Saturday, March 31, 2007
"Pedophile" hysteria
Men are being scared away from joining the teaching profession by a wave of "paedophile hysteria", a leading Tory has warned. Boris Johnson said school staffrooms are increasingly dominated by female teachers because men are afraid of attracting false child abuse allegations. He spoke out after figures revealed women now outnumber men by 13 to one in primary schools - which have been worst-hit by the male recruitment slump.
Mr Johnson, Conservative higher education spokesman, declared that young boys needed male role models to aid their intellectual development but "potentially brilliant" teachers were deterred from entering the profession because they feared being branded paedophiles. Even bumping into a child could cause them to run into difficulties, he warned.
Mr Johnson, speaking at a conference of the Independent Schools Council in London, insisted he "did not want to go into bat for paedophiles". But he claimed society may now be over-egging the problem as he recounted his own experience on a recent British Airways flight. He said a flight attendant had directed him to sit away from his children, apparently without realising they were his own. When she did, she apologised but said the airline did not allow lone men to sit next to children they were unrelated to. "I do think one problem we have got is that we do have a kind of paedophile hysteria in this country and I find it very worrying," he said. "I think the whole thing has been ever so slightly over-egged. I don't want to attack BA unnecessarily but I think it's pretty bonkers that a grown man can be asked to move away from his children. "I do think we are over-doing the whole thing and the result is that a lot of brilliant potential male teachers think 'do I want to go through all of that malarky about what I can and can't do'. "What happens if you bump into someone?
"The result is you have got a ratio of female to male teachers in state primary schools of 13 to 1 now. "That is a huge social change and the effects of that are very damaging, or potentially very damaging on young male minds. "Young male minds do need the intellectual inspiration of a male teacher, not because males are any better than females, but it may help them if there's a male model who can help them with their intellectual development." He added: "I don't want to go into bat for paedophiles but it is a factor in deterring male teachers from thinking about this brilliant profession."
The Mail revealed last year that fewer that 10 per cent of primary teachers are men in some parts of the country. Meanwhile, in the space of a generation, the proportion of secondary school male teachers has dropped from 55 per cent to 41 per cent. The figures prompted concern that the lack of male role models is having serious consequences for boys' performance in exams. Boys now lag behind girls in every major school examination. However teachers' leaders claim that studies show boys do just as well [at what?] when taught by women.
Source
THE SPINELESSNESS OF LEEDS UNIVERSITY MADE CLEAR
For Jewish students, Leeds university has for some time been a source of growing concern. Such students have been forced to run a gauntlet of anti-Jewish prejudice dressed in the familiar camouflage of anti-Israel sentiment, as in the notorious (and now beaten off) attempt to gag the Jewish society. Last week, a more significant controversy erupted there. A non-Jewish German academic, Dr Matthias Kuentzel, was shocked when his planned lecture, `Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East', was abruptly cancelled by the university along with two smaller scheduled seminars.
The university insisted its decision had nothing to do with freedom of speech; nor was it bowing to threats or protests from interest groups. The meeting had been cancelled on safety grounds alone, and because `contrary to our rules, no assessment of risk to people or property has been carried out, no stewarding arrangements are in place and we were not given sufficient notice to ensure safety and public order.' But there was no security risk. No threats had been received. The only ripple was a couple of protests from Muslim students, who claimed the lectures would increase hatred and threaten their `security and well-being' on campus. The university's excuse was absurd.
Indeed, Kuentzel delivered his speech outside the university twice without security problems. Although the university secretary Roger Gair claimed in a letter to the Times that these were the two seminars that were going ahead `as planned', Kuentzel says that, on the contrary, after the cancellation they were hastily convened by private initiative off campus, in Hillel and at a hotel.
Now, fresh information has reached me which reinforces the view that the cancellation was indeed designed to suppress Kuentzel's views. After meeting the university authorities the head of the German department, Professor Stuart Taberner, told his staff that, although he didn't think censorship was the issue, if Kuentzel were to be re-invited the university would have to `look closely' at the subject of his talk. `Having now found the text of what I take to be his talk on the web,' he said, `I'm convinced that the university would want to be reassured that it was striking the correct balance between free speech - the expression of ideas - and its obligation to be mindful of the language in which these ideas are framed'.
The real reason for the cancellation was thus laid bare. It was because of what Kuentzel was saying. The implication was that his language was somehow inflammatory. But his lecture - which he previously delivered in January at Yale - is merely a scholarly and factual account of the links between Nazism and Islamic antisemitism. He argues that the alliance between the Nazis and the Arabs of Palestine infected the wider Muslim world, not least through the influence of the Nazi wireless station Radio Zeesen which broadcast in Arabic, Persian and Turkish and inflamed the Muslim masses with Nazi blood libels laced with Arabic music and quotes from the Koran. Subsequently, this Nazified Muslim antisemitism was given renewed life by both the Egyptian President Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the intellectual inspiration for both Hamas and much of the current jihad against the west.
So what exactly is the `correct balance' that this account fails to strike? Indeed, Kuentzel makes the eminently balanced claim that this history shows there is nothing inevitable about Muslim antisemitism, which is merely Nazism in new garb. The link he makes is no more than the demonstrable truth. But clearly, it is not possible to speak this truth at Leeds university. And the reason for this is surely that it draws a straight line between today's Islamic world and Hitler's Germany.
Indeed, Kuentzel sees a seamless connection between Nazism and the jihad against the west. Hitler, he says, fantasised about the toppling of the skyscrapers of New York, the symbol of Jewish power. And the Hamburg trial of terrorists associated with 9/11 heard evidence that New York had been selected for the atrocity because it was a `Jewish city'.
For Islamists, however, such a connection threatens the image they have so assiduously cultivated for themselves as the victims of prejudice. For their appeasers, it destroys the illusion that Islamist extremism arises from rational grievances such as the war in Iraq or `Islamophobia'. Worse still, those on the left who march shoulder to shoulder with radical Islamists are thus exposed as the allies of Nazism.
The result is that Leeds has now joined the growing list of universities which have spinelessly given up the defence of free speech, and thus, in the great battle for civilisation against barbarism, run up the campus white flag.
Source
MUST BE GLOBAL WARMING: LACK OF DISASTERS GIVES LLOYDS $7 BILLION PROFIT
Lloyd's of London, the world's biggest insurance market, on Thursday reported a pretax profit of 3.66 billion pounds (5.4 billion euros, US$7.2 billion) in 2006, a year of few global catastrophes. That reversed Lloyd's 2005 result of a loss of 103 million pounds (152 million euros, US$202 million) because of hurricane damage claims.
"During the year, we benefited from strong underlying conditions and an exceptionally low level of catastrophes," said Lord Levene, Lloyd's chairman. "However, it would be unrealistic to expect such a favorable claims experience this year."
The 2005 season was the most destructive in recorded history, with 27 named storms and 14 hurricanes, including Katrina, which devastated Louisiana and Mississippi in the U.S. and killed more than 1,300 people.
Source
BRITISH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GETS EVER MORE DANGEROUS
Thousands of prisoners are being given keys to their cells in the latest farce to hit the criminal justice system. They can roam in and out virtually at will under a scheme designed to give them more "respect and decency". The astonishing measure prompted a furious response from MPs last night, who warned that the human-rights culture was out of control.
It will provoke a furious public backlash at a time when prisons are overflowing and dangerous offenders are being tagged and freed into the community. Official figures revealed that 5,747 of the 9,577 offenders in Yorkshire prisons have keys for 'privacy locks' to protect themselves and their belongings. Although many of them are at open prisons and youth offenders' institutes, others are in standard closed prisons for those who have committed serious crimes such as muggings, burglary and theft. It also emerged that some youth prisons now call offenders 'trainees' or 'residents'.
Governors in other parts of the country are also understood to have introduced the key scheme. Shipley Tory MP Philip Davies accused the Government of "turning prisons into hotels". He said: "People will be horrified to know so many prisons give inmates their own keys. It will reinforce their views that the regime is far too lax and cushy. "These people are banged up for a reason. But the Government seems more concerned about the human rights of criminals than those of their victims, who are footing the bill to keep them in increasingly pleasant surroundings."
Blair Gibbs, director of the Tax-Payers' Alliance, said: "It is hard to believe we live in a serious country any more when you hear lunacy like this. Our politicians are clearly not capable of running anything that resembles an effective criminal justice system."
Home Office Minister Gerry Sutcliffe said: "It's mainly used for people who are soon going to be released or in open prisons. "It's all part of providing incentives to encourage them to take more responsibility for themselves, to give them a little bit more respect and decency." He stressed that the prisoners' locks could be over-ridden by staff keys and insisted: "There are no security issues about this. The keys are for their own cells and nowhere else."
The revelation will still reinforce concern that prisoners' 'rights' are increasingly being pandered to. In the financial year that ended last March, 8.8 million in compensation was paid out to prisoners - almost 15 times as much as just two years earlier. Cases included:
2.8 million for medical treatment for a prisoner who failed in a suicide bid.
750,000 for nearly 200 drug addicts who suffered withdrawal symptoms after they were forced to go 'cold turkey'.
80,000 for three illegal immigrant convicts who were not deported quickly enough, opening the door for hundreds of similar claims.
200 each for prisoners whose DVD players were taken away because they watched pornography.
There was also the case of Gerry Cooper, who sued the Home Office after falling out of a bunk bed in his cell. Inquiries by Mr Davies showed that of Yorkshire's 15 prisons, six give keys to all their inmates and three based the decisions on category of offence and personal circumstances. The six who deny them to all offenders, include top-security Wakefield, where Soham murderer Ian Huntley is serving life.
Governors at Hull Prison, where 50 per cent of inmates have keys, suggested the practice was there to help prisoners protect themselves from others. The prison said: "The facility is overridden by staff keys and is seen as of additional benefit to vulnerable prisoners by providing extra protection."
The inquiries also unearthed the fact that young prisoners at Askham Grange prison are called 'residents', while at Wetherby they are 'trainees'. Earlier this year, Derbyshire chief constable David Coleman was accused of 'madness' after refusing to release pictures of two escaped murderers amid fears it might breach their human rights. He claimed they posed 'no risk' to local people.
Source
I have just put up another lot of postings from Chris Brand on his usual highly "incorrect" themes.
Men are being scared away from joining the teaching profession by a wave of "paedophile hysteria", a leading Tory has warned. Boris Johnson said school staffrooms are increasingly dominated by female teachers because men are afraid of attracting false child abuse allegations. He spoke out after figures revealed women now outnumber men by 13 to one in primary schools - which have been worst-hit by the male recruitment slump.
Mr Johnson, Conservative higher education spokesman, declared that young boys needed male role models to aid their intellectual development but "potentially brilliant" teachers were deterred from entering the profession because they feared being branded paedophiles. Even bumping into a child could cause them to run into difficulties, he warned.
Mr Johnson, speaking at a conference of the Independent Schools Council in London, insisted he "did not want to go into bat for paedophiles". But he claimed society may now be over-egging the problem as he recounted his own experience on a recent British Airways flight. He said a flight attendant had directed him to sit away from his children, apparently without realising they were his own. When she did, she apologised but said the airline did not allow lone men to sit next to children they were unrelated to. "I do think one problem we have got is that we do have a kind of paedophile hysteria in this country and I find it very worrying," he said. "I think the whole thing has been ever so slightly over-egged. I don't want to attack BA unnecessarily but I think it's pretty bonkers that a grown man can be asked to move away from his children. "I do think we are over-doing the whole thing and the result is that a lot of brilliant potential male teachers think 'do I want to go through all of that malarky about what I can and can't do'. "What happens if you bump into someone?
"The result is you have got a ratio of female to male teachers in state primary schools of 13 to 1 now. "That is a huge social change and the effects of that are very damaging, or potentially very damaging on young male minds. "Young male minds do need the intellectual inspiration of a male teacher, not because males are any better than females, but it may help them if there's a male model who can help them with their intellectual development." He added: "I don't want to go into bat for paedophiles but it is a factor in deterring male teachers from thinking about this brilliant profession."
The Mail revealed last year that fewer that 10 per cent of primary teachers are men in some parts of the country. Meanwhile, in the space of a generation, the proportion of secondary school male teachers has dropped from 55 per cent to 41 per cent. The figures prompted concern that the lack of male role models is having serious consequences for boys' performance in exams. Boys now lag behind girls in every major school examination. However teachers' leaders claim that studies show boys do just as well [at what?] when taught by women.
Source
THE SPINELESSNESS OF LEEDS UNIVERSITY MADE CLEAR
For Jewish students, Leeds university has for some time been a source of growing concern. Such students have been forced to run a gauntlet of anti-Jewish prejudice dressed in the familiar camouflage of anti-Israel sentiment, as in the notorious (and now beaten off) attempt to gag the Jewish society. Last week, a more significant controversy erupted there. A non-Jewish German academic, Dr Matthias Kuentzel, was shocked when his planned lecture, `Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East', was abruptly cancelled by the university along with two smaller scheduled seminars.
The university insisted its decision had nothing to do with freedom of speech; nor was it bowing to threats or protests from interest groups. The meeting had been cancelled on safety grounds alone, and because `contrary to our rules, no assessment of risk to people or property has been carried out, no stewarding arrangements are in place and we were not given sufficient notice to ensure safety and public order.' But there was no security risk. No threats had been received. The only ripple was a couple of protests from Muslim students, who claimed the lectures would increase hatred and threaten their `security and well-being' on campus. The university's excuse was absurd.
Indeed, Kuentzel delivered his speech outside the university twice without security problems. Although the university secretary Roger Gair claimed in a letter to the Times that these were the two seminars that were going ahead `as planned', Kuentzel says that, on the contrary, after the cancellation they were hastily convened by private initiative off campus, in Hillel and at a hotel.
Now, fresh information has reached me which reinforces the view that the cancellation was indeed designed to suppress Kuentzel's views. After meeting the university authorities the head of the German department, Professor Stuart Taberner, told his staff that, although he didn't think censorship was the issue, if Kuentzel were to be re-invited the university would have to `look closely' at the subject of his talk. `Having now found the text of what I take to be his talk on the web,' he said, `I'm convinced that the university would want to be reassured that it was striking the correct balance between free speech - the expression of ideas - and its obligation to be mindful of the language in which these ideas are framed'.
The real reason for the cancellation was thus laid bare. It was because of what Kuentzel was saying. The implication was that his language was somehow inflammatory. But his lecture - which he previously delivered in January at Yale - is merely a scholarly and factual account of the links between Nazism and Islamic antisemitism. He argues that the alliance between the Nazis and the Arabs of Palestine infected the wider Muslim world, not least through the influence of the Nazi wireless station Radio Zeesen which broadcast in Arabic, Persian and Turkish and inflamed the Muslim masses with Nazi blood libels laced with Arabic music and quotes from the Koran. Subsequently, this Nazified Muslim antisemitism was given renewed life by both the Egyptian President Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the intellectual inspiration for both Hamas and much of the current jihad against the west.
So what exactly is the `correct balance' that this account fails to strike? Indeed, Kuentzel makes the eminently balanced claim that this history shows there is nothing inevitable about Muslim antisemitism, which is merely Nazism in new garb. The link he makes is no more than the demonstrable truth. But clearly, it is not possible to speak this truth at Leeds university. And the reason for this is surely that it draws a straight line between today's Islamic world and Hitler's Germany.
Indeed, Kuentzel sees a seamless connection between Nazism and the jihad against the west. Hitler, he says, fantasised about the toppling of the skyscrapers of New York, the symbol of Jewish power. And the Hamburg trial of terrorists associated with 9/11 heard evidence that New York had been selected for the atrocity because it was a `Jewish city'.
For Islamists, however, such a connection threatens the image they have so assiduously cultivated for themselves as the victims of prejudice. For their appeasers, it destroys the illusion that Islamist extremism arises from rational grievances such as the war in Iraq or `Islamophobia'. Worse still, those on the left who march shoulder to shoulder with radical Islamists are thus exposed as the allies of Nazism.
The result is that Leeds has now joined the growing list of universities which have spinelessly given up the defence of free speech, and thus, in the great battle for civilisation against barbarism, run up the campus white flag.
Source
MUST BE GLOBAL WARMING: LACK OF DISASTERS GIVES LLOYDS $7 BILLION PROFIT
Lloyd's of London, the world's biggest insurance market, on Thursday reported a pretax profit of 3.66 billion pounds (5.4 billion euros, US$7.2 billion) in 2006, a year of few global catastrophes. That reversed Lloyd's 2005 result of a loss of 103 million pounds (152 million euros, US$202 million) because of hurricane damage claims.
"During the year, we benefited from strong underlying conditions and an exceptionally low level of catastrophes," said Lord Levene, Lloyd's chairman. "However, it would be unrealistic to expect such a favorable claims experience this year."
The 2005 season was the most destructive in recorded history, with 27 named storms and 14 hurricanes, including Katrina, which devastated Louisiana and Mississippi in the U.S. and killed more than 1,300 people.
Source
BRITISH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GETS EVER MORE DANGEROUS
Thousands of prisoners are being given keys to their cells in the latest farce to hit the criminal justice system. They can roam in and out virtually at will under a scheme designed to give them more "respect and decency". The astonishing measure prompted a furious response from MPs last night, who warned that the human-rights culture was out of control.
It will provoke a furious public backlash at a time when prisons are overflowing and dangerous offenders are being tagged and freed into the community. Official figures revealed that 5,747 of the 9,577 offenders in Yorkshire prisons have keys for 'privacy locks' to protect themselves and their belongings. Although many of them are at open prisons and youth offenders' institutes, others are in standard closed prisons for those who have committed serious crimes such as muggings, burglary and theft. It also emerged that some youth prisons now call offenders 'trainees' or 'residents'.
Governors in other parts of the country are also understood to have introduced the key scheme. Shipley Tory MP Philip Davies accused the Government of "turning prisons into hotels". He said: "People will be horrified to know so many prisons give inmates their own keys. It will reinforce their views that the regime is far too lax and cushy. "These people are banged up for a reason. But the Government seems more concerned about the human rights of criminals than those of their victims, who are footing the bill to keep them in increasingly pleasant surroundings."
Blair Gibbs, director of the Tax-Payers' Alliance, said: "It is hard to believe we live in a serious country any more when you hear lunacy like this. Our politicians are clearly not capable of running anything that resembles an effective criminal justice system."
Home Office Minister Gerry Sutcliffe said: "It's mainly used for people who are soon going to be released or in open prisons. "It's all part of providing incentives to encourage them to take more responsibility for themselves, to give them a little bit more respect and decency." He stressed that the prisoners' locks could be over-ridden by staff keys and insisted: "There are no security issues about this. The keys are for their own cells and nowhere else."
The revelation will still reinforce concern that prisoners' 'rights' are increasingly being pandered to. In the financial year that ended last March, 8.8 million in compensation was paid out to prisoners - almost 15 times as much as just two years earlier. Cases included:
2.8 million for medical treatment for a prisoner who failed in a suicide bid.
750,000 for nearly 200 drug addicts who suffered withdrawal symptoms after they were forced to go 'cold turkey'.
80,000 for three illegal immigrant convicts who were not deported quickly enough, opening the door for hundreds of similar claims.
200 each for prisoners whose DVD players were taken away because they watched pornography.
There was also the case of Gerry Cooper, who sued the Home Office after falling out of a bunk bed in his cell. Inquiries by Mr Davies showed that of Yorkshire's 15 prisons, six give keys to all their inmates and three based the decisions on category of offence and personal circumstances. The six who deny them to all offenders, include top-security Wakefield, where Soham murderer Ian Huntley is serving life.
Governors at Hull Prison, where 50 per cent of inmates have keys, suggested the practice was there to help prisoners protect themselves from others. The prison said: "The facility is overridden by staff keys and is seen as of additional benefit to vulnerable prisoners by providing extra protection."
The inquiries also unearthed the fact that young prisoners at Askham Grange prison are called 'residents', while at Wetherby they are 'trainees'. Earlier this year, Derbyshire chief constable David Coleman was accused of 'madness' after refusing to release pictures of two escaped murderers amid fears it might breach their human rights. He claimed they posed 'no risk' to local people.
Source
I have just put up another lot of postings from Chris Brand on his usual highly "incorrect" themes.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Britain: New concern at impact of record immigration
After 10 years of record immigration, the Government is to set up a high-level forum to assess its impact on communities. The move marks a significant change of approach by Labour, which has justified the four-fold increase since 1997 almost entirely on economic grounds. David Blunkett, a former Home Secretary, once said there was no obvious upper limit to the numbers that could come from outside the EU. But the Home Office said yesterday that it was establishing a Migration Impacts Forum (MIF) alongside another new body advising on skills shortages that immigrants might be able to fill.
The announcement was part of a package of measures that included the prospect of a 1,000 pound fine on families whose relatives failed to go home when their visas expired. It is already an offence punishable by a 5,000pound fine to retain a nanny who has overstayed. It also envisaged further curbs on forced marriage by raising the minimum age for bringing a spouse to the UK from 18 to 21. It will be a requirement for spouses to learn English before they can join their wife or husband.
Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, who will chair the MIF alongside Phil Woolas, the communities minister, said: "I want to make sure that when ministers decide how high the hurdle should be set, they have got a clear understanding of where in the British economy migration is needed and where it isn't. They also must have access to information about the impacts that immigration is having on communities. "We need to ensure that we are making decisions with our eyes wide open."
The forum will consider evidence that schools, hospitals, housing and transport infrastructure are all feeling the strain of a growing population. Doctors have complained that their surgeries cannot cope with the number of new patients now registering, largely from Eastern Europe. Many were women who were seeking assistance with a pregnancy or who were seeking an abortion.
Figures published today by Migrationwatch, which has campaigned for the wider impact to be considered, - suggest that at least 73,000 new homes would be needed every year to house England's rapidly growing immigrant population. Council chiefs have already warned the Government that local services are coming under huge strain as a result of unprecedented levels of immigration. Over an 18-month period, about 9,000 new National Insurance numbers were issued in Slough, Berks, of which just 150 went to British nationals. Yet the Office for National Statistics recorded only 300 international migrants settling in the area. Net immigration in 2005 was close to 200,000 - four times the number when Labour took office in 1997.
The latest measures foreshadow a new visa regime for tourists, whose length of stay could be reduced from six months to three months. Officials said only two per cent of visitors stayed longer than three months and these could be people who worked illegally or breached their visa terms.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: "It is high time that the wider picture was considered, including the widespread public concern that we are losing our own culture. "But this forum will be useless if it includes only the usual suspects from the immigration industry and employers who stand to gain from immigration."
Source
NHS crisis is forcing cuts to maternity care, charity warns
Support for pregnant women is being cut because of the NHS's financial troubles, a healthcare charity has warned. The National Childbirth Trust (NCT) says it is receiving "increasing reports" that NHS antenatal classes, breastfeeding services and postnatal visits are being cancelled.
NHS antenatal classes have been cut or suspended in at least 10 areas in England and Wales, according to the NCT. These are Romsey in Hampshire; Worcestershire; Newham in London; Watford; Gwent in south Wales; south-west Kent; Nottinghamshire; Gloucestershire; Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire; and Wiltshire.
The NCT said it also understood that postnatal home visits have been stopped or are facing cuts in Wiltshire and in east and north Hertfordshire, which would mean new mothers have to travel to a clinic in order to receive after-birth care. An NCT spokeswoman said: "These cuts in maternity services may reflect a more widespread pattern. "The NCT is concerned that these short-term measures to ease financial deficits are having a negative effect on new parents and parents-to-be, preventing them from getting the information and support they need at this important stage in their lives."
The Department of Health (DoH) said it expected local NHS trusts to follow guidelines set down in the children's national service framework which says good antenatal care will include access to parenting education and preparation for birth "as classes or through other means".
A DoH spokesman said: "The soon-to-be-published maternity strategy will set out how we will achieve services that provide real choice and support for women in all settings, from antenatal care through to the early child years."
Source
BRITAIN: DEFICIENT ETHICS AMONG MUSLIM DOCTORS
Muslim GPs fail to respect the confidentiality of Muslim women patients, Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, has claimed. Ms Hewitt, who represents a constituency in Leicester with a large ethnic minority community, said: "I have had Muslim women give me chapter and verse on very distressing breaches of confidentiality by Muslim GPs. "Some women patients feel they cannot trust their own GP. If they talk to him about a very difficult situation concerning domestic violence or sexual health problems they fear that he will share that with other members of the community." Ms Hewitt had touched on the issue earlier in a speech to the Fabian Society but elaborated her concerns in an interview in Pulse.
A report published last year by the Muslim Women's Network lends some support to Ms Hewitt's charges. It said: "Women did not trust professionals from within their own communities to be always bound by professional rules of confidentiality." The report is based on conversations with Muslim women throughout the country.
But Asian GPs reacted strongly to Ms Hewitt's remarks. Dr Vijoy Singh, chair of Leicestershire and Rutland Local Medical Committee, which covers Ms Hewitt's constituency, said: "No GP would break confidentiality because if they break it, they are liable to be sued. She's out of touch." Prakash Chandra, Local Medical Committee chairman in Newham, which has many Muslim residents, told Pulse: "It surprises me that Patricia Hewitt would make such a statement. This is not a problem I have come across."
A spokeswoman for the General Medical Council (GMC), which investigates complaints against doctors, said: "The GMC is aware that some groups of patients may have added concerns about the confidentiality of their personal information." In the past year, she said, 11 doctors had been referred to a fitness to practise hearing for allegations involving the intentional disclosure of patient information. A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association (BMA) said: "Breaching confidentiality is extremely serious and any doctor who does must be prepared to justify their actions to the General Medical Council."
Jo Haynes, editor of Pulse, said: "These are serious accusations. You would hope Patricia Hewitt has some firm evidence to back up her decision to single out Muslim doctors in this way." Ms Hewitt said: "This is not a direct accusation against Muslim GPs - it is a call for sensitivity from all parts of the health service."
Haleh Afshar, professor of politics and women's studies at York University and chair-woman of the Muslim Women's Network, said she believed that Ms Hewitt had been commenting on issues raised in its own report. "We said that this is a concern that is shared by all women, but the difficulty for Muslim women is that sometimes they don't have the option of going to a GP outside their community." Dr Reefat Drabu, a GP in Southampton, said that she found the accusations offensive. "I'm a Muslim doctor" she said. "Confidentiality is paramount not just for the GP, but for the whole practice. To breach confidentiality in my practice is a sackable offence."
Source
What Britain's politically correct policing and gun restrictions have achieved: "Scores of worried parents are buying body armour for their children in a desperate attempt to keep them safe as street violence escalates. A firm that supplies stab- and bullet-proof vests to government agencies around the world has sold 60 jackets, at a cost of between 300 to 425 pounds, to concerned parents who have flooded the company with inquiries after several murders of teenagers on London streets. The company has received more than 100 calls from parents in the capital over the past few weeks. The company, VestGuard UK, usually gets one or two calls of this type per year. The fatal stabbings of Adam Regis, killed three days after 16-year-old Kodjo Yenga, are the latest in a series of violent incidents involving teenagers in recent months. One mother, whose 13-year-old daughter goes to a school where a pupil has been shot to death, has saved up to buy her child of the best vests available after she was targeted by a gang of older girls. She is now saving up for another vest for her 11-year-old daughter who has also been abused by the gang. Too scared to give her or her daughter’s real name, the woman, a chemical engineer, explained why she felt she had to resort to buying body armour. “My daughter is being attacked by girls who are much older than her and the problem is continuing. I have never seen them with a knife but you never know when they are going to use a gun or knife until it is too late. “The vest is very expensive and we do not have a lot of money but I have no choice. My daughter has been attacked five times in a few weeks and I would rather be safe than sorry... The mother has been to the police but nothing has happened." [She should say her daughter was racially insulted. That would produce a swarm of police immediately]
After 10 years of record immigration, the Government is to set up a high-level forum to assess its impact on communities. The move marks a significant change of approach by Labour, which has justified the four-fold increase since 1997 almost entirely on economic grounds. David Blunkett, a former Home Secretary, once said there was no obvious upper limit to the numbers that could come from outside the EU. But the Home Office said yesterday that it was establishing a Migration Impacts Forum (MIF) alongside another new body advising on skills shortages that immigrants might be able to fill.
The announcement was part of a package of measures that included the prospect of a 1,000 pound fine on families whose relatives failed to go home when their visas expired. It is already an offence punishable by a 5,000pound fine to retain a nanny who has overstayed. It also envisaged further curbs on forced marriage by raising the minimum age for bringing a spouse to the UK from 18 to 21. It will be a requirement for spouses to learn English before they can join their wife or husband.
Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, who will chair the MIF alongside Phil Woolas, the communities minister, said: "I want to make sure that when ministers decide how high the hurdle should be set, they have got a clear understanding of where in the British economy migration is needed and where it isn't. They also must have access to information about the impacts that immigration is having on communities. "We need to ensure that we are making decisions with our eyes wide open."
The forum will consider evidence that schools, hospitals, housing and transport infrastructure are all feeling the strain of a growing population. Doctors have complained that their surgeries cannot cope with the number of new patients now registering, largely from Eastern Europe. Many were women who were seeking assistance with a pregnancy or who were seeking an abortion.
Figures published today by Migrationwatch, which has campaigned for the wider impact to be considered, - suggest that at least 73,000 new homes would be needed every year to house England's rapidly growing immigrant population. Council chiefs have already warned the Government that local services are coming under huge strain as a result of unprecedented levels of immigration. Over an 18-month period, about 9,000 new National Insurance numbers were issued in Slough, Berks, of which just 150 went to British nationals. Yet the Office for National Statistics recorded only 300 international migrants settling in the area. Net immigration in 2005 was close to 200,000 - four times the number when Labour took office in 1997.
The latest measures foreshadow a new visa regime for tourists, whose length of stay could be reduced from six months to three months. Officials said only two per cent of visitors stayed longer than three months and these could be people who worked illegally or breached their visa terms.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: "It is high time that the wider picture was considered, including the widespread public concern that we are losing our own culture. "But this forum will be useless if it includes only the usual suspects from the immigration industry and employers who stand to gain from immigration."
Source
NHS crisis is forcing cuts to maternity care, charity warns
Support for pregnant women is being cut because of the NHS's financial troubles, a healthcare charity has warned. The National Childbirth Trust (NCT) says it is receiving "increasing reports" that NHS antenatal classes, breastfeeding services and postnatal visits are being cancelled.
NHS antenatal classes have been cut or suspended in at least 10 areas in England and Wales, according to the NCT. These are Romsey in Hampshire; Worcestershire; Newham in London; Watford; Gwent in south Wales; south-west Kent; Nottinghamshire; Gloucestershire; Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire; and Wiltshire.
The NCT said it also understood that postnatal home visits have been stopped or are facing cuts in Wiltshire and in east and north Hertfordshire, which would mean new mothers have to travel to a clinic in order to receive after-birth care. An NCT spokeswoman said: "These cuts in maternity services may reflect a more widespread pattern. "The NCT is concerned that these short-term measures to ease financial deficits are having a negative effect on new parents and parents-to-be, preventing them from getting the information and support they need at this important stage in their lives."
The Department of Health (DoH) said it expected local NHS trusts to follow guidelines set down in the children's national service framework which says good antenatal care will include access to parenting education and preparation for birth "as classes or through other means".
A DoH spokesman said: "The soon-to-be-published maternity strategy will set out how we will achieve services that provide real choice and support for women in all settings, from antenatal care through to the early child years."
Source
BRITAIN: DEFICIENT ETHICS AMONG MUSLIM DOCTORS
Muslim GPs fail to respect the confidentiality of Muslim women patients, Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, has claimed. Ms Hewitt, who represents a constituency in Leicester with a large ethnic minority community, said: "I have had Muslim women give me chapter and verse on very distressing breaches of confidentiality by Muslim GPs. "Some women patients feel they cannot trust their own GP. If they talk to him about a very difficult situation concerning domestic violence or sexual health problems they fear that he will share that with other members of the community." Ms Hewitt had touched on the issue earlier in a speech to the Fabian Society but elaborated her concerns in an interview in Pulse.
A report published last year by the Muslim Women's Network lends some support to Ms Hewitt's charges. It said: "Women did not trust professionals from within their own communities to be always bound by professional rules of confidentiality." The report is based on conversations with Muslim women throughout the country.
But Asian GPs reacted strongly to Ms Hewitt's remarks. Dr Vijoy Singh, chair of Leicestershire and Rutland Local Medical Committee, which covers Ms Hewitt's constituency, said: "No GP would break confidentiality because if they break it, they are liable to be sued. She's out of touch." Prakash Chandra, Local Medical Committee chairman in Newham, which has many Muslim residents, told Pulse: "It surprises me that Patricia Hewitt would make such a statement. This is not a problem I have come across."
A spokeswoman for the General Medical Council (GMC), which investigates complaints against doctors, said: "The GMC is aware that some groups of patients may have added concerns about the confidentiality of their personal information." In the past year, she said, 11 doctors had been referred to a fitness to practise hearing for allegations involving the intentional disclosure of patient information. A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association (BMA) said: "Breaching confidentiality is extremely serious and any doctor who does must be prepared to justify their actions to the General Medical Council."
Jo Haynes, editor of Pulse, said: "These are serious accusations. You would hope Patricia Hewitt has some firm evidence to back up her decision to single out Muslim doctors in this way." Ms Hewitt said: "This is not a direct accusation against Muslim GPs - it is a call for sensitivity from all parts of the health service."
Haleh Afshar, professor of politics and women's studies at York University and chair-woman of the Muslim Women's Network, said she believed that Ms Hewitt had been commenting on issues raised in its own report. "We said that this is a concern that is shared by all women, but the difficulty for Muslim women is that sometimes they don't have the option of going to a GP outside their community." Dr Reefat Drabu, a GP in Southampton, said that she found the accusations offensive. "I'm a Muslim doctor" she said. "Confidentiality is paramount not just for the GP, but for the whole practice. To breach confidentiality in my practice is a sackable offence."
Source
What Britain's politically correct policing and gun restrictions have achieved: "Scores of worried parents are buying body armour for their children in a desperate attempt to keep them safe as street violence escalates. A firm that supplies stab- and bullet-proof vests to government agencies around the world has sold 60 jackets, at a cost of between 300 to 425 pounds, to concerned parents who have flooded the company with inquiries after several murders of teenagers on London streets. The company has received more than 100 calls from parents in the capital over the past few weeks. The company, VestGuard UK, usually gets one or two calls of this type per year. The fatal stabbings of Adam Regis, killed three days after 16-year-old Kodjo Yenga, are the latest in a series of violent incidents involving teenagers in recent months. One mother, whose 13-year-old daughter goes to a school where a pupil has been shot to death, has saved up to buy her child of the best vests available after she was targeted by a gang of older girls. She is now saving up for another vest for her 11-year-old daughter who has also been abused by the gang. Too scared to give her or her daughter’s real name, the woman, a chemical engineer, explained why she felt she had to resort to buying body armour. “My daughter is being attacked by girls who are much older than her and the problem is continuing. I have never seen them with a knife but you never know when they are going to use a gun or knife until it is too late. “The vest is very expensive and we do not have a lot of money but I have no choice. My daughter has been attacked five times in a few weeks and I would rather be safe than sorry... The mother has been to the police but nothing has happened." [She should say her daughter was racially insulted. That would produce a swarm of police immediately]
Thursday, March 29, 2007
SLAVERY AND BRITAIN
With the current breastbeating about slavery in Britain (no-one would guess that it was actually Britain that ENDED slavery), it seems important to get clear just what was actually happening before 1807. I think that the following extract from The Encyclopedia Britannica would be a total surprise to 99.9% of Brits:
Black slaves exported from Africa were widely traded throughout the Islamic world. Approximately 18,000,000 Africans were delivered into the Islamic trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades between 650 and 1905.
In the second half of the 15th century Europeans began to trade along the west coast of Africa, and by 1867 between 7,000,000 and 10,000,000 Africans had been shipped as slaves to the New World.
Although some areas of Africa were depleted by slave raiding, on balance the African population grew after the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade because of new food crops introduced from the New World, particularly manioc, corn (maize), and possibly peanuts (groundnuts).
The relationship between African and New World slavery was highly complementary. African slave owners demanded primarily women and children for labour and lineage incorporation and tended to kill males because they were troublesome and likely to flee. The transatlantic trade, on the other hand, demanded primarily adult males for labour and thus saved from certain death many adult males who otherwise would have been slaughtered outright by their African captors
I guess I am naive but is there not some cause for THANKS somewhere in there?
NO JUSTICE IN BRITISH JUSTICE ANY MORE
Of all the stories I have covered about what is now called the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, few have been more remarkable than the disaster that has just befallen David Dobbin, a 43-year-old Cheshire farmer, who derived his entire livelihood from a large dairy herd. His 567 cows, including pedigree Ayrshires and Holsteins, had won prizes, and were worth upwards of 500,000 pounds.
In 2005 Cheshire trading standards officials, acting for Defra (one hopes Cheshire's taxpayers do not mind officials whose salaries they pay acting for a government department) began a long series of visits, to inspect the documentation required for Mr Dobbin's cattle under EC rules. The more they attempted to check the animals' eight-digit ear tags against their EC "cattle passports", the more they claimed to have found "irregularities", although they failed to explain how many or what these were.
Last November, on Defra's instructions, the officials seized all Mr Dobbin's passports, making it illegal for him to move animals off his farm and all but wiping out his income. Last month, serving him with a "notice to identify", they removed his herd to another farm, stating that, under EC regulation 494/98, it was their intention to destroy all 567 animals.
Dating back to the BSE panic, this diktat says that "if the keeper of an animal cannot prove its identification in two working days, it shall be destroyed without delay" and "without compensation". These powers, as I noted when the regulation was issued in 1998, were unprecedented. Nevertheless the regulation permits officials to destroy only animals that cannot be identified. Defra has never claimed that the paperwork for most of Mr Dobbin's cows was not in order, only that the officials had found "what they believed to be an unacceptable level of non-compliance with the regulations", and that this "could have serious implications for the protection of the human food chain".
Less than an hour before slaughter was due to begin, Mr Dobbin's combative Liverpool lawyer, David Kirwan, got a High Court injunction, giving the cows a stay of execution. He also won leave from Mr Justice Goldring for judicial review, on the grounds that Defra was acting beyond its powers. But this month, as the injunction expired, Defra insisted that, unless Mr Dobbin could prove the identification of every one of his animals, they must still be destroyed. Since all his passports, the most obvious means of identification, had been confiscated, this was impossible.
Defra told the court that Mr Dobbin would instead have to provide DNA identification for each animal, within two days. This would have been technically impossible, even if Defra had not moved the cows elsewhere and refused him access. The need to proceed with the slaughter, Defra argued, was urgent, because it had no resources to look after the cattle properly, causing severe "animal welfare" problems. The judge felt he had little option but to give the go-ahead, and on March 8 and 9 the cows were destroyed.
All Mr Dobbin can now hope for is that the judicial review may confirm that Defra acted outside the law. The officials agreed in court that they had never used these powers on anything like such a scale before. It has not been claimed that Mr Dobbin's animals posed any health risk (BSE this year is down to a single case). His only alleged offence was "non-compliance" with complex bureaucratic procedures, to an extent which Defra still cannot specify. For this he has seen his livelihood go up in smoke, without a penny in compensation.
Source
Changing a bulb is risky at the BBC
With a few simple precautions, thousands manage it every day. Yet BBC staff have been stopped from replacing lightbulbs because of concerns for their health and safety. Instead, the corporation is paying up to 10 pounds for each replacement bulb to be fitted.
The situation came to light when Louise Wordsworth, a learning project manager with the BBC, complained. "I called up to ask for a new lightbulb for my desk lamp and was told that this would cost 10 pounds," she wrote in a letter to Ariel, the corporation's magazine. "On telling them I'd buy and replace the bulb myself (bought for the bargain price of 1 pound for two bulbs) I was told that it was against health and safety regulations. So guess how many BBC colleagues it finally took to change a lightbulb (risking life and limb to do so)?"
A BBC spokesman confirmed that there had been a number of complaints, but said that each request was judged on its merits to save staff time.
As for Ms Wordsworth's unanswered question, three years ago it was calculated how many people it takes to change a BBC lightbulb. The member of staff left in the dark would need to find a clerk to get a reference number so that the repair could be paid for, then report the fault to a helpline. An electrician would ask the store manager for the part and install the bulb, making a total of five people.
Source
Wonder drug NHS bosses can't afford to offer cancer victims
CASH-strapped NHS bosses are denying thousands of Midland kidney cancer patients two new 'wonder drugs' that could prolong their lives. A Birmingham oncologist has likened the scandal surrounding Sutent and Nexavar to that of breast cancer treatment Herceptin, which was denied to sufferers until a public outcry last year. Professor Nicholas James revealed that Midland health chiefs are refusing to fund some of his patients with the kidney cancer treatments, licensed for use in Britain last August.
Trials have shown that Sutent and Nexavar can offer patients a dramatic improvement in quality of life - and increase life expectancy by two years. That compares favourably to Interferon-alpha, the kidney cancer treatment currently available on the NHS, which lengthens lives by just five months on average.
But Sutent and Nexavar cost 3,000 pounds a month to fund, and have not yet been approved as 'cost-effective' by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). As a result, funding decisions are currently being taken by individual Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), who are said to be rejecting most NHS patients. Kidney cancer sufferers are so desperate to experience the drugs' life-extending benefits that they are cashing in pensions and selling homes to fund the treatment themselves.
Prof James, a clinical oncology expert from Birmingham University's Wellcome Institute, said: "Around 6,000 people in Britain are diagnosed with kidney cancer every year, and it kills up to 4,000 people every 12 months. "Initially, you can be treated with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery. But, until August last year, if it came back there was no hope. "The approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) of Sutent and Nexavar, licensed last August, has changed all that.
"It was a big step forward in terms of treatment options for kidney cancer patients. "But although the drugs had been approved by the Agency, NICE has not yet given them the go-ahead as being cost-effective for NHS patients. "This is where our problem lies. We have drugs available to treat our patients, but they are not routinely available on the NHS because they have not been approved by NICE. "This means I have some patients who were involved in the trials for these drugs who can continue treatment. "But others have to rely on decisions of their individual PCTs to see if they will fund them.
"When this happened with Herceptin, there was a huge uproar. NICE eventually approved the drug. "Up to 40,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in Britain, so the numbers affected were far greater and they could kick up a bigger fuss. "Meanwhile, there are thousands of kidney cancer patients who could benefit from these new drugs, but who are finding it difficult to make their voices heard."
Two men for every woman is diagnosed with kidney cancer, which tends to affect those aged from 30 to 60. Prof James added: "It's a ridiculous situation. If a drug is approved by the MHRA, it should automatically be approved by NICE. "It is unfair that some patients can have access to the drugs, which have proved to be highly effective at prolonging life and improving life quality, yet others aren't.
"It is a ghastly decision for the PCT to have to make. "There are several Midland patients who can't afford the drugs, while others have remortgaged their homes and cashed in their pensions so they can be treated."
Radio presenter James Whale, who has kidney cancer, is backing the campaign to have Sutent and Nexavar offered free to NHS patients. "In the past, people with advanced kidney cancer had little hope," he said. "Now, drugs like Sutent and Nexavar are their only chance of precious extra months of life."
A Department of Health Spokesman said: "Our guidance makes it clear to NHS organisations that they should not refuse to fund a treatment simply because NICE guidance does not yet exist. "Until NICE has issued final guidance on a treatment, NHS bodies should continue with local arrangements for the managed introduction of new technologies, taking into account all the available evidence."
Source
Green Fascism just around the corner in Britain
Something disturbing and ominous is happening in Great Britain as the country embarks on an all-out fight against the threat of global warming. Intent on making Britain the world's first "green" economy, the government will soon introduce legislation designed to take SUVs and other "gas guzzling" vehicles off the road. By sharply increasing driving levies, the authorities intend to force car owners into making "more sustainable travel choices, including greater use of public transport, walking and cycling."
At the same time, homeowners will be asked to make their homes "carbon neutral" and required to draw their energy primarily from low or zero carbon sources such as wave, tide, solar or nuclear power. To ensure compliance, the government will send out inspectors to scrutinize everything from how a home is insulated to the kind of appliances it uses. Those who fail to meet the decreed standards will be fined and penalized. Just how serious the government is about enforcement can be sensed from the words of Environment Secretary David Miliband who stated -- while unveiling the program -- that it would be "painful" for home owners to continue to have an "energy inefficient home."
These sentiments were echoed by a group of cabinet ministers who said that complying with the new regulations will necessitate sweeping changes in lifestyle across the board. Everybody in Britain, they concurred, will have to "live, work and travel differently."
It is essential that we see these developments for what they really are: A thinly-veiled attempt by devotees of the state to take over a western society the like of which has not been seen since the Soviet-sponsored revolutions of the late 1940s.
The practical consequence of these plans -- should they succeed -- will be a radical empowerment of the state which will end up with virtually unlimited powers to regulate nearly every facet of life. Everything from the way people travel to the manner in which they furnish and maintain their homes will now be subject to governmental decree and oversight. Those who refuse to comply will be punished -- and severely so -- if the words of Miliband are anything to go by.
This is precisely why the idea of man-made global warming so appeals to those on the political left. Being ideological cousins of erstwhile socialists, they share a desire to expand government regardless of the cause or issue they ostensibly espouse. In global warming they have sensed the perfect opportunity, for if the underlying claim is true and the planet is indeed headed for destruction, then the impending catastrophe can only be averted by united action on a grand scale. And such action can only be taken by a strong state which has been granted a wide range of powers to deal with this life-or-death crisis.
What makes the global warming scenario even more appealing is that the chief perpetrator is none other than the left's perennial villain -- the business establishment. After all, most of the pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere by unscrupulous businesses as a by-product of their relentless pursuit of ever greater profits. Close second on the list of culprits are us the people whose excessive consumption, runaway appetites and outright recklessness further exacerbate the already critical situation.
The way to safeguard our survival, then, is for government to exercise strict control over both business and the masses. This will be done through taxation and regulation, which, admittedly, will have to be severe at times. But no one should object or complain, since it is only to be expected that this extreme emergency calls for extreme measures. Thus the alleged threat of man-made global warming is used as a means of realizing the left's perennial dream of society administered by a powerful state.
Those on the left have sought to affect this state of affairs for many decades, but until now their efforts have met with vigorous resistance throughout much of the Western world. Not surprisingly, given that it is a world built on the ideals of economic and individual freedom and the principle of limited government.
But by invoking the specter of global warming, the left no longer has to fight tooth and nail for every tax increase or additional regulation. Alarmed by apocalyptic predictions, the frightened populations will now voluntarily and even eagerly turn over their money, freedoms and rights. Fearing for our lives, no tax will seem too excessive or regulatory burden too intrusive. After all, no decree or law can seem too extreme if our very survival is at stake. Believing we face an imminent doom, we shall readily submit to a governmentally mandated compact we would never agree to under normal circumstances.
This time there will be no resistance to this revolution as the state refashions almost all existing relations and usurps the rights and powers that properly belong to the private sphere. There will be no fierce street fighting such as accompanied the bloody revolutions of the past. This time around people will give up their freedoms willingly and even with gladness.
Even Karl Marx himself could not be wholly displeased with the state of affairs toward which the global warming alarmism is inexorably inclining: A vastly empowered state exercising tight oversight over virtually every dimension of life. The only departure from Marx's original vision is the means by which this will be achieved. It will not come about as a result of bitter class struggle, but of a crusade by environmental activists to save the planet.
The tremendous efficacy of the global warming frenzy in advancing the left's agenda can be seen in Britain where state zealots are in the process of taking over one of the world's oldest democracies. Above all, no one should make the mistake of assuming that this is the work of environmental extremists who have somehow managed to worm their way into positions of power and influence. Rather it is the inevitable consequence of accepting the claim of man-made global warming. As such, it is a dire warning of what lies in store for all those who receive this left-induced hysteria as unassailable truth.
When similar measures are finally proposed in America -- as they inevitably will be -- we must be prepared to expose and call them for what they really are: A ruse to bring about the socialist dream of an all-powerful state in charge of every aspect of our lives.
Source
WILL BRITAIN AND EUROPE WISE UP ON GLOBAL WARMING?
If you could divide Europe's nations and regions into "red" and "blue" states on the American model, very few would be colored "red" -- Poland, some other East European countries, rural regions across the continent, etc. Most nations would be cheerfully "blue." But all Europe would be ''green.'' Green is the universal sign of conspicuous virtue, of concern for planet, of a new paganism that worships the goddess Gaia and treats the Earth as itself a single living organism.
Anyone who questions this newly fashionable faith is regarded as a dangerous heretic to be cast into the outer darkness. A minister in the British government suggested to the BBC that it should not allow air time to any scientists who doubted ''global warming'' (a minority of scientists but a distinguished group). Other high priests of the creed have called for "Nuremberg trials" of "climate change deniers."
In this ovebearing moral atmosphere politicians are likely to salute any green flag that the environmentalists run up. And, sure enough, in 10 days there has been in succession:
1. A "summit" of European Union leaders that pledged to cut Europe's carbon emissions by 20 percent from their 1990 levels and, if other countries (especially America) follow their example, by 30 percent.
2. The publication in Britain of a Climate Change Bill, supported by all major parties, that would set legally binding targets to cut Britain's carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050.
3. A proposal by the supposedly free-market Conservative Party to "allow" every citizen one untaxed air flight a year but then to levy heavy taxes on additional flights in order to discourage air travel.
4. Leaks from Whitehall that Finance Minister Gordon Brown will double fuel taxes in Wednesday's budget as another green measure.
All this is likely to be applauded by the voters -- who are swept up in this green tornado quite as much as the media and politicians -- but will they applaud its effects, large and small, when they pinch? Take small effects first. Under the EU summit agreement, the familiar light bulb is to be outlawed in the next few years in favor of a more carbon-neutral one. Unfortunately, the new bulb is several times more expensive than the existing one and it sheds much less light. Those who can afford the (considerable) expense will use more bulbs to illuminate the same space. Poorer people will develop eye problems and push up health costs. Such are the unintended consequences of thoughtless legislation.
What of large matters? The idea underlying the EU proposals and the British climate change bill is that governments will both impose binding limits on the carbon emissions that industries emit and instruct them to use low-carbon fuels such as wind and solar power. In other words, the EU and Britain are embracing a new form of central planning based on energy-use quotas rather than output quotas. But central planning is a synonym for economic inefficiency and waste. These things happen when green daydreams encounter realities or what Al Gore calls inconvenient truths. Here are a few more of them:
* Almost all the European countries have already failed to meet much lower carbon emission targets under Kyoto than the new targets they adopted 10 days ago.
* When Brown increased fuel taxes six years ago in Britain, nationwide blockades by truck drivers almost brought down the government.
* The British economy accounts for only 2 percent of global carbon emissions. If it were to close down entirely, it would have little or no impact on the world's total carbon output -- and even less impact on the willingness of the Indian and Chinese governments to cut back on building power stations that they consider essential to their nation's prosperity but that are now the main drivers of increased carbon usage.
Britain and Europe's governments are committing themselves to systems of carbon rationing bound to run up against strong consumer and voter resistance within a few years for very little practical gain. Why? Europe's green establishment believes that global warming is caused by carbon usage and thus can be solved only by its massive reduction.
But global warming has several possible causes, some of which, such as the activity of the sun, are unrelated to humans.
While we are seeking to understand global warming scientifically, we should adapt to it -- shoring up coasts against erosion, changing the use of agricultural land to suit the changing climate, building dams, developing new technologies. Adaptation would include measures to encourage the use of cleaner fuels, notably nuclear energy. It would be a practical solution to the effects of warming, whatever science eventually established definitively as its cause.
To be sure, adaptation would be expensive. Not nearly so expensive, however, as trying to close down the free market in Europe and to reverse the Industrial Revolution in Asia. But Gaia is a jealous goddess and does not consider costs.
Source
THE GREAT STATIN FRAUD
Lipitor is a common statin. There is a "Cholesterol Skeptics" site here
A doctor accused of wittingly prescribing useless or possibly lethal drugs would vehemently - and understandably - deny it. This makes it rather difficult to oppose the prevailing medical consensus on statins - the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to four million people in Britain at a cost of 1 billion pounds a year. That's quite a sum. It could pay the salaries of 700,000 nurses or build two spanking new teaching hospitals.
An even bigger sum is 15 billion. That is the profit the pharmaceutical industry made last year from this, the most profitable class of drugs ever invented. They are so profitable that the latest statins to reach the market came with a 600 million promotion budget, to "promote" the notion to family doctors and policymakers that the lower the cholesterol the better, and that at least half the population would benefit from the drugs.
But it is not so. Statins are useless for 95 per cent of those taking them, while exposing all to the hazard of serious side-effects. Hence my ever-growing file of letters from those who regrettably have had to find this out for themselves, illustrated by this all-too-typical tale from Roger Andrews of Hertfordshire, first prescribed statins after an operation for an aortic aneurism (that he had cleverly diagnosed himself).
Over the past few years Mr Andrews had become increasingly decrepit -what can one expect at 74? - with pain and stiffness in the legs and burning sensations in the hands so bad that when flying to his son's wedding in Hawaii he needed walking sticks and a wheelchair at the transfer stops. However, he forgot to pack his statins, and felt so much better after his three-week holiday that when he got home he decided to continue the inadvertent "experiment" of not taking them. Since October most if not all of his crippling side-effects have gone. Several friends can tell a similar story, and they have friends too.
The take-home message is that statins are only of value in those with a strong family history of heart disease or men with a history of heart attacks. For everyone else they are best avoided as they seriously interfere with the functioning of the nerve cells, affecting mental function, and muscles. This is all wittily explained in a recent book by a Cheshire family doctor, Malcolm Kendrick, "The Great Cholesterol Con" (John Blake Publishing, 9.99). There are, I suspect, many out there, like Mr Andrews, wrongly attributing their decrepitude to Anno Domini, when the real culprits are statins.
Source
British man denied "too expensive" heart surgery
Health insurance that isn't
A seriously ill man has been told he cannot have a potentially life-saving operation on the NHS because his local primary care trust will not pay for it. Paul Carter, 66, of Malvern, was told by a specialist he needed biventricular pacing fitted for his enlarged heart. But Worcestershire Primary Health Care Trust has refused, saying the advanced pacemaker surgery would cost 8,000 pounds. It said it could not afford the 400,000 pounds it would cost each year to provide the surgery to patients.
The primary care trust's Dr Richard Harling said: "Any funding would have to come from other services. "For the PCT to justify introducing (biventricular pacing) we would have to be sure that it was a better use of this money than our other local services."
Mr Carter's wife Marjorie said: "We are very upset. Working all your life and having to face an operation and then you can't get it done is a bit distressing."
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which offers guidance to primary care trusts over whether a treatment is cost effective, is due to make a decision over the treatment in July. The Department of Health said, until Nice's guidance was published, the final decision on funding lay with individual trusts.
Source
With the current breastbeating about slavery in Britain (no-one would guess that it was actually Britain that ENDED slavery), it seems important to get clear just what was actually happening before 1807. I think that the following extract from The Encyclopedia Britannica would be a total surprise to 99.9% of Brits:
Black slaves exported from Africa were widely traded throughout the Islamic world. Approximately 18,000,000 Africans were delivered into the Islamic trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades between 650 and 1905.
In the second half of the 15th century Europeans began to trade along the west coast of Africa, and by 1867 between 7,000,000 and 10,000,000 Africans had been shipped as slaves to the New World.
Although some areas of Africa were depleted by slave raiding, on balance the African population grew after the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade because of new food crops introduced from the New World, particularly manioc, corn (maize), and possibly peanuts (groundnuts).
The relationship between African and New World slavery was highly complementary. African slave owners demanded primarily women and children for labour and lineage incorporation and tended to kill males because they were troublesome and likely to flee. The transatlantic trade, on the other hand, demanded primarily adult males for labour and thus saved from certain death many adult males who otherwise would have been slaughtered outright by their African captors
I guess I am naive but is there not some cause for THANKS somewhere in there?
NO JUSTICE IN BRITISH JUSTICE ANY MORE
Of all the stories I have covered about what is now called the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, few have been more remarkable than the disaster that has just befallen David Dobbin, a 43-year-old Cheshire farmer, who derived his entire livelihood from a large dairy herd. His 567 cows, including pedigree Ayrshires and Holsteins, had won prizes, and were worth upwards of 500,000 pounds.
In 2005 Cheshire trading standards officials, acting for Defra (one hopes Cheshire's taxpayers do not mind officials whose salaries they pay acting for a government department) began a long series of visits, to inspect the documentation required for Mr Dobbin's cattle under EC rules. The more they attempted to check the animals' eight-digit ear tags against their EC "cattle passports", the more they claimed to have found "irregularities", although they failed to explain how many or what these were.
Last November, on Defra's instructions, the officials seized all Mr Dobbin's passports, making it illegal for him to move animals off his farm and all but wiping out his income. Last month, serving him with a "notice to identify", they removed his herd to another farm, stating that, under EC regulation 494/98, it was their intention to destroy all 567 animals.
Dating back to the BSE panic, this diktat says that "if the keeper of an animal cannot prove its identification in two working days, it shall be destroyed without delay" and "without compensation". These powers, as I noted when the regulation was issued in 1998, were unprecedented. Nevertheless the regulation permits officials to destroy only animals that cannot be identified. Defra has never claimed that the paperwork for most of Mr Dobbin's cows was not in order, only that the officials had found "what they believed to be an unacceptable level of non-compliance with the regulations", and that this "could have serious implications for the protection of the human food chain".
Less than an hour before slaughter was due to begin, Mr Dobbin's combative Liverpool lawyer, David Kirwan, got a High Court injunction, giving the cows a stay of execution. He also won leave from Mr Justice Goldring for judicial review, on the grounds that Defra was acting beyond its powers. But this month, as the injunction expired, Defra insisted that, unless Mr Dobbin could prove the identification of every one of his animals, they must still be destroyed. Since all his passports, the most obvious means of identification, had been confiscated, this was impossible.
Defra told the court that Mr Dobbin would instead have to provide DNA identification for each animal, within two days. This would have been technically impossible, even if Defra had not moved the cows elsewhere and refused him access. The need to proceed with the slaughter, Defra argued, was urgent, because it had no resources to look after the cattle properly, causing severe "animal welfare" problems. The judge felt he had little option but to give the go-ahead, and on March 8 and 9 the cows were destroyed.
All Mr Dobbin can now hope for is that the judicial review may confirm that Defra acted outside the law. The officials agreed in court that they had never used these powers on anything like such a scale before. It has not been claimed that Mr Dobbin's animals posed any health risk (BSE this year is down to a single case). His only alleged offence was "non-compliance" with complex bureaucratic procedures, to an extent which Defra still cannot specify. For this he has seen his livelihood go up in smoke, without a penny in compensation.
Source
Changing a bulb is risky at the BBC
With a few simple precautions, thousands manage it every day. Yet BBC staff have been stopped from replacing lightbulbs because of concerns for their health and safety. Instead, the corporation is paying up to 10 pounds for each replacement bulb to be fitted.
The situation came to light when Louise Wordsworth, a learning project manager with the BBC, complained. "I called up to ask for a new lightbulb for my desk lamp and was told that this would cost 10 pounds," she wrote in a letter to Ariel, the corporation's magazine. "On telling them I'd buy and replace the bulb myself (bought for the bargain price of 1 pound for two bulbs) I was told that it was against health and safety regulations. So guess how many BBC colleagues it finally took to change a lightbulb (risking life and limb to do so)?"
A BBC spokesman confirmed that there had been a number of complaints, but said that each request was judged on its merits to save staff time.
As for Ms Wordsworth's unanswered question, three years ago it was calculated how many people it takes to change a BBC lightbulb. The member of staff left in the dark would need to find a clerk to get a reference number so that the repair could be paid for, then report the fault to a helpline. An electrician would ask the store manager for the part and install the bulb, making a total of five people.
Source
Wonder drug NHS bosses can't afford to offer cancer victims
CASH-strapped NHS bosses are denying thousands of Midland kidney cancer patients two new 'wonder drugs' that could prolong their lives. A Birmingham oncologist has likened the scandal surrounding Sutent and Nexavar to that of breast cancer treatment Herceptin, which was denied to sufferers until a public outcry last year. Professor Nicholas James revealed that Midland health chiefs are refusing to fund some of his patients with the kidney cancer treatments, licensed for use in Britain last August.
Trials have shown that Sutent and Nexavar can offer patients a dramatic improvement in quality of life - and increase life expectancy by two years. That compares favourably to Interferon-alpha, the kidney cancer treatment currently available on the NHS, which lengthens lives by just five months on average.
But Sutent and Nexavar cost 3,000 pounds a month to fund, and have not yet been approved as 'cost-effective' by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). As a result, funding decisions are currently being taken by individual Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), who are said to be rejecting most NHS patients. Kidney cancer sufferers are so desperate to experience the drugs' life-extending benefits that they are cashing in pensions and selling homes to fund the treatment themselves.
Prof James, a clinical oncology expert from Birmingham University's Wellcome Institute, said: "Around 6,000 people in Britain are diagnosed with kidney cancer every year, and it kills up to 4,000 people every 12 months. "Initially, you can be treated with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery. But, until August last year, if it came back there was no hope. "The approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) of Sutent and Nexavar, licensed last August, has changed all that.
"It was a big step forward in terms of treatment options for kidney cancer patients. "But although the drugs had been approved by the Agency, NICE has not yet given them the go-ahead as being cost-effective for NHS patients. "This is where our problem lies. We have drugs available to treat our patients, but they are not routinely available on the NHS because they have not been approved by NICE. "This means I have some patients who were involved in the trials for these drugs who can continue treatment. "But others have to rely on decisions of their individual PCTs to see if they will fund them.
"When this happened with Herceptin, there was a huge uproar. NICE eventually approved the drug. "Up to 40,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in Britain, so the numbers affected were far greater and they could kick up a bigger fuss. "Meanwhile, there are thousands of kidney cancer patients who could benefit from these new drugs, but who are finding it difficult to make their voices heard."
Two men for every woman is diagnosed with kidney cancer, which tends to affect those aged from 30 to 60. Prof James added: "It's a ridiculous situation. If a drug is approved by the MHRA, it should automatically be approved by NICE. "It is unfair that some patients can have access to the drugs, which have proved to be highly effective at prolonging life and improving life quality, yet others aren't.
"It is a ghastly decision for the PCT to have to make. "There are several Midland patients who can't afford the drugs, while others have remortgaged their homes and cashed in their pensions so they can be treated."
Radio presenter James Whale, who has kidney cancer, is backing the campaign to have Sutent and Nexavar offered free to NHS patients. "In the past, people with advanced kidney cancer had little hope," he said. "Now, drugs like Sutent and Nexavar are their only chance of precious extra months of life."
A Department of Health Spokesman said: "Our guidance makes it clear to NHS organisations that they should not refuse to fund a treatment simply because NICE guidance does not yet exist. "Until NICE has issued final guidance on a treatment, NHS bodies should continue with local arrangements for the managed introduction of new technologies, taking into account all the available evidence."
Source
Green Fascism just around the corner in Britain
Something disturbing and ominous is happening in Great Britain as the country embarks on an all-out fight against the threat of global warming. Intent on making Britain the world's first "green" economy, the government will soon introduce legislation designed to take SUVs and other "gas guzzling" vehicles off the road. By sharply increasing driving levies, the authorities intend to force car owners into making "more sustainable travel choices, including greater use of public transport, walking and cycling."
At the same time, homeowners will be asked to make their homes "carbon neutral" and required to draw their energy primarily from low or zero carbon sources such as wave, tide, solar or nuclear power. To ensure compliance, the government will send out inspectors to scrutinize everything from how a home is insulated to the kind of appliances it uses. Those who fail to meet the decreed standards will be fined and penalized. Just how serious the government is about enforcement can be sensed from the words of Environment Secretary David Miliband who stated -- while unveiling the program -- that it would be "painful" for home owners to continue to have an "energy inefficient home."
These sentiments were echoed by a group of cabinet ministers who said that complying with the new regulations will necessitate sweeping changes in lifestyle across the board. Everybody in Britain, they concurred, will have to "live, work and travel differently."
It is essential that we see these developments for what they really are: A thinly-veiled attempt by devotees of the state to take over a western society the like of which has not been seen since the Soviet-sponsored revolutions of the late 1940s.
The practical consequence of these plans -- should they succeed -- will be a radical empowerment of the state which will end up with virtually unlimited powers to regulate nearly every facet of life. Everything from the way people travel to the manner in which they furnish and maintain their homes will now be subject to governmental decree and oversight. Those who refuse to comply will be punished -- and severely so -- if the words of Miliband are anything to go by.
This is precisely why the idea of man-made global warming so appeals to those on the political left. Being ideological cousins of erstwhile socialists, they share a desire to expand government regardless of the cause or issue they ostensibly espouse. In global warming they have sensed the perfect opportunity, for if the underlying claim is true and the planet is indeed headed for destruction, then the impending catastrophe can only be averted by united action on a grand scale. And such action can only be taken by a strong state which has been granted a wide range of powers to deal with this life-or-death crisis.
What makes the global warming scenario even more appealing is that the chief perpetrator is none other than the left's perennial villain -- the business establishment. After all, most of the pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere by unscrupulous businesses as a by-product of their relentless pursuit of ever greater profits. Close second on the list of culprits are us the people whose excessive consumption, runaway appetites and outright recklessness further exacerbate the already critical situation.
The way to safeguard our survival, then, is for government to exercise strict control over both business and the masses. This will be done through taxation and regulation, which, admittedly, will have to be severe at times. But no one should object or complain, since it is only to be expected that this extreme emergency calls for extreme measures. Thus the alleged threat of man-made global warming is used as a means of realizing the left's perennial dream of society administered by a powerful state.
Those on the left have sought to affect this state of affairs for many decades, but until now their efforts have met with vigorous resistance throughout much of the Western world. Not surprisingly, given that it is a world built on the ideals of economic and individual freedom and the principle of limited government.
But by invoking the specter of global warming, the left no longer has to fight tooth and nail for every tax increase or additional regulation. Alarmed by apocalyptic predictions, the frightened populations will now voluntarily and even eagerly turn over their money, freedoms and rights. Fearing for our lives, no tax will seem too excessive or regulatory burden too intrusive. After all, no decree or law can seem too extreme if our very survival is at stake. Believing we face an imminent doom, we shall readily submit to a governmentally mandated compact we would never agree to under normal circumstances.
This time there will be no resistance to this revolution as the state refashions almost all existing relations and usurps the rights and powers that properly belong to the private sphere. There will be no fierce street fighting such as accompanied the bloody revolutions of the past. This time around people will give up their freedoms willingly and even with gladness.
Even Karl Marx himself could not be wholly displeased with the state of affairs toward which the global warming alarmism is inexorably inclining: A vastly empowered state exercising tight oversight over virtually every dimension of life. The only departure from Marx's original vision is the means by which this will be achieved. It will not come about as a result of bitter class struggle, but of a crusade by environmental activists to save the planet.
The tremendous efficacy of the global warming frenzy in advancing the left's agenda can be seen in Britain where state zealots are in the process of taking over one of the world's oldest democracies. Above all, no one should make the mistake of assuming that this is the work of environmental extremists who have somehow managed to worm their way into positions of power and influence. Rather it is the inevitable consequence of accepting the claim of man-made global warming. As such, it is a dire warning of what lies in store for all those who receive this left-induced hysteria as unassailable truth.
When similar measures are finally proposed in America -- as they inevitably will be -- we must be prepared to expose and call them for what they really are: A ruse to bring about the socialist dream of an all-powerful state in charge of every aspect of our lives.
Source
WILL BRITAIN AND EUROPE WISE UP ON GLOBAL WARMING?
If you could divide Europe's nations and regions into "red" and "blue" states on the American model, very few would be colored "red" -- Poland, some other East European countries, rural regions across the continent, etc. Most nations would be cheerfully "blue." But all Europe would be ''green.'' Green is the universal sign of conspicuous virtue, of concern for planet, of a new paganism that worships the goddess Gaia and treats the Earth as itself a single living organism.
Anyone who questions this newly fashionable faith is regarded as a dangerous heretic to be cast into the outer darkness. A minister in the British government suggested to the BBC that it should not allow air time to any scientists who doubted ''global warming'' (a minority of scientists but a distinguished group). Other high priests of the creed have called for "Nuremberg trials" of "climate change deniers."
In this ovebearing moral atmosphere politicians are likely to salute any green flag that the environmentalists run up. And, sure enough, in 10 days there has been in succession:
1. A "summit" of European Union leaders that pledged to cut Europe's carbon emissions by 20 percent from their 1990 levels and, if other countries (especially America) follow their example, by 30 percent.
2. The publication in Britain of a Climate Change Bill, supported by all major parties, that would set legally binding targets to cut Britain's carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050.
3. A proposal by the supposedly free-market Conservative Party to "allow" every citizen one untaxed air flight a year but then to levy heavy taxes on additional flights in order to discourage air travel.
4. Leaks from Whitehall that Finance Minister Gordon Brown will double fuel taxes in Wednesday's budget as another green measure.
All this is likely to be applauded by the voters -- who are swept up in this green tornado quite as much as the media and politicians -- but will they applaud its effects, large and small, when they pinch? Take small effects first. Under the EU summit agreement, the familiar light bulb is to be outlawed in the next few years in favor of a more carbon-neutral one. Unfortunately, the new bulb is several times more expensive than the existing one and it sheds much less light. Those who can afford the (considerable) expense will use more bulbs to illuminate the same space. Poorer people will develop eye problems and push up health costs. Such are the unintended consequences of thoughtless legislation.
What of large matters? The idea underlying the EU proposals and the British climate change bill is that governments will both impose binding limits on the carbon emissions that industries emit and instruct them to use low-carbon fuels such as wind and solar power. In other words, the EU and Britain are embracing a new form of central planning based on energy-use quotas rather than output quotas. But central planning is a synonym for economic inefficiency and waste. These things happen when green daydreams encounter realities or what Al Gore calls inconvenient truths. Here are a few more of them:
* Almost all the European countries have already failed to meet much lower carbon emission targets under Kyoto than the new targets they adopted 10 days ago.
* When Brown increased fuel taxes six years ago in Britain, nationwide blockades by truck drivers almost brought down the government.
* The British economy accounts for only 2 percent of global carbon emissions. If it were to close down entirely, it would have little or no impact on the world's total carbon output -- and even less impact on the willingness of the Indian and Chinese governments to cut back on building power stations that they consider essential to their nation's prosperity but that are now the main drivers of increased carbon usage.
Britain and Europe's governments are committing themselves to systems of carbon rationing bound to run up against strong consumer and voter resistance within a few years for very little practical gain. Why? Europe's green establishment believes that global warming is caused by carbon usage and thus can be solved only by its massive reduction.
But global warming has several possible causes, some of which, such as the activity of the sun, are unrelated to humans.
While we are seeking to understand global warming scientifically, we should adapt to it -- shoring up coasts against erosion, changing the use of agricultural land to suit the changing climate, building dams, developing new technologies. Adaptation would include measures to encourage the use of cleaner fuels, notably nuclear energy. It would be a practical solution to the effects of warming, whatever science eventually established definitively as its cause.
To be sure, adaptation would be expensive. Not nearly so expensive, however, as trying to close down the free market in Europe and to reverse the Industrial Revolution in Asia. But Gaia is a jealous goddess and does not consider costs.
Source
THE GREAT STATIN FRAUD
Lipitor is a common statin. There is a "Cholesterol Skeptics" site here
A doctor accused of wittingly prescribing useless or possibly lethal drugs would vehemently - and understandably - deny it. This makes it rather difficult to oppose the prevailing medical consensus on statins - the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to four million people in Britain at a cost of 1 billion pounds a year. That's quite a sum. It could pay the salaries of 700,000 nurses or build two spanking new teaching hospitals.
An even bigger sum is 15 billion. That is the profit the pharmaceutical industry made last year from this, the most profitable class of drugs ever invented. They are so profitable that the latest statins to reach the market came with a 600 million promotion budget, to "promote" the notion to family doctors and policymakers that the lower the cholesterol the better, and that at least half the population would benefit from the drugs.
But it is not so. Statins are useless for 95 per cent of those taking them, while exposing all to the hazard of serious side-effects. Hence my ever-growing file of letters from those who regrettably have had to find this out for themselves, illustrated by this all-too-typical tale from Roger Andrews of Hertfordshire, first prescribed statins after an operation for an aortic aneurism (that he had cleverly diagnosed himself).
Over the past few years Mr Andrews had become increasingly decrepit -what can one expect at 74? - with pain and stiffness in the legs and burning sensations in the hands so bad that when flying to his son's wedding in Hawaii he needed walking sticks and a wheelchair at the transfer stops. However, he forgot to pack his statins, and felt so much better after his three-week holiday that when he got home he decided to continue the inadvertent "experiment" of not taking them. Since October most if not all of his crippling side-effects have gone. Several friends can tell a similar story, and they have friends too.
The take-home message is that statins are only of value in those with a strong family history of heart disease or men with a history of heart attacks. For everyone else they are best avoided as they seriously interfere with the functioning of the nerve cells, affecting mental function, and muscles. This is all wittily explained in a recent book by a Cheshire family doctor, Malcolm Kendrick, "The Great Cholesterol Con" (John Blake Publishing, 9.99). There are, I suspect, many out there, like Mr Andrews, wrongly attributing their decrepitude to Anno Domini, when the real culprits are statins.
Source
British man denied "too expensive" heart surgery
Health insurance that isn't
A seriously ill man has been told he cannot have a potentially life-saving operation on the NHS because his local primary care trust will not pay for it. Paul Carter, 66, of Malvern, was told by a specialist he needed biventricular pacing fitted for his enlarged heart. But Worcestershire Primary Health Care Trust has refused, saying the advanced pacemaker surgery would cost 8,000 pounds. It said it could not afford the 400,000 pounds it would cost each year to provide the surgery to patients.
The primary care trust's Dr Richard Harling said: "Any funding would have to come from other services. "For the PCT to justify introducing (biventricular pacing) we would have to be sure that it was a better use of this money than our other local services."
Mr Carter's wife Marjorie said: "We are very upset. Working all your life and having to face an operation and then you can't get it done is a bit distressing."
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which offers guidance to primary care trusts over whether a treatment is cost effective, is due to make a decision over the treatment in July. The Department of Health said, until Nice's guidance was published, the final decision on funding lay with individual trusts.
Source
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
IRRELEVANT EXPERTISE: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CONSULT A ZOOLOGIST ABOUT STATISTICS
We read:
To see what statisticians experienced in the research method concerned say, see here and here. I am myself a much published user of that research method and I made the following comments last year:
And as Iraq Body Count note:
Strange NHS priorities
Tom and Donna (not their real names) are professional shamen. They teach classes in shamanism at a “foundation”, where you can learn “soul retrieval healing”, help the dead “continue their journey into the Hereafter”, and investigate “the Fairy Kingdom”. These soul retrievers and Fairy Kingdom investigators also work for the NHS — where, according to Tom’s foundation profile, they “use complementary therapies to help those with mental health difficulties”.
Shaman therapies are not the only unorthodox treatments for which the NHS will gladly pay. Taxpayers are also subsidising Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) “therapy”, in which, according to one NHS trust, “subtle energies” are reordered via “tapping with the fingertips to stimulate certain meridian energy points while the client is ‘tuned in’ to the problem”. The inventor of EFT notes on his website that he “is not a licensed health professional”, which doesn’t stop him promoting it as an effective treatment for diabetes — unsurprising, since it works for “just about every emotional, health and performance issue you can name”.
If EFT doesn’t do the job, an NHS foot massage might help. Reflexologists believe that each part of the foot maps to a different organ, and that massaging a particular point can treat that organ. Medical doctors think it’s absurd. This is not to say that the NHS doesn’t have a sceptical side — even it is dubious about homeopathy, pointing out that “no evidence has been found” to support the key homeopathic principle that water retains a “memory” of molecules that have been filtered out of it, and that pure distilled water is an effective treatment for a host of conditions.
Since the NHS believes that the entire basis of homeopathy is “contrary to scientific knowledge”, the obvious question becomes: why is it funding five homeopathic hospitals? Most depressing of all for the rational taxpayer is the NHS Directory for Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which aims to promote “dowsers”, “flower therapists” and “crystal healers”.
We’ve just learnt that some hospitals are removing every third light bulb to save money, and that nurses are being paid half the minimum wage — or being asked to work for nothing — at others. That’s how bad the financial crisis has become. Meanwhile, the National Health Service is employing shaman fairy enthusiasts as psychological counsellors, enthusiastically providing treatments invented by “an ordained minister and a personal performance coach” who thinks tapping your body can cure diabetes, promoting dowsers and crystal healers and spending vast amounts on therapies that can’t be scientifically supported.
Source
BIASED BRITISH UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS CHALLENGED
UCAS challenged over proposed new application form
A civil liberties group has asked the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] to intervene over the University and Colleges Admissions Service’s [UCAS] proposal to provide data about potential students’ ethnicity to Admissions Officers before rather than after the selection process is complete.
Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup has written to CRE chair Professor Kay Hampton complaining about the proposal on the grounds that it would be in blatant breach of good equal opportunities practice propounded by the CRE over many years.
Monitoring forms the CRE has always argued should be anonymous, kept separate from any application form and from the entire selection process.
Where they are not this can and does allow ruthless discrimination at the selection process. This was evidenced notoriously by the use of equal opportunities data about their race being used last year to reject 289 white male applicants from consideration with Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services.
Mr Hartup stated: “We must learn our lesson. We cannot trust Chief Constables with confidential information but they were at least breaking the law. How can we possibly allow the careers of students to depend upon the self denying integrity of Admissions Officers under pressure to come up with the results necessary to achieve maximum funding.”
“Should UCAS go ahead with their misguided policy they must expect legal action by students who can never be sure that the reason for their failure to obtain a place at their preferred institution was because their race did not fit the Education Secretary’s matrix.”
Liberty and law has written to UCAS Chief Executive Anthony McClaren urging him to drop the scheme. It has also written to OFFA [Office for fair Access] that has “a role in identifying and disseminating good practice and advice connected with access to higher education.”
More here
Green pain coming to Britain
Homeowners who refuse to make their properties energy efficient will face financial penalties under drastic government plans to transform Britain into the world's first 'green' economy. Ministers yesterday promised deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that they warned would mean everyone in the country having to 'live, work and travel differently'. They compared the scale of change that was necessary to reduce emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 to the industrial revolution of the 18th century.
The Government said that every new home should be 'carbon neutral' within ten years - and existing properties subject to a 'home energy audit' to assess how green they are. Householders would be given access to 'hassle-free' renovation services to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. They would be able to 'buy now, pay later' for green improvements as their fuel bills decreased. Zero carbon homes are insulated to reduce heating costs, use solar panels, windpower or other renewable energy sources, are made with environmentally friendly materials and use energy efficient light bulbs and appliances.
Critics said the plans raised the prospect of 'eco-snoopers' inspecting homes. Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "It's bad enough that politicians want to take so much of our money away in tax. For them also to intrude into our homes in order to have the ability to penalise us even further is simply unacceptable."
Unveiling the plans, Environment Secretary David Miliband said it would be "painful" to continue to have an "energy inefficient home". Those that did would face higher bills, he added. Transport will also undergo radical overhaul as Britain moves towards becoming a "low- carbon economy", the Government said. Vehicles will be made more fuel efficient, effectively forcing current gas-guzzling models off the road. The Government is to work with the EU on new laws setting a new average emissions target of 130g of carbon dioxide per kilometre - well below most of today's models - with further reductions to follow.
People are to be encouraged to make 'more sustainable' travel choices, including greater use of public transport, walking and cycling. The Government is also to invest in solar, wind and wave power. A draft Climate Change Bill published yesterday dismissed sceptics, insisting there was 'no longer any real debate' that climate change was happening and man-made emissions were the main cause. In a sign of the importance the Government attaches to the legislation, the Prime Minister, his expected successor Gordon Brown, and Mr Miliband, touted as a future Labour leader, unveiled the Bill together in Downing Street.
Mr Blair compared the fight against climate change to the battle against fascism. Labour's legislation sets an interim target of a 26 per cent to 32 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, and 60 per cent by 2050. It will make Britain the first country in the world with legally binding targets. A panel will advise ministers on carbon targets every five years. If they miss the figure, future governments will face court action. The draft Bill will now be subject to consultation, but the Government hopes it will be law by Easter 2008. Mr Brown, who doubled air passenger duty last year, said he would not impose further 'green taxes' on aviation in next week's Budget.
But airlines suggested fares may have to rise anyway under the Government's plans. British Airways bosses told MPs ticket hikes could result from plans to include airlines in an EU emissions trading scheme - in which firms receive credits which allow them to emit specific amounts of greenhouse gases, but have to buy more if they exceed their limit.
Opposition politicians and green campaigners said the Government's proposals did not go far enough, insisting binding targets on emissions should be annual. Tory spokesman Peter Ainsworth said: "There is a danger that the fiveyear approach will enable responsibility for failure to be shunted on from one government to another."
Source
We read:
The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt. Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet. But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust".
The Lancet medical journal published its peer-reviewed survey last October. It was conducted by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and compared mortality rates before and after the invasion by surveying 47 randomly chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq.
Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair's official spokesperson said the Lancet's figure was not anywhere near accurate. He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.
But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson [A zoologist], on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."
To see what statisticians experienced in the research method concerned say, see here and here. I am myself a much published user of that research method and I made the following comments last year:
None of the comments I saw appeared to be by people who are experienced users of cluster sampling -- the method used for the Lancet study. I am a VERY experienced user of cluster sampling -- with many of my academic publications based on it. And the glaring error which rather explains why the study appeared in a medical journal rather than a more statistically sophisticated journal is that there was NO VALIDATION of the survey results. That your survey-takers might just sit down under a tree and "make up" their "interview" results is a routine peril and it is routine to take precautions against it -- usually by going back on a later occasion and checking with the alleged respondents a proportion of all interviews handed in. Just the awareness that a sample of the respondents will be re-interviewed tends to keep the interviewers honest -- though not always so, regrettably. So the results reported in the Lancet study have no credibility at all and must be regarded as garbage.
It is astounding that the authors of the study were so naive. Perhaps they WANTED their interviewers to "fudge" the results -- making clear what the desired results would be, of course.
Another oddity in the Lancet article that suggests something peculiar about the authors is the claim that their interviewers were all DOCTORS -- and not just any doctors but doctors bilingual in Arabic and English. I have never seen the like of that before. Experienced interviewers of some kind were what was needed and that is what is usually used, not doctors. Can we really believe that a whole corps of these rare doctors abandoned their medical duties for so long in order to do something outside their normal expertise? If true it certainly suggests a heavy political committment on the part of the doctors concerned -- exactly what one would NOT want in a study claiming to be objective. To me the whole claim seems like the sort of "gilding the lily" that con-men engage in.
Other critics have noticed other vast implausibilities in the results reported -- the amazingly high (98%) success-rate at getting people to consent to an interview, for instance --- garbage, garbage garbage. And the lie about the death certificates actually shows how bogus the results were.
"Those guys were not even trying to do real research. It was just a propaganda circus. I strongly support Moore's point about the survey's lack of demographic information. That is so unthinkable in survey research that the article would never have been published in an academic journal that knew anything about survey research. The Lancet should stick to medicine.
And as Iraq Body Count note:
"Between January and June 2006, there were 91 violent deaths recorded by the Lancet survey. This would correspond to over 180,000 deaths in the first 6 months of 2006, and an average rate of 1,000 per day. The daily death rate over the same period based on UN reports (which sum Baghdad morgue and Ministry of Health data) is 80 violent deaths per day. Cumulated media reports provide a somewhat lower figure. If the Lancet extrapolation is sound, this would imply a further 920 violent deaths every day (1000 minus 80) which have been recorded by neither officials nor the media. As these are averages, some days would see many more deaths, and others substantially fewer, but in either case, all of them would remain unnoticed."
Strange NHS priorities
Tom and Donna (not their real names) are professional shamen. They teach classes in shamanism at a “foundation”, where you can learn “soul retrieval healing”, help the dead “continue their journey into the Hereafter”, and investigate “the Fairy Kingdom”. These soul retrievers and Fairy Kingdom investigators also work for the NHS — where, according to Tom’s foundation profile, they “use complementary therapies to help those with mental health difficulties”.
Shaman therapies are not the only unorthodox treatments for which the NHS will gladly pay. Taxpayers are also subsidising Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) “therapy”, in which, according to one NHS trust, “subtle energies” are reordered via “tapping with the fingertips to stimulate certain meridian energy points while the client is ‘tuned in’ to the problem”. The inventor of EFT notes on his website that he “is not a licensed health professional”, which doesn’t stop him promoting it as an effective treatment for diabetes — unsurprising, since it works for “just about every emotional, health and performance issue you can name”.
If EFT doesn’t do the job, an NHS foot massage might help. Reflexologists believe that each part of the foot maps to a different organ, and that massaging a particular point can treat that organ. Medical doctors think it’s absurd. This is not to say that the NHS doesn’t have a sceptical side — even it is dubious about homeopathy, pointing out that “no evidence has been found” to support the key homeopathic principle that water retains a “memory” of molecules that have been filtered out of it, and that pure distilled water is an effective treatment for a host of conditions.
Since the NHS believes that the entire basis of homeopathy is “contrary to scientific knowledge”, the obvious question becomes: why is it funding five homeopathic hospitals? Most depressing of all for the rational taxpayer is the NHS Directory for Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which aims to promote “dowsers”, “flower therapists” and “crystal healers”.
We’ve just learnt that some hospitals are removing every third light bulb to save money, and that nurses are being paid half the minimum wage — or being asked to work for nothing — at others. That’s how bad the financial crisis has become. Meanwhile, the National Health Service is employing shaman fairy enthusiasts as psychological counsellors, enthusiastically providing treatments invented by “an ordained minister and a personal performance coach” who thinks tapping your body can cure diabetes, promoting dowsers and crystal healers and spending vast amounts on therapies that can’t be scientifically supported.
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BIASED BRITISH UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS CHALLENGED
UCAS challenged over proposed new application form
A civil liberties group has asked the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] to intervene over the University and Colleges Admissions Service’s [UCAS] proposal to provide data about potential students’ ethnicity to Admissions Officers before rather than after the selection process is complete.
Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup has written to CRE chair Professor Kay Hampton complaining about the proposal on the grounds that it would be in blatant breach of good equal opportunities practice propounded by the CRE over many years.
Monitoring forms the CRE has always argued should be anonymous, kept separate from any application form and from the entire selection process.
Where they are not this can and does allow ruthless discrimination at the selection process. This was evidenced notoriously by the use of equal opportunities data about their race being used last year to reject 289 white male applicants from consideration with Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services.
Mr Hartup stated: “We must learn our lesson. We cannot trust Chief Constables with confidential information but they were at least breaking the law. How can we possibly allow the careers of students to depend upon the self denying integrity of Admissions Officers under pressure to come up with the results necessary to achieve maximum funding.”
“Should UCAS go ahead with their misguided policy they must expect legal action by students who can never be sure that the reason for their failure to obtain a place at their preferred institution was because their race did not fit the Education Secretary’s matrix.”
Liberty and law has written to UCAS Chief Executive Anthony McClaren urging him to drop the scheme. It has also written to OFFA [Office for fair Access] that has “a role in identifying and disseminating good practice and advice connected with access to higher education.”
More here
Green pain coming to Britain
Homeowners who refuse to make their properties energy efficient will face financial penalties under drastic government plans to transform Britain into the world's first 'green' economy. Ministers yesterday promised deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that they warned would mean everyone in the country having to 'live, work and travel differently'. They compared the scale of change that was necessary to reduce emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 to the industrial revolution of the 18th century.
The Government said that every new home should be 'carbon neutral' within ten years - and existing properties subject to a 'home energy audit' to assess how green they are. Householders would be given access to 'hassle-free' renovation services to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. They would be able to 'buy now, pay later' for green improvements as their fuel bills decreased. Zero carbon homes are insulated to reduce heating costs, use solar panels, windpower or other renewable energy sources, are made with environmentally friendly materials and use energy efficient light bulbs and appliances.
Critics said the plans raised the prospect of 'eco-snoopers' inspecting homes. Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "It's bad enough that politicians want to take so much of our money away in tax. For them also to intrude into our homes in order to have the ability to penalise us even further is simply unacceptable."
Unveiling the plans, Environment Secretary David Miliband said it would be "painful" to continue to have an "energy inefficient home". Those that did would face higher bills, he added. Transport will also undergo radical overhaul as Britain moves towards becoming a "low- carbon economy", the Government said. Vehicles will be made more fuel efficient, effectively forcing current gas-guzzling models off the road. The Government is to work with the EU on new laws setting a new average emissions target of 130g of carbon dioxide per kilometre - well below most of today's models - with further reductions to follow.
People are to be encouraged to make 'more sustainable' travel choices, including greater use of public transport, walking and cycling. The Government is also to invest in solar, wind and wave power. A draft Climate Change Bill published yesterday dismissed sceptics, insisting there was 'no longer any real debate' that climate change was happening and man-made emissions were the main cause. In a sign of the importance the Government attaches to the legislation, the Prime Minister, his expected successor Gordon Brown, and Mr Miliband, touted as a future Labour leader, unveiled the Bill together in Downing Street.
Mr Blair compared the fight against climate change to the battle against fascism. Labour's legislation sets an interim target of a 26 per cent to 32 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, and 60 per cent by 2050. It will make Britain the first country in the world with legally binding targets. A panel will advise ministers on carbon targets every five years. If they miss the figure, future governments will face court action. The draft Bill will now be subject to consultation, but the Government hopes it will be law by Easter 2008. Mr Brown, who doubled air passenger duty last year, said he would not impose further 'green taxes' on aviation in next week's Budget.
But airlines suggested fares may have to rise anyway under the Government's plans. British Airways bosses told MPs ticket hikes could result from plans to include airlines in an EU emissions trading scheme - in which firms receive credits which allow them to emit specific amounts of greenhouse gases, but have to buy more if they exceed their limit.
Opposition politicians and green campaigners said the Government's proposals did not go far enough, insisting binding targets on emissions should be annual. Tory spokesman Peter Ainsworth said: "There is a danger that the fiveyear approach will enable responsibility for failure to be shunted on from one government to another."
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Hero fireman faces official punishment for risking his life in a rescue
This really IS the Unhinged Kingdom
A fireman is facing disciplinary action after plunging into a river to rescue a drowning woman. Tam Brown, 42, is the subject of an internal investigation by Tayside Fire and Rescue because he breached safety rules during the rescue in the River Tay in Perth. He spent eight minutes in the cold water and at one stage feared that he would be swept to his death. But after dragging the 20-year-old woman to safety he was told by his employer that he had acted improperly by risking his life.
Mr Brown, who has 15 years' experience as a fireman, was hailed as a hero by the young woman's family but Tayside Fire and Rescue said that he had broken the brigade's "standing instructions" on safety procedures.
He said yesterday: "I was expected to watch that young girl die in front of me. As a father and a caring human being, I couldn't live with myself if I'd had to do that."
The woman, who has not been identified, is believed to have jumped into the river on March 6 as "a cry for help". A member of the public called 999 and she was thrown a rope, but she was in danger of being sucked under by the current.
Many drowning victims die before the emergency services arrive. Mr Brown said: "We had seconds to act. The girl was losing consciousness. We had one harness, so I put that on and went down 20ft on a safety line, grabbed her and held her out of the water. My colleagues tried to pull us towards steps, but the current was so bad and the rope was pulled so hard it snapped. "My own life hung in the balance as I swam for the steps with her in my arms. But we got there and were pulled out. I was in the water for eight minutes and it was heart-stoppingly cold, but we saved her."
The brigade's rules state: "Personnel should not enter the water." The fire crew should instead have tried to haul the woman out using poles and ropes. Stephen Hunter, chief fire officer of Tayside Fire and Rescue, admitted that fire engines in Perth were not equipped with the correct poles and ropes, but insisted that Mr Brown had broken the rules. He said: "Firefighter safety is of paramount importance to us. Although our duties include rescues from flooding, there is no statutory obligation to carry out rescues from moving water. "We know they broke procedure because we know he went into the water. We are investigating exactly what happened, and once that is concluded we will consider what action is necessary. That could include disciplinary action."
Steve Hill, chairman of the Perth branch of the Fire Brigades Union, said: "Not one senior officer has congratulated Tam or the other officers who attended that night. They should be elated they saved a life but are traumatised that they face disiplinary action instead." He added: "Contradicting an order can lead to dismissal. If Tam hadn't gone in, the public might have tried to save her and we could have ended up with several dead."
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UK Regulations Barring Religious Schools from Teaching Against Homosexuality Approved
Sexual Orientation Regulations Pass House of Lords
The UK's Sexual Orientation Regulations, that will make it illegal for Christian schools, services and businesses to operate according to their religious principles, passed its last hurdle last night in a vote in the House of Lords. A last minute attempt to defeat the legislation failed. A motion by Baroness O'Caithain that would have scrapped the Regulations on the grounds of anti-religious discrimination was voted down 168 votes to 122. The regulations will be implemented at the end of April.
During the brief debate, Baroness Detta O'Caithain said the SORs are seriously flawed and drew attention to the now notorious breaches of proper democratic procedure by the government who, she said, did not allow proper parliamentary scrutiny. The Peers were not allowed to change the wording of the law but only to vote yes or no. With the passage of the SOR's, she said, the state had decided that "a citizen's right to manifest sexual orientation is absolute, but the right to manifest religious belief is not."
Hundreds of Christians and others concerned for democratic freedom of religious expression attended a prayer rally outside the Houses of Parliament while the debate took place in the House of Lords. While they were given little time in Parliament or the Upper House, the SOR's have been the subject of months of debate in the media since the beginning of January when the Catholic Church, the Church of England, Evangelical, Muslim and Jewish groups warned they would spell the effective end of freedom of religious expression in Britain.
In early January, Cormac Cardinal Murphy O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, made international headlines when he said that attempting to force Catholic adoption agencies to adopt children to homosexual couples would leave the Church no choice but to close the agencies. Others said that there was more at stake than only one group or social service, but that the democratic principle of freedom of religious expression was under direct threat. Since the January decision by Prime Minister Tony Blair, a government document was released indicating that the school curriculum would be included and faith-based schools would not be allowed to teach traditional social mores "as if they were objectively true."
While Cardinal Murphy O'Connor indicated that he still held out hopes that some form of accommodation could be found in the twenty-one month "adjustment period" granted churches, others were less sanguine about the government's good will. LifeSiteNews.com spoke to Fr. Timothy Finigan, a priest of the Archdiocese of Southwark and the founder of the Association of Priests for the Gospel of Life who said, "I don't think it will be productive to negotiate with the government over this. Clearly the regulations are as they are and they have shown that they are not prepared to negotiate or make concessions. The offer of the adjustment period shows that."
While the exemption requested by the Church for the adoption agencies was turned down by Tony Blair, what they got with the government's offer of a delaying period, said Fr. Finigan, "was a kind of stay of execution. But there's nothing there for them. In the meantime, they still have to refer children to be adopted to homosexual couples." Militant gay activists, he said, will almost certainly now move on to the next phase of test legal cases against smaller Christian or Muslim institutions such as schools or boarding houses. "The one thing the government doesn't want to see right now is priests and ministers in prison. That means they are going to start with schools or businesses. They've been pushing hard in education for years," Fr. Finigan said.
Since 1944, Catholic schools in Britain have been partially subsidized by the government. Lord Pilkington of Oxenford said that inasmuch as the SOR's assert that individual "human rights" trumped the rights of voluntary societies, they challenge the democratic foundation of the state. "It is absolutely wrong for a democratic state to assert that the churches and their voluntary societies cannot follow their doctrine merely because the state pays the money. In this, as I say, they break 200 years of tradition." Lord Pilkington said.
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British kids sentenced to rot in their failed schools
`An education ought to be very good, to justify depriving a child of its liberty." I copied this down as an angry schoolgirl, when I was reading John Stuart Mill, though I am no longer sure it was he who wrote it. In any case, it is true. There can be no justification for sentencing children to long hours in schools that are no good to 11 years of compulsory boredom, mismanagement and bad influences. There can be no justification for spending billions on this long incarceration only to let the prisoners out, having blighted their best years, unfit to deal with the world. Yet that, in this rich country, is precisely what we do.
All too many children leave school at 16 - and later - barely literate and numerate. Employers complain about school-leavers' "skills gap", meaning the wretched young things are so ignorant, incompetent and ill-disciplined that they are useless in a job, and need basic remedial training.
Colleges and universities complain that students arrive unable to construct a sentence, let alone write an essay. The brightest of undergraduates - the cream of our education system - need remedial teaching at university. Meanwhile the number of Neets - young people not in education, employment or training - has risen by a quarter since Labour came to power. Surely the disgraceful failure of education in this country is now an established fact?
Yet what is the response of the education secretary to this astonishing failure? It is to make it compulsory for all children to stay in our abysmal education system until the age of 18. Alan Johnson announced plans last week to raise the school-leaving age from 16 to 18. Children must choose between school, college, apprenticeships or work-based training. Teenagers who refuse to do so will face on-the-spot fines, Asbos and even jail. Employers who do not comply with work-based learning schemes will face sanctions, as will parents who put their children between 16 and 18 to work, without offering them training.
It beggars belief. Of course in an ideal world, all children should receive education until at least 18. Tertiary education or training ought to be available to everybody, according to his or her interests and abilities, and I firmly believe the taxpayer should pay for that. However, in the real world of British education, it makes little to sense to impose, by compulsion, the tedium and misery of British schooling for two more long years on those whom it has already failed and humiliated.
If the Department for Education and Skills cannot now make people literate and numerate by 16, if our schools cannot avoid producing disorderly children who wreck classes or play truant, how does it expect to change anything by enforcing two more benighted years of the same damn thing?
Bright schoolchildren and their teachers often talk of the relief they feel when the Asbo set leaves school at 16, so they can get on with their A-level classes in relative peace and quiet. Forcing class-wreckers to stay around would damage still further the chances of those children who want to study. The same applies to sending unwilling teenagers to colleges; they will undermine them. As for workplace training, the government has been making ambitious promises about apprenticeships for 10 years; why does it expect, suddenly, to be able to fulfil them now?
It is hardly fair to anyone to impose angry and unwilling 17 and 18-year-olds on schools and colleges they don't want to go to. School is simply all wrong for some children. It is economically unsound to impose them and their needs on employers who would rather not hire them. Though these teenagers need help and attention, forcing them to stay in education against their will is not the answer.
The real answer, which seems beyond this government or its predecessors, is to make early education work. What all children need is basic literacy, numeracy, good manners and self-discipline. Everything can follow from that, in or out of school, whatever the child's abilities. Since, however, we must despair of schools producing children who are educated in this fundamental sense, we are I suppose looking at damage limitation.
What do you do with problem teenagers of 16 to 18? Clearly it is a good idea to give them something constructive to do, and keep them off the streets. I often think it would be a good idea to offer them something that was fun, along the lines of what privileged children do. I mean extreme sports or adventure holidays. People usually harrumph with indignation at delinquents being taken by social services on expensive rock-climbing and whitewater rafting adventures, like rich kids. But these things develop character and confidence. They teach cooperation (which is why rich parents pay for them).
It is particularly good for children who have been neglected on sink estates to have some good clean fun - something more interesting than drugs and gangs. If I were education secretary I would be funding activity clubs for the Asbo set, like the Rugby Portobello Trust near me in central London, which would be so much fun that Neets would go to them willingly, and maybe get a little education by stealth. The Rugby Portobello offers sessions in music, IT, cooking and even mentorship for young people in running a charity.
Above all, as education secretary, I would consider why so many children, particularly boys, come to hate school. I do agree with the suggestion that the model of schoolroom teaching is unsuitable, after a certain age, for some children, many of them boys, and many of them the least bright or the most bright.
Mixed ability teaching is of course a nonsense, and so I suspect for many children is the feminised, politically correct conventionality and Gradgrind tedium of what passes for liberal education. So are the national curriculum and the mark-grubbing GCSE and A-level. I wouldn't blame any child of mine for opting out.
The education secretary, clearly a fairly able man, ought to understand this. He opted out of school at 15, without any qualifications. Forcing teenagers into this nonsense for still longer, until 18, is an unjustified assault on their freedom.
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Just Say No to this `radical rethink' on drugs
The latest British review of the drug problem peddles dangerous myths about helpless addicts, and suggests making the state drugdealer-in-chief
After a two-year review of the drugs problem in the UK, a prestigious commission established by the UK Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) has come up with a `radical rethink' aiming to influence the impending major government review of the National Drugs Strategy (1). Another current campaign against addiction - the `Get Unhooked' TV and cinema adverts featuring smokers impaled on fish-hooks - reveals the prevailing contempt for those regarded as being in the grip of a chemical dependency that also pervades the RSA report (2).
The common theme is that the user of drugs (whether nicotine, heroin or alcohol) is an automaton, a being without intentions and unable to make choices, a physiological system that requires pharmacological correction. To pursue the official metaphor, the drug user is on a par with a fish, a level of vertebrate life so low that only the most fundamentalist of animal rights activists can be bothered to protest against fishing.
The `Get Unhooked' adverts offer a powerful endorsement of the myths underlying both current drugs policy and the RSA's radical rethink. These myths are exposed by Theodore Dalrymple, whose devastating critique of `pharmacological lies and the addiction bureaucracy' is informed by the experience of working as a psychiatrist at a British prison (3).
The first myth is the notion that addiction is the result of an unfortunate accident: one minute the hapless victim is swimming happily in the pond of life and the next is impaled by the hook of the malign substance. The apparently random victim is instantly at the mercy of whoever holds the rod and line - and in the advert is agonisingly dragged along the floor. But, as Dalrymple shows, becoming addicted to heroin requires effort and discipline, determination and time. Though the notions that the drug is the active agent and the addict the passive victim are popular among users and drug workers alike, they deny both the responsibility of the individual for adopting this lifestyle and the possibility of rejecting it. The image of the pathetic addict squirming on the hook is also contradicted by the reality of the busy and purposeful life required to sustain a drug habit.
The second great myth is that withdrawal from drugs is a deeply traumatic process - like removing a barbed hook from your mouth. This myth has reached a high pitch of histrionic exaggeration in relation to heroin, in the familiar `cold turkey' horrors dramatised in novels and films. Reporting both extensive professional experience and the medical literature, Dalrymple confirms that heroin withdrawal is an uncomfortable, but not a serious condition, with a much lower rate of complications than withdrawal from alcohol, barbiturates or benzodiazepines.
A third myth is that once the victim is ensnared on the hook, addiction immediately becomes a chronic disease requiring medical treatment - in the forms of diverse regimes of detoxification and rehabilitation. This is contradicted by the familiar experience that many users of drugs abandon the habit spontaneously - if supply is interrupted (by imprisonment) or by some change in circumstances (a new relationship, having a baby). As Dalrymple observes, `a motive is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for them to give up'. This does not work for chronic diseases such as tuberculosis or rheumatoid arthritis. The `treatment' of opiate dependency with methadone - the mainstay of medical management of heroin addicts for decades - has had such a low success rate (in terms of achieving abstinence) that the goal of treatment has largely shifted to achieving `maintenance' on an indefinite supply of this stupefying drug.
Methadone has been associated with a steady expansion of heroin use (and a large number of deaths from methadone overdoses). The RSA's answer is more, but `better and more consistent' methadone prescribing, and - the ultimate badge of radicalism in drugs policy - `heroin prescribing wherever appropriate'. This is popular with the police who believe that it may reduce crime, but not with GPs who will be expected to do the prescribing. It is difficult to think of measures more likely to encourage both the scale of heroin abuse and the mortality and morbidity associated with it (apart, perhaps, from the provision of `shooting galleries' for intravenous drug use and rewarding addicts with residential rehab programmes of the sort promoted by celebrities - both measures approved in the RSA report).
The RSA report proclaims as the essence of its innovative approach its emphasis on `harm minimisation' as the central theme of drugs policy. Of course, `harm minimisation', the mainstay of official drugs `guidelines' since at least 1991, has been another spectacular failure (4). Depriving self-indulgent actions of their worst consequences is likely to encourage them to spread. Dalrymple is alert to the wider implications: `[I]f consequences are removed from enough actions, then the very concept of human agency evaporates, life itself becomes meaningless, and is thenceforth a vacuum in which people oscillate between boredom and oblivion.' The concept of harm minimisation assumes that the authorities take over responsibility for the consequences of individuals' behaviour. It is `inherently infantilising'.
The dogma promoted by the RSA report, that drug addiction is a chronic disease, is both absurd and irresponsible. Drug addiction, as Dalrymple insists, is `a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment'. The medicalisation of drug abuse is a combination of `moral cowardice, displacement activity and employment opportunity'.
I would heartily endorse Dalrymple's radical first step towards tackling the drugs problem: close down all clinics claiming to treat drug addicts (on the basis of my experience as an inner-city GP, I would also recommend closing down drug treatment programmes in primary care). Addicts would then have to face the truth: `They are as responsible for their actions as anyone else.' This measure might help to set them free - and it might also help to release doctors from the corrosive deceptions underlying current drug policies. It is striking that while the RSA report is piously non-judgmental towards drug users and eschews coercive policies, it seethes with righteous indignation at GPs who might refuse to follow its dogmatic approach and insists twice in the five pages of its executive summary that GPs should not be allowed `to opt out of providing drugs treatment'. The notion that doctors should be coerced into providing dangerous treatments for their patients in the hope that this might reduce the crime rate reflects the damaging effect of drug policy on the ethics of medical practice.
Dalrymple concludes with a discussion of the case for the legalisation of drugs, which he concedes is `not a straightforward matter'. After considering both philosophical and prudential arguments, `on balance' he does not favour legalisation - the only point on which he is in accord with the RSA. While recognising the enormous cost to individuals and to society of our relationship with our most familiar intoxicant, alcohol, I believe that we have to learn to live with other `substances', too, without resorting to criminal legislation. However, I strongly agree with Dalrymple's emphasis that `far more important in the long run than the question of legalisation.is our attitude towards addiction'.
The radicalism of the RSA's rethink of drugs policy is symbolised by its bold insistence on the repeal of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act - and its replacement with a Misuse of Substances Act. But changing the labels - while perpetuating the myths about drug use - will do nothing to tackle the damaging effects of drugs on individuals and society. The RSA report concedes that `drugs education' - a concept scarcely less mind-numbing than heroin addiction - has failed. The answer? Never mind that `there has been too little evaluation for anyone to be certain what works', we need more of the same, with the heart-sinking rider that it `should be focused more on primary schools'.
Why not teach children something interesting and inspiring, that might give them the truly radical idea that culture and society have more to offer than drug-induced oblivion?
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Medical Leftism
No wonder the intellectual standard of many medical journal articles is so low when we have the sort of shallow thinking displayed below. That lives are saved when tyrannies are deposed or faced down by democratic forces is obviously too deep a thought for these would-be wise ones
Physicians from around the world urged the publisher of The Lancet medical journal to cut its links to weapons sales, calling on the editors to find another publisher if Reed Elsevier refused to stop hosting arms fairs. The doctors made their appeal in the latest edition of The Lancet, released Friday. Editors at The Lancet responded by backing the doctors, calling the situation "bizarre and untenable." They wrote in Friday's edition that - in the interest of health - they may have to consider an "organized campaign" against their own publisher. "The Lancet is one of the most respected international medical journals and should not be linked to an industry involved in weapons designed to cause physical harm and death," wrote Dr. Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, and Dr. Michael Pelly, the association's international adviser.
Some scientists have called for a boycott of journals published by Reed Elsevier Group PLC. Editors at the British Medical Journal have appealed to researchers to stop sending certain studies to The Lancet and other Reed Elsevier titles. On Friday, The Lancet published three pages of protest letters from leading doctors and organizations, including the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Doctors for Iraq and the People's Health Movement, a public health watchdog.
Reed Elsevier said it supported The Lancet editors' right to free speech, but had no plans to stop its involvement with arms fairs. "We accept that Reed Elsevier publications may occasionally take editorial positions which are critical of their owners," the company said in a statement. "We do not, however, see any conflict between Reed Elsevier's connections with the scientific and health communities and the legitimate defense industry."
The Lancet first learned of its publisher's involvement in the arms industry in 2005. Supported by Britain's Ministry of Defense, Reed Elsevier hosts arms fairs around the world that have showcased weapons - including a 1,100-pound cluster bomb, one of the deadliest known bombs. At the time, editor Richard Horton informed the journal's international advisory board, which urged Reed Elsevier to divest itself of its arms trade business. Last month, criticism of the company gained renewed prominence when the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust withdrew $3.9 million of its investment from the company, because of the publisher's ties to the arms industry. "The Lancet has a particular commitment to child survival, and cluster bombs are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children, and cause horrendous disabilities," Horton said. "It is completely incompatible for Reed Elsevier to be in this business and also to be a health science publisher." The Lancet's editors said they spoke regularly to Reed Elsevier about their concerns, and have asked for further meetings, but have yet to receive a response.
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Britain: Any shade of politics you like, so long as it's green
The dangers of the new consensus around the politics of global warming
Listening to this week's statements about global warming made it sound as if the political climate is the one experiencing rapid change. UK prime minister Tony Blair claims his government's new Climate Change Bill is `revolutionary' and compares the challenge of global warming to the struggle against the Nazis and the Soviet Union. Prime minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown declares that it will require a `new world order' to save the planet from man-made global warming. David Cameron, Conservative Party leader and favourite to win the next General Election, says he will `open up a second front in the green revolution' to combat climate change. Meanwhile, commentators talk of global warming as `the key battleground in British politics' and warn that the parties are `set for war over climate change'.
Blimey. Revolutions, political wars and new world orders? Rarely do we hear such passionate talk in the dull world of managerial politics today. So what revolutionary measures are the political leaders fighting for? Behind which banners are they fighting their civil war over the future of the planet? Err, Blair and Brown's New Labour wants to abolish incandescent lightbulbs and standby switches on television sets. And Cameron's Conservatives want to tax us more for flying. To the barricades!
This week's explosion of hot air over global warming marks a new record in the denigration of political language. Behind the overcooked talk about changing the world and saving the planet, the crusade against global warming represents the latest stage in the politics of low expectations and small-mindedness. And far from climate change being a battlefield for any big political `war', the issue is being used to confine debate to an even narrower, more conformist strip of ground.
We have been told many times by political leaders that ours is the era when `choice' is king. Now we can see what they meant. We can choose any shade of politics we like, just so long as it is green. This fits into the pattern of what they call `informed choice', whereby we are expected to make the choices that they inform us are the correct ones.
If we hope to live in a democratic society, any attempt to limit political debate or banish alternative views must be seriously put to question. And there are good reasons for questioning this new political consensus that are quite separate from any debate about the science of climate change. First because, despite the bold talk of all the party leaders, it represents the abdication of political leadership. And second because it reflects an underlying anti-humanist mood in public life.
What we normally call a political consensus is not formed by different parties spontaneously reaching the same conclusions. It comes about when one party imposes its principles on the political agenda, shifting the middle ground and forcing its opponents to accommodate to its programme. That was what the postwar Labour government achieved in the 1940s, and what Margaret Thatcher's Tory governments managed in the 1980s.
Today's consensus around the politics of global warming is different. Nobody could seriously suggest that the UK's invisible Green Party has redrawn the political map. Instead the major parties have all gravitated towards greenery on global warming because they lack any political principles of their own.
With their public standing at an all-time low, politicians are attracted to the issue of climate change because it allows them to scramble out of the mire and back on to the moral high ground. Rather than fending off endless allegations of sleaze or trying to explain why they cannot run a decent health service, Blair and Brown are set free to make portentous speeches about saving the planet. And instead of tackling the tricky issues of coming up with alternative policies on the economy or Iraq, Cameron can strike statesmanlike poses while hugging a glacier.
Blair's remarks this week hinted at how he has suddenly seized upon the global warming issue to provide an ersatz sense of mission for his faltering government. `People that have been in Downing Street over the years have faced issues to do with the Cold War, the Depression and the rise of fascism', the prime minister told a group of teenagers. `Climate change is a bit of a different type of challenge, but a challenge I believe is the biggest long-term threat facing our world.' By recasting climate change as a sort of Nazi or Soviet threat facing the current generation of leaders, Blair elevates himself on to a higher plane of history.
The rise and rise of the politics of global warming also reveals another big problem with leaders today. Lacking any of the political authority of their predecessors, they are continually looking for something else to lean on as a source of public legitimacy. Here they have sought to latch on to the science of climate change. They are dragging scientists on to the stage to try to justify their own petty authoritarian policies, in an echo of the way that the tobacco industry once used men in white coats to advertise its wares.
I am all for the elevation of science and respect for scientists. But this attempt to use science to lend some respect and authority to politicians who lack it represents something far less noble: the abdication of political leadership. Rather than forging and fighting for their own political vision of the future, party leaders are hiding behind scientists and claiming that the science proves that the time for debate is over.
Let us leave aside for now the vexed and complex question of the actual science of climate change. I am no climatologist, but then you surely do not need to be to see that the simplistic, conformist politics of global warming are about something else. Even if we were to accept that some of the far-reaching expert predictions about climate change were true, there would be no necessary straight line from those scientists' estimates to the sort of policies now being proposed by Brown or David Miliband or Cameron. Instead, they are using the language of science to express their own politics of low expectations and policing our behaviour.
When humanity has been faced with great challenges in history, the solution has been to go forward, to apply human ingenuity and endeavour to overcoming problems by advancing society. There is no record of tackling future problems by going backwards or restraining development. Yet that is what is effectively proposed through the politics of global warming.
It is about rationing, giving up the gains of the past, flying less and making do and mending more - a message captured in Brown's typically penny-pinching statement that in future people will have to `count the carbon as well as the pennies'. And as for the developing world, they can forget about getting anywhere near the semi-civilised standards of living achieved in the West. It is strikingly ironic in this context to hear the likes of Cameron talk about a `green revolution' - a term which, only a few years ago, described the use of new science and technology to revolutionise industrial food production in Africa, an advance that the new green (counter-)revolution of `sustainable agriculture' frowns upon.
The adoption of these attitudes across the political class represents something far more important than the cynical tax grab which some critics have claimed it all is. The crusade against manmade global warming is underpinned by a much broader loss of faith in our manmade society and its once-proud accomplishments, from industrialised farming to flying the world. You only had to listen to Cameron, supposedly the great white hope of UK politics, sounding off this week about how many species are threatened with extinction `because of mankind's relentless grab for the finite resources of our shared home' to realise how mainstream mankind-bashing has now become.
Forget the revolutionary rhetoric; these ideas are deeply conservative, backward, and reactionary. To challenge them is not a job for scientific inquiry, since that is not really what such prejudices are based upon, but for political argument. The pressing need is to recast notions of human agency, and develop a future-oriented vision based on a belief in our ability to tackle problems through economic and social advance.
For starters, here is one straightforward historical idea that might sound `revolutionary' today: the more control humanity is able to exercise over nature, and the larger the `footprint' we make on the planet, the better the future is likely to be.
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This really IS the Unhinged Kingdom
A fireman is facing disciplinary action after plunging into a river to rescue a drowning woman. Tam Brown, 42, is the subject of an internal investigation by Tayside Fire and Rescue because he breached safety rules during the rescue in the River Tay in Perth. He spent eight minutes in the cold water and at one stage feared that he would be swept to his death. But after dragging the 20-year-old woman to safety he was told by his employer that he had acted improperly by risking his life.
Mr Brown, who has 15 years' experience as a fireman, was hailed as a hero by the young woman's family but Tayside Fire and Rescue said that he had broken the brigade's "standing instructions" on safety procedures.
He said yesterday: "I was expected to watch that young girl die in front of me. As a father and a caring human being, I couldn't live with myself if I'd had to do that."
The woman, who has not been identified, is believed to have jumped into the river on March 6 as "a cry for help". A member of the public called 999 and she was thrown a rope, but she was in danger of being sucked under by the current.
Many drowning victims die before the emergency services arrive. Mr Brown said: "We had seconds to act. The girl was losing consciousness. We had one harness, so I put that on and went down 20ft on a safety line, grabbed her and held her out of the water. My colleagues tried to pull us towards steps, but the current was so bad and the rope was pulled so hard it snapped. "My own life hung in the balance as I swam for the steps with her in my arms. But we got there and were pulled out. I was in the water for eight minutes and it was heart-stoppingly cold, but we saved her."
The brigade's rules state: "Personnel should not enter the water." The fire crew should instead have tried to haul the woman out using poles and ropes. Stephen Hunter, chief fire officer of Tayside Fire and Rescue, admitted that fire engines in Perth were not equipped with the correct poles and ropes, but insisted that Mr Brown had broken the rules. He said: "Firefighter safety is of paramount importance to us. Although our duties include rescues from flooding, there is no statutory obligation to carry out rescues from moving water. "We know they broke procedure because we know he went into the water. We are investigating exactly what happened, and once that is concluded we will consider what action is necessary. That could include disciplinary action."
Steve Hill, chairman of the Perth branch of the Fire Brigades Union, said: "Not one senior officer has congratulated Tam or the other officers who attended that night. They should be elated they saved a life but are traumatised that they face disiplinary action instead." He added: "Contradicting an order can lead to dismissal. If Tam hadn't gone in, the public might have tried to save her and we could have ended up with several dead."
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UK Regulations Barring Religious Schools from Teaching Against Homosexuality Approved
Sexual Orientation Regulations Pass House of Lords
The UK's Sexual Orientation Regulations, that will make it illegal for Christian schools, services and businesses to operate according to their religious principles, passed its last hurdle last night in a vote in the House of Lords. A last minute attempt to defeat the legislation failed. A motion by Baroness O'Caithain that would have scrapped the Regulations on the grounds of anti-religious discrimination was voted down 168 votes to 122. The regulations will be implemented at the end of April.
During the brief debate, Baroness Detta O'Caithain said the SORs are seriously flawed and drew attention to the now notorious breaches of proper democratic procedure by the government who, she said, did not allow proper parliamentary scrutiny. The Peers were not allowed to change the wording of the law but only to vote yes or no. With the passage of the SOR's, she said, the state had decided that "a citizen's right to manifest sexual orientation is absolute, but the right to manifest religious belief is not."
Hundreds of Christians and others concerned for democratic freedom of religious expression attended a prayer rally outside the Houses of Parliament while the debate took place in the House of Lords. While they were given little time in Parliament or the Upper House, the SOR's have been the subject of months of debate in the media since the beginning of January when the Catholic Church, the Church of England, Evangelical, Muslim and Jewish groups warned they would spell the effective end of freedom of religious expression in Britain.
In early January, Cormac Cardinal Murphy O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, made international headlines when he said that attempting to force Catholic adoption agencies to adopt children to homosexual couples would leave the Church no choice but to close the agencies. Others said that there was more at stake than only one group or social service, but that the democratic principle of freedom of religious expression was under direct threat. Since the January decision by Prime Minister Tony Blair, a government document was released indicating that the school curriculum would be included and faith-based schools would not be allowed to teach traditional social mores "as if they were objectively true."
While Cardinal Murphy O'Connor indicated that he still held out hopes that some form of accommodation could be found in the twenty-one month "adjustment period" granted churches, others were less sanguine about the government's good will. LifeSiteNews.com spoke to Fr. Timothy Finigan, a priest of the Archdiocese of Southwark and the founder of the Association of Priests for the Gospel of Life who said, "I don't think it will be productive to negotiate with the government over this. Clearly the regulations are as they are and they have shown that they are not prepared to negotiate or make concessions. The offer of the adjustment period shows that."
While the exemption requested by the Church for the adoption agencies was turned down by Tony Blair, what they got with the government's offer of a delaying period, said Fr. Finigan, "was a kind of stay of execution. But there's nothing there for them. In the meantime, they still have to refer children to be adopted to homosexual couples." Militant gay activists, he said, will almost certainly now move on to the next phase of test legal cases against smaller Christian or Muslim institutions such as schools or boarding houses. "The one thing the government doesn't want to see right now is priests and ministers in prison. That means they are going to start with schools or businesses. They've been pushing hard in education for years," Fr. Finigan said.
Since 1944, Catholic schools in Britain have been partially subsidized by the government. Lord Pilkington of Oxenford said that inasmuch as the SOR's assert that individual "human rights" trumped the rights of voluntary societies, they challenge the democratic foundation of the state. "It is absolutely wrong for a democratic state to assert that the churches and their voluntary societies cannot follow their doctrine merely because the state pays the money. In this, as I say, they break 200 years of tradition." Lord Pilkington said.
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British kids sentenced to rot in their failed schools
`An education ought to be very good, to justify depriving a child of its liberty." I copied this down as an angry schoolgirl, when I was reading John Stuart Mill, though I am no longer sure it was he who wrote it. In any case, it is true. There can be no justification for sentencing children to long hours in schools that are no good to 11 years of compulsory boredom, mismanagement and bad influences. There can be no justification for spending billions on this long incarceration only to let the prisoners out, having blighted their best years, unfit to deal with the world. Yet that, in this rich country, is precisely what we do.
All too many children leave school at 16 - and later - barely literate and numerate. Employers complain about school-leavers' "skills gap", meaning the wretched young things are so ignorant, incompetent and ill-disciplined that they are useless in a job, and need basic remedial training.
Colleges and universities complain that students arrive unable to construct a sentence, let alone write an essay. The brightest of undergraduates - the cream of our education system - need remedial teaching at university. Meanwhile the number of Neets - young people not in education, employment or training - has risen by a quarter since Labour came to power. Surely the disgraceful failure of education in this country is now an established fact?
Yet what is the response of the education secretary to this astonishing failure? It is to make it compulsory for all children to stay in our abysmal education system until the age of 18. Alan Johnson announced plans last week to raise the school-leaving age from 16 to 18. Children must choose between school, college, apprenticeships or work-based training. Teenagers who refuse to do so will face on-the-spot fines, Asbos and even jail. Employers who do not comply with work-based learning schemes will face sanctions, as will parents who put their children between 16 and 18 to work, without offering them training.
It beggars belief. Of course in an ideal world, all children should receive education until at least 18. Tertiary education or training ought to be available to everybody, according to his or her interests and abilities, and I firmly believe the taxpayer should pay for that. However, in the real world of British education, it makes little to sense to impose, by compulsion, the tedium and misery of British schooling for two more long years on those whom it has already failed and humiliated.
If the Department for Education and Skills cannot now make people literate and numerate by 16, if our schools cannot avoid producing disorderly children who wreck classes or play truant, how does it expect to change anything by enforcing two more benighted years of the same damn thing?
Bright schoolchildren and their teachers often talk of the relief they feel when the Asbo set leaves school at 16, so they can get on with their A-level classes in relative peace and quiet. Forcing class-wreckers to stay around would damage still further the chances of those children who want to study. The same applies to sending unwilling teenagers to colleges; they will undermine them. As for workplace training, the government has been making ambitious promises about apprenticeships for 10 years; why does it expect, suddenly, to be able to fulfil them now?
It is hardly fair to anyone to impose angry and unwilling 17 and 18-year-olds on schools and colleges they don't want to go to. School is simply all wrong for some children. It is economically unsound to impose them and their needs on employers who would rather not hire them. Though these teenagers need help and attention, forcing them to stay in education against their will is not the answer.
The real answer, which seems beyond this government or its predecessors, is to make early education work. What all children need is basic literacy, numeracy, good manners and self-discipline. Everything can follow from that, in or out of school, whatever the child's abilities. Since, however, we must despair of schools producing children who are educated in this fundamental sense, we are I suppose looking at damage limitation.
What do you do with problem teenagers of 16 to 18? Clearly it is a good idea to give them something constructive to do, and keep them off the streets. I often think it would be a good idea to offer them something that was fun, along the lines of what privileged children do. I mean extreme sports or adventure holidays. People usually harrumph with indignation at delinquents being taken by social services on expensive rock-climbing and whitewater rafting adventures, like rich kids. But these things develop character and confidence. They teach cooperation (which is why rich parents pay for them).
It is particularly good for children who have been neglected on sink estates to have some good clean fun - something more interesting than drugs and gangs. If I were education secretary I would be funding activity clubs for the Asbo set, like the Rugby Portobello Trust near me in central London, which would be so much fun that Neets would go to them willingly, and maybe get a little education by stealth. The Rugby Portobello offers sessions in music, IT, cooking and even mentorship for young people in running a charity.
Above all, as education secretary, I would consider why so many children, particularly boys, come to hate school. I do agree with the suggestion that the model of schoolroom teaching is unsuitable, after a certain age, for some children, many of them boys, and many of them the least bright or the most bright.
Mixed ability teaching is of course a nonsense, and so I suspect for many children is the feminised, politically correct conventionality and Gradgrind tedium of what passes for liberal education. So are the national curriculum and the mark-grubbing GCSE and A-level. I wouldn't blame any child of mine for opting out.
The education secretary, clearly a fairly able man, ought to understand this. He opted out of school at 15, without any qualifications. Forcing teenagers into this nonsense for still longer, until 18, is an unjustified assault on their freedom.
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Just Say No to this `radical rethink' on drugs
The latest British review of the drug problem peddles dangerous myths about helpless addicts, and suggests making the state drugdealer-in-chief
After a two-year review of the drugs problem in the UK, a prestigious commission established by the UK Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) has come up with a `radical rethink' aiming to influence the impending major government review of the National Drugs Strategy (1). Another current campaign against addiction - the `Get Unhooked' TV and cinema adverts featuring smokers impaled on fish-hooks - reveals the prevailing contempt for those regarded as being in the grip of a chemical dependency that also pervades the RSA report (2).
The common theme is that the user of drugs (whether nicotine, heroin or alcohol) is an automaton, a being without intentions and unable to make choices, a physiological system that requires pharmacological correction. To pursue the official metaphor, the drug user is on a par with a fish, a level of vertebrate life so low that only the most fundamentalist of animal rights activists can be bothered to protest against fishing.
The `Get Unhooked' adverts offer a powerful endorsement of the myths underlying both current drugs policy and the RSA's radical rethink. These myths are exposed by Theodore Dalrymple, whose devastating critique of `pharmacological lies and the addiction bureaucracy' is informed by the experience of working as a psychiatrist at a British prison (3).
The first myth is the notion that addiction is the result of an unfortunate accident: one minute the hapless victim is swimming happily in the pond of life and the next is impaled by the hook of the malign substance. The apparently random victim is instantly at the mercy of whoever holds the rod and line - and in the advert is agonisingly dragged along the floor. But, as Dalrymple shows, becoming addicted to heroin requires effort and discipline, determination and time. Though the notions that the drug is the active agent and the addict the passive victim are popular among users and drug workers alike, they deny both the responsibility of the individual for adopting this lifestyle and the possibility of rejecting it. The image of the pathetic addict squirming on the hook is also contradicted by the reality of the busy and purposeful life required to sustain a drug habit.
The second great myth is that withdrawal from drugs is a deeply traumatic process - like removing a barbed hook from your mouth. This myth has reached a high pitch of histrionic exaggeration in relation to heroin, in the familiar `cold turkey' horrors dramatised in novels and films. Reporting both extensive professional experience and the medical literature, Dalrymple confirms that heroin withdrawal is an uncomfortable, but not a serious condition, with a much lower rate of complications than withdrawal from alcohol, barbiturates or benzodiazepines.
A third myth is that once the victim is ensnared on the hook, addiction immediately becomes a chronic disease requiring medical treatment - in the forms of diverse regimes of detoxification and rehabilitation. This is contradicted by the familiar experience that many users of drugs abandon the habit spontaneously - if supply is interrupted (by imprisonment) or by some change in circumstances (a new relationship, having a baby). As Dalrymple observes, `a motive is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for them to give up'. This does not work for chronic diseases such as tuberculosis or rheumatoid arthritis. The `treatment' of opiate dependency with methadone - the mainstay of medical management of heroin addicts for decades - has had such a low success rate (in terms of achieving abstinence) that the goal of treatment has largely shifted to achieving `maintenance' on an indefinite supply of this stupefying drug.
Methadone has been associated with a steady expansion of heroin use (and a large number of deaths from methadone overdoses). The RSA's answer is more, but `better and more consistent' methadone prescribing, and - the ultimate badge of radicalism in drugs policy - `heroin prescribing wherever appropriate'. This is popular with the police who believe that it may reduce crime, but not with GPs who will be expected to do the prescribing. It is difficult to think of measures more likely to encourage both the scale of heroin abuse and the mortality and morbidity associated with it (apart, perhaps, from the provision of `shooting galleries' for intravenous drug use and rewarding addicts with residential rehab programmes of the sort promoted by celebrities - both measures approved in the RSA report).
The RSA report proclaims as the essence of its innovative approach its emphasis on `harm minimisation' as the central theme of drugs policy. Of course, `harm minimisation', the mainstay of official drugs `guidelines' since at least 1991, has been another spectacular failure (4). Depriving self-indulgent actions of their worst consequences is likely to encourage them to spread. Dalrymple is alert to the wider implications: `[I]f consequences are removed from enough actions, then the very concept of human agency evaporates, life itself becomes meaningless, and is thenceforth a vacuum in which people oscillate between boredom and oblivion.' The concept of harm minimisation assumes that the authorities take over responsibility for the consequences of individuals' behaviour. It is `inherently infantilising'.
The dogma promoted by the RSA report, that drug addiction is a chronic disease, is both absurd and irresponsible. Drug addiction, as Dalrymple insists, is `a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment'. The medicalisation of drug abuse is a combination of `moral cowardice, displacement activity and employment opportunity'.
I would heartily endorse Dalrymple's radical first step towards tackling the drugs problem: close down all clinics claiming to treat drug addicts (on the basis of my experience as an inner-city GP, I would also recommend closing down drug treatment programmes in primary care). Addicts would then have to face the truth: `They are as responsible for their actions as anyone else.' This measure might help to set them free - and it might also help to release doctors from the corrosive deceptions underlying current drug policies. It is striking that while the RSA report is piously non-judgmental towards drug users and eschews coercive policies, it seethes with righteous indignation at GPs who might refuse to follow its dogmatic approach and insists twice in the five pages of its executive summary that GPs should not be allowed `to opt out of providing drugs treatment'. The notion that doctors should be coerced into providing dangerous treatments for their patients in the hope that this might reduce the crime rate reflects the damaging effect of drug policy on the ethics of medical practice.
Dalrymple concludes with a discussion of the case for the legalisation of drugs, which he concedes is `not a straightforward matter'. After considering both philosophical and prudential arguments, `on balance' he does not favour legalisation - the only point on which he is in accord with the RSA. While recognising the enormous cost to individuals and to society of our relationship with our most familiar intoxicant, alcohol, I believe that we have to learn to live with other `substances', too, without resorting to criminal legislation. However, I strongly agree with Dalrymple's emphasis that `far more important in the long run than the question of legalisation.is our attitude towards addiction'.
The radicalism of the RSA's rethink of drugs policy is symbolised by its bold insistence on the repeal of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act - and its replacement with a Misuse of Substances Act. But changing the labels - while perpetuating the myths about drug use - will do nothing to tackle the damaging effects of drugs on individuals and society. The RSA report concedes that `drugs education' - a concept scarcely less mind-numbing than heroin addiction - has failed. The answer? Never mind that `there has been too little evaluation for anyone to be certain what works', we need more of the same, with the heart-sinking rider that it `should be focused more on primary schools'.
Why not teach children something interesting and inspiring, that might give them the truly radical idea that culture and society have more to offer than drug-induced oblivion?
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Medical Leftism
No wonder the intellectual standard of many medical journal articles is so low when we have the sort of shallow thinking displayed below. That lives are saved when tyrannies are deposed or faced down by democratic forces is obviously too deep a thought for these would-be wise ones
Physicians from around the world urged the publisher of The Lancet medical journal to cut its links to weapons sales, calling on the editors to find another publisher if Reed Elsevier refused to stop hosting arms fairs. The doctors made their appeal in the latest edition of The Lancet, released Friday. Editors at The Lancet responded by backing the doctors, calling the situation "bizarre and untenable." They wrote in Friday's edition that - in the interest of health - they may have to consider an "organized campaign" against their own publisher. "The Lancet is one of the most respected international medical journals and should not be linked to an industry involved in weapons designed to cause physical harm and death," wrote Dr. Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, and Dr. Michael Pelly, the association's international adviser.
Some scientists have called for a boycott of journals published by Reed Elsevier Group PLC. Editors at the British Medical Journal have appealed to researchers to stop sending certain studies to The Lancet and other Reed Elsevier titles. On Friday, The Lancet published three pages of protest letters from leading doctors and organizations, including the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Doctors for Iraq and the People's Health Movement, a public health watchdog.
Reed Elsevier said it supported The Lancet editors' right to free speech, but had no plans to stop its involvement with arms fairs. "We accept that Reed Elsevier publications may occasionally take editorial positions which are critical of their owners," the company said in a statement. "We do not, however, see any conflict between Reed Elsevier's connections with the scientific and health communities and the legitimate defense industry."
The Lancet first learned of its publisher's involvement in the arms industry in 2005. Supported by Britain's Ministry of Defense, Reed Elsevier hosts arms fairs around the world that have showcased weapons - including a 1,100-pound cluster bomb, one of the deadliest known bombs. At the time, editor Richard Horton informed the journal's international advisory board, which urged Reed Elsevier to divest itself of its arms trade business. Last month, criticism of the company gained renewed prominence when the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust withdrew $3.9 million of its investment from the company, because of the publisher's ties to the arms industry. "The Lancet has a particular commitment to child survival, and cluster bombs are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children, and cause horrendous disabilities," Horton said. "It is completely incompatible for Reed Elsevier to be in this business and also to be a health science publisher." The Lancet's editors said they spoke regularly to Reed Elsevier about their concerns, and have asked for further meetings, but have yet to receive a response.
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Britain: Any shade of politics you like, so long as it's green
The dangers of the new consensus around the politics of global warming
Listening to this week's statements about global warming made it sound as if the political climate is the one experiencing rapid change. UK prime minister Tony Blair claims his government's new Climate Change Bill is `revolutionary' and compares the challenge of global warming to the struggle against the Nazis and the Soviet Union. Prime minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown declares that it will require a `new world order' to save the planet from man-made global warming. David Cameron, Conservative Party leader and favourite to win the next General Election, says he will `open up a second front in the green revolution' to combat climate change. Meanwhile, commentators talk of global warming as `the key battleground in British politics' and warn that the parties are `set for war over climate change'.
Blimey. Revolutions, political wars and new world orders? Rarely do we hear such passionate talk in the dull world of managerial politics today. So what revolutionary measures are the political leaders fighting for? Behind which banners are they fighting their civil war over the future of the planet? Err, Blair and Brown's New Labour wants to abolish incandescent lightbulbs and standby switches on television sets. And Cameron's Conservatives want to tax us more for flying. To the barricades!
This week's explosion of hot air over global warming marks a new record in the denigration of political language. Behind the overcooked talk about changing the world and saving the planet, the crusade against global warming represents the latest stage in the politics of low expectations and small-mindedness. And far from climate change being a battlefield for any big political `war', the issue is being used to confine debate to an even narrower, more conformist strip of ground.
We have been told many times by political leaders that ours is the era when `choice' is king. Now we can see what they meant. We can choose any shade of politics we like, just so long as it is green. This fits into the pattern of what they call `informed choice', whereby we are expected to make the choices that they inform us are the correct ones.
If we hope to live in a democratic society, any attempt to limit political debate or banish alternative views must be seriously put to question. And there are good reasons for questioning this new political consensus that are quite separate from any debate about the science of climate change. First because, despite the bold talk of all the party leaders, it represents the abdication of political leadership. And second because it reflects an underlying anti-humanist mood in public life.
What we normally call a political consensus is not formed by different parties spontaneously reaching the same conclusions. It comes about when one party imposes its principles on the political agenda, shifting the middle ground and forcing its opponents to accommodate to its programme. That was what the postwar Labour government achieved in the 1940s, and what Margaret Thatcher's Tory governments managed in the 1980s.
Today's consensus around the politics of global warming is different. Nobody could seriously suggest that the UK's invisible Green Party has redrawn the political map. Instead the major parties have all gravitated towards greenery on global warming because they lack any political principles of their own.
With their public standing at an all-time low, politicians are attracted to the issue of climate change because it allows them to scramble out of the mire and back on to the moral high ground. Rather than fending off endless allegations of sleaze or trying to explain why they cannot run a decent health service, Blair and Brown are set free to make portentous speeches about saving the planet. And instead of tackling the tricky issues of coming up with alternative policies on the economy or Iraq, Cameron can strike statesmanlike poses while hugging a glacier.
Blair's remarks this week hinted at how he has suddenly seized upon the global warming issue to provide an ersatz sense of mission for his faltering government. `People that have been in Downing Street over the years have faced issues to do with the Cold War, the Depression and the rise of fascism', the prime minister told a group of teenagers. `Climate change is a bit of a different type of challenge, but a challenge I believe is the biggest long-term threat facing our world.' By recasting climate change as a sort of Nazi or Soviet threat facing the current generation of leaders, Blair elevates himself on to a higher plane of history.
The rise and rise of the politics of global warming also reveals another big problem with leaders today. Lacking any of the political authority of their predecessors, they are continually looking for something else to lean on as a source of public legitimacy. Here they have sought to latch on to the science of climate change. They are dragging scientists on to the stage to try to justify their own petty authoritarian policies, in an echo of the way that the tobacco industry once used men in white coats to advertise its wares.
I am all for the elevation of science and respect for scientists. But this attempt to use science to lend some respect and authority to politicians who lack it represents something far less noble: the abdication of political leadership. Rather than forging and fighting for their own political vision of the future, party leaders are hiding behind scientists and claiming that the science proves that the time for debate is over.
Let us leave aside for now the vexed and complex question of the actual science of climate change. I am no climatologist, but then you surely do not need to be to see that the simplistic, conformist politics of global warming are about something else. Even if we were to accept that some of the far-reaching expert predictions about climate change were true, there would be no necessary straight line from those scientists' estimates to the sort of policies now being proposed by Brown or David Miliband or Cameron. Instead, they are using the language of science to express their own politics of low expectations and policing our behaviour.
When humanity has been faced with great challenges in history, the solution has been to go forward, to apply human ingenuity and endeavour to overcoming problems by advancing society. There is no record of tackling future problems by going backwards or restraining development. Yet that is what is effectively proposed through the politics of global warming.
It is about rationing, giving up the gains of the past, flying less and making do and mending more - a message captured in Brown's typically penny-pinching statement that in future people will have to `count the carbon as well as the pennies'. And as for the developing world, they can forget about getting anywhere near the semi-civilised standards of living achieved in the West. It is strikingly ironic in this context to hear the likes of Cameron talk about a `green revolution' - a term which, only a few years ago, described the use of new science and technology to revolutionise industrial food production in Africa, an advance that the new green (counter-)revolution of `sustainable agriculture' frowns upon.
The adoption of these attitudes across the political class represents something far more important than the cynical tax grab which some critics have claimed it all is. The crusade against manmade global warming is underpinned by a much broader loss of faith in our manmade society and its once-proud accomplishments, from industrialised farming to flying the world. You only had to listen to Cameron, supposedly the great white hope of UK politics, sounding off this week about how many species are threatened with extinction `because of mankind's relentless grab for the finite resources of our shared home' to realise how mainstream mankind-bashing has now become.
Forget the revolutionary rhetoric; these ideas are deeply conservative, backward, and reactionary. To challenge them is not a job for scientific inquiry, since that is not really what such prejudices are based upon, but for political argument. The pressing need is to recast notions of human agency, and develop a future-oriented vision based on a belief in our ability to tackle problems through economic and social advance.
For starters, here is one straightforward historical idea that might sound `revolutionary' today: the more control humanity is able to exercise over nature, and the larger the `footprint' we make on the planet, the better the future is likely to be.
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Monday, March 26, 2007
BBC pays 200,000 pounds to 'cover up report on anti-Israel bias'
The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend 200,000 pounds blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East. The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.
BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public. The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC's coverage in the region.
BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestianian bias. The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.
The BBC's decision to carry on pursuing the case, despite the fact than the Information Tribunal said it should make the report public, has sparked fury as it flies in the face of claims by BBC chiefs that it is trying to make the corporation more open and transparent. Politicians have branded the BBC's decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country's top public law barrister in the process, as "absolutely indefensible".
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Why are SUVs so incorrect?
Comment from Britain
How did the 4x4 - that big-wheeled, boxy jeep beloved of `Chelsea mums' and footballers - become public enemy no.1 in the environmentalism debate? Listening to anti-4x4 campaigners, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this one breed of car is responsible for destroying the planet. It is widely expected that UK Chancellor Gordon Brown will announce in his Budget tomorrow that Vehicle Excise Duty for the 225,000 least fuel-efficient cars bought in Britain since last April - which includes most 4x4s and also sports cars - will be doubled, rising from 210 to 400 pounds a year. This falls short of what green anti-4x4 campaigners are demanding; they want road tax to be raised to somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds for `the worst offending cars', especially 4x4s, which are described as `vile', `vulgar', and damaging both to the environment and to social cohesion.
The 4x4 has become the bˆte noire of the chattering classes. Pop into any dinner-party gathering in the leafiest of Britain's leafy suburbs and you are guaranteed to hear someone bemoaning these big vehicles as they pass around the pesto. There is more to this anti-4x4 fever than a desire to protect the environment or pedestrians from exhaust fumes. Rather it seems to be underpinned by a snobbery against the `wrong' kind of consumption, especially the kind indulged by apparently unsophisticated noveau riche types who garishly like to flaunt their wealth with their mock-Tudor homes, big hair and big cars.
When you think about it, the obsessive focus on 4x4s in the debate about cars and pollution is pretty crazy. These jeeps make up a tiny minority of the cars in action across Britain. There are an estimated 30million regularly-used vehicles in the UK, and those labelled the `least fuel-efficient' - which include sports cars and other vehicles as well as the hated 4x4 - number only 225,000. Putting motorists off buying 4x4s by making them more expensive to run will do Sweet FA to reduce the level of pollution caused by car use.
The level of CO2 coughed up by a 4x4 is not that much greater than various other modern machines. Campaigners say that 4x4s emit more CO2 than most other cars - that may be true, but they emit less CO2 than some of the things we use in the home day in and day out. According to research published in 2005, one cycle of a kitchen dishwasher releases around 756g of CO2, more than double that produced by a short spin in a Range Rover Turbo Diesel, which releases 299g per kilometre. Using a petrol lawnmower for an hour releases more than 1,000g of CO2. Why are there no campaigns against `evil' dishwashers, or demands that Gordon Brown slap big fat taxes on lawnmowers?
There is also little hard evidence that, when involved in collisions, 4x4s are more dangerous for motorists and pedestrians than other cars. Of course, none of us would like to be on the receiving end of a speeding 4x4 - but nor would we want to be hit by a big red bus, a delivery truck, a black taxi or even a Mini for that matter. According to Chris Patience, head of technical policy at the Automobile Association (AA): `There is no shared characteristic of 4x4s that make them any more or less aggressive towards pedestrians compared to a "normal" car.' Patience even claims that 4x4s might be less harmful to pedestrians when there is a collision. `Typically, pedestrians hit by cars wrap around the front of the car and their head hits the bonnet', he says, and because 4x4s tend to have more space between the bonnet and the engine beneath it, they create something of a `crumple-zone for the head'.
It is not really what these cars do that winds up campaigners, but rather what they represent. They're big brash symbols of conspicuous consumption. And at a time when we're encouraged to be meek and to constantly consider what impact our behaviour might be having on the environment, buying a 4x4 and showing it off to the other mums at the schoolgates or your mates at the football ground is the contemporary equivalent of a mortal sin.
It isn't so much the car that the campaigners can't stand (after all, they like big red carbon-producing buses) but rather the people who tend to drive them - whether it's uppity working-class-done-good people, or country folk who talk in posh tones and probably watch Top Gear. You can tell this is about more than pollution and pedestrians if you listen to the language used to describe 4x4 drivers. They're talked about in the most vituperative terms, not only as polluters but as Bad People. The website of the UK campaign group the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s describes itself as a collection of `concerned citizens' and 4x4s as `The Bad Guys'. It says its aim is to make driving a 4x4 as `socially unacceptable as drink-driving'.
London mayor Ken Livingstone says mums who drop their kids at school in 4x4s are `complete idiots'. A left-leaning British think-tank, the New Economics Foundation, describes 4x4s as `Satan's little run-arounds'. In the US, a website called What Would Jesus Drive? (not a 4x4, apparently) says pollution from 4x4s `has a major impact on human health and the rest of God's creation'. So 4x4 drivers are not only dangerous and greedy and anti-social - they're ungodly, too.
These are clearly moral judgements masquerading as concern for the environment. Look into the trunk of the anti-4x4 campaign and you will find generous doses of snobbery, mean-spiritedness and neo-luddism.
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Immigrants being blamed for the negativity spawned by the British Left
Can immigrants be blamed for lack of loyalty to a country that seems to have lost faith in itself?
UK Chancellor Gordon Brown's recent initiative to ensure that immigrants feel a proper sense of loyalty to Britain has been criticised for being either too little too late or just plain daft. Brown said last month that immigrants should do some `community work' before being granted British citizenship. For Brown, citizenship should be a `kind of contract' with `rights and responsibilities'. This follows on from other proposals suggesting that immigrants should be `encouraged' to learn English and should take tests to demonstrate that they know what Britain is all about and that they wish to be part of it.
Enforced community service is unlikely to engender a sense of belonging. But then, what really seems to be behind the latest demands for immigrants to buy into Britishness is a lack of any positive, coherent sense of what it is to be British amongst the British elite itself. This weakened sense of Britishness has nothing intrinsically to do with immigrants. And yet, more and more, a situation that is the result of various complex historical and political factors is being represented as a problem to do with immigration. This is itself a problem for the rest of us, as it means attention is misplaced upon immigrants and energy is misdirected towards helping immigrants to fit into something that isn't really there.
Take education. It is argued by some that there has been a `downward drag' in standards due to there being too many immigrant children in the classroom. My guess is that pupils today are more disadvantaged by an educational establishment which is not able, or willing, to assert the need for teaching English language and literature to take precedence over the need to be `multicultural' than they are by the presence of pupils who do not speak English very well.
Some believe that a big problem in the health service today is that patients don't understand their doctors, and apparently have to strain to make sense of what the man or woman with the strange accent is saying. What about all the other major problems with the health service, from a lack of resources to the transformation of the NHS into a behaviour-policing outfit? Time and time again, problems that are the result of the actions and policies of the British authorities are being ascribed to immigrants `failing to fit in'. Few ask what exactly there is for them to fit into.
Most Indian immigrants of my parents' generation felt positively hostile to certain British institutions. For example, many were distrustful of the British Army and supported the Quit India Movement, the civil disobedience movement launched in India in 1942 in response to Mahatma Gandhi's call for the immediate independence of India from Britain. Yet simultaneously they felt an affinity with British society and culture. This meant they wanted to make a break with their country of birth in order to be part of a society perceived as going forwards.
Financial gain was not uppermost in their minds. Individual freedom, meritocracy and social mobility were high on the list of attractions. Even when they arrived in the UK and realised that these things were not available to all on an equal basis, their belief in, and desire to be part of, British life remained. They believed that by working through institutions and popular organisations such as trade unions and political parties, many people - themselves included - could improve their lot.
The dynamic engendered by British society at that time was strong enough to inspire people all over the world. Today what immigrants once sought to do spontaneously (learn the language and culture) has to be imposed by government - not primarily because immigrants have changed, but because British society represents less of what they want to sign up to.
Rather than address more difficult issues - that Britain today is less than inspirational on the world stage, is less of a meritocracy, more socially stratified and a place where individuals are more closely monitored in virtually all aspects of our lives - politicians and pundits tear their hair out wondering why on earth immigrants don't appear to want to be part of and to celebrate British culture.
Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I can see no reason why it should matter to anyone. Many people live outside their countries of birth; they work and socialise without conflict. Yet they do not feel that they necessarily belong to, or have to belong to, the country they have chosen to live in. People may feel contradictory affiliations; and something as subjective as a sense of belonging frequently waxes and wanes over time. A more confident, forward-looking society would be more relaxed about these facts.
Whatever measures or cod `solutions' the British political caste comes up with, people's subjective sense of belonging cannot be created by diktat. One of the few positive virtues of British society that politicians often cite is its tolerance. It is ironic, then, that the present government is so intolerant of people who do not conform to its increasingly long list of absurd criteria of what makes for a `good British citizen'.
Still, as long as the focus remains on what immigrants do or don't do to prove their loyalty, the heat is off looking at ourselves, and identifying what the real problems are and what some real solutions might be.
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Keep politics out of science – and vice versa
Comment from Britain
Since Channel 4 aired Martin Durkin’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle on 8 March, in which various scientists questioned the scientific consensus that manmade carbon emissions are causing global warming, there has been an increasingly shrill spat between mainstream climate change scientists and an ever-dwindling number of climate change sceptics. ‘We are right and you are wrong’, say the mainstream scientists. ‘No, we are right and you are wrong’, claim the sceptics. Both sides have wheeled out graphs and pie charts to demonstrate their rightness and their opponents’ wrongness, giving rise to a war of words and stats and scientific facts that has no doubt helped to bamboozle great numbers of the Great British public.
For me, the infuriating thing about this debate is that it overlooks the main problem with the mainstream science on global warming. No, not that it is wrong, or that it is ‘swindling’ people, but rather that it has become deeply, almost irrevocably politicised. As a layperson largely following this debate via my laptop, I can see that a scientific consensus has been reached which says there has been some global warming, and most scientists believe that man’s carbon emissions are contributing to that warming. There is still a clear need for debate, it seems, over whether manmade CO2 alone is the cause of warming, how much warmer the planet is likely to get, and what the consequences will be. The problem, however, is that this scientific consensus is being used by the powers-that-be to justify all sorts of inhumane, illiberal and repressive political measures, often with the support, or at least complicity, of the scientists.
Even when the science is ‘right’, it is never right to prostitute science for political ends. History shows us that the mixing of science and values, the use and abuse of science to direct the political and social life of a society, is never a good idea. It is bad for politics, and it is bad for science.
Spiked is all in favour of good and rigorous science. We have frequently challenged the petty and pernicious government restrictions on scientific endeavour, especially in relation to stem-cell research and animal experimentation. And we have ruthlessly challenged the panics around the genetic modification of crops and food, the bad science that informed the MMR-autism debacle of the past 10 years, and the lazy pseudo-medical science that says an ‘obesity epidemic’ means that the kids of today are unhealthier than earlier generations and will likely die before their parents (1). Some of those currently posing as defenders of scientific integrity in relation to global warming have not been so keen to defend science in these instances. Today, newspaper columnists such as George Monbiot at the Guardian and Geoffrey Lean at the Independent write long pieces attacking Durkin as a lone maverick undermining the scientific consensus. In the past, however, they bigged up lone mavericks who made scary and unsubstantiated claims about how GM foods might poison humans, increase the risk of miscarriage amongst women, and even cause cancer – all of which went against the sensible scientific consensus that GM is actually safe.
Spiked has also consistently called for scientists to be given the independence and the resources they need in order to experiment, discover, improve our understanding of the natural world. That is how science works best: as a kind of pool of fascinating findings and ideas that progressive societies can draw inspiration from, in the name of developing medicine, technology and exploration. Science can inform open political debate, for example in areas of health, but it should not determine it.
Something very different – and dangerous – is happening with the science of global warming. Public figures are using the language of climate change science to force through a new political consensus. The scientific consensus around CO2 emissions and global warming is now used to justify reining in development, narrowing people’s ambitions, and policing our behaviour in an ever-more petty fashion. Elites don the garb of ‘scientific fact’ as a cover for their own loss of nerve and ambition, and as an argument for holding back the potential for further progress and development. From the demand for small-scale ‘sustainable development’ in Africa to new taxes designed to determine what kind of cars we Westerners drive and how many holidays we may take a year, politicians, activists and commentators increasingly marshal the men in white coats to show that we have no choice but to narrow our horizons because the science demands it.
In truth, there is no straight or logical line from the scientific finding that manmade CO2 is contributing to warming and the demand that we slow down development and change the way we live. Rather, such small-minded policies are a product of today’s politics of low expectations, which is dressed up in the language of science. In the past, humanity faced up to great challenges, whether they were thrown up by nature or by man’s own actions, by seeking to forge ahead and advance society, by applying the greatest minds to come up with solutions to our problems. Today we are told that the only legitimate response to predictions of global warming is to drive less, build less, develop less and generally do less in the here and now. George Monbiot confesses that one of his aims is to ‘make people so depressed about the state of the world that they stay in bed all day, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil fuel’ (2). The science demands it, apparently.
Scandalously, over the past five to 10 years the science of climate change has been used as a political weapon, both to transform our behaviour and to silence those who dare to question today’s narrow political outlook. And some mainstream scientists, by allowing this to happen, have been far more complicit in the bastardisation of science than those small numbers of climate change sceptics with their allegedly dodgy graphs. While mainstream science writers attack Martin Durkin and the various talking heads in his film for muddying the science on global warming, they seem blind to the far graver undermining of scientific integrity represented by the relentless politicisation of climate change science.
Over the past two weeks, a handful of climate change scientists have instinctively kicked against the politicisation of their work. At a conference in Oxford, England last weekend, Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier of the Royal Meteorological Society slated the ‘catastrophism’ of scientists who predict that climate change will cause floods, droughts, famines and other assorted horrors. ‘There is no evidence to show we’re all due for very short-term devastating impacts as a result of global warming’, said Professor Hardaker, warning that mixing ‘science with unscientific assumptions’ is a dangerous pastime (3).
Last week some very respectable scientists told the New York Times that some of the claims made by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth were exaggerated and erroneous. (Funnily enough, these scientists were not given anywhere near the same amount of airtime as those who claim to have been duped into appearing in Durkin’s documentary.) ‘I don’t want to pick on Al Gore’, said Don J Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University. ‘But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.’ (4) In both Oxford and New York, serious scientists seem to be reacting against the use of science to tell a fearful and exaggerated tale about the fate awaiting humanity. In the words of Professor Hardaker, they seem uncomfortable with the mixing of ‘science’ (the data drawn up in labs and research units) and ‘unscientific assumptions’ (the notion that we are all doomed).
Also last week, in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Hans von Storch, one of Germany’s leading researchers on climate change, attacked scientists for ‘doom-mongering’ over global warming. Von Storch compared the moral message that is attached to today’s climate change science with earlier religious and mythical stories about the Earth punishing humanity for its hubris. ‘The fear of climatic catastrophes is an ancient one’, he said. In reference to the tendency to single out flying holidaymakers in particular as the new ‘sinners’, von Stroch argued: ‘In the past, people believed that the climate almost always changes for the worse, and only rarely for the better – God’s punishment for sinful behaviour. And nowadays, it’s those hedonistic wastrels who pollute the air so that they can look at some pretty fish in the South Seas. It would be better if we only ever rode bikes. Oh, there’s always someone wagging a finger in disapproval.’ (5)
None of these scientists can be denounced as ‘climate change deniers’, the scurrilous tag normally attached to anybody who questions the consensus on global warming – all of them accept that manmade carbon emissions are contributing to the warming of the planet. Nor can they be written off as oily mouthpieces for ExxonMobil or some other fat conglomerate – they work/did work at respectable universities and institutions. Rather they are voicing their discomfort with certain scientists’ willingness to see their work used to tell stories of catastrophe and to shape people’s behaviour and expectations.
The real scandal in the debate about the science of global warming is not the airing of sceptical or dissenting or plain wrong views, but the exploitation of those who claim to be ‘right’ in order to push forward some pretty poisonous political campaigning. The subordination of science to politics has a horrendous historical track record. In Russia in the 1930s and 40s, the Stalinists championed the ‘agricultural science’ of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko in order to clamp down on research and advances in genetics, which they viewed as ‘bourgeois science’. That had a dire impact on the forward development of agriculture in Russia for more than 30 years. (Interestingly, Lysenko was celebrated in the slavish Soviet press as a natural, earth-loving ‘barefoot scientist’, a little bit like the Observer’s trendy green columnist the ‘barefoot doctor’, perhaps.) The Nazis, of course, used the science of eugenics to justify their racism and anti-Semitism.
The Stalinists’ and Nazis’ science may have been junk, whereas the consensus around manmade global warming is more respectable. Yet the marshalling of the science of global warming to bolster political campaigns today has echoes of the Nazis’ use of science to back up their poisonous politics of race and the Stalinists’ use of science to stifle research on genetics. Whether your science is right or wrong, respectable or racist, its prostitution for political ends is bad news – both for politics and for science.
It is bad for politics because it rigidifies debate. Great important questions about people’s lives and futures are reduced to findings made by scientists and plotted on a line graph. Decisions are taken less on the basis of human interest and need, and more on the basis of what scientists predict is possible and desirable. So today we have the quite shocking situation where the Third World is discussed in terms of how much the River Nile might rise by over the next 100 years, as ruminated over by scientists and experts, rather than in terms of what living, breathing Africans need and expect from life today. The use of science for political ends dehumanises debate. The Nazis’ scurrilous science reduced humans to a hierarchy of beasts. Today’s exploitation of the science of global warming by political elites doesn’t do that, of course, but it does reduce humans to Problems, who are apparently both causing global warming and whose needs and desires cannot be met because to do so would further contribute to global warming.
The use of science in politics also serves to shut down genuine, open political debate. When one side can argue that its political programme is underpinned by Scientific Truth, then its opponents and critics can easily be written off as ‘deniers’ of the Truth, as ‘liars’ and ‘anti-science charlatans’. Question the agenda of ‘sustainable development’ in Africa, which consigns millions to grinding poverty, and you will be accused of ‘ignoring the facts on global warming’; ask whether it is right to restrict people’s ability to travel the world in aeroplanes, one of the great advances of the past hundred years, and you will be told to ‘look at the science!’ Political criticisms are written off as anti-science yelps. The exploitation of science by political elements gives rise to a politics that is narrow, fatalistic and censorious.
The use and abuse of climate change science is bad for science, too. When politicians look to science for their moral authority, believing that scientists can provide a gravitas to their political campaigning, it inevitably pollutes science. The aim of science becomes less to uncover scientific truths than to lend authority to political prejudices – and science inevitably becomes bent in the process. While some scientists, such as those in Oxford, New York and Germany cited above, seem keen to resist the pollution of science by ‘unscientific assumptions’, others have unfortunately gone along with the use of their work to back up political campaigning.
As Professor Hardaker in Oxford pointed out, even an august body such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science talks about global warming in hysterical, unscientific terms, predicting ‘intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms….’ (6) The politicisation of the science of climate change may have the long-term effect of skewing the science, as some scientists fall for the promise of global authority – stardom, no less – if their findings can be made to fit in with today’s narrow political priorities.
There has been a great deal of witch-hunting of Martin Durkin and the contributors to his film The Great Global Warming Swindle over the past two weeks. This witch hunt does not only point to a high level of intolerance in the global warming debate – it also suggests widespread ignorance about who and what is really undermining science today. It is not Durkin, a lone filmmaker with few friends in high places, who is damaging science, but rather those mainstream figures in politics and the media who are using science for cynical and narrow political campaigns.
There is something profoundly inhumane in the politics of global warming, in the widespread discussion of humans as problems to be worked around rather than beings with needs and desires. Anyone interested in real and meaningful dissent today – who believes that questions about the future of humanity are not reducible to graphs and pie charts – should aim their fire at the denigration of both science and politics by today’s Great Global Warming Consensus.
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POOR HIT HARDEST BY KYOTO FOLLY: MILLIONS IN 'FUEL POVERTY' TRAP
"Warming" makes poor people feel the cold
The number of households facing a choice between heating and eating has almost doubled in the past two years. Spiralling gas and electricity bills have left nearly 4m having to spend at least 10% of their disposable income on heating and lighting - the definition of 'fuel poverty'. This is an increase of more than 1.7m, according to an independent study.
The research was commissioned by the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes - a group of 700 industry bodies concerned with domestic energy efficiency. It shows that the Government is hopelessly failing to hit its own targets to stamp out fuel poverty. In 2001, the Government publicly stated that it would eradicate fuel poverty for all vulnerable and low-income households by 2010 and all other households by 2016. Given the increase in the problem over the last two years, it would seem that this is now an impossible task.
The research pointed out that electricity prices surged by 39% and gas prices by 61% between 2003 and 2006. The Government has cashed in on the increases, with a huge rise in the tax paid by North Sea gas companies and VAT on bills. Very little of this has been used to help families struggling with their bills, however. Some 650,000 local authority or housing association households - one in three of the total - struggled to meet rising energy bills in 2006, paying an average 814 pounds a year. These households are now three times more likely to be fuel poor than tenants in 2004, who spent 590 pounds a year on bills.
The report was commissioned by the Managed Homes subgroup of the EEPH which is chaired by Places for People - the UK's largest housing and regeneration group which is responsible for 60,000 homes across the country Project director Nicholas Doyle warned: 'For thousands of people, the prospect of a warm and comfortable home is now a luxury that they cannot afford. The stark reality is that many people from low-income backgrounds are now faced with the choice of deciding whether to heat their home or provide for their family. ...
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Australia's humane British founders
Leftist historians give the impression that Australia's founders were genocidal military dictators. But many of Australia's early colonial leaders were human rights activists ahead of their time, as Keith Windschuttle documents below. Australia's first governor, Capt. Phillip was anti-slavery before Wilberforce! Following the documentation below is a summary of what the Leftists say -- and a rebuttal of it
According to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the 200th anniversary of his country's abolition of the slave trade tomorrow offers the chance to say how profoundly shameful slavery was. Equally, however, it provides the occasion to commemorate those who abolished the trade. In 1807, the British were the first people in the world to do so. This was one of the great feats in the history of human freedom and its originators and their motives deserve to be understood and celebrated today.
Moreover, there was a strong connection between the British colonisation of Australia and those who campaigned against slavery. Today, our contemporary historians avoid this topic. Hence, few Australians are aware of how powerful the abolitionist sentiment was in colonial Australia or how strongly English abolitionists influenced the political and moral foundations of this country.
Soon after British secretary for home affairs, Lord Sydney, appointed him the first governor of NSW in September 1786, Arthur Phillip drew up a detailed memorandum of his plans for the proposed new colony. In one paragraph he wrote: "The laws of this country (England) will of course be introduced in New South Wales, and there is one that I would wish to take place from the moment his majesty's forces take possession of the country: that there can be no slavery in a free land, and consequently no slaves."
In all of Australia's founding documents this statement stands out starkly. There are no other appeals to great principles, no declaration of independence, no constitutional preamble full of nation-building sentiment. Instead, we were founded by bureaucratic correspondence from the British Home Office to the Admiralty, the Navy Board and the Treasury, by other letters, commissions of appointment and warrants for transportation, and by one act of the British parliament concerned mostly with "the transportation of felons and other offenders". Hence Phillip's paragraph above, especially his unequivocal and spare avowal, "there can be no slavery in a free land", is probably the best founding proclamation we have.
It was a remarkable declaration to make at the time. For a start, it demonstrated that its governor and those who appointed him had more ambitious plans for the new colony than they made public. "A free land" meant much more than a dumping ground for convicts. Phillip clearly expected NSW eventually to be composed largely of free settlers. Moreover, Phillip's objection to slavery was noticeably ahead of his time. At this distance, it may seem part of the stock opinion of the day, just one more expression of the abolitionist movement that persuaded the British parliament to outlaw the transportation of slaves on the high seas. But there was more to it than that. As Phillip said, the laws of England did not permit slavery. The ownership and sale of human beings had been illegal in England since the early Middle Ages, but by the 1700s the growth of the slave trade to the Americas saw thousands of black slaves employed as servants in London, Edinburgh and other urban centres. In the celebrated James Somerset case of 1772, Lord Mansfield found that English law did not permit slavery and that black servants were free to go as they pleased.
Nonetheless slavery still thrived across the British Empire. The merchant fleet of Liverpool dominated the transport of slaves from Africa to the Americas; the sugar plantations of Britain's Caribbean colonies were dependent on slave labour; and slavery was widespread in the Muslim realms of British India. Moreover, Britain's former colonies in North America had just formed an independent union based on an appeal to freedom and equality, yet still they housed almost 700,000 slaves.
Phillip wrote his memorandum before the abolitionist movement gained public momentum. At the time, to take a stand for this moral cause put him decidedly on the progressive side of politics. The abolitionists' parliamentary leader, William Wilberforce, decided to take up the issue only in May 1787, eight months after Phillip declared his own attitude. The abolitionist evangelicals in the Church of England and their Quaker supporters were then a marginal group of activists. Their spokesman, Thomas Clarkson, had not yet begun the speaking tours of British cities that were to make abolition a popular cause. By 1791, when Wilberforce introduced his first bill to abolish the slave trade, the movement had made progress but parliament still rejected it decisively by 163 votes to 88.
Although the evangelicals were the main force behind the abolitionist movement and Wilberforce its best-known politician, Phillip had not been greatly influenced by them. Indeed, he was not an especially religious man. His 1786 memorandum discussed his proposed colony's housing, health care, clothing, relations with the Aborigines, rewards and punishments for convicts, land grants, shipping regulations, exploration and trade. Conspicuously, he mentioned neither religion nor the church. In practice, he seemed to regard religion primarily as a utilitarian device for maintaining social order and good behaviour.
Instead, he took a more secular political position that saw slavery as an offence against the tradition of "the freeborn Englishman" that defined his country. This was a political and a folk tradition that extended back at least to the English Civil War but probably much further. It meant that no one in England could be born into slavery, bondage or vassalage. All were born with inalienable rights to freedom.
Phillip was also the inheritor of the British naval tradition that looked down on Europe's original imperial powers, Spain and Portugal. Since the Spanish Armada, English Protestant sailors had been nourished on a diet of anti-Spanish stories designed to show that the adherents of the Catholic Church were capable of any cruelty. Tales of the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition and the brutal treatment of African slaves and the indigenous people of the Americas entrenched the sentiment.
A further influence on Phillip was the humanitarian movement that emerged within the British Enlightenment in the late 1700s. This movement, which had support from early British anthropologists and the Anglican Church, emphasised the unity of humankind. All human beings, whatever their skin colour, were members of the one species and were thus equal, both at law and before God. This sentiment led several Scottish intellectuals to openly condemn slavery, especially Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), plus George Wallace and Adam Ferguson. In England, William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) made a firm break with Roman law on the subject.
In April 1787, Phillip made another memorable statement that applied this egalitarian sentiment to the Aborigines of NSW: "Any Man who takes the life of a Native will be put on his Trial the same as if he had kill'd one of the Garrison. This appears to me not only just but good policy."
Since his early 20s, Phillip had found slavery repugnant. As a junior naval officer on a tour of duty to the Caribbean in 1760-62 he saw the Spanish and British slave plantations on Jamaica, the Leeward Islands and Cuba. "By the time he left the lavish islands," writes his biographer Alan Frost, "Phillip has come to see that behind their gleaming skin lurked a gruesome skull." The evil commerce and the lot of the slaves, Frost records, made an abiding impression on the young naval officer. Phillip spent the years 1775-78 in Brazil as a captain in the Portuguese navy. During a lull in duties at sea, he made an investigation of the king of Portugal's Brazilian diamond mines. He discovered much about Brazil's "Forbidden District", where 5000 African slaves mined diamonds under the constant gaze of their individual overseers. This experience confirmed his aversion to slavery.
Phillip's successors as governors of NSW, John Hunter, Philip Gidley King and William Bligh, were all naval men who shared similar ideas and experiences. All had served in the West Indies or North America and subscribed to the same naval values and humanitarian spirit. They had directly encountered or heard tales of the slave trade to the Americas much like that experienced by Lachlan Macquarie in August 1809 while en route to NSW. Off the Brazilian coast, Macquarie's ship accosted a Portuguese slaver bound for Rio de Janeiro carrying 540 African females. Disease had broken out and, to prevent the infection from spreading, the captain had thrown 50 live women overboard. Elizabeth Macquarie was shocked. Her husband's biographer, John Ritchie, records: "Elizabeth's humanity shuddered at this monstrousness and caused her to think of the abolitionist William Wilberforce."
As well as the Enlightenment tradition of the naval officers, the Australian colony harboured a vigorous evangelical movement. Evangelicalism was a reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late 18th century. It aimed to apply the principles of the Gospels to social life. Its main causes were penal reform, the abolition of slavery and missions to the native people of the empire. The founding of NSW as a convict society in the Pacific, where the Australian and Pacific Island tribes seemed ripe for conversion, was tailor-made for the movement. Although Wilberforce's main project was the abolition of slavery, he was also concerned with improving the living conditions of convicts, Aborigines and Pacific Islanders. From the outset, he took a close interest in NSW, soliciting reports from his evangelical followers in the colony and acting as patron of their appointments. He successfully nominated the colony's first two chaplains, Richard Johnson and Samuel Marsden.
He thought the key to good colonial order was religious observance. In 1792 he wrote to home secretary Lord Dundas saying he had information from NSW that among "the higher, as well as the lower ranks, a degree of open profligacy and vice is allowed if not encouraged there". He urged Dundas "to introduce and keep alive amongst the bulk of the people such a sense of religion as will make them temperate and orderly, and domestic and contented".
Until 1796, Lachlan Macquarie had unquestioningly accepted slavery. He was then a captain in the British army in India. At the time, India had a population of eight million slaves and the institution had existed since time immemorial. Indeed, in 1794, when he joined his regiment in Calicut, Macquarie purchased two slave boys from the market in Cochin. His first wife, Jane, was the daughter of the chief justice of Antigua in the West Indies and she owned a small number of slaves there. Jane died of consumption in 1796 and in her will she set her slaves free. Her husband followed her example and emancipated his Indian slaves, enrolling them in a parish school at Bombay to learn to read and write.
Later, as military secretary to the governor of Bombay, Jonathan Duncan, and as a friend of wealthy merchant Charles Forbes - two Englishmen who endorsed the emerging humanitarian sentiment of the time - Macquarie became a critic of slavery. He returned to England in 1807, the year of the abolitionists' victory, and caught the enthusiasm for their cause. That year he married his second wife, Elizabeth, and came under the influence of her religious outlook, especially her belief that all human creatures were equal in the eyes of God.
These views changed the course of Australian colonial history. Determined to avoid any comparison between convict transportation and slavery, Macquarie radically reformed the punitive regime for convicts, turning it into a program for their regeneration. He moderated corporal punishment, reduced life sentences to 15 years and reprieved numerous convicts sentenced to death. Where Bligh had granted two pardons during his 18-month term as governor, between 1810 and 1820 Macquarie gave 366 absolute pardons, 1365 conditional pardons and 2319 tickets-of-leave (certificates of exemption from compulsory labour). He granted land to emancipists (pardoned convicts) and expirees, and even invited some to dine with him. He appointed former convicts as magistrates, as assistant surgeon, acting surveyor, civil architect and poet laureate. To celebrate St Patrick's Day in 1810, Elizabeth Macquarie invited to dinner 58 convicts and their overseers.
Although Lachlan Macquarie's generosity and clemency sowed seeds of dissension among the free settlers that eventually brought him down, he demonstrated that a penal regime of this kind worked. Most successive governors kept his policies largely intact. The long-term result was that probably more than half of the 160,000 convicts transported in 80 years were transformed from the criminal subcultures of their youth into useful citizens: farmers, tradesmen, soldiers and, in a small but notable number of cases, successful professional and business men and women. Transportation to Australia became history's most successful large-scale experiment in penal reform.
Macquarie translated Wilberforce's agenda into policy towards the Aborigines. He established the Native Institution for Aboriginal children; he settled Aboriginal adults on a farm at George's Head and gave them seed and tools; he built huts for others at Elizabeth Bay and gave them a boat, fishing tackle, salt and casks; in 1814 he inaugurated an annual gathering and feast for all the Aborigines of the Sydney region.
Left-wing historians today record with some satisfaction that all his Aboriginal policies eventually failed. They still demonstrated Macquarie's intention towards the Aborigines, which was to give them the gift of British civilisation. He regarded them as his equals and thought that with only a little assistance they could make the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
In the 1820s, two other Australian colonial governors, Ralph Darling and George Arthur, owed their positions partly to the reputations they gained for actions against the slave trade. Other prominent Australian colonists who had dealings with Wilberforce in London or who gained positions here on his recommendation included navigator Matthew Flinders, lieutenant-governor Charles La Trobe, judge Barron Field; merchant and philanthropist Robert Campbell, banker and newspaper editor Edward Hall Smith, author Nicholas Liddiard, pastoralist John Leake and Anglican clergyman Thomas Hassall.
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Leftist historians hide Australia's humane past
The idea that slavery was an affront to humanity that had no place in a free land was part of the original definition of what it meant to be an Australian. Unfortunately, in today's academic climate in which the Left dominates history and the prevailing mind-set is to disparage our origins, very few academic historians discuss these issues. Anyone looking to the Oxford Companion to Australian History for insight will find its editors, Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre, did not think the abolitionists worthy of an entry or even a mention in the subject index.
Moreover, although NSW founder Arthur Phillip's original anti-slavery declaration was once well known to earlier generations of students, historians today rarely mention it. Even when they do, their intention is usually to qualify it heavily. For instance, in The Europeans in Australia (1997), Alan Atkinson calls Phillip's statement "almost gratuitous", then tries to make him look the odd man out in the colony by saying that once he returned to England, the officers of the marines hoped the Aborigines "might be harnessed to a form of slavery on the current American model".
This claim is hardly credible. The sole evidence for it is half a sentence written in 1795 in the diary of the alcoholic, dissolute magistrate Richard Atkins, a long-time adversary of the officers, who did not name those concerned. Moreover, Atkinson neglects to inform his readers that the other half of Atkins's sentence mocks the very notion. The full sentence Atkins wrote was: "They seem to adopt the Idea that the Natives can be made Slaves of, than which nothing can be more false, they are free as air and Govr. Phillip's conduct was highly approved of for reprobating that idea."
Worse still, students of Australian history taught by the present generation of university lecturers are swamped by allegations that colonial officials were guilty of genocide against the Aborigines. According to Ann Curthoys and John Docker of Australian National University, joint editors of the 2001 edition of the academic journal Aboriginal History, Britain was the most "overtly genocidal" of the European colonial powers and its colonisation of Australia produced a genocide comparable to that of Nazi Germany. Most other authors in that journal agreed with them.
Since genocide is a crime of government and a crime of intent, this accusation is disturbing. If true, it means that all those Australian colonial officials who supported the abolition movement, who were proteges of William Wilberforce and who publicly declared that all human beings were equal before the law, must have been liars and hypocrites. Moreover, their words must have been the opposite of their deeds not just once but consistently across several decades and throughout many colonial administrations. In other words, the accusation is implausible on these grounds alone and is evidence not of the intentions of our founders but of how something has gone seriously wrong with the historical interpretation that prevails in this field.
Today, on the rare occasions it is discussed in Australian history books, the abolitionist movement that triumphed in 1807 usually figures only as an introduction to the campaign in the late 1830s to end convict transportation. Those colonists and their English supporters who were opposed to transportation often compared it with slavery. It is true that Britain's Molesworth Committee of 1838, whose report effectively ended transportation to NSW two years later, did use the comparison with slavery to capitalise on abolitionist sentiment in the wake of the 1833 act outlawing the ownership of slaves in the British Empire.
This makes recent historians think they are licensed to repeat the charge as if it were true. In her volume of the Oxford History of Australia (1992), Jan Kociumbas calls the convict regime variously "slavery" (her scare quotes), semi-slavery and a system of slave labour. This analogy is false since convicts could not be bought or sold in Australia and most were sentenced to fixed terms, after which they were free to remain here or return home. And unlike slaves, their children were always born free. Hence, it is historically inaccurate to use the term today to describe what the convict system was really like.
However, in an era when readers of Australian history are so readily seduced by the pseudo-scholarship of books such as Robert Hughes's bestseller The Fatal Shore, which portrays the convict era as Britain's equivalent of Joseph Stalin's gulag archipelago, bad news is obviously what sells. That Australia's founders were so closely connected to, and so strongly motivated by, one of history's great movements for human liberation is, for some perverse reason, something we now prefer not to know.
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The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend 200,000 pounds blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East. The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.
BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public. The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC's coverage in the region.
BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestianian bias. The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.
The BBC's decision to carry on pursuing the case, despite the fact than the Information Tribunal said it should make the report public, has sparked fury as it flies in the face of claims by BBC chiefs that it is trying to make the corporation more open and transparent. Politicians have branded the BBC's decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country's top public law barrister in the process, as "absolutely indefensible".
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Why are SUVs so incorrect?
Comment from Britain
How did the 4x4 - that big-wheeled, boxy jeep beloved of `Chelsea mums' and footballers - become public enemy no.1 in the environmentalism debate? Listening to anti-4x4 campaigners, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this one breed of car is responsible for destroying the planet. It is widely expected that UK Chancellor Gordon Brown will announce in his Budget tomorrow that Vehicle Excise Duty for the 225,000 least fuel-efficient cars bought in Britain since last April - which includes most 4x4s and also sports cars - will be doubled, rising from 210 to 400 pounds a year. This falls short of what green anti-4x4 campaigners are demanding; they want road tax to be raised to somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds for `the worst offending cars', especially 4x4s, which are described as `vile', `vulgar', and damaging both to the environment and to social cohesion.
The 4x4 has become the bˆte noire of the chattering classes. Pop into any dinner-party gathering in the leafiest of Britain's leafy suburbs and you are guaranteed to hear someone bemoaning these big vehicles as they pass around the pesto. There is more to this anti-4x4 fever than a desire to protect the environment or pedestrians from exhaust fumes. Rather it seems to be underpinned by a snobbery against the `wrong' kind of consumption, especially the kind indulged by apparently unsophisticated noveau riche types who garishly like to flaunt their wealth with their mock-Tudor homes, big hair and big cars.
When you think about it, the obsessive focus on 4x4s in the debate about cars and pollution is pretty crazy. These jeeps make up a tiny minority of the cars in action across Britain. There are an estimated 30million regularly-used vehicles in the UK, and those labelled the `least fuel-efficient' - which include sports cars and other vehicles as well as the hated 4x4 - number only 225,000. Putting motorists off buying 4x4s by making them more expensive to run will do Sweet FA to reduce the level of pollution caused by car use.
The level of CO2 coughed up by a 4x4 is not that much greater than various other modern machines. Campaigners say that 4x4s emit more CO2 than most other cars - that may be true, but they emit less CO2 than some of the things we use in the home day in and day out. According to research published in 2005, one cycle of a kitchen dishwasher releases around 756g of CO2, more than double that produced by a short spin in a Range Rover Turbo Diesel, which releases 299g per kilometre. Using a petrol lawnmower for an hour releases more than 1,000g of CO2. Why are there no campaigns against `evil' dishwashers, or demands that Gordon Brown slap big fat taxes on lawnmowers?
There is also little hard evidence that, when involved in collisions, 4x4s are more dangerous for motorists and pedestrians than other cars. Of course, none of us would like to be on the receiving end of a speeding 4x4 - but nor would we want to be hit by a big red bus, a delivery truck, a black taxi or even a Mini for that matter. According to Chris Patience, head of technical policy at the Automobile Association (AA): `There is no shared characteristic of 4x4s that make them any more or less aggressive towards pedestrians compared to a "normal" car.' Patience even claims that 4x4s might be less harmful to pedestrians when there is a collision. `Typically, pedestrians hit by cars wrap around the front of the car and their head hits the bonnet', he says, and because 4x4s tend to have more space between the bonnet and the engine beneath it, they create something of a `crumple-zone for the head'.
It is not really what these cars do that winds up campaigners, but rather what they represent. They're big brash symbols of conspicuous consumption. And at a time when we're encouraged to be meek and to constantly consider what impact our behaviour might be having on the environment, buying a 4x4 and showing it off to the other mums at the schoolgates or your mates at the football ground is the contemporary equivalent of a mortal sin.
It isn't so much the car that the campaigners can't stand (after all, they like big red carbon-producing buses) but rather the people who tend to drive them - whether it's uppity working-class-done-good people, or country folk who talk in posh tones and probably watch Top Gear. You can tell this is about more than pollution and pedestrians if you listen to the language used to describe 4x4 drivers. They're talked about in the most vituperative terms, not only as polluters but as Bad People. The website of the UK campaign group the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s describes itself as a collection of `concerned citizens' and 4x4s as `The Bad Guys'. It says its aim is to make driving a 4x4 as `socially unacceptable as drink-driving'.
London mayor Ken Livingstone says mums who drop their kids at school in 4x4s are `complete idiots'. A left-leaning British think-tank, the New Economics Foundation, describes 4x4s as `Satan's little run-arounds'. In the US, a website called What Would Jesus Drive? (not a 4x4, apparently) says pollution from 4x4s `has a major impact on human health and the rest of God's creation'. So 4x4 drivers are not only dangerous and greedy and anti-social - they're ungodly, too.
These are clearly moral judgements masquerading as concern for the environment. Look into the trunk of the anti-4x4 campaign and you will find generous doses of snobbery, mean-spiritedness and neo-luddism.
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Immigrants being blamed for the negativity spawned by the British Left
Can immigrants be blamed for lack of loyalty to a country that seems to have lost faith in itself?
UK Chancellor Gordon Brown's recent initiative to ensure that immigrants feel a proper sense of loyalty to Britain has been criticised for being either too little too late or just plain daft. Brown said last month that immigrants should do some `community work' before being granted British citizenship. For Brown, citizenship should be a `kind of contract' with `rights and responsibilities'. This follows on from other proposals suggesting that immigrants should be `encouraged' to learn English and should take tests to demonstrate that they know what Britain is all about and that they wish to be part of it.
Enforced community service is unlikely to engender a sense of belonging. But then, what really seems to be behind the latest demands for immigrants to buy into Britishness is a lack of any positive, coherent sense of what it is to be British amongst the British elite itself. This weakened sense of Britishness has nothing intrinsically to do with immigrants. And yet, more and more, a situation that is the result of various complex historical and political factors is being represented as a problem to do with immigration. This is itself a problem for the rest of us, as it means attention is misplaced upon immigrants and energy is misdirected towards helping immigrants to fit into something that isn't really there.
Take education. It is argued by some that there has been a `downward drag' in standards due to there being too many immigrant children in the classroom. My guess is that pupils today are more disadvantaged by an educational establishment which is not able, or willing, to assert the need for teaching English language and literature to take precedence over the need to be `multicultural' than they are by the presence of pupils who do not speak English very well.
Some believe that a big problem in the health service today is that patients don't understand their doctors, and apparently have to strain to make sense of what the man or woman with the strange accent is saying. What about all the other major problems with the health service, from a lack of resources to the transformation of the NHS into a behaviour-policing outfit? Time and time again, problems that are the result of the actions and policies of the British authorities are being ascribed to immigrants `failing to fit in'. Few ask what exactly there is for them to fit into.
Most Indian immigrants of my parents' generation felt positively hostile to certain British institutions. For example, many were distrustful of the British Army and supported the Quit India Movement, the civil disobedience movement launched in India in 1942 in response to Mahatma Gandhi's call for the immediate independence of India from Britain. Yet simultaneously they felt an affinity with British society and culture. This meant they wanted to make a break with their country of birth in order to be part of a society perceived as going forwards.
Financial gain was not uppermost in their minds. Individual freedom, meritocracy and social mobility were high on the list of attractions. Even when they arrived in the UK and realised that these things were not available to all on an equal basis, their belief in, and desire to be part of, British life remained. They believed that by working through institutions and popular organisations such as trade unions and political parties, many people - themselves included - could improve their lot.
The dynamic engendered by British society at that time was strong enough to inspire people all over the world. Today what immigrants once sought to do spontaneously (learn the language and culture) has to be imposed by government - not primarily because immigrants have changed, but because British society represents less of what they want to sign up to.
Rather than address more difficult issues - that Britain today is less than inspirational on the world stage, is less of a meritocracy, more socially stratified and a place where individuals are more closely monitored in virtually all aspects of our lives - politicians and pundits tear their hair out wondering why on earth immigrants don't appear to want to be part of and to celebrate British culture.
Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I can see no reason why it should matter to anyone. Many people live outside their countries of birth; they work and socialise without conflict. Yet they do not feel that they necessarily belong to, or have to belong to, the country they have chosen to live in. People may feel contradictory affiliations; and something as subjective as a sense of belonging frequently waxes and wanes over time. A more confident, forward-looking society would be more relaxed about these facts.
Whatever measures or cod `solutions' the British political caste comes up with, people's subjective sense of belonging cannot be created by diktat. One of the few positive virtues of British society that politicians often cite is its tolerance. It is ironic, then, that the present government is so intolerant of people who do not conform to its increasingly long list of absurd criteria of what makes for a `good British citizen'.
Still, as long as the focus remains on what immigrants do or don't do to prove their loyalty, the heat is off looking at ourselves, and identifying what the real problems are and what some real solutions might be.
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Keep politics out of science – and vice versa
Comment from Britain
Since Channel 4 aired Martin Durkin’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle on 8 March, in which various scientists questioned the scientific consensus that manmade carbon emissions are causing global warming, there has been an increasingly shrill spat between mainstream climate change scientists and an ever-dwindling number of climate change sceptics. ‘We are right and you are wrong’, say the mainstream scientists. ‘No, we are right and you are wrong’, claim the sceptics. Both sides have wheeled out graphs and pie charts to demonstrate their rightness and their opponents’ wrongness, giving rise to a war of words and stats and scientific facts that has no doubt helped to bamboozle great numbers of the Great British public.
For me, the infuriating thing about this debate is that it overlooks the main problem with the mainstream science on global warming. No, not that it is wrong, or that it is ‘swindling’ people, but rather that it has become deeply, almost irrevocably politicised. As a layperson largely following this debate via my laptop, I can see that a scientific consensus has been reached which says there has been some global warming, and most scientists believe that man’s carbon emissions are contributing to that warming. There is still a clear need for debate, it seems, over whether manmade CO2 alone is the cause of warming, how much warmer the planet is likely to get, and what the consequences will be. The problem, however, is that this scientific consensus is being used by the powers-that-be to justify all sorts of inhumane, illiberal and repressive political measures, often with the support, or at least complicity, of the scientists.
Even when the science is ‘right’, it is never right to prostitute science for political ends. History shows us that the mixing of science and values, the use and abuse of science to direct the political and social life of a society, is never a good idea. It is bad for politics, and it is bad for science.
Spiked is all in favour of good and rigorous science. We have frequently challenged the petty and pernicious government restrictions on scientific endeavour, especially in relation to stem-cell research and animal experimentation. And we have ruthlessly challenged the panics around the genetic modification of crops and food, the bad science that informed the MMR-autism debacle of the past 10 years, and the lazy pseudo-medical science that says an ‘obesity epidemic’ means that the kids of today are unhealthier than earlier generations and will likely die before their parents (1). Some of those currently posing as defenders of scientific integrity in relation to global warming have not been so keen to defend science in these instances. Today, newspaper columnists such as George Monbiot at the Guardian and Geoffrey Lean at the Independent write long pieces attacking Durkin as a lone maverick undermining the scientific consensus. In the past, however, they bigged up lone mavericks who made scary and unsubstantiated claims about how GM foods might poison humans, increase the risk of miscarriage amongst women, and even cause cancer – all of which went against the sensible scientific consensus that GM is actually safe.
Spiked has also consistently called for scientists to be given the independence and the resources they need in order to experiment, discover, improve our understanding of the natural world. That is how science works best: as a kind of pool of fascinating findings and ideas that progressive societies can draw inspiration from, in the name of developing medicine, technology and exploration. Science can inform open political debate, for example in areas of health, but it should not determine it.
Something very different – and dangerous – is happening with the science of global warming. Public figures are using the language of climate change science to force through a new political consensus. The scientific consensus around CO2 emissions and global warming is now used to justify reining in development, narrowing people’s ambitions, and policing our behaviour in an ever-more petty fashion. Elites don the garb of ‘scientific fact’ as a cover for their own loss of nerve and ambition, and as an argument for holding back the potential for further progress and development. From the demand for small-scale ‘sustainable development’ in Africa to new taxes designed to determine what kind of cars we Westerners drive and how many holidays we may take a year, politicians, activists and commentators increasingly marshal the men in white coats to show that we have no choice but to narrow our horizons because the science demands it.
In truth, there is no straight or logical line from the scientific finding that manmade CO2 is contributing to warming and the demand that we slow down development and change the way we live. Rather, such small-minded policies are a product of today’s politics of low expectations, which is dressed up in the language of science. In the past, humanity faced up to great challenges, whether they were thrown up by nature or by man’s own actions, by seeking to forge ahead and advance society, by applying the greatest minds to come up with solutions to our problems. Today we are told that the only legitimate response to predictions of global warming is to drive less, build less, develop less and generally do less in the here and now. George Monbiot confesses that one of his aims is to ‘make people so depressed about the state of the world that they stay in bed all day, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil fuel’ (2). The science demands it, apparently.
Scandalously, over the past five to 10 years the science of climate change has been used as a political weapon, both to transform our behaviour and to silence those who dare to question today’s narrow political outlook. And some mainstream scientists, by allowing this to happen, have been far more complicit in the bastardisation of science than those small numbers of climate change sceptics with their allegedly dodgy graphs. While mainstream science writers attack Martin Durkin and the various talking heads in his film for muddying the science on global warming, they seem blind to the far graver undermining of scientific integrity represented by the relentless politicisation of climate change science.
Over the past two weeks, a handful of climate change scientists have instinctively kicked against the politicisation of their work. At a conference in Oxford, England last weekend, Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier of the Royal Meteorological Society slated the ‘catastrophism’ of scientists who predict that climate change will cause floods, droughts, famines and other assorted horrors. ‘There is no evidence to show we’re all due for very short-term devastating impacts as a result of global warming’, said Professor Hardaker, warning that mixing ‘science with unscientific assumptions’ is a dangerous pastime (3).
Last week some very respectable scientists told the New York Times that some of the claims made by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth were exaggerated and erroneous. (Funnily enough, these scientists were not given anywhere near the same amount of airtime as those who claim to have been duped into appearing in Durkin’s documentary.) ‘I don’t want to pick on Al Gore’, said Don J Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University. ‘But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.’ (4) In both Oxford and New York, serious scientists seem to be reacting against the use of science to tell a fearful and exaggerated tale about the fate awaiting humanity. In the words of Professor Hardaker, they seem uncomfortable with the mixing of ‘science’ (the data drawn up in labs and research units) and ‘unscientific assumptions’ (the notion that we are all doomed).
Also last week, in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Hans von Storch, one of Germany’s leading researchers on climate change, attacked scientists for ‘doom-mongering’ over global warming. Von Storch compared the moral message that is attached to today’s climate change science with earlier religious and mythical stories about the Earth punishing humanity for its hubris. ‘The fear of climatic catastrophes is an ancient one’, he said. In reference to the tendency to single out flying holidaymakers in particular as the new ‘sinners’, von Stroch argued: ‘In the past, people believed that the climate almost always changes for the worse, and only rarely for the better – God’s punishment for sinful behaviour. And nowadays, it’s those hedonistic wastrels who pollute the air so that they can look at some pretty fish in the South Seas. It would be better if we only ever rode bikes. Oh, there’s always someone wagging a finger in disapproval.’ (5)
None of these scientists can be denounced as ‘climate change deniers’, the scurrilous tag normally attached to anybody who questions the consensus on global warming – all of them accept that manmade carbon emissions are contributing to the warming of the planet. Nor can they be written off as oily mouthpieces for ExxonMobil or some other fat conglomerate – they work/did work at respectable universities and institutions. Rather they are voicing their discomfort with certain scientists’ willingness to see their work used to tell stories of catastrophe and to shape people’s behaviour and expectations.
The real scandal in the debate about the science of global warming is not the airing of sceptical or dissenting or plain wrong views, but the exploitation of those who claim to be ‘right’ in order to push forward some pretty poisonous political campaigning. The subordination of science to politics has a horrendous historical track record. In Russia in the 1930s and 40s, the Stalinists championed the ‘agricultural science’ of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko in order to clamp down on research and advances in genetics, which they viewed as ‘bourgeois science’. That had a dire impact on the forward development of agriculture in Russia for more than 30 years. (Interestingly, Lysenko was celebrated in the slavish Soviet press as a natural, earth-loving ‘barefoot scientist’, a little bit like the Observer’s trendy green columnist the ‘barefoot doctor’, perhaps.) The Nazis, of course, used the science of eugenics to justify their racism and anti-Semitism.
The Stalinists’ and Nazis’ science may have been junk, whereas the consensus around manmade global warming is more respectable. Yet the marshalling of the science of global warming to bolster political campaigns today has echoes of the Nazis’ use of science to back up their poisonous politics of race and the Stalinists’ use of science to stifle research on genetics. Whether your science is right or wrong, respectable or racist, its prostitution for political ends is bad news – both for politics and for science.
It is bad for politics because it rigidifies debate. Great important questions about people’s lives and futures are reduced to findings made by scientists and plotted on a line graph. Decisions are taken less on the basis of human interest and need, and more on the basis of what scientists predict is possible and desirable. So today we have the quite shocking situation where the Third World is discussed in terms of how much the River Nile might rise by over the next 100 years, as ruminated over by scientists and experts, rather than in terms of what living, breathing Africans need and expect from life today. The use of science for political ends dehumanises debate. The Nazis’ scurrilous science reduced humans to a hierarchy of beasts. Today’s exploitation of the science of global warming by political elites doesn’t do that, of course, but it does reduce humans to Problems, who are apparently both causing global warming and whose needs and desires cannot be met because to do so would further contribute to global warming.
The use of science in politics also serves to shut down genuine, open political debate. When one side can argue that its political programme is underpinned by Scientific Truth, then its opponents and critics can easily be written off as ‘deniers’ of the Truth, as ‘liars’ and ‘anti-science charlatans’. Question the agenda of ‘sustainable development’ in Africa, which consigns millions to grinding poverty, and you will be accused of ‘ignoring the facts on global warming’; ask whether it is right to restrict people’s ability to travel the world in aeroplanes, one of the great advances of the past hundred years, and you will be told to ‘look at the science!’ Political criticisms are written off as anti-science yelps. The exploitation of science by political elements gives rise to a politics that is narrow, fatalistic and censorious.
The use and abuse of climate change science is bad for science, too. When politicians look to science for their moral authority, believing that scientists can provide a gravitas to their political campaigning, it inevitably pollutes science. The aim of science becomes less to uncover scientific truths than to lend authority to political prejudices – and science inevitably becomes bent in the process. While some scientists, such as those in Oxford, New York and Germany cited above, seem keen to resist the pollution of science by ‘unscientific assumptions’, others have unfortunately gone along with the use of their work to back up political campaigning.
As Professor Hardaker in Oxford pointed out, even an august body such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science talks about global warming in hysterical, unscientific terms, predicting ‘intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms….’ (6) The politicisation of the science of climate change may have the long-term effect of skewing the science, as some scientists fall for the promise of global authority – stardom, no less – if their findings can be made to fit in with today’s narrow political priorities.
There has been a great deal of witch-hunting of Martin Durkin and the contributors to his film The Great Global Warming Swindle over the past two weeks. This witch hunt does not only point to a high level of intolerance in the global warming debate – it also suggests widespread ignorance about who and what is really undermining science today. It is not Durkin, a lone filmmaker with few friends in high places, who is damaging science, but rather those mainstream figures in politics and the media who are using science for cynical and narrow political campaigns.
There is something profoundly inhumane in the politics of global warming, in the widespread discussion of humans as problems to be worked around rather than beings with needs and desires. Anyone interested in real and meaningful dissent today – who believes that questions about the future of humanity are not reducible to graphs and pie charts – should aim their fire at the denigration of both science and politics by today’s Great Global Warming Consensus.
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POOR HIT HARDEST BY KYOTO FOLLY: MILLIONS IN 'FUEL POVERTY' TRAP
"Warming" makes poor people feel the cold
The number of households facing a choice between heating and eating has almost doubled in the past two years. Spiralling gas and electricity bills have left nearly 4m having to spend at least 10% of their disposable income on heating and lighting - the definition of 'fuel poverty'. This is an increase of more than 1.7m, according to an independent study.
The research was commissioned by the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes - a group of 700 industry bodies concerned with domestic energy efficiency. It shows that the Government is hopelessly failing to hit its own targets to stamp out fuel poverty. In 2001, the Government publicly stated that it would eradicate fuel poverty for all vulnerable and low-income households by 2010 and all other households by 2016. Given the increase in the problem over the last two years, it would seem that this is now an impossible task.
The research pointed out that electricity prices surged by 39% and gas prices by 61% between 2003 and 2006. The Government has cashed in on the increases, with a huge rise in the tax paid by North Sea gas companies and VAT on bills. Very little of this has been used to help families struggling with their bills, however. Some 650,000 local authority or housing association households - one in three of the total - struggled to meet rising energy bills in 2006, paying an average 814 pounds a year. These households are now three times more likely to be fuel poor than tenants in 2004, who spent 590 pounds a year on bills.
The report was commissioned by the Managed Homes subgroup of the EEPH which is chaired by Places for People - the UK's largest housing and regeneration group which is responsible for 60,000 homes across the country Project director Nicholas Doyle warned: 'For thousands of people, the prospect of a warm and comfortable home is now a luxury that they cannot afford. The stark reality is that many people from low-income backgrounds are now faced with the choice of deciding whether to heat their home or provide for their family. ...
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Australia's humane British founders
Leftist historians give the impression that Australia's founders were genocidal military dictators. But many of Australia's early colonial leaders were human rights activists ahead of their time, as Keith Windschuttle documents below. Australia's first governor, Capt. Phillip was anti-slavery before Wilberforce! Following the documentation below is a summary of what the Leftists say -- and a rebuttal of it
According to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the 200th anniversary of his country's abolition of the slave trade tomorrow offers the chance to say how profoundly shameful slavery was. Equally, however, it provides the occasion to commemorate those who abolished the trade. In 1807, the British were the first people in the world to do so. This was one of the great feats in the history of human freedom and its originators and their motives deserve to be understood and celebrated today.
Moreover, there was a strong connection between the British colonisation of Australia and those who campaigned against slavery. Today, our contemporary historians avoid this topic. Hence, few Australians are aware of how powerful the abolitionist sentiment was in colonial Australia or how strongly English abolitionists influenced the political and moral foundations of this country.
Soon after British secretary for home affairs, Lord Sydney, appointed him the first governor of NSW in September 1786, Arthur Phillip drew up a detailed memorandum of his plans for the proposed new colony. In one paragraph he wrote: "The laws of this country (England) will of course be introduced in New South Wales, and there is one that I would wish to take place from the moment his majesty's forces take possession of the country: that there can be no slavery in a free land, and consequently no slaves."
In all of Australia's founding documents this statement stands out starkly. There are no other appeals to great principles, no declaration of independence, no constitutional preamble full of nation-building sentiment. Instead, we were founded by bureaucratic correspondence from the British Home Office to the Admiralty, the Navy Board and the Treasury, by other letters, commissions of appointment and warrants for transportation, and by one act of the British parliament concerned mostly with "the transportation of felons and other offenders". Hence Phillip's paragraph above, especially his unequivocal and spare avowal, "there can be no slavery in a free land", is probably the best founding proclamation we have.
It was a remarkable declaration to make at the time. For a start, it demonstrated that its governor and those who appointed him had more ambitious plans for the new colony than they made public. "A free land" meant much more than a dumping ground for convicts. Phillip clearly expected NSW eventually to be composed largely of free settlers. Moreover, Phillip's objection to slavery was noticeably ahead of his time. At this distance, it may seem part of the stock opinion of the day, just one more expression of the abolitionist movement that persuaded the British parliament to outlaw the transportation of slaves on the high seas. But there was more to it than that. As Phillip said, the laws of England did not permit slavery. The ownership and sale of human beings had been illegal in England since the early Middle Ages, but by the 1700s the growth of the slave trade to the Americas saw thousands of black slaves employed as servants in London, Edinburgh and other urban centres. In the celebrated James Somerset case of 1772, Lord Mansfield found that English law did not permit slavery and that black servants were free to go as they pleased.
Nonetheless slavery still thrived across the British Empire. The merchant fleet of Liverpool dominated the transport of slaves from Africa to the Americas; the sugar plantations of Britain's Caribbean colonies were dependent on slave labour; and slavery was widespread in the Muslim realms of British India. Moreover, Britain's former colonies in North America had just formed an independent union based on an appeal to freedom and equality, yet still they housed almost 700,000 slaves.
Phillip wrote his memorandum before the abolitionist movement gained public momentum. At the time, to take a stand for this moral cause put him decidedly on the progressive side of politics. The abolitionists' parliamentary leader, William Wilberforce, decided to take up the issue only in May 1787, eight months after Phillip declared his own attitude. The abolitionist evangelicals in the Church of England and their Quaker supporters were then a marginal group of activists. Their spokesman, Thomas Clarkson, had not yet begun the speaking tours of British cities that were to make abolition a popular cause. By 1791, when Wilberforce introduced his first bill to abolish the slave trade, the movement had made progress but parliament still rejected it decisively by 163 votes to 88.
Although the evangelicals were the main force behind the abolitionist movement and Wilberforce its best-known politician, Phillip had not been greatly influenced by them. Indeed, he was not an especially religious man. His 1786 memorandum discussed his proposed colony's housing, health care, clothing, relations with the Aborigines, rewards and punishments for convicts, land grants, shipping regulations, exploration and trade. Conspicuously, he mentioned neither religion nor the church. In practice, he seemed to regard religion primarily as a utilitarian device for maintaining social order and good behaviour.
Instead, he took a more secular political position that saw slavery as an offence against the tradition of "the freeborn Englishman" that defined his country. This was a political and a folk tradition that extended back at least to the English Civil War but probably much further. It meant that no one in England could be born into slavery, bondage or vassalage. All were born with inalienable rights to freedom.
Phillip was also the inheritor of the British naval tradition that looked down on Europe's original imperial powers, Spain and Portugal. Since the Spanish Armada, English Protestant sailors had been nourished on a diet of anti-Spanish stories designed to show that the adherents of the Catholic Church were capable of any cruelty. Tales of the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition and the brutal treatment of African slaves and the indigenous people of the Americas entrenched the sentiment.
A further influence on Phillip was the humanitarian movement that emerged within the British Enlightenment in the late 1700s. This movement, which had support from early British anthropologists and the Anglican Church, emphasised the unity of humankind. All human beings, whatever their skin colour, were members of the one species and were thus equal, both at law and before God. This sentiment led several Scottish intellectuals to openly condemn slavery, especially Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), plus George Wallace and Adam Ferguson. In England, William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) made a firm break with Roman law on the subject.
In April 1787, Phillip made another memorable statement that applied this egalitarian sentiment to the Aborigines of NSW: "Any Man who takes the life of a Native will be put on his Trial the same as if he had kill'd one of the Garrison. This appears to me not only just but good policy."
Since his early 20s, Phillip had found slavery repugnant. As a junior naval officer on a tour of duty to the Caribbean in 1760-62 he saw the Spanish and British slave plantations on Jamaica, the Leeward Islands and Cuba. "By the time he left the lavish islands," writes his biographer Alan Frost, "Phillip has come to see that behind their gleaming skin lurked a gruesome skull." The evil commerce and the lot of the slaves, Frost records, made an abiding impression on the young naval officer. Phillip spent the years 1775-78 in Brazil as a captain in the Portuguese navy. During a lull in duties at sea, he made an investigation of the king of Portugal's Brazilian diamond mines. He discovered much about Brazil's "Forbidden District", where 5000 African slaves mined diamonds under the constant gaze of their individual overseers. This experience confirmed his aversion to slavery.
Phillip's successors as governors of NSW, John Hunter, Philip Gidley King and William Bligh, were all naval men who shared similar ideas and experiences. All had served in the West Indies or North America and subscribed to the same naval values and humanitarian spirit. They had directly encountered or heard tales of the slave trade to the Americas much like that experienced by Lachlan Macquarie in August 1809 while en route to NSW. Off the Brazilian coast, Macquarie's ship accosted a Portuguese slaver bound for Rio de Janeiro carrying 540 African females. Disease had broken out and, to prevent the infection from spreading, the captain had thrown 50 live women overboard. Elizabeth Macquarie was shocked. Her husband's biographer, John Ritchie, records: "Elizabeth's humanity shuddered at this monstrousness and caused her to think of the abolitionist William Wilberforce."
As well as the Enlightenment tradition of the naval officers, the Australian colony harboured a vigorous evangelical movement. Evangelicalism was a reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late 18th century. It aimed to apply the principles of the Gospels to social life. Its main causes were penal reform, the abolition of slavery and missions to the native people of the empire. The founding of NSW as a convict society in the Pacific, where the Australian and Pacific Island tribes seemed ripe for conversion, was tailor-made for the movement. Although Wilberforce's main project was the abolition of slavery, he was also concerned with improving the living conditions of convicts, Aborigines and Pacific Islanders. From the outset, he took a close interest in NSW, soliciting reports from his evangelical followers in the colony and acting as patron of their appointments. He successfully nominated the colony's first two chaplains, Richard Johnson and Samuel Marsden.
He thought the key to good colonial order was religious observance. In 1792 he wrote to home secretary Lord Dundas saying he had information from NSW that among "the higher, as well as the lower ranks, a degree of open profligacy and vice is allowed if not encouraged there". He urged Dundas "to introduce and keep alive amongst the bulk of the people such a sense of religion as will make them temperate and orderly, and domestic and contented".
Until 1796, Lachlan Macquarie had unquestioningly accepted slavery. He was then a captain in the British army in India. At the time, India had a population of eight million slaves and the institution had existed since time immemorial. Indeed, in 1794, when he joined his regiment in Calicut, Macquarie purchased two slave boys from the market in Cochin. His first wife, Jane, was the daughter of the chief justice of Antigua in the West Indies and she owned a small number of slaves there. Jane died of consumption in 1796 and in her will she set her slaves free. Her husband followed her example and emancipated his Indian slaves, enrolling them in a parish school at Bombay to learn to read and write.
Later, as military secretary to the governor of Bombay, Jonathan Duncan, and as a friend of wealthy merchant Charles Forbes - two Englishmen who endorsed the emerging humanitarian sentiment of the time - Macquarie became a critic of slavery. He returned to England in 1807, the year of the abolitionists' victory, and caught the enthusiasm for their cause. That year he married his second wife, Elizabeth, and came under the influence of her religious outlook, especially her belief that all human creatures were equal in the eyes of God.
These views changed the course of Australian colonial history. Determined to avoid any comparison between convict transportation and slavery, Macquarie radically reformed the punitive regime for convicts, turning it into a program for their regeneration. He moderated corporal punishment, reduced life sentences to 15 years and reprieved numerous convicts sentenced to death. Where Bligh had granted two pardons during his 18-month term as governor, between 1810 and 1820 Macquarie gave 366 absolute pardons, 1365 conditional pardons and 2319 tickets-of-leave (certificates of exemption from compulsory labour). He granted land to emancipists (pardoned convicts) and expirees, and even invited some to dine with him. He appointed former convicts as magistrates, as assistant surgeon, acting surveyor, civil architect and poet laureate. To celebrate St Patrick's Day in 1810, Elizabeth Macquarie invited to dinner 58 convicts and their overseers.
Although Lachlan Macquarie's generosity and clemency sowed seeds of dissension among the free settlers that eventually brought him down, he demonstrated that a penal regime of this kind worked. Most successive governors kept his policies largely intact. The long-term result was that probably more than half of the 160,000 convicts transported in 80 years were transformed from the criminal subcultures of their youth into useful citizens: farmers, tradesmen, soldiers and, in a small but notable number of cases, successful professional and business men and women. Transportation to Australia became history's most successful large-scale experiment in penal reform.
Macquarie translated Wilberforce's agenda into policy towards the Aborigines. He established the Native Institution for Aboriginal children; he settled Aboriginal adults on a farm at George's Head and gave them seed and tools; he built huts for others at Elizabeth Bay and gave them a boat, fishing tackle, salt and casks; in 1814 he inaugurated an annual gathering and feast for all the Aborigines of the Sydney region.
Left-wing historians today record with some satisfaction that all his Aboriginal policies eventually failed. They still demonstrated Macquarie's intention towards the Aborigines, which was to give them the gift of British civilisation. He regarded them as his equals and thought that with only a little assistance they could make the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
In the 1820s, two other Australian colonial governors, Ralph Darling and George Arthur, owed their positions partly to the reputations they gained for actions against the slave trade. Other prominent Australian colonists who had dealings with Wilberforce in London or who gained positions here on his recommendation included navigator Matthew Flinders, lieutenant-governor Charles La Trobe, judge Barron Field; merchant and philanthropist Robert Campbell, banker and newspaper editor Edward Hall Smith, author Nicholas Liddiard, pastoralist John Leake and Anglican clergyman Thomas Hassall.
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Leftist historians hide Australia's humane past
The idea that slavery was an affront to humanity that had no place in a free land was part of the original definition of what it meant to be an Australian. Unfortunately, in today's academic climate in which the Left dominates history and the prevailing mind-set is to disparage our origins, very few academic historians discuss these issues. Anyone looking to the Oxford Companion to Australian History for insight will find its editors, Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre, did not think the abolitionists worthy of an entry or even a mention in the subject index.
Moreover, although NSW founder Arthur Phillip's original anti-slavery declaration was once well known to earlier generations of students, historians today rarely mention it. Even when they do, their intention is usually to qualify it heavily. For instance, in The Europeans in Australia (1997), Alan Atkinson calls Phillip's statement "almost gratuitous", then tries to make him look the odd man out in the colony by saying that once he returned to England, the officers of the marines hoped the Aborigines "might be harnessed to a form of slavery on the current American model".
This claim is hardly credible. The sole evidence for it is half a sentence written in 1795 in the diary of the alcoholic, dissolute magistrate Richard Atkins, a long-time adversary of the officers, who did not name those concerned. Moreover, Atkinson neglects to inform his readers that the other half of Atkins's sentence mocks the very notion. The full sentence Atkins wrote was: "They seem to adopt the Idea that the Natives can be made Slaves of, than which nothing can be more false, they are free as air and Govr. Phillip's conduct was highly approved of for reprobating that idea."
Worse still, students of Australian history taught by the present generation of university lecturers are swamped by allegations that colonial officials were guilty of genocide against the Aborigines. According to Ann Curthoys and John Docker of Australian National University, joint editors of the 2001 edition of the academic journal Aboriginal History, Britain was the most "overtly genocidal" of the European colonial powers and its colonisation of Australia produced a genocide comparable to that of Nazi Germany. Most other authors in that journal agreed with them.
Since genocide is a crime of government and a crime of intent, this accusation is disturbing. If true, it means that all those Australian colonial officials who supported the abolition movement, who were proteges of William Wilberforce and who publicly declared that all human beings were equal before the law, must have been liars and hypocrites. Moreover, their words must have been the opposite of their deeds not just once but consistently across several decades and throughout many colonial administrations. In other words, the accusation is implausible on these grounds alone and is evidence not of the intentions of our founders but of how something has gone seriously wrong with the historical interpretation that prevails in this field.
Today, on the rare occasions it is discussed in Australian history books, the abolitionist movement that triumphed in 1807 usually figures only as an introduction to the campaign in the late 1830s to end convict transportation. Those colonists and their English supporters who were opposed to transportation often compared it with slavery. It is true that Britain's Molesworth Committee of 1838, whose report effectively ended transportation to NSW two years later, did use the comparison with slavery to capitalise on abolitionist sentiment in the wake of the 1833 act outlawing the ownership of slaves in the British Empire.
This makes recent historians think they are licensed to repeat the charge as if it were true. In her volume of the Oxford History of Australia (1992), Jan Kociumbas calls the convict regime variously "slavery" (her scare quotes), semi-slavery and a system of slave labour. This analogy is false since convicts could not be bought or sold in Australia and most were sentenced to fixed terms, after which they were free to remain here or return home. And unlike slaves, their children were always born free. Hence, it is historically inaccurate to use the term today to describe what the convict system was really like.
However, in an era when readers of Australian history are so readily seduced by the pseudo-scholarship of books such as Robert Hughes's bestseller The Fatal Shore, which portrays the convict era as Britain's equivalent of Joseph Stalin's gulag archipelago, bad news is obviously what sells. That Australia's founders were so closely connected to, and so strongly motivated by, one of history's great movements for human liberation is, for some perverse reason, something we now prefer not to know.
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Sunday, March 25, 2007
THAT FABULOUS SOCIALIST "PLANNING" IN ACTION
Long claimed as why socialism is superior to "chaotic" private enterprise
NHS planning has been a disastrous failure, leading to an uncontrolled boom in the workforce followed by a bust in budgets, a report by MPs says. The health service set out in 1999 to recruit 20,000 more nurses by 2004 but hired 67,878 - 340 per cent over target. It also recruited twice as many GPs as planned and 69 per cent more health professionals, such as physiotherapists. As the inflated workforce had to be paid, hospitals and trusts plunged into deficit, the Commons Health Select Committee report says. Now posts are being left empty or lost, and a few NHS workers are being made compulsorily redundant. More than half of newly qualified physiotherapists have failed to find work in the NHS.
The MPs are scathing about the failure to maintain a link between staff numbers and the money available to pay them. Instead of raising productivity to meet targets, the NHS "threw new staff into the task rather than consider the most cost-effective way of doing the job", the report says. It calls the staff expansion "reckless and uncontrolled" and says that funding increases were often seen as a blank cheque for recruiting new staff. There is also criticism of generous contracts. "Large pay increases were granted without adequate steps being taken to ensure increases in productivity in return," it said. The committee urged the Government to make workforce planning a priority [When will they ever learn?], and for an end to constant health service reorganisation.
Stephen O'Brien, the Shadow Health Minister, said: "Top-down workforce targets imposed by Labour have created confusion amongst NHS staff. Patients are bewildered about where all the money has gone, and hard-working staff are losing confidence by the day in Labour's stewardship of the NHS."
The British Medical Association did not entirely endorse the report, however. Sam Everington, its deputy chairman, said: "While agreeing wholeheartedly that integrated workforce planning must be a priority... we do not agree that the expansion of the medical workforce was reckless and uncontrolled and that pay increases for doctors have not seen a return in productivity. "The UK is still critically short of doctors and the BMA has always believed that government goals to increase doctor numbers were too low."
Andy Burnham, the Health Minister, said: "While the pay contracts cost more than we or the trade unions and professional associations first anticipated, we must remember that we were setting right an NHS system with widespread recruitment difficulties. We have been able to eliminate these and reward hard-working professionals with the pay they deserve."
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BRITAIN TO IMPRISON MORE KIDS IN USELESS SCHOOLS
Typical Leftism: Treat all kids as if they are the same. Sitting through what passes for a High School education these days may even be helpful to most but it will certainly not be helpful to all
Teenagers who drop out of school or training at 16 will face criminal action and 50 pound on-the-spot fines under plans to raise the age for leaving full-time education. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said that dropouts would be served with ASBO-style "attendance orders" specifying a study course that they are expected to attend. Breaching an attendance order will be a criminal offence, punishable by a 50 pound fixed penalty or prosecution. Ultimate sanctions include community sentences or fines.
Mr Johnson accepted that there was no point in forcing nonacademic teenagers to struggle on in the classroom. But he emphasised that compulsory education or training to 18 was essential to ensure that the next generation of workers could compete in a knowledge-based global economy. At present Britain has one of the lowest staying-on rates for education among developed countries, ranking twentieth in the OECD rankings, with 76 per cent of young people aged 16 to 18 remaining in education or training. "It should be as unacceptable to see a 16-year-old in the workplace without any education or training as it was to see a 14-year-old, which used to be common before the Butler Education Act [of 1944]," he said. He added that he expected the sanctions, which may also include the confiscation of driving licences, to apply only to a small "hardcore" of refuseniks.
Under the plans, training could take the form of full-time academic or vocational studies, workplace apprenticeships or training courses. Teenagers already in employment would be expected to undertake accredited training one day a week. The names of all 16 and 17-year-olds will be added to a database held by local authorities so that they can track their participation in education or training. Local authorities will receive 476 million pounds a year to employ advisers to help young people to choose suitable forms of training. The education maintenance allowance of 10 to 30 pounds a week, which is paid to 400,000 youngsters from low-income families to encourage them to stay at school, will be replaced with a new "training wage". This is likely to include a basic allowance for those who turn up to training, and "bonus" payments for those who gain qualifications and demonstrate progress.
The new measures will be phased in from 2013, when the leaving age in England will be raised to 17. In 2015 it will be raised again to 18. The older leaving age will cover pupils starting secondary school in September 2008. Currently, parents face criminal prosecution if they fail to ensure that a child under 16 goes to school. The new measures shift the legal responsibility on to the young person. Employers will face fines if they do not allow employees aged 16 and 17 to undertake accredited training. This rule will apply equally to parents employing their children in a family business.
Start-up costs of the measure are expected to be 200 million, with annual costs running at 700 million. The plans received a mixed reaction. David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that it would be better to focus on improving education standards up to the age of 16. Richard Lambert, the director-general of the CBI, the employers organisation, said that it was a necessary step. But Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, warned that criminalising young people could alienate those already disaffected with the system. The Scottish Executive has no plans to raise the education leaving age from 16. The Welsh Assembly aims to increase the number of 16 to 18-year-olds in education or training and is due to issue a strategy this year.
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Britain: Throwing celery now incorrect! (It's true)
Even though it has never done any harm. Hard to imagine that it could!
Is the right to bear celery a civil liberties issue? It certainly wasn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drafted the US constitution. However, this week's news that Chelsea Football Club has banned celery from Stamford Bridge has pushed this humble vegetable to the forefront of the civil rights agenda. To paraphrase Voltaire: I don't like to eat celery, but I'll defend to the death your right to throw it.
Celery throwing, in case you weren't aware, is a slightly surreal Chelsea tradition that dates back to the 1980s. The vegetable throwing is an accompaniment to the famous `Celery song', a paean to the erotic properties of the humble apium graveolens dulce: `Celery, celery, if she don't come, I'll tickle her bum, with a lump of celery'.
Until this week the origins of the chant were a mystery to me. However, after trawling football websites, I came across the theory that the chant is based on a Chas and Dave recording of a traditional cockney singalong called `Ask Old Brown To Tea'. Not being particularly familiar with the Chas and Dave canon, I consulted my friend Ed, a self-confessed aficionado of the London pub rockers. He confirmed that the Chas and Dave connection was correct. The original lyric was, `Ask Old Brown to tea, and his family, if he don't come, I'll tickle his bum, with a lump-a celery'. Chas and Dave recorded a version on an old Christmas album, which then became a hit among travelling Chelsea fans on a tour of Sweden in 1981, and a tradition was born.
However, the football authorities haven't always taken kindly to celery throwing. In 1996, Gillingham FC banned celery from the Priestfield stadium after a goalkeeper complained that he had been struck by the vegetable. In 2002, four Chelsea fans were prosecuted and fined for `throwing celery without lawful authority' during the FA Cup semi-final against Fulham. The latest clampdown on celery throwing came after the Carling Cup Final, when Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas was showered with celery as he went to take a corner. Fabregas wasn't injured by the flying vegetables. In fact, the young midfielder, who is probably used to an entirely different calibre of makeshift missile in his native Spain, looked rather bewildered.
Although nobody was hurt, the FA has launched an investigation into this and another celery-throwing incident involving Chelsea fans and the club has decided to make Stamford Bridge a celery-free zone. `The throwing of anything at a football match, including celery, is a criminal offence for which you can be arrested and end up with a criminal record', said a statement on the club's website. `In future, if anyone is found attempting to bring celery into Stamford Bridge they could be refused entry and anyone caught throwing celery will face a ban.'
As I've argued before on spiked, a policy of banning specific objects that might be used as missiles will always be subverted by human ingenuity (1). If celery is banned, then fans will simply throw coins, cigarette lighters, or mobile phones instead. In 2002, a linesman was struck by a half-eaten meat pie at Millwall's New Den. Is a bunch of celery more hazardous than a meat pie? How many people, I wonder, have been injured by celery at a football match? According to Home Office figures there were 78 arrests for missile throwing in the 2005/6 season, only 16 of which were at Premiership matches (2). The fact that only seven Chelsea fans were arrested for throwing missiles in all competitions last season doesn't suggest a particularly widespread problem. Moreover, it is not possible to tell from the statistics whether these arrests were for chucking celery or more bog standard projectiles such as coins or plastic bottles.
The police may, of course, have been taking a softly-softly approach to celery throwing, so I contacted the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) to find out whether flying celery is a health hazard. `I don't think we can find any instances of people struck by vegetables at sporting fixtures,' Roger Vincent from the RoSPA press office told me. Vincent thought that, while throwing bunches of celery might be dangerous, there wasn't anything wrong with fans waving the vegetable. (Perhaps Chelsea fans should follow the lead of the campaign for safe standing and start a `safe celery' campaign.)
Next I tried the Football Licensing Authority (FLA), which was set up after the Hillsborough disaster to oversee stadium safety. According to the FLA website, the rate of fan injuries at football matches in the 2005/6 season was one injury per 32,449 spectators, of which 65 required hospital treatment (3). Two thirds of these injuries resulted from trips, falls or contact with turnstiles, while half of the remaining injuries were scalds from hot drinks. What about flying vegetables then? I rang the FLA to find out. `There is nothing on record to say anyone's been injured by a vegetable,' said Nikki Rutherford who compiles the FLA injury statistics. `We did have one person choking on a meat pie but that was about all,' she added. So, there you have it, the half-time catering is far more hazardous to spectators than flying celery.
Chelsea might be despised for their new-found wealth and success but celery throwing remains one of their more endearing traits. The spectacle of thousands of Chelsea fans singing their lewd ditty and hurling celery is guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of most football fans, regardless of club allegiance. However, the football authorities evidently fail to see the funny side. Celery is now salata non grata at Stamford Bridge. Worse still, the club is urging supporters to ring a special hotline and inform on anyone seen throwing celery inside the stadium. A celery hotline, for Christ's sake! George Orwell himself couldn't have made it up.
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Britain: A war of words over the 'Yid Army'
Ignore the touchy PC brigade: the fans of north London football club Tottenham Hotspur should be allowed to call themselves whatever they like.
YID - Your Ideal Dating - is an international Jewish dating site. Yid Vicious is an American klezmer (Jewish East European folk music) band. Yid Kids is a clothing line for newborns. Yid Army is the fan club of Tottenham Hotspur, a North London football club. Though the word ‘Yid’, which is the Yiddish ethnonym for Jew, has historically often been used as a pejorative (for an anti-Semite, simply calling someone a ‘Jew’ is a term of abuse), in these cases the word has no racist connotations. On the contrary, it is used humorously and, for Yid Army, it was originally a case of positively reclaiming a racial slur from rival supporters and throwing it back in their face.
Yet now, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is conducting a ‘full consultation exercise’ over their fans’ habits of referring to themselves as the Yid Army because of fears it can give rise to ‘casual anti-Semitism’. A meeting next week will be attended by representatives of the club and its supporters’ trust, the Kick It Out anti-racism campaign, the Football Association, the Premier League and the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defence organisation.
There are various theories as to exactly when Spurs fans started referring to themselves as Yids and Yiddos. By most accounts, such words were originally used as an anti-Semitic provocation by opposing fans, but the Spurs, who have always had a sizeable Jewish fan base, took it over in the 1960s as a badge of honour. They thereby lessened its racist impact and got one up on their rivals.
Now, there are growing concerns that the Yid Army itself is causing racism because apparently people who don’t really understand the history of the term can become ‘casual anti-Semites’. It seems that so long as something offends someone somewhere – regardless of whether it was said informally or with racist intent – it can be construed as racist.
Two incidents over the past couple of weeks have reignited concerns that chants and phrases that have been bandied around football terraces for at least 40 years can give rise to anti-Semitism inside and outside sport stadiums.
During a Sunday football match, West Ham United fans were filmed chanting slogans such as ‘I’d rather be a Paki than a Jew’ during half-time at Upton Park. A week later, eight boys from Chauncy School in Hertfordshire were arrested for apparently saying ‘Yid Army’ at their teacher’s leaving do. This incident was also filmed and when the teacher, David Appleman, saw the video on the internet, he reported his students to the police, accusing them of making anti-Semitic remarks. According to the school’s headteacher, Dennis O’Sullivan, Appleman is ‘looking delighted, smiling and shaking hands with each of the boys’ on the video. O’Sullivan has criticised the police for treating the 15 and 16-year-old boys as criminals and said that ‘it is sad to see that he [Appleman] has made a complaint against our students without telling us’ (1).
O’Sullivan said: ‘We have Spurs supporters chanting “Yiddo! Yiddo!” about themselves at matches. I wonder if we will see the police making arrests at the next home match.’ (2) Well, considering the current consultation exercise and demands from the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) that fans stop calling themselves Yiddos or the Yid Army, it seems neither football matches nor schools are safe from the language police these days.
Spurs fans say that the term Yid is part of the Tottenham subculture and that ‘some people not used to hearing the word used in this way may find it offensive, but genuine supporters usually try to explain to them that it is really an ironic term of endearment – and, importantly, that its use by Spurs fans has stopped its use as real racial abuse by rival supporters’ (3). Even if Tottenham supporters are today largely non-Jewish, Yid Army is simply the term they use to identify themselves as a group with a common interest, and to position themselves against rivals.
One fan said the word Yid is ‘part of our identity and we should be proud of it. It is not racist. It’s about sticking together and responding sensibly to the bullying of others many years before.’ Another fan said that ‘like a great many non-Jewish Spurs fans, my link to this great club goes back to the Jewish community. I am proud of the club’s Jewish links, and those links are celebrated by the fact that we identify ourselves as yiddos’. He added: ‘If there are certain sections who are offended by our own yid chants, perhaps it would be good for them to talk to the fans and learn why we sing it and find out how proud we are of the club’s Jewish heritage. In fact, if we stopped calling ourselves yids, this Jewish heritage would be less obvious for all to see.’ (4)
No doubt, things can get rowdy on football terraces where rivalry is expressed through taunts and insults, but demands that Spurs fans stop using words like Yiddos show that increasingly people aren’t even allowed to decide what to call themselves – never mind what they choose to call their rivals. This is despite the fact that the history of the Yid Army is bound up with popular fights against racism. These days, it seems racism can only be fought on our behalf, by anti-racist quangos and officials.
The link between language and racism is not as clear-cut as it is made out to be by those who want to clamp down on offensive speech. Not only because offence is often in the eye of the beholder, but also because taken out of context and held up to the standards of political correctness, phrases and chants lose the significance they have in their original settings. So the fact that West Ham fans are anti-Spurs, not anti-Semitic, is seen as irrelevant because the words they use to express it are not acceptable according to new and ever-widening definitions of ‘hate speech’.
Chants at sports stadiums should not be interpreted literally. An obvious case in point are the basketball games between Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel, where a common chant from the Jerusalem supporters is ‘Ya Saddam ya habib udrub udrub Tel Aviv’. Hapoel fans adopted it after news programmes showed Palestinians chanting it on rooftops during the Gulf War. It means ‘Saddam, darling, bomb Tel Aviv’ in Arabic.
While the Yid Army turned the tables on their rivals and helped change the word Yid from an insult to a badge of honour, some supporters are seen as ostracising others who may be offended or even as causing anti-Semitism amongst schoolkids and justifying others’ racism. At a 2003 UEFA anti-racism conference, Chelsea chairman Ken Bates said: ‘It is hard to criticise Chelsea fans for calling Tottenham supporters something that they call themselves.’ (5)
The Yid Army website asks why, when fans have used the term Yid Army since the 1960s to deflect racism, it is seen as a problem now. Indeed, this is a sign of our times, of today’s growing tendency to divide society into those who cause offence, those who are easily offended, those who can be easily ignited by offensive words and those who need to police the public in order to minimise such speech.
But reading various Yid Army discussion forums, the Yiddos themselves seem more than capable of distinguishing between racist and affectionate speech. As one puts it: ‘I’m Jewish and a Spurs fan and I’m very proud that Spurs fans - whether they’re Jewish or not - have taken up the yiddo name as a badge of honour. I think that’s what anti-racism is about: people standing together whatever their race/origin/skin colour etc and shoving it back in the racists’ faces.’ (6) Another fan is more to the point: ‘I’m not jewish but i am a yid. Tottenham always will be the yid army and that is that. For any f u k e r who think political correctness is the way to go can go fuk themselves. im fed up with the s**t. coys. YID ARMY’
Source
Long claimed as why socialism is superior to "chaotic" private enterprise
NHS planning has been a disastrous failure, leading to an uncontrolled boom in the workforce followed by a bust in budgets, a report by MPs says. The health service set out in 1999 to recruit 20,000 more nurses by 2004 but hired 67,878 - 340 per cent over target. It also recruited twice as many GPs as planned and 69 per cent more health professionals, such as physiotherapists. As the inflated workforce had to be paid, hospitals and trusts plunged into deficit, the Commons Health Select Committee report says. Now posts are being left empty or lost, and a few NHS workers are being made compulsorily redundant. More than half of newly qualified physiotherapists have failed to find work in the NHS.
The MPs are scathing about the failure to maintain a link between staff numbers and the money available to pay them. Instead of raising productivity to meet targets, the NHS "threw new staff into the task rather than consider the most cost-effective way of doing the job", the report says. It calls the staff expansion "reckless and uncontrolled" and says that funding increases were often seen as a blank cheque for recruiting new staff. There is also criticism of generous contracts. "Large pay increases were granted without adequate steps being taken to ensure increases in productivity in return," it said. The committee urged the Government to make workforce planning a priority [When will they ever learn?], and for an end to constant health service reorganisation.
Stephen O'Brien, the Shadow Health Minister, said: "Top-down workforce targets imposed by Labour have created confusion amongst NHS staff. Patients are bewildered about where all the money has gone, and hard-working staff are losing confidence by the day in Labour's stewardship of the NHS."
The British Medical Association did not entirely endorse the report, however. Sam Everington, its deputy chairman, said: "While agreeing wholeheartedly that integrated workforce planning must be a priority... we do not agree that the expansion of the medical workforce was reckless and uncontrolled and that pay increases for doctors have not seen a return in productivity. "The UK is still critically short of doctors and the BMA has always believed that government goals to increase doctor numbers were too low."
Andy Burnham, the Health Minister, said: "While the pay contracts cost more than we or the trade unions and professional associations first anticipated, we must remember that we were setting right an NHS system with widespread recruitment difficulties. We have been able to eliminate these and reward hard-working professionals with the pay they deserve."
Source
BRITAIN TO IMPRISON MORE KIDS IN USELESS SCHOOLS
Typical Leftism: Treat all kids as if they are the same. Sitting through what passes for a High School education these days may even be helpful to most but it will certainly not be helpful to all
Teenagers who drop out of school or training at 16 will face criminal action and 50 pound on-the-spot fines under plans to raise the age for leaving full-time education. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said that dropouts would be served with ASBO-style "attendance orders" specifying a study course that they are expected to attend. Breaching an attendance order will be a criminal offence, punishable by a 50 pound fixed penalty or prosecution. Ultimate sanctions include community sentences or fines.
Mr Johnson accepted that there was no point in forcing nonacademic teenagers to struggle on in the classroom. But he emphasised that compulsory education or training to 18 was essential to ensure that the next generation of workers could compete in a knowledge-based global economy. At present Britain has one of the lowest staying-on rates for education among developed countries, ranking twentieth in the OECD rankings, with 76 per cent of young people aged 16 to 18 remaining in education or training. "It should be as unacceptable to see a 16-year-old in the workplace without any education or training as it was to see a 14-year-old, which used to be common before the Butler Education Act [of 1944]," he said. He added that he expected the sanctions, which may also include the confiscation of driving licences, to apply only to a small "hardcore" of refuseniks.
Under the plans, training could take the form of full-time academic or vocational studies, workplace apprenticeships or training courses. Teenagers already in employment would be expected to undertake accredited training one day a week. The names of all 16 and 17-year-olds will be added to a database held by local authorities so that they can track their participation in education or training. Local authorities will receive 476 million pounds a year to employ advisers to help young people to choose suitable forms of training. The education maintenance allowance of 10 to 30 pounds a week, which is paid to 400,000 youngsters from low-income families to encourage them to stay at school, will be replaced with a new "training wage". This is likely to include a basic allowance for those who turn up to training, and "bonus" payments for those who gain qualifications and demonstrate progress.
The new measures will be phased in from 2013, when the leaving age in England will be raised to 17. In 2015 it will be raised again to 18. The older leaving age will cover pupils starting secondary school in September 2008. Currently, parents face criminal prosecution if they fail to ensure that a child under 16 goes to school. The new measures shift the legal responsibility on to the young person. Employers will face fines if they do not allow employees aged 16 and 17 to undertake accredited training. This rule will apply equally to parents employing their children in a family business.
Start-up costs of the measure are expected to be 200 million, with annual costs running at 700 million. The plans received a mixed reaction. David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that it would be better to focus on improving education standards up to the age of 16. Richard Lambert, the director-general of the CBI, the employers organisation, said that it was a necessary step. But Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, warned that criminalising young people could alienate those already disaffected with the system. The Scottish Executive has no plans to raise the education leaving age from 16. The Welsh Assembly aims to increase the number of 16 to 18-year-olds in education or training and is due to issue a strategy this year.
Source
Britain: Throwing celery now incorrect! (It's true)
Even though it has never done any harm. Hard to imagine that it could!
Is the right to bear celery a civil liberties issue? It certainly wasn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drafted the US constitution. However, this week's news that Chelsea Football Club has banned celery from Stamford Bridge has pushed this humble vegetable to the forefront of the civil rights agenda. To paraphrase Voltaire: I don't like to eat celery, but I'll defend to the death your right to throw it.
Celery throwing, in case you weren't aware, is a slightly surreal Chelsea tradition that dates back to the 1980s. The vegetable throwing is an accompaniment to the famous `Celery song', a paean to the erotic properties of the humble apium graveolens dulce: `Celery, celery, if she don't come, I'll tickle her bum, with a lump of celery'.
Until this week the origins of the chant were a mystery to me. However, after trawling football websites, I came across the theory that the chant is based on a Chas and Dave recording of a traditional cockney singalong called `Ask Old Brown To Tea'. Not being particularly familiar with the Chas and Dave canon, I consulted my friend Ed, a self-confessed aficionado of the London pub rockers. He confirmed that the Chas and Dave connection was correct. The original lyric was, `Ask Old Brown to tea, and his family, if he don't come, I'll tickle his bum, with a lump-a celery'. Chas and Dave recorded a version on an old Christmas album, which then became a hit among travelling Chelsea fans on a tour of Sweden in 1981, and a tradition was born.
However, the football authorities haven't always taken kindly to celery throwing. In 1996, Gillingham FC banned celery from the Priestfield stadium after a goalkeeper complained that he had been struck by the vegetable. In 2002, four Chelsea fans were prosecuted and fined for `throwing celery without lawful authority' during the FA Cup semi-final against Fulham. The latest clampdown on celery throwing came after the Carling Cup Final, when Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas was showered with celery as he went to take a corner. Fabregas wasn't injured by the flying vegetables. In fact, the young midfielder, who is probably used to an entirely different calibre of makeshift missile in his native Spain, looked rather bewildered.
Although nobody was hurt, the FA has launched an investigation into this and another celery-throwing incident involving Chelsea fans and the club has decided to make Stamford Bridge a celery-free zone. `The throwing of anything at a football match, including celery, is a criminal offence for which you can be arrested and end up with a criminal record', said a statement on the club's website. `In future, if anyone is found attempting to bring celery into Stamford Bridge they could be refused entry and anyone caught throwing celery will face a ban.'
As I've argued before on spiked, a policy of banning specific objects that might be used as missiles will always be subverted by human ingenuity (1). If celery is banned, then fans will simply throw coins, cigarette lighters, or mobile phones instead. In 2002, a linesman was struck by a half-eaten meat pie at Millwall's New Den. Is a bunch of celery more hazardous than a meat pie? How many people, I wonder, have been injured by celery at a football match? According to Home Office figures there were 78 arrests for missile throwing in the 2005/6 season, only 16 of which were at Premiership matches (2). The fact that only seven Chelsea fans were arrested for throwing missiles in all competitions last season doesn't suggest a particularly widespread problem. Moreover, it is not possible to tell from the statistics whether these arrests were for chucking celery or more bog standard projectiles such as coins or plastic bottles.
The police may, of course, have been taking a softly-softly approach to celery throwing, so I contacted the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) to find out whether flying celery is a health hazard. `I don't think we can find any instances of people struck by vegetables at sporting fixtures,' Roger Vincent from the RoSPA press office told me. Vincent thought that, while throwing bunches of celery might be dangerous, there wasn't anything wrong with fans waving the vegetable. (Perhaps Chelsea fans should follow the lead of the campaign for safe standing and start a `safe celery' campaign.)
Next I tried the Football Licensing Authority (FLA), which was set up after the Hillsborough disaster to oversee stadium safety. According to the FLA website, the rate of fan injuries at football matches in the 2005/6 season was one injury per 32,449 spectators, of which 65 required hospital treatment (3). Two thirds of these injuries resulted from trips, falls or contact with turnstiles, while half of the remaining injuries were scalds from hot drinks. What about flying vegetables then? I rang the FLA to find out. `There is nothing on record to say anyone's been injured by a vegetable,' said Nikki Rutherford who compiles the FLA injury statistics. `We did have one person choking on a meat pie but that was about all,' she added. So, there you have it, the half-time catering is far more hazardous to spectators than flying celery.
Chelsea might be despised for their new-found wealth and success but celery throwing remains one of their more endearing traits. The spectacle of thousands of Chelsea fans singing their lewd ditty and hurling celery is guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of most football fans, regardless of club allegiance. However, the football authorities evidently fail to see the funny side. Celery is now salata non grata at Stamford Bridge. Worse still, the club is urging supporters to ring a special hotline and inform on anyone seen throwing celery inside the stadium. A celery hotline, for Christ's sake! George Orwell himself couldn't have made it up.
Source
Britain: A war of words over the 'Yid Army'
Ignore the touchy PC brigade: the fans of north London football club Tottenham Hotspur should be allowed to call themselves whatever they like.
YID - Your Ideal Dating - is an international Jewish dating site. Yid Vicious is an American klezmer (Jewish East European folk music) band. Yid Kids is a clothing line for newborns. Yid Army is the fan club of Tottenham Hotspur, a North London football club. Though the word ‘Yid’, which is the Yiddish ethnonym for Jew, has historically often been used as a pejorative (for an anti-Semite, simply calling someone a ‘Jew’ is a term of abuse), in these cases the word has no racist connotations. On the contrary, it is used humorously and, for Yid Army, it was originally a case of positively reclaiming a racial slur from rival supporters and throwing it back in their face.
Yet now, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is conducting a ‘full consultation exercise’ over their fans’ habits of referring to themselves as the Yid Army because of fears it can give rise to ‘casual anti-Semitism’. A meeting next week will be attended by representatives of the club and its supporters’ trust, the Kick It Out anti-racism campaign, the Football Association, the Premier League and the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defence organisation.
There are various theories as to exactly when Spurs fans started referring to themselves as Yids and Yiddos. By most accounts, such words were originally used as an anti-Semitic provocation by opposing fans, but the Spurs, who have always had a sizeable Jewish fan base, took it over in the 1960s as a badge of honour. They thereby lessened its racist impact and got one up on their rivals.
Now, there are growing concerns that the Yid Army itself is causing racism because apparently people who don’t really understand the history of the term can become ‘casual anti-Semites’. It seems that so long as something offends someone somewhere – regardless of whether it was said informally or with racist intent – it can be construed as racist.
Two incidents over the past couple of weeks have reignited concerns that chants and phrases that have been bandied around football terraces for at least 40 years can give rise to anti-Semitism inside and outside sport stadiums.
During a Sunday football match, West Ham United fans were filmed chanting slogans such as ‘I’d rather be a Paki than a Jew’ during half-time at Upton Park. A week later, eight boys from Chauncy School in Hertfordshire were arrested for apparently saying ‘Yid Army’ at their teacher’s leaving do. This incident was also filmed and when the teacher, David Appleman, saw the video on the internet, he reported his students to the police, accusing them of making anti-Semitic remarks. According to the school’s headteacher, Dennis O’Sullivan, Appleman is ‘looking delighted, smiling and shaking hands with each of the boys’ on the video. O’Sullivan has criticised the police for treating the 15 and 16-year-old boys as criminals and said that ‘it is sad to see that he [Appleman] has made a complaint against our students without telling us’ (1).
O’Sullivan said: ‘We have Spurs supporters chanting “Yiddo! Yiddo!” about themselves at matches. I wonder if we will see the police making arrests at the next home match.’ (2) Well, considering the current consultation exercise and demands from the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) that fans stop calling themselves Yiddos or the Yid Army, it seems neither football matches nor schools are safe from the language police these days.
Spurs fans say that the term Yid is part of the Tottenham subculture and that ‘some people not used to hearing the word used in this way may find it offensive, but genuine supporters usually try to explain to them that it is really an ironic term of endearment – and, importantly, that its use by Spurs fans has stopped its use as real racial abuse by rival supporters’ (3). Even if Tottenham supporters are today largely non-Jewish, Yid Army is simply the term they use to identify themselves as a group with a common interest, and to position themselves against rivals.
One fan said the word Yid is ‘part of our identity and we should be proud of it. It is not racist. It’s about sticking together and responding sensibly to the bullying of others many years before.’ Another fan said that ‘like a great many non-Jewish Spurs fans, my link to this great club goes back to the Jewish community. I am proud of the club’s Jewish links, and those links are celebrated by the fact that we identify ourselves as yiddos’. He added: ‘If there are certain sections who are offended by our own yid chants, perhaps it would be good for them to talk to the fans and learn why we sing it and find out how proud we are of the club’s Jewish heritage. In fact, if we stopped calling ourselves yids, this Jewish heritage would be less obvious for all to see.’ (4)
No doubt, things can get rowdy on football terraces where rivalry is expressed through taunts and insults, but demands that Spurs fans stop using words like Yiddos show that increasingly people aren’t even allowed to decide what to call themselves – never mind what they choose to call their rivals. This is despite the fact that the history of the Yid Army is bound up with popular fights against racism. These days, it seems racism can only be fought on our behalf, by anti-racist quangos and officials.
The link between language and racism is not as clear-cut as it is made out to be by those who want to clamp down on offensive speech. Not only because offence is often in the eye of the beholder, but also because taken out of context and held up to the standards of political correctness, phrases and chants lose the significance they have in their original settings. So the fact that West Ham fans are anti-Spurs, not anti-Semitic, is seen as irrelevant because the words they use to express it are not acceptable according to new and ever-widening definitions of ‘hate speech’.
Chants at sports stadiums should not be interpreted literally. An obvious case in point are the basketball games between Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel, where a common chant from the Jerusalem supporters is ‘Ya Saddam ya habib udrub udrub Tel Aviv’. Hapoel fans adopted it after news programmes showed Palestinians chanting it on rooftops during the Gulf War. It means ‘Saddam, darling, bomb Tel Aviv’ in Arabic.
While the Yid Army turned the tables on their rivals and helped change the word Yid from an insult to a badge of honour, some supporters are seen as ostracising others who may be offended or even as causing anti-Semitism amongst schoolkids and justifying others’ racism. At a 2003 UEFA anti-racism conference, Chelsea chairman Ken Bates said: ‘It is hard to criticise Chelsea fans for calling Tottenham supporters something that they call themselves.’ (5)
The Yid Army website asks why, when fans have used the term Yid Army since the 1960s to deflect racism, it is seen as a problem now. Indeed, this is a sign of our times, of today’s growing tendency to divide society into those who cause offence, those who are easily offended, those who can be easily ignited by offensive words and those who need to police the public in order to minimise such speech.
But reading various Yid Army discussion forums, the Yiddos themselves seem more than capable of distinguishing between racist and affectionate speech. As one puts it: ‘I’m Jewish and a Spurs fan and I’m very proud that Spurs fans - whether they’re Jewish or not - have taken up the yiddo name as a badge of honour. I think that’s what anti-racism is about: people standing together whatever their race/origin/skin colour etc and shoving it back in the racists’ faces.’ (6) Another fan is more to the point: ‘I’m not jewish but i am a yid. Tottenham always will be the yid army and that is that. For any f u k e r who think political correctness is the way to go can go fuk themselves. im fed up with the s**t. coys. YID ARMY’
Source
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Dirty NHS hospital kills patient
And a coverup fails. How many more deaths from negligence is this hospital concealing?
A father of three died after he contracted an infection from a hospital shower on the day that he was due to be discharged after successful treatment for leukaemia. The hospital had failed for many years to act on guidance about the safety of its ageing hot water system, a court was told. The failure led to Daryl Eyles, 37, contracting legionnaires’ disease from a dirty shower head. He had just been told that he was in complete remission after enduring months of chemotherapy. At Bath Magistrates’ Court, the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath admitted two charges of failing to act on safety warnings.
Jennifer Gunning, chairwoman of the bench, said: “Guidance was available for more than ten years, but this was blatantly not followed. The RUH management was inadequate. Mr Eyles died as a result of those failings and many other vulnerable patients were put at risk.” Referring the case to Bristol Crown Court for sentencing, she said: “We believe this to be so serious that our sentencing powers are not sufficient.”
Mr Eyles, a security guard at Bath University, had leukaemia diagnosed in August 2003 after developing a painful abscess while on holiday in Cyprus. The cancer went into remission after his first course of chemotherapy, but he was told that he needed two more sessions to make sure that it did not come back. He spent Christmas at home with his family before returning to the hospital for his final session in January 2004.
His wife, Andrea, 31, had previously told how her husband was desparate to get home and had tried to discharge himself early but was advised to wait a few days. She said: “I saw him after he finished his chemotherapy and he just wanted to come home. He felt fine and was looking forward to getting back to work. “He said he had more chance of catching something in hospital than he did at home, but the doctors advised him to stay in hospital.”
On February 7 Mr Eyles took a shower at the William Budd Oncology Unit, where he was being treated. He became ill and was prescribed antibiotics, but they failed to prevent his death a week later. Doctors initially told Mrs Eyles that her husband had died of pneumonia and septicaemia. She discovered the true cause only after taking legal action. An investigation found that the shower head was contaminated with Legionella bacteria. She said: “I just wanted to know the truth about what happened and I’m furious that it took legal action to get it.” The couple, from Bath, had two children: Georgina, 10, and Mitchell, 8. Daryl also had a son, Christopher, 14, from a previous relationship.
After the hearing Mark Davies, the chief executive of the Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust, said: “The RUH took this incident extremely seriously and we have learnt from this very sad case. “We were all shocked by the sudden death of Daryl Eyles in February 2004. The trust accepted liability in October 2004 and has since reached a settlement in response to the family’s claim. At the time the trust fully cooperated with the Health and Safety Executive and has complied with all its recommendations to minimise further risk of Legionella.” The hospital trust will be sentenced on March 29.
Source
THE LYING UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Below is their excuse for banning the talk on Islam by Dr Kuenzel. Immediately below that is a response exposing the lies in the "explanation"
As the responsible officer, I write in response to your message to the Vice-Chancellor.
Dr Kuentzel's proposed public lecture last Wednesday evening was cancelled neither for any reason of censorship nor because of pressure from any interest group. It was cancelled because the organisers did not give us enough notice to provide the normal level of portering, stewarding and security (around twenty people in total) for such an event.
It is simply not true that we somehow capitulated to threats or complaints. As a matter of fact, we received no threats, and only a handful of complaints - fewer indeed than for a talk delivered on our campus the previous evening by an Israeli diplomat. The talk by the Israeli diplomat went ahead; the difference was that the organisers (the University's Jewish Society) told us about that talk the week before and worked with us to make the necessary arrangements.
Assuming that we are given enough notice, and appropriate logistical information, I know of no reason why Dr Kuentzel should not deliver his lecture in Leeds at a future date.
For the record, and despite press reports to the contrary, the University did not in any way seek to prevent two other talks by Dr Kuentzel on (I believe) the same theme: as internal academic seminars, they did not require the same level of support as a large public meeting.
I would refer you to a statement on the University's website (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/news/kuentzel.htm ).
Yours sincerely
Roger Gair
Comment by Dr. Matthias Kuentzel on the above:
First of all I have to emphasize that I never got a written or even verbal explanation by Mr. Gair or by the office of the University's vice-Chancellor as to why my talk on Islamic antisemitism had been canceled on the very day I arrived in Leeds. No one responsible for the cancellation ever apologized. The University of Leeds did not and does not treat me like an invited guest speaker, but like someone unwelcome who just makes mischief - quite an unpleasant experience.
Against this background, I was confronted with conflicting information with respect to the two seminars scheduled as follow-up events to my public talk. A press officer told me that only my public talk was cancelled. Faculty members of the German department told me that these seminars were cancelled as well. I finally gave these seminars at a location off the University grounds. Many faculty members and students of the University nevertheless participated. The statement by Roger Gair "The other two events [the seminars] are going ahead as planned" (see Times, March 16) was simply not true.
Roger Gair's statement of March 19 is as inconsistent as his press release of March 15.
1. His comparison of my talk with the talk of an Israeli diplomat is completedly misleading, since I am not a diplomat (with all the security requirements that such a status implies) but an academic.
2. He admits that the University in my case "received no threats, and only a handful of complaints". Why then has my "lecture been cancelled on safety grounds . to protect the safety of participants in the event" as his press release says? Why then did Mr. Gair demand that "around twenty people in total" or - in his press release four days earlier - "around 30 people in all" had to be in place just for security reasons?
3. His assertion that the organisers of my talk "did not give us enough notice" to provide for this amount of security staff is misleading, since my talk in Leeds had been scheduled four month earlier and the publicity for it had been out of weeks.
4. It was not my lecture which came to the University's "attention less then 36 hours before it was due to take place" - as his press release asserts - but rather some E-mails by Muslim students who asked the University only on March 13 to "provide a solution . by cancelling the lecture all together" and to "apologize to the Muslim Community as a whole, for suggesting such a topic."
That is why I cannot find the Secretary's claim that my public lecture "was cancelled neither for any reason of censorship nor because of pressure from any interest group" convincing. Instead, there are many indications that the University anticipated potential protests before they ever happened and thus practiced self-censorship.
More here
Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming
Gore won't accept. Monckton really knows science and Gore knows that Monckton would make mincemeat out of him
In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous." See here.
Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide." Monckton and Gore have once before clashed head to head on the science, politics, and religion of global warming in the usually-decorous pages of the London Sunday Telegraph last November.
Monckton calls on the former Vice President to "step up to the plate and defend his advocacy of policies that could do grave harm to the welfare of the world's poor. If Mr. Gore really believes global warming is the defining issue of our time, the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced, then he should welcome the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue before a worldwide audience of billions by defining and defending his claims against a serious, science-based challenge."
The arena of the glittering "Second Great Debate" will be the elegant, Victorian-Gothic Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for the "Great Debate" between the natural scientist T. H. Huxley and Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce on the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Lord Monckton says he chose this historic venue "not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate but also because I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism."
Lord Monckton's resounding challenge to Al Gore reads as follows -- "The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley presents his compliments to Vice- President Albert Gore and by these presents challenges the said former Vice-President to a head-to-head, internationally-televised debate upon the question, 'That our effect on climate is not dangerous,' to be held in the Library of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History at a date of the Vice-President's choosing. "Forasmuch as it is His Lordship who now flings down the gauntlet to the Vice-President, it shall be the Vice-President's prerogative and right to choose his weapons by specifying the form of the Great Debate. May the Truth win! Magna est veritas, et praevalet. God Bless America! God Save the Queen!"
Source
EVEN THE EU PRESIDENT SAYS BRITISH CLIMATE POLICY THREATENS FREEDOM, TURNS OFF VOTERS
UK's climate change agenda 'is a turn-off' Britain's mainstream political agenda on climate change risks intruding into people's lives, threatens individual freedom and could turn voters off the fight against global warming, [the European Commission President] Mr Barroso warns.
As the architect of EU proposals on fighting climate change and measures to set tough binding limits and reductions for CO2 emissions, the Commission President's intervention is a particular setback for ideas given high-profile personal backing by the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, and the Conservative leader, David Cameron.
Mr Barroso hails cheap air travel as "a great thing for our civilisation" and expresses grave concerns over fashionable plans, floated by Mr Miliband, for personal carbon rationing. He suspects that the proposals to restrict CO2 emissions from an individual's activities will lead to intrusive surveillance into private lives. "I do not see any need to establish these intrusive approaches that may reduce the freedom of our societies," he says. "We have to find the right balance and I believe the right balance is not found if we start giving these kind of personal good or bad behaviour certificates to people."
Mr Barroso's views on tackling global warming also clash with Mr Cameron's plans to introduce green taxes and individual allowances on air travel should the Tories win the next election. "Cheap air travel is great for our civilisation. When we think now that people have the freedom to circulate instead of being confined to a small territory, it is great progress," he says.
He is convinced that targeting individuals with such measures will fracture the current popular consensus on climate change. "We should set binding standards and targets by law but to come to specific individual targets is counter-productive. It can turn people against the cause. Let's do it, collectively with a good spirit but without being intrusive in people's lives."
Recent polls have found that two thirds of Britons fear politicians will use climate change as the excuse to raise taxes and 60 per cent oppose higher levies on cheap flights.
Source. For the Telegraph's Barroso interview, see here
And a coverup fails. How many more deaths from negligence is this hospital concealing?
A father of three died after he contracted an infection from a hospital shower on the day that he was due to be discharged after successful treatment for leukaemia. The hospital had failed for many years to act on guidance about the safety of its ageing hot water system, a court was told. The failure led to Daryl Eyles, 37, contracting legionnaires’ disease from a dirty shower head. He had just been told that he was in complete remission after enduring months of chemotherapy. At Bath Magistrates’ Court, the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath admitted two charges of failing to act on safety warnings.
Jennifer Gunning, chairwoman of the bench, said: “Guidance was available for more than ten years, but this was blatantly not followed. The RUH management was inadequate. Mr Eyles died as a result of those failings and many other vulnerable patients were put at risk.” Referring the case to Bristol Crown Court for sentencing, she said: “We believe this to be so serious that our sentencing powers are not sufficient.”
Mr Eyles, a security guard at Bath University, had leukaemia diagnosed in August 2003 after developing a painful abscess while on holiday in Cyprus. The cancer went into remission after his first course of chemotherapy, but he was told that he needed two more sessions to make sure that it did not come back. He spent Christmas at home with his family before returning to the hospital for his final session in January 2004.
His wife, Andrea, 31, had previously told how her husband was desparate to get home and had tried to discharge himself early but was advised to wait a few days. She said: “I saw him after he finished his chemotherapy and he just wanted to come home. He felt fine and was looking forward to getting back to work. “He said he had more chance of catching something in hospital than he did at home, but the doctors advised him to stay in hospital.”
On February 7 Mr Eyles took a shower at the William Budd Oncology Unit, where he was being treated. He became ill and was prescribed antibiotics, but they failed to prevent his death a week later. Doctors initially told Mrs Eyles that her husband had died of pneumonia and septicaemia. She discovered the true cause only after taking legal action. An investigation found that the shower head was contaminated with Legionella bacteria. She said: “I just wanted to know the truth about what happened and I’m furious that it took legal action to get it.” The couple, from Bath, had two children: Georgina, 10, and Mitchell, 8. Daryl also had a son, Christopher, 14, from a previous relationship.
After the hearing Mark Davies, the chief executive of the Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust, said: “The RUH took this incident extremely seriously and we have learnt from this very sad case. “We were all shocked by the sudden death of Daryl Eyles in February 2004. The trust accepted liability in October 2004 and has since reached a settlement in response to the family’s claim. At the time the trust fully cooperated with the Health and Safety Executive and has complied with all its recommendations to minimise further risk of Legionella.” The hospital trust will be sentenced on March 29.
Source
THE LYING UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Below is their excuse for banning the talk on Islam by Dr Kuenzel. Immediately below that is a response exposing the lies in the "explanation"
As the responsible officer, I write in response to your message to the Vice-Chancellor.
Dr Kuentzel's proposed public lecture last Wednesday evening was cancelled neither for any reason of censorship nor because of pressure from any interest group. It was cancelled because the organisers did not give us enough notice to provide the normal level of portering, stewarding and security (around twenty people in total) for such an event.
It is simply not true that we somehow capitulated to threats or complaints. As a matter of fact, we received no threats, and only a handful of complaints - fewer indeed than for a talk delivered on our campus the previous evening by an Israeli diplomat. The talk by the Israeli diplomat went ahead; the difference was that the organisers (the University's Jewish Society) told us about that talk the week before and worked with us to make the necessary arrangements.
Assuming that we are given enough notice, and appropriate logistical information, I know of no reason why Dr Kuentzel should not deliver his lecture in Leeds at a future date.
For the record, and despite press reports to the contrary, the University did not in any way seek to prevent two other talks by Dr Kuentzel on (I believe) the same theme: as internal academic seminars, they did not require the same level of support as a large public meeting.
I would refer you to a statement on the University's website (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/news/kuentzel.htm ).
Yours sincerely
Roger Gair
Comment by Dr. Matthias Kuentzel on the above:
First of all I have to emphasize that I never got a written or even verbal explanation by Mr. Gair or by the office of the University's vice-Chancellor as to why my talk on Islamic antisemitism had been canceled on the very day I arrived in Leeds. No one responsible for the cancellation ever apologized. The University of Leeds did not and does not treat me like an invited guest speaker, but like someone unwelcome who just makes mischief - quite an unpleasant experience.
Against this background, I was confronted with conflicting information with respect to the two seminars scheduled as follow-up events to my public talk. A press officer told me that only my public talk was cancelled. Faculty members of the German department told me that these seminars were cancelled as well. I finally gave these seminars at a location off the University grounds. Many faculty members and students of the University nevertheless participated. The statement by Roger Gair "The other two events [the seminars] are going ahead as planned" (see Times, March 16) was simply not true.
Roger Gair's statement of March 19 is as inconsistent as his press release of March 15.
1. His comparison of my talk with the talk of an Israeli diplomat is completedly misleading, since I am not a diplomat (with all the security requirements that such a status implies) but an academic.
2. He admits that the University in my case "received no threats, and only a handful of complaints". Why then has my "lecture been cancelled on safety grounds . to protect the safety of participants in the event" as his press release says? Why then did Mr. Gair demand that "around twenty people in total" or - in his press release four days earlier - "around 30 people in all" had to be in place just for security reasons?
3. His assertion that the organisers of my talk "did not give us enough notice" to provide for this amount of security staff is misleading, since my talk in Leeds had been scheduled four month earlier and the publicity for it had been out of weeks.
4. It was not my lecture which came to the University's "attention less then 36 hours before it was due to take place" - as his press release asserts - but rather some E-mails by Muslim students who asked the University only on March 13 to "provide a solution . by cancelling the lecture all together" and to "apologize to the Muslim Community as a whole, for suggesting such a topic."
That is why I cannot find the Secretary's claim that my public lecture "was cancelled neither for any reason of censorship nor because of pressure from any interest group" convincing. Instead, there are many indications that the University anticipated potential protests before they ever happened and thus practiced self-censorship.
More here
Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming
Gore won't accept. Monckton really knows science and Gore knows that Monckton would make mincemeat out of him
In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous." See here.
Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide." Monckton and Gore have once before clashed head to head on the science, politics, and religion of global warming in the usually-decorous pages of the London Sunday Telegraph last November.
Monckton calls on the former Vice President to "step up to the plate and defend his advocacy of policies that could do grave harm to the welfare of the world's poor. If Mr. Gore really believes global warming is the defining issue of our time, the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced, then he should welcome the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue before a worldwide audience of billions by defining and defending his claims against a serious, science-based challenge."
The arena of the glittering "Second Great Debate" will be the elegant, Victorian-Gothic Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for the "Great Debate" between the natural scientist T. H. Huxley and Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce on the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Lord Monckton says he chose this historic venue "not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate but also because I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism."
Lord Monckton's resounding challenge to Al Gore reads as follows -- "The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley presents his compliments to Vice- President Albert Gore and by these presents challenges the said former Vice-President to a head-to-head, internationally-televised debate upon the question, 'That our effect on climate is not dangerous,' to be held in the Library of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History at a date of the Vice-President's choosing. "Forasmuch as it is His Lordship who now flings down the gauntlet to the Vice-President, it shall be the Vice-President's prerogative and right to choose his weapons by specifying the form of the Great Debate. May the Truth win! Magna est veritas, et praevalet. God Bless America! God Save the Queen!"
Source
EVEN THE EU PRESIDENT SAYS BRITISH CLIMATE POLICY THREATENS FREEDOM, TURNS OFF VOTERS
UK's climate change agenda 'is a turn-off' Britain's mainstream political agenda on climate change risks intruding into people's lives, threatens individual freedom and could turn voters off the fight against global warming, [the European Commission President] Mr Barroso warns.
As the architect of EU proposals on fighting climate change and measures to set tough binding limits and reductions for CO2 emissions, the Commission President's intervention is a particular setback for ideas given high-profile personal backing by the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, and the Conservative leader, David Cameron.
Mr Barroso hails cheap air travel as "a great thing for our civilisation" and expresses grave concerns over fashionable plans, floated by Mr Miliband, for personal carbon rationing. He suspects that the proposals to restrict CO2 emissions from an individual's activities will lead to intrusive surveillance into private lives. "I do not see any need to establish these intrusive approaches that may reduce the freedom of our societies," he says. "We have to find the right balance and I believe the right balance is not found if we start giving these kind of personal good or bad behaviour certificates to people."
Mr Barroso's views on tackling global warming also clash with Mr Cameron's plans to introduce green taxes and individual allowances on air travel should the Tories win the next election. "Cheap air travel is great for our civilisation. When we think now that people have the freedom to circulate instead of being confined to a small territory, it is great progress," he says.
He is convinced that targeting individuals with such measures will fracture the current popular consensus on climate change. "We should set binding standards and targets by law but to come to specific individual targets is counter-productive. It can turn people against the cause. Let's do it, collectively with a good spirit but without being intrusive in people's lives."
Recent polls have found that two thirds of Britons fear politicians will use climate change as the excuse to raise taxes and 60 per cent oppose higher levies on cheap flights.
Source. For the Telegraph's Barroso interview, see here
Friday, March 23, 2007
THE END OF BRITAIN AS WE KNOW IT
Householders who keep putting out their bins on the wrong day could be caught out by secret spy cameras hidden in tin cans and bricks and branded "envirocriminals". Ealing Council in west London is using the hidden cameras to catch people committing "major envirocrimes" such as graffiti and fly-tipping on main roads. However council tax payers who put out their bins on the wrong day could also be caught up in the push. The cameras, which cost around œ200 each, are triggered by built-in movement sensors. The council, which is Conservative controlled, said in a newsletter to local residents: "To catch vandals and envirocriminals, cameras disguised as anything from tin cans to house bricks will instantly email images to the council's CCTV control centre."
Source
Householders who keep putting out their bins on the wrong day could be caught out by secret spy cameras hidden in tin cans and bricks and branded "envirocriminals". Ealing Council in west London is using the hidden cameras to catch people committing "major envirocrimes" such as graffiti and fly-tipping on main roads. However council tax payers who put out their bins on the wrong day could also be caught up in the push. The cameras, which cost around œ200 each, are triggered by built-in movement sensors. The council, which is Conservative controlled, said in a newsletter to local residents: "To catch vandals and envirocriminals, cameras disguised as anything from tin cans to house bricks will instantly email images to the council's CCTV control centre."
Source
Thursday, March 22, 2007
NHS may be restricted to core services
The NHS is slowly moving in the direction of becoming a very costly organization that consists solely of bureaucrats and provides no services at all
The National Health Service might provide only core services, with patients forced to pay for any other treatment or meet it from private insurance, the government has revealed on Monday.
News that ministers were examining the possibility of defining the services that the NHS is obliged to provide free to everyone was disclosed in the small print of the public services policy review launched on Monday by Tony Blair, the prime minister, and Gordon Brown, the chancellor. It says the government should “look at the possibility of drawing up a package of services that all users are entitled to”. Nice, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, could be asked to do that.
The health department confirmed it was “looking at the possibility in the normal process of policy development” and agreed that deciding what everyone was entitled to would also involve deciding “what they are not entitled to”.
Academics said that amounted to defining a “basic basket” of services the NHS would fund, but warned it was fraught with technical and political difficulties. Anna Dixon, deputy director of policy at the King’s Fund think-tank, and a specialist on international health systems, said: “It sounds like establishing a core package of benefits that the NHS will fund – and that is something that has long been debated in academic circles. But politicians ... have always shied away from being more explicit about entitlements.”
Social insurance systems tended to be much more explicit about what was and was not covered, with private insurance markets developing to cover excluded treatments, she said. But she warned that when lists of exclusions were drawn up, “they often do not feel right to the public”. It was “a very difficult exercise” and one that, if undertaken, “is going to be very controversial”. It would raise issues over whether infertility treatment, or so-called lifestyle drugs for obesity or impotence, should be included.
David Hunter, professor of health policy at Durham University, said: “It is very difficult to define what is in the basket, so either it doesn’t get done or very little gets left out. You don’t save much, and you are still left with the issues of how to ration care and assess quality and cost effectiveness” – something Nice was already doing but “in a rather less prescriptive way”.
Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, was deputy chairman of a pharmaceutical industry-financed study in 1995 that called for restrictions on free services. But she disowned the report on becoming health secretary, saying the government’s big increase in NHS spending removed the need for such measures.
Source
EXERCISE AND OBESITY: CHICKEN OR EGG?
Are people fat because they exercise less or do they exercise less because they are fat? The study below cannot not tell us. But why bother with proof when you KNOW what is going on? A pity that what people KNOW is often not true
The risk of children becoming obese could be halved with 15 extra minutes of moderately vigorous exercise each day, study results have suggested. All that is needed is a short game of football or a walk to school brisk enough to get slightly out of breath. The effects are greater in boys than in girls, but both sexes benefit. The findings point to a lack of exercise, rather than gluttony, as the key to obesity in young people. Researchers were surprised to find that boys have just 25 minutes of activity each day on average, and girls only 16 minutes.
The data comes from the Children of the 90s project, which has followed a group of children born in Avon in the 1990s. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children is one of the biggest and most ambitious cohort studies ever attempted and is producing some of the best evidence on the effects of diet and lifestyle on disease. Researchers fitted 5,500 children aged 12 with activity meters to measure how much exercise they took. The children wore the meters around their waists, taking them off only to sleep, bath or swim. Their body fat was measured using an X-ray emission scanner, which can distinguish between fat and muscle. The results are published in PLoS Medicine.
Professor Chris Riddoch, of the London Sport Institute at Middlesex University, one of the project leaders, said: "We know that diet is important, but what this research tells us is that we mustn't forget about activity. It's been really surprising to us how even small amounts of exercise appear to have dramatic results."
The boys who took the most vigorous activity were more than 30 times less likely to be obese than those who took the least. An extra 15 minutes a day of moderate and vigorous physical activity halved the risk of obesity. Among girls the effects were less dramatic, but still significant. The most active fifth of girls reduced their risk of obesity by two thirds compared with the least active fifth.
Professor Andy Ness, of the University of Bristol, said that the most important activity was the kind that got the children slightly out of breath, or in a sweat. "Recommending an extra 15 minutes of vigorous activity a day may not sound very much, but it is actually double what the average 12-year-old girl does," he said. "In the context of what they are doing, it is quite a lot."
Why the effects should be so much greater in boys remains puzzling. "It could be physiological differences but I think that's unlikely," Professor Ness said. "The other possibility is that boys and girls use activity differently. Boys tend to use activity as the main weight control mechanism, while girls tend to control their weight by eating less." He said that surveys and food production statistics suggested that total calorie intakes had not increased. Yet obesity was rising, so it was reasonable to suggest that this was the result of burning less energy. "Lots of opportunities for activity are factored out of children's lives these days," he said. "There are more sedentary opportunities - sitting in the car, watching television, playing computer games. There's less walking to school, and when they get home Mum and Dad don't want them wandering off into the woods or playing in the streets."
Source
Red nose ban
Health and safety chiefs have banned guests at Comic Relief Does Fame Academy from wearing red noses. Producers planned to give the soft foam noses to contestants' friends and family during the live shows. But officials at London's historic County Hall feared the noses may be a fire risk, reports the Daily Mirror.
A show insider said: "It's a bit ridiculous to stop adults in the audience from wearing red noses. "It's a shame because the show is to raise money and it might have encouraged more people to go out and buy the noses if they saw them on telly."
A spokeswoman for show-makers Endemol said: "It is true red noses are not allowed - but neither are newspapers, bottles, bags and all manner of other items. "We are filming in a Grade II listed building and anything that is a potential fire risk or can cause damage when dropped is not allowed. We are working with essential equipment only."
Source
The NHS is slowly moving in the direction of becoming a very costly organization that consists solely of bureaucrats and provides no services at all
The National Health Service might provide only core services, with patients forced to pay for any other treatment or meet it from private insurance, the government has revealed on Monday.
News that ministers were examining the possibility of defining the services that the NHS is obliged to provide free to everyone was disclosed in the small print of the public services policy review launched on Monday by Tony Blair, the prime minister, and Gordon Brown, the chancellor. It says the government should “look at the possibility of drawing up a package of services that all users are entitled to”. Nice, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, could be asked to do that.
The health department confirmed it was “looking at the possibility in the normal process of policy development” and agreed that deciding what everyone was entitled to would also involve deciding “what they are not entitled to”.
Academics said that amounted to defining a “basic basket” of services the NHS would fund, but warned it was fraught with technical and political difficulties. Anna Dixon, deputy director of policy at the King’s Fund think-tank, and a specialist on international health systems, said: “It sounds like establishing a core package of benefits that the NHS will fund – and that is something that has long been debated in academic circles. But politicians ... have always shied away from being more explicit about entitlements.”
Social insurance systems tended to be much more explicit about what was and was not covered, with private insurance markets developing to cover excluded treatments, she said. But she warned that when lists of exclusions were drawn up, “they often do not feel right to the public”. It was “a very difficult exercise” and one that, if undertaken, “is going to be very controversial”. It would raise issues over whether infertility treatment, or so-called lifestyle drugs for obesity or impotence, should be included.
David Hunter, professor of health policy at Durham University, said: “It is very difficult to define what is in the basket, so either it doesn’t get done or very little gets left out. You don’t save much, and you are still left with the issues of how to ration care and assess quality and cost effectiveness” – something Nice was already doing but “in a rather less prescriptive way”.
Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, was deputy chairman of a pharmaceutical industry-financed study in 1995 that called for restrictions on free services. But she disowned the report on becoming health secretary, saying the government’s big increase in NHS spending removed the need for such measures.
Source
EXERCISE AND OBESITY: CHICKEN OR EGG?
Are people fat because they exercise less or do they exercise less because they are fat? The study below cannot not tell us. But why bother with proof when you KNOW what is going on? A pity that what people KNOW is often not true
The risk of children becoming obese could be halved with 15 extra minutes of moderately vigorous exercise each day, study results have suggested. All that is needed is a short game of football or a walk to school brisk enough to get slightly out of breath. The effects are greater in boys than in girls, but both sexes benefit. The findings point to a lack of exercise, rather than gluttony, as the key to obesity in young people. Researchers were surprised to find that boys have just 25 minutes of activity each day on average, and girls only 16 minutes.
The data comes from the Children of the 90s project, which has followed a group of children born in Avon in the 1990s. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children is one of the biggest and most ambitious cohort studies ever attempted and is producing some of the best evidence on the effects of diet and lifestyle on disease. Researchers fitted 5,500 children aged 12 with activity meters to measure how much exercise they took. The children wore the meters around their waists, taking them off only to sleep, bath or swim. Their body fat was measured using an X-ray emission scanner, which can distinguish between fat and muscle. The results are published in PLoS Medicine.
Professor Chris Riddoch, of the London Sport Institute at Middlesex University, one of the project leaders, said: "We know that diet is important, but what this research tells us is that we mustn't forget about activity. It's been really surprising to us how even small amounts of exercise appear to have dramatic results."
The boys who took the most vigorous activity were more than 30 times less likely to be obese than those who took the least. An extra 15 minutes a day of moderate and vigorous physical activity halved the risk of obesity. Among girls the effects were less dramatic, but still significant. The most active fifth of girls reduced their risk of obesity by two thirds compared with the least active fifth.
Professor Andy Ness, of the University of Bristol, said that the most important activity was the kind that got the children slightly out of breath, or in a sweat. "Recommending an extra 15 minutes of vigorous activity a day may not sound very much, but it is actually double what the average 12-year-old girl does," he said. "In the context of what they are doing, it is quite a lot."
Why the effects should be so much greater in boys remains puzzling. "It could be physiological differences but I think that's unlikely," Professor Ness said. "The other possibility is that boys and girls use activity differently. Boys tend to use activity as the main weight control mechanism, while girls tend to control their weight by eating less." He said that surveys and food production statistics suggested that total calorie intakes had not increased. Yet obesity was rising, so it was reasonable to suggest that this was the result of burning less energy. "Lots of opportunities for activity are factored out of children's lives these days," he said. "There are more sedentary opportunities - sitting in the car, watching television, playing computer games. There's less walking to school, and when they get home Mum and Dad don't want them wandering off into the woods or playing in the streets."
Source
Red nose ban
Health and safety chiefs have banned guests at Comic Relief Does Fame Academy from wearing red noses. Producers planned to give the soft foam noses to contestants' friends and family during the live shows. But officials at London's historic County Hall feared the noses may be a fire risk, reports the Daily Mirror.
A show insider said: "It's a bit ridiculous to stop adults in the audience from wearing red noses. "It's a shame because the show is to raise money and it might have encouraged more people to go out and buy the noses if they saw them on telly."
A spokeswoman for show-makers Endemol said: "It is true red noses are not allowed - but neither are newspapers, bottles, bags and all manner of other items. "We are filming in a Grade II listed building and anything that is a potential fire risk or can cause damage when dropped is not allowed. We are working with essential equipment only."
Source
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
REAL MEDICAL CHOICES COMING TO BRITAIN?
For hip surgery only!
Tony Blair will say today that Labour must go on reforming public services to stay in office as he unveils the reports from his last policy review. These include plans to speed up proposals to allow people waiting for acute operations to go to the hospital of their choice.
He will also announce moves to allow GPs to link up with pharmacies by sharing electronic records.The report of the public services policy group, to be outlined by Mr Blair, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, will claim that the public services have now so changed that it is the patients and parents who are calling the shots. At present people can choose from four hospitals for operations and the Government had intended people to choose from any provider, public or private, by the end of 2008. That deadline is now to be brought forward and people will be able to go anywhere for hip surgery later this year, with changes for other operations also being made this year.
In a clear message to Mr Brown, his almost certain successor, Mr Blair says in the report foreword that the Government could turn back and eschew further reform or go forward with the mission to "personalise and empower". He says Labour must embrace the vision of a Britain "where people are more empowered than today, where they enjoy more opportunity than today, and where services of all kinds are focused ever more on the personal needs of those who use them".
Source
Vote to stop homosexual-rights law, bishops told
Bishops of the Church of England are being urged by their flock to turn out en masse on Wednesday for the Lords debate on equal rights for gay couples wishing to adopt. In an open letter sent to all the diocesan bishops of the Church, more than one fifth of the lay members of the General Synod urge the 26 bishops in the Lords to help to overturn the Sexual Orientation Regulations at its final vote. Many peers and MPs from across all parties are unhappy with the way the changes to adoption law have been processed through Parliament. Hundreds of Christians are expected to turn up for a peaceful protest vigil outside Parliament on Wednesday during the debate.
The Roman Catholic Church has led the campaign against the regulations, which could put its adoption agencies out of business because it would flout Catholic teaching for them to accept public funding to facilitate gay adoption.
Protesters also fear the regulations will compromise the teaching programmes in faith schools, which will not be exempt. They are warning of "substantial danger" that it will be illegal under the regulations for faith schools to continue to teach that sex outside marriage is wrong.
If the bishops are successful in persuading the Lords to defeat the regulations, it is certain to fuel the Government's determination to press for a 100 per cent elected chamber. If bishops were included, it would be with a nominal role only, without voting rights. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, told The Times that if the Lords reforms went ahead on this basis, the Church of England should press for disestablishment.
In their letter, more than 40 members of the General Synod quote the present Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, as saying: "We in the UK do not have anything like this history of top-down rule by regulation. "We have in practice taken for granted that the State is not the source of morality and legitimacy but a system that brokers, mediates and attempts to coordinate the moral resources of those specific communities, the merely local and the credal or issue-focused, which actually make up the national unit. "This is a `secular' system in the sense that it does not impose legal and civil disabilities on any one religious body; but it is not secular in the sense of giving some kind of privilege to a nonreligious or antireligious set of commitments or policies. Moving towards the latter would change our political culture more radically than we imagine."
The lay members continue: "Given the great significance of this vote, many people would understand that the responsibility that Bishops undertake as members of the House of Lords requires them on such occasions to vary their crowded timetable in order to attend the debate. "Many Christians will be praying outside Parliament at the same time, giving up other activities that could rightly claim their attention. "We also note the spirited defence made last week of the role of the Bishops in the House of Lords by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Chelmsford. Important substance would be given to their words if all the Bishops in the Lords were to attend to vote."The regulations were dealt with last week by a House of Commons committee of 16 MPs, which met for 90 minutes. Christian protesters are complaining that even the MPs on the committee itself had been appointed just 15 hours before it met and the room arranged for the debate was so small that there was not enough room for all the MPs.
Observers present reported that the meeting started in confusion and that only four MPs were allowed to speak on the regulations before the vote was passed in favour. Eleanor Laing, the Tory MP, supported the Regulations and said that "her brand of Christianity" preached "live and let live". On Wednesday Baroness Andrews will move that the draft regulations be approved. The aim of the regulations is to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in relation to providing goods, services, facilities, premises, education and public functions.
Source
BRITAIN'S BATTLE FOR THE PLANET
Locked in a struggle for control of the environmental agenda, Britain's political leaders have committed the nation, and its taxpayers, to stringent new carbon-cutting policies. But, reveals Richard Gray, they are facing tough questions over how much gain there will be for the pain
As David Cameron planted a tree in north London last weekend, it was his funky trainers as much as his handy spadework that caught the attention of onlookers. Cameron was officially marking the Conservative Party's "Green Action Day", but there was also a message in his green-laced, camouflage-soled footwear. Central Office was happy to let it be known that they were, in fact, recycled from old firemen's trousers and car seats, part of a limited edition of 400 pairs produced to mark last year's 15th anniversary of The Big Issue. As a symbol, it was true to form from a politician who, since taking over his party's leadership, has rarely missed an opportunity to advertise his green credentials, whether by cycling to work or putting a windmill on his house.
Whoever are the short-term winners and losers at Westminster, it is clear that an environmental "arms race" has begun. For the foreseeable future, our politics will no longer be simply blue, red and yellow, but made up of different shades of green. Voters be warned: Britain is going to save the planet. It is, to put it mildly, an ambitious goal. And this weekend, a number of searching questions are being asked. For example, can a country that contributes just 2 per cent of the world's carbon emissions really make much of a difference to the planet? And, if not, are politicians justified in asking the voters to dramatically change their lifestyles and, inevitably, pay more tax? Similarly prohibitive measures are not being undertaken by China, India and America, the world's largest polluters.
In fact, with the science around global warming still evolving, some ask whether now is the right time to fix on specific policy commitments at all. And then there is the basic question: has it been definitively proved that human behaviour is causing the planet to warm?.... The sceptics accept that the earth is heating up. But they think the warming is due to its natural cycles, and so doubt that humans are the cause. Therefore there is little humans can do to stop it.
Prof Bob Carter, a marine geophysicist at James Cook University, in Queensland, Australia, argues: "Public utterances by prominent persons are marked by an ignorance of the important facts and uncertainties of climate science. "The evidence for dangerous human-caused global-warming forced by human carbon-dioxide emissions is extremely weak. That the satellite temperature record shows no substantial warming since 1978, and that even the ground-based thermometer statistic records no warming since 1998, indicates that a key line of circumstantial evidence for human-caused change to 2026 is now negated."
The debate is far from over. The arguments of doubters suffered a significant blow when Channel 4's recent high-profile programme, The Great Climate Change Swindle, which presented the sceptical view, was accused of inaccuracy. One contributor claims he was misled over the programme's content. But there is also flak heading the way of Al Gore, the former US vice-president, who won an Academy Award for his film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Prof Don Easterbrook, a geologist from Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts of his concerns at "inaccuracies" in Mr Gore's arguments: "The real danger of the IPCC report and Al Gore's film is they suggest that, by diminishing carbon dioxide levels, it will solve the global-warming problem and we won't have to worry about the catastrophe they are predicting."
For the public, the science of global warming remains baffling. Advocates on both sides of the argument can produce reams of statistics to support their opposing views. A poll by ICM, published yesterday in the Guardian, revealed that voters are less engaged with green issues, and more doubtful of the ability of politicians to tackle climate change, than either Gordon Brown or David Cameron might have thought. More than a third said they did not believe MPs could tackle climate change at all. Between them, the Tories and Labour attracted only 30 per cent support for their green strategies.
This growing public disaffection may be behind a sudden move by some prominent climate-change scientists to warn against sensationalist predictions on the part of the environmental lobby. "It is dangerous for politicians to say the science of climate change is now complete," said Dr Piers Forster, an earth and environment researcher at the University of Leeds and a lead author on the UN's influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr Forster believes human activities are without doubt causing the climate to warm, but insists that it is impossible to make clear policy decisions at local or even on continental-wide levels at this stage. "We really don't know how it is going to effect our day-to-day lives over the next 100 years," he states. "People are making decisions about exactly what to do without making sure they are based on the best scientific evidence we have."
Fears about this "eco-hype" were echoed yesterday by two senior members of the Royal Meteorological Society at a conference in Oxford. Profs Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier hit out at researchers who, they say, are "overplaying" the global warming message. Some of their peers, they warn, are making claims about future impacts that cannot be justified by the science. Regardless of the ongoing debate, Britain's political parties have chosen to fight among themselves for the privilege of saving the planet....
Despite their embrace of radical environmental policies, neither party has a convincing answer as to why Britain should take the global lead on climate change, other than as a "moral obligation". In worldwide terms, Britain contributes just a fraction of total carbon emissions - about 544 million tons. By comparison, America pumps out more than 5,844 million tons. China and India, two of the fastest-growing economies, emit 3,263 million tons and 1,220 million tons respectively. China alone has more than 2,000 coal-fired power stations in operation and a new one opens every four days. If the UK stopped all of its emissions today, China would have replaced the lot within a year.
"The climate debate has been captured by people who have at heart an interest in exerting control over people's lives rather than letting them live better lives," said Julian Morris, from IPN. "It is extremely sad to see Britain's political parties trying to capitalise on this."
More here
For hip surgery only!
Tony Blair will say today that Labour must go on reforming public services to stay in office as he unveils the reports from his last policy review. These include plans to speed up proposals to allow people waiting for acute operations to go to the hospital of their choice.
He will also announce moves to allow GPs to link up with pharmacies by sharing electronic records.The report of the public services policy group, to be outlined by Mr Blair, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, will claim that the public services have now so changed that it is the patients and parents who are calling the shots. At present people can choose from four hospitals for operations and the Government had intended people to choose from any provider, public or private, by the end of 2008. That deadline is now to be brought forward and people will be able to go anywhere for hip surgery later this year, with changes for other operations also being made this year.
In a clear message to Mr Brown, his almost certain successor, Mr Blair says in the report foreword that the Government could turn back and eschew further reform or go forward with the mission to "personalise and empower". He says Labour must embrace the vision of a Britain "where people are more empowered than today, where they enjoy more opportunity than today, and where services of all kinds are focused ever more on the personal needs of those who use them".
Source
Vote to stop homosexual-rights law, bishops told
Bishops of the Church of England are being urged by their flock to turn out en masse on Wednesday for the Lords debate on equal rights for gay couples wishing to adopt. In an open letter sent to all the diocesan bishops of the Church, more than one fifth of the lay members of the General Synod urge the 26 bishops in the Lords to help to overturn the Sexual Orientation Regulations at its final vote. Many peers and MPs from across all parties are unhappy with the way the changes to adoption law have been processed through Parliament. Hundreds of Christians are expected to turn up for a peaceful protest vigil outside Parliament on Wednesday during the debate.
The Roman Catholic Church has led the campaign against the regulations, which could put its adoption agencies out of business because it would flout Catholic teaching for them to accept public funding to facilitate gay adoption.
Protesters also fear the regulations will compromise the teaching programmes in faith schools, which will not be exempt. They are warning of "substantial danger" that it will be illegal under the regulations for faith schools to continue to teach that sex outside marriage is wrong.
If the bishops are successful in persuading the Lords to defeat the regulations, it is certain to fuel the Government's determination to press for a 100 per cent elected chamber. If bishops were included, it would be with a nominal role only, without voting rights. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, told The Times that if the Lords reforms went ahead on this basis, the Church of England should press for disestablishment.
In their letter, more than 40 members of the General Synod quote the present Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, as saying: "We in the UK do not have anything like this history of top-down rule by regulation. "We have in practice taken for granted that the State is not the source of morality and legitimacy but a system that brokers, mediates and attempts to coordinate the moral resources of those specific communities, the merely local and the credal or issue-focused, which actually make up the national unit. "This is a `secular' system in the sense that it does not impose legal and civil disabilities on any one religious body; but it is not secular in the sense of giving some kind of privilege to a nonreligious or antireligious set of commitments or policies. Moving towards the latter would change our political culture more radically than we imagine."
The lay members continue: "Given the great significance of this vote, many people would understand that the responsibility that Bishops undertake as members of the House of Lords requires them on such occasions to vary their crowded timetable in order to attend the debate. "Many Christians will be praying outside Parliament at the same time, giving up other activities that could rightly claim their attention. "We also note the spirited defence made last week of the role of the Bishops in the House of Lords by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Chelmsford. Important substance would be given to their words if all the Bishops in the Lords were to attend to vote."The regulations were dealt with last week by a House of Commons committee of 16 MPs, which met for 90 minutes. Christian protesters are complaining that even the MPs on the committee itself had been appointed just 15 hours before it met and the room arranged for the debate was so small that there was not enough room for all the MPs.
Observers present reported that the meeting started in confusion and that only four MPs were allowed to speak on the regulations before the vote was passed in favour. Eleanor Laing, the Tory MP, supported the Regulations and said that "her brand of Christianity" preached "live and let live". On Wednesday Baroness Andrews will move that the draft regulations be approved. The aim of the regulations is to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in relation to providing goods, services, facilities, premises, education and public functions.
Source
BRITAIN'S BATTLE FOR THE PLANET
Locked in a struggle for control of the environmental agenda, Britain's political leaders have committed the nation, and its taxpayers, to stringent new carbon-cutting policies. But, reveals Richard Gray, they are facing tough questions over how much gain there will be for the pain
As David Cameron planted a tree in north London last weekend, it was his funky trainers as much as his handy spadework that caught the attention of onlookers. Cameron was officially marking the Conservative Party's "Green Action Day", but there was also a message in his green-laced, camouflage-soled footwear. Central Office was happy to let it be known that they were, in fact, recycled from old firemen's trousers and car seats, part of a limited edition of 400 pairs produced to mark last year's 15th anniversary of The Big Issue. As a symbol, it was true to form from a politician who, since taking over his party's leadership, has rarely missed an opportunity to advertise his green credentials, whether by cycling to work or putting a windmill on his house.
Whoever are the short-term winners and losers at Westminster, it is clear that an environmental "arms race" has begun. For the foreseeable future, our politics will no longer be simply blue, red and yellow, but made up of different shades of green. Voters be warned: Britain is going to save the planet. It is, to put it mildly, an ambitious goal. And this weekend, a number of searching questions are being asked. For example, can a country that contributes just 2 per cent of the world's carbon emissions really make much of a difference to the planet? And, if not, are politicians justified in asking the voters to dramatically change their lifestyles and, inevitably, pay more tax? Similarly prohibitive measures are not being undertaken by China, India and America, the world's largest polluters.
In fact, with the science around global warming still evolving, some ask whether now is the right time to fix on specific policy commitments at all. And then there is the basic question: has it been definitively proved that human behaviour is causing the planet to warm?.... The sceptics accept that the earth is heating up. But they think the warming is due to its natural cycles, and so doubt that humans are the cause. Therefore there is little humans can do to stop it.
Prof Bob Carter, a marine geophysicist at James Cook University, in Queensland, Australia, argues: "Public utterances by prominent persons are marked by an ignorance of the important facts and uncertainties of climate science. "The evidence for dangerous human-caused global-warming forced by human carbon-dioxide emissions is extremely weak. That the satellite temperature record shows no substantial warming since 1978, and that even the ground-based thermometer statistic records no warming since 1998, indicates that a key line of circumstantial evidence for human-caused change to 2026 is now negated."
The debate is far from over. The arguments of doubters suffered a significant blow when Channel 4's recent high-profile programme, The Great Climate Change Swindle, which presented the sceptical view, was accused of inaccuracy. One contributor claims he was misled over the programme's content. But there is also flak heading the way of Al Gore, the former US vice-president, who won an Academy Award for his film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Prof Don Easterbrook, a geologist from Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts of his concerns at "inaccuracies" in Mr Gore's arguments: "The real danger of the IPCC report and Al Gore's film is they suggest that, by diminishing carbon dioxide levels, it will solve the global-warming problem and we won't have to worry about the catastrophe they are predicting."
For the public, the science of global warming remains baffling. Advocates on both sides of the argument can produce reams of statistics to support their opposing views. A poll by ICM, published yesterday in the Guardian, revealed that voters are less engaged with green issues, and more doubtful of the ability of politicians to tackle climate change, than either Gordon Brown or David Cameron might have thought. More than a third said they did not believe MPs could tackle climate change at all. Between them, the Tories and Labour attracted only 30 per cent support for their green strategies.
This growing public disaffection may be behind a sudden move by some prominent climate-change scientists to warn against sensationalist predictions on the part of the environmental lobby. "It is dangerous for politicians to say the science of climate change is now complete," said Dr Piers Forster, an earth and environment researcher at the University of Leeds and a lead author on the UN's influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr Forster believes human activities are without doubt causing the climate to warm, but insists that it is impossible to make clear policy decisions at local or even on continental-wide levels at this stage. "We really don't know how it is going to effect our day-to-day lives over the next 100 years," he states. "People are making decisions about exactly what to do without making sure they are based on the best scientific evidence we have."
Fears about this "eco-hype" were echoed yesterday by two senior members of the Royal Meteorological Society at a conference in Oxford. Profs Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier hit out at researchers who, they say, are "overplaying" the global warming message. Some of their peers, they warn, are making claims about future impacts that cannot be justified by the science. Regardless of the ongoing debate, Britain's political parties have chosen to fight among themselves for the privilege of saving the planet....
Despite their embrace of radical environmental policies, neither party has a convincing answer as to why Britain should take the global lead on climate change, other than as a "moral obligation". In worldwide terms, Britain contributes just a fraction of total carbon emissions - about 544 million tons. By comparison, America pumps out more than 5,844 million tons. China and India, two of the fastest-growing economies, emit 3,263 million tons and 1,220 million tons respectively. China alone has more than 2,000 coal-fired power stations in operation and a new one opens every four days. If the UK stopped all of its emissions today, China would have replaced the lot within a year.
"The climate debate has been captured by people who have at heart an interest in exerting control over people's lives rather than letting them live better lives," said Julian Morris, from IPN. "It is extremely sad to see Britain's political parties trying to capitalise on this."
More here
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN: "THE GUARDIAN" AND BIG OIL
An amused email below from S. Fred Singer [singer@sepp.org] to Benny Peiser
I have just looked at The Guardian's Climate Summit to be held in London on June 11. What an assembly of Britain's finest! What a wonderful choir - with no dissonant voices to mar the harmony. No climate scientists, of course. After all, isn't the science all settled? But not even a critical observer, like Dr Philip Stott or Melanie Phillips. Only one problem: The lead sponsor of this remarkable celebration is a major oil company. I don't know if one can trust such an assembly if the funds come from Big Oil. Surely, we all realize that such money is tainted. I pray The Guardian will have the good sense to refuse to be bought, to become a lackey to an industry that thrives on bloated profits, etc, etc. Now where did we read this just recently?
Filth and shame in an NHS hospital
Twenty-four hours to save the NHS! I wonder how often that promise comes back to haunt Tony Blair 10 years later. Week after week reliable reports and the government's own figures tell a disgraceful story of incompetence, debt, misery and filth in the National Health Service. That story is supported, week after week, by heart-rending personal accounts of horrors on the wards.
The broken new Labour promise that caught most public attention last week was the failure to abolish mixed-sex wards. Janet Street-Porter, the ferocious media personality, wrote about the misery of her sister when dying of cancer in a mixed-sex NHS ward. Plenty of other people have tried to draw attention to this disgrace and Baroness Knight, the Conservative peer, has been campaigning about it for years but - such is the spirit of the times - it takes a loud-mouth celebrity to get public attention.
The same thing happened when Lord Winston made a fuss about the dreadful treatment that his elderly mother received in hospital. Only then did the government stop denying that there was anything wrong.
Street-Porter published extracts last week of the diary of Patricia Balsom, her dying sister. They were horrifying. Among the miseries she endured was lying neglected in a mixed ward, where she was woken more than once to see a naked male patient masturbating opposite her bed. Her shocking stories prompted a flood of others.
The late Eileen Fahey, for instance, dying of cancer, was put onto a mixed geriatric ward where confused people wandered about without supervision. One man with dementia regularly masturbated at the nurses' station and tried to get into women patients' beds; he was a threat to them all but staff took no notice, according to her daughter Maureen. Other patients have to give answers to intimate questions in the hearing of other patients. One deaf old man was repeatedly asked when he last had an erection, until tears ran down his cheeks.
A former midwife described eloquently on Radio 4 the indignities of being in a 24-bed mixed-sex ward, stripped of all dignity and intimidated. Bedlam was the word she used, and it applies even more accurately to the secure psychiatric mixed ward in London endured by Susan Craig last year, after a breakdown. She suffered regular sexual harassment, with mentally ill men groping her and exposing themselves. The nurses disbelieved her and told her husband she was "flaunting herself". If so (I don't believe them), their job was to protect a patient from her own folly. Instead they chose, in modern cant, to blame the victim.
Sexual harassment is only a small part of the problem. Many people, both men and women, feel their modesty is violated by such closeness to random members of the opposite sex, even when they are not threatened. Patients lie naked, half washed and forgotten, their sick and ageing flesh exposed to everyone, while nurses rush elsewhere. It is commonplace to have to walk to filthy mixed lavatories with gowns wide open at the back. At a time of sickness and anxiety many people are profoundly embarrassed to be surrounded by a clutter of bed pans, colostomy bags, nakedness, cries of pain and sweat, blood and tears - their own and other people's. All this is much worse, for many, when they are surrounded by members of the opposite sex; shame and anxiety are not the best bedfellows of hope and healing.
Much has been written about the rape of modesty and the death of shame. However, it is still true in this weary country that most men and women prefer to perform private bodily functions alone if possible, and among their own sex only, if not. That's why we have separate public lavatories and separate changing rooms in shops and clubs and pubs. That's why people put up towels on the beach. That's why women give birth in female wards, not in mixed wards or not - I hope - so far.
Admittedly there are some who believe that mixed wards are not a problem, but our prime minister is not one. "Is it really beyond the collective wits of the government and health administrators to deal with the problem?" he demanded in 1996, flying high on vectors of dizzying youthful indignation as leader of the opposition. "It's not just a question of money," he went on. "It's a question of political will." Well, he said it and he promised to end mixed-sex wards by 2002.
What we have come to expect of new Labour promises, following failure, changing the goalposts, more failure and exposure, is denial. Sure enough Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, was sent onto the Today programme in denial mode last week. Although the Healthcare Commission watchdog found that on average 22% of patients have to stay in mixed-sex wards, rising to 60% in some hospitals, Hewitt's officials at the Department of Health say the government has achieved its target of abolishing mixed-sex wards, with 99% of trusts providing single-sex accommodation. It is not difficult to spot the problem with that claim. It is not the same as saying 99% of patients get single-sex accommodation; it may be "provided" for very few. There has been the usual goalpost shifting: hospitals can claim they are providing single-sex accommodation by putting screens between beds in mixed-sex wards. Brilliant.
Hewitt admits there was a problem of perception; she even admitted that there was a "clear gap" between patients' experiences and figures provided by hospital trusts to the Department of Health. One does tend to have a problem of perception, I find, if one is being misled.
My feeling is that mixed-sex wards are not the worst of NHS hospitals' problems, although they demonstrate them. They demonstrate the incompetence and deviousness of hospital management in general, and they also show something worse. In all the stories I've come across what stands out is the ignorance, incompetence, laziness and heartlessness of all too many nurses, who are allowed to neglect and insult their patients without supervision and without sanction - in single-sex wards just as much as mixed. Blair did not just promise to abolish mixed-sex wards, he also promised to save the entire NHS. He believes in divine judgment; I wonder how he will answer.
Source
Cannabis: An apology from "The Independent"
In 1997, this newspaper launched a campaign to decriminalise the drug. If only we had known then what we can reveal today... Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.
More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction - and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised.
A decade after this newspaper's stance culminated in a 16,000-strong pro-cannabis march to London's Hyde Park - and was credited with forcing the Government to downgrade the legal status of cannabis to class C - an IoS editorial states that there is growing proof that skunk causes mental illness and psychosis. The decision comes as statistics from the NHS National Treatment Agency show that the number of young people in treatment almost doubled from about 5,000 in 2005 to 9,600 in 2006, and that 13,000 adults also needed treatment.
The skunk smoked by the majority of young Britons bears no relation to traditional cannabis resin - with a 25-fold increase in the amount of the main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabidinol (THC), typically found in the early 1990s. New research being published in this week's Lancet will show how cannabis is more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy. Experts analysed 20 substances for addictiveness, social harm and physical damage. The results will increase the pressure on the Government to have a full debate on drugs, and a new independent UK drug policy commission being launched next month will call for a rethink on the issue.
The findings last night reignited the debate about cannabis use, with a growing number of specialists saying that the drug bears no relation to the substance most law-makers would recognise. Professor Colin Blakemore, chief of the Medical Research Council, who backed our original campaign for cannabis to be decriminalised, has also changed his mind. He said: "The link between cannabis and psychosis is quite clear now; it wasn't 10 years ago."
Many medical specialists agree that the debate has changed. Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at London's Institute of Psychiatry, estimates that at least 25,000 of the 250,000 schizophrenics in the UK could have avoided the illness if they had not used cannabis. "The number of people taking cannabis may not be rising, but what people are taking is much more powerful, so there is a question of whether a few years on we may see more people getting ill as a consequence of that."
"Society has seriously underestimated how dangerous cannabis really is," said Professor Neil McKeganey, from Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research. "We could well see over the next 10 years increasing numbers of young people in serious difficulties."
Politicians have also hardened their stance. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has changed his mind over the classification of cannabis, after backing successful calls to downgrade the drug from B to C in 2002. He abandoned that position last year, before the IoS revealed that he had smoked cannabis as a teenager, and now wants the drug's original classification to be restored.
Source
Homosexual Fairy Tales Anger Christians/Muslims In UK
Parents in Britain are angered over the nationwide plan to teach children as young as four about homosexuality through fairy tales and children's books. The plan, "No Outsiders" is being backed by the Department of Education and is designed to help schools adjust to a new law mandating the affirming of homosexual conduct in Britain's schools. The law goes into effect later this year.
One school is already using the fairytale, "King & King" to tell the story of a prince who rejects three princesses before falling in love and marrying another prince. A school in London is having children ages 4 to 11 rehearsing for a performance of an opera called "The Sissy Duckling," about a duckling who loves cooking, cleaning and art.
Stephen Green, director of the British group Christian Voice, is angered by the new program. "This is tantamount to child abuse. The whole project is nothing more than propaganda aimed at primary school children to make them sympathetic to homosexuality." Green also noted that the program could expose children to sexual predators by making them think "that two boys fiddling with each other ... is perfectly normal. "Parents should be able to have the peace of mind of knowing that school is a safe place. And to have their children indoctrinated with pro-homosexual propaganda is an abuse of the trust parent place in schools," said Green.
Tahir Alam, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain also expressed concern about the teachings. "Why are we introducing these ideas to such young children. A lot of parent will be very concerned about the exposure of their children to such books, which are contrary to their religious beliefs and values."
Source
THE INCORRECTNESS OF CANDOUR IN MODERN-DAY BRITAIN
Mercer was sacked 10 days ago as his party's homeland security spokesman, after having given an interview to a Times Online journalist about life in the army, an institution in which he served for half of his 50 years, before he became an MP in 2001. During this ill-fated and deeply regretted conversation, Mercer announced that it was not unheard of for ethnic minority soldiers to be called such things as "black bastard" - just as obese squaddies would occasionally be referred to as "fat bastards". Mercer said both insults were equally tantamount to bullying and quite unacceptable. He also said he'd come across plenty of black soldiers who had howled "racial prejudice" when upbraided for their indolence or uselessness.
All of this stuff was, when published, deemed either "offensive" or "racist" or both by his party bosses, despite, when you read the quotes in context, it is plainly neither. Anyway, he insists the interview was off the record and he harbours a fair amount of bitterness towards the journalist (hitherto a family friend) who none-theless gleefully wrote the whole thing up.
Within hours he had been sacked by David Cameron without being given much of a chance to explain his side of things. At the time, he said he agreed with the decision to sack him. Time, though, has perhaps ever so slightly altered this perspective....
It is not inconceivable that he could one day cross the floor of the house - though, despite his present rancour, I wouldn't bet on it. What he is most definitely not, though, is metropolitan. Not being properly metropolitan effectively got him sacked. "Politicians have got to understand that people outside of London view the world differently from those who live in the capital. They think very different things. And you need the votes of the people outside London to win a general election. It is a different world out there."
In his constituency of Newark, in rural Nottinghamshire, he says he has been "astonished" and "overwhelmed" by the support he has received in the wake of his abrupt defenestration. The local party, I'm told from elsewhere, has taken down the photographs of David Cameron from its walls. The e-mails have poured in - some 2,500, according to Mercer. "And were any of them critical of what you said?" I ask. "Yes. Seven of them. Actually six, because one chap e-mailed me again to apologise and retract his criticism." Do you think that what you said was wrong? "No, God no, not wrong. But I phrased it clumsily, I think." You would stand by your assertion that calling someone a black bastard and a fat bastard are just about equal in their manifest unpleasantness? "Yes, of course. They're both bullying, they're both hurtful. No real difference."
Mercer is certainly not a racist; his record, as a colonel in the Sherwood Foresters, was of incessant and successful recruitment within the area's black and Asian community. At one point, all five of his company sergeant-majors - recruited and promoted by Mercer - were black. Leroy Hutchinson, who served as a corporal under Mercer, said: "He never tolerated racism. Not a single one of his men would consider him a racist."
So, it is not racism that has done for Patrick Mercer's career. It is something altogether more damaging and corrosive to modern politics: candour. This is not the first time that he has been frustrated to the point of exasperation by punishment being meted out to people who speak what they believe to be the truth, in an unvarnished manner. "It's one thing I learnt from being in the army. You speak clearly and unambiguously, directly and without obfuscation. Then people understand what you mean. In politics, the reverse is true. The whole point is to obfuscate and prevaricate, to get up on your hind legs instead of stating clearly what you mean and proceeding to act." It is now that he becomes animated, talking about the thing that truly concerns him - indeed, scares the hell out of him.
"Take security in London. Nearly two years since 7/7 and not a thing, not a single thing has been done to improve our security on the Tube. Not a thing! We are exactly where we were two years ago. And then, the other day, I received an enormous document on my desk - paid for by the taxpayer, commissioned by the government - entitled The Definition of Terrorism. A great long semantic work explaining exactly what terrorism is . . ." He throws his hands up in exasperation. "I mean, I'm sure it has its place. Somewhere. But it's not the point. People will be killed. And we are mulling over the philosophy of what constitutes terrorism."
He is loyal to the army, too, describing the recent court martial (and acquittal) of six soldiers accused of allowing Iraqi detainees to be abused as a "political show trial". But his experience of internment in Northern Ireland (where he worked in plain clothes) makes him ill-disposed towards the government's wish to detain terrorism suspects for longer than 28 days without trial.
He is as candid about his misjudgments as he is about those policies where he feels he has been proven right (or, worse, is about to be proven horribly right). For example, he was one of the Conservative party's most stoical supporters of the invasion of Iraq. Got that badly wrong, didn't you, mate? "Yes, yes, yes," he says, head in hands. "Badly wrong. I should have listened to Hans Blix [the UN weapons inspector] when he begged me and other members of the select committee to give him just six months more. We should have done that, no doubt about it." He insists, however, that he believed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
It is all too easy to consign Patrick Mercer to a box marked gung-ho backwoodsman (something that I suspect his leader has already done). But it is to miss the essential point, which is that Mercer is a plain-spoken maverick within a community of politicians where such qualities are punished rather than rewarded. For a man brought up within the rigid discipline of the armed forces he is refreshingly unconventional.
In 2000 he gave up his military career and asked me for a job on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (where I was editor) - a brave and frankly ludicrous decision by someone who had never trained as a journalist (and a pretty ludicrous appointment on my part, too). But it worked; he was brilliant. He was a natural journalist, concise and sharp and possessed of a greater knowledge of military matters than all the other BBC defence correspondents put together. He was regarded with intense suspicion by the largely liberal-tinted producers on Today - but he won them over. Using his military intelligence, he broke a string of important stories and risked his neck from beyond the front line in Kosovo.
His interviews with the programme presenters became the stuff of legend, for their clipped and wry observations. Are depleted uranium shells dangerous, Patrick? "Spoil your day," he replied. But beneath this parody of the stereotypical army officer was a deep understanding of geopolitical forces and a gentle Conservative sensibility.
What will he do now, I ask? His options are many and varied. He could keep his head down and hope for political rehabilitation in a couple of years, although if I were Patrick, I wouldn't hold my breath too long. He seems to be inimical to the current vision of Conservatism, though I cannot think of any better-equipped politician to preserve our domestic security. Or he could coalesce around him like-minded Tories, the legions of disaffected nonmetropolitans, and bide his time, waiting for the climate to change and occasionally firing heavy ordnance in the direction of his leader.
What does Conservatism mean to you, Patrick? "Freedom of speech!" He announces, the eyes glinting. Ah yes, that. And what else? "Trusting in the individual to make the best of himself." Anything else? "Having principle." Oh dear me, principle. This is all terribly old-fashioned stuff, don't you think? So is David Cameron a man of principle, I ask him?
"He is the leader," says Mercer. Yes, I know he's the leader. I asked you if he had principle. "He is the leader," he repeats. Yes, I persist, but does he have principle? He finishes his glass of water, smiles a little, narrows his eyes and, from the other side of the table, sticks two fingers up at me. "He is the leader," he says, with finality and stands to leave, which is when the pretty waitress, intrigued by something about this man, asks him what he does for a living. Disgraced Tory politician, love. But he'll be back.
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Horsy schools are winners
It’s the morning break at Danesfield Church of England school, where the staff are engaged in a rather delicate discussion: which one of them is going to clean up the pile of freshly deposited horse manure on the playground?
Danesfield serves the Somerset town of Williton, in the middle of horsey country. Not red coat and 4x4 Mercedes horsey country but the sort of place where down-at-heel boxes — some apparently held together by bailer twine — are towed by elderly Land Rovers that wheeze up hills. The Quantocks are on one side, Exmoor and the Brendans are on the other.
No surprise then that some of the pupils here pack jodhpurs and hard hats into their kit bags. What might surprise you is that Danesfield is a state middle school where 25% of the pupils have special needs.
It’s one of a growing number of state schools that are taking an interest in riding, once seen as a rather upper crust occupation. The organisers of the schools championships at Hickstead in West Sussex say that nearly half the entries now come from state schools, competing alongside the likes of Millfield, also in Somerset, and Cheltenham Ladies’ college. At Danesfield they are particularly proud of their record as the only state school to win a local jumping competition, organised by Wellington school.
Riding is not only a test of athleticism and skill, but it teaches discipline: the horse is in the care of the rider. It can’t be thrown into a box like a cricket bat at the end of a poor innings: it needs feeding, brushing, and mucking out. Saddles and the rest of the tack need to be polished.
And all this discipline has had a marked effect on the special needs pupils of Danesfield. “What it’s really good for is the children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” says special needs co-ordinator Sian Moore. “Some of them come from very deprived backgrounds; they can be very aggressive. But learning to respect an animal, learning that an animal has feelings is very good for them.”
The school offers lunchtime riding lessons at a nearby stables, weekly lessons at the Conquest centre in Taunton, which specialises in teaching riders with learning difficulties.
For some, the prospect of riding lessons is much more attractive than maths, English and history. Parent Lorna Webber used to have difficulty getting her son Jake, 12, out of bed for school on a Monday. He has Asperger’s syndrome and found it difficult to concentrate on his work. Now he not only looks forward to riding on a Friday, but his new enthusiasm has had a knock-on effect with his other work. “He’s taken to it really well,” says Lorna. “He wakes up on Monday morning and says, ‘It’s horse riding on Friday’. “It’s really helped him with his other work because now he has something to look forward to at the end of the week. His concentration is better; he can get his head down and focus.”
The headmaster at Danesfield, Ian Bradbury, has been so struck by the impact of riding at his school that he’s considering expanding. “I’m thinking of putting in our own stables,” he says.
Even with a couple of stables, the school riding team will be a long way behind their independent rivals as far as facilities are concerned. Millfield, famed for its sport, is planning its own specialist polo unit to go with its polo field. It is also laying out its own cross country course. Millfield is just one of a number of schools that provides livery — accommodation for pupils who want to bring their own horses.
Stonar, an independent girls’ school near Bath, has stabling for 60 horses and offers riding scholarships. “Many girls choose to keep their own horses at school,” says the prospectus. “An ambitious young horsewoman can combine her studies with equestrian training, whether or not she has her own horse. Our most talented often go on to compete at national and international levels.” A team from Stonar won the national schools jumping championships last year at Hickstead.
But it’s not just the sport and the glory, it’s not just the discipline, it’s not even the boost it can give to pupils who are struggling with their academic work. There are hidden fringe benefits of riding lessons. As one Danesfield teacher told me: “We had a very promising rider here, who went on to work with horses. Thanks to that, she’s now living with a millionaire.”
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CAUTION URGED ON HYPING CLIMATE 'RISKS'
Two leading UK climate researchers have criticised those among their peers who they say are "overplaying" the global warming message. Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, are voicing their concern at a conference in Oxford. They say some researchers make claims about possible future impacts that cannot be justified by the science. The pair believe this damages the credibility of all climate scientists. They think catastrophism and the "Hollywoodisation" of weather and climate only work to create confusion in the public mind. They argue for a more sober and reasoned explanation of the uncertainties about possible future changes in the Earth's climate.
As an example, they point to a recent statement from one of the foremost US science bodies - the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The association released a strongly worded statement at its last annual meeting in San Francisco in February which said: "As expected, intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies. "These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible."
According to Professors Hardaker and Collier, this may well turn out to be true, but convincing evidence to back the claims has not yet emerged. "It's certainly a very strong statement," Professor Collier told BBC News. "I suspect it refers to evidence that hurricanes have increased as a result of global warming; but to make the blanket assumption that all extreme events are increasing is a bit too early yet."
A former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, Professor Collier is concerned that the serious message about the real risks posed by global warming could be undermined by making premature claims. "I think there is a good chance of that," he said. "We must guard against that - it would be very damaging. "I've no doubt that global warming is occurring, but we don't want to undermine that case by crying wolf."
This view is shared by Professor Hardaker, the society's chief executive. "Organisations have been guilty of overplaying the message," he says. "There's no evidence to show we're all due for very short-term devastating impacts as a result of global warming; so I think these statements can be dangerous where you mix in the science with unscientific assumptions."
The AAAS said it would not be commenting directly on the professors' remarks. "We feel that the recent consensus statement of the AAAS Board of Directors speaks for itself and stands on its own," a spokesperson explained. "The AAAS Board statement references (at the end), the scientific basis upon which the conclusions are based, including the joint National Academies' statement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
Professor Hardaker also believes that overblown statements play into the hands of those who say that scientists are wrong on climate change - that global warming is a myth. "I think we do have to be careful as scientists not to overstate the case because it does damage the credibility of the many other things that we have greater certainty about," he said. "We have to stick to what the science is telling us; and I don't think making that sound more sensational, or more sexy, because it gets us more newspaper columns, is the right thing for us to be doing. "We have to let the science argument win out."
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BBC "impartiality" at work: "At this year's conference, I was stopped by a BBC radio reporter who was soliciting opinions on the scandal involving Israel's president. "Should he resign?" asked the reporter. "I'm not sure," I replied. "I don't know the facts." "Nice to be able to sit on the fence," the BBC's seeker of truth responded. "Sorry," I added, "but in my country, someone is innocent until proven guilty." He was obviously disappointed by my wanting to examine the evidence before voicing an opinion. That's apparently not a requirement for the BBC in its coverage of accusations of Israelis' transgressions."
An amused email below from S. Fred Singer [singer@sepp.org] to Benny Peiser
I have just looked at The Guardian's Climate Summit to be held in London on June 11. What an assembly of Britain's finest! What a wonderful choir - with no dissonant voices to mar the harmony. No climate scientists, of course. After all, isn't the science all settled? But not even a critical observer, like Dr Philip Stott or Melanie Phillips. Only one problem: The lead sponsor of this remarkable celebration is a major oil company. I don't know if one can trust such an assembly if the funds come from Big Oil. Surely, we all realize that such money is tainted. I pray The Guardian will have the good sense to refuse to be bought, to become a lackey to an industry that thrives on bloated profits, etc, etc. Now where did we read this just recently?
Filth and shame in an NHS hospital
Twenty-four hours to save the NHS! I wonder how often that promise comes back to haunt Tony Blair 10 years later. Week after week reliable reports and the government's own figures tell a disgraceful story of incompetence, debt, misery and filth in the National Health Service. That story is supported, week after week, by heart-rending personal accounts of horrors on the wards.
The broken new Labour promise that caught most public attention last week was the failure to abolish mixed-sex wards. Janet Street-Porter, the ferocious media personality, wrote about the misery of her sister when dying of cancer in a mixed-sex NHS ward. Plenty of other people have tried to draw attention to this disgrace and Baroness Knight, the Conservative peer, has been campaigning about it for years but - such is the spirit of the times - it takes a loud-mouth celebrity to get public attention.
The same thing happened when Lord Winston made a fuss about the dreadful treatment that his elderly mother received in hospital. Only then did the government stop denying that there was anything wrong.
Street-Porter published extracts last week of the diary of Patricia Balsom, her dying sister. They were horrifying. Among the miseries she endured was lying neglected in a mixed ward, where she was woken more than once to see a naked male patient masturbating opposite her bed. Her shocking stories prompted a flood of others.
The late Eileen Fahey, for instance, dying of cancer, was put onto a mixed geriatric ward where confused people wandered about without supervision. One man with dementia regularly masturbated at the nurses' station and tried to get into women patients' beds; he was a threat to them all but staff took no notice, according to her daughter Maureen. Other patients have to give answers to intimate questions in the hearing of other patients. One deaf old man was repeatedly asked when he last had an erection, until tears ran down his cheeks.
A former midwife described eloquently on Radio 4 the indignities of being in a 24-bed mixed-sex ward, stripped of all dignity and intimidated. Bedlam was the word she used, and it applies even more accurately to the secure psychiatric mixed ward in London endured by Susan Craig last year, after a breakdown. She suffered regular sexual harassment, with mentally ill men groping her and exposing themselves. The nurses disbelieved her and told her husband she was "flaunting herself". If so (I don't believe them), their job was to protect a patient from her own folly. Instead they chose, in modern cant, to blame the victim.
Sexual harassment is only a small part of the problem. Many people, both men and women, feel their modesty is violated by such closeness to random members of the opposite sex, even when they are not threatened. Patients lie naked, half washed and forgotten, their sick and ageing flesh exposed to everyone, while nurses rush elsewhere. It is commonplace to have to walk to filthy mixed lavatories with gowns wide open at the back. At a time of sickness and anxiety many people are profoundly embarrassed to be surrounded by a clutter of bed pans, colostomy bags, nakedness, cries of pain and sweat, blood and tears - their own and other people's. All this is much worse, for many, when they are surrounded by members of the opposite sex; shame and anxiety are not the best bedfellows of hope and healing.
Much has been written about the rape of modesty and the death of shame. However, it is still true in this weary country that most men and women prefer to perform private bodily functions alone if possible, and among their own sex only, if not. That's why we have separate public lavatories and separate changing rooms in shops and clubs and pubs. That's why people put up towels on the beach. That's why women give birth in female wards, not in mixed wards or not - I hope - so far.
Admittedly there are some who believe that mixed wards are not a problem, but our prime minister is not one. "Is it really beyond the collective wits of the government and health administrators to deal with the problem?" he demanded in 1996, flying high on vectors of dizzying youthful indignation as leader of the opposition. "It's not just a question of money," he went on. "It's a question of political will." Well, he said it and he promised to end mixed-sex wards by 2002.
What we have come to expect of new Labour promises, following failure, changing the goalposts, more failure and exposure, is denial. Sure enough Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, was sent onto the Today programme in denial mode last week. Although the Healthcare Commission watchdog found that on average 22% of patients have to stay in mixed-sex wards, rising to 60% in some hospitals, Hewitt's officials at the Department of Health say the government has achieved its target of abolishing mixed-sex wards, with 99% of trusts providing single-sex accommodation. It is not difficult to spot the problem with that claim. It is not the same as saying 99% of patients get single-sex accommodation; it may be "provided" for very few. There has been the usual goalpost shifting: hospitals can claim they are providing single-sex accommodation by putting screens between beds in mixed-sex wards. Brilliant.
Hewitt admits there was a problem of perception; she even admitted that there was a "clear gap" between patients' experiences and figures provided by hospital trusts to the Department of Health. One does tend to have a problem of perception, I find, if one is being misled.
My feeling is that mixed-sex wards are not the worst of NHS hospitals' problems, although they demonstrate them. They demonstrate the incompetence and deviousness of hospital management in general, and they also show something worse. In all the stories I've come across what stands out is the ignorance, incompetence, laziness and heartlessness of all too many nurses, who are allowed to neglect and insult their patients without supervision and without sanction - in single-sex wards just as much as mixed. Blair did not just promise to abolish mixed-sex wards, he also promised to save the entire NHS. He believes in divine judgment; I wonder how he will answer.
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Cannabis: An apology from "The Independent"
In 1997, this newspaper launched a campaign to decriminalise the drug. If only we had known then what we can reveal today... Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.
More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction - and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised.
A decade after this newspaper's stance culminated in a 16,000-strong pro-cannabis march to London's Hyde Park - and was credited with forcing the Government to downgrade the legal status of cannabis to class C - an IoS editorial states that there is growing proof that skunk causes mental illness and psychosis. The decision comes as statistics from the NHS National Treatment Agency show that the number of young people in treatment almost doubled from about 5,000 in 2005 to 9,600 in 2006, and that 13,000 adults also needed treatment.
The skunk smoked by the majority of young Britons bears no relation to traditional cannabis resin - with a 25-fold increase in the amount of the main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabidinol (THC), typically found in the early 1990s. New research being published in this week's Lancet will show how cannabis is more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy. Experts analysed 20 substances for addictiveness, social harm and physical damage. The results will increase the pressure on the Government to have a full debate on drugs, and a new independent UK drug policy commission being launched next month will call for a rethink on the issue.
The findings last night reignited the debate about cannabis use, with a growing number of specialists saying that the drug bears no relation to the substance most law-makers would recognise. Professor Colin Blakemore, chief of the Medical Research Council, who backed our original campaign for cannabis to be decriminalised, has also changed his mind. He said: "The link between cannabis and psychosis is quite clear now; it wasn't 10 years ago."
Many medical specialists agree that the debate has changed. Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at London's Institute of Psychiatry, estimates that at least 25,000 of the 250,000 schizophrenics in the UK could have avoided the illness if they had not used cannabis. "The number of people taking cannabis may not be rising, but what people are taking is much more powerful, so there is a question of whether a few years on we may see more people getting ill as a consequence of that."
"Society has seriously underestimated how dangerous cannabis really is," said Professor Neil McKeganey, from Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research. "We could well see over the next 10 years increasing numbers of young people in serious difficulties."
Politicians have also hardened their stance. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has changed his mind over the classification of cannabis, after backing successful calls to downgrade the drug from B to C in 2002. He abandoned that position last year, before the IoS revealed that he had smoked cannabis as a teenager, and now wants the drug's original classification to be restored.
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Homosexual Fairy Tales Anger Christians/Muslims In UK
Parents in Britain are angered over the nationwide plan to teach children as young as four about homosexuality through fairy tales and children's books. The plan, "No Outsiders" is being backed by the Department of Education and is designed to help schools adjust to a new law mandating the affirming of homosexual conduct in Britain's schools. The law goes into effect later this year.
One school is already using the fairytale, "King & King" to tell the story of a prince who rejects three princesses before falling in love and marrying another prince. A school in London is having children ages 4 to 11 rehearsing for a performance of an opera called "The Sissy Duckling," about a duckling who loves cooking, cleaning and art.
Stephen Green, director of the British group Christian Voice, is angered by the new program. "This is tantamount to child abuse. The whole project is nothing more than propaganda aimed at primary school children to make them sympathetic to homosexuality." Green also noted that the program could expose children to sexual predators by making them think "that two boys fiddling with each other ... is perfectly normal. "Parents should be able to have the peace of mind of knowing that school is a safe place. And to have their children indoctrinated with pro-homosexual propaganda is an abuse of the trust parent place in schools," said Green.
Tahir Alam, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain also expressed concern about the teachings. "Why are we introducing these ideas to such young children. A lot of parent will be very concerned about the exposure of their children to such books, which are contrary to their religious beliefs and values."
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THE INCORRECTNESS OF CANDOUR IN MODERN-DAY BRITAIN
Mercer was sacked 10 days ago as his party's homeland security spokesman, after having given an interview to a Times Online journalist about life in the army, an institution in which he served for half of his 50 years, before he became an MP in 2001. During this ill-fated and deeply regretted conversation, Mercer announced that it was not unheard of for ethnic minority soldiers to be called such things as "black bastard" - just as obese squaddies would occasionally be referred to as "fat bastards". Mercer said both insults were equally tantamount to bullying and quite unacceptable. He also said he'd come across plenty of black soldiers who had howled "racial prejudice" when upbraided for their indolence or uselessness.
All of this stuff was, when published, deemed either "offensive" or "racist" or both by his party bosses, despite, when you read the quotes in context, it is plainly neither. Anyway, he insists the interview was off the record and he harbours a fair amount of bitterness towards the journalist (hitherto a family friend) who none-theless gleefully wrote the whole thing up.
Within hours he had been sacked by David Cameron without being given much of a chance to explain his side of things. At the time, he said he agreed with the decision to sack him. Time, though, has perhaps ever so slightly altered this perspective....
It is not inconceivable that he could one day cross the floor of the house - though, despite his present rancour, I wouldn't bet on it. What he is most definitely not, though, is metropolitan. Not being properly metropolitan effectively got him sacked. "Politicians have got to understand that people outside of London view the world differently from those who live in the capital. They think very different things. And you need the votes of the people outside London to win a general election. It is a different world out there."
In his constituency of Newark, in rural Nottinghamshire, he says he has been "astonished" and "overwhelmed" by the support he has received in the wake of his abrupt defenestration. The local party, I'm told from elsewhere, has taken down the photographs of David Cameron from its walls. The e-mails have poured in - some 2,500, according to Mercer. "And were any of them critical of what you said?" I ask. "Yes. Seven of them. Actually six, because one chap e-mailed me again to apologise and retract his criticism." Do you think that what you said was wrong? "No, God no, not wrong. But I phrased it clumsily, I think." You would stand by your assertion that calling someone a black bastard and a fat bastard are just about equal in their manifest unpleasantness? "Yes, of course. They're both bullying, they're both hurtful. No real difference."
Mercer is certainly not a racist; his record, as a colonel in the Sherwood Foresters, was of incessant and successful recruitment within the area's black and Asian community. At one point, all five of his company sergeant-majors - recruited and promoted by Mercer - were black. Leroy Hutchinson, who served as a corporal under Mercer, said: "He never tolerated racism. Not a single one of his men would consider him a racist."
So, it is not racism that has done for Patrick Mercer's career. It is something altogether more damaging and corrosive to modern politics: candour. This is not the first time that he has been frustrated to the point of exasperation by punishment being meted out to people who speak what they believe to be the truth, in an unvarnished manner. "It's one thing I learnt from being in the army. You speak clearly and unambiguously, directly and without obfuscation. Then people understand what you mean. In politics, the reverse is true. The whole point is to obfuscate and prevaricate, to get up on your hind legs instead of stating clearly what you mean and proceeding to act." It is now that he becomes animated, talking about the thing that truly concerns him - indeed, scares the hell out of him.
"Take security in London. Nearly two years since 7/7 and not a thing, not a single thing has been done to improve our security on the Tube. Not a thing! We are exactly where we were two years ago. And then, the other day, I received an enormous document on my desk - paid for by the taxpayer, commissioned by the government - entitled The Definition of Terrorism. A great long semantic work explaining exactly what terrorism is . . ." He throws his hands up in exasperation. "I mean, I'm sure it has its place. Somewhere. But it's not the point. People will be killed. And we are mulling over the philosophy of what constitutes terrorism."
He is loyal to the army, too, describing the recent court martial (and acquittal) of six soldiers accused of allowing Iraqi detainees to be abused as a "political show trial". But his experience of internment in Northern Ireland (where he worked in plain clothes) makes him ill-disposed towards the government's wish to detain terrorism suspects for longer than 28 days without trial.
He is as candid about his misjudgments as he is about those policies where he feels he has been proven right (or, worse, is about to be proven horribly right). For example, he was one of the Conservative party's most stoical supporters of the invasion of Iraq. Got that badly wrong, didn't you, mate? "Yes, yes, yes," he says, head in hands. "Badly wrong. I should have listened to Hans Blix [the UN weapons inspector] when he begged me and other members of the select committee to give him just six months more. We should have done that, no doubt about it." He insists, however, that he believed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
It is all too easy to consign Patrick Mercer to a box marked gung-ho backwoodsman (something that I suspect his leader has already done). But it is to miss the essential point, which is that Mercer is a plain-spoken maverick within a community of politicians where such qualities are punished rather than rewarded. For a man brought up within the rigid discipline of the armed forces he is refreshingly unconventional.
In 2000 he gave up his military career and asked me for a job on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (where I was editor) - a brave and frankly ludicrous decision by someone who had never trained as a journalist (and a pretty ludicrous appointment on my part, too). But it worked; he was brilliant. He was a natural journalist, concise and sharp and possessed of a greater knowledge of military matters than all the other BBC defence correspondents put together. He was regarded with intense suspicion by the largely liberal-tinted producers on Today - but he won them over. Using his military intelligence, he broke a string of important stories and risked his neck from beyond the front line in Kosovo.
His interviews with the programme presenters became the stuff of legend, for their clipped and wry observations. Are depleted uranium shells dangerous, Patrick? "Spoil your day," he replied. But beneath this parody of the stereotypical army officer was a deep understanding of geopolitical forces and a gentle Conservative sensibility.
What will he do now, I ask? His options are many and varied. He could keep his head down and hope for political rehabilitation in a couple of years, although if I were Patrick, I wouldn't hold my breath too long. He seems to be inimical to the current vision of Conservatism, though I cannot think of any better-equipped politician to preserve our domestic security. Or he could coalesce around him like-minded Tories, the legions of disaffected nonmetropolitans, and bide his time, waiting for the climate to change and occasionally firing heavy ordnance in the direction of his leader.
What does Conservatism mean to you, Patrick? "Freedom of speech!" He announces, the eyes glinting. Ah yes, that. And what else? "Trusting in the individual to make the best of himself." Anything else? "Having principle." Oh dear me, principle. This is all terribly old-fashioned stuff, don't you think? So is David Cameron a man of principle, I ask him?
"He is the leader," says Mercer. Yes, I know he's the leader. I asked you if he had principle. "He is the leader," he repeats. Yes, I persist, but does he have principle? He finishes his glass of water, smiles a little, narrows his eyes and, from the other side of the table, sticks two fingers up at me. "He is the leader," he says, with finality and stands to leave, which is when the pretty waitress, intrigued by something about this man, asks him what he does for a living. Disgraced Tory politician, love. But he'll be back.
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Horsy schools are winners
It’s the morning break at Danesfield Church of England school, where the staff are engaged in a rather delicate discussion: which one of them is going to clean up the pile of freshly deposited horse manure on the playground?
Danesfield serves the Somerset town of Williton, in the middle of horsey country. Not red coat and 4x4 Mercedes horsey country but the sort of place where down-at-heel boxes — some apparently held together by bailer twine — are towed by elderly Land Rovers that wheeze up hills. The Quantocks are on one side, Exmoor and the Brendans are on the other.
No surprise then that some of the pupils here pack jodhpurs and hard hats into their kit bags. What might surprise you is that Danesfield is a state middle school where 25% of the pupils have special needs.
It’s one of a growing number of state schools that are taking an interest in riding, once seen as a rather upper crust occupation. The organisers of the schools championships at Hickstead in West Sussex say that nearly half the entries now come from state schools, competing alongside the likes of Millfield, also in Somerset, and Cheltenham Ladies’ college. At Danesfield they are particularly proud of their record as the only state school to win a local jumping competition, organised by Wellington school.
Riding is not only a test of athleticism and skill, but it teaches discipline: the horse is in the care of the rider. It can’t be thrown into a box like a cricket bat at the end of a poor innings: it needs feeding, brushing, and mucking out. Saddles and the rest of the tack need to be polished.
And all this discipline has had a marked effect on the special needs pupils of Danesfield. “What it’s really good for is the children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” says special needs co-ordinator Sian Moore. “Some of them come from very deprived backgrounds; they can be very aggressive. But learning to respect an animal, learning that an animal has feelings is very good for them.”
The school offers lunchtime riding lessons at a nearby stables, weekly lessons at the Conquest centre in Taunton, which specialises in teaching riders with learning difficulties.
For some, the prospect of riding lessons is much more attractive than maths, English and history. Parent Lorna Webber used to have difficulty getting her son Jake, 12, out of bed for school on a Monday. He has Asperger’s syndrome and found it difficult to concentrate on his work. Now he not only looks forward to riding on a Friday, but his new enthusiasm has had a knock-on effect with his other work. “He’s taken to it really well,” says Lorna. “He wakes up on Monday morning and says, ‘It’s horse riding on Friday’. “It’s really helped him with his other work because now he has something to look forward to at the end of the week. His concentration is better; he can get his head down and focus.”
The headmaster at Danesfield, Ian Bradbury, has been so struck by the impact of riding at his school that he’s considering expanding. “I’m thinking of putting in our own stables,” he says.
Even with a couple of stables, the school riding team will be a long way behind their independent rivals as far as facilities are concerned. Millfield, famed for its sport, is planning its own specialist polo unit to go with its polo field. It is also laying out its own cross country course. Millfield is just one of a number of schools that provides livery — accommodation for pupils who want to bring their own horses.
Stonar, an independent girls’ school near Bath, has stabling for 60 horses and offers riding scholarships. “Many girls choose to keep their own horses at school,” says the prospectus. “An ambitious young horsewoman can combine her studies with equestrian training, whether or not she has her own horse. Our most talented often go on to compete at national and international levels.” A team from Stonar won the national schools jumping championships last year at Hickstead.
But it’s not just the sport and the glory, it’s not just the discipline, it’s not even the boost it can give to pupils who are struggling with their academic work. There are hidden fringe benefits of riding lessons. As one Danesfield teacher told me: “We had a very promising rider here, who went on to work with horses. Thanks to that, she’s now living with a millionaire.”
Source
CAUTION URGED ON HYPING CLIMATE 'RISKS'
Two leading UK climate researchers have criticised those among their peers who they say are "overplaying" the global warming message. Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, are voicing their concern at a conference in Oxford. They say some researchers make claims about possible future impacts that cannot be justified by the science. The pair believe this damages the credibility of all climate scientists. They think catastrophism and the "Hollywoodisation" of weather and climate only work to create confusion in the public mind. They argue for a more sober and reasoned explanation of the uncertainties about possible future changes in the Earth's climate.
As an example, they point to a recent statement from one of the foremost US science bodies - the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The association released a strongly worded statement at its last annual meeting in San Francisco in February which said: "As expected, intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies. "These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible."
According to Professors Hardaker and Collier, this may well turn out to be true, but convincing evidence to back the claims has not yet emerged. "It's certainly a very strong statement," Professor Collier told BBC News. "I suspect it refers to evidence that hurricanes have increased as a result of global warming; but to make the blanket assumption that all extreme events are increasing is a bit too early yet."
A former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, Professor Collier is concerned that the serious message about the real risks posed by global warming could be undermined by making premature claims. "I think there is a good chance of that," he said. "We must guard against that - it would be very damaging. "I've no doubt that global warming is occurring, but we don't want to undermine that case by crying wolf."
This view is shared by Professor Hardaker, the society's chief executive. "Organisations have been guilty of overplaying the message," he says. "There's no evidence to show we're all due for very short-term devastating impacts as a result of global warming; so I think these statements can be dangerous where you mix in the science with unscientific assumptions."
The AAAS said it would not be commenting directly on the professors' remarks. "We feel that the recent consensus statement of the AAAS Board of Directors speaks for itself and stands on its own," a spokesperson explained. "The AAAS Board statement references (at the end), the scientific basis upon which the conclusions are based, including the joint National Academies' statement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
Professor Hardaker also believes that overblown statements play into the hands of those who say that scientists are wrong on climate change - that global warming is a myth. "I think we do have to be careful as scientists not to overstate the case because it does damage the credibility of the many other things that we have greater certainty about," he said. "We have to stick to what the science is telling us; and I don't think making that sound more sensational, or more sexy, because it gets us more newspaper columns, is the right thing for us to be doing. "We have to let the science argument win out."
Source
BBC "impartiality" at work: "At this year's conference, I was stopped by a BBC radio reporter who was soliciting opinions on the scandal involving Israel's president. "Should he resign?" asked the reporter. "I'm not sure," I replied. "I don't know the facts." "Nice to be able to sit on the fence," the BBC's seeker of truth responded. "Sorry," I added, "but in my country, someone is innocent until proven guilty." He was obviously disappointed by my wanting to examine the evidence before voicing an opinion. That's apparently not a requirement for the BBC in its coverage of accusations of Israelis' transgressions."
Monday, March 19, 2007
CLASS WARFARE REVIVED IN BRITAIN
Middle-class pupils face losing out on university places if their parents have degrees and professional jobs, after changes to the admissions system. For the first time, applicants will be asked to reveal whether their parents also went to university, as part of moves to attract more working-class students into higher education. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said yesterday that it had also decided that information on the occupation and ethnicity of applicants' parents should also be made available to admissions officers. Previously this had been held back until after places were offered. Ucas said that the decision was specifically designed to "support the continuing efforts of universities and colleges to widen participation". Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, confirmed yesterday that the Government was backing the changes.
Critics said that the move smacked of social engineering and that it could be used to discriminate against middle-class students. The new questions, which will appear on Ucas forms from next year, will also ask students if they have ever been in local authority care.
Pat Langham, president of the Girls' Schools Association, said that she had grave concerns over the changes. "Why collect this information at all? If they are going to use it to discriminate against those who they feel are privileged - ie, those whose parents went to university - then what would be the point in anyone ever trying to improve themselves? "I was the first person in my family to go to university. My father was a policeman and my mother a dinner lady. But I'm a headmistress with a degree; were I to have children applying for university under these rules, would they be discriminated against because I have worked hard?"
Research shows that being the first member of a family to go to university is the hardest barrier to break. The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock proudly proclaimed in 1987 that he was "the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to get to university."
Ms Langham also suggested that the new questions would encourage applicants to bend the truth. "If your parents were property developers, applicants could mark them down as a `builders'; if they were managing directors you could describe them as `clerks'. Who is going to establish the veracity of these forms?"
Jonathan Shepherd, generalsecretary of the Independent Schools Council, called the changes "nonsense". He said: "What next? Are they going to go back two or three generations or start collecting people's DNA?"
Oxford University said that it had no intention of using the information, adding that it would hold it back from college admissions officers until after offers had been made and acted upon. Mike Nicholson, director of admissions at Oxford, said: "We haven't any evidence to suggest that this type of information has any valid relevance to the decisions we have to make. It would be far more useful to know whether a candidate predicted to get good grades goes to a school where few pupils expect to do well." But Drummond Bone, president of the vice-chancellors' group Universities UK, said it would allow institutions to understand more about how the applicant got to where they are.
The Government has set aspirational targets for universities designed to get more students from state schools and working-class groups. Some funding is contingent on this. But ministers have been frustrated by lack of progress.Between 2002-03 and 2004-05 the proportion of entrants from state schools fell from 87.2 per cent to 86.7 per cent. Over the same period the proportion of students from lower social classes fell from 28.4 per cent to 28.2 per cent.
Although Ucas says that the new questions are optional, opponents believe that those who refused to answer may also be discriminated against. Boris Johnson, the Shadow Higher Education Minister, said that students should have a right to withhold the new information without fear of prejudice.
Source
THE SOURCES OF GREEN/LEFT GLOOM
Some excerpts below from an interview conducted by Benny Peiser with Freeman Dyson. Dyson is "a British-born American physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and for his serious theorizing in futurism and science fiction concepts, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism, and proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation" (Quote from Wikipedia). Lubos Motl also picks out some highlights of the interview
Benny Peiser: Britain's leading cosmologists seem to be particularly gloomy about the future of civilisation and humankind. The so-called Doomsday Argument seems to have had a significant influence on many Cambridge-based scientists. It has induced among them a conviction that global catastrophe is almost imminent. Martin Rees, for instance, estimates that there is a 50% chance of human extinction during the next 100 years. How do you explain this apocalyptic mood among leading cosmologists in Britain and the almost desperate tone of their pronouncements?
Freeman Dyson: My view of the prevalence of doom-and-gloom in Cambridge is that it is a result of the English class system. In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status. As a child of the academic middle class, I learned to look on the commercial middle class with loathing and contempt. Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher, which was also the revenge of the commercial middle class. The academics lost their power and prestige and the business people took over. The academics never forgave Thatcher and have been gloomy ever since.
Benny Peiser: Your sociological reading raises the question whether the current fashion of issuing doomsday predictions could be interpreted as the revenge by leading academics against the business community? After all, their very activities, success and societal role are blamed for impending catastrophe. Could it be that the scientific prophets of doom are trying to regain some of their lost influence by portraying themselves as saviours who, at the same time, provide governments with strong incentives for increased state power and intervention?
Freeman Dyson: I agree with your diagnosis of the academic disease. The academics are suffering from business envy, in the USA as well as in Britain. And of course there are companies like Halliburton that it is reasonable to hate, enjoying political power in the Bush government and profiteering from the war that they encouraged Bush to start. Opposition to the war is mixed up with opposition to the business community. But I agree with you that there is a longer-lasting envy of the business community that has nothing to do with the war. The academics preaching doom and gloom are indeed hoping to take their revenge on the business community by capturing the government.
Benny Peiser: There has been an apparent shift among the political left and liberals from what used to be called progressive ideas to more dystopian anxieties. What are the reasons that you have not been carried away by this tide of cultural and technological pessimism. And why have so few academics and authors of popular science been able to resist this shift towards unhappiness and desperation? In other words, how much of our optimism is shaped by people around us and positive experiences, and how much is due to rational thought, I wonder?
Freeman Dyson: I do not agree that there has been a recent shift from progressive ideas to dystopian anxieties. The best writers have always been dystopian. In the 1890s we had Wells's Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau'. In the 1930s Huxley's Brave New World. These were the classics that I grew up with seventy years ago. Nothing that has been written recently is gloomier than Wells and Huxley. And in spite of that, there have always been optimists like me and Amory Lovins. I recommend Amory Lovins as an antidote to gloom and doom.
Benny Peiser: Finally, let me ask you about your thoughts regarding Britain, the country of your birth, the USA, the country of your choice, and the future of the Western democracies. At the end of your new book you write that "without religion, the life of a country would be greatly impoverished." Perhaps nothing symbolises the glaring differences between Britain and the USA more than the gradual fading of religion in the cultural life of the UK and the profound permeation of religion on public life in the US. Sometimes I wonder whether both extremes may be detrimental to a stable, liberal and open-minded society. In a world of mounting intellectual dogmatism, is there, in your view, a middle way between the Scylla of nihilist despair and the Carybis of fundamentalist unreasonableness?
Freeman Dyson: I do not agree with your assessment of religion in Britain and the USA. The extremes of religious dogmatism in the USA and of atheistic dogmatism in Britain are greatly exaggerated by the media. In both countries, the average atheist and the average Christian are not dogmatic or unreasonable. So far as I can see, there is about the same variety of beliefs on both sides of the ocean. Certainly we do not need any accurate navigation to find a middle way between the two extremes. Probably ninety percent of the population are somewhere in the middle. It is also interesting in this connection to observe the similarity, in optimistic mood and rapid material progress, between China and India. Although China is traditionally non-religious and India is traditionally permeated with religion, this does not seem to make much difference. In both countries, rapidly growing wealth and technological progress create a mood of optimism, with or without religion.
And these little piggies might offend Muslims....
A school production of Roald Dahl's Three Little Pigs has turned the heroes into three little puppies for fear of offending Muslims. Dahl's play, in which he reworks Little Red Riding Hood to include the pigs, is being put on by Honley Church of England School, in Huddersfield, with 250 primary pupils from other schools singing along.
Gill Goodswen, who is one of the organisers of the Kirklees Primary Music festival behind the changes, said: "We have to be sensitive if we want to be multi-cultural. It was felt it would be more responsible not to use the three little pigs."
She said the committee had to consider the feelings of children who would be singing along, not just the performers. "We feared that some Muslim children wouldn't sing along to the words about pigs," she added. "We didn't want to take that risk. If changing a few words avoids offence then we will do so."
One parent, a mother-of-three, said: "Surely there are much worse things to worry about in the world than a story about three little pigs? It is really ridiculous."
Local councillor Terry Lyons said: "I can't believe that Muslims would be offended. This is pandering to a few extremists. People will take umbrage at this decision, making it easier for the BNP to recruit."
Mohammed Imran, of the nearby Hanfia Mosque and Educational Institute, said he welcomed the thinking behind the decision but did not think it was necessary. He pointed out that Islam does not ban the mentioning of pigs but added: "They are obviously trying to involve children rather than exclude them."
But Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, said: "My view is that the people responsible for this are completely bonkers. It is the type of political correctness which makes people's blood boil. "As usual it is done in the name of ethnic minorities but it is perpetrated by white, middle class, do-gooders with a guilt complex and far too much time on their hands."
Source
The British Labour party gets desperate
Tony Blair is to invite retail chains including Tesco, Virgin and Boots to bid to run GP surgeries on behalf of the NHS with contracts worth 225 million pounds over five years. GPs will be encouraged to run clinics at breakfast time and in the early evening in poor areas where conventional family doctors have been reluctant to practise. Blair’s announcement, to be made tomorrow, is intended to ensure Gordon Brown carries on his reforms of the NHS after Blair leaves Downing Street. The prime minister will respond to Tory claims that he has left the NHS in “crisis” by publishing his ideas for “progressive” reform of public services. He will allow GPs to link up with pharmacies and supermarket drug counters by sharing electronic patient records.
In an indication that he is signed up to the scheme, the chancellor will announce measures to expand the use of “community pharmacies” for routine treatments and tests. Tomorrow Blair will publish the first of six policy review papers, on public services, in an effort to shift the emphasis away from producers to consumers. Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, will name the first towns to take part in the new programme. Extra family practices, walk-in centres and minor injuries units will be opened in Hartlepool, Durham, Mansfield and Great Yarmouth. Other areas will join the programme in the coming months. Contracts for the new services will run for an initial five years, with the possibility of extension.
Although there is no national shortage of GPs, there are many “underdoctored” areas in England and Wales. The four areas involved in the first wave have significantly fewer GPs per person than the national average of 57.9 GPs per 100,000 people. The programme aims to attract a broad range of providers, from existing entrepreneurial GPs to social enterprises and FTSE-100 companies. Some extra GPs and nurses will be recruited for up to 30 health blackspots to tackle local shortages of doctors.
David Cameron will also focus on the NHS in a speech to the Conservative party’s spring forum in Nottingham today. He is expected to say: “It used to be said that Labour were the party of the NHS. Not any more. Labour are the party that is undermining the health service. “There’s a simple reason why. It’s not because they don’t care. But it is because of their values and philosophy: Labour’s mania for controlling and directing things from the centre; Labour’s pessimism about human nature; Labour’s belief that if people aren’t told what to do, they’ll do the wrong thing. Labour just don’t trust people.”
Thousands of doctors staged marches in London and Glasgow yesterday to protest at reforms to the system of medical training. They accuse the government of trying to “disempower and degrade” the profession.
Source
Junior doctor selection chaos will ‘block medical progress in Britain’
The chaotic selection system for junior doctors is threatening British medical science as well as leaving thousands of trained doctors without jobs, leading clinical researchers said yesterday. The online application process for specialist training posts will lead to a shortage of medically qualified scientists, because it does not give credit to the academic and research achievements of junior doctors, senior scientists said. The Medical Training Application Service (MTAS), which puts candidates on shortlists for specialist jobs by computer, using a rigid scoring system, has been denounced as unfair by the British Medical Association. Junior doctors and consultants have called for it to be suspended.
The system has left more than 30,000 qualified junior doctors competing for 22,000 jobs, and consultants have refused to interview candidates because they regard the shortlisting process as unfair. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the Health Minister, was forced to order a review of the system last week, and thousands of doctors are expected to join protest marches in London and Glasgow tomorrow. Further criticism of MTAS has come from medical research groups, who said that the “dumbed-down” method of selecting the best candidates for specialist training paid “scant regard” to the needs of clinical research. The shortlisting system did not take account of junior doctors’ academic achievements or published research, it was claimed. This made it impossible to ensure that the brightest doctors were given appropriate posts.
Professor John Bell, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and Professor Sir John Tooke, chairman of the Council of Heads of Medical Schools, yesterday wrote an open letter to the British Medical Journal condemning the reforms. “Academic trainees — those doctors wishing to pursue careers which encompass research as well as patient care — have been particularly badly affected by the decision to anonymise applications and deprive the assessors of details of previous clinical and research experience,” they said. “Without a scientifically informed and research-orientated medical workforce throughout the country, the Government’s vision of the UK as a world-class centre for bio-medical research and health-care cannot be realised.”
A poll of more than 1,700 people, including more than 400 consultants, found that most wanted the scheme to be suspended or scrapped. Morris Brown, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge, who organised the survey, said that the results showed that the Government’s review did not go far enough. “Many doctors that preferred to be a physician, for instance, were allocated instead to interviews in surgery or general practice, and would not receive a second chance. Those rejected altogether may not find any of their preferred options available in the second round,” he said. “All but 205 and 241 respondents, respectively, want the first and second rounds of interviews aborted now.” He said that all but 119 respondents believed that the architects of the NHS Modernising Medical Careers programme should resign
Source
Middle-class pupils face losing out on university places if their parents have degrees and professional jobs, after changes to the admissions system. For the first time, applicants will be asked to reveal whether their parents also went to university, as part of moves to attract more working-class students into higher education. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said yesterday that it had also decided that information on the occupation and ethnicity of applicants' parents should also be made available to admissions officers. Previously this had been held back until after places were offered. Ucas said that the decision was specifically designed to "support the continuing efforts of universities and colleges to widen participation". Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, confirmed yesterday that the Government was backing the changes.
Critics said that the move smacked of social engineering and that it could be used to discriminate against middle-class students. The new questions, which will appear on Ucas forms from next year, will also ask students if they have ever been in local authority care.
Pat Langham, president of the Girls' Schools Association, said that she had grave concerns over the changes. "Why collect this information at all? If they are going to use it to discriminate against those who they feel are privileged - ie, those whose parents went to university - then what would be the point in anyone ever trying to improve themselves? "I was the first person in my family to go to university. My father was a policeman and my mother a dinner lady. But I'm a headmistress with a degree; were I to have children applying for university under these rules, would they be discriminated against because I have worked hard?"
Research shows that being the first member of a family to go to university is the hardest barrier to break. The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock proudly proclaimed in 1987 that he was "the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to get to university."
Ms Langham also suggested that the new questions would encourage applicants to bend the truth. "If your parents were property developers, applicants could mark them down as a `builders'; if they were managing directors you could describe them as `clerks'. Who is going to establish the veracity of these forms?"
Jonathan Shepherd, generalsecretary of the Independent Schools Council, called the changes "nonsense". He said: "What next? Are they going to go back two or three generations or start collecting people's DNA?"
Oxford University said that it had no intention of using the information, adding that it would hold it back from college admissions officers until after offers had been made and acted upon. Mike Nicholson, director of admissions at Oxford, said: "We haven't any evidence to suggest that this type of information has any valid relevance to the decisions we have to make. It would be far more useful to know whether a candidate predicted to get good grades goes to a school where few pupils expect to do well." But Drummond Bone, president of the vice-chancellors' group Universities UK, said it would allow institutions to understand more about how the applicant got to where they are.
The Government has set aspirational targets for universities designed to get more students from state schools and working-class groups. Some funding is contingent on this. But ministers have been frustrated by lack of progress.Between 2002-03 and 2004-05 the proportion of entrants from state schools fell from 87.2 per cent to 86.7 per cent. Over the same period the proportion of students from lower social classes fell from 28.4 per cent to 28.2 per cent.
Although Ucas says that the new questions are optional, opponents believe that those who refused to answer may also be discriminated against. Boris Johnson, the Shadow Higher Education Minister, said that students should have a right to withhold the new information without fear of prejudice.
Source
THE SOURCES OF GREEN/LEFT GLOOM
Some excerpts below from an interview conducted by Benny Peiser with Freeman Dyson. Dyson is "a British-born American physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and for his serious theorizing in futurism and science fiction concepts, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism, and proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation" (Quote from Wikipedia). Lubos Motl also picks out some highlights of the interview
Benny Peiser: Britain's leading cosmologists seem to be particularly gloomy about the future of civilisation and humankind. The so-called Doomsday Argument seems to have had a significant influence on many Cambridge-based scientists. It has induced among them a conviction that global catastrophe is almost imminent. Martin Rees, for instance, estimates that there is a 50% chance of human extinction during the next 100 years. How do you explain this apocalyptic mood among leading cosmologists in Britain and the almost desperate tone of their pronouncements?
Freeman Dyson: My view of the prevalence of doom-and-gloom in Cambridge is that it is a result of the English class system. In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status. As a child of the academic middle class, I learned to look on the commercial middle class with loathing and contempt. Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher, which was also the revenge of the commercial middle class. The academics lost their power and prestige and the business people took over. The academics never forgave Thatcher and have been gloomy ever since.
Benny Peiser: Your sociological reading raises the question whether the current fashion of issuing doomsday predictions could be interpreted as the revenge by leading academics against the business community? After all, their very activities, success and societal role are blamed for impending catastrophe. Could it be that the scientific prophets of doom are trying to regain some of their lost influence by portraying themselves as saviours who, at the same time, provide governments with strong incentives for increased state power and intervention?
Freeman Dyson: I agree with your diagnosis of the academic disease. The academics are suffering from business envy, in the USA as well as in Britain. And of course there are companies like Halliburton that it is reasonable to hate, enjoying political power in the Bush government and profiteering from the war that they encouraged Bush to start. Opposition to the war is mixed up with opposition to the business community. But I agree with you that there is a longer-lasting envy of the business community that has nothing to do with the war. The academics preaching doom and gloom are indeed hoping to take their revenge on the business community by capturing the government.
Benny Peiser: There has been an apparent shift among the political left and liberals from what used to be called progressive ideas to more dystopian anxieties. What are the reasons that you have not been carried away by this tide of cultural and technological pessimism. And why have so few academics and authors of popular science been able to resist this shift towards unhappiness and desperation? In other words, how much of our optimism is shaped by people around us and positive experiences, and how much is due to rational thought, I wonder?
Freeman Dyson: I do not agree that there has been a recent shift from progressive ideas to dystopian anxieties. The best writers have always been dystopian. In the 1890s we had Wells's Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau'. In the 1930s Huxley's Brave New World. These were the classics that I grew up with seventy years ago. Nothing that has been written recently is gloomier than Wells and Huxley. And in spite of that, there have always been optimists like me and Amory Lovins. I recommend Amory Lovins as an antidote to gloom and doom.
Benny Peiser: Finally, let me ask you about your thoughts regarding Britain, the country of your birth, the USA, the country of your choice, and the future of the Western democracies. At the end of your new book you write that "without religion, the life of a country would be greatly impoverished." Perhaps nothing symbolises the glaring differences between Britain and the USA more than the gradual fading of religion in the cultural life of the UK and the profound permeation of religion on public life in the US. Sometimes I wonder whether both extremes may be detrimental to a stable, liberal and open-minded society. In a world of mounting intellectual dogmatism, is there, in your view, a middle way between the Scylla of nihilist despair and the Carybis of fundamentalist unreasonableness?
Freeman Dyson: I do not agree with your assessment of religion in Britain and the USA. The extremes of religious dogmatism in the USA and of atheistic dogmatism in Britain are greatly exaggerated by the media. In both countries, the average atheist and the average Christian are not dogmatic or unreasonable. So far as I can see, there is about the same variety of beliefs on both sides of the ocean. Certainly we do not need any accurate navigation to find a middle way between the two extremes. Probably ninety percent of the population are somewhere in the middle. It is also interesting in this connection to observe the similarity, in optimistic mood and rapid material progress, between China and India. Although China is traditionally non-religious and India is traditionally permeated with religion, this does not seem to make much difference. In both countries, rapidly growing wealth and technological progress create a mood of optimism, with or without religion.
And these little piggies might offend Muslims....
A school production of Roald Dahl's Three Little Pigs has turned the heroes into three little puppies for fear of offending Muslims. Dahl's play, in which he reworks Little Red Riding Hood to include the pigs, is being put on by Honley Church of England School, in Huddersfield, with 250 primary pupils from other schools singing along.
Gill Goodswen, who is one of the organisers of the Kirklees Primary Music festival behind the changes, said: "We have to be sensitive if we want to be multi-cultural. It was felt it would be more responsible not to use the three little pigs."
She said the committee had to consider the feelings of children who would be singing along, not just the performers. "We feared that some Muslim children wouldn't sing along to the words about pigs," she added. "We didn't want to take that risk. If changing a few words avoids offence then we will do so."
One parent, a mother-of-three, said: "Surely there are much worse things to worry about in the world than a story about three little pigs? It is really ridiculous."
Local councillor Terry Lyons said: "I can't believe that Muslims would be offended. This is pandering to a few extremists. People will take umbrage at this decision, making it easier for the BNP to recruit."
Mohammed Imran, of the nearby Hanfia Mosque and Educational Institute, said he welcomed the thinking behind the decision but did not think it was necessary. He pointed out that Islam does not ban the mentioning of pigs but added: "They are obviously trying to involve children rather than exclude them."
But Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, said: "My view is that the people responsible for this are completely bonkers. It is the type of political correctness which makes people's blood boil. "As usual it is done in the name of ethnic minorities but it is perpetrated by white, middle class, do-gooders with a guilt complex and far too much time on their hands."
Source
The British Labour party gets desperate
Tony Blair is to invite retail chains including Tesco, Virgin and Boots to bid to run GP surgeries on behalf of the NHS with contracts worth 225 million pounds over five years. GPs will be encouraged to run clinics at breakfast time and in the early evening in poor areas where conventional family doctors have been reluctant to practise. Blair’s announcement, to be made tomorrow, is intended to ensure Gordon Brown carries on his reforms of the NHS after Blair leaves Downing Street. The prime minister will respond to Tory claims that he has left the NHS in “crisis” by publishing his ideas for “progressive” reform of public services. He will allow GPs to link up with pharmacies and supermarket drug counters by sharing electronic patient records.
In an indication that he is signed up to the scheme, the chancellor will announce measures to expand the use of “community pharmacies” for routine treatments and tests. Tomorrow Blair will publish the first of six policy review papers, on public services, in an effort to shift the emphasis away from producers to consumers. Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, will name the first towns to take part in the new programme. Extra family practices, walk-in centres and minor injuries units will be opened in Hartlepool, Durham, Mansfield and Great Yarmouth. Other areas will join the programme in the coming months. Contracts for the new services will run for an initial five years, with the possibility of extension.
Although there is no national shortage of GPs, there are many “underdoctored” areas in England and Wales. The four areas involved in the first wave have significantly fewer GPs per person than the national average of 57.9 GPs per 100,000 people. The programme aims to attract a broad range of providers, from existing entrepreneurial GPs to social enterprises and FTSE-100 companies. Some extra GPs and nurses will be recruited for up to 30 health blackspots to tackle local shortages of doctors.
David Cameron will also focus on the NHS in a speech to the Conservative party’s spring forum in Nottingham today. He is expected to say: “It used to be said that Labour were the party of the NHS. Not any more. Labour are the party that is undermining the health service. “There’s a simple reason why. It’s not because they don’t care. But it is because of their values and philosophy: Labour’s mania for controlling and directing things from the centre; Labour’s pessimism about human nature; Labour’s belief that if people aren’t told what to do, they’ll do the wrong thing. Labour just don’t trust people.”
Thousands of doctors staged marches in London and Glasgow yesterday to protest at reforms to the system of medical training. They accuse the government of trying to “disempower and degrade” the profession.
Source
Junior doctor selection chaos will ‘block medical progress in Britain’
The chaotic selection system for junior doctors is threatening British medical science as well as leaving thousands of trained doctors without jobs, leading clinical researchers said yesterday. The online application process for specialist training posts will lead to a shortage of medically qualified scientists, because it does not give credit to the academic and research achievements of junior doctors, senior scientists said. The Medical Training Application Service (MTAS), which puts candidates on shortlists for specialist jobs by computer, using a rigid scoring system, has been denounced as unfair by the British Medical Association. Junior doctors and consultants have called for it to be suspended.
The system has left more than 30,000 qualified junior doctors competing for 22,000 jobs, and consultants have refused to interview candidates because they regard the shortlisting process as unfair. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the Health Minister, was forced to order a review of the system last week, and thousands of doctors are expected to join protest marches in London and Glasgow tomorrow. Further criticism of MTAS has come from medical research groups, who said that the “dumbed-down” method of selecting the best candidates for specialist training paid “scant regard” to the needs of clinical research. The shortlisting system did not take account of junior doctors’ academic achievements or published research, it was claimed. This made it impossible to ensure that the brightest doctors were given appropriate posts.
Professor John Bell, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and Professor Sir John Tooke, chairman of the Council of Heads of Medical Schools, yesterday wrote an open letter to the British Medical Journal condemning the reforms. “Academic trainees — those doctors wishing to pursue careers which encompass research as well as patient care — have been particularly badly affected by the decision to anonymise applications and deprive the assessors of details of previous clinical and research experience,” they said. “Without a scientifically informed and research-orientated medical workforce throughout the country, the Government’s vision of the UK as a world-class centre for bio-medical research and health-care cannot be realised.”
A poll of more than 1,700 people, including more than 400 consultants, found that most wanted the scheme to be suspended or scrapped. Morris Brown, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge, who organised the survey, said that the results showed that the Government’s review did not go far enough. “Many doctors that preferred to be a physician, for instance, were allocated instead to interviews in surgery or general practice, and would not receive a second chance. Those rejected altogether may not find any of their preferred options available in the second round,” he said. “All but 205 and 241 respondents, respectively, want the first and second rounds of interviews aborted now.” He said that all but 119 respondents believed that the architects of the NHS Modernising Medical Careers programme should resign
Source
Sunday, March 18, 2007
BBC ARROGANCE AND BIAS
As my colleague James Harding wrote in times2 this week, there's a vibrancy about London these days that easily eclipses New York or Paris or Tokyo. To many residents, perhaps, life in London may be a struggle against rising crime and a crowded Tube and overpriced housing, but from an international perspective, it is truly the world's preeminent urban locale. In fact, in anything other than the most literal, geographic expression of the term, London is really no longer an English city at all. Its great economic dynamo, the City, powers corporations from Shanghai to Seattle. Its labour force, drawn to it by the opportunities of its free markets, is much more polyglot and multinational than any other urban concentration in the world.
But there's salt to this strawberry. London's political culture has been uprooted from its English heritage. It is run - if you can call it that - by a sort of postmodern communist Mayor, whose political voice - minus the annoying nasal whine - would sound right at home in Paris, Bologna or San Francisco. It hosts a metropolitan elite that loftily gazes three ways: outward, at the supposed superiority of anything not British; inward, at its own ineffable genius; and down its elegantly pampered nose, at the provincial trivialities that consume the dreary lives of the rest of the population.
But worst of all; much more, much more baleful than any of these irritations, is the political, cultural and intellectual hegemony exercised by the ultimate self-serving metropolitan monopoly, the BBC. Much worse because, unlike mayors and snobs, its domination of the rest of the country is so complete and so permanent.
On a recent trip back to Britain, I happened to hear on the BBC an interview with Helen Mirren, shortly before her Oscars triumph. Amid the usual probing sort of questioning that is the currency of celebrity journalism ("How do you manage to look so young? Is there anyone since Shakespeare who has come close to matching your talent?") one particular gem caught my attention.
Dame Helen was asked how difficult it had been to play such an "unsympathetic character" as the Queen, the eponymous heroine of her recent film. She replied, quite tartly, that she didn't find the Queen unsympathetic at all and launched into her now familiar riff about how she thought Elizabeth II really, surprisingly, quite agreeable.
It was a little incident, a small crystal in the battering hailstorm of drivel that pours daily through the airwaves. And yet to my mind it signified something so large. It had nothing to do with politics or Iraq or America. It was so telling in its revelation of prejudices and presumptions precisely because it was on such a slight matter as the sensibilities of an actress.
It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch - or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world - must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media's cultural enlightenment. More than that, the question - all fawning and fraternal and friendly - contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.
You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC's grasp of the nation's cultural and political soul has become. The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation's output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.
This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world - from colonialism to global warming.
I'm often told, when I take on like this, that I'm ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I've no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to.
A necessary word here about our sponsor. Anything critical of the BBC written by an employee of Rupert Murdoch is instantly dismissed. It's not an unreasonable instinct. Outside Murdochland it is solemnly assumed that each morning the drones of News Corporation are given their marching orders on how to interpret every event so that it conforms precisely to the commercial and political instincts of the proprietor.
In the real world, not only does the Murdoch media have only a fraction of the reach of the BBC, but a casual glance at its output demonstrates it is far less monolithic in its outlook than is the BBC.
Fortunately, in the US this week, I was struck by an article on the oped pages of The New York Times, the very citadel of leftish political correctness. Written by an apparently completely sane professor at a prestigious US university and entitled "Biased Broadcasting Corporation", it assailed the BBC's Middle Eastern services for their consistently anti-Western tone and content.
When the editorial pages of The New York Times accuse the BBC of anti-Western bias it is worth taking notice. It is a little like Osama bin Laden accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being a bit harsh on the Jews. It suggests that in other, even pretty unlikely, parts of the world, people are waking up to the menace to our values represented by the BBC. The British sadly, seem curiously content to remain in thrall to it.
Source
"TRADING TRUTH FOR INFLUENCE"
The latest IPCC report which reduces expected sea-level rise from feet to inches has got the Greenies rattled. Wretchard comments below on the rather amazing retreat from reality by a prominent global warmer -- who says that Greenies must trade "normal" truth for influence. It is a pretty good admission that global warming is not true in any normal sense.
The "precautionary principle" he invokes is in any case a philosophically silly detour. What do we take precautions against? A new ice age? One of those is geologically overdue. So you get straight back to a need to evaluate the evidence. What we do would be the opposite if we thought that a new ice age were more probable -- which it is.
Melanie Phillips is scathing about the anti-scientific Prof. Hulme too and Lubos Motl also weighs in
Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, argues in the Guardian that while scientific evidence may cast doubt on Global Warming why believe science? When a larger truth must be expressed, then "post-normal" science must be employed. (Hat tip: Melanie Philips and a Belmont Club reader)
Hulme argues that Global Warming is so important that everyone must act to stop it, whether or not it is scientifically known to exist.
It is an argument superficially similar in structure to Pascal's Wager, which is an expected value argument for the existence of God.
But any resemblance between Pascal and Hulme ends there. While Pascal's Wager describes an approach to problems which are in principle unknowable to science because they are unobservable, at least with present methods, Hulme on the other hand, exiles phenomena which are entirely observable and which ought to be primarily in the domain of science to the realm of political activism. While in Pascal's Wager a personal bet on the existence of God can never alter the fact of His actual existence or non-existence and is therefore entirely private, Hulme's exhortation to base a global program of social and climate engineering on "post-normal" political science amounts to a kind of self-appointed and potentially catastrophic tyranny.
In declaring himself free of the traditional scientific burden of proof Hulme finally abandons any pretense to authority. He has no rigorous way to tell us what is going to happen next. Nor is he willing to discuss it with those who do. There are two ways to predict the future. Statistics can help us predict the future based on trends which arise from the past, like driving a car with a blacked-out windshield by extrapolating from the scene in the rearview mirror. The stronger way is to possess an analytic model of the phenomenon such that we can "see" the future in the way that we can predict the future position of Mars by celestial mechanics in order to meet it with a space probe. Of the two ways Hulme has neither, nor did the Global Warming crowd ever even pretend to have the second; but now there is no requirement to even have the first. Presumably Hulme would object to being labeled a jackass using the "post-normal" methods he advocates. It might be a false accusation, but then we're not talking about proof, are we?
Update
Here's a YouTube clip from a Harvard astrosphysicist on the subject of "precautionary principle" as applied to weather engineering and the punishment its critics faced half a millenium ago. She has another word from the "post-normal" method of thinking: superstition. Click here
Summary of skeptical film
As Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" becomes mandatory viewing for many U.S. school children and nears becoming the "official truth" about global warming, it comes as most welcome news that an absolutely gripping film rebuttal has made its international debut, much to the chagrin of true believers in man-made climate change.
Last week, the UK's Channel 4 premiered a 75-minute film entitled, "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Through interviews with prize-winning climate experts and others, this masterful documentary explains the origins of global warming alarmism; debunks claims of man-made global climate change; exposes the motivations of organizations, scientists and activists sounding the alarm; and explains why it's been extremely difficult, if not downright dangerous, for climate scientists to question global warming orthodoxy publicly.
The entire film, which is creating quite a stir among tens of thousands of web viewers, can be viewed online at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831.
According to the film, the origins of global warming alarmism had its roots in the 1970s-era fears of global cooling and an impending ice age, resulting from the 1940-1970 global temperature decline. Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin suggested at the time that man-made greenhouse gas emissions might offset the cooling by warming the atmosphere.
When Margaret Thatcher became UK Prime Minister in 1979, her mandate was to reduce Britain's economic decline. Thatcher wanted to make the UK energy-independent through nuclear power - she didn't like her country's reliance on coal, which politically empowered the coal miner unions, or oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states.
So Thatcher latched onto Bolin's notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby providing the perfect political cover for advancing her nuclear power agenda without having to fight the miners or Arab oil states.
She empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin global climate change research, a move that eventually led to the 1988 creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations' group that has come to be the "official" international agency for global warming alarmism.
At about the same time, as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore explains on-camera, environmentalism became more extreme. By the mid-1980s, environmental goals - e.g., clean air and clean water - had become so mainstream that activists had to adopt more extreme positions to remain anti-establishment.
Then when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, many "peace-niks" and political activists moved over to environmental activism, bringing their "neo-Marxist" political philosophy with them. As Moore puts it, environmentalism became the "new guise for anti-capitalism."
Global warming alarmism was thus borne from this combination of official British policy, environmentalism's rejection of its own success and political opportunism by "unemployed" left-wing political activists.
With such an inglorious heritage, it's no wonder the scientists in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" have little trouble dismantling climate myths. Perhaps the most important bit of scientific knowledge presented is the actual relationship between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide. In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore disingenuously describes the relationship as "complex" while implying that higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cause higher global temperatures. But according to the geological record and data from ice cores, higher temperatures actually precede higher carbon dioxide levels by about 800 years. Twentieth century data support this idea in at least two ways. First, most of the 20th century's warming occurred before 1940, while most of the century's greenhouse gas emissions occurred after 1940. Next, when manmade greenhouse gas emissions soared in the post World War II industrial boom, global temperatures declined until the mid-1970s, leading to the aforementioned global cooling concerns.
The Channel 4 program notes that ongoing temperature measurements contradict global warming theory. According to the theory, lower atmosphere temperatures should be warming at a much faster rate than those at the Earth's surface. In reality, however, just the opposite is occurring.
Then there's the sun - the gigantic yellow ball in the sky that climate alarmists want all of us to ignore in favor of minute emissions of an invisible gas that makes up less than one-half of one percent of the Earth's atmosphere. As it turns out, solar activity - unlike atmospheric carbon dioxide levels - correlates quite well with historic temperature changes, including through its effects on cosmic rays and clouds, as the film demonstrates quite effectively.
So why does the world seem to be caught up in the vise-like grip of a controversy that is contradicted by available scientific data and its own dubious heritage According to the scientists in the movie, there is an intolerance of dissent on global warming. Official government sanction of global warming opened the floodgates of funding to climate researchers, who previously worked in obscurity.
NASA scientist Roy Spencer says in the program that climate scientists need for there to be problems to get more funding. IPCC contributor John Christy says of climate scientists, "We have a vested interest in creating panic because money with then flow to climate scientists." University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that "If the global warming virago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of jobs."
The film also debunks the IPCC claim that the 2,500 scientists contributing to its reports also support its alarmist conclusions. One key IPCC contributor for example, the Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, threatened to sue the IPCC if the group didn't remove his name from a chapter with which he disagreed.
When I met Al Gore in January 2006 after a presentation of his climate slideshow, I asked him if he'd be interested in setting up a public debate between climate scientists. He declined - twice. At this point, I'd settle for a movie face-off - "An Inconvenient Truth" vs. "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Let the public see both sides of the story and then we'll see who's believable and who's not.
Source
NHS DREAMING
[TV show] "Tomorrow's World" is like our Government in its attitude to the NHS. Ministers stand, Raymond Baxter-like, with a futuristic blueprint of how life will be; and they know that if they make it sound sensational enough, and have a perpetual showcase of ideas, we will barely notice that, in essence, the gadgets from the last episode are kaput, nothing has changed and all we receive are updates of stuff that did not work particularly well in the first place.
Coming soon from Tomorrow's NHS: an air-conditioning unit for those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Marvel as the Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, explains how it will work at a press conference today. Gasp as she neatly sidesteps the fact that if everybody with this incurable illness took up the offer of air-con installation, the cost would be in the region of o250 million. Gasp anyway when the next heatwave hits and you realise there is about as much chance of your GP springing for this as there is of your local Ford dealer contacting you about the flying four-door saloon you've had on order since 1973.
Do not be alarmed, though. There will be another glimpse of our brave new NHS world next month if Gordon pulls off his favourite trick by reinventing some old money as new in his budget. Maybe the paper-clip counters will lift their restrictions on drugs that stave off aggressive cancers or slow Alzheimer's disease. Doubt it. Most likely, there will just be the usual round of meetings, followed by a stalemate and the rearranging of figures to make it look as something has been done.
"Tomorrow's World" fizzled out because even in the computer age there are not that many new inventions. There are tweaks and refinements but it is not every week that a bloke marches into the television studio, consigns your 45s to the bin and hands you something called a compact disc. So it is with the NHS. We are led to believe that big, new ideas are happening all the time. Yet those who base their opinions on first-hand experience understand that little is different under Labour. We have various pronouncements and initiatives but, as ever, nobody gets out of casualty within four hours and waiting lists for big operations are still ticked off in years and months, not weeks.
When my father-in-law was dying of a brain tumour (called glioblastoma multiforme, the axe-wielding psychopath of the cancer family) and required round-the-clock care, three suits from the local health authority attempted to have the budgetary meeting about which department picked up his tab while drinking tea in his sitting-room, in front of his family. That was a decade ago. Now, his widow, my mother-in-law, waits for a hip replacement that was agreed to be essential the Christmas before last. The Health Secretary will tell you that care has changed and nobody waits more than six months for hip operations these days. If they do, the local trust has to pay to send the patient private. But that's another flying car. The actuality is that the six-month countdown only kicks in when a patient is on the waiting list, so if there is no availability the trick is to keep her off the register for as long as possible.
Say an elderly woman whose blood pressure is up, which it might be if she was on the highest daily dose of morphine for pain, and who is throwing up every morning as a side-effect, had hung about in a corridor for two hours and was then being seen in the NHS equivalent of a MASH unit with twin consultations taking place side-by-side in the same grubby room. Well, you cannot have the operation with raised blood pressure, so we have to get that under control before we can put you on the list. The same, next time, with that slightly high thyroid reading. We'll need to adjust your medication first, I'm afraid.
No doubt it is important. But a thyroid takes weeks to get under control, the waiting list is measured in months, but the two cannot run together because this is not about good health, but good housekeeping, the management of cost and resources, better to manipulate figures. All the patient can do is keep going back in the hope that, next time, the health service can find no reason to stall. Meanwhile, drink your morphine.
So when the Health Secretary stands up with the promise of a chilled climate for a million incurable wheezers this summer, please excuse my scepticism. She may see a vision of a healthy future, but from here it is just another holiday on Mars. Air-conditioning to be provided by people that can't find you a bed? Don't hold your breath.
Source
THE POMEGRANATE ENTHUSIASM
They have been a common sight in Brisbane suburban gardens over the years, but now the humble pomegranate is reaching celebrity status in the UK. And it's all because of their supposed health benefits. Demand for the fruit has grown by 76 per cent across stores over the past year, figures from market analysts TNS show. Dubbed a "superfood", the pomegranate has overtaken blueberries as Britain's fastest growing seller, according to supermarket chain Tesco which sold 3.8 million pomegranates in the past year - an increase of two million on the previous year. Other products dubbed "superfoods" because of their health benefits include spinach, broccoli, avocados and fish rich in omega 3 oils.
The pomegranate is a native fruit of the Middle East which grows well in Queensland's tropical conditions. Just one pomegranate provides around 40 per cent of the daily recommended vitamin C intake. They also contain high levels of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents and have been shown to help with the treatment of a range of illnesses including osteoarthritis and cardiovascular disease.
Research from the US also has revealed that eating pomegranates slows down the progress of prostate cancer. Last year, a team at the University of California, Los Angeles found drinking just one glass of pomegranate juice a day could allow a man aged 65-70 years who already has prostate cancer to complete his normal lifespan without harsh medical treatments. More than 2500 men die from prostate cancer in Australia each year.
That US research team found pomegranate juice dramatically slowed prostate cancer in mice. "Our study, while early, adds to growing evidence that pomegranates contain very powerful agents against cancer, particularly prostate cancer," said Professor Hasan Mukhtar who led the study. "There is good reason now to test this fruit in humans, both for cancer prevention and treatment."
Source
Journal abstract follows. Note that the research showed effects only in the test tube and in specially prepared mice. It is a big leap from that to an effect on human lifespan
Pomegranate fruit juice for chemoprevention and chemotherapy of prostate cancer
Arshi Malik et al
Prostate cancer is the most common invasive malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among U.S. males, with a similar trend in many Western countries. One approach to control this malignancy is its prevention through the use of agents present in diet consumed by humans. Pomegranate from the tree Punica granatum possesses strong antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties. We recently showed that pomegranate fruit extract (PFE) possesses remarkable antitumor-promoting effects in mouse skin. In this study, employing human prostate cancer cells, we evaluated the antiproliferative and proapoptotic properties of PFE. PFE (10-100 æg/ml; 48 h) treatment of highly aggressive human prostate cancer PC3 cells resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of cell growth/cell viability and induction of apoptosis. Immunoblot analysis revealed that PFE treatment of PC3 cells resulted in (i) induction of Bax and Bak (proapoptotic); (ii) down-regulation of Bcl-XL and Bcl-2 (antiapoptotic); (iii) induction of WAF1/p21 and KIP1/p27; (iv) a decrease in cyclins D1, D2, and E; and (v) a decrease in cyclin-dependent kinase (cdk) 2, cdk4, and cdk6 expression. These data establish the involvement of the cyclin kinase inhibitor-cyclin-cdk network during the antiproliferative effects of PFE. Oral administration of PFE (0.1% and 0.2%, wt/vol) to athymic nude mice implanted with androgen-sensitive CWR22Rnu1 cells resulted in a significant inhibition in tumor growth concomitant with a significant decrease in serum prostate-specific antigen levels. We suggest that pomegranate juice may have cancer-chemopreventive as well as cancer-chemotherapeutic effects against prostate cancer in humans.
Britain: Gifted grade school children to be offered extra activities
A poor substitute for accelerated progession. The kids concerned will still be bored stiff in class
The most gifted 10 per cent of primary school children are to be offered extra classes under plans to track the brightest 400,000 through school and into university. Under the scheme, to be announced by Tony Blair on Monday, children as young as 4 will qualify for summer schools at universities, as well as online tuition, Saturday morning classes and joint activities with bright children from other schools. The scheme will extend the reach of the National Gifted and Talented Youth Agency, which is aimed at 150,000 pupils in state secondary schools. It was set up in 2002 after concerns that middle-class parents were abandoning the state sector for private schools because mixed-ability teaching failed to challenge the brightest pupils.
The initiative coincides with the release of figures from the Independent Schools Council suggesting that the growth in admissions to private schools is being driven by the primary sector. Pupil numbers in state primaries have fallen by almost 300,000, to 4.1 million, since 1997, and prep school numbers have increased by more than 14,000, to 159,000.
Downing Street emphasised, however, that the scheme aimed to ensure that more bright children were identified early on. A source said: "This is about helping each child to reach their full potential. That means identifying and developing the talents of children from an early age, and at the same time giving extra support to children who are struggling."
Under the scheme, each school will be required to appoint a teacher to select the 10 per cent most gifted and talented children. Assessments will be based on teacher assessments and the results of national Key Stage 1 tests that children sit at the age of 7. The term "gifted" is taken generally to apply to children of high intelligence, while "talented" refers to those with outstanding ability in a specific area, such as art, music or sport.
Bethan Marshall, a lecturer in education at King's College London, said: "Some children who are not labelled gifted and talented might feel like failures if they are not selected, particularly if they come from a competitive home. Children who are selected may feel it is an expectation that they have to live up to."
Peter Congdon, an educational psychologist and director of the Gifted Children's Information Centre, said that research had shown that teachers had insufficient training properly to identify gifted and talented pupils. "Teachers tend to choose children who produce good work on paper and who behave themselves. What are known as `gifted disabled' children, who may be very intelligent, but also dyslexic, may be missed, as may the ones who are very bright, but who are misfits," he said.
Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, said: "If it is intended to buy off the middle classes it won't work because what they want is a good all-round education," he said. Sir Cyril Taylor, the chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and the driving force behind the National Talent Register, the existing table of the 5 per cent of pupils with the best scores for maths and English, has not been consulted over the plan to extend the programme to primary children. Sir Cyril cautioned against diverting attention and funding from the gifted and talented programme for secondary schools and said that neither scheme would work unless those running it knew exactly what they were aiming to achieve. The announcement will coincide with the release of the names of the ten local authorities that are to pilot a scheme to measure pupil progress
Source
As my colleague James Harding wrote in times2 this week, there's a vibrancy about London these days that easily eclipses New York or Paris or Tokyo. To many residents, perhaps, life in London may be a struggle against rising crime and a crowded Tube and overpriced housing, but from an international perspective, it is truly the world's preeminent urban locale. In fact, in anything other than the most literal, geographic expression of the term, London is really no longer an English city at all. Its great economic dynamo, the City, powers corporations from Shanghai to Seattle. Its labour force, drawn to it by the opportunities of its free markets, is much more polyglot and multinational than any other urban concentration in the world.
But there's salt to this strawberry. London's political culture has been uprooted from its English heritage. It is run - if you can call it that - by a sort of postmodern communist Mayor, whose political voice - minus the annoying nasal whine - would sound right at home in Paris, Bologna or San Francisco. It hosts a metropolitan elite that loftily gazes three ways: outward, at the supposed superiority of anything not British; inward, at its own ineffable genius; and down its elegantly pampered nose, at the provincial trivialities that consume the dreary lives of the rest of the population.
But worst of all; much more, much more baleful than any of these irritations, is the political, cultural and intellectual hegemony exercised by the ultimate self-serving metropolitan monopoly, the BBC. Much worse because, unlike mayors and snobs, its domination of the rest of the country is so complete and so permanent.
On a recent trip back to Britain, I happened to hear on the BBC an interview with Helen Mirren, shortly before her Oscars triumph. Amid the usual probing sort of questioning that is the currency of celebrity journalism ("How do you manage to look so young? Is there anyone since Shakespeare who has come close to matching your talent?") one particular gem caught my attention.
Dame Helen was asked how difficult it had been to play such an "unsympathetic character" as the Queen, the eponymous heroine of her recent film. She replied, quite tartly, that she didn't find the Queen unsympathetic at all and launched into her now familiar riff about how she thought Elizabeth II really, surprisingly, quite agreeable.
It was a little incident, a small crystal in the battering hailstorm of drivel that pours daily through the airwaves. And yet to my mind it signified something so large. It had nothing to do with politics or Iraq or America. It was so telling in its revelation of prejudices and presumptions precisely because it was on such a slight matter as the sensibilities of an actress.
It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch - or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world - must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media's cultural enlightenment. More than that, the question - all fawning and fraternal and friendly - contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.
You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC's grasp of the nation's cultural and political soul has become. The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation's output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.
This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world - from colonialism to global warming.
I'm often told, when I take on like this, that I'm ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I've no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to.
A necessary word here about our sponsor. Anything critical of the BBC written by an employee of Rupert Murdoch is instantly dismissed. It's not an unreasonable instinct. Outside Murdochland it is solemnly assumed that each morning the drones of News Corporation are given their marching orders on how to interpret every event so that it conforms precisely to the commercial and political instincts of the proprietor.
In the real world, not only does the Murdoch media have only a fraction of the reach of the BBC, but a casual glance at its output demonstrates it is far less monolithic in its outlook than is the BBC.
Fortunately, in the US this week, I was struck by an article on the oped pages of The New York Times, the very citadel of leftish political correctness. Written by an apparently completely sane professor at a prestigious US university and entitled "Biased Broadcasting Corporation", it assailed the BBC's Middle Eastern services for their consistently anti-Western tone and content.
When the editorial pages of The New York Times accuse the BBC of anti-Western bias it is worth taking notice. It is a little like Osama bin Laden accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being a bit harsh on the Jews. It suggests that in other, even pretty unlikely, parts of the world, people are waking up to the menace to our values represented by the BBC. The British sadly, seem curiously content to remain in thrall to it.
Source
"TRADING TRUTH FOR INFLUENCE"
The latest IPCC report which reduces expected sea-level rise from feet to inches has got the Greenies rattled. Wretchard comments below on the rather amazing retreat from reality by a prominent global warmer -- who says that Greenies must trade "normal" truth for influence. It is a pretty good admission that global warming is not true in any normal sense.
The "precautionary principle" he invokes is in any case a philosophically silly detour. What do we take precautions against? A new ice age? One of those is geologically overdue. So you get straight back to a need to evaluate the evidence. What we do would be the opposite if we thought that a new ice age were more probable -- which it is.
Melanie Phillips is scathing about the anti-scientific Prof. Hulme too and Lubos Motl also weighs in
Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, argues in the Guardian that while scientific evidence may cast doubt on Global Warming why believe science? When a larger truth must be expressed, then "post-normal" science must be employed. (Hat tip: Melanie Philips and a Belmont Club reader)
Hulme argues that Global Warming is so important that everyone must act to stop it, whether or not it is scientifically known to exist.
Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken.
It has been labelled "post-normal" science. ... The danger of a "normal" reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow. ... If only climate change were such a phenomenon and if only science held such an ascendancy over our personal, social and political life and decisions. In fact, in order to make progress about how we manage climate change we have to take science off centre stage. ...
What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy; it is whether we have sufficient foresight, supported by wisdom, to allow our perspective about the future, and our responsibility for it, to be altered. All of us alive today have a stake in the future, and so we should all play a role in generating sufficient, inclusive and imposing knowledge about the future. Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones.
It is an argument superficially similar in structure to Pascal's Wager, which is an expected value argument for the existence of God.
Pascal argued that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists, because the expected value of believing that God exists is always greater than the expected value resulting from non-belief. Indeed, he claimed that the expected value is infinite. Pascal believed that it was inexcusable not to investigate this question: "Before entering into the proofs of the Christian religion, I find it necessary to point out the sinfulness of those men who live in indifference to the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and which touches them so nearly." Pascal's Wager is an argument for belief in God that he made and used because he hoped it would convert those to Christianity, who were ignorant, uninterested, or unconvinced by the arguments for the existence of God.
But any resemblance between Pascal and Hulme ends there. While Pascal's Wager describes an approach to problems which are in principle unknowable to science because they are unobservable, at least with present methods, Hulme on the other hand, exiles phenomena which are entirely observable and which ought to be primarily in the domain of science to the realm of political activism. While in Pascal's Wager a personal bet on the existence of God can never alter the fact of His actual existence or non-existence and is therefore entirely private, Hulme's exhortation to base a global program of social and climate engineering on "post-normal" political science amounts to a kind of self-appointed and potentially catastrophic tyranny.
In declaring himself free of the traditional scientific burden of proof Hulme finally abandons any pretense to authority. He has no rigorous way to tell us what is going to happen next. Nor is he willing to discuss it with those who do. There are two ways to predict the future. Statistics can help us predict the future based on trends which arise from the past, like driving a car with a blacked-out windshield by extrapolating from the scene in the rearview mirror. The stronger way is to possess an analytic model of the phenomenon such that we can "see" the future in the way that we can predict the future position of Mars by celestial mechanics in order to meet it with a space probe. Of the two ways Hulme has neither, nor did the Global Warming crowd ever even pretend to have the second; but now there is no requirement to even have the first. Presumably Hulme would object to being labeled a jackass using the "post-normal" methods he advocates. It might be a false accusation, but then we're not talking about proof, are we?
Update
Here's a YouTube clip from a Harvard astrosphysicist on the subject of "precautionary principle" as applied to weather engineering and the punishment its critics faced half a millenium ago. She has another word from the "post-normal" method of thinking: superstition. Click here
Summary of skeptical film
As Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" becomes mandatory viewing for many U.S. school children and nears becoming the "official truth" about global warming, it comes as most welcome news that an absolutely gripping film rebuttal has made its international debut, much to the chagrin of true believers in man-made climate change.
Last week, the UK's Channel 4 premiered a 75-minute film entitled, "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Through interviews with prize-winning climate experts and others, this masterful documentary explains the origins of global warming alarmism; debunks claims of man-made global climate change; exposes the motivations of organizations, scientists and activists sounding the alarm; and explains why it's been extremely difficult, if not downright dangerous, for climate scientists to question global warming orthodoxy publicly.
The entire film, which is creating quite a stir among tens of thousands of web viewers, can be viewed online at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831.
According to the film, the origins of global warming alarmism had its roots in the 1970s-era fears of global cooling and an impending ice age, resulting from the 1940-1970 global temperature decline. Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin suggested at the time that man-made greenhouse gas emissions might offset the cooling by warming the atmosphere.
When Margaret Thatcher became UK Prime Minister in 1979, her mandate was to reduce Britain's economic decline. Thatcher wanted to make the UK energy-independent through nuclear power - she didn't like her country's reliance on coal, which politically empowered the coal miner unions, or oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states.
So Thatcher latched onto Bolin's notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby providing the perfect political cover for advancing her nuclear power agenda without having to fight the miners or Arab oil states.
She empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin global climate change research, a move that eventually led to the 1988 creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations' group that has come to be the "official" international agency for global warming alarmism.
At about the same time, as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore explains on-camera, environmentalism became more extreme. By the mid-1980s, environmental goals - e.g., clean air and clean water - had become so mainstream that activists had to adopt more extreme positions to remain anti-establishment.
Then when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, many "peace-niks" and political activists moved over to environmental activism, bringing their "neo-Marxist" political philosophy with them. As Moore puts it, environmentalism became the "new guise for anti-capitalism."
Global warming alarmism was thus borne from this combination of official British policy, environmentalism's rejection of its own success and political opportunism by "unemployed" left-wing political activists.
With such an inglorious heritage, it's no wonder the scientists in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" have little trouble dismantling climate myths. Perhaps the most important bit of scientific knowledge presented is the actual relationship between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide. In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore disingenuously describes the relationship as "complex" while implying that higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cause higher global temperatures. But according to the geological record and data from ice cores, higher temperatures actually precede higher carbon dioxide levels by about 800 years. Twentieth century data support this idea in at least two ways. First, most of the 20th century's warming occurred before 1940, while most of the century's greenhouse gas emissions occurred after 1940. Next, when manmade greenhouse gas emissions soared in the post World War II industrial boom, global temperatures declined until the mid-1970s, leading to the aforementioned global cooling concerns.
The Channel 4 program notes that ongoing temperature measurements contradict global warming theory. According to the theory, lower atmosphere temperatures should be warming at a much faster rate than those at the Earth's surface. In reality, however, just the opposite is occurring.
Then there's the sun - the gigantic yellow ball in the sky that climate alarmists want all of us to ignore in favor of minute emissions of an invisible gas that makes up less than one-half of one percent of the Earth's atmosphere. As it turns out, solar activity - unlike atmospheric carbon dioxide levels - correlates quite well with historic temperature changes, including through its effects on cosmic rays and clouds, as the film demonstrates quite effectively.
So why does the world seem to be caught up in the vise-like grip of a controversy that is contradicted by available scientific data and its own dubious heritage According to the scientists in the movie, there is an intolerance of dissent on global warming. Official government sanction of global warming opened the floodgates of funding to climate researchers, who previously worked in obscurity.
NASA scientist Roy Spencer says in the program that climate scientists need for there to be problems to get more funding. IPCC contributor John Christy says of climate scientists, "We have a vested interest in creating panic because money with then flow to climate scientists." University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that "If the global warming virago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of jobs."
The film also debunks the IPCC claim that the 2,500 scientists contributing to its reports also support its alarmist conclusions. One key IPCC contributor for example, the Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, threatened to sue the IPCC if the group didn't remove his name from a chapter with which he disagreed.
When I met Al Gore in January 2006 after a presentation of his climate slideshow, I asked him if he'd be interested in setting up a public debate between climate scientists. He declined - twice. At this point, I'd settle for a movie face-off - "An Inconvenient Truth" vs. "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Let the public see both sides of the story and then we'll see who's believable and who's not.
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NHS DREAMING
[TV show] "Tomorrow's World" is like our Government in its attitude to the NHS. Ministers stand, Raymond Baxter-like, with a futuristic blueprint of how life will be; and they know that if they make it sound sensational enough, and have a perpetual showcase of ideas, we will barely notice that, in essence, the gadgets from the last episode are kaput, nothing has changed and all we receive are updates of stuff that did not work particularly well in the first place.
Coming soon from Tomorrow's NHS: an air-conditioning unit for those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Marvel as the Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, explains how it will work at a press conference today. Gasp as she neatly sidesteps the fact that if everybody with this incurable illness took up the offer of air-con installation, the cost would be in the region of o250 million. Gasp anyway when the next heatwave hits and you realise there is about as much chance of your GP springing for this as there is of your local Ford dealer contacting you about the flying four-door saloon you've had on order since 1973.
Do not be alarmed, though. There will be another glimpse of our brave new NHS world next month if Gordon pulls off his favourite trick by reinventing some old money as new in his budget. Maybe the paper-clip counters will lift their restrictions on drugs that stave off aggressive cancers or slow Alzheimer's disease. Doubt it. Most likely, there will just be the usual round of meetings, followed by a stalemate and the rearranging of figures to make it look as something has been done.
"Tomorrow's World" fizzled out because even in the computer age there are not that many new inventions. There are tweaks and refinements but it is not every week that a bloke marches into the television studio, consigns your 45s to the bin and hands you something called a compact disc. So it is with the NHS. We are led to believe that big, new ideas are happening all the time. Yet those who base their opinions on first-hand experience understand that little is different under Labour. We have various pronouncements and initiatives but, as ever, nobody gets out of casualty within four hours and waiting lists for big operations are still ticked off in years and months, not weeks.
When my father-in-law was dying of a brain tumour (called glioblastoma multiforme, the axe-wielding psychopath of the cancer family) and required round-the-clock care, three suits from the local health authority attempted to have the budgetary meeting about which department picked up his tab while drinking tea in his sitting-room, in front of his family. That was a decade ago. Now, his widow, my mother-in-law, waits for a hip replacement that was agreed to be essential the Christmas before last. The Health Secretary will tell you that care has changed and nobody waits more than six months for hip operations these days. If they do, the local trust has to pay to send the patient private. But that's another flying car. The actuality is that the six-month countdown only kicks in when a patient is on the waiting list, so if there is no availability the trick is to keep her off the register for as long as possible.
Say an elderly woman whose blood pressure is up, which it might be if she was on the highest daily dose of morphine for pain, and who is throwing up every morning as a side-effect, had hung about in a corridor for two hours and was then being seen in the NHS equivalent of a MASH unit with twin consultations taking place side-by-side in the same grubby room. Well, you cannot have the operation with raised blood pressure, so we have to get that under control before we can put you on the list. The same, next time, with that slightly high thyroid reading. We'll need to adjust your medication first, I'm afraid.
No doubt it is important. But a thyroid takes weeks to get under control, the waiting list is measured in months, but the two cannot run together because this is not about good health, but good housekeeping, the management of cost and resources, better to manipulate figures. All the patient can do is keep going back in the hope that, next time, the health service can find no reason to stall. Meanwhile, drink your morphine.
So when the Health Secretary stands up with the promise of a chilled climate for a million incurable wheezers this summer, please excuse my scepticism. She may see a vision of a healthy future, but from here it is just another holiday on Mars. Air-conditioning to be provided by people that can't find you a bed? Don't hold your breath.
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THE POMEGRANATE ENTHUSIASM
They have been a common sight in Brisbane suburban gardens over the years, but now the humble pomegranate is reaching celebrity status in the UK. And it's all because of their supposed health benefits. Demand for the fruit has grown by 76 per cent across stores over the past year, figures from market analysts TNS show. Dubbed a "superfood", the pomegranate has overtaken blueberries as Britain's fastest growing seller, according to supermarket chain Tesco which sold 3.8 million pomegranates in the past year - an increase of two million on the previous year. Other products dubbed "superfoods" because of their health benefits include spinach, broccoli, avocados and fish rich in omega 3 oils.
The pomegranate is a native fruit of the Middle East which grows well in Queensland's tropical conditions. Just one pomegranate provides around 40 per cent of the daily recommended vitamin C intake. They also contain high levels of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents and have been shown to help with the treatment of a range of illnesses including osteoarthritis and cardiovascular disease.
Research from the US also has revealed that eating pomegranates slows down the progress of prostate cancer. Last year, a team at the University of California, Los Angeles found drinking just one glass of pomegranate juice a day could allow a man aged 65-70 years who already has prostate cancer to complete his normal lifespan without harsh medical treatments. More than 2500 men die from prostate cancer in Australia each year.
That US research team found pomegranate juice dramatically slowed prostate cancer in mice. "Our study, while early, adds to growing evidence that pomegranates contain very powerful agents against cancer, particularly prostate cancer," said Professor Hasan Mukhtar who led the study. "There is good reason now to test this fruit in humans, both for cancer prevention and treatment."
Source
Journal abstract follows. Note that the research showed effects only in the test tube and in specially prepared mice. It is a big leap from that to an effect on human lifespan
Pomegranate fruit juice for chemoprevention and chemotherapy of prostate cancer
Arshi Malik et al
Prostate cancer is the most common invasive malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among U.S. males, with a similar trend in many Western countries. One approach to control this malignancy is its prevention through the use of agents present in diet consumed by humans. Pomegranate from the tree Punica granatum possesses strong antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties. We recently showed that pomegranate fruit extract (PFE) possesses remarkable antitumor-promoting effects in mouse skin. In this study, employing human prostate cancer cells, we evaluated the antiproliferative and proapoptotic properties of PFE. PFE (10-100 æg/ml; 48 h) treatment of highly aggressive human prostate cancer PC3 cells resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of cell growth/cell viability and induction of apoptosis. Immunoblot analysis revealed that PFE treatment of PC3 cells resulted in (i) induction of Bax and Bak (proapoptotic); (ii) down-regulation of Bcl-XL and Bcl-2 (antiapoptotic); (iii) induction of WAF1/p21 and KIP1/p27; (iv) a decrease in cyclins D1, D2, and E; and (v) a decrease in cyclin-dependent kinase (cdk) 2, cdk4, and cdk6 expression. These data establish the involvement of the cyclin kinase inhibitor-cyclin-cdk network during the antiproliferative effects of PFE. Oral administration of PFE (0.1% and 0.2%, wt/vol) to athymic nude mice implanted with androgen-sensitive CWR22Rnu1 cells resulted in a significant inhibition in tumor growth concomitant with a significant decrease in serum prostate-specific antigen levels. We suggest that pomegranate juice may have cancer-chemopreventive as well as cancer-chemotherapeutic effects against prostate cancer in humans.
Britain: Gifted grade school children to be offered extra activities
A poor substitute for accelerated progession. The kids concerned will still be bored stiff in class
The most gifted 10 per cent of primary school children are to be offered extra classes under plans to track the brightest 400,000 through school and into university. Under the scheme, to be announced by Tony Blair on Monday, children as young as 4 will qualify for summer schools at universities, as well as online tuition, Saturday morning classes and joint activities with bright children from other schools. The scheme will extend the reach of the National Gifted and Talented Youth Agency, which is aimed at 150,000 pupils in state secondary schools. It was set up in 2002 after concerns that middle-class parents were abandoning the state sector for private schools because mixed-ability teaching failed to challenge the brightest pupils.
The initiative coincides with the release of figures from the Independent Schools Council suggesting that the growth in admissions to private schools is being driven by the primary sector. Pupil numbers in state primaries have fallen by almost 300,000, to 4.1 million, since 1997, and prep school numbers have increased by more than 14,000, to 159,000.
Downing Street emphasised, however, that the scheme aimed to ensure that more bright children were identified early on. A source said: "This is about helping each child to reach their full potential. That means identifying and developing the talents of children from an early age, and at the same time giving extra support to children who are struggling."
Under the scheme, each school will be required to appoint a teacher to select the 10 per cent most gifted and talented children. Assessments will be based on teacher assessments and the results of national Key Stage 1 tests that children sit at the age of 7. The term "gifted" is taken generally to apply to children of high intelligence, while "talented" refers to those with outstanding ability in a specific area, such as art, music or sport.
Bethan Marshall, a lecturer in education at King's College London, said: "Some children who are not labelled gifted and talented might feel like failures if they are not selected, particularly if they come from a competitive home. Children who are selected may feel it is an expectation that they have to live up to."
Peter Congdon, an educational psychologist and director of the Gifted Children's Information Centre, said that research had shown that teachers had insufficient training properly to identify gifted and talented pupils. "Teachers tend to choose children who produce good work on paper and who behave themselves. What are known as `gifted disabled' children, who may be very intelligent, but also dyslexic, may be missed, as may the ones who are very bright, but who are misfits," he said.
Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, said: "If it is intended to buy off the middle classes it won't work because what they want is a good all-round education," he said. Sir Cyril Taylor, the chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and the driving force behind the National Talent Register, the existing table of the 5 per cent of pupils with the best scores for maths and English, has not been consulted over the plan to extend the programme to primary children. Sir Cyril cautioned against diverting attention and funding from the gifted and talented programme for secondary schools and said that neither scheme would work unless those running it knew exactly what they were aiming to achieve. The announcement will coincide with the release of the names of the ten local authorities that are to pilot a scheme to measure pupil progress
Source
Saturday, March 17, 2007
A demented approach to the ageing population
Scary headlines about a 'dementia timebomb' expose today's miserabilist view of the human success story that is longer life.
A report published last week by the UK Alzheimer’s Society, Dementia UK: a report into the prevalence and cost of dementia, confirmed what many people already knew: that dementia is one of the main causes of disability in later life. What was disappointing was the way the research was framed as another ‘ageing timebomb’.
Today, about one-in-five people over the age of 80 has a form of dementia. As a progressive disease, the impact on the individual ranges from mild to severe, so that only a small proportion lose most of their capacity for independent living. But for those worst affected it is extremely distressing for themselves and especially for their caring relatives.
The study could have been greeted simply as a rational contribution to helping society adjust its priorities to an ageing population. With demographic shifts, the types of illnesses that society should focus on change. With substantially reduced infant mortality and more people living to an old age compared to 100 and even 25 years ago, less medical research can be devoted to defeated or contained diseases such as polio, smallpox, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, measles or typhoid, and more can be devoted to heart disease, stroke, cancer and dementia. That’s rational social adaptation.
Unfortunately, a review of the media headlines illustrates a much more alarmist and miserabilist message: ‘Dementia timebomb warning’, ‘The country’s looming dementia crisis’, ‘Dementia timebomb will cost NHS millions’. Such a reaction to the underlying research in this report is not only unjustified but also counter-productive. The Alzheimer’s Society itself warns that such alarmist talk is misleading. It argues with reason that: ‘The use of phrases such as the demographic timebomb, or the view that older people are a burden on our society, does not encourage the view that a sustainable system can be developed.’ (2)
There is nothing new here. The threat of a ‘timebomb’ is frequently invoked in relation to ageing - just look at the debate about pensions. But this fear and anxiety is not a good way to plan transformation and progressive adaptation. Instead, fear-mongering today tends to reinforce a fatalist resignation to the future, epitomised by a naturalist view of ageing: we’re ageing, old age historically brings negative consequences, so we have to put up with it.
Knee-jerk responses in the face of an ‘emerging crisis’ make things worse, more often than not. (That’s also the story of the perverse, counter-productive impact of pension reforms over the past 20 years.) For example, the report draws attention to the ‘starkly different ordering of [research] priorities: cancer 23.5 per cent, cardiovascular disease 17.6 per cent, musculoskeletal disorders 6.9 per cent, stroke 3.1 per cent and dementia 1.4 per cent’. I’m sure it is not the authors’ intention but when legitimate calls for more specific research funding are made in the hyperbolic context of a perceived looming ‘cost crisis’, one can easily imagine the response will be ‘okay, let’s cut funding to these other areas and reallocate to dementia instead’. In the short term, this might seem to support the prospects for potential dementia sufferers, but overall could produce a worse future for old people if other age-related chronic disorders lose funding as a result.
These anxieties about the social and economic impact of ageing are unjustified. We need to challenge an intensifying paradox of our times: that even though we are living longer, healthier and more prosperous lives than ever in human history, we are also more negative about ageing and old age. In the past, old age had both positive and negative connotations – experience and wisdom, not just decrepitude. Today, we only seem to recognise the negative: a timebomb bringing about an intolerable economic and social strain based on millions more dependent people.
Whatever the specific issue, there are always three ways to expose this paradox of ageing.
Firstly, society is getting wealthier all the time. Whatever the extra costs associated with an older population, the trend of rising productivity means that we will have even more resources in the future, so we can bear these costs easily.
History justifies that perspective. There is nothing new or unprecedented about ageing. Developed countries will age over the next half-century at much the same rate that they have for the last hundred years. In contrast to the warnings today that ‘ageing will slow down future economic growth’, this demographic shift hasn’t stopped us from getting more prosperous as a society and older people have benefited from this greater social wealth.
Secondly, a narrow ‘telescope’ view of the future tends to mislead when broader social consequences are drawn. Focusing on one particular feature of the future can fail to incorporate offsetting factors.
The most obvious example as it applies to ageing is that fewer young people necessarily offset more old people. Hence, more absolute spending on old age-related costs is offset by less on younger sections of the population - for example, on education and the specific health costs of the young.
Even in the narrow area of health within wider social spending there are inevitable offsets. Some forms of morbidity rise with age, so more old people mean more illness to be treated. But we are living not just longer lives but longer healthier lives. This trend counteracts the impact of increased health spending related to old age.
This is even more the case when the main influence on the ageing of society is no longer falling birth rates but longer life. For most of the twentieth century, ageing populations mostly represented a changed ratio between young and old people – falling fertility reduced the size of younger cohorts producing an automatic increase in the average age and in the proportion of old people in the population. More recently, since about the 1960s, greater longevity has become a bigger influence on the age structure. The fact that we are living longer is partly attributable to the defeat, or better treatment, of diseases that used to debilitate or kill off younger people. People, including those who are already old, are living to a greater age. Postponed death of this sort tends to go along with people being fitter and healthier during their lives because they are both reflections of social progress and higher living standards.
Most of us are getting through youth and middle age without requiring much medical support, and much less than our parents and grandparents needed. Lower health costs earlier in life means a healthier society, which is good, and which brings about an inevitable concentration of health resources on the older segment of the population because of the higher probability of disease and death with advancing age.
A related factor that is often downplayed in discussions of age-related health costs is that the cost of dying is more relevant than the cost of ageing. The highest costs arise in the final six-to-18 months prior to death, whatever the age of death. Focusing on the costs of people with dementia in their final years forgets that this means we are paying the cost of these final months for fewer younger people - and in the context of dementia, ‘younger’ means people below the age of 80.
In other words, just because there will be more people with dementia in an ageing population doesn’t tell us anything about total social expenditures in the future.
Thirdly, the future is one of transformation and adaptation, not extrapolation. This is the statistical distinction between ‘projections’ and ‘forecasts’, which invariably get mixed up in everyday discussion. This confusion is a boon to those who make fearful speculations about the future. A statistician can make a projection about the future based on certain present-day assumptions and extrapolating from them. But every serious professional statistician will add the warning that this is not a forecast of the future, because things will change - society progresses - and therefore the assumptions made for the projection will become invalid.
This misleading shorthand applies to the dementia study itself. It claims: ‘The total number of people with dementia in the UK is forecast to increase to 940,110 by 2021 and 1,735,087 by 2051, an increase of 38 per cent over the next 15 years and 154 per cent over the next 45 years.’ Hence the alarmist BBC News headline: ‘1.7m “will have dementia by 2051“‘. (3) These figures are really projections, not forecasts, based on the researchers’ assumptions about the numbers of elderly people, the incidence of conditions such as high cholesterol and blood pressure, and levels of exercise. Many of these assumptions will not work out exactly.
More importantly, the prevalence of dementia could fall if some means of preventing or, in the shorter term, postponing dementia were discovered. This is the message of the report that should be heeded – more research can accelerate building upon the existing indications of scientific and medical progress in this area. But this gets a little lost in the hyperbole.
More broadly we can reasonably expect further improvements in standards of health in the future. The general trend is that in most countries a symptom of living longer healthier lives is that the age of onset of particular illnesses is postponed. The average 65-year-old today is much healthier than one in 1950 due to a combination of improvements in living standards and medical progress; healthy life expectancy is growing with increases in overall life expectancy.
The only uncertainties are the pace of improvements in healthy life expectancy and total life expectancy - and the relation between them. In general, morbidity is being postponed. There are indications for some illnesses, though not yet dementia, of tendencies to their compression as well as postponement. This means that some chronic disorders might be concentrated into a smaller proportion, and even a shorter absolute period, at the end of a person’s life. That’s because the older you are when you become ill, the quicker you may finally succumb to that illness.
This report on dementia is one more example of the unjustified negativity with which an ageing population is perceived these days, alongside the ongoing fears and panics about the cost of pensions and other age-related phenomena such as the cost of long-term care. All this pessimism about the human success story of people living longer older tells us more about society’s collective sense of uncertainty and anxieties about where we are heading, than it does about a rational understanding of any of these age-related issues.
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Offsetting your "carbon footprint" takes decades
SCHEMES used by environmentally conscious consumers to cut their "carbon footprint" could take up to a century to deliver the promised benefits, a study has suggested. Researchers found it takes that length of time for "carbon offsetting" - which often involves the planting of trees in the developing world - to absorb the greenhouse gases emitted by a single flight. Dozens of fortunes have been made in recent years by entrepreneurs offering people and businesses the chance to neutralise their carbon emissions for a fee.
The new research, carried out by scientists at the Tyndall Centre, based at the University of East Anglia, and Sweden's Lund University, suggests that such schemes may, in fact, do little more than salve the consciences of those paying for them. "What we are seeing here is the emergence of a new and completely unregulated financial market," said Lund's Professor Stefan Gossling, who led the study. "These schemes may eventually recapture the carbon people emit now but will only finish the job after most of them have died. That is too long."
The schemes studied by Gossling included one offered by British Airways to its passengers through Climate Care, a British carbon offsetting company. It found that an offset bought through the scheme would take about 100 years to recapture the carbon emitted by a flight. This is because Climate Care includes forestry in its offsetting portfolio, meaning that carbon emitted can be recaptured only as fast as a tree can grow.
The research coincides with a sharp rise in the political temperature over climate change. Last week EU leaders agreed to cut European carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. The voluntary carbon offsetting market has sprung from the same global concern over carbon emissions. There are now dozens of companies charging fees to help people and organisations deal with their carbon emissions. One of the richest is Climate Change Capital, a merchant bank specialising in low-carbon investments, which controls funds of more than 500 million pounds and has made millionaires of its founders, James Cameron and Lionel Fretz. The firm specialises in big industrial projects. Most offsetting companies prefer, however, to support smaller energy-efficiency projects and renewable energy schemes.
A favourite is to buy low-energy lightbulbs for distribution in developing countries. Such schemes can take years to recover the carbon emitted by, say, a flight, but when forestry is the chosen offset mechanism this can stretch into decades. "When companies offer to offset a single flight over a period of 100 years then the schemes lose credibility," said Gossling. "How can anyone predict the fate of a forest? A hundred years from now it could burn down and all that carbon would be released."
Some forestry projects have ended in spectacular failures. Coldplay, the rock group, sponsored 10,000 mango trees in southern India to offset the environmental impact of its 2002 album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. By last year, however, the trees, supplied by Future Forests, now The CarbonNeutral Company, had withered and died. Jonathan Shopley, chief executive of The CarbonNeutral Company, said the firm had since moved out of forestry and in to schemes such as wind farms and low-energy lighting. "Any offsets taken out with us in future will recover the relevant carbon emissions within four years," he said.
The turnover of the CarbonNeutral Company has risen sharply to 4 million pounds a year and it has just signed up Silverjet, a new air-line dedicated to business class passengers. It charges an average 999 for a return flight between New York and London - of which 11 goes towards offsetting each passenger's carbon emissions. David Wellington, managing director of Climate Care, said: "Many of the criticisms raised over offsetting were valid. This is a young industry and it is still settling down, but the standards are improving very fast. For example, we have already moved out of forestry into renewable energy projects that reduce the time over which offsets take effect."
But others believe that carbon offsetting is deeply flawed. Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, said it was little more than a mechanism to allow rich westerners to ease their consciences. "What we are really doing is paying poor people to reduce their carbon emissions so that we can maintain our luxury lifestyles. If we really want to live sustainably we are going to have to accept the knocks and give up things like flying. In the end they are unsustainable," he said.
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Early Years Foundation Stage: UK Childhood Indoctrination
Post lifted from Random Observations. Melanie Phillips also has some scathing observations on this. Her summary: "This surely is the Nanny State gone stark staring mad"
It is just me, or is this UK precedent, reported in the Telegraph, distinctly creepy?
And of course:
What does it mean to be a British citizen? It means recognizing others are different. Is that it? Different how? And what does "respect" actually entail?
This working document [pdf, as HTML] on the curriculum reveals there's a huge focus on indirectly instilling cultural relativism in 3-year-olds though their caregivers. In fact, it's apparently the first thing that pops into the authors' minds:
How to break this down? First, let's note that little tiny asterisk next to the word "racism", where the footnote reveals "racism" doesn't simply mean actual racism -- which all good-minded people oppose -- but rather also includes "cultural racism", "enthnocentrism", "institutional racism", and "structural racism."
And what do these various terms mean? For example, here's what "cultural racism" denotes:
So it turns out these alleged "citizenship" lessons ultimately mean we convince children there is nothing better about British culture than, say, a society ruled by the Taliban. (But certainly not the reverse. Down with assimilation!)
And "institutional racism"?
Example: If some minority group is more often arrested for some category of crime, whether the police and lawmakers have racist motives or not, those involved are guilty of "institutional racism" -- and anyone who still insists due process should be racially blind "is guilty of racism", ironically.
So the goal here is, amazingly, neo-Marxist* structural analysis, where the caregiver (and thus, by influence, child) is taught to think in terms of membership groups, rather than as individuals; in terms of relative societal power of those groups rather than goodness or badness of an individual's behavior; and in term of outcomes rather than traditional standards of fairness -- by which I mean applying the same rules equally to all.
And thus the instruction to be "observant and watchful" for "discrimination a child may experience or manifest" means that we watch for traditional ethics and values instilled in children from "family background, culture, [or] religion" and counter it. Indeed, the document further admits the curriculum must "plan how to support children in learning positive attitudes and unlearning any negative attitudes to differences between people... helping children unlearn any prejudiced attitudes..."
Concerning the selection of caregivers, the document adds:
And, they add, "recruitment practice" (hiring of new caregivers, presumably) must "ensure only those knowledgeable or committed to implement equality are selected." Note the exact phrasing: "those committed to implement equality", apparently in a revolutionary sense. The focus, again, is a desired societal outcome, not merely to prefer individuals who have a heart for small people, or those who will apply the same rules equally to all kids.
In fact, quite to the contrary:
So the upshot here is that if you want to take care of a child in the UK, you will be gauged and even selected henceforth on your committment to these dogmas.
A nice, efficient way of taking control, it would seem, of "all nurseries" in the UK and turning them into state-run creches -- while halting the transmission of familial and majority moral, religious, and cultural values. (Under the guise of providing "uniform care", of course.) In fact, it seems this particular document addresses nothing else.
So why am I writing this? Not because I wish to defend racism, that's for sure. But what we see is the installation of an entirely different moral paradigm and value set -- one which is rampant in today's university -- into very young children, under the guise of fighting racism. That's why you see so many different words with "racism" appended, like "cultural racism" which is simply the charge of not buying into cultural relativism, framed so to make those who disagree "racists."
And ultimately, I believe this alternative morality create citizens who are conditioned to avoid critical thinking, and who are more malleable to the needs of a strong, centralized government. Dewey would have been proud.
600,000 pounds compensation for a man whose wife died in a NHS hospital
The husband of a woman who died from blood poisoning six days after giving birth to their second child received 600,000 pounds in compensation yesterday after two NHS trusts apologised for a series of blunders that led to her death. Ben Palmer's wife, Jessica, was 34 when she suffered a cardiac arrest in the operating theatre, leaving him to bring up their two children, Harry and Emily, now five and two.
Mrs Palmer, a personal assistant to the Conservative MP Peter Lilley, was discharged from Kingston Hospital in Surrey the day after she gave birth, even though she had low blood pressure, a fast pulse and a high temperature - all signs of infection. As her condition deteriorated and she developed a red patch across her stomach, the couple contacted Mrs Palmer's GP, who prescribed painkillers for back pain, and her midwife, but she was not readmitted to hospital until five days later. She died the next day from multiple organ failure caused by streptococcal septicaemia.
At the inquest into her death, a community midwife from St George's Hospital in Tooting, south-west London, admitted that she had made a "gross mistake" in not referring Mrs Palmer to a doctor earlier. The deputy coroner for West London concluded that Mrs Palmer's death could have been avoided had she been sent back to hospital earlier, but she stopped short of formally finding neglect. She recorded a verdict of natural causes.
The final settlement figure of 600,000 against Kingston Hospital NHS Trust and St George's Healthcare NHS Trust, which both accepted liability, includes the provision of 23,667 pounds each to Harry and Emily. Robert Wilson, solicitor for the trusts, said at the High Court yesterday that both trusts expressed their "sincere apologies" to Mr Palmer and the family for "the shortcomings in care" which led to the death of Mrs Palmer.
"Inevitably, this has led to a great deal of soul-searching and I would particularly like to convey the profound regret of all the clinicians and staff involved in her care," he said. "Of course, they recognise that the family has to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives and an apology is of scant help in these circumstances, but it is sincerely offered."
After the hearing, Mr Palmer, 36, called on the Government to improve maternity services to prevent such a tragedy happening again. "This should never have happened," he said. "My son cries in my arms at night because he misses his mother, my daughter cries in sympathy and because she never knew her mother. I cry for them both, for the loss of their mother, my wife and best friend, and for the joys of motherhood that Jessica has been denied. "With mothering Sunday coming up this weekend, I would like the health secretary to try explaining to my children why Jessica isn't going to tuck them up in bed tonight."
Claire Fazan, his solicitor, from Irwin Mitchell, said: "Each stage of Jessica's care was provided by someone different. Her ante-natal care was at one hospital, her delivery was at another, the community midwife was from another trust and the health visitor she never lived to see was from yet another trust. Jessica's case highlights the need for extra resources and continuity of care for mothers." Mr Lilley said yesterday: "Jessica was simply one of the most delightful people you could know."
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Scary headlines about a 'dementia timebomb' expose today's miserabilist view of the human success story that is longer life.
A report published last week by the UK Alzheimer’s Society, Dementia UK: a report into the prevalence and cost of dementia, confirmed what many people already knew: that dementia is one of the main causes of disability in later life. What was disappointing was the way the research was framed as another ‘ageing timebomb’.
Today, about one-in-five people over the age of 80 has a form of dementia. As a progressive disease, the impact on the individual ranges from mild to severe, so that only a small proportion lose most of their capacity for independent living. But for those worst affected it is extremely distressing for themselves and especially for their caring relatives.
The study could have been greeted simply as a rational contribution to helping society adjust its priorities to an ageing population. With demographic shifts, the types of illnesses that society should focus on change. With substantially reduced infant mortality and more people living to an old age compared to 100 and even 25 years ago, less medical research can be devoted to defeated or contained diseases such as polio, smallpox, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, measles or typhoid, and more can be devoted to heart disease, stroke, cancer and dementia. That’s rational social adaptation.
Unfortunately, a review of the media headlines illustrates a much more alarmist and miserabilist message: ‘Dementia timebomb warning’, ‘The country’s looming dementia crisis’, ‘Dementia timebomb will cost NHS millions’. Such a reaction to the underlying research in this report is not only unjustified but also counter-productive. The Alzheimer’s Society itself warns that such alarmist talk is misleading. It argues with reason that: ‘The use of phrases such as the demographic timebomb, or the view that older people are a burden on our society, does not encourage the view that a sustainable system can be developed.’ (2)
There is nothing new here. The threat of a ‘timebomb’ is frequently invoked in relation to ageing - just look at the debate about pensions. But this fear and anxiety is not a good way to plan transformation and progressive adaptation. Instead, fear-mongering today tends to reinforce a fatalist resignation to the future, epitomised by a naturalist view of ageing: we’re ageing, old age historically brings negative consequences, so we have to put up with it.
Knee-jerk responses in the face of an ‘emerging crisis’ make things worse, more often than not. (That’s also the story of the perverse, counter-productive impact of pension reforms over the past 20 years.) For example, the report draws attention to the ‘starkly different ordering of [research] priorities: cancer 23.5 per cent, cardiovascular disease 17.6 per cent, musculoskeletal disorders 6.9 per cent, stroke 3.1 per cent and dementia 1.4 per cent’. I’m sure it is not the authors’ intention but when legitimate calls for more specific research funding are made in the hyperbolic context of a perceived looming ‘cost crisis’, one can easily imagine the response will be ‘okay, let’s cut funding to these other areas and reallocate to dementia instead’. In the short term, this might seem to support the prospects for potential dementia sufferers, but overall could produce a worse future for old people if other age-related chronic disorders lose funding as a result.
These anxieties about the social and economic impact of ageing are unjustified. We need to challenge an intensifying paradox of our times: that even though we are living longer, healthier and more prosperous lives than ever in human history, we are also more negative about ageing and old age. In the past, old age had both positive and negative connotations – experience and wisdom, not just decrepitude. Today, we only seem to recognise the negative: a timebomb bringing about an intolerable economic and social strain based on millions more dependent people.
Whatever the specific issue, there are always three ways to expose this paradox of ageing.
Firstly, society is getting wealthier all the time. Whatever the extra costs associated with an older population, the trend of rising productivity means that we will have even more resources in the future, so we can bear these costs easily.
History justifies that perspective. There is nothing new or unprecedented about ageing. Developed countries will age over the next half-century at much the same rate that they have for the last hundred years. In contrast to the warnings today that ‘ageing will slow down future economic growth’, this demographic shift hasn’t stopped us from getting more prosperous as a society and older people have benefited from this greater social wealth.
Secondly, a narrow ‘telescope’ view of the future tends to mislead when broader social consequences are drawn. Focusing on one particular feature of the future can fail to incorporate offsetting factors.
The most obvious example as it applies to ageing is that fewer young people necessarily offset more old people. Hence, more absolute spending on old age-related costs is offset by less on younger sections of the population - for example, on education and the specific health costs of the young.
Even in the narrow area of health within wider social spending there are inevitable offsets. Some forms of morbidity rise with age, so more old people mean more illness to be treated. But we are living not just longer lives but longer healthier lives. This trend counteracts the impact of increased health spending related to old age.
This is even more the case when the main influence on the ageing of society is no longer falling birth rates but longer life. For most of the twentieth century, ageing populations mostly represented a changed ratio between young and old people – falling fertility reduced the size of younger cohorts producing an automatic increase in the average age and in the proportion of old people in the population. More recently, since about the 1960s, greater longevity has become a bigger influence on the age structure. The fact that we are living longer is partly attributable to the defeat, or better treatment, of diseases that used to debilitate or kill off younger people. People, including those who are already old, are living to a greater age. Postponed death of this sort tends to go along with people being fitter and healthier during their lives because they are both reflections of social progress and higher living standards.
Most of us are getting through youth and middle age without requiring much medical support, and much less than our parents and grandparents needed. Lower health costs earlier in life means a healthier society, which is good, and which brings about an inevitable concentration of health resources on the older segment of the population because of the higher probability of disease and death with advancing age.
A related factor that is often downplayed in discussions of age-related health costs is that the cost of dying is more relevant than the cost of ageing. The highest costs arise in the final six-to-18 months prior to death, whatever the age of death. Focusing on the costs of people with dementia in their final years forgets that this means we are paying the cost of these final months for fewer younger people - and in the context of dementia, ‘younger’ means people below the age of 80.
In other words, just because there will be more people with dementia in an ageing population doesn’t tell us anything about total social expenditures in the future.
Thirdly, the future is one of transformation and adaptation, not extrapolation. This is the statistical distinction between ‘projections’ and ‘forecasts’, which invariably get mixed up in everyday discussion. This confusion is a boon to those who make fearful speculations about the future. A statistician can make a projection about the future based on certain present-day assumptions and extrapolating from them. But every serious professional statistician will add the warning that this is not a forecast of the future, because things will change - society progresses - and therefore the assumptions made for the projection will become invalid.
This misleading shorthand applies to the dementia study itself. It claims: ‘The total number of people with dementia in the UK is forecast to increase to 940,110 by 2021 and 1,735,087 by 2051, an increase of 38 per cent over the next 15 years and 154 per cent over the next 45 years.’ Hence the alarmist BBC News headline: ‘1.7m “will have dementia by 2051“‘. (3) These figures are really projections, not forecasts, based on the researchers’ assumptions about the numbers of elderly people, the incidence of conditions such as high cholesterol and blood pressure, and levels of exercise. Many of these assumptions will not work out exactly.
More importantly, the prevalence of dementia could fall if some means of preventing or, in the shorter term, postponing dementia were discovered. This is the message of the report that should be heeded – more research can accelerate building upon the existing indications of scientific and medical progress in this area. But this gets a little lost in the hyperbole.
More broadly we can reasonably expect further improvements in standards of health in the future. The general trend is that in most countries a symptom of living longer healthier lives is that the age of onset of particular illnesses is postponed. The average 65-year-old today is much healthier than one in 1950 due to a combination of improvements in living standards and medical progress; healthy life expectancy is growing with increases in overall life expectancy.
The only uncertainties are the pace of improvements in healthy life expectancy and total life expectancy - and the relation between them. In general, morbidity is being postponed. There are indications for some illnesses, though not yet dementia, of tendencies to their compression as well as postponement. This means that some chronic disorders might be concentrated into a smaller proportion, and even a shorter absolute period, at the end of a person’s life. That’s because the older you are when you become ill, the quicker you may finally succumb to that illness.
This report on dementia is one more example of the unjustified negativity with which an ageing population is perceived these days, alongside the ongoing fears and panics about the cost of pensions and other age-related phenomena such as the cost of long-term care. All this pessimism about the human success story of people living longer older tells us more about society’s collective sense of uncertainty and anxieties about where we are heading, than it does about a rational understanding of any of these age-related issues.
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Offsetting your "carbon footprint" takes decades
SCHEMES used by environmentally conscious consumers to cut their "carbon footprint" could take up to a century to deliver the promised benefits, a study has suggested. Researchers found it takes that length of time for "carbon offsetting" - which often involves the planting of trees in the developing world - to absorb the greenhouse gases emitted by a single flight. Dozens of fortunes have been made in recent years by entrepreneurs offering people and businesses the chance to neutralise their carbon emissions for a fee.
The new research, carried out by scientists at the Tyndall Centre, based at the University of East Anglia, and Sweden's Lund University, suggests that such schemes may, in fact, do little more than salve the consciences of those paying for them. "What we are seeing here is the emergence of a new and completely unregulated financial market," said Lund's Professor Stefan Gossling, who led the study. "These schemes may eventually recapture the carbon people emit now but will only finish the job after most of them have died. That is too long."
The schemes studied by Gossling included one offered by British Airways to its passengers through Climate Care, a British carbon offsetting company. It found that an offset bought through the scheme would take about 100 years to recapture the carbon emitted by a flight. This is because Climate Care includes forestry in its offsetting portfolio, meaning that carbon emitted can be recaptured only as fast as a tree can grow.
The research coincides with a sharp rise in the political temperature over climate change. Last week EU leaders agreed to cut European carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. The voluntary carbon offsetting market has sprung from the same global concern over carbon emissions. There are now dozens of companies charging fees to help people and organisations deal with their carbon emissions. One of the richest is Climate Change Capital, a merchant bank specialising in low-carbon investments, which controls funds of more than 500 million pounds and has made millionaires of its founders, James Cameron and Lionel Fretz. The firm specialises in big industrial projects. Most offsetting companies prefer, however, to support smaller energy-efficiency projects and renewable energy schemes.
A favourite is to buy low-energy lightbulbs for distribution in developing countries. Such schemes can take years to recover the carbon emitted by, say, a flight, but when forestry is the chosen offset mechanism this can stretch into decades. "When companies offer to offset a single flight over a period of 100 years then the schemes lose credibility," said Gossling. "How can anyone predict the fate of a forest? A hundred years from now it could burn down and all that carbon would be released."
Some forestry projects have ended in spectacular failures. Coldplay, the rock group, sponsored 10,000 mango trees in southern India to offset the environmental impact of its 2002 album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. By last year, however, the trees, supplied by Future Forests, now The CarbonNeutral Company, had withered and died. Jonathan Shopley, chief executive of The CarbonNeutral Company, said the firm had since moved out of forestry and in to schemes such as wind farms and low-energy lighting. "Any offsets taken out with us in future will recover the relevant carbon emissions within four years," he said.
The turnover of the CarbonNeutral Company has risen sharply to 4 million pounds a year and it has just signed up Silverjet, a new air-line dedicated to business class passengers. It charges an average 999 for a return flight between New York and London - of which 11 goes towards offsetting each passenger's carbon emissions. David Wellington, managing director of Climate Care, said: "Many of the criticisms raised over offsetting were valid. This is a young industry and it is still settling down, but the standards are improving very fast. For example, we have already moved out of forestry into renewable energy projects that reduce the time over which offsets take effect."
But others believe that carbon offsetting is deeply flawed. Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, said it was little more than a mechanism to allow rich westerners to ease their consciences. "What we are really doing is paying poor people to reduce their carbon emissions so that we can maintain our luxury lifestyles. If we really want to live sustainably we are going to have to accept the knocks and give up things like flying. In the end they are unsustainable," he said.
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Early Years Foundation Stage: UK Childhood Indoctrination
Post lifted from Random Observations. Melanie Phillips also has some scathing observations on this. Her summary: "This surely is the Nanny State gone stark staring mad"
It is just me, or is this UK precedent, reported in the Telegraph, distinctly creepy?
Babies will be given marks for crying, gurgling or babbling under the Government's new curriculum for 0-5 year olds which all nurseries must follow.
Playgroups and childminders will also need to show that they help babies make progress in 69 areas of education and development or risk losing funds.
The new Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum lays down how children are expected to develop from birth to the end of the first year of compulsory schooling, the year in which they turn five. The document, which has the force of law, was published yesterday alongside a book of guidance and cards containing the main requirements and underlying principles.
And of course:
By three years and four months, children will begin citizenship lessons so they understand that "people have different, needs, views, cultures and beliefs, that need to be treated with respect".
What does it mean to be a British citizen? It means recognizing others are different. Is that it? Different how? And what does "respect" actually entail?
This working document [pdf, as HTML] on the curriculum reveals there's a huge focus on indirectly instilling cultural relativism in 3-year-olds though their caregivers. In fact, it's apparently the first thing that pops into the authors' minds:
The first page of this document states that it is to be ’a single framework for care, learning and development for children in all early years settings from birth to the August after their fifth birthday’. This statement has huge implications for racial equality. It means those responsible for working with young children must:
* have an understanding and knowledge about how racism* is deeply embedded in our society and its implications for working with all children and their families
* ensure that every child is equally cared for. This means ensuring equality of treatment, being knowledgeable about the needs, family background, culture, religion (or none) ... of every child, being observant and watchful about their experiences within the setting and being aware and understanding of any potential racial prejudice or discrimination a child may experience or manifest and how to address them effectively...
* encourage every child equally to develop ... their ability to stand up for themselves about fairness and justice as well as standing up for others who are treated unfairly
How to break this down? First, let's note that little tiny asterisk next to the word "racism", where the footnote reveals "racism" doesn't simply mean actual racism -- which all good-minded people oppose -- but rather also includes "cultural racism", "enthnocentrism", "institutional racism", and "structural racism."
And what do these various terms mean? For example, here's what "cultural racism" denotes:
The culture of minority groups is seen as flawed in soem [sic] way, and thus as standing in the way of their progress. Unlike post-reflective gut racism, however, cultural racism does not involve belief in the existence of any biological incapacity to change. On the contrary, change is exactly what is sought. Minorities are encouraged to turn their back on their own culture and to become absorbed by the majority culture.
So it turns out these alleged "citizenship" lessons ultimately mean we convince children there is nothing better about British culture than, say, a society ruled by the Taliban. (But certainly not the reverse. Down with assimilation!)
And "institutional racism"?
... institutional racism generally refers to the way that the institutional arrangements and the distribution of resources in our society serve to reinforce the advantages of the white majority... [necessitating] the moral judgment that once the discriminatory consequences of the institutional practices are raised to consciousness, anyone seeking to perpetuated them is guilty of racism
Example: If some minority group is more often arrested for some category of crime, whether the police and lawmakers have racist motives or not, those involved are guilty of "institutional racism" -- and anyone who still insists due process should be racially blind "is guilty of racism", ironically.
So the goal here is, amazingly, neo-Marxist* structural analysis, where the caregiver (and thus, by influence, child) is taught to think in terms of membership groups, rather than as individuals; in terms of relative societal power of those groups rather than goodness or badness of an individual's behavior; and in term of outcomes rather than traditional standards of fairness -- by which I mean applying the same rules equally to all.
And thus the instruction to be "observant and watchful" for "discrimination a child may experience or manifest" means that we watch for traditional ethics and values instilled in children from "family background, culture, [or] religion" and counter it. Indeed, the document further admits the curriculum must "plan how to support children in learning positive attitudes and unlearning any negative attitudes to differences between people... helping children unlearn any prejudiced attitudes..."
Concerning the selection of caregivers, the document adds:
At present there are great differences in qualifications, knowledge and experience about racial equality among providers and practitioners. This means that this document must be explicit about such issues. It points to the considerable need for training for them about equality issues
And, they add, "recruitment practice" (hiring of new caregivers, presumably) must "ensure only those knowledgeable or committed to implement equality are selected." Note the exact phrasing: "those committed to implement equality", apparently in a revolutionary sense. The focus, again, is a desired societal outcome, not merely to prefer individuals who have a heart for small people, or those who will apply the same rules equally to all kids.
In fact, quite to the contrary:
... treating all children equally – this does not mean treating them all in the same way because every child is different from every other one
So the upshot here is that if you want to take care of a child in the UK, you will be gauged and even selected henceforth on your committment to these dogmas.
A nice, efficient way of taking control, it would seem, of "all nurseries" in the UK and turning them into state-run creches -- while halting the transmission of familial and majority moral, religious, and cultural values. (Under the guise of providing "uniform care", of course.) In fact, it seems this particular document addresses nothing else.
So why am I writing this? Not because I wish to defend racism, that's for sure. But what we see is the installation of an entirely different moral paradigm and value set -- one which is rampant in today's university -- into very young children, under the guise of fighting racism. That's why you see so many different words with "racism" appended, like "cultural racism" which is simply the charge of not buying into cultural relativism, framed so to make those who disagree "racists."
And ultimately, I believe this alternative morality create citizens who are conditioned to avoid critical thinking, and who are more malleable to the needs of a strong, centralized government. Dewey would have been proud.
600,000 pounds compensation for a man whose wife died in a NHS hospital
The husband of a woman who died from blood poisoning six days after giving birth to their second child received 600,000 pounds in compensation yesterday after two NHS trusts apologised for a series of blunders that led to her death. Ben Palmer's wife, Jessica, was 34 when she suffered a cardiac arrest in the operating theatre, leaving him to bring up their two children, Harry and Emily, now five and two.
Mrs Palmer, a personal assistant to the Conservative MP Peter Lilley, was discharged from Kingston Hospital in Surrey the day after she gave birth, even though she had low blood pressure, a fast pulse and a high temperature - all signs of infection. As her condition deteriorated and she developed a red patch across her stomach, the couple contacted Mrs Palmer's GP, who prescribed painkillers for back pain, and her midwife, but she was not readmitted to hospital until five days later. She died the next day from multiple organ failure caused by streptococcal septicaemia.
At the inquest into her death, a community midwife from St George's Hospital in Tooting, south-west London, admitted that she had made a "gross mistake" in not referring Mrs Palmer to a doctor earlier. The deputy coroner for West London concluded that Mrs Palmer's death could have been avoided had she been sent back to hospital earlier, but she stopped short of formally finding neglect. She recorded a verdict of natural causes.
The final settlement figure of 600,000 against Kingston Hospital NHS Trust and St George's Healthcare NHS Trust, which both accepted liability, includes the provision of 23,667 pounds each to Harry and Emily. Robert Wilson, solicitor for the trusts, said at the High Court yesterday that both trusts expressed their "sincere apologies" to Mr Palmer and the family for "the shortcomings in care" which led to the death of Mrs Palmer.
"Inevitably, this has led to a great deal of soul-searching and I would particularly like to convey the profound regret of all the clinicians and staff involved in her care," he said. "Of course, they recognise that the family has to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives and an apology is of scant help in these circumstances, but it is sincerely offered."
After the hearing, Mr Palmer, 36, called on the Government to improve maternity services to prevent such a tragedy happening again. "This should never have happened," he said. "My son cries in my arms at night because he misses his mother, my daughter cries in sympathy and because she never knew her mother. I cry for them both, for the loss of their mother, my wife and best friend, and for the joys of motherhood that Jessica has been denied. "With mothering Sunday coming up this weekend, I would like the health secretary to try explaining to my children why Jessica isn't going to tuck them up in bed tonight."
Claire Fazan, his solicitor, from Irwin Mitchell, said: "Each stage of Jessica's care was provided by someone different. Her ante-natal care was at one hospital, her delivery was at another, the community midwife was from another trust and the health visitor she never lived to see was from yet another trust. Jessica's case highlights the need for extra resources and continuity of care for mothers." Mr Lilley said yesterday: "Jessica was simply one of the most delightful people you could know."
Source
Friday, March 16, 2007
Bungling British bureaucracy kills mother who fell ill after hours
Penny Campbell became ill and died over the course of a bank holiday weekend despite the attention of eight doctors. Her grieving partner believes that she would still be alive if the NHS out-of-hours system worked properly. Angus MacKinnon said that Ms Campbell, 41, had been a victim of the Government's approach to healthcare reform. She died from blood poisoning at the Royal London Hospital, East London, after she became infected during an operation for haemorrhoids. Her condition would have been easy to treat if caught in time, but she fell ill over the Easter weekend in 2005, while her GP was on holiday.
Eight doctors from Camidoc, a private company contracted to provide out-of-hours cover, misdiagnosed her condition because they did not have access to notes made by her GP or by each other. An inquest ruled in October that they had contributed to her death.
Mr MacKinnon, who intends to sue Camidoc, said: "I'm fairly confident that if Penny had been seen by a doctor from her own surgery, then you would not have had a situation where you can be seen by eight doctors, none of whom could diagnose correctly."
He has been told by a government source that the policy for providing out-of-hours cover was not discussed in Cabinet. "The reform was introduced without any kind of pilot scheme, which is absurd." He said that the coroner wrote to Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, after the inquest to warn her that the case raised national issues. "Five months later I am still waiting for a letter from her. I think that is shocking."
Source
Reform of GP out-of-hours service an expensive shambles, says report
Government preparations for a new out-of-hours GP service were "shambolic", a report from the Public Accounts Committee has found. Doctors were allowed to opt out of providing a 24-hour service in return for a salary sacrifice of only 6,000 pounds each - half what the service costs to provide. The Department of Health was not directly involved in the negotiations and never clearly defined what it wanted.
Poor monitoring means that some primary care trusts do not know whether the services they provide are any good. In cases where quality has been measured, performance is poor.
The department overlooked the fact that ending Saturday surgeries would be inconvenient for many patients, the committee said. It also allocated 70 million pounds less to trusts than the new service cost to provide, forcing them to incur deficits or to cut budgets for other services.
Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough and chairman of the committee, said: "The Department of Health thoroughly mishandled the introduction of the new system of out-of-hours care. The department chose to act as an observer, and no more, in the negotiations with GPs' representatives. This hands-off approach was good news for the doctors but no one else. They were given a strong incentive to opt out - a lot less work for a small loss of income - and a disproportionate amount of taxpayers' money is now having to be spent to provide the replacement service." About nine million patients require out-of-hours care in England each year. This is provided by in-house primary care trust teams, GP cooperatives and private companies.
Mr Leigh added: "The new service is getting better, but the needs of patients are not best served by the ending of Saturday morning surgeries. They are not best served where access to advice and treatment is often extremely difficult and slow; and they are not best served where no one knows whether the service is meant for urgent cases only or for any requests for help at all. "To cap it all, the cost of the new service is around 70 million a year more than was expected. That's the last thing the primary care trusts need at this time of increasing financial pressure." The total allocated by the Department of Health to trusts for out-of-hours services in 2005-06 was 322 million, according to the report from the Public Accounts Committee. However, figures from the National Audit Office showed that actual spending in 2005-06 was likely to be 392 million.
Those who provide out-of-hours care have been set targets relating to how long it takes to answer a call and to assess whether a patient is an emergency case. But the percentage of trusts meeting the targets was extremely low, the report said.
Stephen O'Brien, the Conservative health spokesman, said: "The Government has failed on out-of-hours provision. Everyone up and down the country is suffering because of it. Patricia Hewitt's pitiful attempt to claw back money from GPs is to try and shut the gate after the horse has bolted. "Not only has the extra cost added to the billion-pound cash crisis in our NHS, but it has pushed more people into busy A&E units, putting greater pressure on our hospitals."
Norman Lamb, of the Liberal Democrats, said: "Yet again, the Government has grossly mishandled an NHS contract, putting further pressure on cash-strapped trusts and leaving patients confused about where care is being provided. The effect of this mess is that A&E services will be swamped by patients who don't know where else to turn."
The Department of Health claimed that "most patients" were benefiting from improvements in out-of-hours services thanks to the new arrangements, and denied that the ending of Saturday surgeries had anything to do with the new contract. A spokesman said: "Patients right across the country should now be assured timely and responsive care, including the guarantee of a face-to-face consultation with a GP if needed. "It was clear from the rising number of complaints that the previous system was not meeting patients' needs and was affecting the ability to recruit and retain GPs."
Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Assocation's GPs Committee, said: "We would confirm the committee's findings that the quality of many out-of-hours services leaves a lot to be desired. We have commented about this both nationally and locally. "However, we would reject the implication that GPs were the only ones to do well out of this deal and that the Government was not really involved. The Department of Health was fully aware at all stages of the negotiations about the opt-out price."
-Before 2004 GPs were responsible for their patients 24 hours a day. For out-of-hours care (6.30pm to 8am weekdays and all weekend) they either did it themselves, shared the load with other doctors or employed locums
-The new contract allowed them to opt out of 24-hour care by sacrificing 6,000 a year. Ninety per cent of GPs accepted
-Primary care trusts had to organise out-of-hours care by employing GPs, private companies or even GPs who had opted out of providing it themselves
-As a whole, the new contract gave GPs a big rise in pay, raising the average to nearly œ100,000. A points system that rewards GPs for a quality service easily exceeds what they lost in giving up out-of-hours care
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Britain: Islamic extremists 'infiltrate Oxbridge'
Leading universities including Oxford and Cambridge have been targeted by Islamic extremists who remain widely active on campuses, a prominent academic is warning. Up to 48 British universities have been infiltrated by fundamentalists and the threat posed by radical groups must be "urgently addressed", according to Prof Anthony Glees. The claim calls into question the Government's attempted crackdown on Islamic extremism in universities and casts doubt on claims by Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, that the problem is not widespread.
Prof Glees will warn the Association of University Chief Security Officers (Aucso) next month that the disbanded extremist group, al-Muhajiroun, claims to have infiltrated "the main campuses such as Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics and Imperial College". His speech on "radicalism in universities" also states that at its peak before the July 7 bombings in 2005, al-Muhajiroun had a presence at "more than 48 universities and faculties", and that Omar Bakri Mohammed, the group's founder, claims it is "still operational" in several campuses.
Prof Glees, the director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, said: "We must accept this problem is widespread and underestimated. Unless clear and decisive action against campus extremism is taken, the security situation in the UK can only deteriorate." Following a report from Prof Glees showing that 31 universities and colleges had hard-line Islamic groups within their campuses, the Department for Education and Skills last year issued guidelines on dealing with any extremism.
Student Islamic societies have faced growing scrutiny after it emerged that one of 12 men charged in connection with the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners was president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University. Last year, Aucso launched a "counter-terrorism" group to tackle the spread of Islamic fundamentalism on campuses.
Prof Glees called on the Government to provide extra investment in campus security and urged university officials to interview undergraduates to ensure that they were bona fide students.
A spokesman for Oxford University said: "We always take any extremism seriously and work closely with the police on any form of extremism that might affect our students or staff." A Cambridge University spokesman said he was not aware of any current extremist activity but that the university "remained vigilant". The Government's controversial guidance asked university staff to "monitor" student Islamic societies and report any "Asian-looking" students they suspected of extremism to the security services. Student groups attacked the move as "bearing on the side of McCarthyism". Other critics suggest that the guidelines are widely ignored. Chris Pope, an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said: "My understanding is that this problem is ongoing and expanding in some campuses."
A spokesman for Universities UK, the umbrella group for British vice-chancellors, said: "In the rare event of such problems, universities work very closely with the police and other authorities."
In a recent report from a London-based Arabic newspaper, Anjem Choudary, the former head of al-Muhajiroun in Britain, who joined the group as a student at the University of Surrey, confirmed that while the movement officially disbanded in 2005, "the students of Omar Bakri continue to preach on campuses".
Last year, Dhiren Barot, said to be al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's "UK general", was jailed for 40 years for planning terrorist attacks. Barot, 34, faked his identity in order to study at Brunel University. The London School of Ecomonics and Imperial College were unable to comment. Mr Rammell said: "Our assessment has not changed. Violent extremism in the name of Islam is a real, credible and sustained threat to the UK and there is evidence of a serious, but not widespread risk of violent extremism in the name of Islam on our university campuses."
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British university is accused of censoring lecture on Islamic anti-Semititism
The University of Leeds was accused of infringing free speech last night when it cancelled a lecture on "Islamic anti-Semitism" by a German academic. Matthias Koentzel arrived at the university yesterday morning to begin a three-day programme of lectures and seminars, but was told that it had been called off on "security grounds".
Dr Koentzel, a political scientist who has lectured around the world on the antiSemitic ideology of Islamist groups, told The Times there were concerns that he would be attacked. He said that he was "outraged" that his meetings had been cancelled and had yet to receive an explanation. The university, which acted after complaints from Muslim students, denied that it was interfering with the academic freedom of Dr Koentzel, and said that proper arrangements for stewarding the meeting had not been made. The lecture, entitled "Hitler's Legacy: Islamic antiSemitism in the Middle East", was organised by the university's German department and publicised three weeks ago. A large attendance had been expected.
Dr Koentzel, a former adviser to the German Green Party, said: "I have been told that it has had to be cancelled for security reasons. It seems there were concerns that there could be violence against my person. "I have lectured in lots of countries on this subject. I gave the same talk at Yale University recently, and this is the first time I have been invited to lecture in the UK. Nothing like this has ever happened before - this is censorship. "It is a controversial area but I am accustomed to debate. I value the integrity of academic debate and I feel that it really is in danger here. This is a very important subject and if you cannot address it on university property, then what is a university for?"
Dr Koentzel, a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that he had been shown two e-mails that had been received, which objected to his lecture. One, apparently written by a student, said: "As a Muslim and an Arab this has come to me as a great shock. The only intention that you have for doing this is to increase hatred as I clearly regard it as an open racist attack."
Ahmed Sawalem, president of the university's student Islamic Society, confirmed that he had contacted the office of Professor Michael Arthur, the Vice-Chancellor, to register an official complaint. "The title of the talk is provocative and I have searched the internet to read his writings and they are not very pleasant," Mr Sawalem said. "We are not opposed to freedom of expression. We just sent a complaint, we did not ask for the talk to be cancelled."
The university authorities contacted the German department on Tuesday and asked for a change in the title. The department agreed to relabel the talk as "The Nazi Legacy: the export of antiSemitism to the Middle East". Yesterday morning, the head of the German department, Professor Stuart Taberner, was called to a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor's staff and the head of security. After the meeting, Dr Koentzel's lecture and workshops were cancelled.
Annette Seidel Arpaci, an academic in the German department, said: "This is an academic talk by a scholar, it is not a political rally. The sudden cancellation is a sell-out of academic freedom, especially freedom of speech, at the University of Leeds." A spokes-woman for the university said that it valued freedom of speech and added that the cancellation of the meeting had been a bureaucratic issue. "The decision to cancel the meeting has nothing to do with academic freedom, freedom of speech, antiSemitism or Islam-ophobia, and those claiming that is the case are making mischief," she said.
What he wrote
" AntiSemitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda . . . "Although Islamism is an independent, antiSemitic, antimodern mass movement, its main early promoters, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti and the Qassamites in Palestine, were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist Government."
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After Hate Speech, the war against ‘Mate Speech’
As the language police turn their attention to banter between buddies and football-ground chants, no area of life is safe from the censors.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, governments in the West have instituted laws against ‘Hate Speech’. To varying degrees they have criminalised the use of racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic or anti-religious words by groups or individuals on the basis that they might incite hatred and possibly even violence against vulnerable minorities.
Now, if recent cases in Britain are anything to go by, the language police are turning their attentions to what we might call ‘Mate Speech’. They’re cracking down on banter between buddies, throwaway chants at football matches, and words uttered in informal, behind-the-scenes settings, on the basis that someone somewhere, if they ever caught drift of these words, might possibly be offended by them.
Welcome to the humourless society, where no off-the-cuff remark, gag or utterance is beyond the sanction of the sanctimonious word-watchers.
Last week, Conservative MP and former army colonel Patrick Mercer was sacked from the Front Bench by party leader David Cameron for saying the words ‘black bastard’ in an interview with The Times. Mercer said: ‘If someone is slow on the assault course [in army training], you’d get people shouting: “Come on you fat bastard, come on you ginger bastard, come on you black bastard.”’ Cameron said Mercer’s words were ‘completely unacceptable’ and within three hours of their being published in The Times he had kicked Mercer out of the shadow cabinet.
Also last week, eight schoolboys aged 15 and 16 were arrested in Hertfordshire, England after a couple of them chanted ‘Yid Army’ at a leaving do for Jewish teacher David Appleman. ‘Yid Army’ is a knowing term used by fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club to describe themselves, in recognition of the fact that much of Spurs’ traditional support came from the Jewish community in north London. Apparently Mr Appleman was ‘smiling and shaking hands with the boys’ when the incident occurred, but when he later saw a video of it on YouTube he made a complaint to the police.
Meanwhile, the police force investigating allegations of racist behaviour in the Celebrity Big Brother house in January have announced that they’re dropping the case. Who can forget the CBB incident (however much we might have tried), when an argument over Oxo cubes between reality TV has-been Jade Goody and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty – which reached its heady conclusion when Goody said the phrase ‘Shilpa Poppadom’ – caused an international stink? The Crown Prosecution Service said that while what occurred in the house ‘was clearly offensive, it was not criminal’.
Phew. It’s not a crime – yet – to say someone’s name and then put the word ‘Poppadom’ after it.
Perhaps the most striking thing about these ‘Mate Speech’ incidents is the separation of words from intent. No one really thinks Patrick Mercer is a racist. Even those denouncing him for using ‘insensitive words’ point out that he isn’t racist and has probably done some good work in the army. The schoolboys chanting ‘Yid Army’ were using a football-ground chant that is not remotely anti-Semitic in intent; indeed it is chanted by Jewish fans of Tottenham Hotspur. And the police investigating the CBB affair have failed to uncover any evidence that the words used in the house – which ranged from ‘liar!’ and ‘fake!’ to a suggestion that Shilpa Shetty should ‘spend a day in the slums’ – had racist underpinnings.
The lack of any racist intent is clear from the fact that there are no ‘victims’ in these cases. Mercer did not say ‘black bastard’ to one of his black constituents or to a black journalist; he merely described, in a quiet and polite interview with The Times, what sometimes gets said on army training courses. Likewise, despite their best efforts, the police looking into CBB did not find anyone who thought they were a victim of racism. In interviews with the housemates, ‘everyone stated that they had not witnessed or perceived they were the victim of any racist behaviour’.
It would seem that schoolteacher David Appleman did not think of himself as a victim of an anti-Semitic slur at the time that the schoolkids were chanting ‘Yid Army’, but later changed his mind when he saw a video on YouTube. And now there are demands for Spurs fans to rethink their ‘Yid Army’ tag, despite the fact that no one in Spurs circles thinks of it as an insult that harms them: they’re the ones who chant it!
The fact that you can have an outcry, even a police investigation, over words that are not racist in intent, and which have not harmed anyone, takes censorship to a terrifying new level. These days, it doesn’t matter what your words mean, or who you say them to. It doesn’t even matter if they are true; for example, whether you think it is right or wrong that this kind of thing happens, Patrick Mercer is no doubt correct to state that during army training the phrase ‘come on you black bastard’ is used to spur on black soldiers doing obstacle courses. Rather it is assumed that there are certain words and phrases you simply cannot say these days – anywhere, anytime, to any person, or for any reason whatsoever.
So Jade Goody may not have been racist when she said ‘Shilpa Poppadom’, but you just cannot use cultural references to have a pop at people you don’t like these days. Patrick Mercer was not being racist when he pointed out that those responsible for training soldiers sometimes say ‘come on you black bastard’, but you cannot say those two words – ‘black bastard’ – anymore. The ‘yiddos’ of the Yid Army have ‘taken back’ the word yid and turned it into a badge of footballing pride – but don’t they know that you shouldn’t say the word yid in any context or at any time?
Some are understandably perplexed by this censorship of individuals who have not attacked or slurred anyone else (and who are sometimes referring to themselves!). In The Sunday Times, Rod Liddle confesses to being ‘poleaxed by the strange logic’ behind the Mercer incident, where a shadow cabinet minister is given the boot for saying something that was intended to be neither racist nor offensive, but rather was an attempt to ‘explain, with candour, what he’d observed during his time serving this country as a soldier’. Where does this perplexing censorship come from?
The idea that words can be offensive, even racist, even if they are not intended as such – and even if they are not aimed at anyone else or if the person they are aimed at does not consider them to be racist or harmful – was institutionalised by the Macpherson Report of 1999. Based on an inquiry into the investigation of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London, the Macpherson Report established a new definition of a racist crime and racist slur. It said that an incident should officially be deemed racial if anybody – not just the victim, but ‘anybody else’ – considers it to be racial. Such a sweepingly relativistic view of offensive speech and criminal action has become institutionalised in policing, politics and public debate in Britain.
And it has given rise to a stultifyingly censorious climate.
Speech is no longer a matter for the speaker and the listener; rather it has been laid open to third parties, to the perceptions, sensitivities and judgements of ‘anybody else’.
So what was once par for the course on army training courses – where soldiers may have been called ‘ginger bastard’ or ‘black bastard’ in order to toughen them up – is now seen as ‘completely unacceptable’ because others outside of the army culture judge it to be racist. Where Shilpa Shetty did not consider Jade Goody’s mouthy insults to be racist, they were still widely discussed as such – by numerous journalists, quango officials and politicians – because people outside of the CBB house perceived them as racist. And while ‘yid’ is used as a term of endearment by Spurs fans – tough, because there are people outside of Spurs who reckon it is anti-Semitic and thus should never be uttered.
In post-Macpherson Britain, ‘offence’ is no longer something specific between two parties, where one person might intend offence and another person might take it. Rather, offence has become a moral judgement that can be made by anyone against your words and their meaning. Words are no longer judged in context, or in terms of the impact they made on the person they were aimed at; rather they are judged by an ever-broadening category of offensiveness that can be wielded by anybody who heard your words, whether in person or, in the case of Patrick Mercer, through a newspaper story, or in the case of CBB over the TV airwaves.
This policing of our words by the catch-all category of ‘anybody else’s offence’ alienates us from what we think, say and believe. Our words are no longer our own; anyone who hears them can attach a meaning and intention to them, beyond what we ourselves meant and intended. This massively dents our right to speak freely with one another, and it undermines our own responsibility for what we say. Apparently it is no longer for us to decide with our friends or colleagues or fellow football fans what kind of words and phrases to use, and how and when to use them; rather it is the judgements of others that really count. And, of course, it will always be the most over-sensitive souls, those who make a profession of seeking out and exposing ‘offensive words’, who will butt into our everyday exchanges and declare that they are offensive.
I always hated the campaigns against Hate Speech. They were underpinned by an insulting view of the public, who were thought to be easily cajoled into becoming hate-fuelled racists or anti-Semites. And they were more concerned with brushing prejudice under the carpet – silencing its practitioners – rather than having the argument out and really doing something to challenge inequality. The new campaign against ‘Mate Speech’ that the post-Macpherson politics of offence has given rise to is far, far worse. It has turned ‘offence’ from something real and direct into a free-floating moral code that can be used to judge anybody’s words at any time. And it intrudes into the most intimate aspects of our lives.
When any words said by anyone in any context can be perceived by anybody else who hears them, or who hears of them, as offensive, then really no area of life is free from censorship: not the football stadium, the workplace cafeteria, the rough and tumble of a training course, the school playground. And when our words can end up being judged as racist and harmful even when we meant them innocently, the end result can only be self-doubt and self-policing: we become uncertain about what to say and when to say it. We internalise the new censoriousness; our words stick in our throat.
This is deeply troubling. We need areas of life that are free from the judgements of officialdom. It is in these areas where we experiment with words and ideas and forge friendships with like-minded individuals. Football fans bond through stadium chants; soldiers become a coherent squadron by developing their own codes of conduct and lingo, however bizarre they might seem to the rest of us; schoolchildren take risks with words in the playground, away from the formal, stuffy classroom. Closing down these informal arenas - by opening them up to the sensibilities of ‘anybody else’ - is not only illiberal; it does harm to our ability to make and sustain real and humane relationships.
It is time we took back responsibility for working out amongst ourselves what we should think and say, and responsibility for the consequences of our utterances. Our thoughts and words should not be the business of ‘anybody else’, that sly codeword for the new thought and speech police who believe they know what’s best.
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Riot police called in to quell riot at British immigration centre
"Seven staff and two inmates were taken to hospital after suffering smoke inhalation after a riot broke out at an immigration detention centre today. Riot police carrying shields were seen entering the centre at Kidlington, Oxfordshire, to help specialist Tornado units - highly trained prison officers trained to deal with riots. A Home Office spokeswoman said: "Police, fire and ambulance teams are on the scene and a number of Tornado units from the Prison Service have been deployed to the centre.
A Thames Valley Police spokesman said all three emergency services were called to the centre, to the north of Oxford, at 6.50am. He said 30 firefighters were at the scene to deal with a fire, although the main issue was smoke damage. "No serious injuries have been reported and the fire has now been put out," he said. "Police on the scene and the fire service are investigating the cause but it's likely to be suspicious."
The centre, which is run by private company GEO UK Ltd, opened in 1993 and holds 200 adult male detainees, including failed asylum seekers and immigration offenders awaiting deportation.
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Now living together makes you fat!
It's all men's fault, of course
Men and women might belong to the same species but they can have very different eating habits. Women are generally fruit eaters who are able to eat their fruit whole. Men, on the other hand, tend to eat less fruit unless someone (usually a woman) cuts it into pieces for them. They're also likely to eat fewer vegetables, are more likely to be meat eaters, while women are more likely to eat chicken and fish or be vegetarian. So what happens when they move in together - whose eating habits rule and can it be a recipe for becoming overweight?
While some research suggests the first year of living together is a time of increased risk of weight gain for both sexes, a review of research into the eating habits of cohabiting and married couples in the UK, USA and Australia found that in general, women came off worse. Although men often picked up healthier food habits when they moved in with a woman, women ended up eating more foods high in fat and sugar, and put on weight, according to the report by the Human Nutrition Research Centre at the University of Newcastle in the UK.
"It's hard to eat as many vegetables as I'd like because my partner will only eat potatoes, corn, salad leaves, carrot and avocado - unless you count baked beans. He's into English stodge and I like a Mediterranean diet," complains a friend who moved in with her partner last year. "I tend to tailor my choices to what he eats because I don't want to cook two different meals at night - but I'm trying to find more ways to adapt our meals so I get more vegetables."
So far she's not gained any extra kilos, but ask would-be weight losers when they gained weight, and many will tell you it's when they got married. That's the observation of Marie Elliott, who leads four Weight Watchers' meetings a week in Camden in Sydney. "I lost weight for my wedding, but I started gaining it once I was married. Maybe it's because you get a bit more relaxed. If you're cooking for someone else and you want to impress them you might make dessert more often, and whereas you might not drink while you're alone, when you're living with a partner there's always someone to share a drink with. Women who start cooking for a man might also start serving larger portions," she says.
But once the weight is on, men and women need different approaches to getting it off, according to dietitian Karen Miller-Kovach, Chief Scientific Officer with Weight Watchers in the US. "Both men and women are emotional eaters, but women overeat when they're sad, while men tend to overeat when they're happy - when they're out with the boys or they're celebrating an anniversary," says Miller-Kovach, who is the author of She Loses, He Loses: The Truth About Men, Women and Weight Loss (to be published in the US in April).
And while it's common for women to believe they're fat when they're not, it's common for men to think they're not overweight when they are - some men have to be obese before they think they're overweight, she adds. "But the things that inspire men and women to lose weight or to eat healthier are different. While women are more likely to change their eating [habits] to prevent a health problem, men often wait until they get a problem."
If you're a woman who wants to encourage her partner to eat better or lose weight, Miller-Kovach's advice is to give him a problem that can be fixed by having a healthier diet or losing weight. "Men are problem solvers - if you can present him with a problem, like the fact that he now needs clothes in a larger size, or needs to lower his cholesterol or blood pressure, a guy will fix it," she says.
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Penny Campbell became ill and died over the course of a bank holiday weekend despite the attention of eight doctors. Her grieving partner believes that she would still be alive if the NHS out-of-hours system worked properly. Angus MacKinnon said that Ms Campbell, 41, had been a victim of the Government's approach to healthcare reform. She died from blood poisoning at the Royal London Hospital, East London, after she became infected during an operation for haemorrhoids. Her condition would have been easy to treat if caught in time, but she fell ill over the Easter weekend in 2005, while her GP was on holiday.
Eight doctors from Camidoc, a private company contracted to provide out-of-hours cover, misdiagnosed her condition because they did not have access to notes made by her GP or by each other. An inquest ruled in October that they had contributed to her death.
Mr MacKinnon, who intends to sue Camidoc, said: "I'm fairly confident that if Penny had been seen by a doctor from her own surgery, then you would not have had a situation where you can be seen by eight doctors, none of whom could diagnose correctly."
He has been told by a government source that the policy for providing out-of-hours cover was not discussed in Cabinet. "The reform was introduced without any kind of pilot scheme, which is absurd." He said that the coroner wrote to Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, after the inquest to warn her that the case raised national issues. "Five months later I am still waiting for a letter from her. I think that is shocking."
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Reform of GP out-of-hours service an expensive shambles, says report
Government preparations for a new out-of-hours GP service were "shambolic", a report from the Public Accounts Committee has found. Doctors were allowed to opt out of providing a 24-hour service in return for a salary sacrifice of only 6,000 pounds each - half what the service costs to provide. The Department of Health was not directly involved in the negotiations and never clearly defined what it wanted.
Poor monitoring means that some primary care trusts do not know whether the services they provide are any good. In cases where quality has been measured, performance is poor.
The department overlooked the fact that ending Saturday surgeries would be inconvenient for many patients, the committee said. It also allocated 70 million pounds less to trusts than the new service cost to provide, forcing them to incur deficits or to cut budgets for other services.
Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough and chairman of the committee, said: "The Department of Health thoroughly mishandled the introduction of the new system of out-of-hours care. The department chose to act as an observer, and no more, in the negotiations with GPs' representatives. This hands-off approach was good news for the doctors but no one else. They were given a strong incentive to opt out - a lot less work for a small loss of income - and a disproportionate amount of taxpayers' money is now having to be spent to provide the replacement service." About nine million patients require out-of-hours care in England each year. This is provided by in-house primary care trust teams, GP cooperatives and private companies.
Mr Leigh added: "The new service is getting better, but the needs of patients are not best served by the ending of Saturday morning surgeries. They are not best served where access to advice and treatment is often extremely difficult and slow; and they are not best served where no one knows whether the service is meant for urgent cases only or for any requests for help at all. "To cap it all, the cost of the new service is around 70 million a year more than was expected. That's the last thing the primary care trusts need at this time of increasing financial pressure." The total allocated by the Department of Health to trusts for out-of-hours services in 2005-06 was 322 million, according to the report from the Public Accounts Committee. However, figures from the National Audit Office showed that actual spending in 2005-06 was likely to be 392 million.
Those who provide out-of-hours care have been set targets relating to how long it takes to answer a call and to assess whether a patient is an emergency case. But the percentage of trusts meeting the targets was extremely low, the report said.
Stephen O'Brien, the Conservative health spokesman, said: "The Government has failed on out-of-hours provision. Everyone up and down the country is suffering because of it. Patricia Hewitt's pitiful attempt to claw back money from GPs is to try and shut the gate after the horse has bolted. "Not only has the extra cost added to the billion-pound cash crisis in our NHS, but it has pushed more people into busy A&E units, putting greater pressure on our hospitals."
Norman Lamb, of the Liberal Democrats, said: "Yet again, the Government has grossly mishandled an NHS contract, putting further pressure on cash-strapped trusts and leaving patients confused about where care is being provided. The effect of this mess is that A&E services will be swamped by patients who don't know where else to turn."
The Department of Health claimed that "most patients" were benefiting from improvements in out-of-hours services thanks to the new arrangements, and denied that the ending of Saturday surgeries had anything to do with the new contract. A spokesman said: "Patients right across the country should now be assured timely and responsive care, including the guarantee of a face-to-face consultation with a GP if needed. "It was clear from the rising number of complaints that the previous system was not meeting patients' needs and was affecting the ability to recruit and retain GPs."
Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Assocation's GPs Committee, said: "We would confirm the committee's findings that the quality of many out-of-hours services leaves a lot to be desired. We have commented about this both nationally and locally. "However, we would reject the implication that GPs were the only ones to do well out of this deal and that the Government was not really involved. The Department of Health was fully aware at all stages of the negotiations about the opt-out price."
-Before 2004 GPs were responsible for their patients 24 hours a day. For out-of-hours care (6.30pm to 8am weekdays and all weekend) they either did it themselves, shared the load with other doctors or employed locums
-The new contract allowed them to opt out of 24-hour care by sacrificing 6,000 a year. Ninety per cent of GPs accepted
-Primary care trusts had to organise out-of-hours care by employing GPs, private companies or even GPs who had opted out of providing it themselves
-As a whole, the new contract gave GPs a big rise in pay, raising the average to nearly œ100,000. A points system that rewards GPs for a quality service easily exceeds what they lost in giving up out-of-hours care
Source
Britain: Islamic extremists 'infiltrate Oxbridge'
Leading universities including Oxford and Cambridge have been targeted by Islamic extremists who remain widely active on campuses, a prominent academic is warning. Up to 48 British universities have been infiltrated by fundamentalists and the threat posed by radical groups must be "urgently addressed", according to Prof Anthony Glees. The claim calls into question the Government's attempted crackdown on Islamic extremism in universities and casts doubt on claims by Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, that the problem is not widespread.
Prof Glees will warn the Association of University Chief Security Officers (Aucso) next month that the disbanded extremist group, al-Muhajiroun, claims to have infiltrated "the main campuses such as Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics and Imperial College". His speech on "radicalism in universities" also states that at its peak before the July 7 bombings in 2005, al-Muhajiroun had a presence at "more than 48 universities and faculties", and that Omar Bakri Mohammed, the group's founder, claims it is "still operational" in several campuses.
Prof Glees, the director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, said: "We must accept this problem is widespread and underestimated. Unless clear and decisive action against campus extremism is taken, the security situation in the UK can only deteriorate." Following a report from Prof Glees showing that 31 universities and colleges had hard-line Islamic groups within their campuses, the Department for Education and Skills last year issued guidelines on dealing with any extremism.
Student Islamic societies have faced growing scrutiny after it emerged that one of 12 men charged in connection with the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners was president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University. Last year, Aucso launched a "counter-terrorism" group to tackle the spread of Islamic fundamentalism on campuses.
Prof Glees called on the Government to provide extra investment in campus security and urged university officials to interview undergraduates to ensure that they were bona fide students.
A spokesman for Oxford University said: "We always take any extremism seriously and work closely with the police on any form of extremism that might affect our students or staff." A Cambridge University spokesman said he was not aware of any current extremist activity but that the university "remained vigilant". The Government's controversial guidance asked university staff to "monitor" student Islamic societies and report any "Asian-looking" students they suspected of extremism to the security services. Student groups attacked the move as "bearing on the side of McCarthyism". Other critics suggest that the guidelines are widely ignored. Chris Pope, an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said: "My understanding is that this problem is ongoing and expanding in some campuses."
A spokesman for Universities UK, the umbrella group for British vice-chancellors, said: "In the rare event of such problems, universities work very closely with the police and other authorities."
In a recent report from a London-based Arabic newspaper, Anjem Choudary, the former head of al-Muhajiroun in Britain, who joined the group as a student at the University of Surrey, confirmed that while the movement officially disbanded in 2005, "the students of Omar Bakri continue to preach on campuses".
Last year, Dhiren Barot, said to be al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's "UK general", was jailed for 40 years for planning terrorist attacks. Barot, 34, faked his identity in order to study at Brunel University. The London School of Ecomonics and Imperial College were unable to comment. Mr Rammell said: "Our assessment has not changed. Violent extremism in the name of Islam is a real, credible and sustained threat to the UK and there is evidence of a serious, but not widespread risk of violent extremism in the name of Islam on our university campuses."
Source
British university is accused of censoring lecture on Islamic anti-Semititism
The University of Leeds was accused of infringing free speech last night when it cancelled a lecture on "Islamic anti-Semitism" by a German academic. Matthias Koentzel arrived at the university yesterday morning to begin a three-day programme of lectures and seminars, but was told that it had been called off on "security grounds".
Dr Koentzel, a political scientist who has lectured around the world on the antiSemitic ideology of Islamist groups, told The Times there were concerns that he would be attacked. He said that he was "outraged" that his meetings had been cancelled and had yet to receive an explanation. The university, which acted after complaints from Muslim students, denied that it was interfering with the academic freedom of Dr Koentzel, and said that proper arrangements for stewarding the meeting had not been made. The lecture, entitled "Hitler's Legacy: Islamic antiSemitism in the Middle East", was organised by the university's German department and publicised three weeks ago. A large attendance had been expected.
Dr Koentzel, a former adviser to the German Green Party, said: "I have been told that it has had to be cancelled for security reasons. It seems there were concerns that there could be violence against my person. "I have lectured in lots of countries on this subject. I gave the same talk at Yale University recently, and this is the first time I have been invited to lecture in the UK. Nothing like this has ever happened before - this is censorship. "It is a controversial area but I am accustomed to debate. I value the integrity of academic debate and I feel that it really is in danger here. This is a very important subject and if you cannot address it on university property, then what is a university for?"
Dr Koentzel, a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that he had been shown two e-mails that had been received, which objected to his lecture. One, apparently written by a student, said: "As a Muslim and an Arab this has come to me as a great shock. The only intention that you have for doing this is to increase hatred as I clearly regard it as an open racist attack."
Ahmed Sawalem, president of the university's student Islamic Society, confirmed that he had contacted the office of Professor Michael Arthur, the Vice-Chancellor, to register an official complaint. "The title of the talk is provocative and I have searched the internet to read his writings and they are not very pleasant," Mr Sawalem said. "We are not opposed to freedom of expression. We just sent a complaint, we did not ask for the talk to be cancelled."
The university authorities contacted the German department on Tuesday and asked for a change in the title. The department agreed to relabel the talk as "The Nazi Legacy: the export of antiSemitism to the Middle East". Yesterday morning, the head of the German department, Professor Stuart Taberner, was called to a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor's staff and the head of security. After the meeting, Dr Koentzel's lecture and workshops were cancelled.
Annette Seidel Arpaci, an academic in the German department, said: "This is an academic talk by a scholar, it is not a political rally. The sudden cancellation is a sell-out of academic freedom, especially freedom of speech, at the University of Leeds." A spokes-woman for the university said that it valued freedom of speech and added that the cancellation of the meeting had been a bureaucratic issue. "The decision to cancel the meeting has nothing to do with academic freedom, freedom of speech, antiSemitism or Islam-ophobia, and those claiming that is the case are making mischief," she said.
What he wrote
" AntiSemitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda . . . "Although Islamism is an independent, antiSemitic, antimodern mass movement, its main early promoters, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti and the Qassamites in Palestine, were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist Government."
Source
After Hate Speech, the war against ‘Mate Speech’
As the language police turn their attention to banter between buddies and football-ground chants, no area of life is safe from the censors.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, governments in the West have instituted laws against ‘Hate Speech’. To varying degrees they have criminalised the use of racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic or anti-religious words by groups or individuals on the basis that they might incite hatred and possibly even violence against vulnerable minorities.
Now, if recent cases in Britain are anything to go by, the language police are turning their attentions to what we might call ‘Mate Speech’. They’re cracking down on banter between buddies, throwaway chants at football matches, and words uttered in informal, behind-the-scenes settings, on the basis that someone somewhere, if they ever caught drift of these words, might possibly be offended by them.
Welcome to the humourless society, where no off-the-cuff remark, gag or utterance is beyond the sanction of the sanctimonious word-watchers.
Last week, Conservative MP and former army colonel Patrick Mercer was sacked from the Front Bench by party leader David Cameron for saying the words ‘black bastard’ in an interview with The Times. Mercer said: ‘If someone is slow on the assault course [in army training], you’d get people shouting: “Come on you fat bastard, come on you ginger bastard, come on you black bastard.”’ Cameron said Mercer’s words were ‘completely unacceptable’ and within three hours of their being published in The Times he had kicked Mercer out of the shadow cabinet.
Also last week, eight schoolboys aged 15 and 16 were arrested in Hertfordshire, England after a couple of them chanted ‘Yid Army’ at a leaving do for Jewish teacher David Appleman. ‘Yid Army’ is a knowing term used by fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club to describe themselves, in recognition of the fact that much of Spurs’ traditional support came from the Jewish community in north London. Apparently Mr Appleman was ‘smiling and shaking hands with the boys’ when the incident occurred, but when he later saw a video of it on YouTube he made a complaint to the police.
Meanwhile, the police force investigating allegations of racist behaviour in the Celebrity Big Brother house in January have announced that they’re dropping the case. Who can forget the CBB incident (however much we might have tried), when an argument over Oxo cubes between reality TV has-been Jade Goody and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty – which reached its heady conclusion when Goody said the phrase ‘Shilpa Poppadom’ – caused an international stink? The Crown Prosecution Service said that while what occurred in the house ‘was clearly offensive, it was not criminal’.
Phew. It’s not a crime – yet – to say someone’s name and then put the word ‘Poppadom’ after it.
Perhaps the most striking thing about these ‘Mate Speech’ incidents is the separation of words from intent. No one really thinks Patrick Mercer is a racist. Even those denouncing him for using ‘insensitive words’ point out that he isn’t racist and has probably done some good work in the army. The schoolboys chanting ‘Yid Army’ were using a football-ground chant that is not remotely anti-Semitic in intent; indeed it is chanted by Jewish fans of Tottenham Hotspur. And the police investigating the CBB affair have failed to uncover any evidence that the words used in the house – which ranged from ‘liar!’ and ‘fake!’ to a suggestion that Shilpa Shetty should ‘spend a day in the slums’ – had racist underpinnings.
The lack of any racist intent is clear from the fact that there are no ‘victims’ in these cases. Mercer did not say ‘black bastard’ to one of his black constituents or to a black journalist; he merely described, in a quiet and polite interview with The Times, what sometimes gets said on army training courses. Likewise, despite their best efforts, the police looking into CBB did not find anyone who thought they were a victim of racism. In interviews with the housemates, ‘everyone stated that they had not witnessed or perceived they were the victim of any racist behaviour’.
It would seem that schoolteacher David Appleman did not think of himself as a victim of an anti-Semitic slur at the time that the schoolkids were chanting ‘Yid Army’, but later changed his mind when he saw a video on YouTube. And now there are demands for Spurs fans to rethink their ‘Yid Army’ tag, despite the fact that no one in Spurs circles thinks of it as an insult that harms them: they’re the ones who chant it!
The fact that you can have an outcry, even a police investigation, over words that are not racist in intent, and which have not harmed anyone, takes censorship to a terrifying new level. These days, it doesn’t matter what your words mean, or who you say them to. It doesn’t even matter if they are true; for example, whether you think it is right or wrong that this kind of thing happens, Patrick Mercer is no doubt correct to state that during army training the phrase ‘come on you black bastard’ is used to spur on black soldiers doing obstacle courses. Rather it is assumed that there are certain words and phrases you simply cannot say these days – anywhere, anytime, to any person, or for any reason whatsoever.
So Jade Goody may not have been racist when she said ‘Shilpa Poppadom’, but you just cannot use cultural references to have a pop at people you don’t like these days. Patrick Mercer was not being racist when he pointed out that those responsible for training soldiers sometimes say ‘come on you black bastard’, but you cannot say those two words – ‘black bastard’ – anymore. The ‘yiddos’ of the Yid Army have ‘taken back’ the word yid and turned it into a badge of footballing pride – but don’t they know that you shouldn’t say the word yid in any context or at any time?
Some are understandably perplexed by this censorship of individuals who have not attacked or slurred anyone else (and who are sometimes referring to themselves!). In The Sunday Times, Rod Liddle confesses to being ‘poleaxed by the strange logic’ behind the Mercer incident, where a shadow cabinet minister is given the boot for saying something that was intended to be neither racist nor offensive, but rather was an attempt to ‘explain, with candour, what he’d observed during his time serving this country as a soldier’. Where does this perplexing censorship come from?
The idea that words can be offensive, even racist, even if they are not intended as such – and even if they are not aimed at anyone else or if the person they are aimed at does not consider them to be racist or harmful – was institutionalised by the Macpherson Report of 1999. Based on an inquiry into the investigation of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London, the Macpherson Report established a new definition of a racist crime and racist slur. It said that an incident should officially be deemed racial if anybody – not just the victim, but ‘anybody else’ – considers it to be racial. Such a sweepingly relativistic view of offensive speech and criminal action has become institutionalised in policing, politics and public debate in Britain.
And it has given rise to a stultifyingly censorious climate.
Speech is no longer a matter for the speaker and the listener; rather it has been laid open to third parties, to the perceptions, sensitivities and judgements of ‘anybody else’.
So what was once par for the course on army training courses – where soldiers may have been called ‘ginger bastard’ or ‘black bastard’ in order to toughen them up – is now seen as ‘completely unacceptable’ because others outside of the army culture judge it to be racist. Where Shilpa Shetty did not consider Jade Goody’s mouthy insults to be racist, they were still widely discussed as such – by numerous journalists, quango officials and politicians – because people outside of the CBB house perceived them as racist. And while ‘yid’ is used as a term of endearment by Spurs fans – tough, because there are people outside of Spurs who reckon it is anti-Semitic and thus should never be uttered.
In post-Macpherson Britain, ‘offence’ is no longer something specific between two parties, where one person might intend offence and another person might take it. Rather, offence has become a moral judgement that can be made by anyone against your words and their meaning. Words are no longer judged in context, or in terms of the impact they made on the person they were aimed at; rather they are judged by an ever-broadening category of offensiveness that can be wielded by anybody who heard your words, whether in person or, in the case of Patrick Mercer, through a newspaper story, or in the case of CBB over the TV airwaves.
This policing of our words by the catch-all category of ‘anybody else’s offence’ alienates us from what we think, say and believe. Our words are no longer our own; anyone who hears them can attach a meaning and intention to them, beyond what we ourselves meant and intended. This massively dents our right to speak freely with one another, and it undermines our own responsibility for what we say. Apparently it is no longer for us to decide with our friends or colleagues or fellow football fans what kind of words and phrases to use, and how and when to use them; rather it is the judgements of others that really count. And, of course, it will always be the most over-sensitive souls, those who make a profession of seeking out and exposing ‘offensive words’, who will butt into our everyday exchanges and declare that they are offensive.
I always hated the campaigns against Hate Speech. They were underpinned by an insulting view of the public, who were thought to be easily cajoled into becoming hate-fuelled racists or anti-Semites. And they were more concerned with brushing prejudice under the carpet – silencing its practitioners – rather than having the argument out and really doing something to challenge inequality. The new campaign against ‘Mate Speech’ that the post-Macpherson politics of offence has given rise to is far, far worse. It has turned ‘offence’ from something real and direct into a free-floating moral code that can be used to judge anybody’s words at any time. And it intrudes into the most intimate aspects of our lives.
When any words said by anyone in any context can be perceived by anybody else who hears them, or who hears of them, as offensive, then really no area of life is free from censorship: not the football stadium, the workplace cafeteria, the rough and tumble of a training course, the school playground. And when our words can end up being judged as racist and harmful even when we meant them innocently, the end result can only be self-doubt and self-policing: we become uncertain about what to say and when to say it. We internalise the new censoriousness; our words stick in our throat.
This is deeply troubling. We need areas of life that are free from the judgements of officialdom. It is in these areas where we experiment with words and ideas and forge friendships with like-minded individuals. Football fans bond through stadium chants; soldiers become a coherent squadron by developing their own codes of conduct and lingo, however bizarre they might seem to the rest of us; schoolchildren take risks with words in the playground, away from the formal, stuffy classroom. Closing down these informal arenas - by opening them up to the sensibilities of ‘anybody else’ - is not only illiberal; it does harm to our ability to make and sustain real and humane relationships.
It is time we took back responsibility for working out amongst ourselves what we should think and say, and responsibility for the consequences of our utterances. Our thoughts and words should not be the business of ‘anybody else’, that sly codeword for the new thought and speech police who believe they know what’s best.
Source
Riot police called in to quell riot at British immigration centre
"Seven staff and two inmates were taken to hospital after suffering smoke inhalation after a riot broke out at an immigration detention centre today. Riot police carrying shields were seen entering the centre at Kidlington, Oxfordshire, to help specialist Tornado units - highly trained prison officers trained to deal with riots. A Home Office spokeswoman said: "Police, fire and ambulance teams are on the scene and a number of Tornado units from the Prison Service have been deployed to the centre.
A Thames Valley Police spokesman said all three emergency services were called to the centre, to the north of Oxford, at 6.50am. He said 30 firefighters were at the scene to deal with a fire, although the main issue was smoke damage. "No serious injuries have been reported and the fire has now been put out," he said. "Police on the scene and the fire service are investigating the cause but it's likely to be suspicious."
The centre, which is run by private company GEO UK Ltd, opened in 1993 and holds 200 adult male detainees, including failed asylum seekers and immigration offenders awaiting deportation.
Source
Now living together makes you fat!
It's all men's fault, of course
Men and women might belong to the same species but they can have very different eating habits. Women are generally fruit eaters who are able to eat their fruit whole. Men, on the other hand, tend to eat less fruit unless someone (usually a woman) cuts it into pieces for them. They're also likely to eat fewer vegetables, are more likely to be meat eaters, while women are more likely to eat chicken and fish or be vegetarian. So what happens when they move in together - whose eating habits rule and can it be a recipe for becoming overweight?
While some research suggests the first year of living together is a time of increased risk of weight gain for both sexes, a review of research into the eating habits of cohabiting and married couples in the UK, USA and Australia found that in general, women came off worse. Although men often picked up healthier food habits when they moved in with a woman, women ended up eating more foods high in fat and sugar, and put on weight, according to the report by the Human Nutrition Research Centre at the University of Newcastle in the UK.
"It's hard to eat as many vegetables as I'd like because my partner will only eat potatoes, corn, salad leaves, carrot and avocado - unless you count baked beans. He's into English stodge and I like a Mediterranean diet," complains a friend who moved in with her partner last year. "I tend to tailor my choices to what he eats because I don't want to cook two different meals at night - but I'm trying to find more ways to adapt our meals so I get more vegetables."
So far she's not gained any extra kilos, but ask would-be weight losers when they gained weight, and many will tell you it's when they got married. That's the observation of Marie Elliott, who leads four Weight Watchers' meetings a week in Camden in Sydney. "I lost weight for my wedding, but I started gaining it once I was married. Maybe it's because you get a bit more relaxed. If you're cooking for someone else and you want to impress them you might make dessert more often, and whereas you might not drink while you're alone, when you're living with a partner there's always someone to share a drink with. Women who start cooking for a man might also start serving larger portions," she says.
But once the weight is on, men and women need different approaches to getting it off, according to dietitian Karen Miller-Kovach, Chief Scientific Officer with Weight Watchers in the US. "Both men and women are emotional eaters, but women overeat when they're sad, while men tend to overeat when they're happy - when they're out with the boys or they're celebrating an anniversary," says Miller-Kovach, who is the author of She Loses, He Loses: The Truth About Men, Women and Weight Loss (to be published in the US in April).
And while it's common for women to believe they're fat when they're not, it's common for men to think they're not overweight when they are - some men have to be obese before they think they're overweight, she adds. "But the things that inspire men and women to lose weight or to eat healthier are different. While women are more likely to change their eating [habits] to prevent a health problem, men often wait until they get a problem."
If you're a woman who wants to encourage her partner to eat better or lose weight, Miller-Kovach's advice is to give him a problem that can be fixed by having a healthier diet or losing weight. "Men are problem solvers - if you can present him with a problem, like the fact that he now needs clothes in a larger size, or needs to lower his cholesterol or blood pressure, a guy will fix it," she says.
Source
Thursday, March 15, 2007
"Grey" Incorrect in Scotland
We read:
Scotland is rather Green politically, anyway.
Stornoway is the port for the Outer Hebridean Island of Lewis and it WAS rather grey last time I was there. The picture above was probably taken on the one bright and sunny day of the year -- and it is cloudy, even so.
The exercise craze that crippled a generation
They were promised the body beautiful and their mantra was "No pain no gain". Two decades later they are feeling it again - in their knees, hips and lower backs. They are the casualties of the aerobics boom. The craze began in the late 1970s but it was the actress Jane Fonda who really got people moving. Following her lead, thousands climbed into Spandex, donned headbands and twisted and punched the air in church halls across Britain.
Now they are more likely to be seen in physiotherapy. Nicki de Lyon, of Sports and Spinal Clinics, London, said: "They have knee and hip and lower back problems. It was not just the constant impact on hard floors, which put pressure on joints, but the twisting movements. And in the 1980s there had not been any research into the right footwear."
The fitness industry was in its infancy. Robin Gargrave, of the YMCA, said: "People didn't know what they were doing. They were just following America. Now we know that jogging on the spot waving your arms in the air isn't the best thing for your body."
Derrick Evans, who went on to become Mr Motivator, visited a leisure centre in Harrow in 1981 and saw hundreds of women doing "Popmobility". He hired the two women leading them and set up a class at a church hall in Neasden. "After a few months I decided I could do this," he said. Before long he had become the presenter Gloria Hunniford's trainer and was motivating millions of viewers on This Morning. "In those days it wasn't critical to have qualifications. There weren't really any around." Now 54, he claims to be "fitter than a fiddle" - but his routines were always "moderate". Others were less so. Andy Jackson, of the Fitness Industry Authority, says that, in the first flush of the craze, "a lot of deconditioned people suddenly started exercising with the intensity of Linford Christie".
Disciples were told that pain was good for them. "It's positive pain, just like childbirth," devotees in America shouted. As the craze took off in Britain, Geri Livingston bought a cat-suit and joined an energetic group in a church hall in Cheshire. All through the 1980s she sought out the toughest classes, attending up to four a week. "My knees just kill me now," said Mrs Livingston, now 44. "I can't jog any more, and I have lower back problems."
Hardest hit were the instructors. "I would be taking 20 classes a week," said Ebony Williams, who now teaches Pilates. "My knees are painful and swollen, I'm seeing a chiropractor for my back, and I have to have regular massages. All the instructors I knew have had the same problems with their knees, back, joints and shoulders."
Aerobics is now in decline. In Britain it has been supplanted by a bewildering array of low-impact routines and "conditioning" programmes aimed at people in their mid50s. There, in softly lit studios, next to Japanese fountains and no longer wearing Spandex, the walking wounded of the aerobics boom may seek to soothe their battered bones.
Source
Another vacant "racism" controversy in Britain
Those who condemn Tory MP Patrick Mercer confuse political incorrectness with something more serious. I myself had something to say on this matter on Tongue Tied. Post below lifted from "The Guardian" (!) -- which see for links
Poor Colonel Mercer, he is denounced as a racist, summarily dismissed from his front bench post and roundly abused on the BBC's Question Time by five of the dimmest panellists ever let into a TV studio. Be clear about this, Patrick Mercer is not a racist, nothing like a racist: rather he is the victim of a collective reflex in the political class, a reflex which has all the complexity of a tape recording and which speaks received standard opinion.
What the colonel was actually trying to do with his remarks about "fat bastards," "ginger-haired bastards" and "black bastards", was to ask for a sense of proportion, the very last thing routine political minds could hope to find. He was saying that the army is a rough-mouthed place, happily adjusted to top-of-the register adjectives without going to law. That is surely right. Indeed Mr Mercer is being slightly euphemistic. It would be less likely that the noun, around which the adjectives "fat," "ginger" or "black" usually gathered, would be anything so eirenic as "bastard." In the army, as at the football stadium, it would be "c*nt" or "wanker." A pity really that Mr Mercer didn't get himself hanged for the sheep of "c*nt" rather than the genteel lamb of "bastard." That is a word rapidly passing out of offensive use, as "bugger" has long been. "There's a canny bugger; have you got your milk money?" is standard parent-to-child usage between Jarrow and Ashington.
The reaction of the professional reactors to "black bastard", - not uttered second person vocative, merely remarked as natural rough soldier talk - is perfect Victorian middle class. It is Thomas Bowdler, cutting the dirty bits out of Shakespeare, it is old-lady-ish, prim, hands-over-ears, Frinton-on-Sea, unhand-me-sir niminy-pimmery of a very high order. It is also close to a sort of right-thinking McCarthyism. For "commie subversive," read "racist".
Mr Mercer told the truth: that hard words pass among men, likely to be blown apart fighting Mr Blair's futile wars, as being not very important. Soldiers, if they do not start grown-up, quickly become so, learning what matters, the point made with fierce eloquence by the black sergeant who ran to his colonel's defence. "I've talked with him eaten with him, shared the night sky with him, and I tell you he isn't a racist."
This is the perspective which the colonel, with a slightly clumsy choice of words, was commending to us. Another part of that perspective is real, foul-breathed, in-your-face racism. Try the Stephen Lawrence case which, for the record, the liberal media were slow to make trouble over. The trouble came, through his personal acquaintance with Neville Lawrence, from that highly prejudiced about most things, four square Tory and inspirational editor, Paul Dacre. It was the Daily Mail which to its eternal glory, did the screaming headlines where screaming headlines were absolutely needed. Racism lies among the other street killings, the monkey noises I heard at a Yorkshire football ground a week or two back. It was racism in capitals when an Israeli minister said of the Palestinians generally "they are lice."
There is too, a good deal of covert racism in the way ministers talk about and behave to the illegal immigrants whom they promise to give such a bad time. These are foreigners who, for having failed the target-let criteria of all-too fallible boards, are commonly treated like convicted criminals, incarcerated, abused, the door kicked-in at six in the morning before they are taken in handcuffs to the airport. These are foreigners we can really behave badly to, with the home secretary to guide us.
What really distinguishes racism from a touch of politically incorrect stocking is intent, what the law call "malice." Do the words complained of express hatred for someone or for a set of people? Do they seek, in the language of the libel law, to incite "hatred ridicule or contempt"? The point about Mr Mercer's reference to cries of "get a move on you black bastard," was that he was convinced that they didn't. It was rough boys' talk. But this useful nuance is clearly lost upon David Cameron, whose response on Thursday was the sort of flashy weakness which masquerades as strength. "Oh my God, the press will be after us. We mustn't step out of line, mustn't give offence mustn't reason a case through. Sack him at once. Won't that be super PR?"
When Ted Heath fired Enoch Powell in 1968, he went against the grain of half his party and against a far larger corpus of public anti-black feeling than exists now. He was giving a genuine lead and, for all Powell's wrong headed virtues, he was right to sack him. Heath was being brave. Cameron is being commonplace, limp, tide-borne, fashionable, not inclined to think when he can be seen to mimic action. He comes over as a slight unmeritable man slavering in the best Pavlovian fashion before jumping through all the received standard hoops. He is a politician not worth trying to be interested in.
I repeat the words of Mr Mercer's black sergeant. "I have worked for him, eaten with him, shared the night sky with him and he is not a racist." That's good enough for me, but clearly not for David Cameron. Mr Mercer is indeed not a racist, but out of cowardice and mediocrity of mind and spirit, David Cameron has sacked him. The thing speaks for itself.
Source
We read:
"Land Rover has angered a Western Isles councillor after promoting a new colour called Stornoway Grey. Angus Nicolson claimed the colour will damage the town's image among tourists and leave people with the impression that it was drab and dull. The councillor has called on the car manufacturing giant to rename it Silvery Stornoway.
However, Land Rover said it was one of its strongest colours and that it will help "keep" Stornoway on the map.
Mr Nicolson said: "This is deeply insulting and is offensive, inaccurate and inherently degrading. "This will hit tourism as it subliminally implants adverse connotations in the minds of those who have never experienced the reality of these beautiful islands."
Source
Scotland is rather Green politically, anyway.
Stornoway is the port for the Outer Hebridean Island of Lewis and it WAS rather grey last time I was there. The picture above was probably taken on the one bright and sunny day of the year -- and it is cloudy, even so.
The exercise craze that crippled a generation
They were promised the body beautiful and their mantra was "No pain no gain". Two decades later they are feeling it again - in their knees, hips and lower backs. They are the casualties of the aerobics boom. The craze began in the late 1970s but it was the actress Jane Fonda who really got people moving. Following her lead, thousands climbed into Spandex, donned headbands and twisted and punched the air in church halls across Britain.
Now they are more likely to be seen in physiotherapy. Nicki de Lyon, of Sports and Spinal Clinics, London, said: "They have knee and hip and lower back problems. It was not just the constant impact on hard floors, which put pressure on joints, but the twisting movements. And in the 1980s there had not been any research into the right footwear."
The fitness industry was in its infancy. Robin Gargrave, of the YMCA, said: "People didn't know what they were doing. They were just following America. Now we know that jogging on the spot waving your arms in the air isn't the best thing for your body."
Derrick Evans, who went on to become Mr Motivator, visited a leisure centre in Harrow in 1981 and saw hundreds of women doing "Popmobility". He hired the two women leading them and set up a class at a church hall in Neasden. "After a few months I decided I could do this," he said. Before long he had become the presenter Gloria Hunniford's trainer and was motivating millions of viewers on This Morning. "In those days it wasn't critical to have qualifications. There weren't really any around." Now 54, he claims to be "fitter than a fiddle" - but his routines were always "moderate". Others were less so. Andy Jackson, of the Fitness Industry Authority, says that, in the first flush of the craze, "a lot of deconditioned people suddenly started exercising with the intensity of Linford Christie".
Disciples were told that pain was good for them. "It's positive pain, just like childbirth," devotees in America shouted. As the craze took off in Britain, Geri Livingston bought a cat-suit and joined an energetic group in a church hall in Cheshire. All through the 1980s she sought out the toughest classes, attending up to four a week. "My knees just kill me now," said Mrs Livingston, now 44. "I can't jog any more, and I have lower back problems."
Hardest hit were the instructors. "I would be taking 20 classes a week," said Ebony Williams, who now teaches Pilates. "My knees are painful and swollen, I'm seeing a chiropractor for my back, and I have to have regular massages. All the instructors I knew have had the same problems with their knees, back, joints and shoulders."
Aerobics is now in decline. In Britain it has been supplanted by a bewildering array of low-impact routines and "conditioning" programmes aimed at people in their mid50s. There, in softly lit studios, next to Japanese fountains and no longer wearing Spandex, the walking wounded of the aerobics boom may seek to soothe their battered bones.
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Another vacant "racism" controversy in Britain
Those who condemn Tory MP Patrick Mercer confuse political incorrectness with something more serious. I myself had something to say on this matter on Tongue Tied. Post below lifted from "The Guardian" (!) -- which see for links
Poor Colonel Mercer, he is denounced as a racist, summarily dismissed from his front bench post and roundly abused on the BBC's Question Time by five of the dimmest panellists ever let into a TV studio. Be clear about this, Patrick Mercer is not a racist, nothing like a racist: rather he is the victim of a collective reflex in the political class, a reflex which has all the complexity of a tape recording and which speaks received standard opinion.
What the colonel was actually trying to do with his remarks about "fat bastards," "ginger-haired bastards" and "black bastards", was to ask for a sense of proportion, the very last thing routine political minds could hope to find. He was saying that the army is a rough-mouthed place, happily adjusted to top-of-the register adjectives without going to law. That is surely right. Indeed Mr Mercer is being slightly euphemistic. It would be less likely that the noun, around which the adjectives "fat," "ginger" or "black" usually gathered, would be anything so eirenic as "bastard." In the army, as at the football stadium, it would be "c*nt" or "wanker." A pity really that Mr Mercer didn't get himself hanged for the sheep of "c*nt" rather than the genteel lamb of "bastard." That is a word rapidly passing out of offensive use, as "bugger" has long been. "There's a canny bugger; have you got your milk money?" is standard parent-to-child usage between Jarrow and Ashington.
The reaction of the professional reactors to "black bastard", - not uttered second person vocative, merely remarked as natural rough soldier talk - is perfect Victorian middle class. It is Thomas Bowdler, cutting the dirty bits out of Shakespeare, it is old-lady-ish, prim, hands-over-ears, Frinton-on-Sea, unhand-me-sir niminy-pimmery of a very high order. It is also close to a sort of right-thinking McCarthyism. For "commie subversive," read "racist".
Mr Mercer told the truth: that hard words pass among men, likely to be blown apart fighting Mr Blair's futile wars, as being not very important. Soldiers, if they do not start grown-up, quickly become so, learning what matters, the point made with fierce eloquence by the black sergeant who ran to his colonel's defence. "I've talked with him eaten with him, shared the night sky with him, and I tell you he isn't a racist."
This is the perspective which the colonel, with a slightly clumsy choice of words, was commending to us. Another part of that perspective is real, foul-breathed, in-your-face racism. Try the Stephen Lawrence case which, for the record, the liberal media were slow to make trouble over. The trouble came, through his personal acquaintance with Neville Lawrence, from that highly prejudiced about most things, four square Tory and inspirational editor, Paul Dacre. It was the Daily Mail which to its eternal glory, did the screaming headlines where screaming headlines were absolutely needed. Racism lies among the other street killings, the monkey noises I heard at a Yorkshire football ground a week or two back. It was racism in capitals when an Israeli minister said of the Palestinians generally "they are lice."
There is too, a good deal of covert racism in the way ministers talk about and behave to the illegal immigrants whom they promise to give such a bad time. These are foreigners who, for having failed the target-let criteria of all-too fallible boards, are commonly treated like convicted criminals, incarcerated, abused, the door kicked-in at six in the morning before they are taken in handcuffs to the airport. These are foreigners we can really behave badly to, with the home secretary to guide us.
What really distinguishes racism from a touch of politically incorrect stocking is intent, what the law call "malice." Do the words complained of express hatred for someone or for a set of people? Do they seek, in the language of the libel law, to incite "hatred ridicule or contempt"? The point about Mr Mercer's reference to cries of "get a move on you black bastard," was that he was convinced that they didn't. It was rough boys' talk. But this useful nuance is clearly lost upon David Cameron, whose response on Thursday was the sort of flashy weakness which masquerades as strength. "Oh my God, the press will be after us. We mustn't step out of line, mustn't give offence mustn't reason a case through. Sack him at once. Won't that be super PR?"
When Ted Heath fired Enoch Powell in 1968, he went against the grain of half his party and against a far larger corpus of public anti-black feeling than exists now. He was giving a genuine lead and, for all Powell's wrong headed virtues, he was right to sack him. Heath was being brave. Cameron is being commonplace, limp, tide-borne, fashionable, not inclined to think when he can be seen to mimic action. He comes over as a slight unmeritable man slavering in the best Pavlovian fashion before jumping through all the received standard hoops. He is a politician not worth trying to be interested in.
I repeat the words of Mr Mercer's black sergeant. "I have worked for him, eaten with him, shared the night sky with him and he is not a racist." That's good enough for me, but clearly not for David Cameron. Mr Mercer is indeed not a racist, but out of cowardice and mediocrity of mind and spirit, David Cameron has sacked him. The thing speaks for itself.
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
NHS negligence kills baby
Even spinning like a top could not quite cover this one up
A newborn baby became the youngest victim of MRSA in Britain when he died in hospital after contracting the virulent superbug, a coroner ruled yesterday. Luke Day was only 36 hours old when he died, though he may have been saved if medical staff had followed procedures and given him special care, an inquest into his death was told. An attempt by doctors to resuscitate him failed after he was found lifeless in a cot beside his mother on the maternity ward at Ipswich Hospital in February 2005. An internal inquiry revealed that staff had failed to recognise signs that Luke could have been ill up to 16 hours before his death.
Specialists said they could not be sure MRSA was the cause of death, but Peter Dean, the Suffolk coroner, said that on the balance of probabilities Luke had died as a result of contracting it. Staff at the hospital were unable to find the source of the bug, despite carrying out extensive inquiries.
Luke’s mother, Glynis Day, now 19, a kitchen assistant from Woodbridge, Suffolk, attended the hearing with Luke’s father, Kevin Fenton, 26. They criticised the hospital’s failure to detect warning signs. “I think it is disgusting,” Ms Day said. Mr Fenton said that hearing the details of how Luke died “makes me sick”.
Marion Malone, who conducted a postmortem examination at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which found MRSA in Luke’s lungs, heart and spleen, told the hearing that she believed his death had been caused by septicaemia due to bacterial infection.
The inquest heard how Luke should have been tested for possible infections after staff noticed that his temperature was low, that he had low blood-sugar levels and he appeared “lethargic and slightly floppy”. Tests later revealed that his blood contained MRSA — methicillin-re-sistant staphylococcus aureus — as well as a less dangerous form ofstaphylococcus.
Peter Wilson, a consultant microbiologist at University College Hospital, London, who analysed Luke’s blood samples, said the balance of probability was that Luke’s death was caused by the bacteria. But he added that he could not say for sure if the MRSA strain was responsible or whether death was caused by septicaemia or toxins in the blood caused by the bacteria.
The coroner asked him: “Are you saying that there were signs that should have triggered referral and it would appear these signs were not picked up so Luke therefore did not have the benefit of an infection screen? “Is it fair to say that his chances would have been better had protocol been followed? [That] we don’t know if the outcome would have been different, but [that] Luke would have had a better chance?” Dr Wilson replied: “Yes, that is correct. It all depends on whether the signs that were present should have been spotted.” He added that Luke could have been treated with antibiotics if infection was suspected, which could have saved him by preventing the septicaemia from spreading.
The inquest heard how Luke weighed a healthy 7lb 7oz when born naturally at 6.53am on February 2, 2005. Staff had no concerns about his condition, but then found he was “grunting”, had low glucose levels in his blood and a lower than normal temperature at 2.10am the next day. Jane Gosling, the senior midwife, was later attending to Ms Day when she noticed that Luke was cold. He was immediately transferred for resuscitation but was declared dead 30 minutes later. The internal hospital inquiry report said there were deviations from clinical guidelines and that a paediatrician should have been called to examine Luke because of his low temperature and blood-sugar levels. It added that some of the clinical guidelines were ambiguous, but that there was “no overarching coordination of Luke’s care”.
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What a marvellous miracle! -- this baby survived
Healthy Baby Born After Prenatal Screening Falsely Showed he "Died". Baby boy miraculously survived womb-scraping procedure to remove its body
A prenatal screening test given to a UK woman in early pregnancy showed her baby had died, and the next day she underwent a procedure to remove the child's body from the womb. Three weeks later, however, she discovered her baby was alive and healthy, in a miraculous escape from failed technology. Jake Brown was born Feb. 24 at St. John's Hospital in Livingston, healthy and untouched by the trauma of his early development, The Telegraph reported March 7. His mother, Julie Brown, 29, said "The thought of them trying to get rid of a perfectly healthy baby makes me sick to the pit of my stomach, but I've got to move forward now."
The hospital had conducted a scan on Mrs. Brown at five and a half weeks gestation and could not find a heart beat or signs of growth. She was told the child had died and scheduled for a dilation and curettage procedure the next day. Somehow, her baby survived. ""The hospital has explained to me exactly what went wrong (with the diagnosis)," Mrs. Brown said. "The baby's sac hadn't changed size, but the baby had. The woman carrying out the scan didn't notice this and she thought I'd miscarried."
Errors in prenatal testing are far more common than many people realize. While more and more parents are depending on technology to identify potential health problems in their unborn children, many are not aware of the significant inaccuracy rates in prenatal screening. Abortion of the child is most often the result, even though in many cases scans are inconclusive or show only an increased possibility of health problems.
Down's syndrome is one of the most common pre-natal diagnoses to lead to abortion--but studies show screening tests for Down's are inaccurate up to 40 percent of the time. A recent Canadian study found more natural differences between the genetic code of individuals than previous researchers had thought existed, leading to greater difficulty in establishing a "normal" genetic code as a basis for evaluating pre-natal scans. Published in the journal Nature, the report suggested that prenatal screening may incorrectly diagnose genetic differences as "defects".
While the Browns don't intend to pursue legal action against the hospital, the couple said the mistake caused pain and trauma to the whole family. "They booked me in for an operation to remove the baby and we were all devastated,' Mrs. Brown said. "We then had to explain to my children Sarah and Leon that the baby had gone to heaven. My husband and the children were in floods of tears."
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UK Tribunal: Christian Judges Must Award Homosexual Couples Adoptive Children or Resign
Yesterday, the Employee Tribunal in Sheffield of South Yorkshire county, Britain informed Andrew McClintock that, despite his religious beliefs, he may not refuse to preside over adoption cases that would place a child in a home with homosexual parents. The tribunal also ruled that McClintock had not suffered any religious discrimination, despite the fact that McClintock was forced to quit his job in order to uphold his Christian conscience.
In his case, McClintock argued that, not only did his orders compromise his Christian beliefs, but they would compel him to act against what he thought to be in the best welfare of the child. He argues that he had no choice but to resign.
The tribunal's ruling says, "If a judge personally has particular views on any subject, he or she must put those views to the back of his or her mind when applying the law of the land impartially."
After the Civil Partnerships Act was passed in 2005, McClintock requested that he be excused from cases involving adoption by homosexual couples because, not only did homosexual adoption contradict his religious beliefs, he thought that placing a child in such a home would be removing them from "one kind of harm only to face another hazard."
As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, McClintock resigned his job in 2005 after he was informed by his managers that he would not be permitted to excuse himself from specific cases. McClintock had served as a magistrate judge in Britain's Sheffield County for 18 years.
McClintock took legal action against the British Department for Constitutional Affairs suing them for religious discrimination. McClintock's attorneys argued that his request to be excused from certain specific cases should be permitted under Regulation 10 of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.
McClintock's attorneys also utilized expert witness testimony in the case which claimed that "there was little research into the effect of same-sex nurture on children's development, and that what had been established was worrying."
After hearing of the tribunal's verdict McClintock said, "More needy children will be fuelling this experiment in social science and suffering what the experts call mother-hunger or father-hunger. This ruling is going to make it harder for many conscientious people - whether they are [Justices of the Peace] in the family court, or otherwise involved with children, or maybe with different matters of conscience.
He continued, "Anyone who holds seriously to the traditional morals and family values of Jews, Christians or Muslims will think twice before taking on such a job."
A spokesman for the gay rights group Stonewall was quoted in a BBC article commenting on the recent ruling said, "We are not surprised at the outcome and the tribunal's decision made it clear that people in public service cannot pick and choose which laws they comply with. While not disrespecting anyone's private religious views, all public figures have to work within the legislation and in these cases in the best interests of the children involved."
Andrea Williams of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, on the other hand, condemned the ruling saying, "This case is a clear picture of how Christian faith is becoming privatized in society. It is yet another example of the repression of Christian conscience and signals the prevalence of a secular 'new morality' and the erosion of Christian values at the expense of our children's welfare."
Britain is rife with similar controversy as the British government prepares to introduce new guidelines and legislation to the already present Sexual Orientation Regulations of 2003. According to the website Christian Concern For Our Nation the new legislation, "will make it illegal for providers of goods, services, facilities, premises, education or public functions to discriminate against the recipients on the grounds of their sexual orientation i.e. whether they are homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual.
Among other things, the legislation would make it mandatory for schools to teach homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality. Private venues would not be allowed to refuse their services to groups promoting homosexuality. Adoption agencies, regardless of religious affiliation, would be mandated to facilitate homosexual adoption.
Archbishop Nichols of Birmingham delivered a harsh criticism of governmental entities in a recent sermon, "It is simply unacceptable to suggest that the resources of faith communities, whether in schools, adoption agencies, welfare programmes, halls and shelters can work in co-operation with public authorities only if the faith communities accept not simply a legal framework but also the moral standards at present being touted by the Government." Nichols has threatened that all Catholic adoption agencies will close down if the legislation is approved.
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While Critics Blame Catholic Church for AIDS Deaths Stats Show Just the Opposite
Church's accusers have not done the homework or are deliberately misreporting the facts
The Catholic Church is killing "millions" because of its teaching on chastity and fidelity in marriage and needs to change its "policy" on banning condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS, according to a popular and apparently perpetual theme in mainstream journalism.
Commentators, especially from Britain, regularly pronounce that the late Pope John Paul II, and his successor Benedict XVI, are personally responsible for the deaths of millions of people because of their opposition to contraception, particularly condoms.
The Guardian's Polly Toynbee, on the occasion of the death of John Paul II, called the Vatican, "a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy." Toynbee said with the "ban on condoms the church has caused the death of millions of Catholics and others in areas dominated by Catholic missionaries, in Africa and right across the world. In countries where 50% are infected, millions of very young Aids orphans are today's immediate victims of the curia."
Catholic readers of the mainstream press are familiar with the regular appearance of articles speculating on whether the Pope will "lift the ban" or approve the use of condoms to stop AIDS.
Last week the Times' religion correspondent, Ruth Gledhill, wrote on her weblog that she and Times colleague Richard Owen in Rome, were "inundated" with emails, calls "and other tips" wondering if the Pope intended to lift the "ban" on condoms in his Ash Wednesday homily that afternoon.
The rumour was entirely false, she said, but it was followed the next day with a letter speculating that Pope Benedict would lift the ban on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of Donum Vitae, a document that reiterated the Catholic teaching on the sinfulness of artificial contraception, including barrier methods.
Gledhill quoted John Coventry of the aid organization, ActionAid, that promotes condom use for AIDS prevention. Translating Catholic teaching on chastity and fidelity in marriage as "anti-condom ideology" Coventry said it "has got in the way of pragmatic approaches to preventing the spread of the disease."
"For the Pope to relax Catholic attitudes to condoms would send a clear signal that it is not acceptable to prevent access to potentially life saving materials - in this case condoms - on grounds of religious belief," Coventry said.
Coventry's comments were mild compared to Toynbee in 2005 when she compared John Paul II to Vladimir Lenin: "they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost."
Toynbee wrote, "Disgracefully, the European rich quietly ignore the church's outlandish teachings on contraception without rebelling on behalf of the helpless third-world poor who die for their misplaced faith. Those 'civilised' Catholics have as much blood on their hands as the Vatican they support."
A short examination, however, of the HIV/AIDS rates of those African countries that have a large Catholic population shows that the Church's accusers have not done the homework or are deliberately misreporting the facts. The available statistics show that countries with a large Catholic percentage population, show significantly lower rates of HIV/AIDS infections than countries with mostly non-Catholic populations.
2003 statistics from the World Factbook of the US Central Intelligence Agency, shows Burundi at 62% Catholic with 6% AIDS infection rate. Angola's population is 38% Roman Catholic and has 3.9% AIDS rate. Ghana is 63% Christian, with in some regions as much as 33% Catholic and has 3.1% AIDS rate. Nigeria, divided almost evenly between the strongly Muslim north and Christian and "animist" south, has 5.4% AIDS rate.
Strongly Christian Uganda continues to frustrate condom-pushing NGO's by maintaining its abstinence and fidelity AIDS prevention programs and one of the lowest rates of AIDS in Africa, at 4.1%. Uganda's population is listed by the CIA Factbook as 33% Roman Catholic and 33% Protestant.
Of African countries with low Catholic populations, Botswana is typical with 37.3% AIDS, one of the highest in Africa, and 5% of the total population Catholic. In 2003, Swaziland was shown to have a 38.8% AIDS infection rate and only 20% Catholic population.
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BRITISH POLITICS HEATING UP
With a leadership change and an election on the horizon, British politics are getting frenetic -- with the environment a major taliking point. Below are three skeptical comments on the latest episodes. The first is from a Leftist newspaper, the second from a conservative newspaper and the third is from a regional newspaper:
It's just politics
Environmental expert PHILIP STOTT, Professor of Biogeography at the University of London, explains why we shouldn't panic - and why he believes global warming is just another political bandwagon
Every ambitious politician pays lip service to the daft idea that we can control climate, using "global warming" for their own political ends, from forcing you to wear hemp underpants to establishing a new generation of nuclear reactors. But look beyond the rising rhetoric ... what climate are these politicians hoping to produce? The biting cold of 1947, when the sea froze over? They have abandoned reason.
More worryingly, elitist green agendas, like carbon taxes and road pricing, have terrible repercussions for the poor.
Climate is chaos. It is the most complex system, driven by volcanoes, the oceans, clouds, a wobbly Earth, a pulsing sun, and cosmic rays from exploding stars. Dealing with one factor at the margins - human emissions of carbon dioxide - is utterly pointless. Climate is change. It has flipped between hot and cold, dry and wet for 4.5 billion years.
Unfortunately, our politicians have forgotten that a mammoth Ice Age ended only 12,000 years ago; that Medieval England was a balmy vineyard; that the Little Ice Age blasted Europe from the 14th Century onwards, producing the violent winds that sank the Spanish Armada. Samuel Johnson tells us of an Astronomer who claims that he can control climate: "...the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction ..." Unfortunately, the Astronomer was mad. And so are we if we give such nonsense credence.
Nobody, not even Mr Bush and Mr Blair, can fine tune climate to a degree Celsius. Yet, what about the future? The latest summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a possible rise in temperature of between 1.1 to 6.4 degC. Other groups say we shall enter a cooling phase, up to minus-two degC in 2012. That's a range of eight degrees - what's that supposed to tell us?
We should focus instead on bringing four billion people out of poverty, providing them with clean water and modern sources of energy. The richer one is, the better one can cope with change. Our "global warming" political agenda is dangerously misguided.
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Green lobby must not stifle debate
The Tories are on about airfares yet again. This week, David Cameron and Gordon Brown will conduct a Dutch auction in how much to penalise you for environmental crimes.
There is something oddly familiar about all this. Perhaps I am sceptical about the climate change campaign because its exponents remind me so much of the people I knew years ago on the Marxist Left: repressive, self-righteous, and inherently totalitarian. Because of what they see as the indubitable rightness, and the absolute moral transcendence, of their cause, they can justify demonising anyone who criticises or dissents from it. Back then, the comrades used to shame those of us who blanched at their ideological ruthlessness with the epithet "wishy-washy liberal": the exploitation of the working classes was the all-encompassing evil that had to be fought with whatever weapon it took.
These days you are castigated for worrying about self-indulgent luxuries such as free speech and open debate when we are all about to fry - or drown, depending on where you happen to be on the stricken planet when the apocalypse arrives. I am not a scientist. I do not have the expertise or the qualifications to adjudicate on the conflicting arguments on offer in this issue. But one thing that is quite clear to me is that there are different authoritative views on the data, and on the extrapolations that are being made from the data, on global warming - particularly on the question of whether such warming as has been identified is caused by human activity.
Before I became a journalist, I was an academic and one of the things most rigorously impressed upon me during my years in academia was that intellectual progress can only come through argument and self-criticism. It is quite antithetical to scholarly endeavour, not to say the spirit of Western enlightenment, for researchers to seek to close down opposition to a theory or a thesis.
But greenery is no longer scholarship: it is politics. The discussion has been taken over by politically driven forces with little interest in the value of free intellectual enquiry. Some of the dissident voices on climate change were rounded up for last week's polemical Channel 4 documentary made by Martin Durkin, The Great Global Warming Swindle (repeated tonight on the digital channel More4).
Whether or not you were persuaded by their articulate doubts, you could not help being struck by the McCarthyite persecution (up to and including death threats) which their non-conformist opinions had attracted. Scientists with impeccable credentials, emeritus professors and acknowledged experts in the field being hounded and professionally discredited for their reservations about an established orthodoxy: not a pretty sight. Hundreds of years after Galileo, we are apparently still prepared to suppress inconvenient intellectual opposition once political interests have become entrenched.
Among those who attempted to prevent the film being shown at all was the Liberal Democrat spokesman on the environment, Chris Huhne, who, without having seen the programme, wrote to Channel 4 executives advising them in the gravest terms to reconsider their decision to broadcast it.
One respect in which the green lobby is significantly unlike the Trotskyist movement of my youth is that it seems not to give a stuff about the poor. Green taxes are regressive: they hit the lower paid, (who can actually be forced to cut back on their air travel and their heating) much harder than the affluent, who can simply absorb the extra costs and carry on living and flying as they always have. Mr Cameron and Mr Brown both profess themselves committed to the needs of families. Who would be hit harder by increases in the cost of home heating fuel and the use of water meters: young parents who bath their children every night and use their washing machine every day, or rich singles who eat out every night and take their laundry to the dry cleaners?
And, of course, the same logic applies to big business - which can easily absorb the added cost of green regulations - as opposed to small businesses, which cannot. Big corporations and retailing chains win all round: they can get political credit for going green while happily watching their small competitors driven out of business by the price of meeting environmental rules.
There is big money to be made now out of climate change, and not just by huge supermarket chains and manufacturers cashing in on the government grants and the contracting market which will be produced by eliminating smaller suppliers. Clever entrepreneurs have seen an opening: "carbon offsetting" is a completely unregulated growth industry that offers to take your money in return for cancelling out your contribution to global warming, by all sorts of dubious means such as planting forests, which may or may not survive. Rather like the medieval papacy selling indulgences, the offset people give absolution to the better-off in return for cash.
But the lower-paid in Europe will be less hard hit in the green scenario than the wretchedly poor of the developing world. One of the disturbing points in the Durkin documentary was that some of the most desperately backward areas of sub-Saharan Africa are being told that they must not exploit their oil reserves to create electricity because more use of fossil fuel would damage the planet. Without using oil to electrify the countryside, these African nations will be effectively prevented from bringing the benefits of modern life - safe water supplies, irrigation and lighting - to the mass of their peoples within a generation.
Well, the green apologists say, even if our computer models are flawed, and our extrapolations prove unsound, isn't it better to "clean up the planet" anyway? Why not take the steps to reduce carbon emissions and pay the hard price just in case it is all true? I don't know about you, but before I can feel comfortable asking people in emerging economies such as India to forgo the benefits of economic growth and mass prosperity, before I can sentence some of the poorest people in the world to living indefinitely without modern technology, before I am even prepared to ask the lower-paid of this country to give up the improvements in their quality of life to which they have only just become accustomed - I want to hear any and every argument that is to be had about this theory.
And to the comrades in the green movement, I would say this: before you slam the lid on debate, and put your invasive restrictions into place to deny people freedoms and comforts that have transformed their condition, you had better be damned sure that you are right.
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Frederick Forsyth says Britain in the grip of climate hysteria
AUTHOR Frederick Forsyth has claimed we are becoming hysterical about climate change - a phenomenon he believes could be purely natural. Mr Forsyth, who lives on a farm in East End Green, near Hertingfordbury, found himself in a minority as he spoke on BBC1's Question Time last Thursday night. David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, told the programme: "Just last Friday, we had 2,500 scientists from around the world saying this is much more urgent that politicians have recognised. "I'm 41. This is an issue for my lifetime, not just an issue for my grandchildren's lifetime."
But Mr Forsyth, the author of best-selling novels like The Odessa File and The Fourth Protocol, countered: "I'm very sceptical about some of the excesses that I regard the Milibands of this world are leading towards. When you think about it, it's all been incredibly rapid - a year, a year and a half. And it's not a concern: it's an obsession. It's something very close to hysteria.
"But there are a lot of questions about the whole business of climatology that I cannot secure answers to. Most scientists/climatologists admit that 90 per cent of the questions they pose to themselves they cannot answer: too many variables, too many unknowns. "Why, for example, could the Romans in 200AD grow grapes on Hadrian's Wall? "Is it true that the climate of the planet changes roughly every 500 years, warming and cooling, warming and cooling. If it is true, what percentage is down to man and what percentage is down to nature?"
Simon Hughes, the president of the Liberal Democrats, responded: "Frederick writes stories and I think this is a story that is valid historically but I prefer David's evidence-based answer." He called for an end to planes flying "half-empty", called on the Government to stop airport expansion and for incentives to encourage children to cycle to school.
Tory MP Ken Clarke, a former Chancellor, said: "I think Freddie is right in saying the temperature is back to what it was in the time of the Romans." But he felt it was "overwhelmingly probable" that human activity was contributing to global warming.
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Do cities make us sick?
By Prof. James Woudhuysen
Next Wednesday's spiked seminar `Building for the Future: Housing Need and Sustainability', which I am speaking at, comes at a useful moment. To be held at the London headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects, it comes in the wake of the publication of the twenty-sixth report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP). Titled The Urban Environment, the report came out on 6 March (1). Weighing in at more than 200 pages, it is a remarkable document. It is the first official suggestion, in Britain, that cities, and especially new housebuilding in the South East of England, represent health problems. This medicalisation of cities and housing marks a new low in today's suspicion of mankind's works, and indeed of mankind.
After an opening paragraph eulogising cities as synonymous with civilsation, the tone swiftly changes. We learn in the third paragraph that cities can provide people with `a wide range of services with low personal transport requirements'. Ah, so cities are good because they obviate the human need to move around. We also learn that cities `have the potential to release land for nature': cities - especially `compact' cities - are apparently good because they allow us to preserve the 98 per cent of the world's land surface that is un-urbanised (p2). In other words, to the extent that cities should be cheered, it is only because they get people `off the land' and leave it for trees and plants and wildlife.
Next, and importantly, an obscure 1973 paper by one Professor Horst Rittel is cited to suggest that UK urban environmental management presents `a classic case' of a `wicked problem'. Defects in urban health - and of course `wellbeing' - cannot be solved definitively, we are told, `but rather must be managed for better or worse'. Indeed, `urban environmental issues owe much of their wickedness to the nature of towns and cities as complex systems' (p5).
Complex they certainly are. In an early diagram (p7), containing no fewer than 33 arrows of causality, increased car ownership and use - familiar villains - are held responsible for flash flooding, property damage, loss of shade, and dodgy impacts on rivers, flora and fauna. But the Royal Commission's main concern is that cities `still appear to be missing from the sustainability agenda' (p10).
Perhaps the Commission's chairman, Professor Sir John Lawton, should get out a bit more. When a biologist at the University of York, it's true, his investigation of the insect fauna of bracken on Skipwith Common, near Selby, stood `as a model of sustained and intensive ecological research' (2). But if this complete non-specialist in urban matters had bothered to read the website of Ruth Kelly's Department of Communities and Local Government, he would find that the words `cities' and `housing' are rarely written nowadays in Whitehall without the adjective `sustainable' in front of each.
Indeed, the RCEP itself indulges in the same kind of monotony. Early on, it identified four `priority themes', these being `sustainable urban transport; sustainable urban management (Local Agenda 21, EMAS, indicators); sustainable urban construction (resource and energy efficiency, demolition waste, design issues); and sustainable urban design (land use-regeneration, brownfield sites, urban sprawl, land use densities)' (3).
I will leave it to the reader to find out more about Local Agenda 21 (a derivative of Agenda 21, the UN's Rio Declaration on Environment and Development) and EMAS (the EU's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme). But this much is clear: for the Commission, the UK's progress towards sustainability is hindered by `the current drive to create new urban areas', and in particular by proposals to build 3.3million new homes in England by 2016 (p15). Rough translation: the move towards being more green is hampered by plans to build more homes in order to house all those pesky people. This gives a telling insight into the priorities of the environmentally-minded.
Again, perhaps Commission members should listen less to Greenpeace, Ken Livingstone's deputy Nicky Gavron, the deep green environmentalist Herbert Girardet or London School of Economics professor Anne Power, who - with the architect Richard Rogers - believes that all new housing in Britain must be built to London densities. Perhaps, instead, they should take more seriously the affordability of UK housing, and the demographic trends that make it so essential that the UK builds more homes. The Commission, however, has not `sought to unpick the rationale behind' such issues, `beyond noting that the predict-and-provide approach has been found wanting in other areas of policy' (p27).
Commission worries
So. Predict a need for more housing, but do not provide for it. Why? Because new housing `is difficult to reconcile with the idea of respecting environmental limits' (p27). Forget about young people - let them live with their parents and grandparents. Rather, we should worry about air quality, despite the fact that, in the case of particulates, there was until 2000 a steady reduction in concentrations in UK cities (succeeded by circumstances in which `concentrations have at best plateaued') (p37). We should worry not so much about the 27,500 additional deaths in the UK caused by cold in 2005, but rather about hotter summers, the `urban heat island effect' and the 2,000 people who supposedly died of heat-related causes in 2003 (p41).
Our old friend, sick building syndrome, gets an outing, too. We are told that SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and avian flu `may pose a particular threat to city dwellers', and that there is strong evidence that, `in some circumstances', the urban environment `can lead to impaired mental health' (p44, mentioned 47 times), as well as that well-known scourge, obesity (p46). Indeed, in a lurid diagram on `the pathways that can link residential environments to cardiovascular risk', it is seriously proposed that cities lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, inflammation, heart rate variability and more besides (p49). All this despite the fact that the report concedes that `the nature of the relationship between health and place is poorly understood. It is difficult to establish whether and how the urban environment causes unfavourable health outcomes.' (p33)
Is there no malady for which cities are not culpable? And if cities are to blame for so much, why is life expectancy rising in the way that it is? The influx of millions and millions of people into cities over the past century and more has gone hand-in-hand with improvements in quality and longevity of life.
However, the Royal Commission does not bother to ask itself difficult questions about the benefits of city life. It is so fearful of the possibility of 3.3million homes being built that it has not stopped to ask whether possibility will lead to actuality, and whether the `proposals' for new homes will result in new homes. Take the Thames Gateway housing development in East London. According to Stan Hornagold, senior partner at management consultants Hornagold & Hills, it will `require building a city the size of Leeds in the most populated part of the country'. But after surveying about 400 firms, local authorities and government officials connected with the Gateway, Hornagold found that almost nothing has actually been done over the past 12 months. About the `additional Leeds' factor, Hornagold stated: `We don't get any sense that is being planned for in some government departments.' (4)
The energy question
Few houses are being built. But those that the Royal Commission imagines are being built will apparently wreck our lives. The Commission completely underplays, too, the fact that, under Ruth Kelly's December 2006 Code for Sustainable Homes: A Step-Change in Sustainable Home Building Practice (two mentions of `sustainable' just in the title!), new houses will be subject to stringent rules on carbon emissions in a way that old houses will not. (5)
There is more. The likely meaning of the DCLG's enormously complex Code is that each new home should be in `balance', partly through supplying zero carbon (ZC) energy to the National Grid … la the David Cameron/B&Q rooftop windmill, partly from drawing Grid energy that is itself ZC. Moreover, some environmentalist zealots will say that ZC is not enough; that we need to generate more Grid-exportable ZC energy from the home than is consumed by it. Some will also argue that ZC energy generated on top of 100 kWh/m2 a year should be used to pay off embodied energy in construction, periodic upgrade, and eventual demolition, within the life of structures that could, perhaps, have lifetimes of just 60 years (6). Indeed, the DCLG is already thinking that it may want to provide some way of accounting for embodied energy. `A probable future development regarding the environmental impact of materials', it says, `is to reward resource efficiency, as well as the use of resources that are more sustainable, by developing "Ecopoints per m2" as a measure for this item' (7).
All the discussion on housing today is not about how many, or how large, but about the need for `zero carbon' homes. Not content with that, however, the Royal Commission wants the Code extended to all new buildings, not just residential ones (p100).
Altogether, it seems, houses are the bad guys. Indeed, if the political economy of UK land and the UK planning system - in its sixtieth year in 2007 - has acted to prevent new build in the past, it seems that official strictures around energy, and the Royal Commission's strictures on health, will join the land as barriers to housebuilding in the future. What is the solution, then? To leave people homeless? To force us all to live in overcrowded accommodation?
The Commission's insouciance is breathtaking. Might multiple generations of a family living together in a cramped setting just lead to mental health problems? Isn't it a problem, as the report notes, that `at current rates of turnover an average dwelling in the UK would have a lifetime of around 1,000 years' (p85)? And why refer to Bill Dunster's tawdry BedZED zero-energy development in East London, and the speculative refurbishments of hip property developers Urban Splash in Manchester and Birmingham? (pp99, 101) These examples of greenness are endlessly repeated in the construction trade. If they're so successful, why are there not more of them?
Like the DCLG, the Commission is exercised by the energy embodied in homes, not just that involved in operating them. But once again it ties itself in knots, trying to prevent new construction. After 60 years, it observes, `the total cumulative energy of the new-build home is significantly less than the total energy consumed in running the existing home. Therefore, the embodied energy in dwellings is no reason not to demolish.' (p104)
That sounds rational. But the report goes on to say, in the same sentence: `. but there may be other reasons why demolition is not appropriate, including social, community or heritage reasons.' (p104) So even if new homes are more energy efficient than old ones, we probably shouldn't have any.
It is impossible to read the next 100 pages of this report without laughing or crying. It provides a striking snapshot of officialdom's reluctance to prioritise people's housing needs, and our comfort, and to build the homes that young people, families, immigrants and everybody else requires. Next Wednesday's debate should allow us to interrogate these issues further, and hopefully to put forward an alternative.
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Even spinning like a top could not quite cover this one up
A newborn baby became the youngest victim of MRSA in Britain when he died in hospital after contracting the virulent superbug, a coroner ruled yesterday. Luke Day was only 36 hours old when he died, though he may have been saved if medical staff had followed procedures and given him special care, an inquest into his death was told. An attempt by doctors to resuscitate him failed after he was found lifeless in a cot beside his mother on the maternity ward at Ipswich Hospital in February 2005. An internal inquiry revealed that staff had failed to recognise signs that Luke could have been ill up to 16 hours before his death.
Specialists said they could not be sure MRSA was the cause of death, but Peter Dean, the Suffolk coroner, said that on the balance of probabilities Luke had died as a result of contracting it. Staff at the hospital were unable to find the source of the bug, despite carrying out extensive inquiries.
Luke’s mother, Glynis Day, now 19, a kitchen assistant from Woodbridge, Suffolk, attended the hearing with Luke’s father, Kevin Fenton, 26. They criticised the hospital’s failure to detect warning signs. “I think it is disgusting,” Ms Day said. Mr Fenton said that hearing the details of how Luke died “makes me sick”.
Marion Malone, who conducted a postmortem examination at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which found MRSA in Luke’s lungs, heart and spleen, told the hearing that she believed his death had been caused by septicaemia due to bacterial infection.
The inquest heard how Luke should have been tested for possible infections after staff noticed that his temperature was low, that he had low blood-sugar levels and he appeared “lethargic and slightly floppy”. Tests later revealed that his blood contained MRSA — methicillin-re-sistant staphylococcus aureus — as well as a less dangerous form ofstaphylococcus.
Peter Wilson, a consultant microbiologist at University College Hospital, London, who analysed Luke’s blood samples, said the balance of probability was that Luke’s death was caused by the bacteria. But he added that he could not say for sure if the MRSA strain was responsible or whether death was caused by septicaemia or toxins in the blood caused by the bacteria.
The coroner asked him: “Are you saying that there were signs that should have triggered referral and it would appear these signs were not picked up so Luke therefore did not have the benefit of an infection screen? “Is it fair to say that his chances would have been better had protocol been followed? [That] we don’t know if the outcome would have been different, but [that] Luke would have had a better chance?” Dr Wilson replied: “Yes, that is correct. It all depends on whether the signs that were present should have been spotted.” He added that Luke could have been treated with antibiotics if infection was suspected, which could have saved him by preventing the septicaemia from spreading.
The inquest heard how Luke weighed a healthy 7lb 7oz when born naturally at 6.53am on February 2, 2005. Staff had no concerns about his condition, but then found he was “grunting”, had low glucose levels in his blood and a lower than normal temperature at 2.10am the next day. Jane Gosling, the senior midwife, was later attending to Ms Day when she noticed that Luke was cold. He was immediately transferred for resuscitation but was declared dead 30 minutes later. The internal hospital inquiry report said there were deviations from clinical guidelines and that a paediatrician should have been called to examine Luke because of his low temperature and blood-sugar levels. It added that some of the clinical guidelines were ambiguous, but that there was “no overarching coordination of Luke’s care”.
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What a marvellous miracle! -- this baby survived
Healthy Baby Born After Prenatal Screening Falsely Showed he "Died". Baby boy miraculously survived womb-scraping procedure to remove its body
A prenatal screening test given to a UK woman in early pregnancy showed her baby had died, and the next day she underwent a procedure to remove the child's body from the womb. Three weeks later, however, she discovered her baby was alive and healthy, in a miraculous escape from failed technology. Jake Brown was born Feb. 24 at St. John's Hospital in Livingston, healthy and untouched by the trauma of his early development, The Telegraph reported March 7. His mother, Julie Brown, 29, said "The thought of them trying to get rid of a perfectly healthy baby makes me sick to the pit of my stomach, but I've got to move forward now."
The hospital had conducted a scan on Mrs. Brown at five and a half weeks gestation and could not find a heart beat or signs of growth. She was told the child had died and scheduled for a dilation and curettage procedure the next day. Somehow, her baby survived. ""The hospital has explained to me exactly what went wrong (with the diagnosis)," Mrs. Brown said. "The baby's sac hadn't changed size, but the baby had. The woman carrying out the scan didn't notice this and she thought I'd miscarried."
Errors in prenatal testing are far more common than many people realize. While more and more parents are depending on technology to identify potential health problems in their unborn children, many are not aware of the significant inaccuracy rates in prenatal screening. Abortion of the child is most often the result, even though in many cases scans are inconclusive or show only an increased possibility of health problems.
Down's syndrome is one of the most common pre-natal diagnoses to lead to abortion--but studies show screening tests for Down's are inaccurate up to 40 percent of the time. A recent Canadian study found more natural differences between the genetic code of individuals than previous researchers had thought existed, leading to greater difficulty in establishing a "normal" genetic code as a basis for evaluating pre-natal scans. Published in the journal Nature, the report suggested that prenatal screening may incorrectly diagnose genetic differences as "defects".
While the Browns don't intend to pursue legal action against the hospital, the couple said the mistake caused pain and trauma to the whole family. "They booked me in for an operation to remove the baby and we were all devastated,' Mrs. Brown said. "We then had to explain to my children Sarah and Leon that the baby had gone to heaven. My husband and the children were in floods of tears."
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UK Tribunal: Christian Judges Must Award Homosexual Couples Adoptive Children or Resign
Yesterday, the Employee Tribunal in Sheffield of South Yorkshire county, Britain informed Andrew McClintock that, despite his religious beliefs, he may not refuse to preside over adoption cases that would place a child in a home with homosexual parents. The tribunal also ruled that McClintock had not suffered any religious discrimination, despite the fact that McClintock was forced to quit his job in order to uphold his Christian conscience.
In his case, McClintock argued that, not only did his orders compromise his Christian beliefs, but they would compel him to act against what he thought to be in the best welfare of the child. He argues that he had no choice but to resign.
The tribunal's ruling says, "If a judge personally has particular views on any subject, he or she must put those views to the back of his or her mind when applying the law of the land impartially."
After the Civil Partnerships Act was passed in 2005, McClintock requested that he be excused from cases involving adoption by homosexual couples because, not only did homosexual adoption contradict his religious beliefs, he thought that placing a child in such a home would be removing them from "one kind of harm only to face another hazard."
As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, McClintock resigned his job in 2005 after he was informed by his managers that he would not be permitted to excuse himself from specific cases. McClintock had served as a magistrate judge in Britain's Sheffield County for 18 years.
McClintock took legal action against the British Department for Constitutional Affairs suing them for religious discrimination. McClintock's attorneys argued that his request to be excused from certain specific cases should be permitted under Regulation 10 of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.
McClintock's attorneys also utilized expert witness testimony in the case which claimed that "there was little research into the effect of same-sex nurture on children's development, and that what had been established was worrying."
After hearing of the tribunal's verdict McClintock said, "More needy children will be fuelling this experiment in social science and suffering what the experts call mother-hunger or father-hunger. This ruling is going to make it harder for many conscientious people - whether they are [Justices of the Peace] in the family court, or otherwise involved with children, or maybe with different matters of conscience.
He continued, "Anyone who holds seriously to the traditional morals and family values of Jews, Christians or Muslims will think twice before taking on such a job."
A spokesman for the gay rights group Stonewall was quoted in a BBC article commenting on the recent ruling said, "We are not surprised at the outcome and the tribunal's decision made it clear that people in public service cannot pick and choose which laws they comply with. While not disrespecting anyone's private religious views, all public figures have to work within the legislation and in these cases in the best interests of the children involved."
Andrea Williams of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, on the other hand, condemned the ruling saying, "This case is a clear picture of how Christian faith is becoming privatized in society. It is yet another example of the repression of Christian conscience and signals the prevalence of a secular 'new morality' and the erosion of Christian values at the expense of our children's welfare."
Britain is rife with similar controversy as the British government prepares to introduce new guidelines and legislation to the already present Sexual Orientation Regulations of 2003. According to the website Christian Concern For Our Nation the new legislation, "will make it illegal for providers of goods, services, facilities, premises, education or public functions to discriminate against the recipients on the grounds of their sexual orientation i.e. whether they are homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual.
Among other things, the legislation would make it mandatory for schools to teach homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality. Private venues would not be allowed to refuse their services to groups promoting homosexuality. Adoption agencies, regardless of religious affiliation, would be mandated to facilitate homosexual adoption.
Archbishop Nichols of Birmingham delivered a harsh criticism of governmental entities in a recent sermon, "It is simply unacceptable to suggest that the resources of faith communities, whether in schools, adoption agencies, welfare programmes, halls and shelters can work in co-operation with public authorities only if the faith communities accept not simply a legal framework but also the moral standards at present being touted by the Government." Nichols has threatened that all Catholic adoption agencies will close down if the legislation is approved.
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While Critics Blame Catholic Church for AIDS Deaths Stats Show Just the Opposite
Church's accusers have not done the homework or are deliberately misreporting the facts
The Catholic Church is killing "millions" because of its teaching on chastity and fidelity in marriage and needs to change its "policy" on banning condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS, according to a popular and apparently perpetual theme in mainstream journalism.
Commentators, especially from Britain, regularly pronounce that the late Pope John Paul II, and his successor Benedict XVI, are personally responsible for the deaths of millions of people because of their opposition to contraception, particularly condoms.
The Guardian's Polly Toynbee, on the occasion of the death of John Paul II, called the Vatican, "a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy." Toynbee said with the "ban on condoms the church has caused the death of millions of Catholics and others in areas dominated by Catholic missionaries, in Africa and right across the world. In countries where 50% are infected, millions of very young Aids orphans are today's immediate victims of the curia."
Catholic readers of the mainstream press are familiar with the regular appearance of articles speculating on whether the Pope will "lift the ban" or approve the use of condoms to stop AIDS.
Last week the Times' religion correspondent, Ruth Gledhill, wrote on her weblog that she and Times colleague Richard Owen in Rome, were "inundated" with emails, calls "and other tips" wondering if the Pope intended to lift the "ban" on condoms in his Ash Wednesday homily that afternoon.
The rumour was entirely false, she said, but it was followed the next day with a letter speculating that Pope Benedict would lift the ban on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of Donum Vitae, a document that reiterated the Catholic teaching on the sinfulness of artificial contraception, including barrier methods.
Gledhill quoted John Coventry of the aid organization, ActionAid, that promotes condom use for AIDS prevention. Translating Catholic teaching on chastity and fidelity in marriage as "anti-condom ideology" Coventry said it "has got in the way of pragmatic approaches to preventing the spread of the disease."
"For the Pope to relax Catholic attitudes to condoms would send a clear signal that it is not acceptable to prevent access to potentially life saving materials - in this case condoms - on grounds of religious belief," Coventry said.
Coventry's comments were mild compared to Toynbee in 2005 when she compared John Paul II to Vladimir Lenin: "they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost."
Toynbee wrote, "Disgracefully, the European rich quietly ignore the church's outlandish teachings on contraception without rebelling on behalf of the helpless third-world poor who die for their misplaced faith. Those 'civilised' Catholics have as much blood on their hands as the Vatican they support."
A short examination, however, of the HIV/AIDS rates of those African countries that have a large Catholic population shows that the Church's accusers have not done the homework or are deliberately misreporting the facts. The available statistics show that countries with a large Catholic percentage population, show significantly lower rates of HIV/AIDS infections than countries with mostly non-Catholic populations.
2003 statistics from the World Factbook of the US Central Intelligence Agency, shows Burundi at 62% Catholic with 6% AIDS infection rate. Angola's population is 38% Roman Catholic and has 3.9% AIDS rate. Ghana is 63% Christian, with in some regions as much as 33% Catholic and has 3.1% AIDS rate. Nigeria, divided almost evenly between the strongly Muslim north and Christian and "animist" south, has 5.4% AIDS rate.
Strongly Christian Uganda continues to frustrate condom-pushing NGO's by maintaining its abstinence and fidelity AIDS prevention programs and one of the lowest rates of AIDS in Africa, at 4.1%. Uganda's population is listed by the CIA Factbook as 33% Roman Catholic and 33% Protestant.
Of African countries with low Catholic populations, Botswana is typical with 37.3% AIDS, one of the highest in Africa, and 5% of the total population Catholic. In 2003, Swaziland was shown to have a 38.8% AIDS infection rate and only 20% Catholic population.
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BRITISH POLITICS HEATING UP
With a leadership change and an election on the horizon, British politics are getting frenetic -- with the environment a major taliking point. Below are three skeptical comments on the latest episodes. The first is from a Leftist newspaper, the second from a conservative newspaper and the third is from a regional newspaper:
It's just politics
Environmental expert PHILIP STOTT, Professor of Biogeography at the University of London, explains why we shouldn't panic - and why he believes global warming is just another political bandwagon
Every ambitious politician pays lip service to the daft idea that we can control climate, using "global warming" for their own political ends, from forcing you to wear hemp underpants to establishing a new generation of nuclear reactors. But look beyond the rising rhetoric ... what climate are these politicians hoping to produce? The biting cold of 1947, when the sea froze over? They have abandoned reason.
More worryingly, elitist green agendas, like carbon taxes and road pricing, have terrible repercussions for the poor.
Climate is chaos. It is the most complex system, driven by volcanoes, the oceans, clouds, a wobbly Earth, a pulsing sun, and cosmic rays from exploding stars. Dealing with one factor at the margins - human emissions of carbon dioxide - is utterly pointless. Climate is change. It has flipped between hot and cold, dry and wet for 4.5 billion years.
Unfortunately, our politicians have forgotten that a mammoth Ice Age ended only 12,000 years ago; that Medieval England was a balmy vineyard; that the Little Ice Age blasted Europe from the 14th Century onwards, producing the violent winds that sank the Spanish Armada. Samuel Johnson tells us of an Astronomer who claims that he can control climate: "...the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction ..." Unfortunately, the Astronomer was mad. And so are we if we give such nonsense credence.
Nobody, not even Mr Bush and Mr Blair, can fine tune climate to a degree Celsius. Yet, what about the future? The latest summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a possible rise in temperature of between 1.1 to 6.4 degC. Other groups say we shall enter a cooling phase, up to minus-two degC in 2012. That's a range of eight degrees - what's that supposed to tell us?
We should focus instead on bringing four billion people out of poverty, providing them with clean water and modern sources of energy. The richer one is, the better one can cope with change. Our "global warming" political agenda is dangerously misguided.
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Green lobby must not stifle debate
The Tories are on about airfares yet again. This week, David Cameron and Gordon Brown will conduct a Dutch auction in how much to penalise you for environmental crimes.
There is something oddly familiar about all this. Perhaps I am sceptical about the climate change campaign because its exponents remind me so much of the people I knew years ago on the Marxist Left: repressive, self-righteous, and inherently totalitarian. Because of what they see as the indubitable rightness, and the absolute moral transcendence, of their cause, they can justify demonising anyone who criticises or dissents from it. Back then, the comrades used to shame those of us who blanched at their ideological ruthlessness with the epithet "wishy-washy liberal": the exploitation of the working classes was the all-encompassing evil that had to be fought with whatever weapon it took.
These days you are castigated for worrying about self-indulgent luxuries such as free speech and open debate when we are all about to fry - or drown, depending on where you happen to be on the stricken planet when the apocalypse arrives. I am not a scientist. I do not have the expertise or the qualifications to adjudicate on the conflicting arguments on offer in this issue. But one thing that is quite clear to me is that there are different authoritative views on the data, and on the extrapolations that are being made from the data, on global warming - particularly on the question of whether such warming as has been identified is caused by human activity.
Before I became a journalist, I was an academic and one of the things most rigorously impressed upon me during my years in academia was that intellectual progress can only come through argument and self-criticism. It is quite antithetical to scholarly endeavour, not to say the spirit of Western enlightenment, for researchers to seek to close down opposition to a theory or a thesis.
But greenery is no longer scholarship: it is politics. The discussion has been taken over by politically driven forces with little interest in the value of free intellectual enquiry. Some of the dissident voices on climate change were rounded up for last week's polemical Channel 4 documentary made by Martin Durkin, The Great Global Warming Swindle (repeated tonight on the digital channel More4).
Whether or not you were persuaded by their articulate doubts, you could not help being struck by the McCarthyite persecution (up to and including death threats) which their non-conformist opinions had attracted. Scientists with impeccable credentials, emeritus professors and acknowledged experts in the field being hounded and professionally discredited for their reservations about an established orthodoxy: not a pretty sight. Hundreds of years after Galileo, we are apparently still prepared to suppress inconvenient intellectual opposition once political interests have become entrenched.
Among those who attempted to prevent the film being shown at all was the Liberal Democrat spokesman on the environment, Chris Huhne, who, without having seen the programme, wrote to Channel 4 executives advising them in the gravest terms to reconsider their decision to broadcast it.
One respect in which the green lobby is significantly unlike the Trotskyist movement of my youth is that it seems not to give a stuff about the poor. Green taxes are regressive: they hit the lower paid, (who can actually be forced to cut back on their air travel and their heating) much harder than the affluent, who can simply absorb the extra costs and carry on living and flying as they always have. Mr Cameron and Mr Brown both profess themselves committed to the needs of families. Who would be hit harder by increases in the cost of home heating fuel and the use of water meters: young parents who bath their children every night and use their washing machine every day, or rich singles who eat out every night and take their laundry to the dry cleaners?
And, of course, the same logic applies to big business - which can easily absorb the added cost of green regulations - as opposed to small businesses, which cannot. Big corporations and retailing chains win all round: they can get political credit for going green while happily watching their small competitors driven out of business by the price of meeting environmental rules.
There is big money to be made now out of climate change, and not just by huge supermarket chains and manufacturers cashing in on the government grants and the contracting market which will be produced by eliminating smaller suppliers. Clever entrepreneurs have seen an opening: "carbon offsetting" is a completely unregulated growth industry that offers to take your money in return for cancelling out your contribution to global warming, by all sorts of dubious means such as planting forests, which may or may not survive. Rather like the medieval papacy selling indulgences, the offset people give absolution to the better-off in return for cash.
But the lower-paid in Europe will be less hard hit in the green scenario than the wretchedly poor of the developing world. One of the disturbing points in the Durkin documentary was that some of the most desperately backward areas of sub-Saharan Africa are being told that they must not exploit their oil reserves to create electricity because more use of fossil fuel would damage the planet. Without using oil to electrify the countryside, these African nations will be effectively prevented from bringing the benefits of modern life - safe water supplies, irrigation and lighting - to the mass of their peoples within a generation.
Well, the green apologists say, even if our computer models are flawed, and our extrapolations prove unsound, isn't it better to "clean up the planet" anyway? Why not take the steps to reduce carbon emissions and pay the hard price just in case it is all true? I don't know about you, but before I can feel comfortable asking people in emerging economies such as India to forgo the benefits of economic growth and mass prosperity, before I can sentence some of the poorest people in the world to living indefinitely without modern technology, before I am even prepared to ask the lower-paid of this country to give up the improvements in their quality of life to which they have only just become accustomed - I want to hear any and every argument that is to be had about this theory.
And to the comrades in the green movement, I would say this: before you slam the lid on debate, and put your invasive restrictions into place to deny people freedoms and comforts that have transformed their condition, you had better be damned sure that you are right.
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Frederick Forsyth says Britain in the grip of climate hysteria
AUTHOR Frederick Forsyth has claimed we are becoming hysterical about climate change - a phenomenon he believes could be purely natural. Mr Forsyth, who lives on a farm in East End Green, near Hertingfordbury, found himself in a minority as he spoke on BBC1's Question Time last Thursday night. David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, told the programme: "Just last Friday, we had 2,500 scientists from around the world saying this is much more urgent that politicians have recognised. "I'm 41. This is an issue for my lifetime, not just an issue for my grandchildren's lifetime."
But Mr Forsyth, the author of best-selling novels like The Odessa File and The Fourth Protocol, countered: "I'm very sceptical about some of the excesses that I regard the Milibands of this world are leading towards. When you think about it, it's all been incredibly rapid - a year, a year and a half. And it's not a concern: it's an obsession. It's something very close to hysteria.
"But there are a lot of questions about the whole business of climatology that I cannot secure answers to. Most scientists/climatologists admit that 90 per cent of the questions they pose to themselves they cannot answer: too many variables, too many unknowns. "Why, for example, could the Romans in 200AD grow grapes on Hadrian's Wall? "Is it true that the climate of the planet changes roughly every 500 years, warming and cooling, warming and cooling. If it is true, what percentage is down to man and what percentage is down to nature?"
Simon Hughes, the president of the Liberal Democrats, responded: "Frederick writes stories and I think this is a story that is valid historically but I prefer David's evidence-based answer." He called for an end to planes flying "half-empty", called on the Government to stop airport expansion and for incentives to encourage children to cycle to school.
Tory MP Ken Clarke, a former Chancellor, said: "I think Freddie is right in saying the temperature is back to what it was in the time of the Romans." But he felt it was "overwhelmingly probable" that human activity was contributing to global warming.
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Do cities make us sick?
By Prof. James Woudhuysen
Next Wednesday's spiked seminar `Building for the Future: Housing Need and Sustainability', which I am speaking at, comes at a useful moment. To be held at the London headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects, it comes in the wake of the publication of the twenty-sixth report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP). Titled The Urban Environment, the report came out on 6 March (1). Weighing in at more than 200 pages, it is a remarkable document. It is the first official suggestion, in Britain, that cities, and especially new housebuilding in the South East of England, represent health problems. This medicalisation of cities and housing marks a new low in today's suspicion of mankind's works, and indeed of mankind.
After an opening paragraph eulogising cities as synonymous with civilsation, the tone swiftly changes. We learn in the third paragraph that cities can provide people with `a wide range of services with low personal transport requirements'. Ah, so cities are good because they obviate the human need to move around. We also learn that cities `have the potential to release land for nature': cities - especially `compact' cities - are apparently good because they allow us to preserve the 98 per cent of the world's land surface that is un-urbanised (p2). In other words, to the extent that cities should be cheered, it is only because they get people `off the land' and leave it for trees and plants and wildlife.
Next, and importantly, an obscure 1973 paper by one Professor Horst Rittel is cited to suggest that UK urban environmental management presents `a classic case' of a `wicked problem'. Defects in urban health - and of course `wellbeing' - cannot be solved definitively, we are told, `but rather must be managed for better or worse'. Indeed, `urban environmental issues owe much of their wickedness to the nature of towns and cities as complex systems' (p5).
Complex they certainly are. In an early diagram (p7), containing no fewer than 33 arrows of causality, increased car ownership and use - familiar villains - are held responsible for flash flooding, property damage, loss of shade, and dodgy impacts on rivers, flora and fauna. But the Royal Commission's main concern is that cities `still appear to be missing from the sustainability agenda' (p10).
Perhaps the Commission's chairman, Professor Sir John Lawton, should get out a bit more. When a biologist at the University of York, it's true, his investigation of the insect fauna of bracken on Skipwith Common, near Selby, stood `as a model of sustained and intensive ecological research' (2). But if this complete non-specialist in urban matters had bothered to read the website of Ruth Kelly's Department of Communities and Local Government, he would find that the words `cities' and `housing' are rarely written nowadays in Whitehall without the adjective `sustainable' in front of each.
Indeed, the RCEP itself indulges in the same kind of monotony. Early on, it identified four `priority themes', these being `sustainable urban transport; sustainable urban management (Local Agenda 21, EMAS, indicators); sustainable urban construction (resource and energy efficiency, demolition waste, design issues); and sustainable urban design (land use-regeneration, brownfield sites, urban sprawl, land use densities)' (3).
I will leave it to the reader to find out more about Local Agenda 21 (a derivative of Agenda 21, the UN's Rio Declaration on Environment and Development) and EMAS (the EU's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme). But this much is clear: for the Commission, the UK's progress towards sustainability is hindered by `the current drive to create new urban areas', and in particular by proposals to build 3.3million new homes in England by 2016 (p15). Rough translation: the move towards being more green is hampered by plans to build more homes in order to house all those pesky people. This gives a telling insight into the priorities of the environmentally-minded.
Again, perhaps Commission members should listen less to Greenpeace, Ken Livingstone's deputy Nicky Gavron, the deep green environmentalist Herbert Girardet or London School of Economics professor Anne Power, who - with the architect Richard Rogers - believes that all new housing in Britain must be built to London densities. Perhaps, instead, they should take more seriously the affordability of UK housing, and the demographic trends that make it so essential that the UK builds more homes. The Commission, however, has not `sought to unpick the rationale behind' such issues, `beyond noting that the predict-and-provide approach has been found wanting in other areas of policy' (p27).
Commission worries
So. Predict a need for more housing, but do not provide for it. Why? Because new housing `is difficult to reconcile with the idea of respecting environmental limits' (p27). Forget about young people - let them live with their parents and grandparents. Rather, we should worry about air quality, despite the fact that, in the case of particulates, there was until 2000 a steady reduction in concentrations in UK cities (succeeded by circumstances in which `concentrations have at best plateaued') (p37). We should worry not so much about the 27,500 additional deaths in the UK caused by cold in 2005, but rather about hotter summers, the `urban heat island effect' and the 2,000 people who supposedly died of heat-related causes in 2003 (p41).
Our old friend, sick building syndrome, gets an outing, too. We are told that SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and avian flu `may pose a particular threat to city dwellers', and that there is strong evidence that, `in some circumstances', the urban environment `can lead to impaired mental health' (p44, mentioned 47 times), as well as that well-known scourge, obesity (p46). Indeed, in a lurid diagram on `the pathways that can link residential environments to cardiovascular risk', it is seriously proposed that cities lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, inflammation, heart rate variability and more besides (p49). All this despite the fact that the report concedes that `the nature of the relationship between health and place is poorly understood. It is difficult to establish whether and how the urban environment causes unfavourable health outcomes.' (p33)
Is there no malady for which cities are not culpable? And if cities are to blame for so much, why is life expectancy rising in the way that it is? The influx of millions and millions of people into cities over the past century and more has gone hand-in-hand with improvements in quality and longevity of life.
However, the Royal Commission does not bother to ask itself difficult questions about the benefits of city life. It is so fearful of the possibility of 3.3million homes being built that it has not stopped to ask whether possibility will lead to actuality, and whether the `proposals' for new homes will result in new homes. Take the Thames Gateway housing development in East London. According to Stan Hornagold, senior partner at management consultants Hornagold & Hills, it will `require building a city the size of Leeds in the most populated part of the country'. But after surveying about 400 firms, local authorities and government officials connected with the Gateway, Hornagold found that almost nothing has actually been done over the past 12 months. About the `additional Leeds' factor, Hornagold stated: `We don't get any sense that is being planned for in some government departments.' (4)
The energy question
Few houses are being built. But those that the Royal Commission imagines are being built will apparently wreck our lives. The Commission completely underplays, too, the fact that, under Ruth Kelly's December 2006 Code for Sustainable Homes: A Step-Change in Sustainable Home Building Practice (two mentions of `sustainable' just in the title!), new houses will be subject to stringent rules on carbon emissions in a way that old houses will not. (5)
There is more. The likely meaning of the DCLG's enormously complex Code is that each new home should be in `balance', partly through supplying zero carbon (ZC) energy to the National Grid … la the David Cameron/B&Q rooftop windmill, partly from drawing Grid energy that is itself ZC. Moreover, some environmentalist zealots will say that ZC is not enough; that we need to generate more Grid-exportable ZC energy from the home than is consumed by it. Some will also argue that ZC energy generated on top of 100 kWh/m2 a year should be used to pay off embodied energy in construction, periodic upgrade, and eventual demolition, within the life of structures that could, perhaps, have lifetimes of just 60 years (6). Indeed, the DCLG is already thinking that it may want to provide some way of accounting for embodied energy. `A probable future development regarding the environmental impact of materials', it says, `is to reward resource efficiency, as well as the use of resources that are more sustainable, by developing "Ecopoints per m2" as a measure for this item' (7).
All the discussion on housing today is not about how many, or how large, but about the need for `zero carbon' homes. Not content with that, however, the Royal Commission wants the Code extended to all new buildings, not just residential ones (p100).
Altogether, it seems, houses are the bad guys. Indeed, if the political economy of UK land and the UK planning system - in its sixtieth year in 2007 - has acted to prevent new build in the past, it seems that official strictures around energy, and the Royal Commission's strictures on health, will join the land as barriers to housebuilding in the future. What is the solution, then? To leave people homeless? To force us all to live in overcrowded accommodation?
The Commission's insouciance is breathtaking. Might multiple generations of a family living together in a cramped setting just lead to mental health problems? Isn't it a problem, as the report notes, that `at current rates of turnover an average dwelling in the UK would have a lifetime of around 1,000 years' (p85)? And why refer to Bill Dunster's tawdry BedZED zero-energy development in East London, and the speculative refurbishments of hip property developers Urban Splash in Manchester and Birmingham? (pp99, 101) These examples of greenness are endlessly repeated in the construction trade. If they're so successful, why are there not more of them?
Like the DCLG, the Commission is exercised by the energy embodied in homes, not just that involved in operating them. But once again it ties itself in knots, trying to prevent new construction. After 60 years, it observes, `the total cumulative energy of the new-build home is significantly less than the total energy consumed in running the existing home. Therefore, the embodied energy in dwellings is no reason not to demolish.' (p104)
That sounds rational. But the report goes on to say, in the same sentence: `. but there may be other reasons why demolition is not appropriate, including social, community or heritage reasons.' (p104) So even if new homes are more energy efficient than old ones, we probably shouldn't have any.
It is impossible to read the next 100 pages of this report without laughing or crying. It provides a striking snapshot of officialdom's reluctance to prioritise people's housing needs, and our comfort, and to build the homes that young people, families, immigrants and everybody else requires. Next Wednesday's debate should allow us to interrogate these issues further, and hopefully to put forward an alternative.
Source
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
"Mental" a Naughty Word in Britain
The wicked Jeremy Clarkson again:
Fish to the rescue -- again
Fish seems to be as popular as McDonalds is unpopular. In the study below, fish oil supplements were shown to alter brain chemistry and behaviour also improved but connecting the two is mere theory. In the absence of a double-blind trial, the behaviour improvement was most likely a "Hawthorne" effect.. Prof. Puri is a fatty acids evangelist with a huge number of academic publications extolling their benefits but I could not find the study mentioned below in the maze of his publication list so I presume that it is as yet unpublished.
Fatty acids can help children in exams and improve their behaviour in class and at home, a study suggests. Overweight children who took fatty acid dietary supplements showed dramatic improvements in concentration, reading, memory and mental agility. The advances that their brains made in three months would normally take three years, researchers found. One teenage boy who was hooked on watching television and hated books before the experiment became an avid reader after and dismissed programmes as too boring to bother with.
Researchers said that the results, while based on a small sample, supported recent findings that fatty acids boost brain development and suggest that fast food may stunt mental growth, because processed foods do not contain these acids.
Improvement were made in every area of academic activity but the most surprising change, said researchers, was in levels of Nacetylaspartate, or NAA, a biochemical indicator of brain development. According to brain scans carried out at St George's Hospital, southwest London, the levels of NAA rose far more than expected in the three boys and one girl taking a supplement containing the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. "The results were astonishing," said Professor Basant Puri, who led the study. "In three months you might expect to see a small NAA increase. But we saw as much growth as you would normally see in three years. It was as if these were the brains of children three years older. It means you have more connections and greater density of nerve cells, in the same way that a tree grows more branches. "For all the children there was a marked change, but in the three boys there was a massive, massive increase in NAA. I was quite startled by what I saw."
The children taking part in the research were classified as overweight. Zach, aged 8, weighed 8st (51kg), George and Rachael, both aged 11, weighed 11st, and Gareth, who was 13, weighed 12st. At the start of the pilot study, the children were given a supplement called VegEPA. They took two capsules a day and were encouraged to cut down on fatty snacks and fizzy drinks and be more active. After three months the children's reading abilities were a year ahead, their handwriting was neater and more accurate and they paid more attention in class.
"Gareth's parents told me how he had suddenly found TV boring, as he wanted to read. Three months earlier he was saying he couldn't understand people who loved books," said Professor Puri, of the Division of Clinical Sciences at Imperial College, London. "The concentration of all the children improved enormously and they seemed a lot calmer and happier. Even before I started testing them their parents were saying how much better they were."
The children were asked to change their diet but there was no evidence that they did to any great extent and Professor Puri believes that the changes were caused by the supplement, which is derived from oily fish and evening primrose oil. It contains an essential fatty acid called EPA, but significantly, another type of fatty acid, DHA, is absent. Previous studies by Professor Puri have shown this formula can improve brain function in adults. His study features in a Five TV documentary, Mind the Fat: Does Fast Equal Food Slow Kids?, to be broadcast on Thursday.
Professor Kishore Bhakoo, of the the Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial, said: "The thing that amazed me was how much change in biochemistry you could see in three months . . . You'd expect some variation, but they were all going in the same direction." He said that the results had implications for the "junk food" debate: "Processed food doesn't contain these substances."
Source
Wales: Most spiking cases 'just drunk'
Most patients who believe they have had their drinks spiked test negative for drugs, research at Wrexham Maelor Hospital has found. The study aimed to assess the scale of drink-spiking in the area and identify problems at specific clubs and pubs. But the year-long investigation of hospital patients found fewer than one in five showed any trace of drugs. The research concluded the patients' symptoms were more likely to be the result of excess alcohol.
So-called "date rape" drugs include ketamine, Rohypnol and GHB. During the 12-month study there were 75 alleged cases of drink-spiking. Patient samples were analysed for alcohol and drug levels, and information was recorded about where the alleged spiking had happened. The alleged incidents took place in 23 different locations, although two locations accounted for 31% of the cases. Only 14% of the patients had informed the police. The research, which was published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, found 65% were twice the legal drink-driving limit, and 24% were three times the drink-drive limit.
Dr Peter Saul, a GP in Wrexham, said the report's findings "should not belittle the danger" people faced either from drink-spiking or drinking too much alcohol. He told BBC Radio Wales: "There had always been a suspicion that people would say that their drinks had been spiked when perhaps they had misjudged how much alcohol they were taking. "If you go home and your parents are there, and you are vomiting on the path, and you come in in a terrible state, you get sympathy if you say 'oh, my drink was spiked.' "You don't get sympathy if you say 'we spent too long in the bar'."
Dr Saul said the report did not make it clear if people's drinks had been spiked by alcohol, as opposed to drugs. He said: "It could explain the figures of people with very high alcohol levels." He added: "The message has to be to be careful, not just about having your drink spiked but the total amount of alcohol you have when you are going out for the night."
Professor Jonathan Shepherd is a Cardiff-based surgeon who has pioneered a method for hospital casualty units to compile statistics on the drink-related assaults. He told the same programme: "It really puts to bed a myth that's very widely held that drinks are spiked when in reality they are not." Prof Shepherd's research has included breathalysing up to 900 late-night drinkers in Cardiff city centre. He said: "There is certainly a sizeable minority who are drinking huge amounts of alcohol. "For all of us, it's a cautionary tale - we ought to be deciding beforehand how much are going to drink on a night out."
However, Prof Shepherd acknowledged that drink-spiking was a still a risk, which he said was easier to prevent by drinking from a bottle rather than a large glass. Dr Hywel Hughes, who led the study at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, said the survey's results should not obscure the risks of drink spiking, as one-in-five people tested showed signs of "drugs of abuse". He said: "The bigger picture is probably the alcohol but spiking does go on, so people do need to take precautions against that."
Source
British Catholic fightback against homosexuality
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, has called on his flock to join a campaign against new gay rights laws. Archbishop Nichols urged Catholics in the city to write to their MPs in protest at the Sexual Orientation Regulations, published last week by the Government.
The Catholic Church has led a campaign against the regulations, which make it illegal to discriminate against gay couples when placing children for adoption. The Church says that this goes against its teaching and that its adoption agencies would be forced to close as a result.
In a letter read out at services yesterday, Archbishop Nichols said that the regulations implied an understanding of the family and of children's needs in which the claims of same-sex couples were placed above the beliefs of all major religions.
Source
Our primitive ancestors not so "noble" after all
It is known that primitive people today are anything but peaceful but the myth that OUR ancestors were peaceful is often pushed. Despite the evidence below, however, Leftists will no doubt continue to cling to their Rousseauian myths
Life for the first people to settle down to farm in Britain was far more violent than previously supposed, research suggests. Far from a peaceful expansion into empty and fertile lands, the transformation from hunter-gatherer to farming society was riven with conflict and change. New techniques have allowed archaeologists to pinpoint ages of Early Neolithic, long-barrow burial mounds more accurately, forcing them to revise virtually every assumption about Britain's first farmers. Early Neolithic society, dating about 3,900BC to 3,300BC, was much more diverse than previously realised, with differences between rites and beliefs noticeable in communities only a few miles from each other.
Long barrows have until now been regarded as burial places that were used for several hundred years as the resting places of chieftains and Neolithic VIPs. New dating on six barrows shows that they were open for only a few decades and were likely to have been used by everyone in the community, making them Neolithic village graveyards.
One barrow, Wayland's Smithy, near the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire, could have been opened and closed in a day to hold the remains of villagers killed in a raid. Three of the 14 bodies were found with the arrowheads that are presumed to have killed them and the other 11 are now thought likely to have died at the same time. The new evidence, with revised dates for five other burial barrows, means that archaeologists will have to spend the next 20 years reassessing their understanding of the period when farmers took over from hunter-gatherers in Britain.
Four of the barrows assessed by the new dating were contemporaneous yet were all shut up in different ways, suggesting much more diverse beliefs during the era of how "ghosts and spirits" should be treated. Previously, the different methods of depositing bodies and closing the barrows were held to be indicative of customs and beliefs changing over time. The new findings suggest that rather than commemorating long-dead tribal chieftains or heroes, the people were keeping alive memories of their friends and families. At Hazleton North in Gloucestershire, offerings of meat were placed in chambers 20 years after burials ceased, suggesting that people were visiting their parents' graves. Archaeologists were able to provide precise dates for the six barrows by using a new technique that combines radiocarbon dating with Bayesian statistics.
Radiocarbon dating, callibrated by dendrochronology, is accurate to about 250 years with Early Neolithic remains but when combined with Bayesian statistical analysis, in which artefacts are assessed by such things as the soil they were found in, dates accurate to a decade can be reached.
Alex Bayliss, a radiocarbon dating expert with English Heritage, said: "Maybe the idea of an egalitarian, peaceful land is not as true as we thought." Of Wayland's Smithy, she said: "Maybe this is the result of an epidemic of collective violence. Maybe there was a cattle raid where most of the women and children fled to hide in the woods and the men stayed to fight and lost the battle." Michael Wysocki, of the University of Central Lancaster, said that the period appeared to have been one "of increasing social tension and upheaval".
Source
Prof. Wunsch is feeling the heat
He is probably under a lot of pressure now so one cannot really blame him for trying to back off. Post below lifted from Global Warming Hyperbole
The wicked Jeremy Clarkson again:
"The BBC has apologised to brain injury sufferers after Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson referred to crash victim Richard Hammond as "a mental".
Clarkson made the quip when presenter Hammond returned to the show last month. Hammond is still recovering from a 280mph car smash in September which left him fighting for his life. "Are you a mental?" Clarkson asked on the BBC2 programme.
Source
Fish to the rescue -- again
Fish seems to be as popular as McDonalds is unpopular. In the study below, fish oil supplements were shown to alter brain chemistry and behaviour also improved but connecting the two is mere theory. In the absence of a double-blind trial, the behaviour improvement was most likely a "Hawthorne" effect.. Prof. Puri is a fatty acids evangelist with a huge number of academic publications extolling their benefits but I could not find the study mentioned below in the maze of his publication list so I presume that it is as yet unpublished.
Fatty acids can help children in exams and improve their behaviour in class and at home, a study suggests. Overweight children who took fatty acid dietary supplements showed dramatic improvements in concentration, reading, memory and mental agility. The advances that their brains made in three months would normally take three years, researchers found. One teenage boy who was hooked on watching television and hated books before the experiment became an avid reader after and dismissed programmes as too boring to bother with.
Researchers said that the results, while based on a small sample, supported recent findings that fatty acids boost brain development and suggest that fast food may stunt mental growth, because processed foods do not contain these acids.
Improvement were made in every area of academic activity but the most surprising change, said researchers, was in levels of Nacetylaspartate, or NAA, a biochemical indicator of brain development. According to brain scans carried out at St George's Hospital, southwest London, the levels of NAA rose far more than expected in the three boys and one girl taking a supplement containing the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. "The results were astonishing," said Professor Basant Puri, who led the study. "In three months you might expect to see a small NAA increase. But we saw as much growth as you would normally see in three years. It was as if these were the brains of children three years older. It means you have more connections and greater density of nerve cells, in the same way that a tree grows more branches. "For all the children there was a marked change, but in the three boys there was a massive, massive increase in NAA. I was quite startled by what I saw."
The children taking part in the research were classified as overweight. Zach, aged 8, weighed 8st (51kg), George and Rachael, both aged 11, weighed 11st, and Gareth, who was 13, weighed 12st. At the start of the pilot study, the children were given a supplement called VegEPA. They took two capsules a day and were encouraged to cut down on fatty snacks and fizzy drinks and be more active. After three months the children's reading abilities were a year ahead, their handwriting was neater and more accurate and they paid more attention in class.
"Gareth's parents told me how he had suddenly found TV boring, as he wanted to read. Three months earlier he was saying he couldn't understand people who loved books," said Professor Puri, of the Division of Clinical Sciences at Imperial College, London. "The concentration of all the children improved enormously and they seemed a lot calmer and happier. Even before I started testing them their parents were saying how much better they were."
The children were asked to change their diet but there was no evidence that they did to any great extent and Professor Puri believes that the changes were caused by the supplement, which is derived from oily fish and evening primrose oil. It contains an essential fatty acid called EPA, but significantly, another type of fatty acid, DHA, is absent. Previous studies by Professor Puri have shown this formula can improve brain function in adults. His study features in a Five TV documentary, Mind the Fat: Does Fast Equal Food Slow Kids?, to be broadcast on Thursday.
Professor Kishore Bhakoo, of the the Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial, said: "The thing that amazed me was how much change in biochemistry you could see in three months . . . You'd expect some variation, but they were all going in the same direction." He said that the results had implications for the "junk food" debate: "Processed food doesn't contain these substances."
Source
Wales: Most spiking cases 'just drunk'
Most patients who believe they have had their drinks spiked test negative for drugs, research at Wrexham Maelor Hospital has found. The study aimed to assess the scale of drink-spiking in the area and identify problems at specific clubs and pubs. But the year-long investigation of hospital patients found fewer than one in five showed any trace of drugs. The research concluded the patients' symptoms were more likely to be the result of excess alcohol.
So-called "date rape" drugs include ketamine, Rohypnol and GHB. During the 12-month study there were 75 alleged cases of drink-spiking. Patient samples were analysed for alcohol and drug levels, and information was recorded about where the alleged spiking had happened. The alleged incidents took place in 23 different locations, although two locations accounted for 31% of the cases. Only 14% of the patients had informed the police. The research, which was published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, found 65% were twice the legal drink-driving limit, and 24% were three times the drink-drive limit.
Dr Peter Saul, a GP in Wrexham, said the report's findings "should not belittle the danger" people faced either from drink-spiking or drinking too much alcohol. He told BBC Radio Wales: "There had always been a suspicion that people would say that their drinks had been spiked when perhaps they had misjudged how much alcohol they were taking. "If you go home and your parents are there, and you are vomiting on the path, and you come in in a terrible state, you get sympathy if you say 'oh, my drink was spiked.' "You don't get sympathy if you say 'we spent too long in the bar'."
Dr Saul said the report did not make it clear if people's drinks had been spiked by alcohol, as opposed to drugs. He said: "It could explain the figures of people with very high alcohol levels." He added: "The message has to be to be careful, not just about having your drink spiked but the total amount of alcohol you have when you are going out for the night."
Professor Jonathan Shepherd is a Cardiff-based surgeon who has pioneered a method for hospital casualty units to compile statistics on the drink-related assaults. He told the same programme: "It really puts to bed a myth that's very widely held that drinks are spiked when in reality they are not." Prof Shepherd's research has included breathalysing up to 900 late-night drinkers in Cardiff city centre. He said: "There is certainly a sizeable minority who are drinking huge amounts of alcohol. "For all of us, it's a cautionary tale - we ought to be deciding beforehand how much are going to drink on a night out."
However, Prof Shepherd acknowledged that drink-spiking was a still a risk, which he said was easier to prevent by drinking from a bottle rather than a large glass. Dr Hywel Hughes, who led the study at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, said the survey's results should not obscure the risks of drink spiking, as one-in-five people tested showed signs of "drugs of abuse". He said: "The bigger picture is probably the alcohol but spiking does go on, so people do need to take precautions against that."
Source
British Catholic fightback against homosexuality
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, has called on his flock to join a campaign against new gay rights laws. Archbishop Nichols urged Catholics in the city to write to their MPs in protest at the Sexual Orientation Regulations, published last week by the Government.
The Catholic Church has led a campaign against the regulations, which make it illegal to discriminate against gay couples when placing children for adoption. The Church says that this goes against its teaching and that its adoption agencies would be forced to close as a result.
In a letter read out at services yesterday, Archbishop Nichols said that the regulations implied an understanding of the family and of children's needs in which the claims of same-sex couples were placed above the beliefs of all major religions.
Source
Our primitive ancestors not so "noble" after all
It is known that primitive people today are anything but peaceful but the myth that OUR ancestors were peaceful is often pushed. Despite the evidence below, however, Leftists will no doubt continue to cling to their Rousseauian myths
Life for the first people to settle down to farm in Britain was far more violent than previously supposed, research suggests. Far from a peaceful expansion into empty and fertile lands, the transformation from hunter-gatherer to farming society was riven with conflict and change. New techniques have allowed archaeologists to pinpoint ages of Early Neolithic, long-barrow burial mounds more accurately, forcing them to revise virtually every assumption about Britain's first farmers. Early Neolithic society, dating about 3,900BC to 3,300BC, was much more diverse than previously realised, with differences between rites and beliefs noticeable in communities only a few miles from each other.
Long barrows have until now been regarded as burial places that were used for several hundred years as the resting places of chieftains and Neolithic VIPs. New dating on six barrows shows that they were open for only a few decades and were likely to have been used by everyone in the community, making them Neolithic village graveyards.
One barrow, Wayland's Smithy, near the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire, could have been opened and closed in a day to hold the remains of villagers killed in a raid. Three of the 14 bodies were found with the arrowheads that are presumed to have killed them and the other 11 are now thought likely to have died at the same time. The new evidence, with revised dates for five other burial barrows, means that archaeologists will have to spend the next 20 years reassessing their understanding of the period when farmers took over from hunter-gatherers in Britain.
Four of the barrows assessed by the new dating were contemporaneous yet were all shut up in different ways, suggesting much more diverse beliefs during the era of how "ghosts and spirits" should be treated. Previously, the different methods of depositing bodies and closing the barrows were held to be indicative of customs and beliefs changing over time. The new findings suggest that rather than commemorating long-dead tribal chieftains or heroes, the people were keeping alive memories of their friends and families. At Hazleton North in Gloucestershire, offerings of meat were placed in chambers 20 years after burials ceased, suggesting that people were visiting their parents' graves. Archaeologists were able to provide precise dates for the six barrows by using a new technique that combines radiocarbon dating with Bayesian statistics.
Radiocarbon dating, callibrated by dendrochronology, is accurate to about 250 years with Early Neolithic remains but when combined with Bayesian statistical analysis, in which artefacts are assessed by such things as the soil they were found in, dates accurate to a decade can be reached.
Alex Bayliss, a radiocarbon dating expert with English Heritage, said: "Maybe the idea of an egalitarian, peaceful land is not as true as we thought." Of Wayland's Smithy, she said: "Maybe this is the result of an epidemic of collective violence. Maybe there was a cattle raid where most of the women and children fled to hide in the woods and the men stayed to fight and lost the battle." Michael Wysocki, of the University of Central Lancaster, said that the period appeared to have been one "of increasing social tension and upheaval".
Source
Prof. Wunsch is feeling the heat
He is probably under a lot of pressure now so one cannot really blame him for trying to back off. Post below lifted from Global Warming Hyperbole
The following articles pegged the bullshit meter all the way off the scale.
Climate scientist 'duped to deny global warming' - Ben Goldacre and David Adam, yes David Adam, Environmental Corespondent for the Guardian, the same David Adam that blogged his comments on the program without even watching it first! (03/10/07)
Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4
This expert in oceanography quoted in last week's debunking of the Gore green theory says he was 'seriously misrepresented' - By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor (03/10/07)
Less than 48 hours after this controversial new documentary challenging some of the assertions that man made CO2 is causing global warming aired on British TV, one of it's participants is claiming that his views were "grossly distorted" by the film. Professor Carl wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology continued to say that not only was he "totally misled" and "completely misrepresented" but also that the film was "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War II."
According to Independent, Professor Wunsch said "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a program about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the program, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled".
The Professor went on to say that he believes it is "an almost inescapable conclusion" that "if man adds excess CO2 to the atmosphere, the climate will warm".
After viewing these comments by the professor only hours after watching the program, I was shocked. I decided to go back and analyze the scenes in which the good professor appeared, and see if I could possibly imagine a "context" in which the actual words uttered by Professor Wunsch would have had a significantly different meaning. I could not. Maybe you can. I have printed the Professor's words as they appeared in the film, and the time at which they appeared. The film is currently available on Google Video but I don't know how long it will be there.
In this portion of the discussion, Professor Wunsch begins by explaining how the ocean's surface temperature plays a role in the exchange of carbon dioxide. He later comments on the vastness of the oceans, and their extremely slow reaction to any changes in climate as a result of such vastness.
Professor Wunsch:
25:43 The ocean is the major reservoir into which carbon dioxide goes when it comes out of the atmosphere or to from which it is re-emitted to the the atmosphere. If you heat the surface of the ocean, it tends to emit carbon dioxide. Similarly, if you cool the ocean surface, the ocean can dissolve more carbon dioxide.
Professor Wunsch:
26:44 - The ocean has a memory of past events ugh running out as far as 10,000 years. So for example, if somebody says oh I'm seeing changes in the North Atlantic, this must mean that the climate system is changing, it may only mean that something happened in a remote part of the ocean decades or hundreds of years ago who's effects are now beginning to show up in the North Atlantic.
In this portion of the film, the professor is speaking about the complexity of climate models and how their results can be greatly influenced by the input data they are given.
Professor Wunsch:
49:22 - The models are so complicated, you can often adjust them is such a way that they do something very exciting.
Professor Wunsch:
50:46 - Even within the scientific community you see, it's a problem.
If I run a complicated model and I do something to it like ugh melt a lot of ice into the ocean and nothing happens, ugh it's not likely to get printed. But if I run the same model, and I adjust it in such a way that something dramatic happens to the ocean circulation like the heat transport turns off, ugh it will be published. People will say this is very exciting. It will even get picked by the media. So there is a bias, there's is a very powerful bias within the media, and within the science community itself, toward results which are ugh dramatizable. If Earth freezes over, that's a much more interesting story than saying well you know it ugh fluctuates around, sometimes the mass flux goes up by 10%, sometimes it goes down by 20%, but eventually it comes back. Well you know, which would you do a story on? That's what it's about.
I've watched this video several times now and I can't believe the comments made in the film, and those in the above mentioned articles came from the same man. In my opinion, the Professor's words speak for themselves. I don't see how they could mean anything other than what they mean.
Monday, March 12, 2007
"Stone Age" now Wrong
The latest wisdom from Britain:
‘Apocalypse my arse’
Martin Durkin, director of The Great Global Warming Swindle, on green intolerance, soft censorship and his ‘dodgy’ Marxist background. See the video version of the film here. The article below is from one of the retired Marxists at "Spiked"
‘I wanted to call it “Apocalypse My Arse”, but in the end we decided on “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. It’s a provocative title, which helps with ratings.’
Martin Durkin has a hangover. And a cold. He spent last night, Thursday 8 March, watching the Channel 4 screening of his film The Great Global Warming Swindle in a pub with friends and colleagues. ‘It’s better than watching it at home. That can be an isolating experience. You become convinced you’re the only person in the country watching it.’ Now, this morning, he has some things to get off his chest – about the green movement’s demonisation of him for daring to question environmentalist orthodoxy; the ‘soft censorship’ of his earlier programmes; and the endless revelations that he had an apparently dodgy Marxist background. ‘Shock, horror’, he says. ‘Exposing that a journalist has a Marxist background is like exposing that he wears trousers.’
Durkin’s latest film has won him the accolade – or perhaps slur – of being the ‘anti-Al Gore’. Where the American president-who-never-was transformed his rather dull PowerPoint presentation on the threat of global warming into a marginally less dull big box office flick – An Inconvenient Truth – Durkin has directed a 90-minute made-for-TV movie that basically says: ‘Everything you know about global warming is wrong!’
Its title a knowing, punk-rebellious nod to the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, The Great Global Warming Swindle featured scientists questioning whether global warming is manmade. Some of them argued that the Sun - directly, or through its effect on cosmic rays - causes global warming. Others claimed that CO2 levels are influenced by changes in temperature rather than the other way around. If this were the case, it would turn on its head every fundamental assumption underpinning not just the green movement but also national and international politics, a whole new genre of global warming literature and research, and much of the newly greened education system in Britain: those assumptions being that a rise in CO2 is causing the Earth to warm, that man is responsible for that rise in CO2, and thus we must rein man in. No wonder many seem miffed by Durkin’s film.
Whatever viewers may have thought about the new theories put forward in Swindle to explain global warming (personally, I found the replacement of the widespread, all-encompassing manmade theory with an all-encompassing cosmic ray theory – sort of ‘It’s the Sun wot done it!’ – a little unconvincing), there’s no denying that the film poked some very big holes in the global warming consensus.
Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, one of the world’s leading experts on malaria, was a revelation. He explained how he had to threaten legal action against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to have his name removed from the list of ‘2,000 of the world’s leading scientists’ who apparently backed its summary published last month. The problem? Professor Reiter didn’t back it, instead arguing that it was a ‘sham’. The IPCC ‘make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed, but it’s not true’, he said.
And leaving to one side the science of global warming, there was also some stirring stuff on the impact of the environmentalist ethos on political debate and human ambition – especially in relation to the developing world. Many of the talking heads argued that our obsession with restraining development in order to ‘save the planet’ will consign the world’s poorest to a life of grime and squalor. And, ironically, pollution. As one contributor pointed out, the smoke from cowshit and other items that some in the developing world burn in order to warm their homes – because they don’t have electricity and because the only solution put forward for their predicament is that they should use expensive and ineffectual ‘sustainable’ solar and wind power – is recognised by the World Health Organisation as one of the worst pollutants in the world. Tens of thousands of children in the developing world die every year from respiratory problems brought on by such in-house smog. It is peasantry, rather than modernity, that kills them; shit, not cars.
Watching The Great Global Warming Swindle felt a little bit naughty, even subversive. You simply never hear stark criticisms of the politics of global warming in the mainstream media very much. And yet, as Durkin points out, the response to his film has pretty much been a shrill: How can Channel 4 show this stuff?!
‘Some people seem really outraged that 90 minutes of airtime was given to “the other side”’, he says. He describes as ‘surreal’ the accusation that Channel 4, in airing his film, is somehow distorting the debate about global warming. One commentator declared: ‘Channel 4 has done a huge public disservice. Or are they planning to show a follow-up that takes apart last night’s wayward thesis?’ (1) ‘These people talk about balance, but the environmentalist view is everywhere!’, says Durkin. Indeed, even Durkin’s film was not allowed to stand alone: earlier in the week Channel 4 showed a Dispatches documentary made by green Guardian columnist George Monbiot to ‘balance out’ Durkin’s film, and then repeated it again last night after Durkin’s film. So even when you get to criticise the prevailing view, you have to be sandwiched in between two slabs of Monbiot.
TV has been well and truly greened: there are hectoring lifestyle shows like No Waste Like Home and It’s Not Easy Being Green, the greening of various soap characters, the unwritten law that says all wildlife documentaries must pass comment on how man has endangered tigers/whales/polar bears (usually polar bears), and news programmes frequently leading on The Threat of Global Warming to Life As We Know It, complete with Peter Snow-style swingometer graphics showing creeping deserts, disappearing glaciers and, of course, stranded bloody polar bears.
And yet some have branded Channel 4 as irresponsible for showing a 90-minute critical film which Durkin says he struggled for 10 years to have commissioned. ‘It shows that environmentalists and journalists can be utterly intolerant’, he says. ‘They simply will not tolerate any dissenting view. Straight away they try to take it down. You can see that in the kind of language they use – they say “the jury is in” on global warming, or “the science is done and dusted”, or you’re a “denier” if you question the consensus. This is not about having a debate but about shutting down debate.’
Indeed, many of Durkin’s critics have responded to The Great Global Warming Swindle by trying to slur Durkin and the participants in the film. Or they have gone running to the Office of Communications (Ofcom) to demand that it rap Durkin’s knuckles – a bit like overgrown school sissies squealing to teacher about the boy they don’t like in the hope that teacher will give him a jolly good thrashing.
Before the film aired, a contributor to a green-leaning website advised fellow contributors to keep an eye out for who is due to appear in the film ‘and more importantly who they work for’ (my italics). This sums up the approach of trying to demolish the arguer rather than his argument, to expose people’s alleged funding or leanings rather than to take up the substance of what they say. (For what it’s worth, most of the participants in the film said they hadn’t received a penny from oil companies, much as they would have liked to.)
In today’s Guardian, Zoe Williams seems to make a sly dig at one of the participants (Professor Tim Ball) on the basis that he is from Winnipeg. Apparently, being based on Farringdon Road in central London is a far better qualification for commenting on climate change, even if you are a ditzy la-la columnist and the weird Winnipeg man a professor of climatology (2). (Durkin points out the irony of people ‘exposing’ that he doesn’t have a background in science. If everyone who doesn’t have a background in science was forbidden from researching or talking about global warming, he says, then that would mean silencing some of the leading environmentalist thinkers and just about every newspaper columnist, who can always be relied upon to churn out an ‘I’m Scared of Global Warming and So Should You Be!’ column despite not knowing what a test tube is.)
On Wednesday, before the film even aired, a left-leaning website provided readers with a link to Ofcom’s website and the instruction: ‘Please do complain [about The Great Global Warming Swindle], and please do publicise this link and ask others to complain.’ It gave a link to the Channel 4 complaints website, too, saying that if Channel 4 ‘get a number of complaints then they will find it harder to commission future programmes from Durkin’ (3). This represents a new low in the discussion of environmentalism. Instead of having an upfront, open debate about the science, and the social and political courses of action that might be required to alleviate pollution while still meeting people’s needs and desires, some try to have a film written off by the suited and booted powers-that-be at Ofcom and a director excommunicated from the world of TV.
Durkin has been here before. His 1997 series, Against Nature, also an impassioned critique of environmentalism, was similarly the subject of a concerted complaints effort. This led to the Independent Television Commission (subsequently superseded by Ofcom) chastising Durkin and Channel 4 for using ‘underhand editing techniques’.
‘It is soft censorship’, Durkin insists. ‘If there is a huge response to a programme, then the ITC and now Ofcom feel the need to do something. So they end up censuring seriously controversial work. I mean, Channel 4 shows a lot of rubbish, like “wank week”. But because hardly anyone complains about that, Ofcom doesn’t say anything. And then people complain about my work, which is serious, and these bodies take action. It might not be formal censorship, but it is a kind of invisible censorship. The end result is phoney controversialism on TV but not much real controversialism. Ofcom is supposed to uphold standards but it does the opposite.’
He believes that such official chastisement – which was widely celebrated by some greens in relation to Against Nature and which is being demanded again for The Great Global Warming Swindle – has a ‘chilling effect’ on TV output. The big broadcasters, desperate to avoid being ticked off by Ofcom, will avoid showing anything liable to invite large numbers of complaints. So they stick with the wankers of ‘wank week’ instead. A far safer bet.
Durkin’s experiences with Against Nature also showed that the cheap and conspiratorial shot of denouncing someone by associating them with others can be used to stifle genuine debate. Who was he sinisterly associated with over the Against Nature controversy? Why, LM, the predecessor magazine to spiked which was edited by Mick Hume.
Scour the web for commentary on Against Nature (only if you have absolutely nothing else to do – seriously) and you will find shrill, green-ink enviro-babble about how we sinister Marxists at LM pulled the puppet-strings of Against Nature in order to do big business’s bidding against the poor, beleaguered environmentalist movement. Or something. In fact, a few people who contributed articles to LM appeared as talking heads on Against Nature. That’s all. Not as exciting as the crazed and wide-eyed web conspiracy theories make it sound, I know. Sorry.
Yet that hasn’t stopped the anti-LM conspiracy-mongering from making a comeback to coincide with the airing of The Great Global Warming Swindle - 10 years after Against Nature was first shown and seven years since LM was forced to close following a libel action brought by ITN. The new Channel 4 film has been described as ‘The Great LM Swindle’. Anti-globalisation author Paul Kingsnorth has written a satirical skit about what might have happened at the Channel 4 offices when they decided to commission Durkin’s latest film. It ends with one of the C4 bosses saying: ‘Brilliant work everyone. Lunch at the Groucho to celebrate? spiked is paying.’ (4) As well as being spectacularly unfunny (miserabilists can’t do satire), the skit is, of course, pure fantasy: spiked had no involvement in The Great Global Warming Swindle and we never buy anyone lunch. Our petty cash is so petty it doesn’t stretch to that.
Durkin laughs about the fact that many environmentalists fancy themselves as leftists, yet ‘they are always exposing me…as a leftist!’ It is indeed surreal – pure madness, in fact – for environmentalist writers, activists, politicians, TV-makers and the rest to complain about the showing of Durkin’s film, when their arguments are so widespread and so rarely challenged. Talking to Durkin, it is clear he is nobody’s stooge – not Big Oil’s, not Big Science’s, and certainly not mine or spiked’s. Whether he’s exposing the origins of environmentalism, the scare about GM food or the global warming consensus, he makes film about things that he believes in; it’s just that his beliefs don’t chime with what we’re ‘supposed’ to believe today. In these uncritical, unquestioning times, we could do with more anti-conformist films from ‘mavericks’ like Durkin.
The various attempts to have him shut up, denounced, sacked or whatever speak to a worryingly censorious climate in the climate change debate. And whatever the sceptics in the Swindle film might think, such a climate has not come about as a result of a handful of greens conspiratorially plotting to take down Durkin and anyone else who stands in their way. Rather, it is a product of a broader, society-wide attitude of ‘You can’t say that!’ in relation to discussions of global warming, development, man’s intervention in nature and the future of humanity itself. If we want a proper debate about these issues, we need an open and rigorous public life, rather than sneaky accusations of secret conspiracies and demands for censure.
Source
STERN ACCUSED OF OVERCOOKING THE ECONOMICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The British mandarin behind a gloomy report on climate change has had to run a gauntlet of American economists
PUNCH "Sir Nicholas Stern" into Factiva, the news clippings database, and you'll find only 38 references to him in the American press over the past 12 months. In Britain the quality papers alone have mentioned him more than 501 times (make that 502).
Commissioned by the government to look at the impact of climate change, Stern published his review last October and it makes sober reading. Unless drastic action is taken - and soon - 200m people are likely to be displaced by floods by 2050, Stern concluded. According to his 600-page report the global economy could shrink by between 5% and 20% over the next two centuries because of the likely disruption to people's way of life caused by global warming. Taking action now to reduce carbon emissions would involve a "significant but manageable" one-off cost of 1% of global economic output by 2050. Not taking action would be disastrous: "Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," wrote the former World Bank chief economist.
Until recently America's ruling party was in a state of denial about global warming. President George W. Bush appeared to believe it was a hoax. His critics accused the former Texan oilman of letting the world burn to protect business interests.
Mid-term elections have given the Democrats the upper hand in Washington and global warming has become a hot topic, fuelled by former Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and his Oscar-nominated documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
Stern was in Washington this month to address Congress about his report - an audience, it would be fair to assume, more receptive to his words than at any other point in the Bush administration. Stern pressed Congress to consider adopting new regulations, funding new technologies and establishing a system of trading carbon-dioxide-emission credits to try to limit gases that spur global warming. "Leadership in the world's largest markets sets the pace elsewhere," he told the Senate's energy and natural resources committee. "Now is the time to act urgently, strongly and internationally."
But while the politicians were at least paying lip service, America's academics were taking their gloves off. On a trip to Yale, Stern was compared to the Wizard of Oz, his frightening picture a projection of badly flawed economics. Unlike Bush, it is not that Yale's economists doubt that the earth is getting hotter, or that human activity is the cause of global warming. The clear implication is that Stern overstated his case for political reasons.
Stern's biggest critic is William Nordhaus, an expert on the economics of global warming at Yale. In a public debate Nordhaus said the report "commits cruel and unusual punishment on the English language", adding that the British government's opinion on climate change was no more infallible than its prewar view about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Fellow Yale economist Robert Mendelsohn was blunter still. He was "awestruck" by the report, comparing Stern to "The Wizard of Oz". "My job is to be Toto [Dorothy's terrier, which unmasks the wizard]," he added.
Commenting on the dispute, Paul Joskow, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Centre for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, said: "I don't think that there is a disagreement in terms of policy. The US needs to get on board and control greenhouse gases." Even Nordhaus has called Stern "fundamentally correct in sign if not in size". "The problems have been with the way in which the analysis in the report has been packaged," said Joskow. Academics felt the damage attributed to climate change was "chosen from the high side of the probability distribution" and likely costs "from the low side", Joskow said.
More criticism will soon be forthcoming. Harvard economics professor Martin Weitzman, in a soon-to-be published report in the Journal of Economic Literature, has made another attack on Stern's methodology. He argues that the UK government official overcooked his figures. The Stern report is biased toward gloom, argues Weitzman. According to "a generous interpretation of its not-so-great economic analysis," the report "has its heart in the right place" but its numbers do not back up its "alarmist tone", he writes.
The main economic objection to Stern centres on "the discount rate". Stern's headline numbers assumed that a dollar of economic damage prevented a century from now (adjusted for inflation) is roughly as valuable as a dollar spent reducing emissions today. The figure makes the cost of disaster to our grandchildren equal to the cost of the same disaster to ourselves.
Morally, the approach is unimpeachable; economically, its critics argue it is a nonsense. The world's economy is set to grow at 4.1% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Already today's dollar is looking like it is worth less than it will be worth tomorrow. If growth rates continue at present levels, then in 100 years' time there will be no comparison between the two figures. A richer and more technologically advanced society will be better able to deal with tomorrow's problems than we are today, argue Stern's critics.
The Stern Review team has begun to address these criticisms and published a defence of its methodology. The easiest part of the argument to follow is that "business-as-usual emissions of GHGs (greenhouse gases) could radically reduce the standard of living of future generations".
But his critics say it is still Stern's convictions, not his numbers, that buttress his argument. "I think very highly of Nick," said Joskow. "There's always a question if you are an economist: should you be stepping over the line and become a politician and a promoter? Nick has come to believe that this is a very serious problem, and drastic measures need to be taken. The very large numbers in the Stern review are at best speculative."
The report has certainly ignited a heated academic debate. But so far Stern's words do not appear to have reached a mass audience in America in the same way they have in Europe.
"These kinds of problem get you all tied up with the dilemmas of the infinite. We don't know a lot of things and 100 years away is a very long time," said Joskow. "Getting away from the precise numbers, the fact that it has helped to invigorate a debate about climate change and how we deal with it is very good. Maybe that was the intent: to shock people and get them to think."
Source
British schoolboys arrested over `racist taunts'
A typical British police over-reaction. All that happened was a bit of juvenile cheekiness -- a repetition by some kid or kids of a sporting expression that drew attention to the teacher's Jewishness. At a time when calls to the British police for assistance are routinely ignored, one could only hope that they would react with the vigour shown below to complaints of burglary, assault etc. Under Ingsoc (Orwell's abbreviation of "English Socialism"), thoughtcrime is more important than real crime. I have zero tolerance for antisemitism but this was just kids being kids.
Eight teenage boys were arrested in class after a film shown on the internet was alleged to show them shouting racist taunts at a teaching assistant, David Appleman, during his leaving party. Police took the 14 and 15-year-olds out of Chauncy School at Ware, Hertfordshire, drove them off in vans and questioned them for nine hours at Bishop's Stortford police station. They were fingerprinted, photographed and had DNA swabs taken. A spokeswoman said that reports of a racist incident were being investigated.
The film was made in December and posted on the YouTube video-sharing website. Police are believed to have removed it for examination. The youths were released on police bail. A Hertfordshire Police spokesman said: " "We take allegations of this nature very seriously and we believe we acted accordingly."
Dennis O'Sullivan, Chauncy School's head teacher, said: "When these boys realised that Mr Appleman was leaving they prepared a tribute to Mr Appleman for his last lesson. "David is seen on video looking delighted, smiling and shaking hands with each of the boys." It is thought that the alleged racist comments followed afterwards.
Mr O'Sullivan said he believed that Mr Appleman had complained to police, adding: "It is sad to see he made a complaint against our students without telling us." He continued: "None of us should accept racism in any part of our lives." Police said that investigations into the matter were ongoing.
Source
We read elsewhere:
They were accused by Chauncy's former technology assistant, David Appleman, of making anti-Semitic remarks during his leaving party in December. It is alleged that 'Yid Army' was shouted - a nickname for Tottenham Hotspur's Jewish supporters that is often heard at football grounds.
NHS DENTISTRY BUNGLE
NHS dentistry faces a 120 million pound shortfall because the Health Department wrongly estimated how many patients would contribute to the cost of their treatment, the Tories claimed yesterday. Many people appear to have abandoned the NHS to go private, reducing the amount of money that NHS dentists are able to collect through patient charges.
Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, used the Freedom of Information Act to seek data for 51 of England's 152 primary care trusts, which pay dentists. He said that nearly all were collecting less patient revenue than they had expected. The deficit for the 51 trusts was more than 41 million pounds, which suggested, Mr Lansley said, that the deficit for all 152 trusts would 120 million.
The figures also suggested that since 2005-06 there had been a 6 per cent drop in the level of dental care on the NHS, equivalent to 1.4 million fewer people registered with an NHS dentist, he said. "This is the latest revelation in a long series of NHS mismanagements under Labour. Eight years ago, Tony Blair promised everyone would have access to an NHS dentist but in the last year alone, 1.4 million fewer people have access. Labour wanted to milk dental patients through higher charges but the decline in NHS dentistry has even thwarted that plan."
The Health Department contested Mr Lansley's claims. "This survey paints a picture of NHS dentistry that we do not recognise. We do not accept the claim that 1.4 million fewer people now have access to NHS dentistry," it said. "Equally it is nonsense to talk of a massive shortfall in investment.
Source
The latest wisdom from Britain:
"Attention Fred Flintstone and the Geico cave guys: "Stone Age" is no longer acceptable, joining the list of other words and terms deemed offensive in polite society. "Primitive" also is considered, well, primitive by some.
"All anthropologists would agree that the negative use of the terms 'primitive' and 'Stone Age' to describe tribal peoples has serious implications for their welfare," the British-based Association of Social Anthropologists said Tuesday. "Governments and other social groups have long used these ideas as a pretext of depriving such peoples of land and their resources."
The edict is the result of a kerfuffle that began last March when Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat member of Parliament, described two Botswana tribes as "trying to stay in the Stone Age" and "primitive" during a spirited debate. Though she later said she was misunderstood, Mrs. Tonge was criticized in the British press as "primitive" herself.
Source
‘Apocalypse my arse’
Martin Durkin, director of The Great Global Warming Swindle, on green intolerance, soft censorship and his ‘dodgy’ Marxist background. See the video version of the film here. The article below is from one of the retired Marxists at "Spiked"
‘I wanted to call it “Apocalypse My Arse”, but in the end we decided on “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. It’s a provocative title, which helps with ratings.’
Martin Durkin has a hangover. And a cold. He spent last night, Thursday 8 March, watching the Channel 4 screening of his film The Great Global Warming Swindle in a pub with friends and colleagues. ‘It’s better than watching it at home. That can be an isolating experience. You become convinced you’re the only person in the country watching it.’ Now, this morning, he has some things to get off his chest – about the green movement’s demonisation of him for daring to question environmentalist orthodoxy; the ‘soft censorship’ of his earlier programmes; and the endless revelations that he had an apparently dodgy Marxist background. ‘Shock, horror’, he says. ‘Exposing that a journalist has a Marxist background is like exposing that he wears trousers.’
Durkin’s latest film has won him the accolade – or perhaps slur – of being the ‘anti-Al Gore’. Where the American president-who-never-was transformed his rather dull PowerPoint presentation on the threat of global warming into a marginally less dull big box office flick – An Inconvenient Truth – Durkin has directed a 90-minute made-for-TV movie that basically says: ‘Everything you know about global warming is wrong!’
Its title a knowing, punk-rebellious nod to the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, The Great Global Warming Swindle featured scientists questioning whether global warming is manmade. Some of them argued that the Sun - directly, or through its effect on cosmic rays - causes global warming. Others claimed that CO2 levels are influenced by changes in temperature rather than the other way around. If this were the case, it would turn on its head every fundamental assumption underpinning not just the green movement but also national and international politics, a whole new genre of global warming literature and research, and much of the newly greened education system in Britain: those assumptions being that a rise in CO2 is causing the Earth to warm, that man is responsible for that rise in CO2, and thus we must rein man in. No wonder many seem miffed by Durkin’s film.
Whatever viewers may have thought about the new theories put forward in Swindle to explain global warming (personally, I found the replacement of the widespread, all-encompassing manmade theory with an all-encompassing cosmic ray theory – sort of ‘It’s the Sun wot done it!’ – a little unconvincing), there’s no denying that the film poked some very big holes in the global warming consensus.
Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, one of the world’s leading experts on malaria, was a revelation. He explained how he had to threaten legal action against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to have his name removed from the list of ‘2,000 of the world’s leading scientists’ who apparently backed its summary published last month. The problem? Professor Reiter didn’t back it, instead arguing that it was a ‘sham’. The IPCC ‘make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed, but it’s not true’, he said.
And leaving to one side the science of global warming, there was also some stirring stuff on the impact of the environmentalist ethos on political debate and human ambition – especially in relation to the developing world. Many of the talking heads argued that our obsession with restraining development in order to ‘save the planet’ will consign the world’s poorest to a life of grime and squalor. And, ironically, pollution. As one contributor pointed out, the smoke from cowshit and other items that some in the developing world burn in order to warm their homes – because they don’t have electricity and because the only solution put forward for their predicament is that they should use expensive and ineffectual ‘sustainable’ solar and wind power – is recognised by the World Health Organisation as one of the worst pollutants in the world. Tens of thousands of children in the developing world die every year from respiratory problems brought on by such in-house smog. It is peasantry, rather than modernity, that kills them; shit, not cars.
Watching The Great Global Warming Swindle felt a little bit naughty, even subversive. You simply never hear stark criticisms of the politics of global warming in the mainstream media very much. And yet, as Durkin points out, the response to his film has pretty much been a shrill: How can Channel 4 show this stuff?!
‘Some people seem really outraged that 90 minutes of airtime was given to “the other side”’, he says. He describes as ‘surreal’ the accusation that Channel 4, in airing his film, is somehow distorting the debate about global warming. One commentator declared: ‘Channel 4 has done a huge public disservice. Or are they planning to show a follow-up that takes apart last night’s wayward thesis?’ (1) ‘These people talk about balance, but the environmentalist view is everywhere!’, says Durkin. Indeed, even Durkin’s film was not allowed to stand alone: earlier in the week Channel 4 showed a Dispatches documentary made by green Guardian columnist George Monbiot to ‘balance out’ Durkin’s film, and then repeated it again last night after Durkin’s film. So even when you get to criticise the prevailing view, you have to be sandwiched in between two slabs of Monbiot.
TV has been well and truly greened: there are hectoring lifestyle shows like No Waste Like Home and It’s Not Easy Being Green, the greening of various soap characters, the unwritten law that says all wildlife documentaries must pass comment on how man has endangered tigers/whales/polar bears (usually polar bears), and news programmes frequently leading on The Threat of Global Warming to Life As We Know It, complete with Peter Snow-style swingometer graphics showing creeping deserts, disappearing glaciers and, of course, stranded bloody polar bears.
And yet some have branded Channel 4 as irresponsible for showing a 90-minute critical film which Durkin says he struggled for 10 years to have commissioned. ‘It shows that environmentalists and journalists can be utterly intolerant’, he says. ‘They simply will not tolerate any dissenting view. Straight away they try to take it down. You can see that in the kind of language they use – they say “the jury is in” on global warming, or “the science is done and dusted”, or you’re a “denier” if you question the consensus. This is not about having a debate but about shutting down debate.’
Indeed, many of Durkin’s critics have responded to The Great Global Warming Swindle by trying to slur Durkin and the participants in the film. Or they have gone running to the Office of Communications (Ofcom) to demand that it rap Durkin’s knuckles – a bit like overgrown school sissies squealing to teacher about the boy they don’t like in the hope that teacher will give him a jolly good thrashing.
Before the film aired, a contributor to a green-leaning website advised fellow contributors to keep an eye out for who is due to appear in the film ‘and more importantly who they work for’ (my italics). This sums up the approach of trying to demolish the arguer rather than his argument, to expose people’s alleged funding or leanings rather than to take up the substance of what they say. (For what it’s worth, most of the participants in the film said they hadn’t received a penny from oil companies, much as they would have liked to.)
In today’s Guardian, Zoe Williams seems to make a sly dig at one of the participants (Professor Tim Ball) on the basis that he is from Winnipeg. Apparently, being based on Farringdon Road in central London is a far better qualification for commenting on climate change, even if you are a ditzy la-la columnist and the weird Winnipeg man a professor of climatology (2). (Durkin points out the irony of people ‘exposing’ that he doesn’t have a background in science. If everyone who doesn’t have a background in science was forbidden from researching or talking about global warming, he says, then that would mean silencing some of the leading environmentalist thinkers and just about every newspaper columnist, who can always be relied upon to churn out an ‘I’m Scared of Global Warming and So Should You Be!’ column despite not knowing what a test tube is.)
On Wednesday, before the film even aired, a left-leaning website provided readers with a link to Ofcom’s website and the instruction: ‘Please do complain [about The Great Global Warming Swindle], and please do publicise this link and ask others to complain.’ It gave a link to the Channel 4 complaints website, too, saying that if Channel 4 ‘get a number of complaints then they will find it harder to commission future programmes from Durkin’ (3). This represents a new low in the discussion of environmentalism. Instead of having an upfront, open debate about the science, and the social and political courses of action that might be required to alleviate pollution while still meeting people’s needs and desires, some try to have a film written off by the suited and booted powers-that-be at Ofcom and a director excommunicated from the world of TV.
Durkin has been here before. His 1997 series, Against Nature, also an impassioned critique of environmentalism, was similarly the subject of a concerted complaints effort. This led to the Independent Television Commission (subsequently superseded by Ofcom) chastising Durkin and Channel 4 for using ‘underhand editing techniques’.
‘It is soft censorship’, Durkin insists. ‘If there is a huge response to a programme, then the ITC and now Ofcom feel the need to do something. So they end up censuring seriously controversial work. I mean, Channel 4 shows a lot of rubbish, like “wank week”. But because hardly anyone complains about that, Ofcom doesn’t say anything. And then people complain about my work, which is serious, and these bodies take action. It might not be formal censorship, but it is a kind of invisible censorship. The end result is phoney controversialism on TV but not much real controversialism. Ofcom is supposed to uphold standards but it does the opposite.’
He believes that such official chastisement – which was widely celebrated by some greens in relation to Against Nature and which is being demanded again for The Great Global Warming Swindle – has a ‘chilling effect’ on TV output. The big broadcasters, desperate to avoid being ticked off by Ofcom, will avoid showing anything liable to invite large numbers of complaints. So they stick with the wankers of ‘wank week’ instead. A far safer bet.
Durkin’s experiences with Against Nature also showed that the cheap and conspiratorial shot of denouncing someone by associating them with others can be used to stifle genuine debate. Who was he sinisterly associated with over the Against Nature controversy? Why, LM, the predecessor magazine to spiked which was edited by Mick Hume.
Scour the web for commentary on Against Nature (only if you have absolutely nothing else to do – seriously) and you will find shrill, green-ink enviro-babble about how we sinister Marxists at LM pulled the puppet-strings of Against Nature in order to do big business’s bidding against the poor, beleaguered environmentalist movement. Or something. In fact, a few people who contributed articles to LM appeared as talking heads on Against Nature. That’s all. Not as exciting as the crazed and wide-eyed web conspiracy theories make it sound, I know. Sorry.
Yet that hasn’t stopped the anti-LM conspiracy-mongering from making a comeback to coincide with the airing of The Great Global Warming Swindle - 10 years after Against Nature was first shown and seven years since LM was forced to close following a libel action brought by ITN. The new Channel 4 film has been described as ‘The Great LM Swindle’. Anti-globalisation author Paul Kingsnorth has written a satirical skit about what might have happened at the Channel 4 offices when they decided to commission Durkin’s latest film. It ends with one of the C4 bosses saying: ‘Brilliant work everyone. Lunch at the Groucho to celebrate? spiked is paying.’ (4) As well as being spectacularly unfunny (miserabilists can’t do satire), the skit is, of course, pure fantasy: spiked had no involvement in The Great Global Warming Swindle and we never buy anyone lunch. Our petty cash is so petty it doesn’t stretch to that.
Durkin laughs about the fact that many environmentalists fancy themselves as leftists, yet ‘they are always exposing me…as a leftist!’ It is indeed surreal – pure madness, in fact – for environmentalist writers, activists, politicians, TV-makers and the rest to complain about the showing of Durkin’s film, when their arguments are so widespread and so rarely challenged. Talking to Durkin, it is clear he is nobody’s stooge – not Big Oil’s, not Big Science’s, and certainly not mine or spiked’s. Whether he’s exposing the origins of environmentalism, the scare about GM food or the global warming consensus, he makes film about things that he believes in; it’s just that his beliefs don’t chime with what we’re ‘supposed’ to believe today. In these uncritical, unquestioning times, we could do with more anti-conformist films from ‘mavericks’ like Durkin.
The various attempts to have him shut up, denounced, sacked or whatever speak to a worryingly censorious climate in the climate change debate. And whatever the sceptics in the Swindle film might think, such a climate has not come about as a result of a handful of greens conspiratorially plotting to take down Durkin and anyone else who stands in their way. Rather, it is a product of a broader, society-wide attitude of ‘You can’t say that!’ in relation to discussions of global warming, development, man’s intervention in nature and the future of humanity itself. If we want a proper debate about these issues, we need an open and rigorous public life, rather than sneaky accusations of secret conspiracies and demands for censure.
Source
STERN ACCUSED OF OVERCOOKING THE ECONOMICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The British mandarin behind a gloomy report on climate change has had to run a gauntlet of American economists
PUNCH "Sir Nicholas Stern" into Factiva, the news clippings database, and you'll find only 38 references to him in the American press over the past 12 months. In Britain the quality papers alone have mentioned him more than 501 times (make that 502).
Commissioned by the government to look at the impact of climate change, Stern published his review last October and it makes sober reading. Unless drastic action is taken - and soon - 200m people are likely to be displaced by floods by 2050, Stern concluded. According to his 600-page report the global economy could shrink by between 5% and 20% over the next two centuries because of the likely disruption to people's way of life caused by global warming. Taking action now to reduce carbon emissions would involve a "significant but manageable" one-off cost of 1% of global economic output by 2050. Not taking action would be disastrous: "Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," wrote the former World Bank chief economist.
Until recently America's ruling party was in a state of denial about global warming. President George W. Bush appeared to believe it was a hoax. His critics accused the former Texan oilman of letting the world burn to protect business interests.
Mid-term elections have given the Democrats the upper hand in Washington and global warming has become a hot topic, fuelled by former Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and his Oscar-nominated documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
Stern was in Washington this month to address Congress about his report - an audience, it would be fair to assume, more receptive to his words than at any other point in the Bush administration. Stern pressed Congress to consider adopting new regulations, funding new technologies and establishing a system of trading carbon-dioxide-emission credits to try to limit gases that spur global warming. "Leadership in the world's largest markets sets the pace elsewhere," he told the Senate's energy and natural resources committee. "Now is the time to act urgently, strongly and internationally."
But while the politicians were at least paying lip service, America's academics were taking their gloves off. On a trip to Yale, Stern was compared to the Wizard of Oz, his frightening picture a projection of badly flawed economics. Unlike Bush, it is not that Yale's economists doubt that the earth is getting hotter, or that human activity is the cause of global warming. The clear implication is that Stern overstated his case for political reasons.
Stern's biggest critic is William Nordhaus, an expert on the economics of global warming at Yale. In a public debate Nordhaus said the report "commits cruel and unusual punishment on the English language", adding that the British government's opinion on climate change was no more infallible than its prewar view about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Fellow Yale economist Robert Mendelsohn was blunter still. He was "awestruck" by the report, comparing Stern to "The Wizard of Oz". "My job is to be Toto [Dorothy's terrier, which unmasks the wizard]," he added.
Commenting on the dispute, Paul Joskow, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Centre for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, said: "I don't think that there is a disagreement in terms of policy. The US needs to get on board and control greenhouse gases." Even Nordhaus has called Stern "fundamentally correct in sign if not in size". "The problems have been with the way in which the analysis in the report has been packaged," said Joskow. Academics felt the damage attributed to climate change was "chosen from the high side of the probability distribution" and likely costs "from the low side", Joskow said.
More criticism will soon be forthcoming. Harvard economics professor Martin Weitzman, in a soon-to-be published report in the Journal of Economic Literature, has made another attack on Stern's methodology. He argues that the UK government official overcooked his figures. The Stern report is biased toward gloom, argues Weitzman. According to "a generous interpretation of its not-so-great economic analysis," the report "has its heart in the right place" but its numbers do not back up its "alarmist tone", he writes.
The main economic objection to Stern centres on "the discount rate". Stern's headline numbers assumed that a dollar of economic damage prevented a century from now (adjusted for inflation) is roughly as valuable as a dollar spent reducing emissions today. The figure makes the cost of disaster to our grandchildren equal to the cost of the same disaster to ourselves.
Morally, the approach is unimpeachable; economically, its critics argue it is a nonsense. The world's economy is set to grow at 4.1% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Already today's dollar is looking like it is worth less than it will be worth tomorrow. If growth rates continue at present levels, then in 100 years' time there will be no comparison between the two figures. A richer and more technologically advanced society will be better able to deal with tomorrow's problems than we are today, argue Stern's critics.
The Stern Review team has begun to address these criticisms and published a defence of its methodology. The easiest part of the argument to follow is that "business-as-usual emissions of GHGs (greenhouse gases) could radically reduce the standard of living of future generations".
But his critics say it is still Stern's convictions, not his numbers, that buttress his argument. "I think very highly of Nick," said Joskow. "There's always a question if you are an economist: should you be stepping over the line and become a politician and a promoter? Nick has come to believe that this is a very serious problem, and drastic measures need to be taken. The very large numbers in the Stern review are at best speculative."
The report has certainly ignited a heated academic debate. But so far Stern's words do not appear to have reached a mass audience in America in the same way they have in Europe.
"These kinds of problem get you all tied up with the dilemmas of the infinite. We don't know a lot of things and 100 years away is a very long time," said Joskow. "Getting away from the precise numbers, the fact that it has helped to invigorate a debate about climate change and how we deal with it is very good. Maybe that was the intent: to shock people and get them to think."
Source
British schoolboys arrested over `racist taunts'
A typical British police over-reaction. All that happened was a bit of juvenile cheekiness -- a repetition by some kid or kids of a sporting expression that drew attention to the teacher's Jewishness. At a time when calls to the British police for assistance are routinely ignored, one could only hope that they would react with the vigour shown below to complaints of burglary, assault etc. Under Ingsoc (Orwell's abbreviation of "English Socialism"), thoughtcrime is more important than real crime. I have zero tolerance for antisemitism but this was just kids being kids.
Eight teenage boys were arrested in class after a film shown on the internet was alleged to show them shouting racist taunts at a teaching assistant, David Appleman, during his leaving party. Police took the 14 and 15-year-olds out of Chauncy School at Ware, Hertfordshire, drove them off in vans and questioned them for nine hours at Bishop's Stortford police station. They were fingerprinted, photographed and had DNA swabs taken. A spokeswoman said that reports of a racist incident were being investigated.
The film was made in December and posted on the YouTube video-sharing website. Police are believed to have removed it for examination. The youths were released on police bail. A Hertfordshire Police spokesman said: " "We take allegations of this nature very seriously and we believe we acted accordingly."
Dennis O'Sullivan, Chauncy School's head teacher, said: "When these boys realised that Mr Appleman was leaving they prepared a tribute to Mr Appleman for his last lesson. "David is seen on video looking delighted, smiling and shaking hands with each of the boys." It is thought that the alleged racist comments followed afterwards.
Mr O'Sullivan said he believed that Mr Appleman had complained to police, adding: "It is sad to see he made a complaint against our students without telling us." He continued: "None of us should accept racism in any part of our lives." Police said that investigations into the matter were ongoing.
Source
We read elsewhere:
They were accused by Chauncy's former technology assistant, David Appleman, of making anti-Semitic remarks during his leaving party in December. It is alleged that 'Yid Army' was shouted - a nickname for Tottenham Hotspur's Jewish supporters that is often heard at football grounds.
NHS DENTISTRY BUNGLE
NHS dentistry faces a 120 million pound shortfall because the Health Department wrongly estimated how many patients would contribute to the cost of their treatment, the Tories claimed yesterday. Many people appear to have abandoned the NHS to go private, reducing the amount of money that NHS dentists are able to collect through patient charges.
Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, used the Freedom of Information Act to seek data for 51 of England's 152 primary care trusts, which pay dentists. He said that nearly all were collecting less patient revenue than they had expected. The deficit for the 51 trusts was more than 41 million pounds, which suggested, Mr Lansley said, that the deficit for all 152 trusts would 120 million.
The figures also suggested that since 2005-06 there had been a 6 per cent drop in the level of dental care on the NHS, equivalent to 1.4 million fewer people registered with an NHS dentist, he said. "This is the latest revelation in a long series of NHS mismanagements under Labour. Eight years ago, Tony Blair promised everyone would have access to an NHS dentist but in the last year alone, 1.4 million fewer people have access. Labour wanted to milk dental patients through higher charges but the decline in NHS dentistry has even thwarted that plan."
The Health Department contested Mr Lansley's claims. "This survey paints a picture of NHS dentistry that we do not recognise. We do not accept the claim that 1.4 million fewer people now have access to NHS dentistry," it said. "Equally it is nonsense to talk of a massive shortfall in investment.
Source
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Second lung cancer drug not made available to NHS patients
Another new cancer drug has been rejected by the Government's value-for-money watchdog. Roche, the healthcare company that makes Tarceva, used to treat lung cancer, said that it would appeal against the decision by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which it said was perverse and disappointing. It claimed that the evidence Roche presented had been assessed "neither fairly nor appropriately" by NICE. Tarceva has been approved for use in Scotland since June 2006.
The NICE guidance said it did not believe that Tarceva (erlotinib) was the best use of resources in the care of sufferers of non-small cell lung cancer. It said that the drug would be reviewed again next year. Andrew Dillon, chief executive, said: "After considering all the evidence available, as well as the comments received during consultation on the earlier draft, the independent appraisal committee concluded that erlotinib is not an effective use of NHS resources when compared with either docetaxel or best supportive care. The committee was also concerned that erlotinib would not be as effective as the existing standard treatment, docetaxel.
"However, given the rapidly changing evidence base for erlotinib, the committee advised that the guidance should be considered for early review. Therefore this guidance will be reviewed in February 2008. "The committee also recommends that further research be undertaken into subgroups for whom erlotinib may provide greater benefit." Subject to an appeal being received, final guidance to the NHS is expected in April.
Mike Unger, chief executive of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, said: "We are obviously severely disappointed and disillusioned with NICE's decision not to approve Tarceva purely on economic grounds. It's the second blow that NICE has dealt to lung cancer patients in a month, following the announcement to decline Alimta - so there are now very few options left for lung cancer patients."
Mr Unger added: "This leaves massive inconsistencies in treatment options for lung cancer patients in the UK. It's absurd that Tarceva is available to certain patients in Scotland, but not the rest of the UK. Tarceva is used as a standard treatment in many other European countries and this should be the case here." Tarceva has been hailed by the medical profession as a big advance in a neglected area of cancer.
Source
Gun law and common sense
Comment from Britain by Peter Hitchens
More rubbish is written about 'gun control' than about almost any other subject. Allegedly 'tough' gun and knife laws are the liberal substitute for the death penalty, the left's way of trying to stop criminals from killing. Like most 'liberal' solutions, they don't work against their intended target, and they attack freedom. It helps a great deal to be liberal about this if you a) don't think about it and b) know no history at all. Until 1920, Britain's gun laws made Texas look effeminate. There was no effective restriction at all on owning a firearm. Yet there was virtually no gun crime. Now we have some of the most restrictive anti-gun laws in the world, and gun crime is a serious and growing problem. Interestingly, the laws came first, the problem afterwards, and the recent ban on handguns was a completely logic-free response to the Dunblane mass-murder which preceded it.
Here's a strange fact. If you read the Sherlock Holmes stories, you will notice just how frequently Holmes and Watson take guns out on various missions (Watson’s is usually his trusty old service revolver, retained from his brush with war in Afghanistan). On one occasion, Holmes amuses himself by picking out the Royal monogram 'VR' in bullet-pocks above the fireplace, a remarkable tribute to his shooting ability with a handgun. His skills may have been exceptional, but gun ownership was, at the time the stories were written, entirely legal and normal, and nobody thought it odd.
What is strange is that modern British readers of these stories never pause to wonder how and why things have changed so much. Well, if you do wonder, I must direct you once again to the relevant chapter of 'A Brief History of Crime' in which I was accused of arguing that we should all carry weapons about, as one female acquaintance of mine generally does in the State of Virginia, perfectly legally.
British leftist feminists, who warn constantly that all men are rapists, and endlessly demand harsher punishments and looser rules of evidence in rape prosecutions, really ought to be keen supporters of America's 'Second Amendment Sisters', who argue that women should all be armed and dangerous, and rapists, as a result, should be mostly dead, or too afraid to try it on. But somehow, they aren't. One liberal obsession clashes with another, yet again....
The same 'experts' who have banned guns and knives (with no noticeable effect on their use by criminals, though the harassment of innocents for carrying pen-knives grows year by year) pursue individuals for hitting burglars too hard or, in a notable incident last week, a pensioner who had clouted one of a gang of youths who had pelted his home with snowballs for hours on end. And they are wholly ineffectual in dealing with burglars on the rare occasions when they both catch them and manage to prosecute them.
Yet the one thing that will bring a rapid and powerful police response to a phone call is a claim that guns are being used by private citizens. And the one offence the courts will always punish severely is the one they call 'taking the law into your own hands'. Why? Because they are much more worried about their monopoly of force than they are about protecting us. Is that a good sign?
Actually, I object strongly to the expression 'taking the law into your own hands'. The law is ours and we made it for ourselves, to protect us and govern us, as a free people. Our freedom to defend ourselves against criminal violence is part of our general freedom to live our lives lawfully. We hire the police to help us enforce the law, not to tell us that we cannot do so. Sadly, the modern British law is not our law, but an elite law, based on ideas which most of us do not share. And the modern police are the elite's police, not ours, which is one of the reasons why they have vanished from the streets, where we want them to be. The disarming of the people, and the cancellation of all their rights to defend themselves, are bad signs.
Source
Another new cancer drug has been rejected by the Government's value-for-money watchdog. Roche, the healthcare company that makes Tarceva, used to treat lung cancer, said that it would appeal against the decision by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which it said was perverse and disappointing. It claimed that the evidence Roche presented had been assessed "neither fairly nor appropriately" by NICE. Tarceva has been approved for use in Scotland since June 2006.
The NICE guidance said it did not believe that Tarceva (erlotinib) was the best use of resources in the care of sufferers of non-small cell lung cancer. It said that the drug would be reviewed again next year. Andrew Dillon, chief executive, said: "After considering all the evidence available, as well as the comments received during consultation on the earlier draft, the independent appraisal committee concluded that erlotinib is not an effective use of NHS resources when compared with either docetaxel or best supportive care. The committee was also concerned that erlotinib would not be as effective as the existing standard treatment, docetaxel.
"However, given the rapidly changing evidence base for erlotinib, the committee advised that the guidance should be considered for early review. Therefore this guidance will be reviewed in February 2008. "The committee also recommends that further research be undertaken into subgroups for whom erlotinib may provide greater benefit." Subject to an appeal being received, final guidance to the NHS is expected in April.
Mike Unger, chief executive of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, said: "We are obviously severely disappointed and disillusioned with NICE's decision not to approve Tarceva purely on economic grounds. It's the second blow that NICE has dealt to lung cancer patients in a month, following the announcement to decline Alimta - so there are now very few options left for lung cancer patients."
Mr Unger added: "This leaves massive inconsistencies in treatment options for lung cancer patients in the UK. It's absurd that Tarceva is available to certain patients in Scotland, but not the rest of the UK. Tarceva is used as a standard treatment in many other European countries and this should be the case here." Tarceva has been hailed by the medical profession as a big advance in a neglected area of cancer.
Source
Gun law and common sense
Comment from Britain by Peter Hitchens
More rubbish is written about 'gun control' than about almost any other subject. Allegedly 'tough' gun and knife laws are the liberal substitute for the death penalty, the left's way of trying to stop criminals from killing. Like most 'liberal' solutions, they don't work against their intended target, and they attack freedom. It helps a great deal to be liberal about this if you a) don't think about it and b) know no history at all. Until 1920, Britain's gun laws made Texas look effeminate. There was no effective restriction at all on owning a firearm. Yet there was virtually no gun crime. Now we have some of the most restrictive anti-gun laws in the world, and gun crime is a serious and growing problem. Interestingly, the laws came first, the problem afterwards, and the recent ban on handguns was a completely logic-free response to the Dunblane mass-murder which preceded it.
Here's a strange fact. If you read the Sherlock Holmes stories, you will notice just how frequently Holmes and Watson take guns out on various missions (Watson’s is usually his trusty old service revolver, retained from his brush with war in Afghanistan). On one occasion, Holmes amuses himself by picking out the Royal monogram 'VR' in bullet-pocks above the fireplace, a remarkable tribute to his shooting ability with a handgun. His skills may have been exceptional, but gun ownership was, at the time the stories were written, entirely legal and normal, and nobody thought it odd.
What is strange is that modern British readers of these stories never pause to wonder how and why things have changed so much. Well, if you do wonder, I must direct you once again to the relevant chapter of 'A Brief History of Crime' in which I was accused of arguing that we should all carry weapons about, as one female acquaintance of mine generally does in the State of Virginia, perfectly legally.
British leftist feminists, who warn constantly that all men are rapists, and endlessly demand harsher punishments and looser rules of evidence in rape prosecutions, really ought to be keen supporters of America's 'Second Amendment Sisters', who argue that women should all be armed and dangerous, and rapists, as a result, should be mostly dead, or too afraid to try it on. But somehow, they aren't. One liberal obsession clashes with another, yet again....
The same 'experts' who have banned guns and knives (with no noticeable effect on their use by criminals, though the harassment of innocents for carrying pen-knives grows year by year) pursue individuals for hitting burglars too hard or, in a notable incident last week, a pensioner who had clouted one of a gang of youths who had pelted his home with snowballs for hours on end. And they are wholly ineffectual in dealing with burglars on the rare occasions when they both catch them and manage to prosecute them.
Yet the one thing that will bring a rapid and powerful police response to a phone call is a claim that guns are being used by private citizens. And the one offence the courts will always punish severely is the one they call 'taking the law into your own hands'. Why? Because they are much more worried about their monopoly of force than they are about protecting us. Is that a good sign?
Actually, I object strongly to the expression 'taking the law into your own hands'. The law is ours and we made it for ourselves, to protect us and govern us, as a free people. Our freedom to defend ourselves against criminal violence is part of our general freedom to live our lives lawfully. We hire the police to help us enforce the law, not to tell us that we cannot do so. Sadly, the modern British law is not our law, but an elite law, based on ideas which most of us do not share. And the modern police are the elite's police, not ours, which is one of the reasons why they have vanished from the streets, where we want them to be. The disarming of the people, and the cancellation of all their rights to defend themselves, are bad signs.
Source
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Candyfloss Soldiers Wanted in the British Army?
Abuse is part and parcel of army training and army discipline. It has long been considered a part of toughening the soldiers up. And I speak as a former Sergeant in the Australian Army Psychology Corps so I do know a little about the matter. Someone who can't take abuse is not likely to be able to take the more serious stuff that field service could dish up any day
BEADY EYE ON BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Independent schools are warned today that they will lose their charitable status unless they offer direct benefits to people on low incomes. The savings to the public purse of educating pupils who would otherwise be in state schools will not be sufficient to justify the tax breaks they receive under new rules published by the Charity Commission. Instead, the schools must keep a detailed account of how many free or subsidised places they offer to pupils from low-income backgrounds. They must also show that they provide a public benefit by sharing facilities with state schools.
The commission spelled out its new "public benefit test" in the report put out for consultation but said it would issue further guidance for educational charities later. The presumption that charities advancing education or religion or relieving poverty benefit the public will no longer hold and they will be required to meet the test or lose their status and assets.
According to the Independent Schools Council (ISC), the umbrella organisation for 1,278 fee-charging schools, most registered as charities, the tax benefits amount to around 88 million pounds. It estimates that schools give back 2.20 pounds in bursaries and widening access for each 1 pound gained by charitable status and that they and their fee-paying parents save the country 1.98 billion a year through educating children who would otherwise be in the state sector.
But the commission said wider savings to the economy would not meet the new test. "It would not be sufficient if the only benefit available to people on low incomes is the wider benefit which the public in general receives where a service provided by a charity relieves public funds. Such benefits are primarily to taxpayers, and people on low incomes may pay little or no tax."
The charging of fees did not necessarily disqualify schools or other bodies, such as private hospitals or care homes, from arguing that they operated for the public good. "However an organisation which excluded people on low incomes from any benefits would not be set up and operate for the benefit of the public. Where access to the benefits is based on the ability to pay the fees charged, it must be clear that benefit can still be provided to the public generally, or to a sufficient section of the public, which must include people on low incomes." When people on low incomes were unable to benefit from a charity in an immediate or direct way, because they could not afford the fees charged for the services, there must be other reasonable ways available for them to benefit.
The report suggests that "direct or first-hand" benefits might be provided to people on low incomes through scholarships, bursaries or assisted places. It could also be done by the provision of wider access to charitable facilities or services "for example, a charitable independent school allowing a state-maintained school to use its educational facilities". Jonathan Shephard, the general secretary of the ISC, said he believed the commission had "got the law right" in its report. "We are at the beginning of a long process and the report is setting out general principles, which I think are correct. Most schools already meet the test and those which don't have a year or 18 months to ensure they do."
Source
British professor 'hounded over immigration claim'
An Oxford University professor at the centre of a debate on academic freedom said last night that he was being hounded because he had dared to challenge the Establishment's views on immigration. David Coleman, a co-founder of the think-tank MigrationWatch, has faced calls to be sacked from his job as professor of demography after being targeted by students opposed to his questioning of the benefits of large-scale immigration.
The Oxford Student Association for Refugees, part of a group that receives substantial funding from the Government and the National Lottery, said that the academic is bringing the university into disrepute.
Professor Coleman said last night: "My feelings about the motives of those behind these misrepresentations and their desire to suppress opinions that they do not share are at best left to the imagination. "The breathtaking mendacity of their claim that this affair is not `personal', they are not actually seeking my removal, or that they really want a `debate" is beneath contempt." Writing in The Daily Telegraph today he said that he had become involved in MigrationWatch after being concerned with the increasing tendency of official spokesmen to analyse the advantages of the economic and demographic effects of migration which tended to ignore the drawbacks.
"It seemed to me to be leading to the creation of an establishment consensus in the `respectable' media and elsewhere intolerant of dissenting interpretations, regarding them almost axiomatically to be heretical or malevolent," he wrote. "Naturally there is disagreement within academic circles on the benefits and costs of migration, here and internationally. But those disagreements are (mostly) conducted in a decorous fashion on a rational basis."
He added: "Those who have some specific knowledge on matters of public interest should try to keep a balanced interpretation in public view. "That is not to say, of course, that various eminent economists and other experts do not endorse the economic and other merits of large scale immigration, or that my views are infallible. But they are based, I hope, on evidence and logic."
Professor Coleman said that he is puzzled at the students' objections to his fellowship of the Galton Institute, previously called the Eugenics Society. He says the group, whose membership has included three Nobel prizewinners, aims to promote and debate the ethical aspects of human hereditary and helped to "invent" demography in Britain.
Professor Coleman has been targeted because he acts as honorary adviser to MigrationWatch and sits on its council. The group, chaired by Sir Andrew Green, a retired diplomat, has been criticised by the Home Office for its forecasts of the level of migration into Britain and for questioning the economic benefits of migrants. The Oxford Student Association for Refugees is particularly critical of the claim by MigrationWatch in January that immigrants contribute the equivalent of a Mars bar a month to the UK.
However, fellow academics have condemned the campaign to oust the don. One, Dennis Hayes, president of the University and College Union, said: "The students should be arguing with Professor Coleman, not calling for his sacking." The Tories have asked for an inquiry into the funding of the Oxford group's parent body, Student Action for Refugees, which has had lottery cash.
Source
GREENIE CAMPAIGNS BACKFIRE
Jeremy Paxman has been encouraging people to throw rubbish out of their car windows. He didn't mean to. He didn't want to. But he did. Yesterday morning the Newsnight presenter produced an article in The Guardian bemoaning the "uglification" of Britain. He rejected the assertion of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign that "litter levels in England have fallen to a five-year low". "How can they claim the country is so clean," asks Paxman "when the evidence of our eyes suggests quite the reverse?" The TV man conducted an informal survey on a quiet stretch of country road. He hadn't gone 500 yards before counting 100 pieces of rubbish. "Most - sandwich wrappers, McDonald's bags, crisp packets and endless plastic bottles - had been deliberately jettisoned."
How can I argue that this passionate and in many ways highly admirable attack on littering encourages people to litter? Let me tell you a story. Actually it's not my story. It was told to the Prime Minister's advisers by the social psychologist Professor Robert Cialdini when he went to 10 Downing Street recently to discuss environmental issues. One of the professor's students visited the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona with his fianc,e, a notably honest woman, someone who wouldn't borrow a paperclip without returning it. As they entered, the couple encountered a sign cautioning against stealing petrified wood. "Our heritage is being vandalised by the theft of 14 tons of wood every year." The fiancee's reaction was quite unexpected. "We'd better get ours now," she whispered.
Unwittingly the sign provided visitors with two pieces of information that made them more likely to steal wood. The first was that the forest was being depleted rapidly, wood was running out, you better get a move on. They may as well have put up a sign reading: "Hurry now, while stocks last." Nothing moves goods quite as rapidly as the idea that the product is scarce, as any retailer will tell you. The other information provided by the sign was that it was quite normal to steal wood. Lots of people steal wood, it's commonplace, go on, you'll not be different from the rest.
Information about social norms - how other people behave - is an extremely powerful influence on behaviour. It's the reason why bandwagons get going in by-elections. And the information need not be accurate to alter people's conduct. Less than 3 per cent of the park's visitors had ever stolen wood, contrary to the impression given by the sign.
So when the Paxman article appeared, he doubtless hoped that we would be shamed into tidier ways. But, sad to report, the attitude of many of his readers will be to open their windows and toss out some more rubbish. I've always been a tidy person, they'll think, but I read a piece in the paper by that clever bloke off of University Challenge that says that these days no one else is bothered much with tidiness. I don't see why I should go all the way to the bin, I'll just drop my Twix wrapper on the pavement like all the rest do. The Keep Britain Tidy campaign leads its website with this claim: "Half of us boast impeccable habits." This may be impossibly optimistic for your tastes, but it certainly demonstrates a solid grasp of the principles of social psychology.
Almost every day in the media there is a Paxman-type story - an attempt to persuade people to behave differently by telling us all how bad things are getting. Over the past fortnight, for example, there have been countless articles about the decline in marriage. And every one of them encourages a further decline. If you wanted to increase marriage rates you would be emphasising how usual it is to get married, how despite all you've heard it's still the norm. People like you get married and stay together, that's the message you want people to hear. If you make deserting your children seem like a normal thing to do, more will do it. Same with drink-driving, shoplifting, drug-taking, gang membership, whatever.
Last week I called myself a social responsibility militant, picking up a phrase of David Cameron's that describes his policy of altering behaviour through persuasion rather than the law. I argued that laws are often ineffective. There is a wealth of data showing that if you, say, make wearing a seat belt compulsory, drivers buckle up before speeding up and killing others. Persuade drivers to take safety seriously and you may get somewhere.
The petrified forest story and the example of Jeremy Paxman's article show why, despite all the data on the clumsiness of the law, politicians continue to prefer legislative initiatives. It's because legislating is so much easier.
Source
British justice: "A pensioner [State-supported senior] who lives beside the seaside has been warned by his council that he faces a heavy fine for fly-tipping if he returns windblown sand in his garden back to the beach. Arthur Bulmer, 79, has long complained of sand drifting on to his property on the fore-shore at Lytham St Anne’s, in Lancashire, but this year’s gales have exacerbated the problem. When he asked Fylde Borough Council if it was permissible to return the sand where it came from, he was told it would constitute fly-tipping. He should treat it as litter and take it to the municipal refuse tip. The council told him that they happily clear sand deposited on the public highway but once it lands on private property it becomes the responsibility of the owners. The pensioner says that he has no alternative but to pay a specialist waste disposal firm to collect his unwanted sand and take it away."
Abuse is part and parcel of army training and army discipline. It has long been considered a part of toughening the soldiers up. And I speak as a former Sergeant in the Australian Army Psychology Corps so I do know a little about the matter. Someone who can't take abuse is not likely to be able to take the more serious stuff that field service could dish up any day
"A prominent politician was sacked in a racism row overnight after he said being called a "black b*stard" was part and parcel of Army life for ethnic minority soldiers.
Patrick Mercer, the shadow homeland security minister for Britain's Conservative Party and a former Army colonel, also said he knew "a lot" of ethnic minority servicemen in the Army who used perceived discrimination as an excuse for poor performance.
Mr Mercer, MP for Newark, told The Times that suffering racial abuse - as well as abuse about facial features, hair colour and weight - was common in the Army and to be expected.
Source
BEADY EYE ON BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Independent schools are warned today that they will lose their charitable status unless they offer direct benefits to people on low incomes. The savings to the public purse of educating pupils who would otherwise be in state schools will not be sufficient to justify the tax breaks they receive under new rules published by the Charity Commission. Instead, the schools must keep a detailed account of how many free or subsidised places they offer to pupils from low-income backgrounds. They must also show that they provide a public benefit by sharing facilities with state schools.
The commission spelled out its new "public benefit test" in the report put out for consultation but said it would issue further guidance for educational charities later. The presumption that charities advancing education or religion or relieving poverty benefit the public will no longer hold and they will be required to meet the test or lose their status and assets.
According to the Independent Schools Council (ISC), the umbrella organisation for 1,278 fee-charging schools, most registered as charities, the tax benefits amount to around 88 million pounds. It estimates that schools give back 2.20 pounds in bursaries and widening access for each 1 pound gained by charitable status and that they and their fee-paying parents save the country 1.98 billion a year through educating children who would otherwise be in the state sector.
But the commission said wider savings to the economy would not meet the new test. "It would not be sufficient if the only benefit available to people on low incomes is the wider benefit which the public in general receives where a service provided by a charity relieves public funds. Such benefits are primarily to taxpayers, and people on low incomes may pay little or no tax."
The charging of fees did not necessarily disqualify schools or other bodies, such as private hospitals or care homes, from arguing that they operated for the public good. "However an organisation which excluded people on low incomes from any benefits would not be set up and operate for the benefit of the public. Where access to the benefits is based on the ability to pay the fees charged, it must be clear that benefit can still be provided to the public generally, or to a sufficient section of the public, which must include people on low incomes." When people on low incomes were unable to benefit from a charity in an immediate or direct way, because they could not afford the fees charged for the services, there must be other reasonable ways available for them to benefit.
The report suggests that "direct or first-hand" benefits might be provided to people on low incomes through scholarships, bursaries or assisted places. It could also be done by the provision of wider access to charitable facilities or services "for example, a charitable independent school allowing a state-maintained school to use its educational facilities". Jonathan Shephard, the general secretary of the ISC, said he believed the commission had "got the law right" in its report. "We are at the beginning of a long process and the report is setting out general principles, which I think are correct. Most schools already meet the test and those which don't have a year or 18 months to ensure they do."
Source
British professor 'hounded over immigration claim'
An Oxford University professor at the centre of a debate on academic freedom said last night that he was being hounded because he had dared to challenge the Establishment's views on immigration. David Coleman, a co-founder of the think-tank MigrationWatch, has faced calls to be sacked from his job as professor of demography after being targeted by students opposed to his questioning of the benefits of large-scale immigration.
The Oxford Student Association for Refugees, part of a group that receives substantial funding from the Government and the National Lottery, said that the academic is bringing the university into disrepute.
Professor Coleman said last night: "My feelings about the motives of those behind these misrepresentations and their desire to suppress opinions that they do not share are at best left to the imagination. "The breathtaking mendacity of their claim that this affair is not `personal', they are not actually seeking my removal, or that they really want a `debate" is beneath contempt." Writing in The Daily Telegraph today he said that he had become involved in MigrationWatch after being concerned with the increasing tendency of official spokesmen to analyse the advantages of the economic and demographic effects of migration which tended to ignore the drawbacks.
"It seemed to me to be leading to the creation of an establishment consensus in the `respectable' media and elsewhere intolerant of dissenting interpretations, regarding them almost axiomatically to be heretical or malevolent," he wrote. "Naturally there is disagreement within academic circles on the benefits and costs of migration, here and internationally. But those disagreements are (mostly) conducted in a decorous fashion on a rational basis."
He added: "Those who have some specific knowledge on matters of public interest should try to keep a balanced interpretation in public view. "That is not to say, of course, that various eminent economists and other experts do not endorse the economic and other merits of large scale immigration, or that my views are infallible. But they are based, I hope, on evidence and logic."
Professor Coleman said that he is puzzled at the students' objections to his fellowship of the Galton Institute, previously called the Eugenics Society. He says the group, whose membership has included three Nobel prizewinners, aims to promote and debate the ethical aspects of human hereditary and helped to "invent" demography in Britain.
Professor Coleman has been targeted because he acts as honorary adviser to MigrationWatch and sits on its council. The group, chaired by Sir Andrew Green, a retired diplomat, has been criticised by the Home Office for its forecasts of the level of migration into Britain and for questioning the economic benefits of migrants. The Oxford Student Association for Refugees is particularly critical of the claim by MigrationWatch in January that immigrants contribute the equivalent of a Mars bar a month to the UK.
However, fellow academics have condemned the campaign to oust the don. One, Dennis Hayes, president of the University and College Union, said: "The students should be arguing with Professor Coleman, not calling for his sacking." The Tories have asked for an inquiry into the funding of the Oxford group's parent body, Student Action for Refugees, which has had lottery cash.
Source
GREENIE CAMPAIGNS BACKFIRE
Jeremy Paxman has been encouraging people to throw rubbish out of their car windows. He didn't mean to. He didn't want to. But he did. Yesterday morning the Newsnight presenter produced an article in The Guardian bemoaning the "uglification" of Britain. He rejected the assertion of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign that "litter levels in England have fallen to a five-year low". "How can they claim the country is so clean," asks Paxman "when the evidence of our eyes suggests quite the reverse?" The TV man conducted an informal survey on a quiet stretch of country road. He hadn't gone 500 yards before counting 100 pieces of rubbish. "Most - sandwich wrappers, McDonald's bags, crisp packets and endless plastic bottles - had been deliberately jettisoned."
How can I argue that this passionate and in many ways highly admirable attack on littering encourages people to litter? Let me tell you a story. Actually it's not my story. It was told to the Prime Minister's advisers by the social psychologist Professor Robert Cialdini when he went to 10 Downing Street recently to discuss environmental issues. One of the professor's students visited the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona with his fianc,e, a notably honest woman, someone who wouldn't borrow a paperclip without returning it. As they entered, the couple encountered a sign cautioning against stealing petrified wood. "Our heritage is being vandalised by the theft of 14 tons of wood every year." The fiancee's reaction was quite unexpected. "We'd better get ours now," she whispered.
Unwittingly the sign provided visitors with two pieces of information that made them more likely to steal wood. The first was that the forest was being depleted rapidly, wood was running out, you better get a move on. They may as well have put up a sign reading: "Hurry now, while stocks last." Nothing moves goods quite as rapidly as the idea that the product is scarce, as any retailer will tell you. The other information provided by the sign was that it was quite normal to steal wood. Lots of people steal wood, it's commonplace, go on, you'll not be different from the rest.
Information about social norms - how other people behave - is an extremely powerful influence on behaviour. It's the reason why bandwagons get going in by-elections. And the information need not be accurate to alter people's conduct. Less than 3 per cent of the park's visitors had ever stolen wood, contrary to the impression given by the sign.
So when the Paxman article appeared, he doubtless hoped that we would be shamed into tidier ways. But, sad to report, the attitude of many of his readers will be to open their windows and toss out some more rubbish. I've always been a tidy person, they'll think, but I read a piece in the paper by that clever bloke off of University Challenge that says that these days no one else is bothered much with tidiness. I don't see why I should go all the way to the bin, I'll just drop my Twix wrapper on the pavement like all the rest do. The Keep Britain Tidy campaign leads its website with this claim: "Half of us boast impeccable habits." This may be impossibly optimistic for your tastes, but it certainly demonstrates a solid grasp of the principles of social psychology.
Almost every day in the media there is a Paxman-type story - an attempt to persuade people to behave differently by telling us all how bad things are getting. Over the past fortnight, for example, there have been countless articles about the decline in marriage. And every one of them encourages a further decline. If you wanted to increase marriage rates you would be emphasising how usual it is to get married, how despite all you've heard it's still the norm. People like you get married and stay together, that's the message you want people to hear. If you make deserting your children seem like a normal thing to do, more will do it. Same with drink-driving, shoplifting, drug-taking, gang membership, whatever.
Last week I called myself a social responsibility militant, picking up a phrase of David Cameron's that describes his policy of altering behaviour through persuasion rather than the law. I argued that laws are often ineffective. There is a wealth of data showing that if you, say, make wearing a seat belt compulsory, drivers buckle up before speeding up and killing others. Persuade drivers to take safety seriously and you may get somewhere.
The petrified forest story and the example of Jeremy Paxman's article show why, despite all the data on the clumsiness of the law, politicians continue to prefer legislative initiatives. It's because legislating is so much easier.
Source
British justice: "A pensioner [State-supported senior] who lives beside the seaside has been warned by his council that he faces a heavy fine for fly-tipping if he returns windblown sand in his garden back to the beach. Arthur Bulmer, 79, has long complained of sand drifting on to his property on the fore-shore at Lytham St Anne’s, in Lancashire, but this year’s gales have exacerbated the problem. When he asked Fylde Borough Council if it was permissible to return the sand where it came from, he was told it would constitute fly-tipping. He should treat it as litter and take it to the municipal refuse tip. The council told him that they happily clear sand deposited on the public highway but once it lands on private property it becomes the responsibility of the owners. The pensioner says that he has no alternative but to pay a specialist waste disposal firm to collect his unwanted sand and take it away."
Friday, March 09, 2007
Red tape killing NHS
The National Health Service is groaning under the weight of inspection and regulation, with at least 56 bodies with a right to visit NHS hospitals and trusts, many without an invitation. There are so many bodies that the authors of a new report from the NHS Confederation say that they are not sure they have managed to count them all. Calling for a halt to overbearing bureaucrats, the confederation - which represents NHS managers in 90 per cent of trusts - says something must be done to reduce the burden.
The burden of providing data is even worse than that of playing host to Government inspectors, the report says. Often different bodies call for the same data, but in subtly different forms, so that it must be collated twice at huge cost. "The sheer number of inspections, standards, and volume of information required to demonstrate compliance is making it difficult for NHS organisations to extract value from these various process and use them to drive improvement in services for patients" the report says.
Despite claims by the Healthcare Commission, the principal inspector, that it would adopt a "light touch" and promises by Government to ease the burden of regulation, things are getting worse, not better. The impact of the commission's annual health check is "overwhelming", the report says, and loses its meaning because of its wide-ranging nature. The process requires 500 separate information topics to be addressed, so voluminous that managers told the confederation they doubted they could ever complete them well enough.
There is also huge overlap with data required by the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts and the Healthcare Commission.
There is also criticism of the commission's move to ask trusts to "self declare" compliance with its standards. While the aim was to reduce inspections, the result has been confusion as trusts do not know what documents they need. "This has led to an increased feeling of a burdensome system where the board has to second guess what the Healthcare Commission is looking for," the report says.
Sometimes the demands are absurd. One hospital installed a toilet block and single-sex wards, but the commission refused to accept this as there was no paperwork. Extra work was needed to generate paper that has no function except to satisfy the regulator.
Gill Morgan, chief executive of the confederation, said: "NHS leaders welcome meaningful regulation and inspection, but unsurprisingly they don't like excessive bureaucracy. "Regulation is not an end in itself. It will only fulfil its purpose if it helps NHS organisations assess themselves as a way of driving forward improvement and providing public assurance about quality and safety of the service."
The commission has introduced a concordat between inspection bodies aimed at reducing the burden. But, the conferedation says, it is not working. It recommends the sharing of information between regulators, cuts to inspections and data collections, inspections managed to avoid unnecessary evidence gathering and that the concordat be extended to all organisations
Source
LEGAL COVERUP OF BRITISH GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AN ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH
Something odd happens, even to the mightiest of organisations, when they are confronted by a judge in chambers and a smooth-tongued counsel. The threat of an injunction, especially one sought by the Attorney-General, is enough to reduce them to meek compliance. They forget to remind the court that the best response to any damaging disclosure is the one articulated by the Duke of Wellington: "Publish and be damned!" Thus it was that the BBC caved in, last Friday night, to Lord Goldsmith's application for an injunction, which prevented it running a perfectly legitimate story about an alleged Downing Street cover-up. Instead of appealing immediately, the BBC sat back and waited for someone else with a bit more gumption to scoop it.
Injunctions are nearly always a sign of political or personal embarrassment and should nearly always be resisted. They are an act of desperation on the part of a litigant who has something to hide and nothing else to hide behind. They have the effect of drawing far more attention to the matter in hand than would otherwise have been the case, and they fail in the long run. More to the point, they are an infringement of freedom of expression and the public interest.
Only in cases of gross contempt of court, where publication may damage a forthcoming trial or lead to the discharge of a jury, can injunctions be justified. It is up to the judge to point out that if the story complained about is defamatory, a breach of confidence or otherwise contentious, then the litigant should sue rather than suppress. Governments like to add national security to the list of forbidden subjects, but even that is usually a smokescreen. As a veteran of a three-year battle on behalf of The Scotsman newspaper against Mrs Thatcher's Government, which argued, right up to the House of Lords, that the memoirs of a Cold War spy would shatter the edifice of the State, I know whereof I speak. She lost. The Government survived.
Quite why the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, should have compromised his independence in this way is a mystery. His claim that the BBC's story, about the role of a Downing Street aide in the cash-for-peerages affair, may have compromised Scotland Yard's inquiries scarcely stands up to scrutiny. Most of the regular leaks have clearly emanated from police sources, so it is hard to argue that this latest one is suddenly unacceptable.
Lord Goldsmith should have told them briskly that their attempt to suppress the story amounts to prior restraint, has no basis in law, and that, if the police think they have a case for contempt, they can institute a prosecution in due course. He may have added that, since no case, even if brought, is likely to come to court in less than two years, the idea that a leaked memo might influence a jury so far ahead is improbable.
Instead, he has opened himself to the accusation that he is seeking to protect the Government from further humiliation. The injunction thus becomes the latest in a list of half-hearted attempts at censorship, such as Tony Blair's bid to prevent the Daily Mirror revealing his alleged conversation with George W. Bush over bombing al-Jazeera.
We should by now have learnt from the United States, where the Supreme Court will always presume in favour of free speech. The prime test case was that of the Pentagon Papers, when the Nixon Administration argued that publication of stolen documents revealing confidential negotiations over Vietnam constituted a threat to national security, on the ground that other nations would no longer trust the US to keep its secrets. The Supreme Court threw out that case and The New York Times published the results. It was a far better advertisement for American self-confidence than a cover-up. Today no one can recollect much of what was in the Pentagon Papers; but the failed attempt to suppress them is still remembered.
Challenging interfering governments should be a prime responsibility of the media. But it takes time, and involves risks, which managements too often shrink from. My three-year legal marathon on The Scotsman exposed that paper to potential costs of hundreds of thousands of pounds - picked up, instead, by the taxpayer after we had won. When The Wall Street Journal challenged an attempted injunction by a Saudi businessman over a story about financing terrorism in 2001, that case, too, went all the way to the Lords and might have cost the newspaper, had it lost, more than $4 million. The Journal argued that a fundamental principle was at stake, and was praised by the courts for its "responsible journalism".
So, courage - moral as well as managerial - is required in defence of media freedom, and the BBC has as much of a responsibility here as any newspaper. It does not, however, have a great track record. When, at the outset of the Hutton inquiry, ITV presented the case for televising the proceedings, its lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, invited the BBC to join him in the action. The BBC refused, perhaps because it thought that the outcome might compromise it as well as the Government.
The time has come, then, for a new slogan to be added to the legal lexicon - something along the lines of "embarrassment is no defence in law". It is as well to remember that Wellington scrawled "Publish and be damned!" on the back of a letter he had received from his mistress, who was threatening to include his name in her scandalous memoirs. He was not only declaring his immunity to exposure, he was defying a potential blackmailer. He may observe today that the line between blackmail and an injunction can be a fine one.
Source
New Report Finds Red-faced Errors by IPCC and Gore
An analysis of the United Nations widely-touted 2007 IPCC Global Warming Summary for Policymakers by UK Lord Viscount Monckton has found 31 errors and exaggerations. Since Lord Monckton alerted the UN about its errors, the UN substantially rewrote and corrected the report, Monckton claims in his new analysis. (see here)
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, an aide to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, sent the UN a list of 31 errors and exaggerations shortly after launch of the summary in February 2007 of its latest report on the science of climate change.
The UN's climate-change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, did not reply directly to Lord Monckton's criticism, but made many of the corrections nevertheless. "The tradition of elementary but serious scientific errors, of which the notorious `hockey-stick' graph of estimated global temperatures over the past 1,000 years is an example, is alive and well in the UN's 2007 report," Lord Monckton said.
"The UN has still not corrected or apologized for the `hockey-stick', by which it falsely abolished the mediaeval warm period, when temperatures were 2 or 3C warmer than today, and disaster failed to ensue. But it has been forced to correct several schoolboy howlers - though it has not had the honesty to announce publicly and clearly that it has done so," Monckton said. "The heavily-corrected version of the IPCC report has been furtively posted on the IPCC's website, www.ipcc.ch. There has been no public statement by the IPCC admitting to the errors," Monckton added.
Th
The National Health Service is groaning under the weight of inspection and regulation, with at least 56 bodies with a right to visit NHS hospitals and trusts, many without an invitation. There are so many bodies that the authors of a new report from the NHS Confederation say that they are not sure they have managed to count them all. Calling for a halt to overbearing bureaucrats, the confederation - which represents NHS managers in 90 per cent of trusts - says something must be done to reduce the burden.
The burden of providing data is even worse than that of playing host to Government inspectors, the report says. Often different bodies call for the same data, but in subtly different forms, so that it must be collated twice at huge cost. "The sheer number of inspections, standards, and volume of information required to demonstrate compliance is making it difficult for NHS organisations to extract value from these various process and use them to drive improvement in services for patients" the report says.
Despite claims by the Healthcare Commission, the principal inspector, that it would adopt a "light touch" and promises by Government to ease the burden of regulation, things are getting worse, not better. The impact of the commission's annual health check is "overwhelming", the report says, and loses its meaning because of its wide-ranging nature. The process requires 500 separate information topics to be addressed, so voluminous that managers told the confederation they doubted they could ever complete them well enough.
There is also huge overlap with data required by the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts and the Healthcare Commission.
There is also criticism of the commission's move to ask trusts to "self declare" compliance with its standards. While the aim was to reduce inspections, the result has been confusion as trusts do not know what documents they need. "This has led to an increased feeling of a burdensome system where the board has to second guess what the Healthcare Commission is looking for," the report says.
Sometimes the demands are absurd. One hospital installed a toilet block and single-sex wards, but the commission refused to accept this as there was no paperwork. Extra work was needed to generate paper that has no function except to satisfy the regulator.
Gill Morgan, chief executive of the confederation, said: "NHS leaders welcome meaningful regulation and inspection, but unsurprisingly they don't like excessive bureaucracy. "Regulation is not an end in itself. It will only fulfil its purpose if it helps NHS organisations assess themselves as a way of driving forward improvement and providing public assurance about quality and safety of the service."
The commission has introduced a concordat between inspection bodies aimed at reducing the burden. But, the conferedation says, it is not working. It recommends the sharing of information between regulators, cuts to inspections and data collections, inspections managed to avoid unnecessary evidence gathering and that the concordat be extended to all organisations
Source
LEGAL COVERUP OF BRITISH GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AN ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH
Something odd happens, even to the mightiest of organisations, when they are confronted by a judge in chambers and a smooth-tongued counsel. The threat of an injunction, especially one sought by the Attorney-General, is enough to reduce them to meek compliance. They forget to remind the court that the best response to any damaging disclosure is the one articulated by the Duke of Wellington: "Publish and be damned!" Thus it was that the BBC caved in, last Friday night, to Lord Goldsmith's application for an injunction, which prevented it running a perfectly legitimate story about an alleged Downing Street cover-up. Instead of appealing immediately, the BBC sat back and waited for someone else with a bit more gumption to scoop it.
Injunctions are nearly always a sign of political or personal embarrassment and should nearly always be resisted. They are an act of desperation on the part of a litigant who has something to hide and nothing else to hide behind. They have the effect of drawing far more attention to the matter in hand than would otherwise have been the case, and they fail in the long run. More to the point, they are an infringement of freedom of expression and the public interest.
Only in cases of gross contempt of court, where publication may damage a forthcoming trial or lead to the discharge of a jury, can injunctions be justified. It is up to the judge to point out that if the story complained about is defamatory, a breach of confidence or otherwise contentious, then the litigant should sue rather than suppress. Governments like to add national security to the list of forbidden subjects, but even that is usually a smokescreen. As a veteran of a three-year battle on behalf of The Scotsman newspaper against Mrs Thatcher's Government, which argued, right up to the House of Lords, that the memoirs of a Cold War spy would shatter the edifice of the State, I know whereof I speak. She lost. The Government survived.
Quite why the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, should have compromised his independence in this way is a mystery. His claim that the BBC's story, about the role of a Downing Street aide in the cash-for-peerages affair, may have compromised Scotland Yard's inquiries scarcely stands up to scrutiny. Most of the regular leaks have clearly emanated from police sources, so it is hard to argue that this latest one is suddenly unacceptable.
Lord Goldsmith should have told them briskly that their attempt to suppress the story amounts to prior restraint, has no basis in law, and that, if the police think they have a case for contempt, they can institute a prosecution in due course. He may have added that, since no case, even if brought, is likely to come to court in less than two years, the idea that a leaked memo might influence a jury so far ahead is improbable.
Instead, he has opened himself to the accusation that he is seeking to protect the Government from further humiliation. The injunction thus becomes the latest in a list of half-hearted attempts at censorship, such as Tony Blair's bid to prevent the Daily Mirror revealing his alleged conversation with George W. Bush over bombing al-Jazeera.
We should by now have learnt from the United States, where the Supreme Court will always presume in favour of free speech. The prime test case was that of the Pentagon Papers, when the Nixon Administration argued that publication of stolen documents revealing confidential negotiations over Vietnam constituted a threat to national security, on the ground that other nations would no longer trust the US to keep its secrets. The Supreme Court threw out that case and The New York Times published the results. It was a far better advertisement for American self-confidence than a cover-up. Today no one can recollect much of what was in the Pentagon Papers; but the failed attempt to suppress them is still remembered.
Challenging interfering governments should be a prime responsibility of the media. But it takes time, and involves risks, which managements too often shrink from. My three-year legal marathon on The Scotsman exposed that paper to potential costs of hundreds of thousands of pounds - picked up, instead, by the taxpayer after we had won. When The Wall Street Journal challenged an attempted injunction by a Saudi businessman over a story about financing terrorism in 2001, that case, too, went all the way to the Lords and might have cost the newspaper, had it lost, more than $4 million. The Journal argued that a fundamental principle was at stake, and was praised by the courts for its "responsible journalism".
So, courage - moral as well as managerial - is required in defence of media freedom, and the BBC has as much of a responsibility here as any newspaper. It does not, however, have a great track record. When, at the outset of the Hutton inquiry, ITV presented the case for televising the proceedings, its lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, invited the BBC to join him in the action. The BBC refused, perhaps because it thought that the outcome might compromise it as well as the Government.
The time has come, then, for a new slogan to be added to the legal lexicon - something along the lines of "embarrassment is no defence in law". It is as well to remember that Wellington scrawled "Publish and be damned!" on the back of a letter he had received from his mistress, who was threatening to include his name in her scandalous memoirs. He was not only declaring his immunity to exposure, he was defying a potential blackmailer. He may observe today that the line between blackmail and an injunction can be a fine one.
Source
New Report Finds Red-faced Errors by IPCC and Gore
An analysis of the United Nations widely-touted 2007 IPCC Global Warming Summary for Policymakers by UK Lord Viscount Monckton has found 31 errors and exaggerations. Since Lord Monckton alerted the UN about its errors, the UN substantially rewrote and corrected the report, Monckton claims in his new analysis. (see here)
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, an aide to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, sent the UN a list of 31 errors and exaggerations shortly after launch of the summary in February 2007 of its latest report on the science of climate change.
The UN's climate-change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, did not reply directly to Lord Monckton's criticism, but made many of the corrections nevertheless. "The tradition of elementary but serious scientific errors, of which the notorious `hockey-stick' graph of estimated global temperatures over the past 1,000 years is an example, is alive and well in the UN's 2007 report," Lord Monckton said.
"The UN has still not corrected or apologized for the `hockey-stick', by which it falsely abolished the mediaeval warm period, when temperatures were 2 or 3C warmer than today, and disaster failed to ensue. But it has been forced to correct several schoolboy howlers - though it has not had the honesty to announce publicly and clearly that it has done so," Monckton said. "The heavily-corrected version of the IPCC report has been furtively posted on the IPCC's website, www.ipcc.ch. There has been no public statement by the IPCC admitting to the errors," Monckton added.
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