stephen green: I love cancer and hate women

You may remember Stephen Green as the man who declared that protecting girls and young women from cervical cancer through vaccination would turn them them into "tarts." He's back, with the joys of the season in his heart, to argue that:

"Anyone giving this drug to a girl is telling her, 'I think you are a slag'."

Once again, Green decides it's better to die from an avoidable cancer than be accused of being a whore by a crazy man. That the crazy man is Stephen Green appears to have escaped Green's attention.

This is - in an incredibly depressing way - the next second annual display of festive fuckwittery on the subject of HPV, when fans of cancer gather to accuse parents who want to protect their children from death by cancer (via viruses that can be contracted from a single sexual partner) are signatories to a whore's charter.

Only a total idiot (see Green, Stephen) would forget that vaccines only work if they are received before a person contracts the condition: they are a preventative measure. Therefore, a vaccine for a sexually-transmitted infection or disease must be administered before the onset of sexual activity.

For repeared posts on the virulent strain of stupidity triggered by HPV, try the soon-to-be-re-tagged archives.

changes

I'm starting a new job in the new year which will finally do more than cover my bills and rent: I'm crossing over to become a full-time researcher and academic.

The particular post means I'm going to be working longer hours and harder than ever before, but I'm actually going to be paid well (gasp) in a job that I enjoy (gasp). I've had plenty of full-time, grown-up jobs, but it feels like this is the first real one. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop; given that I'm working in education, the shoe may well come pre-dropped.

The upshot is that my blogging habits may become a little erratic in January until I can work out where they will fit in to my new schedule. Expect more late night and early morning posts rather than day-time updates, I think.

quentin letts: here's some hot gossip about this season's most popular shoes

Wow. Quentin Letts has entirely dropped the pretence of being a political sketch-writer to pen an entire article on Ruth Kelly's fashion choices , illustrated lavishly with over a dozen photographs showing her "transformation." He's finally crossed the line from tongue-in-cheek commentary to writing like a junior sub-editor for the Daily Star but with less wit and insight:

The weight has fallen off her.

Out has gone the charity shop wardrobe, and her hair, once like something off Prisoner Cell Block H, has gone all custard-coloured, fresh-shampooed, tumbly. Look out Farrah Fawcett!

Miss Kelly was sitting beside her friend Alistair Darling in the House of Commons the other day. She threw her gorgeous locks this way and that. [Phwoaar?]

It was hard to credit that here was the sometime Guardian economics writer, who graduated from that madrassa of Leftism to become an egghead at the Bank of England, and then entered Parliament as a heavily pregnant, sensibly shod intellectual in 1997.

Because it's hard to credit that accomplished, serious women are attractive? Or that attractive women are smart? Which garden variety of sexism is this? Quentin Letts: the Jeremy Clarkson of political commentary.

some of his best friends are catholic

 A good politician's answer, so free of content and raises more questions than it answers:

During a round of media broadcasts on the morning after his election to the post, he was asked by one interviewer: "Do you believe in God?"

"No," Mr Clegg answered simply, during an appearance on BBC Radio 5 Live.

He later issued a statement saying that, while he is "not an active believer", his Spanish wife Miriam is a Roman Catholic and their two young sons will be brought up in the Catholic faith.

His statement said: "I have enormous respect for people who have religious faith. I'm married to a Catholic and am committed to bringing my children up as Catholics. However, I myself am not an active believer, but the last thing I would do when talking or thinking about religion is approach it with a closed heart or a closed mind."

Not an active believer? If he doesn't believe in god, then he's no kind of believer at all. Maybe he's leaving the door open for passive belief (he doesn't actively disbelieve?) or some kind of road to election conversion. It rather sounds like someone tip-toeing back from the uncomfortable truth to argue that he can't be a proper atheist because - after all - some of his best friends are Catholic. The first answer was the better one: it had the merit of being concise and honest.

This kind of answer is a fairly direct response to the notion that people who don't privilege religious belief over any other kind of belief are somehow closed minded (an argument which has always sounded strangest coming from people whose organisations have lists of dogmatic rules to which you must adhere). However, "enormous respect" doesn't commit him to anything in particular, but comforts a religious community who want to feel their needs are going to be listened to.

It is, though, rather depressing that anyone needs to engage in this kind of lip service: you'd expect (or at least hope) any elected politician to respect their constituents equally, regardless of faith or lack of faith. Why isn't that enough?

too much truth makes the baby go blind

Some awful sub-editing over at the Telegraph leads to the headline "Archbishop says nativity 'a legend.'" Except, of course, that's not what he said.

While it would be quite exciting news if the leader of an international faith disputed one of its founding narratives, Archbishop Williams merely pointed out that a number of the details surrounding Christmas (such as the wise men) are the product of folklore and have little or no basis in scripture; he also admitted, with disarming honesty, that the timing was probably more to do with the convenient pagan winter festivals at that time of year.

Williams did not, however, dispute the actual story of the nativity, which is the virgin birth of god made man. That little detail seems to have slipped past a number of irate devout commenters who are now accusing him of being apostate and demanding that he resign, (a very merry christmas to you, too) having fallen for the Telegraph's claim that this is the "final blow" to the nativity.

(Yes, apparently the factual basis of the nativity was entirely unquestioned until now. There's still the slightly sticky problem that exists whenever someone attempts to rationalise religion: the decision to declare some parts "myth" and other parts as foundational truths looks ever so slightly arbitrary. Hey ho.)

This is - as you've surely now worked out - another glorious chapter in the Telegraph's attempt to generate a war on Christmas, now declaring defeat before anything has actually happened. In fact, their choice of headline makes the Telegraph a leading culprit in the undermining of our great cultural tradition of xmas etc. etc.

homeopath-baiting

I notice that bear-baiting has now been replaced by the spectacle of homeopaths attempting to rationalise their beliefs. It's not pretty, particularly when the badscience community starts to turn up in the comments.

Amongst the strips of flesh being verbally torn from Rustum Roy, I note:

- the invention of the word "homeophobia," a word that both makes no linguistic sense and belittles people who've suffered genuine abuse

- the attempt to use argument-by-analogy as a scientific rationale

- some confusion about the difference between carbon and diamond, leading me to think any spouse of his should check their wedding ring for coal

- misleading use of actual science dealing with solvents which are far, far more concentrated than any homeopathic remedy

- the presumption that mainstream, peer-reviewed journals would never print proof of homeopathy because of a vast conspiracy

It's possible - following the Express-reader parody identified this morning - that this is a parody of an actual article. However, it's actually the Guardian "response" column which currently appears to provide a low-fact zone, free of normal editorial standards in the name of "balance."

It helps to remember that refusing to give equal respect to all "sides" of an argument is not an immediate sign of close-mindedness - sometimes the other "side" is really, really dumb, and it's similarly stupid to pretend otherwise.

the zen masters of parody: daily express edition

Various people have speculated that the commenters lurking on certain national newspaper sites may not be entirely legitimate - not corporate ringers, but zen masters of the art of parody.

Today's evidence in support of that theory arrives via the Daily Express, who ask "should all violent video games be banned?" The commenter "Muggles" replies:

BAN FOREIGN VIOLENCE

We MUST ban all foreign violent films, TV, videogames, football fans, footballers and rugby players NOW before they do any more harm to our children.

We could keep boxing provided it was between Englishmen or women.

I rest my case.

The problem, as ever, is that it's still quite difficult to distinguish between a crazy person and a very good parody of a crazy person, but I think it's the acceptance of nationally purified violence that tips it.

So, real opinion, or parody of Express-reader opinion? YOU DECIDE!

david aaronovitch: an absence of arguments

I think that David Aaronovitch might be arguing in favour of extending detention, though he doesn't ever really get around to making a case. He pulls up Liberty for inaccuracy in their account of Spanish and Italian detention limits but doesn't actually explain why we should have longer detention in the UK.

Discovering that Italy may have more draconian measures has little - if anything at all - to do with it. I'm sure there are any number of less liberal governments to which we could compare ourselves, but that doesn't mean we want to copy them.

The closest thing we get to an argument is this:

On yesterday's Today programme Sir Michael Pitt, the author of the report on flooding, was asked if inundation was as serious a problem as terrorism. The background implication was, I believe, that the Government was putting too much emphasis upon, and effort into, fighting terror. This is a fashionable, albeit preposterous risk analysis, which if fully adopted would mean us putting every penny we had into fighting heart disease, which kills more people every minute than have died in floods since 1945.

Again, Aaronovitch doesn't bother to explain why this is necessarily preposterous: it is a pre-given opinion that terror represents the greatest imaginable threat to our culture (which is presumably why he's on the receiving end of approving links from Melanie Phillips).

To even consider that other, non-ideological threats might represent equivalent or even - in the long term - greater threats to our country and its citizens is misrepresented as a willing blindness to the danger of terrorism.

Aaronovitch seems unable to recognise that all risk is relative - that is, the threat of terrorism is not absolute and that a proportional threat must be met with a proportional response. To refuse to bend every part of our domestic policy and law to meet the threat of radicalism is not ideological blindness, but responsible government.

And he still doesn't get around to explaining why we should extend detention.

the crappy candidate you already know

There's nothing like the risk of nominating a crazy ass-hat that makes other candidates, previously derided for their unelectability and near ass-hattedness, suddenly look like statesmen.

the very picture of a modern liberal democracy

For all that's been written about the devil cult of political correctness, this week's story over the temporary decision to censor the word "faggot" demonstrates - once more - that the phantom of "PC" does not rule our lives.

For anyone playing catch-up:

1. Radio station makes decision to bleep out word "faggot" for fearing of causing offence / indirectly encouraging homophobic bullying, despite song having been broadcast unedited on same station since its release in 1987.

2. Public and media ridicule decision on grounds of artistic expression, stupidity, etc.

3. Radio station rapidly reverses decision, barely two days after the policy was introduced.

4. Everyone goes back to singing song to which they already knew the words.

Why, if it isn't the very picture of a liberal democracy. If only our elected officials were so responsive..

a quick read

With regrettable predictability, a study showing a relationship between risk of low-weight births and women who have had abortions or miscarriages - without differentiating between the two - is already being headlined as "Abortion 'increases risk' for future births."

I have institutional access to the Journal Of Epidemiology and Community Health, so I've spent ten minutes reading the paper. The authors mention - repeatedly - that a major shortfall of the data they used is that it does not differentiate between abortion and miscarriage (to its credit, the Scotsman story linked above does make this clear in the body of the article, despite their choice of headline).

The most likely connection between abortion and low birth weight, the authors speculate, is damage to the cervix from dilatation or curettage, or from post-abortion complications. That may be particularly relevant because the data was taken from the US in the period 1956-66, and does not reflect significant improvements in both clinical practice, and the development of medical (non-surgical) abortion methods using drugs like Mifepristone.

The paper concludes that practitioners should inform patients of potential risk, but also calls for further research as the findings are not conclusive. Now, what are the chances that the usual pro-life suspects are going to be as careful and measured with their words?

reforming the honours system (burning the house down before the tories get back in?)

Missing from yesterday's post on institutionalised sleaze - in a woods-for-the-trees kind of way - was the Honours system:

Gordon Brown will be asked by a powerful committee of MPs tomorrow to immediately introduce fundamental reforms for the appointment of peers following the "cash for honours" scandal that has dogged the Labour party for almost two years.

A report seen by the Guardian calls for a complete change in the appointment of peerages, a new corruption act and fresh powers for party funding watchdogs to take tougher action against parties breaking the law.

The partial list of recommendations from the report offered by the Guardian is rather embarrassing - embarrassing in the sense that we don't already have these rules:

The main recommendations in the 91-page report include:

- insisting all peers pay British taxes, ending "ad hoc" rules that allowed Tory peer Lord Laidlaw to fail to honour his pledge that he would cease to be a tax exile once he got a peerage. The change is also a coded warning to Lord Ashcroft, the Tory deputy chairman, that he should clarify publicly that he pays tax in Britain

- publication of all people recommended for peerages - so the public know who is on the list - and their merits for the job can be properly examined

- Gordon Brown and all successors as prime ministers to renounce their right to create peerages. Nor should they appoint the people who vet nominations to the House of Lords

- a new corruption law - keeping the old Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act but adding new provisions allowing MPs and peers to be prosecuted for bribery.

Given that peerages have been such a popular tool for rewarding friends of all political colours, it's hard to imagine that such fundamental reform will be easily swallowed. However, Brown may just be looking for something to simultaneously improve his image as a reformer and give a much needed bump to Labour's dismal standing in recent opinion polls.

There's also the more devious (and thus much less likely) theory that this is exactly what you'd do if you thought you were going to lose the next election: stuff the Lords with cronies and then assume the moral high ground to prevent the next inhabitant of Number 10 from taking advantage of that particular perk. What have you got to lose if you know you're going to lose?

quentin letts, fashionista

Presumably there's a point at which the job of being a parliamentary sketch writer is different from deciding whether you fancy the women on the front benches. If there is, Quentin Letts hasn't reached it yet:

First, Miss Kelly, much souped-up in the wardrobe and hygiene departments these recent weeks, was wearing a radiantly fuchsia jacket. No longer is our Ruth a model for mouldering cast- offs from War on Want. She's become a babe!

We are still, sadly, waiting for Letts' trenchant observations on the wardrobe choices and sex appeal of David Davis or even Michael Gove of the Tory shadow cabinet. Perhaps, as per Jacqui Smith, Letts would like to imagine whether Davis would look arousing in a policeman's uniform? I am certain that the Daily Mail would happily oblige with a phone poll.

nadine dorries: fake sleaze allegations dismissed

While still on the Nadine Dorries front, her attempt to trigger a sleaze investigation (discussed here as a transparently false attempt to smear her political opponents) have fallen on predictably deaf ears:

On 13th November 2007 I made a complaint to Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, regarding twelve female Labour MPs. [...] All the MPs I complained about are listed on the organisation of Emily's List website as having taken money in order to help them become selected as Labour candidates.

In order to obtain the funding you have to complete two criteria; one to support Labour values; and two, to be pro choice (abortion).

Accepting money in order to help you become an MP on the basis that you are pro-abortion in my book means you have compromised your neutrality in the voting lobby, thereby contravening page 28 of the Guide to the rules relating to the conduct of Members (as stated above).

Sir Philip Mawer has dismissed the case. I received two letters from him in the post today – letter one states:

"There is no evidence that those who have received funding from Emily's List are party to such a contractual agreement. Nor have I been presented with any evidence which suggests that the organisers of Emily's List have behaved as if those who received its funding were party to such an agreement."

Much shorter Nadine: my personal interpretation of the law had no basis in fact.

Then, having been confirmed as the pusher of a baseless smear, Dorries takes time out on the following day to label one of the women she falsely accused as a "fishwife" for daring to ask for an apology.

A class act.

nadine dorries: still not convincing

Nadine Dorries is once more attempting to dress her own views on contraception and abortion as in the best interests of women. Her opposition to access to the pill via pharmacies is less than convincing:

My response is that the idea is a bad one for two reasons; the first being that a GP should assess whether any young girl, or woman, is suitable to take the pill as there are health implications.

If there is a history of thrombosis in the family the GP may want to first assess whether or not the patient is susceptible to clotting, and do so by taking a blood sample to test for the Leiden factor. If this test comes back negative, then the patient may take the pill without adverse risk.

A pharmacist on the radio said that this was not a problem. He would ask the relevant questions to establish if there was a family history of thrombosis. If there was, he would tell the young girl that he couldn’t prescribe the pill and she would have to go to her GP first for a blood test. Really?

Do you know what I would do if I were that young girl? I would go to the next chemist and when he asked was there a family history of thrombosis, I would say no, collect my pills and be off.

Well, if we presume that all teenage girls are fool-hardy liars, then there are any number of conclusions we can jump to. The first would be that the same young girls would lie to their doctor about their family history, too. Still, once you've decided what all teenagers are doing all the time, then it becomes very easy to construct an argument:

There is also another issue in all of this. What message does this convey and just what is going on here? Where are the boys in all of this? What about their responsibility? How many 15 year old young boys are going to pressurise their very grown-up looking 14 year old girlfriends to go to the chemist for the pill? So much easier than having to sit down in front of your family GP.

While young men should indeed be involved in taking responsibility for contraception, that issue has nothing to do with making it easier for young women to protect themselves. Making sexual health easier for women does not immediately invoke the abdication of male responsibility unless you actively want it to.

If Dorries was genuinely interested in that line of argument, she'd campaign for sex education that actually talks about contraception: lecturing people on responsibility without giving them the knowledge or tools to actually behave responsibly is a waste of time.

Dorries asks deliberately unanswerable, misleading questions about teenage lives. One might as well ask how many 14 year old girls are telling their boyfriends that they'll have to wait until they're both over 16 - except asking that question doesn't automatically assume the worst possible outcome for everyone, all the time.

Finally, Dorries is once more on the opposite side of the issue to people who you'd actually expect to have an informed professional opinion: the Royal Society of Medicine has been pushing for easier access to oral contraceptives and the fpa (Family Planning Association) also supports the move.

For bonus stupidity, try this:

But Dr Trevor Stammers, of the Family Education Trust, said: "The government is desperate to be seen to be doing something about the treatment of sexual health. The difficulty of this is it's based on wishful thinking.

"If you give a 14-year-old the pill she's going to get chlamydia and gonorrhoea from the boy who says that's all she needs to stop getting pregnant."

The answer, quite obviously, is better sex education. You'd think someone from the Family Education Trust might have worked that one out.

the sleaze that dare not speak its name

Two stories that are worth putting side by side for your daily dose of cynicism. First, there's ex-PM John Major's claim that sleaze under Labour has become systemic - and then the finding that only one in ten quangos publish their accounts:

Although they account for billions of pounds of taxpayers' money, quangos – short for Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations – are under no obligation to publish information about spending by their managers, and a survey by the Liberal Democrats discovered that only about one in 10 did indeed reveal their spending figures.

Those that did not included the BBC, the Big Lottery Fund, the Health and Safety Executive, Sport England and Standards Board for England.

The underlying problem is that quangos provide a system of patronage that's proved invaluable to every government that's been elected: politicians of all colours promise to reform, but it seems to be an idle threat. Bashing quangos - and the BBC in particular - makes for good speeches, but fundamental reform would rob the political system of one of the more popular and, above all discreet, tools for rewarding friends, acquaintances and brown-envelope waving strangers.

While party funding, suspicious loans and dubious peerages form the larger (and most headline worthy) part of sleaze, quangos represent an intrenched corner - not least because well-paid seats on the boards of quangos make excellent jobs for otherwise unemployable ex-ministers and MPs.

Given that quangos first rose to prominence in the early 90s under the Tories and have seen limited reform under Labour through the Committee on Standards in Public Life - introducing genuine measures to ensure transparency and accountability will be one test of the next administration's will to actually rock the boat.

we demand better cover-ups

To illustrate the dodgy rhetoric described below - despite Newsnight stating within their report that extremist literature is a problem in some of Britain's mosques, having contributed to past reporting on that very issue, Charles Moore concludes:

The BBC chose, in effect, to side with their extreme opponents and to cover up the report, because of an obsession about a few pieces of paper.

So to challenge Policy Exchange is to indirectly side with extremists, so any further discussion should stop right now. It may even been objectively pro-terrorist.

I'm also sure that Moore's committment of Policy Exchange to a serious investigation of the allegedly flawed receipts is in no way clouded by his dismissal of the issue as "an obsession about a few pieces of paper."

It's also unclear how the BBC can be held responsible for "covering up" a report which - as Moore argues in the first sentences of his article - appeared on the front page of most national newspapers. Does this also count as ineffective use of the license fee?

what no legal action?

While we wait for the threatened "relentless" legal action from Policy Exchange - to trial or capitulation - there's Charles Moore's defence in the Telegraph from the weekend. Once again, we're given the false argument that the scale of the original media coverage of the report somehow confirms its contents. No, not at all, in the same way that the sheer numbers of copies of the Bible and the Koran do not make its contents independently true.

Moore chooses to attack Newsnight for "vanity publishing" - a curious claim to make on behalf of an organisation that commissions and publishes its own research without outside editorial input, or peer review of supposedly academic work. Moore's open admission that "Policy Exchange bases its work on evidence, and so its evidence must be sound" does not appear to stretch as far as addressing the basic questions of methodology that have been raised about the report - questions entirely separate from Newsnight's allegations.

Still, given the seemingly total absence of legal action - presumably based in an absence of anything actionable - Policy Exchange has to wage a PR battle to protect its reputation. Unfortunately for Policy Exchange, Newsnight's Richard Watson obligingly turns up in the comment section to point out Moore's misdirection:

Several readers have spotted a glaring omission in Charles Moore's article; neither Mr Moore, nor Policy Exchange, have answered the simplest of questions: based on our evidence, do they believe any of the receipts were faked? One has to wonder why. [...]

We have never argued that there is no problem with the dissemination of extremist literature in Britain. I have broadcast many reports on this subject for Newsnight. But if some researchers have fabricated even a minority of receipts then what reliance should the public place on the testimony of the research team? What is to be trusted and what is not if this is the case? What about any mosques which could have been named unfairly? Policy Exchange, and Mr Moore, seem dismissive of these points. We do not agree.

The particular rhetorical move pushed by Moore and Policy Exchange is one of the most persistently banal: to challenge the findings of a particular report into extremist literature is not - absolutely not - the same thing as denying the existence of extremist literature.

To both recognise the problem of such literature and question a body of research purporting to illustrate it is not hypocritical - it is necessary and ethical. It's rather more necessary when the authors of such research are laying claim to comprehensive, academic standards of research. Similarly, the fact that a piece of research appears to support the findings of other research is not de facto proof that that particular piece of research is sound. It's a shoddy piece of rhetoric that provides cover for a failure to actually enter into analysis - which, again, is one of the purposes of peer review.

If you claim to be the publishers of an academic work, try not to look surprised when people attempt to hold you to that standard.

christmas now not under attack (and we have always been at war with eurasia)

Remember, traditional Christmas is still under attack.. or not:

Britain's cathedrals are laying on dozens of extra services to cope with large congregations this Christmas following record attendance levels last year, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Official figures obtained by this newspaper show the numbers packing the pews on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day last year rose by 7.5 per cent compared with 2005. The figure has risen by 37 per cent since the Millennium and many cathedrals face turning hundreds of people away from their carol services and midnight masses.

The phenomenon has astonished Church leaders accustomed to declining congregations, especially as parish churches also saw a rise in Christmas attendance of four per cent last year.

Would this be the Telegraph admitting that its own frantic coverage of an entire season about to be "swept away" by secular fervour was total bollocks? I do hope so: such a shame they make no mention of it.

studies in advanced ethics (daily mail edition)

Victims of sex trafficking - women falsely imprisoned and repeatedly raped for profit within the UK - will receive compensation for pain and trauma. The warm-hearted response of the Daily Mail's comment section?

Another Labour government giveaway to foreign people, where are our freebies?

- John, Tendring, England

And that's not cherry-picked.

Admidst all the condemnation of foreigners, it's funny that no-one manages to mention the men who are prepared to pay for sex - and who make the industry profitable in the first place.

the war on christma.. sorry, the war on masculinity

It's the weeked, but this is too stupid to pass by:

For every great woman there have been 100 - even 1,000 - great men in the same field.

This is, of course, a contentious thesis, but a new book by anthropologist Desmond Morris attempts not only to explain why this is so, but also to contest that those reports of the death of masculinity (trumpeted by so many feminist thinkers) have almost certainly been exaggerated.

Pushing awful social historicism aside, no: not at all. The trumpeting of the "death of masculinity"does not appear in the work of "many feminist thinkers." That's just untrue, a lie, an error of the editing process, a sign of gross ignorance: you choose.

The only people who have seriously pushed the "death of masculinity" have been self-appointed masculinists with books to sell - notably Harvey Mansfield, whose definitions of masculinity came from the world of fiction, and consisted of a series of non gender-specific character traits.

Mansfield was a favourite of the Daily Mail, who allowed him to write his own advertorial - see Harvard professor talks cock. He wasn't very convincing and tended to argue things like this:

"To resist rape a woman needs more than martial arts and more than the police; she needs a certain ladylike modesty enabling her to take offense at unwanted encroachment."

What a charmer. It comes as no suprise then that "the death of masculinity has been exaggerated," given that it hadn't happened in the first place, was initially created to sell books and then happily repeated on the pages of the tabloids.

All of which leads to this entirely hilarious moment of praise for Morris:

But there is one issue for which Morris desrves credit: the demolition of the truly asinine idea that the male has had his day and is about to become extinct. As he says, where are all the men going to go? How will humans manage to reproduce without them? Sperm is still needed to fertilise eggs.

And although cloning has been suggested to create an all-female, all-lesbian humanity, the fact is that no one has yet cloned a human and even when they do, it will remain a difficult and expensive procedure and will never supplant the traditional fertilisation process.

It's with some happiness that I can report that this ridiculous, "asinine" warning was first made by... Melanie Phillips, on the pages of the Daily Mail. Hurray!

Who'd have thought there'd be more than one self-generated story of cultural panic, using the same methods, from the same newspapers?

free advice

Policy Exchange is now "taking legal advice" on the matter of BBC Newsnight's questions about their research: it may have been better to take that step before threatening to pursue the matter "relentlessly, to trial or capitulation."

Had they done so, they'd look a little less like bullies who have had their bluff called. Admittedly, that threat was made before the exact wording of the allegations was revealed, but the seemingly careful way in which Newsnight constrained its challenges to specific pieces of evidence and specific questions of methodology may have blunted that threat.

Handled properly, Policy Exchange might win the PR battle - but rather more stringent standards apply in court. Time will tell, no?

and this is what journalism looks like: research standards and policy exchange (updated)

I watched the Newsnight report raising doubts about the quality of Policy Exchange's research - and the confrontational interview following it where the head of research defended their study into extremist literature by arguing - in part - that it got a lot of press coverage. Sorry, no.

Yardage of coverage has nothing to do with the quality of the journalism, particularly when the pack instinct of the British media kicks in. To echo Garry at BSaSC:

Unlike almost all of the rest of the British media which reported the P.E. headline grabber unquestioningly, Newsnight actually investigated the veracity of what they were being asked to report. Like, you know, journalists.

The willingness of other news outlets to accept a report on face value is not proof of malevolence or cowardice on the part of the one organisation that actually chooses to read what they've been sent.

Despite the bluster directed at the BBC for being uniquely awkward, this isn't the first time that serious questions have been raised about methodology - Garry points to the series of mild and polite posts written by Dr Marranci of the University of Aberdeen which ask very simple, clean questions about the research process, which the author of the report (turning up in the comments) chose to ignore.

The speed with which Policy Exchange has jumped to threats of legal action in response to the specific questions raised in the Newsnight report is not encouraging. On the fact of it, it resembles an attempt to silence criticism, rather than address it - particularly as an explicit threat to prosecute was made ahead of the broadcast. The Policy Exchange board apparently met yesterday to discuss such action: nothing has been announced yet, and it's difficult to work out exactly which statements could be actionable.

The appeal that the report represents a "greater truth" about elements of extremism in British Islamicism is also dishonest - given that this piece of research was presented as firm academic proof, rather than a figurative description. The claims being made were assumed to be compelling entirely because they were presented as having an indisputable factual basis, of this piece of research being a uniquely detailed national study.

To examine method in the face of such claims is not irrelevant: with academic research, it is often the entire game. That the Policy Exchange both commissioned and published the research themselves without independent review does not strengthen the claim to academic veracity - as a working academic, self-publication would do little or nothing for my employment prospects or reputation.

If you want to make strong claims under the title of academic research, then you have to put up with people strongly examining your methods and results. That's what makes it academic research. In short, any attempt to sue will most likely result in further analysis of the kind that has seeming caused Policy Exchange so much discomfort.

Update: the most recent comment from Policy Exchange announces that they are "in legal consultations about action in this matter" - a marked retreat from the pre-broadcast threat that they would pursue the matter "relentlessly, to trial or capitulation."

Afterthought: technically, they didn't say who would capitulate..

6 out of 71, must do better

As mentioned in comments below - and reported by various papers this morning - plans to extend to detention have been rejected by both the Home Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. One commonly repeated fact has been that Jacqui Smith herself admitted that only six of the 71 responses to the Government's proposals on going beyond 28 days were supportive.

Asked about the nature of objections, Smith also committed to publishing all 71 responses: "Members will be able to read them for themselves and find out." In the meantime, we have the Home Office's summary of the responses from the public consultation process (pdf), which made it clear that "the majority of the responses we received did not support an outright extension to the current 28 day limit." Any support was given on the condition that there would be additional Parliamentary or judicial oversight.

The final page of the summary gives a partial list of the responses - 35 from organisations, and a further 36 from individuals. It will be interesting to see exactly who argued in favour, and the arguments that they found so compelling. While technically accurate, the statement that the majority of responses did not support extension may prove to be an enormous understatement, given the strength with which many groups apparently actively lobbied against the plans.

press to public: would it be okay if we treated you like morons?

It's so nice that the media is able to step into election campaigns and decide - regardless of actual merit - which candidates should be dismissed :

Remember "the Scream" by Howard Dean? Well, in today's debate in Johnston, Iowa it was "the Cackle". In the press debate room there was an eruption of mirth and disbelief from reporters as a lapel microphone picked up Hillary Clinton's belly laugh when her rival Barack Obama was put on the spot. It'll be up on YouTube very soon. [...]

"What happened with the Scream was it confirmed people's fears that Dean was too hot," said Trippi. "I don't know whether the Cackle was her just laughing at a joke or something else…it doesn't matter whether she was innocent or not, she is just feeding into perceptions after the past few weeks."

It doesn't matter whether she was innocent or not.. but we're going to report it and talk about it anyway. It's hard to imagine how the reporting of a major process in politics could be any more vapid or meaningless - and the defence that other people in the media are talking about this non-issue is not a defence. That's the definition of a circle-jerk, an admission that the story has no relevance beyond the echo chamber of punditry.

At the very, very best, this is the mindless repetition of opposition spin that says nothing about her - or anyone else's - suitability for office. At least with discussion of Rudy Guiliani's laughter there was an actual underlying story: a man laughing to cover his failure to respond to questions surrounding his business interests and use of city resources to coddle his then mistress. With that story, you might be able to cling to some journalistic integrity by reporting fact instead of spin.

And this story is one of the Telegraph's Editor's Choices of the day. And we have a whole year of election coverage ahead of us. Someone, kill me now?

lord falconer joins government critics over extension of terror detention limit

Another former Lord Chancellor - Lord Falconer - joins the ranks of senior lawyers who are not convinced by the government's case for extending the detention of terror suspects:

Leaked emails show Falconer stating that the extension should be triggered only "if the major incident made it impossible for the police and Crown Prosecution Service to deal with the number of cases with which they are confronted within the 28-day period".

Friends of Falconer confirmed the authenticity of the emails and said he did not believe the government had made a coherent case, and that it would not be justifiable to extend detention beyond 28 days simply because further time was needed to investigate an individual suspect in a complex case.

He is also opposed to the idea, put forward by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, last week, that parliament should be asked to vote on whether it was right for the home secretary to detain a specific individual beyond 28 days. He believes MPs should only endorse the principle of an extension, and not vote on an individual case.

Translation: there's not a single part of the government's plans as they stand which are worth supporting.

As I speculated yesterday, we're fast approaching a point at which "compromise" over the proposals will look like little more than political expediency: acceptance of bad proposals instead of very bad proposals because there's nothing else on offer.

Unlike the first deabte over extension to 90 days, Gordon Brown has been careful to limit his exposure; while remaining strongly in favour of extension (and not above strong-arming ministers back into line), he's made few of the extremely public and earnest statements that characterised Blair's approach.

While Blair took the role of martyr - that it's better to do what you believe is best, even if you lose - Brown has no desire to be crucified. However, absent that narrative - where Labour rebels were characterised as foolishly blind to the true dangers of terrorism - backbenchers have less to fear from the threat of public disapproval.

Finally, as was pointed out a few weeks ago, the major UK national newspapers either oppose or have shown no noticeable editorial support for extension. Even the Daily Mail dedicated an editorial to the weakness of the government's position.

It's still certainly possible that the government will rally loyal backbenchers and scrape through Parliament - but at the cost of creating unworkable, unpopular law (which will then come back to repeatedly haunt them) while strengthening the image of the government as illiberal and unresponsive to criticism. It's bad politics, on every front.

the law is an ass

Today's must-read - Mark Thomas on his attempt to get Gordon Brown into court for an illegal protest , courtesy of the ludicrous anti-protest provisions of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act:

In the past 18 months I have legally demonstrated in every corner of the area this law covers, from Hungerford Bridge (demanding more trolls) to the Mall (demanding human rights in Saudi Arabia). The definition of what constitutes a protest is such that I had to apply for permission to wear a red nose in Parliament Square on Red Nose Day. Not to do so would have risked arrest. Last month I had to get police approval to hold a banner saying, "Support the Poppy Appeal".

If the wearing of a brightly coloured proboscis constitutes a protest, then the unveiling of Nelson Mandela's statue must do so too. After all, it celebrated the collapse of apartheid (a political cause), honoured a man who organised the armed struggle in South Africa (definitely political and quite possibly glorifying terrorism), and pledged to fight poverty.

So, being civic-minded, I wrote to the police asking if I needed permission for a gathering at the statue. My event had speeches - in fact, they were extracts from the original speeches made on the day by Mr Brown and Mr Mandela. Yes, the police informed me, I did need permission to demonstrate - which I duly applied for and received. Unfortunately for the prime minister, it seems no one bothered to get police approval at the event he spoke at.

While it might sound ridiculous to attempt to prosecute a sitting prime-minister for this offence, it's really only possible because the law itself is an ass. Anything that potentially criminalises the choice of icing on a cake at a picnic deserves to be tested to destruction.

For further entertaining abuse of anti-protest laws, also see the Anti-Christmas Carol Service, organised by Manic of Bloggerheads.

extending detention limits: the mirage of compromise

A cursory check of the people who are technically part of the government and believe that the case for extending detention has not been made produces this list:

- the current Attorney General, Baroness Scotland of Asthal (according to The Times)
- the past Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith
- the Solicitor General, Vera Baird (again, according to The Times)
- the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald
- the Security Minister, Lord West (though only until someone reminded him otherwise)

The interesting thing about this little list is that the claim of "political opportunism" currently being thrown at the Tories doesn't apply. This is primarily a list of people who make a career out of the successful and just prosecution of the law (excluding Lord West) and they're simply not convinced that extending detention would aid that task.

The only reason that they have been ignored - and the reason that Smith has reserved her fury for David Davis as "a man that has shown no interest in seeking a political agreement" - is that they have little or no impact on the passage of laws through Parliament. Smith also doesn't dare attack her own party's back-benchers, for fear of pushing potential rebels further away from the party line. In other words, Smith is boxed into making her own opportunistic argument: attacking the Tories for being weak on terror without actually addressing the content of their objections.

Failure to seek political agreement isn't - in itself - a horrendous flaw. If something is a manifestly, obviously, screamingly bad policy, then accepting a moderate version of that policy is still a bad idea. It might be less of a bad idea than the original idea, but it's still not good governance. While it might be good politics to seek compromise, there's a point at which ethics and common sense give you little choice other than to refuse even a watered down version of a terrible law.

casting call: MPs wanted, must be able to feign concern

Philip Johnston at The Telegraph covers the various objections to extending detention uncovered in yesterday's select committee hearing - leading with the recognition that:

The Government is proposing a maximum of 42 days but parliament would have to give its approval within 30 days of the extension being ordered. Miss Smith acknowledged that this could mean MPs being asked to endorse the action after a suspect - who can now be held for up to 28 days - had already been detained for the full period.

The suspicion that any system of "Parliamentary safeguard" would most likely be retroactive has become a major talking point - not least because MPs are realising that they will be saddled with the responsibility for ensuring fair treatment without any of the powers to actually fulfill that role.

It's more than a "charade" or a "cosmetic exercise" - it's a piece of fully fledged theatre designed to falsely reassure the public in which the government was hoping MPs would take a leading role. It's far from a strategy which will bring rebel MPs back into the Labour fold - and more likely to drive them away.

Given that each day's news appears to add another few names of highly placed government officials who do not support an extension of the detention period - now apparently including Sir Ken Macdonald, the director of public prosecutions - would it not be easier to print the much shorter list of those who actually support the idea?

peter hitchens: my rejection of sex education is proof of something

Before removing the splinter of ignorance from the eye of another, remember to remove the forest of red-wood trees from your own. Exhibit one:

Last Tuesday the once-great newspaper The Times printed as its front-page lead story a claim that 'research' showed that schools were failing to teach children enough about sex. You might have thought that this would be a reputable, impartial poll conducted by a serious body.

Not exactly. The survey's sponsors are something called the 'UK Youth Parliament', which is partly taxpayer-funded and in the grip of every fashionable received opinion you care to name. [...] The questionnaire itself reveals the biased aim of the exercise, saying: 'The results will be used to help us plan the rest of our campaign to improve and promote good sex and relationship education in schools.

As I have pointed out here before, under-age pregnancy, abortion and sexual diseases have actually increased as immoral sex education in this country has spread. We could do with some serious research on the connection between the two – and some serious newspaper coverage, too.

The absence of research to support such a connection is rather due to research showing the opposite: comprehensive, effective sex education increases the age at which people first have sex, reduces the number of sexual partners and increases the rate of protected sex. The lack of "serious newspaper coverage" on the theory that sex education causes disease and abortion is due to the fact that no-one seriously believes it to be true.

There is - perhaps predictably - a body of research showing that young people are not getting the information they need about sex from school, or from their parents. Hitchens' attempt to smear the UK Youth Parliament (on the grounds that they have opinions he doesn't like ignores) ignores a growing mound of evidence that shows that young people are staggeringly ignorant about contraception and STIs, dangerously misinformed about AIDS and - as the recent Offsted report in sex education showed - forced to turn to magazines for information they can't get anywhere else. All of the above suggests that the appeal for better sex education is genuine, and urgent.

I've written - repeatedly - about the stellar ignorance about the actual nature of sex education amongst some of our pundits, many of whom begin from the assumption that any sex education whatsoever, in any form, is automatically bad. Hitchens demonstrates quite nicely the ability of pundits to accuse others of bias while maintaining that their own attitudes to sex are as pure as the fallen snow. He is, after all, the man who dismissed sex education as " talking dirty."

melanie phillips: these unreliable sources prove my point

Melanie Phillips provides her version of a convincing argument:

On this blog on December 5, I floated the theory that the US had done a deal with both Iran and Saudi Arabia to produce calm in Iraq in return for a promise not to bomb Iran and to serve Israel to them on a plate. Now Debkafile -- whose bulletins, based on intelligence sources, are not reliable but often contain more than a germ of truth -- is reporting a grander version of the same theory. [...] True? It sounds horribly as if it may be.

So that's a wildly speculative theory of an international conspiracy, supported by even more speculative version of the same theory provided by a source whom Phillips' herself describes as unreliable (which in itself is a pretty high bar).

And this level of argument is apparently more trustworthy than a report produced by thirteen intelligence agencies, which Phillips alleges is the product of either conspiracy or incompetence (even though previous NIEs - produced with primarily the same methods - were completely trustworthy and provided a concrete rationale for invading Iraq).

I hope that's clear: any evidence of confusion is clearly the work of a hidden cabal attempting to undermine Melanie Phillips from within.

scenes in a committee room

More from the select committee hearing on extending terror suspect detention:

- the process to examine whether someone should be held in detention for 42 days could, in practice, take longer than 42 days to complete.

- a zen moment of accountability, where the plans for Parliamentary debate over an extended detention would have to take place without MPs being able to debate on all the facts due to security concerns.

- parliamentary debate would apparently happen in a parallel time-line, during an investigation but not during an investigation to as to ensure fair treatment and the best chance of prosecution (possibly on a parallel Earth).

- the privy council report on intercept evidence (arguably the most important and unmentioned sticking point) is still being written.

- Smith explains that she has "taken views on board" during the consultation process, but not in any way that actually changes what she thinks. Other opinions have been "folded in," like butterflies in a cement mixer.

And it's over.

why 42 days?

Jacqui Smith's case for a 42 day detention limit remains less than convincing. The argument that on six occasions people have been detained beyond 14 days since the pre-detention limit was extended to 28 days is not support for a longer detention period. To the contrary, it suggests that the current limits are proportional and - on the limited occasions they have even been needed - have fulfilled their purpose.

It also cannot be used to as simple evidence that the government was right to ask for an extension two years ago, and by implication is right to do so again - as at that time the government wanted 90 days. If those cases prove anything, it's that the government may have been correct in principal to ask for an extension but completely overstated its case - a situation being repeated again today. Following the liveblog, it looks as though Smith's inability to explain away the drop from 90 days (to less than half that period) is going to be major problem for the coherence of her case.

ordinary people to blame: festive edition

There seems to be some prevailing belief in a sector of the British press that it's a surprise - no, a shock - that all families don't sit around eating roast chestnuts, toasting the queen and throwing shiny six-pences to orphans on Christmas morning. As a rule, the more your mental picture resembles a Dickensian Christmas card, the less accurate it is likely to be.

As I suggested yesterday, change in the way we celebrate Christmas is mainly due to ordinary people making their own decisions and starting their own traditions - and not proof of a secular end-times where the dark dogs of science and "political correctness" swallow the sun and destroy our way of life.

jacqui smith liveblog

For fans of mid-weight wrestling, the Guardian has a live-blog this morning of Jacqui Smith's questioning by the home affairs select committee over plans to extend detention of terror suspects.

sourpuss

Best disclaimer of the day, at the foot of the Mail's double-feature on a lemon-based weight loss scheme:

Note: If you suffer from heartburn, kidney or gall-bladder problems, or have a citrus allergy, consult your GP before going on this diet.

Quite. My other favourite bit is the promise - after several hundred words extolling the power of lemons - that you will lose some weight and feel healthier if you adopt "an exercise regime involving 30 minutes of aerobic activity five or six days a week." No, really?

Such a shame that has nothing to do with the commitment to "at least one meal a day [that] includes lemon - either a squirt of juice or some peel."

richard littlejohn: I am wistful for an era that didn't exist

Richard Littlejohn's most recent column - complaining that the humble engine-driver town councillors of the past have been replaced by the "self-regarding pious Guardianistas" of the present - demonstrates a splendid willingness to ignore reality and grossly oversimplify. One day in the future (when we're assessing the state of British journalism in this period) we may look back at his works and vomit a little bit into our mouths.

While it's fun (and from Littlejohn's comfortable perch, profitable) to blame people who read the Guardian for everything that's wrong with local government, there's the small problem of reality: the overwhelming majority of councillors and town councils are Conservative, and that percentage has been growing for a considerable number of years. As of 2007, for example, the Tories have 9448 councillors to Labour's 5471 - and control the greater proportion of councils.

While members of the Tory party can and do read the Guardian from time to time, local government isn't the hot-bed of lefty-liberalism that Littlejohn imagines while day-dreaming of steam engines. There are indeed horrible problems with some areas of local government, but - as has become almost endearingly predictable - Littlejohn charges off in the wrong direction in search of his favourite scapegoats.

borked from puberty

Oh, good, another theory of teh homo - where the basic principle seems to be "you're gay because something went wrong with you when you were growing up." As ever, simply charming:

Anthropologist Desmond Morris argues that the sexes draw apart from the age of five to their early teens when they go through an "intensive educational period." Boys and girls tend to only have close relationships with those of their own gender.

When they become teenagers they are flooded with hormones and become interested in the opposite sex. But, Morris says, homosexual boys get stuck in the stand-off phase and cannot make the switch. "They cannot understand why young boys, who were playing sex games with them only a few months before, are now only interested in chasing girls," he said.

In his study, The Naked Man: A study of the Male Body, Morris suggests gay men may have had unpleasant experiences with girls or become fixated with other boys as sexual companions in the stand-off phase.

When considering this theory, you're probably going to want to ignore a) all the examples of homosexuality in every corner of the animal world, b) all that evidence of a complex relationship between genes and environment and c) those damned invisible bisexuals. Offer does not include lesbianism.

The comment section of the Mail is somewhat predictably beginning to throb with people happily declaring that "this puts to bed the myth that homosexuals are born that way," even though the Mail's version of Morris' theory is at best speculative.

I'm also wondering what to do with the earlier popular theory that homosexuality was due to overly close bonds with women and mother figures which suffocated masculine development. Well, at least someone is off the hook. That, incidentally, is the problem with the spin the Mail brings to this kind of story: it's not about an interest in origins, but about looking for someone to blame.

needs more bite

Siobhain Butterworth offers a decent round-up of the Guardian's recent tussles with homeopathy, but seems to fall into unenviable role of attempting to adjudicate without passing judgement. Part of the problem is that "fairness" requires the defence of the palpably ridiculous:

"I've read the Guardian for 30 years and need assurance," says a homeopath, responding to the article, who thinks more should be done to counter what he calls "scientific fundamentalism". Let's sidestep the question of whether there is anything wrong with scientific fundamentalism and look at what the Guardian has published about homeopathy over the last 12 months.

That's one hell of an issue to side-step. When homeopaths are offering treatments for Malaria and AIDS, there's no polite way to point out that this is health endangering fraud: supposed "fundamentalism" doesn't come into it. Actual anti-malarials - having an effect greater than placebo - work whether you believe or don't, and that's not an incidental issue that can be put to one side.

While it's "fair" for Butterworth to report the complaints of homeopaths, it wouldn't hurt for her - or someone else - to point out that their claims of inaccuracy in reporting are a huge red-herring. Failing to mention the exact process of shaking a remedy to "potentise" it does not make that process anything other than theatre. Yes, an inaccurate or partial account of your nonsense was given but it is still nonsense.

For a reader's editor to have to consider seriously the protest that a newspaper is too hopelessly wedded to actual fact is not a good sign. At the very least, the notion of "fairness" in allowing each "side" to speak needs to be speedily divorced from the validity of what is being said: the truth of where the overwhelming consensus of human knowledge rests and the abject paucity of evidence for homeopathy.

unhelpfully selective defences

New rule: if you discover that people who happen to be Jewish are doing something a bit suspicious with money in politics, then writing about it may be anti-semetic and special experts must be invited onto the Today programme. When Muslims do the same thing, it's just news.

to clarify: jesus doesn't care that there's no tinsel at the job centre

The Times chooses to prove that it can also be very serious about being very stupid:

Examples of the erosion of the traditional Christmas festival are becoming increasingly easy to find. Last year Tower Hamlets council in east London banned decorations at JobCentres. Cards wish "holiday greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas". One school even banned Mary being called the Virgin Mary.

Ah, no, Examples of newspapers being willing to fixate on incredibly small, local decisions to claim a national trend have become increasingly easy to find. Once more: none of that has a) anything to do with people actually celebrate Christmas in their families and homes or b) anything to do with the general picture of the country as a whole. It's an incredible stretch to imagine that the hallmark of a "traditional Christmas festival" is the choice of decorations in your local government office, as opposed to - you know - something a bit Jesus-related.

Trevor Phillips upcoming "attack" on the usual anonymous (and primarily non-existent) "politically-correct critics" of Christmas is nonsensical: it's an exercise in pandering to people who don't have the sense to recognise that Christmas - and every other national holiday - is determined by how people actually celebrate it, and not by angst-ridden headlines.

festive dispatches from the war on stupid

A fresh supply of total festive balls arrives:

Christmas is in danger of being swept aside by a tide of political correctness, leading political figures have warned.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said banning Nativity plays and replacing "Merry Christmas" signs with "Season's greetings" risked offending people from other faiths by patronising them. He attacked the attitude of councils that refuse to celebrate Christmas as "nonsense" and expressed concern at the way traditions are being eroded in schools.

Except, of course, that no-one has "banned" Nativity plays, and that people are completely free to celebrate this coming holiday as they see fit - which includes going to church, celebrating it without any religious content, or completely ignoring it.

The only significant change has been the willingness of politicians to pretend that they have "values" by springing to the defence of something that isn't under attack. I'm sure Cameron would give a speech on the dangers of Christmas crackers if someone told him there was a vote in it. Every other change is to do with ordinary people making ordinary choices about how to lead their lives - and not the devious workings of a secular cabal who hate infant deities.

The thread-bare quality of the supposed controversy is illustrated quite neatly by the Telegraph's need to dredge up stories from nearly a decade ago to claim that the season is being eroded:

Birmingham City Council became notorious for using the term "Winterval" in 1998 to cover all religious festivities, and now almost half of all primary schools in the city are not staging a Nativity play.

A survey found just one in 10 Christmas cards sold in Britain contained religious messages or imagery.

The conservative press is never, ever going to forgive Birmingham City Council for "Winterval": we'll still be hearing about in 2018, even though it only existed for two years as part of a scheme to drive business into Birmingham's newly rejuvenated town centre. Winterval doesn't exist anymore, hasn't since 2000 and wasn't repeated anywhere else: it has absolutely nothing to do with a "politically correct" attack on Christmas, mainly because the attack doesn't exist.

The christmas card "survey" is a story recycled from the last year's Telegraph sponsored stupidity - a non-story aided and abetted by the usual suspects on the religious right which suggested (once more) that the main reason for change is ordinary people, who prefer funny cards with pictures of penguins dressed as santa rather than pictures of the baby Jesus reminding you of your sins.

In short, the idea that Christmas - a holiday observed by the vast majority, when churches see their highest yearly attendance - is about to be "swept away" is hyperbole of the most transparent order, and the attempt to induce panic over a "war on Christmas" is a feeble copy of the American right-wing campaign with the same nonsensical agenda. To echo the Telegraph's new campaign, a moment to feel proud to be British.

melanie phillips: brand new conspiracy theories for 2008

Melanie Phillips' rejection of the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has been a wonder to behold, as she extends her already extensive collection of conspiracy theories to include an anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-freedom cabal within the state department itself (!!!??!!). This is admittedly slightly more rational than her claim of the international conspiracy to conceal the existence of weapons of mass destruction (a theory based on exactly one source) but it's still orbiting the earth. And at least with the WMD theory, she closed by admitting "Of course we don't know whether any of this is true."

One of the readily obvious reasons why the statements made by some public figures about the NIE in the past don't match the actual text is that - for a very long time - it was assumed that it wouldn't be published.

You might be suprised that some politicians aren't entirely honest about the contents of documents which they think will never enter the public domain; the issue of when the Whitehouse knew of the contents of the NIE (while continuing to push the threat of an imminently nuclear Iran) is still unravelling.

To keep it short, though, I'll leave you with some of the arch-liberal support for the NIE that has Phillips climbing the walls:

I don’t have any reason to question the — what the community has produced, with respect to the NIE on Iran. Now, there are things they don’t know. There are always — there’s always the possibility that the circumstances will change. But I think they’ve done the best job they can with the intelligence that’s available to give us their best judgment on those issues.

That was, of course, the leading insurgent-from-within, Dick Cheney.

(Incidentally, Phillips' attempt to claim that the NIE was written three disreputable state department officials is manifestly false: the NIE is the product of all sixteen intelligence agencies. Who'd have thought it wasn't just a couple of guys in a room?)

web justice

Tee hee - this post here is currently the second hit for Peter Hitchens on google.co.uk . A short-lived moment of entertainment, no doubt.

norman wells: badly informed or deliberately misleading

Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust appears in today's Guardian to prove he's either badly informed or a deliberate fraud when it comes to sex education.

In particular, Wells' repeats the misleading claim that "not a single primary care trust was able to cite any evidence that the confidential provision of the morning-after pill in pharmacies has contributed to a reduction in under-16 conception rates." You might notice that he's shifted from claiming that NHS trusts did not cite evidence to the claim that NHS trusts could not cite evidence, which is an entirely different claim and equally intellectually dishonest.

Wells' objection - at best - seems to be that no-one answered (possibly for not having been asked) his specific question. As Wells must know, the NHS has very good reasons to think both that the provision of confidential information AND access to the morning-after pill are good ideas.

First, the fpa (formerly the Family Planning Association) have long maintained that confidentiality is a primary factor in whether young people seek help or advice on the issue of sexual health - and they have very good reasons for believing that. Secondly, there are very recent studies such as that from the Guttmacher Institute (the contents of which Wells chose to ignore) which confirm, unsuprisingly, that access to contraception reduces conception rates.

Wells' faux-ignorance over what sex education "taught well" might mean is further proof that he should be ignored. A limited acquaintance with successful sex education programmes would tell him that schemes that are "taught well" are taught by specifically trained teachers, using comprehensive (and where necessary explicit) information about sex, disease and contraception that is age appropriate. The fact that we've chosen not to enforce these methods in the UK is not proof that they do not exist, and have not been extremely successful elsewhere.

Having berated Polly Toynbee for failing to support her claims with evidence, Wells once more proves himself unwilling to provide any evidence to support any of his own. It's a combination of baseless assertion and lies:

Separating sex from marriage has not only led to high rates of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and abortions, but is also a major contributory factor in divorce and family breakdown, with all the associated human misery and adverse social consequences. Young people need to hear that there is a better way.

The notion that sex education programmes don't talk about the importance of stable relationships is, once more, grossly misleading. A major feature of the Scottish approach to sex education, for example, is an emphasis on stable family life.

Wells chooses to dismiss this approach because it doesn't exclusively emphasise the primacy of marriage - which is the only circumstance in which he personally thinks sex is acceptable. As I suggested in the opening, Norman Wells is either grossly misinformed, or deliberately trying to misinform so to advance his own particular sexual morality code. The latter seems more and more likely everytime he opens his mouth.

the refusal to refer

Would you want a priest or a doctor in charge of your health-care?

A Catholic hospital is in turmoil after two directors resigned, refusing to accept tighter ethical codes on abortions, contraception and sex-change operations. Dr Martin Scurr and Lord Fitzalan-Howard voted against implementing new guidelines at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in north London, according to the Catholic newspaper the Tablet, and resigned in protest when the board accepted the code issued earlier this year by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Catholic church in England and Wales and patron of the 150-year-old medical institution.

It sounds glib, but the issue essentially comes down to Cardinal O'Connor arguing that denying certain medical procedures is actually in our best interests, despite the best medical advice to the contrary. And he says so, in his own words:

Writing to Bridgeman, the cardinal said: "There must be clarity that the hospital, being a Catholic hospital with a distinct vision of what is truly in the interests of human persons, cannot offer its patients, non-Catholic or Catholic, the whole range of services routinely accepted by many in modern secular society as being in a patient's best interest."

I suppose we can be grateful that the Cardinal's seemingly arbitrary list doesn't ban blood transfusions, antibiotics or any other post-medieval medical advance. It must be lovely to be able to decide what is "truly in the interest of human persons" (a phrase designed to include everything from OAPs to hours-old fertilised eggs) without having to consider any actual boring medical evidence, though that might be confusing clarity of thought with absence of thought.

This also isn't merely about the refusal to perform certain procedures, like abortion: it's about the refusal to even refer someone to another hospital or doctor who would be willing to help, because of the supposed indirect sin of having enabled someone to make their own decisions that you happen to disagree with.

 And - other than creating an ethical minefield created for doctors and patients - why is this a problem? The hospital is funded by the NHS.

public consultation on Serious Organised Crime and Police Act

For anyone who has missed the announcement, the government has opened a public consultation about repealing the anti-protest provisions of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act has been zealously enforced to prevent any form of protest in a huge area surrounding Parliament, Whitehall and various other government buildings - though the original protestor whom it was designed to oust slipped through a rather large loop-hole in the law. One of the better know cases saw Maya Evans and Milan Rai arrested merely for reading out the names of Iraq war victims opposite the Cenotaph war memorial.

Mark Thomas also famously recounts the story of a woman threatened with arrest for having a picnic: her cake had the word PEACE iced onto it, which was apparently interpreted as an unauthorised political protest. He also arranged a massed, lone protest. Perhaps appropriately, it's a law that has summoned some spectacularly illogical defences.

The anti-protest provisions are shamefully illiberal and should be repealed. The closing date for the consultation is January 17th: don't let this opportunity slip past.

all your gods belong to us

Mitt Romney's declaration that he would "serve no one religion" was actually a promise to serve all Christian religions , and ignore those dirty secular atheists. As such, the comparison to Kennedy is utterly misleading:

Speaking to an invited and heavily-supportive audience of nearly 400, and self-consciously echoing Mr Kennedy, the former Massachusetts governor said: "Like him, I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion."

No, not by your specific religion,, but by the primacy of religion in general: you don't suck up to the evangelical vote by explaining they're just as good as the godless.

a self-fulfilling conspiracy

From the department of cunning plans:

Mr Abrahams claimed that he donated the money secretly to avoid accusations of being part of a "Jewish conspiracy".

So, in seeking to avoid the accusation of conspiracy, Abrahams donated money - through third parties who had no idea what was going on - in a way most likely to be identified as a conspiracy. Bravo.

It helps to remember that Abrahams and Labour are now being investigated for an entirely secular conspiracy to circumvent political donor laws that has nothing to do with his or anyone else's Judaism. In that sense, the claim of antisemitism is irrelevant and has nothing to do with whether the law was broken or not.

peter hitchens: still not that bright at all

Unsatisfied at his earlier attempts to show himself to be not that bright, Peter Hitchens offers a review of The Golden Compass, the film of Philip Pullman's book Northern Lights.

After several hundred words committed to demonstrating not much (and it's really worth looking to see how long his comment goes on for, near to three thousand words) Hitchens manages his first complaint, which is that if you take out the central plot line in the novels, Pullman's stories don't make much sense.

I imagine that this would be the case in most works of fiction - and it's probably the reason why Pullman thought to have a central plot. A few hours in the library would reveal that this is a cunning literary device employed by many authors. Hitchens' actual argument is that Pullman's novels are relentlessly focussed on the evil of organised religion, and should therefore be dismissed for that reason alone.

Hitchens' attempt at literary criticism is particularly strange, given that he begins by declaring "I have never doubted Philip Pullman's talent as a writer," before going on to express various, mildly incoherent doubts about his abilities as an author. There are, therefore, double doses of irony every time Hitchens accuses Pullman of being inconsistent.

As before, Hitchens seems to be unable to tell the difference between Pullman's works of fiction and the beliefs of atheists:

There are also many grave oddities. Pullman uses quite a lot of religious ideas, or supernatural ones. The 'daemons' which appear as talking pets are described at the beginning of the film as visible souls. Souls? Souls imply eternal life and a judgement beyond this world, surely one of the main things atheists wish us to cease to believe in.

Given that this is a work of fiction rather than a description of the real world or a coherent treatise on secular life, it's hard to work out what Hitchens' problem is other than a lack of basic reading comprehension. The film and novel also features a talking polar bear: is this too supposed to be evidence of Pullman's theological inconsistency?

Admittedly, it is entertaining to have a Christian person criticising a work of fantasy fiction for "strange inconsistencies," seemingly unaware of the teeming contradictions in the Bible and the several thousand more generated by the various and changing doctrines of organised faiths. There's further hilarity in Hitchen's criticism of Nicole Kidman's 1930s style costume, where he argues that a "repressed, retarded, guilt-stricken" society would want to dress its women in "a wimple or at least some sort of veil and all-enveloping robe."

An interesting defence of organised religion, no doubt.

get-out-of-purgatory-free offer (too many available jokes)

Making a trip to a shrine famous for offering false hope will buy you time out of purgatory, the waiting room of the not-quite-faithful enough:

Pilgrims to the shrine in south-west France will receive "plenary indulgences" from the Pontiff, which the Church says reduce the time spent being "washed" of sin after death. The indulgences will be available from this weekend until Dec 8, 2008.

The Church teaches that people who do not go directly to heaven must spend time in purgatory, where they can be purified of residual sin.

It is the latest initiative to get more pilgrims to the shrine, famous for the reported healing properties of its water. In August the Vatican opened an airline service offering pilgrims direct flights from Rome to Lourdes.

That last bit is particularly entertaining because of the rich history of the abuse of plenary indulgences - where the wealthy were allowed to buy their way into heaven - which led, in part, to the Reformation.

This, of course, is entirely different: you now also get frequent flier miles.

Please note that purgatory is slightly different from limbo - one being an invention of the church and the other one being.. uhmm.. something else. Limbo is where unbaptised babies hang out, denied from ever entering heaven because of original sin - that is, until the Pope changes his mind and gets infallible on yo' ass by reversing several hundred years of doctrine.

in the words of the failed plaintiff, "blasphemy is of little, if any, relevance in today’s society"

As the very least, the barrister who led the failed blasphemy case against the BBC has a grasp of the obvious:

Mark Mullins, QC, representing Mr Green and Christian Voice, said the effect of yesterday's ruling was that "no prosecution for blasphemy can be brought against the BBC".
He added: "That is tantamount to saying that blasphemy is of little, if any, relevance in today's society ."

Well, yes - which is why the demand by Christian Voice for blasphemy law to be "reformed," i.e. strengthened, is so utterly doomed to failure. There's neither a public need nor desire for such a move - mainly because there's no real need or desire for the law as it stands right now.

However, like all good legal decisions, there's still space for confusion.

While this ruling confirms that the Theatres Act (1968) protects all public performances (and broadcasts of those performances) from prosecution for blasphemy, it still leaves open a number of other circumstances in which a case could be made. Not only does this ruling not directly challenge the law against blasphemy (potentially leaving the issue of the right to free speech under article ten of the ECHR for the Lords) but it indirectly confirms its continued legitimacy.

In refusing to allow the case go forward, the judges ruled that there was no prime facie case of blasphemy against Jerry Springer – The Opera; in other words, indicating that the offence could still be prosecutable in the right circumstances, just not against the producers or broadcasters of JS:TO. This is compounded by the use of the Theatres Act to describe a privileged variety of (public) speech, leaving a gaping legal hole over other forms of expression.

This - coupled with the missed opportunity to use the ECHR to entirely remove blasphemy as an offence - is why certain interested parties are keeping the champagne corked.

your daily shaming

To directly quote my friend who forwarded me the email: ah, a piece on sluts who regret being sluts.

PUBLICATION: Sun Woman
DEADLINE: 05-December-2007 17:00

QUERY: Sun Woman have asked us to find them a woman to take part in a feature they are doing in light of a new survey that shows that one third of women will sleep with a guy on the first date.

We are looking for a woman in her late 20s, early 30s, from the south of England, who has done this at least once in the past and regretted it.

This woman would need to be named and pictured. In return for a short interview and a photoshoot, she would receive a payment of £200.

There are - and I'm sure this will be a vast and unwieldy surprise - no pages in any of the tabloids or money on offer for men to discuss their regret and shame at having sex on a first date.

on AIDS quackery

Quote of the day from Ben Goldacre: "Our greatest impediment is wishful, brutal stupidity."

christianophobiaphobic (updated)

The notion of Christianophobia - a slightly more erudite version of the War on Christmas - doesn't really stand up to any serious analysis. There is, after all, a huge difference between an attack on Christianity, and a disinterest in showing Christianity special deference.

The Telegraph's willingness to swallow the "warnings" of a Tory MP without stopping to check any of his claims describes the quality of the debate we're going to be forced to sit through. I'm a particular fan of this quote:

He cited research which found that around 80 per cent of schools will not be holding a Nativity play this Christmas, because of fears that they could offend non-Christians.

"Christmas time would be a highly appropriate time to do Nativity plays, with its message of hope and love and light," Mr Pritchard said.

First of all, religion fans, Christmas is an "appropriate" time for the nativity because the nativity is the story of Christ's birth, which is kinda sorta what the holiday Christmas celebrates. It would be pretty strange to stage the nativity in July for that reason.

Secondly, the claim that "80% of schools will not be holding a nativity play" stinks to high heaven. It's missing all of the details that would that particular factoid relevant: how many schools, for example, have ever bothered to stage nativity plays to begin with?

How many schools have a majority of non-Christian students for whom the play would be irrelevant? How many are organising different celebrations for entirely apolitical reasons? In an ideal world, these are questions an actual journalist would have asked - if he or she wasn't too busy with stenography lessons.

To revisit an old post on the claim that Christians are being treated unfairly in this brave, new homo-tolerating world, remember that no-one is making any of these old but still familiar arguments:

- that socially conservative Christians do not have the right to marry or adopt or assume next of kin rights because of their "lifestyle choices"

- that Christianity is a legitimate reason for a person to be denied housing or other goods and services

- that Christians should not be put in charge of teaching children because of the damaging effect it might have on impressionable minds

- that a refusal to have sex outside of a ritualistic union is unnatural or even perverse

- that discrimination based on religion (or religious sectarianism) shouldn't be taken seriously, because if the people affected wanted to they could just "stop believing"

If you're quite literally the state religion - and allowed to run your own schools paid for with state money - you're quite a long way from being marginalised. And if the entire country is about to grind to a halt for a national holiday based on the birth of your deity, then you're probably doing okay.

Updated: also see Theo Hobson at CiF:

Christians must learn that secular liberal culture is not a threat, but a spur to reform. The tolerance that secular society shows to gays is the most obvious example of this. Liberal Christians must be more explicit in their denunciation of the illiberal tendency.

At present the liberal voices don't know how to stand up to people like Odone. The difficulty is that she has the power of the institutions behind her: she does indeed speak for the church. The main churches are big corporate versions of Odone: chirpily illiberal, and proud of it.

a subtle message

Just in case you didn't have time to read the words of a Daily Mail article, there's always a helpful photographic illustration. Here's girl-who-regrets-abortion, curled up defensively on an.. uhmm. examination table with her foot in one stirrup:

She accompanies today's news that early stage abortions may take place in GP surgeries. You might recognise her - she's been used one or twice before to suggest that abortion is FILLED WITH REGRET. Here she is. And again. And again. And again, and again.

It's almost as though the Mail is hinting at something.

sex education in the uk: routine misinformation

We can't pretend that we don't know the reasons why sex education in the UK isn't working - it's to do with the absence of actual education about sex :

Teenagers are being taught sex education so badly in schools that many are left in complete ignorance about how to avoid sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy.

A letter to The Times today from leading children's organisations, sexual health experts and eight members of the Commons Health Select Committee, calls on the Government to make relationship teaching a statutory part of the national curriculum.

The experts say that research published today highlights the longstanding failure of schools and how it is contributing to the country's sexual health crisis.

In a very horrible way, none of this is news. We've known about this situation for many, many years, and successive governments have tried very hard not to do much about it for fear of offending people who don't like sex. Like abstinence education, it's not a method that works in any way at all: it merely propagates ignorance, fear and disease.

One of the most damaging narratives generated by the press (led primarily by tabloid reactionaries) and accepted by the general public is that sex education in the UK is too explicit, and that any measure intended to improve it involves the dangerous sexualisation of children. Educators involved in sex education are regarded with suspicion, with some gutter pundits going so far as to suggest that the work demonstrates paedophiliac tendencies.

The narrative has also been constructed through a focus on incredibly small trial schemes intended to test potential reforms - so that more explicit trials taken with parental consent which involve less than a dozen schools across the UK (and therefore tiny percentages of the total school population) are misrepresented as the status quo. Programmes undertaken by local authorities to address the short-fall in the curriculum are demonised as "filth" with the willing assistance of socially conservative "family" campaigners.

Any scheme that dare attempt to include the issue of homosexuality is looking for a screaming headline. The fact that parents agree to take part in such schemes is largely (if not entirely) ignored. It's also a subject on which tabloids have been more than willing to print statements which are objectively false: big, fat lies .

As such, the battle faced by any party willing to take on the issue and actually create meaningful, desperately needed reform is going to have to face public opinion which has been routinely and deliberately misinformed about the issue.

uk sex education primer

DK rejoins the I can't believe it's not (sex) education debate.

As a quick primer for anyone coming here from there, the only kind of sex education formally required by law in most of the UK is the biology of reproduction, fetal development, and the physical and emotional changes of adolescence.

Everything else - contraception, the idea of consent, STIs - is considered a "discretionary" optional extra which local education authorities can choose whether to include or not.  On top of that, sex education is not compulsory, so parents can choose to have their children opt-out of any of the above.

The exception to the above picture in the UK is Scotland, which in the last two years has introduced a programme called Healthy Respect that contains information on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases as a way of encouraging good sexual health. You can read more about the overall sex education strategy for schools in Scotland here (pdf) - I'd draw specific attention to the age-appropriate nature of the information given out at different stages, which has proven to be particularly successful elsewhere. There's even more information on sex education on the Learning and Teaching Scotland site.

The only exception to that is the Catholic Church's alternative education programme - which they were allowed to develop after protesting - called Call to Love, which focuses on encouraging children to delay sex until marriage, and does not cover contraception.

a short clarification

Please note: the Jewish financier whom Melanie Phillips recently stated is the subject of traditional anti-semetic claims of conspiracy is David Abrahams and not George Soros, the Jewish financier whom Melanie Phillips believes is responsible for a global conspiracy against democracy and is actively trying to ensnare our children into a life of drug addiction .

strong support for abortion on demand in UK

Here's a YouGov survey commissioned by Catholics for Choice that seems to have passed without major media interest. The top-line summary is strong support for abortion on demand (pdf): 63% agree or strongly agree that it should be legal for a woman to have an abortion when she has an unwanted pregnancy; 14% disagree or strongly disagree.

When cross-referenced by faith, 58% of Christians/Protestants supported the legality of abortion; even amongst Catholics (for whom doctrine should dictate a complete rejection of abortion) support runs at 43%. In short, we're far more pro-choice than the recent debate of abortion limits might have led you to expect - and certainly more pro-choice than the kind of groups that Nadine Dorries and others choose to represent as the mainstream.

majority now oppose ID cards

It was inevitable that the longer the government made an argument based in competence that the less convincing it would sound:

More people now oppose Labour's proposed ID cards than support them, a poll for The Daily Telegraph has found.

Just 43 per cent of those questioned said they favoured the introduction of a national identity scheme compared with 48 per cent who were against. It is the first time YouGov has found more against than in favour.

When the ID scheme was first proposed by the Government in 2003, YouGov found 78 per cent supported it and just 15 per cent were opposed. Since then, there has been a gradual erosion in support for ID cards and the recent loss of the country's entire child benefit records on two CDs seems to have tipped the balance.

It's hard to trust anyone when they've demonstrated, repeatedly, that such trust is misplaced.

liars

I was pretty sure that Norman Wells' claim that there was no evidence to support the provision of contraception was full of shit. I was right, and it turns out that he knows it, too. As discussed here almost exactly a year ago:

Sexual abstinence as an effective tool in reducing teenage pregnancy is a complete "myth", the Government's advisory body on the issue claimed yesterday. The Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy said that research from the United States showed that contraception was the way to bring down rates.

When confronted with this study, Norman Wells - he of the Family Education Trust - took the simple step of ignoring it and claimed that contraception "cheapened sex." As today, Wells' personal attitudes to sex replaced every other form of logic or evidence.

So, when the Family Education Trust claim that the NHS has no reasoned basis for their policies on contraception, they either have selectively short memories or are deliberate liars. Either way, not the people to be taking advice from.

melanie phillips: the problem with diplomacy is the shortage of gun-boats

Diplomacy, Melanie Phillips style:

Mr Miliband should have thrown the ambassador and every Sudanese diplomat out of the country, cancelled all visas and stopped British aid to Sudan.

And he should also have denounced the religious precepts which produced such a barbaric response to a preposterously imagined slight.

The idea that this might not have led to Gillian Gibbons' release - and might just have endeared the authorities to the small mob baying for her death - seems to have escaped Phillips' imagination. In fact, the failure to turn up in a tank is the apparently the equivalent of abject surrender and the full-throated support of sharia law.

It is quite silly to think that this kind of chest-beating, table-pounding behaviour would have done anything other than to make Gibbons' position worse, as if gun-boat diplomacy were still a viable option. Phillips seems to be on the same team as Littlejohn, who bemoaned the failure of British sailors to throw themselves in front of a hail of bullets to sustain his version of the British abroad. Littlejohn's own version of justice for people he perceives as insufficiently British is also worth remembering in this situation: let's be thankful Gillian Gibbons is an educated white woman.

The cartoon version of the world that Phillips and Littlejohn inhabit is dangerous precisely because they think that the only possible reasoned response to extremism is to conjure up an extremism of our own; in their version of the world there's only a fight to the death or surrender, and a failure to show such ideological purity is a sign of treachery. That this world view almost entirely matches the one that they claim to despise - where you're a true believer/patriot or a wicked blasphemer/terrorist  - is obvious to everyone but them.

There is, with due sympathy for Gillian Gibbon's position, also the issue that other countries are free to enforce their own laws as they see fit, even when those laws are very silly laws indeed from our perspective; it's hard to imagine Phillips endorsing the right of foreign nationals to opt out of UK law because they don't share our cultural background or values. Like it or not, living in another country means obeying that country's laws and - like it or not - we simply can't throw out all the ambassadors and cut off all financial ties every time a British citizen ends up in court. Instead, we have diplomacy.

norman wells and the family education trust: we do not like contraception therefore you shouldn't either (updated)

You have to admire the quality of hypocrisy demonstrated by Norman Wells and the Family Education Trust. They've produced a report (pdf) claiming that, when questioned, primary care trusts did not cite any research showing that access to the morning after pill makes any difference to teen abortion or pregnancy rates.

"Did not cite" is a happily misleading argument, the corollary to "we did not ask for it." The fact that the trusts didn't spring forward with the research when being asked about their general policy on contraception provision doesn't mean the research doesn't exist. (UPDATE: The research exists, and Wells is entirely aware of it - as he responded to its use by the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy this time last year.)

In any case, it's curious that the press release anouncing this report - and the cut-and-paste press coverage generated by it - is unable to provide any evidence whatsoever to support Wells' claim that:

the free and confidential provision of the emergency pill to girls under 16 is further promoting a casual approach to sexual relationships. This will inevitably result in more underage sex, more teenage pregnancies, and more sexually-transmitted infections.

It's a claim that Wells has been making for - literally - years without ever being able to support his claim with evidence. It's possible that there's some evidence in the body of the report (£6 + £1 p&p) but it's strange that absolutely no mention of that evidence has been made in public. You'd think he'd be desperate to make the public case of a causative link as convincingly as possible. Why, it's almost as though the evidence doesn't exist.

Wells' own bluster of an inevitable rise in sex caused by contraception is also entertainingly contradicted by the more cautious text of the report's press release, which - again, without citing any evidence - speculates that provision of contraception and the morning-after pill may be contributing to a rise in sexual activity.

Wells' dire warning is most likely related to his aversion to all forms of pre-marital sex, whether you're over 16 or not: sexual activity is bad news unless it's sanctioned by church or state - a position held by few, and enforced (impossibly) by an even smaller number of parents.

Finally, the report (which is supposed to be interested in the welfare of young adults) is actually titled "Waking up to the morning-after pill: How parents are undermined by the promotion of emergency hormonal contraception to under-16s." Promotion, you say? These pills are being pushed onto young people?

Why, that sounds like another unsupported claim.