the independent: jumping the shark, whilst on fire

Determined to destroy that last lingering fragment of credibility on science and health issues, the Independent prints a feature about a woman who is told by her naturopath that her exhaustion was caused by electromagnetic "smog" in her flat.

That's right: the Independent has been reduced to printing the unsupported assertions that "our dependence on office and communications equipment [...] exposes us to frequencies that can have a detrimental effect on our wellbeing, especially if we are run-down, or if our immune system is compromised in some way."

And that's even with the admission that "research being carried out by industry, the Government and academics has so far failed to find a persuasive link between mobile phone masts and health problems" - which to even the most casual observer would seem to largely contradict the previous claim.

Worried that the paper might not yet look like a collective of total fucking idiots (and please excuse my bloggers accent), the article goes on to recommend both

the Q-Link pendant, which employs "sympathetic resonance technology," something that the makers declare "repairs and tunes your biofield".

and

The homeopathic medicine company, New Vistas, and the Australian flower essence company, Bush Flower Remedies, [who] both make drops that claim to reduce the amount of radiation stored in the body.

I probably don't need to point out that the total evidence for "sympathetic resonance technology" or the existence of your "biofield" is so dilute as to be practically homeopathic. Similarly, news that homeopathic medicine was capable of treating radiation poisoning is an amazing story in its own right - or it would be if it were, you know - true.

This is awful, awful journalism which a respectable newspaper should feel embarassed to print, even in the "lifestyle" section - even if "lifestyle" is just code for "any old shit charlatans will sell you for dirty cash."

cardinal keith o'brien: it's outrageous that these non-catholics aren't listening to me

I know it's normally those pesky queers who are on the receiving end of the Catholic Church's high-fallutin' wrath, but let's not forget that they really, really hate it when heterosexuals have sex and make choices about their lives without papal authorisation too.

What's apparently even more enraging is when non-Catholic politicians have opinions and morality which are not the same as the Catholic Church's . O'Brien finds it just outrageous that people who aren't Catholic don't behave like Catholics.

In other words, business as usual, just with extra foam at the corners of his mouth.

gordon brown: don't give the people what they want

The Labour deputy-leadership contest provides some entertainment value this morning, as The Guardian reports Jon Cruddas' rising fortunes as "Labour leftwinger gets boost from Newsnight hustings," with The Times simultaneously reporting Gordon Brown's warning "to Labour's deputy leadership contenders ... to avoid lurching to the left in their attempt to secure victory."

It's funny because Brown is indirectly admitting that Labour government policy frequently has little to do with the opinions of the popular rank and file membership: that a large proportion of the Labour party is entirely at odds by the positions adopted by those at the top. "Lurching" to the "left" (and there's a loaded frame) is only a feasible strategy because large portions of the Labour party seem to disagree with both Brown and Blair.

Brown's seemingly pragmatic argument also ignores the fact that Cruddas and others might genuinely hold a set of beliefs and not just whatever set of placeholder values will get them elected - and those beliefs might be desirable to portions the party membership.

Brown's argument that it would be politically dangerous for leadership contenders to reflect the priorities of the people they want to lead is an ingenious attempt to disguise this uncomfortable truth. It's a reflection of several years of "collective" cabinet decision making which has rarely been collective, and suggests that Brown wants to pick up the centralised reigns of power where Blair dropped them.

In other words, it rather looks like that the change of leadership has led both cabinet ministers and ordinary Labour members to think that they'll be allowed back onto the grown-up table when it comes to setting policy - and that Brown is trying his hardest to stop that happening.

tick box B if you are not a total b*tch

Lauren Booth reaches straight for the box marked "unrealistic stereotypes" to make sure that everyone is unhappy:

A new Mummy War has broken out over the "best" way to bring up children - and it's causing a deep and rancorous gulf between two tribes of women who regard each other with disdain and dislike.

This is, of course, news to everyone but Lauren Booth who has invented this epic struggle for the sake of a couple of thousand words. Hey, and isn't it convenient how women fit into one of two neat categories? Are you a total bitch, or some other kind of woman?

Held up as an aspirational role model for the rest of us, [Alpha mum] never has a hair out of place and can be spotted tapping urgently into her Blackberry on the school run.

This sort of woman treats parenthood as a project to be managed down to the last second. Fiercely organised, she's likely to be highpowered and well-educated. Aren't you feeling inferior already?

Well, as a rule I'm not intimidated by straw-women invented to demonise working, organised or accomplished mothers, so no.

She treats her home life as an extension of her corporate one: [Ah, she has a job: an obvious mistake, what a bitch, etc.] family time is merely another slot in the bulging diary.

Her children are seamlessly ferried between extra curricular activities with little to no time to spare for relaxation or, God forbid, just thinking. Doing nothing is not an option for these youngsters.

For too long this pernicious style of over-parenting has been held up as a barometer of maternal success.

Really? By who? Is this one of those "it's important to the editor of the femail therefore it's important to everyone else" moments?

The idea that you have to fit into one of two available categories as a mother..

Though I hate the term Beta, with its inference of second-class parenting skills, I'm happy to adopt it if it means I'm not the other sort.

is a giant heaping pile of lady-bollocks, if you'll excuse the expression. The article is riddled with false dichotomies: you're either laid-back and nurturing or so tensely wound that you're damaging your children; either instinctive (good, beta) or intellectual (alpha, bad).

While Booth is presumably trying to rally to the defence of women who don't identify as "alphas," it's a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist - and one that ends up creating another list of ways in which women can fail to be the "right" kind of mother.

sodium benzoate: no evidence of risk (unless you are made from yeast)

Sciencepunk does a little digging into the "soft-drinks are killing your kids ZOMG" story I covered earlier this week - and comes to very similar conclusions about the distinctive yeastiness of the research:

So here are the facts: sodium benzoate is a preservative added to soft drinks to prevent mould. Professor Piper performs an experiment which shows that yeast (a kind of mould, lest we forget), doesn’t do well when sodium benzoate is mixed in with it. I think I speak for everyone when I say “well, duh!”.

The story also seems to be the exclusive product of a press release written by Professor Piper himself, based on research he published eight years ago. No further detectable research has been published - not even on yeast.

Go over to read the whole thing, before marvelling how many "science" correspondents can miss the fact there is no evidence to suggest E211 is harmful to humans in the rush to print a story claiming that.. E211 is harmful to humans. Get the feeling that those same journalists couldn't tell the difference between human dna and a hole in the ground?

the tories and nhs reform

Timed nicely to coincide with / upstage Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's speech on the future of the NHS (more of the same, apparently) the Cornerstone Group releases their own report calling for radical change:

The way forward is compulsory insurance. It is up to the Conservative Party to think innovatively and radically about a health shake-up that will benefit all. People want immediate, good quality health care.

They don’t care where it comes from or who provides it. When they are ill they want to be treated quickly and efficiently with the best possible drugs and techniques.

My mistake - that clear blue water does exist, and it's between different kinds of Tories.

Infighting aside, I've seen the notion of compulsory insurance proposed in various different forms, and most of this is based on a previous Reform study, with some local constituency case-studies pinned to the front.

As such, it's not an entirely convincing position paper: the table (quoted from a Reform study) arguing the advantages of compulsory insurance is - as Bart Simpson put it - self-serving and with many omissions.

The claim to "no waiting lists" under compulsory insurance is particularly dubious: I buy many, many things from private companies and appointments are rarely made in a way that suits me and not the system of the company, not least because I'm not their only client. The proposals don't describe an even playing field so much as a different shape of playing field.

Worth a read, and something I'll be coming back to.

looks like consensus, smells like consensus

I see that the search for clear, blue Tory water goes on:

Mr Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Mr Blair's ideas on choice were right, but said he had been wrong to impose them from Whitehall.

He said: "I'm saying work with the public service professionals, work with teachers, work with doctors to give them much greater power over their local services and to give the users of these services... the choice that is the driver of improvement in every other walk of life and can be the driver of improvement in public services."

So it's a change of style, rather than content, is it? "Working with" seems to the catch-phrase of choice for anyone trying to distance themselves from Blair without actually - you know - changing any of his policies.

It's part of the characterisation of Blair as autocratic that doesn't actually produce any new ideas. The promise to empower people by giving them choice, by which they can then choose to empower themselves also sounds as circular as ever.

Here, Osborne also manages to avoid any discussion what the distinction between "power" for professionals and "choice" for users might actually mean: at the very least, it's the tacit recognition that pure, unadulterated choice is not best path to improvement. In other words, some of us are consultant cardiologists or GPs, and some of us are not.

Instead, it's a preview for more water-treading:

In a speech later to the Policy Exchange think tank, Mr Osborne will say that while the Tories and Mr Blair agreed on "the essentials of the way forward", Mr Brown, due to take over by the end of June, was not part of the "growing consensus".

So even though we agree on the essentials and Blair was right about "choice," it's not a consensus. It's.. uh.. something else. Something else that looks exactly like consensus.

It would be entertaining if this kabuki play of cognitive dissonance wasn't the closest thing we have to political debate between the two main parties.

easy virtue

While I hate to stand in the way of another badly written story attacking Channel 4, there's something special about the claim that a documentary will depict Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall, as a woman of "easy virtue."

It's not that Channel 4 has suddenly started naming and shaming sluts, but instead given a platform to someone who points out the Royal family's entirely medieval approach to sex and marriage. The "controversial" claim:

Royal author and biographer Christopher Wilson adds:

"There was never any question of his marrying Camilla. She was not a virgin and the court certainly had no idea of allowing him (Charles) to marry a woman, let's say, of easy virtue."

So there you have it. Has had sex outside marriage = woman of easy virtue. And the problem apparently wasn't that attitude, it's mentioning it in public.

echo chamber

It's extraordinary how much the people that Melanie Phillips decries can sound exactly like Melanie Phillips. In a post titled "Dialogue of the demented," Phillips quotes from Iftikhar Ahmed's open letter to Ruth Kelly - which is apparently a "stream of paranoid delusions." This bit in particular caught my eye:

America and Europe are wealthy, but they are morally impoverished. Broken families, drugs, booze, youth gangs, crime, neglect of children and the old, the sheer boredom of shopaholicism, terrorism, the inner-cities slums, materialism itself, are all the marks of a global society in decline. Children need to be taught to distinguish between right and wrong.

It's funny because this is the exact argument that Melanie "paranoid and deluded" Phillips has been making in column after column, claiming that Britain has gone astray by abandoning its founding (Judeo-Christian) traditions by tolerating homos, not condemning single mothers etc. etc.

rile britannia

The cheery face of the British abroad, reported by the Mail without further comment:

A coach driver became so fed up with German tourists bagging every sunbed that he set fire to all their towels. [...]

"The next morning about 20 towels were there again so I collected them up, put them on a pile on the beach - and lit them. All the British tourists were cheering."

The hotel then intervened to protect him when he was arrested. Apparently, talking to the other people in the hotel like, y'know, human beings wasn't included in the package deal.

"free" on the nhs

The NHS this morning:

The NHS has underspent by half a billion pounds as a result of the aggressive cuts imposed by the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, a Guardian analysis of health authority figures has revealed.

January's BBC documentary, "Can Gerry Robinson save the NHS?", via Dr Crippen:

It was only in the last ten minutes of a three hour documentary that Gerry hit the barrier that all efficient hospitals hit. The PCT will not fund additional work. And they will not fund additional work because the government will not give them additional funds. [...]

    "Could the PCTs have more funds?" asked Gerry.

    "It is not a case of more funds for the PCT, Gerry, for you see, we have "set them free"" said Patsy.

Back to today:

In many parts of England, primary care trusts cut spending during the final months of the financial year by ordering hospitals not to treat patients too quickly. A five-month minimum wait was introduced in some areas. [...]

Ms Hewitt called for further economies. She even asked underspending trusts to spend even less in the hope that their surpluses would compensate for overspending elsewhere.

This must be a use of the word "free" with which I am not familiar. Either that or Hewitt is an enormous fraud who twists arms to take credit for good news and avows any responsibility for bad news.

breaking: catholic church to launch attack on abortion rights

The Catholic Church is about to step up its campaign against abortion. Excuse me while I break a small embargo by quoting a press release:

In a strongly worded sermon to be delivered on Thursday afternoon (31 May) at St. Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith O'Brien will describe the claims and assurances made at the timeof the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act were no more than a "pack of lies" which amounted to "lies and misinformation masquerading as compassion and truth".

From the sermon:

The scale of the killing is beyond our grasp. In Scotland we kill the equivalent of a classroom full of school children every day. For many women abortion has become an alternative form of birth control. The lives of the babies involved are not at risk any more than the lives of their mothers are threatened by pregnancy. Abortions to save the life of a woman are almost unheard of. As a society we wilfully ignore these realities.

In case you were wondering, the "reality" that the Church bars the use of contraception as a means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies is also "wilfully ignored," as is the fact that abortion rates are far, far higher in countries where abortion is illegal.

This is going to be fairly unpleasant week for women who have the temerity to exercise choice in their own lives.

Full text of press release on request.

never had it so good?

Elsewhere in tolerance news:

Peter Tatchell was among dozens of people assaulted by Russians shouting "death to homosexuals" as they demanded the right to hold a gay Pride parade in Moscow today.

He was punched twice in the initial melee before he was later attacked by six men, who punched him in his right eye and kicked him to the ground, suffering severe bruising to his face and body.

I highlight this story because a discussion piece over at the BBC last month asked "Is the job now done for gay rights campaigners?" While that story focussed on admittedly positive legislation passed in the UK (and downplayed the bedrock of religious intolerance towards teh queer) the question is very similar to the one asked of feminism - in other words, what are you feminists/queers still complaining about?

It's the familar assumption that women "have it all" that makes way for the dubious claims of post-feminism and raunch culture, a claim made possible by assuming that the state of middle-class urban members of a given group are representative of that group everywhere. Middle-class white women have never had it so good, goes the argument, so feminism can shut up shop. Middle-class white gay men have ever had it so good either, so gay rights can shut up shop too.

However, both feminist and gay rights movements are coming to the recognition (or have always known) that successes "at home" - figuratively and literally - are not matched elsewhere in the world. Despite its detractors, a large proportion of the feminist movement focuses its energies and priorities beyond local borders, be they national or those based in class, religion or race. It's an awareness of the conditional, rather than merely limited, quality of so much that has been achieved: that being a fully "empowered" member of a given minority still involves fitting a certain profile. Tatchell's (and others) work outside of the UK is part of a similar impulse.

So there are two things at work here: first, that comfortable equality at home is not matched elsewhere; second, that our comfortable equality is based in very specific solutions (such as the mirroring of heterosexual marriage) that legitimise very specific identities for marginal groups - and as such, those solutions might not translate well to other places.

Consequently, asking the question "is the job done?" gives campaigners the opportunity to point out how introspective the mainstream discussion of equality can be - that the statement that "we've never had it so good" can be a problem when it creates artificial horizons for what we might achieve and clouds where our priorities should lie.

championing tolerance (does not extend to pagans, homos etc.)

WordNetDaily picks up the Scotsman's pagans vs. Christians story and repeats some old lies in the process:

In 2005, WND reported plans to begin banning Bibles from Edinburgh student halls of residence due to concern they are the source of discrimination against students of other faiths.

Except that it was never a ban, more a proposal that the Bibles would be moved from individual rooms into common areas.

Then there's the false equivalence of the Pagan Federation (misleadingly labelled as a society) and the Christian Union -  the first is an outside organisation hiring rooms for a conference, and the second is part of the student association and regulated by the University:

The decision to allow the Pagan Society to hold its meeting on campus comes a year after university officials denied the same privilege to the university's Christian Union.

Officials banned a course on the dangers of homosexuality the group wanted to teach, saying it was in violation of the university's guidelines. A compromise offered by the university allowed the course to be taught if posters offering differing views were prominently displayed.

The story seems to forget to mention that this offer was rejected, which would handily demonstrate that the Catholic Church's plea for mutual tolerance in a pluralistic society is hypocritical bull.

In fact, if you've just spent most of the year campaigning against equal rights for gay people, the idea that you're also the champion of "live and let live" is more than a little hard to swallow.

soft drinks pose health risk (to yeast)

The Daily Mail picks up the Independent's appallingly misleading story on chemicals in soft drinks and runs like a child with scissors. To save time, I'm going to edit as we go:

Research shows that E211 - found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max - can switch off vital parts of DNA, causing serious damage to [yeast] cells.

Laboratory tests [on yeast] suggest this could even result in degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and cirrhosis of the liver [but there is no evidence for this yet. At all. Not even a little bit.]

Once more, we make the majestic leap from "this might be dangerous but there's no evidence to support it yet" to "chemical in soft drinks 'can wreck your child's DNA'."

There are plenty of reasons why drinking large amounts of a drink made almost entirely from sugar and water is a bad idea without reaching for the science fiction.

melanie phillips: here are some assertions passing as facts

Melanie Phillips, writing in defence of "stop and search" powers while writing.. against "stop and search" powers:

A police state inflicts a regime of terror. By contrast, this country is trying — admittedly imperfectly — to defend its citizens against terror. Indeed, no one went to the civil liberty barricades when this measure was introduced in Northern Ireland to protect its citizens from Irish terrorism.

Wrrrrong.

Amongst other organisations, the civil liberties campaign group Liberty (or the National Council for Civil Liberties, as they were then known) objected strenuously, arguing that the police already had sufficient powers to combat terror, that the issuing of Exclusion Orders was open to abuse and that changes legitimised and extended past abuses. Arguments that sound strangely familiar, no?

While we're driving tanks through the holes in Phillips' prose:

But whether this latest proposal is the correct approach is another matter altogether. Being forced to give an account of oneself to the police is indeed a serious blow to our concept of individual liberty. For us to accept it, we have to be sure it is a necessary weapon in our anti-terrorist arsenal.

But for starters, we don't even know whether it was actually effective in Northern Ireland, or whether the fight against terrorism there depended instead on the use of covert agents and good intelligence.

The problem with this argument is that if it's true (and it's a fair argument) it means that we should be similarly sceptical of any other untested measures being proposed - either by Blair, Reid, or Phillips herself on a weekly basis. Clearly, some authoritarians are more equal than others.

pagans vs. homos. vs. christians: fight!

It's always fun when homophobes can't understand why people who don't spread hate are more welcome than they are:

The University of Edinburgh has granted permission to the Pagan Society to hold its annual conference - involving talks on witchcraft, pagan weddings and tribal dancing - on campus next month. Druids, heathens, shamans and witches are expected to attend what is a major event in the pagan calendar.

But the move has enraged the Christian Union, which accuses the university of double standards after banning one of its events on the "dangers" of homosexuality.

The event was barred after they refused to allow printed material suggesting an alternative point of view into the room.

A few details:

1. The Christian Union is part of the University's student association, and therefore bound by the regulations of both the student association and the University as a whole.

2. The Pagan Federation, a private organisation who appear to be organising the conference, are not.

3. The Pagan Federation has no problem with teh homo, and does not fall foul of any other University commitments to anti-discrimination - giving the University no reason not to hire out its societies centre.

So it's double standards, except for that the two parties are completely different. One is part of the University, the other is not.

There seems to be some terrible brain-fever attacking the members of the Christian Union. The argument that "anti-racism groups would never be asked to put up posters saying there are alternative views" makes absolutely no sense: they'd never be asked to put up those posters because the University's anti-discrimination guidelines prohibit discrimination.

It also assumes that all alternative views are equally valid - that to really hate the homo is part of "a pluralistic democracy revolv[ing] around an acceptance of competing ideas." Well, no. There are plenty of ideas which even a pluralistic democracy thinks are intolerable, loathsome and exist only to propagate intolerance. In fact, those ideas tend to be rejected because they're the kind of ideas which inhibit tolerance and discussion in a pluralistic democracy.

And tolerance? To try and claim that the Chrsitian fundamentalist objection to gay people should be protected as part of the "acceptance of competing ideas" is bullshit of the highest order: fundamentalists have absolutely no interest in accepting or tolerating an alternative point of view. Why should they be tolerated when they have no interest in listening to anyone else? Or indeed, nearly everyone else?

soft-drinks ate my dna

The credibility of The Independent's science reporting dips even lower today, with a scaremongering headline report claiming that a soft-drinks preservative, sodium benzoate, "has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA." It's awful journalism that jumps to conclusions based on scarce or even non-existent research.

The only research cited is a laboratory test into the impact of sodium benzoate on the DNA of yeast; it's certainly not research that has established any evidence of human impact. However, the Indepedent jumps straight to the idea that the DNA-munching qualities of drinks with sodium benzoate "can eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's."

There's no evidence for that, either.

Given the terrific lack of evidence, the Independent instead focusses on the well-know link between certain additives and hyperactive disorders in children - hoping that no-one notices that this has absolutely nothing to with the claim that drinking soft-drinks containing sodium benzoate "switches off" important parts of human DNA, leading to disease.

In fact, if you wade through columns and columns of irrelevant red-herrings, you get this non-statement:

[Professor Piper] stressed that he was not saying that sodium benzoate was unsafe, but that the food industry could not state with certainty that it was safe.

Isn't it funny how saying that something is not unsafe becomes the headline "Caution: Some soft drinks may seriously harm your health"?

The problem here, of course, is that an honest scientist would have great difficulties saying that something is safe with total certainty - he or she would say it was safe based on the research that was available.

It's that little loop-hole of scientific integrity which allows crack-pots and consumer journalists to then shout "Ah, so you're saying it might give us cancer after all?" Well, no. Just because something is possible doesn't also make it likely.

The Independent's "Consumer Affairs Correspondent" Martin Hickman is either stupid or playing stupid - refusing to distinguish between a thing that is theoretically possible (but has no evidence to support it) and a thing that evidence has suggested is likely.

Instead, Hickman pulls the Melanie Phillips manouevre and assumes that because something is possible, it's almost certainly inevitable - taking an absence of information and assuming the worst, even though there's little or no support for that worst outcome.

It's fucking terrible journalism.

more fun with numbers

Oh, I'm going to have some fun with the Stonewall survey. Here's a few factoids:

More Daily Mail readers think that anti-gay prejudice should be tackled than Daily Telegraph readers (65% - 49%).

91% of "people of faith" believe that homophobic bullying in schools should be tackled.

A few more sacred cows of received opinion take a hit..

everyone loves homo

A short note to various fundamentalists, "family" values pressure groups, religious figureheads, Melanie Phillips and Richard Littlejohn: you don't speak for us :

Major new polling commissioned by Stonewall has found that the vast majority of Britons, 85%, support the 2007 Sexual Orientation Regulations, newly-introduced legal protections for gay people.

Similar numbers would be happy if a relative, their boss or a footballer in the team they support (92%) was gay, the Living Together survey established. The vast majority believe that further steps should be taken to tackle homophobia by government, workplaces, schools and the media. [...]

YouGov sampled 2,009 respondents from across Britain to gauge public opinion towards gay people. While a significant majority expressed high levels of tolerance, 73 per cent said that anti-gay prejudice needed addressing. Eighty-nine per cent support a new offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, to match existing protections against incitement to racial hatred.

Score one for the deadly deadly homos, I think.

blood donation ban: science vs. prejudice

The ban on gay men from donating blood was one of the first issues I wrote about in any depth as a blogger: then, as now, it seemed as though the policy was based on evidence that hadn't been reconsidered in pushing ten years, on the assumption that men who have sex with men are equally at risk and that safe-sex had no meaningful impact on preventing disease transmission.

Even one act of protected oral sex between two men, if reported to the UK Blood Transfusion Service, is enough to bar you from giving blood for the rest of your life. In short, a far higher and more rigorous standard is applied to men who have sex with men than to their entirely heterosexual counterparts -  regardless of the number of their partners, whether they practice safe sex or even if they have been recently tested and found to be healthy.

None of these criteria are applied to straight donors in the same way; all men who have sex with men are treated as a homogenous group and presumed to be at a uniformly higher level of risk.

The traditional argument for the ban is based in a calculation of risk: given that tests for HIV aren't 100% accurate, a judgment was made as to whether the additional blood gained from widening the pool of donors was worth the additional risk of blood-transmitted diseases entering the blood banks.

It's the argument that the Blood Transfusion Service in Scotland and the rest of the UK continues to make today. It's the argument recently used by the FDA in the States:

The 'window period' exists very early after infection, where even current HIV testing methods cannot detect all infections. During this time, a person is infected with HIV, but may not have made enough virus or developed enough antibodies to be detected by available tests. For this reason, a person could test negative, even when they are actually HIV positive and infectious.

However, evidence exists that this calculation of risk is out-of-date. The Red Cross, the international blood association AABB and America's Blood Centers all oppose the ban, arguing that:

such "window period" risks have been negated by modern blood tests, which " can detect HIV-positive donors within just 10 to 21 days of infection." To ensure such risks were minimized further, their proposal included a "one-year deferral following male-to-male sexual contact."

If the rational, scientific reasons for restricting those who can donate blood no longer apply, we're only left with prejudice.

john reid and the powers of kings

I see that most of the universe's pundits have followed John Reid's lead against the Human Rights Act, nicely missing that his proposals don't just describe a derogation from an international treaty but an attempt to chip away at habeas corpus.

Proposing - as Reid has done - that guilt can be inferred from silence, and that suspects can be questioned after charges have been brought are measures that don't just contradict the Human Rights Act but several hundred years of British justice that preceded it.

From the hook, line and sinker brigade, here's Melanie Phillips:

The primary duty of any government is to protect its citizens. In any normal society, people who are thought to be dangerous are jailed.

No, no, no. In any "normal society" (and I presume she means western democracies), people who are merely thought to be dangerous are not jailed: that's the behaviour of an autocracy under a king.

In a "normal society", we actually have to produce evidence before we lock someone up indefinitely. It's difficult and demanding but it's also the foundation of justice.

Whining about not being allowed to lock up whoever we please for as long as we please is spectacularly ugly and illiberal. Anyone genuinely interested in sending more terror suspects to trial might want to address why - unlike the US and nearly every other country in Europe - certain forms of evidence are still barred from court. Using the Human Rights Act as a punch-bag might be fun, but it accomplishes nothing.

ann widdecombe: who needs the freedom of information act when you already know everything?

Ann Widdecombe's defence of the gutting of the Freedom of Information act dishonestly characterises the need for accountability and transparency as a pointlessly prurient interest in MP's expenses. Sorry, Ann, but the reason it looks like you're trying to conceal your expenses from us is because you're supporting an amendment that would let you conceal your expenses from us.

Her argument seems to be that there are so many ways to circumvent the act by holding meetings off-books or by using anodyne language that there's no point in having it at all. Yet, even though this law is so useless, Widdecombe stops short of arguing for it to be repealed and talks of "lightening the burden of the act." Under the proposed amendment, this would mean "no burden at all."

Widdecombe also disengenously dismisses the value of anything that has already been revealed under FoI:

Much is made of the fact that only recently, under this Act, papers were obtained, in the teeth of Treasury resistance, which showed that Gordon Brown had known all along that his abolition of tax relief could wreck pension funds.

Yet, as I have pointed out before, it was always obvious that he knew because previous Tory chancellors knew and they knew because civil servants knew.

There is a small but important difference between things that Ann Widdecombe knows and holds to be true, and things that everyone else knows. There's also a rather more important difference between things Ann Widdecombe knows, and the things she is able to prove with documentary evidence.

Accountability and transparency are the vital features of a democracy, awkward and time-consuming though their manifestations (such as, oh, elections) might occasionally be. Freedom of Information allows the public - frequently via the media - to examine evidence surrounding public policy issues which governments try to conceal, such as criticisms of the new NHS IT system by the National Audit Office or that the abandoned plan to merge police forces in England and Wales cost millions of pounds before it was scrapped.

We can even learn when parts of the media are complicit in feeding the cycle of misinformation and misdirection . It's also a tool that opposition MPs have been eager to use to hold the current government to account. To pretend that the Freedom of Information act does not serve a useful role in our political discourse is hugely dishonest.

Anyway, what happened to "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide?" Ann?

if homos were houses

After a few days of Ruth Kelly bashing across the press (with the Guardian helpfully summarising the key words: "hapless, helpless, hopeless, fluffing, flailing, floundering, stumbling, fumbling, bumbling, bungling, bluffing, blundering") it's pretty obvious where certain priorities lie. 

Do your best to do nothing when it comes to equality for a sizeable minority, while taking advice from an extreme religious sect? Refuse to say whether you think the people you are supposed to be defending are sinful and intrinsically disordered, as beliefs of said sect would suggest? Awkward, but not apparently not a sacking offence unless you're some kind of weird fringe liberal type.

Fuck with our property? Kelly must go now!

norman wells: for the sake of the children, keep your head in the sand

Sexually active women between 12 and 30 talk voluntarily about safe sex, with parental consent where appropriate - shock. The Mail (as if any other paper could be so obsessed) leads with "Lottery pays for girls aged 12 to be quizzed about their sex lives."

The fake "controversy" of the moment seems to be that some of the young women who took part are under the age of consent - with renta-quote Norman Wells of Family and Youth Concern arguing that this encourages them to have sex.. even though the women in question were already sexually active. Presumably Wells knows something about linear time and causation we don't - on top of assuming (as per usual) that any discussion of sex whatsoever leads directly to penetration.

Wells is very careful to criticise the lottery for funding this research project, rather than parents for exercising their own judgment and giving consent for their daughters to take part: anything else would point rather sharply to his control-freakery and his assumption that he alone knows best.

Norman Wells, director of the pressure group Family and Youth Concern, said: "In trying to break down young people's natural inhibitions about sex by means of such crude and voyeuristic exercises, sex educators are breaking down one of the most powerful disincentives to underage teenagers engaging in sexual activity."

Except that's not what they were trying to do, not even slightly; they weren't actually even trying to educate on this occasion, merely trying to find out people's attitudes to safe sex. The topics of discussion were also chosen by the people in the group, not the organisers.

It's hard to see how Wells' solution could be made more transparently ugly and damaging: the best way to keep young people from sex is to make them as inhibited and frightened of sex as possible.  The only thing Wells' strategy ensures is bad sex: unprotected sex and sex which makes people feel ashamed and unhappy.

Wells chooses not to understand that young people have other "natural" urges - which is to learn about and experiment with sex - and  that no amount of hand-wringing and moral posturing will change that. Coating young people with a thick layer of ignorance and fear is only going to leave them ill-prepared, and even at risk, for when they eventually become sexually active: it's just about the worst response imaginable.

A dangerous idiot.

counting on your fingers

Various alarm bells should be going off when you read this story:

Parents can predict their children's exam performance simply by looking at their hands, according to research. Psychologists claim that results in English and maths tests are linked to the length of fingers. [...]

Scientists believe the trends can be explained by the levels of testosterone and oestrogen that children are exposed to in the womb. The sex hormones are thought to govern brain development as well as finger length.

In truth, exposure to hormones in the womb influences the development of pretty much everything - but saying that isn't the same as understanding quite how it works, or declaring that hormones are the sole or most significant factor.

In the research project, which has been published in the British Journal of Psychology, scientists measured the finger lengths of 75 seven-year-olds by using photocopies of their palms.

First, the study had a sample size of only 75 students who all came from the same school in Bath. It only looked at results in key stage exams and finger size for correlation - and apparently ( click here to read if you have handy institutional access) didn't assess the impact of any other factors, such as familial levels of education, class, relative poverty etc. etc.

Secondly, while it's thought that there's a relationship between hormone exposure in the womb and finger growth, it's not something that's fully understood; it's certainly not an area where we can point (ahem) to a single overriding influence. It's not as simple as saying testosterone makes you good at maths, which is the conclusion you might draw from the Mail's coverage.

The conclusions being drawn in the research are consequently couched in cautious rather than definitive language. It's not that this is poor research, but that - as with most small scale studies - it's part of a longer discussion based on a slowly growing body of evidence rather than an iron-clad conclusion.

For comparison, you might remember similarly excitable reports in 2000 about a study published in Nature examining the correlation between finger length and homosexuality.. which ultimately concluded that there was a high degree of overlap and that it was not possible to accurately predict sexuality.

However, as with this story, any subtly in the findings was lost in the rush for the headline.

won't somebody think of the fatherless sharks?

Courtesy of excited science journalists everywhere: female sharks can reproduce without having sex. I hope to see a comment from "family rights" groups decrying this foul and terrible calumny struck against nature, the institution of marriage, proper gender identities etc. etc.

too shy for 1000 words on page 12

Not-that-much-of-a-shock revelation of the week is that journalist Liz Jones has separated from her proudly philandering husband, Nirpal Dhaliwal. Even less of a shock is his decision to blame his wife for the separation:

[I]n a frank magazine interview, Nirpal reveals why the couple came to the inevitable decision. Talking to Grazia magazine this week, Nirpal says he hated being written about and admits the marriage should have ended long ago. [...]

He adds: "Of all the problems that have plagued my marriage - my infidelities, my slovenliness, Liz's manic tidiness and neurotic high-maintenance - it has been interesting to note that the issue that has most bothered me, and been the most constant, was the one Liz never mentioned in her columns: the columns themselves. I hated being written about'

Yes, he hated it so much that he accepted a large cheque from the Mail to write several large features describing his own faithfulness and marriage on at least two occasions - the first time arguing that he was the only true feminist (*gag*) and that:

Unfaithful as I'd been, I was not going to let her have me over a barrel for the rest of our marriage. I needed to keep a sense of self and not allow her to mire me in guilt and a desperate quest of forgiveness.

and then going on to blame his wife for his infidelities ("My own adulteries - which occurred a couple of years ago on a long trip abroad - were driven by the need to escape the overbearing intimacy of married life"). Apparently, it was her fault for marrying him in the first place: he was a helpless pawn, trapped into writing articles about himself for money.

I think we can assume that the Mail will keep both on the books for future episodes of Dhaliwal's forthcoming book, "I'm Actually A Shy Person Not An Egotist: A Revealing Expose In Ten Parts."

FOI amendements: a solution for a problem that doesn't exist

Cameron moves in the right direction on the Freedom of Information amendments but is either misinformed or hedging his bets:

David Cameron has told Conservative peers to vote against a controversial bill introduced by one of his own backbenchers which would exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act.

The Tory leader said he wanted to find a way to protect MPs correspondence but that he could not support the private members' bill, pushed through the Commons last week by former Conservative chief whip David Maclean.

The problem with Cameron's olive-branch is that it repeats the central argument presented by Maclean - whereas even a five minute briefing on the Freedom of Information and Data Protection acts would confirm that the details of personal correspondence are already protected.

daily mail: new lies, same as the old lies

Sometimes the Mail's stories about the threat of the deadly deadly homos seem very familiar. Sometimes it's because it's the exact same story, refurbished to stir another round of "those homos are teaching my children PC nonsense when they should be learning to pray..uh.. read and write." Today's case in point is this one:

Children as young as four are being taught about same-sex relationships using puppets, plays and fairy tales in a Government-funded scheme, it emerged yesterday.

The first time we heard this story was in August of last year, when the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail screamed "Schools told to teach gay sex" and "Gay sex lessons in primary schools." Neither of these claims were even slightly true then, and they're still lies now.

The scheme - which attempts the apparently unforgivable task of reducing discrimination and homophobic bullying in our schools - involves 14 primaries across England. For anyone keeping score, that's about 0.7% of England's 17,600 primary schools, which is a rather small group to support the frothing claims of "indoctrination" and "brainwashing" pouring into the Mail's comment section. Somehow, teaching children that gay people must be treated with hostility and hate doesn't count as indoctrination: funny that.

Today's story is also part of the Mail's continuing effort to demonise the sexual orientation regulations which were introduced earlier this year - while stolidly refusing to recognise that those regulations are the direct offspring of the Equality Act, which banned religious discrimination. But then recognising that would rather dent the claim that the deadly deadly homos are receiving preferential treatment and trampling on the rights of everyone else.

onwards and upwards

I have a day off from my 9-5 job - so I'm catching up on all my freelance stuff and applying for other, better jobs. Back to posting tomorrow..

stop using that word

If one more fucking newspaper tells me about Prince Harry's "secret" new job, then I'm leaving show-business:

se·cret (sē'krĭt)
adj.
1. Kept hidden from knowledge or view; concealed.
2. Dependably discreet.
3. Operating in a hidden or confidential manner.

bill exempting MPs from freedom of information returns

The attempt to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act returns to the Commons today - with a third attempt to block it:

MPs are attempting to derail a bill calling for Parliamentarians to be exempt from Freedom of Information law.

Tory MP David Maclean's bill is before the Commons again, weeks after opponents thought they had "killed it off" by debating it until time ran out. A quirk of procedure meant it has returned for debate, but opponents hope they can again "talk out" the bill by debating numerous amendments. [...]

Debate began at 0930 BST and opponents will have to continue talking until 1430 BST to successfully talk the bill out.

The exemption for MPs is entirely unneeded, and the arguments made in its favour have been disingenuous, ignorant or outright dishonest.

The plea to backbenchers by those supporting the exemption that "we hope you would agree that MPs correspondence on behalf of a constituent to a public authority should remain confidential" is misdirection and deception of the most obvious kind - because the confidentiality of such correspondence isn't in question. The protections in both the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act were written with precisely those kind of concerns in mind,

Transparency is the parent of accountability, and it's embarrassing that this bill should still be floating around Parliament like an unflushed turd.

needy

The meaningless verbal club of "political correctness" is wielded with full force to argue "men are too too frightened to give women the compliments they need ." Oh, dear.

We can start with the idea that women "need" compliments - which, unsurprisingly, is not what the survey referenced by the story shows at all. The survey finds that a majority of women like to be complimented, which is not the same thing.

It's probably based on this assertion passing as fact:

Experts have set an ideal 'compliment quota' of five a day.

It's hard to know where to start with that kind of nonsense: why five? Why ideal? What happens if I'm starved? Is it dangerous if I overdose?

Then there's the "expert":

Relationship expert Christine Webber said: "In my experience, women do care a great deal about what people think about them. A compliment massively boosts self-esteem. "And whilst it may seem somewhat frivolous, it is in fact a vital ingredient for well-being."

That there might be other effective ways to boost self-esteem isn't under consideration, nor the idea that constantly seeking the approval of others might not be so healthy.

She said many men were terrified of an innocent remark being wrongly interpreted. "I think political correctness and fear of saying the wrong thing is the main cause of men failing to compliment women who are not their partners," she added.

She recommended, perhaps not too surprisingly, that men should steer clear of complimenting breasts, bottoms and legs with non-partners.

And here's the stupid crux of the matter. The fact that "nice tits" doesn't work as a compliment has nothing to do with the phantom of political correctness; it's to do with the fact that a person might just feel as though she has been reduced to an appendage to be ogled. And that might make her angry, rather than boost her esteem.

Similarly, the idea that a man might think what he's saying is "innocent" does not resolve him of the consequences of his speech. It doesn't automatically make him a bastard, but there's a limit to the understanding that can be extended to someone who, despite the obvious, thinks it's still 1965 and that all women are birds.

Why should the idea that we might want to learn new ways to talk to each be so threatening? Why is this a repeat of the idea that men are too stupid to change their ways, and instead continually blunder into traps set by wily feminists? Newsflash: the ways we expect to treat each other as people isn't constant, and changes as our culture changes (never mind the impact of class, religion and ethnicity). It would be far more suprising if we were still dragging the most fertile member of the opposite tribe back to the cave.

"but the desert is relatively peaceful.."

This seems to be an impressively weak response from the Home Office:

Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation, UK foreign policy think tank Chatham House says.

Its report says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country. [...] The UK Foreign Office, responding to the Chatham House report, stated that security conditions, although "grim" in places, varied across Iraq.

"Most insurgent attacks remain concentrated in just four of Iraq's 18 provinces, containing less than 42% of the population," a Foreign Office spokesman told the Press Association news agency.

I'm not quite sure why this is supposed to be a good thing - given that this means that the insurgency is taking place in heavily populated areas, provinces which have a disporportionate percentage of the population. Car bombs are going off, but it's only where there are people? Oh well, that's fine then.

single men: not a problem, single women: apocalypse now?

Another fishing expedition, courtesy of my friendly London PR insider:

QUERY: We are urgently looking for a woman in her 40's and 50's who has a career she loves and has not had a relationship with a man for at least ten years. Apparently the number of women single in their 40's and 50's is growing all the time. We can pay you for taking part. Please can you email me asap, many thanks, Diana

PUBLICATION DESCRIPTION: Femail section of the Daily Mail  
ISSUE DATE*: May 20th 2007

Presumably any career woman who has had relationships within a decade but remains unmarried wouldn't serve the Mail's favoured stereotypical narrative that women with careers must necessarily miss out on everything else.

What's more interesting, though, is that despite a steady parade of concerned interest in singleton career women we never read a story worrying that "apparently the number of men single in their 40's and 50's is growing all the time."

Regardless of how positive the coverage might be of a single woman who is happy to have a career and no relationships (though don't place any large bets) there's still the inference that to live that way is bizarre and unusual for women in a way we wouldn't think of with men. Conveniently ignoring, of course, that a surplus of single women indicates a similar surplus of single men.

suck freely

Turns out - golly, what a suprise - that we shouldn't really be losing any sleep over the link between oral sex and throat cancer (despite reams of press coverage to the contrary). Some numbers crunched, courtesy of Dan Savage over at the slog:

Tonsil and throat cancers affect about two in every 100,000 adults in the US, according to the New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 356, p. 1944), by way of New Scientist, "while [p]eople who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex."

Or, in other words, from 2 in 100,000 (1:50,000) (the norm) to 5 in 100,000 (1:20,000; as 250% more than 2:100,000 is 5:100,000). While this might seem like a substantial increase, keep the following information in mind: the ACTUAL percentage (not the relative percentage) is .002% in the normal case, and .005% in the other, the difference being .003 percentage points.

In other words, if a man or woman has had more than five (5) oral-sex partners, then he/she is only 3 thousandths of a percent more likely to get throat cancer than someone else who abstains from oral sex.

Not for the first time, thank fuck - or possibly suck - for Dan.

let me tell you how offended you should have been

Shorter Daily Mail: we're so shocked and disgusted by this filth that you missed on TV last night that we must give it as much free publicity as possible. In fact, we're so disgusted that we're forced to reproduce large stills from it.

I presume that they just have Mediawatch on speed-dial to save time.

luckily it's free advice

I'm reading some tremendously weak-ass legal advice today. Here's a sample from the guidance offered by the Lawyers Christian Fellowship on the sexual orientation regulations that were introduced as a by-product of the move to outlaw religious discrimination:

It would technically be illegal for a vicar to use the illustration that "it is better to follow the Bible's teaching and risk being sued than to be complicit in sin by printing leaflets promoting gay pride."

which comes with this footnote:

This example presumes the vicar would support the printing of leaflets promoting heterosexual sex within marriage.

Maybe it's me, but once we've assumed that a vicar is in the business of regularly offering opinions on the printing of sex-advice leaflets then we're already dealing with a small - let's say non-existent - group of likely preachers.

Let's also say that I have a healthy portion of scepticism for any group of lawyers who offer stories in the Daily Mail as proof that the government is "promoting" homosexuality to four-year olds, particularly when the story is scare-mongering bollocks that refers to a tiny research programme in less than 1% of all primary schools.

fresh old faces

I notice that the Tory backbench Cornerstone Group has a blog. In the past, its socially conservative members have taken a "no homos, please" attitude towards civil liberties: it would be nice if arrival online also indicated a few other changes.

For the record, it's possible to "support" marriage - and even argue that marriage is best - without denying the same civil protections in law to gay couples as straight couples. Just because certain groups choose not to (while denying legitimacy to gay people on host of other fronts) doesn't mean that it's not possible.

unique doesn't mean positive

There's no chance that the Catholic Church will give up the right to veto teachers in denominational schools. Even if demonstrating a commitment to Catholic values wasn't an exercise in tenuous dogmatism (a note from my mother saying I'm a good girl/boy?) giving up the right to veto would mean giving up power.

It might just also start to point out that the best candidates for teaching jobs are being turned down because they fail to match a nebulous and changing set of religious criteria that have little, if anything, to do with their ability to teach - and that the claim to preserving a "unique ethos" is a cover for the right to practice highly selective education.

Unique is one of those words which is used to infer merit, when it only means that something is one of a kind. Keeping students intentionally ignorant about STIs and contraception? No worries: it's a unique ethos. Such a pity that the consequences of ignorance are neither unique nor rare.

hewitt ducks and covers

Read Hewitt's full statement - which mentions criminal investigations into the security breaches but not the departments own culpability in failing to secure data - over here. There's absolutely no recognition of any of the other flaws in the system that make it unfit for purpose.

As an aside, does Hewitt really expect to survive Brown's inevitable cabinet reshuffle? If I was looking for dead wood to excise to the delight of just about everyone, I'd start there.

MTAS: amputated but not scrapped

Barn door, horse, bolted etc.:

In a move apparently designed to outflank a legal action by junior doctors due to be heard in court today, Ms Hewitt told Parliament yesterday that the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) would not be used for the second round of interviews.

But still without apparently recognising that the system - and consequently the first round of interviews - was hopelessly flawed, as further suggested by a letter from yesterday's Times:

I have evidence that the MTAS selection process for junior doctors has gone even more seriously wrong. Several UK citizens, with high scores at the GP assessment centres, have had their applications to GP training rejected because they "do not have the correct immigration status and work permits."

However - and despite numerous headlines suggesting that the system has been scrapped - Hewitt's statement seems to suggest otherwise:

Ms Hewitt said in a written statement: "Given the continuing concerns of junior doctors about MTAS, the system will not be used for matching candidates to training posts, but will continue to be used for national monitoring."

Note how Hewitt's statement doesn't recognise any fault with the system, but merely claims to be responding to "concerns."

But still, national monitoring? Anyone have any idea what the hell that means? Given that the very purpose of MTAS was to match candidates to posts (and failed at that), what else is this zombie-system going to be used for? Here's hoping that it's just face-saving language that doesn't actually mean the system will remain in service.

egg on face

Despite regular stories claiming that the police are driven to investigate pointless crimes by the dual bogey-men of political correctness and the nanny-state, we discover - in both the Mail and the Independent - the Police Federation think it's all to do with meeting targets:

The Police Federation annual conference in Blackpool will debate today whether judging officers purely on how many arrests, cautions or on-the-spot fines they can deliver is making a mockery of the criminal justice system.  

The federation said the drive to meet Whitehall performance targets was compelling officers to criminalise middle England.

Compel is a rather strong word; what we're actually talking about is a system where there is an incentive to wield the strong arm of the law, even when softly softly might be the better approach. And there are a number of details missing in the media coverage: are officers punished if they fail to reach targets? Or is their progression through the force slowed? How are the targets consequential?

I'm also not sure the dossier of ridiculous cases works as a media strategy, entertaining though the "creams buns thrown at a bus" stories might be. The fact that policemen were prepared to entertain those kinds of cases at all to meet targets (instead of refusing to participate in such an apparently asinine system) is more likely to damage public confidence than instill public sympathy.

The argument that "when people are being pushed to show results, they will use anything they can to demonstrate they are doing a good job" ends up suggesting a lack of judgment - people who are prepared to do the wrong or stupid thing for an easy life. So, not a great ad for the police..

pretty pills

In case you had any lingering doubts about the femail's take on the female body:

Pretty pills: the secret to a younger looking you?

The answer, as you might just guess, is "no." And where does this story start?

Earlier this month, the FDA (Food & Drug Administration), the US body that approves and regulates drugs, cosmetics and supplements, agreed to let pharmaceutical giants Glaxo SmithKline sell a weight-loss drug, Alli, over the counter.

That's right. Weight-loss drugs = pretty pills.

The rest of the article is a series of drugs which - like pretty much every other drug - are dangerous or ineffective if used without medical supervision, and for a purpose other than that which they were intended. So... uh.. don't do that.

less than the least we could do

And now the Mail news-desk echoes Melanie Philips' logic:

The Australian government has banned its cricket team from playing in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. [...] The move sent a powerful message to cricket-playing countries and other nations who have stopped short of taking effective action against the dictator.

Apparently canceling sports engagements is now the equivalent of "effective action." Seriously, "a powerful message to cricket-playing countries"? Is it possible that we could define a more feeble form of interventionism to heap praise on?

11 men in white showing you the finger

Uh, no:

Cancelling sporting fixtures, as we all know, is a powerful weapon to use against repressive regimes for which such recognition is all-important.

All-important? Powerful? No. Cancelling sporting fixtures with repressive regimes is actually a way for governments to look like they're taking a stand without actually having to do anything about repressive regimes. It's diplomatic showmanship. Show me a dictator who trembles when a cricket squad fails to RSVP and I'll show my new moon-based cheese factory.

Oh, and Phillips should really know better than to fall for this trick:

[John Howard] abolished multiculturalism at a stroke by renaming Australia's Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, turning it into the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

And Blair re-introduced justice to the UK by renaming the Department of Constitutional Affairs , did he?

persecution not that complex

Ah, the Daily Mail, master of exaggeration:

Schools could be forced to ban their pupils from wearing crosses - while allowing them to display symbols of non-Christian religions.

The rules being considered by one education authority would see jewellery forbidden from PE lessons, apart from in "exceptional circumstances".

So not really a ban, then. Still, on with the "I Can't Believe This Is Controversy":

The sensitivity apparently only extends to symbols from the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim faiths.

A draft document from Croydon Council in South London apparently says exceptions would include the rakhi cotton bracelet worn by Hindus and the kara metal bracelet put on the arms of Sikh children, which cannot be removed.

Still - even though these are draft regulations, being revised after public consultation - if the Mail wants to campaign for the right of Christian students to choke themselves on a rosary during PE, they have my blessing.

It also helps to remember that those poor persecuted Christians were recently told that schools could forbid them from wearing veils in class - no, wait, that was Muslims. Sorry, my bad.

further adventures of total bastards

Round three:

The Labour Party is mounting a covert campaign to push through a new law to exclude MPs from the Freedom of Information Act, critics have claimed.

An email from Labour's influential parliamentary committee urges its backbench MPs to support a private member's Bill that would prevent the public using the new right-to-know legislation to see MPs' correspondence.

That last part is a little misleading, as data protection laws would protect the disclosure of individual letters - unless heavily edited to remove identifying details. In fact, it's the explicit safeguards found in both the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act that make the exemption for MPs so entirely unneeded.

However, Labour is spinning in the opposite direction through the simple medium of ignoring those laws and pretending that they don't do what they do:

Jack Straw also gave his tacit support for the Bill on Thursday when he told the Commons that the publication of MPs' correspondence "would drive a coach and horses through the relationship that we have with constituents".

Mr Straw said: "It is all very well for some people to say that there are some exemptions, but the truth is that the way that some journalists and the Information Commissioner are acting means that that intention is not being met in practice"

Of course, that the exemptions address exactly the kind of thing that Straw is so anxious about goes without mention. That Straw also seems unable to give any evidence of his version of the the "truth" is also presumably too rude to bring up. What total bastards.

still crazy

While it might have been highly unprofessional for BBC journalist John Sweeney to lose his temper with the Scientologist he was interviewing , let's not pretend that Scientology has any credibility at all. In fact, to listen with patience and respect to a cult designed by a science fiction author for profit is probably a greater failure of judgment.

one of these autocracies is not like the other

Let he who has no sense of irony cast the first stone:

Pope condemns Latin American 'autocrats'

Pope Benedict XVI has criticised "authoritarian governments" in Latin America, in a speech at the end of his five-day tour of Brazil. [...]

In his opening address to the two-week bishops' conference, the Pope attacked unnamed governments in Latin America that he said were "wedded to old-fashioned ideologies which do not correspond to the Christian vision of man and society".

Autocratic Pope Benedict on day one of his five-day tour of Brazil :

A combative Pope Benedict XVI opened his trip to Brazil yesterday in no-holds-barred mood, vowing to stem the defections of Roman Catholics to  evangelical Protestantism and giving a warning that the penalty for  supporting abortion was excommunication.

By the by, countries in which abortion is banned have a far, far higher rate of abortion than in countries where abortion is legalised - but then recognising that would suggest that the Church's stance on the sanctity of life is more about control than saving lives.

catholics make generous offer of f*ck all

I'm not sure if this is a case of translation error, or just the person in question talking total bollocks:

Catholics and secular groups in Italy will go head to head over government proposals to grant homosexual couples legal status, in demonstrations planned for tomorrow. [...]

Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister proposed allowing civil unions in February. The planned law, which would also give unmarried heterosexual couples more rights, has met with strong opposition from conservatives and centre-left Catholics in the Italian Parliament. [...]

Domenico Delle Foglie, protest organiser for the conservative groups said the Unions proposal was "the straw that broke the camel's back" and "unfair competition" to marriage.

Exactly how is offering an alternative to Catholic marriage "unfair competition"? Somehow, we're in  bizarro-reverso world where no alternative at all is somehow a fairer form of competition - a kind of non-competitive form of competition. This must be one of those miracles of faith, like the Holy Trinity or ignorance of child abuse in the Irish church.

To describe civil unions as "the straw that broke the camel's back" is also immense, globe-spanning bollocks - as if gay people should be content with the generous offer from the Catholic church of the status quo, i.e. nothing at all.  Fuck that, and fuck that with red Prada slippers on.

when £1 billion sounds like a bargain: the rising cost of ID cards

The news that the bill for ID cards will likely top £5.75 billion is part of a determined spiralling of costs that started over five years ago.

When David Blunkett originally floated the plan for compulsory cards back in February 2002, former home office minister Mike O'Brien criticised the likely cost of £1 billion as "unwieldy and too expensive." In July, the BBC reported a "conservative" estimate of £700 million.

By December 2002, critics of the ID card plan were arguing that the cost would be something like £1.5 billion. They were clearly wrong, because by November 2003 the estimate was revised upwards to £3 billion, with individual cards costing between £30 and £40. in 2004, the governments own estimate put the cost of the scheme at £3.1 billion, with each card costing £30.

Conscious of rising estimates, Home Office Minister Liam Byrne told a Labour conference fringe meeting in September 2006 that the costs of the identity cards scheme could be cut "quite substantially" by making more use of existing government databases.

It's not clear what impact his background as an IT consultant had on government plans, but between October 2006 and May 2007 the cost estimate jumped from £4.91 billion to £5.55 billion. The cost of the individual card now stands at £93 (more than three times the original estimate) and may still reach £100.

So, given the current government track record of pulling figures from thin air (and hotly decrying anyone who points out that the cost is likely to rise again) expect to see the total cost climbing steadily until the day the plug is pulled on the whole scheme - which, according to a parliamentary answer in October 2006, has already cost us a minimum of £32 million. Doesn't it make you feel safe at night?

what's half a billion pounds between friends?

In case you missed it, the cost of the ID cards has risen to an estimated £5 billion: it's a rise of at least £400 million on the last estimate. You know, eventually this will add up to real money. From David Hughes in The Independent:

Home Office figures showed the costs over 10 years were estimated to be £5.31 billion from 2006 to 2016, compared with £4.91 billion in the last calculation.

A further, separate estimate said the scheme would cost £5.55 billion over  the 10 years from 2007 to 2017.

The finagling over whether the expenditure has or has not been authorised by the Treasury is a red herring, given that we've been told again and again that we're having ID cards regardless of cost ("Treasury approval needs to be given - and it will be"), or indeed anything else.

I'm glad that the Tories (along with the Lib Dems) keep kicking Labour on this one, but there's no reason why they shouldn't be making more noise. About £400 million worth of noise, perhaps.

kissing also cancerous

The BBC offers does some far more respectable reporting on the research showing a link between HPV, oral sex and throat cancer - pointing out that most HPV infections clear with little or no symptoms and only a small percentage of people who acquired high-risk strains may develop a cancer. It also points out that kissing can't be ruled out as a means of transmission.

Slightly confusingly, the report describes how the vaccine covers the most common HPV strains but then questions whether the HPV vaccine would protect against specifically oral infection. I'm confused: why wouldn't oral infection be covered? Wouldn't it rather be a question of whether the specific strain of the virus was covered, or not?

further sexy ignorance: HPV and oral sex

The sex police are really trying very hard today. Let's go straight to the headline:

Oral sex can cause throat cancer.

And we're off to the races. A less dishonest headline would read "Oral sex with someone who has HPV infection will increase the risk of getting throat cancer." Oral sex isn't the problem: with a healthy partner, it's perfectly safe.

That link between HPV and cancer isn't a surprise, given that we already know (and have known for some time) that HPV can cause cancer - most commonly in the cervix, but also in the penis. But instead we have a scare story about the dangers of oral sex, going to far as to confusedly claim "oral sex is an even bigger kille[r] than smoking or drinking" - a highly misleading, if not demonstrably false claim.

The research actually suggests that the risk of developing throat cancer is increased more by having multiple oral sex partners AND being infected with HPV than by smoking or drinking, and NOT - as you might be mistaken for thinking - that more people have died from blow-job related cancers than have ever died from causes related to smoking or drinking.

Of course, the way to avoid deaths by cancer of the throat, penis and cervix would be to invent some kind of vaccine against the virus. In fact, this kind of story would be a compelling argument for the need to immunise. Oh, if only there was some way to escape these deadly deadly blow-jobs!

What's that? That vaccine already exists? It's rather strange, then, that it doesn't get a single mention in the Mail's story.

death before sex

From the US side of the "preventing cancer will turn girls into sluts" argument over the HPV vaccine, a Texan senator is claiming that the vaccine is dangerous because it is untested. Tristero at Digby's responds:

That has to be true, right? Drug companies don't test their drugs before they're available for public use, just like the Republican Representative said, correct?

Otherwise, Bonnen would simply be a nasty, lying, woman-hating, fear-mongering fuck who is deliberately acting to guarantee that a new generation of Texas girls grows up with a high risk of contracting an easily preventable cancer.

Quite.

The objections to the HPV vaccine in the UK and overseas have provided a spectacularly ugly answer to the question "just how much do these people hate sex?" Answer: "So much so that they'd prefer to let their fear of it lead to easily avoidable deaths."

more news is good news

Some faux-outrage:

The BBC was accused of dumbing down yesterday after it revealed plans to broadcast a 60-second news summary on its main channel at 8pm.

The 'catch-up' bulletin would be shown on BBC1 at weeknights, acting as a rapid run-down on the day's events. Critics said the corporation was guilty of appealing to the 'lowest common denominator' and ignoring its remit to provide a context for important stories.

Hang on - the BBC has decided to broadcast more news during peak hours when more people are likely to be watching and this is somehow a bad thing? Bonus misogyny points for using this non-story as a vehicle for attacking a female newscaster, who now has "only 60 seconds to concentrate."

politics for mothers

Caitlin Moran's claim that mothers don't talk politics because "politics is, as currently practised, all ideology, theory, puff and dreams" instead of "practical corporeal facts" turns a stupendous blind eye to impact of supposedly theoretical decisions on real life.

While the argument that the division of labour in child-rearing might restrict the amount of time some mothers can commit to policy debate is reasonable, it's not one that Moran makes - instead opting for a version of motherly pragmatism that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Can Moran really believe that there's no relationship between policy decisions made on schools admission and school catchment areas? While knowledge of those catchment areas may be highly useful, to opt out of the debates that define those boundaries and rules in the first place is to relegate female political activity to gaming a system they have no role in determining.

Why should mothers just learn the rules of a system when they could be involved in writing those rules to make their lives easier? The idea that the short-term demands of mothering ("small, sensible, practical tasks") rules out the ability of women with children to be interested or involved in long-term plans is actually quite patronising: it's also politically self-defeating, as it ignores how the environment in which short term decisions are made are informed by broader political and social moves.

And while the details of Gordon Brown's 1997 pensions finagle (as Moran describes it) might not make the most thrilling conversation, pretending that a vast amount of money disappearing from our collective pensions won't have a practical, corporeal consequence is nonsensical - and adds to the idea that high finance is boys only work.

in doc we trust

YouGov's survey of whom the public trust to tell the truth (pdf) puts family doctors at the top of the list - and journalists for red-top tabloids at the bottom. It's a happy coincidence, given how many horribly misleading or plainly inaccurate medical scare stories have surfaced in print over the last few years.

The most reliable members of the press corp are apparently working for the BBC - rated as trustworthy by 54% - with broadsheet journalists at 43% in turn rating more than twenty points above the Daily Mail and Express.

The group which has seen the single greatest loss of public confidence between 2003 and 2007? ITV news journalists, dropping 28 points to 54% - though this still places them well above politicians of every description.

The one notable category missing from the list, though, is priests and other religious leaders. Is it a minor miracle, or do we just assume that this is a subject area where truth doesn't really apply?

independent misrepresents research to stoke "electrosmog" stories

It's one thing to make a mistake but quite another to repeat the mistake and take credit for ill-informed decisions made because of it.

Yesterday's Independent on Sunday reported that "council chiefs are rethinking plans for mobile telephone masts because of fears that their radiation may be causing bees to disappear," citing their own report from the previous weekend on research they claimed showed an adverse effect of mobile phones on hive activity.

However, as the Guardian technology blog quickly discovered, the research didn't show that at all. The study actually examined the effect of DECT (cordless home) phone base stations - not mobile phones, or mobile phone masts.

Yet the IoS continues to repeat the original inaccurate claim:

The German scientists, whose work has won two international awards, found that bees failed to return to their hives when "cordless DECT mobile phones" were placed in the masts.

The research was designed to indicate the effect mobile phone radiation and other "electrosmog" may have on human brains. But it may also provide a clue to the reasons behind "Colony Collapse Disorder", when hives suddenly empty, which has hit half of all US states and is spreading in continental Europe.

Hmm.. let's hear from one the authors of that research:

Our studies cannot indicate that electromagnetic radiation is a cause of CCD.

This - and the fact that cordless DECT mobile phones are NOT the same thing as mobile phones - would be something that Geoffrey Lean, the Indy's environment editor, would know if he'd actually spoken to the researchers. Researchers who are now apparently quite pissed that their work has been misrepresented.

You might now notice that "electrosmog" is a term invented by the Independent to string together a series of highly speculative and dubious stories. It's a collective noun for scaremongering, the kind which leads councils to make decisions on the basis of non-existent threats - and that's really not something a newspaper should congratulate itself for being responsible for.

cervical cancer vaccine: totally f*cking stupid update

Sometimes, stupid will not die:

GPs are prescribing a controversial anti-cancer vaccine which family campaigners say could promote promiscuity amongst underage girls.

Prescribing it to young women with the full consent and support of their families, shock. It's not a controversy and saying it is doesn't make it so. As the Mail itself has reported, a majority of mothers are in favour of the vaccine and the only regular objections come from the most conservative "family" groups who speak for exactly no-one.

Repeat after me: even the most tenuous non-existent risk of early sexual activity is better than death by cervical cancer.

Still, back to the stupid:

Gardasil is licensed in the UK for girls aged between nine and 26, and is more effective when administered in girls before they become sexually active.

For this reason, government experts are currently deciding whether to roll out a national vaccination programme on pre-pubescent girls.

But this has led to concern that the vaccine, which is administered in three injections over six months, will promote underage sex among girls.

It'll promote underage lesbianism? This is new development. Hey, where are the boys in this story? Wouldn't it be helpeful to mention the link between HPV and penile cancer?

Hugh McKinney of the National Family Campiagn warned the vaccine could lead some girls to assume they are protected against all sexually transmitted diseases and encourage them to engage in risky behaviour.

They'd only believe that if they listened to you, Hugh, you who seems to think his own paranoia about sexual activity is worth the avoidable deaths of others from cancer. (You know, in reading hundreds of these stories stories, I've never heard anyone ask what McKinney's definition of "risky" behaviour is supposed to be.)

From the top: there is no evidence that a vaccination programme would lead to riskier behaviour. And, even if it did, the simple cure for ignorance is education - a cure not applicable to cervical cancer.

As we've discussed in the past, some of the effects of comprehensive sex education (avowedly not what we have in the UK) can include delaying the onset the sexual activity, improving the use of contraception and reducing the total number of sexual partners.

But - as this is the day of the totally fucking stupid - the solutions that might actually address anxieties about "risky" sexual behaviour are also the ones which the same paranoid anxieties about sex forbid. Congratulations, "family" campaigners: your faux-moral outrage prevents anyone from doing anything about the things you fear.

the mirage of the faith vote?

Matthew Tempests' detailed round-up of the poor results for the smaller parties across Scotland, England and Wales in The Guardian seems to omit one cluster of minority groups, possibly because they have too few votes to register on the political radar at all.

No, not UKIP, but the faith vote parties - headed up by the Christian People's Alliance and the Scottish Christian Party, neither of whom seem have transformed a claim to speak for the faithful into electoral support - which is currently hovering around (and mainly below) 1.5% of the vote.

that other union

The Telegraph urges everyone to vote for "Tories and the Union," while managing to entirely avoid mentioning the elephant in the room of the European Union. 'Cause, that's like, just shut up, alright?

Bonus faux-modesty points for accusing the Liberal Democrats of "contemptible" political promiscuity, somehow managing to suggest that they'll support absolutely anyone in exchange for a packet of crisps and the hope of a turn in the big chair when everyone else is out of the office.

the surrendered wife movement

Just when you thought that domestic and sexual servitude was just so passe - here's the "surrendered wife" movement , as featured glowingly in the Daily Mail:

The idea of the surrendered wife comes from a book by American Laura Doyle - a former marketing copywriter whose opinions make Ma Walton look like a feminist activist.

It has spawned a whole Surrendered Wives movement which goes far beyond the wildest dreams of your average Stepford Wife. Devotees agree to relinquish all control of their husband's life, allowing him to make all the decisions, never saying 'no' to sex, and finally learning to change themselves and not their men.

The idea is that men can't change - so women are the ones who need a radical re-think in order to preserve romance in marriages.

*brain falls out of head*

Before we get to the part where we trade personal and sexual autonomy for the sake of "romance" (oh, and just how romantic that will be), note how this whole shit-basket of an idea balances on the unchallenged notion that "men can't change." It's a patronising and hackneyed stereotype passing as universal truth.

Presumably Doyle isn't arguing that men can't learn new things, or unable to pull their hands out of a fire. What she actually means is "men can't change the way they treat women," men here apparently being the standardised homogeneous group of penis-bearers who all treat women in the same way, regardless of upbringing, religion, generation etc. etc. It also ignores the idea that some men won't change the way they act in a marriage, because they're just selfish bastards. Here, women are to blame because men can't help themselves.

So it's a proposition that never stops to look at the behaviour of men (individually or collectively, for better or worse) but creates a narrative where any attempt to get a man to do something is always unjustified and pointless: it's just shrill nagging. Failing to help around the house? Forgets to collect the children from school? Don't point it out: he's genetically unable to do those things, so you should do them and then praise him so he doesn't feel bad. If you're not lucky enough to have found a man with the dishwasher empyting behavioural gene, then you're just out of luck.

Following on, the version of female behaviour that has to be adopted to please the incredible unchangeable man also goes without analysis. Instead, the surrendered wife is intensely grateful for even the smallest act of housework ("I don't do more housework - I do less, because Ali is so amazed to be thanked so nicely for every small thing he does that he has started loading the dishwasher for the first time in years"). And that gratitude should take the form of blow-jobs on demand, of course.

To describe this kind of "relationship" as uneven is the understatement of the year. Here's a thought. If you have to surrender every aspect of your own personality and body in order to please the person you're married to, maybe you shouldn't be married to that person?

p is for perjury

Matthew Parris' defence of Lord Browne's right to privacy - and criticism of the press' prurience - downplays a central fact: regardless of whether the City is still retrogressive when it comes to homosexuality or that Browne is entitled to spend his own money on whomever he pleased, you don't get to lie in court. You don't get to decide what is or is not relevant to a legal proceeding because you feel your privacy is being invaded.

But this isn't just about modesty. You also don't get to lie in court in order to smear the person whose evidence may be used against you. It's interesting that Parris' sympathies don't extend to Browne's partner - whom Browne has accused of being a drug user and alcoholic in order to discredit him.

While homophobia in the city may unfortunately be very real and the press' delight in scandal and manufactured scandal is endless, those are not legitimate reasons to commit perjury.

lying for the lord

Looks like the Scottish Christian Party might be investigated for breaking electoral law. From The Herald:

The row erupted over a letter being sent to more than one million voters in and around Glasgow, in which the Rev George Hargreaves, leader of the Scottish Christian Party, is attributed.
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He states he is "pleased to announce the Christian Democrat Party has decided not to fight the Scottish Parliamentary elections, thereby clearing the way for the Scottish Christian Party - Scotland's only Christian Bible-based political party - to offer you a single clear Christian option at the ballot box".

Except that they haven't, or at least were never standing for election in the first place. However, the Christian People's Alliance (CPA), the direct rival for the faith vote, does exist - and describes itself as "a Christian Democrat Party."

Cue confused phone-calls to the CPA by people who want to know why they've pulled out. Cue surprise and anger at the CPA, because they haven't.

A little googling reveals that there is, in fact, a small party called the Christian Democratic Party who are based in Manchester and ally themselves to the CPA. They were last active in Wales in the 2004 European elections (winning 0.7% of the popular vote) and do not ever seem to have been active in Scottish parliamentary elections.

So, honest, obscure mistake or deliberate attempt to knobble an opponent? Let the lord.. uh.. the courts decide.

diagnosis liar

While Hewitt's most recent problem with the truth is perhaps the most obvious, it's hardly the first time that reality has differed from what she's said in Parliament - such as repeating the promise of 50 new community hospitals and then sending out surrogates a few months later to pretend that no such thing happened.

moving in extremely f*cking mysterious ways

Via Mediawatchwatch, an extended profile of the Scottish Christian Party that confirms (as if somehow there was any doubt) how the SCP really, really hates the homo. I mean, three-quarters of a million hand addressed-letters with pamphlets decrying equal rights?

It's amazing what else you could do with that amount of manpower.. if you weren't paralysed by the thought of what consenting adults do in bed, or concerned that the symbol of the Welsh dragon wields a demonic influence. Maybe stepping a little further back from the incense burner would be a good idea, no?

And yes, this is fish-in-a-barrel territory, but otherwise it's an all-terror news day.

strangely selective

Is there a reason we don't refer to some groups that use violence and the threat of violence to wage "sustained campaigns of harassment and intimidation [...] seeking to achieve their objectives by creating a climate of fear" as domestic terrorists?

more interested in booty sex that you'd perhaps expect

More from the Scottish Christian Party candidate hoping to get my vote:

As parents you have little rights since clause 28 was thrown out. Your children will learn how to put a condom on before the age of 8, and be taught about the other lifestyle.

Oh, goody, more lies about sex education. I do enjoy how 'bearing false witness" doesn't seem to be a problem during elections  - and shouldn't that should be the Other Lifestyle, or even the Deadly Deadly Lifestyle?

You will not be permitted to remove them out of the class.  Please foresee where all this will end.  Medically we have and increase in HIV,  AIDS and people in need of Anal surgery because of sexual injury in this lifestyle.

While it's fun 'n' easy to blame the Others, note that the majority of people who have contracted HIV/AIDS in the last ten years have been straight rather than gay - infections acquired heterosexually have accounted for the much of the rapid rise in the numbers of new HIV diagnoses (4,049 in 2005 compared to 840 in 1996).

As ever, for gay and not-gay people alike, it's not so much the sex as the unsafe sex that's the problem. Please now make up your own joke about the "fact" about sexual injury having been pulled out of someone's bottom.

give unto me

I think I may have spotted a small flaw in this idea:

Debt-ridden Americans are turning to churches for Biblically-based advice on anything from credit card repayments to buying a second-hand car. [...] The churches often use programmes developed by other Christian organisations and distributed within religious communities or via the internet.

They tend to offer a package of advice on budgeting, household cost-cutting and debt management bolstered by a strong Scriptural element. [...]

Participants are encouraged to give as much as 10 per cent of their income to their church . More than 350,000 families have completed one church financial programme alone, each paying $80 to $90 (£40-£50) for books and CDs about the Financial Peace plan.

That there are a huge number of voluntary organisations which give financial and debt resolution advice for free - and without any religious content - hardly needs to be mentioned (excepting that The Telegraph doesn't).

the miracle of relevancy

Ruth Gledhill covers the story of the BBC's "gay mass," (or, as it turns out, prayer service) helpfully following the Daily Mail's lead to add "San Francisco is home to the renowned Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, two of whom are pictured here."

Cue a half-hearted apology:

Update: a number of posters have understandably queried why I've included the infamous Sisters here. I should have explained in the original post and apologise for not doing so. It is because, according to the Mail report, until stopped by the Archbishop of SF, they regularly staged "lewd and irreverent bingo nights" on the Holy Redeemer church premises, handing out prizes of a "sexual" nature.

The fact that the Sisters have nothing whatsoever to do with the BBC broadcast - and are no longer active on church premises, or ever led a service - doesn't seem to matter. It's still "relevant" because.. uhmm.. socially conservative Christians really hate transvestite street theatre activist nuns?