Meet The Sceptics (Those Ones that are Supposed to Have Been Silenced)

If you want proof that the BBC, the supreme mouthpiece of the New Socialist World Order is suppressing the AGW deniers and silencing them in a Inquisition like manner, then look no further than BBC 4's "Meet the Sceptics" where the evil Communist mouthpiece silences the dissidents yet again by giving them an hour long documentary on the forbidden topic. That's pretty impressive for a "countertheory" that has never been able to publish a peer reviewed paper. So forgive me if I don't really buy all this "were silenced" stuff.

I haven't seen it yet, (gonna watch it now. Yikes.) but I'm sure it'll be called "a stitch up" or a "character assassination", the usual stuff.

James Delingpole Makes a Grade A Tit of Himself on Horizon Pt II

As we know in part one, Climate "sceptic" James Delingpole was made to look rather silly on the Horizon documentary about "Science under attack" by the royal society president Paul Nurse. Delingpole has been quite slow to respond on his blog about the affair. It really went belly up a bit for him and I think he has been stumped a bit by how badly it backfired for him* and has put up a few articles criticising Ben Goldacre for calling him a "penis" and attacking him for being an "intellectual coward" by supporting the consensus on AGW. Which I think is out of line against a man who could have been taken to the cleaners by the notoriously litigious poo lady and by exposing the murky underworld of the big medical companies and the AIDS denial in South Africa in the "Bad Science" book. He then attacks the mathematician Simon Singh** for being a bit of a bully for tweeting about our lone crusader:


Sorry, but @JamesDelingpole deserves mockery ‘cos he has the arrogance to think he knows more of science than a Nobel Laureate


Oh bloody boohoo. Delingpole, who ironically is not averse to resorting to a bit of playground abuse (libtards) is trying to set himself up as the victim of some kind of Twitter smear campaign of abuse for his noble stance on climate change. Now let me make it clear, I don't approve if he has received threatening messages, but bloody hell he can't half give it but is incapable of taking it. He has essentially used his blog to promote the idea that climate scientists are colluding in a scam to extort trillions of dollars from a gullible Joe Public. That he somehow has somehow he has seen through the tissue of lies that some of the most qualified climatologists in the world have failed to notice. These are big claims, so you might expect to get a bit of flack for stating it. Sorry James that's how the cookie crumbles mate. As I said he has taken a metaphorical cricket bat around the chops, and as everyone knows when the debate goes tits up resort to straw man arguments. Let's take a look at some of Jameses.


"Yet in the opinion of Singh, the worldwide Climate Change industry is the one area where the robust scepticism and empiricism he professes to believe in just doesn’t apply. Apparently, the job of a journalist is just to accept the word of “the scientists” and take it as read that being as they are “scientists” their word is God and it brooks no questioning or dissent"


This shows James has little understanding of how either to critically appraise scientific research properly and what scepticism is. Possibly it is the result of those with a journalistic background being attracted to holding contrarian views from what they perceive as an aloof "elite" Delingpole appears to believe "scientists" are some monolithic cult who dictatorially decide from on high what is scientifically orthodox and what isn't. The vigorously researched evidence for AGW was simply not obtained in that manner. It is not unreasonable for a qualified scientist to take at face value the "views" of an unqualified layman who doesn't appear to know what science is.


"There’s a “consensus” on global warming. It’s immutable and correct. And anyone who disputes it is a vexatious denier informed by nothing but ignorance and who deserves nothing other than to be hounded and bullied and abused by the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC, Simon Singh’s Twitter mob, Ben Goldacre’s Twitter mob, and the shrill nest of paid-for trolls who infest the comments below this blog not to present a reasoned case but merely to disrupt and offend."


There is a consensus amongst scientists, a very rigorous one supported by shitloads of evidence to back it up. I shall repeat this again loud and clear.


SCIENTIFIC CONCENSUS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OR DOGMATIC ORTHODOXY. NOT AT ALL!!!


Thanks for listening!


Well you can split hairs over what you think the motives of the AGW sceptics may be, but I take the philosophy of Johann Hari. All people deserve respect, all ideas don't. Oh and don't accuse your opponents of trying to rubbish the cause; and then do just that in the same paragraph.


"Well I’m sick of it."


Blog about something else then.


"What sickens me is the hypocrisy of people who claim to be in favour of speech, claim to believe in empiricism, claim to be sceptics yet refuse to accept room for an honest, open debate on one of the most important political issues of our time."


Nurse had a debate with you my friend. Horizon asked you on to do that and you fucked it up. Want some credibility, stop relying on shitty research.


**"My case is not that I “James Delingpole have taken a long hard look at the science of global warming and discovered through careful sifting of countless peer-reviewed papers that the experts have got it all wrong.”


If you are going to accuse the folks who wrote these papers of some sort of cover up, I suggest you start swatting up a bit. Bloody hell if you want to stick your neck out, do the homework.


"What I am saying, and I say almost every day, is that the evidence is not as robust as the “consensus” scientists claim; that there are many distinguished scientists all round the world who dispute this alleged “consensus”;"


How would you know? You haven't read the bloody evidence. You just bloody admitted it!


"that true science doesn’t advance through “consensus” and never has;"


Well quite possibly. But it's a bloody good sign of an accurate theory. Newtons third law works just as well today as it did in old Isaacs time.


"that there are many vested interests out there determined and able to spend a great deal of money by making out that the case for catastrophic, man-made global warming is much stronger than it is."


Yeah because high petrol prices and and end to cheap flights have always been real vote winners. Anyway if a scientist did discover that AGW wasn't occurring it would be the find of the century. You'd be lauded, showered with cash and grants from the oil companies. There sending the Nobel Prize your way as well. Real life isn't like a Michael Chrichton novel.


"and because they are not issues which require an exclusively scientific knowledge to understand. They just require the basic journalistic skill of being able to read and analyse."


But a sciencey background sort of helps. Anyone can read a scientific paper, but an unqualified journalist can make mistakes with scientific papers. Melanie Philips for instance didn't realise that Cochrane papers were specifically designed to criticise scientific papers, so she jumped to the wrong conclusions over what was said about the quality of Andrew Wakefields detractors findings. That is why I am all for opening science up to the greater public and journalists who have to report scientific stuff to their readers, but often fail to do so very well.


"Yet despite apparently knowing nothing more about me and what I do than he has learned from a heavily politicised BBC documentary, and maybe heard from his mob of Twitter bully chums or read in the Guardian, Singh feels able to decide that Paul Nurse is right on this issue and I’m wrong. Well I don’t call that an evidence-based argument. I call that dishonest, thoughtless and – given the high ethical standards Singh claims to represent – outrageously hypocritical."


Yes, as just because you haven't actually read the peer reviewed papers on the subject, doesn't necessarily mean you can't loftily proclaim that it's all one huge con by the people who wrote them, and have people give you a round of applause for it.


"“If my cause is really so powerful and right and true, how come its response to any kind of criticism is not to engage with it through argument but merely to try to silence it with censorship, appeals to authority, crude character assassination and establishment cover ups?”


This reasoning is how; inevitably- these kinds of things can self sustain themselves. If they do take you on, they are the scary "establishment" trying to bully the heretics. If they don't take you on, they are trying to hush you up and censor you. The MMR causes autism and Intellegent Design proponents trot this very same argument out, and because it is so superficially plausible on one level, that is why pseudoscience can be so persist ant on the flimsiest of evidence to actually support it. So it is with trepidation that I quote Delingpoles closing words on the whole affair*


"This has been a bruising week for me. But in the long term, I have a strong suspicion, it is going to do far, far more damage to the BBC, to Sir Paul Nurse (and, by extension, to the integrity of the Royal Society) than ever it has done to me."


Pseudoscience, the gift that keeps on giving.

James Delingpole Makes a Grade A Tit of Himself on Horizon (Part I)

It's unbelievable! I go away for a few days (hence why this one follows on a bit later than the actual interview I am posting about) and I get confronted with a feast of fertile blogging fodder that I had no idea was going on as I haven't been on the web at all during the duration, (not always an entirely bad thing to do now and then.) or looked at a newspaper the whole time. Melanie Philips has pissed off almost everyone on Twitter with a bizarre and ill thought out column about the "gay agenda" pushing homosexuality to schoolkids via special awareness topics in their lessons, designed to "destroy the concept of traditional sexuality". Jesus! Two sports pundits given the boot for slagging off a lady ref. A hard line Christian GP who has been appointed to the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs. This is a pretty impressive list of potential topics, but old news is no news, so I have decided to retrospectively comment on the story that has the most personal interest to me of which I have only just found out about this past day as a result of my self imposed news blackout. A story involving a well known climate change skeptic who ended up looking like a complete berk on a BBC documentary. This was one of the most embarrasing interviews ever to grace the box that didn't involve Bill Grundy and any member of the Sex Pistols.

The Horizon documentary titled "Science Under Attack" was presented by the President of the Royal Society; Sir Paul Nurse. In it Nurse was concerned about the discrepancies between what Scientific consensus has to say about - in particular -climate change; GM crops and the nature of the HIV virus, and the general views about these issues in the eyes of the lay public. The programme was good and I genuinely encourage you watch it on I-player (link provided) if you haven't seen it. It focused primarily on climate change, and I was a bit disappointed the other topics took perhaps as much of a backburner as they did as they are all interesting topics in themselves. But as I said climate change is probably the most obvious contemporary scientific topic that creates a controversial divergence between the scientific consensus of climate scientists (around 97 percent agree man made climate change is occurring) and the layperson (half of Americans and a third of Britons think ACC is being deliberately exaggerated) It is unsurprising then that Professor Nurse interviews a climate change denier to find out why this is so, and into this steps James Delingpole, the Daily Telegraphs resident "ACC is bollocks" blogger. The interviews with him in the documentary are stunning, not because Delingpole puts in a good performance, but because; in American parlance - he got his ass handed to him on a plate, a big silver platter even. It is pure car crash stuff. Delingpole is edgy and clearly out of his depth even before the fun starts. Delingpole dismisses "scientific consensus" as unscientific (I presume he makes the mistake of thinking it is just the same as conventional wisdom. Delingpole makes broad sweeping statements throughout the interview but never elaborates, so you can see why we may have to speculate on what he means). Nurse disagrees and says that this amount of consensus over such a long period of time is a healthy sign that the evidence is very strong, and that as scientific superstardom results from demolishing established theories, it must have been pretty robust or it would have been disproved. The killer blow is landed when Nurse proposes a hypothetical scenario to Delingpole and his "consensus is not science" stance. Say he was suffering from cancer and the doctors had come to a unanimous consensually conclusion about his treatment plan, (which happens often) would he reject this treatment for one that hadn't, as happens every once in a blue moon, if that? Delingpole is floored by this. He visibly looks like he wants to stop the interview and hastily tries to change the subject onto the East Anglian e-mails thing. I know some editing goes on with this kind of thing, but my god Delingpole comes off badly on this one. Nurse has stumbled upon what i think is the best way to combat pseudoscience, or conspiracy theories. Point out the bleeding obvious flaws in their logic. People like Delingpole cherry pick data (and ACC involves lots of figures to selectively shove into an article), and quote figures out of context to bolster and inflate the validity of their "stance". They never go for the biggy, disprove the warming effects of carbon dioxide, demolish the whole ACC theory to a chorcoally pile of dust at it's root. They can't. Nurse however is in the position of being able to quietly and calmly attack the major flaws of their arguments without turning it into a slanging match involving the "evil establishment" against the lone Galileo figure in the eyes of a layperson, or looking like a dusty old don being one upped by a polemicist pulling out all the logical fallacies to make his point look one hundred times better than it actually is. It's like calmly explaining to a moon hoaxer who says they had to remove all the stars from the photos, thus why they are not visible; that thinking that not one astronomer or scientist looking at those photos would notice that the stars suddenly being missing was a bit dodgy - is so monumentally fucking stupid that anyone who thinks this shouldn't comment on opening a loaf of bread, let alone expect anyone to take them remotely seriously. The interview also shows (and I am aware of post production editing) to some extent that Delingpole can dish it out on his blog (sometimes in quite a dubious manner) with the largely receptive audience, but is a little squeamish at taking it himself. Hell if as a non-scientist; you want to dismiss 97 percent of respected climate scientists as liars, expect to have to face the harsh questions from a critical point of view. Let us hope we are reclaiming some of the "war against science." Point out the major flaws of the key arguments the pseudoscientists are peddling, and not let them cherry pick on their own terms, and perhaps; perhaps popular perceptions of science will improve. Here's hoping anyway.

Turn in to part II tomorrow where we look at James Delingpoles take on the whole interview.

*POSTSCRIPT. Although the hypothetical question posed by Paul Nurse and Delingpoles response are the point the interview jumped the shark, this doesn't even take into account the lofty claim on his behalf that the entire peer review process has been trashed by the "climategate" affair. How? Again he makes lofty announcements and never backs them up with evidence, or indeed anecdotes. He even admits that it is really a political and not a dispute about scientific research. The admission that he hasn't the time or the scientific know how (Mr. Delingpole has a degree in English) to read peer reviewed research papers on climate change is astounding for a man who spends about 95 percent of his blog "proving" how ACC is made up by communists or whoever. How can he know that the peer review process is irrevocabally damaged by the East anglia broohaha if oh... he hasn't read a fucking peer reviewed paper on the damn subject. Christ in heaven, what was he thinking in this interview? Then he pulls the coup de gracé by saying his job isn't to interpret the data, it is to interpret the interpreted data. Or as it is known in every day terms, "Just having an opinion on stuff". Watch it, it truly has to be seen to be believed.

Baroness Warsi and Anti Muslim Bigotry in the UK

1. What the BBC puts Muslims.... story was really about.

2. I flush the "Muslim toilests" down the loo as bullshit

3. 5cc demolishes the "Muslims tell British to go to hell..... headline

4.MCB tell the Daily Express a few home truths. (presumably after they had finished telling us all what to teach in our schools.)

I found all of the pictures above just by typing Daily Star / Express Muslims, no loaded terms like racism etc. I also found that what the front page images were saying was either untrue or completely distorted in every item I have put up above. With this in mind it is interesting to hear what Baroness Warsi had to say about anti-Muslim prejudice in the UK today.

Baroness Warsi's speech has been pretty controversial to say the least. If you look on the Telegraph blogs which is generally a good place to find varying right wing conservative opinion (Warsi is a Tory after all.) you get a mixed response to what she said, from the ghastly Lord Tebbit basically saying she should shut her mouth, to Peter Oborne agreeing with her, and lots of comments on his article... er not. As I said the debate is rather confused and seems to fall between two issues, the first being whether or not Muslims are particularly singled out in the prejudice stakes. The second is whether the British have a legitimate reason to fear of Islam / Muslims in the UK to "justify" that fear. Let us look first at argument number one, are Muslims particularly susceptible to prejudice in the UK? In my opinion this is pretty straight forward and I agree with Baroness Warsi that it is pretty widespread and in some ways the acceptable face of prejudice these days. The sentiments around the headlines I have shown imply that British Muslims demand special treatment; that they as the minority expect the majority to confirm to their values. Muslims are ungrateful and unpatriotic towards Britain; no - they actually hate the UK, and that they have a sense of victim hood (listen to Jon Gaunt's claim of "bleating" in this heated interview on the Jeremy Vine show, about 13 minutes in.) and that they have the audacity to claim to be victims of prejudice, a claim no one in the majority should indulge at face value. The sense that the Muslim minority are the recipients of special treatment at the expense of the white majority was in some part a triggering point in the Burnley race riots 10 years ago. Again as with the headlines, this seems t6o be more a case of here say than actually having any basis in objective truth if you care to sift through the evidence. All of which is mixed in with urban myths and misunderstandings over individual anecdotes blown out of proportion and falsely repeated as truths. Anecdotally I do a few hours in my local pub on a Thursday night, and I overheard two separate patrons grumbling about these very things in relation to the Warsi speech, that was in one five hour shift. Then there are those stupid chain posts on facebook, things like "you can't do X in case it offends minorities [aka Muslims], that do the rounds with depressing regularity. So on these levels yes, Muslims in the UK are more vulnerable to facing prejudice in relation to other people.

The second argument revolves around whether Islam, or at least the radical forms of Islam are a threat to modern Britain and the West itself, and is Islam uniquely incompatible with western values? Well in the case of radical Islam yes it is a threat to western values, but that doesn't make it unique. The founding doctrines of Islam like the other Abrahamic sects are a product of their times, which aren't our times. They were written in a rougher tougher age when justice was rough and justice was done by hitting people with swords. Where women's rights were unheard of. Where enslaving your fellow man was just "stuff that happened". It is therefore no surprise that religious fundamentalists of all the major religions will end up clashing with the liberal pluralistic values of the democratic west. The old testament and the harsher end of the Quran is about as far removed from what we would call "western values" as you can get. If Islamic fundamentalists take this stuff at face value then it is unsurprising that some will denounce the west as decadent and whatever. However let us not forget that right wing Christian authoritarians regularly denounce the west, and sectarian organisations like the EDL clearly loathe pluralism and democracy though they claim to be patriotic.

It is often claimed that Islam is uniquely evil and incompatible with western values. This really isn't true. Religions sort of sawtooth in the violence done in their name, at present radical Islam is peeking all over the world, and violence is done in the name of Islam, even on the streets of London in 2005. But let me stress that religious violence is not just confined to Islam, all the major religions will resort to bloodshed if taken to extremes. That when people resort to a combination of dogma, adherence to violent medieval codes of practice and supremacism, then the shit will hit the fan. But that was part of Baroness Warsi's point. Muslims are a diverse group of people, some take it too literally, most pick and choose what to believe. Most probably haven't even read most of the Quran, like most who say they are Christians, who haven't even read most of the Bible. Most modern people either couldn't or wouldn't be able to follow them totally to the letter these days anyway. All Muslims seem to be far to often lumped in as one monolithic group of ultra excitable fanatics who want to burn and stone stuff at the drop of a hat, and that is just removed from reality. As for Islam being uniquely incompatible with a liberal democratic society. Take a look at the protests in Iran in 2009, and the people of Tunisia rising up against a grasping kleptocrat. Seems the people in those countries aren't to keen on living under authoritarian regimes, both countries that are Islamic majority ones.

I would be naive to say that Islam has it's fair share of problems, all human organisations do. The Abrahamic faiths will always struggle to find their place in a modern democratic society that increasingly seems to reject the influence they once had (and a good thing that is too.) and contradicts the archaic doctrines they hold dear. But when I see the horrible comments about Muslims on the Telegraph blogs, and some of the casual racism spouted off as truth, we have to remember that these are human beings we are talking about. Muslims aren't some monolithic alien species who are wholly incompatible and irreconcilably different from the rest of us, a point I believe Ms. Warsi was trying to make, and a point that sometimes needs to be made a lot more.

Ed West Tries to Tame the Telegraph Blogs Comments (Good Luck!)

Some of the comments on the Torygraph Blogs have to be seen to be believed. The mean mindedness, the stupid conspiracy theories, the dreadful racism, or even just the fact that even the most innocuous of posts seems to end up descending into an argument about holocaust denial. Just the simple lack of humanity of some of them are enough to make you want the end to come that bit quicker. I don't know if it just the luxury of anonymity that produces comments such as those, or we have some pretty fucked up people out there? It is sometimes like peering into some dark dark abyss, when you think to yourself what sort of mindset spews this kind of stuff out.

I also think it must be rather a both embarrassing and unpleasant bit of baggage for the bloggers themselves, and this was sort of confirmed by a blog entry by Ed West today appealing to the people leaving comments to perhaps tone it down a bit. Read what he has to say and not just mouth off all the racist garbage you can think of for once. It seems he has been spooked a bit about a previous post about what he sees as the problem of ghettoism in Muslim communities in Birmingham. The post is a little intellectually lazy, drawing on second hand anecdotes to come to sweeping conclusions, but he is entitled to write about what he likes and community relations are after all an important issue that should be raised. It is the tone of some of the comments that bothers him (and me), they are pretty hard core and some revolve around hints of ethnic war and parts of Britain being ethnically cleansed. Trying to restore some sanity and perspective to the points he was originally making West appeals to the better angels of those leaving the extreme comments:

"People who type “why can’t we discuss this issue?” and then write underneath “WE NEED TO KILL ALL MUSLIMS” don’t seem to understand that they’re the problem, not the solution. The Standpoint story is depressing enough without the comments underneath adding to it. So for God’s sake, try to remember it’s human beings we’re talking about here – don’t kill debate with hatred, and if you have any hatred, save it for me."

I have a feeling that his appeal will largely fall on deaf ears. You will often hear; say a Mail columnist missing the point by claiming that no-one can discuss immigration or race relations without being deemed "racist" by the "liberal elite", that's not really the case. As this appeal unintentionally admits, a lot of it is down to the fact that racist comments have a nasty habit of derailing even the most innocuous of debates on this issue, not always just a fear of some elite howling "racist" at anyone who dares mention the topic. It is little wonder that those on the mainstream tread warily in this area.

Upward Mobility Gets a Bit More Elusive.

I'm glad I am not embarking on a degree course this coming year. The obstacles in just getting through all the rigmarole towards a degree these days just seem so much steeper. Especially if you are a student from a poorer background, or even a conventional middle class background as well. I mean when the tuition fees are hitting nine grand a lot of sixth formers are going to seriously question whether it is all worth it. I'm not even talking about the so-called "soft subjects" whatever they may be. I mean even traditional degrees that were seen as gateways to well paying careers (not that should be the be all and end all of studying) such as medicine or finance; law and IT, and so on. Nine grand is a potential huge risk especially in the more competitive areas where jobs may be scarce to start with and perhaps less well paid at the beginning. Sadly I think there are many who are just going to throw the towel in before they even fill in the UCAS form. I'd like to see some sort of brighter side to all this, but then I read this story about three out of five of the more prestigious graduate recruiters planning to filter out graduates who will not or more importantly [for this post] cannot perform unpaid or very limited paid internships to get a bit of work experience. (and lets face it or the employer a free staff member into the bargain.) On the face of it this seems rather sensible. Firstly there are more graduates for fewer posts, so bump up selection criteria. Secondly it can go some way to solving the studying / experience paradox. That is you can't get experience as you are studying, and you can't do the studying whilst you are doing the experience, so you end up having to study for the job, only to not have the experience for the job because you don't have the experience for the job you have to study to get. Lastly it's good CV fodder. However these placements have the downside of being more difficult to do if you don't have much in the way of cash. If you have your own cash or a well off family that/they can see you through the costs of doing unpaid or poorly paid work (some pay the lavish sum of £2.50 p/hr), all those trains, taxis, fuel and buttys and pop start totting up, not to mention the money lost through a gap in earning. Many of these internships may continue after the degree is over and the student loan is drying up. Lower income people are further disadvantaged by possibly having to supplement their income with a paid part time job. Balance this with study, a reduced amount of time available for out of curriculum internship, the possibility of cutting the hours of paid employment (likely needed for household income) to complete the internship. Then the fact of having reduced mobility as you have no savings for a flat or something near the internship, or running a car, or paying for buses. The problems in having to continue unpaid or below minimum wage internship after qualifying is much more pressing for someone of limited means who really needs to start earning decent money that bit more urgently. It is highly depressing to think that many less well off people are going to see the odds so harshly stacked against them, and it will enter their minds "Is this really all worth it?", and I hate to say a fair few are going to think yes.

All in all not a great sign for a future spurt of healthy upward mobility.

The Perfect Stick With Which the Mail Can Use to Beat the NHS

Swine flu has had a great deal of coverage this past few weeks, and none more so than in the very tragic case of young Lana Ameen (3 years old) who died of the illness shortly after Christmas. This has led to some people including (understandably) her grief stricken parents to question the wisdom of the governments scientific advisers advice not to vaccinate children under 5 who showed no outwards symptoms of the illness this time around, unlike last years outbreak. (sadly Lana fell under this category.) There have also been reports of a shortage of flu vaccines (not always just the H1N1 strain. The media always fudge these kinds of technicalities) in some areas, either the result of bodged forward planning or people surging to be vaccinated after they have seen the new criteria for those who should be inoculated (i.e carers etc.) and reacting to the narrative string of deaths from flu that have been reported from around Christmas time, or by stories of left over vaccine from last year being handed out. Concerns about the reasons why the advisers changed the criteria have compounded the issue. The perceived "overkill" in response to the last outbreak (though there was nothing trivial about it to the estimated 457 who were believed to have died of swine flu) may have led to a "dropping of guards", or that some kind of herd immunity from last years inoculations should see this year through as well. Or that procuring massive amounts of vaccine for the under 5's was objectively economically unsound after it was estimated that only one in four under 5's had received the previous call to have the jab last time around. We still live in a society that has a fair amount of suspicion towards vaccination, another wonderful legacy of the MMR scare. Though there are reports of worried parents paying over the odds for private inoculations in the aftermath of Lanas tragic death.

It would be an invidious task for anyone to oversee. To decide how vigorously to respond to an outbreak before it has happened, with a finite amount of money to deal with the problem. If we had Star Treks replicators we could perhaps afford to magic medicine up for everyone with no need to bean count. But sadly we don't, and it is devastatingly hard to know where to draw the line. My own hunch is that under 5's should have remained eligible for the vaccine. But I don't have either the full facts about budget restraints or the medical expertise to really expand on this other than perhaps a theory of being over prepared than under. But as I said I don't have the medical knowledge to expand on that. Amanda Platell of the Daily Mail probably has less knowledge about medicine than I do (and that aint a lot), and probably thinks disease is spread by Satan farting in your face like 15th century folk believed. Unlike me she isn't afraid to make sweeping generalisations and give her uninsightful tuppenceworth;

"One can only imagine the courage it must have taken for Zana and Gemma Ameen to release a picture of their three-year-old daughter Lana in the final hours of her pitifully short life.
Lana died from swine flu on Boxing Day, and now Dr Ameen, a hospital registrar, has spoken out to expose the cruelty of a system that refuses vaccinations against this deadly flu to children under five. Had Lana been given the £6 jab, as her parents had requested, her father is convinced she would still be alive.

Not only does this needless tragedy expose the flawed reasoning behind who is entitled to the inoculations, it also highlights the shameful way the £110billion we now spend on the NHS is used. Or rather, wasted.

Where is the morality in a public health system that removes tattoos and performs boob jobs, yet denies children protection from a known killer?

In a week when we’ve learned that some doctors are getting £100,000 overtime pay, on top of their £96,000 salaries, and that nearly a thousand GPs are on salaries of £200,000, how can it possibly be justified?

The UK’s NHS system still allows wide, free access to patients from anywhere in the EU. Other countries, quite rightly, prioritise their own citizens. Why on earth don’t we?

The truth is that all political parties are terrified of admitting the truth — the NHS needs a complete overhaul. There must be priorities and surely a life-saving drug for a child is more important than vanity procedures and gastric bands for those who can’t control their eating?
Dr Ameen is right when he says the decision not to give children the jab is not about saving lives but saving money.

‘Everyone — from her health team to the Government, to me, her Daddy who loved her more than anything in the world — let her down,’ he wrote in this paper yesterday.
And until we stop treating the NHS like some sacred cow, and face up to its failings, children like Lana will continue to be its innocent victims."

This article is revealing in many ways. Firstly it shows that Platell knows nothing about what she is spouting off about. You can't really make direct comparisons between such differing health care procedures such as how far a blanket vaccination program should go and providing gastric bands for a start. The second is that this article is not just an attack on the vaccination program, but a launchpad for a broader attack on the NHS itself, hence all the stuff about treating our own etc... This is perfect material to attack the NHS regardless of what it does. Attack them for being under prepared as this article does, or attack them for wasting money if they over prepare as Lidljohn did in this article . It is win-win for armchair pundits who can safely attack from the office, without ever having to face the responsibility of allocating funding for potential pandemics which no one can ever wholly predict. With this kind of story the NHS can be painted as a bloated incompetent socialist bureaucracy which either wastes taxpayers money, or lets kids die by penny pinching. This is the real point of these polemics, not any sort of insightful critique of the way our health care is funded. So forgive me if I won't be lectured by someone like Platell about facing up to the "failings of the NHS"

Who on Earth is Writing Sarah Palin's Speeches?

The exact nature of the content and theme of Barack Obama's official speech about the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson has been the subject of extreme speculation in the days running up to it. Would he use it to directly attack the Tea Party and Sarah Palin? No. Would he call for unity in the wake of the shootings? Yes. Would he attempt to capitalise politically on it by smearing the more vocal of his opponents and claim they were actually responsible for it and not just some lone nutter? No. The speech I think went down pretty well. He obviously highlighted on calling for national unity and an opportunity to restore debate to bringing people closer together not further and violently apart. Of course his speech focused heavily on the victims of the attack. Such as news that Gabrielle Giffords had actually opened her eyes for the first time since the attack, and then onto the less fortunate victims especially Christina Green who was born when 9/11 occurred and was sadly killed in the shooting. Now it is fairly obvious that Obama is a cool and analytically minded man with a process based legal mindset. Not counting that due to the violent nature of the crime that led to the speech would be difficult for anyone to find the right words to say - this was from a speech perspective not Obamas strongest area (and in a nation that requires a lot of emoting from a leader this has worked against him), however he pulled it off pretty well. The speech was moving and a celebration of the victims lives and the spirit of the nation, not an angry opportunity for a polemic to name names and point fingers. It never seemed either overly sentimental or forced, which is a difficult act to pull off for someone who is not a naturally emotive person. It was as fitting a tribute to the victims and to the country as could have been expected by the head of state. The same can't be said for another speech given by Sarah Palin.

Palins speech; the first one she has made on the shootings since the attack happened wasn't before a live audience but pre-recorded on her website. This makes the biggest gaffe in it totally unfathomable. But let's look at the speech itself. In contrast to Obamas, there was a much greater sense that she used her words to help her own ends into the bargain. A bit of back peddling on her behalf to distance herself from the affair. (Note she wasn't directly responsible for what happened btw) One particular example that stuck out for me was when she quoted something Ronald Reagan had said about rejecting the notion that when a law is broken, society is not at all assumed to be to blame, but the lawbreaker is, and that lawbreaking begins and ends with the lawbreaker. Whether you believe this or not, it is awfully handy to use to distance oneself from the accusations that incendiary rhetoric is fanning the flames in the minds of gunmen with an axe to grind. The speech had a much more self indulgent theme than Obamas did, his was largely an appeal to unity and a memorial to the victims. Palins seemed primarily some kind of damage limitation exercise on her behalf. But the biggest gaffe of all had to be the use of the term "blood libel" to describe the liberal medias attempts to link herself and the Tea Party (I presume that is who she meant) to the shootings. Now let us leave aside that this was supposed to have been a speech lamenting the deaths, and; oh - not about lamenting the bad PR you have been getting from it, I mean who the hell thought using the term "blood libel", a biblical phrase first used to describe the collective guilt the Jews would have to carry the can for for killing Jesus, and was then used to justify the pogroms the Jews faced at the hands of vengeful Christians, was a good idea? Did Palin (or whoever wrote the speech for her) really think that the flack she got was on a par with the victims of these purges? That the fact that Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish should have perhaps raised questions about the suitability of the analogy? That it displayed a staggeringly crass lack of perspective? You really have to ask who put this into the script, a pre recorded one at that; so it can't be dismissed as a slip of the tongue either (admittedly it would have been a very strange one as well). We really have to ask is this women actually more ignorant and gormless than we already suspected. And is it time someone so monumentally unfit for high office should perhaps shuffle off back to her day job sometime soon?

Who Was to Blame for the Massacre in Tucson?

A few of the Telegraph bloggers are suddenly very keen to point out that "the left / liberals" are a bit too eager to pin the blame on the Tea Party and people like Glenn Beck, for encouraging the terrible shootings that have led to six deaths and thirteen injured when lone gunman Jared Loughner opened fire at a meeting where the right wing Democrat congress woman Gabrielle Giffords was holding a meeting, an apparent assassination attempt which has led to Mrs Giffords needing life saving treatment for a bullet to the head, and has caused the deaths of a 9 year old girl; Christina Green*, and several elderly people dead as well. The Torygraph bloggers who have been pretty supportive of the Tea Party are keen to highlight that the left are trying to politicise the massacre for their own ends, and to discredit the Tea Party itself for their own ends.

Obviously the blame ultimately lies with the Loughner himself. He fired those shots, he decided to murder people for whatever twisted "reasons" he may have had. But the controversy around Palin and Becks antics on the part of "the left" and others in relation to the shooting is not a politicising act as such, but (IMHO) serious questions about the nature 0f the kind of rhetoric emanating in some right wing; anti government; libertarian circles. Now there is no evidence that Lolughner was a Tea partier, and if you can stomach reading the self pitying incoherent drivel he has posted in the past, he comes across as an unbalanced anti-government paranoid conspiracy theorist who is attracted to both hard left and hard right sentiment, a classic self pitying fanatic with an axe to grind who thinks the system is spying on him and is to blame for his own failings as a person, and that all us schmucks are too thick to see what he can.

Now back to the criticisms of Beck and Palin. Obviously they aren't responsible for the massacre, and should not take direct blame for it. However, and this is where I'm sorry to say - mud sticks. The level of some of the sentiment from their supporters has been geared towards implied violence. Some of the more fringe extremes have been echoing sentiments in the mould of the placard above. There has been rather a lot of use of metaphors relating to aggression and violence and an inability to even entertain the notion of listening to the opposing side. Not even taking into account the innocuous "Mama Grizzly" thing. Stuff like the rattlesnake poster saying "don't step on me!" or Palin using the "gunsight map" to make a stand against the 20 reps who voted for the healthcare reforms (including Gabrielle Giffords herself). Palin has been keen to remove it from her website since the attack occurred. Now let me emphasise again, Sarah Palin did not guide the hand that fired the bullets, the killer is to blame for what happened. But that does not excuse the harsh incendiary rhetoric that has been doing the rounds. To quote the republican David Frum (so it isn't just leftys who have condemned the militant language):

"Conservatives have been quick to repudiate – to brand as offensive and disgusting – any suggestion that the Tucson shooting was somehow inspired by the extreme anti-Obama political rhetoric of the past 2 years.

In this, conservatives have the facts on their side. By all reports, the Tucson shooter was a very mentally disturbed person. Even if Jared Lee Loughner was aware that Sarah Palin’s PAC had posted a gun sight next to Congresswoman Gifford’s name, that awareness cannot be translated into a motivation. It makes no sense to talk of the “motive” of someone who is fundamentally irrational.

That point should be acknowledged, accepted, and internalized. Yet as we acknowledge that extremist rhetoric did not incite this crime, it should also be acknowledged that the rhetoric has been extreme, and potentially dangerously so. I wrote in April 2009:

A man bearing a sidearm appears outside President Obama’s Aug. 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., under a sign proclaiming, “It is time to water the tree of liberty.”
That phrase of course references a famous statement of Thomas Jefferson’s, from a 1787 letter: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.”

Earlier that same day, another man is arrested inside the school building in which the president will speak. Police found a loaded handgun in his parked car.

At an event held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last week, police were called after one attendee dropped a gun.

Nobody has been hurt so far. We can all hope that nobody will be. But firearms and politics never mix well. They mix especially badly with a third ingredient: the increasingly angry tone of incitement being heard from right-of-center broadcasters.

The Nazi comparisons from Rush Limbaugh; broadcaster Mark Levin asserting that President Obama is “literally at war with the American people”; former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin claiming that the president was planning “death panels” to extirpate the aged and disabled; the charges that the president is a fascist, a socialist, a Marxist, an illegitimate Kenyan fraud, that he “harbors a deep resentment of America,” that he feels a “deep-seated hatred of white people,” that his government is preparing concentration camps, that it is operating snitch lines, that it is planning to wipe away American liberties”: All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.

Again: this talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk. Better: This crime should summon us to a quiet collective resolution to cease this kind of talk and to cease to indulge those who engage in it.

Although there is always the risk of a loony with an axe to grind going on a shooting rampage whatever you say, or however eloquently you word your views. The sentiments on Glenn Becks show, and the more militant talk on the murky ends of the tea party are music to the ears of a paranoid misfit with an irrational hatred of big government, or any for of government whatsoever and in any form. When Beck equates firearms control with the rise of National Socialism, or calls Obama a white hater without any evidence to back that up, these kinds of people are going to listen. When suggestive imagery about "gunning" after your opponents may cause someone like Palin to perhaps worry that someone could take her literally, especially when people have been turning up to these meetings brandishing firearms that would not be out of place on a bloody battlefield (why do you need such a large arsenal by the way. How big are the coyotes on your farm?) When right wing news networks totally exaggerate the perceived dangers of social democracy such as health care reform as "some doctors are going to send granny to the gas chambers." or pro abortion as "Stalins USSR". This feeds the paranoia of frightened disturbed individuals who think the establishment is out to get them. Is it not too much to ask that those who may be cynically manipulating this stuff, to see that they may be stirring things up that they may not be able to control. Do they even comprehend where it could lead? The right are often quick to highlight European nations slackness on zealous ultra Islamic preachers using militant rhetoric, and that we shouldn't be surprised if a devotee may take their words to horrific conclusions. The same applies here. For all the talk of liberty, there seems a lot of fascistic violent sentiment doing the rounds. Time for more constructive dialogue with opponents, and less threatening demagogy .

THIS VIDEO IS AN INTERESTING AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE MILITANT SENTIMENT THAT WAS DOING THE ROUNDS, THOUGH BEFORE THE SHOOTINGS HAPPENED. IT IS EVEN MORE PERTINENT IN LIGHT OF WHAT HAPPENED.

*Christina was born on September 11th 2001. She was at the meeting to highlight the positive things that happened that day. What a tragc irony. Utterly heartbreaking.

Banning the N - Word from Huckleberry Finn Isn't Just PC Gone Mad.

There has been a controversy in the US this past week about a book editor called Alan Gribben who has brought out a version of Mark Twains popular "Huck Finn" with the word "nigger" excised and replaced with the less racially charged "slave." instead. This has led to Gribben being pilloried as some kind of politically correct vandal kowtowing to "hurt feelings" of "minorities", the usual spiel which we see associated with stuff like this. But people who have only heard that bit of the story are missing the point. Mr. Gribben is a well known scholar on these stories, possibly the only man who knew more about them was old Mark Twain himself. The reasoning [on Gribbens part] behind this act was to actually stop schools in the South from banning the book outright for it's perceived racist connotations, that the editorial would explain the change and allow everyone to understand the racial terminology in the correct context. It was not an act of censorship, but an attempt to circumvent it. Alan Gribben should be applauded, but I doubt many see beyond what they want to see in this whole affair.

In an ideal world the book should be printed as Twain wrote it. People should have at least some grasp of artistic and narrative context. Just because someone uses iffy terminology or controversial stuff doesn't mean that they are endorsing or approving it. There are three reasons I see that results in people wanting to ignore the whole thing, all of which are in some way a response to people not taking what I have just said on board. Firstly the racism and slavery that are themes of the book are still very uncomfortable topics in that part of the US. There is shitloads of baggage around the whole thing. Just overlooking the Huck Finn books is one easy way for teaching boards to skirt the issue. Secondly some black commentators and others hear about all this racist talk without actually reading the books and jump to the wrong conclusions, calling for this "racist nonsense" to be barred in the classroom, which gives the boards another reason to do the first thing. And finally because racist boneheads start calling for the books to be taught ostensibly as it is PC Marxism not too, but largely because they get off on books with nigger written in them. These people don't realise that Twain's works actually condemn racism, as subtext and context don't mix well in the literalists mind. It's rather like those BNP people who deliberately buy gollies and black and white minstrel memorabilia. They think they are being rebellious.* Or on the other side, why on later film versions of "Oliver Twist" Fagin's overt Jewishness** had to be toned down as the perceived anti-Semitic nature of the character began to overshadow the "message" of the story. So we have a mixture of - on the firsthand - being well intentioned and buck passing at the same time, others missing the point totally, and for the latter - missing the point and being racist as well. Alan Gribben has discovered (I hope) a method of getting Twains brilliant books back into the classroom avoiding the above in one stroke.

It really is a shame these books are banned. They aren't racist. Mark Twain wrote them precisely to challenge the prejudice of the age. As his readers perhaps would have thought back then, that Huck Finn was right to think that Tom Sawyer was wrong to help some (and someone elses) mere slave boy escape. Huck and the readers learn through getting to know "nigger" Jim and to learn about his plight and see how he is a victim. To see him as a human with feelings and emotions and not just some piece of property. To see that Tom Sawyer was right to challenge the racist "wisdom" of the age, to his conscience. Twain is challenging the reader to see the wrongness of treating human beings as slaves and to appeal to the plight of your fellow man and not to the racist dogma of the age. These are important stories, and no-one is going to come out a raving bigot if they read them properly. So far from being a PC busybody perhaps Alan Gribben will end up doing us all a favour.

* This scientific phenomenon is also known as "looking like a bit of a prat."

** That was the point really. Fagins Jewishness wasn't really all that relevant to the actual story. It is sort of hinted at in dead exposition in the books that he was a Jew who had fled from pogroms in his native land to London. But anti Semites blew it up as his "Jewishness" being responsible for his villainous character. The simple fact is Fagin could have been from Birmingham and it would not have changed the story in any real way. You just need a grotty looking weirdo who's dodgy and gets kids to steal for him. It doesn't matter where he came from.

There is No "War On Motorists" But there Should Be.

Both Eric Pickles and Philip Hammond seem to think that there is something called the "War on motorists", and have vowed to end this so called war. Well let me just explain something.

THERE IS NO WAR ON MOTORISTS TO STOP!

I hear this phrase from Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, just about every right wing columnist who's ever existed, people who write angry letters to newspapers about being (gasp) fined for parking somewhere they shouldn't. People who moan at speed cameras slowing people down (isn't speeding actually dangerous and all that "hit me at 30 I live, 40 I die! stuff btw??) and so on and so on. So bloody what if you get fined for speeding - tough titty it's illegal you moron. Got booked on double yellows? Schoolkids know you get done for that. Fined for overstaying on a meter zone, buy a watch then!

Why is this such a "pissed off" posting? My particular beef about this kind of thing has come about because A) Eric Pickles, the communities secretary has got rid of the last governments limits on town centre parking and higher fees for parking in town centres, because what we obviously need is more cars clogging up our town centres that can barely cope with what they have now. B) Philip Hammond is Transport Secretary and has said that this is a part of stopping the war on motorists (translates to sucking up to petrolheads) and that:

"cars are a lifeline for many people – and that by supporting the next generation of ultra-low emission vehicles, it can enable sustainable green motoring to be a long-term part of Britain’s future transport planning."

Which loosely translates into "Fuck changing our car dependency, that's way too much bother on our part. What will Jeremy Clarkson say about that? I'll just make up some stuff about future cars that run on antimatter, and pass the buck for some other guy to pick up down the line."

Let me say off the bat, that I do drive, and there is no doubt the car is on some level a useful tool. In an ideal world we could use them to our hearts content and they would benefit our lives. Say they ran on air, and could turn into a briefcase you could carry around when you didn't need them (a la the Jetsons) so no need for stuff like parking spaces then. Unfortunately they don't work like that, and we don't live in a Hanna Barbera cartoon. Our dependency on the car is a serious problem and it needs tackling. But no one has the balls to do anything about it, and that is a problem when the guy tasked with handling this stuff is bullshitting his way out of facing up to the terrible problems the car addiction is stacking up. I saw this was likely to be the way we were headed (in a traffic jam probably) when the rather clever M4 bus lane was said to be facing the chop, the motorway equivalent of having Scrappy Doo shot dead in an episode of the Scooby Doo cartoon. Then the speed cameras in Oxfordshire are to be deactivated to save cash (thought they were there to fleece motorists?) This has confirmed my worst fears.

Our obsession about private car use is a lot like being addicted to crack. It may make us feel better in the short term, it gives people a buzz and our high with their new machines, and we all go crazy if someone tries to get a grip on our addiction. Like crack these small pleasures are eclipsed by so many pitfalls. Yes, crack may feel nice for a while, but you do realise you have to steal from grannies to get cash: you have pock marked skin and about four teeth left at 25, you stink and look awful and all this is a result of wanting that high. Likewise cars clogg up our streets and town centres, and then the bypasses, then the bypasses of the bypass that had to bypassed. They are smelly and expensive to run. They kill about 71 people per day (UK), and maim many others for life. They poison our air. They require roads and motorways that scar our landscape, and can bisect communities as that snarling bypass acts like an impenetrable tarmac frontier (the Twyford Down cutting on the M3 was nothing short of environmental vandalism. Bloody dreadful). The petrol they run on helps fund vile regimes like Saudi Arabia, and has caused so much shit in the Middle East. They make us miserable and cause seemingly mild mannered people to explode into ranting swearing lunatics for stuff as simple as someone taking a few seconds longer to park up. They disrupt wildlife and cause carnage to wildlife populations and, oh they fuck the climate up too. Truly a record anyone should be proud of. Some say cars are liberating, they seem to just enslave us as much in my opinion. And yet any attempt to try and fix this addiction results in derision and anger, as does anyone who is addicted but won't admit it when confronted. And this rage makes transport secretaries crumble. But the problems excessive car use cause won't go away. Indeed the 6 billion PFI sum (no really) being spent on the M25 widening project* should be a nice little sum our kids will have to pay back over the long haul.

The problem of excessive car usage is compounded by how it drives ugly libertarian impulses in the more vocal petrolheads that can cascade downwards to other motorists. How the freedom to drive at 46 mph on a suburban main road is now somehow seen as some sign of resistance against the "Big brother state" and not just the actions of a selfish prick with a small penis who is going to kill someone if he's not careful. How traffic wardens** are seriously compared to the Gestapo and have to wear those cameras lest they be punched in the face by a driver too stupid to realise that he doesn't have a sovereign right to park his Audi "sportscar" where he likes. To quote that quintessential darling of the right :-) George Monbiot:

"When you drive, society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law: all become a nuisance to be wished away. The more you drive, the more bloody-minded and individualistic you become. The car is slowly turning us, like the Americans and the Australians, into a nation which recognises only the freedom to act, and not the freedom from the consequences of other people’s actions. We drive on the left in Britain, but we are being driven to the right."

One of the less remarked comments of Margaret Thatcher that although seemed quite innocuous, turned out to have great consequences was her crass remark about any man over 26 being a failure if he couldn't drive and used public transport. Some of that mud sticked. We need urgent urgent investment of public transport, and more bums on buses and trains. I can't see how the car focused society is ultimately sustainable. It will be bitter medicine to swallow, people won't like it, but I don't see how it is avoidable if we want to avoid serious problems in the future. War on the motorist. If only.

* I'm astounded this doesn't seem to generate a great deal of controversy. The Variable Speed Limit signs they put up seem to arouse more pique. (the Nanny State is slowing us down.) Do these VSL signs (used to regulate a steadier traffic flow discipline) also hint that widening may still not be enough?

** The issues around private clamping, or wardens being paid on commission to book people are separate arguments, and IMHO are both better done by the public sector for the simple purpose of up keeping traffic parking regulations and not to make cash. Cutting the dependency of car use will be a painful process and the public need to be won over (a bit). Stuff like this just antagonises everyone and is dodgy anyway.