medical care are facing unnecessary delays in seeing a doctor, despite government targets to speed up urgent treatment, a review says today. In the most comprehensive review yet of NHS emergency and urgent care, the Healthcare Commission found significant variations in how patients are treated across England, particularly on evenings and at weekends.
In some hospitals only 40 per cent of patients were seen by a doctor or nurse within an hour of arrival at the accident and emergency department, while others achieved 100 per cent. The proportion of children with a broken arm or leg who attended A&E and were given pain relief within one hour varied from 20 per cent in some hospitals to 100 per cent elsewhere.
The review, which measured the performance of local ambulance trusts, accident and emergency departments, out-of-hours GP and telephone services and walk-in centres, found that patients were often confused over where to seek help. Overall, emergency care services were "least well performing" or only "fair" in four out of ten areas, with some patients facing delays in transfers to hospital, which are not covered by existing targets.
A new national target is needed to measure how quickly patients receive care from the moment they call an ambulance to the point of admission to casualty departments, the commission suggests. This would provide a more accurate assessment of patients' experience than existing measures, which only cover ambulance response times or stipulate a maximum four-hour waiting time in A&E.
In some A&E departments, for 95 per cent of the time, ambulances are back on the road within 15 minutes of delivering a patient, but in other departments this figure is as low as 10 per cent. This could reflect delays because of a lack of staff or beds to admit a patient, the commission said.
Its review found on average, that services in rural areas performed better than those in urban areas, such as London.
In total, out of 152 primary care trust areas, a third were ranked "best performing" in urgent and emergency care; 41, or 27 per cent, were better performing; 33, or 22 per cent were fair-performing; and 28, or 18 per cent, were categorised as least well performing. Services in the North East performed best overall, with all of the region's trusts rated as "best" or "better performing".
Anna Walker, chief executive of the Healthcare Commission, said there had been improvements in performance on government targets, with 97.9 per cent of A&E patients being treated within the four-hour target in 2007-08, up from 91.2 per cent in 2003-04.
Mike Penning, Conservative MP for Hemel Hempstead, said the Government was "hitting self-imposed targets, but missing the point in providing care. Patient outcomes are being neglected."
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Britain's endless diet of government intervention in food choice
Health authorities and food campaigners have pursued their pet projects by promoting scare stories about children's health.
Next week sees the start of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's campaign to change the way children are fed. But while providing children with better meals and facilities at school is a worthy enough aim, lecturing the nation's parents about how they are setting up their kids for a (short) lifetime of ill-health is simply nauseating.
While campaigners call for more government intervention into our eating habits, it is surely time to call a halt. The last thing we need is a further expansion of schemes and initiatives.
We have been led to believe that we are facing a timebomb of ill-health that can only be defused by changing the way our children eat. That might be justified if children were dropping like flies from disease. In fact, the opposite is true. According to figures for England and Wales, in 1981 there were 30 deaths for every 100,000 children aged between one and 14 years. In 2006, that had more than halved to 14 deaths per 100,000. Death in childhood was rare and has become even rarer in the last 25 years or so.
Are children becoming sicker? Clearly, serious infectious disease is largely a thing of the past. Obesity may be increasing, but obesity is not a disease; at most, it is associated with a number of chronic conditions. The most obvious of these in relation to children is the apparent emergence of type-2 diabetes among children, something previously considered to be a condition of middle age. Yet research published in Diabetes Care in 2007 suggests that type-2 diabetes remains unusual in children under the age of 17. The researchers undertook a year-long survey of 2,665 consultant paediatricians in the UK and Ireland. During this period, 67 cases of type-2 diabetes were reported, all of them in the UK, suggesting an overall incidence of 5.3 cases per million children.
So, type-2 diabetes in children would seem to be, if not a one-in-a-million occurrence, not far off. Furthermore, while there is a strong association between being overweight and type-2 diabetes, the association with ethnic status is worrying. As the authors note: `The incidence rates for South Asians and blacks are an alarming 3.5 times and 11 times higher, respectively, than in whites.' This ethnic differential continues into adulthood. If the government were really serious about tackling type-2 diabetes, it would do better to devote a substantial research effort to understanding this differential rather than lecturing the whole population about our personal habits.
Nor is it the case that there is mass malnutrition among children. According to Family Food 2006, the average UK family is getting all the protein and energy required, plus plenty of vitamins and minerals. The average household now spends just 10 per cent of its income on food and non-alcoholic drinks. Food has never been so readily available and in such variety. Even where children do have rather limited tastes, we should chill out. While nutritionists may be sniffy about about children eating cheeseburger, chips and fish fingers all the time, such foods do actually provide a fair proportion of a child's nutritional needs. They may not be perfect, but such eating habits are highly unlikely to result in an epidemic of disease, either.
But there is a more fundamental principle at stake: it is not the government's business to interfere in our personal lives except in the most exceptional circumstances. Yet we are subject to endless health advice both from official sources and through the popular media, from shows like Honey, We're Killing the Kids to the much-praised but frankly hectoring series by Jamie Oliver on school meals. If that were not enough, that intervention is increasingly direct, with parents receiving letters home about their children's supposed weight problems and being given strict instructions about what to put in their lunchboxes.
It seems that the government, the health authorities and a variety of different campaigners see it as their job to overrule parents about how their children should eat. In reality, the vast majority of parents endeavour to get their children to eat well, but in the absence of eating well, they make pragmatic, personal decisions about how to ensure they eat something. Current levels of intervention are unlikely to help matters and are an insult to the decision-making abilities of parents.
If children's food is a top priority, then make school meals free, or at least cheap, at the point of delivery and give them the time and surroundings to eat them comfortably. That's not a health strategy, that's just common decency. If adults would not tolerate being forced to queue up for ages to receive mediocre food in a hall so crowded that there is often nowhere to sit, why should we assume our children should put up with it? And let those meals taste of something; salt in recent years has been treated in school canteens like it is a chemical weapon rather than a fundamental requirement of good cooking. It is noticeable that the new cookbook produced by the government to teach kids how to prepare their own meals avoids salt or sneaks it into recipes in stock. No wonder children are rejecting such bland offerings.
But before the first school bell of the day sounds, and after hometime, it would be far better if the government, the health authorities and the self-appointed guardians of our diets did what children up and down the country do at lunchtime: bugger off.
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Data security? Unknown in Britain: "Files containing the personal records of thousands of serving and former RAF staff have been stolen, the Ministry of Defence confirmed last night. Three computer hard drives storing the information were taken last Wednesday in a raid on a high-security area at the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency at RAF Innsworth, Gloucester. The agency provides support for about 900,000 current and former RAF personnel. The loss of the data comes in the same week as a disk containing the names and addresses of almost 11,500 teachers went missing in the post. The Government has already come under scrutiny for its data protection procedures since the details of 25 million child benefit recipients were lost in transit by a courier almost a year ago. Earlier this month, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, ordered an inquiry into the loss of a computer hard drive containing the details of up to 5,000 employees of the justice system."
There was once a set of ideas and customs that were characteristically British but years of being ground down under the millstones of socialism and moral relativism have destroyed most of that. Just as one instance: British justice was once a source of pride. But now all Britain has is political police who ignore threats to life and limb but pursue forbidden political speech with great energy -- and who refuse to acknowledge any culpability for executing an innocent Brazilian because the deed was supervised by a prominent Lesbian (the aptly-named Cressida Dick). Who could be proud of that?
To update Dr Samuel Johnson, it appears that "Britishness" is now the last refuge of a politician who hasn't a clue in what country we live. New Labour is obsessed with promoting a shared sense of Britishness, claiming anything from an Olympic yachtsman to a chicken tikka masala as a safe symbol of "what unites us". The latest chapter of this sad attempt to write a new island story is a pamphlet A More United Britain by Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister.
After a year consulting the public, Mr Byrne has come up with 27 ways to celebrate the British bank holiday proposed by Gordon Brown. One look at the list - Morris dancing, drinking in the pub, listening to a Queen's speech, looking at pictures of Winston Churchill, multicultural street parties, all to be done "cheaply" - might have many taking to the lifeboats for a day trip to France. Some have suggested Mr Brown could best bring everybody together on a Thursday, by calling a general election when they can unite to vote out the Government.
But could you do much better? I defy anybody to define Britishness today, without sounding as banal as Mr Byrne or as archaic as John Major rambling on about warm spinsters drinking beer while playing cricket on bicycles. It is not just new Labour's proposals that are vacuous. They reflect the way that any notion of "Britishness" is now empty of real meaning. National identities that count for something cannot be dreamt up by committees.
When the British had a strong sense of national identity, nobody had to ask what it meant. The "British way of life" was something whose shared meaning could be taken for granted. But any such sense of national superiority or self-confidence has long gone, along with the empire.
It is not only our new immigrant communities who fail to identify with Britain today. The obsessive search for Britishness through the Blair-Brown years shows that uncertainty about who we are and what we stand for goes right to the top. The more unsure they are of how or where we live now, the more politicans talk about our "shared values", although the only one they seem able to name is "tolerance" - ie, we accept everybody's values.
As one whose political loyalties have long been red, without the white and blue, I have no problems with the decline of the old conceited British nationalism. But what Mr Byrne and Mr Brown's banal celebration of both "Britishness" and "difference" reveals is that we have not found any universal values to replace it. I wouldn't want to drink to that on their "cheap" British bank holiday, even if the Prime Minister was paying.
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Britain's anti-citizenship education
According to a study by the National Foundation for Educational Research, children who have citizenship lessons at school - introduced in 2002 to boost pupils' civic pride and sense of social responsibility -- display less trust in authority figures and institutions and end up with a more negative attitude towards society.
Why is anyone surprised at this? I could have told them this would be the outcome. Indeed, I did tell them this would be the outcome. Repeatedly. I wrote column after column warning that the model of citizenship being adopted, drawn up by the retired politics Professor Bernard Crick, was actually a model of anti-citizenship. In 2004, for example, I wrote in the Mail that
the citizenship teaching inspired by Sir Bernard amounted to politically correct indoctrination in which multiculturalism, `globalisation' and `a shrinking planet' were all buzz phrases; and in which, far from being taught about their obligations to Britain, pupils were encouraged to develop `their own ground rules'.
The doctrinaire thinking behind this hollowing out of citizenship was clear enough in the late nineties, when Sir Bernard first produced his advice on citizenship for Mr Blunkett who was then Education Secretary. Beneath its pious invocations of `responsibility' and `community involvement', it was all about enabling young people to get more out of society. Even more strikingly, it wanted teachers to promote `active citizenship', by equipping pupils with the political skills to change the laws. Duty to obey the law - the first obligation of citizenship - wasn't even mentioned.
Now we read in the Telegraph:
The study said that pupils in their final year of school only expressed `moderate levels of agreement with laws'.
Well, there's a surprise. Let's raise our glasses once again to Antonio Gramsci, whose posthumous triumph in turning Britain's values inside out has surely been more spectacular than he could ever have dreamed.
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The revolting world of middle class prejudice
A new `protesters' handbook' is about as rebellious as the newspaper that published it: the Guardian.
In August, that well-known agitator for social progress, Prince Charles, was prattling incoherently about the `evils' of GM crops to a journalist from the UK Daily Telegraph. The BBC's news report on Charles' outburst was accompanied by stock footage of young protesters dressed in faux-science lab garb, awkwardly prancing around on fields where GM crops were being developed. Who would have guessed that being a supposed radical protester today would mean being on the same side as the mad and reactionary Charles Windsor?
Such is the peculiar state of what passes for radical politics, or what sociologists call `New Social Movements'. Increasingly, single-issue campaigns for the environment or against global corporations tend to win approval from the very elitists they claim to oppose. In recent years, these dreadlocked stilt-walkers have also joined forces with the fag end of the Labourist left to protest against the war in Iraq. Such developments apparently scotch rumours that `radicalism' is dead. Anyone who dares to question the political viability of all this protesting must be a black-hearted cynic, right.?
Indeed, to combat the pernicious influence of those who criticise today's supposedly radical protests - and to `shake you out of your apathy once and for all' - journalist and activist Bibi van der Zee has compiled Rebel, Rebel: The Protestor's Handbook. In each chapter, van der Zee outlines how to fundraise, how to demonstrate, how to lobby parliament and, with an eye on New Labour's Key Skills agenda, how to write a letter. Thanks for that.
And yet, the very manner of this handbook, even the fact that it exists, suggests that it is not very rebellious at all. In the 1980s, another type of protesters' manual - The Anarchist's Cookbook, which gave handy tips on how to use a catapult with ball-bearings on demonstrations, amongst other things - was only available under-the-counter at radical bookshops. By contrast, Rebel, Rebel is published and distributed by a national broadsheet newspaper, the Guardian, which columnist and Tory Party supporter Max Hastings has described as the newspaper of `the new establishment'.
Indeed, much of the ideological content of Rebel, Rebel echoes and champions the petty concerns of. well, the new establishment. Top of the agenda is concern about climate change and other `environmental issues', which are peppered throughout the handbook like an unwanted rash of measles. Perhaps van der Zee hasn't realised it yet, but with everyone from UK prime minister Gordon Brown to London mayor Boris Johnson to Tory millionaire Zac Goldsmith banging on about `environmental concerns', being green is not very rebellious. In fact, rarely has `rebellion' looked and sounded more like an unthinking, unblinking form of mindless conformity than when it comes to the green issue.
Van der Zee at least starts off at the right place. She cites John Locke's Social Contract theory and points out that protests and campaigns have long been central to the safeguarding and extension of our freedoms and rights. Van der Zee starts each chapter by quoting Hobbes, Locke, Marx and Engels, the Suffragettes and Martin Luther King to make a parallel between grand political visions of the past and the `how to' mechanics of organising a protest today. Yet where those illustrious radicals of yesteryear were motivated by a desire to liberate humanity from its constraints, Rebel, Rebel seeks to do precisely the opposite: to impose unnecessary limits and restraints on everyday human behaviour.
In the side-panels titled `Why I Fight', Joss Garman, an environmental activist, says he protests to stop people from flying abroad on holiday; Bernadette Vallely, founder of the Women's Environmental Network, wants to stop mums from using disposable nappies; Rebecca Lush Blum, an anti-road protester, wants to restrict people's mobility by car.
`Are you desperate to right a wrong?' asks the blurb on the back cover of Rebel, Rebel. And in almost every instance throughout the book, the `wrong' that apparently needs to be righted is the unthinking behaviour and poor choices of ill-informed plebs or those tacky `new money' types. So after Vallely was met by hoots of derision from time-stretched mothers who refused to give up disposable nappies - which, after all, were invented precisely to make mums' lives easier - she condescendingly writes, `They didn't seem to understand how privileged they are', as if she was talking about a bunch of spoilt five-year-olds.
Outwardly, the handbook purports to be concerned with combating global warming, but references to `these people' exposes, yet again, that green radicalism is frequently a transparent cover for banal and old-fashioned class snobbery. And the chatty, kids' TV presenter style of prose means that some very revealing, quite spiteful comments - such as `I started discussing politics recently with a London cabby (I know, I know - next time I'll remember to start chewing my own hand off first)' - manage to slip through.
Such barely concealed disdain for ordinary people leads inexorably to a form of campaigning where activists don't have to talk to Joe Schmo at all (and thus save themselves from getting gnarled hands in the process). Rebel, Rebel naturally salutes the direct action methods of Greenpeace and crusty rioters who find chainstore coffee shops so very offensive. Van der Zee makes a fanciful connection between these pantomime antics and Martin Luther King's civil rights campaigning in the 1960s. Yet where King took his argument to the white American working classes, to try to win them to his cause, today's direct activists prefer to shun democratic participation in favour of protesting `on behalf' of others: victims, the vulnerable, animals, the planet.
And where King campaigned for equal rights and better living standards for black Americans, today's `demands are NOT for more anything - more rights, more votes, more wages', says van der Zee. Instead `they are for something "different"'. In fact, after reading Rebel, Rebel, one becomes convinced that today's campaigners are freakishly demanding less and less of everything: less driving, less holidaying, fewer consumer goods. In essence, the desire to do `something different', as van der Zee describes it, is similar to that adolescent urge not to become one of the `rat race drones', which most of us grew out of in our late teens.
Rebel, Rebel has its work out cut out when it examines the former bˆte noire of middle-class liberals: trade unions. One chapter republishes a famous photo of a striking miner from 1984 squaring up to a policeman, yet the chapter's tone is one of relief that those days of class warfare and picket-line violence are long gone. Indeed, Rebel, Rebel is delighted that these old organisations are `relaxing the idea of trade-based unions and making them far more inclusive and adopting a new kind of internationalism that's not just about voting in a notion of solidarity but actually applying pressure in several places at once'.
In other words, trade unions are no longer sectional interest groups but rather morally altruistic outfits in tune with prevailing middle-class sensibilities. As van der Zee points out, sounding oddly like the old union-busting Tory minister Norman Tebbit, `the old stereotype of the "I'm All Right Jack" 1970s striker is slowly eroding' (er, slowly?). Elsewhere, Rebel, Rebel expresses delight that trade unions have devised `environmental representatives' in the workplace similar to traditional union reps. Of course, this particular chapter closes by advising readers to join unions, but only in the safe knowledge that they no longer aggressively fight for the material self-interest of their members.
If Rebel, Rebel is uneasy about trade unions, it is downright hostile to political parties. Van der Zee asks a question: `Is there really any point in forming your own political party?' After a brief history of the Labour Party's `betrayals', and the recent fiasco of the Socialist Worker's Party's RESPECT campaign, the answer to van der Zee's question is the same again and again: `Of course there's no point setting up a party!' It is true that the days of mass political parties are over, and it would be a waste of energy to mourn the demise of the Labour and Conservative parties as mass organisations. But what van der Zee really seems to object to is the idea of being partisan, of organisations being defined by their members' sectional interests, as the old mass parties once were.
In the sections on party politics, there is also a cynical and contemptuous undertone in relation to the mass of the people who, through the democratic process, hold parties to account. A book that champions middle-class individuals who hector busy mums about nappies, but which denounces political parties comes across as deeply anti-democratic. Indeed, protest is presented as a way of getting around and even controlling mass sentiment, rather than harnessing it and representing it.
Rebel, Rebel's preferred politician is Martin Bell, who in 1997 successfully defeated the Tatton Conservative MP Neil Hamilton. As both Labour and the Liberal Democrats withdrew themselves from the election in Tatton, Bell won by occupying the moral high-ground over the scandalised Tories. Van der Zee's message seems clear: one man-in-a-white-suit's subjective sense of `what is right' is preferable to old-style party politics and issues-based democratic engagement. The chapter on `Legal Action', which advises on how to get unelected lawyers and crusty judges to challenge government decision-making, further reveals the contempt of Rebel, Rebel for the democratic participation of the masses.
Little of this is new or surprising. Many of the issues in the handbook have been championed by the liberal intelligentsia and the new political elites for more than a decade. In particular, `saving the planet' and cancelling Third World debt are campaigns that have been supported by everyone from anarchists and radical lefties to Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Far from this handbook putting forward anything truly radical or rebellious, it is a bible of contemporary conformism and consensus. Why else would a national newspaper which in the past has expressed hostility to popular protest movements publish it?
And if there is so much common ground between political decision-makers and the contributors to Rebel, Rebel, it makes you wonder who exactly van der Zee is railing against.
Of course, the manual points the finger at global corporations and big business. Yet this sounds unconvincing, especially when you consider that many of today's global giants have rebranded themselves as green and ethical. Indeed, the rise of environmentalism has provided something of a boost to certain capitalist sectors, stimulating fresh demands for `ethical' consumer goods and enabling capitalists to restructure business practices and boost profitability in the process.
No, the main targets of the protesters lauded in Rebel, Rebel are those who are really seen as standing in the way of the middle-class, caring, ethical agenda: the unethical masses. Those who still shop at Tesco, fly abroad on holiday, drive 4x4s, and haven't got round to buying low-energy light-bulbs yet. Clearly, they don't understand how `privileged they are' and must be taught to rein in their unethical consumerism and follow the lead of more sussed individuals like van der Zee.
As the section in society that is most estranged from the production process, either as workers or as capitalist decision-makers, the middle classes have always found it difficult to relate to modern, mass society. Their response has usually been to adopt a detached bemusement at the two great competing classes, or to offer themselves up as society's `moral conscience' against both corrupt capitalists and materialist, oafish proles (but mostly against the proles).
Today, the middle-class activists' self-styled position as the `watchful ones amongst the slaves' - as one green-leaning author recently referred to himself - has been boosted as the traditional sources of elite authority and rule have diminished. Ethical activism has, slowly but surely, become a kind of amorphous, pervasive mechanism through which other people's behaviour can be morally judged as either `acceptable' or `unacceptable'. Far from offering progressive rebellion, the rebels of Rebel, Rebel seem really to be concerned with imposing and popularising these new behavioural standards across society at large.
In this context, protesting is recast as opposing those who do not conform to ethical standards of behaviour. Protesting against McDonald's, smashing up Starbucks or setting up camps near Heathrow airport are all designed to shame those who have bought the `wrong' type of burger or chosen the `wrong' type of holiday. The language of limits, which is dominant in this deeply cynical handbook, is really about placing limits on personal freedom via a new form of ethical and moral blackmail.
Rebel, Rebel is a handbook packed with the new establishment's prejudices and all of its petty, authoritarian concerns. Even by their own miserable standards, the middle classes have never sounded quite so revolting.
Source
BBC2 still furiously biased
The Climate Wars is at the centre of a new TV global warming row after four contributors claimed it misrepresented them.The complaints surround the 14 September episode of the three-part, in-house programme, in which presenter Dr Iain Stewart interviewed key global warming sceptics, including Lord Monckton of Brenchley.
Lord Monckton has made a formal complaint to Ofcom and the BBC Trust that the programme-makers unfairly misrepresented him in a 90-minute interview. "In the two minutes it [BBC2] broadcast, it omitted all my scientific points, including my criticism of the defective 'hockey-stick' graph which the presenter had questioned me about," Monckton told Broadcast.
Canadian climate expert Dr Tim Ball and fellow contributor Dr Fred Singer also told Broadcast that they would complain to Ofcom and another scientist, Dr Roy Spencer, said he was considering complaining to both Ofcom and the BBC Trust.
The row follows the controversy that surrounded Channel 4's 2007 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.
Ofcom said it had received four complaints from viewers about the 14 September episode of Climate Wars. The BBC said it stood by the programme.
Source
Sleepy British paramedic service kills woman
The evening of May 25 last year had all the makings of a great night for Rebecca Wedd. She had turned 23 the day before and was on her way to a summer ball to celebrate finishing her final year at college. Instead, it ended in her death.
Ms Wedd was knocked down by a car near Coates on her way to the party at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. An ambulance was called but it took 42 minutes to arrive. By the time she reached an A&E department, almost 40 minutes later, "it was too late", her father said.
Peter Wedd, 53, from Cambridge, said that his daughter had been let down in the worst possible way. "I had always thought that Britain's ambulance services were the best in the world. Clearly, I was wrong. I could blame anybody for her death. Becky was clearly in a position she shouldn't have been. The car driver didn't see her. But the fact is . . . Great Western Ambulance Service did not do its job."
The service's target response time for life-threatening emergency calls is eight minutes. "They missed it by 34 minutes," Mr Wedd said. "It's appalling."
The Healthcare Commission investigated Great Western Ambulance Trust over Ms Wedd's death. It found that the trust had "learnt lessons" from the case and made improvements to its service.
Mr Wedd said: "People should be aware of how the ambulance service failed that night. Services . . . should sit up and say, `This is not going to happen here'."
Source
Emergency NHS patients still waiting too long to see doctor, review says
Patients who need emergency medical care are facing unnecessary delays in seeing a doctor, despite government targets to speed up urgent treatment, a review says today. In the most comprehensive review yet of NHS emergency and urgent care, the Healthcare Commission found significant variations in how patients are treated across England, particularly on evenings and at weekends.
In some hospitals only 40 per cent of patients were seen by a doctor or nurse within an hour of arrival at the accident and emergency department, while others achieved 100 per cent. The proportion of children with a broken arm or leg who attended A&E and were given pain relief within one hour varied from 20 per cent in some hospitals to 100 per cent elsewhere.
The review, which measured the performance of local ambulance trusts, accident and emergency departments, out-of-hours GP and telephone services and walk-in centres, found that patients were often confused over where to seek help. Overall, emergency care services were "least well performing" or only "fair" in four out of ten areas, with some patients facing delays in transfers to hospital, which are not covered by existing targets.
A new national target is needed to measure how quickly patients receive care from the moment they call an ambulance to the point of admission to casualty departments, the commission suggests. This would provide a more accurate assessment of patients' experience than existing measures, which only cover ambulance response times or stipulate a maximum four-hour waiting time in A&E.
In some A&E departments, for 95 per cent of the time, ambulances are back on the road within 15 minutes of delivering a patient, but in other departments this figure is as low as 10 per cent. This could reflect delays because of a lack of staff or beds to admit a patient, the commission said.
Its review found on average, that services in rural areas performed better than those in urban areas, such as London.
In total, out of 152 primary care trust areas, a third were ranked "best performing" in urgent and emergency care; 41, or 27 per cent, were better performing; 33, or 22 per cent were fair-performing; and 28, or 18 per cent, were categorised as least well performing. Services in the North East performed best overall, with all of the region's trusts rated as "best" or "better performing".
Anna Walker, chief executive of the Healthcare Commission, said there had been improvements in performance on government targets, with 97.9 per cent of A&E patients being treated within the four-hour target in 2007-08, up from 91.2 per cent in 2003-04.
Mike Penning, Conservative MP for Hemel Hempstead, said the Government was "hitting self-imposed targets, but missing the point in providing care. Patient outcomes are being neglected."
Source
Britain's endless diet of government intervention in food choice
Health authorities and food campaigners have pursued their pet projects by promoting scare stories about children's health.
Next week sees the start of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's campaign to change the way children are fed. But while providing children with better meals and facilities at school is a worthy enough aim, lecturing the nation's parents about how they are setting up their kids for a (short) lifetime of ill-health is simply nauseating.
While campaigners call for more government intervention into our eating habits, it is surely time to call a halt. The last thing we need is a further expansion of schemes and initiatives.
We have been led to believe that we are facing a timebomb of ill-health that can only be defused by changing the way our children eat. That might be justified if children were dropping like flies from disease. In fact, the opposite is true. According to figures for England and Wales, in 1981 there were 30 deaths for every 100,000 children aged between one and 14 years. In 2006, that had more than halved to 14 deaths per 100,000. Death in childhood was rare and has become even rarer in the last 25 years or so.
Are children becoming sicker? Clearly, serious infectious disease is largely a thing of the past. Obesity may be increasing, but obesity is not a disease; at most, it is associated with a number of chronic conditions. The most obvious of these in relation to children is the apparent emergence of type-2 diabetes among children, something previously considered to be a condition of middle age. Yet research published in Diabetes Care in 2007 suggests that type-2 diabetes remains unusual in children under the age of 17. The researchers undertook a year-long survey of 2,665 consultant paediatricians in the UK and Ireland. During this period, 67 cases of type-2 diabetes were reported, all of them in the UK, suggesting an overall incidence of 5.3 cases per million children.
So, type-2 diabetes in children would seem to be, if not a one-in-a-million occurrence, not far off. Furthermore, while there is a strong association between being overweight and type-2 diabetes, the association with ethnic status is worrying. As the authors note: `The incidence rates for South Asians and blacks are an alarming 3.5 times and 11 times higher, respectively, than in whites.' This ethnic differential continues into adulthood. If the government were really serious about tackling type-2 diabetes, it would do better to devote a substantial research effort to understanding this differential rather than lecturing the whole population about our personal habits.
Nor is it the case that there is mass malnutrition among children. According to Family Food 2006, the average UK family is getting all the protein and energy required, plus plenty of vitamins and minerals. The average household now spends just 10 per cent of its income on food and non-alcoholic drinks. Food has never been so readily available and in such variety. Even where children do have rather limited tastes, we should chill out. While nutritionists may be sniffy about about children eating cheeseburger, chips and fish fingers all the time, such foods do actually provide a fair proportion of a child's nutritional needs. They may not be perfect, but such eating habits are highly unlikely to result in an epidemic of disease, either.
But there is a more fundamental principle at stake: it is not the government's business to interfere in our personal lives except in the most exceptional circumstances. Yet we are subject to endless health advice both from official sources and through the popular media, from shows like Honey, We're Killing the Kids to the much-praised but frankly hectoring series by Jamie Oliver on school meals. If that were not enough, that intervention is increasingly direct, with parents receiving letters home about their children's supposed weight problems and being given strict instructions about what to put in their lunchboxes.
It seems that the government, the health authorities and a variety of different campaigners see it as their job to overrule parents about how their children should eat. In reality, the vast majority of parents endeavour to get their children to eat well, but in the absence of eating well, they make pragmatic, personal decisions about how to ensure they eat something. Current levels of intervention are unlikely to help matters and are an insult to the decision-making abilities of parents.
If children's food is a top priority, then make school meals free, or at least cheap, at the point of delivery and give them the time and surroundings to eat them comfortably. That's not a health strategy, that's just common decency. If adults would not tolerate being forced to queue up for ages to receive mediocre food in a hall so crowded that there is often nowhere to sit, why should we assume our children should put up with it? And let those meals taste of something; salt in recent years has been treated in school canteens like it is a chemical weapon rather than a fundamental requirement of good cooking. It is noticeable that the new cookbook produced by the government to teach kids how to prepare their own meals avoids salt or sneaks it into recipes in stock. No wonder children are rejecting such bland offerings.
But before the first school bell of the day sounds, and after hometime, it would be far better if the government, the health authorities and the self-appointed guardians of our diets did what children up and down the country do at lunchtime: bugger off.
Source
Data security? Unknown in Britain: "Files containing the personal records of thousands of serving and former RAF staff have been stolen, the Ministry of Defence confirmed last night. Three computer hard drives storing the information were taken last Wednesday in a raid on a high-security area at the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency at RAF Innsworth, Gloucester. The agency provides support for about 900,000 current and former RAF personnel. The loss of the data comes in the same week as a disk containing the names and addresses of almost 11,500 teachers went missing in the post. The Government has already come under scrutiny for its data protection procedures since the details of 25 million child benefit recipients were lost in transit by a courier almost a year ago. Earlier this month, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, ordered an inquiry into the loss of a computer hard drive containing the details of up to 5,000 employees of the justice system."
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Purge on Muslim clerics who turn a blind eye to the abuse of women?
Muslim spiritual leaders could be denounced publicly by their own community as part of a campaign to expose imams whose silence on domestic abuse is leading to women being burnt, lashed and raped in the name of Islam.
Muslim scholars are to present the Government with the names of imams who are alleged by members of their own communities to have refused to help abused women. Imams are also accused of refusing to speak out against domestic abuse in their sermons because they fear losing their clerical salaries and being sacked for broaching a "taboo" subject.
Some of Britain's most prominent moderate imams and female Muslim leaders have backed the campaign, urging the Home Office to vet more carefully Islamic spiritual leaders coming to Britain to weed out hardliners. A four-month inquiry by the Centre for Islamic Pluralism into domestic abuse has uncovered harrowing tales of women being raped, burnt by cigarettes and lashed with belts by their husbands, who believe it is their religious right to mistreat them.
At least 40 female Muslim victims and many social workers from northern England - including Bradford, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham - were interviewed as part of the inquiry, which is expected to be published next month.
During its investigation the organisation - the British arm of a long-established US think-tank - received a number of complaints about imams who had turned a blind eye to cases of domestic violence, many of whom are followers of Wahabbism, a puritanical interpretation of the Koran espoused by Osama bin Laden.
There have also been similar complaints about clerics from the Tablighi Jamaat movement, which is accused of radicalising young British Muslims with its orthodox teachings.
The organisation's international director, the Muslim scholar Irfan al-Alawi, told The Times that he would be forwarding the names of the imams to the Home Office, which has promised to investigate the allegations. He called for them to be stripped of any government grants that they may be receiving. He is also seeking legal advice about exposing the imams at public lectures and forums throughout the country. "I have to make sure that I don't end up with a lawsuit on my hands but at the same time expose what is going on in the community," he said.
Yousif al-Khoei, spokesman for the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (Minab) - a government approved body set up to improve the standards among British imams - admitted that some clerics condoned domestic violence although he said it was a "minority practice". He insisted the problem was to do with specific cultural beliefs rather than religious ideology, but said that the board was determined to tackle the problem by promoting "proper Islamic guidelines in the public arena".
However, he gave warning against the idea of publicly identifying imams, saying that would risk turning them into "martyrs" within their own community. "Instead, we should encourage women to seek advice from proper imams," he said.
While the number of domestic violence cases has almost doubled in the last three years, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, the figures fail to reflect the physical abuse cases within the Muslim community. Such cases, on which there is no data because they are largely unreported, are driven by cultural and religious beliefs instead of alcohol and drug abuse, said Shahien Taj, director of the Henna Foundation, which deals with honour crimes and domestic abuse victims.
Ms Taj, who is a member of the Government's Muslim Women's Advisory Group, said women were reluctant to come forward about the abuse they experienced because they were "groomed and brainwashed" into becoming interdependent on their direct families and not encouraged to take their complaints to the outside world.
Dr al-Alawi said there were cultural and religious reasons why some imams would not want to raise the issue of domestic violence in the mosque. "A lot of women who are brought from foreign countries to join their spouse here, firstly they cannot speak English and the imam is very reluctant to have a conversation with a woman because they feel there is a barrier and the woman should not be approachable to the man. "There's a lot of sexual abuse as well, which is apparently considered taboo for Muslims to talk about, whereby husbands are forcing themselves on women after they had been out with other women - rape case," he said.
Sheikh Irfan Chishti, director of the Light of Islam Academy and a former member of Tony Blair's Preventing Extremism Together taskforce, said there was "religious justification" among some imams for the abuse and subjugation of women. He said female victims were in many cases afraid of seeking help because they feared retribution and being accused of tarnishing or disobeying Islam. "Women don't speak up and if they do speak up they can get battered," Sheikh Chishti said. "Some men are brought up to believe that because they are superior therefore inadvertently or by default women are inferior and therefore submissive." He said that female Muslims needed to be empowered by moderate community leaders and the younger generation should be encouraged to condemn and report domestic violence.
Sheik Chishti also said young and British-raised community members should be encouraged to take over mosque committees. "You will not have change in the mosque until you change the culture of the leadership."
Source
Muslim spiritual leaders could be denounced publicly by their own community as part of a campaign to expose imams whose silence on domestic abuse is leading to women being burnt, lashed and raped in the name of Islam.
Muslim scholars are to present the Government with the names of imams who are alleged by members of their own communities to have refused to help abused women. Imams are also accused of refusing to speak out against domestic abuse in their sermons because they fear losing their clerical salaries and being sacked for broaching a "taboo" subject.
Some of Britain's most prominent moderate imams and female Muslim leaders have backed the campaign, urging the Home Office to vet more carefully Islamic spiritual leaders coming to Britain to weed out hardliners. A four-month inquiry by the Centre for Islamic Pluralism into domestic abuse has uncovered harrowing tales of women being raped, burnt by cigarettes and lashed with belts by their husbands, who believe it is their religious right to mistreat them.
At least 40 female Muslim victims and many social workers from northern England - including Bradford, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham - were interviewed as part of the inquiry, which is expected to be published next month.
During its investigation the organisation - the British arm of a long-established US think-tank - received a number of complaints about imams who had turned a blind eye to cases of domestic violence, many of whom are followers of Wahabbism, a puritanical interpretation of the Koran espoused by Osama bin Laden.
There have also been similar complaints about clerics from the Tablighi Jamaat movement, which is accused of radicalising young British Muslims with its orthodox teachings.
The organisation's international director, the Muslim scholar Irfan al-Alawi, told The Times that he would be forwarding the names of the imams to the Home Office, which has promised to investigate the allegations. He called for them to be stripped of any government grants that they may be receiving. He is also seeking legal advice about exposing the imams at public lectures and forums throughout the country. "I have to make sure that I don't end up with a lawsuit on my hands but at the same time expose what is going on in the community," he said.
Yousif al-Khoei, spokesman for the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (Minab) - a government approved body set up to improve the standards among British imams - admitted that some clerics condoned domestic violence although he said it was a "minority practice". He insisted the problem was to do with specific cultural beliefs rather than religious ideology, but said that the board was determined to tackle the problem by promoting "proper Islamic guidelines in the public arena".
However, he gave warning against the idea of publicly identifying imams, saying that would risk turning them into "martyrs" within their own community. "Instead, we should encourage women to seek advice from proper imams," he said.
While the number of domestic violence cases has almost doubled in the last three years, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, the figures fail to reflect the physical abuse cases within the Muslim community. Such cases, on which there is no data because they are largely unreported, are driven by cultural and religious beliefs instead of alcohol and drug abuse, said Shahien Taj, director of the Henna Foundation, which deals with honour crimes and domestic abuse victims.
Ms Taj, who is a member of the Government's Muslim Women's Advisory Group, said women were reluctant to come forward about the abuse they experienced because they were "groomed and brainwashed" into becoming interdependent on their direct families and not encouraged to take their complaints to the outside world.
Dr al-Alawi said there were cultural and religious reasons why some imams would not want to raise the issue of domestic violence in the mosque. "A lot of women who are brought from foreign countries to join their spouse here, firstly they cannot speak English and the imam is very reluctant to have a conversation with a woman because they feel there is a barrier and the woman should not be approachable to the man. "There's a lot of sexual abuse as well, which is apparently considered taboo for Muslims to talk about, whereby husbands are forcing themselves on women after they had been out with other women - rape case," he said.
Sheikh Irfan Chishti, director of the Light of Islam Academy and a former member of Tony Blair's Preventing Extremism Together taskforce, said there was "religious justification" among some imams for the abuse and subjugation of women. He said female victims were in many cases afraid of seeking help because they feared retribution and being accused of tarnishing or disobeying Islam. "Women don't speak up and if they do speak up they can get battered," Sheikh Chishti said. "Some men are brought up to believe that because they are superior therefore inadvertently or by default women are inferior and therefore submissive." He said that female Muslims needed to be empowered by moderate community leaders and the younger generation should be encouraged to condemn and report domestic violence.
Sheik Chishti also said young and British-raised community members should be encouraged to take over mosque committees. "You will not have change in the mosque until you change the culture of the leadership."
Source
Friday, September 26, 2008
British Doctors told to curb use of Ritalin in hyperactive children
Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be treated with drugs such as Ritalin only in severe cases and never when they are younger than 5, under official health guidelines issued today. Widespread concerns that medication is used too freely to calm hyperactive children have been recognised by two clinical practice watchdogs, which are now advising doctors not to prescribe drugs whenever possible.
Most children with ADHD should instead be offered psychological therapy to improve their behaviour, backed up by training to support their parents and teachers, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) recommend. Drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta (brand names for methylphenidate) and Strattera (atomoxetine) should be used as frontline treatments only when severe ADHD is diagnosed, or when other options have failed.
While up to 3 per cent of school-age children in Britain are affected by ADHD, only about a third to a quarter of these would qualify as severe cases. In a typical school of 1,400 children, between 30 and 40 would have a diagnosis of ADHD, and about 10 would be classed as severely affected.
The symptoms of ADHD include an inability to concentrate for long periods, hyperactive and restless behaviour, and impulsive actions, such as speaking without thinking of the consequences or failing to wait and take turns. It also affects about 2 per cent of adults.
ADHD support groups welcomed the guidelines, but said that they would have to be backed by increased resources for behavioural therapy if they are to have the desired effect. Andrea Benbow, chief executive of the Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service, said that many parents had to wait months or even years to be given psychological therapy and training, and that many programmes were not designed for ADHD or effective for it. "There are huge waiting lists, and many training programmes are not ADHD-specific and they're useless," she said. "We need these interventions - drugs are not the be all and end all - and parents would welcome them if they were there. "This needs to be backed by better resources. Lots of the good programmes are delivered by the voluntary sector, but the problem is, who funds them?"
The new guidance follows growing disquiet among some parents, teachers and doctors about the number of children taking medication for ADHD, who often remain on drugs for years. More than 600,000 prescriptions for the three drugs were filled in 2007 in England, though the number of children who received them is estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000 because only a month's supply is generally prescribed at once.
Ritalin is the most common ADHD drug, with 461,000 prescriptions filled in England in 2007. This compares with 199,000 in 2003, 26,500 in 1998 and 3,500 in 1993. The growth has alarmed some observers, concerned that some doctors are turning to medication too quickly to control a disorder that often responds well to other treatment strategies. Ritalin and Concerta can have side-effects that include nervousness, insomnia, appetite loss and weight loss. Strattera can cause nausea, dizziness, fatigue and mood swings. There has also been little research into the implications of taking them as long-term treatments.
Prescription rates vary widely. In July a study by the Health Service Journal found that some primary care trusts offer Ritalin up to 23 times more than others: in Wirral, pharmacists dispensed one prescription for every seven children under 16, compared with one for every 159 children in Stoke-on-Trent.
Other treatment options include sending children on courses of cognitive behavioural therapy or social skills training, and training parents in how to cope with the condition and improve their children's behaviour. Teachers can also be trained to manage children with ADHD. These can be highly effective, but drugs are often used instead because they offer a quicker solution and are not subject to long waiting lists.
The guidelines recommend a sparing approach to drug use when possible. Tim Kendall, a consultant psychiatrist in Sheffield and joint director of the NCCMH, who sat on the expert panel, said: "Quite commonly, people tend to revert to offering methylphenidate or atomoxetine. "When they do that, it's not always because there's a good balance of risk and benefits. It's because the child has got what appears to be ADHD and that's what's available. It's easier to prescribe a drug when other options like parent-training programmes are not available."
Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive of NICE, said: "Today's guideline, which is published during ADHD Awareness Week, is the first guideline to address the diagnosis and management of ADHD within both clinical and education settings. At its heart is the recognition of the importance of establishing a multidisciplinary team, including the person with ADHD, their family and their teachers in order to help support the person with ADHD achieve their full potential."
Professor Eric Taylor, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London and chairman of the guideline development group, said: "I believe these guidelines will make people with ADHD, and their families, more confident that their problems will be recognised and can often be helped, and that they will provide professionals with a framework for good practice nationally."
Source
British city objects to paying for land it stole
It wants to pay only the vastly reduced value that it created by denying permission for housing to be built on the land -- even though the land had been used for housing for many years. Below is their tale of woe. They think that THEY have been hard done-by because the land owners have the law on their side. There is nothing like a British bureaucracy. They think that people have rights only if they graciously allow it. The claim that it will cost the taxpayer a heap is rubbish. They just have to stop their obstruction of rebuilding on the site and it will cost them nothing.
Taxpayers will have to foot a $3.2 million bill to buy the 0.22 acre plot from a firm of property speculators, even though its true value is just $30,000. A judge who reluctantly ordered the council to pay the extortionate fee described the law as "utterly deplorable" and there are now fears of a rash of similar cases in London and other cities which were bombed by the Luftwaffe.
The wrangle centres on a scrap of land measuring roughly 20 yards by 50 which makes up part of a public park called Fred Wells Gardens in Battersea, south west London. A row of Victorian terraced houses, making up numbers 9 to 15 Orville Road once stood on the site, but they were destroyed by what is thought to have been a V1 flying bomb.
After the war the council cleared the site and added it to the neighbouring park, but it was privately owned, and was bought for $60,000 in 2001 by an investment firm called Greenweb Ltd, which wanted to build houses there. When the London Borough of Wandsworth refused planning permission to build on the site, Greenweb served a purchase notice compelling the council to buy the land because it would not allow it to be used for any commercial purpose. The current market value of the land, as a public open space, was independently set at $30,000, but Greenweb's legal team invoked an obscure clause in the Land Compensation Act 1961 which gives automatic planning permission for the rebuilding of houses destroyed by German bombs. That meant the value of the land suddenly shot up to $3.2m, even though the council would never allow it to be developed.
Councillor Maurice Heaster, Wandsworth's cabinet member for corporate resources, said: "This case really does prove the old saying that sometimes the law is an ass. "This could all have been avoided. Civil servants and ministers have been warned on numerous occasions that this piece of legislation was a ticking time bomb that should be ditched, but they have done nothing and local residents will now have to pay the price for their inaction."
The council, whose lawyers argued that the law was "absurd", appealed against the valuation by the Lands Tribunal, but three Appeal Court judges have upheld the decision, whilst making clear their disgust that the law still existed. Lord Justice Buxton said there was "no escape" from the law, but described the situation as "utterly deplorable" and called on councils to lobby the government for a repeal of the law to avoid "the unmeritorious deprivation of very scarce funds that occurred in this case". Lord Justice Thomas said it was "highly regrettable" that taxpayers in Wandsworth had to fund the purchase of the land for more than 100 times its true value, while Lord Justice Stanley Burnton said he upheld the law "most reluctantly".
The council is now considering a fresh appeal to the House of Lords, arguing that the law was only ever intended to ensure fair compensation for people whose properties were destroyed in the war. The London Development Agency, which is responsible for buying the land for London 2012 Olympics venues in the east end of London, said the ruling did not affect any of the sites being purchased.
Source
Children in risk-averse Britain 'trust no-one'
Britain's suspicious and risk-averse culture is leading to children growing up trusting no one, according to an adviser to Gordon Brown. Baroness Neuberger, the Liberal Democrat peer and one of Britain's foremost female rabbis, believes that many people are put off working with the young because of the fear of being branded paedophiles. Others are so petrified of being sued that they avoid helping people in their communities. As a result, once commonplace and small acts of kindness, such as embracing a hospital patient, are being shunned and the population is becoming increasingly selfish.
In an address due to be given to the Royal Society of Arts today, the peer, a champion of volunteering, says: "It is hard for ordinary people to give a leg up to someone less fortunate, to help the kid in care or the granny whose life is getting tough. We have become seriously risk-averse - fearful as a nation, scared of terrorists, child molesters and violence on the street. As a result, we make it harder and harder to help those who need our aid."
Source
Setback in battle against Britain's compulsory retirement age
How Brits love compulsion!
Hundreds of workers who want to work beyond the age of 65 were dealt a blow yesterday after campaigners lost an important round in their legal battle to banish Britain's compulsory retirement age. A preliminary legal opinion at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg rejected a claim by Age Concern that to compel people to stop work at or after 65 without compensation breaches EU equality requirements.
Although the opinion could yet be overturned by the full European Court, it will dismay hundreds of people who have been forced to retire and who are claiming compensation through employment tribunals. If the opinion is upheld by the European Court, employees who want to work beyond 65 will continue to need the agreement of their bosses. About 260 tribunal claims are on hold, awaiting the outcome of the test case, and thousands more claims could follow if pensioners are forced to retire.
Jan Marzak, the Advocate-General of the court, most of whose opinions are followed by the court, argued yesterday that a fixed retirement age was not necessarily contrary to EU rules. He agreed with Age Concern that British rules on mandatory retirement were covered by the EU directive. But he said that discrimination on the ground of age could be justified in certain circumstances in the context of a country's labour market and employment policy. He said that to allow employers to force workers to retire at 65 or over "can in principle be justified if that rule is objectively and reasonably justified in the context of national law by a legitimate aim relating to employment policy and the labour market, and it is not apparent that the means put in place to achieve that aim of public interest are inappropriate and unnecessary for the purpose".
Employers welcomed the opinion, saying that it would enable them to plan their workforce and ensure a "dignified exit" for employees whose performance was starting to decline.
Help the Aged said that the opinion was very disappointing and condemned it as flying in the face of fairness and common sense, as well as the trend towards greater life expectancy. Kate Jopling, the charity's head of public affairs, said: "Allowing companies to show loyal workers the door just because they are 65 or over makes a mockery of age discrimination laws which are there to make clear that age is just a number, not an indicator of your competency. "There is simply no justification for allowing a 65th birthday card to come hand in hand with a P45, regardless of competency or previous track record." Lawyers for Age Concern told a hearing this year that the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations breach the EU's Equal Treatment Directive, which bans employment discrimination on various grounds, including age.
The regulations, introduced in 2006, ban discrimination on the ground of age but exclude pensioners, who can be dismissed at 65 without redundancy payments, or at the employer's mandatory retirement age if it is above 65. Government lawyers insisted that the exception was a national matter and that rules on retirement-age workers should not be governed by the EU directive.
One of Age Concern's member organisations, Heyday, took the case to the High Court, which sent it to the EU court for a ruling. The "opinion" is not legally binding, but is followed by the EU judges in about 80 per cent of cases. The final verdict is due in about six months.
The Advocate-General also rejected Age Concern's claim that national governments should have to provide a specific list of which differences of treatment in retirement age are justified. A victory for Age Concern - not ruled out but now unlikely - could lead to a far-reaching change in domestic employment law, and a flood of compensation actions in addition to the 260 now pending. About 25,000 workers are estimated to face "default retirement" at 65 in Britain every year, when they would be happy and able to carry on.
Source
Amazing! Brutal Muslim child abuse penalized in Britain
But no jail time. Just a slap on the wrist. And apologies for bringing the prosecution
A man who encouraged two teenage boys to flog themselves until their backs were covered in bloody cuts was given a suspended jail sentence yesterday. Syed Mustafa Zaidi, 44, a Shia Muslim, was taking part at a mosque in Levenshulme, Manchester, in the traditional Ashura festival, a ritual of lamentation commemorating the slaughter of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Hussein, and his followers in the 7th century AD. Participants encourage each other to flail themselves with a whip with a wooden handle and five chains that end in sharp blades, to recreate the suffering of the martyrs.
Zaidi, a warehouse supervisor from Eccles, Greater Manchester, was found guilty last month of child cruelty for his role in encouraging the two boys, aged 13 and 15, to use the adult bladed whip rather than one specifically designed for youngsters. Both boys required hospital treatment.
He was given a 26-week prison sentence at Manchester Crown Court, suspended by Judge Robert Atherton for 12 months. Zaidi was ordered not to allow or encourage anyone under 16 to beat themselves during the next year. The prosecution had emphasised that bringing the legal action was not an attack on the practices of Shia Muslims. However, protesters declaring that the courts should not have become involved in what is a religious ceremony paraded placards outside the court building.
Judge Atherton said: "It should be clearly understood by everyone that the jury's verdict was not a comment upon that ceremony and no one should misinterpret it as being such. "The law recognises that children and young persons may wish to take part in some activities which it considers they should not. It is sometimes expressed as protecting themselves from themselves."
Zaidi had denied two counts of child cruelty amounting to "wilful ill-treatment".The boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that they had wanted to beat themselves, but not under duress and not using blades.
Carol Jackson, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "Given the age of the children concerned, the refusal of Mr Zaidi to admit any wrongdoing and the likelihood of such an incident occurring again, we are satisfied that it was in the public interest to bring this case."
Source
Green idealists fail to make grade, says study
People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth. According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.
Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: "Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights." Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.
Only a very small number of citizens matched their eco-friendly behaviour at home by refusing to fly abroad, Barr told a climate change conference at Exeter University yesterday. The research team questioned 200 people on their environmental attitudes and split them into three groups, based on a commitment to green living. They found the longest and the most frequent flights were taken by those who were most aware of environmental issues, including the threat posed by climate change.
Questioned on their heavy use of flying, one respondent said: "I recycle 100% of what I can, there's not one piece of paper goes in my bin, so that makes me feel less guilty about flying as much as I do."
Barr said "green" lifestyles at home and frequent flying were linked to income, with wealthier people more likely to be engaged in both activities. He said: "The findings indicate that even those people who appear to be very committed to environmental action find it difficult to transfer these behaviours into more problematic contexts."
The team says the research is one of the first attempts to analyse how green intentions alter depending on context. It says the results reveal the scale of the challenge faced by policymakers who are trying to alter public behaviour to help tackle global warming.
The study concludes: "The notion that we can treat what we do in the home differently from what we do on holiday denies the existence of clearly related and complex lifestyle choices and practices. Yet even a focus on lifestyle groups who may be most likely to change their views will require both time and political will. The addiction to cheap flights and holidays will be very difficult to break."
The frequent flyers said they expected new technology to make aviation greener, echoing comments made by Tony Blair last year, who said it was "impractical" to expect people to take holidays closer to home. He said the solution was "to look at how you make air travel more energy-efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less."
Source
Charming NHS worker abuses woman for needing a Caesarian
Go NHS and get treated like cattle
A pregnant woman about to have a Caesarean after a difficult three-day labour was sworn at by a hospital worker who demanded to know why she couldn’t give birth naturally, a hearing was told today. Samantha Shepherd was told that her baby’s life would be in danger if she didn’t have a Caesarean. But the conversation with her doctor was interrupted when Nigel Baglin, a surgery assistant, stormed into the room and shouted “F****** hell, why can’t women in this hospital give birth naturally?”
Mr Baglin, an anaesthetic support agency worker at Newham University Hospital, East London, crashed his trolley into the door of the room during the outburst, the competence committee hearing heard. The worker said he made the comments because he was “aghast” at the number of Caesarian sections being carried out at the hospital. “It was like every patient on the ward wanted one and had consented to them. “As a personal opinion, I did not think this was natural. It was a sarcastic comment aimed at the doctor and it was a mistake on my part,” Mr Baglin, who now works in Derby, said.
Mrs Shepherd, a mother of three, said she already had reservations about the Caesarean and was left devastated by the confrontation. “I felt I was a complete failure,” she said. “I was really nervous about having the baby. I had two previous births naturally. Every woman has a plan and this labour was not going along as hoped,” she said. “The doctor was explaining that I needed to have a second epidural when he (Mr Baglin) entered the room and banged the door with his trolley.” She said everyone in the room heard his outburst. “He stormed out and everyone was in shock. I felt worthless and told my husband I was a complete failure.” She said she would not use the hospital if she fell pregnant again.
Mr Baglin said the outburst was not intended personally. He said: “It was an off-the-cuff comment. I admit it was inappropriate but I was being rushed around.” But a witness said Baglin’s comments were directed straight at Mrs Shepherd. The woman said: “He was so angry you could see the veins in his neck. He wanted to be an exhibitionist and he wanted it to be heard.”
After the incident in February last year, the hospital reported Mr Baglin’s outburst to his agency, and said it would not employ him in future. Mr Baglin told the inquiry at Park House, Kennington Park Road, south east London, he resigned from his work at the hospital the day after the incident when a formal complaint had been made against him. A panel on the committee will rule whether Mr Baglin’s fitness to practise is impaired. The hearing continues.
Source
Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be treated with drugs such as Ritalin only in severe cases and never when they are younger than 5, under official health guidelines issued today. Widespread concerns that medication is used too freely to calm hyperactive children have been recognised by two clinical practice watchdogs, which are now advising doctors not to prescribe drugs whenever possible.
Most children with ADHD should instead be offered psychological therapy to improve their behaviour, backed up by training to support their parents and teachers, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) recommend. Drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta (brand names for methylphenidate) and Strattera (atomoxetine) should be used as frontline treatments only when severe ADHD is diagnosed, or when other options have failed.
While up to 3 per cent of school-age children in Britain are affected by ADHD, only about a third to a quarter of these would qualify as severe cases. In a typical school of 1,400 children, between 30 and 40 would have a diagnosis of ADHD, and about 10 would be classed as severely affected.
The symptoms of ADHD include an inability to concentrate for long periods, hyperactive and restless behaviour, and impulsive actions, such as speaking without thinking of the consequences or failing to wait and take turns. It also affects about 2 per cent of adults.
ADHD support groups welcomed the guidelines, but said that they would have to be backed by increased resources for behavioural therapy if they are to have the desired effect. Andrea Benbow, chief executive of the Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service, said that many parents had to wait months or even years to be given psychological therapy and training, and that many programmes were not designed for ADHD or effective for it. "There are huge waiting lists, and many training programmes are not ADHD-specific and they're useless," she said. "We need these interventions - drugs are not the be all and end all - and parents would welcome them if they were there. "This needs to be backed by better resources. Lots of the good programmes are delivered by the voluntary sector, but the problem is, who funds them?"
The new guidance follows growing disquiet among some parents, teachers and doctors about the number of children taking medication for ADHD, who often remain on drugs for years. More than 600,000 prescriptions for the three drugs were filled in 2007 in England, though the number of children who received them is estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000 because only a month's supply is generally prescribed at once.
Ritalin is the most common ADHD drug, with 461,000 prescriptions filled in England in 2007. This compares with 199,000 in 2003, 26,500 in 1998 and 3,500 in 1993. The growth has alarmed some observers, concerned that some doctors are turning to medication too quickly to control a disorder that often responds well to other treatment strategies. Ritalin and Concerta can have side-effects that include nervousness, insomnia, appetite loss and weight loss. Strattera can cause nausea, dizziness, fatigue and mood swings. There has also been little research into the implications of taking them as long-term treatments.
Prescription rates vary widely. In July a study by the Health Service Journal found that some primary care trusts offer Ritalin up to 23 times more than others: in Wirral, pharmacists dispensed one prescription for every seven children under 16, compared with one for every 159 children in Stoke-on-Trent.
Other treatment options include sending children on courses of cognitive behavioural therapy or social skills training, and training parents in how to cope with the condition and improve their children's behaviour. Teachers can also be trained to manage children with ADHD. These can be highly effective, but drugs are often used instead because they offer a quicker solution and are not subject to long waiting lists.
The guidelines recommend a sparing approach to drug use when possible. Tim Kendall, a consultant psychiatrist in Sheffield and joint director of the NCCMH, who sat on the expert panel, said: "Quite commonly, people tend to revert to offering methylphenidate or atomoxetine. "When they do that, it's not always because there's a good balance of risk and benefits. It's because the child has got what appears to be ADHD and that's what's available. It's easier to prescribe a drug when other options like parent-training programmes are not available."
Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive of NICE, said: "Today's guideline, which is published during ADHD Awareness Week, is the first guideline to address the diagnosis and management of ADHD within both clinical and education settings. At its heart is the recognition of the importance of establishing a multidisciplinary team, including the person with ADHD, their family and their teachers in order to help support the person with ADHD achieve their full potential."
Professor Eric Taylor, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London and chairman of the guideline development group, said: "I believe these guidelines will make people with ADHD, and their families, more confident that their problems will be recognised and can often be helped, and that they will provide professionals with a framework for good practice nationally."
Source
British city objects to paying for land it stole
It wants to pay only the vastly reduced value that it created by denying permission for housing to be built on the land -- even though the land had been used for housing for many years. Below is their tale of woe. They think that THEY have been hard done-by because the land owners have the law on their side. There is nothing like a British bureaucracy. They think that people have rights only if they graciously allow it. The claim that it will cost the taxpayer a heap is rubbish. They just have to stop their obstruction of rebuilding on the site and it will cost them nothing.
Taxpayers will have to foot a $3.2 million bill to buy the 0.22 acre plot from a firm of property speculators, even though its true value is just $30,000. A judge who reluctantly ordered the council to pay the extortionate fee described the law as "utterly deplorable" and there are now fears of a rash of similar cases in London and other cities which were bombed by the Luftwaffe.
The wrangle centres on a scrap of land measuring roughly 20 yards by 50 which makes up part of a public park called Fred Wells Gardens in Battersea, south west London. A row of Victorian terraced houses, making up numbers 9 to 15 Orville Road once stood on the site, but they were destroyed by what is thought to have been a V1 flying bomb.
After the war the council cleared the site and added it to the neighbouring park, but it was privately owned, and was bought for $60,000 in 2001 by an investment firm called Greenweb Ltd, which wanted to build houses there. When the London Borough of Wandsworth refused planning permission to build on the site, Greenweb served a purchase notice compelling the council to buy the land because it would not allow it to be used for any commercial purpose. The current market value of the land, as a public open space, was independently set at $30,000, but Greenweb's legal team invoked an obscure clause in the Land Compensation Act 1961 which gives automatic planning permission for the rebuilding of houses destroyed by German bombs. That meant the value of the land suddenly shot up to $3.2m, even though the council would never allow it to be developed.
Councillor Maurice Heaster, Wandsworth's cabinet member for corporate resources, said: "This case really does prove the old saying that sometimes the law is an ass. "This could all have been avoided. Civil servants and ministers have been warned on numerous occasions that this piece of legislation was a ticking time bomb that should be ditched, but they have done nothing and local residents will now have to pay the price for their inaction."
The council, whose lawyers argued that the law was "absurd", appealed against the valuation by the Lands Tribunal, but three Appeal Court judges have upheld the decision, whilst making clear their disgust that the law still existed. Lord Justice Buxton said there was "no escape" from the law, but described the situation as "utterly deplorable" and called on councils to lobby the government for a repeal of the law to avoid "the unmeritorious deprivation of very scarce funds that occurred in this case". Lord Justice Thomas said it was "highly regrettable" that taxpayers in Wandsworth had to fund the purchase of the land for more than 100 times its true value, while Lord Justice Stanley Burnton said he upheld the law "most reluctantly".
The council is now considering a fresh appeal to the House of Lords, arguing that the law was only ever intended to ensure fair compensation for people whose properties were destroyed in the war. The London Development Agency, which is responsible for buying the land for London 2012 Olympics venues in the east end of London, said the ruling did not affect any of the sites being purchased.
Source
Children in risk-averse Britain 'trust no-one'
Britain's suspicious and risk-averse culture is leading to children growing up trusting no one, according to an adviser to Gordon Brown. Baroness Neuberger, the Liberal Democrat peer and one of Britain's foremost female rabbis, believes that many people are put off working with the young because of the fear of being branded paedophiles. Others are so petrified of being sued that they avoid helping people in their communities. As a result, once commonplace and small acts of kindness, such as embracing a hospital patient, are being shunned and the population is becoming increasingly selfish.
In an address due to be given to the Royal Society of Arts today, the peer, a champion of volunteering, says: "It is hard for ordinary people to give a leg up to someone less fortunate, to help the kid in care or the granny whose life is getting tough. We have become seriously risk-averse - fearful as a nation, scared of terrorists, child molesters and violence on the street. As a result, we make it harder and harder to help those who need our aid."
Source
Setback in battle against Britain's compulsory retirement age
How Brits love compulsion!
Hundreds of workers who want to work beyond the age of 65 were dealt a blow yesterday after campaigners lost an important round in their legal battle to banish Britain's compulsory retirement age. A preliminary legal opinion at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg rejected a claim by Age Concern that to compel people to stop work at or after 65 without compensation breaches EU equality requirements.
Although the opinion could yet be overturned by the full European Court, it will dismay hundreds of people who have been forced to retire and who are claiming compensation through employment tribunals. If the opinion is upheld by the European Court, employees who want to work beyond 65 will continue to need the agreement of their bosses. About 260 tribunal claims are on hold, awaiting the outcome of the test case, and thousands more claims could follow if pensioners are forced to retire.
Jan Marzak, the Advocate-General of the court, most of whose opinions are followed by the court, argued yesterday that a fixed retirement age was not necessarily contrary to EU rules. He agreed with Age Concern that British rules on mandatory retirement were covered by the EU directive. But he said that discrimination on the ground of age could be justified in certain circumstances in the context of a country's labour market and employment policy. He said that to allow employers to force workers to retire at 65 or over "can in principle be justified if that rule is objectively and reasonably justified in the context of national law by a legitimate aim relating to employment policy and the labour market, and it is not apparent that the means put in place to achieve that aim of public interest are inappropriate and unnecessary for the purpose".
Employers welcomed the opinion, saying that it would enable them to plan their workforce and ensure a "dignified exit" for employees whose performance was starting to decline.
Help the Aged said that the opinion was very disappointing and condemned it as flying in the face of fairness and common sense, as well as the trend towards greater life expectancy. Kate Jopling, the charity's head of public affairs, said: "Allowing companies to show loyal workers the door just because they are 65 or over makes a mockery of age discrimination laws which are there to make clear that age is just a number, not an indicator of your competency. "There is simply no justification for allowing a 65th birthday card to come hand in hand with a P45, regardless of competency or previous track record." Lawyers for Age Concern told a hearing this year that the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations breach the EU's Equal Treatment Directive, which bans employment discrimination on various grounds, including age.
The regulations, introduced in 2006, ban discrimination on the ground of age but exclude pensioners, who can be dismissed at 65 without redundancy payments, or at the employer's mandatory retirement age if it is above 65. Government lawyers insisted that the exception was a national matter and that rules on retirement-age workers should not be governed by the EU directive.
One of Age Concern's member organisations, Heyday, took the case to the High Court, which sent it to the EU court for a ruling. The "opinion" is not legally binding, but is followed by the EU judges in about 80 per cent of cases. The final verdict is due in about six months.
The Advocate-General also rejected Age Concern's claim that national governments should have to provide a specific list of which differences of treatment in retirement age are justified. A victory for Age Concern - not ruled out but now unlikely - could lead to a far-reaching change in domestic employment law, and a flood of compensation actions in addition to the 260 now pending. About 25,000 workers are estimated to face "default retirement" at 65 in Britain every year, when they would be happy and able to carry on.
Source
Amazing! Brutal Muslim child abuse penalized in Britain
But no jail time. Just a slap on the wrist. And apologies for bringing the prosecution
A man who encouraged two teenage boys to flog themselves until their backs were covered in bloody cuts was given a suspended jail sentence yesterday. Syed Mustafa Zaidi, 44, a Shia Muslim, was taking part at a mosque in Levenshulme, Manchester, in the traditional Ashura festival, a ritual of lamentation commemorating the slaughter of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Hussein, and his followers in the 7th century AD. Participants encourage each other to flail themselves with a whip with a wooden handle and five chains that end in sharp blades, to recreate the suffering of the martyrs.
Zaidi, a warehouse supervisor from Eccles, Greater Manchester, was found guilty last month of child cruelty for his role in encouraging the two boys, aged 13 and 15, to use the adult bladed whip rather than one specifically designed for youngsters. Both boys required hospital treatment.
He was given a 26-week prison sentence at Manchester Crown Court, suspended by Judge Robert Atherton for 12 months. Zaidi was ordered not to allow or encourage anyone under 16 to beat themselves during the next year. The prosecution had emphasised that bringing the legal action was not an attack on the practices of Shia Muslims. However, protesters declaring that the courts should not have become involved in what is a religious ceremony paraded placards outside the court building.
Judge Atherton said: "It should be clearly understood by everyone that the jury's verdict was not a comment upon that ceremony and no one should misinterpret it as being such. "The law recognises that children and young persons may wish to take part in some activities which it considers they should not. It is sometimes expressed as protecting themselves from themselves."
Zaidi had denied two counts of child cruelty amounting to "wilful ill-treatment".The boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that they had wanted to beat themselves, but not under duress and not using blades.
Carol Jackson, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "Given the age of the children concerned, the refusal of Mr Zaidi to admit any wrongdoing and the likelihood of such an incident occurring again, we are satisfied that it was in the public interest to bring this case."
Source
Green idealists fail to make grade, says study
People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth. According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.
Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: "Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights." Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.
Only a very small number of citizens matched their eco-friendly behaviour at home by refusing to fly abroad, Barr told a climate change conference at Exeter University yesterday. The research team questioned 200 people on their environmental attitudes and split them into three groups, based on a commitment to green living. They found the longest and the most frequent flights were taken by those who were most aware of environmental issues, including the threat posed by climate change.
Questioned on their heavy use of flying, one respondent said: "I recycle 100% of what I can, there's not one piece of paper goes in my bin, so that makes me feel less guilty about flying as much as I do."
Barr said "green" lifestyles at home and frequent flying were linked to income, with wealthier people more likely to be engaged in both activities. He said: "The findings indicate that even those people who appear to be very committed to environmental action find it difficult to transfer these behaviours into more problematic contexts."
The team says the research is one of the first attempts to analyse how green intentions alter depending on context. It says the results reveal the scale of the challenge faced by policymakers who are trying to alter public behaviour to help tackle global warming.
The study concludes: "The notion that we can treat what we do in the home differently from what we do on holiday denies the existence of clearly related and complex lifestyle choices and practices. Yet even a focus on lifestyle groups who may be most likely to change their views will require both time and political will. The addiction to cheap flights and holidays will be very difficult to break."
The frequent flyers said they expected new technology to make aviation greener, echoing comments made by Tony Blair last year, who said it was "impractical" to expect people to take holidays closer to home. He said the solution was "to look at how you make air travel more energy-efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less."
Source
Charming NHS worker abuses woman for needing a Caesarian
Go NHS and get treated like cattle
A pregnant woman about to have a Caesarean after a difficult three-day labour was sworn at by a hospital worker who demanded to know why she couldn’t give birth naturally, a hearing was told today. Samantha Shepherd was told that her baby’s life would be in danger if she didn’t have a Caesarean. But the conversation with her doctor was interrupted when Nigel Baglin, a surgery assistant, stormed into the room and shouted “F****** hell, why can’t women in this hospital give birth naturally?”
Mr Baglin, an anaesthetic support agency worker at Newham University Hospital, East London, crashed his trolley into the door of the room during the outburst, the competence committee hearing heard. The worker said he made the comments because he was “aghast” at the number of Caesarian sections being carried out at the hospital. “It was like every patient on the ward wanted one and had consented to them. “As a personal opinion, I did not think this was natural. It was a sarcastic comment aimed at the doctor and it was a mistake on my part,” Mr Baglin, who now works in Derby, said.
Mrs Shepherd, a mother of three, said she already had reservations about the Caesarean and was left devastated by the confrontation. “I felt I was a complete failure,” she said. “I was really nervous about having the baby. I had two previous births naturally. Every woman has a plan and this labour was not going along as hoped,” she said. “The doctor was explaining that I needed to have a second epidural when he (Mr Baglin) entered the room and banged the door with his trolley.” She said everyone in the room heard his outburst. “He stormed out and everyone was in shock. I felt worthless and told my husband I was a complete failure.” She said she would not use the hospital if she fell pregnant again.
Mr Baglin said the outburst was not intended personally. He said: “It was an off-the-cuff comment. I admit it was inappropriate but I was being rushed around.” But a witness said Baglin’s comments were directed straight at Mrs Shepherd. The woman said: “He was so angry you could see the veins in his neck. He wanted to be an exhibitionist and he wanted it to be heard.”
After the incident in February last year, the hospital reported Mr Baglin’s outburst to his agency, and said it would not employ him in future. Mr Baglin told the inquiry at Park House, Kennington Park Road, south east London, he resigned from his work at the hospital the day after the incident when a formal complaint had been made against him. A panel on the committee will rule whether Mr Baglin’s fitness to practise is impaired. The hearing continues.
Source
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Circus fans face silent comedy after ban on clowns' trumpets
British bureaucrats never stop their search for ways to disrupt the lives of others
The grand finale of Zippo's Circus fell strangely flat before its Birmingham audience. Three Spanish clowns, Nicol, Michael and Pappa, had been due to introduce themselves with a blast of trumpets. However, this had to be cut from the act. Also gone was the moment, midway through the routine, when Nicol sounds three notes on a tuba, which then explodes, the bell landing on another clown's head while Nicol blows a puff of smoke from his rear. And instead of the recorded flamenco track that usually accompanies their performance, there was silence.
These last-minute alterations were insisted upon by an official from the licensing department of Birmingham City Council. Half an hour before the show was due to start, the officer was insisting that the show could not go on if the clowns sounded their trumpets, or blew the exploding horn. It would need to be classified as a live music performance and the Big Top would require a licence.
Martin Burton, proprietor of Zippo's Circus, and a former clown himself, was not amused: "I'm a big fan of silent comedy, but this is ludicrous." Mr Burton had thought such issues had been settled in lengthy exchanges with the council's licensing department before the circus even came to town. "There was some discussion about whether skipping on a tight-rope was dancing," he told The Times yesterday. "Tight-rope walking is not regarded as regulated entertainment requiring a licence; dance is."
They also considered the trained horses, and a Jack Russell called Clopsky ("his master's wife is Russian"), that leaps over a gyrating German acrobat and perches on the acrobat's feet while he performs a handstand. Neither Clopsky nor the acrobats were thought to be performing regulated entertainment: it was neither dance nor professional sport. "Although the acrobats wouldn't like to hear me say this, they are not Olympic quality," Mr Burton said.
Finally, there were the clowns. Mr Burton thought he had persuaded the council that the music in their act was purely incidental. "It's just a quick blast of trumpets at the start," Mr Burton said. "Then three notes from the exploding tuba: pa-pa-pa-bang!" Nevertheless, long after the health and safety officials had left, satisfied that all was in order, an official for the licencing department remained. "Normally we would have stood our ground, but we had only half an hour," Mr Burton said. "I agreed to cut the music. It was ludicrous."
Jacqui Kennedy, director of regulatory services at Birmingham City Council, said: "Under the Licensing Act 2003, elements of the programme proposed by Zippo's would fall into the category of regulated entertainment and such events would require either a licence under the Act or a temporary event notice." The Act, in force since 2005, means that circuses could technically require a licence for every site they visit. "It's $2,000 a time and we are visiting 30 different places," Mr Burton said.
While some circuses have closed, Mr Burton has opted to negotiate with each council in turn. Birmingham has been the first to object. Malcolm Clay, secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors, told The Times last night that an application would shortly be submitted to Whitehall for a change in the rules. "There is now an acceptance that something needs to be done for circuses," he said.
Source
NHS midwives deal with three births at once
Midwives are "overworked and overstretched", sometimes caring for three women in labour at the same time, according an expert.
Since 2001 there has been a 16 per cent rise in birthrates yet there are vacancies for midwives in every part of the country, according to the Royal College of Midwives. The Government has pledged 3,400 extra full-time jobs (4,000 including part-time workers), but research for the Darzi review into the NHS shows a shortage of 4,288 midwives. The shortfall is estimated after comparing it with the NHS "gold standard" for safer childbirth, which demands one midwife per 28 births. London has the worst shortages with 1,150 more midwives needed to meet a 20 per cent rise in the birthrate.
Louise Silverton, deputy general secretary at the RCM, said: "Women keep hearing about Government policy statements, such as one-to-one care from a midwife, but they are not getting that sort of treatment in many areas. "Our members are telling us that they are overworked and overstretched and are running between beds dealing with, in some cases, three women at once." The RCM added funding for maternity services has been cut by $110 million. Miss Silverton added: "The maternity services have long been described as a postcode lottery - but our regional NHS responses paint a shocking picture of just how loaded that lottery for maternity care is."
By next year ministers have promised women will be able to choose whether to have their child in hospital, at home or in a midwife-led birth centre. The Government has promised $660 million of extra funding for maternity services over three years.
But, according to Miss Silverton, research shows nine out of 10 maternity units do not know where their share of the œ330 million had gone, and it could have been diverted into other services. She said: "It is not enough for the Government to say it has put money into maternity services, but then fail to make sure the money actually goes where it is supposed to." The Department of Health said: "Our maternity services are the safest they have ever been. We are committed to improving outcomes for both mothers and babies."
Source
'Pointless' NHS complaints system to be made less rigid
The Department of Health has promised to overhaul the system for making complaints about NHS care after a survey found that more than two thirds of patients think that the process is pointless. The report by the Patients Association described the NHS complaints system as "cumbersome, variable and takes too long". Of nearly 500 patients polled, 69 per cent said that they had wanted to complain about the healthcare they had received in the past five years.
For those who complained, 29 per cent described the process as totally pointless, 20.5 per cent as pointless and 19 per cent as slightly pointless. Only 2 per cent said that the experience had been "very useful". More than four fifths (81 per cent) believed that there was not a culture of openness in the NHS when errors occurred and that staff were not encouraged to report mistakes.
The association's report concludes: "While patients will always accept that errors will occur in any health service, what they will not accept is the fact that staff are not open about admitting such errors occur."
On the matter of recent MRSA outbreaks and other healthcare-acquired infections, 47 per cent of patients blamed NHS trust managers. Nurses and cleaning staff were blamed by 16 per cent of respondents, and 10 per cent believed that doctors were responsible.
Three quarters of respondents felt that trust in doctors and nurses has decreased compared with five years ago. As a result, 96 per cent said they believed that patients questioned the actions of doctors and nurses more than they used to.
The Department of Health said it would be reforming the system so that patients' concerns were taken seriously. An official said: "We know that people find the current complaints system confusing. Some may also avoid complaining because they feel too intimidated or worry about damaging their relationship with their GP or social worker. This must change. "We are introducing a streamlined approach that will remove the need to follow a rigid set of procedures and replace them with a more open, flexible and personal service." If patients fail to resolve complaints at a local level they can forward their concerns to the Healthcare Commission, the NHS regulator.
The Patients Association called for NHS trust boards to be publicly accountable for an "open, transparent and timely resolution of complaints". It also wants an end to system where standard complaint responses vary depending on the region. Katherine Murphy, the group's communications director, said: "Every complaint matters. Ignoring complaints results in wasted resources, frustrated patients and cynicism about the system."
Source
Below: Britain's Greenest newspaper blames increased incidence of Legionnaires' disease on global warming
As the figures from Britain's Hadley climate centre show, there has been no global warming since 1998, so the paper CANNOT be right! The disease may be exacerbated by hot weather but you don't need climate change to have hot weather! There have ALWAYS been spells of hot weather!
Britain has suffered its first deaths from infectious disease attributable to global warming, official figures suggest. Cases of Legionnaires' disease, the bacterial lung infection which kills more than one in 10 of those it infects, reached record levels in August and September and experts say the extreme summer weather is the most likely cause of the rise. Doctors say that as the world gets hotter, Britain could be threatened by diseases such as malaria, spreading from the tropics. In 2003, an estimated 2,000 UK deaths, mostly elderly people, were attributed to the 90-degree summer heatwave which was blamed on global warming. But the record levels of Legionnaires' disease reported by the Health Protection Agency this summer are believed to be the first example of an increase in infectious disease in Britain driven by climate change.
Legionnaires' disease is a bacterial infection spread through water. It is not transmitted from person to person and is caught only when infected water is inhaled as a vapour. Hotel showers are a particular risk. There were 128 cases of Legionnaires' in August, the highest since records began in 1980, and more than double the total in August 2005 of 63 cases. To the end of September this year, there have been 340 cases, almost 100 more than in the whole of last year, and the highest for the first nine months of any year. A total of 177 cases were diagnosed in August and September.
Public health experts blame the sudden leap on climate change. The hottest July on record, then a wetter than normal August are thought to have provided ideal breeding conditions for Legionella bacteria. Carol Joseph, a specialist in Legionnaires' at the HPA, said previous peaks had been linked to single outbreaks, such as that in Barrow-in-Furness in 2002 when 179 people were infected by a leaking cooling tower.
But the latest surge covers all regions and cannot be traced to one or two outbreaks. Dr Joseph said: "This latest peak [in August] is exceptional. We think this is some kind of weather effect. There are always more cases in August and September because of the warm weather and because more people stay in hotels. There is a definite link with hotels that have poor water systems and dodgy showers. Only a small proportion of these cases had travelled outside the UK.
Other countries such as Denmark had a similar rise in cases during hot spells of weather, Dr Joseph said. The annual total of cases in Britain is on course to exceed 400 for the first time this year. The total has exceeded 300 every year since 2002, having remained below 200 for the previous 20 years. Improved reporting had contributed to the rise.
Legionnaires' disease affects three times as many men as women and is commoner in those over 50, though it can strike at any age. It starts as a flu-like illness with muscle aches, fever and tiredness then pneumonia. It can be treated with antibiotics.
A Met Office spokesman said July was the hottest July since records began in 1659. In August, temperatures fell, rainfall was 10 per cent above average and sunshine 15 per cent below average. September was also the hottest on record. Asked about global warming, the spokesman said: "It is the sort of thing we would expect to see in accordance with the climate models."
Source
Financial Crisis: Bankers and the City of London provided a roof over people's heads
by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
Go on. Admit it. You don't feel altogether sorry for those bankers, do you? When you read about the collapsing pillars of the temples of mammon, you don't feel the tears beginning to prick the corner of your eyes. When you read that the masters and mistresses of the Universe are being expelled from their glass palaces, ferrying their possessions in cardboard boxes, you can't quite find it in you, somehow, to mourn. Oh no. On the contrary. You snuffle and truffle your way through the yards of newsprint, searching for fresh news of folding banks and speculating who will be next.
So Lehman Brothers has bitten the dust, and the gloomy reverberations are being heard in Porsche dealerships on both sides of the Atlantic. Merrill Lynch has been sold, and now the tide of destruction is lapping about the feet of Morgan Stanley and - can it be true? - Goldman Sachs!
Amid the anguish, amid the despair, I am afraid I detect in the coverage a tiny but audible batsqueak of glee, and sometimes it is more than a squeak. Every Lefty from Alex Salmond to Gordon Brown is queuing up to kick the "spivs and speculators", who are apparently the authors of their own destruction, as well as the destruction of immeasurable wealth across Britain and the world.
At the very moment last week when banking stocks were a sea of gore, and thousands of jobs were being lost, the Prime Minister thought fit to announce that the "City must clean up its act". In respectable conservative free-market newspapers you will find yammering columnists demanding new laws on usury, so that nothing of this kind can ever happen again.
As the banker-bashers survey the wreckage of Lehman Bros, the main complaint is that the carnage does not go far enough. Why, when ordinary people are suffering from plummeting house prices, are these ex-Lehman partners allowed to waltz off with multi-million pound bonuses?
Why, when they have so terminally stuffed the financial system that most people are finding it tough to get a mortgage, are these incompetent loan sharks still cruising the world in their yachts and Bugatti Veyrons? Yes, there are some pretty strong feelings out there: Schadenfreude at the bankers who have been punished, indignation at those who have not.
Which is why it is time for this column - ever alert to the noble but unpopular cause - to enter a note in defence of the banks, the City, and the general practice of lending money for profit.
Let us be clear: the banks have been greedy, sometimes hideously greedy. And they have collaborated in encouraging the greed and credulity of home-owners, on both sides of the Atlantic, who have taken on more debt than they can manage. The banks have made it worse by taking that bad debt, and chopping it up into funny parcels called derivatives, and selling these products to each other to make even more money; and then they have made things much, much worse by lying. They have been lying to each other about the extent to which they hold this toxic stuff, and so trust has broken down, and the banks have stopped dealing with each other, and no one can get any credit, and the short-selling hedge funds have begun to close in - quite reasonably - to sell the banks' shares and start the bloodbath.
Last week we seemed to be faced with a full-scale run on the banks, and governments in America and Britain had no choice but to act. The Labour Government has flouted competition rules to protect HBOS, and both governments have banned short selling. It is an incredible turn of events, and for a free marketeer it is quite dizzying. There can be no doubt that government has a duty to get involved, not least to protect innocent depositors. Someone needs to make sure there is no more sharp practice, and that someone is government.
How come Lehman was allowed at the last minute to whip an $16 billion cushion away from London, and transfer that cushion to New York? The result was that the defenestrated bankers of New York had a softer landing than Lehman folk in the City. It looks damn suspicious. We need an answer, and fast. But we should also remember that whenever government gets involved in the market - whenever they use taxpayers' money to defend the price of a share or a currency - they create a risk and they create an opportunity.
When Hank Paulson nationalised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he was issuing a feeding call to the sharks, as obvious as the boasts of Norman Lamont that he would fight to the death to protect the parity of sterling against the German mark. The hedge funds saw a one-way bet, then and now, and the paradox is that Paulson's initial actions may have made the banks more vulnerable, not less.
What will happen in January, when the rules on short-selling expire? And whatever else government does, we must remember that regulation introduced in response to one crisis almost always helps to create the next one. London's recent success as a financial centre - and our edge over New York - has been at least partly to do with the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley rules that fettered American markets.
Before you attack the bankers of London, remember that this is one of the few global industries in which we truly excel; the City contributes about 9 per cent of Britain's GDP - think of all the professions and trades that feast, directly or indirectly, on the nourishment provided: the lawyers, accountants, PR firms, architects, interior designers, builders, taxi drivers and just about everyone else.
And before you go whingeing to me about house prices boosted by City bonuses, I leave you with one final thought: whatever the disasters of the sub-prime sector, these products allowed millions of Americans to own their homes, and the vast majority are making their payments. They will enjoy the long-term benefits of home ownership, and that is thanks to the ingenuity and enterprise of people who lend money for profit.
Of course there are spivs and speculators out there. But before we get carried away with neo-socialist claptrap, we should remember the huge benefits brought to this country by bankers and the City of London
Source
British bureaucrats never stop their search for ways to disrupt the lives of others
The grand finale of Zippo's Circus fell strangely flat before its Birmingham audience. Three Spanish clowns, Nicol, Michael and Pappa, had been due to introduce themselves with a blast of trumpets. However, this had to be cut from the act. Also gone was the moment, midway through the routine, when Nicol sounds three notes on a tuba, which then explodes, the bell landing on another clown's head while Nicol blows a puff of smoke from his rear. And instead of the recorded flamenco track that usually accompanies their performance, there was silence.
These last-minute alterations were insisted upon by an official from the licensing department of Birmingham City Council. Half an hour before the show was due to start, the officer was insisting that the show could not go on if the clowns sounded their trumpets, or blew the exploding horn. It would need to be classified as a live music performance and the Big Top would require a licence.
Martin Burton, proprietor of Zippo's Circus, and a former clown himself, was not amused: "I'm a big fan of silent comedy, but this is ludicrous." Mr Burton had thought such issues had been settled in lengthy exchanges with the council's licensing department before the circus even came to town. "There was some discussion about whether skipping on a tight-rope was dancing," he told The Times yesterday. "Tight-rope walking is not regarded as regulated entertainment requiring a licence; dance is."
They also considered the trained horses, and a Jack Russell called Clopsky ("his master's wife is Russian"), that leaps over a gyrating German acrobat and perches on the acrobat's feet while he performs a handstand. Neither Clopsky nor the acrobats were thought to be performing regulated entertainment: it was neither dance nor professional sport. "Although the acrobats wouldn't like to hear me say this, they are not Olympic quality," Mr Burton said.
Finally, there were the clowns. Mr Burton thought he had persuaded the council that the music in their act was purely incidental. "It's just a quick blast of trumpets at the start," Mr Burton said. "Then three notes from the exploding tuba: pa-pa-pa-bang!" Nevertheless, long after the health and safety officials had left, satisfied that all was in order, an official for the licencing department remained. "Normally we would have stood our ground, but we had only half an hour," Mr Burton said. "I agreed to cut the music. It was ludicrous."
Jacqui Kennedy, director of regulatory services at Birmingham City Council, said: "Under the Licensing Act 2003, elements of the programme proposed by Zippo's would fall into the category of regulated entertainment and such events would require either a licence under the Act or a temporary event notice." The Act, in force since 2005, means that circuses could technically require a licence for every site they visit. "It's $2,000 a time and we are visiting 30 different places," Mr Burton said.
While some circuses have closed, Mr Burton has opted to negotiate with each council in turn. Birmingham has been the first to object. Malcolm Clay, secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors, told The Times last night that an application would shortly be submitted to Whitehall for a change in the rules. "There is now an acceptance that something needs to be done for circuses," he said.
Source
NHS midwives deal with three births at once
Midwives are "overworked and overstretched", sometimes caring for three women in labour at the same time, according an expert.
Since 2001 there has been a 16 per cent rise in birthrates yet there are vacancies for midwives in every part of the country, according to the Royal College of Midwives. The Government has pledged 3,400 extra full-time jobs (4,000 including part-time workers), but research for the Darzi review into the NHS shows a shortage of 4,288 midwives. The shortfall is estimated after comparing it with the NHS "gold standard" for safer childbirth, which demands one midwife per 28 births. London has the worst shortages with 1,150 more midwives needed to meet a 20 per cent rise in the birthrate.
Louise Silverton, deputy general secretary at the RCM, said: "Women keep hearing about Government policy statements, such as one-to-one care from a midwife, but they are not getting that sort of treatment in many areas. "Our members are telling us that they are overworked and overstretched and are running between beds dealing with, in some cases, three women at once." The RCM added funding for maternity services has been cut by $110 million. Miss Silverton added: "The maternity services have long been described as a postcode lottery - but our regional NHS responses paint a shocking picture of just how loaded that lottery for maternity care is."
By next year ministers have promised women will be able to choose whether to have their child in hospital, at home or in a midwife-led birth centre. The Government has promised $660 million of extra funding for maternity services over three years.
But, according to Miss Silverton, research shows nine out of 10 maternity units do not know where their share of the œ330 million had gone, and it could have been diverted into other services. She said: "It is not enough for the Government to say it has put money into maternity services, but then fail to make sure the money actually goes where it is supposed to." The Department of Health said: "Our maternity services are the safest they have ever been. We are committed to improving outcomes for both mothers and babies."
Source
'Pointless' NHS complaints system to be made less rigid
The Department of Health has promised to overhaul the system for making complaints about NHS care after a survey found that more than two thirds of patients think that the process is pointless. The report by the Patients Association described the NHS complaints system as "cumbersome, variable and takes too long". Of nearly 500 patients polled, 69 per cent said that they had wanted to complain about the healthcare they had received in the past five years.
For those who complained, 29 per cent described the process as totally pointless, 20.5 per cent as pointless and 19 per cent as slightly pointless. Only 2 per cent said that the experience had been "very useful". More than four fifths (81 per cent) believed that there was not a culture of openness in the NHS when errors occurred and that staff were not encouraged to report mistakes.
The association's report concludes: "While patients will always accept that errors will occur in any health service, what they will not accept is the fact that staff are not open about admitting such errors occur."
On the matter of recent MRSA outbreaks and other healthcare-acquired infections, 47 per cent of patients blamed NHS trust managers. Nurses and cleaning staff were blamed by 16 per cent of respondents, and 10 per cent believed that doctors were responsible.
Three quarters of respondents felt that trust in doctors and nurses has decreased compared with five years ago. As a result, 96 per cent said they believed that patients questioned the actions of doctors and nurses more than they used to.
The Department of Health said it would be reforming the system so that patients' concerns were taken seriously. An official said: "We know that people find the current complaints system confusing. Some may also avoid complaining because they feel too intimidated or worry about damaging their relationship with their GP or social worker. This must change. "We are introducing a streamlined approach that will remove the need to follow a rigid set of procedures and replace them with a more open, flexible and personal service." If patients fail to resolve complaints at a local level they can forward their concerns to the Healthcare Commission, the NHS regulator.
The Patients Association called for NHS trust boards to be publicly accountable for an "open, transparent and timely resolution of complaints". It also wants an end to system where standard complaint responses vary depending on the region. Katherine Murphy, the group's communications director, said: "Every complaint matters. Ignoring complaints results in wasted resources, frustrated patients and cynicism about the system."
Source
Below: Britain's Greenest newspaper blames increased incidence of Legionnaires' disease on global warming
As the figures from Britain's Hadley climate centre show, there has been no global warming since 1998, so the paper CANNOT be right! The disease may be exacerbated by hot weather but you don't need climate change to have hot weather! There have ALWAYS been spells of hot weather!
Britain has suffered its first deaths from infectious disease attributable to global warming, official figures suggest. Cases of Legionnaires' disease, the bacterial lung infection which kills more than one in 10 of those it infects, reached record levels in August and September and experts say the extreme summer weather is the most likely cause of the rise. Doctors say that as the world gets hotter, Britain could be threatened by diseases such as malaria, spreading from the tropics. In 2003, an estimated 2,000 UK deaths, mostly elderly people, were attributed to the 90-degree summer heatwave which was blamed on global warming. But the record levels of Legionnaires' disease reported by the Health Protection Agency this summer are believed to be the first example of an increase in infectious disease in Britain driven by climate change.
Legionnaires' disease is a bacterial infection spread through water. It is not transmitted from person to person and is caught only when infected water is inhaled as a vapour. Hotel showers are a particular risk. There were 128 cases of Legionnaires' in August, the highest since records began in 1980, and more than double the total in August 2005 of 63 cases. To the end of September this year, there have been 340 cases, almost 100 more than in the whole of last year, and the highest for the first nine months of any year. A total of 177 cases were diagnosed in August and September.
Public health experts blame the sudden leap on climate change. The hottest July on record, then a wetter than normal August are thought to have provided ideal breeding conditions for Legionella bacteria. Carol Joseph, a specialist in Legionnaires' at the HPA, said previous peaks had been linked to single outbreaks, such as that in Barrow-in-Furness in 2002 when 179 people were infected by a leaking cooling tower.
But the latest surge covers all regions and cannot be traced to one or two outbreaks. Dr Joseph said: "This latest peak [in August] is exceptional. We think this is some kind of weather effect. There are always more cases in August and September because of the warm weather and because more people stay in hotels. There is a definite link with hotels that have poor water systems and dodgy showers. Only a small proportion of these cases had travelled outside the UK.
Other countries such as Denmark had a similar rise in cases during hot spells of weather, Dr Joseph said. The annual total of cases in Britain is on course to exceed 400 for the first time this year. The total has exceeded 300 every year since 2002, having remained below 200 for the previous 20 years. Improved reporting had contributed to the rise.
Legionnaires' disease affects three times as many men as women and is commoner in those over 50, though it can strike at any age. It starts as a flu-like illness with muscle aches, fever and tiredness then pneumonia. It can be treated with antibiotics.
A Met Office spokesman said July was the hottest July since records began in 1659. In August, temperatures fell, rainfall was 10 per cent above average and sunshine 15 per cent below average. September was also the hottest on record. Asked about global warming, the spokesman said: "It is the sort of thing we would expect to see in accordance with the climate models."
Source
Financial Crisis: Bankers and the City of London provided a roof over people's heads
by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
Go on. Admit it. You don't feel altogether sorry for those bankers, do you? When you read about the collapsing pillars of the temples of mammon, you don't feel the tears beginning to prick the corner of your eyes. When you read that the masters and mistresses of the Universe are being expelled from their glass palaces, ferrying their possessions in cardboard boxes, you can't quite find it in you, somehow, to mourn. Oh no. On the contrary. You snuffle and truffle your way through the yards of newsprint, searching for fresh news of folding banks and speculating who will be next.
So Lehman Brothers has bitten the dust, and the gloomy reverberations are being heard in Porsche dealerships on both sides of the Atlantic. Merrill Lynch has been sold, and now the tide of destruction is lapping about the feet of Morgan Stanley and - can it be true? - Goldman Sachs!
Amid the anguish, amid the despair, I am afraid I detect in the coverage a tiny but audible batsqueak of glee, and sometimes it is more than a squeak. Every Lefty from Alex Salmond to Gordon Brown is queuing up to kick the "spivs and speculators", who are apparently the authors of their own destruction, as well as the destruction of immeasurable wealth across Britain and the world.
At the very moment last week when banking stocks were a sea of gore, and thousands of jobs were being lost, the Prime Minister thought fit to announce that the "City must clean up its act". In respectable conservative free-market newspapers you will find yammering columnists demanding new laws on usury, so that nothing of this kind can ever happen again.
As the banker-bashers survey the wreckage of Lehman Bros, the main complaint is that the carnage does not go far enough. Why, when ordinary people are suffering from plummeting house prices, are these ex-Lehman partners allowed to waltz off with multi-million pound bonuses?
Why, when they have so terminally stuffed the financial system that most people are finding it tough to get a mortgage, are these incompetent loan sharks still cruising the world in their yachts and Bugatti Veyrons? Yes, there are some pretty strong feelings out there: Schadenfreude at the bankers who have been punished, indignation at those who have not.
Which is why it is time for this column - ever alert to the noble but unpopular cause - to enter a note in defence of the banks, the City, and the general practice of lending money for profit.
Let us be clear: the banks have been greedy, sometimes hideously greedy. And they have collaborated in encouraging the greed and credulity of home-owners, on both sides of the Atlantic, who have taken on more debt than they can manage. The banks have made it worse by taking that bad debt, and chopping it up into funny parcels called derivatives, and selling these products to each other to make even more money; and then they have made things much, much worse by lying. They have been lying to each other about the extent to which they hold this toxic stuff, and so trust has broken down, and the banks have stopped dealing with each other, and no one can get any credit, and the short-selling hedge funds have begun to close in - quite reasonably - to sell the banks' shares and start the bloodbath.
Last week we seemed to be faced with a full-scale run on the banks, and governments in America and Britain had no choice but to act. The Labour Government has flouted competition rules to protect HBOS, and both governments have banned short selling. It is an incredible turn of events, and for a free marketeer it is quite dizzying. There can be no doubt that government has a duty to get involved, not least to protect innocent depositors. Someone needs to make sure there is no more sharp practice, and that someone is government.
How come Lehman was allowed at the last minute to whip an $16 billion cushion away from London, and transfer that cushion to New York? The result was that the defenestrated bankers of New York had a softer landing than Lehman folk in the City. It looks damn suspicious. We need an answer, and fast. But we should also remember that whenever government gets involved in the market - whenever they use taxpayers' money to defend the price of a share or a currency - they create a risk and they create an opportunity.
When Hank Paulson nationalised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he was issuing a feeding call to the sharks, as obvious as the boasts of Norman Lamont that he would fight to the death to protect the parity of sterling against the German mark. The hedge funds saw a one-way bet, then and now, and the paradox is that Paulson's initial actions may have made the banks more vulnerable, not less.
What will happen in January, when the rules on short-selling expire? And whatever else government does, we must remember that regulation introduced in response to one crisis almost always helps to create the next one. London's recent success as a financial centre - and our edge over New York - has been at least partly to do with the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley rules that fettered American markets.
Before you attack the bankers of London, remember that this is one of the few global industries in which we truly excel; the City contributes about 9 per cent of Britain's GDP - think of all the professions and trades that feast, directly or indirectly, on the nourishment provided: the lawyers, accountants, PR firms, architects, interior designers, builders, taxi drivers and just about everyone else.
And before you go whingeing to me about house prices boosted by City bonuses, I leave you with one final thought: whatever the disasters of the sub-prime sector, these products allowed millions of Americans to own their homes, and the vast majority are making their payments. They will enjoy the long-term benefits of home ownership, and that is thanks to the ingenuity and enterprise of people who lend money for profit.
Of course there are spivs and speculators out there. But before we get carried away with neo-socialist claptrap, we should remember the huge benefits brought to this country by bankers and the City of London
Source
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Bureaucratic NHS control freaks quite happy to let patients die rather than lose any control
Bosses in the National Health Service have refused to administer a drug to a patient with advanced kidney cancer even though the medicine is being provided free. Barrie Clark, 61, was told in May that he could receive a free supply of a new kidney cancer drug on compassionate grounds from the pharmaceuticals company that makes it. Clark was then astonished to be told by the NHS that he could not take up the offer at his local hospital because it was against management policy. He could receive the drug, which has been approved as safe, only by paying for nurses to administer it privately.
Clark is in a similar predicament to patients being denied NHS care if they choose to pay for drugs that the health service does not fund. Campaigners are outraged that the ban on allowing NHS patients to pay for private drugs has now extended to letting them receive additional medicines for free.
In a letter of complaint to NHS Grampian, which runs Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where Clark is being treated, the father of four said: "I have been denied a free drug for a long time when there was no alternative treatment. "We find this appalling and demand that the drug be offered free of charge immediately. How many other people has this happened to? You have jeopardised my life and caused great anguish to me and my family. That is disgraceful."
The medicine, temsirolimus, which has the brand name Torisel, was granted a licence for the European Union in November. The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has ruled that its benefits outweigh the risks. Dozens of NHS patients have received it on compassionate grounds from Wyeth, the manufacturer, in advance of its commercial launch in Britain. The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is assessing whether Torisel is cost-effective enough to be prescribed on the NHS.
Managers at NHS Grampian told Clark that he could not receive it because it was not yet on its list of prescribed drugs, known as the hospital formulary. The trust says it will not be placed on the formulary until it is assessed by Nice or the Scottish Medicines Consortium. Clark, a manager in the oil industry, has been helped by Kate Spall, a cancer drugs campaigner with the Pamela Northcott Fund. Spall said: "I have never heard such rubbish. They are saying this medicine cannot be given because it is not on a drug list, but patients elsewhere across the country are getting it. Are we now in a position where a terminally ill patient is denied a free medication?"
Cancer professors dismissed the explanation as "bureaucratic nonsense". Will Steward, a consultant oncologist at Leicester Royal Infirmary, said: "I really do not understand the decision not to allow a free drug to be administered from the hospital. We do this frequently. "Many trusts have allowed this in the past and this decision is perverse." Jonathan Waxman, a consultant oncologist at the Hammersmith hospital in London, added: "This is an effective treatment. This shows the mess we are now in."
After Clark told the hospital he was going to speak to the media, managers said he could pay to have the drug administered privately. He would need to pay about $2,000 a month as it is taken intravenously. Clark said that, although appalled at his treatment by the NHS, his own oncologist had done his best. NHS Grampian declined to comment on the individual case.
The Sunday Times has been campaigning to end the ban on NHS patients paying for private drugs that the state does not fund. Last week two patients won appeals to receive cancer drugs on the NHS after they featured in the Sunday Times Right to Pay campaign.
Sheila Norrington, 59, a cancer patient from Maidstone, Kent, was denied NHS care after paying privately for Erbitux, which costs about $6,000 a month. After the paper highlighted her case, the Peggy Wood Foundation, a charity, agreed to pick up the bills, but last week West Kent Primary Care Trust reversed its decision.
Barry Humphrey, 59, from North Walsham, Norfolk, was told that if he paid for Nexavar, the only available treatment for his advanced liver cancer, he would be billed for his NHS care. His local trust refused to fund the drug but neighbouring Suffolk Primary Care Trust has recommended that the NHS should provide it.
The British Medical Association and the NHS Confederation, which represents hospital managers, support a patient's right to co-pay for cancer drugs without losing NHS care.
Source
NHS clinics to be built `where they are not needed'
Is anybody surprised?
The Government is planning to build dozens of new NHS clinics in areas where they are not required, independent research seen by The Times suggests. Ministers have told each of the 152 local health authorities in England to build at least one "GP-led health centre" in a $500 million scheme to improve patient access to doctors. The 1 million pound walk-in clinics will combine surgeries with services such as dentistry and chiropody.
Local primary care trusts (PCTs) are proposing sites for the health centres that would result in many being built in the wrong areas, analysts say. More than 1.3 million people have signed a petition against the clinics, which doctors' leaders and the Conservatives say could close hundreds of surgeries.
Demographic research by CACI, a market research firm, says that inner-city areas may need up to four health centres while rural locations might need none at all. The Department of Health said that the centres were intended to complement, not replace, existing practices.
Source
UK forecast: 'Arctic winter with heavy snow and plummeting temperatures'
AN Arctic winter with heavy snow and plummeting temperatures lies in store for us all after one of the most miserable summers on record.
And we could even be in for a white Christmas, with the first snow due in December.
But the worst of the weather will come in the New Year, with icy storms bringing disruption to public services, roads, and schools.
The bitter cold will stretch into February, when daytime temperatures could struggle to rise above freezing point.
"It's going to be a colder than average winter," said forecaster Jonathan Powell of Positive Weather Solutions. "We can look forward to a lot of us seeing some snow throughout December, January and February, not to mention some raw temperatures."
There is a 45 per cent chance of snow on Christmas Day, particularly in the North and East, he forecast.
"In mid-February we'll see a sustained cold blast, with penetrating frosts by night, and also the threat of wintry conditions that will bring the UK to a grinding halt.
"Our daytime temperatures will struggle to get above freezing, with the wind-chill factor keeping the `real feel' temperature well below that for a period of time."
Despite the gloomy outlook, the Indian summer looks set to continue until at least the end of September. Much of the country has been enjoying the best weather in more than three months, with this week being the driest since June.
Temperatures will remain at 65F (18C), above the seasonal average, with plenty of sun and little rain.
"It's going to remain very nice indeed over the next 10 days or so," said Sarah Holland of the Met Office. "It is the belated summer eveyone has wanted."
Source
The harmful mistakes of sex education in school
Those who can, do, according to the old saying, and those who can't, teach. That has always seemed to me unfair. However, I have come to think that those who can't teach, teach sex education. Judged by its results - not a bad way of judging - sex education has been an utter failure. The increase in sex education here in recent years has coincided with an explosion of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease (STD) far worse than anywhere else in Europe. Since the government's teenage pregnancy strategy was introduced in 1999, the number of girls having abortions has soared. You might well be tempted to argue that sex education causes sexual delinquency.
Only two months ago the Health Protection Agency reported that a culture of promiscuity among the young had driven the rate of STDs to a record. Almost 400,000 people - half of them under 25 - were newly diagnosed, 6% more than in 2006.
When something fails, the usual procedure is to drop it and try something else. With sex education, the worse it gets, the more people cry out for more of it and earlier. Ministers are considering whether to make schools offer more sex education, offer it earlier and deny parents the right to withdraw their children from it.
Last week the Family Planning Association - now calling itself the fpa, having joined other charities in a mad rush to reduce themselves to a couple of lower-case letters - published a comic-style sex education booklet for six-year-olds to be marketed in primary schools for use in sex and relationships lessons. It has printed 50,000 copies of Let's Grow with Nisha and Joe, and tried it out in more than 50 primary schools; it hopes to encourage schools that have shied away from sex lessons to take them on with Nisha and Joe. Oh dear.
There's nothing wrong with the pamphlet itself. Admittedly it's more of a dreary workbook than a "fun" comic, but there's nothing that would startle a child or should upset even the most conservative of "family campaigners". The rudest thing is a drawing of two children, naked, with instructions to draw lines connecting interesting bits of their bodies with the appropriate words. This is all to promote discussion of sex and relationships when children are young enough not to feel self-conscious.
It seems to me highly unrealistic (given that 25% of children leave primary school struggling to read and write) to assume that many six-year-olds could begin to read the labels "testicles" or "vagina". And it is infuriating, given that medical-style euphemism has triumphed over plain English, that the authors have chosen one that's wrong. "Vagina" does not mean the external genital organs, commonly referred to as "front bottom". It comes from the Latin for sheath or scabbard and means what that suggests. The correct word would be "vulva", but the ill-educated educationists blithely impose inaccuracy on our tiny children. However, that is not what I most object to.
What I object to about the book is what I object to about sex education as a whole (quite apart from its failures). Sex education - particularly compulsory and standardised sex education - is based on mistaken assumptions. The first is the pervasive assumption of equality - that is, that all six-year-olds or all 11-year-olds or 15-year-olds can discuss the complexities of sex in the same form in the same way. That's nonsense. Children vary in intelligence and progress. Some young children can easily decipher words such as "urethra"; others may never be able to read them.
More importantly, children and teenagers mature at different ages and come from different backgrounds with different family expectations. You cannot talk the same way to a shy 13-year-old who hasn't had her first period to another who is well acquainted with the darker recesses of the school bike shed. Some boys are men at 11 and 12, physically; others are children until much later. Some children's parents find it acceptable that their sons and daughters are having sex at 13, while others would be shocked: you cannot talk to all these children together. It would puzzle and offend them and might do them serious damage. And it undermines the authority of those parents who do not share the values of the teacher, or of the majority of the other pupils. It is wrong to assume that people want equality in such matters. They want differences.
Children and families and moral values are not equal, neither within schools nor outside them. They simply aren't the same.A sensitive teacher will try to make allowances, but there is a shortage in this country of good and sensitive teachers - hence the crisis in education.
Another mistaken assumption is that sex education ought, necessarily, to be entrusted to teachers, given how wildly they vary in ability and in moral attitudes. The thought that the government is considering making sex and relationship education compulsory in schools is terrifying. I can hardly imagine anything worse than subjecting a sensitive child to guidance on such matters from an inexperienced and politically correct teacher, who is neither well informed nor self-critical.
The relationships between sex, love, babies, crime and disease are too explosive to be left primarily to such a person, or to any person apart from the parents. Of course where parents can't, or won't, guide their children on such matters, the duty falls on teachers. Some may do a good job, although the evidence isn't encouraging. But none should take it on without parental consent.
It always amazes me when people complain that people don't talk about sex and there's not enough information about it. The truth is, you can hardly avoid it. Newspapers, magazines, chat shows, blogs, internet information sites, doctors' surgeries and all the rest are groaning under the weight of information about sex, contraception and relationships. Some of it I think is good; some of it you might think is better. And that's the point. Schools shouldn't be required to impose sex education, still less a standard sex curriculum on us. We should be able to pick and choose for our children among the infinity of information out there.
Channel 4's The Sex Education Show, for instance, strikes me as informative and helpful but depressingly vulgar. Others might find it tastefully frank. It's up to us to choose. Teacher, leave that child alone.
Source
Inquest into British police shooting: Police ruled victim out as suspect 20 mins before they shot him! "Jean Charles de Menezes was ruled out as a suspected suicide bomber just 20 minutes before he was shot dead by police, an inquest into his death has heard. The innocent Brazilian was killed on a Tube train at Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005 after being mistaken for one of the four terrorists who had tried to blow themselves up on London's transport system the previous day. Two firearms officers who shot him in the head a total of seven times at point blank range have said they were "convinced" Mr de Menezes was about to detonate a suicide bomb and that "an instant killing was the only option" otherwise "everyone in the carriage was going to die". Yet an officer in the Metropolitan Police control room directing the surveillance teams who followed Mr de Menezes made a note which said: "Not identical male as above discounted. Surveillance to withdraw to original positions."
Bosses in the National Health Service have refused to administer a drug to a patient with advanced kidney cancer even though the medicine is being provided free. Barrie Clark, 61, was told in May that he could receive a free supply of a new kidney cancer drug on compassionate grounds from the pharmaceuticals company that makes it. Clark was then astonished to be told by the NHS that he could not take up the offer at his local hospital because it was against management policy. He could receive the drug, which has been approved as safe, only by paying for nurses to administer it privately.
Clark is in a similar predicament to patients being denied NHS care if they choose to pay for drugs that the health service does not fund. Campaigners are outraged that the ban on allowing NHS patients to pay for private drugs has now extended to letting them receive additional medicines for free.
In a letter of complaint to NHS Grampian, which runs Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where Clark is being treated, the father of four said: "I have been denied a free drug for a long time when there was no alternative treatment. "We find this appalling and demand that the drug be offered free of charge immediately. How many other people has this happened to? You have jeopardised my life and caused great anguish to me and my family. That is disgraceful."
The medicine, temsirolimus, which has the brand name Torisel, was granted a licence for the European Union in November. The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has ruled that its benefits outweigh the risks. Dozens of NHS patients have received it on compassionate grounds from Wyeth, the manufacturer, in advance of its commercial launch in Britain. The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is assessing whether Torisel is cost-effective enough to be prescribed on the NHS.
Managers at NHS Grampian told Clark that he could not receive it because it was not yet on its list of prescribed drugs, known as the hospital formulary. The trust says it will not be placed on the formulary until it is assessed by Nice or the Scottish Medicines Consortium. Clark, a manager in the oil industry, has been helped by Kate Spall, a cancer drugs campaigner with the Pamela Northcott Fund. Spall said: "I have never heard such rubbish. They are saying this medicine cannot be given because it is not on a drug list, but patients elsewhere across the country are getting it. Are we now in a position where a terminally ill patient is denied a free medication?"
Cancer professors dismissed the explanation as "bureaucratic nonsense". Will Steward, a consultant oncologist at Leicester Royal Infirmary, said: "I really do not understand the decision not to allow a free drug to be administered from the hospital. We do this frequently. "Many trusts have allowed this in the past and this decision is perverse." Jonathan Waxman, a consultant oncologist at the Hammersmith hospital in London, added: "This is an effective treatment. This shows the mess we are now in."
After Clark told the hospital he was going to speak to the media, managers said he could pay to have the drug administered privately. He would need to pay about $2,000 a month as it is taken intravenously. Clark said that, although appalled at his treatment by the NHS, his own oncologist had done his best. NHS Grampian declined to comment on the individual case.
The Sunday Times has been campaigning to end the ban on NHS patients paying for private drugs that the state does not fund. Last week two patients won appeals to receive cancer drugs on the NHS after they featured in the Sunday Times Right to Pay campaign.
Sheila Norrington, 59, a cancer patient from Maidstone, Kent, was denied NHS care after paying privately for Erbitux, which costs about $6,000 a month. After the paper highlighted her case, the Peggy Wood Foundation, a charity, agreed to pick up the bills, but last week West Kent Primary Care Trust reversed its decision.
Barry Humphrey, 59, from North Walsham, Norfolk, was told that if he paid for Nexavar, the only available treatment for his advanced liver cancer, he would be billed for his NHS care. His local trust refused to fund the drug but neighbouring Suffolk Primary Care Trust has recommended that the NHS should provide it.
The British Medical Association and the NHS Confederation, which represents hospital managers, support a patient's right to co-pay for cancer drugs without losing NHS care.
Source
NHS clinics to be built `where they are not needed'
Is anybody surprised?
The Government is planning to build dozens of new NHS clinics in areas where they are not required, independent research seen by The Times suggests. Ministers have told each of the 152 local health authorities in England to build at least one "GP-led health centre" in a $500 million scheme to improve patient access to doctors. The 1 million pound walk-in clinics will combine surgeries with services such as dentistry and chiropody.
Local primary care trusts (PCTs) are proposing sites for the health centres that would result in many being built in the wrong areas, analysts say. More than 1.3 million people have signed a petition against the clinics, which doctors' leaders and the Conservatives say could close hundreds of surgeries.
Demographic research by CACI, a market research firm, says that inner-city areas may need up to four health centres while rural locations might need none at all. The Department of Health said that the centres were intended to complement, not replace, existing practices.
Source
UK forecast: 'Arctic winter with heavy snow and plummeting temperatures'
AN Arctic winter with heavy snow and plummeting temperatures lies in store for us all after one of the most miserable summers on record.
And we could even be in for a white Christmas, with the first snow due in December.
But the worst of the weather will come in the New Year, with icy storms bringing disruption to public services, roads, and schools.
The bitter cold will stretch into February, when daytime temperatures could struggle to rise above freezing point.
"It's going to be a colder than average winter," said forecaster Jonathan Powell of Positive Weather Solutions. "We can look forward to a lot of us seeing some snow throughout December, January and February, not to mention some raw temperatures."
There is a 45 per cent chance of snow on Christmas Day, particularly in the North and East, he forecast.
"In mid-February we'll see a sustained cold blast, with penetrating frosts by night, and also the threat of wintry conditions that will bring the UK to a grinding halt.
"Our daytime temperatures will struggle to get above freezing, with the wind-chill factor keeping the `real feel' temperature well below that for a period of time."
Despite the gloomy outlook, the Indian summer looks set to continue until at least the end of September. Much of the country has been enjoying the best weather in more than three months, with this week being the driest since June.
Temperatures will remain at 65F (18C), above the seasonal average, with plenty of sun and little rain.
"It's going to remain very nice indeed over the next 10 days or so," said Sarah Holland of the Met Office. "It is the belated summer eveyone has wanted."
Source
The harmful mistakes of sex education in school
Those who can, do, according to the old saying, and those who can't, teach. That has always seemed to me unfair. However, I have come to think that those who can't teach, teach sex education. Judged by its results - not a bad way of judging - sex education has been an utter failure. The increase in sex education here in recent years has coincided with an explosion of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease (STD) far worse than anywhere else in Europe. Since the government's teenage pregnancy strategy was introduced in 1999, the number of girls having abortions has soared. You might well be tempted to argue that sex education causes sexual delinquency.
Only two months ago the Health Protection Agency reported that a culture of promiscuity among the young had driven the rate of STDs to a record. Almost 400,000 people - half of them under 25 - were newly diagnosed, 6% more than in 2006.
When something fails, the usual procedure is to drop it and try something else. With sex education, the worse it gets, the more people cry out for more of it and earlier. Ministers are considering whether to make schools offer more sex education, offer it earlier and deny parents the right to withdraw their children from it.
Last week the Family Planning Association - now calling itself the fpa, having joined other charities in a mad rush to reduce themselves to a couple of lower-case letters - published a comic-style sex education booklet for six-year-olds to be marketed in primary schools for use in sex and relationships lessons. It has printed 50,000 copies of Let's Grow with Nisha and Joe, and tried it out in more than 50 primary schools; it hopes to encourage schools that have shied away from sex lessons to take them on with Nisha and Joe. Oh dear.
There's nothing wrong with the pamphlet itself. Admittedly it's more of a dreary workbook than a "fun" comic, but there's nothing that would startle a child or should upset even the most conservative of "family campaigners". The rudest thing is a drawing of two children, naked, with instructions to draw lines connecting interesting bits of their bodies with the appropriate words. This is all to promote discussion of sex and relationships when children are young enough not to feel self-conscious.
It seems to me highly unrealistic (given that 25% of children leave primary school struggling to read and write) to assume that many six-year-olds could begin to read the labels "testicles" or "vagina". And it is infuriating, given that medical-style euphemism has triumphed over plain English, that the authors have chosen one that's wrong. "Vagina" does not mean the external genital organs, commonly referred to as "front bottom". It comes from the Latin for sheath or scabbard and means what that suggests. The correct word would be "vulva", but the ill-educated educationists blithely impose inaccuracy on our tiny children. However, that is not what I most object to.
What I object to about the book is what I object to about sex education as a whole (quite apart from its failures). Sex education - particularly compulsory and standardised sex education - is based on mistaken assumptions. The first is the pervasive assumption of equality - that is, that all six-year-olds or all 11-year-olds or 15-year-olds can discuss the complexities of sex in the same form in the same way. That's nonsense. Children vary in intelligence and progress. Some young children can easily decipher words such as "urethra"; others may never be able to read them.
More importantly, children and teenagers mature at different ages and come from different backgrounds with different family expectations. You cannot talk the same way to a shy 13-year-old who hasn't had her first period to another who is well acquainted with the darker recesses of the school bike shed. Some boys are men at 11 and 12, physically; others are children until much later. Some children's parents find it acceptable that their sons and daughters are having sex at 13, while others would be shocked: you cannot talk to all these children together. It would puzzle and offend them and might do them serious damage. And it undermines the authority of those parents who do not share the values of the teacher, or of the majority of the other pupils. It is wrong to assume that people want equality in such matters. They want differences.
Children and families and moral values are not equal, neither within schools nor outside them. They simply aren't the same.A sensitive teacher will try to make allowances, but there is a shortage in this country of good and sensitive teachers - hence the crisis in education.
Another mistaken assumption is that sex education ought, necessarily, to be entrusted to teachers, given how wildly they vary in ability and in moral attitudes. The thought that the government is considering making sex and relationship education compulsory in schools is terrifying. I can hardly imagine anything worse than subjecting a sensitive child to guidance on such matters from an inexperienced and politically correct teacher, who is neither well informed nor self-critical.
The relationships between sex, love, babies, crime and disease are too explosive to be left primarily to such a person, or to any person apart from the parents. Of course where parents can't, or won't, guide their children on such matters, the duty falls on teachers. Some may do a good job, although the evidence isn't encouraging. But none should take it on without parental consent.
It always amazes me when people complain that people don't talk about sex and there's not enough information about it. The truth is, you can hardly avoid it. Newspapers, magazines, chat shows, blogs, internet information sites, doctors' surgeries and all the rest are groaning under the weight of information about sex, contraception and relationships. Some of it I think is good; some of it you might think is better. And that's the point. Schools shouldn't be required to impose sex education, still less a standard sex curriculum on us. We should be able to pick and choose for our children among the infinity of information out there.
Channel 4's The Sex Education Show, for instance, strikes me as informative and helpful but depressingly vulgar. Others might find it tastefully frank. It's up to us to choose. Teacher, leave that child alone.
Source
Inquest into British police shooting: Police ruled victim out as suspect 20 mins before they shot him! "Jean Charles de Menezes was ruled out as a suspected suicide bomber just 20 minutes before he was shot dead by police, an inquest into his death has heard. The innocent Brazilian was killed on a Tube train at Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005 after being mistaken for one of the four terrorists who had tried to blow themselves up on London's transport system the previous day. Two firearms officers who shot him in the head a total of seven times at point blank range have said they were "convinced" Mr de Menezes was about to detonate a suicide bomb and that "an instant killing was the only option" otherwise "everyone in the carriage was going to die". Yet an officer in the Metropolitan Police control room directing the surveillance teams who followed Mr de Menezes made a note which said: "Not identical male as above discounted. Surveillance to withdraw to original positions."
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
DOES LACK OF DOCTORS MAKE YOU FAT?
This is an amusing one. Some more cart before the horse logic. The authors find that people are slimmer where there are more doctors. But, despite hailing from good old class-conscious England, they have missed the obvious. Middle class people are slimmer and live in nicer areas. And doctors like living in nicer areas and seeing middle class people. So it is nicer areas that cause both the slimness and the increased presence of doctors. The presence of more doctors is not causal. Abstract follows:
GP supply and obesity
By Stephen Morris and Hugh Gravelle
Abstract
We investigate the relationship between area general practitioner (GP) supply and individual body mass index (BMI) in England. Individual level BMI is regressed against area whole time equivalent GPs per 1000 population plus a large number of individual and area level covariates. We use instrumental variables (area house prices and age weighted capitation) to allow for the endogeneity of GP supply. We find that that a 10% increase in GP supply is associated with a mean reduction in BMI of around 1 kg/m2 (around 4% of mean BMI). The results suggest that reduced list sizes per GP can improve the management of obesity.
Source
Social class 'determines child's success' in Britain
Given the woeful standards of government schools, it's no surprise. People with a bit of money in Britain send their kids private
Children's social class is still the most significant factor in determining their exam success in state schools, the Government's head of teacher training acknowledges today. In an interview with The Independent, Graham Holley, the chief executive of the Training and Development Agency, said: "The performance of a school and a child in it is highly linked to social class. "If you turn the clock back on pupils in school today 15 years and predict their outcomes from where they were born, you can do it.
"We need to change that. It's not something this government has done. It's not something the last government has done. It's something that has been there since the Second World War and probably even before that."
Mr Holley also warned that as many as three in every 10 secondary schools (around 1,000 state schools) were "arguably still performing unsatisfactorily". But he distanced himself from the claim made by Gordon Brown that schools that failed to get 30 per cent of their pupils to achieve five A* to C grade passes at GCSE were "failing". "I'm not saying they [the three in ten] are failing and I'm not saying that these schools all have a challenging intake. There are some schools whose results do not look bad on paper that are complacent and coasting and they're not doing as well with their children as are schools in very similar circumstances. "We have to ask why is that? It is not down to individual teachers' competence. It is down to they way they are managed."
Mr Holley was speaking after presenting his views to a high level private meeting of senior educationalists in an attempt to improve the impact teaching can have on the quality of children's lives. He called for moves to ensure the most highly qualified teachers were persuaded to teach in the country's most disadvantaged schools.
He said the Training and Development Agency was examining ways of achieving this - including the prospect of paying "golden hellos" and "golden handcuffs" (where newly-qualified teachers are paid extra provided they sign a contract committing themselves to working for a certain period of time in a school). But he insisted: "It's not just about money. We need to ensure they have the professional support to deal with issues as they arise. "It takes some time to manage a class well and control and manage behaviour - including poor behaviour. It is quite possible to tolerate a level of disruption in a class and for there still to be learning taking place. Also, just because pupils have stopped throwing things about, it doesn't mean they're now learning well. "It is a very difficult challenge for a teacher to learn this. They will not have had this experience and they will need continuing professional development."
Mr Holley also called for more investment in schools offering extended services - such as breakfast and homework clubs - to help deprived children overcome the handicaps of working at home. "Children are turning up to school, cold hungry and not in the right frame of mind to learn," he said. "There also may be nowhere for them to do homework at home - their parents may be working or a single parent could be pre-occupied with other things."
He also revealed that the agency is increasing the number of "enhancement" courses to boost the number of maths and science teachers in schools. Under this initiative, graduates with an allied degree - in engineering or, say, oceanography - can spend up to six months topping up their skills to become science teachers. They would be paid a bursary of œ225 a week while on the course.
Source
British bar owners told traditional sign 'encourages drink driving'
Landlords Trisha and Thomas Russell were told to remove the board, which shows an arrow beneath the words: 'The Black Dog, Chilmark, Bar and Restaurant' as it was deemed distracting to motorists. The sign, the size of a sandwich board, was erected two decades ago, as the pub is located away from the main A303 road.
The couple, who took over the tenancy four weeks ago were surprised to hear they needed planning permission for the sign and were then shocked to receive an objection from the Highways Agency for their application. A letter from the agency read: "The sign contains several lines of text and is therefore distracting to motorists. "It is also advertising the use of a public house to motorists, potentially providing the temptation to drink and drive while using a long distance trunk route.
"No alcohol is allowed to be served or consumed in service stations on motorways as a matter of principle. "We would wish to continue this principle by not encouraging drivers to break their journey in a public house."
Mrs Russell, 41, said the objection was ridiculous and the pub in Chilmark, Wiltshire, also serves a range of soft drinks and meals. She believes removal of the sign could lead to a dramatic drop in customers. "Motorists who come in only use the toilet and have a sandwich alongside a glass of lemonade," she said. "We get a lot of our business from the sign and without it I worry that our customer numbers will fall considerably. "We came here from another pub and have never experienced anything as daft as this, " she added.
A spokesman for the Highways Agency said the letter could be "misconstrued" and there was no implication that signs of public houses would lead to an increase in drink driving. "The decision to drink drive is a personal one and not directly the responsibility of the publican or the business." A spokeswoman for West Wiltshire District Council said the planning application was still under-review and that a decision had not yet been made.
Source
Global Warming's Boom Bust
Global warming' is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage.
Despite all the undoubted political and economic gloom, the delightful thing about today's Sunday newspapers is the virtual absence of the phrase `global warming'. `Global warming' has been effectively buried, by collapsing banks and plunging markets, by rising energy costs, by internal battling within the Labour Party, by pitbulls and the American election, by real threats, like knife crime and terrorism in Islamabad, and by the fact that, on nearly every bit of current evidence, the world is likely to enter a cooling phase - the BBC please note.
Interestingly, the final part of BBC 2's dire series, `Earth - The Climate Wars', which is to be shown this evening, has also fallen out of the ratings, not even, for example, being suggested under `Choice' in The Sunday Times television listings [see: `Culture', The Sunday Times, September 21, pp. 60 - 61]. Mind you, as I have already pointed out, this seriously-unbalanced programme has been well and truly `flounced', and rightly so, by BBC 1's new four-part costume drama, `Tess of the D'Urbervilles' [see: `Tess Trumps Trumpery', September 16]. The pretty Morris dancers have pranced all over it. And tonight, thank goodness, it doesn't stand a chance, as Angel Clare carries the four milkmaids, one by one, across that famous swollen stream. Guess which programme I'll be watching? Phwoar!
Double Whammy!
The only exception to all this is a double whammy against `global warming' by Christopher Booker writing in The Sunday Telegraph [`Financial crisis: Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam', The Sunday Telegraph, September 21].
First, we should note that Booker is also scathing about `Earth - The Climate Wars' [see the Section (scroll down): `BBC series stitches up sceptics in counter-attack over climate change' - thank goodness I wasn't interviewed!]: "There was no hint that the `hockey stick' is among the most completely discredited artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to the devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph's creators had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a hockey-stick shape whatever data were fed into it.
There was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or obscure some vital fact. Yet the `impartial' BBC is sending out this farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the `march of the lie' continues."
Actually, I think that the BBC has made a somewhat more fundamental miscalculation. What strikes me about this programme is how old fashioned the whole concept now seems, how out-of-date the trope and the battle. It is as if world economics and politics have not changed dramatically over the last year. The brutal truth is that the `global warming' boom is bust. Fewer and fewer people are interested. Indeed, even I am bored to distraction by it , and as for Goodwife Stott ....
"The Economics Of The Madhouse"
But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Booker exposes the sheer economic idiocy behind `global warming', claiming: "What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers [see left: photo by David Shankbone, reproduced under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence, Version 1.2 or any later version] and the likelihood that in four years' time our electricity bills will jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal and gas prices)?
The answer is that, before its collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to `fight climate change' by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide."
He goes on: "Advised by some of the world's leading global warming activists, such as Dr James Hansen and Al Gore (a close friend of the firm's erstwhile managing director Theodore Roosevelt IV), Lehman bought their message wholesale. GIM, the company set up by Gore to sell `carbon offsets' in return for planting trees, was a prized Lehman client.
The particular market that Lehman hoped to dominate is centred on the buying and selling of carbon permits, through the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) set up in 2005, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the `cap and trade' system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama. This may still seem abstract but it will affect all our lives, because ultimately we will all be paying for it, through the colossal costs it will impose on industry, not least electricity."
And Booker's overall conclusion is trenchant: "Everything about this grandiose scheme betokens the economics of the madhouse ... What is certain is that it will pile astronomic costs onto everyone in the EU, inevitably impacting most severely on poorer householders that will face bills they cannot afford. The only other certainty - perhaps a consolation - is that those sharing in this bonanza will not include Lehman Brothers, now excluded from cashing in on what threatens to become the maddest scam the world has ever seen."
Now, while I don't know the ins and outs of all this, of one thing I am certain. With a world likely to cool during the next decade, with a world economy set in austere mode, and with the new politics of China, India, Brazil, and the rest, Big Global Warming's boom days are surely coming to an end.
Source
Another drug trial disaster in Britain
A 27-YEAR-OLD man has died in a government-funded medical trial, in which at least two other patients were given overdoses. Gary Foster, a graphic designer who was planning to get married this month, was on seven occasions given double the amount of chemotherapy he should have been prescribed. His mother, Colleen Foster, said: "Gary was slowly poisoned to death."
The mistakes raise questions about the safety of medical trials in Britain two years after the notorious "elephant man" trial, which was supposed to have led to tighter supervision. Six men nearly died after their bodies swelled horrifically after taking the experimental drug TGN1412.
University College London Hospitals NHS Trust (UCLH), one of Britain's largest trusts, has been forced to suspend the trial although it is continuing at other UK hospitals. Foster's death was due to a fundamental error in the setting-up of the trial on the hospital computer system. A second UCLH patient was affected by the same error, but survived.
Another patient, who died at a different hospital, and whose name has not been disclosed, also received an overdose of the drug bleomycin. In that case, the overdose was due to an error by a nurse or doctor rather than a basic flaw in the setting-up of the trial. According to the Medical Research Council (MRC), the government-funded organisation which ran the trial, the drug was not the direct cause of his death.
When the MRC suspected that patients had been given overdoses, instead of calling UCLH immediately, it posted a letter on October 3, 2007. An inquest into Foster's death heard that a nurse failed to open the letter until October 16, two days after his death. The family concede that by October 3 it was too late to save Foster because he was already dying of organ failure caused by the overdoses.
Foster, from Waltham Abbey, Essex, was eager to join the medical trial in June 2007. He had just been diagnosed with testicular cancer, and he had a 60% chance of survival. The disease has a survival rate of about 95% if caught early. Doctors told Foster that, if he was accepted for the trial, his chances of survival would increase.
Colleen Foster said: "The trial sister said: `Good news, Gary, you have been selected for the trial.' At UCLH they said, `Don't worry, testicular cancer is curable. We will monitor Gary for 10 years - you don't have to worry.' They made us feel so confident." His fiancee, Paula Collins, 35, added: "When Gary became involved in the trial, we thought it was fantastic news because we thought Gary's chance of survival would be greater and the care would be better."
The trial, called TE23, was testing whether a combination of five existing chemotherapy drugs was better at treating testicular cancer than the standard treatment of three drugs. Foster was in the group receiving the new therapy. From June until mid-September 2007 he made regular trips to UCLH in central London, to receive the drugs. On seven occasions between July and September last year, he received 30,000 units of one of the drugs, bleomycin, instead of 15,000. Foster and his family had no idea the drugs they believed were saving his life were killing him. Colleen Foster said: "We just thought Gary was getting tired because of the chemotherapy."
Eventually Foster developed a dry cough, a symptom of lung damage, caused by an overdose of bleomycin. An inquest heard that the cough should have been recognised by doctors and nurses as a warning sign that the bleomycin was damaging his lungs. Despite the cough, Foster was given a final dose. The coroner ruled that Foster died as a result of lung damage caused by an overdose of bleomycin. The coroner also found that the instructions for the trial had been wrongly set up on the electronic prescribing system at UCLH.
Colleen Foster said: "An overdose gives the impression that it was a one-off. It was seven times. Every week my poor Gary was going into hospital, we thought he was getting better but, actually, he was being slowly poisoned and poisoned to death." Eventually he became so ill that he was transferred to intensive care and put on a ventilator, but attempts to save him were in vain. Foster's family blame his death on a trial they say was set up in a hurried and piecemeal manner.
Collins said: "Checks should have been carried out. It is incomprehensible that they were dealing with the most dangerous medicines and they were so blase. It was so slapdash. "We had dreams and lots of plans together," she said. "Gary also had his own ambitions. We were supposed to be getting married on Saturday September 6, instead, on the Tuesday before, we were at the inquest. He was such a lovely person. He was so well liked and had so many friends."
"We do need trials but there need to be more controls," Collins added. "I would encourage other people thinking about taking part in trials to proceed with caution. I would hate to think of anyone else going through what we have gone through." .....
The MRC said it had reviewed its trial procedures as a result of the tragedy and introduced additional checks. It said it followed its normal procedures by posting its concerns rather than making an emergency phone call. "During the processing of the forms for the UCLH patients, a possible dosing error for these two patients was spotted. A query form was then returned to the hospital." Dr Stephen Harland, who was in charge of the trial at UCLH and supervised Foster's care, declined to comment....
Source
Must not criticize Islam
British critic to be banned from teaching because of his "intolerance". British teachers are generally very Leftist and so are those who control and represent them.
The BNP is an anti-immigration party.
Note the following Leftist comment from another report of the matter:
Christina sounds pretty intolerant herself. Perhaps she too should be banned from teaching.
This is an amusing one. Some more cart before the horse logic. The authors find that people are slimmer where there are more doctors. But, despite hailing from good old class-conscious England, they have missed the obvious. Middle class people are slimmer and live in nicer areas. And doctors like living in nicer areas and seeing middle class people. So it is nicer areas that cause both the slimness and the increased presence of doctors. The presence of more doctors is not causal. Abstract follows:
GP supply and obesity
By Stephen Morris and Hugh Gravelle
Abstract
We investigate the relationship between area general practitioner (GP) supply and individual body mass index (BMI) in England. Individual level BMI is regressed against area whole time equivalent GPs per 1000 population plus a large number of individual and area level covariates. We use instrumental variables (area house prices and age weighted capitation) to allow for the endogeneity of GP supply. We find that that a 10% increase in GP supply is associated with a mean reduction in BMI of around 1 kg/m2 (around 4% of mean BMI). The results suggest that reduced list sizes per GP can improve the management of obesity.
Source
Social class 'determines child's success' in Britain
Given the woeful standards of government schools, it's no surprise. People with a bit of money in Britain send their kids private
Children's social class is still the most significant factor in determining their exam success in state schools, the Government's head of teacher training acknowledges today. In an interview with The Independent, Graham Holley, the chief executive of the Training and Development Agency, said: "The performance of a school and a child in it is highly linked to social class. "If you turn the clock back on pupils in school today 15 years and predict their outcomes from where they were born, you can do it.
"We need to change that. It's not something this government has done. It's not something the last government has done. It's something that has been there since the Second World War and probably even before that."
Mr Holley also warned that as many as three in every 10 secondary schools (around 1,000 state schools) were "arguably still performing unsatisfactorily". But he distanced himself from the claim made by Gordon Brown that schools that failed to get 30 per cent of their pupils to achieve five A* to C grade passes at GCSE were "failing". "I'm not saying they [the three in ten] are failing and I'm not saying that these schools all have a challenging intake. There are some schools whose results do not look bad on paper that are complacent and coasting and they're not doing as well with their children as are schools in very similar circumstances. "We have to ask why is that? It is not down to individual teachers' competence. It is down to they way they are managed."
Mr Holley was speaking after presenting his views to a high level private meeting of senior educationalists in an attempt to improve the impact teaching can have on the quality of children's lives. He called for moves to ensure the most highly qualified teachers were persuaded to teach in the country's most disadvantaged schools.
He said the Training and Development Agency was examining ways of achieving this - including the prospect of paying "golden hellos" and "golden handcuffs" (where newly-qualified teachers are paid extra provided they sign a contract committing themselves to working for a certain period of time in a school). But he insisted: "It's not just about money. We need to ensure they have the professional support to deal with issues as they arise. "It takes some time to manage a class well and control and manage behaviour - including poor behaviour. It is quite possible to tolerate a level of disruption in a class and for there still to be learning taking place. Also, just because pupils have stopped throwing things about, it doesn't mean they're now learning well. "It is a very difficult challenge for a teacher to learn this. They will not have had this experience and they will need continuing professional development."
Mr Holley also called for more investment in schools offering extended services - such as breakfast and homework clubs - to help deprived children overcome the handicaps of working at home. "Children are turning up to school, cold hungry and not in the right frame of mind to learn," he said. "There also may be nowhere for them to do homework at home - their parents may be working or a single parent could be pre-occupied with other things."
He also revealed that the agency is increasing the number of "enhancement" courses to boost the number of maths and science teachers in schools. Under this initiative, graduates with an allied degree - in engineering or, say, oceanography - can spend up to six months topping up their skills to become science teachers. They would be paid a bursary of œ225 a week while on the course.
Source
British bar owners told traditional sign 'encourages drink driving'
Landlords Trisha and Thomas Russell were told to remove the board, which shows an arrow beneath the words: 'The Black Dog, Chilmark, Bar and Restaurant' as it was deemed distracting to motorists. The sign, the size of a sandwich board, was erected two decades ago, as the pub is located away from the main A303 road.
The couple, who took over the tenancy four weeks ago were surprised to hear they needed planning permission for the sign and were then shocked to receive an objection from the Highways Agency for their application. A letter from the agency read: "The sign contains several lines of text and is therefore distracting to motorists. "It is also advertising the use of a public house to motorists, potentially providing the temptation to drink and drive while using a long distance trunk route.
"No alcohol is allowed to be served or consumed in service stations on motorways as a matter of principle. "We would wish to continue this principle by not encouraging drivers to break their journey in a public house."
Mrs Russell, 41, said the objection was ridiculous and the pub in Chilmark, Wiltshire, also serves a range of soft drinks and meals. She believes removal of the sign could lead to a dramatic drop in customers. "Motorists who come in only use the toilet and have a sandwich alongside a glass of lemonade," she said. "We get a lot of our business from the sign and without it I worry that our customer numbers will fall considerably. "We came here from another pub and have never experienced anything as daft as this, " she added.
A spokesman for the Highways Agency said the letter could be "misconstrued" and there was no implication that signs of public houses would lead to an increase in drink driving. "The decision to drink drive is a personal one and not directly the responsibility of the publican or the business." A spokeswoman for West Wiltshire District Council said the planning application was still under-review and that a decision had not yet been made.
Source
Global Warming's Boom Bust
Global warming' is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage.
Despite all the undoubted political and economic gloom, the delightful thing about today's Sunday newspapers is the virtual absence of the phrase `global warming'. `Global warming' has been effectively buried, by collapsing banks and plunging markets, by rising energy costs, by internal battling within the Labour Party, by pitbulls and the American election, by real threats, like knife crime and terrorism in Islamabad, and by the fact that, on nearly every bit of current evidence, the world is likely to enter a cooling phase - the BBC please note.
Interestingly, the final part of BBC 2's dire series, `Earth - The Climate Wars', which is to be shown this evening, has also fallen out of the ratings, not even, for example, being suggested under `Choice' in The Sunday Times television listings [see: `Culture', The Sunday Times, September 21, pp. 60 - 61]. Mind you, as I have already pointed out, this seriously-unbalanced programme has been well and truly `flounced', and rightly so, by BBC 1's new four-part costume drama, `Tess of the D'Urbervilles' [see: `Tess Trumps Trumpery', September 16]. The pretty Morris dancers have pranced all over it. And tonight, thank goodness, it doesn't stand a chance, as Angel Clare carries the four milkmaids, one by one, across that famous swollen stream. Guess which programme I'll be watching? Phwoar!
Double Whammy!
The only exception to all this is a double whammy against `global warming' by Christopher Booker writing in The Sunday Telegraph [`Financial crisis: Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam', The Sunday Telegraph, September 21].
First, we should note that Booker is also scathing about `Earth - The Climate Wars' [see the Section (scroll down): `BBC series stitches up sceptics in counter-attack over climate change' - thank goodness I wasn't interviewed!]: "There was no hint that the `hockey stick' is among the most completely discredited artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to the devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph's creators had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a hockey-stick shape whatever data were fed into it.
There was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or obscure some vital fact. Yet the `impartial' BBC is sending out this farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the `march of the lie' continues."
Actually, I think that the BBC has made a somewhat more fundamental miscalculation. What strikes me about this programme is how old fashioned the whole concept now seems, how out-of-date the trope and the battle. It is as if world economics and politics have not changed dramatically over the last year. The brutal truth is that the `global warming' boom is bust. Fewer and fewer people are interested. Indeed, even I am bored to distraction by it , and as for Goodwife Stott ....
"The Economics Of The Madhouse"
But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Booker exposes the sheer economic idiocy behind `global warming', claiming: "What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers [see left: photo by David Shankbone, reproduced under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence, Version 1.2 or any later version] and the likelihood that in four years' time our electricity bills will jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal and gas prices)?
The answer is that, before its collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to `fight climate change' by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide."
He goes on: "Advised by some of the world's leading global warming activists, such as Dr James Hansen and Al Gore (a close friend of the firm's erstwhile managing director Theodore Roosevelt IV), Lehman bought their message wholesale. GIM, the company set up by Gore to sell `carbon offsets' in return for planting trees, was a prized Lehman client.
The particular market that Lehman hoped to dominate is centred on the buying and selling of carbon permits, through the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) set up in 2005, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the `cap and trade' system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama. This may still seem abstract but it will affect all our lives, because ultimately we will all be paying for it, through the colossal costs it will impose on industry, not least electricity."
And Booker's overall conclusion is trenchant: "Everything about this grandiose scheme betokens the economics of the madhouse ... What is certain is that it will pile astronomic costs onto everyone in the EU, inevitably impacting most severely on poorer householders that will face bills they cannot afford. The only other certainty - perhaps a consolation - is that those sharing in this bonanza will not include Lehman Brothers, now excluded from cashing in on what threatens to become the maddest scam the world has ever seen."
Now, while I don't know the ins and outs of all this, of one thing I am certain. With a world likely to cool during the next decade, with a world economy set in austere mode, and with the new politics of China, India, Brazil, and the rest, Big Global Warming's boom days are surely coming to an end.
Source
Another drug trial disaster in Britain
A 27-YEAR-OLD man has died in a government-funded medical trial, in which at least two other patients were given overdoses. Gary Foster, a graphic designer who was planning to get married this month, was on seven occasions given double the amount of chemotherapy he should have been prescribed. His mother, Colleen Foster, said: "Gary was slowly poisoned to death."
The mistakes raise questions about the safety of medical trials in Britain two years after the notorious "elephant man" trial, which was supposed to have led to tighter supervision. Six men nearly died after their bodies swelled horrifically after taking the experimental drug TGN1412.
University College London Hospitals NHS Trust (UCLH), one of Britain's largest trusts, has been forced to suspend the trial although it is continuing at other UK hospitals. Foster's death was due to a fundamental error in the setting-up of the trial on the hospital computer system. A second UCLH patient was affected by the same error, but survived.
Another patient, who died at a different hospital, and whose name has not been disclosed, also received an overdose of the drug bleomycin. In that case, the overdose was due to an error by a nurse or doctor rather than a basic flaw in the setting-up of the trial. According to the Medical Research Council (MRC), the government-funded organisation which ran the trial, the drug was not the direct cause of his death.
When the MRC suspected that patients had been given overdoses, instead of calling UCLH immediately, it posted a letter on October 3, 2007. An inquest into Foster's death heard that a nurse failed to open the letter until October 16, two days after his death. The family concede that by October 3 it was too late to save Foster because he was already dying of organ failure caused by the overdoses.
Foster, from Waltham Abbey, Essex, was eager to join the medical trial in June 2007. He had just been diagnosed with testicular cancer, and he had a 60% chance of survival. The disease has a survival rate of about 95% if caught early. Doctors told Foster that, if he was accepted for the trial, his chances of survival would increase.
Colleen Foster said: "The trial sister said: `Good news, Gary, you have been selected for the trial.' At UCLH they said, `Don't worry, testicular cancer is curable. We will monitor Gary for 10 years - you don't have to worry.' They made us feel so confident." His fiancee, Paula Collins, 35, added: "When Gary became involved in the trial, we thought it was fantastic news because we thought Gary's chance of survival would be greater and the care would be better."
The trial, called TE23, was testing whether a combination of five existing chemotherapy drugs was better at treating testicular cancer than the standard treatment of three drugs. Foster was in the group receiving the new therapy. From June until mid-September 2007 he made regular trips to UCLH in central London, to receive the drugs. On seven occasions between July and September last year, he received 30,000 units of one of the drugs, bleomycin, instead of 15,000. Foster and his family had no idea the drugs they believed were saving his life were killing him. Colleen Foster said: "We just thought Gary was getting tired because of the chemotherapy."
Eventually Foster developed a dry cough, a symptom of lung damage, caused by an overdose of bleomycin. An inquest heard that the cough should have been recognised by doctors and nurses as a warning sign that the bleomycin was damaging his lungs. Despite the cough, Foster was given a final dose. The coroner ruled that Foster died as a result of lung damage caused by an overdose of bleomycin. The coroner also found that the instructions for the trial had been wrongly set up on the electronic prescribing system at UCLH.
Colleen Foster said: "An overdose gives the impression that it was a one-off. It was seven times. Every week my poor Gary was going into hospital, we thought he was getting better but, actually, he was being slowly poisoned and poisoned to death." Eventually he became so ill that he was transferred to intensive care and put on a ventilator, but attempts to save him were in vain. Foster's family blame his death on a trial they say was set up in a hurried and piecemeal manner.
Collins said: "Checks should have been carried out. It is incomprehensible that they were dealing with the most dangerous medicines and they were so blase. It was so slapdash. "We had dreams and lots of plans together," she said. "Gary also had his own ambitions. We were supposed to be getting married on Saturday September 6, instead, on the Tuesday before, we were at the inquest. He was such a lovely person. He was so well liked and had so many friends."
"We do need trials but there need to be more controls," Collins added. "I would encourage other people thinking about taking part in trials to proceed with caution. I would hate to think of anyone else going through what we have gone through." .....
The MRC said it had reviewed its trial procedures as a result of the tragedy and introduced additional checks. It said it followed its normal procedures by posting its concerns rather than making an emergency phone call. "During the processing of the forms for the UCLH patients, a possible dosing error for these two patients was spotted. A query form was then returned to the hospital." Dr Stephen Harland, who was in charge of the trial at UCLH and supervised Foster's care, declined to comment....
Source
Must not criticize Islam
British critic to be banned from teaching because of his "intolerance". British teachers are generally very Leftist and so are those who control and represent them.
"A teacher could face being struck off over allegations of racial and religious intolerance. Adam Walker, who taught at Houghton Kepier School, is believed to be the first teacher to be hauled before England's General Teaching Council (GTC) to face the charge. It is believed he is accused of expressing views "suggestive of racial and religious intolerance" in an Internet forum.
The 39-year-old, from County Durham, has stood as a candidate for the British National Party (BNP) in local elections. He claims the allegations against him are driven by "politically motivated spite". Mr Walker, a design teacher, resigned from Houghton Kepier Sports College after the school began disciplinary action in early 2007.
Source
The BNP is an anti-immigration party.
Note the following Leftist comment from another report of the matter:
"But Christina McAnea, of the Unison union, questioned whether BNP members should be allowed to teach. "Schools should be centres of learning and tolerance, not a breeding ground for the poisonous views of the BNP," she said.
Christina sounds pretty intolerant herself. Perhaps she too should be banned from teaching.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Incorrect goggles in the British nanny State
For thousands of years people have swum with NO goggles. How shockingly unsafe!
A swimmer has been banned from his local pool because of his unusual goggles. Roland Grimm, in his late 60s, said: "I'm very upset because it seems mad. I've used these goggles in more than 100 pools and no one else has ever complained. After you've been swimming for 40 years all over the world you know what works best for you and what's safe."
Gary Dark, manager of the leisure centre in Swiss Cottage, northwest London, said the goggles were a health and safety risk because the glass was not shatter-proof and the nosepiece could cause breathing difficulties.
Source
Junk food ad rules “not working”
How frustrating for the Fascists!
Adverts for unhealthy foods are still appearing during TV programmes seen by children, despite curbs introduced in January, a consumer watchdog has said. Which? said the five programmes with the most child viewers and only four of the top 20 most popular children's shows were covered by Ofcom's rules. These state that ads for "less healthy” foods are not allowed in or around programmes which "appeal" to under-16s.
But advertisers said Which's list included shows "not aimed" at children. A programme is defined as being of particular appeal to children if the proportion of those under 16 watching a programme is 20% higher than the general viewing population. This means shows like The Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants are covered, while shows like Beat the Star, Animals Do The Funniest Things and Emmerdale are not, even though they are watched by thousands more children.
A two-week analysis by Which? found that ads for products including Coca-Cola, Oreos and Kellogg's Coco Pops were broadcast during programmes popular with children but not covered by the restrictions. It said ITV's Beat the Star attracted more than half a million child viewers during the monitoring period, but had contained ads for Coca-Cola, Dairylea Dunkers, Nachos and Sprite.
Which? food campaigner Clare Corbett said: "The ad restrictions may look good on paper but the reality is that the programmes most popular with children are slipping through the net. "If these rules are going to be effective, then they have to apply to the programmes that children watch in the greatest numbers." She added: "We're not anti-advertising, we're just against the fact that most of the ads children see are for unhealthy products, rather than the healthier foods they should be eating more of."
But the Advertising Association said Which? seemed to want to unfairly restrict companies' ability to deliver commercial messages. Chief executive Baroness Peta Buscombe called its report "sensationalist, unconstructive and missing the point" and said the advertising industry took a "responsible approach" to food advertising. She added: "Their list includes programmes clearly not aimed at children and films screened after 10pm. "There clearly has to be an element of parental responsibility on which programmes they allow their children to view."
A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said: "For the first time, TV adverts for foods high in fat, salt and sugar are banned during programmes aimed at or of particular appeal to children under 16. "Although children still see some of these advertisements, the current Ofcom regulations mean that the viewing of these adverts by children is reduced by an estimated 50%, an impressive amount." He added: "We appreciate that there are calls for further restrictions on UK TV advertising but these should be considered once we have had a chance to assess the impact of current measures."
Ofcom is set to report to government on the success of its restrictions in December. The Food Standards Agency, which drew up a model for deciding if a food was unhealthy, is also to assess how well it is performing.
Source
Good luck is ours. But bad luck is everyone else's
Why do other people expect us to bail them out when things go wrong?
By Stephen Pollard, writing from Britain:
A while ago, I had a puncture. I was on my way home and suddenly I was stranded. For some reason it never occurred to me that I could hail a taxi to take me home and expect you to pay for it.
According to reports at the weekend, taxpayers - you and me, in other words - will be stiffed to the tune of o20 million to pay for the flights home of some people caught out by the collapse of XL. The Civil Aviation Authority runs a compensation scheme to take care of stranded holidaymakers and to refund forthcoming holidays that won't take place. But the scheme is already 21 million pounds in deficit. So guess who is going to pick up the tab? You and me.
There's a warm glow inside me knowing that, as I type this, a portion of the fee will be taken from me by the Inland Revenue to pay for someone else's holiday. Actually it's not a warm glow so much as a red hot rage. I've yet to see a sensible explanation of why the rest of us should be forced to put our hands in our pockets to pay for someone else's bad luck on holiday.
It's sad. It's tough. It's annoying. And it should be - unfortunately - expensive. If I was a victim of XL, I'd be mighty angry that I am not going to get home as planned. But I would not expect the rest of the country to pay for my journey. Just as good luck is not something we can expect as of right, so bad luck happens and we sometimes must suffer the consequences - especially when, as in this case, we are either too stupid or too cheapskate to take out holiday insurance to cover such an eventuality. But the idea that good luck is ours to enjoy and bad luck is everyone else's problem is now endemic.
I picked some tomatoes yesterday. I'd been looking forward to eating them for weeks. Lovely, juicy Marmande. But they were rotting, ruined by too much rain. It never occurred to me that I should be compensated. But then I'm not a farmer. Last year was record-breaking for grain farmers, with prices at 180 pounds a tonne. The recent rain, however, has flattened this year's crop. Some farmers say that they will lose a third of their expected earnings. So the Government's Rural Advocate is asking the Prime Minister to bring forward payment of subsidies due in December under the Common Agricultural Policy.
Farmers embody the worst of all worlds - subsidised to the hilt to distort the market, and then screaming for compensation when things do not go as planned for them. It's the same story. Good luck is a private boon; bad luck is the taxpayer's cost.
Source
Why today's British children just can't win
With the Olympics still fresh in their little minds, my daughter and a few more seven-year-olds staged their own truncated athletics gala in the back garden recently. I almost choked on my coffee when I heard the words: "You're the loser. Here, have the bronze." When I explained to her later that medals are only for the winners and that losers get no awards, she was incredulous. Bronze, being the least exciting prize, must surely be for the person whose performance is the worst, she explained. Is it any wonder that she might labour under this misapprehension? For today's British child, life is one long awards ceremony. It's not whether you win or lose, it's the taking part that gets you the trophy.
At any children's party, it's often hard to work out who is the birthday boy or girl. Every child is weighed down with gifts from stage-managed pass-the-parcel games and overflowing loot bags. It's everyone's special day.
Yesterday we learnt that the results of children's football matches will no longer be published and there will be no league tables in case it makes the mini soccer players too competitive. I could write everything I know of the beautiful game on a postage stamp in large letters, but I am pretty certain that the competitive aspect is something common to many sports and sometimes known as The Whole Point. Yet the Football Association has said the results of matches for seven- and eight-year-olds will not be disseminated and there will be no silver cups.
Talk about moving the goal posts; in this case they've disappeared. The FA handbook says: "Under-sevens and under-eights are not permitted to play in leagues where results are collected or published or winner trophies are presented."
The reason for the move, according to the organisation, is that children ought to learn to play the game without facing the pressure to win. The FA is not trying to ban winners - in fact, it appears it wants all the players to enjoy a sort of diluted victory. It is losing that is feared here and non-competitive football is a natural consequence of the non-competitive culture being forced upon children.
Contemporary child-rearing mores conspire against all forms of losing. The amateur psychologist in all of us tells us it is bad for a child's confidence. Everything from coming last to spelling in indecipherable text lingo must, we are told, get a "Well done!" sticker. As a consequence, the taste of genuine victory and the thrill of true excellence is a rare and illicit treat for today's children.
It is grown-ups, however, not children, who fear defeat. Children, particularly younger ones, are the greatest champions of the school of hard knocks and hierarchy - often frighteningly so. Though our education system tries to conceal it, every child knows who is "top of the class". On the CBBC website yesterday, young commentators were largely up in arms about the FA spoilsports. Some blamed the scourge of pushy parents for the ruling: "Parents are very competitive and I think this spoils the game. But this shouldn't be taken out on the kids as it is not fair. It is the parents."
Parents of my generation have, quite rightly, largely given up forms of chastisement that involve humiliating little people. Most of us agree that smacking children and bullying them is wrong. The idea that we must avoid telling them anything they don't want to hear has somehow become tacked on to this. Wouldn't we do more for their self-worth if we let them win? Wouldn't we teach them more about life if we showed them how to recover from losing?
"Some you win, some you lose" is not the harshest of truths and we do our children no favours in protecting them from it. It's a lazy kind of love that doesn't teach a child to win with grace and lose with courage. Everybody loses if nobody can win.
Source
For thousands of years people have swum with NO goggles. How shockingly unsafe!
A swimmer has been banned from his local pool because of his unusual goggles. Roland Grimm, in his late 60s, said: "I'm very upset because it seems mad. I've used these goggles in more than 100 pools and no one else has ever complained. After you've been swimming for 40 years all over the world you know what works best for you and what's safe."
Gary Dark, manager of the leisure centre in Swiss Cottage, northwest London, said the goggles were a health and safety risk because the glass was not shatter-proof and the nosepiece could cause breathing difficulties.
Source
Junk food ad rules “not working”
How frustrating for the Fascists!
Adverts for unhealthy foods are still appearing during TV programmes seen by children, despite curbs introduced in January, a consumer watchdog has said. Which? said the five programmes with the most child viewers and only four of the top 20 most popular children's shows were covered by Ofcom's rules. These state that ads for "less healthy” foods are not allowed in or around programmes which "appeal" to under-16s.
But advertisers said Which's list included shows "not aimed" at children. A programme is defined as being of particular appeal to children if the proportion of those under 16 watching a programme is 20% higher than the general viewing population. This means shows like The Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants are covered, while shows like Beat the Star, Animals Do The Funniest Things and Emmerdale are not, even though they are watched by thousands more children.
A two-week analysis by Which? found that ads for products including Coca-Cola, Oreos and Kellogg's Coco Pops were broadcast during programmes popular with children but not covered by the restrictions. It said ITV's Beat the Star attracted more than half a million child viewers during the monitoring period, but had contained ads for Coca-Cola, Dairylea Dunkers, Nachos and Sprite.
Which? food campaigner Clare Corbett said: "The ad restrictions may look good on paper but the reality is that the programmes most popular with children are slipping through the net. "If these rules are going to be effective, then they have to apply to the programmes that children watch in the greatest numbers." She added: "We're not anti-advertising, we're just against the fact that most of the ads children see are for unhealthy products, rather than the healthier foods they should be eating more of."
But the Advertising Association said Which? seemed to want to unfairly restrict companies' ability to deliver commercial messages. Chief executive Baroness Peta Buscombe called its report "sensationalist, unconstructive and missing the point" and said the advertising industry took a "responsible approach" to food advertising. She added: "Their list includes programmes clearly not aimed at children and films screened after 10pm. "There clearly has to be an element of parental responsibility on which programmes they allow their children to view."
A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said: "For the first time, TV adverts for foods high in fat, salt and sugar are banned during programmes aimed at or of particular appeal to children under 16. "Although children still see some of these advertisements, the current Ofcom regulations mean that the viewing of these adverts by children is reduced by an estimated 50%, an impressive amount." He added: "We appreciate that there are calls for further restrictions on UK TV advertising but these should be considered once we have had a chance to assess the impact of current measures."
Ofcom is set to report to government on the success of its restrictions in December. The Food Standards Agency, which drew up a model for deciding if a food was unhealthy, is also to assess how well it is performing.
Source
Good luck is ours. But bad luck is everyone else's
Why do other people expect us to bail them out when things go wrong?
By Stephen Pollard, writing from Britain:
A while ago, I had a puncture. I was on my way home and suddenly I was stranded. For some reason it never occurred to me that I could hail a taxi to take me home and expect you to pay for it.
According to reports at the weekend, taxpayers - you and me, in other words - will be stiffed to the tune of o20 million to pay for the flights home of some people caught out by the collapse of XL. The Civil Aviation Authority runs a compensation scheme to take care of stranded holidaymakers and to refund forthcoming holidays that won't take place. But the scheme is already 21 million pounds in deficit. So guess who is going to pick up the tab? You and me.
There's a warm glow inside me knowing that, as I type this, a portion of the fee will be taken from me by the Inland Revenue to pay for someone else's holiday. Actually it's not a warm glow so much as a red hot rage. I've yet to see a sensible explanation of why the rest of us should be forced to put our hands in our pockets to pay for someone else's bad luck on holiday.
It's sad. It's tough. It's annoying. And it should be - unfortunately - expensive. If I was a victim of XL, I'd be mighty angry that I am not going to get home as planned. But I would not expect the rest of the country to pay for my journey. Just as good luck is not something we can expect as of right, so bad luck happens and we sometimes must suffer the consequences - especially when, as in this case, we are either too stupid or too cheapskate to take out holiday insurance to cover such an eventuality. But the idea that good luck is ours to enjoy and bad luck is everyone else's problem is now endemic.
I picked some tomatoes yesterday. I'd been looking forward to eating them for weeks. Lovely, juicy Marmande. But they were rotting, ruined by too much rain. It never occurred to me that I should be compensated. But then I'm not a farmer. Last year was record-breaking for grain farmers, with prices at 180 pounds a tonne. The recent rain, however, has flattened this year's crop. Some farmers say that they will lose a third of their expected earnings. So the Government's Rural Advocate is asking the Prime Minister to bring forward payment of subsidies due in December under the Common Agricultural Policy.
Farmers embody the worst of all worlds - subsidised to the hilt to distort the market, and then screaming for compensation when things do not go as planned for them. It's the same story. Good luck is a private boon; bad luck is the taxpayer's cost.
Source
Why today's British children just can't win
With the Olympics still fresh in their little minds, my daughter and a few more seven-year-olds staged their own truncated athletics gala in the back garden recently. I almost choked on my coffee when I heard the words: "You're the loser. Here, have the bronze." When I explained to her later that medals are only for the winners and that losers get no awards, she was incredulous. Bronze, being the least exciting prize, must surely be for the person whose performance is the worst, she explained. Is it any wonder that she might labour under this misapprehension? For today's British child, life is one long awards ceremony. It's not whether you win or lose, it's the taking part that gets you the trophy.
At any children's party, it's often hard to work out who is the birthday boy or girl. Every child is weighed down with gifts from stage-managed pass-the-parcel games and overflowing loot bags. It's everyone's special day.
Yesterday we learnt that the results of children's football matches will no longer be published and there will be no league tables in case it makes the mini soccer players too competitive. I could write everything I know of the beautiful game on a postage stamp in large letters, but I am pretty certain that the competitive aspect is something common to many sports and sometimes known as The Whole Point. Yet the Football Association has said the results of matches for seven- and eight-year-olds will not be disseminated and there will be no silver cups.
Talk about moving the goal posts; in this case they've disappeared. The FA handbook says: "Under-sevens and under-eights are not permitted to play in leagues where results are collected or published or winner trophies are presented."
The reason for the move, according to the organisation, is that children ought to learn to play the game without facing the pressure to win. The FA is not trying to ban winners - in fact, it appears it wants all the players to enjoy a sort of diluted victory. It is losing that is feared here and non-competitive football is a natural consequence of the non-competitive culture being forced upon children.
Contemporary child-rearing mores conspire against all forms of losing. The amateur psychologist in all of us tells us it is bad for a child's confidence. Everything from coming last to spelling in indecipherable text lingo must, we are told, get a "Well done!" sticker. As a consequence, the taste of genuine victory and the thrill of true excellence is a rare and illicit treat for today's children.
It is grown-ups, however, not children, who fear defeat. Children, particularly younger ones, are the greatest champions of the school of hard knocks and hierarchy - often frighteningly so. Though our education system tries to conceal it, every child knows who is "top of the class". On the CBBC website yesterday, young commentators were largely up in arms about the FA spoilsports. Some blamed the scourge of pushy parents for the ruling: "Parents are very competitive and I think this spoils the game. But this shouldn't be taken out on the kids as it is not fair. It is the parents."
Parents of my generation have, quite rightly, largely given up forms of chastisement that involve humiliating little people. Most of us agree that smacking children and bullying them is wrong. The idea that we must avoid telling them anything they don't want to hear has somehow become tacked on to this. Wouldn't we do more for their self-worth if we let them win? Wouldn't we teach them more about life if we showed them how to recover from losing?
"Some you win, some you lose" is not the harshest of truths and we do our children no favours in protecting them from it. It's a lazy kind of love that doesn't teach a child to win with grace and lose with courage. Everybody loses if nobody can win.
Source
Sunday, September 21, 2008
British child footballers banned from reading results
Children have been banned from reading their football results in local newspapers because it makes them too competitive.
Football Association laws dictate that from this season, the results of matches between children aged seven and eight must not be published, league tables must not be kept and prizes must not be given out. Some local associations have chosen to extend the regulations even further, it has emerged, banning league tables and trophies for 9, 10 and 11-year olds as well.
Scott Ager, who last season managed Priory Parkside under-9s 'A' team in Huntingdon, was sharply reprimanded after declaring that his team had won the league and having them photographed with a trophy by their local newspaper. Mr Ager said: "I find it bizarre. It seems to me to work against talented players, as the teams who may lose heavily are likely to be ones with players who just play for a bit of fun. It is very frustrating. Kids put all this effort in but there is no reward. "All the other managers in the league acknowledged that we had been the best team as we had won the most games. Football is our national sport, yet there are some strange rules around it."
A spokesman for Hunts FA said: "We were very angry. We do not allow competitive leagues until after under-11s. Mr Ager was chastened very severely and eventually left his club."
The FA handbook states: "Under-7s and Under-8s are not permitted to play in leagues where results are collected or published or winner trophies are presented." The move was designed to allow young children to nurture their skills without facing the pressure to win. Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development, said: "In the youngest age groups there's too much emphasis on winning leagues, often to satisfy parents and coaches. "That's what we're looking to change. We need better, more skilful players coming through. Undoubtedly having league tables at this age is not helping their development."
Andy Szczepanski, whose son plays for Brampton Spartans under-8s, said: "I understand where they are coming from but I also think there is a need for competition. "It will make it more difficult for managers trying to arrange friendlies against sides of a similar standard because without seeing results there is no frame of reference."
During a visit to the Olympics in Beijing last month, Gordon Brown admitted that Labour's decision to reduce competitive school sport had been a "tragic mistake" and promised to re-introduce it. "We want to encourage competitive sports in schools, not the 'medals for all' culture we have seen in previous years," the Prime Minister said. "It was wrong because it doesn't work. In sport you get better by challenging yourself against other people."
The Conservatives said that last year 3.1 million school children - 42 per cent of all pupils - did not compete in intra-school sport. Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said the figures showed Mr Brown's promise was hollow. He said: "Gordon Brown talks the talk on competitive sport but doesn't get past the starting blocks when it comes to delivery of policy. "If he wants to end a 'medals for all' culture, why has the number of children doing competitive sport at school gone down by nearly a million last year alone?"
Source
Thousands of British elderly ‘denied best thinning bones treatment’
Thousands of women with thinning bones are being denied the best available therapies because of “unethical and shortsighted” NHS rationing, senior osteoporosis specialists say today. Guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) are unfairly restricting access to osteoporosis drugs that can prevent pain, disability and even death, leading doctors and charity executives say.
In a letter to The Times, a group of 36 experts has called on NICE to revise restrictive draft guidance, which is the subject of an appeal that begins today. They urge NICE to widen access to alendronate, the cheapest generic osteoporosis drug, which costs only £50 a year, and to ease strict eligibility criteria for slightly more expensive options. NICE approves alendronate only for patients older than 75. It is also unsuitable for a quarter of patients.
Source
Another Golliwog furore
Golliwogs are old-fashioned soft toys for children modelled on the appearance of an African. They are still popular with children in England and Australia.
CLIMATE VANDALISM IN BRITAIN
Writing about anything other than the financial crisis today seems akin to the house journalist on the Titanic penning an article on flower arranging - two hours after the ship hit the iceberg. The tale is told, though, of passengers on the deck some hours after the impact enjoying snowball fights, heedless of the danger they were in.
One is also conscious of the Jo Moore dictum that days like today are an extremely good time to bury bad news. While the media attention is focused on the gathering storm of the financial meltdown (or not), many other things are happening. One of those things is the latest bizarre (a word I am beginning to over-use . does anyone know a better one?) development in the long-running saga of the European emissions trading scheme (ETS) - that arcane subject which no one really wants to talk about but which, in the fullness of time is going to cost us all (collectively) many billions.
Anyhow, pushing the story on is The Guardian which tells us that "leaked papers" show that Britain is "trying to weaken plan for EU carbon cuts." See here. This is a move, storms this distinctly greenie paper which would "reduce efforts to cut domestic pollution" - by which, of course it means carbon dioxide, which isn't pollution at all, but never mind.
What this is all about is a British inspired idea (although other have had the same thought) of using carbon credits awarded to con artists entrepreneurs in the developing world who have learnt how to milk the system installed energy-saving technology and thus done their bit to make money save the planet.
Behind all this is that monument to insanity the ETS which, as readers will be aware, creates carbon allowances (called EU allowances or EUAs in the trade) to auction to industry, thus giving them permission to produce carbon dioxide and thus stay in business. Tied in with this is a plan, year on year, to reduce the number of allowances available, the theory being that this increases the cost of the allowances and thus creates a financial incentive to invest in carbon reduction measures which, collectively will reduce emissions and enable the EU to meet its self-imposed emission reduction targets.
That, at least, is the theory, with the major target being the electricity generation industry. And when the scheme was dreamed up, the EU was convinced that this would be achieve by moving away from burning fossil fuel - and especially coal - and creating zillions of giant subsidy wind farms, all with "zero" emissions.
However, no one with more than two brain cells (which of course excludes most greenies) is now labouring under the impression that wind energy is going to deliver the goods. And, far from coal disappearing, if anything usage is set to increase as pressure on gas supplies is set to make this energy source far more expensive.
This set the scene for the next fantasy option - carbon capture. Again, though no one with any brains is under any illusions that this will work, which means that we have a slight problem. As the years progress and the carbon allowances are cut, UK plc faces the situation of having electricity generators standing idle - fully tanked up and ready to go - but unable to operate because their owners have run out of allocations. This, as you can imagine, would not go down too well with the great unwashed.
Hence, someone in government with a residual capacity for thinking has come up with this bright idea of buying carbon credits off the developing world, an idea which now has The Guardian whipping up its frenzy. This would allow Europe to make less effort to cut its pollution, it says, enabling it to emit "an extra billion tonnes of CO2 from 2013-2020." The paper could have said it will also enable it to keep the lights on, but that is not the game here.
And, of course, the move has been "condemned" by the climate change industry environment campaigners, who are accusing the UK of "trying to undermine efforts to get European industry to reduce emissions." Says that great self-publicist and self-centred little madam Caroline Lucas, MEP extraordinaire and leader of the Green party: "The British government is trying to buy its way out of climate change targets using unreliable credits from abroad. It shows how much of the political talk on climate is empty rhetoric, when you have the UK talking up the need for action on one hand, and carrying out this kind of irresponsible climate vandalism on the other." Don't you just love the rhetoric: "climate vandalism". Never mind daubing power station chimneys - trying to keep the lights on is now "climate vandalism".
In the very near future, however, la Lucas had better turn her attention to her beloved EU - which pays her a salary ten time more than she would get if she had to market her skills. The commission and her MEP "colleagues" are working on proposals to combine the ETS with what is called the "clean development mechanism" (CDM) run by the UN to create a global money-making empire emissions market along the same lines that the British are mooting.
Still, when "climate vandalism" gravitates to "climate crime", la Lucas can lock us up in windowless cells with no lights and we can all reduce our carbon footprints that way. Before that, however, if would be nice if someone could actually demonstrate to this stupid woman the true meaning of vandalism, before she does any more damage.
Source
England most crowded country in Europe
ENGLAND is the most densely populated major country in the European Union, overtaking the Netherlands, data from the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows. In a written answer to parliament, the ONS said today the projected population density of England in 2008 was 395 persons per square kilometre. The most recent United Nations figures available for the Netherlands are from 2005, when it had 393 people per square kilometre. Since then its population is believed to have remained steady or fallen slightly.
Tiny island nation Malta is the most densely populated of the 27 EU member states, with 1274 people per square kilometre.
The United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - has undergone a recent surge in immigration, which remains a hot topic in the country, with critics saying the system is in chaos. The latest figures could fuel the debate. The ONS said the projected population density of the whole of the UK in 2008 was 253 persons per square kilometre - which would place it fourth in the EU behind Malta, the Netherlands and Belgium - with Scotland at 66 per square kilometre, Wales at 144 and Northern Ireland at 131.
The UK has seen a surge in immigration over the last 10 years, with the resident population swelling to 60,975,000 in mid-2007. Many immigrants have settled in London and the wider south-east England region. The ONS estimates that England's population density will rise to 464 people per square kilometre by 2031. The UK population in 2031, if recently observed trends in fertility, mortality and migration were to continue, is likely to reach 71 million, a rise "attributable to a net inward flow of migrants'', according to National Statistician Karen Dunnell.
Last week an all-party group of MPs, led by Frank Field and Nicholas Soames, called for a "balanced'' approach to immigration, where the numbers allowed to settle in the country equalled those leaving. "This is a milestone in the immigration debate as immigration accounts for 70 per cent of our population growth,'' the pair said in response to the fresh figures. "The government's points-based system places no limit on the number of people allowed to settle in the UK. If ever there was a case for balanced migration, it is now,'' they said
Source
Children have been banned from reading their football results in local newspapers because it makes them too competitive.
Football Association laws dictate that from this season, the results of matches between children aged seven and eight must not be published, league tables must not be kept and prizes must not be given out. Some local associations have chosen to extend the regulations even further, it has emerged, banning league tables and trophies for 9, 10 and 11-year olds as well.
Scott Ager, who last season managed Priory Parkside under-9s 'A' team in Huntingdon, was sharply reprimanded after declaring that his team had won the league and having them photographed with a trophy by their local newspaper. Mr Ager said: "I find it bizarre. It seems to me to work against talented players, as the teams who may lose heavily are likely to be ones with players who just play for a bit of fun. It is very frustrating. Kids put all this effort in but there is no reward. "All the other managers in the league acknowledged that we had been the best team as we had won the most games. Football is our national sport, yet there are some strange rules around it."
A spokesman for Hunts FA said: "We were very angry. We do not allow competitive leagues until after under-11s. Mr Ager was chastened very severely and eventually left his club."
The FA handbook states: "Under-7s and Under-8s are not permitted to play in leagues where results are collected or published or winner trophies are presented." The move was designed to allow young children to nurture their skills without facing the pressure to win. Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development, said: "In the youngest age groups there's too much emphasis on winning leagues, often to satisfy parents and coaches. "That's what we're looking to change. We need better, more skilful players coming through. Undoubtedly having league tables at this age is not helping their development."
Andy Szczepanski, whose son plays for Brampton Spartans under-8s, said: "I understand where they are coming from but I also think there is a need for competition. "It will make it more difficult for managers trying to arrange friendlies against sides of a similar standard because without seeing results there is no frame of reference."
During a visit to the Olympics in Beijing last month, Gordon Brown admitted that Labour's decision to reduce competitive school sport had been a "tragic mistake" and promised to re-introduce it. "We want to encourage competitive sports in schools, not the 'medals for all' culture we have seen in previous years," the Prime Minister said. "It was wrong because it doesn't work. In sport you get better by challenging yourself against other people."
The Conservatives said that last year 3.1 million school children - 42 per cent of all pupils - did not compete in intra-school sport. Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said the figures showed Mr Brown's promise was hollow. He said: "Gordon Brown talks the talk on competitive sport but doesn't get past the starting blocks when it comes to delivery of policy. "If he wants to end a 'medals for all' culture, why has the number of children doing competitive sport at school gone down by nearly a million last year alone?"
Source
Thousands of British elderly ‘denied best thinning bones treatment’
Thousands of women with thinning bones are being denied the best available therapies because of “unethical and shortsighted” NHS rationing, senior osteoporosis specialists say today. Guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) are unfairly restricting access to osteoporosis drugs that can prevent pain, disability and even death, leading doctors and charity executives say.
In a letter to The Times, a group of 36 experts has called on NICE to revise restrictive draft guidance, which is the subject of an appeal that begins today. They urge NICE to widen access to alendronate, the cheapest generic osteoporosis drug, which costs only £50 a year, and to ease strict eligibility criteria for slightly more expensive options. NICE approves alendronate only for patients older than 75. It is also unsuitable for a quarter of patients.
Source
Another Golliwog furore
Golliwogs are old-fashioned soft toys for children modelled on the appearance of an African. They are still popular with children in England and Australia.
"A mother ended up getting arrested in a bizarre case of political correctness gone mad when her six-year-old daughter stuck a golliwog doll on their windowsill. English 39-year-old Amanda Schofield was quizzed on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence after a neighbour complained.
Schofield, of Stockport, Greater Manchester, had removed the toy from the window as she put little Eboni to bed - yet was still visited by cops the same night. She was asked to attend a police station and was not charged.
Schofield told our sister paper The Sun: "I feel like a criminal. I can't believe it." A police spokesman said: "It was the latest in a number of previous incidents that the victim perceived to be race-related."
Source
CLIMATE VANDALISM IN BRITAIN
Writing about anything other than the financial crisis today seems akin to the house journalist on the Titanic penning an article on flower arranging - two hours after the ship hit the iceberg. The tale is told, though, of passengers on the deck some hours after the impact enjoying snowball fights, heedless of the danger they were in.
One is also conscious of the Jo Moore dictum that days like today are an extremely good time to bury bad news. While the media attention is focused on the gathering storm of the financial meltdown (or not), many other things are happening. One of those things is the latest bizarre (a word I am beginning to over-use . does anyone know a better one?) development in the long-running saga of the European emissions trading scheme (ETS) - that arcane subject which no one really wants to talk about but which, in the fullness of time is going to cost us all (collectively) many billions.
Anyhow, pushing the story on is The Guardian which tells us that "leaked papers" show that Britain is "trying to weaken plan for EU carbon cuts." See here. This is a move, storms this distinctly greenie paper which would "reduce efforts to cut domestic pollution" - by which, of course it means carbon dioxide, which isn't pollution at all, but never mind.
What this is all about is a British inspired idea (although other have had the same thought) of using carbon credits awarded to con artists entrepreneurs in the developing world who have learnt how to milk the system installed energy-saving technology and thus done their bit to make money save the planet.
Behind all this is that monument to insanity the ETS which, as readers will be aware, creates carbon allowances (called EU allowances or EUAs in the trade) to auction to industry, thus giving them permission to produce carbon dioxide and thus stay in business. Tied in with this is a plan, year on year, to reduce the number of allowances available, the theory being that this increases the cost of the allowances and thus creates a financial incentive to invest in carbon reduction measures which, collectively will reduce emissions and enable the EU to meet its self-imposed emission reduction targets.
That, at least, is the theory, with the major target being the electricity generation industry. And when the scheme was dreamed up, the EU was convinced that this would be achieve by moving away from burning fossil fuel - and especially coal - and creating zillions of giant subsidy wind farms, all with "zero" emissions.
However, no one with more than two brain cells (which of course excludes most greenies) is now labouring under the impression that wind energy is going to deliver the goods. And, far from coal disappearing, if anything usage is set to increase as pressure on gas supplies is set to make this energy source far more expensive.
This set the scene for the next fantasy option - carbon capture. Again, though no one with any brains is under any illusions that this will work, which means that we have a slight problem. As the years progress and the carbon allowances are cut, UK plc faces the situation of having electricity generators standing idle - fully tanked up and ready to go - but unable to operate because their owners have run out of allocations. This, as you can imagine, would not go down too well with the great unwashed.
Hence, someone in government with a residual capacity for thinking has come up with this bright idea of buying carbon credits off the developing world, an idea which now has The Guardian whipping up its frenzy. This would allow Europe to make less effort to cut its pollution, it says, enabling it to emit "an extra billion tonnes of CO2 from 2013-2020." The paper could have said it will also enable it to keep the lights on, but that is not the game here.
And, of course, the move has been "condemned" by the climate change industry environment campaigners, who are accusing the UK of "trying to undermine efforts to get European industry to reduce emissions." Says that great self-publicist and self-centred little madam Caroline Lucas, MEP extraordinaire and leader of the Green party: "The British government is trying to buy its way out of climate change targets using unreliable credits from abroad. It shows how much of the political talk on climate is empty rhetoric, when you have the UK talking up the need for action on one hand, and carrying out this kind of irresponsible climate vandalism on the other." Don't you just love the rhetoric: "climate vandalism". Never mind daubing power station chimneys - trying to keep the lights on is now "climate vandalism".
In the very near future, however, la Lucas had better turn her attention to her beloved EU - which pays her a salary ten time more than she would get if she had to market her skills. The commission and her MEP "colleagues" are working on proposals to combine the ETS with what is called the "clean development mechanism" (CDM) run by the UN to create a global money-making empire emissions market along the same lines that the British are mooting.
Still, when "climate vandalism" gravitates to "climate crime", la Lucas can lock us up in windowless cells with no lights and we can all reduce our carbon footprints that way. Before that, however, if would be nice if someone could actually demonstrate to this stupid woman the true meaning of vandalism, before she does any more damage.
Source
England most crowded country in Europe
ENGLAND is the most densely populated major country in the European Union, overtaking the Netherlands, data from the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows. In a written answer to parliament, the ONS said today the projected population density of England in 2008 was 395 persons per square kilometre. The most recent United Nations figures available for the Netherlands are from 2005, when it had 393 people per square kilometre. Since then its population is believed to have remained steady or fallen slightly.
Tiny island nation Malta is the most densely populated of the 27 EU member states, with 1274 people per square kilometre.
The United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - has undergone a recent surge in immigration, which remains a hot topic in the country, with critics saying the system is in chaos. The latest figures could fuel the debate. The ONS said the projected population density of the whole of the UK in 2008 was 253 persons per square kilometre - which would place it fourth in the EU behind Malta, the Netherlands and Belgium - with Scotland at 66 per square kilometre, Wales at 144 and Northern Ireland at 131.
The UK has seen a surge in immigration over the last 10 years, with the resident population swelling to 60,975,000 in mid-2007. Many immigrants have settled in London and the wider south-east England region. The ONS estimates that England's population density will rise to 464 people per square kilometre by 2031. The UK population in 2031, if recently observed trends in fertility, mortality and migration were to continue, is likely to reach 71 million, a rise "attributable to a net inward flow of migrants'', according to National Statistician Karen Dunnell.
Last week an all-party group of MPs, led by Frank Field and Nicholas Soames, called for a "balanced'' approach to immigration, where the numbers allowed to settle in the country equalled those leaving. "This is a milestone in the immigration debate as immigration accounts for 70 per cent of our population growth,'' the pair said in response to the fresh figures. "The government's points-based system places no limit on the number of people allowed to settle in the UK. If ever there was a case for balanced migration, it is now,'' they said
Source
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Now paracetamol is in the gun
Finding: Sickly babies (i.e. ones given lots of painkillers) tend to have more illness in later life. Big news! Big stupidity to blame the problem on the remedy, though. There are other grounds for caution with paracetamol but the stuff below is negligible grounds for caution. It's just more data dredging
Giving paracetamol-based medicines such as Calpol to babies can increase their chances of developing asthma in later life, a large international study suggests. Researchers who analysed data on more than 200,000 children found strong links between their exposure to paracetamol as infants and the development of asthma and other allergic conditions.
Mothers are advised that after two months, in babies weighing over 4kg (9lb), they can treat fevers with medicines or suspensions that contain paracetamol. But the study raises questions about the long-term effects of using medicines such as junior paracetamol and Calpol at such a young age.
Children under 12 months who were given a paracetamol-based medicine at least once a month more than tripled the chances of suffering wheezing attacks by the age of 6 or 7, the researchers found. The painkiller was also associated with an increased risk of rhinoconjunctivitis - or hay fever - and eczema. The researchers add that increased use of paracetamol - because of earlier fears about giving children aspirin - could be a factor in causing rising rates of asthma in many countries.
Previous research had already suggested a link between paracetamol and asthma, and scientists believe that the painkiller may cause changes in the body that leave a child more vulnerable to inflammation and allergies.
The authors of the study, published in The Lancet medical journal, emphasise that the findings do not constitute a reason to stop using paracetamol for relief of pain and fever in children. Instead, they support existing guidelines of the World Health Organisation that paracetamol-based medicines should not be used routinely, but should be reserved for those with a high fever (38.5C or above). Experts point out that in these cases, giving children medication outweighs the risks of not doing so.
Paracetamol is not licensed for use in infants under 2 months old by mouth and is only recommended after that in "junior" doses or medicines that contain less than the standard adult dose. More than one million children in the UK - equivalent to one in ten - now have asthma and the number of cases has trebled since the 1960s. The rise has in part coincided with paracetamol becoming the preferred drug to treat fevers and pain in children.
The study, part of a worldwide investigation called the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, spanned 73 centres in 31 countries. It found that giving children paracetamol in the first year of life increased the risk of later asthma symptoms in children aged 6 and 7 by 46 per cent. Taking paracetamol at least once a month - classified as "high use" - increased the symptoms risk 3.23 times. Using the drug in the first year of life increased the risk of hay fever and eczema at the age of 6 and 7 by 48 per cent and 35 per cent respectively.
The researchers had to rely on written answers from parents who filled in questionnaires about their children's health and use of paracetamol, which may be subject to error.
Professor Richard Beasley, who led the study at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, said that there were good reasons to suggest that paracetamol was a factor in causing health problems, rather than merely being associated with them. The research highlights a "dose-dependent" response, with more exposure to the drug resulting in more asthma attacks, pointing to a cause-and-effect relationship, he said. [Rubbish! It just shows that the sicklier kids get more asthma]
The researchers said that more research, in the form of randomised controlled trials, was needed urgently. [Indeed!]
Source
British sex pamphlet for 6-year-olds horrifies family lobby
The country's biggest sexual health charity has published a sex education pamphlet for six-year-olds to encourage earlier discussion of the facts of life. The 12-page comic-style booklet, which will be distributed to schools, asks children to identify the physical differences between boys and girls and name their body parts properly. One puzzle asks children to draw a line from the words "vagina" and "testicles" to the correct areas of a picture of a naked girl and boy.
The pamphlet from the FPA - formerly the Family Planning Association - entitled Let's Grow with Nisha and Joe, which will be shown to pupils by schools unless parents opt out, was immediately condemned by family campaigners as "a very worrying development". They said that years of sex education had done nothing to tackle the teenage pregnancy rate, still the highest in Europe, and starting the education even earlier would make the problem worse.
The FPA countered that 6 was not too young to start conversations about sex. On the contrary it was a good chance to get the conversation going because children were not self-conscious or embarrassed about their bodies at that age. "The booklet answers the questions that six-year-olds are already asking about themselves, their families and the world around them," said Julie Bentley, chief executive of the FPA. "Introducing ideas about love, relationships and body names at a very basic level, when children are inquisitive and want to learn, lays a foundation for learning when they're much older and ready to find out more."
The FPA hopes primary schools that have shied away from lessons on sex and relationships will use the pamphlet as a basis for lessons. It also hopes that it will encourage parents to talk to children about what will happen to their bodies when they grow up.
But critics say that sex education has not worked and that a new approach that focuses on values rather than biology is required. "Where has the last 20 years of propagating value-free sex education got us? The FPA seem to think that by doing the same thing with younger and younger children they are going to get a different result. Actually they are going to reap the whirlwind," said Trevor Stammers, a GP and trustee of the Family Education Trust. "There is a constant emphasis on biological knowledge and an absence of understanding that feelings can be hurt and sex outside a loving relationship leads to damage and retreat."
The publication comes as ministers review the way that sex education lessons are provided in schools. Under the present rules the only statutory requirement made of primary and secondary schools is that they teach children the basic facts about human reproduction in their biology lessons.Many schools do much more during personal, social and health education (PSHE) lessons, but standards vary widely and teachers often lack training and materials. Parents are allowed to withdraw their children from these lessons although all must attend the science classes that deal with sex.
Ministers will explore whether sex lessons as part of PSHE should be statutory, and start earlier. They are also looking at whether parents should retain the right to withdraw their children from these lessons.
The debate is highly polarised. The FPA and other sex education campaigners say that good sex education, similar to that taught in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, is the only way to tackle the increase in sexually transmitted diseases and reduce the teenage pregnancy rate.
Family campaigners say that the present approach to sex education has achieved nothing. "We are deeply concerned with what is going to come out of this review, with fewer and fewer rights for parents," Dr Stammers said. "The doctrine of `if it feels right for you, do it' has been disastrous, simply leading to younger and younger teenagers having sex, with the risk that it damages their ability to develop relationships later in life."
Source
Britain: Must condemn creationism at all times
"On the word of no one" is the Royal Society's motto. Authority, it contends, is nothing: evidence everything. Scientific papers, even by the most distinguished thinkers, should live or die by the facts alone. This week senior members of the society forced the resignation of Michael Reiss, its director of education, after a speech in which - parts of the media implied - he advocated teaching creationism in schools. On the word of no one.
His speech is online, so let us assess the evidence. The first thing you notice is that, if this were a scientific paper, it is no Principia Mathematica. Its conclusions seem obvious: almost truistic. Professor Reiss, while strongly defending evolution, says that teachers should be respectful to creationist students and not ridicule their views - because it is counter-productive, and puts them off science. He concludes: "A student who believes in creationism has a non-scientific way of seeing the world, and one very rarely changes one's world view as a result of a 50-minute lesson."
But take one sentence out of context, "creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view", prefix it by explaining that Professor Reiss is a clergyman, and suddenly he is a creationist.
The strangest thing is that the Royal Society accepts that he has been badly treated. "Professor Michael Reiss's recent comments... were open to misinterpretation," it says. "While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the society's reputation. As a result, Professor Reiss and the Royal Society have agreed that, in the best interests of the society, he will step down immediately." So he resigned not because he was wrong, nor even because he was particularly controversial. He resigned because others ascribed to him beliefs that were not his own.
He is not the first. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave a 6,000-word lecture about Sharia in the UK, it was summarised in headlines implying that he advocated public executions and the stoning of women. When Patrick Mercer, the Conservative defence spokesman, talked about the use of the word "nigger" while he was in the Army, he was sacked - not for being racist, but for allowing people to think he might be.
In an odd pact between journalists who want to write sensation, and readers who want to buy it, we choose cartoonish half-truths over complex reality. Professor Reiss is the victim of a culture where all arguments must be expressible in a sentence, and all sentences able to stand on their own. But don't take my word for it: read the speech.
Source
INDULGING THE GREENS MUST STOP
Comment from Prof. Stott in Britain
The Green movement has become dangerous for the survival of our society. It is surely time to stop pandering to its often ridiculous whims and fancies. We have been far too kind to its utopianism. Politicians of all parties have become enfeebled by indulging its fanaticism and unrealistic proposals, especially on food and energy. This has led to inertia, and to a serious failure to act when action is urgently required, a situation often exacerbated by the ludicrous obligations laid on us through a bureaucratic and unaccountable EU.
But we have to act, and we are going to have to challenge the EU. We need no more reports. We do not have the time. We require new coal-powered plants, new nuclear power stations, additional LNG storage facilities, and the Seven Barrage. "And when do we want them? We want them now!"
Green gobbledygook over so-called 'renewables' has helped to undermine UK energy policy to such a degree that we are facing an energy gap of between 30% to 40%, a threat Global Warming Politics has highlighted over and over again [e.g., 'The Energy Elephant Trumpets At Last', August 4]. Today, thank goodness, this threat has been spelt out once more in a new report, and with 'Janet-and-John' simplicity: 'Power cuts warning must be taken seriously' (The Daily Telegraph, September 17): "Between now and 2020, 23 gigawatts of generating capacity will be lost as old coal and nuclear stations are de-commissioned. Yet Labour Ministers spent a decade twiddling their thumbs over energy policy.
Only last year, when our dangerous dependence on energy from either potentially hostile (Russia) or unstable (Middle East) sources finally registered, did the Government belatedly accept that there has to be a new generation of nuclear reactors to meet the shortfall. Since then, there has been precious little evidence of any sense of urgency in getting that programme under way.
Today's report shows how dangerously negligent this lackadaisical approach has been. It also confirms that wind power, on which the Government has expended the better part 1 billion a year in subsidies, is little more than environmental window dressing. Its unreliability - wind is not a constant - means it cannot replace a single watt of permanent generating capacity."
When we add to this Green unreality over energy a self-indulgent opposition to conventional agriculture and to GM crops, tropes which are now threatening the poor and the disadvantaged the world over; total confusion over biofuels; frequent support for protectionism against trade; the desire to heap increased costs and retrogressive taxes on everyone, but especially on the poor; the wish to force people into lifestyles that few can afford or want; and the championing of breaking the law when protesting, we can see that the moral charge sheet against the Greens is long and extending by the day.
The idea that the Greens hold any moral high ground is sentimental rubbish. Many of their so-called ethical investments will cripple us, while impoverishing the poor even further.
It really is time for both of our leading political parties [I have no hope whatsoever for the dire Liberal Democrats, whose 'leader', Nick Clegg, didn't even know the level of the State Pension when asked] to return to economic reality in an increasingly unforgiving world. We can no longer afford to play at Green fantasies. We must grow up. Indulging The Greens Must Stop
Source
Finding: Sickly babies (i.e. ones given lots of painkillers) tend to have more illness in later life. Big news! Big stupidity to blame the problem on the remedy, though. There are other grounds for caution with paracetamol but the stuff below is negligible grounds for caution. It's just more data dredging
Giving paracetamol-based medicines such as Calpol to babies can increase their chances of developing asthma in later life, a large international study suggests. Researchers who analysed data on more than 200,000 children found strong links between their exposure to paracetamol as infants and the development of asthma and other allergic conditions.
Mothers are advised that after two months, in babies weighing over 4kg (9lb), they can treat fevers with medicines or suspensions that contain paracetamol. But the study raises questions about the long-term effects of using medicines such as junior paracetamol and Calpol at such a young age.
Children under 12 months who were given a paracetamol-based medicine at least once a month more than tripled the chances of suffering wheezing attacks by the age of 6 or 7, the researchers found. The painkiller was also associated with an increased risk of rhinoconjunctivitis - or hay fever - and eczema. The researchers add that increased use of paracetamol - because of earlier fears about giving children aspirin - could be a factor in causing rising rates of asthma in many countries.
Previous research had already suggested a link between paracetamol and asthma, and scientists believe that the painkiller may cause changes in the body that leave a child more vulnerable to inflammation and allergies.
The authors of the study, published in The Lancet medical journal, emphasise that the findings do not constitute a reason to stop using paracetamol for relief of pain and fever in children. Instead, they support existing guidelines of the World Health Organisation that paracetamol-based medicines should not be used routinely, but should be reserved for those with a high fever (38.5C or above). Experts point out that in these cases, giving children medication outweighs the risks of not doing so.
Paracetamol is not licensed for use in infants under 2 months old by mouth and is only recommended after that in "junior" doses or medicines that contain less than the standard adult dose. More than one million children in the UK - equivalent to one in ten - now have asthma and the number of cases has trebled since the 1960s. The rise has in part coincided with paracetamol becoming the preferred drug to treat fevers and pain in children.
The study, part of a worldwide investigation called the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, spanned 73 centres in 31 countries. It found that giving children paracetamol in the first year of life increased the risk of later asthma symptoms in children aged 6 and 7 by 46 per cent. Taking paracetamol at least once a month - classified as "high use" - increased the symptoms risk 3.23 times. Using the drug in the first year of life increased the risk of hay fever and eczema at the age of 6 and 7 by 48 per cent and 35 per cent respectively.
The researchers had to rely on written answers from parents who filled in questionnaires about their children's health and use of paracetamol, which may be subject to error.
Professor Richard Beasley, who led the study at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, said that there were good reasons to suggest that paracetamol was a factor in causing health problems, rather than merely being associated with them. The research highlights a "dose-dependent" response, with more exposure to the drug resulting in more asthma attacks, pointing to a cause-and-effect relationship, he said. [Rubbish! It just shows that the sicklier kids get more asthma]
The researchers said that more research, in the form of randomised controlled trials, was needed urgently. [Indeed!]
Source
British sex pamphlet for 6-year-olds horrifies family lobby
The country's biggest sexual health charity has published a sex education pamphlet for six-year-olds to encourage earlier discussion of the facts of life. The 12-page comic-style booklet, which will be distributed to schools, asks children to identify the physical differences between boys and girls and name their body parts properly. One puzzle asks children to draw a line from the words "vagina" and "testicles" to the correct areas of a picture of a naked girl and boy.
The pamphlet from the FPA - formerly the Family Planning Association - entitled Let's Grow with Nisha and Joe, which will be shown to pupils by schools unless parents opt out, was immediately condemned by family campaigners as "a very worrying development". They said that years of sex education had done nothing to tackle the teenage pregnancy rate, still the highest in Europe, and starting the education even earlier would make the problem worse.
The FPA countered that 6 was not too young to start conversations about sex. On the contrary it was a good chance to get the conversation going because children were not self-conscious or embarrassed about their bodies at that age. "The booklet answers the questions that six-year-olds are already asking about themselves, their families and the world around them," said Julie Bentley, chief executive of the FPA. "Introducing ideas about love, relationships and body names at a very basic level, when children are inquisitive and want to learn, lays a foundation for learning when they're much older and ready to find out more."
The FPA hopes primary schools that have shied away from lessons on sex and relationships will use the pamphlet as a basis for lessons. It also hopes that it will encourage parents to talk to children about what will happen to their bodies when they grow up.
But critics say that sex education has not worked and that a new approach that focuses on values rather than biology is required. "Where has the last 20 years of propagating value-free sex education got us? The FPA seem to think that by doing the same thing with younger and younger children they are going to get a different result. Actually they are going to reap the whirlwind," said Trevor Stammers, a GP and trustee of the Family Education Trust. "There is a constant emphasis on biological knowledge and an absence of understanding that feelings can be hurt and sex outside a loving relationship leads to damage and retreat."
The publication comes as ministers review the way that sex education lessons are provided in schools. Under the present rules the only statutory requirement made of primary and secondary schools is that they teach children the basic facts about human reproduction in their biology lessons.Many schools do much more during personal, social and health education (PSHE) lessons, but standards vary widely and teachers often lack training and materials. Parents are allowed to withdraw their children from these lessons although all must attend the science classes that deal with sex.
Ministers will explore whether sex lessons as part of PSHE should be statutory, and start earlier. They are also looking at whether parents should retain the right to withdraw their children from these lessons.
The debate is highly polarised. The FPA and other sex education campaigners say that good sex education, similar to that taught in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, is the only way to tackle the increase in sexually transmitted diseases and reduce the teenage pregnancy rate.
Family campaigners say that the present approach to sex education has achieved nothing. "We are deeply concerned with what is going to come out of this review, with fewer and fewer rights for parents," Dr Stammers said. "The doctrine of `if it feels right for you, do it' has been disastrous, simply leading to younger and younger teenagers having sex, with the risk that it damages their ability to develop relationships later in life."
Source
Britain: Must condemn creationism at all times
"On the word of no one" is the Royal Society's motto. Authority, it contends, is nothing: evidence everything. Scientific papers, even by the most distinguished thinkers, should live or die by the facts alone. This week senior members of the society forced the resignation of Michael Reiss, its director of education, after a speech in which - parts of the media implied - he advocated teaching creationism in schools. On the word of no one.
His speech is online, so let us assess the evidence. The first thing you notice is that, if this were a scientific paper, it is no Principia Mathematica. Its conclusions seem obvious: almost truistic. Professor Reiss, while strongly defending evolution, says that teachers should be respectful to creationist students and not ridicule their views - because it is counter-productive, and puts them off science. He concludes: "A student who believes in creationism has a non-scientific way of seeing the world, and one very rarely changes one's world view as a result of a 50-minute lesson."
But take one sentence out of context, "creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view", prefix it by explaining that Professor Reiss is a clergyman, and suddenly he is a creationist.
The strangest thing is that the Royal Society accepts that he has been badly treated. "Professor Michael Reiss's recent comments... were open to misinterpretation," it says. "While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the society's reputation. As a result, Professor Reiss and the Royal Society have agreed that, in the best interests of the society, he will step down immediately." So he resigned not because he was wrong, nor even because he was particularly controversial. He resigned because others ascribed to him beliefs that were not his own.
He is not the first. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave a 6,000-word lecture about Sharia in the UK, it was summarised in headlines implying that he advocated public executions and the stoning of women. When Patrick Mercer, the Conservative defence spokesman, talked about the use of the word "nigger" while he was in the Army, he was sacked - not for being racist, but for allowing people to think he might be.
In an odd pact between journalists who want to write sensation, and readers who want to buy it, we choose cartoonish half-truths over complex reality. Professor Reiss is the victim of a culture where all arguments must be expressible in a sentence, and all sentences able to stand on their own. But don't take my word for it: read the speech.
Source
INDULGING THE GREENS MUST STOP
Comment from Prof. Stott in Britain
The Green movement has become dangerous for the survival of our society. It is surely time to stop pandering to its often ridiculous whims and fancies. We have been far too kind to its utopianism. Politicians of all parties have become enfeebled by indulging its fanaticism and unrealistic proposals, especially on food and energy. This has led to inertia, and to a serious failure to act when action is urgently required, a situation often exacerbated by the ludicrous obligations laid on us through a bureaucratic and unaccountable EU.
But we have to act, and we are going to have to challenge the EU. We need no more reports. We do not have the time. We require new coal-powered plants, new nuclear power stations, additional LNG storage facilities, and the Seven Barrage. "And when do we want them? We want them now!"
Green gobbledygook over so-called 'renewables' has helped to undermine UK energy policy to such a degree that we are facing an energy gap of between 30% to 40%, a threat Global Warming Politics has highlighted over and over again [e.g., 'The Energy Elephant Trumpets At Last', August 4]. Today, thank goodness, this threat has been spelt out once more in a new report, and with 'Janet-and-John' simplicity: 'Power cuts warning must be taken seriously' (The Daily Telegraph, September 17): "Between now and 2020, 23 gigawatts of generating capacity will be lost as old coal and nuclear stations are de-commissioned. Yet Labour Ministers spent a decade twiddling their thumbs over energy policy.
Only last year, when our dangerous dependence on energy from either potentially hostile (Russia) or unstable (Middle East) sources finally registered, did the Government belatedly accept that there has to be a new generation of nuclear reactors to meet the shortfall. Since then, there has been precious little evidence of any sense of urgency in getting that programme under way.
Today's report shows how dangerously negligent this lackadaisical approach has been. It also confirms that wind power, on which the Government has expended the better part 1 billion a year in subsidies, is little more than environmental window dressing. Its unreliability - wind is not a constant - means it cannot replace a single watt of permanent generating capacity."
When we add to this Green unreality over energy a self-indulgent opposition to conventional agriculture and to GM crops, tropes which are now threatening the poor and the disadvantaged the world over; total confusion over biofuels; frequent support for protectionism against trade; the desire to heap increased costs and retrogressive taxes on everyone, but especially on the poor; the wish to force people into lifestyles that few can afford or want; and the championing of breaking the law when protesting, we can see that the moral charge sheet against the Greens is long and extending by the day.
The idea that the Greens hold any moral high ground is sentimental rubbish. Many of their so-called ethical investments will cripple us, while impoverishing the poor even further.
It really is time for both of our leading political parties [I have no hope whatsoever for the dire Liberal Democrats, whose 'leader', Nick Clegg, didn't even know the level of the State Pension when asked] to return to economic reality in an increasingly unforgiving world. We can no longer afford to play at Green fantasies. We must grow up. Indulging The Greens Must Stop
Source
Friday, September 19, 2008
THE BBC'S CLIMATE BIASES -- AGAIN
An email from David Tyler [D.Tyler@mmu.ac.uk]:
I am planning to put in a complaint about the standard of Iain Stewart's coverage of the Climate Sceptic issue (BBC 2: The Climate Wars). He had plenty of clips showing them in denial, but very little allowing them to say why they take a dissenting position. He presented the Hockey Stick graph in a positive light, giving viewers very little appreciation of the scientific controversies that it has generated. For example, material the BBC itself has reported was omitted completely.
The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary got a mention, and the evidence for climate being driven by the sun was conceded to be relevant before the last few decades, but Stewart suggested that the temperature plots providing the demonstration for this finished prematurely. He provided an updating, which he said demonstrated the sceptics were wrong - but the global temperature data he presented showed an exponential increase - the reality is that the graph has plateaued since 2000. He provided no opportunity for a sceptic to comment on the point he was making and presented his own view as definitive. He did not work through the implications for the Hockey Stick graph if climate was driven by solar energy prior to 1960. He showed some clips of Christopher Monckton talking about his dissenting views, but this did not explore the science.
The body language of Stewart suggested that he was not interested in exploring the reasons for dissent. This programme is declared to be a feature by the BBC, but it shows a highly polarised perspective: science vs politically-inspired dissent. Viewers would come away with the view that climate sceptics are funded by organisations with vested interests, and that their dissent cannot be described as science. This message is a complete distortion of the situation, and consequently is not in the public interest.
Re persecution of "Dr Scot Jnr":
Further to my recent reports about NHS attacks on free speech by doctors, I thought it fair to make clear that the whole of the NHS should not be tarred with this. Below are particulars of the very senior feminazis actually involved
Professor Elisabeth Paice saw the scatological comment on the forum about Prof. Black and reported it to Prof. Black. Paice is Dean Director, Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education for London; Chair of the Conference of Postgraduate Medical Deans; Chair of the forum for Modernising Medical Careers.
From a recent anonymous post on the NHS Exposed blog: "Readers may be interested to learn that the London Dean involved is also implicated in copying material from DNUK in order to report another doctor to the GMC. This doctor has sadly committed suicide. Whilst cause and effect are hard to prove, the involvement of Elisabeth Paice in yet another tragic abuse of power has caused much anger amongst doctors, as is her unaccountability."
Professor Dame Carol Black. Either Black or Paice called Needham to get Scot suspended. She is National Director for Health and Work, Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Chair of the Nuffield Trust. From Wikipedia: "Junior NHS Doctors were upset when Dame Carol Black was re-elected Chairperson of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (unopposed) in 2008. One junior surgeon launched a scatological attack on Dame Carol on the doctor discussion forum Doctors.net.uk which resulted in Dame Carol's colleage, Professor (Dean) Elizabeth Paice complaining to the junior's dean in Highland (Professor Gillian Needham). The junior doctor was suspended. This caused outrage in the medical blogging and discussion forums, with many authors calling this an abuse of power by the Deans as Carol Black is a public figure and many juniors were justifiably very upset by the problems with the Modernising Medical Careers changes to junior doctor training and held that Dame Carol Black should accept responsibility for the problems that occurred."
Professor Gillian Needham is Post Graduate Dean of Medical Studies, Aberdeen University; Head of the Highland Deanery which is responsible for overseeing Dr Scot Jnr's surgeon training. (Note, she is NOT his employer so has no legal right to suspend/sack him. She allegedly prevailed upon Garry Coutts, Chair of NHS Highland (Scot's employers) to do the deed).
ENERGY CRISIS: BRITAIN URGED TO DUMP CLIMATE GOALS
British climate and energy policy is incoherent and needs an overhaul, dumping carbon targets and building more coal and nuclear power stations to stop the lights going out, a pro-nuclear scientist said. A report entitled "A Pragmatic Energy Policy for the UK", by Professor Ian Fells and Candida Whitmill, said renewables would not fill the impending energy gap so old nuclear and coal plants had to be kept going while new ones were built urgently. "Current UK energy policy is not fit for purpose. Something has to be done about it if we are not going to run into serious problems around about the middle of the next decade," Fells, an advocate of nuclear power, told reporters.
The government should guarantee a minimum electricity price to the power companies for the next 30 years to give them a secure investment outlook to finance the 4 billion pounds each nuclear power plant is likely to cost, he added. "We are looking at something that looks like a slow motion train crash," Fells said, accusing the government of vacillating over climate change and energy policy, starving the power industry of direction and reducing investment to a minimum.
The same held true across Europe where nuclear power was resurgent as governments woke up to the fact that they had delayed important baseload energy investment decisions for too long and placed too much reliance on intermittent renewables.
Environmentalists were outraged at the recommendations in the report, issued on Wednesday. "Professor Fells has a long standing love affair with the technologies of the 20th century, but as time goes by his fetish for coal and nuclear power looks increasingly naive," said Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr. "All over the world jobs are being created in the renewable energy sector, but Britain has been left behind for too long by the negative, white flag approach to climate change that this report represents."
The report, commissioned by industrialist Andrew Cook, who told the news conference he feared a complete societal breakdown if there were widespread power cuts, said energy security had now to be given absolute priority over climate change policies. It was a view echoed by Whitmill: "Today's credit crunch is a head cold compared with the double pneumonia this country will suffer if we don't implement an energy policy urgently."
Whitmill said one-third of Britain's electricity generating capacity was set for shutdown within 12 years either due to old age or European Union carbon emissions restrictions that come into force in 2015. The report said Britain, facing a yawning gulf between electricity demand and supply, had to breach the EU rules and keep the old coal plants going even though this went completely counter to climate policy of cutting carbon.
Source
The British Nanny State marches on
Stuck at a train crossing? Turn off the engine or pay fine
Motorists who leave their engines idling unnecessarily face an on-the-spot fine under plans being considered by councillors. West Sussex County Council is seeking to reduce exhaust emissions by penalising drivers who refuse to turn off their engines while parked or waiting at railway crossings. A pilot scheme expected to be introduced in January will allow traffic wardens to fine motorists who break the new rule. A council spokesman said: "We want to get people out of the habit of leaving their cars ticking over out of convenience." Signs are already in place at level crossings ordering people to switch their engines off.
"We would stress that this is just an investigation at this stage," the spokesman said. "If it was ever introduced the fixed penalty would probably be œ20. But we would hope that the vast majority of motorists would be willing to cooperate."
An Air Quality Management Area has already been set up in Shoreham, where the trial will take place. It will be expanded across the county if it proves successful. Traffic wardens will be instructed to issue a warning to drivers who are caught with their engines idling. There will, however, be exemptions for lorries with freezer units and other vehicles that need to keep their engines ticking over.
Roger Turner, 30, a taxi driver from West Sussex, said: "Who gave them the right to tell us to switch off our engines? It's not like we try to waste fuel.It's just another example of the nanny state, telling us what we can and can't do."
Edmund King, president of the AA, said: "I think the council has to be careful. They need to run a high-profile campaign if they are going to do this because to prosecute people without telling them about it first would be very harsh."
Source
BAD BISPHENOL AGAIN!
This scare never seems to die. Weak epidemiological associations below based on small samples of sufferers -- with causal inferences speculative, as usual. Interesting that one of the study participants did not think much of the results. Note that the vast majority of the sample were NOT ill and yet had bisphenol in them also. Also note that an unspecified number of both "heart" and "diabetic" patients were UNDIAGNOSED heart-disease and diabetes sufferers!
Exposure to a ubiquitous chemical used in plastic baby bottles, food cans and a host of other products may increase the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes, a study suggests. In the first significant study of the effects of bisphenol A (BPA), one of the world's most mass-produced substances, researchers found that even small traces in the body were potentially linked to health problems.
BPA, used in hardened plastics including food containers and compact discs, can be found in detectable levels in nine out of ten people. It enters the body primarily through food and drink but also through drinking water, dental sealants, through the skin or inhalation of household dusts.
The researchers, from the Peninsula Medical School, Exeter, found that relatively high levels of the chemical present in urine were associated with a threefold risk of cardiovascular disease and double the risk for type 2 diabetes. With possible public health implications, the results "deserve scientific follow-up", the study's authors said.
Previous studies of adverse effects in animals have created concern over long-term, low-level exposure to BPA in humans. But the findings, from a "snapshot" study of the American population, do not prove that the chemical causes health problems, the researchers said.
Heart disease is reckoned Britain's biggest killer, with about 270,000 heart attacks occurring each year, while 100,000 cases of type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity, are diagnosed each year.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at BPA levels in the urine of 1,455 American adults, and whether they had ever been diagnosed with one of eight main diseases, including arthritis and thyroid disease. In total 79 had had heart attacks, chest pain or other types of cardiovascular disease and 136 had diabetes. The average level of BPA exposure was 20 micrograms per day.
But 25 per cent of participants with highest BPA concentrations (between 35 to 50 micrograms per day) were nearly three times likelier to be diagnosed with cardiovascular disease than those in the lowest 25 per cent (10 micrograms per day). Similarly, those with highest BPA concentrations were 2.4 times likelier to have had diabetes diagnosed compared with those at lowest levels. Current guidelines suggest that an adult can safely consume up to 3,250 micrograms a day, a much higher amount than the study suggests.
BPA leaches from drinks bottles made from some polycarbonate plastics and from the epoxy linings of canned foods, especially if heated. "BPA-free" baby bottles have been sold in recent years, but there is little information for consumers on BPA.
David Melzer, who led the study at the University of Exeter, said: "At the moment we can't be sure BPA is the direct cause of the extra cases of heart disease and diabetes. If it is, some cases of these conditions could be prevented by reducing BPA exposure."
Iain Lang, a co-author of the study, added, "Measuring who has disease and high BPA levels at a single point in time cannot tell you which comes first. I'm not changing my behaviour on the basis of this single study."
Source
Association of Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration With Medical Disorders and Laboratory Abnormalities in Adults
By Iain A. Lang et al.
Context: Bisphenol A (BPA) is widely used in epoxy resins lining food and beverage containers. Evidence of effects in animals has generated concern over low-level chronic exposures in humans.
Objective: To examine associations between urinary BPA concentrations and adult health status.
Design, Setting, and Participants: Cross-sectional analysis of BPA concentrations and health status in the general adult population of the United States, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2004.
Participants were 1455 adults aged 18 through 74 years with measured urinary BPA and urine creatinine concentrations. Regression models were adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, income, smoking, body mass index, waist circumference, and urinary creatinine concentration. The sample provided 80% power to detect unadjusted odds ratios (ORs) of 1.4 for diagnoses of 5% prevalence per 1-SD change in BPA concentration, or standardized regression coefficients of 0.075 for liver enzyme concentrations, at a significance level of P <.05.
Main Outcome Measures: Chronic disease diagnoses plus blood markers of liver function, glucose homeostasis, inflammation, and lipid changes.
Results: Higher urinary BPA concentrations were associated with cardiovascular diagnoses in age-, sex-, and fully adjusted models (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.39; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.18-1.63; P = .001 with full adjustment). Higher BPA concentrations were also associated with diabetes (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.39; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.21-1.60; P <.001) but not with other studied common diseases.
In addition, higher BPA concentrations were associated with clinically abnormal concentrations of the liver enzymes gamma -glutamyltransferase (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.14-1.46; P < .001) and alkaline phosphatase (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.18-1.85; P = .002).
Conclusion: Higher BPA exposure, reflected in higher urinary concentrations of BPA, may be associated with avoidable morbidity in the community-dwelling adult population.
JAMA. 2008;300(11):1303-1310
Antibiotics given to delay labour can harm baby
Another disgraceful attempt to worry pregnant women. The report below is a very partial summary of two papers that were published simultaneously. This paper found no effect of antibiotic use while this paper found no effect of antibiotic use on anything other than rate of cerebral palsy, which was rare in any case. It's just data dredging. If you look at enough variables, you will find differences by chance alone. The real conclusion should be that antibiotics in pregnancy are almost certainly safe
Giving women antibiotics to delay premature labour may increase the risk of developmental problems for the baby, a study suggests. The study by the University of Leicester, published in The Lancet, assessed seven-year-olds whose mothers had been involved in a clinical trial at the time of their birth. The children of those given an antibiotic were much more likely to have cerebral palsy. The Health Department has written to doctors asking them to discontinue the practice, which is not routine.
Experts say that the more common use of antibiotics for pregnant women who show signs of an infection when their waters break early can be lifesaving, and should be continued.
Many new mothers get too little postnatal support, a poll of 6,000 mothers by Netmums.com found. Six out of ten felt they had not seen their health visitor enough during the first year of their child's life.
Source
Children are best educated at home
Britain: It is back-to-school this week. All over the country, stressed parents made last-minute dashes to the shops to force children to try on clumpy school shoes. Then they got up early, hurried their children into cars or on to buses, got stuck in jams, arrived later than intended and said a rushed goodbye. Then they found that the children had gone. Relief may have been mixed with melancholy, loss and a hope that the children were all right behind those high windows, told what to do by strangers.
The return to school is a well-established part of the journey of life. It seems normal, right and inevitable. But actually it is none of these things. Yes, it is normal in the early 21st century. But if modern civilisation started about 10,000 years ago, this way of treating children has been "normal" only for the last 2 per cent of the time. It is a new, artificial construct designed to provide education at low cost. It certainly was not created to provide a pleasant or socialising experience for children.
Schools are not clearly "right", either. People tend to think that what everyone does and what they themselves experienced must be right. But there is nothing obviously ideal about delivering your children to other people who do not love them as you do, and who are likely to teach them things with which you may disagree. And sending children to school is not inevitable. Under the law, children must be educated. But they do not have to be educated at a school. There is another way.
Home education is not for everyone - not even a large minority. It is a luxury in most cases. The parent who becomes a home teacher earns no money. There have to be savings, or partners, husbands or wives must be willing to pay the bills. But lots of well-educated wives do not work and could save money by home educating. For those who can find a way, home-educating is a glorious, liberating, empowering, profoundly fulfilling thing to do. Far more people should try it. At present it is estimated that about 50,000 children are taught this way. The number has jumped from a decade ago but is still very few compared with America.
I have just finished two years of teaching my younger daughter, Alex, now 11. We have become very close. Many fathers see their children at supper time and a bit more at weekends. Alex and I were with each other all day, every weekday, in all sorts of places and circumstances. We knew and shared thoughts, ideas and feelings. I believe the closeness that we developed will benefit our relationship for the rest of our lives.
We had enjoyable educational trips to France, Italy and China. Instead of learning about the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius from a text book, Alex and I climbed up to the rim and peered into the still-smoking crater. We visited Pompeii and Oplontis to see the parts of Roman civilisation that had been preserved by the most famous of its eruptions.
One of the beauties of home education is that you can teach children things that you want them to know - some of which are not taught in most schools. I wanted Alex to know something of the origin of the Universe, and astronomy. We studied far more history than schools do, including overviews of Rome, China and Britain. We looked at the Second World War, using DVDs of the superb Channel 4 series on it. We started learning Italian. But all parents would have different ideas of what they want their children to know. You can go for whatever you think important. This is freedom, thrilling freedom. You don't have to teach just what some civil servant in Whitehall has lighted upon and stuck in the national curriculum.
It is strange that children all over the country study the same bits of history - all knowing certain periods and hardly studying outside them. It verges on the totalitarian. With home education, there can be enormous diversity. At the same time, there is nothing to stop one's child taking the same GCSEs and Alevels that others are taking.
But some of the greatest gains from home education are not easily measured or tested. They come from the daily flow of conversation - the times when your child asks you a question and a conversation follows.
You may make an observation, or your child may see something and become interested in it. If that happens, you can encourage the interest. This is developing the ability to think and discuss. It is a big contrast with what happens at school where it is impossible in a class of 25 to chase the individual interests of everyone present or to enter separate conversations. It may even be the case that schools can damage a child's curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. I have seen children totally turned off education and making no attempt to hide how bored they are.
The widespread concern is that a home-educated child misses out on "socialisation". But I have never heard anyone offer any evidence for this. As far as I know, the evidence from America is rather the other way - home-educated children are better socialised. We know that young children left in inferior nurseries and not given much attention can get withdrawn or aggressive. It is possible, to put it no higher, that being left at school and not given much attention can, in some cases, have a similar, if milder, damaging effect on older children.
You don't have to educate a child for all his or her years of learning. It could be for just one or two. Several teachers have told me that they would love to take their children on a round-the-world journey, perhaps when their offspring are aged somewhere between 11 and 14. I would recommend it.
Home education, however you structure it, can bring you and your child closer together. You can both learn. You will have shared experiences that will enrich your relationship for ever. Yes, there will also be arguments and tears. But children and parents who never experience it are missing out badly.
Source
An email from David Tyler [D.Tyler@mmu.ac.uk]:
I am planning to put in a complaint about the standard of Iain Stewart's coverage of the Climate Sceptic issue (BBC 2: The Climate Wars). He had plenty of clips showing them in denial, but very little allowing them to say why they take a dissenting position. He presented the Hockey Stick graph in a positive light, giving viewers very little appreciation of the scientific controversies that it has generated. For example, material the BBC itself has reported was omitted completely.
The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary got a mention, and the evidence for climate being driven by the sun was conceded to be relevant before the last few decades, but Stewart suggested that the temperature plots providing the demonstration for this finished prematurely. He provided an updating, which he said demonstrated the sceptics were wrong - but the global temperature data he presented showed an exponential increase - the reality is that the graph has plateaued since 2000. He provided no opportunity for a sceptic to comment on the point he was making and presented his own view as definitive. He did not work through the implications for the Hockey Stick graph if climate was driven by solar energy prior to 1960. He showed some clips of Christopher Monckton talking about his dissenting views, but this did not explore the science.
The body language of Stewart suggested that he was not interested in exploring the reasons for dissent. This programme is declared to be a feature by the BBC, but it shows a highly polarised perspective: science vs politically-inspired dissent. Viewers would come away with the view that climate sceptics are funded by organisations with vested interests, and that their dissent cannot be described as science. This message is a complete distortion of the situation, and consequently is not in the public interest.
Re persecution of "Dr Scot Jnr":
Further to my recent reports about NHS attacks on free speech by doctors, I thought it fair to make clear that the whole of the NHS should not be tarred with this. Below are particulars of the very senior feminazis actually involved
Professor Elisabeth Paice saw the scatological comment on the forum about Prof. Black and reported it to Prof. Black. Paice is Dean Director, Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education for London; Chair of the Conference of Postgraduate Medical Deans; Chair of the forum for Modernising Medical Careers.
From a recent anonymous post on the NHS Exposed blog: "Readers may be interested to learn that the London Dean involved is also implicated in copying material from DNUK in order to report another doctor to the GMC. This doctor has sadly committed suicide. Whilst cause and effect are hard to prove, the involvement of Elisabeth Paice in yet another tragic abuse of power has caused much anger amongst doctors, as is her unaccountability."
Professor Dame Carol Black. Either Black or Paice called Needham to get Scot suspended. She is National Director for Health and Work, Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Chair of the Nuffield Trust. From Wikipedia: "Junior NHS Doctors were upset when Dame Carol Black was re-elected Chairperson of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (unopposed) in 2008. One junior surgeon launched a scatological attack on Dame Carol on the doctor discussion forum Doctors.net.uk which resulted in Dame Carol's colleage, Professor (Dean) Elizabeth Paice complaining to the junior's dean in Highland (Professor Gillian Needham). The junior doctor was suspended. This caused outrage in the medical blogging and discussion forums, with many authors calling this an abuse of power by the Deans as Carol Black is a public figure and many juniors were justifiably very upset by the problems with the Modernising Medical Careers changes to junior doctor training and held that Dame Carol Black should accept responsibility for the problems that occurred."
Professor Gillian Needham is Post Graduate Dean of Medical Studies, Aberdeen University; Head of the Highland Deanery which is responsible for overseeing Dr Scot Jnr's surgeon training. (Note, she is NOT his employer so has no legal right to suspend/sack him. She allegedly prevailed upon Garry Coutts, Chair of NHS Highland (Scot's employers) to do the deed).
ENERGY CRISIS: BRITAIN URGED TO DUMP CLIMATE GOALS
British climate and energy policy is incoherent and needs an overhaul, dumping carbon targets and building more coal and nuclear power stations to stop the lights going out, a pro-nuclear scientist said. A report entitled "A Pragmatic Energy Policy for the UK", by Professor Ian Fells and Candida Whitmill, said renewables would not fill the impending energy gap so old nuclear and coal plants had to be kept going while new ones were built urgently. "Current UK energy policy is not fit for purpose. Something has to be done about it if we are not going to run into serious problems around about the middle of the next decade," Fells, an advocate of nuclear power, told reporters.
The government should guarantee a minimum electricity price to the power companies for the next 30 years to give them a secure investment outlook to finance the 4 billion pounds each nuclear power plant is likely to cost, he added. "We are looking at something that looks like a slow motion train crash," Fells said, accusing the government of vacillating over climate change and energy policy, starving the power industry of direction and reducing investment to a minimum.
The same held true across Europe where nuclear power was resurgent as governments woke up to the fact that they had delayed important baseload energy investment decisions for too long and placed too much reliance on intermittent renewables.
Environmentalists were outraged at the recommendations in the report, issued on Wednesday. "Professor Fells has a long standing love affair with the technologies of the 20th century, but as time goes by his fetish for coal and nuclear power looks increasingly naive," said Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr. "All over the world jobs are being created in the renewable energy sector, but Britain has been left behind for too long by the negative, white flag approach to climate change that this report represents."
The report, commissioned by industrialist Andrew Cook, who told the news conference he feared a complete societal breakdown if there were widespread power cuts, said energy security had now to be given absolute priority over climate change policies. It was a view echoed by Whitmill: "Today's credit crunch is a head cold compared with the double pneumonia this country will suffer if we don't implement an energy policy urgently."
Whitmill said one-third of Britain's electricity generating capacity was set for shutdown within 12 years either due to old age or European Union carbon emissions restrictions that come into force in 2015. The report said Britain, facing a yawning gulf between electricity demand and supply, had to breach the EU rules and keep the old coal plants going even though this went completely counter to climate policy of cutting carbon.
Source
The British Nanny State marches on
Stuck at a train crossing? Turn off the engine or pay fine
Motorists who leave their engines idling unnecessarily face an on-the-spot fine under plans being considered by councillors. West Sussex County Council is seeking to reduce exhaust emissions by penalising drivers who refuse to turn off their engines while parked or waiting at railway crossings. A pilot scheme expected to be introduced in January will allow traffic wardens to fine motorists who break the new rule. A council spokesman said: "We want to get people out of the habit of leaving their cars ticking over out of convenience." Signs are already in place at level crossings ordering people to switch their engines off.
"We would stress that this is just an investigation at this stage," the spokesman said. "If it was ever introduced the fixed penalty would probably be œ20. But we would hope that the vast majority of motorists would be willing to cooperate."
An Air Quality Management Area has already been set up in Shoreham, where the trial will take place. It will be expanded across the county if it proves successful. Traffic wardens will be instructed to issue a warning to drivers who are caught with their engines idling. There will, however, be exemptions for lorries with freezer units and other vehicles that need to keep their engines ticking over.
Roger Turner, 30, a taxi driver from West Sussex, said: "Who gave them the right to tell us to switch off our engines? It's not like we try to waste fuel.It's just another example of the nanny state, telling us what we can and can't do."
Edmund King, president of the AA, said: "I think the council has to be careful. They need to run a high-profile campaign if they are going to do this because to prosecute people without telling them about it first would be very harsh."
Source
BAD BISPHENOL AGAIN!
This scare never seems to die. Weak epidemiological associations below based on small samples of sufferers -- with causal inferences speculative, as usual. Interesting that one of the study participants did not think much of the results. Note that the vast majority of the sample were NOT ill and yet had bisphenol in them also. Also note that an unspecified number of both "heart" and "diabetic" patients were UNDIAGNOSED heart-disease and diabetes sufferers!
Exposure to a ubiquitous chemical used in plastic baby bottles, food cans and a host of other products may increase the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes, a study suggests. In the first significant study of the effects of bisphenol A (BPA), one of the world's most mass-produced substances, researchers found that even small traces in the body were potentially linked to health problems.
BPA, used in hardened plastics including food containers and compact discs, can be found in detectable levels in nine out of ten people. It enters the body primarily through food and drink but also through drinking water, dental sealants, through the skin or inhalation of household dusts.
The researchers, from the Peninsula Medical School, Exeter, found that relatively high levels of the chemical present in urine were associated with a threefold risk of cardiovascular disease and double the risk for type 2 diabetes. With possible public health implications, the results "deserve scientific follow-up", the study's authors said.
Previous studies of adverse effects in animals have created concern over long-term, low-level exposure to BPA in humans. But the findings, from a "snapshot" study of the American population, do not prove that the chemical causes health problems, the researchers said.
Heart disease is reckoned Britain's biggest killer, with about 270,000 heart attacks occurring each year, while 100,000 cases of type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity, are diagnosed each year.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at BPA levels in the urine of 1,455 American adults, and whether they had ever been diagnosed with one of eight main diseases, including arthritis and thyroid disease. In total 79 had had heart attacks, chest pain or other types of cardiovascular disease and 136 had diabetes. The average level of BPA exposure was 20 micrograms per day.
But 25 per cent of participants with highest BPA concentrations (between 35 to 50 micrograms per day) were nearly three times likelier to be diagnosed with cardiovascular disease than those in the lowest 25 per cent (10 micrograms per day). Similarly, those with highest BPA concentrations were 2.4 times likelier to have had diabetes diagnosed compared with those at lowest levels. Current guidelines suggest that an adult can safely consume up to 3,250 micrograms a day, a much higher amount than the study suggests.
BPA leaches from drinks bottles made from some polycarbonate plastics and from the epoxy linings of canned foods, especially if heated. "BPA-free" baby bottles have been sold in recent years, but there is little information for consumers on BPA.
David Melzer, who led the study at the University of Exeter, said: "At the moment we can't be sure BPA is the direct cause of the extra cases of heart disease and diabetes. If it is, some cases of these conditions could be prevented by reducing BPA exposure."
Iain Lang, a co-author of the study, added, "Measuring who has disease and high BPA levels at a single point in time cannot tell you which comes first. I'm not changing my behaviour on the basis of this single study."
Source
Association of Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration With Medical Disorders and Laboratory Abnormalities in Adults
By Iain A. Lang et al.
Context: Bisphenol A (BPA) is widely used in epoxy resins lining food and beverage containers. Evidence of effects in animals has generated concern over low-level chronic exposures in humans.
Objective: To examine associations between urinary BPA concentrations and adult health status.
Design, Setting, and Participants: Cross-sectional analysis of BPA concentrations and health status in the general adult population of the United States, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2004.
Participants were 1455 adults aged 18 through 74 years with measured urinary BPA and urine creatinine concentrations. Regression models were adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, income, smoking, body mass index, waist circumference, and urinary creatinine concentration. The sample provided 80% power to detect unadjusted odds ratios (ORs) of 1.4 for diagnoses of 5% prevalence per 1-SD change in BPA concentration, or standardized regression coefficients of 0.075 for liver enzyme concentrations, at a significance level of P <.05.
Main Outcome Measures: Chronic disease diagnoses plus blood markers of liver function, glucose homeostasis, inflammation, and lipid changes.
Results: Higher urinary BPA concentrations were associated with cardiovascular diagnoses in age-, sex-, and fully adjusted models (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.39; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.18-1.63; P = .001 with full adjustment). Higher BPA concentrations were also associated with diabetes (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.39; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.21-1.60; P <.001) but not with other studied common diseases.
In addition, higher BPA concentrations were associated with clinically abnormal concentrations of the liver enzymes gamma -glutamyltransferase (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.14-1.46; P < .001) and alkaline phosphatase (OR per 1-SD increase in BPA concentration, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.18-1.85; P = .002).
Conclusion: Higher BPA exposure, reflected in higher urinary concentrations of BPA, may be associated with avoidable morbidity in the community-dwelling adult population.
JAMA. 2008;300(11):1303-1310
Antibiotics given to delay labour can harm baby
Another disgraceful attempt to worry pregnant women. The report below is a very partial summary of two papers that were published simultaneously. This paper found no effect of antibiotic use while this paper found no effect of antibiotic use on anything other than rate of cerebral palsy, which was rare in any case. It's just data dredging. If you look at enough variables, you will find differences by chance alone. The real conclusion should be that antibiotics in pregnancy are almost certainly safe
Giving women antibiotics to delay premature labour may increase the risk of developmental problems for the baby, a study suggests. The study by the University of Leicester, published in The Lancet, assessed seven-year-olds whose mothers had been involved in a clinical trial at the time of their birth. The children of those given an antibiotic were much more likely to have cerebral palsy. The Health Department has written to doctors asking them to discontinue the practice, which is not routine.
Experts say that the more common use of antibiotics for pregnant women who show signs of an infection when their waters break early can be lifesaving, and should be continued.
Many new mothers get too little postnatal support, a poll of 6,000 mothers by Netmums.com found. Six out of ten felt they had not seen their health visitor enough during the first year of their child's life.
Source
Children are best educated at home
Britain: It is back-to-school this week. All over the country, stressed parents made last-minute dashes to the shops to force children to try on clumpy school shoes. Then they got up early, hurried their children into cars or on to buses, got stuck in jams, arrived later than intended and said a rushed goodbye. Then they found that the children had gone. Relief may have been mixed with melancholy, loss and a hope that the children were all right behind those high windows, told what to do by strangers.
The return to school is a well-established part of the journey of life. It seems normal, right and inevitable. But actually it is none of these things. Yes, it is normal in the early 21st century. But if modern civilisation started about 10,000 years ago, this way of treating children has been "normal" only for the last 2 per cent of the time. It is a new, artificial construct designed to provide education at low cost. It certainly was not created to provide a pleasant or socialising experience for children.
Schools are not clearly "right", either. People tend to think that what everyone does and what they themselves experienced must be right. But there is nothing obviously ideal about delivering your children to other people who do not love them as you do, and who are likely to teach them things with which you may disagree. And sending children to school is not inevitable. Under the law, children must be educated. But they do not have to be educated at a school. There is another way.
Home education is not for everyone - not even a large minority. It is a luxury in most cases. The parent who becomes a home teacher earns no money. There have to be savings, or partners, husbands or wives must be willing to pay the bills. But lots of well-educated wives do not work and could save money by home educating. For those who can find a way, home-educating is a glorious, liberating, empowering, profoundly fulfilling thing to do. Far more people should try it. At present it is estimated that about 50,000 children are taught this way. The number has jumped from a decade ago but is still very few compared with America.
I have just finished two years of teaching my younger daughter, Alex, now 11. We have become very close. Many fathers see their children at supper time and a bit more at weekends. Alex and I were with each other all day, every weekday, in all sorts of places and circumstances. We knew and shared thoughts, ideas and feelings. I believe the closeness that we developed will benefit our relationship for the rest of our lives.
We had enjoyable educational trips to France, Italy and China. Instead of learning about the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius from a text book, Alex and I climbed up to the rim and peered into the still-smoking crater. We visited Pompeii and Oplontis to see the parts of Roman civilisation that had been preserved by the most famous of its eruptions.
One of the beauties of home education is that you can teach children things that you want them to know - some of which are not taught in most schools. I wanted Alex to know something of the origin of the Universe, and astronomy. We studied far more history than schools do, including overviews of Rome, China and Britain. We looked at the Second World War, using DVDs of the superb Channel 4 series on it. We started learning Italian. But all parents would have different ideas of what they want their children to know. You can go for whatever you think important. This is freedom, thrilling freedom. You don't have to teach just what some civil servant in Whitehall has lighted upon and stuck in the national curriculum.
It is strange that children all over the country study the same bits of history - all knowing certain periods and hardly studying outside them. It verges on the totalitarian. With home education, there can be enormous diversity. At the same time, there is nothing to stop one's child taking the same GCSEs and Alevels that others are taking.
But some of the greatest gains from home education are not easily measured or tested. They come from the daily flow of conversation - the times when your child asks you a question and a conversation follows.
You may make an observation, or your child may see something and become interested in it. If that happens, you can encourage the interest. This is developing the ability to think and discuss. It is a big contrast with what happens at school where it is impossible in a class of 25 to chase the individual interests of everyone present or to enter separate conversations. It may even be the case that schools can damage a child's curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. I have seen children totally turned off education and making no attempt to hide how bored they are.
The widespread concern is that a home-educated child misses out on "socialisation". But I have never heard anyone offer any evidence for this. As far as I know, the evidence from America is rather the other way - home-educated children are better socialised. We know that young children left in inferior nurseries and not given much attention can get withdrawn or aggressive. It is possible, to put it no higher, that being left at school and not given much attention can, in some cases, have a similar, if milder, damaging effect on older children.
You don't have to educate a child for all his or her years of learning. It could be for just one or two. Several teachers have told me that they would love to take their children on a round-the-world journey, perhaps when their offspring are aged somewhere between 11 and 14. I would recommend it.
Home education, however you structure it, can bring you and your child closer together. You can both learn. You will have shared experiences that will enrich your relationship for ever. Yes, there will also be arguments and tears. But children and parents who never experience it are missing out badly.
Source
Thursday, September 18, 2008
NHS bullies trying to silence another doctor who dared to criticize low standards
Report from Dr Rant this morning that another doctor has been sacked for speaking out about low standards/lack of funding. The article from the local paper is here.
What isn't reported here is just as important as what is: the newspaper piece does not mention the actual reason for Dr Shirine Boardman's dismissal, except to say that "... it does not relate to any issues of patient safety or clinical competence."
This utter failure to report the real reasons for such disciplinary action and clinicians' real reasons for speaking up is almost tantamount to a 'D notice' - where editors are not allowed even to report that they are not allowed to report....
What is it that NHS chiefs are so desperate to hide?
Source
Newspaper article follows:
Specialist doctor sacked by hospital
A Warwick Hospital consultant who set up a health project to help combat diabetes in and around Leamington has been sacked. Dr Shirine Boardman worked at the Lakin Road site as a diabetologist for eight years and established a clinic for Asian people at Leamington's Queensway Community Centre last year. She was sacked by the hospital's bosses on July 22, but is appealing against the decision.
Hospital chief executive Glen Burley said: "Dr Shirine Boardman was dismissed following an internal hearing carried out in accordance with our disciplinary procedures. "We are not going to comment in detail on the nature of the misconduct, but we can say that it does not relate to any issues of patient safety or clinical competence." Dr Boardman declined to comment until after the appeal, but said she was "passionate" about her job.
Chairman of the South Warwickshire Diabetes UK support group David Gent said: "She was our vice-president and we hope that she will continue in that role. "Her loss is going to be great. She will be very difficult to replace because she had a passion for what she did. "She gave us her full support in what we were trying to do - get better services for diabetes patients in this area. "We will have to await the outcome of the appeal, but we hope it will be in her favour and ours."
Dr Boardman was featured in the Courier in June calling for Warwickshire Primary Care Trust to improve services. She said more specialist services in the community, closer working with GPs and greater public consultation could help "transform" it. The Apnee Sehat clinic was created with Warwick University to try and reduce high levels of diabetes, heart disease and stroke in the Asian population. The research clinic, where doctors and nurses have been involved in teaching Sikhs and Hindus about managing and preventing the illnesses, was heralded by the NHS's director of GPs Professor David Colin-Thome as "the start of a new era in community care". Funded by the university and charitable grants, it has been nominated for a number of awards including the NHS's Reducing Health Inequalities social care award.
The Primary Care Trust's former director of public health Dr Tim Davies has said the clinic's future would be reassessed this year based on whether it had achieved better results than the hospital service.
Source
"Dr. Scot" update
Re: Silencing attempt noted here on 15th.
Dr Scot Jnr. was reinstated and went back to work on 16th. The powers that be had managed to keep the story of his dismissal out of the national newspapers/television, incredibly. But bloggers and others took up the story. Once it went global, it's likely that the game was up for the young doctor's bullies.
The story doesn't end there exactly because there has been a formal complaint to the General Medical Council about these senior medical women's behaviour. This is likely to roll on interminably as state bureaucracies do. But there will be a story in that - a sort of test case even.
ANOTHER GREAT THEORY BITES THE DUST
Aspirin seems to loosen up the blood flow generally and that should be a good thing for the restricted bloodflow found in aged brains -- and thus keep the brains concerned a bit younger. So is regular aspirin intake a good thing if you want to avoid going ga-ga? Sorry. No effect! Pesky things, these placebo controls!
Low dose aspirin and cognitive function in middle aged to elderly adults: randomised controlled trial
By Jackie F Price et al.
Objective To determine the effects of low dose aspirin on cognitive function in middle aged to elderly men and women at moderately increased cardiovascular risk.
Design Randomised double blind placebo controlled trial.
Setting Central Scotland.
Participants 3350 men and women aged over 50 participating in the aspirin for asymptomatic atherosclerosis trial.
Intervention Low dose aspirin (100 mg daily) or placebo for five years.
Main outcome measures Tests of memory, executive function, non-verbal reasoning, mental flexibility, and information processing five years after randomisation, with scores used to create a summary cognitive score (general factor).
Results At baseline, mean vocabulary scores (an indicator of previous cognitive ability) were similar in the aspirin (30.9, SD 4.7) and placebo (31.1, SD 4.7) groups. In the primary intention to treat analysis, there was no significant difference at follow-up between the groups in the proportion achieving over the median general factor cognitive score (32.7% and 34.8% respectively, odds ratio 0.91, 95% confidence interval 0.79 to 1.05, P=0.20) or in mean scores on the individual cognitive tests. There were also no significant differences in change in cognitive ability over the five years in a subset of 504 who underwent detailed cognitive testing at baseline.
Conclusion Low dose aspirin does not affect cognitive function in middle aged to elderly people at increased cardiovascular risk.
BMJ 2008;337:a1198.
Yet another episode in England's black crime nightmare: "A greengrocer was stabbed to death in a revenge attack after a row over a 90-cent orange, a UK court has heard. The 25-year-old greengrocer, Khalil Nasseri, was allegedly knifed in the chest by 39-year-old Delroy Brown after he caught Mr Brown trying to steal the orange from a South London fruit shop in January, the Daily Mail reported. "[Brown] took an orange from the greengrocers' fruit display in the street and he began to peel it with a knife," Peter Kyte, QC, told a court. "He appeared unwilling to pay for that orange. Khalil Nasseri challenged him to pay for the orange and a disagreement between these two people ensued." Brown first attacked Mr Nasseri with a hammer he took from his car, but was disarmed by other shopkeepers and chased from the store, but not before warning Mr Nasseri: "I will return. This is not over ... I'm coming back for your blood", the Daily Mail said. "He was chased away from the scene by a number of people and he returned a couple of days later, this time he came with reinforcements, two other black men," Peter Kyte, QC, told the court. One of the men had a knife, Mr Kyte said. They assaulted shopkeepers at the store before stabbing Mr Nasseri to "almost instantaneous death", he said."
Report from Dr Rant this morning that another doctor has been sacked for speaking out about low standards/lack of funding. The article from the local paper is here.
What isn't reported here is just as important as what is: the newspaper piece does not mention the actual reason for Dr Shirine Boardman's dismissal, except to say that "... it does not relate to any issues of patient safety or clinical competence."
This utter failure to report the real reasons for such disciplinary action and clinicians' real reasons for speaking up is almost tantamount to a 'D notice' - where editors are not allowed even to report that they are not allowed to report....
What is it that NHS chiefs are so desperate to hide?
Source
Newspaper article follows:
Specialist doctor sacked by hospital
A Warwick Hospital consultant who set up a health project to help combat diabetes in and around Leamington has been sacked. Dr Shirine Boardman worked at the Lakin Road site as a diabetologist for eight years and established a clinic for Asian people at Leamington's Queensway Community Centre last year. She was sacked by the hospital's bosses on July 22, but is appealing against the decision.
Hospital chief executive Glen Burley said: "Dr Shirine Boardman was dismissed following an internal hearing carried out in accordance with our disciplinary procedures. "We are not going to comment in detail on the nature of the misconduct, but we can say that it does not relate to any issues of patient safety or clinical competence." Dr Boardman declined to comment until after the appeal, but said she was "passionate" about her job.
Chairman of the South Warwickshire Diabetes UK support group David Gent said: "She was our vice-president and we hope that she will continue in that role. "Her loss is going to be great. She will be very difficult to replace because she had a passion for what she did. "She gave us her full support in what we were trying to do - get better services for diabetes patients in this area. "We will have to await the outcome of the appeal, but we hope it will be in her favour and ours."
Dr Boardman was featured in the Courier in June calling for Warwickshire Primary Care Trust to improve services. She said more specialist services in the community, closer working with GPs and greater public consultation could help "transform" it. The Apnee Sehat clinic was created with Warwick University to try and reduce high levels of diabetes, heart disease and stroke in the Asian population. The research clinic, where doctors and nurses have been involved in teaching Sikhs and Hindus about managing and preventing the illnesses, was heralded by the NHS's director of GPs Professor David Colin-Thome as "the start of a new era in community care". Funded by the university and charitable grants, it has been nominated for a number of awards including the NHS's Reducing Health Inequalities social care award.
The Primary Care Trust's former director of public health Dr Tim Davies has said the clinic's future would be reassessed this year based on whether it had achieved better results than the hospital service.
Source
"Dr. Scot" update
Re: Silencing attempt noted here on 15th.
Dr Scot Jnr. was reinstated and went back to work on 16th. The powers that be had managed to keep the story of his dismissal out of the national newspapers/television, incredibly. But bloggers and others took up the story. Once it went global, it's likely that the game was up for the young doctor's bullies.
The story doesn't end there exactly because there has been a formal complaint to the General Medical Council about these senior medical women's behaviour. This is likely to roll on interminably as state bureaucracies do. But there will be a story in that - a sort of test case even.
ANOTHER GREAT THEORY BITES THE DUST
Aspirin seems to loosen up the blood flow generally and that should be a good thing for the restricted bloodflow found in aged brains -- and thus keep the brains concerned a bit younger. So is regular aspirin intake a good thing if you want to avoid going ga-ga? Sorry. No effect! Pesky things, these placebo controls!
Low dose aspirin and cognitive function in middle aged to elderly adults: randomised controlled trial
By Jackie F Price et al.
Objective To determine the effects of low dose aspirin on cognitive function in middle aged to elderly men and women at moderately increased cardiovascular risk.
Design Randomised double blind placebo controlled trial.
Setting Central Scotland.
Participants 3350 men and women aged over 50 participating in the aspirin for asymptomatic atherosclerosis trial.
Intervention Low dose aspirin (100 mg daily) or placebo for five years.
Main outcome measures Tests of memory, executive function, non-verbal reasoning, mental flexibility, and information processing five years after randomisation, with scores used to create a summary cognitive score (general factor).
Results At baseline, mean vocabulary scores (an indicator of previous cognitive ability) were similar in the aspirin (30.9, SD 4.7) and placebo (31.1, SD 4.7) groups. In the primary intention to treat analysis, there was no significant difference at follow-up between the groups in the proportion achieving over the median general factor cognitive score (32.7% and 34.8% respectively, odds ratio 0.91, 95% confidence interval 0.79 to 1.05, P=0.20) or in mean scores on the individual cognitive tests. There were also no significant differences in change in cognitive ability over the five years in a subset of 504 who underwent detailed cognitive testing at baseline.
Conclusion Low dose aspirin does not affect cognitive function in middle aged to elderly people at increased cardiovascular risk.
BMJ 2008;337:a1198.
Yet another episode in England's black crime nightmare: "A greengrocer was stabbed to death in a revenge attack after a row over a 90-cent orange, a UK court has heard. The 25-year-old greengrocer, Khalil Nasseri, was allegedly knifed in the chest by 39-year-old Delroy Brown after he caught Mr Brown trying to steal the orange from a South London fruit shop in January, the Daily Mail reported. "[Brown] took an orange from the greengrocers' fruit display in the street and he began to peel it with a knife," Peter Kyte, QC, told a court. "He appeared unwilling to pay for that orange. Khalil Nasseri challenged him to pay for the orange and a disagreement between these two people ensued." Brown first attacked Mr Nasseri with a hammer he took from his car, but was disarmed by other shopkeepers and chased from the store, but not before warning Mr Nasseri: "I will return. This is not over ... I'm coming back for your blood", the Daily Mail said. "He was chased away from the scene by a number of people and he returned a couple of days later, this time he came with reinforcements, two other black men," Peter Kyte, QC, told the court. One of the men had a knife, Mr Kyte said. They assaulted shopkeepers at the store before stabbing Mr Nasseri to "almost instantaneous death", he said."
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
British faith schools `will hinder fight against terrorism'?
Lumping all faith schools together is deliberately obtuse. Faiths that are hostile to Western civilization and faiths that support it are DIFFERENT! Islam and Christianity are NOT the same
The expansion of faith schools in Britain will hinder the fight against terrorism by fostering a belief in separate identity, says a psychologist who has studied the causes of violent religious extremism. Professor David Canter, director of the Centre for Investigative Psychology at Liverpool University, said: "Faith schools are terribly dangerous. Setting up these divisions based on faith is the starting point for people thinking of themselves as separate, and identifying an 'out-group' that you are not part of. "Identifying yourself as part of a group with power is a well-established notion in social psychology - social identity. Social identity is in part defined by an out-group distinct from yours."
A division of schools based on religion fostered separate identity between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, and expansion of faith schools in England and Wales is likely to do the same, Professor Canter said. "It will create the possibility of people considering their significance in terms of religion."
Professor Canter has overseen psychological interviews with 49 convicted terrorists in India. "They seem to [have] got really hooked into a very intensive religious framework early on," Professor Canter said at the British Association's science festival in Liverpool. "Schools with a mixture of faiths seems psychologically more healthy."
Source
His Grace Michael Nazir-Ali: Britons suffer 'cultural amnesia' about Christian art
Britons are suffering from "cultural amnesia" about the Christian origins of the country's art, music and language, a senior bishop has warned
The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali said the works of Shakespeare or Milton could not have been written without the English translation of the Bible and the publication of the Book of Common Prayer, while great paintings and pieces of music were inspired by Christianity and made to be showcased in churches and cathedrals. Yet he claimed many people are now ignorant of the religious background to our culture.
The bishop, a prominent conservative in the Church of England who boycotted this year's gathering of Anglican Communion leaders in the ongoing row over homosexuality, said the church should do more to ensure schools, television companies and radio channels educate their audiences. His comments, part of a speech he gave to members of the Prayer Book Society, come after he warned that Britishness itself is being destroyed by the decline of Christian values, creating a "moral vacuum" that is being filled by radical Islam.
Dr Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, said: "What amazes me is how people in this country don't take account of the brute fact that the Bible and the prayer book have shaped so much of its literary and cultural achievements. "Without the translation of the Bible into English and the creation of the prayer book, it would have been impossible to have a Donne or a Shakespeare or a Milton. "Certainly with art, poetry and music, people aren't exposed to the Biblical root of what has inspired people to create these themes. There should be better interpretation of things. "With music, you can listen to hour upon hour of Classic FM but nobody tells you what the piece means. A lot of this music was written for worship. "Some reference to the fact that it was written in the context of worship would be very welcome, otherwise this amnesia will make the culture more and more shallow."
The bishop also pointed out that many modern artists and authors, regardless of their personal beliefs, use religious themes in their work. He cited as an example the Ian McEwan novel Atonement, later made into a film starring Keira Knightley, which takes its title from the Christian idea of humans being reconciled with God through the death of Jesus Christ. "So much of the inspiration for art was Christian - even the radical ones have been reacting to the Christian story," Dr Nazir-Ali said. "So often the classic themes are used and re-used and it's very important for people to know about them."
He added that the church should make sure schools, the Government and media organisations know about the Biblical basis behind works of culture so they can communicate them to their audiences. "We need a partnership between the church and schools and the state to make sure that the Christian story is known. "The church should work in partnership with television, with radio and with the media in general to enable people to understand where these things are coming from. Even if they don't agree with it, at least they have the information."
Source
NHS productivity falls as spending rises by billions under Labour
The National Health Service has become less efficient despite Labour pumping millions into its budget. Official figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics show that the amount of treatment the NHS delivers is lagging behind the pace of increase in the service's budget. Critics said the statistics showed the NHS had absorbed huge amounts of money with very little to show for it and the Government must reform its management instead of pumping in ever more funding.
NHS productivity fell by 2.0 per cent a year between 2001 and 2005, according to the Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity, the ONS unit that monitors public spending. That was the period of the biggest funding increase in NHS history. From 2005 to 2006, productivity fell less quickly, by 0.2 per cent. From 1995 to 2006, the NHS annual budget more than doubled from 39 billion to 89.7 billion.
Andrew Lansley, the Conservative shadow health secretary, said the figures proved that Labour's approach to the NHS had failed. "Spending more money if it's not spent well doesn't necessarily deliver the services you are looking for," he said, accusing Labour's use of centralised targets and management of undermining the delivery of healthcare. As an example, Mr Lansley cited the latest central NHS contract for GPs' surgeries. A Whitehall audit earlier this year found that the contract had lead to family doctors earning 58 per cent more for doing 5 per cent less work.
The Department of Health said it was more important to focus on improvements in the quality and availability of treatment. A spokesman said: "Ten years ago people died waiting for operations, today waiting lists are at the lowest ever. The NHS is treating more patients, treating them faster and treating them more safely "It is also easier to access NHS treatment - through NHS Direct, walk in centres and at A&E where over 97% of people are now seen within four hours. And it is easier to see your GP because of extended opening hours in the evening or at weekends "There are 280,000 more doctors, nurses and other essential staff working for the NHS than in 1997 and all NHS staff have enjoyed well deserved pay rises. "Most importantly when people are asked, their experience of the NHS has improved.
Source
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
Lumping all faith schools together is deliberately obtuse. Faiths that are hostile to Western civilization and faiths that support it are DIFFERENT! Islam and Christianity are NOT the same
The expansion of faith schools in Britain will hinder the fight against terrorism by fostering a belief in separate identity, says a psychologist who has studied the causes of violent religious extremism. Professor David Canter, director of the Centre for Investigative Psychology at Liverpool University, said: "Faith schools are terribly dangerous. Setting up these divisions based on faith is the starting point for people thinking of themselves as separate, and identifying an 'out-group' that you are not part of. "Identifying yourself as part of a group with power is a well-established notion in social psychology - social identity. Social identity is in part defined by an out-group distinct from yours."
A division of schools based on religion fostered separate identity between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, and expansion of faith schools in England and Wales is likely to do the same, Professor Canter said. "It will create the possibility of people considering their significance in terms of religion."
Professor Canter has overseen psychological interviews with 49 convicted terrorists in India. "They seem to [have] got really hooked into a very intensive religious framework early on," Professor Canter said at the British Association's science festival in Liverpool. "Schools with a mixture of faiths seems psychologically more healthy."
Source
His Grace Michael Nazir-Ali: Britons suffer 'cultural amnesia' about Christian art
Britons are suffering from "cultural amnesia" about the Christian origins of the country's art, music and language, a senior bishop has warned
The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali said the works of Shakespeare or Milton could not have been written without the English translation of the Bible and the publication of the Book of Common Prayer, while great paintings and pieces of music were inspired by Christianity and made to be showcased in churches and cathedrals. Yet he claimed many people are now ignorant of the religious background to our culture.
The bishop, a prominent conservative in the Church of England who boycotted this year's gathering of Anglican Communion leaders in the ongoing row over homosexuality, said the church should do more to ensure schools, television companies and radio channels educate their audiences. His comments, part of a speech he gave to members of the Prayer Book Society, come after he warned that Britishness itself is being destroyed by the decline of Christian values, creating a "moral vacuum" that is being filled by radical Islam.
Dr Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, said: "What amazes me is how people in this country don't take account of the brute fact that the Bible and the prayer book have shaped so much of its literary and cultural achievements. "Without the translation of the Bible into English and the creation of the prayer book, it would have been impossible to have a Donne or a Shakespeare or a Milton. "Certainly with art, poetry and music, people aren't exposed to the Biblical root of what has inspired people to create these themes. There should be better interpretation of things. "With music, you can listen to hour upon hour of Classic FM but nobody tells you what the piece means. A lot of this music was written for worship. "Some reference to the fact that it was written in the context of worship would be very welcome, otherwise this amnesia will make the culture more and more shallow."
The bishop also pointed out that many modern artists and authors, regardless of their personal beliefs, use religious themes in their work. He cited as an example the Ian McEwan novel Atonement, later made into a film starring Keira Knightley, which takes its title from the Christian idea of humans being reconciled with God through the death of Jesus Christ. "So much of the inspiration for art was Christian - even the radical ones have been reacting to the Christian story," Dr Nazir-Ali said. "So often the classic themes are used and re-used and it's very important for people to know about them."
He added that the church should make sure schools, the Government and media organisations know about the Biblical basis behind works of culture so they can communicate them to their audiences. "We need a partnership between the church and schools and the state to make sure that the Christian story is known. "The church should work in partnership with television, with radio and with the media in general to enable people to understand where these things are coming from. Even if they don't agree with it, at least they have the information."
Source
NHS productivity falls as spending rises by billions under Labour
The National Health Service has become less efficient despite Labour pumping millions into its budget. Official figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics show that the amount of treatment the NHS delivers is lagging behind the pace of increase in the service's budget. Critics said the statistics showed the NHS had absorbed huge amounts of money with very little to show for it and the Government must reform its management instead of pumping in ever more funding.
NHS productivity fell by 2.0 per cent a year between 2001 and 2005, according to the Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity, the ONS unit that monitors public spending. That was the period of the biggest funding increase in NHS history. From 2005 to 2006, productivity fell less quickly, by 0.2 per cent. From 1995 to 2006, the NHS annual budget more than doubled from 39 billion to 89.7 billion.
Andrew Lansley, the Conservative shadow health secretary, said the figures proved that Labour's approach to the NHS had failed. "Spending more money if it's not spent well doesn't necessarily deliver the services you are looking for," he said, accusing Labour's use of centralised targets and management of undermining the delivery of healthcare. As an example, Mr Lansley cited the latest central NHS contract for GPs' surgeries. A Whitehall audit earlier this year found that the contract had lead to family doctors earning 58 per cent more for doing 5 per cent less work.
The Department of Health said it was more important to focus on improvements in the quality and availability of treatment. A spokesman said: "Ten years ago people died waiting for operations, today waiting lists are at the lowest ever. The NHS is treating more patients, treating them faster and treating them more safely "It is also easier to access NHS treatment - through NHS Direct, walk in centres and at A&E where over 97% of people are now seen within four hours. And it is easier to see your GP because of extended opening hours in the evening or at weekends "There are 280,000 more doctors, nurses and other essential staff working for the NHS than in 1997 and all NHS staff have enjoyed well deserved pay rises. "Most importantly when people are asked, their experience of the NHS has improved.
Source
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The vastly incorrect Jeremy Clarkson on the difficulties of charity
He has recently been to Cambodia, it seems
Since we're told charity begins at home, it's better, I've always thought, to give 1m pounds to a hapless British person than 10 cents to an organisation that provides sandwiches for prisoners in Turkey. Now, however, I have decided that, actually, charity begins in Cambodia.
Some people get all dewy-eyed about Africa. That's jolly noble, but I don't see the point because I fear that no matter how much money you pump in, the bejewelled pigs that run the place will pump it straight back out again, into the coffers of Kalashnikov and Mercedes-Benz. The only thing I'd send to the dark continent is a team of SAS hitmen to shoot the likes of Mr Mugabe in the middle of his face.
Others would say that we have enough problems on our own shores without getting all teary over the children of Mr Pot. I disagree, because these days, every time I think of underprivileged people in Britain, the hideous face of Shannon Matthews's mum pops into my head, all greasy, fat and stupid, and it's hard to summon up any sympathy at all.
Cambodia, though, is different. It's a country of 14m people but between them they have only about 5m legs. In fact, there are 25,000 amputees, the highest ratio per capita of any country in the world. This is not because Cambodians are especially clumsy. It is because of landmines. Nobody knows how many mines were laid during the endless cycle of warfare, but it's sure to be in the millions. What we do know is that since the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and drove the madman Pol Pot into the hills, 63,000 people have trodden on one. One man has had his left leg blown off four times. They gave him a good prosthetic after the first and second explosions, but since then he's had to make his own out of wood.
And it's still going on today. In most places in the world, you can get three rice harvests per year from your paddy field. In Cambodia, it's one. This is partly because the Khmer like a weird sort of rice that's harder to grow, but mostly it's because you set off with your plough and within minutes there's a big bang and your water buffalo has become a crimson mist. As a result of the ordnance lying in every field, no one is fighting for a right to roam in Cambodia. They have no equivalent of the Ramblers Association. They have no concept of Janet Street-Porter. In fact they have no concept of England.
Because the education is so poor, most people there believe the world is made up of four countries: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Everywhere else is France. All white people are therefore French. Angelina Jolie, who adopted a Cambodian baby, does much to help clear the landmines and has been made a Cambodian citizen, is French. I was French. And every night, most of the men settle down to watch Manchester United and Chelsea slug it out for honours in the French Premier League. I'd never met an adult anywhere in the world (apart from America) who'd never heard of Great Britain. In Cambodia nobody had.
What's more, you will never see a Cambodian person wearing sunglasses. Mainly this is because the average wage in Cambodia is less than $800 a year and so Ray-Bans are a bit out of range. But also it's because Cambodians all have flat noses. So sunglasses simply fall onto the floor every time you hop to the shops, and every time your buffalo explodes.
That's what did it for me. The sunglasses. Not the education. Not the notion of living in a country where there is no Janet Street-Porter. The landmines made my eyes prickle, but my heart just mushroomed over the idea that they can't afford to wear shades. And that even if they could, they'd keep falling off. I have therefore decided that I must do something. Unfortunately, however, we all reach a point like this when we decide we must help, and then it's so very hard to know what should be done next.
Secretly we all know that for every pound we donate to a large charity, only 2p actually reaches the people we have in mind. The rest is spent on adverts for highly paid co-ordinators in The Guardian and expensive offices in London's glittering West End.
You always feel you want to go to the root of the problem. But in the bee that's come to nest in my roost, that'll be hard. Earlier this summer a team of Australian doctors happened upon a little girl in the town of Siem Reap. Her face had been horribly disfigured, by a bloody landmine I suppose, and they were overwhelmed with a need to help. They went to meet her parents, and her father was keen that his daughter be sent to Australia for plastic surgery. Her mother, however, went ballistic when she discovered the poor child would once again look normal. "How will she be able to beg then?" she asked. And the Aussie medics were sent packing.
I can't even ring the Cambodian government for help because I fear it would be extremely enthusiastic and then all the money I sent over would be spent on fixtures and fittings in the finance minister's next luxury hotel. That's if I could raise any money in the first place. It's hard when money's tight here and everyone else has their own pet project.
I suppose I could write to Ray-Ban asking it to design a cheap pair of shades that can be worn by someone who has no nose. But I think it'd be better if I started work on some designs for the most brilliant mine-clearing vehicle the world has ever seen. I'm thinking of strapping some ramblers together, and then . . .
Source
British government's neo-Marxist education policy punishes excellence
By Simon Heffer
When I went up to Cambridge University almost 30 years ago, I didn't think I was going to spend three years in a laboratory staffed by social engineers. I thought I was about to have the privilege of getting a world-class education, with no hidden agenda. Happily, the university's vice-chancellor, Alison Richard, takes the same view, and this week, thanks to some welcome and outspoken remarks on this subject, she has entered into a confrontation with the Government over its neo-Marxist education policy.
I can think of few greater hypocrisies than Labour criticising our old and great universities for taking, in its view, too few people from "disadvantaged" backgrounds. Every time someone from a public or grammar [selective] school gets into Oxbridge, the Leftists (many of whom went to one of these universities from just such a school) wince at the "inequality" that has been perpetuated. They cannot bear to acknowledge the truth: that more people from "their" comprehensive schools would get to Oxbridge, beating the competition in a fair fight, if "their" comprehensive schools were better.
Thanks to the determination of Labour to stick to Marxist educational practices in these schools, with their emphasis on anti-elitism and their fear of stretching pupils, children who go through them have at least one hand tied behind their back from day one. Some are lucky to live in areas served by one of our 164 grammar schools, but with all the main political parties now opposed to these magnificent institutions, that lifeline will not be made available to a wider clientele. This is sad, not least because if there were grammar schools in every town, everywhere - even the meanest council estate - would be in a catchment area.
Having put these obstacles in the way of children whose parents cannot afford to have them privately educated, or to live in a grammar-school catchment area, the Government compounds the nightmare. It has in many cases made an education at the best universities financially beyond the reach of students from poor families.
My college at Cambridge is currently raising funds to offer financial help to those from poor families who feel they cannot afford the education they have earned by merit, so low is the family income above which one qualifies for no state help.
As Labour wastes money on poor universities with vacuous degree courses in order to boast that more people get into higher education, some students are too intimidated by the size of the debt they would have to incur to take up places at Oxbridge. In fact, because of subsidised college rents, Oxbridge can be less expensive than other universities. However, some students feel their only option is to attend a university near home, cutting costs by living with their parents. How a government that brings about this situation can turn round and lecture Oxbridge on elitism is beyond me.
Cambridge has a point only if it continues to be a university for very bright undergraduates who can benefit from the teaching of often brilliant dons who work there doing research. Admitting people on a quota system based on social class can only drag down Cambridge's standards, driving quality elsewhere, and ultimately harming the future of the country. There is no snobbery about class at Cambridge. There is a desire to give the best education to those best equipped to benefit from it.
If the state schools could produce more suitable candidates, and if the funding system enabled them to afford to go to such a university, there wouldn't be a problem. That one exists is not Cambridge's fault. It is the Government's. And until its education policy ceases to serve the outdated ideological obsession of the Left, and starts instead to serve the best interests of our children, that will remain the case.
Source
Climate change chicanery
By Christopher Booker
Recent events have seen the scare campaign over global warming descend to the level of a Monty Python sketch. Much publicity was given, for instance, to Lewis Gordon Pugh, who set out to paddle a kayak to the Pole to demonstrate the vanishing of the Arctic ice. At 80.5 degrees north, still 600 miles short of his goal, he met with ice so thick that he and his fossil-fuelled support ship had to turn back. But this did not prevent him receiving a congratulatory call from Gordon Brown, nor boasting that he had travelled "further north than anyone has kayaked so far".
It took the admirable Watts Up With That blog, run by the American meteorologist Anthony Watts, to point out that in 1893 the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen found the Arctic so ice-free that he was able to kayak above 82 degrees north, 100 miles nearer the Pole than our hapless campaigner against "unprecedented global warming".
Then there was the much-publicised speech to Compassion in World Farming by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pleading for people to give up meat, on the grounds that the digestive methane given off by cattle contributes more to greenhouse gases than all the world's transport.
Although hailed by the BBC as "the UN's top climate scientist", Dr Pachauri, who holds PhDs in economics and engineering, is nothing of the kind, but just an apparatchik. A vegetarian Hindu, Dr Pachauri not only used highly tendentious figures to promote his cause but said nothing about the contribution made to global warming by India's 400 million sacred cows, which presumably would still be free to vent wind even if the rest of humanity is converted to eating veggieburgers.
There has also been an acclaimed new paper by Michael Mann, the creator of the iconic "hockey stick" graph, purporting to show that the world has recently become hotter than at any time in recorded history, eliminating all the wealth of evidence to show that temperatures were higher in the Mediaeval Warm Period than today.
After being used obsessively by the IPCC's 2001 report to promote the cause, the "hockey stick" was comprehensively discredited, not least by Steve McIntyre, a Canadian computer analyst, who showed that Mann had built into his computer programme an algorithm (or "al-gore-ithm") which would produce the hockey stick shape even if the data fed in was just "random noise".
Two weeks ago Dr Mann published a new study, claiming to have used 1,209 new historic "temperature proxies" to show that his original graph was essentially correct after all. This was faithfully reported by the media as further confirmation that we live in a time of unprecedented warming. Steve McIntyre immediately got to work and, supported by expert readers on his Climate Audit website, shredded Mann's new version as mercilessly as he had the original.
He again showed how selective Mann had been in his new data, excluding anything which confirmed the Mediaeval Warming and concentrating on that showing temperatures recently rising to record levels.
Finnish experts pointed out that, where Mann placed emphasis on the evidence of sediments from Finnish lakes, there were particular reasons why these should have shown rising temperatures in recent years, such as expanding towns on their shores. McIntyre even discovered a part of Mann's programme akin to a disguised version of his earlier algorithm, which he now calls "Mannomatics".
But Mann's new study will surely be used to push the warmist party line in the run-up to the IPCC international conference in Copenhagen next year to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, temperatures continue to drop. The latest Nasa satellite readings on global temperatures from the University of Alabama, one of four officially recognised sources of temperature data, show that August was the fourth month this year when temperatures fell below their 30-year average, ie since satellite records began. The US National Climatic Data Center showsis showing that last month in the USA was only the 39th warmest since records began 113 years ago.
It is high time, however, that we took all this chicanery and wishful thinking seriously - as was evidenced in Maidstone Crown Court last Wednesday, by the acquittal of six Greenpeace campaigners tried for criminal damage to Kingsnorth power station. They were attempting to stop a new coal-fired power station being built, to produce 1,600 megawatts of electricity (two and a half times as much as is generated by all the 2,300 wind turbines so far built in Britain). As gleefully reported on the front page of The Independent, and at length by other promoters of warming alarmism such as the BBC and The Guardian, the jury agreed that the damage they had perpetrated was lawfully justified - because the damage done by the new power station, in raising global sea levels and contributing to the extinction of "a million species", would be far worse.
The court was swayed to this remarkable verdict by the evidence of two "expert witnesses" for the defence: Zac Goldsmith, one of David Cameron's envrionmental policy advisers and a prospective Conservative MP, and James Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Dr Hansen, who has been the world's leading global warming campaigner for 20 years (along with his ally Al Gore), claimed that the proposed Kingsnorth power station alone would be responsible for the extinction of "400 species".
It is extraordinary that two such partisan witnesses were accepted by the court in this role, since the rules, as defined by Mr Justice Cresswell in 1993, insist that the function of an "expert witness" is only to give "objective evidence". He must not be an "advocate" for one side or the other on any issue on which experts are divided.
This should have ruled Dr Hansen out at once. Question marks are raised over his institute's temperature data. Last year he was forced by Steve McIntyre to revise his figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as Hansen claimed, but the 1930s. He has also campaigned tirelessly for the scrapping of all coal-fired power stations.
Yet we are critically dependent on coal-generated power: it supplies 35 per cent of Britain's needs and 50 per cent of America's. Thanks to EU rules, we will be forced to close six coal-fired power stations before long, and without new ones, such as that proposed for Kingsnorth, our economy will judder to a halt.
David Cameron could well be prime minister by then. That one of his closest advisers believes that criminal damage is justified to stop coal-fired power plants being built is just as alarming as that the British courts now seem to agree with him.
Source
British TV host says "bus is full" on immigration
TV game show host Noel Edmonds has made controversial comments about immigration, saying there are too many migrants to Britain and they are draining national resources. "We can all go down the pub and go, 'Oh it's terrible, all these immigrants.' But what are we going to do in Britain to change this toxic culture if we don't say, 'Enough is enough,'" the popular presenter told the News of the World on Sunday. "I'm very straightforward on immigration. The bus is full," he said. "We haven't got enough energy, we haven't got enough electricity, we haven't got enough of a health service."
The comments by one of the country's most widely watched entertainers are likely to spark debate. Britain has welcomed millions of new migrants to its shores in recent years, especially those from east European countries that are now members of the European Union. The influx has given a substantial boost to the economy as new arrivals have taken on many of the undesirable jobs, often for low wages, that Britons generally no longer want to do.
But as the economy has slowed in the last year and the credit crisis has taken a toll, polls show most Britons think there are too many immigrants in the country and want to see new restrictions imposed on the influx. A YouGov poll last week showed 57 percent of adults thought there should be less immigration.
Edmonds, 59, the host of popular game show Deal or No Deal, said he not only wanted to crack down on immigration, but on crime and youth violence, saying he would like to build more prisons and overhaul the police force.
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Nasty British socialists determined to grind everyone's medical care down to a low level
A naval commander's wife is being billed for all her NHS care after paying for a drug privately
A LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER awarded an MBE for services to the Royal Navy is preparing to hand back his decoration in protest after his terminally ill wife had her free NHS cancer care withdrawn for buying a drug privately. Diane Winston, 53, who has kidney cancer, is being billed by her local trust for all her NHS care, including scans and hospital appointments, after paying privately for the drug Nexavar, which her health service consultant recommended.
Winston's husband, Lionel, 57, is so disappointed at the way his wife has been treated that he is prepared to give up the MBE, which he hangs with pride on his wall. "If this situation is not changed, in protest, I will formally return my MBE," said Lionel. "I am so disgusted by the government, and the nation that I have given the last 37 years of my life to, and for which they have awarded me the MBE, that I would give it back."
The Winstons have fallen victim to the government ban on "co-payment", under which a patient who pays privately for any treatment cannot receive free state care for the same condition.
Lionel Winston was awarded his Member of the Order of the British Empire decoration by the Queen in 1994. The ceremony was attended by his proud wife and their two sons, Sonny, now 30, and Tel, 28. Lionel, who was born in Dominica, worked his way up from the lower decks to become an officer. "From extremely humble beginnings, Lionel has come a very long way and for him to have that medal is hugely important to him. I am extremely proud of what he has achieved," said Diane. "To even think about giving it back shows the extent of his disgust."
In addition to the Nexavar, which costs about 3,000 pounds a month, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, where Diane is being treated, has also issued bills for scans costing up to 480 each. Diane's consultant is so sympathetic to her plight she has given her time for free, but the trust charges an administrative fee for every appointment.
Last week, the couple, from Gosport, Hampshire, discovered that a deposit they had paid of about 3,700, which they believed had contributed to the cost of the drugs, had been used to pay for NHS care such as scans and appointments.
Kate Spall, campaigner at the Pamela Northcott Fund, a kidney cancer group, said: "This couple have had to rely on family, friends and fundraising to buy drugs to keep Diane alive. They are now in a position where they need to pay not only for the drug their NHS consultant desperately wants Diane to have, but also for NHS services, which is absolutely scandalous."
The trust insists it advised the Winstons that their deposit would be used to pay for scans and hospital appointments and not medication. A spokeswoman said the trust was following guidelines by charging for the routine treatments.
On October 2, Lionel will hold a fundraising dinner and auction on HMS Victory in Portsmouth to raise more money for his wife's care. Diane is one of thousands of patients with advanced kidney cancer who have been denied medication on the NHS that could prolong their lives. Last month, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the government's drugs rationing body, ruled that four drugs to treat kidney cancer, Sutent, Nexavar, Avastin and Torisel, are not good value for money despite admitting they are effective.
The decision prompted 26 leading professors of cancer medicine to write, in a letter to The Sunday Times, that the current system for assessing new drugs was not working. The Sunday Times has been campaigning to end the government ban on co-payments.
Public outrage at the way patients have been treated prompted a review of the policy. The inquiry, by Professor Mike Richards, the national cancer director, is widely expected to allow patients to top up their care. Leading health insurers are preparing to offer policies that would enable patients to buy life-saving drugs not funded by the NHS. Axa PPP and Saga are drawing up plans for the policies in anticipation of an end to the NHS ban on patients "topping up" free care by paying for private treatment.
One company, WPA, has already launched its health top-up policy, showing that the NHS ban on co-payment has begun to crumble in the face of patients demanding the right to buy the latest drugs. Fergus Craig, commercial director for Axa PPP healthcare, one of Britain's biggest medical insurers, said: "We are considering introducing policies to enable people to top up their NHS care with privately funded treatment." A spokesman for Saga added: "We are looking at how Saga health insurance might be able to provide payment for drugs that the NHS won't pay for."
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A small victory for free speech
Naughty novel to be published after all
There is a good and sympathetic background story about Sarah Palin's growing up in Alaska in a BRITISH paper. All that American papers seem to want to do is dig dirt on her. Don Surber is disgusted at that it takes a British paper to do such a story.
A rare bit of sanity from the British government: ""Families in cramped homes are to benefit from a scheme to scrap planning permission for many extensions and loft conversions, the government has said. The regulations, effective in England from 1 October, will mean 80,000 fewer applications and save up to 50 million pounds, Housing Minister Caroline Flint said. She said families struggling to move due to the credit crunch would benefit."
He has recently been to Cambodia, it seems
Since we're told charity begins at home, it's better, I've always thought, to give 1m pounds to a hapless British person than 10 cents to an organisation that provides sandwiches for prisoners in Turkey. Now, however, I have decided that, actually, charity begins in Cambodia.
Some people get all dewy-eyed about Africa. That's jolly noble, but I don't see the point because I fear that no matter how much money you pump in, the bejewelled pigs that run the place will pump it straight back out again, into the coffers of Kalashnikov and Mercedes-Benz. The only thing I'd send to the dark continent is a team of SAS hitmen to shoot the likes of Mr Mugabe in the middle of his face.
Others would say that we have enough problems on our own shores without getting all teary over the children of Mr Pot. I disagree, because these days, every time I think of underprivileged people in Britain, the hideous face of Shannon Matthews's mum pops into my head, all greasy, fat and stupid, and it's hard to summon up any sympathy at all.
Cambodia, though, is different. It's a country of 14m people but between them they have only about 5m legs. In fact, there are 25,000 amputees, the highest ratio per capita of any country in the world. This is not because Cambodians are especially clumsy. It is because of landmines. Nobody knows how many mines were laid during the endless cycle of warfare, but it's sure to be in the millions. What we do know is that since the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and drove the madman Pol Pot into the hills, 63,000 people have trodden on one. One man has had his left leg blown off four times. They gave him a good prosthetic after the first and second explosions, but since then he's had to make his own out of wood.
And it's still going on today. In most places in the world, you can get three rice harvests per year from your paddy field. In Cambodia, it's one. This is partly because the Khmer like a weird sort of rice that's harder to grow, but mostly it's because you set off with your plough and within minutes there's a big bang and your water buffalo has become a crimson mist. As a result of the ordnance lying in every field, no one is fighting for a right to roam in Cambodia. They have no equivalent of the Ramblers Association. They have no concept of Janet Street-Porter. In fact they have no concept of England.
Because the education is so poor, most people there believe the world is made up of four countries: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Everywhere else is France. All white people are therefore French. Angelina Jolie, who adopted a Cambodian baby, does much to help clear the landmines and has been made a Cambodian citizen, is French. I was French. And every night, most of the men settle down to watch Manchester United and Chelsea slug it out for honours in the French Premier League. I'd never met an adult anywhere in the world (apart from America) who'd never heard of Great Britain. In Cambodia nobody had.
What's more, you will never see a Cambodian person wearing sunglasses. Mainly this is because the average wage in Cambodia is less than $800 a year and so Ray-Bans are a bit out of range. But also it's because Cambodians all have flat noses. So sunglasses simply fall onto the floor every time you hop to the shops, and every time your buffalo explodes.
That's what did it for me. The sunglasses. Not the education. Not the notion of living in a country where there is no Janet Street-Porter. The landmines made my eyes prickle, but my heart just mushroomed over the idea that they can't afford to wear shades. And that even if they could, they'd keep falling off. I have therefore decided that I must do something. Unfortunately, however, we all reach a point like this when we decide we must help, and then it's so very hard to know what should be done next.
Secretly we all know that for every pound we donate to a large charity, only 2p actually reaches the people we have in mind. The rest is spent on adverts for highly paid co-ordinators in The Guardian and expensive offices in London's glittering West End.
You always feel you want to go to the root of the problem. But in the bee that's come to nest in my roost, that'll be hard. Earlier this summer a team of Australian doctors happened upon a little girl in the town of Siem Reap. Her face had been horribly disfigured, by a bloody landmine I suppose, and they were overwhelmed with a need to help. They went to meet her parents, and her father was keen that his daughter be sent to Australia for plastic surgery. Her mother, however, went ballistic when she discovered the poor child would once again look normal. "How will she be able to beg then?" she asked. And the Aussie medics were sent packing.
I can't even ring the Cambodian government for help because I fear it would be extremely enthusiastic and then all the money I sent over would be spent on fixtures and fittings in the finance minister's next luxury hotel. That's if I could raise any money in the first place. It's hard when money's tight here and everyone else has their own pet project.
I suppose I could write to Ray-Ban asking it to design a cheap pair of shades that can be worn by someone who has no nose. But I think it'd be better if I started work on some designs for the most brilliant mine-clearing vehicle the world has ever seen. I'm thinking of strapping some ramblers together, and then . . .
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British government's neo-Marxist education policy punishes excellence
By Simon Heffer
When I went up to Cambridge University almost 30 years ago, I didn't think I was going to spend three years in a laboratory staffed by social engineers. I thought I was about to have the privilege of getting a world-class education, with no hidden agenda. Happily, the university's vice-chancellor, Alison Richard, takes the same view, and this week, thanks to some welcome and outspoken remarks on this subject, she has entered into a confrontation with the Government over its neo-Marxist education policy.
I can think of few greater hypocrisies than Labour criticising our old and great universities for taking, in its view, too few people from "disadvantaged" backgrounds. Every time someone from a public or grammar [selective] school gets into Oxbridge, the Leftists (many of whom went to one of these universities from just such a school) wince at the "inequality" that has been perpetuated. They cannot bear to acknowledge the truth: that more people from "their" comprehensive schools would get to Oxbridge, beating the competition in a fair fight, if "their" comprehensive schools were better.
Thanks to the determination of Labour to stick to Marxist educational practices in these schools, with their emphasis on anti-elitism and their fear of stretching pupils, children who go through them have at least one hand tied behind their back from day one. Some are lucky to live in areas served by one of our 164 grammar schools, but with all the main political parties now opposed to these magnificent institutions, that lifeline will not be made available to a wider clientele. This is sad, not least because if there were grammar schools in every town, everywhere - even the meanest council estate - would be in a catchment area.
Having put these obstacles in the way of children whose parents cannot afford to have them privately educated, or to live in a grammar-school catchment area, the Government compounds the nightmare. It has in many cases made an education at the best universities financially beyond the reach of students from poor families.
My college at Cambridge is currently raising funds to offer financial help to those from poor families who feel they cannot afford the education they have earned by merit, so low is the family income above which one qualifies for no state help.
As Labour wastes money on poor universities with vacuous degree courses in order to boast that more people get into higher education, some students are too intimidated by the size of the debt they would have to incur to take up places at Oxbridge. In fact, because of subsidised college rents, Oxbridge can be less expensive than other universities. However, some students feel their only option is to attend a university near home, cutting costs by living with their parents. How a government that brings about this situation can turn round and lecture Oxbridge on elitism is beyond me.
Cambridge has a point only if it continues to be a university for very bright undergraduates who can benefit from the teaching of often brilliant dons who work there doing research. Admitting people on a quota system based on social class can only drag down Cambridge's standards, driving quality elsewhere, and ultimately harming the future of the country. There is no snobbery about class at Cambridge. There is a desire to give the best education to those best equipped to benefit from it.
If the state schools could produce more suitable candidates, and if the funding system enabled them to afford to go to such a university, there wouldn't be a problem. That one exists is not Cambridge's fault. It is the Government's. And until its education policy ceases to serve the outdated ideological obsession of the Left, and starts instead to serve the best interests of our children, that will remain the case.
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Climate change chicanery
By Christopher Booker
Recent events have seen the scare campaign over global warming descend to the level of a Monty Python sketch. Much publicity was given, for instance, to Lewis Gordon Pugh, who set out to paddle a kayak to the Pole to demonstrate the vanishing of the Arctic ice. At 80.5 degrees north, still 600 miles short of his goal, he met with ice so thick that he and his fossil-fuelled support ship had to turn back. But this did not prevent him receiving a congratulatory call from Gordon Brown, nor boasting that he had travelled "further north than anyone has kayaked so far".
It took the admirable Watts Up With That blog, run by the American meteorologist Anthony Watts, to point out that in 1893 the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen found the Arctic so ice-free that he was able to kayak above 82 degrees north, 100 miles nearer the Pole than our hapless campaigner against "unprecedented global warming".
Then there was the much-publicised speech to Compassion in World Farming by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pleading for people to give up meat, on the grounds that the digestive methane given off by cattle contributes more to greenhouse gases than all the world's transport.
Although hailed by the BBC as "the UN's top climate scientist", Dr Pachauri, who holds PhDs in economics and engineering, is nothing of the kind, but just an apparatchik. A vegetarian Hindu, Dr Pachauri not only used highly tendentious figures to promote his cause but said nothing about the contribution made to global warming by India's 400 million sacred cows, which presumably would still be free to vent wind even if the rest of humanity is converted to eating veggieburgers.
There has also been an acclaimed new paper by Michael Mann, the creator of the iconic "hockey stick" graph, purporting to show that the world has recently become hotter than at any time in recorded history, eliminating all the wealth of evidence to show that temperatures were higher in the Mediaeval Warm Period than today.
After being used obsessively by the IPCC's 2001 report to promote the cause, the "hockey stick" was comprehensively discredited, not least by Steve McIntyre, a Canadian computer analyst, who showed that Mann had built into his computer programme an algorithm (or "al-gore-ithm") which would produce the hockey stick shape even if the data fed in was just "random noise".
Two weeks ago Dr Mann published a new study, claiming to have used 1,209 new historic "temperature proxies" to show that his original graph was essentially correct after all. This was faithfully reported by the media as further confirmation that we live in a time of unprecedented warming. Steve McIntyre immediately got to work and, supported by expert readers on his Climate Audit website, shredded Mann's new version as mercilessly as he had the original.
He again showed how selective Mann had been in his new data, excluding anything which confirmed the Mediaeval Warming and concentrating on that showing temperatures recently rising to record levels.
Finnish experts pointed out that, where Mann placed emphasis on the evidence of sediments from Finnish lakes, there were particular reasons why these should have shown rising temperatures in recent years, such as expanding towns on their shores. McIntyre even discovered a part of Mann's programme akin to a disguised version of his earlier algorithm, which he now calls "Mannomatics".
But Mann's new study will surely be used to push the warmist party line in the run-up to the IPCC international conference in Copenhagen next year to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, temperatures continue to drop. The latest Nasa satellite readings on global temperatures from the University of Alabama, one of four officially recognised sources of temperature data, show that August was the fourth month this year when temperatures fell below their 30-year average, ie since satellite records began. The US National Climatic Data Center showsis showing that last month in the USA was only the 39th warmest since records began 113 years ago.
It is high time, however, that we took all this chicanery and wishful thinking seriously - as was evidenced in Maidstone Crown Court last Wednesday, by the acquittal of six Greenpeace campaigners tried for criminal damage to Kingsnorth power station. They were attempting to stop a new coal-fired power station being built, to produce 1,600 megawatts of electricity (two and a half times as much as is generated by all the 2,300 wind turbines so far built in Britain). As gleefully reported on the front page of The Independent, and at length by other promoters of warming alarmism such as the BBC and The Guardian, the jury agreed that the damage they had perpetrated was lawfully justified - because the damage done by the new power station, in raising global sea levels and contributing to the extinction of "a million species", would be far worse.
The court was swayed to this remarkable verdict by the evidence of two "expert witnesses" for the defence: Zac Goldsmith, one of David Cameron's envrionmental policy advisers and a prospective Conservative MP, and James Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Dr Hansen, who has been the world's leading global warming campaigner for 20 years (along with his ally Al Gore), claimed that the proposed Kingsnorth power station alone would be responsible for the extinction of "400 species".
It is extraordinary that two such partisan witnesses were accepted by the court in this role, since the rules, as defined by Mr Justice Cresswell in 1993, insist that the function of an "expert witness" is only to give "objective evidence". He must not be an "advocate" for one side or the other on any issue on which experts are divided.
This should have ruled Dr Hansen out at once. Question marks are raised over his institute's temperature data. Last year he was forced by Steve McIntyre to revise his figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as Hansen claimed, but the 1930s. He has also campaigned tirelessly for the scrapping of all coal-fired power stations.
Yet we are critically dependent on coal-generated power: it supplies 35 per cent of Britain's needs and 50 per cent of America's. Thanks to EU rules, we will be forced to close six coal-fired power stations before long, and without new ones, such as that proposed for Kingsnorth, our economy will judder to a halt.
David Cameron could well be prime minister by then. That one of his closest advisers believes that criminal damage is justified to stop coal-fired power plants being built is just as alarming as that the British courts now seem to agree with him.
Source
British TV host says "bus is full" on immigration
TV game show host Noel Edmonds has made controversial comments about immigration, saying there are too many migrants to Britain and they are draining national resources. "We can all go down the pub and go, 'Oh it's terrible, all these immigrants.' But what are we going to do in Britain to change this toxic culture if we don't say, 'Enough is enough,'" the popular presenter told the News of the World on Sunday. "I'm very straightforward on immigration. The bus is full," he said. "We haven't got enough energy, we haven't got enough electricity, we haven't got enough of a health service."
The comments by one of the country's most widely watched entertainers are likely to spark debate. Britain has welcomed millions of new migrants to its shores in recent years, especially those from east European countries that are now members of the European Union. The influx has given a substantial boost to the economy as new arrivals have taken on many of the undesirable jobs, often for low wages, that Britons generally no longer want to do.
But as the economy has slowed in the last year and the credit crisis has taken a toll, polls show most Britons think there are too many immigrants in the country and want to see new restrictions imposed on the influx. A YouGov poll last week showed 57 percent of adults thought there should be less immigration.
Edmonds, 59, the host of popular game show Deal or No Deal, said he not only wanted to crack down on immigration, but on crime and youth violence, saying he would like to build more prisons and overhaul the police force.
More here
Nasty British socialists determined to grind everyone's medical care down to a low level
A naval commander's wife is being billed for all her NHS care after paying for a drug privately
A LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER awarded an MBE for services to the Royal Navy is preparing to hand back his decoration in protest after his terminally ill wife had her free NHS cancer care withdrawn for buying a drug privately. Diane Winston, 53, who has kidney cancer, is being billed by her local trust for all her NHS care, including scans and hospital appointments, after paying privately for the drug Nexavar, which her health service consultant recommended.
Winston's husband, Lionel, 57, is so disappointed at the way his wife has been treated that he is prepared to give up the MBE, which he hangs with pride on his wall. "If this situation is not changed, in protest, I will formally return my MBE," said Lionel. "I am so disgusted by the government, and the nation that I have given the last 37 years of my life to, and for which they have awarded me the MBE, that I would give it back."
The Winstons have fallen victim to the government ban on "co-payment", under which a patient who pays privately for any treatment cannot receive free state care for the same condition.
Lionel Winston was awarded his Member of the Order of the British Empire decoration by the Queen in 1994. The ceremony was attended by his proud wife and their two sons, Sonny, now 30, and Tel, 28. Lionel, who was born in Dominica, worked his way up from the lower decks to become an officer. "From extremely humble beginnings, Lionel has come a very long way and for him to have that medal is hugely important to him. I am extremely proud of what he has achieved," said Diane. "To even think about giving it back shows the extent of his disgust."
In addition to the Nexavar, which costs about 3,000 pounds a month, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, where Diane is being treated, has also issued bills for scans costing up to 480 each. Diane's consultant is so sympathetic to her plight she has given her time for free, but the trust charges an administrative fee for every appointment.
Last week, the couple, from Gosport, Hampshire, discovered that a deposit they had paid of about 3,700, which they believed had contributed to the cost of the drugs, had been used to pay for NHS care such as scans and appointments.
Kate Spall, campaigner at the Pamela Northcott Fund, a kidney cancer group, said: "This couple have had to rely on family, friends and fundraising to buy drugs to keep Diane alive. They are now in a position where they need to pay not only for the drug their NHS consultant desperately wants Diane to have, but also for NHS services, which is absolutely scandalous."
The trust insists it advised the Winstons that their deposit would be used to pay for scans and hospital appointments and not medication. A spokeswoman said the trust was following guidelines by charging for the routine treatments.
On October 2, Lionel will hold a fundraising dinner and auction on HMS Victory in Portsmouth to raise more money for his wife's care. Diane is one of thousands of patients with advanced kidney cancer who have been denied medication on the NHS that could prolong their lives. Last month, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the government's drugs rationing body, ruled that four drugs to treat kidney cancer, Sutent, Nexavar, Avastin and Torisel, are not good value for money despite admitting they are effective.
The decision prompted 26 leading professors of cancer medicine to write, in a letter to The Sunday Times, that the current system for assessing new drugs was not working. The Sunday Times has been campaigning to end the government ban on co-payments.
Public outrage at the way patients have been treated prompted a review of the policy. The inquiry, by Professor Mike Richards, the national cancer director, is widely expected to allow patients to top up their care. Leading health insurers are preparing to offer policies that would enable patients to buy life-saving drugs not funded by the NHS. Axa PPP and Saga are drawing up plans for the policies in anticipation of an end to the NHS ban on patients "topping up" free care by paying for private treatment.
One company, WPA, has already launched its health top-up policy, showing that the NHS ban on co-payment has begun to crumble in the face of patients demanding the right to buy the latest drugs. Fergus Craig, commercial director for Axa PPP healthcare, one of Britain's biggest medical insurers, said: "We are considering introducing policies to enable people to top up their NHS care with privately funded treatment." A spokesman for Saga added: "We are looking at how Saga health insurance might be able to provide payment for drugs that the NHS won't pay for."
Source
A small victory for free speech
Naughty novel to be published after all
"Gibson Square, a British publishing house, has announced that it will soon release "The Jewel of Medina," a novel by American author Sherry Jones whose publication in the United States was recently canceled by Random House for fear of triggering violence by Islamic fanatics. Bravo.
The novel fictionalizes the relationship between the Prophet Muhammad and his youngest bride, Aisha. After paying the author a significant advance and making plans for the release of the book, Random House sent copies of the galleys to various scholars, some of whom told the publisher that the content distorted history, would inflame Muslims and could cause much trouble. Security experts were also consulted. Random House decided to cancel publication of Jones' work, invoking reasons of "safety."
Many people in the West misunderstand what freedom of expression means. They associate it with the restriction on the power of the government to interfere with the freedom to express oneself. It is really a restriction on the power of anyone to interfere with anyone else's right to free expression, including but not limited to the government. If a business decision is made under extreme fear-directly or indirectly caused by force from a third person rather than the government-freedom of expression also suffers.
I am not interested in the reasons why Gibson Square has decided to publish the book-whether opportunism, greed, love of scandal, a dislike of the prophet, or a belief in the merits of the novel. But the fact that someone, somewhere, is willing to run the risk of not letting the threat of violence inhibit free expression is tremendously comforting
Source
There is a good and sympathetic background story about Sarah Palin's growing up in Alaska in a BRITISH paper. All that American papers seem to want to do is dig dirt on her. Don Surber is disgusted at that it takes a British paper to do such a story.
A rare bit of sanity from the British government: ""Families in cramped homes are to benefit from a scheme to scrap planning permission for many extensions and loft conversions, the government has said. The regulations, effective in England from 1 October, will mean 80,000 fewer applications and save up to 50 million pounds, Housing Minister Caroline Flint said. She said families struggling to move due to the credit crunch would benefit."
Monday, September 15, 2008
Free speech punished by senior NHS doctors
The NHS is just another nasty bureaucracy
A junior doctor made a rude comment on a doctors' only forum about one of the top bananas who masterminded the plan to 'improve' doctors' training and 'career paths'. 'Modernising Medical Careers', as it's called, is very widely disliked. Its benefits seem to be mostly for employers and the government - not doctors or patients.
Our Dr Scot Jnr, who works in a Highlands hospital, made some forthright comments (which included some 'Anglo-Saxon' words) about one of the MMC architects who is a career medical politician.
He was immediately suspended from work: a high-powered London close friend of the top banana architect had seen the comment and called another chum, another big tamale medical woman, up in the Highlands. A plot - allegedly unlawful - was hatched between them, Chinese-whisperish, to silence and punish Dr Scot Jnr forthwith.
This summary activity has deep implications for the freedom of doctors to speak out against diktats they don't agree with, and it demonstrates how bullied and harassed clinical staff are. One in four junior doctors report being bullied and intimidated by senior doctors (figure from BMA report). Ultimately it has deep implications for the quality of care and treatment doctors are allowed to give patients.
Fundamentally, this silencing and intimidatory activity is an onslaught on freedom of speech for all of us. In the NHS particularly, this toxic culture is so deeply entrenched that it goes barely noticed by most, it's part of the environment like targets or management suite shagpile. This hidden culture of intimidation and fear is also the reason that so many patients are not able to get the treatment they need or the apologies they deserve when things go wrong.
Source
British middle school graduates with the spelling skills of seven-year-olds
Pupils can gain a good GCSE in English despite being unable to spell basic words, according to a report. Many were awarded at least a C grade - considered a decent pass - even though scripts were littered with errors, it is claimed. Some teenagers were unable to spell there and where - words the average pupil is expected to master at the age of seven. Pupils were also awarded B grades despite spelling words such as finally with one "l" and failing to appreciate the difference between woman and women.
Researchers from Cambridge Assessment - one of the country's biggest exam boards - analysed spelling in 60 English papers. Three per cent of all words were wrong, rising to one-in-14 among teenagers awarded a G grade, they said. Some words were so badly spelt that researchers had problems working out what they meant. In one script, gorgeous was spelt "gourges", anxious came out as "angshuse" and familiar became "formiler". In other examples, nervous was spelt "nufse", thought became "faunt" and talk "torck".
The disclosure comes just days after a leading academic called for an overhaul of the English spelling system to allow irregularities to be accepted. Professor John Wells, from University College London, said that forcing pupils to memorise irregular spellings was holding many back in the classroom.
But Ian McNeilly, of the National Association for the Teaching of English, said too many schools were forced to ignore bad spelling in tests to inflate pupils' overall marks. "I am not saying that we make spelling a huge priority over understanding, analysis and interpretation," he told the Times Educational Supplement. "But students should be able to spell securely. It's an ongoing battle that isn't helped by wider society."
In the latest study - presented to the annual conference of the British Educational Research Association - academics analysed papers taken by students in 2004. They were able to present a detailed breakdown of the number of spelling mistakes by grade. Around four per cent of all words in papers graded an F were incorrect and more than two per cent of spellings by C-grade candidates were wrong.
Most common mistakes surrounded uncertainty over double letters. Spellings such as "allways", "quiettly", "untill" and "stoped" were common errors. Many pupils confused new and knew - and failed to spot the difference between too and to. Some teenagers were unsure about when "h" followed "w", using phrases such as "I whant", "he whas" and "we where".
Basic rules of primary school spelling were also forgotten by GCSE candidates. This led to misspellings such as "slightley", "angrey" and "comeing". Researchers said many errors came down to pupils' speech patterns, with some substituting -ing for -ink, producing words such as "somethink" and "nothink".
It comes amid on-going concerns over spelling standards among young people. Last month, one academic said that standards of spelling among university students were now so bad that lecturers are being urged to turn a blind eye to mistakes.
Source
Girls at British single-sex schools outperform co-education pupils
There have been a lot of findings elsewhere to this effect but socio-economic differences might be part of the explanation
GIRLS attending single-sex schools far outperform their contemporaries in mixed education, an analysis of government data have found. The research by the independent Girls' Schools Association (GSA) shows that this year 56.7% of their member schools' A-level results were at grade A, compared with 48.9% at coed independent schools. At GCSE the margin was wider still, with 68.5% marked A or A* compared with the mixed figure of 54%.
The research, based on figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, reflects a trend that has been apparent for at least the past four years. In recent decades single-sex education has declined in popularity, with the number of schools falling from nearly 2,500 30 years ago to about 400. In the past decade alone, some 120 independent schools have gone co-educational.
Some of the best-known former boys' schools, such as Wellington and Uppingham, are now mixed, although others, including Eton and Winchester, have remained boys-only.
Girls' schools have been more likely to resist going co-educational. Advocates of the system believe that in mixed classes girls are more likely to be inhibited and reluctant to voice their opinions openly. Girls in single-sex schools are also more likely to take A-level subjects which in mixed schools have traditionally been seen as the preserve of boys, such as science and maths.
Last year, 72.5% of pupils in the GSA schools won A grades in maths A-level while the figure was 64.9% for girls in their mixed equivalent. The national figure was nearly 30 percentage points lower. Separate research by the Girls' Day School Trust, an independent chain, has found that the proportion of their pupils taking science subjects at A-level is more than double the national average. Vicky Tuck, president of the GSA and principal of Cheltenham ladies' college, said girls schools "have a brilliant track record in helping pupils attain".
However, Richard Cairns, headmaster of the mixed Brighton college, said boys and girls complemented each others' learning. "Boys will focus on what's going on in the killing fields, and girls will think, `What's the impact [over] the next 40 years when there's no father at home?' "
Rebecca Ogilvie-Smith, from Oxfordshire, who last month scored top grades in all her AS-levels at Cheltenham - while also winning top grades in her French A2- said attending a single-sex school had taken off "a certain pressure" which the presence of boys can bring. "There is a very intense feeling of community and it is not judgmental," said Ogilvie-Smith. "Your focus is not on how you look."
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Revealed: UK's first official sharia courts
ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases. The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.
It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network's headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996. Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.
Siddiqi said: "We realised that under the Arbitration Act we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are."
The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future "seems unavoidable" in Britain. In July, the head of the judiciary, the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, further stoked controversy when he said that sharia could be used to settle marital and financial disputes. In fact, Muslim tribunal courts started passing sharia judgments in August 2007. They have dealt with more than 100 cases that range from Muslim divorce and inheritance to nuisance neighbours. It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations.
Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of "smaller" criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. "All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases," said Siddiqi, chairman of the governing council of the tribunal.
Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.
Politicians and church leaders expressed concerns that this could mark the beginnings of a "parallel legal system" based on sharia for some British Muslims. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: "If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so." Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: "I think it's appalling. I don't think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state."
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men. Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons. The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment. In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations. Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "The MCB supports these tribunals. If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish, so must the sharia ones."
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Wanted: Pretty woman flatmate who will cook and clean
A finance worker has been disciplined after sending an email to female colleagues asking them to recommend a lady flatmate who would cook and clean for him and be "reasonably nice to look at"
Paul Eley, 30, told colleagues he was looking for a woman to share his apartment rent free as long she was aged 18 to 26, attractive and happy to do his washing and ironing. He emailed 12 female co-workers asking if anyone needed a room and would be prepared to clean the whole flat once a week and the kitchen every day. Mr Eley said the new tenant would have to cook for him if he worked late, adding: "Nothing difficult, something like sausage and mash." She would "sometimes" be allowed to watch what she wanted on television and would be allowed friends around "as long as they are women". Mr Eley also stipulated that the lady would have to leave at a month's notice if he suddenly found a "serious" girlfriend who wanted to move in.
The fiduciary administrator made his comments in two emails sent to colleagues at investment company Concept Group Limited in Guernsey. Some of his appalled female colleagues forwarded the emails to friends and they were soon being read by hundreds of people on the island. After several complaints about his conduct Mr Eley was disciplined by company directors and warned the comments were sexist.
One colleague said: "Nobody was sure if he was trying to be funny or not. It was either a bad joke or the most sexist thing ever written. "Most women in the office didn't see the funny side and he was hauled in to the boardroom and given a proper dressing down for sexist behaviour. His bosses definitely didn't see the funny side."
Mr Eley insisted the emails had been a joke and he had not meant to cause offence. He said: "It was only meant as a joke and was not meant to be anything serious." Mr Eley sent his first email at 2.13pm on September 9 under the heading "New Flatmate" It said: "I am looking for a girl flatmate between 18 years old and 26 years old. Preferably someone who is very tidy and reasonable nice to look at." He then listed a series of cooking and cleaning jobs the new flatmate would have to do instead of paying rent.
Mr Eley is the latest person to have an embarrassing email proliferate unexpectedly. In 2000 public relations officer Claire Swire sent her boyfriend, Bradley Chait, an intimate email which went around the world after he forwarded it to friends.
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Easy ways to cut immigration and still get the work done
A great comment from Minette Marrin in Britain
It is a great relief to know that though the British Establishment may be unforgivably slow in recognising the obvious, it isn’t absolutely incapable of it. Last week the powers that be – the forces of conventional wisdom and political correctness – finally saw the light on immigration. They didn’t exactly admit it, of course. They merely stood by quietly and allowed others to tell the truth about immigration, without trying to shame them into silence. In its quiet way it was a remarkable cultural moment – a national tipping point.
On Monday a cross-parliamentary group led by Frank Field, the former Labour minister, called for a limit to immigration. There were no howls of outrage, merely a few squeaks. In a report called Balanced Migration, accompanied by a poll by YouGov, the parliamentary campaigners made the obvious point, accompanied by painstakingly gathered facts, that immigration cannot continue at its present uncontrolled rate. The country cannot stand it. At current levels, (mostly immigration from outside the European Union) 7m people will come to live here by 2031; that is the equivalent of seven cities the size of Birmingham. By now only bigots against the truth deny the pressure that recent immigration imposes on schools, hospitals, prisons, housing and infrastructure.
All this ought to have been obvious long ago. It’s what the vast majority here think. What’s new is that it’s possible to say so without being accused of playing the race card or the numbers game; I’m not sure why, but it must have something to do with the fact that many ethnic minority people now think so too. The YouGov poll showed that 85% of all people think immigration is putting too much pressure on public services, 76% that Britain is overcrowded and 81% that the government should greatly reduce immigration to Britain. Sixty per cent of Asians and 45% of blacks think the same, so such thoughts are not necessarily racist; ironically, it is their agreement that has made discussion possible.
The Balanced Migration group is calling for a stop to net immigration: it proposes that the number of immigrants (from outside the EU) who are given permission to settle here should be kept to roughly the same as the number of British citizens who are emigrating. This wouldn’t affect temporary work permits or family reunion, but it would significantly cut the population explosion here.
Part of the point of this launch is the usual invitation to a national debate. I have a couple of suggestions to offer. One of the many standard arguments in favour of immigration is that we need the workers. Even if immigrants make a net contribution of only a few pounds a year (62p a week, according to the exhaustive House of Lords economics committee investigation this year into the economic impact of immigration) or even if they are a large net cost, we’d be lost without them because they do essential work. They do all the care work, the unskilled work and the seasonal work. Who else would do it?
The answer is simple. There are already plenty of British citizens here to do it. I don’t mean the unemployed Britons here, though some of them might be suitable as well. I mean two other groups. One consists of state sector workers. The Labour government, while in office, has created well over 800,000 public sector jobs, most of them unnecessary. Not only is this make-work, it is make-waste. All those functionaries do not merely sit at desks, consuming heat and light and waiting for their pension. They create other costs and other work. Such is the mindless power of bureaucracy that one outreach worker with an absurd brief such as advising Irish people in Birmingham about sex (I didn’t make that one up) can call upon new initiatives, new meetings, new groups, new funding, new employees and more expense. Meanwhile the old and the lonely are neglected, unless a Filipino or a Somali immigrant can be found for them.
This vast army of state sector workers should be redeployed. They should be allowed to keep their job security, salaries and pensions, but they should become social care workers. They should, in person, look after the old, the sick, the mentally ill and the displaced; we are all capable of social care – looking after a bedridden pensioner, or feeding a sick child in hospital, giving a worn-out carer a respite break, working in a women’s shelter, or advising a desperate family about debt. We don’t have enough citizens doing this. It is supremely valuable work, far more so than checking the ethnicity of people parking cars.
This important work is not exactly skilled, but it is responsible and demanding. It is not right to give this work to low-paid, poorly educated immigrants who speak little English, when we have plenty of people here already who could do it.
Similarly with work that is more obviously unskilled, or low-skilled, like looking after parks and streets and countless other essential jobs, we need not depend so heavily on immigrants when we have huge numbers of citizens who could do it, yet they are often denied the opportunity. I mean people with learning disabilities.
Learning disability is an awkward term. It has nothing to do with mental illness. It means a significant intellectual impairment, or – crudely – a low IQ. Clearly a person with a mild or moderate learning disability couldn’t usually expect to do a skilled job. But for many doing an unskilled job can be a great joy, a source of pride and independence, as well as useful to all concerned, whether it’s stacking shelves in a friendly supermarket, assisting a park keeper, working on a building site, in a hotel laundry or picking strawberries. And according to government estimates, between 580,000 and 1.75m people here have mild to moderate learning disabilities; that is a huge source of willing workers. Yet despite the known wishes of people with such disabilities, despite the pressure of various lobby groups on their behalf, they find it difficult to get jobs.
Immigrants have brought great things to this country. One of them, rather oddly and recently, is the opportunity at last to talk more openly as a society about the costs and benefits of immigration, without being denounced as a heartless xenophobe or closet racist. Enoch Powell is at last being proved wrong.
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AIDS epidemic? It was a `glorious myth'
The author of 1987's "The Truth About the AIDS Panic" welcomes two new whistleblowing texts on the opportunism of the AIDS industry.
There is a widely accepted view that Britain was saved from an explosive epidemic of heterosexual AIDS in the late 1980s by a bold campaign initiated by gay activists and radical doctors and subsequently endorsed by the government and the mass media. According to advocates of this view, we owe our low rates of HIV infection today largely to the success of initiatives such as the `Don't Die of Ignorance' leaflet distributed to 23million households and the scary `Tombstones and Icebergs' television and cinema adverts (though they are always quick to add that we must maintain vigilance and guard against complacency).
Now former AIDS industry insiders are challenging the imminent heterosexual plague story and many of the other scare stories of the international AIDS panic. James Chin, author of The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness, is a veteran public health epidemiologist who worked in the World Health Organisation's Global Programme on AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Elizabeth Pisani, a journalist turned epidemiologist and author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, spent most of the past decade working under the auspices of UNAIDS, which took over the global crusade against HIV in 1996. Once prominent advocates of the familiar doomsday scenarios, both have now turned whistleblowers on their former colleagues in the AIDS bureaucracy, a `byzantine' world, according to Pisani, in which `money eclipses truth'.
For Chin, the British AIDS story is an example of a `glorious myth' - a tale that is `gloriously or nobly false', but told `for a good cause'. He claims that government and international agencies, and AIDS advocacy organisations, `have distorted HIV epidemiology in order to perpetuate the myth of the great potential for HIV epidemics to spread into "general" populations'. In particular, he alleges, HIV/AIDS `estimates and projections are "cooked" or made up'.
While Pisani disputes Chin's claim that UNAIDS epidemiologists deliberately overestimated the epidemic, she admits to what she describes as `beating up' the figures, insisting - unconvincingly - that there is a `huge difference' between `making it up (plain old lying) and beating it up'. Pisani freely acknowledges her role in manipulating statistics to maximise their scare value, and breezily dismisses the `everyone-is-at-risk nonsense' of the British `Don't Die of Ignorance' campaign.
Chin's book offers a comprehensive exposure of the hollowness of the claims of the AIDS bureaucracy for the efficacy of their preventive campaigns. He provides numerous examples of how exaggerated claims for the scale of the HIV epidemic (and the risks of wider spread) in different countries and contexts enable authorities to claim the credit for subsequently lower figures, as they `ride to glory' on curves showing declining incidence. As he argues, `HIV prevalence is low in most populations throughout the world and can be expected to remain low, not because of effective HIV prevention programmes, but because. the vast majority of the world's populations do not have sufficient HIV risk behaviours to sustain epidemic HIV transmission'.
By the late 1980s, it was already clear that, given the very low prevalence of HIV, the difficulty of transmitting HIV through heterosexual sex and the stable character of sexual relationships (even those having multiple partners tend to favour serial monogamy), an explosive HIV epidemic in Britain, of the sort that occurred in relatively small networks of gay men and drug users, was highly improbable, as Don Milligan and I argued in 1987 (1).
As both Chin and Pisani indicate, high rates of heterosexually spread HIV infection remain the exceptional feature of sub-Saharan Africa (and parts of the Caribbean) where a particular pattern of concurrent networks of sexual partners together with high rates of other sexually transmitted infections facilitated an AIDS epidemic. Though this has had a devastating impact on many communities, Chin suggests that HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean has been overestimated by about 50 per cent. The good news is that, contrary to the doom-mongering of the AIDS bureaucracy, the rising annual global HIV incidence peaked in the late 1990s and the AIDS pandemic has now passed its peak.
Most significantly, the sub-Saharan pattern has not been replicated in Europe or North America, or even in Asia or Latin America, though there have been localised epidemics associated with gay men, drug users and prostitution, most recently in South-East Asia and Eastern Europe.
Many commentators now acknowledge the gross exaggerations and scaremongering of the AIDS bureaucracy. It is clear that HIV has remained largely confined to people following recognised high-risk behaviours, rather than being, in the mantra of the AIDS bureaucracy, a condition of poverty, gender inequality and under-development. Yet they also accept the argument, characterised by Chin as `political correctness', that it is better to try to terrify the entire population with the spectre of an AIDS epidemic than it is to risk stigmatising the gays and junkies, ladyboys and whores who feature prominently in Pisani's colourful account.
For Chin and Pisani, the main problem of the mendacity of the AIDS bureaucracy is that it leads to misdirected, ineffective and wasteful campaigns to change the sexual behaviour of the entire population, while the real problems of HIV transmission through high-risk networks are neglected. To deal with these problems, both favour a return to traditional public health methods of containing sexually transmitted infections through aggressive testing, contact tracing and treatment of carriers of HIV. Whereas the gay activists who influenced the early approach of the AIDS bureaucracy favoured anonymous and voluntary testing, our whistleblowers now recommend a more coercive approach, in relation to both diagnosis and treatment.
Pisani reminds readers that `public health is inherently a somewhat fascist discipline' (for example, quarantine restrictions have an inescapably authoritarian character) and enthusiastically endorses the AIDS policies of the Thai military authorities and the Chinese bureaucrats who are not restrained from targeting high-risk groups by democratic niceties. The problem is that, given the climate of fear generated by two decades of the `everyone-is-at-risk nonsense', the policy now recommended by Chin and Pisani is likely to lead to more repressive interventions against stigmatised minorities (which will not help to deter the spread of HIV infection).
Chin confesses that he has found it difficult `to understand how, over the past decade, mainstream AIDS scientists, including most infectious disease epidemiologists, have virtually all uncritically accepted the many "glorious" myths and misconceptions UNAIDS and AIDS activists continue to perpetuate'. An explanation for this shocking betrayal of principle can be found in a 1996 commentary on the British AIDS campaign entitled `Icebergs and rocks of the "good lie"'. In this article, Guardian journalist Mark Lawson accepted that the public had been misled over the threat of AIDS, but argued that the end of promoting sexual restraint (especially among the young) justified the means (exaggerating the risk of HIV infection): as he put it, `the government has lied and I am glad' (2).
This sort of opportunism is not confined to AIDS: in other areas where experts are broadly in sympathy with government policy - such as passive smoking, obesity and climate change - they have been similarly complicit in the prostitution of science to propaganda. It is a pity that Chin and Pisani did not blow their whistles earlier and louder, but better late than never.
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The NHS is just another nasty bureaucracy
A junior doctor made a rude comment on a doctors' only forum about one of the top bananas who masterminded the plan to 'improve' doctors' training and 'career paths'. 'Modernising Medical Careers', as it's called, is very widely disliked. Its benefits seem to be mostly for employers and the government - not doctors or patients.
Our Dr Scot Jnr, who works in a Highlands hospital, made some forthright comments (which included some 'Anglo-Saxon' words) about one of the MMC architects who is a career medical politician.
He was immediately suspended from work: a high-powered London close friend of the top banana architect had seen the comment and called another chum, another big tamale medical woman, up in the Highlands. A plot - allegedly unlawful - was hatched between them, Chinese-whisperish, to silence and punish Dr Scot Jnr forthwith.
This summary activity has deep implications for the freedom of doctors to speak out against diktats they don't agree with, and it demonstrates how bullied and harassed clinical staff are. One in four junior doctors report being bullied and intimidated by senior doctors (figure from BMA report). Ultimately it has deep implications for the quality of care and treatment doctors are allowed to give patients.
Fundamentally, this silencing and intimidatory activity is an onslaught on freedom of speech for all of us. In the NHS particularly, this toxic culture is so deeply entrenched that it goes barely noticed by most, it's part of the environment like targets or management suite shagpile. This hidden culture of intimidation and fear is also the reason that so many patients are not able to get the treatment they need or the apologies they deserve when things go wrong.
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British middle school graduates with the spelling skills of seven-year-olds
Pupils can gain a good GCSE in English despite being unable to spell basic words, according to a report. Many were awarded at least a C grade - considered a decent pass - even though scripts were littered with errors, it is claimed. Some teenagers were unable to spell there and where - words the average pupil is expected to master at the age of seven. Pupils were also awarded B grades despite spelling words such as finally with one "l" and failing to appreciate the difference between woman and women.
Researchers from Cambridge Assessment - one of the country's biggest exam boards - analysed spelling in 60 English papers. Three per cent of all words were wrong, rising to one-in-14 among teenagers awarded a G grade, they said. Some words were so badly spelt that researchers had problems working out what they meant. In one script, gorgeous was spelt "gourges", anxious came out as "angshuse" and familiar became "formiler". In other examples, nervous was spelt "nufse", thought became "faunt" and talk "torck".
The disclosure comes just days after a leading academic called for an overhaul of the English spelling system to allow irregularities to be accepted. Professor John Wells, from University College London, said that forcing pupils to memorise irregular spellings was holding many back in the classroom.
But Ian McNeilly, of the National Association for the Teaching of English, said too many schools were forced to ignore bad spelling in tests to inflate pupils' overall marks. "I am not saying that we make spelling a huge priority over understanding, analysis and interpretation," he told the Times Educational Supplement. "But students should be able to spell securely. It's an ongoing battle that isn't helped by wider society."
In the latest study - presented to the annual conference of the British Educational Research Association - academics analysed papers taken by students in 2004. They were able to present a detailed breakdown of the number of spelling mistakes by grade. Around four per cent of all words in papers graded an F were incorrect and more than two per cent of spellings by C-grade candidates were wrong.
Most common mistakes surrounded uncertainty over double letters. Spellings such as "allways", "quiettly", "untill" and "stoped" were common errors. Many pupils confused new and knew - and failed to spot the difference between too and to. Some teenagers were unsure about when "h" followed "w", using phrases such as "I whant", "he whas" and "we where".
Basic rules of primary school spelling were also forgotten by GCSE candidates. This led to misspellings such as "slightley", "angrey" and "comeing". Researchers said many errors came down to pupils' speech patterns, with some substituting -ing for -ink, producing words such as "somethink" and "nothink".
It comes amid on-going concerns over spelling standards among young people. Last month, one academic said that standards of spelling among university students were now so bad that lecturers are being urged to turn a blind eye to mistakes.
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Girls at British single-sex schools outperform co-education pupils
There have been a lot of findings elsewhere to this effect but socio-economic differences might be part of the explanation
GIRLS attending single-sex schools far outperform their contemporaries in mixed education, an analysis of government data have found. The research by the independent Girls' Schools Association (GSA) shows that this year 56.7% of their member schools' A-level results were at grade A, compared with 48.9% at coed independent schools. At GCSE the margin was wider still, with 68.5% marked A or A* compared with the mixed figure of 54%.
The research, based on figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, reflects a trend that has been apparent for at least the past four years. In recent decades single-sex education has declined in popularity, with the number of schools falling from nearly 2,500 30 years ago to about 400. In the past decade alone, some 120 independent schools have gone co-educational.
Some of the best-known former boys' schools, such as Wellington and Uppingham, are now mixed, although others, including Eton and Winchester, have remained boys-only.
Girls' schools have been more likely to resist going co-educational. Advocates of the system believe that in mixed classes girls are more likely to be inhibited and reluctant to voice their opinions openly. Girls in single-sex schools are also more likely to take A-level subjects which in mixed schools have traditionally been seen as the preserve of boys, such as science and maths.
Last year, 72.5% of pupils in the GSA schools won A grades in maths A-level while the figure was 64.9% for girls in their mixed equivalent. The national figure was nearly 30 percentage points lower. Separate research by the Girls' Day School Trust, an independent chain, has found that the proportion of their pupils taking science subjects at A-level is more than double the national average. Vicky Tuck, president of the GSA and principal of Cheltenham ladies' college, said girls schools "have a brilliant track record in helping pupils attain".
However, Richard Cairns, headmaster of the mixed Brighton college, said boys and girls complemented each others' learning. "Boys will focus on what's going on in the killing fields, and girls will think, `What's the impact [over] the next 40 years when there's no father at home?' "
Rebecca Ogilvie-Smith, from Oxfordshire, who last month scored top grades in all her AS-levels at Cheltenham - while also winning top grades in her French A2- said attending a single-sex school had taken off "a certain pressure" which the presence of boys can bring. "There is a very intense feeling of community and it is not judgmental," said Ogilvie-Smith. "Your focus is not on how you look."
Source
Revealed: UK's first official sharia courts
ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases. The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.
It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network's headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996. Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.
Siddiqi said: "We realised that under the Arbitration Act we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are."
The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future "seems unavoidable" in Britain. In July, the head of the judiciary, the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, further stoked controversy when he said that sharia could be used to settle marital and financial disputes. In fact, Muslim tribunal courts started passing sharia judgments in August 2007. They have dealt with more than 100 cases that range from Muslim divorce and inheritance to nuisance neighbours. It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations.
Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of "smaller" criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. "All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases," said Siddiqi, chairman of the governing council of the tribunal.
Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.
Politicians and church leaders expressed concerns that this could mark the beginnings of a "parallel legal system" based on sharia for some British Muslims. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: "If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so." Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: "I think it's appalling. I don't think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state."
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men. Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons. The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment. In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations. Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "The MCB supports these tribunals. If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish, so must the sharia ones."
Source
Wanted: Pretty woman flatmate who will cook and clean
A finance worker has been disciplined after sending an email to female colleagues asking them to recommend a lady flatmate who would cook and clean for him and be "reasonably nice to look at"
Paul Eley, 30, told colleagues he was looking for a woman to share his apartment rent free as long she was aged 18 to 26, attractive and happy to do his washing and ironing. He emailed 12 female co-workers asking if anyone needed a room and would be prepared to clean the whole flat once a week and the kitchen every day. Mr Eley said the new tenant would have to cook for him if he worked late, adding: "Nothing difficult, something like sausage and mash." She would "sometimes" be allowed to watch what she wanted on television and would be allowed friends around "as long as they are women". Mr Eley also stipulated that the lady would have to leave at a month's notice if he suddenly found a "serious" girlfriend who wanted to move in.
The fiduciary administrator made his comments in two emails sent to colleagues at investment company Concept Group Limited in Guernsey. Some of his appalled female colleagues forwarded the emails to friends and they were soon being read by hundreds of people on the island. After several complaints about his conduct Mr Eley was disciplined by company directors and warned the comments were sexist.
One colleague said: "Nobody was sure if he was trying to be funny or not. It was either a bad joke or the most sexist thing ever written. "Most women in the office didn't see the funny side and he was hauled in to the boardroom and given a proper dressing down for sexist behaviour. His bosses definitely didn't see the funny side."
Mr Eley insisted the emails had been a joke and he had not meant to cause offence. He said: "It was only meant as a joke and was not meant to be anything serious." Mr Eley sent his first email at 2.13pm on September 9 under the heading "New Flatmate" It said: "I am looking for a girl flatmate between 18 years old and 26 years old. Preferably someone who is very tidy and reasonable nice to look at." He then listed a series of cooking and cleaning jobs the new flatmate would have to do instead of paying rent.
Mr Eley is the latest person to have an embarrassing email proliferate unexpectedly. In 2000 public relations officer Claire Swire sent her boyfriend, Bradley Chait, an intimate email which went around the world after he forwarded it to friends.
Source
Easy ways to cut immigration and still get the work done
A great comment from Minette Marrin in Britain
It is a great relief to know that though the British Establishment may be unforgivably slow in recognising the obvious, it isn’t absolutely incapable of it. Last week the powers that be – the forces of conventional wisdom and political correctness – finally saw the light on immigration. They didn’t exactly admit it, of course. They merely stood by quietly and allowed others to tell the truth about immigration, without trying to shame them into silence. In its quiet way it was a remarkable cultural moment – a national tipping point.
On Monday a cross-parliamentary group led by Frank Field, the former Labour minister, called for a limit to immigration. There were no howls of outrage, merely a few squeaks. In a report called Balanced Migration, accompanied by a poll by YouGov, the parliamentary campaigners made the obvious point, accompanied by painstakingly gathered facts, that immigration cannot continue at its present uncontrolled rate. The country cannot stand it. At current levels, (mostly immigration from outside the European Union) 7m people will come to live here by 2031; that is the equivalent of seven cities the size of Birmingham. By now only bigots against the truth deny the pressure that recent immigration imposes on schools, hospitals, prisons, housing and infrastructure.
All this ought to have been obvious long ago. It’s what the vast majority here think. What’s new is that it’s possible to say so without being accused of playing the race card or the numbers game; I’m not sure why, but it must have something to do with the fact that many ethnic minority people now think so too. The YouGov poll showed that 85% of all people think immigration is putting too much pressure on public services, 76% that Britain is overcrowded and 81% that the government should greatly reduce immigration to Britain. Sixty per cent of Asians and 45% of blacks think the same, so such thoughts are not necessarily racist; ironically, it is their agreement that has made discussion possible.
The Balanced Migration group is calling for a stop to net immigration: it proposes that the number of immigrants (from outside the EU) who are given permission to settle here should be kept to roughly the same as the number of British citizens who are emigrating. This wouldn’t affect temporary work permits or family reunion, but it would significantly cut the population explosion here.
Part of the point of this launch is the usual invitation to a national debate. I have a couple of suggestions to offer. One of the many standard arguments in favour of immigration is that we need the workers. Even if immigrants make a net contribution of only a few pounds a year (62p a week, according to the exhaustive House of Lords economics committee investigation this year into the economic impact of immigration) or even if they are a large net cost, we’d be lost without them because they do essential work. They do all the care work, the unskilled work and the seasonal work. Who else would do it?
The answer is simple. There are already plenty of British citizens here to do it. I don’t mean the unemployed Britons here, though some of them might be suitable as well. I mean two other groups. One consists of state sector workers. The Labour government, while in office, has created well over 800,000 public sector jobs, most of them unnecessary. Not only is this make-work, it is make-waste. All those functionaries do not merely sit at desks, consuming heat and light and waiting for their pension. They create other costs and other work. Such is the mindless power of bureaucracy that one outreach worker with an absurd brief such as advising Irish people in Birmingham about sex (I didn’t make that one up) can call upon new initiatives, new meetings, new groups, new funding, new employees and more expense. Meanwhile the old and the lonely are neglected, unless a Filipino or a Somali immigrant can be found for them.
This vast army of state sector workers should be redeployed. They should be allowed to keep their job security, salaries and pensions, but they should become social care workers. They should, in person, look after the old, the sick, the mentally ill and the displaced; we are all capable of social care – looking after a bedridden pensioner, or feeding a sick child in hospital, giving a worn-out carer a respite break, working in a women’s shelter, or advising a desperate family about debt. We don’t have enough citizens doing this. It is supremely valuable work, far more so than checking the ethnicity of people parking cars.
This important work is not exactly skilled, but it is responsible and demanding. It is not right to give this work to low-paid, poorly educated immigrants who speak little English, when we have plenty of people here already who could do it.
Similarly with work that is more obviously unskilled, or low-skilled, like looking after parks and streets and countless other essential jobs, we need not depend so heavily on immigrants when we have huge numbers of citizens who could do it, yet they are often denied the opportunity. I mean people with learning disabilities.
Learning disability is an awkward term. It has nothing to do with mental illness. It means a significant intellectual impairment, or – crudely – a low IQ. Clearly a person with a mild or moderate learning disability couldn’t usually expect to do a skilled job. But for many doing an unskilled job can be a great joy, a source of pride and independence, as well as useful to all concerned, whether it’s stacking shelves in a friendly supermarket, assisting a park keeper, working on a building site, in a hotel laundry or picking strawberries. And according to government estimates, between 580,000 and 1.75m people here have mild to moderate learning disabilities; that is a huge source of willing workers. Yet despite the known wishes of people with such disabilities, despite the pressure of various lobby groups on their behalf, they find it difficult to get jobs.
Immigrants have brought great things to this country. One of them, rather oddly and recently, is the opportunity at last to talk more openly as a society about the costs and benefits of immigration, without being denounced as a heartless xenophobe or closet racist. Enoch Powell is at last being proved wrong.
Source
AIDS epidemic? It was a `glorious myth'
The author of 1987's "The Truth About the AIDS Panic" welcomes two new whistleblowing texts on the opportunism of the AIDS industry.
There is a widely accepted view that Britain was saved from an explosive epidemic of heterosexual AIDS in the late 1980s by a bold campaign initiated by gay activists and radical doctors and subsequently endorsed by the government and the mass media. According to advocates of this view, we owe our low rates of HIV infection today largely to the success of initiatives such as the `Don't Die of Ignorance' leaflet distributed to 23million households and the scary `Tombstones and Icebergs' television and cinema adverts (though they are always quick to add that we must maintain vigilance and guard against complacency).
Now former AIDS industry insiders are challenging the imminent heterosexual plague story and many of the other scare stories of the international AIDS panic. James Chin, author of The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness, is a veteran public health epidemiologist who worked in the World Health Organisation's Global Programme on AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Elizabeth Pisani, a journalist turned epidemiologist and author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, spent most of the past decade working under the auspices of UNAIDS, which took over the global crusade against HIV in 1996. Once prominent advocates of the familiar doomsday scenarios, both have now turned whistleblowers on their former colleagues in the AIDS bureaucracy, a `byzantine' world, according to Pisani, in which `money eclipses truth'.
For Chin, the British AIDS story is an example of a `glorious myth' - a tale that is `gloriously or nobly false', but told `for a good cause'. He claims that government and international agencies, and AIDS advocacy organisations, `have distorted HIV epidemiology in order to perpetuate the myth of the great potential for HIV epidemics to spread into "general" populations'. In particular, he alleges, HIV/AIDS `estimates and projections are "cooked" or made up'.
While Pisani disputes Chin's claim that UNAIDS epidemiologists deliberately overestimated the epidemic, she admits to what she describes as `beating up' the figures, insisting - unconvincingly - that there is a `huge difference' between `making it up (plain old lying) and beating it up'. Pisani freely acknowledges her role in manipulating statistics to maximise their scare value, and breezily dismisses the `everyone-is-at-risk nonsense' of the British `Don't Die of Ignorance' campaign.
Chin's book offers a comprehensive exposure of the hollowness of the claims of the AIDS bureaucracy for the efficacy of their preventive campaigns. He provides numerous examples of how exaggerated claims for the scale of the HIV epidemic (and the risks of wider spread) in different countries and contexts enable authorities to claim the credit for subsequently lower figures, as they `ride to glory' on curves showing declining incidence. As he argues, `HIV prevalence is low in most populations throughout the world and can be expected to remain low, not because of effective HIV prevention programmes, but because. the vast majority of the world's populations do not have sufficient HIV risk behaviours to sustain epidemic HIV transmission'.
By the late 1980s, it was already clear that, given the very low prevalence of HIV, the difficulty of transmitting HIV through heterosexual sex and the stable character of sexual relationships (even those having multiple partners tend to favour serial monogamy), an explosive HIV epidemic in Britain, of the sort that occurred in relatively small networks of gay men and drug users, was highly improbable, as Don Milligan and I argued in 1987 (1).
As both Chin and Pisani indicate, high rates of heterosexually spread HIV infection remain the exceptional feature of sub-Saharan Africa (and parts of the Caribbean) where a particular pattern of concurrent networks of sexual partners together with high rates of other sexually transmitted infections facilitated an AIDS epidemic. Though this has had a devastating impact on many communities, Chin suggests that HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean has been overestimated by about 50 per cent. The good news is that, contrary to the doom-mongering of the AIDS bureaucracy, the rising annual global HIV incidence peaked in the late 1990s and the AIDS pandemic has now passed its peak.
Most significantly, the sub-Saharan pattern has not been replicated in Europe or North America, or even in Asia or Latin America, though there have been localised epidemics associated with gay men, drug users and prostitution, most recently in South-East Asia and Eastern Europe.
Many commentators now acknowledge the gross exaggerations and scaremongering of the AIDS bureaucracy. It is clear that HIV has remained largely confined to people following recognised high-risk behaviours, rather than being, in the mantra of the AIDS bureaucracy, a condition of poverty, gender inequality and under-development. Yet they also accept the argument, characterised by Chin as `political correctness', that it is better to try to terrify the entire population with the spectre of an AIDS epidemic than it is to risk stigmatising the gays and junkies, ladyboys and whores who feature prominently in Pisani's colourful account.
For Chin and Pisani, the main problem of the mendacity of the AIDS bureaucracy is that it leads to misdirected, ineffective and wasteful campaigns to change the sexual behaviour of the entire population, while the real problems of HIV transmission through high-risk networks are neglected. To deal with these problems, both favour a return to traditional public health methods of containing sexually transmitted infections through aggressive testing, contact tracing and treatment of carriers of HIV. Whereas the gay activists who influenced the early approach of the AIDS bureaucracy favoured anonymous and voluntary testing, our whistleblowers now recommend a more coercive approach, in relation to both diagnosis and treatment.
Pisani reminds readers that `public health is inherently a somewhat fascist discipline' (for example, quarantine restrictions have an inescapably authoritarian character) and enthusiastically endorses the AIDS policies of the Thai military authorities and the Chinese bureaucrats who are not restrained from targeting high-risk groups by democratic niceties. The problem is that, given the climate of fear generated by two decades of the `everyone-is-at-risk nonsense', the policy now recommended by Chin and Pisani is likely to lead to more repressive interventions against stigmatised minorities (which will not help to deter the spread of HIV infection).
Chin confesses that he has found it difficult `to understand how, over the past decade, mainstream AIDS scientists, including most infectious disease epidemiologists, have virtually all uncritically accepted the many "glorious" myths and misconceptions UNAIDS and AIDS activists continue to perpetuate'. An explanation for this shocking betrayal of principle can be found in a 1996 commentary on the British AIDS campaign entitled `Icebergs and rocks of the "good lie"'. In this article, Guardian journalist Mark Lawson accepted that the public had been misled over the threat of AIDS, but argued that the end of promoting sexual restraint (especially among the young) justified the means (exaggerating the risk of HIV infection): as he put it, `the government has lied and I am glad' (2).
This sort of opportunism is not confined to AIDS: in other areas where experts are broadly in sympathy with government policy - such as passive smoking, obesity and climate change - they have been similarly complicit in the prostitution of science to propaganda. It is a pity that Chin and Pisani did not blow their whistles earlier and louder, but better late than never.
Source
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The British Labour Party should dump compassion
Christianity has not done socialism any favours. The Left must embrace progress and winners, not the workshy and the weak -- says Matthew Parris below. He has some interesting points but seems to end up with an attempt to convert the modern British Left to Fascism. Parris is a rather eccentric homosexual conservative
It's time to ask not who should lead the Left in Britain, but where they should be led. Does socialism have a future? Little seems to be coming from the old warhorses of the left-wing intelligentsia these days, so, as the party conference season gets under way today, I thought I'd have a bash myself.
Socialism was never set in stone. In postwar Britain it has been evolving, and a powerful influence on this evolution, especially under the leaderships of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has been something called "Christian socialism": the belief that the democratic and liberal Left may have something to learn from, and contribute to, New Testament morality: the working out of God's purpose on Earth. After all, didn't Jesus say "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor"?
I'm not suggesting that most politicians on the Left are consciously motivated by biblical injunction, or are even active believers. It's more subliminal. Ours remains a predominantly Christian culture, with Gospel beliefs about fairness, mercy and helping the poor, sick and weak, embedded deeply among our values; as is a tendency to ennoble suffering, and a guilt about wealth.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, all of us have drunk deep at this well. It does not take the subtlest of minds to make a connection between these values, and the socialist political imperative to redistribute wealth, and care for all classes. Both aim, in their outcomes, for humanitarian goals. But this apparent convergence of purposes is a deception. Far from reinforcing true socialism, Christian socialism has ambushed it, subverting its original message and wrecking it as a viable philosophy of government in a market-driven age.
Marx is about power. Christianity is about charity. Marx is about the authority of the collective. Christian liberalism is about the individual conscience. Marx is about justice. Christian humanitarianism is about mercy. The common causes in which Christians, liberals and socialists have tried to reconcile their differences - personal freedom, the redistribution of wealth and the beneficent State - have in Christian hands proved ruinous to the socialist idea: softening its head, picking its pocket, throwing good money after bad, nursing the weak and neglecting the winners, hearkening to disability and turning away from ability, and leaching its energies into a welter of simpering charitable causes. For most of the second half of the 20th century, Western socialism has hovered around the bedside of the victim, the loser and the marginalised. To win, it should have been outdoors, exhorting the strong.
This wheelchair socialism has sucked the Centre Left into spending people's taxes on unproductive causes, and associating itself with failure rather than success. Nietzsche characterised the driving Christian ethic thus: "It lived on distress..." H.L.Mencken added: "God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters."
It's not for me, here, to defend or attack the Church's absorption with the Prodigal Son rather than his industrious brother, the single lost sheep rather than the rest of the flock; or the way Christianity has made victimhood on the Cross both its mascot and its guiding light. I simply observe that this has absolutely nothing to do with what Marx was trying to say. Socialism was a most unsqueamish creed. If it wished to redistribute wealth, that was not for reasons of mercy but because Marx saw capitalism as a machine doomed to seize up: whereas mankind would fire on all cylinders if labour realised and exercised its potential muscle, and all men pulled together.
A socialist true to these roots, sitting in a modern British Cabinet, and faced with a decision whether to channel Treasury money into (a) scientific research; (b) transport infrastructure; (c) free bus passes for pensioners; or (d) a subsidised national paternity-leave scheme, could weigh socialist arguments for any or all of these purposes; but Christian charity, compassion, or a human-rights-based notion of "fairness" would not be among them.
Properly understood, socialist priorities should never be divorced from considerations of how most effectively to motivate citizens, oil the cogs and drive the pistons. Marx would have been contemptuous of the workshy and mildly uninterested in the disabled. Nor would he have shared Christian socialism's tenderness for the outcast, for individual conscience, and for liberty. Socialism should see little value in personal freedom except in so far as it contributes to the collective good.
Central to socialism is the power of the collective (for the moment, the State): the power to improve the common lot, overriding the individual where necessary. This case for muscular government has always been stronger than we free-market liberals have wanted to acknowledge. Perversely, as socialist movements flounder everywhere, the case for muscular government is actually getting stronger.
This is not an ideological movement I would join, and in a post-industrial age its fixation with organised labour is redundant, but in other ways it remains a perfectly modern if brutal idea that deserves a confident voice in the century ahead.
Not that you would know it from the state of the Labour Party. I'm not in the business of advising Gordon Brown on how to save his skin; that battle is lost. The next election is lost. The election may come sooner than we think - how many more Siobhain McDonaghs wait to fall on their swords?
After that election, a Left Opposition will need to find a voice. It will not hear it from the Manse. It needs to find a crowd. They will not be discovered sleeping rough. It needs to find a class. They will not be the underclass. It needs to find a national purpose. Fairness and Equality will not suffice; Sure Start is not enough.
There's no point trying to out-smooth David Cameron or out-compassion Nick Clegg. Away (the socialist should say) with caring and diversity: let's hear about investment, not subsidy; progress, not equality; about Crossrail (what's the betting Mr Brown cancels it?); about how Britain generates its own power, how we rescue our rail network from impending insolvency, how we get from London to Scotland by train in two hours, and how we stop the planning system throttling every big project; about how we develop a global positioning system that the Americans don't control, how we pay for better highways and uncongested streets with proper road pricing, and how we research and market carbon-free transport, heat and power.
Unless you believe in big, costly, muscular and intrusive government, your voice in all such national causes must be muted. There's a damn good case to be made for strong-arming by the State, and only the Left can make it. This is not a time for Bonhoeffer and playgroups, but for a Left which believes unashamedly in taking command.
Source
British cities spending millions to move "unsafe" gravestones!
Local authorities were accused of "municipal vandalism" after it emerged that they are spending millions of pounds to move gravestones that are regarded as a health and safety risk. Tens of thousands of headstones have been flattened or removed across the country because of fears that they could fall on gravediggers or members of the public, according to figures compiled by the Conservatives. Greg Hands, MP for Hammersmith & Fulham, used the Freedom of Information Act to establish that in London 9,463 stones and memorials have been moved over the past three years. If other UK councils have been carrying out the same level of activity, 76,000 headstones will have been moved at a cost of $30 million.
Mr Hands blamed the Health and Safety Executive, which has ordered town halls to put "memorial management arrangements" in place. "People are 4,000 times more likely to be injured by a bendy bus than by a headstone in a graveyard, yet millions of pounds of taxpayers' money are being blown on ripping down headstones," he said.
Source
VANDALIZING THE ECONOMY
This is very big. Over in the UK, a group of Greenpeace supporters trespassed on to a coal-fired power station and started vandalizing it, painting a message to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown about global warming. They were arrested and prosecuted. Their defense strategy was to claim a "lawful excuse" on the grounds that their actions could help prevent significant damage to others' property that would result from global warming. Their defense witnesses included James Hansen, Al Gore's adviser and head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, and Zac Goldsmith, ultra-wealthy heir of Sir James Goldsmith and a wannabe Tory MP. The strategy worked. Yesterday, a jury returned a majority verdict, acquiting the so-called Kingsnorth Six. As The Independent put it, the jury decided the "threat of global warming justifies breaking the law."
The ramifications are huge. Operators of coal-fired power stations in the UK have just been stripped of legal protection from the criminal actions of the environmental lobby (to call them extremists would be wrong - this is the mainstream). It is perfectly possible that a future jury will find differently, but the chances of that happening have fallen dramatically. Investor confidence in coal energy will therefore be damaged. There will be huge political risk in building a new coal plant. Existing coal plants will come under literal attack.
This is, as Matt Sinclair points out, the frosting on a cake of anti-energy pressures: We need to replace a huge share (PDF, pg. 67) of our generating capacity, at a cost of billions upon billions, in around a decade. The companies we are relying upon to do so already face a very tangible prospect of having the returns on their investment confiscated directly by windfall taxes or indirectly by threats of windfall taxes if they don't cough up. Their costs are constantly being pushed up by regulations and, when they pass that cost on to customers, they are demonised, in part by a Government funded pressure group. Now when their property is damaged to the value of $60,000 the perpetrators will be let off...
Coal is out. The same people hate nuclear and will work to delay new nuclear plants. Renewables are marginal, even according to the Renewable Energy Foundation. North Sea Gas is running out, so the only solution to keep the lights on is kowtowing to Vladimir Putin and Gazprom.
Let us also be quite clear why this has happened. The energy industry in the UK and Her Majesty's Government have allowed the environmental groups free rein to delegitimize coal (and oil for that matter). They have invested nothing in defending fossil fuels, legitimizing their product or in advancing strategies to combat global warming that do not involve getting rid of coal. As a result, the jury was, in a literal sense, prejudiced against coal. The benefits of affordable energy for the many must be championed, otherwise we will end up with expensive energy for the few.
Source
Spelling correctly is a bridge to a better and more respected life
In a cheery letter to her son John, Margaret Paston wrote: "Yor sustere recomaundyt hyr to yow, and thankyt yow hertyly that ye wyll remembyre hyr." What? The problem in understanding The Paston Letters is not that they are written in Old English (their period is early modern) but that their authors' spelling was so haphazard.
Now Professor John Wells of University College, London, is egging on the Spelling Society in its attempts to dissuade children from mastering spelling. "It's time to remove the fetish that says that correct spelling is a principal mark of being educated," he says. The Spelling Society needs no egging. Its prime objective is: "To publicise the unnecessary difficulties of English spelling and the benefits that its simplification would bring." That sounds all right, and so does the name Spelling Society. The trouble is that it is an anti-spelling society. It used to be called the Simplified Spelling Society, but it simplified the name, rather misleadingly.
While it is slightly unfair to characterise members of this society as the kind of people who recoil at a lamb chop, shudder at beer and insist on wearing wool next to the skin, one should remember that a stalwart of their cause was George Bernard Shaw - never happier than when sitting in his Jaeger underwear in an ABC cafe, toying with a nut fritter and a glass of milk.
Shaw it was who came up with the tired joke of spelling fish as "ghoti" (gh as in laugh; o as in women; ti as in motion). He left money in his will to fund spelling reform, which caused endless squabbling between rival beneficiaries.
There is no difficulty in devising an alphabet that reflects English pronunciation. The 40 or 50 symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet do a tolerable job. It would expand the minds of schoolchildren to learn it. But that is entirely beside the point.
To limit education by using only reformed spelling would be a great betrayal because it would cut off children, later adults, from reading old books. They'd soon tire of trying to make out the words, just as Germans today puzzle over books printed in their old gothic type. A new elite would be born. In the same way as the knowledge of Latin used to distinguish the educated, so in future anyone who knew only reformed spelling would be stigmatised as being educated to a rudimentary level.
Quite apart from this fatal flaw in spelling reform, the spelling single-issue mob completely misunderstand the function of spelling in English society. It is a pons asinorum, a donkeys' bridge that anyone who learns to read or write must cross. On it depends all future employment. Employers are confused by school qualifications: GCSEs, A-levels, pre-Us, IBs, new diplomas.
Every prospective employer is swayed by spelling in a letter of application or CV. I know someone who almost failed to get an interview because she lived in Guilford Street, London WC1, and the interviewer thought it was her mis-spelling for "Guildford". Spelling does count. Not only does it make communication possible without the headaches of Paston peculiarities, it reflects a stocked and ordered mind. One of the glories of 19th century reform was the banishing of corruption in public appointments by the Northcote-Trevelyan report, which in 1854 recommended competitive examinations.
These did not, like the Mandarin examinations of the sixth-century Sui dynasty, demand that candidates be locked in bare sheds for three days to show flawless knowledge of 10,000 characters. They did expect a modest ability to spell plain English. Learning to spell may be dull at times, but anyone who can learn to speak English and read it should be expected to get it right.
What Thomas Gaisford, the Dean of Christ Church, once said in a sermon about the study of Greek, applies today to accurate spelling: "It not only elevates above the vulgar herd, but leads not infrequently to positions of considerable emolument".
Source
More insane British bureaucracy
Twin girls born either side of midnight to be split up in school - because they fall in different academic years
As twin girls, the parents of one-week-old Lexus and Amber Conway expected them to share everything as they grew up. But the possibility they will be separated for much of their formative years is already hanging over the pair - and all because they were born either side of midnight. The girls were born just 45 minutes apart on the the night of August 31, but one arrived before it officially became September 1 and one after. A matter of minutes means they are now facing being separated at school because their official birthdays fall either side of the division for academic years.
Under the current rules, Lexus would be able to go to school aged four but because she was born slightly later, Amber would have to wait until she was five. Their parents, Sarah Conway and Ian Caldwell, however, are determined they will not be split up and plan to fight for the next four years to prevent it. Miss Conway said: 'Doing everything together is what being a twin is all about. How could I keep one at home and send one to school? 'I've been told this is a really unique case and I'm going to fight to make sure they go to school together even if it takes me the next four years.'
The 37-year-old administrator gave birth to Lexus naturally at 11.40pm on August 31at the Barratt Maternity Unit in Northampton. Amber was delivered by Caesarean section just 45 minutes later but by that time, it had become September 1. 'The midwife said it was the first time she had ever heard of this happening to twins,' Miss Conway, from Northampton, said. 'It's such a shame for the girls, especially as Amber only missed the cut-off point by a matter of minutes. 'We tried to persuade the registry office to give them both August 31 as their birthdays but they said there was no leeway.'
Mr Caldwell, who is also a twin, said they would teach the girls at home or move to Spain if they cannot start school together. 'My family live in Spain and they have a different academic year so we'd rather move out there than split up the twins,' his girlfriend added.
Keith Reed, chief executive of the charity The Twins and Multiple Births Association, said this was the first case of its kind he had ever heard of. 'It's highly unusual for twins to be born in separate school years and I hope the local authority gives due regard to the individual needs of the children and family involved,' he said.
Northamptonshire County Council, the family's local authority, have also never encountered such a scenario before. A spokesman said: 'We will need to look into this nearer the time Lexus and Amber are due to start school as part of their overall application for a school place. 'Any decision made will be in the best interests of both children as well as taking into consideration the wishes of the parents.'
Source
A very strange church: "The Church of England expressed deep concerns last night about the spread of creationist views as it prepared to unveil a website promoting the evolutionary views of Charles Darwin. Anglican leaders fear that "noisy" advocates of a literal interpretation of the Bible - especially in the United States, where even the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is a vocal supporter - are infecting the perception of Christianity worldwide. The Church will launch the website on Monday, a few weeks after the 150th anniversary of Darwin's first public proposal of natural selection and amid growing controversy over the teaching of creationism in schools."
Christianity has not done socialism any favours. The Left must embrace progress and winners, not the workshy and the weak -- says Matthew Parris below. He has some interesting points but seems to end up with an attempt to convert the modern British Left to Fascism. Parris is a rather eccentric homosexual conservative
It's time to ask not who should lead the Left in Britain, but where they should be led. Does socialism have a future? Little seems to be coming from the old warhorses of the left-wing intelligentsia these days, so, as the party conference season gets under way today, I thought I'd have a bash myself.
Socialism was never set in stone. In postwar Britain it has been evolving, and a powerful influence on this evolution, especially under the leaderships of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has been something called "Christian socialism": the belief that the democratic and liberal Left may have something to learn from, and contribute to, New Testament morality: the working out of God's purpose on Earth. After all, didn't Jesus say "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor"?
I'm not suggesting that most politicians on the Left are consciously motivated by biblical injunction, or are even active believers. It's more subliminal. Ours remains a predominantly Christian culture, with Gospel beliefs about fairness, mercy and helping the poor, sick and weak, embedded deeply among our values; as is a tendency to ennoble suffering, and a guilt about wealth.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, all of us have drunk deep at this well. It does not take the subtlest of minds to make a connection between these values, and the socialist political imperative to redistribute wealth, and care for all classes. Both aim, in their outcomes, for humanitarian goals. But this apparent convergence of purposes is a deception. Far from reinforcing true socialism, Christian socialism has ambushed it, subverting its original message and wrecking it as a viable philosophy of government in a market-driven age.
Marx is about power. Christianity is about charity. Marx is about the authority of the collective. Christian liberalism is about the individual conscience. Marx is about justice. Christian humanitarianism is about mercy. The common causes in which Christians, liberals and socialists have tried to reconcile their differences - personal freedom, the redistribution of wealth and the beneficent State - have in Christian hands proved ruinous to the socialist idea: softening its head, picking its pocket, throwing good money after bad, nursing the weak and neglecting the winners, hearkening to disability and turning away from ability, and leaching its energies into a welter of simpering charitable causes. For most of the second half of the 20th century, Western socialism has hovered around the bedside of the victim, the loser and the marginalised. To win, it should have been outdoors, exhorting the strong.
This wheelchair socialism has sucked the Centre Left into spending people's taxes on unproductive causes, and associating itself with failure rather than success. Nietzsche characterised the driving Christian ethic thus: "It lived on distress..." H.L.Mencken added: "God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters."
It's not for me, here, to defend or attack the Church's absorption with the Prodigal Son rather than his industrious brother, the single lost sheep rather than the rest of the flock; or the way Christianity has made victimhood on the Cross both its mascot and its guiding light. I simply observe that this has absolutely nothing to do with what Marx was trying to say. Socialism was a most unsqueamish creed. If it wished to redistribute wealth, that was not for reasons of mercy but because Marx saw capitalism as a machine doomed to seize up: whereas mankind would fire on all cylinders if labour realised and exercised its potential muscle, and all men pulled together.
A socialist true to these roots, sitting in a modern British Cabinet, and faced with a decision whether to channel Treasury money into (a) scientific research; (b) transport infrastructure; (c) free bus passes for pensioners; or (d) a subsidised national paternity-leave scheme, could weigh socialist arguments for any or all of these purposes; but Christian charity, compassion, or a human-rights-based notion of "fairness" would not be among them.
Properly understood, socialist priorities should never be divorced from considerations of how most effectively to motivate citizens, oil the cogs and drive the pistons. Marx would have been contemptuous of the workshy and mildly uninterested in the disabled. Nor would he have shared Christian socialism's tenderness for the outcast, for individual conscience, and for liberty. Socialism should see little value in personal freedom except in so far as it contributes to the collective good.
Central to socialism is the power of the collective (for the moment, the State): the power to improve the common lot, overriding the individual where necessary. This case for muscular government has always been stronger than we free-market liberals have wanted to acknowledge. Perversely, as socialist movements flounder everywhere, the case for muscular government is actually getting stronger.
This is not an ideological movement I would join, and in a post-industrial age its fixation with organised labour is redundant, but in other ways it remains a perfectly modern if brutal idea that deserves a confident voice in the century ahead.
Not that you would know it from the state of the Labour Party. I'm not in the business of advising Gordon Brown on how to save his skin; that battle is lost. The next election is lost. The election may come sooner than we think - how many more Siobhain McDonaghs wait to fall on their swords?
After that election, a Left Opposition will need to find a voice. It will not hear it from the Manse. It needs to find a crowd. They will not be discovered sleeping rough. It needs to find a class. They will not be the underclass. It needs to find a national purpose. Fairness and Equality will not suffice; Sure Start is not enough.
There's no point trying to out-smooth David Cameron or out-compassion Nick Clegg. Away (the socialist should say) with caring and diversity: let's hear about investment, not subsidy; progress, not equality; about Crossrail (what's the betting Mr Brown cancels it?); about how Britain generates its own power, how we rescue our rail network from impending insolvency, how we get from London to Scotland by train in two hours, and how we stop the planning system throttling every big project; about how we develop a global positioning system that the Americans don't control, how we pay for better highways and uncongested streets with proper road pricing, and how we research and market carbon-free transport, heat and power.
Unless you believe in big, costly, muscular and intrusive government, your voice in all such national causes must be muted. There's a damn good case to be made for strong-arming by the State, and only the Left can make it. This is not a time for Bonhoeffer and playgroups, but for a Left which believes unashamedly in taking command.
Source
British cities spending millions to move "unsafe" gravestones!
Local authorities were accused of "municipal vandalism" after it emerged that they are spending millions of pounds to move gravestones that are regarded as a health and safety risk. Tens of thousands of headstones have been flattened or removed across the country because of fears that they could fall on gravediggers or members of the public, according to figures compiled by the Conservatives. Greg Hands, MP for Hammersmith & Fulham, used the Freedom of Information Act to establish that in London 9,463 stones and memorials have been moved over the past three years. If other UK councils have been carrying out the same level of activity, 76,000 headstones will have been moved at a cost of $30 million.
Mr Hands blamed the Health and Safety Executive, which has ordered town halls to put "memorial management arrangements" in place. "People are 4,000 times more likely to be injured by a bendy bus than by a headstone in a graveyard, yet millions of pounds of taxpayers' money are being blown on ripping down headstones," he said.
Source
VANDALIZING THE ECONOMY
This is very big. Over in the UK, a group of Greenpeace supporters trespassed on to a coal-fired power station and started vandalizing it, painting a message to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown about global warming. They were arrested and prosecuted. Their defense strategy was to claim a "lawful excuse" on the grounds that their actions could help prevent significant damage to others' property that would result from global warming. Their defense witnesses included James Hansen, Al Gore's adviser and head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, and Zac Goldsmith, ultra-wealthy heir of Sir James Goldsmith and a wannabe Tory MP. The strategy worked. Yesterday, a jury returned a majority verdict, acquiting the so-called Kingsnorth Six. As The Independent put it, the jury decided the "threat of global warming justifies breaking the law."
The ramifications are huge. Operators of coal-fired power stations in the UK have just been stripped of legal protection from the criminal actions of the environmental lobby (to call them extremists would be wrong - this is the mainstream). It is perfectly possible that a future jury will find differently, but the chances of that happening have fallen dramatically. Investor confidence in coal energy will therefore be damaged. There will be huge political risk in building a new coal plant. Existing coal plants will come under literal attack.
This is, as Matt Sinclair points out, the frosting on a cake of anti-energy pressures: We need to replace a huge share (PDF, pg. 67) of our generating capacity, at a cost of billions upon billions, in around a decade. The companies we are relying upon to do so already face a very tangible prospect of having the returns on their investment confiscated directly by windfall taxes or indirectly by threats of windfall taxes if they don't cough up. Their costs are constantly being pushed up by regulations and, when they pass that cost on to customers, they are demonised, in part by a Government funded pressure group. Now when their property is damaged to the value of $60,000 the perpetrators will be let off...
Coal is out. The same people hate nuclear and will work to delay new nuclear plants. Renewables are marginal, even according to the Renewable Energy Foundation. North Sea Gas is running out, so the only solution to keep the lights on is kowtowing to Vladimir Putin and Gazprom.
Let us also be quite clear why this has happened. The energy industry in the UK and Her Majesty's Government have allowed the environmental groups free rein to delegitimize coal (and oil for that matter). They have invested nothing in defending fossil fuels, legitimizing their product or in advancing strategies to combat global warming that do not involve getting rid of coal. As a result, the jury was, in a literal sense, prejudiced against coal. The benefits of affordable energy for the many must be championed, otherwise we will end up with expensive energy for the few.
Source
Spelling correctly is a bridge to a better and more respected life
In a cheery letter to her son John, Margaret Paston wrote: "Yor sustere recomaundyt hyr to yow, and thankyt yow hertyly that ye wyll remembyre hyr." What? The problem in understanding The Paston Letters is not that they are written in Old English (their period is early modern) but that their authors' spelling was so haphazard.
Now Professor John Wells of University College, London, is egging on the Spelling Society in its attempts to dissuade children from mastering spelling. "It's time to remove the fetish that says that correct spelling is a principal mark of being educated," he says. The Spelling Society needs no egging. Its prime objective is: "To publicise the unnecessary difficulties of English spelling and the benefits that its simplification would bring." That sounds all right, and so does the name Spelling Society. The trouble is that it is an anti-spelling society. It used to be called the Simplified Spelling Society, but it simplified the name, rather misleadingly.
While it is slightly unfair to characterise members of this society as the kind of people who recoil at a lamb chop, shudder at beer and insist on wearing wool next to the skin, one should remember that a stalwart of their cause was George Bernard Shaw - never happier than when sitting in his Jaeger underwear in an ABC cafe, toying with a nut fritter and a glass of milk.
Shaw it was who came up with the tired joke of spelling fish as "ghoti" (gh as in laugh; o as in women; ti as in motion). He left money in his will to fund spelling reform, which caused endless squabbling between rival beneficiaries.
There is no difficulty in devising an alphabet that reflects English pronunciation. The 40 or 50 symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet do a tolerable job. It would expand the minds of schoolchildren to learn it. But that is entirely beside the point.
To limit education by using only reformed spelling would be a great betrayal because it would cut off children, later adults, from reading old books. They'd soon tire of trying to make out the words, just as Germans today puzzle over books printed in their old gothic type. A new elite would be born. In the same way as the knowledge of Latin used to distinguish the educated, so in future anyone who knew only reformed spelling would be stigmatised as being educated to a rudimentary level.
Quite apart from this fatal flaw in spelling reform, the spelling single-issue mob completely misunderstand the function of spelling in English society. It is a pons asinorum, a donkeys' bridge that anyone who learns to read or write must cross. On it depends all future employment. Employers are confused by school qualifications: GCSEs, A-levels, pre-Us, IBs, new diplomas.
Every prospective employer is swayed by spelling in a letter of application or CV. I know someone who almost failed to get an interview because she lived in Guilford Street, London WC1, and the interviewer thought it was her mis-spelling for "Guildford". Spelling does count. Not only does it make communication possible without the headaches of Paston peculiarities, it reflects a stocked and ordered mind. One of the glories of 19th century reform was the banishing of corruption in public appointments by the Northcote-Trevelyan report, which in 1854 recommended competitive examinations.
These did not, like the Mandarin examinations of the sixth-century Sui dynasty, demand that candidates be locked in bare sheds for three days to show flawless knowledge of 10,000 characters. They did expect a modest ability to spell plain English. Learning to spell may be dull at times, but anyone who can learn to speak English and read it should be expected to get it right.
What Thomas Gaisford, the Dean of Christ Church, once said in a sermon about the study of Greek, applies today to accurate spelling: "It not only elevates above the vulgar herd, but leads not infrequently to positions of considerable emolument".
Source
More insane British bureaucracy
Twin girls born either side of midnight to be split up in school - because they fall in different academic years
As twin girls, the parents of one-week-old Lexus and Amber Conway expected them to share everything as they grew up. But the possibility they will be separated for much of their formative years is already hanging over the pair - and all because they were born either side of midnight. The girls were born just 45 minutes apart on the the night of August 31, but one arrived before it officially became September 1 and one after. A matter of minutes means they are now facing being separated at school because their official birthdays fall either side of the division for academic years.
Under the current rules, Lexus would be able to go to school aged four but because she was born slightly later, Amber would have to wait until she was five. Their parents, Sarah Conway and Ian Caldwell, however, are determined they will not be split up and plan to fight for the next four years to prevent it. Miss Conway said: 'Doing everything together is what being a twin is all about. How could I keep one at home and send one to school? 'I've been told this is a really unique case and I'm going to fight to make sure they go to school together even if it takes me the next four years.'
The 37-year-old administrator gave birth to Lexus naturally at 11.40pm on August 31at the Barratt Maternity Unit in Northampton. Amber was delivered by Caesarean section just 45 minutes later but by that time, it had become September 1. 'The midwife said it was the first time she had ever heard of this happening to twins,' Miss Conway, from Northampton, said. 'It's such a shame for the girls, especially as Amber only missed the cut-off point by a matter of minutes. 'We tried to persuade the registry office to give them both August 31 as their birthdays but they said there was no leeway.'
Mr Caldwell, who is also a twin, said they would teach the girls at home or move to Spain if they cannot start school together. 'My family live in Spain and they have a different academic year so we'd rather move out there than split up the twins,' his girlfriend added.
Keith Reed, chief executive of the charity The Twins and Multiple Births Association, said this was the first case of its kind he had ever heard of. 'It's highly unusual for twins to be born in separate school years and I hope the local authority gives due regard to the individual needs of the children and family involved,' he said.
Northamptonshire County Council, the family's local authority, have also never encountered such a scenario before. A spokesman said: 'We will need to look into this nearer the time Lexus and Amber are due to start school as part of their overall application for a school place. 'Any decision made will be in the best interests of both children as well as taking into consideration the wishes of the parents.'
Source
A very strange church: "The Church of England expressed deep concerns last night about the spread of creationist views as it prepared to unveil a website promoting the evolutionary views of Charles Darwin. Anglican leaders fear that "noisy" advocates of a literal interpretation of the Bible - especially in the United States, where even the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is a vocal supporter - are infecting the perception of Christianity worldwide. The Church will launch the website on Monday, a few weeks after the 150th anniversary of Darwin's first public proposal of natural selection and amid growing controversy over the teaching of creationism in schools."
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Meat, fish and milk protect against brain shrinkage?
This study was conducted with some caution about confounding factors (Abstract here) so deserves some respect. The causal inferences are speculative nonetheless. The possibility of a third factor influencing both B12 levels and brain shrinkage could not be excluded and this is, after all, a poorly understood field. If the theory is correct, however, we should see a lot of vegetarians with shrunken brains! I must say that I would not be too surprised if that were found! There has after all been some evidence to suggest that tofu causes dementia!. So maybe tofu eating is the third factor! (Just joking)
A diet rich in fish, meat and milk could help to protect against memory loss in old age, a new study has shown. The findings suggest a key vitamin found in the foods helps to prevent brain shrinkage, which has been linked to memory problems.
Researchers at the University of Oxford studied 107 people aged 61 to 87 and found those with lower levels of the vitamin in their blood were six times more likely to experience brain shrinkage than those with higher levels. The vitamin, B12, found in meat, fish, fortified cereals and milk, is crucial to the formation of red blood cells and the maintenance of a healthy nervous system. Research has shown that many elderly people have low levels of the vitamin.
Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, which helped fund the research, published in the journal Neurology, said: "This study suggests that consuming more vitamin B12 through eating meat, fish, fortified cereals or milk as part of a balanced diet might help protect the brain. Liver and shellfish are particularly rich sources of B12. "Vitamin B12 deficiency is a common problem among elderly people in the UK and has been linked to declining memory and dementia. "700,000 people live with dementia in the UK, and more research like this is urgently needed if we are to tackle this cruel condition."
Source
British TV Channel 4 accused of pro-Muslim bias
The television channel, whose head of religious broadcasting is a Muslim, is said by several Roman Catholic priests to be unfair in its treatment of different faiths. They claim it recently showed a whole season of broadly positive programmes on Islam while a "Da Vinci Code-style" documentary on Christianity cast doubt on the validity of the Pope. In addition, they say the Channel 4 website treats the history and beliefs of Islam more reverently than it does Christianity.
It comes just days after the BBC was accused of pandering to Muslims by Hindu and Sikh leaders, who claimed the corporation makes a disproportionately large number of programmes about Islam.
Fr Ray Blake, a leading Catholic blogger who is a parish priest in Brighton, said: "I don't think it's fair towards Christianity. There seems to be a rather supine attitude to Islam and a trivialising attitude to Catholicism. I find it worrying. "Channel 4 has shown quite serious discussions about Islam but nothing that treats Christianity in the same way." Over the summer, Channel 4 broadcast a week of special programmes on Islam including a feature-length documentary on its holy book, the Qu'ran, and a series of interviews with Muslims around the world talking about their beliefs.
However last week it repeated a controversial documentary first shown at Easter, called The Secrets of the 12 Disciples, which claimed St Peter died in Palestine, not in Rome as the church has always taught. Academics quoted in the documentary say this means that he was not the first Pope and so other pontiffs have not been his true successors, with the Vatican accused of "fabricating" a connection with the apostle to justify its power.
The Catholic blog Clerical Whispers quoted one commentator as calling the arguments in the programme "intellectually-challenged" and added: "They are on a par with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and are unsubstantiated. It shows undisguised disdain for the Catholic Church." Another blogging priest, Fr Tim Finigan, said the Channel 4 website highlights the torture and persecution carried out by the Roman Catholic church during the Inquisition, which he said is in contrast to its positive description of Muslims. He wrote: "My point in posting all this is not to denigrate Islam but rather to draw attention to the kind of treatment that can be given to religion, and how far it is from the customary treatment given to beliefs and practices that are sacred to Christians."
One commenter on Fr Blake's blog wrote: "The Commissioning Editor for religious broadcasting at Channel 4 is Aaqil Ahmed, a Muslim. I have long noticed that the only coverage Christianity gets on Channel 4 is in the form of programmes that seeks to undermine the authority of the Church, our traditions and our scripture."
A spokesman for Channel 4 denied it favoured Islam over other religions, however. He said: "Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Religion, Aaqil Ahmed, commissions programmes on the basis of their merit, and our output reflect a wide range of beliefs and faiths."
Source
British watchdog's $9 million PR budget: NICE spends more on 'spin' than drug tests
The health rationing watchdog has come under attack for spending more money on spin than on evaluating drugs which could save patients' lives. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which has been widely criticised for banning drugs from NHS use as too expensive, squandered 4.5million pounds on 'communications' last year. This was 1.1million more than the 3.4million the controversial organisation spent on assessing new medicines.
The money forked out on press officers, marketing executives and consultants included 25,000 on top public relations firm Weber Shandwick to defend NICE's ban on Alzheimer's drugs. It could have paid for 5,000 Alzheimer's sufferers to get 2.50-a-day drugs for a year. Alternatively it would have funded nearly 200 patients with advanced kidney cancer to have a drug for 12 months that would double their life expectancy. Tens of thousands of people across the country are waiting for NICE to assess drugs that could extend their lives or alleviate conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and thinning bones.
MPs, patients groups and medical organisations branded the amount spent on communications as a 'scandalous waste of money'. Myeloma sufferer Jacky Pickles, one of the 'Velcade Three' - three mothers who launched a campaign after being denied anti-cancer drugs - said: 'It is disgraceful that money which could provide drugs that make the difference between someone living and dying is being spent on communications.' Mrs Pickles, 46, of Keighley, West Yorkshire, added: 'NICE should either use the money to improve their evaluation process, or give it back to the NHS to spend on people who are ill.'
Shadow Health Minister Mark Simmonds, who uncovered the budget breakdown tucked away in NICE's annual report, said: 'These figures typify New Labour's approach to Britain's health service. 'Thousands of patients across the country who are still waiting for NICE to evaluate new medicines will rightly be asking why Labour insists on spending more on spin than on speeding up people's access to lifesaving drugs.'
NICE has an annual budget of 34.4million pounds, and spends 1 in every 8 pounds on communications. In contrast, 1 in every 10 is spent on evaluating new drugs. The rest is spent on such things as salaries - NICE's annual report for 2006/07 revealed that wages accounted for almost 37 per cent of the budget - accommodation (eight per cent) and external contracts. Almost 300 full-time staff are employed in London and Manchester.
The watchdog looks at whether drugs are cost-effective for the NHS, with the annual cost threshold set between 20,000-30,000 pounds, above which they are considered too expensive. The 'value-for-money' calculation, which does not take into account factors such as severity of a disease, means British patients are denied drugs that are freely available abroad.
NICE was condemned recently for handing a 'death sentence' to 1,700 patients with advanced kidney disease each year who will be deprived of four life-extending drugs. One, Sutent, which costs around 24,000 a year, can double the life expectancy of patients to 28 months.
NICE has also been accused of 'dithering' over the evaluation process. It has taken several years for the watchdog to approve the use of some drugs. Chief executive Andrew Dillon was forced to make a grovelling apology last month for a two-year delay in approving a new treatment for blindness during which time many Britons lost their sight.
Michael Summers, vice-chairman of the Patients Association, said spending 4.5million on communications was 'immoral and indefensible'. He said: 'If NICE has reached the situation where it is so unpopular that it has to spend money improving its image, maybe it should be less dilatory and improve its performance.'
Nick Rijke, of the National Osteoporosis Society, said: 'I would have thought that an organisation that spends so much on communicating would be rather better at listening to the views of clinical experts and patient societies.'
NICE said the majority of its communications budget was spent informing doctors about which drugs had been approved and new guidelines for treatments, although it admitted that it had a 'small' marketing budget.
Mr Dillon said: 'The actual cost of assessing new drugs for the NHS includes money spent on NICE's behalf by the Department of Health. When you add them together, the total cost of the NICE technology appraisal programme far outstrips the cost of NICE communications.'
Source
Leading British scientist urges teaching of creationism in schools
Creationism should be taught in science classes as a legitimate point of view, according to the Royal Society, putting the august science body on a collision course with the Government. The Rev Michael Reiss, a biologist and its director of education, said it was self-defeating to dismiss as wrong or misguided the 10 per cent of pupils who believed in the literal account of God creating the Universe and all living things as related in the Bible or Koran. It would be better, he said, to treat creationism as a world view.
His comments put him at odds with fellow scientists as well as the Government. Former Fellows of the Royal Society include Charles Darwin, who first proposed the theory of evolution. National curriculum guidelines state that creationism has no place in science lessons. The Government says that if it is raised by students, teachers should discuss how creationism differs from evolution, say that it is not scientific theory and that further discussion should be saved for religious classes.
Professor Reiss, a biologist, was speaking at the British Association's Festival of Science in Liverpool. Other scientists were vociferous in their response, saying that creationism should remain entirely within the sphere of religious education.
Professor Lewis Wolpert, of University College Medical School, said: "Creationism is based on faith and has nothing to do with science, and it should not be taught in science classes. It is based on religious beliefs and any discussion should be in religious studies."
Dr John Fry, a physicist at the University of Liverpool, said: "Science lessons are not the appropriate place to discuss creationism, which is a world view in total denial of any form of scientific evidence. Creationism doesn't challenge science: it denies it!"
However, Professor John Bryant, a biologist at the University of Exeter, agreed that creationism should be discussed as an alternative position of the origins of man and earth. "If the class is mature enough and time permits, one might have a discussion on the alternative viewpoints," he said. "However, I think we should not present creationism as having the same status as evolution."
The Royal Society's support for the presence of creationism within the classroom points to a remarkable turn-around. Last year the society issued an open letter stating that creationism had no place in schools and that pupils should understand that science supported the theory of evolution. A spokesman for the organisation, which counts 21 Nobel Prize winners among its Fellows, confirmed yesterday that Professor Reiss's views did represent that of its president, Lord Rees of Ludlow, and the society. He said: "Teachers need to be in a position to be able to discuss science theories and explain why evolution is a sound scientific theory and why creationism isn't."
More here
This study was conducted with some caution about confounding factors (Abstract here) so deserves some respect. The causal inferences are speculative nonetheless. The possibility of a third factor influencing both B12 levels and brain shrinkage could not be excluded and this is, after all, a poorly understood field. If the theory is correct, however, we should see a lot of vegetarians with shrunken brains! I must say that I would not be too surprised if that were found! There has after all been some evidence to suggest that tofu causes dementia!. So maybe tofu eating is the third factor! (Just joking)
A diet rich in fish, meat and milk could help to protect against memory loss in old age, a new study has shown. The findings suggest a key vitamin found in the foods helps to prevent brain shrinkage, which has been linked to memory problems.
Researchers at the University of Oxford studied 107 people aged 61 to 87 and found those with lower levels of the vitamin in their blood were six times more likely to experience brain shrinkage than those with higher levels. The vitamin, B12, found in meat, fish, fortified cereals and milk, is crucial to the formation of red blood cells and the maintenance of a healthy nervous system. Research has shown that many elderly people have low levels of the vitamin.
Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, which helped fund the research, published in the journal Neurology, said: "This study suggests that consuming more vitamin B12 through eating meat, fish, fortified cereals or milk as part of a balanced diet might help protect the brain. Liver and shellfish are particularly rich sources of B12. "Vitamin B12 deficiency is a common problem among elderly people in the UK and has been linked to declining memory and dementia. "700,000 people live with dementia in the UK, and more research like this is urgently needed if we are to tackle this cruel condition."
Source
British TV Channel 4 accused of pro-Muslim bias
The television channel, whose head of religious broadcasting is a Muslim, is said by several Roman Catholic priests to be unfair in its treatment of different faiths. They claim it recently showed a whole season of broadly positive programmes on Islam while a "Da Vinci Code-style" documentary on Christianity cast doubt on the validity of the Pope. In addition, they say the Channel 4 website treats the history and beliefs of Islam more reverently than it does Christianity.
It comes just days after the BBC was accused of pandering to Muslims by Hindu and Sikh leaders, who claimed the corporation makes a disproportionately large number of programmes about Islam.
Fr Ray Blake, a leading Catholic blogger who is a parish priest in Brighton, said: "I don't think it's fair towards Christianity. There seems to be a rather supine attitude to Islam and a trivialising attitude to Catholicism. I find it worrying. "Channel 4 has shown quite serious discussions about Islam but nothing that treats Christianity in the same way." Over the summer, Channel 4 broadcast a week of special programmes on Islam including a feature-length documentary on its holy book, the Qu'ran, and a series of interviews with Muslims around the world talking about their beliefs.
However last week it repeated a controversial documentary first shown at Easter, called The Secrets of the 12 Disciples, which claimed St Peter died in Palestine, not in Rome as the church has always taught. Academics quoted in the documentary say this means that he was not the first Pope and so other pontiffs have not been his true successors, with the Vatican accused of "fabricating" a connection with the apostle to justify its power.
The Catholic blog Clerical Whispers quoted one commentator as calling the arguments in the programme "intellectually-challenged" and added: "They are on a par with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and are unsubstantiated. It shows undisguised disdain for the Catholic Church." Another blogging priest, Fr Tim Finigan, said the Channel 4 website highlights the torture and persecution carried out by the Roman Catholic church during the Inquisition, which he said is in contrast to its positive description of Muslims. He wrote: "My point in posting all this is not to denigrate Islam but rather to draw attention to the kind of treatment that can be given to religion, and how far it is from the customary treatment given to beliefs and practices that are sacred to Christians."
One commenter on Fr Blake's blog wrote: "The Commissioning Editor for religious broadcasting at Channel 4 is Aaqil Ahmed, a Muslim. I have long noticed that the only coverage Christianity gets on Channel 4 is in the form of programmes that seeks to undermine the authority of the Church, our traditions and our scripture."
A spokesman for Channel 4 denied it favoured Islam over other religions, however. He said: "Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Religion, Aaqil Ahmed, commissions programmes on the basis of their merit, and our output reflect a wide range of beliefs and faiths."
Source
British watchdog's $9 million PR budget: NICE spends more on 'spin' than drug tests
The health rationing watchdog has come under attack for spending more money on spin than on evaluating drugs which could save patients' lives. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which has been widely criticised for banning drugs from NHS use as too expensive, squandered 4.5million pounds on 'communications' last year. This was 1.1million more than the 3.4million the controversial organisation spent on assessing new medicines.
The money forked out on press officers, marketing executives and consultants included 25,000 on top public relations firm Weber Shandwick to defend NICE's ban on Alzheimer's drugs. It could have paid for 5,000 Alzheimer's sufferers to get 2.50-a-day drugs for a year. Alternatively it would have funded nearly 200 patients with advanced kidney cancer to have a drug for 12 months that would double their life expectancy. Tens of thousands of people across the country are waiting for NICE to assess drugs that could extend their lives or alleviate conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and thinning bones.
MPs, patients groups and medical organisations branded the amount spent on communications as a 'scandalous waste of money'. Myeloma sufferer Jacky Pickles, one of the 'Velcade Three' - three mothers who launched a campaign after being denied anti-cancer drugs - said: 'It is disgraceful that money which could provide drugs that make the difference between someone living and dying is being spent on communications.' Mrs Pickles, 46, of Keighley, West Yorkshire, added: 'NICE should either use the money to improve their evaluation process, or give it back to the NHS to spend on people who are ill.'
Shadow Health Minister Mark Simmonds, who uncovered the budget breakdown tucked away in NICE's annual report, said: 'These figures typify New Labour's approach to Britain's health service. 'Thousands of patients across the country who are still waiting for NICE to evaluate new medicines will rightly be asking why Labour insists on spending more on spin than on speeding up people's access to lifesaving drugs.'
NICE has an annual budget of 34.4million pounds, and spends 1 in every 8 pounds on communications. In contrast, 1 in every 10 is spent on evaluating new drugs. The rest is spent on such things as salaries - NICE's annual report for 2006/07 revealed that wages accounted for almost 37 per cent of the budget - accommodation (eight per cent) and external contracts. Almost 300 full-time staff are employed in London and Manchester.
The watchdog looks at whether drugs are cost-effective for the NHS, with the annual cost threshold set between 20,000-30,000 pounds, above which they are considered too expensive. The 'value-for-money' calculation, which does not take into account factors such as severity of a disease, means British patients are denied drugs that are freely available abroad.
NICE was condemned recently for handing a 'death sentence' to 1,700 patients with advanced kidney disease each year who will be deprived of four life-extending drugs. One, Sutent, which costs around 24,000 a year, can double the life expectancy of patients to 28 months.
NICE has also been accused of 'dithering' over the evaluation process. It has taken several years for the watchdog to approve the use of some drugs. Chief executive Andrew Dillon was forced to make a grovelling apology last month for a two-year delay in approving a new treatment for blindness during which time many Britons lost their sight.
Michael Summers, vice-chairman of the Patients Association, said spending 4.5million on communications was 'immoral and indefensible'. He said: 'If NICE has reached the situation where it is so unpopular that it has to spend money improving its image, maybe it should be less dilatory and improve its performance.'
Nick Rijke, of the National Osteoporosis Society, said: 'I would have thought that an organisation that spends so much on communicating would be rather better at listening to the views of clinical experts and patient societies.'
NICE said the majority of its communications budget was spent informing doctors about which drugs had been approved and new guidelines for treatments, although it admitted that it had a 'small' marketing budget.
Mr Dillon said: 'The actual cost of assessing new drugs for the NHS includes money spent on NICE's behalf by the Department of Health. When you add them together, the total cost of the NICE technology appraisal programme far outstrips the cost of NICE communications.'
Source
Leading British scientist urges teaching of creationism in schools
Creationism should be taught in science classes as a legitimate point of view, according to the Royal Society, putting the august science body on a collision course with the Government. The Rev Michael Reiss, a biologist and its director of education, said it was self-defeating to dismiss as wrong or misguided the 10 per cent of pupils who believed in the literal account of God creating the Universe and all living things as related in the Bible or Koran. It would be better, he said, to treat creationism as a world view.
His comments put him at odds with fellow scientists as well as the Government. Former Fellows of the Royal Society include Charles Darwin, who first proposed the theory of evolution. National curriculum guidelines state that creationism has no place in science lessons. The Government says that if it is raised by students, teachers should discuss how creationism differs from evolution, say that it is not scientific theory and that further discussion should be saved for religious classes.
Professor Reiss, a biologist, was speaking at the British Association's Festival of Science in Liverpool. Other scientists were vociferous in their response, saying that creationism should remain entirely within the sphere of religious education.
Professor Lewis Wolpert, of University College Medical School, said: "Creationism is based on faith and has nothing to do with science, and it should not be taught in science classes. It is based on religious beliefs and any discussion should be in religious studies."
Dr John Fry, a physicist at the University of Liverpool, said: "Science lessons are not the appropriate place to discuss creationism, which is a world view in total denial of any form of scientific evidence. Creationism doesn't challenge science: it denies it!"
However, Professor John Bryant, a biologist at the University of Exeter, agreed that creationism should be discussed as an alternative position of the origins of man and earth. "If the class is mature enough and time permits, one might have a discussion on the alternative viewpoints," he said. "However, I think we should not present creationism as having the same status as evolution."
The Royal Society's support for the presence of creationism within the classroom points to a remarkable turn-around. Last year the society issued an open letter stating that creationism had no place in schools and that pupils should understand that science supported the theory of evolution. A spokesman for the organisation, which counts 21 Nobel Prize winners among its Fellows, confirmed yesterday that Professor Reiss's views did represent that of its president, Lord Rees of Ludlow, and the society. He said: "Teachers need to be in a position to be able to discuss science theories and explain why evolution is a sound scientific theory and why creationism isn't."
More here
Friday, September 12, 2008
Save the planet by cutting down on meat? That's just a load of bull
By the inimitable Boris Johnson. Never before has London had such a jolly and irreverent Mayor. The man is a living national treasure
Look, I hate to be rude to the UN. I don't want to seem churlish in the face of advice from a body as august and well-meaning as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But if they seriously believe that I am going to give up eating meat - in the hope of reducing the temperature of the planet - then they must be totally barmy.
No, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, distinguished chairman of the panel, I am not going to have one meat-free day per week. No, I am not going to become a gradual vegetarian. In fact, the whole proposition is so irritating that I am almost minded to eat more meat in response.
Every weekend, rain or shine, I suggest that we flaunt our defiance of UN dietary recommendations with a series of vast Homeric barbecues. We are going to have carnivorous festivals of chops and sausages and burgers and chitterlings and chine and offal, and the fat will run down our chins, and the dripping will blaze on the charcoal, and the smoky vapours will rise to the heavens. We will call these meat feasts Pachauri days, in satirical homage to the tofu-chomping UN man who told the human race to go veggie.
And the reason I respond so intemperately to his suggestion is that he completely misses the point. Everybody knows the reality, and everybody - every environmentalist, every Guardian columnist - pussyfoots around it. The problem is not the cows; the problem is the people eating the cows. The problem is us. Oh, Dr Pachauri is quite right to be concerned at the emissions of noxious vapours from farm animals. As the UN revealed in 2006, livestock make a bigger contribution to the greenhouse effect - to global warming - than every motor vehicle on the planet.
Cows are spreading remorselessly over the earth, as jungle is turned into pasture, and pasture is turned into cud, and cud is turned into the terrible ruminant efflatus that rises from the fields and the farms and swaddles the globe in a tea cosy of methane, 23 times as damaging as CO2.
Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth's surface, and farming now produces 37 per cent of the methane created by human activity, and every extra cow means thousands of extra cowpats, each cowpat seemingly innocent enough, but together capable of emitting enough steaming gas to change the composition of the upper air.
Yes, Dr Pachauri is spot on in his analysis. It is his prescription that is absurd. He is quite right that if you want to buy a gas-guzzler 4x4 Range Rover and you want to offset your greenhouse emissions, you just have to pop into the nearest field and assassinate a cow. And he is quite right that if we were to kill all the cows in the world, and all the sheep, we would greatly reduce our methane output.
What he neglects in his argument are the 1.3 billion people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture, and above all he forgets the global population of human beings. It is our appetite for meat that supports those farmers, and it is our insatiable desire for burgers that has called those poor cows into existence.
Why, oh why will the modern UN say nothing about the real issue, the prior issue, the unspeakable truth that is at the heart of deforestation, global warming, the depletion of the seas, the destruction of species and just about every environmental problem that afflicts us? The biggest threat to the planet is not the lowing of the cows as they take over the Latin American savannah. It is the dizzying increase in the numbers of people driving those cows and then eating them. The world's population is up to 6.72 billion, and set to rise to 9 billion by 2050.
Now let me tell you something about the year 2050. It is not that far off. I fully intend to see it in, since I will be a mere 84, and I must say that I do not look with enthusiasm at the prospect of sharing the planet with another 2.3 billion people. I am sure that they will all each be individually charming and they will all have much to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual life of our species. But they will also make life that much more crowded, sweaty and exhausting than it already is. They will accelerate the urbanisation of the world and the turning of rural south-east England into a gigantic suburbia.
And whatever Dr Pachauri may say, I do not think they will be persuaded to eat nut cutlets. Millions of years of evolution are not to be reversed by a spot of preaching from the UN. Man is an omnivore, culturally and probably biologically programmed to take protein from meat; and those meat animals must be farmed. We cannot all eat moose, like Sarah Palin. We need cows. Not so long ago I stood in the vast canteen in the Beijing Olympic village and on one side were long salad bars, with virtually no one in the queue.
Source
Cancer patient with months to live wins court order for last-chance drug on NHS
A cancer patient yesterday won a legal battle against the NHS to be given a drug that doctors say could prolong his life by up to three years. Colin Ross, 55, of Horsham, West Sussex, has multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, and was not expected to survive to see Christmas unless he was given a drug described as his “last chance”. The High Court overruled the decision by West Sussex Primary Care Trust that treatment would not be cost-effective, and said that Mr Ross should receive Revlimid as an exceptional case.
Mr Ross had incurable cancer diagnosed in May 2004. In an interview with The Times last month he said that he was “sickened” that he was being denied the $60,000-a-year treatment even though the drug was available to patients living only a few miles away in East Sussex. But despite the exhortations of doctors treating Mr Ross at the Royal Marsden Hospital, the specialist cancer hospital in London, the trust had, since March, repeatedly refused to fund the drug, raising the issue of a so-called postcode lottery for NHS treatments.
However, Judge Simon Grenfell, sitting in London, condemned the trust’s decision yesterday as “one which no reasonable authority could have made on the application before it”. Revlimid is among the most expensive of new cancer treatments and is readily available to patients across Europe and in the United States and Scotland. But it has not yet been granted approval by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and, because of the cost, is likely to be rejected. It is provided by only some trusts in England and then only in exceptional circumstances.
The case is likely to encourage other cancer patients who may have been denied expensive drugs on the NHS, but experts emphasise that the case does not set a legal precedent and that decisions will be taken case by case in other areas. The judge issued an emergency injunction to enable Mr Ross to begin treatment today, but the ruling was made on an interim basis pending a further appeal and not as the start of permanent treatment.
Mr Ross was too ill to attend court for the ruling but his long-term partner and carer, Wendy Forbes-Newbegin, 52, who has breast cancer, cried after the victory. She said after the judgment that the family’s treatment by the NHS had been “appalling”. “The mental anguish that we have been through has at times been unbearable, and wholly unacceptable in this day and age,” she said. “Colin’s diagnosis and recent prognosis have been so awful in the first place, but to have to endure all the months of waiting for this life-prolonging treatment has been nothing short of shameful in the first degree.”
Mr Ross, who has two children and four grandchildren, told The Times that he feared that delays incurred by his appeals to the trust and ensuing legal action may have reduced the effectiveness of the treatment. “Depending on what the judges say, I could start treatment with Revlimid, or the doctors will simply refer me to start receiving palliative care,” he said last month. “My bed in the hospice is already booked. I realise the drug is expensive for the NHS, but to think that I could have a few extra months or years to spend with my daughters and watch my grandchildren grow up – I’ve never wanted anything more.”
The former engineer in the oil and gas industry had suffered years of pain and disability from the disease, which made his bones brittle and prone to fracture. He had already been prescribed other drugs on the NHS for myeloma, Thalidomide and Velcade, but was forced to stop taking them because of painful side-effects. Before yesterday’s ruling he was taking a cocktail of painkillers and other drugs “just to keep my head above water”, and was advised that Revlimid was now the only option.
In March, Mr Ross’s clinicians asked West Sussex PCT to fund Revlimid for three to four courses at a cost of $10,000 a course and presented evidence to show that it could give Mr Ross up to three more years of life. He had been unable to purchase the drugs privately, he said. “Even if I could, the law states that I would have to become a private patient and forfeit the rest of my NHS care.”
Richard Clayton, QC, acting for Mr Ross, told the court during a two-day hearing: “This application for this drug is the end of the road for him. Either he gets the drug and is able to have life-prolonging treatment, or he doesn’t and treatment ceases, with inevitable consequences.” He added: “Were the claimant to live a mile and a half in either direction from where he does, he would have received the drug.” West Sussex PCT said that it was considering whether to appeal. [What total, complete and utter assholes!]
Source
Foreign doctors, midwives and teachers are facing tougher immigration tests to come to Britain
Thousands of foreign GPs, midwives, teachers and social workers will find it harder to come to work in Britain under a new Government immigration clampdown. The Home Office's Migration Advisory Committee published a new list of nearly 200 skilled occupations - rated as the equivalent of two A-levels or above - which can be filled by migrant workers under new immigration rules. However they exclude a number of occupations which previously have been filled by migrants from outside the European Economic Area (the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) under the old work permit scheme. They include salaried GPs - such as those traditionally from the Indian sub-Continent - who will now find it harder to come to work in the UK.
Social workers, midwives and foreign teachers, apart from those teaching maths and science, skilled construction workers, IT specialists and architects from outside the EEA will also find it tougher to get into Britain. The new list details 700,000 jobs which are potentially open to migrants, 15 per cent of which - around 105,000 - are currently vacant and could be filled by foreigners after the new "points based" immigration system comes into force in November.
This is despite a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee recently warning that unemployment could hit two million by Christmas. There were particular shortages among civil and chemical engineers, quantity ship and hovercraft officers, skilled chefs earning more than 8.10 pounds an hour, skilled sheep shearers and vets.
Professor David Metcalf, the committee's chairman, said: "Don't think we are a soft touch. There are rather more jobs which we have excluded from the list than we have included." Additional job shortages in Scotland mean that migrants offering to fill a number of additional occupations will be allowed to enter the UK, including frozen fish filleters, nurses in elderly units and speech and language therapists.
The committee rated 353 occupations and 26,000 different job titles by five key indicators including pay, qualifications and training and experience to determine which and jobs were skilled. They then used 12 different indicators to decide which sectors of the economy are suffering from a skills shortage.
Skilled immigrants coming to the UK have to pass a number of points based hurdles before coming to the UK including speaking English, a job offer paying more than 24,000 pounds a year and a sponsoring employer. Under the points based system, foreigners need 70 points to enter the UK. Speaking English is worth 10 points while other points come from skill and salary levels. If the job is on the shortage list, it is worth an extra 50 points.
Prof Metcalf admitted that the focus on salary would mean that pressures to keep wage inflation down in the UK could result in more migrants coming to the UK. He said: "If you keep wages down you probably will need more immigrants."
Ministers will study the list before publishing the final version next month. Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said the list "seems broadly right" and he expected the Government to issue a "remarkably similar" list in five or six weeks. Plans for which unskilled workers under the tier three scheme are currently suspended because the Government said there are enough unskilled workers already in the EEA, the Home Office said.
The Tories criticised the plans. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: "This announcement shows yet again that when it comes to managing immigration the government still don't get it. "A points-based system without an annual limit is pointless. The government need to understand that sound immigration policy is not just about admitting the right type of people to Britain but the right amount."
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation warned that excluding social and hospitality workers could create labour shortages. Tom Hadley, a spokesman, said: "The effect of the compromise position on social care and hospitality workers will need to be watched. It is vital that positions in these areas can continue to be resourced."
The report comes after a coalition of MPs and peers from all parties called for significant cuts in immigration and a new "one in, one out" policy. The Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration called for a policy of balanced migration, under which immigration levels are capped in line with the number of emigrants to maintain a stable UK population over time.
Source
Lord Carey joins cross-party call for overhaul of British immigration policy
The former Archbishop of Canterbury has called for an overhaul of Britain's immigration policies. Lord Carey has joined a cross-party group of peers and MPs led by Labour's Frank Field and the Conservatives' Nicholas Soames demanding "balanced migration". They want a limit on the number of people permitted to live permanently in Britain, so the population of the UK will stabilise at 65 million. Lord Carey, who has a home on Gower, insisted immigration had been a "blessing" to the country, saying: "We are simply saying we have got to have a policy that works."
The group wants the number of people permanently entering Britain roughly to equal the number leaving. Its launch yesterday coincided with the publication of a YouGov poll commissioned by think-tank Migrationwatch UK which found that among ethnic minority voters, 75% thought immigration should be cut, with 36% backing balanced migration and 39% wanting even tougher limits.
Lord Carey told the Western Mail that if Britain lacked an effective migration policy right-wing parties would exploit public resentment. He is also concerned that "ghettos" are forming in cities.
But Saleem Kidwai, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Wales, rejected the group's call that those permitted to work in Britain should be able to stay for four years only. He said: "The vast majority, we feel, make a great contribution. If they are working here, that means they are needed here. "If they are working here, why restrict their contribution? If they have a job after four years, why shouldn't they continue it?" Only 2% of migrants to the UK between 1993 and 2006 have settled in Wales. A sharp cut in immigration is backed by 81% of Labour voters, 83% of Liberal Democrats and 89% of Conservatives.
Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: "Our tough new points system plus our plans for newcomers to earn their citizenship will reduce overall numbers of economic migrants coming to Britain, and the numbers awarded permanent settlement. "Crucially the points system means only the migrants with the skills Britain needs can come - and no more. Unlike made-up quotas, this stops government cutting business off from the skills it needs when they need them. "We've asked the new, independent Migration Advisory Committee to make sure we hear common sense on the new rules. "We're looking forward to their report on where we need migrants and where we don't before the points system goes live in under three months' time."
Source
By the inimitable Boris Johnson. Never before has London had such a jolly and irreverent Mayor. The man is a living national treasure
Look, I hate to be rude to the UN. I don't want to seem churlish in the face of advice from a body as august and well-meaning as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But if they seriously believe that I am going to give up eating meat - in the hope of reducing the temperature of the planet - then they must be totally barmy.
No, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, distinguished chairman of the panel, I am not going to have one meat-free day per week. No, I am not going to become a gradual vegetarian. In fact, the whole proposition is so irritating that I am almost minded to eat more meat in response.
Every weekend, rain or shine, I suggest that we flaunt our defiance of UN dietary recommendations with a series of vast Homeric barbecues. We are going to have carnivorous festivals of chops and sausages and burgers and chitterlings and chine and offal, and the fat will run down our chins, and the dripping will blaze on the charcoal, and the smoky vapours will rise to the heavens. We will call these meat feasts Pachauri days, in satirical homage to the tofu-chomping UN man who told the human race to go veggie.
And the reason I respond so intemperately to his suggestion is that he completely misses the point. Everybody knows the reality, and everybody - every environmentalist, every Guardian columnist - pussyfoots around it. The problem is not the cows; the problem is the people eating the cows. The problem is us. Oh, Dr Pachauri is quite right to be concerned at the emissions of noxious vapours from farm animals. As the UN revealed in 2006, livestock make a bigger contribution to the greenhouse effect - to global warming - than every motor vehicle on the planet.
Cows are spreading remorselessly over the earth, as jungle is turned into pasture, and pasture is turned into cud, and cud is turned into the terrible ruminant efflatus that rises from the fields and the farms and swaddles the globe in a tea cosy of methane, 23 times as damaging as CO2.
Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth's surface, and farming now produces 37 per cent of the methane created by human activity, and every extra cow means thousands of extra cowpats, each cowpat seemingly innocent enough, but together capable of emitting enough steaming gas to change the composition of the upper air.
Yes, Dr Pachauri is spot on in his analysis. It is his prescription that is absurd. He is quite right that if you want to buy a gas-guzzler 4x4 Range Rover and you want to offset your greenhouse emissions, you just have to pop into the nearest field and assassinate a cow. And he is quite right that if we were to kill all the cows in the world, and all the sheep, we would greatly reduce our methane output.
What he neglects in his argument are the 1.3 billion people whose livelihoods depend on agriculture, and above all he forgets the global population of human beings. It is our appetite for meat that supports those farmers, and it is our insatiable desire for burgers that has called those poor cows into existence.
Why, oh why will the modern UN say nothing about the real issue, the prior issue, the unspeakable truth that is at the heart of deforestation, global warming, the depletion of the seas, the destruction of species and just about every environmental problem that afflicts us? The biggest threat to the planet is not the lowing of the cows as they take over the Latin American savannah. It is the dizzying increase in the numbers of people driving those cows and then eating them. The world's population is up to 6.72 billion, and set to rise to 9 billion by 2050.
Now let me tell you something about the year 2050. It is not that far off. I fully intend to see it in, since I will be a mere 84, and I must say that I do not look with enthusiasm at the prospect of sharing the planet with another 2.3 billion people. I am sure that they will all each be individually charming and they will all have much to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual life of our species. But they will also make life that much more crowded, sweaty and exhausting than it already is. They will accelerate the urbanisation of the world and the turning of rural south-east England into a gigantic suburbia.
And whatever Dr Pachauri may say, I do not think they will be persuaded to eat nut cutlets. Millions of years of evolution are not to be reversed by a spot of preaching from the UN. Man is an omnivore, culturally and probably biologically programmed to take protein from meat; and those meat animals must be farmed. We cannot all eat moose, like Sarah Palin. We need cows. Not so long ago I stood in the vast canteen in the Beijing Olympic village and on one side were long salad bars, with virtually no one in the queue.
Source
Cancer patient with months to live wins court order for last-chance drug on NHS
A cancer patient yesterday won a legal battle against the NHS to be given a drug that doctors say could prolong his life by up to three years. Colin Ross, 55, of Horsham, West Sussex, has multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, and was not expected to survive to see Christmas unless he was given a drug described as his “last chance”. The High Court overruled the decision by West Sussex Primary Care Trust that treatment would not be cost-effective, and said that Mr Ross should receive Revlimid as an exceptional case.
Mr Ross had incurable cancer diagnosed in May 2004. In an interview with The Times last month he said that he was “sickened” that he was being denied the $60,000-a-year treatment even though the drug was available to patients living only a few miles away in East Sussex. But despite the exhortations of doctors treating Mr Ross at the Royal Marsden Hospital, the specialist cancer hospital in London, the trust had, since March, repeatedly refused to fund the drug, raising the issue of a so-called postcode lottery for NHS treatments.
However, Judge Simon Grenfell, sitting in London, condemned the trust’s decision yesterday as “one which no reasonable authority could have made on the application before it”. Revlimid is among the most expensive of new cancer treatments and is readily available to patients across Europe and in the United States and Scotland. But it has not yet been granted approval by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and, because of the cost, is likely to be rejected. It is provided by only some trusts in England and then only in exceptional circumstances.
The case is likely to encourage other cancer patients who may have been denied expensive drugs on the NHS, but experts emphasise that the case does not set a legal precedent and that decisions will be taken case by case in other areas. The judge issued an emergency injunction to enable Mr Ross to begin treatment today, but the ruling was made on an interim basis pending a further appeal and not as the start of permanent treatment.
Mr Ross was too ill to attend court for the ruling but his long-term partner and carer, Wendy Forbes-Newbegin, 52, who has breast cancer, cried after the victory. She said after the judgment that the family’s treatment by the NHS had been “appalling”. “The mental anguish that we have been through has at times been unbearable, and wholly unacceptable in this day and age,” she said. “Colin’s diagnosis and recent prognosis have been so awful in the first place, but to have to endure all the months of waiting for this life-prolonging treatment has been nothing short of shameful in the first degree.”
Mr Ross, who has two children and four grandchildren, told The Times that he feared that delays incurred by his appeals to the trust and ensuing legal action may have reduced the effectiveness of the treatment. “Depending on what the judges say, I could start treatment with Revlimid, or the doctors will simply refer me to start receiving palliative care,” he said last month. “My bed in the hospice is already booked. I realise the drug is expensive for the NHS, but to think that I could have a few extra months or years to spend with my daughters and watch my grandchildren grow up – I’ve never wanted anything more.”
The former engineer in the oil and gas industry had suffered years of pain and disability from the disease, which made his bones brittle and prone to fracture. He had already been prescribed other drugs on the NHS for myeloma, Thalidomide and Velcade, but was forced to stop taking them because of painful side-effects. Before yesterday’s ruling he was taking a cocktail of painkillers and other drugs “just to keep my head above water”, and was advised that Revlimid was now the only option.
In March, Mr Ross’s clinicians asked West Sussex PCT to fund Revlimid for three to four courses at a cost of $10,000 a course and presented evidence to show that it could give Mr Ross up to three more years of life. He had been unable to purchase the drugs privately, he said. “Even if I could, the law states that I would have to become a private patient and forfeit the rest of my NHS care.”
Richard Clayton, QC, acting for Mr Ross, told the court during a two-day hearing: “This application for this drug is the end of the road for him. Either he gets the drug and is able to have life-prolonging treatment, or he doesn’t and treatment ceases, with inevitable consequences.” He added: “Were the claimant to live a mile and a half in either direction from where he does, he would have received the drug.” West Sussex PCT said that it was considering whether to appeal. [What total, complete and utter assholes!]
Source
Foreign doctors, midwives and teachers are facing tougher immigration tests to come to Britain
Thousands of foreign GPs, midwives, teachers and social workers will find it harder to come to work in Britain under a new Government immigration clampdown. The Home Office's Migration Advisory Committee published a new list of nearly 200 skilled occupations - rated as the equivalent of two A-levels or above - which can be filled by migrant workers under new immigration rules. However they exclude a number of occupations which previously have been filled by migrants from outside the European Economic Area (the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) under the old work permit scheme. They include salaried GPs - such as those traditionally from the Indian sub-Continent - who will now find it harder to come to work in the UK.
Social workers, midwives and foreign teachers, apart from those teaching maths and science, skilled construction workers, IT specialists and architects from outside the EEA will also find it tougher to get into Britain. The new list details 700,000 jobs which are potentially open to migrants, 15 per cent of which - around 105,000 - are currently vacant and could be filled by foreigners after the new "points based" immigration system comes into force in November.
This is despite a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee recently warning that unemployment could hit two million by Christmas. There were particular shortages among civil and chemical engineers, quantity ship and hovercraft officers, skilled chefs earning more than 8.10 pounds an hour, skilled sheep shearers and vets.
Professor David Metcalf, the committee's chairman, said: "Don't think we are a soft touch. There are rather more jobs which we have excluded from the list than we have included." Additional job shortages in Scotland mean that migrants offering to fill a number of additional occupations will be allowed to enter the UK, including frozen fish filleters, nurses in elderly units and speech and language therapists.
The committee rated 353 occupations and 26,000 different job titles by five key indicators including pay, qualifications and training and experience to determine which and jobs were skilled. They then used 12 different indicators to decide which sectors of the economy are suffering from a skills shortage.
Skilled immigrants coming to the UK have to pass a number of points based hurdles before coming to the UK including speaking English, a job offer paying more than 24,000 pounds a year and a sponsoring employer. Under the points based system, foreigners need 70 points to enter the UK. Speaking English is worth 10 points while other points come from skill and salary levels. If the job is on the shortage list, it is worth an extra 50 points.
Prof Metcalf admitted that the focus on salary would mean that pressures to keep wage inflation down in the UK could result in more migrants coming to the UK. He said: "If you keep wages down you probably will need more immigrants."
Ministers will study the list before publishing the final version next month. Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said the list "seems broadly right" and he expected the Government to issue a "remarkably similar" list in five or six weeks. Plans for which unskilled workers under the tier three scheme are currently suspended because the Government said there are enough unskilled workers already in the EEA, the Home Office said.
The Tories criticised the plans. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: "This announcement shows yet again that when it comes to managing immigration the government still don't get it. "A points-based system without an annual limit is pointless. The government need to understand that sound immigration policy is not just about admitting the right type of people to Britain but the right amount."
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation warned that excluding social and hospitality workers could create labour shortages. Tom Hadley, a spokesman, said: "The effect of the compromise position on social care and hospitality workers will need to be watched. It is vital that positions in these areas can continue to be resourced."
The report comes after a coalition of MPs and peers from all parties called for significant cuts in immigration and a new "one in, one out" policy. The Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration called for a policy of balanced migration, under which immigration levels are capped in line with the number of emigrants to maintain a stable UK population over time.
Source
Lord Carey joins cross-party call for overhaul of British immigration policy
The former Archbishop of Canterbury has called for an overhaul of Britain's immigration policies. Lord Carey has joined a cross-party group of peers and MPs led by Labour's Frank Field and the Conservatives' Nicholas Soames demanding "balanced migration". They want a limit on the number of people permitted to live permanently in Britain, so the population of the UK will stabilise at 65 million. Lord Carey, who has a home on Gower, insisted immigration had been a "blessing" to the country, saying: "We are simply saying we have got to have a policy that works."
The group wants the number of people permanently entering Britain roughly to equal the number leaving. Its launch yesterday coincided with the publication of a YouGov poll commissioned by think-tank Migrationwatch UK which found that among ethnic minority voters, 75% thought immigration should be cut, with 36% backing balanced migration and 39% wanting even tougher limits.
Lord Carey told the Western Mail that if Britain lacked an effective migration policy right-wing parties would exploit public resentment. He is also concerned that "ghettos" are forming in cities.
But Saleem Kidwai, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Wales, rejected the group's call that those permitted to work in Britain should be able to stay for four years only. He said: "The vast majority, we feel, make a great contribution. If they are working here, that means they are needed here. "If they are working here, why restrict their contribution? If they have a job after four years, why shouldn't they continue it?" Only 2% of migrants to the UK between 1993 and 2006 have settled in Wales. A sharp cut in immigration is backed by 81% of Labour voters, 83% of Liberal Democrats and 89% of Conservatives.
Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: "Our tough new points system plus our plans for newcomers to earn their citizenship will reduce overall numbers of economic migrants coming to Britain, and the numbers awarded permanent settlement. "Crucially the points system means only the migrants with the skills Britain needs can come - and no more. Unlike made-up quotas, this stops government cutting business off from the skills it needs when they need them. "We've asked the new, independent Migration Advisory Committee to make sure we hear common sense on the new rules. "We're looking forward to their report on where we need migrants and where we don't before the points system goes live in under three months' time."
Source
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Low salt levels in ham and bacon risk botulism
Salty ham and bacon are keeping us healthy, according to meat firms protesting new salt-reduction targets. Meat manufacturers have rejected calls to cut salt levels in processed meats, claiming salt is used to prevent the deadly food bug botulism. The Food Standards Agency has called for salt content to be reduced to 2.13g per 100g by 2010 and to 1.75g by 2012. It suggested last month that 14,000 premature deaths a year could be avoided if adults reduced salt intake to just 6g a day. The current average is 8.6g per day, down from 9.5g in 2001.
But ham and bacon processors say the move will reduce the shelf life of products, and put customers off. A 10-slice packet of ham contains just under two teaspoons of salt. Claire Cheney, director-general of the Provision Trade Federation, representing leading processed meats companies and supermarkets said the targets were a potential health risk. She told The Grocer magazine: 'If you have not got sufficient preservative in a product like ham you get pockets where the salt levels are too low to prevent the formation of the botulism toxin. 'This will force us to reduce the shelf life further and with that come serious food safety concerns, not least the risk of botulism.'
She was backed by Elizabeth Andoh-Kesson, technical manager of the British Meat Processors Association. She said: 'We are very worried about the stricter targets and believe that reducing salt further has implications for food safety and the shelf life of products.'
Health campaigners have urged the FSA to stand firm, and resist pressure from the meat industry which is reluctant to change its manufacturing practices. Trade associations, including the 5billion pounds a year sandwich industry, complained consumers would find the taste of their products too bland without salt.
Source
British park rangers ordered to stop and quiz adults spotted without children
They are one of the few remaining refuges from the hustle and bustle of urban life - the perfect spot for a sandwich away from the office or a gentle stroll in the fresh air. Except, it appears in Telford, Shropshire, where park staff have been ordered to stop and quiz people using the town's park who are not accompanied by a child. They face having to explain what they are doing in the park and could be thrown out by park wardens or reported to police if they remained unconvinced.
The local council - which manages the 170 hectare Telford Town Park - says the policy is a 'common sense approach' aimed at safeguarding children using the park and follows similar guidance to staff at its leisure centres and libraries. A spokesman said only those deemed to be 'acting suspiciously' would be stopped and questioned. But park users accused it of 'authoritarian madness' and said the ruling risked panicking parents about the dangers children faced from potential paedophiles.
The policy came to light after two environmental campaigners dressed as penguins were thrown out of the park last month when caught handing out leaflets on climate change. Telford & Wrekin Council said Rachel Whittaker and Neil Donaldson were ejected because they had not undergone Criminal Records Bureau checks or risk assessments before entering the park - a requirement under the Child Protection Act.
David Ottley, Telford & Wrekin's sports and recreation manager, said in a letter to a member of the public over that issue: 'Our Town Park staff approach adults that are not associated with any children in the Town Park and request the reason for them being there. 'In particular, this applies to those areas where children or more vulnerable groups gather, such as play facilities and the entrances to play areas. This is a child safety precautionary measure which members of staff will continue to undertake as and when necessary.'
Miss Whittaker, 34, from Wellington, near Telford, said the policy carried a 'dangerous implication that if you have a child with you than everything is okay and you won't be questioned.' She added: 'It is dangerous as well as frightening people, it could start a hysterical society and punishes people who have done nothing wrong while giving an outlet for those with sinister motives a way of getting around it.'
Park user Edna Pearson, 70, part-time pub worker, yesterday said the policy was 'over the top'. Mrs Pearson said: 'It's the men you feel sorry for - unless you have got a dog with you, you cannot go for a walk anywhere on your own any more. 'Kids shouldn't be left by themselves anyway and some paedophiles have children with them.'
Former childcare social worker John Evans said: 'It is authoritarian madness which can only be based on ignorance. It is absurd, it is insulting and what's more it is dangerous as it panics people about the dangers their children face.' Adrian Voce, director of Play England, a lottery-funded branch of the National Children's Bureau which advises local authorities on child play provision, said the policy appeared 'odd' and the authority's guidance to park wardens may have been 'excessively cautious'.
The park, situated close to the town centre, is the only staffed park in the borough and is well used by office workers in their lunch hours. It also has a popular children's play area, woodland walks and a mini road train for families to enjoy. Ron Odunayia, Director of Community Services at the council, said: 'We are not talking about a blanket policy covering everybody who enjoys our Town Park. 'However, if someone is acting in a suspicious manner or acting in an inappropriate way then, of course, our staff reserve the right to asks questions. 'Our approach is in certain circumstances where an individual's behaviour is deemed strange or suspicious rather than as a general rule.'
Councillor Denis Allen, cabinet member for community services, added that as landowner of the park, the Tory-run authority had child protection responsibilities and a duty of care. He said anyone approached would be treated 'sensitively, and in a fair and even-handed manner', but confirmed that the police or child protection services would be informed, if appropriate.
Source
A nasty British school bullies handicapped kid
But publicity has them spinning. It's a government funded school with pretensions to quality. Sounds like it's just pretentious
Since losing his hair to a serious illness as a young child, Dale Platts and his baseball cap have become inseparable. The New York Yankees hat has not only helped the 13-year-old to cope with the cruel taunts of other children, but also protects his head and lashless eyes from the sun. But the schoolboy has now been ordered to remove the cap after his school decided it went against its uniform policy. Dale - who was warned that he would be taught in isolation if he refused - is now at home and missing classes.
His mother, Kenina Platts, 41, said: 'It's really cruel. I'm outraged the school can be so short-sighted. He wears the hat for medical reasons - it's not a fashion statement. 'Dale has to suffer at the hands of child bullies. Now the school itself is pressurising him and bullying him. He is too ashamed to take it off. 'To say he would be taught in isolation is madness. It is like putting him in solitary confinement. It is punishing him for being bald.'
Dale lost his hair, toenails and fingernails when he was five months old after suffering from severe bronchiolitis, a respiratory virus that left him in hospital for a week. During the illness, his immune system began to attack parts of his body, including his hair follicles, stopping the hair and nails from growing - a condition known as alopecia universalis. Dale lost his hair at five months old after suffering from bronchiolitis. The condition is the most severe form of alopecia, affecting one in 100,000 people, including Little Britain comedian Matt Lucas.
However, Dale, of Collingham, Nottinghamshire, was unconcerned by his baldness until he started secondary school aged 11 and the bullying began. He has had items thrown at his head and been taunted with cruel names and chants. He has not left his bedroom without wearing his baseball hat for two years. But at the end of last term, Maggie Brown, the deputy head of Robert Pattinson School in North Hykeham, Lincolnshire, told him the cap contravened its dress code.
Although he has been told he can wear a beanie hat as a compromise, Dale has complained the woolly hat causes eczema and headaches, and does not offer the same protection-against harsh fluorescent lighting and dust as his cap. He was sent home last Thursday, the first day of the new school term. Dale said: 'I just want to go to school and get no bother.'
A spokesman for the school said its uniform policy does not allow peaked caps or hoodies, but some allowances could be made for medical or religious reasons. In Dale's case, the school said it believed the family had agreed the teenager would wear a beanie hat.
Source
More NHS bungling
How can they confuse lung disease and cancer of the liver?
When doctors told Andy Lees he had no more than six weeks to live he set about the sombre task of preparing for his death. He divided his œ18,000 life savings among his nearest and dearest, leaving enough to pay for his funeral. Then he waited for the cancer to take him. But a year later Mr Lees is still in the land of the living - and has just been told he does not have cancer after all. Now penniless, the 72-year-old is planning to sue the hospital which wrongly diagnosed the terminal illness.
He said: `The doctors told me I had cancer of the liver and the lungs, I had only four to six weeks to live and there was nothing they could do for me. `But they've now said they were wrong and, although I'm still very ill, I'm not dying. `I've given away my life savings because I didn't think I'd need it. Now I'm absolutely skint.'
Mr Lees gave his four sons and his daughter œ1,000 each and told them to use it as they wished. Two grandchildren received œ2,000 each while a further œ3,000 was divided among friends. To ensure he would not be a burden on his family after he was gone, he paid œ6,000 for his funeral and headstone. To make matters worse, the headstone was placed at the spot where he was to be buried at the cemetery near his home in Blackburn, West Lothian. He later asked for it to be removed. He said: `Discovering your own tombstone is quite an experience.'
Mr Lees was taken to St John's Hospital in Livingston last year after lapsing into a diabetic coma. Doctors carried out tests and told him he was dying of cancer, but after several return visits to the hospital they have changed their diagnosis. Now they say he is suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes the airways to narrow.
Mr Lees said his family were shattered when they heard the initial diagnosis. He said: `My family and I went through hell.' Now the pensioner is housebound and unable to afford the mobility scooter he needs. NHS Lothian medical director Dr Charles Swainson said: `We have met Mr Lees and his family and apologised for any distress caused.' [Big deal!]
Undertakers William Grieve and Son said Mr Lees had specifically asked for the headstone to be put in place when he made his funeral arrangements.
Source
British PM triggers row with John McCain: "Gordon Brown has triggered a potential row with John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, after apparently backing Barack Obama - breaking convention not to get involved in foreign elections. The Prime Minister heaped praise on Mr Obama and the Democrats in a magazine article, saying they were "generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times." Dealing with economic problems is the crucial battleground in the US elections and Mr Brown's comments were interpreted as backing the Democrat candidate. It sparked a flurry of activity among The Prime Minister's office and the British Embassy in Washington were last night involved in an embarrassing behind-the-scenes operation to try and limit the fallout from the incident. They were alerted after the highly influential Drudge Report website picked up the story, sparking a flurry of comment and analysis from election watchers in the US. Well-placed sources claimed that Mr Brown may not have read the article written in his name by a "junior Labour official".
Major companies fleeing Green/Left Britain: "Already struggling with an economy on the brink of recession and a record budget deficit, Britain's government is facing another problem: how to stop an exodus of British companies fleeing the local tax regime. In the past week alone, three British companies have announced plans to move their head office abroad before the end of the year, unhappy about a lack of clarity about future tax rules and eager to cut their tax bill. Henderson Group, an asset management firm, and engineering company Charter plan to move to Ireland. Regus Group, the office space provider, is leaving for Luxembourg and at least two more companies, advertising agency WPP Group and insurer Brit Insurance, said they might follow. The moves provoked hefty discussions among lawmakers and business representatives about the competitiveness of Britain's corporate tax system. The moves also came at the worst time for the government, which is already expected to lose billions of pounds in tax revenue from financial services companies burdened with losses from the credit crunch".
Britain: Mothers 'should be paid to stay home with their children': "Mothers should receive financial help of up to $12,000 a year to stay at home and care for their babies and toddlers, according to a report which says that nurseries fail to provide the one-to-one adult interaction children need. Too many parents of babies and toddlers are being forced back to work by financial pressure and government policy when they would prefer to stay at home during their offspring's earliest years, according to the research by a think-tank chaired by the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. Many of society's problems, such as knife and gun crime among teenagers, alcohol and drug abuse and poor mental health can be traced back to parental neglect when children were very young, said the Centre for Social Justice. Its recommendation was based on "compelling" research in psychology and neuroscience"
Salty ham and bacon are keeping us healthy, according to meat firms protesting new salt-reduction targets. Meat manufacturers have rejected calls to cut salt levels in processed meats, claiming salt is used to prevent the deadly food bug botulism. The Food Standards Agency has called for salt content to be reduced to 2.13g per 100g by 2010 and to 1.75g by 2012. It suggested last month that 14,000 premature deaths a year could be avoided if adults reduced salt intake to just 6g a day. The current average is 8.6g per day, down from 9.5g in 2001.
But ham and bacon processors say the move will reduce the shelf life of products, and put customers off. A 10-slice packet of ham contains just under two teaspoons of salt. Claire Cheney, director-general of the Provision Trade Federation, representing leading processed meats companies and supermarkets said the targets were a potential health risk. She told The Grocer magazine: 'If you have not got sufficient preservative in a product like ham you get pockets where the salt levels are too low to prevent the formation of the botulism toxin. 'This will force us to reduce the shelf life further and with that come serious food safety concerns, not least the risk of botulism.'
She was backed by Elizabeth Andoh-Kesson, technical manager of the British Meat Processors Association. She said: 'We are very worried about the stricter targets and believe that reducing salt further has implications for food safety and the shelf life of products.'
Health campaigners have urged the FSA to stand firm, and resist pressure from the meat industry which is reluctant to change its manufacturing practices. Trade associations, including the 5billion pounds a year sandwich industry, complained consumers would find the taste of their products too bland without salt.
Source
British park rangers ordered to stop and quiz adults spotted without children
They are one of the few remaining refuges from the hustle and bustle of urban life - the perfect spot for a sandwich away from the office or a gentle stroll in the fresh air. Except, it appears in Telford, Shropshire, where park staff have been ordered to stop and quiz people using the town's park who are not accompanied by a child. They face having to explain what they are doing in the park and could be thrown out by park wardens or reported to police if they remained unconvinced.
The local council - which manages the 170 hectare Telford Town Park - says the policy is a 'common sense approach' aimed at safeguarding children using the park and follows similar guidance to staff at its leisure centres and libraries. A spokesman said only those deemed to be 'acting suspiciously' would be stopped and questioned. But park users accused it of 'authoritarian madness' and said the ruling risked panicking parents about the dangers children faced from potential paedophiles.
The policy came to light after two environmental campaigners dressed as penguins were thrown out of the park last month when caught handing out leaflets on climate change. Telford & Wrekin Council said Rachel Whittaker and Neil Donaldson were ejected because they had not undergone Criminal Records Bureau checks or risk assessments before entering the park - a requirement under the Child Protection Act.
David Ottley, Telford & Wrekin's sports and recreation manager, said in a letter to a member of the public over that issue: 'Our Town Park staff approach adults that are not associated with any children in the Town Park and request the reason for them being there. 'In particular, this applies to those areas where children or more vulnerable groups gather, such as play facilities and the entrances to play areas. This is a child safety precautionary measure which members of staff will continue to undertake as and when necessary.'
Miss Whittaker, 34, from Wellington, near Telford, said the policy carried a 'dangerous implication that if you have a child with you than everything is okay and you won't be questioned.' She added: 'It is dangerous as well as frightening people, it could start a hysterical society and punishes people who have done nothing wrong while giving an outlet for those with sinister motives a way of getting around it.'
Park user Edna Pearson, 70, part-time pub worker, yesterday said the policy was 'over the top'. Mrs Pearson said: 'It's the men you feel sorry for - unless you have got a dog with you, you cannot go for a walk anywhere on your own any more. 'Kids shouldn't be left by themselves anyway and some paedophiles have children with them.'
Former childcare social worker John Evans said: 'It is authoritarian madness which can only be based on ignorance. It is absurd, it is insulting and what's more it is dangerous as it panics people about the dangers their children face.' Adrian Voce, director of Play England, a lottery-funded branch of the National Children's Bureau which advises local authorities on child play provision, said the policy appeared 'odd' and the authority's guidance to park wardens may have been 'excessively cautious'.
The park, situated close to the town centre, is the only staffed park in the borough and is well used by office workers in their lunch hours. It also has a popular children's play area, woodland walks and a mini road train for families to enjoy. Ron Odunayia, Director of Community Services at the council, said: 'We are not talking about a blanket policy covering everybody who enjoys our Town Park. 'However, if someone is acting in a suspicious manner or acting in an inappropriate way then, of course, our staff reserve the right to asks questions. 'Our approach is in certain circumstances where an individual's behaviour is deemed strange or suspicious rather than as a general rule.'
Councillor Denis Allen, cabinet member for community services, added that as landowner of the park, the Tory-run authority had child protection responsibilities and a duty of care. He said anyone approached would be treated 'sensitively, and in a fair and even-handed manner', but confirmed that the police or child protection services would be informed, if appropriate.
Source
A nasty British school bullies handicapped kid
But publicity has them spinning. It's a government funded school with pretensions to quality. Sounds like it's just pretentious
Since losing his hair to a serious illness as a young child, Dale Platts and his baseball cap have become inseparable. The New York Yankees hat has not only helped the 13-year-old to cope with the cruel taunts of other children, but also protects his head and lashless eyes from the sun. But the schoolboy has now been ordered to remove the cap after his school decided it went against its uniform policy. Dale - who was warned that he would be taught in isolation if he refused - is now at home and missing classes.
His mother, Kenina Platts, 41, said: 'It's really cruel. I'm outraged the school can be so short-sighted. He wears the hat for medical reasons - it's not a fashion statement. 'Dale has to suffer at the hands of child bullies. Now the school itself is pressurising him and bullying him. He is too ashamed to take it off. 'To say he would be taught in isolation is madness. It is like putting him in solitary confinement. It is punishing him for being bald.'
Dale lost his hair, toenails and fingernails when he was five months old after suffering from severe bronchiolitis, a respiratory virus that left him in hospital for a week. During the illness, his immune system began to attack parts of his body, including his hair follicles, stopping the hair and nails from growing - a condition known as alopecia universalis. Dale lost his hair at five months old after suffering from bronchiolitis. The condition is the most severe form of alopecia, affecting one in 100,000 people, including Little Britain comedian Matt Lucas.
However, Dale, of Collingham, Nottinghamshire, was unconcerned by his baldness until he started secondary school aged 11 and the bullying began. He has had items thrown at his head and been taunted with cruel names and chants. He has not left his bedroom without wearing his baseball hat for two years. But at the end of last term, Maggie Brown, the deputy head of Robert Pattinson School in North Hykeham, Lincolnshire, told him the cap contravened its dress code.
Although he has been told he can wear a beanie hat as a compromise, Dale has complained the woolly hat causes eczema and headaches, and does not offer the same protection-against harsh fluorescent lighting and dust as his cap. He was sent home last Thursday, the first day of the new school term. Dale said: 'I just want to go to school and get no bother.'
A spokesman for the school said its uniform policy does not allow peaked caps or hoodies, but some allowances could be made for medical or religious reasons. In Dale's case, the school said it believed the family had agreed the teenager would wear a beanie hat.
Source
More NHS bungling
How can they confuse lung disease and cancer of the liver?
When doctors told Andy Lees he had no more than six weeks to live he set about the sombre task of preparing for his death. He divided his œ18,000 life savings among his nearest and dearest, leaving enough to pay for his funeral. Then he waited for the cancer to take him. But a year later Mr Lees is still in the land of the living - and has just been told he does not have cancer after all. Now penniless, the 72-year-old is planning to sue the hospital which wrongly diagnosed the terminal illness.
He said: `The doctors told me I had cancer of the liver and the lungs, I had only four to six weeks to live and there was nothing they could do for me. `But they've now said they were wrong and, although I'm still very ill, I'm not dying. `I've given away my life savings because I didn't think I'd need it. Now I'm absolutely skint.'
Mr Lees gave his four sons and his daughter œ1,000 each and told them to use it as they wished. Two grandchildren received œ2,000 each while a further œ3,000 was divided among friends. To ensure he would not be a burden on his family after he was gone, he paid œ6,000 for his funeral and headstone. To make matters worse, the headstone was placed at the spot where he was to be buried at the cemetery near his home in Blackburn, West Lothian. He later asked for it to be removed. He said: `Discovering your own tombstone is quite an experience.'
Mr Lees was taken to St John's Hospital in Livingston last year after lapsing into a diabetic coma. Doctors carried out tests and told him he was dying of cancer, but after several return visits to the hospital they have changed their diagnosis. Now they say he is suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which causes the airways to narrow.
Mr Lees said his family were shattered when they heard the initial diagnosis. He said: `My family and I went through hell.' Now the pensioner is housebound and unable to afford the mobility scooter he needs. NHS Lothian medical director Dr Charles Swainson said: `We have met Mr Lees and his family and apologised for any distress caused.' [Big deal!]
Undertakers William Grieve and Son said Mr Lees had specifically asked for the headstone to be put in place when he made his funeral arrangements.
Source
British PM triggers row with John McCain: "Gordon Brown has triggered a potential row with John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, after apparently backing Barack Obama - breaking convention not to get involved in foreign elections. The Prime Minister heaped praise on Mr Obama and the Democrats in a magazine article, saying they were "generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times." Dealing with economic problems is the crucial battleground in the US elections and Mr Brown's comments were interpreted as backing the Democrat candidate. It sparked a flurry of activity among The Prime Minister's office and the British Embassy in Washington were last night involved in an embarrassing behind-the-scenes operation to try and limit the fallout from the incident. They were alerted after the highly influential Drudge Report website picked up the story, sparking a flurry of comment and analysis from election watchers in the US. Well-placed sources claimed that Mr Brown may not have read the article written in his name by a "junior Labour official".
Major companies fleeing Green/Left Britain: "Already struggling with an economy on the brink of recession and a record budget deficit, Britain's government is facing another problem: how to stop an exodus of British companies fleeing the local tax regime. In the past week alone, three British companies have announced plans to move their head office abroad before the end of the year, unhappy about a lack of clarity about future tax rules and eager to cut their tax bill. Henderson Group, an asset management firm, and engineering company Charter plan to move to Ireland. Regus Group, the office space provider, is leaving for Luxembourg and at least two more companies, advertising agency WPP Group and insurer Brit Insurance, said they might follow. The moves provoked hefty discussions among lawmakers and business representatives about the competitiveness of Britain's corporate tax system. The moves also came at the worst time for the government, which is already expected to lose billions of pounds in tax revenue from financial services companies burdened with losses from the credit crunch".
Britain: Mothers 'should be paid to stay home with their children': "Mothers should receive financial help of up to $12,000 a year to stay at home and care for their babies and toddlers, according to a report which says that nurseries fail to provide the one-to-one adult interaction children need. Too many parents of babies and toddlers are being forced back to work by financial pressure and government policy when they would prefer to stay at home during their offspring's earliest years, according to the research by a think-tank chaired by the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. Many of society's problems, such as knife and gun crime among teenagers, alcohol and drug abuse and poor mental health can be traced back to parental neglect when children were very young, said the Centre for Social Justice. Its recommendation was based on "compelling" research in psychology and neuroscience"
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Majority in Britain want tougher immigration policy
The majority of people living in Britain, from all political and ethnic backgrounds, think too many people are settling in the country and favour tougher immigration policies, a poll showed on Monday. According to the YouGov poll, 57 percent of adults think there should be less immigration than emigration and 28 percent favour keeping the number of people moving to Britain the same as the number leaving, so-called balanced migration.
With immigration high on the political agenda following an influx of workers from eastern Europe, a parliamentary cross-party committee asked pressure group Migrationwatch to commission the survey on balanced migration.
According to the Office of National Statistics, more people have moved to Britain than left every year since 1993, when there was a net outflow of 1,000. The net inflow was 223,000 in 2004, 185,000 in 2005 and 191,000 in 2006.
The YouGov survey showed there was overwhelming support for lower immigration from backers of the three main political parties, as well as among black and minority ethnic respondents. Among supporters of Labour, 36 percent said balanced migration was about right and 45 percent said that would still mean immigration was too high. For Conservative voters, 23 percent supported a balanced approach while 66 percent wanted tougher limits.
Among black and minority ethnic respondents to the YouGov survey, 36 percent favoured balanced migration and 39 percent wanted tighter immigration policies
More here
Revealed: The wild variation in how NHS trusts spend money on treating the same conditions
The NHS spends three times more in some areas on treating the same conditions, it has emerged. A report highlighted huge variations in amounts spent locally, even after the needs of different communities were accounted for. Spending varies by up to 3.4 times for mental health, 2.5 times for cancer and 2.2 times for heart and circulatory diseases.
The study by health charity the King's Fund analysed primary care trust spending from 2004 to 2007. Islington, North London, spent 332 pounds per head of population on mental health, while in West Kent it was just 98 - a 3.4-fold gap.
The proportion devoted to mental health ranged from 7.6 to 25 per cent of trusts' budgets. Knowsley, Merseyside, paid 118 a head on cancer, while Ealing, West London, allocated 47.
Middlesbrough spent 167 on circulatory diseases compared with 76 in Southwark, South-East London.
Professor John Appleby, of the King's Fund, said: 'It does raise questions about the consistency of the decisions PCTs make.' Chief executive Niall Dickson said: 'There are unexplained spending variations - some are almost certainly not justified.' David Stout, of the PCT Network, representing trusts, said: 'Many of these variations are expected. 'However, some are not explained. It may reveal unacceptable variation in clinical practice.'
Source
OK to call GWB a "retard"
I noted on August 12 how vastly incorrect the word "retard" seems to be. Some hairy British Leftist, however, thought nothing of applying the word to GWB:
Predictably, The New York Times loved it! But many listeners did not.
No link between MMR and autism say doctors after recreating controversial study
A fresh study has ruled out a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Scientists said they hoped their findings - which contradict an identical British study ten years ago - would encourage parents to immunise their children. Fears over the combined measles, mumps and rubella jab have contributed to the highest numbers of measles cases seen in Britain and the U.S. and parts of Europe in many years. The disease kills about 250,000 a year globally, mostly children in poor nations.
This latest U.S. study attempted to replicate 1998 research led by Dr Andrew Wakefield, then of the Royal Free Hospital, in London, which suggested the MMR vaccine was linked to autism and gastro-intestinal problems. His study has since been discredited and he is currently undergoing disciplinary action for professional misconduct.
Scientists at Columbia University in New York looked for evidence of genetic material from the measles virus in intestinal tissue samples taken from 25 children with autism who also had gastro-intestinal problems. They compared these to samples from 13 children who had gastro-intestinal problems but no autism, and found no differences. The team also collected data about the children's immunisation histories but found no relationship between the timing of the MMR vaccine and the onset of either gastrointestinal complaints or autism. However, the study did find evidence that children with autism have persistent bowel troubles that should be addressed.
The samples were analysed in three laboratories that were not told which came from the children with autism. One of the labs had been involved in the original study suggesting a link between measles virus and autism. 'We found no difference in children who had GI complaints and no autism and children who had autism but no GI complaints,' Dr Ian Lipkin of Columbia University said.
The team also collected data about the children's health and immunisation histories from parents and physicians to see if vaccinations preceded either their autism or bowel trouble. 'We found no relationship between the timing of MMR vaccine and the onset of either GI complaints or autism,' Dr Mady Hornig, also of Columbia, added. Recent research suggests that around 1 in 100 people have some form of autism in the UK.
Source
Doomed by mother's diet: Calorie- cutting during pregnancy 'puts your baby at risk of obesity in later life'
A nice little dilemma the food Fascists have dreamed up for mothers
Women who count calories during pregnancy could be condemning their unborn children to a lifetime of obesity, scientists have warned. It is thought that a lack of food in the womb alters the programming of the baby's fat cells, leading to weight problems in later life. As they grown into adulthood the child may find their body is still trying to compensate for the food shortages it experienced years before, a science conference heard yesterday.
Dr Helen Budge, of University Hospital Nottingham, warned that dieting during pregnancy or when trying to conceive could have long-lasting consequences. She said: 'Women diet to get pregnant and try to restrict their food intake during pregnancy because they don't want to become overweight. 'But the baby needs them to gain some weight. 'Whether we become obese is often established before, and soon after, we are born and is influenced by both the eating habits of our mothers and by the nutrition we receive as babies in the months after birth. 'Processes set in motion early on in our lives can have life-long effects.'
Dr Budge's work shows that lack of nutrition in the womb alters the chemistry of the developing fat cells. 'We know the chemistry of these cells is upset,' she said. 'There is more inflammation and stress on the cells and the hormone balance is upset.' With overweight mothers-to-be also running the risk of obese children, Dr Budge said a balanced diet was essential during pregnancy.
She told the British Association's Festival of Science in Liverpool: 'They should avoid food fads and diets and avoid over-eating. 'The message is about getting the balance right. 'If we want to successfully tackle obesity, it is essential that we improve understanding amongst women of the importance of having a healthy balanced diet before and during pregnancy and how this can affect the health of their child for decades at a time.'
Their average daily calorie intake was lower than both that recommended during pregnancy and that for women who aren't pregnant. They also put on less weight than advised by the Department of Health - gaining around 2.5lb under the recommended 27.5lb. The women were also lacking in iron, which prevents anemia, and folic acid, a form of vitamin B which helps prevent brain and spine defects such as spina bifida.
And research on rats suggest that children develop a taste for junk food in the womb, raising their risk of obesity, heart disease and diabetes in the years to come. Even babies fed a healthy diet after birth - meaning they had never eaten junk food themselves - tended to be overweight.
Dr Pat Goodwin, of the Wellcome Trust, which funded the junk food research, said: 'Obesity has increased dramatically over the last few years and needs to be tackled urgently. 'Pregnancy can be a difficult time for many mothers, but it is important that they are aware that what they eat may affect their offspring.'
Source
The agonies of educational choice in Britain
The quality of British government ("State") schools is very uneven and is often very low, depending in part on where the school is located. Only the many private schools offer a reasonable guarantee of a good education. So the middle class try to send their kids to private schools in the hope of catching up with the upper class. But the upper class have the last laugh. They often send their kids to government schools! So what's a good British Leftist to do? The one below feels he has been cheated but still feels he has to send his kids to a private school! He explains:
Arabella Weir: "Why I would never send my kids to private school," she wrote in another newspaper last week. "The underlying snobbery and racism are shocking." Oh, I know. It's like the thought of another four years of Christian rightwingers in the White House. Don't get wound up, my wife says. But I can't help it. My kids dwell in a school playground that looks like happy hour at the United Nations but apparently we're all racists. I'm picking them up with Peter the plumber and Tom the builder but in Arabella's mind we're snobs. I wonder if her kids ever got met at the gates by a bloke in a van.
Apparently not, because she wrote that her ten-year-old daughter walks home from school through several council estates "without even thinking about it". I reckon mummy thinks about it, though. I reckon if you know how many council estates your children walk through you are not quite as down with the working class as you would like us to believe.
Really posh people don't send their children private these days. They go state and smug, judging all the hapless arrivistes scrabbling to give their children the half-chance that might protect them from having to get up before dawn each morning to run a greengrocer's like their dad. Gordon Brown's son, John, is going to the local community school where almost half the pupils have free meals, apparently. Big deal. Chances are that what with his father being the Prime Minister, junior might need less of a leg-up in his teenage years than some of his schoolfriends.
Ms Weir talked about sending her children to the less desirable of the two state primaries in her area - Camden, naturally - as if she were bestowing her bounteous gifts of spawn on the poor. She said that when her parents moved to Camden they were advised against it by friends because "people like us" didn't live near council-house folk. And that was the clue. Something was not quite right in that sentence. You know what it is. I'm talking to the state school attendees here. Were any of your classmates called Arabella? No, me neither. [In Britain, Arabella is a famously upper-class name]
Arabella may have attended state school in Camden, but there the gamble ended. Her father was Sir Michael Weir, Balliol scholar, Foreign Office diplomat, former Ambassador to Egypt and the man Jim Callaghan referred to as his mentor on Middle East politics. When Anwar Sadat was assassinated, Sir Michael was seated two rows behind. Sir Michael died two years ago leaving an obituary that read like a Who's Who of 20th-century history. It said that he persuaded Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah al-Thani of Qatar to abolish slavery, which my dad was definitely going to get round to, if he had not had 400 boiling chickens to gut at a market stall each day in East London.
"It's only information," sniffed Arabella of private education; but it isn't. It is an often forlorn attempt to level the playing field by those not born with connections that will put them at the front of every queue. State education can never provide the same opportunities for all because there will remain the sons and daughters of the truly powerful, the truly wealthy, the famous, who can call in favours from a network forever closed to the bloke with the plumbing business that has just had a good year. All he can do is try to buy his way in; this is why you rarely hear of a black guy with a guilt complex about getting his children privately educated.
My kids watch Doctor Who. The godfather to Arabella's kids is Doctor Who. David Tennant. You see the difference, Arabella, don't you? You don't need to send your little angels to private school. They are already in the Tardis, just like their mum.
Source
Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor' by promoting traditional farming
And it's King of climate change saying it
Western do-gooders are impoverishing Africa by promoting traditional farming at the expense of modern scientific agriculture, according to Britain's former chief scientist. Anti-science attitudes among aid agencies, poverty campaigners and green activists are denying the continent access to technology that could improve millions of lives, Professor Sir David King will say today. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from Europe and America are turning African countries against sophisticated farming methods, including GM crops, in favour of indigenous and organic approaches that cannot deliver the continent's much needed "green revolution", he believes.
Speaking before a keynote lecture tonight to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he is president, Sir David said that the slow pace of African development was linked directly to Western influence. "I'm going to suggest, and I believe this very strongly, that a big part has been played in the impoverishment of that continent by the focus on nontechnological agricultural techniques, on techniques of farming that pertain to the history of that continent rather than techniques that pertain to modern technological capability.
Why has that continent not joined Asia in the big green revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades? The suffering within that continent, I believe, is largely driven by attitudes developed in the West which are somewhat anti-science, anti-technology - attitudes that lead towards organic farming, for example, attitudes that lead against the use of genetic technology for crops that could deal with increased salinity in the water, that can deal with flooding for rice crops, that can deal with drought resistance."
Sir David, who stepped down in December as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, will use his presidential address to the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool to accuse governments and NGOs of confused thinking about African development. "Solutions will only emerge if full use is made of modern agricultural technology methods, under progressive, scientifically informed regulation," he will say.
"The most advanced form of plant breeding, using modern genetic techniques, is now available to us. Plant breeding needs to meet a range of demands, including defences against evolving plant diseases, drought resistance, saline resistance, and flood tolerance. The problem is that the Western-world move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences."
His remarks will place him in direct opposition to former Whitehall colleagues. The Government endorsed recently the International Assessement of Agricultural Science and Technology, a report from 400 scientists and development experts published in April, which championed small-scale farming and traditional knowledge. The exercise was led by Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Sir David said that its findings were short-sighted. "I hesitate to criticise Bob Watson, who I admire enormously, but I think that we have been overwhelmed by attitudes to Africa that for some reason are qualitatively different to attitudes elsewhere. "We have the technology to feed the population of the planet. The question is do we have the ability to understand that we have it, and to deliver?"
Sir David, who was born and brought up in South Africa, added: "I think there is a tremendous groundswell of feeling that we need to support tradition in Africa. What that actually means in practice is if you go to a marketplace in a lovely town like Livingstone in Zambia, near Victoria Falls, you will see hundreds of people with little piles of their crops for sale. "This is an extremely inefficient process. The sort of thing we're seeing existed in this country hundreds of years ago. I don't believe that will lead to the economic development of Africa."
He will cite the example of rice that can resist flooding, which has been developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Its development has been held up for several years because scientists felt they could not use GM techniques, such is the scale of Western-influenced opposition to the technology.
He will also accuse green groups such as the UN Environment Programme of agitating against new technologies on the basis of speculative risks, while ignoring potential benefits. "For example, Friends of the Earth in 1999 worried that drought-tolerant crops may have the potential to grow in habitats unavailable' to conventional crops.
The priority of providing food to an area of the world in greatest need appears to not have been noted.For decades, approaches to international development have been dominated by this well-meaning but fatally flawed doctrine."
Source
The British Labour party's 3,600 new ways of making you a criminal
Ever tried selling a grey squirrel, impersonating a traffic warden, importing Polish potatoes or disturbing a pack of eggs without permission? If you do, you will be breaking the law. These are among the 3,605 new criminal offences created by the Labour Government since it won power in 1997 - almost one for every day it has been in office. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne has described the plethora of new laws as 'legislative diarrhoea'.
The new offences are made up of 1,238 which were brought in as primary legislation - meaning they were debated in Parliament - and 2,367 by secondary legislation, such as orders in council and statutory instruments. Under Tony Blair, Labour introduced 160 new offences in its first year, but in 2003, 493 offences were created. Offences brought in during the past five years include:
Sell types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed
Disturb a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer
Offer for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
It has slowed slightly in the past two years with 288 new offences in 2007 and 148 so far this year. Mr Huhne said: 'In what conceivable way can the introduction of a new criminal offence every day help tackle crime when most crimes that people care about have been illegal for years. 'This legislative diarrhoea is not about making us safer, because it does not help enforce the laws that we have one jot. It is about the Government's posturing on punishments.'
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has proved the most prolific law creators, introducing some 852 new offences. Meanwhile the Home Office has been responsible for 455 new offences.
Mr Huhne said minor criminals should be kept out of jail to allow the Home Office to redirect funding from prisons to the police. It is the fear of being caught - and not the severity of punishment after conviction - which deters people from committing crime, he said outlining the Lib Dem's vision for policing and criminal justice.
Mr Huhne - whose party is already committed to funding 10,000 more police by scrapping ID cards - said: 'We rely on prison far too much. 'First, reoffending is appallingly high, as prisons are colleges of crime. Secondly, the chances of being caught are still far too low, as only one in 100 crimes leads to a conviction. 'We do not need to increase the severity of punishments, but we do need to increase the chances of being caught. Catching criminals works better than posturing about penalties.'
Some more offences introduced in the past five years:
To wilfully pretend to be a barrister (A provision of the Legal Services Act 2007 aimed at modernising the legal profession and increasing competition between barristers).
(Part of a detailed set of regulations last year controlling the production and marketing of eggs).
Obstruct workers carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway (The offence is created under legislation designed to boost capacity on the DLR in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics in London).
Attach an ear tag to an animal when it has previously been used to identify another animal (A regulation introduced last year to tighten up identification of cattle).
Land a catch at a harbour that includes unsorted fish without permission (Regulations two years ago controlling fish taken from seas around Britain).
Fail to use an approved technique for weighing herring, mackerel and horse mackerel (Banned under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006).
Allow an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre (The 2003 Licensing Act introduced a maximum penalty of six months' prison for breaking the law).
Source
British officialdom still losing data: "Jack Straw, the justice secretary, has called for an urgent inquiry into the latest government loss of computer data, a disk containing the personal details of 5,000 prison staff. Although the prison service was informed of the loss in July, Straw, who is the minister responsible, was only made aware of it yesterday when he was contacted by a Sunday newspaper. The hard disk containing personal details of up to 5,000 staff, including probation workers, was mislaid by a computing firm working for the Ministry of Justice more than a year ago. According to a letter sent by the firm, EDS, on July 4, the 500GB portable hard disk contained names, dates of birth, National Insurance numbers and prison service employee numbers of about 11% of the UK prison service's 45,000 workers. A copy of the letter, entitled Security Incident Interim Report, was obtained by the News of the World, which informed the justice secretary. "I am extremely concerned about this missing data," Straw said last night. "I was informed of its loss at lunchtime and have ordered an urgent inquiry into the circumstances and the implications of the data loss and the level of risk involved."
A British government bungle that would be funny if it were not so stupid: "Further flooding is feared across Britain this week as residents of the worst-hit town complained that a government-backed alternative for traditional sandbags had floated away... Some residents complained yesterday that flood defences simply floated away. They had been given packs of expanding pillows, designed like nappies, to soak up 20 litres of water. Simon Richell, 40 and wife, Gez, 38, saved their three sons, aged 11, 4 and 9 months, then tried to protect their riverside home. "We got handed these bags which expand to absorb water but they just floated off," said Mr Richell. "We ended up filling sandbags from the kids' sandpit." The "Floodsax" bags had been provided as part of a pilot scheme this year. It had been supported by John Healey, the Floods Recovery Minister, who visited Morpeth yesterday. The Environment Agency said that it was the first time that the bags had been used in the pilot zones." [How come the moronic bureaucrats did not test the things first?]
The majority of people living in Britain, from all political and ethnic backgrounds, think too many people are settling in the country and favour tougher immigration policies, a poll showed on Monday. According to the YouGov poll, 57 percent of adults think there should be less immigration than emigration and 28 percent favour keeping the number of people moving to Britain the same as the number leaving, so-called balanced migration.
With immigration high on the political agenda following an influx of workers from eastern Europe, a parliamentary cross-party committee asked pressure group Migrationwatch to commission the survey on balanced migration.
According to the Office of National Statistics, more people have moved to Britain than left every year since 1993, when there was a net outflow of 1,000. The net inflow was 223,000 in 2004, 185,000 in 2005 and 191,000 in 2006.
The YouGov survey showed there was overwhelming support for lower immigration from backers of the three main political parties, as well as among black and minority ethnic respondents. Among supporters of Labour, 36 percent said balanced migration was about right and 45 percent said that would still mean immigration was too high. For Conservative voters, 23 percent supported a balanced approach while 66 percent wanted tougher limits.
Among black and minority ethnic respondents to the YouGov survey, 36 percent favoured balanced migration and 39 percent wanted tighter immigration policies
More here
Revealed: The wild variation in how NHS trusts spend money on treating the same conditions
The NHS spends three times more in some areas on treating the same conditions, it has emerged. A report highlighted huge variations in amounts spent locally, even after the needs of different communities were accounted for. Spending varies by up to 3.4 times for mental health, 2.5 times for cancer and 2.2 times for heart and circulatory diseases.
The study by health charity the King's Fund analysed primary care trust spending from 2004 to 2007. Islington, North London, spent 332 pounds per head of population on mental health, while in West Kent it was just 98 - a 3.4-fold gap.
The proportion devoted to mental health ranged from 7.6 to 25 per cent of trusts' budgets. Knowsley, Merseyside, paid 118 a head on cancer, while Ealing, West London, allocated 47.
Middlesbrough spent 167 on circulatory diseases compared with 76 in Southwark, South-East London.
Professor John Appleby, of the King's Fund, said: 'It does raise questions about the consistency of the decisions PCTs make.' Chief executive Niall Dickson said: 'There are unexplained spending variations - some are almost certainly not justified.' David Stout, of the PCT Network, representing trusts, said: 'Many of these variations are expected. 'However, some are not explained. It may reveal unacceptable variation in clinical practice.'
Source
OK to call GWB a "retard"
I noted on August 12 how vastly incorrect the word "retard" seems to be. Some hairy British Leftist, however, thought nothing of applying the word to GWB:
"If his aim was to be noticed by America, Russell Brand more than achieved his goal last night as he ranted that President Bush was a "retarded cowboy" while hosting the MTV awards.
The British comedian, who is a virtual unknown in America, left the creme of the music world stunned as he championed Barack Obama, ran down George Bush and made lewd jokes about the Christian pop band Jonas Brothers.
Brand told the Hollywood audience they must vote for Barrack Obama "on behalf of the world", before insinuating that America had lower standards than Britain when it came to picking leaders.
"Some people, I think they're called racists, say America is not ready for a black president. "But I know America to be a forward thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be president for eight years?
Source
Predictably, The New York Times loved it! But many listeners did not.
No link between MMR and autism say doctors after recreating controversial study
A fresh study has ruled out a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Scientists said they hoped their findings - which contradict an identical British study ten years ago - would encourage parents to immunise their children. Fears over the combined measles, mumps and rubella jab have contributed to the highest numbers of measles cases seen in Britain and the U.S. and parts of Europe in many years. The disease kills about 250,000 a year globally, mostly children in poor nations.
This latest U.S. study attempted to replicate 1998 research led by Dr Andrew Wakefield, then of the Royal Free Hospital, in London, which suggested the MMR vaccine was linked to autism and gastro-intestinal problems. His study has since been discredited and he is currently undergoing disciplinary action for professional misconduct.
Scientists at Columbia University in New York looked for evidence of genetic material from the measles virus in intestinal tissue samples taken from 25 children with autism who also had gastro-intestinal problems. They compared these to samples from 13 children who had gastro-intestinal problems but no autism, and found no differences. The team also collected data about the children's immunisation histories but found no relationship between the timing of the MMR vaccine and the onset of either gastrointestinal complaints or autism. However, the study did find evidence that children with autism have persistent bowel troubles that should be addressed.
The samples were analysed in three laboratories that were not told which came from the children with autism. One of the labs had been involved in the original study suggesting a link between measles virus and autism. 'We found no difference in children who had GI complaints and no autism and children who had autism but no GI complaints,' Dr Ian Lipkin of Columbia University said.
The team also collected data about the children's health and immunisation histories from parents and physicians to see if vaccinations preceded either their autism or bowel trouble. 'We found no relationship between the timing of MMR vaccine and the onset of either GI complaints or autism,' Dr Mady Hornig, also of Columbia, added. Recent research suggests that around 1 in 100 people have some form of autism in the UK.
Source
Doomed by mother's diet: Calorie- cutting during pregnancy 'puts your baby at risk of obesity in later life'
A nice little dilemma the food Fascists have dreamed up for mothers
Women who count calories during pregnancy could be condemning their unborn children to a lifetime of obesity, scientists have warned. It is thought that a lack of food in the womb alters the programming of the baby's fat cells, leading to weight problems in later life. As they grown into adulthood the child may find their body is still trying to compensate for the food shortages it experienced years before, a science conference heard yesterday.
Dr Helen Budge, of University Hospital Nottingham, warned that dieting during pregnancy or when trying to conceive could have long-lasting consequences. She said: 'Women diet to get pregnant and try to restrict their food intake during pregnancy because they don't want to become overweight. 'But the baby needs them to gain some weight. 'Whether we become obese is often established before, and soon after, we are born and is influenced by both the eating habits of our mothers and by the nutrition we receive as babies in the months after birth. 'Processes set in motion early on in our lives can have life-long effects.'
Dr Budge's work shows that lack of nutrition in the womb alters the chemistry of the developing fat cells. 'We know the chemistry of these cells is upset,' she said. 'There is more inflammation and stress on the cells and the hormone balance is upset.' With overweight mothers-to-be also running the risk of obese children, Dr Budge said a balanced diet was essential during pregnancy.
She told the British Association's Festival of Science in Liverpool: 'They should avoid food fads and diets and avoid over-eating. 'The message is about getting the balance right. 'If we want to successfully tackle obesity, it is essential that we improve understanding amongst women of the importance of having a healthy balanced diet before and during pregnancy and how this can affect the health of their child for decades at a time.'
Their average daily calorie intake was lower than both that recommended during pregnancy and that for women who aren't pregnant. They also put on less weight than advised by the Department of Health - gaining around 2.5lb under the recommended 27.5lb. The women were also lacking in iron, which prevents anemia, and folic acid, a form of vitamin B which helps prevent brain and spine defects such as spina bifida.
And research on rats suggest that children develop a taste for junk food in the womb, raising their risk of obesity, heart disease and diabetes in the years to come. Even babies fed a healthy diet after birth - meaning they had never eaten junk food themselves - tended to be overweight.
Dr Pat Goodwin, of the Wellcome Trust, which funded the junk food research, said: 'Obesity has increased dramatically over the last few years and needs to be tackled urgently. 'Pregnancy can be a difficult time for many mothers, but it is important that they are aware that what they eat may affect their offspring.'
Source
The agonies of educational choice in Britain
The quality of British government ("State") schools is very uneven and is often very low, depending in part on where the school is located. Only the many private schools offer a reasonable guarantee of a good education. So the middle class try to send their kids to private schools in the hope of catching up with the upper class. But the upper class have the last laugh. They often send their kids to government schools! So what's a good British Leftist to do? The one below feels he has been cheated but still feels he has to send his kids to a private school! He explains:
Arabella Weir: "Why I would never send my kids to private school," she wrote in another newspaper last week. "The underlying snobbery and racism are shocking." Oh, I know. It's like the thought of another four years of Christian rightwingers in the White House. Don't get wound up, my wife says. But I can't help it. My kids dwell in a school playground that looks like happy hour at the United Nations but apparently we're all racists. I'm picking them up with Peter the plumber and Tom the builder but in Arabella's mind we're snobs. I wonder if her kids ever got met at the gates by a bloke in a van.
Apparently not, because she wrote that her ten-year-old daughter walks home from school through several council estates "without even thinking about it". I reckon mummy thinks about it, though. I reckon if you know how many council estates your children walk through you are not quite as down with the working class as you would like us to believe.
Really posh people don't send their children private these days. They go state and smug, judging all the hapless arrivistes scrabbling to give their children the half-chance that might protect them from having to get up before dawn each morning to run a greengrocer's like their dad. Gordon Brown's son, John, is going to the local community school where almost half the pupils have free meals, apparently. Big deal. Chances are that what with his father being the Prime Minister, junior might need less of a leg-up in his teenage years than some of his schoolfriends.
Ms Weir talked about sending her children to the less desirable of the two state primaries in her area - Camden, naturally - as if she were bestowing her bounteous gifts of spawn on the poor. She said that when her parents moved to Camden they were advised against it by friends because "people like us" didn't live near council-house folk. And that was the clue. Something was not quite right in that sentence. You know what it is. I'm talking to the state school attendees here. Were any of your classmates called Arabella? No, me neither. [In Britain, Arabella is a famously upper-class name]
Arabella may have attended state school in Camden, but there the gamble ended. Her father was Sir Michael Weir, Balliol scholar, Foreign Office diplomat, former Ambassador to Egypt and the man Jim Callaghan referred to as his mentor on Middle East politics. When Anwar Sadat was assassinated, Sir Michael was seated two rows behind. Sir Michael died two years ago leaving an obituary that read like a Who's Who of 20th-century history. It said that he persuaded Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah al-Thani of Qatar to abolish slavery, which my dad was definitely going to get round to, if he had not had 400 boiling chickens to gut at a market stall each day in East London.
"It's only information," sniffed Arabella of private education; but it isn't. It is an often forlorn attempt to level the playing field by those not born with connections that will put them at the front of every queue. State education can never provide the same opportunities for all because there will remain the sons and daughters of the truly powerful, the truly wealthy, the famous, who can call in favours from a network forever closed to the bloke with the plumbing business that has just had a good year. All he can do is try to buy his way in; this is why you rarely hear of a black guy with a guilt complex about getting his children privately educated.
My kids watch Doctor Who. The godfather to Arabella's kids is Doctor Who. David Tennant. You see the difference, Arabella, don't you? You don't need to send your little angels to private school. They are already in the Tardis, just like their mum.
Source
Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor' by promoting traditional farming
And it's King of climate change saying it
Western do-gooders are impoverishing Africa by promoting traditional farming at the expense of modern scientific agriculture, according to Britain's former chief scientist. Anti-science attitudes among aid agencies, poverty campaigners and green activists are denying the continent access to technology that could improve millions of lives, Professor Sir David King will say today. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from Europe and America are turning African countries against sophisticated farming methods, including GM crops, in favour of indigenous and organic approaches that cannot deliver the continent's much needed "green revolution", he believes.
Speaking before a keynote lecture tonight to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he is president, Sir David said that the slow pace of African development was linked directly to Western influence. "I'm going to suggest, and I believe this very strongly, that a big part has been played in the impoverishment of that continent by the focus on nontechnological agricultural techniques, on techniques of farming that pertain to the history of that continent rather than techniques that pertain to modern technological capability.
Why has that continent not joined Asia in the big green revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades? The suffering within that continent, I believe, is largely driven by attitudes developed in the West which are somewhat anti-science, anti-technology - attitudes that lead towards organic farming, for example, attitudes that lead against the use of genetic technology for crops that could deal with increased salinity in the water, that can deal with flooding for rice crops, that can deal with drought resistance."
Sir David, who stepped down in December as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, will use his presidential address to the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool to accuse governments and NGOs of confused thinking about African development. "Solutions will only emerge if full use is made of modern agricultural technology methods, under progressive, scientifically informed regulation," he will say.
"The most advanced form of plant breeding, using modern genetic techniques, is now available to us. Plant breeding needs to meet a range of demands, including defences against evolving plant diseases, drought resistance, saline resistance, and flood tolerance. The problem is that the Western-world move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences."
His remarks will place him in direct opposition to former Whitehall colleagues. The Government endorsed recently the International Assessement of Agricultural Science and Technology, a report from 400 scientists and development experts published in April, which championed small-scale farming and traditional knowledge. The exercise was led by Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Sir David said that its findings were short-sighted. "I hesitate to criticise Bob Watson, who I admire enormously, but I think that we have been overwhelmed by attitudes to Africa that for some reason are qualitatively different to attitudes elsewhere. "We have the technology to feed the population of the planet. The question is do we have the ability to understand that we have it, and to deliver?"
Sir David, who was born and brought up in South Africa, added: "I think there is a tremendous groundswell of feeling that we need to support tradition in Africa. What that actually means in practice is if you go to a marketplace in a lovely town like Livingstone in Zambia, near Victoria Falls, you will see hundreds of people with little piles of their crops for sale. "This is an extremely inefficient process. The sort of thing we're seeing existed in this country hundreds of years ago. I don't believe that will lead to the economic development of Africa."
He will cite the example of rice that can resist flooding, which has been developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Its development has been held up for several years because scientists felt they could not use GM techniques, such is the scale of Western-influenced opposition to the technology.
He will also accuse green groups such as the UN Environment Programme of agitating against new technologies on the basis of speculative risks, while ignoring potential benefits. "For example, Friends of the Earth in 1999 worried that drought-tolerant crops may have the potential to grow in habitats unavailable' to conventional crops.
The priority of providing food to an area of the world in greatest need appears to not have been noted.For decades, approaches to international development have been dominated by this well-meaning but fatally flawed doctrine."
Source
The British Labour party's 3,600 new ways of making you a criminal
Ever tried selling a grey squirrel, impersonating a traffic warden, importing Polish potatoes or disturbing a pack of eggs without permission? If you do, you will be breaking the law. These are among the 3,605 new criminal offences created by the Labour Government since it won power in 1997 - almost one for every day it has been in office. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne has described the plethora of new laws as 'legislative diarrhoea'.
The new offences are made up of 1,238 which were brought in as primary legislation - meaning they were debated in Parliament - and 2,367 by secondary legislation, such as orders in council and statutory instruments. Under Tony Blair, Labour introduced 160 new offences in its first year, but in 2003, 493 offences were created. Offences brought in during the past five years include:
Sell types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed
Disturb a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer
Offer for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
It has slowed slightly in the past two years with 288 new offences in 2007 and 148 so far this year. Mr Huhne said: 'In what conceivable way can the introduction of a new criminal offence every day help tackle crime when most crimes that people care about have been illegal for years. 'This legislative diarrhoea is not about making us safer, because it does not help enforce the laws that we have one jot. It is about the Government's posturing on punishments.'
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has proved the most prolific law creators, introducing some 852 new offences. Meanwhile the Home Office has been responsible for 455 new offences.
Mr Huhne said minor criminals should be kept out of jail to allow the Home Office to redirect funding from prisons to the police. It is the fear of being caught - and not the severity of punishment after conviction - which deters people from committing crime, he said outlining the Lib Dem's vision for policing and criminal justice.
Mr Huhne - whose party is already committed to funding 10,000 more police by scrapping ID cards - said: 'We rely on prison far too much. 'First, reoffending is appallingly high, as prisons are colleges of crime. Secondly, the chances of being caught are still far too low, as only one in 100 crimes leads to a conviction. 'We do not need to increase the severity of punishments, but we do need to increase the chances of being caught. Catching criminals works better than posturing about penalties.'
Some more offences introduced in the past five years:
To wilfully pretend to be a barrister (A provision of the Legal Services Act 2007 aimed at modernising the legal profession and increasing competition between barristers).
(Part of a detailed set of regulations last year controlling the production and marketing of eggs).
Obstruct workers carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway (The offence is created under legislation designed to boost capacity on the DLR in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics in London).
Attach an ear tag to an animal when it has previously been used to identify another animal (A regulation introduced last year to tighten up identification of cattle).
Land a catch at a harbour that includes unsorted fish without permission (Regulations two years ago controlling fish taken from seas around Britain).
Fail to use an approved technique for weighing herring, mackerel and horse mackerel (Banned under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006).
Allow an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre (The 2003 Licensing Act introduced a maximum penalty of six months' prison for breaking the law).
Source
British officialdom still losing data: "Jack Straw, the justice secretary, has called for an urgent inquiry into the latest government loss of computer data, a disk containing the personal details of 5,000 prison staff. Although the prison service was informed of the loss in July, Straw, who is the minister responsible, was only made aware of it yesterday when he was contacted by a Sunday newspaper. The hard disk containing personal details of up to 5,000 staff, including probation workers, was mislaid by a computing firm working for the Ministry of Justice more than a year ago. According to a letter sent by the firm, EDS, on July 4, the 500GB portable hard disk contained names, dates of birth, National Insurance numbers and prison service employee numbers of about 11% of the UK prison service's 45,000 workers. A copy of the letter, entitled Security Incident Interim Report, was obtained by the News of the World, which informed the justice secretary. "I am extremely concerned about this missing data," Straw said last night. "I was informed of its loss at lunchtime and have ordered an urgent inquiry into the circumstances and the implications of the data loss and the level of risk involved."
A British government bungle that would be funny if it were not so stupid: "Further flooding is feared across Britain this week as residents of the worst-hit town complained that a government-backed alternative for traditional sandbags had floated away... Some residents complained yesterday that flood defences simply floated away. They had been given packs of expanding pillows, designed like nappies, to soak up 20 litres of water. Simon Richell, 40 and wife, Gez, 38, saved their three sons, aged 11, 4 and 9 months, then tried to protect their riverside home. "We got handed these bags which expand to absorb water but they just floated off," said Mr Richell. "We ended up filling sandbags from the kids' sandpit." The "Floodsax" bags had been provided as part of a pilot scheme this year. It had been supported by John Healey, the Floods Recovery Minister, who visited Morpeth yesterday. The Environment Agency said that it was the first time that the bags had been used in the pilot zones." [How come the moronic bureaucrats did not test the things first?]
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
British landlady ordered to pay damages to serial rapist for clearing his apartment after arrest
You can't beat British law for insanity
A serial rapist has been awarded compensation after his landlady cleared his flat of his belongings while he was awaiting trial. Thomas Cope, 55, tied up his teenage victim with a computer mouse cord and raped her twice before letting her go after an eight hour ordeal. He was jailed for life after a judge branded him 'a serious danger to women'.
But in a publicly funded county court case, the former debt collector sued Melody Goymer for clearing his flat - where he raped his latest victim - following his arrest. The court ruled grandmother Mrs Goymer, 60, had unlawfully terminated Cope's tenancy by failing to seek a court order for possession of the flat in Hailsham, Sussex. The judgement was described yesterday as 'shocking' and 'sickening' by critics, including a rape charity.
Cope was flanked by two prison custody officers as he complained that items including a 20in TV, computer desks, coffee table and tin openers had been put into storage. He admitted Mrs Goymer, who rents three properties in the Eastbourne area, was a 'very good' landlady but said he had been 'angry and stressed' by the eviction. 'It has caused problems between me and my wife,' he told Eastbourne County Court. 'On two or three occasions she has stopped phoning and writing to me because of it. 'I've just been banging my head against a brick wall since I've been in prison.'
Cope - who was living alone in the flat after moving out of the home he shared with his wife, Ann - was first jailed for rape for four years in 1976. He received eight years for rape in 1979, five years in 1985 for indecent assault and another ten years for attempted rape in 1990. He is currently serving a life sentence for attacking a 19-year-old woman on April 25, 2006.
Judge Austin Issard-Davies, sitting at Hove Crown Court in Sussex in June last year, ordered him to serve a minimum of four-and-a-half years for the latest offence before being considered for parole. He told Cope: 'I have no doubt that you are a serious danger to women.'
Mrs Goymer told Eastbourne County Court how she cleared Cope's two-bedroom flat days after he was remanded in custody in December 2006. She said: 'We had no contact from him and didn't know where he was so we used a pass key to get into the flat which we found in a terrible condition. 'It looked as if he had done a runner and just left. There was no electricity and the food in the fridge freezer had rotted away.'
Deputy District Judge Smith awarded Cope $1500 and ordered Mrs Goymer to return his goods within 14 days during the hearing on Thursday. He said: 'He was not thrown out on the street and he may not have been physically removed but his belongings were. 'What would have happened if he had been released on bail or found not guilty? He was unlawfully evicted and his possessions were wrongly removed and wrongly retained.' The amount of costs to be awarded to Cope is to be decided at a later date after the judge said the $26,000 claimed by his lawyers was 'awfully high'.
Afterwards, a Rape Crisis spokeswoman said: 'This case is shocking. 'We are outraged that the same system that can reduce the compensation for victims of rape can financially compensate a serial rapist who has committed violent sexual crimes against women over the last 20 years.' A TaxPayer's Alliances spokesman said: 'All right-minded people will be sickened their hard-earned tax is being used in this way. 'This case demonstrates how courts routinely waste money and how judges often make judgments that go against natural justice.'
Source
"Green" rules helped crash British airliner
By Ray Massey
British pilots have called on regulators to reconsider some of the environmentally friendly requirements of planes, to prevent a repetition of the harrowing crash landing of a passenger jet at Heathrow in January. They said that green" rules demanding that planes burn less fuel could cause planes to crash, after investigators reported that a rush of ice crystals in fuel lines caused the British Airways accident, in which three passengers received minor injuries.
The ice choked off the fuel supply of the plane, which was carrying 135 passengers, less than a minute before the touchdown. The results of the eight-month investigation immediately sparked calls for world-wide safety checks.
David Reynolds, head of Britain's pilots' union, said: "These rules need to be looked at again. Fuel flow is an important factor in the safe running of an aircraft engine. With reduced burn, that means that less fuel is circulating, which makes it easier for water to separate and turn into ice "
Referring to the BA crash, Mr Reynolds said: "In this case, this was combined with very low temperatures and perhaps fuel which may have had a bit more water than usual - even though it complied with international standards. It was an unfortunate combination of circumstances but it does pose questions for all manufacturers, regulators and airlines.
In the wake of the incident, every long-haul passenger plane in the world faces strict new safety checks. They could also be ordered to fly at lower altitudes after investigators admitted they had no idea how many other planes may be vulnerable to the "previously unforeseen threat".
The investigators said they still did not know exactly how ice could have formed in the 777 - because it had not done so before during millions of flight hours. They now think a unique combination of three events conspired to create the conditions that choked off the fuel. They are:
* The length of time the fuel stayed in the tank at below freezing point in unusually cold weather over Siberia.
* The fact the plane was flying at a steady cruising speed and altitude for a long period, which allowed ice to form in the tank because it was using minimal fuel.
* The demand for a burst of fuel to the engines on landing, which went unmet as the ice blocked the pipes.
Emergency directives have been issued to all airlines, including BA, which operate Boeing 777s. They feature stop-gap measures to prevent a repeat of the conditions which led to the crash on January 17. This includes a requirement for planes to fly on maximum power mid-flight to prevent the long-term build up of ice in the tanks. One expert said, that in motoring terms, they have to "gun the accelerator", even when that is not necessary. Asking pilots to do this inevitably increased fuel consumption. With costs soaring, this may affect ticket prices.
The above report appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 7 September, 2008
It's official: you can be fat and fit
Contrary to the government hysteria, being obese is not an indicator of ill-health, and it's far from a death sentence.
One of the more depressing things about the constant talk of an obesity epidemic that is killing us all, and most particularly our children, is the media's constant readiness to give room to almost any nonsense so long as the word fat appears in it, while ignoring significant research that fails to fit the now-conventional wisdom that `being fat = death'.
Recently this trend has been on display in the way in which the British press has uncritically reported the views of Professor David Hunter of Durham University. Described by the Daily Telegraph as a `leading public health expert', Hunter has claimed that the UK National Health Service (NHS) will become unaffordable due to the costs of treating obesity-related diseases, opined that obesity requires `strong action' from government, and demanded that the government require tobacco-like warnings on foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar. Claiming that the obesity epidemic posed as significant a threat as terrorism, Hunter derided the official response as nothing more than `piddling'. According to Hunter, half the British population will be obese by 2032 (1).
Yet just days before Hunter's outburst, the quality dailies, with the exception of the Telegraph, which published a small piece deep inside the paper, failed to cover two new studies published in the same issue of Archives of Internal Medicine which give the lie to a good many of today's doomsday scenarios as well as to much of the government's propaganda about overweight and obesity, not to say its `obesity strategy'.
The studies come from Germany and the US. The US study found that despite claims, such as Hunter's, about the dangers of obesity and the risks of the diabetic obese overwhelming the NHS, roughly half of overweight people in the US - about 36million people - do not have raised blood pressure or cholesterol levels. The same applies to about a third of the people - 20million - who are categorised as `obese'. Moreover, about a quarter of normal-weight individuals have high blood pressure or problematic levels of cholesterol. As the authors concluded, `the present data suggest a high prevalence of cardiometabolic abnormality clustering among normal-weight individuals, as well as a high prevalence of obese individuals who are metabolically healthy.' The conclusions were based on a representative sample of over 5,400 adults surveyed in the National Health and Nutrition Examinations from 1999 to 2004 (2).
The German study found that insulin sensitivity was not statistically different in obese individuals compared with normal weight individuals. In effect, the image of hordes of fatties with metabolic problems leading to high levels of heart disease and diabetes is a myth. As the German research team put it, a `metabolically benign obesity that is not accompanied by insulin resistance and early atherosclerosis exists in humans' (3).
This is indeed unwelcome news to the obesity crusaders, for it shows just how scientifically unjustified their claims are, how generally untruthful the government's claims about the dangers of being overweight are, how compromised is their health advice about overweight and obesity, and how unwarranted are the calls for draconian government interventions such as tobacco-like warnings on so-called unhealthy foods. As MaryFran Sowers, one of the co-authors of the US study, told the New York Times: `We use "overweight" almost indiscriminately sometimes. But there is lots of individual variation within that, and we need to be cognizant of that as we think about what our health messages should be.'
Of course, none of this should come as a surprise since there is considerable evidence that `fat-and-fit' is not an oxymoron. For instance, last December the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study which followed 2,600 American adults aged over 60 for 12 years. Two striking findings emerged from the study. First, as in other studies, the overweight - that is those with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 to 30 - had slightly lower death rates than those of `normal' weight. Second, levels of fitness, not BMI, was the most reliable predictor of death. Those with the lowest levels of fitness were significantly more likely to die, regardless of body weight.
Despite the incessant claims that the government's obesity strategy is `evidence-based', don't expect to hear about any of this research from anyone connected with the Department of Health. After all, having invested so much time and money in spreading fears, it would be a shame now to have to stop picking on the overweight and obese and find a genuine health problem on which to focus.
Source
British Labour Party parliamentarian calls for curbs on migrants
The leading Labour rebel, Frank Field, has teamed up with senior Tories to demand a cap on the number of immigrants settling in Britain. In a move that will alarm Downing Street, Field will tomorrow become the first prominent Labour figure to tackle Gordon Brown openly over the explosive issue of immigration. A former welfare minister under Tony Blair, Field will join Nicholas Soames, the Tory MP, to call for a huge reduction in the numbers of non-European Union workers who settle permanently in Britain. Soames, a former minister under John Major, is a hate figure among many Labour MPs. Together with the pressure group Migrationwatch, Field and his allies will launch the first cross-party parliamentary immigration group. The move has tacit support from at least one government minister.
Field aims to push Brown to end Britain's open door immigration policy, which he says is costing British jobs and is deeply unpopular with voters. The Labour maverick led the backbench rebellion over Brown's controversial abolition of the 10p tax rate. His latest intervention will be seen by Downing Street as likely to cause division within Labour ranks by challenging Brown on a key area of Labour policy. Until now the idea of imposing any kind of immigration quota has been taboo in Labour circles. Field believes that unchecked immigration is placing an intolerable burden on schools, transport, the health service and the environment. He will cite figures showing that the rise in immigration means that Britain will need to build seven new cities the size of Birmingham by 2031.
A forecast by the European commission predicts that Britain's population will rise from 60.9m today to 77m within 50 years, making it Europe's most populous country. In 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, an estimated 591,000 people arrived in the UK. About 400,000 left the country, leaving net immigration at 191,000.
Field will call on Brown to balance the number of those coming to settle in Britain with those emigrating. He will propose that all but a tiny minority of the skilled foreigners from outside the EU coming to work here on new four-year work permits should leave as soon as their permits expire. Under the present system, most stay on and are allowed to settle permanently. "The group believe that this should be the central aim of immigration policy. Only a small number would be allowed to settle and that number would be capped," said a source close to Field.
Yesterday one government minister said he privately supported the move. "We absolutely have to have a cap, otherwise how can you control it? Any sensible person will say that predictions that the population will grow to nearly 80m is unsustainable," he said. "If you don't have a cap on those who stay after their work permits expire, you can't control the long-term trend."
Field has spoken about the need to control immigration from eastern Europe. But this is the first time that any Labour figure has called for a quota on migrants coming to settle. Ministers have consistently dismissed Tory calls for a quota, saying it would make little difference as most migrants come from the EU and have a legal right to stay. But that view is challenged by Migrationwatch, which has found that immigration from the EU will soon balance out. The pressure of immigration in future will come from non-EU countries, including those in Africa and Asia. Unofficial estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 foreigners a year who come to Britain under work permit schemes decide to flout immigration rules and stay on when their permits expire.
The Home Office has recently introduced an Australian points-based system designed to restrict the number of non-EU migrants entering under the work permit scheme to those who have proper qualifications and experience. But the Tories - and Field - believe that the scheme is still an open door because it does not set an annual limit on numbers. David Cameron, the Conservative party leader, said last year that he wanted to reduce "substantially" the number of non-EU immigrants. He has promised to announce a specific limit in the party's next election manifesto.
Field will emphasise that he does not want a limit on the numbers of new migrants per se. Instead he plans to target the more important issue of placing a cap on those who settle here permanently. Field's friends say his move is designed to reflect genuine concern among working-class people in his Birkenhead constituency. Last December the MP revealed new figures which showed that most new jobs were going to migrants. The figures made a mockery of Brown's declaration that he wanted "British jobs for British workers". The Statistics Commission said that 1.4m workers born abroad had taken jobs in Britain since 1997 - up to 81% of the 1.7m new jobs.
The new group believes it has backing from business leaders such as the Institute of Directors and the CBI. Field expects to receive substantial public support. Previous opinion polls show about half of existing migrants felt there should be curbs on future immigrants coming to Britain.
A Home Office spokesperson last night said: "Migration is good for employment and good for the economy - new migrants contributed œ6 billion to the UK economy in 2006 alone. "The tough Australian-style points system means only those Britain needs and no more can come here and it's flexible - allowing us to raise or lower the bar according to the needs of business and the country as a whole. When setting the pass mark, we will listen to the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee, an independent panel of economists. "All migrants must speak English and obey the law if they want to gain citizenship."
Source
It's the mavericks who squelch debate??
Blame the victim! A loony British-Indian academic blames the VICTIMS (not the perpetrators) of censorship for shutting down debate:
Somehow this stupid bint equates opening up topics for discussion with "closing off the possibility of sustained and knowledgable debate". It's only because these topics are taboo that it needs mavericks to raise them! I think Matthew 7:3-5 is again relevant here. She should read it.
The writer is a woman with an Indian name. The name does not sound Muslim but her logic does.
I guess I can unravel her thinking, though. "Sustained and knowledgable debate" is debate that comes to the "right" conclusions -- and she knows what those conclusions are. So anything that upsets her neat little assumptions is disruptive and upsetting and should be STOPPED!
You can't beat British law for insanity
A serial rapist has been awarded compensation after his landlady cleared his flat of his belongings while he was awaiting trial. Thomas Cope, 55, tied up his teenage victim with a computer mouse cord and raped her twice before letting her go after an eight hour ordeal. He was jailed for life after a judge branded him 'a serious danger to women'.
But in a publicly funded county court case, the former debt collector sued Melody Goymer for clearing his flat - where he raped his latest victim - following his arrest. The court ruled grandmother Mrs Goymer, 60, had unlawfully terminated Cope's tenancy by failing to seek a court order for possession of the flat in Hailsham, Sussex. The judgement was described yesterday as 'shocking' and 'sickening' by critics, including a rape charity.
Cope was flanked by two prison custody officers as he complained that items including a 20in TV, computer desks, coffee table and tin openers had been put into storage. He admitted Mrs Goymer, who rents three properties in the Eastbourne area, was a 'very good' landlady but said he had been 'angry and stressed' by the eviction. 'It has caused problems between me and my wife,' he told Eastbourne County Court. 'On two or three occasions she has stopped phoning and writing to me because of it. 'I've just been banging my head against a brick wall since I've been in prison.'
Cope - who was living alone in the flat after moving out of the home he shared with his wife, Ann - was first jailed for rape for four years in 1976. He received eight years for rape in 1979, five years in 1985 for indecent assault and another ten years for attempted rape in 1990. He is currently serving a life sentence for attacking a 19-year-old woman on April 25, 2006.
Judge Austin Issard-Davies, sitting at Hove Crown Court in Sussex in June last year, ordered him to serve a minimum of four-and-a-half years for the latest offence before being considered for parole. He told Cope: 'I have no doubt that you are a serious danger to women.'
Mrs Goymer told Eastbourne County Court how she cleared Cope's two-bedroom flat days after he was remanded in custody in December 2006. She said: 'We had no contact from him and didn't know where he was so we used a pass key to get into the flat which we found in a terrible condition. 'It looked as if he had done a runner and just left. There was no electricity and the food in the fridge freezer had rotted away.'
Deputy District Judge Smith awarded Cope $1500 and ordered Mrs Goymer to return his goods within 14 days during the hearing on Thursday. He said: 'He was not thrown out on the street and he may not have been physically removed but his belongings were. 'What would have happened if he had been released on bail or found not guilty? He was unlawfully evicted and his possessions were wrongly removed and wrongly retained.' The amount of costs to be awarded to Cope is to be decided at a later date after the judge said the $26,000 claimed by his lawyers was 'awfully high'.
Afterwards, a Rape Crisis spokeswoman said: 'This case is shocking. 'We are outraged that the same system that can reduce the compensation for victims of rape can financially compensate a serial rapist who has committed violent sexual crimes against women over the last 20 years.' A TaxPayer's Alliances spokesman said: 'All right-minded people will be sickened their hard-earned tax is being used in this way. 'This case demonstrates how courts routinely waste money and how judges often make judgments that go against natural justice.'
Source
"Green" rules helped crash British airliner
By Ray Massey
British pilots have called on regulators to reconsider some of the environmentally friendly requirements of planes, to prevent a repetition of the harrowing crash landing of a passenger jet at Heathrow in January. They said that green" rules demanding that planes burn less fuel could cause planes to crash, after investigators reported that a rush of ice crystals in fuel lines caused the British Airways accident, in which three passengers received minor injuries.
The ice choked off the fuel supply of the plane, which was carrying 135 passengers, less than a minute before the touchdown. The results of the eight-month investigation immediately sparked calls for world-wide safety checks.
David Reynolds, head of Britain's pilots' union, said: "These rules need to be looked at again. Fuel flow is an important factor in the safe running of an aircraft engine. With reduced burn, that means that less fuel is circulating, which makes it easier for water to separate and turn into ice "
Referring to the BA crash, Mr Reynolds said: "In this case, this was combined with very low temperatures and perhaps fuel which may have had a bit more water than usual - even though it complied with international standards. It was an unfortunate combination of circumstances but it does pose questions for all manufacturers, regulators and airlines.
In the wake of the incident, every long-haul passenger plane in the world faces strict new safety checks. They could also be ordered to fly at lower altitudes after investigators admitted they had no idea how many other planes may be vulnerable to the "previously unforeseen threat".
The investigators said they still did not know exactly how ice could have formed in the 777 - because it had not done so before during millions of flight hours. They now think a unique combination of three events conspired to create the conditions that choked off the fuel. They are:
* The length of time the fuel stayed in the tank at below freezing point in unusually cold weather over Siberia.
* The fact the plane was flying at a steady cruising speed and altitude for a long period, which allowed ice to form in the tank because it was using minimal fuel.
* The demand for a burst of fuel to the engines on landing, which went unmet as the ice blocked the pipes.
Emergency directives have been issued to all airlines, including BA, which operate Boeing 777s. They feature stop-gap measures to prevent a repeat of the conditions which led to the crash on January 17. This includes a requirement for planes to fly on maximum power mid-flight to prevent the long-term build up of ice in the tanks. One expert said, that in motoring terms, they have to "gun the accelerator", even when that is not necessary. Asking pilots to do this inevitably increased fuel consumption. With costs soaring, this may affect ticket prices.
The above report appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 7 September, 2008
It's official: you can be fat and fit
Contrary to the government hysteria, being obese is not an indicator of ill-health, and it's far from a death sentence.
One of the more depressing things about the constant talk of an obesity epidemic that is killing us all, and most particularly our children, is the media's constant readiness to give room to almost any nonsense so long as the word fat appears in it, while ignoring significant research that fails to fit the now-conventional wisdom that `being fat = death'.
Recently this trend has been on display in the way in which the British press has uncritically reported the views of Professor David Hunter of Durham University. Described by the Daily Telegraph as a `leading public health expert', Hunter has claimed that the UK National Health Service (NHS) will become unaffordable due to the costs of treating obesity-related diseases, opined that obesity requires `strong action' from government, and demanded that the government require tobacco-like warnings on foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar. Claiming that the obesity epidemic posed as significant a threat as terrorism, Hunter derided the official response as nothing more than `piddling'. According to Hunter, half the British population will be obese by 2032 (1).
Yet just days before Hunter's outburst, the quality dailies, with the exception of the Telegraph, which published a small piece deep inside the paper, failed to cover two new studies published in the same issue of Archives of Internal Medicine which give the lie to a good many of today's doomsday scenarios as well as to much of the government's propaganda about overweight and obesity, not to say its `obesity strategy'.
The studies come from Germany and the US. The US study found that despite claims, such as Hunter's, about the dangers of obesity and the risks of the diabetic obese overwhelming the NHS, roughly half of overweight people in the US - about 36million people - do not have raised blood pressure or cholesterol levels. The same applies to about a third of the people - 20million - who are categorised as `obese'. Moreover, about a quarter of normal-weight individuals have high blood pressure or problematic levels of cholesterol. As the authors concluded, `the present data suggest a high prevalence of cardiometabolic abnormality clustering among normal-weight individuals, as well as a high prevalence of obese individuals who are metabolically healthy.' The conclusions were based on a representative sample of over 5,400 adults surveyed in the National Health and Nutrition Examinations from 1999 to 2004 (2).
The German study found that insulin sensitivity was not statistically different in obese individuals compared with normal weight individuals. In effect, the image of hordes of fatties with metabolic problems leading to high levels of heart disease and diabetes is a myth. As the German research team put it, a `metabolically benign obesity that is not accompanied by insulin resistance and early atherosclerosis exists in humans' (3).
This is indeed unwelcome news to the obesity crusaders, for it shows just how scientifically unjustified their claims are, how generally untruthful the government's claims about the dangers of being overweight are, how compromised is their health advice about overweight and obesity, and how unwarranted are the calls for draconian government interventions such as tobacco-like warnings on so-called unhealthy foods. As MaryFran Sowers, one of the co-authors of the US study, told the New York Times: `We use "overweight" almost indiscriminately sometimes. But there is lots of individual variation within that, and we need to be cognizant of that as we think about what our health messages should be.'
Of course, none of this should come as a surprise since there is considerable evidence that `fat-and-fit' is not an oxymoron. For instance, last December the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study which followed 2,600 American adults aged over 60 for 12 years. Two striking findings emerged from the study. First, as in other studies, the overweight - that is those with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 to 30 - had slightly lower death rates than those of `normal' weight. Second, levels of fitness, not BMI, was the most reliable predictor of death. Those with the lowest levels of fitness were significantly more likely to die, regardless of body weight.
Despite the incessant claims that the government's obesity strategy is `evidence-based', don't expect to hear about any of this research from anyone connected with the Department of Health. After all, having invested so much time and money in spreading fears, it would be a shame now to have to stop picking on the overweight and obese and find a genuine health problem on which to focus.
Source
British Labour Party parliamentarian calls for curbs on migrants
The leading Labour rebel, Frank Field, has teamed up with senior Tories to demand a cap on the number of immigrants settling in Britain. In a move that will alarm Downing Street, Field will tomorrow become the first prominent Labour figure to tackle Gordon Brown openly over the explosive issue of immigration. A former welfare minister under Tony Blair, Field will join Nicholas Soames, the Tory MP, to call for a huge reduction in the numbers of non-European Union workers who settle permanently in Britain. Soames, a former minister under John Major, is a hate figure among many Labour MPs. Together with the pressure group Migrationwatch, Field and his allies will launch the first cross-party parliamentary immigration group. The move has tacit support from at least one government minister.
Field aims to push Brown to end Britain's open door immigration policy, which he says is costing British jobs and is deeply unpopular with voters. The Labour maverick led the backbench rebellion over Brown's controversial abolition of the 10p tax rate. His latest intervention will be seen by Downing Street as likely to cause division within Labour ranks by challenging Brown on a key area of Labour policy. Until now the idea of imposing any kind of immigration quota has been taboo in Labour circles. Field believes that unchecked immigration is placing an intolerable burden on schools, transport, the health service and the environment. He will cite figures showing that the rise in immigration means that Britain will need to build seven new cities the size of Birmingham by 2031.
A forecast by the European commission predicts that Britain's population will rise from 60.9m today to 77m within 50 years, making it Europe's most populous country. In 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, an estimated 591,000 people arrived in the UK. About 400,000 left the country, leaving net immigration at 191,000.
Field will call on Brown to balance the number of those coming to settle in Britain with those emigrating. He will propose that all but a tiny minority of the skilled foreigners from outside the EU coming to work here on new four-year work permits should leave as soon as their permits expire. Under the present system, most stay on and are allowed to settle permanently. "The group believe that this should be the central aim of immigration policy. Only a small number would be allowed to settle and that number would be capped," said a source close to Field.
Yesterday one government minister said he privately supported the move. "We absolutely have to have a cap, otherwise how can you control it? Any sensible person will say that predictions that the population will grow to nearly 80m is unsustainable," he said. "If you don't have a cap on those who stay after their work permits expire, you can't control the long-term trend."
Field has spoken about the need to control immigration from eastern Europe. But this is the first time that any Labour figure has called for a quota on migrants coming to settle. Ministers have consistently dismissed Tory calls for a quota, saying it would make little difference as most migrants come from the EU and have a legal right to stay. But that view is challenged by Migrationwatch, which has found that immigration from the EU will soon balance out. The pressure of immigration in future will come from non-EU countries, including those in Africa and Asia. Unofficial estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 foreigners a year who come to Britain under work permit schemes decide to flout immigration rules and stay on when their permits expire.
The Home Office has recently introduced an Australian points-based system designed to restrict the number of non-EU migrants entering under the work permit scheme to those who have proper qualifications and experience. But the Tories - and Field - believe that the scheme is still an open door because it does not set an annual limit on numbers. David Cameron, the Conservative party leader, said last year that he wanted to reduce "substantially" the number of non-EU immigrants. He has promised to announce a specific limit in the party's next election manifesto.
Field will emphasise that he does not want a limit on the numbers of new migrants per se. Instead he plans to target the more important issue of placing a cap on those who settle here permanently. Field's friends say his move is designed to reflect genuine concern among working-class people in his Birkenhead constituency. Last December the MP revealed new figures which showed that most new jobs were going to migrants. The figures made a mockery of Brown's declaration that he wanted "British jobs for British workers". The Statistics Commission said that 1.4m workers born abroad had taken jobs in Britain since 1997 - up to 81% of the 1.7m new jobs.
The new group believes it has backing from business leaders such as the Institute of Directors and the CBI. Field expects to receive substantial public support. Previous opinion polls show about half of existing migrants felt there should be curbs on future immigrants coming to Britain.
A Home Office spokesperson last night said: "Migration is good for employment and good for the economy - new migrants contributed œ6 billion to the UK economy in 2006 alone. "The tough Australian-style points system means only those Britain needs and no more can come here and it's flexible - allowing us to raise or lower the bar according to the needs of business and the country as a whole. When setting the pass mark, we will listen to the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee, an independent panel of economists. "All migrants must speak English and obey the law if they want to gain citizenship."
Source
It's the mavericks who squelch debate??
Blame the victim! A loony British-Indian academic blames the VICTIMS (not the perpetrators) of censorship for shutting down debate:
"A troubling collaboration between parts of the media and some academics and writers becomes visible here. Pervasive silences or gaps in knowledge around difficult issues of race, class and difference may be periodically breached by the Maverick Don, that mythologised figure to whom the media seem irresistibly drawn. Rather than a thoughtful intervention, this apparently eccentric academic or writer will toss out a provocative and authoritative pronouncement that appears to fly delightfully in the face of "political correctness".
Such putatively daring truth claims ("Islam is the problem", "Racism is natural", "Men are being emasculated by women") allow for silences to be broken dramatically and temporarily, while closing off the possibility of sustained and knowledgable debate. Pronouncement, outcry, apology - so unfolds the soap opera after which we return to business as usual. Meanwhile truly substantial and necessary scholarship on race and culture, at Cambridge included, simply drops off the radar
Source
Somehow this stupid bint equates opening up topics for discussion with "closing off the possibility of sustained and knowledgable debate". It's only because these topics are taboo that it needs mavericks to raise them! I think Matthew 7:3-5 is again relevant here. She should read it.
The writer is a woman with an Indian name. The name does not sound Muslim but her logic does.
I guess I can unravel her thinking, though. "Sustained and knowledgable debate" is debate that comes to the "right" conclusions -- and she knows what those conclusions are. So anything that upsets her neat little assumptions is disruptive and upsetting and should be STOPPED!
Monday, September 08, 2008
Stupid British "human rights" laws give free rein to a monster
An Australian-raised English murderer and serial rapist sent back to Britain after his release from jail faces life behind bars after a sex attack on a pensioner. Simon Wilson, 50, who was deported after his release from a Queensland jail in January, yesterday pleaded guilty in a London court to three charges, including rape, relating to an April attack. Wilson migrated to Canberra with his family as a toddler. After becoming a drifter, he committed 77 offences in Australia, including a killing and six rapes - one in Melbourne.
He was released in January after serving 16 years for the murder of Mackay spinster Joan Randell and deported under tough Australian laws on foreigners who abuse their residency. The detective who dealt with the case described Wilson as a "freak" who needed constant supervision and should never be allowed to return to society. But in Britain, his case was found not to meet criteria for any control orders, leaving him free to go where he pleased. Authorities were also powerless to force Wilson to sign the sex-offender register when he refused to do so. He agreed to meet police and agencies regularly, though lack of resources meant he could not be placed under 24-hour surveillance.
In April, Wilson attacked a 71-year-old woman on her doorstep in central London, slashing her face and body as he tried to rape her. Yesterday, Wilson stared at the ground as he mumbled his guilty pleas in an Australian accent. Prosecutor Constance Briscoe told the court: "We will certainly be making submissions at sentence that this defendant is highly dangerous and ought not to be released in the future." Wilson was remanded in custody until October 10 for a pre-sentence report.
In 2005, 66-year-old Robert Excell returned after 37 years in an Australian jail for child sex convictions. In March, prolific pedophile Raymond Horne, 61, was deported from Australia, where he had lived for more than 50 years. This is in marked contrast to Britain, where criminals such as Italian-born Learco Chindamo, who moved to Britain aged five and went on to kill teacher Philip Lawrence, cannot be deported because of his human rights.
Tory MP Philip Davies said: "Our policies in this country should be more in tune with the way the Australians do it. "They have a zero-tolerance approach while we pussyfoot around. We are far too bothered about the human rights of criminals rather than the rights of citizens."
Source
The Russian bear submerging Greenie concerns in Britain
Jeremy Leggett has an article up on Comment is Free urging people to "Beware the bear trap". Essentially, his case is that we need to pile on the renewable capacity in order to prevent Russia being able to use its fossil fuel resources as a weapon against us.
The first thing to note is that, while Western Europe is in an unenviable position relying on Russia for its gas, the Russian position isn't quite as strong as it looks. Each time oil and gas resources are used as a weapon they lose their impact. By making it clear that supplies aren't reliable you encourage your customer to put more effort into seeking alternatives or other sources of supply.
There is no doubt that recent Kremlin bolshiness has strengthened the case for Western Europe to revive its nuclear industry, for example, which could well mean threats to the gas supply are less potent next time around. We can only hope that there is someone in the European political elite with the basic strategic vision needed. Business, at least, will probably put more effort into exploiting alternative sources of hydrocarbons like Canadian tar sands.
The major problem with Leggett's article is that he sees renewables as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. In reality, one of the reasons why Britain is in such trouble is that over the last ten years we've had a Government with a fondness for airy, unrealistic fantasies that renewables can provide a substantial portion of the electricity we need. Our energy policy has been based, for a decade, on the ludicrous idea that a combination of gas and renewable energy can provide the stable, affordable and secure capacity we need.
While renewables can provide power, albeit often at great cost, their unreliability means they can't provide significant capacity when you need it (peak load capacity). The situation is stated pretty clearly in this REF report (PDF, pg. 94). As such, their contribution to energy security is negligible. If Russia were to cut off the gas all the wind power in the world would do pretty much nothing stop the lights going out on a cold evening. Other renewables have, at present, a limited ability to provide remotely affordable power. Unless unreliable or exceptionally expensive electricity is felt to be acceptable renewables can't deliver energy security.
So long as politicians listen to people like Jeremy Leggett, and his renewable energy fairy tales, serious solutions like Enhanced Oil Recovery in the North Sea and building coal and nuclear capacity won't get the attention they deserve. By the time we wake up, it might be too late.
Source
AMBULANCE-CHASING GREEN/LEFTISTS LOVE A HURRICANE
Spare a thought for anyone on the Environment beat at the Guardian newspaper. It must be like working for Pravda during the Breznhev era. There, as the economy became ever more dysfunctional, reporters were obliged to pump out ever more absurd stories saluting record productivity and efficiency records. The triumph over capitalism was imminent!
A different time and a different place: but at the Graun [Guardian], the ideology is "Climate Change" - and the number of narratives permissible is similarly narrow, and rigidly defined from the top. For as regular readers of the paper will know, the climate can only change in one direction: for the worse. Apocalypse is imminent!
It's in this context you should spare a thought for David Adam, the newspaper's environment correspondent. He certainly has our sympathies. With hurricane Gustav set to devastate New Orleans, Adam was tasked with the job of showing how it's all down to Global Warming.
Tasteless ambulance-chasing like this is now commonplace. Both Believers and Skeptics are both guilty of making too much of the latest weather, and extrapolating from it a trend that suits them. Weather is not climate. But extreme weather tends to excite one side rather more than the other: because it follows the simple moral fable in which man's wickedness causes unnatural events. This pagan superstition was evident three years ago, the last time New Orleans took a battering. Barely a week had elapsed after Katrina struck, before Al Gore addressed the nation to blame it all on sinful mankind for causing Global Warming. Gore quoted Chamberlain - "this is only the beginning of the reckoning" - and for good measure, castigated American's "moral health".
So from the outset, it must have dawned on our heroic Graun correspondent that he had a task worthy of Hercules. Adam couldn't quote anything that contradicted the theological foundations of the orthodoxy that the occasion demanded - since that, presumably, would result in a rapid descent into Farringdon Road's piranha tank. But the problem is, there just isn't much evidence to support the idea that a warmer climate means worse weather, and the closer you look, the harder this is to prove. And so his soul-searching struggle is laid bare.
Adams begins confidently - "Meteorologists are predicting a more active hurricane season than usual this year..." But realises it's a lost cause almost immediately. "... but there is no way to know whether global warming has caused an individual event such as a hurricane, or whether it has made such storms worse," he writes.
That's not a promising start - and certainly not what the editors and eco-activists want to read. So like a hastily-constructed sea defence, the doubt is rapidly sandbagged: "On the other hand, some scientists argue that severe storms such as Gustav are more likely in a warming world, because warmer seas make more powerful storms," he continues. Phew.
Actually, it's more accurate to say that while non-scientists, such as Gore, are only too keen to draw links between warming and extreme weather (remember, man is responsible for all things unnatural), recent years have seen fading support for the notion.
Tom Knutson of NOAA's fluid dynamics lab published a paper this year arguing that a warmer climate means fewer hurricanes: 18 per cent fewer by the end of the century, he proposed. In another 2008 study, NOAA's Chris Landsea saw "nothing in the US hurricane damage record that indicates global warming has caused a significant increase in destruction along our coasts". And even the media's favourite hurricane doom-monger, Kerry Emanuel at MIT, an advocate of the link between a warmer climate and nastier storms for 20 years, is surprised by what his models now predict: a warmer planet means fewer hurricanes in 200 years.
(A caveat: like the much vaunted Global Climate Models (GCMs) Knutson and Emanuel's own models involve "parameterization". What this means is that left alone, computer models produce completely ridiculous results: "too many hurricanes", is how Knutson puts it. So the models are frigged massaged to produce something that's plausibly scary, but not so ridiculous that people notice. Such is the way "science" is conducted in the 21st Century...)
But back at El Graun, the unspeakable remains unpublishable. So instead of outlining the recent work, we get such platitudes such as "if anything, the science has become fuzzier in the years after Katrina", and "it is also unclear how reliably historical records of hurricane strength can be compared", and "no firm conclusion can be made at this point".
Well, wasn't that worthwhile? At least the party line remains intact. There's a slight problem, however. When the information needed to look beyond the "fuzziness" is at one's fingertips, and can be found in only a few seconds with Google, why would anyone want to bother with a report? There's one casualty of global warming that no one seems to have discussed yet - newspapers.
Source
An Australian-raised English murderer and serial rapist sent back to Britain after his release from jail faces life behind bars after a sex attack on a pensioner. Simon Wilson, 50, who was deported after his release from a Queensland jail in January, yesterday pleaded guilty in a London court to three charges, including rape, relating to an April attack. Wilson migrated to Canberra with his family as a toddler. After becoming a drifter, he committed 77 offences in Australia, including a killing and six rapes - one in Melbourne.
He was released in January after serving 16 years for the murder of Mackay spinster Joan Randell and deported under tough Australian laws on foreigners who abuse their residency. The detective who dealt with the case described Wilson as a "freak" who needed constant supervision and should never be allowed to return to society. But in Britain, his case was found not to meet criteria for any control orders, leaving him free to go where he pleased. Authorities were also powerless to force Wilson to sign the sex-offender register when he refused to do so. He agreed to meet police and agencies regularly, though lack of resources meant he could not be placed under 24-hour surveillance.
In April, Wilson attacked a 71-year-old woman on her doorstep in central London, slashing her face and body as he tried to rape her. Yesterday, Wilson stared at the ground as he mumbled his guilty pleas in an Australian accent. Prosecutor Constance Briscoe told the court: "We will certainly be making submissions at sentence that this defendant is highly dangerous and ought not to be released in the future." Wilson was remanded in custody until October 10 for a pre-sentence report.
In 2005, 66-year-old Robert Excell returned after 37 years in an Australian jail for child sex convictions. In March, prolific pedophile Raymond Horne, 61, was deported from Australia, where he had lived for more than 50 years. This is in marked contrast to Britain, where criminals such as Italian-born Learco Chindamo, who moved to Britain aged five and went on to kill teacher Philip Lawrence, cannot be deported because of his human rights.
Tory MP Philip Davies said: "Our policies in this country should be more in tune with the way the Australians do it. "They have a zero-tolerance approach while we pussyfoot around. We are far too bothered about the human rights of criminals rather than the rights of citizens."
Source
The Russian bear submerging Greenie concerns in Britain
Jeremy Leggett has an article up on Comment is Free urging people to "Beware the bear trap". Essentially, his case is that we need to pile on the renewable capacity in order to prevent Russia being able to use its fossil fuel resources as a weapon against us.
The first thing to note is that, while Western Europe is in an unenviable position relying on Russia for its gas, the Russian position isn't quite as strong as it looks. Each time oil and gas resources are used as a weapon they lose their impact. By making it clear that supplies aren't reliable you encourage your customer to put more effort into seeking alternatives or other sources of supply.
There is no doubt that recent Kremlin bolshiness has strengthened the case for Western Europe to revive its nuclear industry, for example, which could well mean threats to the gas supply are less potent next time around. We can only hope that there is someone in the European political elite with the basic strategic vision needed. Business, at least, will probably put more effort into exploiting alternative sources of hydrocarbons like Canadian tar sands.
The major problem with Leggett's article is that he sees renewables as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. In reality, one of the reasons why Britain is in such trouble is that over the last ten years we've had a Government with a fondness for airy, unrealistic fantasies that renewables can provide a substantial portion of the electricity we need. Our energy policy has been based, for a decade, on the ludicrous idea that a combination of gas and renewable energy can provide the stable, affordable and secure capacity we need.
While renewables can provide power, albeit often at great cost, their unreliability means they can't provide significant capacity when you need it (peak load capacity). The situation is stated pretty clearly in this REF report (PDF, pg. 94). As such, their contribution to energy security is negligible. If Russia were to cut off the gas all the wind power in the world would do pretty much nothing stop the lights going out on a cold evening. Other renewables have, at present, a limited ability to provide remotely affordable power. Unless unreliable or exceptionally expensive electricity is felt to be acceptable renewables can't deliver energy security.
So long as politicians listen to people like Jeremy Leggett, and his renewable energy fairy tales, serious solutions like Enhanced Oil Recovery in the North Sea and building coal and nuclear capacity won't get the attention they deserve. By the time we wake up, it might be too late.
Source
AMBULANCE-CHASING GREEN/LEFTISTS LOVE A HURRICANE
Spare a thought for anyone on the Environment beat at the Guardian newspaper. It must be like working for Pravda during the Breznhev era. There, as the economy became ever more dysfunctional, reporters were obliged to pump out ever more absurd stories saluting record productivity and efficiency records. The triumph over capitalism was imminent!
A different time and a different place: but at the Graun [Guardian], the ideology is "Climate Change" - and the number of narratives permissible is similarly narrow, and rigidly defined from the top. For as regular readers of the paper will know, the climate can only change in one direction: for the worse. Apocalypse is imminent!
It's in this context you should spare a thought for David Adam, the newspaper's environment correspondent. He certainly has our sympathies. With hurricane Gustav set to devastate New Orleans, Adam was tasked with the job of showing how it's all down to Global Warming.
Tasteless ambulance-chasing like this is now commonplace. Both Believers and Skeptics are both guilty of making too much of the latest weather, and extrapolating from it a trend that suits them. Weather is not climate. But extreme weather tends to excite one side rather more than the other: because it follows the simple moral fable in which man's wickedness causes unnatural events. This pagan superstition was evident three years ago, the last time New Orleans took a battering. Barely a week had elapsed after Katrina struck, before Al Gore addressed the nation to blame it all on sinful mankind for causing Global Warming. Gore quoted Chamberlain - "this is only the beginning of the reckoning" - and for good measure, castigated American's "moral health".
So from the outset, it must have dawned on our heroic Graun correspondent that he had a task worthy of Hercules. Adam couldn't quote anything that contradicted the theological foundations of the orthodoxy that the occasion demanded - since that, presumably, would result in a rapid descent into Farringdon Road's piranha tank. But the problem is, there just isn't much evidence to support the idea that a warmer climate means worse weather, and the closer you look, the harder this is to prove. And so his soul-searching struggle is laid bare.
Adams begins confidently - "Meteorologists are predicting a more active hurricane season than usual this year..." But realises it's a lost cause almost immediately. "... but there is no way to know whether global warming has caused an individual event such as a hurricane, or whether it has made such storms worse," he writes.
That's not a promising start - and certainly not what the editors and eco-activists want to read. So like a hastily-constructed sea defence, the doubt is rapidly sandbagged: "On the other hand, some scientists argue that severe storms such as Gustav are more likely in a warming world, because warmer seas make more powerful storms," he continues. Phew.
Actually, it's more accurate to say that while non-scientists, such as Gore, are only too keen to draw links between warming and extreme weather (remember, man is responsible for all things unnatural), recent years have seen fading support for the notion.
Tom Knutson of NOAA's fluid dynamics lab published a paper this year arguing that a warmer climate means fewer hurricanes: 18 per cent fewer by the end of the century, he proposed. In another 2008 study, NOAA's Chris Landsea saw "nothing in the US hurricane damage record that indicates global warming has caused a significant increase in destruction along our coasts". And even the media's favourite hurricane doom-monger, Kerry Emanuel at MIT, an advocate of the link between a warmer climate and nastier storms for 20 years, is surprised by what his models now predict: a warmer planet means fewer hurricanes in 200 years.
(A caveat: like the much vaunted Global Climate Models (GCMs) Knutson and Emanuel's own models involve "parameterization". What this means is that left alone, computer models produce completely ridiculous results: "too many hurricanes", is how Knutson puts it. So the models are frigged massaged to produce something that's plausibly scary, but not so ridiculous that people notice. Such is the way "science" is conducted in the 21st Century...)
But back at El Graun, the unspeakable remains unpublishable. So instead of outlining the recent work, we get such platitudes such as "if anything, the science has become fuzzier in the years after Katrina", and "it is also unclear how reliably historical records of hurricane strength can be compared", and "no firm conclusion can be made at this point".
Well, wasn't that worthwhile? At least the party line remains intact. There's a slight problem, however. When the information needed to look beyond the "fuzziness" is at one's fingertips, and can be found in only a few seconds with Google, why would anyone want to bother with a report? There's one casualty of global warming that no one seems to have discussed yet - newspapers.
Source
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Mythical NHS maternity money
Funding promised by the Government to improve poor standards of care for mothers and newborn babies is failing to reach maternity units, The Times has learnt. A survey of NHS trusts has showed that nine out of ten cannot identify their share of the $660 million pledged by ministers. Leading midwives and doctors say the money could be lost on the NHS balance sheet or spent on other services because it has not been properly ring-fenced. Despite record increases in spending on the health service by Labour, critics maintain that the money is still not reaching the areas most in need of reform.
Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, announced the extra spending over the next three years in January, following several critical reviews of maternity services by the Healthcare Commission, which is the NHS regulator. "From April 2008, trusts have access to this additional money," he said.
Rising birth rates and a shortage of midwives have put huge pressure on the system, meaning mothers are often left without care during labour.
The Times submitted questions under the Freedom of Information Act to all 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in England, the local bodies that distribute 70 per cent of the total NHS budget. Of 85 trusts who responded, only eight claimed to have received additional funding for maternity this year as Mr Johnson promised. The extra money was for the implementation of "Maternity Matters", a policy that recommends that every woman giving birth in England should have one-to-one care from a dedicated midwife. Ministers also aim to give greater choice over where babies are born, with more home births and deliveries in local units staffed by midwives rather than hospital consultants expected as a result.
One head of midwifery in the South West, who did not wish to be named, said: "Despite all of the Government's announcements, we have not seen any of this additional funding. "All the staff are aware of this additional funding and expecting to see changes and improvements in maternity service provision, but I have not seen any of the money." Instead, healthcare staff have to bid for the extra funds and have had no reassurances on how it would be spent.
Louise Silverton, deputy general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), said that new mothers would still face a postcode lottery in the quality of care as a result. "It is not enough for the Government to say they have put money into maternity services, but then fail to make sure the money actually goes where it is supposed to. "Women keep hearing these excellent policy statements, such as one-to-one care from a midwife, but they are not getting that sort of treatment in many areas." Overall, NHS spending on maternity in England was cut by $110 million in 2006-07, while the birth rate has risen 16 per cent since 2001, she said. "Some trusts have managed to increase their spending but for the most part we don't know what PCTs are spending the money on, there's a lack of transparency."
Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, added: "Extra funds have been promised to improve maternity services and it is important for these to be ring-fenced within each trust. "NHS managers, clinical directors and head of services must present a case to their PCTs in order to secure more funds for their units." The RCM estimates that 5,000 extra midwives need to be recruited urgently, but the Government has promised only 3,400 full-time posts.
Of those surveyed, 33 trusts (38 per cent) could specify a figure for their projected spending on maternity services in 2008-09, but this was estimated from increases in their total budgets or from local plans agreed prior to the Government's investment. Asked what the money was being spent on, trusts' answers varied from specific numbers of posts for midwives and maternity support workers to more general promises to "increase midwifery capacity" or programmes such as sexual health services, breast-feeding support or smoking cessation for pregnant women.
"These are softer areas of care that do not address the core issue of staffing shortages," Miss Silverton added. "Large numbers of midwives are due to retire in the next few years and maternity support workers should not be used to substitute for them."
Anne Milton, a Conservative MP, added: "This Government has been more concerned with getting a good headline than delivering the services that patients need. It is unacceptable that at a time when the NHS is reporting record surpluses of nearly $4 billion that this funding is not reaching the front line, where it is so desperately needed by new mothers and their children."
Source
Waiting in pain
For women like Clare Payne, who experience complications during pregnancy, childbirth can be an agonising experience. Mrs Payne, 23, gave birth to her first son Harry in 2006 with few problems, but his brother Finley's birth last September was delayed repeatedly owing to a shortage of staff and beds.
At 18 weeks she developed SPD, a condition that causes pressure on the pelvis and extreme pain. Doctors said that she should be induced at 37 weeks, but when she arrived at hospital she was promptly sent home because there were not enough staff. "I was told I was a priority case, but every time I contacted the ward I was told I would have to wait hours, if not days."
Mrs Payne, a sales assistant from St Leonards, East Sussex, returned to hospital at least three more times. Finally she elected to have a Caesarean section after waiting for more than two weeks. "It was a totally disgusting way to treat a heavily pregnant woman," she said.
Source
British Soldier forced to sleep in car after hotel refuses him a room
A hotel that refused an injured soldier a room, forcing him to spend the night in his car, was backed into issuing a grovelling apology yesterday after receiving a barrage of abusive phone calls. The Metro Hotel, in Woking, Surrey, called the police as its phone lines were flooded with angry and threatening calls from the public. The attack on the switchboards came after it emerged that Corporal Tomos Stringer, 24, had been told that it was company policy not to accept members of the Armed Forces.
A soldier since the age of 16 and veteran of multiple tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, Corporal Stringer had travelled to Surrey to help with funeral preparations for a friend killed in action. The corporal, who was not in uniform, presented his warrant card when asked by the hotel for proof of identity. After being refused a room, he had to bed down in his car, with his wrist, broken during a convoy ambush, encased in plaster.
Corporal Stringer's MP, Hywel Williams, Derek Twigg, the Defence Minister, and Bob Ainsworth, the Armed Forces Minister, have all written to the hotel. After a resolute silence, the hotel, owned by a company called American Amusements, finally issued a statement: "The Metro Hotel, Woking, sincerely regrets any upset caused towards Corporal Stringer and his family . . . The hotel management has always had an open-door policy to all its visitors and guests, including members of the military and Armed Forces." The receptionist had made a mistake, it added.
Corporal Stringer, of 13 Air Assault Support Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps, has returned to Afghanistan. His mother, Gaynor Stringer, from Criccieth, North Wales, told The Times: "I'm very, very angry. It's discrimination. They would never get away with it if it was against someone of ethnic origin." She added: "In America, they treat soldiers as heroes. We went to Disney World with Tomos and the whole family was moved to the front of the lines. Everybody was clapping and cheering. Here, soldiers can't even get a bed for the night."
Source
Environment Minister for Northern Ireland calls global warming fears 'hysterical psuedo-religion'
The Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has angered green campaigners by describing their view on climate change as a "hysterical psuedo-religion". In an article in the News Letter, Mr Wilson said he believed it occurred naturally and was not man-made. "Resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change, rather than King Canute-style vainly trying to stop it," said the minister. Peter Doran of the Green Party said it was a "deeply irresponsible message."
Mr Wilson said he refused to "blindly accept" the need to make significant changes to the economy to stop climate change. "The tactic used by the "green gang" is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact," he said. The minister said he accepted climate change can occur, but does not believe the cause has been identified. "Reasoned debate must replace the scaremongering of the green climate alarmists."
John Woods of Friends of the Earth said Mr Wilson was "like a cigarette salesman denying that smoking causes cancer". "Ironically, if we listen to him Northern Ireland will suffer economically as we are left behind by smarter regions who are embracing the low carbon economy of the future."
It is the latest clash between Mr Wilson and green groups since his appointment as environment minister in June.
Source
White students 'avoid maths and science'
Thousands of high-flying white youngsters are giving up maths and science at 16 because they think they are not clever enough to succeed atA-Level, according to a report published today. The report reveals that white children who achieve A* and A grade passes at GCSE are far less likely than other ethnic groups to pursue the subjects to A-Level.
According to what is being billed as a "state of the nation" report on maths and science by The Royal Society, white youngsters are "known to develop the idea that success in mathematics comes from being naturally gifted". By contrast, Asian and Chinese youths, says the report, are more likely to believe that success comes from hard work.
It also warns that overall take-up of the subjects has fallen during the past decade. That means ministers are unlikely to reach targets they have set for qualified scientists and mathematicians to enable the UK to compete with other countries. "In chemistry, Pakistani students are 7.2 times more likely and Indian students 4.3 times more likely than white students with the same level of attainment at GCSE to progress toA-Level," the report says. "Bangladeshi, black and Chinese students are also more likely than white students with the same attainment to progress to A-Level. "A similar pattern can be seen in mathematics, with Chinese students being 4.7 times more likely to progress, Indian students 3.4 times more likely and Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black students also more likely to progress."
The report warns that - despite rises in the take-up of maths and science subjects in recent years - numbers are still well down on a decade ago. "Between 1996 and 2007, the proportions of 17-year-olds in each of the four UK nations taking chemistry, physics and mathematics have actually shrunk," it says. "In England, Northern Ireland and Wales no more than 6 per cent of 17-year-olds took A-Level physics in any one year. For chemistry, the figure was 7 per cent and for biology and mathematics it was 12 per cent."
Government attempts to reform the curriculum during the past 12 years to make the subjects more attractive have, the report adds, "had worryingly little impact on increasing the number of students taking maths and science in post-compulsory education". Those include rewriting the maths syllabus to make it more accessible - or "easier" as some critics would have it.
The report says that children's attitudes towards science become "less positive" at secondary school, with the lack of specialist teachers being cited as one reason pupils are put off the subject. "There is enduring concern that students do not find the science and mathematics they encounter at school as interesting as might be hoped. "Negative attitudes are linked to a view of the science curriculum in England as overly full, fact-laden and hard. The situation is worrying, given the needs of industry for science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) skills, the Government's stated desire to increase the number of STEM graduates, and the need for more science and mathematics teachers." The Government, it says, wants at least 80 per cent of all pupils to take the equivalent of two science GCSE's. This figure has not been met since 2005.
Professor Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, said last night: "Science and mathematics education, particularly in England, has been assaulted by reform over the last 20 years. "Unless we break the cycle of politically motivated knee-jerk reactions and constant change, we are in danger of never giving reforms the time they need to bed in. "Therefore [we are] not getting to grips with what works and what doesn't."
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "Recent exam results tell a different story and show that our reforms are having a positive effect. The number of young people taking maths and science A-Levels continues to increase and this year the number of young people taking maths A-Level was at its highest for a decade."
Source
Handwriting standards blamed as pupils ask for exam 'scribes'
Thousands of teenagers need "scribes" to help them write their A-level and GCSE papers because they are incapable of answering questions in longhand themselves, a study has revealed. The number of requests for "ghost writers" to help pupils do exams rose from 28,324 in 2005 to 40,215 last year, while the number of students asking to use a word processor or computer also soared by more than 50 per cent, to 21,713. Requests for practical assistance short of a "scribe", such as a teacher sitting in to help a pupil to write legibly, also increased.
Experts say more scripts than ever are illegible because the email and text generation are unable to write properly by hand. Teachers marking this summer's English, drama and citizenship GCSEs for the Edexcel exam board reported: "Some handwriting is a pleasure to read but an increasing minority is bordering on the illegible." They added: "Centres [where examinations are held] are asked to emphasise to candidates the importance of writing answers that are not only legible but coherent. Centres might wish to consider the use of scribes or word processors in more cases - especially for those candidates with known handwriting difficulties." In a report on this year's English exam, Edexcel added: "Centres should continue to stress to candidates the importance of clear handwriting which is not too small ... The actual quality of handwriting in some instances is such as to make responses virtually illegible."
Their concerns mirror those expressed by Scottish examiners, who have called for handwriting classes to be reintroduced because so many pupils cannot write longhand. They say teenagers who spend hours each week sending emails and text messages have lost the ability to work with pen and paper. As a result, a large number of Higher exams in English could not be marked because of illegible handwriting.
The latest report from exam assessors says "markers are increasingly concerned about handwriting that is difficult to read" and that dedicated classes should be held for "candidates whose handwriting is seriously weak or known to become so under pressure".
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said yesterday: "This suggests to me that youngsters should be spending less time on computers and more on improving their handwriting skills. "Examinations are supposed to be a test of basic skills and, if they can't do the basics, they shouldn't be getting someone else to do them for them. Emails and text messaging have their place but not at the expense of basic skills."
The rise in requests for handwriting has prompted Ofqual, the new regulator of exams in England, to promise it will monitor the position. "The number of candidates approved for access arrangements has increased this year," it said. "This could be due to a greater awareness amongst exam officers in schools and colleges of what candidates are entitled to. As the regulator, we will closely monitor the situation to ensure that the system remains fair for all students." Exam boards pointed out that the figures related to the total number of scripts with which a pupil had asked for help - saying that a candidate might require help with more than one exam.
However, sources said the requests were only likely to be made in subjects which required detailed writing, such as English, history and citizenship, and it was unlikely that a single candidate would need help with more than three exams. To satisfy examiners that a request for a scribe is valid, a candidate must either have a physical disability, a sudden injury or be assessed by a qualified psychologist or specialist teacher. They are eligible for a scribe if they can prove they cannot write more than 10 words a minute.
Source
Funding promised by the Government to improve poor standards of care for mothers and newborn babies is failing to reach maternity units, The Times has learnt. A survey of NHS trusts has showed that nine out of ten cannot identify their share of the $660 million pledged by ministers. Leading midwives and doctors say the money could be lost on the NHS balance sheet or spent on other services because it has not been properly ring-fenced. Despite record increases in spending on the health service by Labour, critics maintain that the money is still not reaching the areas most in need of reform.
Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, announced the extra spending over the next three years in January, following several critical reviews of maternity services by the Healthcare Commission, which is the NHS regulator. "From April 2008, trusts have access to this additional money," he said.
Rising birth rates and a shortage of midwives have put huge pressure on the system, meaning mothers are often left without care during labour.
The Times submitted questions under the Freedom of Information Act to all 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in England, the local bodies that distribute 70 per cent of the total NHS budget. Of 85 trusts who responded, only eight claimed to have received additional funding for maternity this year as Mr Johnson promised. The extra money was for the implementation of "Maternity Matters", a policy that recommends that every woman giving birth in England should have one-to-one care from a dedicated midwife. Ministers also aim to give greater choice over where babies are born, with more home births and deliveries in local units staffed by midwives rather than hospital consultants expected as a result.
One head of midwifery in the South West, who did not wish to be named, said: "Despite all of the Government's announcements, we have not seen any of this additional funding. "All the staff are aware of this additional funding and expecting to see changes and improvements in maternity service provision, but I have not seen any of the money." Instead, healthcare staff have to bid for the extra funds and have had no reassurances on how it would be spent.
Louise Silverton, deputy general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), said that new mothers would still face a postcode lottery in the quality of care as a result. "It is not enough for the Government to say they have put money into maternity services, but then fail to make sure the money actually goes where it is supposed to. "Women keep hearing these excellent policy statements, such as one-to-one care from a midwife, but they are not getting that sort of treatment in many areas." Overall, NHS spending on maternity in England was cut by $110 million in 2006-07, while the birth rate has risen 16 per cent since 2001, she said. "Some trusts have managed to increase their spending but for the most part we don't know what PCTs are spending the money on, there's a lack of transparency."
Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, added: "Extra funds have been promised to improve maternity services and it is important for these to be ring-fenced within each trust. "NHS managers, clinical directors and head of services must present a case to their PCTs in order to secure more funds for their units." The RCM estimates that 5,000 extra midwives need to be recruited urgently, but the Government has promised only 3,400 full-time posts.
Of those surveyed, 33 trusts (38 per cent) could specify a figure for their projected spending on maternity services in 2008-09, but this was estimated from increases in their total budgets or from local plans agreed prior to the Government's investment. Asked what the money was being spent on, trusts' answers varied from specific numbers of posts for midwives and maternity support workers to more general promises to "increase midwifery capacity" or programmes such as sexual health services, breast-feeding support or smoking cessation for pregnant women.
"These are softer areas of care that do not address the core issue of staffing shortages," Miss Silverton added. "Large numbers of midwives are due to retire in the next few years and maternity support workers should not be used to substitute for them."
Anne Milton, a Conservative MP, added: "This Government has been more concerned with getting a good headline than delivering the services that patients need. It is unacceptable that at a time when the NHS is reporting record surpluses of nearly $4 billion that this funding is not reaching the front line, where it is so desperately needed by new mothers and their children."
Source
Waiting in pain
For women like Clare Payne, who experience complications during pregnancy, childbirth can be an agonising experience. Mrs Payne, 23, gave birth to her first son Harry in 2006 with few problems, but his brother Finley's birth last September was delayed repeatedly owing to a shortage of staff and beds.
At 18 weeks she developed SPD, a condition that causes pressure on the pelvis and extreme pain. Doctors said that she should be induced at 37 weeks, but when she arrived at hospital she was promptly sent home because there were not enough staff. "I was told I was a priority case, but every time I contacted the ward I was told I would have to wait hours, if not days."
Mrs Payne, a sales assistant from St Leonards, East Sussex, returned to hospital at least three more times. Finally she elected to have a Caesarean section after waiting for more than two weeks. "It was a totally disgusting way to treat a heavily pregnant woman," she said.
Source
British Soldier forced to sleep in car after hotel refuses him a room
A hotel that refused an injured soldier a room, forcing him to spend the night in his car, was backed into issuing a grovelling apology yesterday after receiving a barrage of abusive phone calls. The Metro Hotel, in Woking, Surrey, called the police as its phone lines were flooded with angry and threatening calls from the public. The attack on the switchboards came after it emerged that Corporal Tomos Stringer, 24, had been told that it was company policy not to accept members of the Armed Forces.
A soldier since the age of 16 and veteran of multiple tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, Corporal Stringer had travelled to Surrey to help with funeral preparations for a friend killed in action. The corporal, who was not in uniform, presented his warrant card when asked by the hotel for proof of identity. After being refused a room, he had to bed down in his car, with his wrist, broken during a convoy ambush, encased in plaster.
Corporal Stringer's MP, Hywel Williams, Derek Twigg, the Defence Minister, and Bob Ainsworth, the Armed Forces Minister, have all written to the hotel. After a resolute silence, the hotel, owned by a company called American Amusements, finally issued a statement: "The Metro Hotel, Woking, sincerely regrets any upset caused towards Corporal Stringer and his family . . . The hotel management has always had an open-door policy to all its visitors and guests, including members of the military and Armed Forces." The receptionist had made a mistake, it added.
Corporal Stringer, of 13 Air Assault Support Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps, has returned to Afghanistan. His mother, Gaynor Stringer, from Criccieth, North Wales, told The Times: "I'm very, very angry. It's discrimination. They would never get away with it if it was against someone of ethnic origin." She added: "In America, they treat soldiers as heroes. We went to Disney World with Tomos and the whole family was moved to the front of the lines. Everybody was clapping and cheering. Here, soldiers can't even get a bed for the night."
Source
Environment Minister for Northern Ireland calls global warming fears 'hysterical psuedo-religion'
The Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has angered green campaigners by describing their view on climate change as a "hysterical psuedo-religion". In an article in the News Letter, Mr Wilson said he believed it occurred naturally and was not man-made. "Resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change, rather than King Canute-style vainly trying to stop it," said the minister. Peter Doran of the Green Party said it was a "deeply irresponsible message."
Mr Wilson said he refused to "blindly accept" the need to make significant changes to the economy to stop climate change. "The tactic used by the "green gang" is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact," he said. The minister said he accepted climate change can occur, but does not believe the cause has been identified. "Reasoned debate must replace the scaremongering of the green climate alarmists."
John Woods of Friends of the Earth said Mr Wilson was "like a cigarette salesman denying that smoking causes cancer". "Ironically, if we listen to him Northern Ireland will suffer economically as we are left behind by smarter regions who are embracing the low carbon economy of the future."
It is the latest clash between Mr Wilson and green groups since his appointment as environment minister in June.
Source
White students 'avoid maths and science'
Thousands of high-flying white youngsters are giving up maths and science at 16 because they think they are not clever enough to succeed atA-Level, according to a report published today. The report reveals that white children who achieve A* and A grade passes at GCSE are far less likely than other ethnic groups to pursue the subjects to A-Level.
According to what is being billed as a "state of the nation" report on maths and science by The Royal Society, white youngsters are "known to develop the idea that success in mathematics comes from being naturally gifted". By contrast, Asian and Chinese youths, says the report, are more likely to believe that success comes from hard work.
It also warns that overall take-up of the subjects has fallen during the past decade. That means ministers are unlikely to reach targets they have set for qualified scientists and mathematicians to enable the UK to compete with other countries. "In chemistry, Pakistani students are 7.2 times more likely and Indian students 4.3 times more likely than white students with the same level of attainment at GCSE to progress toA-Level," the report says. "Bangladeshi, black and Chinese students are also more likely than white students with the same attainment to progress to A-Level. "A similar pattern can be seen in mathematics, with Chinese students being 4.7 times more likely to progress, Indian students 3.4 times more likely and Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black students also more likely to progress."
The report warns that - despite rises in the take-up of maths and science subjects in recent years - numbers are still well down on a decade ago. "Between 1996 and 2007, the proportions of 17-year-olds in each of the four UK nations taking chemistry, physics and mathematics have actually shrunk," it says. "In England, Northern Ireland and Wales no more than 6 per cent of 17-year-olds took A-Level physics in any one year. For chemistry, the figure was 7 per cent and for biology and mathematics it was 12 per cent."
Government attempts to reform the curriculum during the past 12 years to make the subjects more attractive have, the report adds, "had worryingly little impact on increasing the number of students taking maths and science in post-compulsory education". Those include rewriting the maths syllabus to make it more accessible - or "easier" as some critics would have it.
The report says that children's attitudes towards science become "less positive" at secondary school, with the lack of specialist teachers being cited as one reason pupils are put off the subject. "There is enduring concern that students do not find the science and mathematics they encounter at school as interesting as might be hoped. "Negative attitudes are linked to a view of the science curriculum in England as overly full, fact-laden and hard. The situation is worrying, given the needs of industry for science, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) skills, the Government's stated desire to increase the number of STEM graduates, and the need for more science and mathematics teachers." The Government, it says, wants at least 80 per cent of all pupils to take the equivalent of two science GCSE's. This figure has not been met since 2005.
Professor Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, said last night: "Science and mathematics education, particularly in England, has been assaulted by reform over the last 20 years. "Unless we break the cycle of politically motivated knee-jerk reactions and constant change, we are in danger of never giving reforms the time they need to bed in. "Therefore [we are] not getting to grips with what works and what doesn't."
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "Recent exam results tell a different story and show that our reforms are having a positive effect. The number of young people taking maths and science A-Levels continues to increase and this year the number of young people taking maths A-Level was at its highest for a decade."
Source
Handwriting standards blamed as pupils ask for exam 'scribes'
Thousands of teenagers need "scribes" to help them write their A-level and GCSE papers because they are incapable of answering questions in longhand themselves, a study has revealed. The number of requests for "ghost writers" to help pupils do exams rose from 28,324 in 2005 to 40,215 last year, while the number of students asking to use a word processor or computer also soared by more than 50 per cent, to 21,713. Requests for practical assistance short of a "scribe", such as a teacher sitting in to help a pupil to write legibly, also increased.
Experts say more scripts than ever are illegible because the email and text generation are unable to write properly by hand. Teachers marking this summer's English, drama and citizenship GCSEs for the Edexcel exam board reported: "Some handwriting is a pleasure to read but an increasing minority is bordering on the illegible." They added: "Centres [where examinations are held] are asked to emphasise to candidates the importance of writing answers that are not only legible but coherent. Centres might wish to consider the use of scribes or word processors in more cases - especially for those candidates with known handwriting difficulties." In a report on this year's English exam, Edexcel added: "Centres should continue to stress to candidates the importance of clear handwriting which is not too small ... The actual quality of handwriting in some instances is such as to make responses virtually illegible."
Their concerns mirror those expressed by Scottish examiners, who have called for handwriting classes to be reintroduced because so many pupils cannot write longhand. They say teenagers who spend hours each week sending emails and text messages have lost the ability to work with pen and paper. As a result, a large number of Higher exams in English could not be marked because of illegible handwriting.
The latest report from exam assessors says "markers are increasingly concerned about handwriting that is difficult to read" and that dedicated classes should be held for "candidates whose handwriting is seriously weak or known to become so under pressure".
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said yesterday: "This suggests to me that youngsters should be spending less time on computers and more on improving their handwriting skills. "Examinations are supposed to be a test of basic skills and, if they can't do the basics, they shouldn't be getting someone else to do them for them. Emails and text messaging have their place but not at the expense of basic skills."
The rise in requests for handwriting has prompted Ofqual, the new regulator of exams in England, to promise it will monitor the position. "The number of candidates approved for access arrangements has increased this year," it said. "This could be due to a greater awareness amongst exam officers in schools and colleges of what candidates are entitled to. As the regulator, we will closely monitor the situation to ensure that the system remains fair for all students." Exam boards pointed out that the figures related to the total number of scripts with which a pupil had asked for help - saying that a candidate might require help with more than one exam.
However, sources said the requests were only likely to be made in subjects which required detailed writing, such as English, history and citizenship, and it was unlikely that a single candidate would need help with more than three exams. To satisfy examiners that a request for a scribe is valid, a candidate must either have a physical disability, a sudden injury or be assessed by a qualified psychologist or specialist teacher. They are eligible for a scribe if they can prove they cannot write more than 10 words a minute.
Source
Saturday, September 06, 2008
LABOUR'S GREEN SUICIDE: POVERTY FEARS OVER RENEWABLE ENERGY
And this warning comes from a big-time Warmist!
Half a million people could be pushed into fuel poverty by the UK's drive for wind power, the government's former chief scientific adviser has said. Sir David King said: "If we overdo wind we are going to put up the price of electricity and that means more people will fall into the fuel poverty trap." The UK has signed up to an EU agreement for 20% of power to come from renewable sources by 2020.
Professor King told the BBC EU leaders did not understand their own targets. One of Tony Blair's last acts as Prime Minister was to sign up to an EU target to have 20% of Europe's energy from renewable sources by 2020. The UK currently generates around 2% of its electricity from wind power but to meet the EU's target the government estimates this will have to increase to around 35% by the end of the next decade. It will also lead to price rises, the government thinks around 10% for electricity and closer to 20% for gas.
Professor King who who served as chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, told BBC Radio 4's The Investigation that the government is placing too much emphasis on wind power to reach the target and this would mean more people suffering from fuel poverty. "These are difficult numbers to estimate but numbers around half a million are not at all unrealistic," he said.
Professor King said he thought that Mr Blair and the other EU leaders did not understand what they were committing themselves to. "I think there was some degree of confusion at the heads of states meeting dealing with this. "If they had said 20% renewables on the electricity grids across the European Union by 2020, we would have had a realistic target but by saying 20% of all energy, I actually wonder whether that wasn't a mistake." Professor King, who was chief scientific adviser at the time of the decision, added: "I was rather surprised when I heard what the decision was."
The EU needed to renegotiate a more achievable and less expensive target, and he added: "This is an issue which needs to be revisited and I say this as somebody who feels that we really have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions very substantially but in my view it is an expensive, and not a very clever route to go for 35 to 40% on wind turbines."
However Maria McCaffery, Chief Executive of British Wind Energy Association countered: "We don't have to pay for wind power it just comes to us naturally and is totally sustainable. "The expectation is that it will in time drive down the basic cost of energy and actually help the fuel poverty situation, that certainly is our expectation"
A government spokesman said it believes the target is ambitious but is fully committed to meeting it and that the impact on energy bills in the short term will be small.
Source
A drug for everything
Bad, quirky and obsessive behaviour is not new. Now there's a drug for everything - but is that the answer? Spending too much time on the internet? Worried about a low sex drive, shyness or lack of social skills? Or do you lose your temper too easily, blush too readily or spend too much time and money shopping?
There was a time when such behaviours might have been regarded as individual differences, or put down to lack of self-control and restraint. But not any more. Increasing numbers of behavioural conditions are being treated with drug therapy. Bereavement issues, blushing, low sex drive, high sex drive, sex addiction, lack of orgasm, gambling, fear of public speaking, stealing, domestic violence and phobias are all being targeted with drugs that are either in clinical trials or already available.
For drug companies, this market is potentially huge. It is claimed, for example, that almost half of women have a sexual problem. Nearly 8 per cent of adults, it seems, have intermittent explosive disorder; another 8 per cent are compulsive shoppers. Thirteen to 15 per cent are said to be social phobics, and up to 10 per cent have a fear of public speaking. On top of that are gamblers, phobics and the depressed - all suitable cases for treatment.
But critics argue that some of these treatments amount to medicalisation of individual differences and traits. Unlike physiological diseases such as cancer, behaviour disorders are a grey area, with no clear boundary between normality and illness. People at the extreme end need treatment, but others who may have symptoms may not.
Another problem is defining symptoms of some conditions. Take intermittent explosive disorder, the definition of which seems to defy even people in the field. "It is a vaguely defined condition for which effective treatments have not been identified," say researchers at the University of Chicago who have been involved in one drug trial.
One of the major areas for trials of new drugs is sexual problems. Reports have suggested that one in three women have low sex drive - and one drug trial has involved women whose symptoms include failure to achieve orgasm in half of their sexual encounters.
Professor Graham Hart, of the University of Glasgow, co-author of a paper on this issue in the British Medical Journal, says that the imperative now is for more and better sexual gratification. "Celibacy is the new deviance," he says. "The problem with such an overly medical approach to sexual behaviour is that social and interpersonal dynamics may be ignored.
"People choose one another for their uniqueness. The last century saw a considerable increase in acceptance of diversity of sexual expression - it would be a shame if this century saw diversity replaced by uniform expectations of performance and desire."
At the University of East Anglia, Dr Ray Crozier, an expert on shyness, makes a similar case about the medicalisation of blushing. He argues that, in many cases, there is nothing inherently wrong, painful or unhealthy about blushing, yet it is treated both with surgery and drugs. More often than not, he says, the problem is in the eye of the perceiver.
"Shame and embarrassment are powerful experiences that lead people to find a way to escape from them," he says. "But anxiety about blushing is not caused by inherent properties of the blush, and something important would be lost if blushing were eradicated."
More here
And this warning comes from a big-time Warmist!
Half a million people could be pushed into fuel poverty by the UK's drive for wind power, the government's former chief scientific adviser has said. Sir David King said: "If we overdo wind we are going to put up the price of electricity and that means more people will fall into the fuel poverty trap." The UK has signed up to an EU agreement for 20% of power to come from renewable sources by 2020.
Professor King told the BBC EU leaders did not understand their own targets. One of Tony Blair's last acts as Prime Minister was to sign up to an EU target to have 20% of Europe's energy from renewable sources by 2020. The UK currently generates around 2% of its electricity from wind power but to meet the EU's target the government estimates this will have to increase to around 35% by the end of the next decade. It will also lead to price rises, the government thinks around 10% for electricity and closer to 20% for gas.
Professor King who who served as chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, told BBC Radio 4's The Investigation that the government is placing too much emphasis on wind power to reach the target and this would mean more people suffering from fuel poverty. "These are difficult numbers to estimate but numbers around half a million are not at all unrealistic," he said.
Professor King said he thought that Mr Blair and the other EU leaders did not understand what they were committing themselves to. "I think there was some degree of confusion at the heads of states meeting dealing with this. "If they had said 20% renewables on the electricity grids across the European Union by 2020, we would have had a realistic target but by saying 20% of all energy, I actually wonder whether that wasn't a mistake." Professor King, who was chief scientific adviser at the time of the decision, added: "I was rather surprised when I heard what the decision was."
The EU needed to renegotiate a more achievable and less expensive target, and he added: "This is an issue which needs to be revisited and I say this as somebody who feels that we really have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions very substantially but in my view it is an expensive, and not a very clever route to go for 35 to 40% on wind turbines."
However Maria McCaffery, Chief Executive of British Wind Energy Association countered: "We don't have to pay for wind power it just comes to us naturally and is totally sustainable. "The expectation is that it will in time drive down the basic cost of energy and actually help the fuel poverty situation, that certainly is our expectation"
A government spokesman said it believes the target is ambitious but is fully committed to meeting it and that the impact on energy bills in the short term will be small.
Source
A drug for everything
Bad, quirky and obsessive behaviour is not new. Now there's a drug for everything - but is that the answer? Spending too much time on the internet? Worried about a low sex drive, shyness or lack of social skills? Or do you lose your temper too easily, blush too readily or spend too much time and money shopping?
There was a time when such behaviours might have been regarded as individual differences, or put down to lack of self-control and restraint. But not any more. Increasing numbers of behavioural conditions are being treated with drug therapy. Bereavement issues, blushing, low sex drive, high sex drive, sex addiction, lack of orgasm, gambling, fear of public speaking, stealing, domestic violence and phobias are all being targeted with drugs that are either in clinical trials or already available.
For drug companies, this market is potentially huge. It is claimed, for example, that almost half of women have a sexual problem. Nearly 8 per cent of adults, it seems, have intermittent explosive disorder; another 8 per cent are compulsive shoppers. Thirteen to 15 per cent are said to be social phobics, and up to 10 per cent have a fear of public speaking. On top of that are gamblers, phobics and the depressed - all suitable cases for treatment.
But critics argue that some of these treatments amount to medicalisation of individual differences and traits. Unlike physiological diseases such as cancer, behaviour disorders are a grey area, with no clear boundary between normality and illness. People at the extreme end need treatment, but others who may have symptoms may not.
Another problem is defining symptoms of some conditions. Take intermittent explosive disorder, the definition of which seems to defy even people in the field. "It is a vaguely defined condition for which effective treatments have not been identified," say researchers at the University of Chicago who have been involved in one drug trial.
One of the major areas for trials of new drugs is sexual problems. Reports have suggested that one in three women have low sex drive - and one drug trial has involved women whose symptoms include failure to achieve orgasm in half of their sexual encounters.
Professor Graham Hart, of the University of Glasgow, co-author of a paper on this issue in the British Medical Journal, says that the imperative now is for more and better sexual gratification. "Celibacy is the new deviance," he says. "The problem with such an overly medical approach to sexual behaviour is that social and interpersonal dynamics may be ignored.
"People choose one another for their uniqueness. The last century saw a considerable increase in acceptance of diversity of sexual expression - it would be a shame if this century saw diversity replaced by uniform expectations of performance and desire."
At the University of East Anglia, Dr Ray Crozier, an expert on shyness, makes a similar case about the medicalisation of blushing. He argues that, in many cases, there is nothing inherently wrong, painful or unhealthy about blushing, yet it is treated both with surgery and drugs. More often than not, he says, the problem is in the eye of the perceiver.
"Shame and embarrassment are powerful experiences that lead people to find a way to escape from them," he says. "But anxiety about blushing is not caused by inherent properties of the blush, and something important would be lost if blushing were eradicated."
More here
Friday, September 05, 2008
Sarah Palin gets the spiteful Margaret Thatcher treatment
A comment from Janet Daley in Britain
There are few sights more bloodcurdling than the liberal pack in full cry. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin is a testimony to the degree of panic her appointment has generated in Leftist circles. It would seem that it is only sexist to trash a woman candidate if she is a Woman Candidate, which is to say a liberal.
It took about 20 minutes after John McCain announced her as his running mate for the attack machine to mobilise: woman candidate (bleep, bleep), no previous warning (nee-naw, nee-naw), exterminate, exterminate.
At first, it was pretty tenuous stuff: her husband had once been caught on a drink-drive charge - when he was 22 years old. You don't say. In blue-collar America, having only one drink-drive offence pretty much qualifies you as a Grade A wimp. Then the piranhas got hold of a real prize (or so they thought): the 17-year-old daughter of this Christian Evangelical family was pregnant.
Yes, these things happen - and this particular thing happens quite a lot among the working-class American families that Mrs Palin personifies. She and her daughter are being true to their convictions: the girl will have her baby and marry her boyfriend. There will be no abortion or adoption.
The Palin family will offer them love, compassion and support. What's your problem? Christianity (even of the Evangelical sort) does not expect human beings to be faultless: it demands only that they make amends for their transgressions and accept responsibility for them. The Evangelical churches have made it their particular mission in recent years to support teenage mothers and urge their families to stand by them. So where is the shame in this situation?
Now those who are not of the Palins' religious persuasion may well feel that it is wrong to allow a 17-year-old to marry and start a family. If one of my daughters had become pregnant at the age of 17, would I have advised her to have the baby and marry the father? No, I would not.
Do I respect the decision of another mother and daughter to make that choice based on their own values? Yes, I do. And that - as far as I am concerned - is what it means to be a "liberal". Which brings us to the subject of those hokey old redneck values that the Guardian and the blogosphere find so amusing (or pernicious, depending on their degree of dedication).
I personally am, and always have been, fervently pro-choice on abortion. I do not consider this to be the only sanctified Woman's point of view because I am aware that huge numbers of women disagree with me. Whenever I touch on the subject, they write in and tell me so, often in eloquent and passionate terms. But according to the official feminist sisterhood (which was taken over by the totalitarian Marxist tendency long ago) you can represent the views of Women only if you accept the tenets of their ideology. Ergo, Mrs Palin is not a Woman Candidate.
She is a renegade, the gender equivalent of an Uncle Tom. In the US, her position is particularly incendiary because it is part of the culture war between metropolitan liberals and provincial America: that vast fly-over country where people (or "folks", as they call themselves) still live by the standards the Palin family embodies. Life is about hard work and hard play.
They hunt with guns from childhood. They talk about sin (and redemption) in ways that embarrass the urban elite, and they regard patriotism as a fundamental part of their moral code. (It is the liberals' ambivalence about patriotism that they detest most.)
Like Margaret Thatcher before her, Mrs Palin is coming in for both barrels of Left-wing contempt: misogyny and snobbery. Where Lady Thatcher was dismissed as a "grocer's daughter" by people who called themselves egalitarian, Mrs Palin is regarded as a small-town nobody by those who claim to represent "ordinary people".
What the metropolitan sophisticates failed to understand in the 1980s when Thatcher won election after election is even more the case in the US: most (and I do mean most) ordinary people actually believe in the basic decencies, the "small-town values", of family, marital fidelity, and personal responsibility. They believe in and honour them - even if they do not manage to uphold them. Middle America - of which Alaska is spiritually, if not geographically, a part - builds its life around those ideals and regards commonplace moral lapses as part of the eternal struggle to be good.
The life of small-town USA is based on the principles of those Protestant colonial settlers who founded the nation: hard work, self-improvement, personal faith and family devotion. Mrs Palin speaks to and for them in a way that patronising "liberal" elitists find infuriating.
Source
Obama Is the Anti-Thatcher
The Democratic Party Convention in Denver has been called political theater, but it was really a masquerade ball. Again and again, speakers invoked the language of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan -- stressing the value of hard work and responsibility for self and family -- while advancing a set of pro-union and collectivist economic policies. If today's Democrats had their way, they would put the United States in the same approximate position as pre-Thatcher Britain, when the streets of London were choked with garbage because of a strike by sanitation workers and Britain was known around the world as "the sick man of Europe."
The most overworked word at the Democratic Convention was "work" itself. Barack Obama used the word 35 times in his address. Joe Biden mentioned it 22 times. Both told stories of parents and grandparents who worked their fingers to the bone in realizing the American dream of building a better life. Mr. Biden's speech included a touching vignette about his father, who told him, "Champ, when you get knocked down, get up. Get up."
But the real thrust of the message that Mr. Obama and he gave to the cheering multitudes in Denver was: You are entitled to your job. If you are hit by a foreign competitor who is leaner and hungrier and less coddled than you, get down and stay down, and expect the government to put you back on your feet.
When Mrs. Thatcher became Britain's prime minister in 1979, she assumed leadership of a country that had been devastated by several decades of ruinous economic and social policies. This was due to the same aversion to competition and international trade, and the same misplaced faith in the ability of government to act as the engine of progress and the guarantor of jobs.
In her speech to the Conservative Party in 1981, Mrs. Thatcher said: "We have to earn a living in a world that can choose between the goods that we produce and those of other countries. . . . And here let me say plainly to the trade union leaders: You are often your own worst enemies. Why isn't there more? Because too often restrictive practices rob you of the one thing you have to sell -- your productivity. . . . When two men insist on doing the work of one, there is only half as much for each."
In his speech to the Democratic convention, Mr. Obama said: "I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."
One has to wonder who Mr. Obama thinks he is to suppose he'd be able to make so many correct calls in directing investment flows in one industry after the next while sitting in the White House. But his presumptuousness is not unprecedented. The Labour Party politicians in Britain who came to power at the end of World War II shared the same ent
A comment from Janet Daley in Britain
There are few sights more bloodcurdling than the liberal pack in full cry. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin is a testimony to the degree of panic her appointment has generated in Leftist circles. It would seem that it is only sexist to trash a woman candidate if she is a Woman Candidate, which is to say a liberal.
It took about 20 minutes after John McCain announced her as his running mate for the attack machine to mobilise: woman candidate (bleep, bleep), no previous warning (nee-naw, nee-naw), exterminate, exterminate.
At first, it was pretty tenuous stuff: her husband had once been caught on a drink-drive charge - when he was 22 years old. You don't say. In blue-collar America, having only one drink-drive offence pretty much qualifies you as a Grade A wimp. Then the piranhas got hold of a real prize (or so they thought): the 17-year-old daughter of this Christian Evangelical family was pregnant.
Yes, these things happen - and this particular thing happens quite a lot among the working-class American families that Mrs Palin personifies. She and her daughter are being true to their convictions: the girl will have her baby and marry her boyfriend. There will be no abortion or adoption.
The Palin family will offer them love, compassion and support. What's your problem? Christianity (even of the Evangelical sort) does not expect human beings to be faultless: it demands only that they make amends for their transgressions and accept responsibility for them. The Evangelical churches have made it their particular mission in recent years to support teenage mothers and urge their families to stand by them. So where is the shame in this situation?
Now those who are not of the Palins' religious persuasion may well feel that it is wrong to allow a 17-year-old to marry and start a family. If one of my daughters had become pregnant at the age of 17, would I have advised her to have the baby and marry the father? No, I would not.
Do I respect the decision of another mother and daughter to make that choice based on their own values? Yes, I do. And that - as far as I am concerned - is what it means to be a "liberal". Which brings us to the subject of those hokey old redneck values that the Guardian and the blogosphere find so amusing (or pernicious, depending on their degree of dedication).
I personally am, and always have been, fervently pro-choice on abortion. I do not consider this to be the only sanctified Woman's point of view because I am aware that huge numbers of women disagree with me. Whenever I touch on the subject, they write in and tell me so, often in eloquent and passionate terms. But according to the official feminist sisterhood (which was taken over by the totalitarian Marxist tendency long ago) you can represent the views of Women only if you accept the tenets of their ideology. Ergo, Mrs Palin is not a Woman Candidate.
She is a renegade, the gender equivalent of an Uncle Tom. In the US, her position is particularly incendiary because it is part of the culture war between metropolitan liberals and provincial America: that vast fly-over country where people (or "folks", as they call themselves) still live by the standards the Palin family embodies. Life is about hard work and hard play.
They hunt with guns from childhood. They talk about sin (and redemption) in ways that embarrass the urban elite, and they regard patriotism as a fundamental part of their moral code. (It is the liberals' ambivalence about patriotism that they detest most.)
Like Margaret Thatcher before her, Mrs Palin is coming in for both barrels of Left-wing contempt: misogyny and snobbery. Where Lady Thatcher was dismissed as a "grocer's daughter" by people who called themselves egalitarian, Mrs Palin is regarded as a small-town nobody by those who claim to represent "ordinary people".
What the metropolitan sophisticates failed to understand in the 1980s when Thatcher won election after election is even more the case in the US: most (and I do mean most) ordinary people actually believe in the basic decencies, the "small-town values", of family, marital fidelity, and personal responsibility. They believe in and honour them - even if they do not manage to uphold them. Middle America - of which Alaska is spiritually, if not geographically, a part - builds its life around those ideals and regards commonplace moral lapses as part of the eternal struggle to be good.
The life of small-town USA is based on the principles of those Protestant colonial settlers who founded the nation: hard work, self-improvement, personal faith and family devotion. Mrs Palin speaks to and for them in a way that patronising "liberal" elitists find infuriating.
Source
Obama Is the Anti-Thatcher
The Democratic Party Convention in Denver has been called political theater, but it was really a masquerade ball. Again and again, speakers invoked the language of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan -- stressing the value of hard work and responsibility for self and family -- while advancing a set of pro-union and collectivist economic policies. If today's Democrats had their way, they would put the United States in the same approximate position as pre-Thatcher Britain, when the streets of London were choked with garbage because of a strike by sanitation workers and Britain was known around the world as "the sick man of Europe."
The most overworked word at the Democratic Convention was "work" itself. Barack Obama used the word 35 times in his address. Joe Biden mentioned it 22 times. Both told stories of parents and grandparents who worked their fingers to the bone in realizing the American dream of building a better life. Mr. Biden's speech included a touching vignette about his father, who told him, "Champ, when you get knocked down, get up. Get up."
But the real thrust of the message that Mr. Obama and he gave to the cheering multitudes in Denver was: You are entitled to your job. If you are hit by a foreign competitor who is leaner and hungrier and less coddled than you, get down and stay down, and expect the government to put you back on your feet.
When Mrs. Thatcher became Britain's prime minister in 1979, she assumed leadership of a country that had been devastated by several decades of ruinous economic and social policies. This was due to the same aversion to competition and international trade, and the same misplaced faith in the ability of government to act as the engine of progress and the guarantor of jobs.
In her speech to the Conservative Party in 1981, Mrs. Thatcher said: "We have to earn a living in a world that can choose between the goods that we produce and those of other countries. . . . And here let me say plainly to the trade union leaders: You are often your own worst enemies. Why isn't there more? Because too often restrictive practices rob you of the one thing you have to sell -- your productivity. . . . When two men insist on doing the work of one, there is only half as much for each."
In his speech to the Democratic convention, Mr. Obama said: "I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."
One has to wonder who Mr. Obama thinks he is to suppose he'd be able to make so many correct calls in directing investment flows in one industry after the next while sitting in the White House. But his presumptuousness is not unprecedented. The Labour Party politicians in Britain who came to power at the end of World War II shared the same ent