Professor David Nutt has kindly allowed me to put his presentation on estimating drug harms from Monday 16th.
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xD.
President Barack Obama, who pledged to eradicate childhood hunger, has described as “unsettling” the agriculture department survey, which says 50 million people in the US – one in six of the population – were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year, in large part because of escalating unemployment or poorly paid jobs.
From FDR’s second inaugural address:
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
There’s no doubt that the US in a much better position than it was after the Great Depression; still, all is a long way from well.
xD.
I had the very great pleasure of listening to two first-rate speakers at Skeptics in the Pub Westminster this evening – Professor David Nutt and Dr Evan Harris MP.
Professor Nutt went through the advice that had been given by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to Alan Johnson and the frankly poor way in which that advice was dealt with, as well as briefly mentioning why he was sacked. As Evan Harris pointed out, this was largely for publishing an article in a scientific journal whose readership is not large.
Continue reading “David Nutt and Evan Harris at #sitp Westminster”
I have nothing but sympathy for Jacqui Janes. I can’t begin to imagine what she’s going through. No parent should have to bury their child, but it must be near-unendurable to wonder whether more could have been done to save Jamie Janes’ life.
I’d love to know if the Sun has passed money to Mrs Janes. I don’t begrudge her it, but if the PM called me up out of the blue, I doubt I’d have the presence of mind to record the conversation. It’d take me a minute or two of fiddling with the phone to work out how to do it. Unless, of course, I’d been primed to do it by person or persons unknown.
I think putting a private letter in the press is a little tasteless. I do wonder how this ended up in the Sun’s hands; was it sent from Mrs Janes’ initiative or were the Sun speaking to each bereaved family, just on the off chance?
It’s no great secret that Gordon Brown is visually impaired and doesn’t write particularly legibly. Perhaps he should have rewritten the letter; perhaps not. If it has be checked by someone else, it probably would have been rewritten; there’s the rub. Instead of the PM’s honest & personal feelings, future letters will be drafted, scrutinised and typed up by a Wykehamist and then just signed by the PM, with all trace of human emotion and fallibility erased lest it end up on the front page of the gutter press.
The Sun seems to be using the anger occasioned by the loss of a son and soldier to score party political points. That dishonours his memory.
xD.
UPDATE 2150 – lots of other people have expressed similar sentiments to me, but there are a couple of particularly apposite posts by Bob Piper that I’d like to flag up. One is also called Exploiting Grief; the other is a fill-in-the-blanks form from 1916 that passed for a letter of condolence.
It’s been a familiar line, on whose veracity I will not comment, that while the right-of-centre was merrily blogging away, the left-of-centre blogosphere was somewhat flaccid. Part of the reason for this, so the trope goes, was that Labour was in power. The Tories stole a march because they could freely open fire at teh evil ZaNuLab while the left were stuck being subservient toadies or, for a slightly more considered view, because there was not much point sticking it to the Tories and a lot of Labour-aligned people were fed up with the party.
Well, the times they are a-changing. The statements made by Mr Cameron et al are no longer the posturing of an opposition, but the positions of a government in waiting. This gives broadly Labour-aligned blogs something to bite into – ‘our teeth are in the real meat’ – and means the Tories are becoming more self-regarding.
We have Liberal Conspiracy, which is now part of the scenery, but a few other progressive blogs covering the breadth of politics have appeared – Next Left, Left Foot Forward, LabourList – while there is a storm brewing on the Tory-aligned blogosphere regarding Europe.
That last point reflects a debate going on in the parliamentary party (my suspicion is that there is not a similar debate in the voluntary party but I stand ready to be corrected). The Labour-aligned blogosphere isn’t quite there yet, although I suspect some of the running made by blogs on the Tories’ fellow members of the ECR in general and one or two characters in particular will be picked up nationally.
The prophecy was that, once out of power, Labour blogging would really take off. It would appear that it’s starting to do so; whether this is a knell for the Labour government or a tool to keep us in government, I don’t know. It is, however, overdue.
xD.
In and amongst all the debates about reforming the electoral system, I’d like to flag up one that I particularly like. It’s simple, cheap and effective – Re-Open Nominations (RON).
The idea is very simple. On every ballot paper, at the bottom, is a candidate called RON. If RON wins, nominations are re-opened and the election is held again. Simple.
“A-ha”, I hear you cry, “but what about local councils?”
Local council wards each elect three councillors. If RON comes in the top three, anyone who would have been elected but comes below RON isn’t elected; anyone who beats RON is elected.
So, if the ward was Hogwarts and three were to be elected, only Alastor Moody would be elected and there would be a new election for the remaining two places:
Alastor Moody (elected)
RON (‘elected’)
Sirius Black (not elected)
Arabella Figg (not elected)
Albus Dumbledore (not elected)
Similarly, mutatis mutandis for Euro elections and the GLA.
Now, the advantages. People can express discontent with all the available options and, in instances where there’s only one candidate, means that they’re not elected by default. It’s slightly different to ‘none of the above’ in that it’s more constructive; someone isn’t necessarily elected just because no-one less crap ran.
xD.
I am very proud of some of the things I achieved while active in the LSE Students’ Union. A little while ago, I was contacted by LSESU asking if, as part of the redecoration of the bar, they could have a silhouette of me and a quote to go on the wall. I duly obliged; this evening, I saw it on the wall of the Three Tuns for the first time.
This is the wall, with the outlines of JFK, Cherie Blair, the two mascots (beaver and penguin) and a few other notables and not-so-notables including yours truly.
🙂
The quote says
42 real heads of government, 17 Nobel laureates, 2 fictional heads of government and at least 2 terrorists have been to the LSE. Countless others have changed the world.
Before you finish, just ask yourself – do we really need another accountant?
xD.
The Pennsylvania Republican party have run an advert where the ‘O’ of Obama’s surname is replaced with a hammer and sickle in a circle. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I thought I’d do a little list of ways in which Barack Obama is different from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
| CPSU | Barack Obama |
| Ran a country through one-party rule | Has never run a country through one-party rule |
| Killed up to sixty million kulaks | Has never killed up to sixty million kulaks |
| Signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany | Has never signed any pacts with Nazi Germany |
| Crushed uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia | Has never crushed uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia |
| Ran a command economy | Runs a free market economy |
| Persecuted Christians and executed Orthodox priests | Is a Christian |
Do I really need to continue? OK, Republicans, we get it. You think Obama is allowing the federal government to grow too large. This does not make him a communist.
xD.
My friend James Higham – learned counsel for the other side – has replied at length to the video I posted of Philip Spooner saying, in answer to whether he was supportive of gay rights, ‘what do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?‘, saying “Marriage is the union of two people for the purposes of procreation – end of story“. Well, gauntlet thrown, gauntlet picked up.
The first objection is this – not only was the question wrong for anyone in a polling place to ask because it presupposed that the wrong answer would impact on the person’s right to vote, something not provided for by the constitution but if it did not prevent the man from voting, then why was the question there in the first place?
If the question was asked actually inside the polling place, where people are actually putting the cross in a box, or whatever the local variant is, that would be a problem. I suspect that this was just as Mr Spooner was going into or coming out of the polling place. I’m not familiar with the procedures in Massachusetts, but the election officials in the UK would come down on you like a ton of bricks if you did that. There is no restriction, though, on speaking to people near the polling place (so long as it isn’t intimidatory). Secondly, the fact that something is not provided for in the Constitution is irrelevant. The Constitution is based on negative liberties – unless it says you must do or refrain from doing something, you can do what you want. Indeed, the tenth amendment reads
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
.
There is nothing in the US Constitution that prevents two people, on the way to vote, from discussing how they will cast their ballot.
The second objection is that it is a false question. You and I know full well that to just drop in the word “equality” and ask people to say whether they favour it or not will always produce a majority opinion in favour. That, however, is not what was really being asked. What was being asked was whether the person was in favour of gay marriage or not.
This becomes a semantic question. Does gay equality mean that we must allow gay marriage? I answer in the affirmative; James in the negative. James acknowledged this, and goes on to say
This is a blurring of two separate issues:
1. Do you believe that adult gays and lesbians should be able to pursue their lifestyle, insofar as they conform to the law, without fear or prejudice being shown towards them?
Most would say yes to that.
2. Do you agree that gays and lesbians have an equal right to marry as much as any heterosexual?
I think there is a real problem with that division. Let us substitute the term ‘people with blue eyes’ for ‘gays and lesbians’, mutatis mutandur, and see what happens.
1. Do you believe that adult people with blue eyes should be able to pursue their lifestyle, insofar as they conform to the law, without fear or prejudice being shown towards them?
2. Do you agree that people with blue eyes have an equal right to marry as much as any person with brown eyes?
In the second case, it’s very obvious that the law has been constructed to favour those with brown eyes against those with blue eyes. People with blue eyes can do whatever they want so long as they conform to the law and it is that law which prevents them from doing what they want to do. The law is cast unfairly.
Moving on, James says:
Here’s the logical fallacy. Same sex cannot marry, by definition. Here is the Merriam-Webster definition [until 2003, when the PCists got in and forced it to be changed]:
Main Entry: marriage
Pronunciation: ‘mar-ij also ‘mer-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English mariage, from Old French, from marier to marry
Date: 14th century
1 a : the state of being married b : the mutual relation of husband and wife : WEDLOCK c : the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family
2 : an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities
3 : an intimate or close union
To which I say nonsense. All James has done is chosen a definition of marriage that he likes. I could simply choose a different one, or say that a family does not necessarily include children, or say that the definition was changed in 2003 to reflect changes in how the term is used.
Not only that but polls such as this one show that the majority do not accept that what gays have is a marriage – it’s a civil partnership. Even if they did achieve a majority that way, it is still pointless because it is like changing a science text to say that the sun rises in the west, just because a concerted propaganda campaign has convinced people of it.
In classical Greece, the household included slaves; in mediaeval Europe, servants. It can be extended or nuclear. The way in which we live changes; terms like ‘family’ are subjective in meaning.
The third objection is that not only are they blurring the question and presenting a false construct as a valid alternative but they are also lying about history. On the Meriam-Webster page, a commentator said that the only reason for that definition of marriage was that the man who wrote it was a fundamentalist Christian.
James then goes on to detail how marriage was seen as between a man and a woman in classical Greece, pharaoic Egypt and so on. Certainly, marriage was conceived of as between a man and a woman before Christianity appeared. I’m not sure that the construct is false – morality in the west is at least based on Judaeo-Christian values, and so, as marriage in those value is generally conceived of as being between a man and a woman, that it persists is no surprise. Judaeo-Christian values may be based on other values, or incorporate features of them, but the absence of many temples to Osiris in central London would suggest that the Egyptian mythos is not a major force. Marriage as described pre-dates Christianity, but it could have died out and Christianity was implemental in seeing that it did not die out. The inflexibility can be attributed to the fundamentalism.
In any case, I don’t really care what the ancients considered moral. Quite apart from their genocide, slavery and credulousness, to define one’s morality by any other’s actions, past or present, is to give up your rationality.
James then goes off on something of a flight of fancy, suggesting that ‘socialists’ are trying to rewrite history. Er… no. As I’ve tried to show, past definition does not apply today to a subjective term. Apparently, we are aiming for
1) Abolition of all ordered governments
2) Abolition of private property
3) Abolition of inheritance
4) Abolition of patriotism
5) Abolition of the family
6) Abolition of religion
7) Creation of a world government
I’m not sure where this came from – no link provided that I can see, but it is a load of garbage. (1) and (7) cancel each other out, the Christian Socialist Movement would have something to say about (6). (3) is a subset of (2), and that’s something than could be attributed to communists, not socialists or social democrats. Quite how we would go about abolishing feelings of kinship – (4) and (5) is beyond me. They survived the USSR, after all.
Ultimately, I see marriage as a contract between two adults. It’s no-one’s business how or why they enter into that contract. The only arguments other than ‘we don’t like gays’ against gay marriage have to do with marriage necessarily being a vehicle for procreation. That is a stupid thing to say – many couples can’t have children, many don’t want children.
xD.
While Jan Moir has been issuing her homophobic drivel and being roundly castigated by the internet, another story in the news of quite astounding bigotry caught my eye.
In Tangipahoa Country, Louisiana, a justice of the peace, Keith Bardwell, refuses to give marriage licenses for mixed-race couples. Yes, you read that correctly.
The story first surfaced in the Hammond Daily Star. Mr Bardwell says he will not perform mixed-race marriages because the children will suffer as neither black nor white society will accept them.
I don’t want to get into a semantic discussion about whether this is racism. I would say that it is and, even if it isn’t, it’s simply flat wrong. I would like to point out some of the other screaming idiocies that this puisne justice has committed by his actions.
Firstly, he has awarded the state the right to choose those fit to breed.
Secondly, he has misapplied this principle in choosing a single category and not looking at others.
Thirdly, he has made childbearing a necessary consequence of marriage.
Fourthly, he has made the ability to contract marriage contingent on the approval of the state.
Fifthly, he has ignored the ruling of the Supreme Court in Loving v Virginia, where the unanimous opinion said, inter alia
There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.
Sixthly, in so doing he has violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (emphasis added)
Seventhly, he has legalised the tyranny of the majority by making social acceptance a condition of action
Eighthly, he has confused correlation with causation and taken his small number of instances to be indicative of the bigger picture
Ninethly, he has done what he thinks is just; his role is to enforce justice. That may or not be just, but it is not his place to second guess the law in this way.
Tenthly, he has not realised that the election of a biracial president suggests, at the least, that the mood is changing.
His actions, or rather inactions, are a travesty of justice. He apparently intends not to restand for the office of justice of the peace when his term expires on the last day of 2014. I hope we do not have to wait that long for him to be removed from office.
xD.