Comment – Page 3 – A View From The Lanterne Rouge

Quotes that made me laugh #41

Scientific illiteracy – it’s bad for your health

It never ceases to amaze me that the more dogma-driven of politicians rarely follow the adage that if you’re in a hole, stop digging! That’s especially true if you’re Jeremy Hunt, the UK Health Secretary, and your excavations undermine the tenets of science-based policy.

Professor Steven Hawking has accused politicians of ‘cherry picking’ evidence to impose new contracts on medics in the National Health Service. The Health Secretary’s response was to argue that he couldn’t ignore the evidence and then to accuse Hawking of peddling pernicious falsehoods.

Hawking’s concern is that four of the eight papers cited by Hunt in support of his actions had not been peer-reviewed and that 13 papers that contradicted the government view had been ignored.

Hawking further stated that:

“Speaking as a scientist, cherry picking evidence is unacceptable. When public figures abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others, to justify policies that they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture”.

And that is not just Hawking’s view. According to other reports:

“… the editor of the British Medical Journal, statisticians and the BMA council chair, amongst others, said that [Hunt] had misrepresented research to support his claim …“.

So, despite such a depressing farrago of fact and fiction, what was the quote that made me laugh? ‘Twas this …

“Professor Hawking has given us answers to many of the universe’s most challenging questions, and even he can’t work out why Jeremy Hunt is still in his job.”

A limerick a week #41

What a shower!

Such is their meretricious nature that Theresa May and her conservative party are, as Terry Thomas would have said, “A shower. An absolute shower!”

Of the £1 billion recently promised by May to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to prop up her minority government, £910 million is to be spent over the next two years. Thereafter, their agreement will be reviewed with the likelihood of additional cash demands from the DUP.

In other words, over the next two years the votes of each DUP member of parliament will cost us £91 million. That is £8.75 million a week that could otherwise have been spent on the NHS or supporting the vulnerable within society across the UK as a whole. But of course, as Theresa May told our nurses (and as parroted by the Home Secretary Amber Rudd on welfare payments for the disabled) there is no magic money-tree for them, only, it seems, for a bunch of regressive, misogynistic, homophobic creationists with a dodgy history of supporting terrorists. As Bonaparte said: “En politique, une absurdité n’est pas un obstacle”.

So, not much humour in this week’s limerick …

There isn’t a magic money-tree,
For nurses or the likes of you and me,
But to stay in power
That tawdry shower
Of Tories found one for the DUP.

Postscript: this is not entirely true, of course. It neglects the magic money-tree available since 2009 for bankers (aka quantitative easing) that was used to get them off the hook for the financial meltdown that they caused while the dispossessed pay the price. Theresa May’s much vaunted Christian faith seems distinctly Old Testament: The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. Proverbs 22:7.

Plus ça change …

Quotes that made me laugh #35

Oh no, it’s BoJo!

A few years ago, in a televised interview with Boris Johnson, Eddie Mair, a BBC presenter, deflated the current UK Foreign Secretary’s superficial buffoonery and set out some less-than-flattering instances of his behaviour.

Subsequently, at the start of this month, Johnson laid into what he contended to be the BBC’s bias when selecting its audience for the UK election Leaders’ Debate: “the most left-wing” he’d ever seen. (Incidentally, this was the debate that his party leader, Theresa May, refused to take part in presumably because, to borrow Margaret Thatcher’s phrase, she was “Frightened? Frit? Could not take it?”)

So, given the back story, yesterday’s radio interview that reunited Messrs Mair and Johnson was always going to be ‘a bit tasty’. And it was. It soooo was. I’d go as far as saying that it was the audio-equivalent of a bacon roll from Warwickshire’s Hatton Locks Café!

In an exchange that showed it was not only when bedding women-other-than-his-wife that Johnson loses control of his briefs, Mair skewered him on the policies within his party’s new legislative timetable. When, after a point that he couldn’t answer, BoJo tried to return to an earlier question that he had similarly failed on, Mair eviscerated him (figuratively, of course) and it is his quote that made me laugh:

“Well why don’t we do the questions in the order I’m asking them? It’s not a Two Ronnies sketch, you can’t answer the question before last.”

Postscript: BoJo was apparently the UK’s most popular politician a couple of years ago, his buffoonery clearly out-weighing any mendacity that Joe Public may have seen (although more insightful folk were always aware of the smokescreen behind which lay a different reflection). As The Poke’s website states: “Mair once called him as ‘a nasty piece of work’. Now he’s an ill-informed one”.

This is the place

Tony Walsh’s rendition of his 2013 poem This is the Place at the recent Manchester vigil is a ‘must watch’ performance. In the modern era of soundbite politicking, it harkens back to the days of true oratory and its message is the more powerful for it:

Nothing more to say.

Quotes that made me laugh #31

I’m a couple of years off it in body, and hopefully many years off it in mind, but my sister’s recent 60th birthday got me looking into other folks’ reactions on hitting that age.

One article that I found in the Graun was written a few years ago by Ian Martin, one of the writers of The Thick Of It. His 60 thoughts about turning 60 provided three that I feel should be shared here, including one that made me laugh out loud …

The first, on the government of Cameron, Osborne et al:

“But I cannot remember ever before feeling the visceral contempt I have for this gang of posh sociopaths. As a rough guide, I would say any government that sets the welfare of the comfortably off above the welfare of the old, the young, the sick, the poor, the oppressed, the disabled … well, call me old-fashioned but any government like that wants hosing down the drain.”

… the second, on abhorring violence as “it never solves problems”:

“Why, then, do I keep thinking that if I had two weeks left to live and just one decent throw of the arm left in me, oh man, I would really want to punch Iain Duncan Smith in the face.”

… and, finally (the one that made me laugh) on thinking twice before speaking ill of people:

“Before you say anything nasty about someone, just pause for a second and browse through some really good adjectives in your head.”

A sad reflection …

… from the Graun:

Down at heel …

… and dignity in di feet!

Sometimes petitions work! I rarely sign online petitions, but as you can read here I did sign the one instigated by a woman receptionist who was sent home without pay for refusing to wear high-heeled shoes.

As you can read below, it looks like it had an effect (it goes on a bit – a lot actually – so don’t feel compelled!):

You recently signed the petition “Make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work”:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/129823

We told you a few months ago that MPs on the House of Commons Petitions Committee had decided to investigate the issues raised by this petition.

The inquiry has now finished and the Petitions Committee has published a joint report with the Women and Equalities Committee on high heels and workplace dress codes. The report concludes that the Equality Act 2010 is not yet fully effective in protecting workers from discrimination.

The report calls for:

· the Government to take urgent action to improve the effectiveness of the Equality Act. It recommends that the Government reviews this area of the law and, if necessary, asks Parliament to amend it.
· more effective remedies—such as increased financial penalties—for employment tribunals to award against employers who breach the law, in order to provide an effective deterrent.
· the Government to introduce guidance and awareness campaigns targeted at employers, workers and students, to improve understanding of the law and workers’ rights.

You can read the full report on the Parliament website: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/petitions-committee/news-parliament-2015/high-heels-and-workplace-dress-codes-report-published-16-17/?utm_source=petition&utm_campaign=129823&utm_medium=email&utm_content=reportstory

We are hugely grateful to you for signing this petition and raising this issue in Parliament. Without this petition, this inquiry would not have happened.

What will happen now?

The petition and report will be debated in Parliament on Monday 6 March at 4.30pm in Westminster Hall (the second debating chamber of the House of Commons). You can watch the debate live on the day or catch up with it afterwards on Parliament TV: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Commons

The Government will send a formal response to our report within 2 months. We will let you know when this happens. You can follow any updates on our inquiry page: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/petitions-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/high-heels-workplace-dress-codes-inquiry-16-17/?utm_source=petition&utm_campaign=129823&utm_medium=email&utm_content=inquiry

What Michael said #4

opinion

/əˈpɪnjən/

verb

1. a view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

“that, in my opinion, is right“

2. a statement of advice by an expert on a professional matter.

“if in doubt, get a second opinion

One of the problems with opinions is that everybody has one. And now as a school of ‘opinion’ develops across the pond that conflates lies with facts, I am reminded again of the wisdom of Michael Graham, who wrote in 1943 that:

“To build up an informed opinion is a matter of some difficulty: not in the opinion part of it, because the public frequently shows itself very opinionated on the slenderest of information. The difficulty rather lies in making sure the opinion is well-informed.”

Postscript: I could have sworn that it was the late-lamented football manager Brian Clough who said to his namesake commentator, Brian Moore: “Let’s face it Brian, we’re all entitled to our opinions, but it’s my opinion that counts”, however, I can’t find any reference to it! On reflection it seems that one of the most memorable quotes from my teens was simply a conceit of the TV impressionist Mike Yarwood.

If only …

Wishful thinking from Berger & Wyse on this year’s Presidential inauguration

Postscript: I was going to delete this post after discovering that the ‘birds’ that are being released are not, as I originally assumed, doves of peace (wishful thinking), but represent tweets from a narcissistic sociopath.

I decided not to delete it, but to let it stand as testament to (i) my ignorance of certain social media and (ii) my naïve inclination to look for silver linings.

Happy birthday to a hypocrite …

Having ‘dissed’ marketing departments in my earlier post I am now about to contradict myself by thanking the good people of the Laphroaig distillery for my ‘Friend of Laphroaig’ birthday card and 20% discount on my next bottle. Very timely. Ironic, really, as I became a ‘friend’ solely as a result of being ‘marketed’ …