Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, medical, thoughts

Alcoholic Puritans

As Simon Barnes (former Chief Sports Writer of the Times) pointed out long ago, alcohol is the West’s drug of choice. But we live in a puritan country, and one where the government is getting ever more puritan and attempting to curtail anything of which it doesn’t approve.
Hence this week we have seen new government guidelines on the consumption of alcohol which are hyperbolic and puritan [Telegraph, 08/01/2016]. Or in the words of Simon Jenkins in the Guardian [08/01/2016]: These absurd new guidelines on how much alcohol we should drink are patronising and will have negligible effect on people’s health … These limits are about a vague national self-image of puritanism, not health.
At a swoop the alcohol limit for men has been halved to 14 units a week. Yes, halved. They say the previous limit was 21 units, but it wasn’t; the guidelines said 3-4 units a day; that’s up to 28 units a week. Similarly the limit for women has been reduced from 21 units (2-3 units a day) to 14. That, my friends, is the first piece of statistical obfuscation in the announcements — and it is one none of the media seem to have noticed.
As the Telegraph points out, one simple rule in life is that if A tries to tell B not to do something, B will probably want to do it all the more. Especially if A works for the government and is therefore ipso facto not trusted and seen as hectoring.
According to the Chief Medical Officer there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. While technically this may be true, it is disingenuous. The report’s figures show that there is a small but significant increased risk of breast cancer for women who drink; and similarly an increase in some of the rarer cancers (eg. oesophageal cancer) in men.
So what is the data behind this? Well the figures being quoted in the media are:

Cancer 0 Units 1-14 Units >14 units
Breast, female 11% 12.5% 15.5%
Bowel, male 6.5% 6.5% 8.5%
Bowel, female 5% 5% 6.5%
Oesophagal, male 0.5% 1.5% 2.5%

[Note: these numbers have been rounded to the nearest 0.5%; allowing for error bars the statistics cannot possibly be any more accurate than this.]
So if I drink more than 14 units a week I am 2% more likely to get bowel cancer (for which I am already being regularly monitored) or oesophageal cancer (which is pretty rare). And note this is over my lifetime (three-quarters or more of which has already passed), not per year.
Let’s give this some perspective … For comparison, in the UK we have a less than 0.5% lifetime chance of dying in some form of transportation accident (the vast majority of which is down to road travel). [In the USA this risk is over 1%.] Moreover in the UK the risk of dying from coronary heart disease alone is around 14% for men and 10% for women.
To quote the Telegraph again, the hyperbolic claim that there is no safe limit at all — that someone is taking their life into their own hands when they enjoy a glass of sherry — defies common sense. The report even admits the health risks of drinking within its recommended limits are comparable to those from “regular or routine activities, such as driving”. And that is something we all accept for both convenience and enjoyment.
As Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs observed [Telegraph, again]: Alcohol consumption has been falling for a decade. The change to the guidelines will turn hundreds of thousands of people into ‘hazardous drinkers’ overnight thereby reviving the moral panic about drinking in Britain and opening the door to yet more nanny state interventions. People deserve to get honest and accurate health advice from the Chief Medical Officer, not scaremongering.
And this from Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge: These guidelines define ‘low-risk’ drinking as giving you less than a 1 per cent chance of dying from an alcohol-related condition … An hour of TV watching a day, or a bacon sandwich a couple of times a week, is more dangerous to your long-term health.
Or Simon Jenkins again: Everything we do in life is risky … We would be furious if Whitehall laid down risk and safety limits for riding horses, climbing mountains, eating foreign food and playing rugby. All involve far greater danger than marginal changes in consuming alcohol.
No wonder the government and the Chief Medical Officer have been accused of nanny state scaremongering.
But let’s be clear what the government are doing here. This is puritanism and prohibition by the back-door. Tobacco has already been made socially unacceptable. This is the campaign to do the same for alcohol. And note that they have already started on sugar.
And we all know that prohibition doesn’t work; it drives the problem underground and deprives the government of tax revenue.
As citizens it is our right — indeed our duty — to stand out against such ill-conceived nanny-state control. It is high time that people were empowered to take responsibility for their own lives, the risks they take and their quality of life (something which is all too often overlooked) without hectoring “advice” from on high. Unless we do so we are rapidly sliding down the slippery slope to Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.
I, for one, will be treating this new guidance with the contempt it deserves.

current affairs, ramblings

2016 Predictions

I thought I’d get my crystal ball out again this year and see if I could come up with a few ideas as to what might happen over the course of this brand new 2016.
What follows is the best I can interpret the misty images in the aforesaid crystal ball. As last year they are just my ideas of what might happen based solely on hunches and gut feel; I have no inside knowledge and I haven’t been studying the form — so if you base any decision on any of this I will take no responsibility for your idiocy. However some of them do seem to be somewhat obvious.
Anyway, here we go …

UK

  1. David Cameron will not succeed in negotiating any meaningful changes to UK’s membership of the EU
  2. Nevertheless Cameron declares a triumph & campaigns for the UK to stay in the EU
  3. However the UK electorate will vote narrowly to leave the EU
  4. This could lead to the downfall of the current government and a General Election
  5. Labour’s Sadiq Khan wins the London mayoral election
  6. Boris Johnson is appointed to the cabinet in a summer reshuffle
  7. At least one very well-known UK company (or charity) goes into liquidation unexpectedly with 500+ job losses
  8. The government will go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow despite adverse environmental evaluations
  9. Consequently the value of property within 10 miles of the Heathrow flightpath falls by 20%
  10. Work starts on HS2 and Crossrail 2 despite the lack of available funding
  11. Construction work starts on London’s “garden bridge”, also despite a funding shortfall; the project will never be completed
  12. Inflation remains at about 1%
  13. Interest rates rise to 1% by YE
  14. The FTSE 100 closes 2016 down 10% on the 2015 close
  15. At least one major “accident” (transport? industrial? terrorist?) with 50+ fatalities — and there’s a good chance it will be in London
  16. Death of a senior member of the royal family
  17. Prince Harry comes out as gay (or at least bi)
  18. Artist Banksy is finally unmasked; he turns out to be someone already well known
  19. Bruce Forsythe and David Attenborough die
  20. Arsenal win Premier League
  21. Another warm, wet winter followed by a cold wet summer

World

  1. Donald Trump will not win the Republican nomination in the US Presidential election
  2. Hilary Clinton wins the US Presidential election by the tiniest of majorities
  3. Relations between Turkey and Russia deteriorate further
  4. Fighting in Ukraine flares up again
  5. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un dies unexpectedly, plunging the country into chaos and resulting in annexation by China
  6. Dalai Lama dies, precipitating a diplomatic crisis with China
  7. Major violence erupts in Egypt further damaging their tourist industry especially in the Nile Valley
  8. Assad remains in power in Syria, possibly in a strengthened position as the West comes to see him as the least worst option
  9. Greece will have further financial troubles and will again come close to leaving the EU — and they may even be forced to leave
  10. Cyprus reaches some form of vague reunification agreement
  11. The EU has to formally suspend Schengen Agreement
  12. A further downturn in Chinese economy causes worldwide downturn
  13. Oil prices remain low but fuel and domestic energy prices rise compared with the start of the year
  14. At least two major airline, train, cruise liner or ferry accidents with 200+ fatalities (in total)
  15. A naval vessel (Australian? Russian?) finds the wreckage of MH370, by luck as it is outside the search zone; it is too deep to be safely recovered

Personal
Six personal predictions have been documented but are redacted to protect both saints and sinners.

Let’s see if we can do any better this year than we did last. But do not put any money on this — I won’t be!
Do you have any good predictions for this year? If so please share them.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech

Pampered Students

While we’re on people who aren’t impressed, here’s a piece from Harry Mount in yesterday’s Telegraph. Mount is fulminating at the Oxford University students’ demand that a statue of Cecil Rhodes be taken down from the wall of Oriel College because of his imperialist and racist views.


The whole stupid suggestion is, for me, summed up in this one paragraph:

We shouldn’t be so surprised. If you’ve had a lifetime of people saying “yes” to you, of never being told off, you remain frozen in a permanent state of supersensitivity. I wasn’t offended by the Rhodes statue when I was at Oxford 20 years ago. But, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have thought my wounded feelings should be cured by tearing apart the delicate fabric of a beautiful university.

Quite so.
I wonder how many of these same students (or perhaps their academic role models) are (or were) on Rhodes Scholarships? I bet some are.
And moreover I would add that we have to tell history as it was, not how we would like it to have been. To do anything else is not only deceitful but puts you on a short and very slippery slope towards totalitarianism.
Time to grow up, boys and girls!

current affairs, environment

Publicly Subsidised Flooding?

Yet one more time George Monbiot, writing in yesterday’s Guardian, has his knife in the government’s environmental policy. He maintains that the massive farming subsidies the government have pumped into grouse moors (mostly owned by their chums) are responsible for the widespread flooding in northern England.
While I’m not qualified to make all the connections made by Monbiot, he does seem to have a good point.
Here’s the Guardian article, and here is the fully referenced version.

current affairs, sexuality

Safer Sex Work

Today I’m going to return to one of my perennial subjects: prostitution.
A couple of weeks ago New Scientist (12 December) carried an Opinion piece by Clare Wilson under the title Safer Sex Work. As I’m not sure if the linked article is generally accessible on the New Scientist website, I post here the core of the article.

Evidence suggests nations should legalise, not ban, prostitution
Do we help sex workers most by legalising or criminalising what they do? …
A proposed bill [in Scotland] that would decriminalise prostitution there has just finished its consultation stage. In the UK, selling sex isn’t illegal but related acts are, such as soliciting, kerb-crawling and working in a brothel. These would be allowed under the Scottish bill.
In 2012 [MSP] Jean Urquhart favoured a form of criminalisation. Then she went to a debate involving sex workers. What she heard … has led her to “come full circle”. [The] bill is modelled on a 2003 New Zealand law … backed by [WHO] …
… if what you do is illegal, it is harder to work with others or hire guards — that’s classed as working in a brothel. If you get attacked you dare not go to the police. And you are less likely to use services that provide free condoms and treat sexually transmitted infections …


Some opponents of legalisation want the “Swedish model”, where it is illegal to pay for sex but not to provide it, to avoid penalising sex workers. But a sex worker whose customers get arrested will quickly have no customers at all. So it still forces them to operate in secret, leading to the same problems.
As one sex worker says, the debate tends to revolve around feelings about men who pay for sex and what that says about society. She wants to scream: “What about our safety?”

Despite many opinions to the contrary (and despite being totally illogical), we know that the “Swedish model” doesn’t work: see for instance here and here. Unlike in New Zealand which has gone the opposite route to general acclaim.
I remember reading about this Scottish bill some while back and it did seem to me to be the most sensible and logical way forward. Prostitution isn’t going to go away. So legalising, or at least decriminalising, it seems the best approach: the sex workers can be protected, registered and have regular medical checks; that protects their clients as well; and once something is legal and regulated it can be taxed (and what government doesn’t want money for nothing?).
That looks like win-win-win to me.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, quotes

Language, Politics and War

I the last couple of days I’ve seen two articles, of very different natures, invoking George Orwell (1903-1950, right) against the deceit and obfuscation of modern politics, and indeed public life generally.
The first goes under the banner 10 George Orwell Quotes that Predicted Life in 2015 America, although it applies just as well to any other country. Here are a few of the Orwell quotes (sadly not referenced):

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.
Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.

I’ll wait here while you think about those for a few minutes …
…
…
…
OK? Good. Then I’ll resume …
The second article is quite a long essay in last Saturday’s Guardian from Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. But don’t let that deter you because the article is erudite, well-written and in the tradition of English essay-writing. It is an edited version of this year’s Orwell Lecture.
[Orwell was working at what may well have been the height of the English art of essay-writing — and he was a master essayist. Essay writing was the way for journalists and intellectuals to summon up and communicate their thoughts; which is why we were taught to write essays at school. It was essentially the 1920s to 1950s version of modern blogging — at least the more serious end of blogging.]
In his article Williams looks at the way in which Orwell, and his contemporary Thomas Merton (an American Roman Catholic monk, 1915-1968, pictured right), teach us about the language of terror and war. Essentially the thesis is that in order to counteract the obfuscation of “military strategists and politicians” the commentator has to write well — clearly, concisely, transparently — in order to permit communication and hence understanding.
Williams’ essay is dense. So dense I had to read it twice. Nevertheless it is itself clear and well written — so don’t let the density put you off; it is very well worth reading. This is where I would normally give you a couple of quick quotes as the nub of the article, but were I to do that here I would have to reproduce the whole essay! That is how good it is. But undeterred, I will anyway because Williams says it so much better than I can …

Bureaucratic double-speak, tautology and ambiguous cliché not only dominate the language of public life from the health service to higher education, talking and writing badly also prepares the ground for military and terrorist action.
Merton relished the comment of an American commander in Vietnam: “In order to save the village, it became necessary to destroy it”.
When the agents of Islamist terror call suicide bombers “martyrs”, the writer’s job is to direct attention to the baby, the Muslim grandmother, the Jewish aid worker, the young architect, the Christian nurse or taxi driver whose death has been triumphantly scooped up into the glory of the killer’s self-inflicted death.
Both Merton and Orwell concentrate on a particular kind of bureaucratic redescription of reality, language that is designed to be no one’s in particular, the language of countless contemporary manifestos, mission statements and regulatory policies, the language that dominates so much of our public life, from health service to higher education. In its more malign forms, this is also the language of commercial interests defending tax evasion … or worse, governments dealing with challenges to human rights violations, or worst of all (it’s in all our minds just now) of terrorists who have mastered so effectively the art of saying nothing true or humane as part of their techniques of intimidation. In contrast, the difficulty of good writing is a difficulty meant to make the reader pause and rethink.
Our current panics about causing “offence” are, at their best and most generous, an acknowledgement of how language can encode and enact power relations … But at its worst, it is a patronising and infantilising worry about protecting individuals from challenge; the inevitable end of that road is a far worse entrenching of unquestionable power, the power of a discourse that is never open to reply … On both sides of all such debates, there can be a deep unwillingness to have things said or shown that might profoundly challenge someone’s starting assumptions.

Yes it is a dense, but good and illuminating, essay. It’s well worth the effort required to read it. And when you’ve read it, please hammer its lessons into the concrete heads of our politicians.

current affairs, ramblings

Paris

No I’m not going to start delving into all the recent mess; there’s too much uninformed and idle garbage being talked already. But I must just highlight what Brad Warner has said — he’s American, a Zen monk and talks much sense; unlike so very many Americans. Brad has written a ferociously forthright, and also in parts highly amusing, analysis on his blog.
His final sentences are:

The lunatics who think they can overturn all of [civilisation] are using technologies that could not possibly even exist at all if the rest of the world wanted to go back to life as it was in the seventh century. They will fail.
Greed, hatred and stupidity are universal human traits. But so are cooperation, love and intelligence.
And more people support cooperation, love and intelligence than will ever support greed, hatred and stupidity.

But what is brilliant, because even Brad admits it is funny, is what he quotes from a guy called John Oliver:

croc… it is important to remember, nothing about what these assholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure and I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked.

As Brad says: “It’s a funny rant, but it’s also deeply true”.
Go read the whole of Brad’s post here, it’s not very long.

beliefs, current affairs, ramblings

They just don’t learn

When will the Western world understand that, by their actions, they are responsible for the terrorist attacks which are happening around the world? I’m thinking specifically of Paris last Friday but there are many many others.
By interfering — usually with military force — in the Arab nations all they are succeeding in doing is further radicalising those countries’ (potentially) disaffected youth and other (misguided) religious zealots.
And why are they surprised at this? If some set of foreigners, with a different culture and religion, were launching air strikes on us, wouldn’t we be sending anyone who would into their countries as insurgents? Especially if we had poorly organised and equipped military ourselves.
Of course we would — and we have. For starters, see the WWII French Resistance and other clandestine organisations like SOE. And we have officially sanctioned and organised terrorists called the SAS.
The more we meddle, and the more we retaliate, the worse we are going to make the problem. And it is a problem which is of our making! We started meddling in the Middle East way back at the time of the Crusades and it has escalated (on and off) ever since. In After the Victorians AN Wilson makes the point that one of the underlying causes of WWI was Britain trying to prevent Germany getting access to Arab oil which we had claimed. We’ve been interfering ever since. And it goes on.
None of these countries — in fact overall very few countries in the world — have a tradition of democracy. They are nearly all used to autocratic rule in one form or another. Just as we were, once upon a time. It has taken us 800 years, starting with Magna Carta in 1215, to get our democracy to its current (fragile) state. Some of the countries of our erstwhile empire have taken the English model on board. Other European countries have got there too by their own, often bloody, routes — see, for example, the French Revolution.
So how is it we expect to be able to walk into any country, tell them to embrace democracy and expect them to jump for joy and do so overnight? Why would they? How can they when it’s taken us 800 years? To them democracy is a revolution and a totally different culture. People don’t like change and they are mostly OK with what they have because at least they understand it. Nearly everywhere we’ve done this in the last 200 years we have ended up with, at best, a bloody nose.
The Arab countries are large enough and well enough orchestrated that they can bring their resistance to us. They have a religion which, by and large, transcends their tribal divisions and they aren’t confined to their own little enclaves like many African nations. Contrary to Christianity, when push comes to shove, the Arab religious beliefs will overcome any tribal animosities.
Why is it that politicians cannot learn from history? It isn’t that hard. If I, a mere scientist, can do so then so can anyone with more than six brain cells. (Oh, hang on, do politicians even have six brain cells?)
No I am not saying we should be soft on terrorists. Yes we have to deal with them on our territory according to our laws — just as they would if the tables were turned.
What I am saying is twofold: (a) stop meddling in other countries, except perhaps through diplomatic channels, and (b) stop bombing the shit out of them at any excuse. Unless, of course, your objective is to radicalise them.
Let me leave you with two final thoughts.
(1) Never lose sight of the fact that your enemy is a human being too. He (or she) has a mother, a sister, a child, a spouse who loves them. They eat, pee and lust the same as you. They were once that carefree child playing in the street. To lose sight of your enemy’s humanity is to lose all respect for others and yourself.
(2) And in the words of Abraham Lincoln:

Do I not destroy my enemies by making them my friends?