Yet more fantasy...

George Osborne: prat. [Yes, yes, I know—but he's not even worth a decent swearword.]

Yesterday, it was reported that little Georgie Osborne was pledging to "inject unspent money into capital projects".

The chancellor of the exchequer is working on pooling unspent money from across Whitehall to inject into extra capital projects to kickstart the economy, the Guardian has learned.

George Osborne has earmarked spending that Whitehall departments have failed to meet—further to a £500m pot already created by his Lib Dem colleagues—which will be redirected to "really useful projects, capital R, capital U," one Conservative cabinet minister told the Guardian.

Really? Well, tonight, the BBC has a rather different story to tell...

A council tax freeze in England will be extended to 2012/13 under plans to be unveiled by the chancellor on Monday.

The £805m move will be paid for by a Whitehall "underspend", aides said.

The government cannot force councils to freeze bills—but it is offering to give those which limit spending rises to 2.5% the money they need.

Wow. Thank goodness for that "underspend", eh?

But I thought that it was going to be spent on "capital projects"? Funnelling more money to councils in order to shore up their expenditure is not, by any definition, "capital projects".

In any case, as I pointed out somewhat vociferously yesterday, there is no fucking "underspend".

What "unspent money", George? Your Coalition has borrowed more money in the last year than any government in history; the structural deficit is bigger than ever, and you have reduced this country's debt by precisely bugger all.

Approximately £180 billion of the cash that you are burning through this year is money that you didn't have in the first place, you fucking cock.

Repeat after me, George: there is no "underspend", because you are overspending by about £500 million every damn day.

As it happens, I would rather that Georgie used the money to avert tax rises than squander it on a pointless high-speed rail link or a fucking statue of a giant ice-cream or something, but even so...

A systematic failure

Mad Mel Phillips might be a bit mad, but it is difficult to argue that she cannot write—can you imagine the vapid and morally bankrupt Polly Toynbee scribing something like this...?

What we are seeing, in the sluggish and unprepared reaction of the police and political class to these events, compounded by their serial failure to grasp from previous such disturbances just what is going on here, is a catastrophic combination of professional inertia and incompetence, serial eyes off the ball, paralysing political correctness, an apparent reluctance to identify, name and deal with subversive activity, a capital’s police force in systemic disarray, a criminal justice system that has become an insulting joke, a refusal from the top to draw clear lines in the sand and to exercise moral and political leadership, a pandering instead to mob rule, tyro politicians who have never had a grown-up job and couldn’t run the proverbial whelk-stall let alone get a grip on a culture teetering on the edge of the cliff, a third-rate civil service machine that no longer can be relied on to keep the show on the road, a culture of narcissistic selfishness on an epic scale and a general breakdown in education, morality and elementary codes of civilised behaviour, much of it deliberately willed on for the past three decades by a grossly irresponsible and politically motivated intelligentsia that set out to smash the west.

Mel, the West is already smashed—and not by any terrorist. As I have pointed out before, the only thing that has destroyed the West is the West itself.

Welcome to the new politics...

A message for the Huffington Post

Via @Charlotte Gore on Twitter, I find this timely rant from sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison. It's called Pay The Writer...



Now, i'm aware that some of what he says about "amateurs ruining it for the rest of us" might apply to bloggers—and we are proud of stealing the bread from the mouths of professional media whores—but his rant about a rich company asking someone to work for free most certainly applies to the Huffington Post.

Yes, as @wallaceme points out, the writers were indeed free agents and they chose to write for the damn thing, but given that it was largely their efforts that built the brand, they might have expected to see some of the cash.

Which is why I have a great deal of sympathy for the lawsuit against the Huffington Post in the US.

Tasini, who wrote more than 250 posts for The Huffington Post on an unpaid basis leading up to the site’s sale, said: “Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern day slaves on Arianna Huffingtons’s plantation”. He said he was suing because “people who create content…have to be compensated” for their work.

The complainant and his lawyers believe that bloggers’ articles helped contribute to approximately a third of the sale value of the site, with about 9,000 people writing for the Huffington Post for free.

I don't necessarily think that these bloggers should win—after all, they signed a contract (I assume)—but I do, nonetheless, have a great deal of sympathy for them. The Huffington Post, after all, has no real assets or brand—other than the content that said bloggers donated.

Still, one can only assume that—even knowing that they won't get a share of any massive fucking payout—people think that the deal is worth it. After all, there appears to be no shortage of people signing up to the UK edition.

Who should control the press? or The Madness of Green George

As a man who, for a few brief articles, looked like he might not be a total moron, one might have hoped that George Monbiot might not have been an utter arsehole about the current travails of the press—but no...

So what can be done?

I don't know, George—why don't you tell us...? Oh, wait, you're going to aren't you? This had better be good...

Because of the peculiar threat they present to democracy...

Um... I think that there are rather bigger threats to democracy, George. The European Union springs to mind, as does our own derisory system of "representative democracy".

But, OK, I'll humour you. What's your solution...?

... there’s a case to be made for breaking up all majority interests in media companies, and for a board of governors, appointed perhaps by Commons committee, to act as a counterweight to the shareholders’ business interests.

Aaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha! Aaaahaha!

You fucking what? This is a joke, right?

You think that the press should be—indeed, most definitely is (so much so that the shareholders' property should be appropriated)—a brake on the excesses of our lords and masters, and the people that you think should control the press are the fucking politicians?

Are you completely fucking INSANE...?

I would like to state this plainly, George: you seriously think that the people who should control what is published about our politicians should be our politicians?

I thought that you were on your way to some kind of Damascene conversion: it seems, instead, that all your recent articles were actually a slow-burning descent into raving lunacy.

So sad...

Factchecking Johann Hari: Junichiro battles the robots

Author's note: I am not the Devil's Kitchen.

This blog post originally appeared on my now-defunct "Mr Eugenides" blog on 22nd January 2010. In view of Mr Hari's current travails, I thought it worth reposting in full this hilarious example of his loose relationship with truthiness.

- Mr Eugenides

------------------------

Two weeks ago it was a lament about our "culture of overwork", despite the overwhelming body of evidence that says the exact opposite. Today, Johann Hari is writing about, er, the increasing use of robots on the battlefield, together with the technological and ethical risks it poses, when he comes out with this corker (my emphasis):

We know the programming of robots will regularly go wrong – because all technological programming regularly goes wrong. Look at the place where robots are used most frequently today: factories. Some 4 per cent of US factories have "major robotics accidents" every year – a man having molten aluminium poured over him, or a woman picked up and placed on a conveyor belt to be smashed into the shape of a car. The former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was nearly killed a few years ago after a robot attacked him on a tour of a factory.

You what? A robot nearly killed the Japanese Prime Minister? I would have thought I would have remembered that, wouldn't you? So I did a Google search, and found footage of the incident in question:

That's it? That's your definition of "nearly killed"? I've got a fucking iron that is more deadly.

It took me three seconds to Google this, and one minute fifteen to establish that Hari is talking out of his capacious arse. Did someone tell Johann this when he was down the pub? Really, did he not think, y'know, um, I wonder if that drunk guy last night was making that robot shit up? What's your scoop next week, Johann, a world exclusive with Bigfoot?

Of course this is the most trivial howler imaginable, but it does make you wonder why the hell you should believe a word this man types. No wonder the Independent is dying on its arse when they print tripe like this.

Energy generation begins at home

A few days ago, this excellent article by Charles Moore contained a rather significant anecdote...

The other day, I heard that a top executive of one of our biggest power companies has had an emergency generator installed in his large house. One must assume that he knows something we don't.

Well, yes: he knows that this country is facing an energy shortfall from about 2014 onwards and we are, in fact, facing the prospect of rolling back-outs.

It is less a case of vote Blue, go Green than a case of vote how you like, the lights are still going to go out.

And all because our politicians are in thrall to an insane Green religion and they give more of a shit about some unproven Doomsday phantasm than they do about grannies freezing to death in their homes.

God, but I hate these bastards.

How appropriate

According to Hugh Muir at The Guardian, the reason that Santre Sanchez Gayle agreed to shoot a woman he'd never met for £200 was because he lived in poverty.

Riiiight.

To make his case, Muir drafts in some professional bleeding heart... [Emphasis mine.]

The core problem is poverty, says India, chair of the charity Leap, which works to help people out of poverty. "These are two disadvantaged, vulnerable groups, one leveraging the other. But the issue is deprivation. That £200 to him was same as £2m to someone else."

Which is a coincidence, really, because people appear to value their own lives at roughly £2 million.

Gayle, on the other hand, viewed other people's lives as being worth a mere £200.

It seems to me that the "core problem" is that Santre "Riot"* Gayle is an unpleasant little bastard who—in valuing the lives of others so low—reveals that he is a severe danger to society and should never be let out of prison.

So, you know what?

Fuck him.

* You would have thought that his nickname might have given people a clue here...

Marred by his own hypocrisy

Andrew Marr: a face only a mother and two desperate, lackwit MSM slappers could love (occasionally).

You would have to have the sense of humour of a socialist not to laugh at the recent travails of Andrew "arsehole" Marr.

BBC presenter Andrew Marr has revealed he took out a super-injunction to protect his family's privacy - but says he will not pursue it any further.

Mr Marr told the Daily Mail he was "embarrassed" about the gagging order he took out in 2008 to suppress reports of an affair with a fellow journalist.

"I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists," he said.

Really? Then why did you do it—is it because you are a disgusting hypocrite?

Yes.

After all, this is a journalist who questioned and harried MPs (as long as they weren't NuLabour ministers) over stupidity, corruption and hypocrisy—and yet who tried to gag his fellow hacks from reporting on his own faithless behaviour.

After all, it wasn't as though Guido hadn't let us all know some time ago.

At the time he believed he had fathered a child with the woman, but later found out through a DNA test this was not the case.

Yes, Andrew Marr spent seven years allegedly paying child support to Alice Miles—only to find out that she was, apparently, quite as unable to keep her genitals in her knickers as he was.

That alone made me laugh for nearly half an hour. I wonder if Marr will be asking for his money back...?

Lest we forget, of course, this is the same Andrew Marr who decided to have a go at "socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed" bloggers.

As such, I thought it worthwhile digging around The Kitchen archives (not least because some 6,000 people seem to have had the same idea) in order to dig out my encomium to this "nightmarish Fraggle".

Andrew Marr, however, is a bald, jug-eared, media whore whose pathetic and slavish devotion to NuLabour may or may not be influenced by his employment by the extortion-funded BBC and his marriage to Jackie Ashley, the raddled-looking harridan daughter of a life peer who writes for both The New Statesman and The Grauniad.

But, Andrew Marr is at least correct when he accuses bloggers of ranting. After all, whilst many of us are very angry about how our country has been systematically destroyed and our futures mortgaged by his favourite party, we are—alas—unable to use taxpayers' cash to get our points across. This leads to a certain amount of frustration and, inevitably, more than a soupcon of cathartic ranting.

But, as Anna Raccoon shows, we in the blogosphere can do some genuine good by providing crowd-sourcing and expertise to those oppressed by Andrew Marr's favourite little technocrats.

Furthermore, many blogs provide an invaluable insight into certain professions because they are written by people at the sharp end—people who genuinely know what is happening on the ground, or have a specialist knowledge of the subjects that they write about.

Which, for me, provide far more useful information about the true state of affairs than Andrew Marr reading some generalised crap—written by some underpaid graduate with a 2:2 in English Literature—off a fucking autocue. No amount of ridiculous arm-waving, Andrew, can substitute for a coherent piece written by someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

Still, I suppose that Andrew can write with some authority about super-injunctions, eh? It's just a pity that the same does not apply to honesty, truth, faithfulness, straight-dealing and not being a cunt.

Quote of the day...

... comes from Toby Young's scathing appraisal of socialist media darling, economic illiterate and all-round arse, Laurie Penny.

She’s so earnest, so self-absorbed, it’s impossible to take her seriously. Almost everything she writes is beyond parody, as if she’s the creation of a brilliant Right-wing satirist rather than a real person...

In many ways, I would love to believe that Penny is, in fact, such a creation.

Alas, I fear that this is not the case, and that Laurie is not only real but just as self-absorbed, fatuous and earnestly pretentious as the articles that fall like turds from her metaphorical pen.

Laurie Penny would be funny—if she were an invention rather than a dangerously influential parody of an intelligent and knowledgable human being...

UPDATE: back in February, young Penny wondered at her fortunate state...

So, I'm experiencing a bit of vertigo. Nine months ago I had just over a thousand Twitter followers; now it’s nearly thirteen thousand. Nine months ago it was a huge nerve-wracking fiasco for me to talk on a regional radio driveshow; last month I was a panellist on Any Questions. Nine months ago I was a blogger in the process of trying to improve my writing in the hopes of someday, maybe, being a ‘proper’ commentator’; I’m now a columnist for the country’s foremost leftwing magazine, earning a living as a full-time comment-and-features journo, and have written opinion pieces for the Guardian, the Evening Standard, the Independent and others. I got to talk at the Fabian Society conference! People from the BBC sometimes ring me up and ask what I think about things!

Penny thinks! Super! But don't worry—Laurie is not letting any of this go to her head. Actually, maybe she has—but that is all going to stop...

Meanwhile, I’m gradually learning how to handle all the pressure without being a total dickhead.

We're waiting...

Any time now...

UPDATE 2: the wife was at Wadham College, Oxford, at the same time as Ms Penny...

But stacked against everything else that comes out of Wadham College, what is Laurie Penny really doing?

She is travelling an extremely well-trodden road bearing the placard of thoroughly-explored philosophies. And the destination, reached so many times before, has benefitted no one except the travellers themselves.

This is not a condition, I fear, that is exclusive to Wadham...

Japanese nuclear power-plants: an accurate assessment

A nuclear reactor: now you can build your own...

Via EUReferendum, I have read—with great interest—this article on the situation surrounding the Fukushima nuclear incident.

Whilst media outlets, such as the BBC, have been amplifying the dangers (whilst simultaneously appearing to downplay them) the simple fact is that, according to the linked article, there really is no risk.

The article is written by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston: he is a PhD Scientist, whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry. As such, Oehmen can be taken as a rather more authoritative source than, for instance, the BBC's Roger Black; I have been unable to find a biography for the latter but, given the lack of scientific qualifications in the rest of the BBC's environmental team, I think that we can assume that Oehmen is rather more believable than Black.

Anyway, the whole article is utterly fascinating—laying out, as it does, not only what happened in Japan but also describing, in detail, exactly how a nuclear plant of the light water design actually operates.

So, I recommend that you read it all—I will simply leave you with Oehmen's conclusions:

• The plant is safe now and will stay safe.


• Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.


• Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.


• There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.


• The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.


• The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water


• The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.


• Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.


• The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)


• I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. About half of Japan’s nuclear reactors will probably have to be inspected, reducing the nation’s power generating capacity by 15%. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well. That will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to potential power shortages during peak demand, in Japan.

If you want to stay informed, please forget the usual media outlets and consult the following websites:

• http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Battle_to_stabilise_earthquake_reactors_1203111.html


• http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/12/japan-nuclear-earthquake/


• http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2011/03/11/media-updates-on-nuclear-power-stations-in-japan/

As Oehmen points out, he has published this in order to provide an accurate portrayal of the situation—something that he has not seen, and you will not see, in the hysterical articles written by the under-qualified hacks of the MSM.

Journalism vs. Blogging

Via Ben Goldacre on Twitter, I find this short but quite interesting article on the difference between journalism and blogging.

The article doesn't really point out anything that established denizens of the blogosphere will not already know, but I did like the fact that it condenses the whole argument into this rather neat little infographic.


It is the bottom-up transparency that is so important in blogging, I think: as the medium has become more mature, bloggers have started to become sloppy about linking to data and sources. This is a bad thing, but not entirely unexpected.

In the early days (and yes, I do consider myself to be one of the early UK political bloggers), we linked religiously to sources because we simply did not have the credibility of journalists: not only that, but we had something to prove—that we were happy to be held to account quickly and easily.

Whether that landscape has changed now is an interesting question: I do think that the political blogging landscape has changed in many ways, not least in the fracturing of the "political blogging community" into far more hardened party political lines: I regard this as being something of a pity but, once again, perhaps inevitable.

Anyway, I thought that it was an interesting digression...

UPDATE: since these things obviously go in trends, Gary Andrews has his own discussion of the changes in the blogosphere...

And when blogging was relatively new, it was a mixture of the enthusiasts, who could work blogging into a job, and those who had more time on their hands who led the charge.

Now many of those who led the charge are busier or have made a reasonably good fist of trying to monetise their blog.

Certainly those who blogged for fun – and are probably still leading proponents of blogging – have less time or work on a blog that pays. It’s become more professional, that’s for sure.

So where does this leave the professional amateur, the person who takes pride in their blog but holds down a day job and possibly a relationship, maybe with kids too? There’s only so many evenings you can stay up until the wee hours blogging merrily away.

Increasingly, I suspect, those early waves of professional amateurs have either got a career out of it or got out, bar for the occasional update on a semi-dormant blog (hey, I never said I wasn’t using myself as a case study).

Gary's argument is basically that the old hands either run out of time, or go professional: but, of course, there will be a new generation of exciting new bloggers coming through...

In which I am a bitch

Dan Hannan keeps referring to himself as a blogger: this really grips my shit is a big way. So I left a comment there...

You know what, Dan? I'd try to answer you except that you never answer anyone.

Don't pretend that you are a blogger: you aren't. You are an old-style columnist who cannot be bothered to answer his critics: there is no difference between you and Polly Toynbee.

You want to see what a blogger is? Look at the rest of us out here or—better—look at Lord Tebbit. He answers his critics: you cannot be arsed.

The fact that you won an award for "blogging" is one of the biggest travesties of our times.

You are generally good at what you do—indeed, I agree with you much of the time (as you know). But you are not a blogger, and you should stop referring to yourself as such.

DK

Oce upon a time, we bloggers were bloggers: we weren't divided by party lines. It was us versus the established media: now, we seem all too eager to accept those MSM wankers calling themselves "bloggers". I blame (mainly) that cunt Oliver Kamm, who is the first blogger that I know who crossed the line.

Here's the trick, chaps: bloggers answer their critics—they engage in conversation. And I don't care how much I agree with Hannan and endorse his attacks on our government—he is not a blogger.

The worst thing that politics ever did was to destroy the blogger-to-blogger relationship: it's dead, but we should now (in the spirit of coalition) resurrect it and give the Establishment hell...

UPDATE: one other blogging convention is that, every now and again, you have to get a bit pissed and post a nonsensical, rageous and gratuitously insulting post, in which you pine for "the good old days"—a mythological golden age probably located sometime in 1954(b).

Independent fame at last

Your humble Devil is flattered to have been characterised—alongside a few other notable blogging chaps and chapettes—so succinctly by the Independent's Michael Bywater...

The bloke from The Devil's Kitchen is doing it by saying "fuck" a lot, and who can blame him?

Quite. Mind you, it's customary in blogging circles to link to those blogs which one mentions.

And so, in the spirit of my described trait (to which I'll add some bad-tempered churlishness), I'd like to ask Michael a question: where the fuck's my link...?

Anyway, your humble Devil will be back tomorrow for some blogging fun. Probably.

UPDATE: The Longrider comments on Bywater's snide little sideswipe...

The general gist, though is that we aren’t in the same league as professional journalists. We aren’t. We tend to be a little more careful with our facts and if we get it wrong, will openly correct our copy. We engage with readers and, generally, exercise higher standard of ethical behaviour.

When it comes down to it, the professional journalist is only a fag paper away from the politician when it comes to disinformation, failure to check facts, misleading statistics, propaganda and downright lies – so, yes, I am not in the same league at all and would need to scrub myself down with sulphuric acid and a steel loofah if I ever became contaminated by one.

Harsh but, I think, entirely fair. Although I think he misses another salient point: we bloggers will investigate stories that the journos wouldn't touch, such as ClimateGate.

Rats are not people

(nb. I am not the Devil's Kitchen)

Christ, The Daily Telegraph usually waits until the end of the week to publish this kind of trash...

Junk food 'as addictive as heroin and smoking'

Here we go then...

Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found laboratory rats became addicted on a bad diet just like people who became dependent on cocaine and heroin.

Did they really? Well, here's some news: rats are not people, so fuck off.

While the findings cannot be directly transferred to human obesity, it found that overconsumption of high-calorie food triggered addiction-like responses in the brain.

But the study, published online in Nature Neuroscience, suggests for the first time that our brains may react in the same way to junk food as it does to drugs.

For the first time? I don't think so, sunshine. That's dopamine you're talking about there. It's a neurotransmitter that rewards pleasure and we've known that it gets released naturally by eating food for many, many years. 

Dr Paul Kenny, a neuroscientist who led the research, said the study, which took nearly three years to complete [the experiment lasted 40 days - TFS], confirmed the "addictive" properties of junk food.

"Obesity may be a form of compulsive eating,” he said.

What the hell does that mean? Obesity is a physical characteristic. Compulsive eating is an activity. Compulsive eating may lead to obesity. It's not a form of obesity.

"The new study explains what happens in the brain of these animals when they have easy access to high-calorie, high-fat food.”

You are, are you not, the same Dr Paul Kenny who was banging on about this last year in the, er, Daily Telegraph? Alright then, you publicity hungry rat-fucker, let's hear about your little experiment.

In the study, the research team divided the animals into three groups.

One got normal amounts of healthy food to eat, another was given restricted amounts of junk food and the third had unlimited amounts of cheesecake, fatty meat products, cheap sponge cakes and chocolate snacks.

There were no adverse effects on the first two groups. But the rats which ate as much junk food as they wanted quickly became very fat and started bingeing.

You don't say. You gave unlimited tasty, high calorie food to a bunch of stupid rodents and they ate it and got fat. Thank God for scientists.

Since you can't believe a word ill-informed Telegraph hacks say about scientific research, it's necessary to read the actual study. In it, you'll find that the first group was given nothing but standard, unappetizing laboratory chow pellets to eat. The other two groups were given what the researchers tellingly describe as "palatable food"—or the "cafeteria diet"—which consisted of "bacon, sausage, cheesecake, pound cake, frosting and chocolate." One of these groups had 1 hour's access a day, the other group had 18 to 23 hours access.

When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found the rats on unlimited junk food needed even more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets.

Yeah, after 40 days of feeding them sugary puddings that have no place being in a rodent's diet and would never be in a human's diet at anything approaching that level. But they also found (not mentioned in any news reports)...

Consistent with previous reports, there was a tendency for consumption of the cafeteria diet to decrease over time in the extended-access rats. This may reflect the development of tolerance to the palatability of the food items provided as part of the cafeteria diet over time.

In other words, the rats got bored of eating nothing but bacon and high-fat desserts, got less pleasure from doing so and—despite unrestricted access—ate less of them. Hardly "as addictive as heroin" that, is it?

"They always went for the worst types of food and as a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats,” said Dr Kenny.

The worst food being the "palatable" food, yes? You'd be eating the laboratory chow, I presume, Dr Kenny?

"When we removed the junk food and tried to put them on a nutritious diet – what we called the 'salad bar option' [laboratory chow - TFS] – they simply refused to eat."

"The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food."

This statement is—there is no other word for it—a complete lie, unless the good doctor chose not to mention it in his study, where it merely states that...

After 40 days, rats were no longer permitted access to the palatable diet but continued to have ad libitum access to standard laboratory chow... There was a marked decrease in caloric intake and a gradual decrease in body weight in extended access rats.

Nothing there about the rats "simply refusing to eat" or "basically starving themselves". If the scientist can't describe what happened in his own experiment, what chance has some twat from The Telegraph got?

The scientists fed the rats a diet modelled after the type that contributes to human obesity: easy to obtain high-calorie, high-fat foods. Soon after the experiments began, the animals began to bloat.

Let's say it one more time. Rats are not human beings. Rats might be intelligent by the pitiful standard of other rodents but, let's face it, they're still incredibly fucking stupid. If you give unlimited cocaine to a rat it will be dead within days because it will forget to eat, drink or sleep. Even the worst coke-heads don't do that, because they belong to the most intelligent and self-aware species on earth.

Unlike rats, we know that over-eating will make us fat and unattractive. We know that eating nothing but chocolate is unhealthy. Unlike rats, we have to pay for our food. Unlike rats, our dietary choices are more sophisticated than a toss up between chocolate cake and chow pellets. 

Above all, we have free will. The trouble with neuroscientists is that they spend so much time dicking around with mice and rats that they start to think that human behaviour is as easy to predict and manipulate as that of pea-brained vermin. The same mentality has infected the medical establishment, who view the population as rats and themselves as scientists in control of a giant experiment. Restrict access here, provide incentives there and, bingo, behaviour can be manipulated in whichever way they wish. Idiots.

All this experiment shows, for the umpteenth time, is that pleasurable activities produce dopamine. Or as Leg-Iron puts it:

The results prove only that rats have a sense of taste and smell, and don't like the crap they are routinely fed. It's junk science.

The frequent references to cocaine and heroin are there purely to allow excitable journalists to declare that tasty palatable 'junk' food is as addictive as hard drugs which—and this fact that has not gone unnoticed by the obesity crusaders—are illegal. It is the same line used by cranks like John Banzhaf and David Kessler (both former anti-smoking campaigners, incidentally. Enjoying that slippery-slope yet, nonsmokers?) 

Similarly, references to "easy access to high-calorie, high-fat food" are there only to encourage scum-bag politicians to clamp down on what and when we can eat, as if giving rats endless high calorie snacks for 40 days and 40 nights is comparable to having a McDonalds down the road. 

From the study itself:

Ease of access and consequent overeating of cafeteria-style diets in humans is considered an important environmental contributor to the current obesity epidemic in Western societies.

Geddit? Sentences like that don't appear in scientific journals by accident. And how well the media have responded, with much more to come later in the day, I'm sure...

Bad diet is like a drug habit say scientists (The Mirror)

Revealed: Junk food is just as addictive as drugs (Daily Record)

Junk Food Is As Addictive As Heroin (preventdisease.com)

The stage is set. By now, you should know what to expect.

Cosmo: stupid name, stupid guy

Cosmo Landesman in the Times has a very silly pop at smokers. There's not much of originality in there—mostly it's the usual bitching about butts and smells—but there are a couple of sentences worth pulling out.

I notice that right-wing critics of the nanny state never call for the legalisation of drugs on the grounds that adults should be free to choose to be addicts or not.

Er... I do. Indeed, I was at Exeter University last week, giving a speech advocating that very thing.

When it comes to choice, we demand to be left alone; but when our choice leads to cancer or liver failure we demand that the state — in the form of the NHS — takes care of us.

Er... I don't. I have private health insurance. It costs me about £51 per month for the very best cover that they could offer me. And, interestingly, Cosmo, the fact that I smoke does not affect my premiums.

Some years ago, I was researching what my National Insurance premiums cost versus what those same services would cost privately. Inevitably—and even at the lower wage that I was then earning—taking out private insurance for medical care and unemployment, and paying into a private pension cost far less than the NICs*.

However, when talking to the insurance rep—to whom I had given the background of my research—I got a quote (which was based, mainly, on my age) and asked whether the fact that I was a heavy smoker (a fact that I had to volunteer) made a difference to the premium.

The answer was that, no, it didn't: basically, because I was likely to die earlier—even if I needed treatment for a smoking related disease—such treatment was likely to be considerably cheaper than having to spend years in a nursing home. Oh, and the insurance companies also recognised that there was an inverse correlation between smoking and Alzheimer's (one of the most expensive diseases as far as insurance companies are concerned).

Just thought I'd share that with you...

But the idea that we are living in a Britain where personal freedoms are curtailed as never before seems bizarre. I never hear young people complain about the nanny state. Why? Because they’re all out of their heads on booze or stoned on weed and having a wonderful time.

Uh huh. Which is why such a high proportion of the Libertarian Party is made up of people under 30.

And being consistently sober is tedious and stressful. Which is why, when you ban various drugs, it doesn't stop people taking those drugs, or looking for legal alternatives—such as the hilariously named "meow meow".

So, tell you what, Cosmo: you fuckers let me opt out of the state healthcare system entirely—let me keep my NICs and stick with my private insurance—and I'll not be a burden on your precious NHS.

Except, of course, that isn't going to happen, is it? Because, for all your whining, National Insurance is a fucking Ponzi Scheme and it is actually my subs that are going to pay for your treatment.

So shut the fuck up.

* There are caveats that I'm sure A&E; Charge Nurse will, no doubt, point out. However, my medical insurance premium could double and I would still be paying less for those three services privately than I am under NICs.

Polly Toynbee: contrarian harridan

Your humble Devil has not turned his baleful eye towards Polly Toynbee for some time, partly because he has not had the time to engage in a thorough fisking of the evil old bag.

Unfortunately, such timing issues still persist but, nevertheless, it is always worth sending a few shots across her bows—if only to keep dear Pollyanna on her toes.

And in a neat example of such time-limited but timely reminders, this post will emphasise one of those little tics which—whilst not being exclusive to Polly—does illustrate just why she is one of the most abysmal writers in the MSM (as previously chronicled, at length, here at The Kitchen).

Yes, it's Polly's quite brilliant ability to contradict herself within the very same article that we are going to highlight today.

So, in today's worthless piece of crap, darling Polly is talking about a National Care Service—which sounds like it will be a fucking disaster—and the contradiction lies in Polly's justification for another massive fucking nationwide government-driven QUANGO. So, we have this...

One benefit of devolution is the real-life social experiments it offers as each nation adopts different social ­policies. But the chance to learn from one another is often ignored at Westminster.

Wow! Polly thinks that we should experiment on people—just like little lab rats. But then this hardly comes as a surprise—she is a socialist, after all, and believes that she is superior to the plebs who exist only to serve her need for social expiation.

But that is incidental—note, please, that she has said that experimentation between regions is a good thing because other regions can learn from one another—although, presumably, she would not think that any verdict should be passed on Saint Obama's health bill as a result of the recent electoral upset in Massachusetts.

Regardless, this idiotic nitwit now weighs in with a fantastically contradictory statement.

Nothing about social care is simple – not least because each local authority offers different levels of care at different rates and interprets the official criteria arbitrarily: that's why we need a National Care Service.

Erm... Right, so experimentation between devolved regions is a good thing because we can learn valuable lessons...

... but we need a National Care Service to ensure that regions cannot, in fact, experiment.

Well done, Polly, you fucking muppet.

UPDATE: it seems that Timmy has made the same point, albeit somewhat more succinctly.

UPDATE 2: the wife, by the way, maintains that Polly cannot be serious and that her columns are, in fact, a colossal practical joke—each one a more elaborate spoof than the next. Sometimes, I wonder if she might be right...

Post of the Day: Worstall goes all Devil

Timmy rarely swears, but this article on the EU urging us to "focus on the big issues"—by some apologist called Vaira Vike-Freiberga—has really got his goat, and his comments are succinct and to the point...

Europe is as democratic as it can be for now.

Translation: shut the fuck up and do what we tell you.

Europe can never again have a political system imposed on it from above.

Which is why we are imposing one upon you so shut the fuck up and do what we tell you.

The time for faceless bureaucracy and high-table deal-making is over.

Which is why we’ll continue to run the system as a faceless bureaucracy leavened with high-table deal-making so shut the fuck up and do what we tell you.

As regular readers of The Kitchen will know, your humble Devil is not a fan of democracy—but it is the least worst system that we have come up with.

The EU doesn't even pretend that it is even paying lip-service to democracy anymore. The attitude of the colleagues really is "shut the fuck up and do what we tell you."

Can we leave yet? Or better...

Unio Europaea delenda est.

Look on the bright side

Via Iain Dale, I see that Quaequam Blog! has found an upside to the idea that the Press Complaints Commission should regulate blogs.

But wait: a thought occurs. If bloggers are to be brought under the PCC, surely we should have seats on the PCC board? And, given the fact that our combined readership is somewhat larger than the newspapers’, shouldn’t we actually have a majority of seats on that board? It seems to me that having a majority of bloggers sitting on the PCC board would almost certainly result in a better system of self-regulation than we have at present.

Now that would be fun: apart from anything else, I'd love to see Justin, Unity and Tim Ireland ruling on complaints against The Sun, for instance.

And, even more joyfully, we could see a situation in which the peripatetic Greek, Timmy and myself are called on to rule against on whether Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot or Jackie Ashley, for instance, have broken the rules by lying like bastards.

You know, this idea is beginning to appeal...

Baroness Buscombe can fuck right off

As you may have seen, Baroness Buscombe—the new head of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC)—has wondered whether blogs should also be regulated by the PCC. Well, with all due respect, Baroness, you can fuck right off.

Now, instead of hurling insults at the woman—I am a busy man and, frankly, she ain't worth it—I have, instead, willingly signed up to Unity's reasonable but forceful response: a letter, which will be sent to the Baroness which not only politely points out that she can fuck right off, but also gives a number of good reasons why she can fuck right off. The most telling of these being that fact that, frankly, our standards are rather higher than that of the PCC or its members.

The text of the letter appears below, and you can sign up in the comments at Liberal Conspiracy. Do go and do so: this is not a party political response: this is the blogosphere telling the old media Establishment to go fuck itself and so, as far as your humble Devil is concerned, is worth signing up to on that basis alone.

Baroness Buscombe
Chair
Press Complaints Commission
Halton House
20/23 Holborn
London EC1N 2JD

Cc. Rt. Hon. Ben Bradshaw MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Cc. John Whittingdale MP, Culture, Media and Sport Committee

17 November 2009

Dear Lady Buscombe

Re: Extension of PCC regulation to UK Blogs/Blogging

We write in regards to your apparent proposal that the PCC should consider extending its remit to the ‘blogosphere’ as reported by Ian Burrell of the Independent on 16 November 2009 (1).

While we are grateful for your interest in our activities we must regretfully decline your kind offer of future PCC regulation. Frankly, we do not feel that the further development of blogging as an interactive medium that facilitates the free exchange of ideas and opinions will benefit from regulation by a body representing an industry with, in the main, substantially lower ethical standards and practices than those already practiced by the vast majority of established British bloggers.

Although we would not wish you believe that this criticism relates to all your members – The Guardian, in particular, has adopted a number of practices, not least the appointment of a Readers’ Editor to deal with complaints, which we consider to be the current gold standard in ethical journalistic practice amongst national newspapers – It is nevertheless the case that the vast majority of national newspaper titles routinely fall well short of both those, and our own, standards and that our direct experience of dealing with the Press Complaints Commission shows the organisation to be, in the main, complicit in those failings.

To give but one recent example of bad practice, of the many that bloggers have documented in over the last few years, an article published by the Tabloid Watch blog in October, covered documented, in some considerable detail, the tortuous process that one of its readers had to go through in order to get the News of the World to retract a manifestly untrue and inflammatory statement by one of its regular columnists, Carole Malone. In this particular column, published in July 2009, Malone made use of an all-too-common and utterly racist myth that ‘immigrants’ (meaning asylum seekers) receive free cars on arriving in the UK (2), a myth that is most closely associated with the propaganda output of the British National Party.

All you have to do to get everything Britain has to offer is to turn up illegally with some sob story of how your own country is too dangerous or that you’re a lesbian who’ll be shot if you stay there and Hey Presto, it’s like you’ve won the lottery! And, in effect, they HAVE.

Free houses, free cars, free healthcare and free money. Hell, they don’t even have to work or speak the language. Even the suggestion they should is seen as racist in Brown’s Britain.

They can just live as they did before, only with a whole heap more money and zero responsibility to the country providing it. (3)

What we find most striking about the process documented by Tabloid Watch is the extent to which the PCC actively sought to facilitate the News of the World’s efforts to avoid undertaking practices that we, as bloggers, take for granted as being standard practice in our corner of the Internet; i.e. the prominent publication of an honest and open correction of a factual error on the original article in which the error, itself, was made. Instead, as we invariably find to be standard practice amongst, particularly, tabloid newspapers; the correction and cursory apology (4)– when it was grudgingly issued after what Tabloid Watch described as ‘two months of wrangling’ – appeared in a location other than that of Malone’s column in the newspaper’s print edition and on its website on a page utterly divorced the article to which it relates, which was removed its entirely, and in such a way that only someone searching specifically for the retraction would ever be likely to find it. (5)

To all intents and purposes, the retraction might as well not have been issued, for all that it would apparent to visitors to the News of World’s website that it had ever been made.

This is but one clear example of a practice that would be unacceptable amongst established bloggers and one of many that bloggers who specialise in monitoring the national press for accuracy have documented in recent years. For a blogger to engage in such practices, which include ‘stealth editing’ of articles, after publication, to avoid owning up to factual errors and removing and/or refusing to publish critical comments from readers, especially those that highlight and correct factual errors.

For an established blogger to adopt such practices would do incalculable damage to their public reputation; this being, after all, all that we have to trade on.

To the vast majority of national newspapers such conduct is no more than standard operating practice.

Consequently we would suggest that before your even consider turning your attention to our activities, you should direct your energies towards putting your own house in proper order. Should you succeed in raising the ethical standards and practices of the majority of the national press, particularly the tabloids, to our level then we may be inclined to reconsider our position. Until that happens, any attempt by the Press Complaints Commission to regulate the activities of bloggers will be strenuously resisted at every possible turn.

Regards,

Unity—Ministry of Truth (6) and Liberal Conspiracy (7)

References

1. Ian Burrell. PCC to regulate UK bloggers? Independent Minds. [Online] 16 November 2009. http://ianburrell.independentminds.livejournal.com/8357.html.


2. MacGuffin. How the PCC Doesn’t Work. Tabloid Watch. [Online] 25 October 2009. http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-pcc-doesnt-work.html.


3. Malone, Carole. I’ll Give You a Real Benefits Sob Story. News of The World. [Online] 26 July 2009. Article no longer available online. Key content quoted by Tabloid Watch: http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2009/07/carole-malone-and-bnp.html.


4. Press Complaints Commission. [Online] [Cited: 17 November 2009.] http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NjAzNQ==.


5. News of The World. Illegal immigrants & cars . [Online] [Cited: 25 October 2009.] http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/showbiz/564615/Illegal-immigrants-amp-cars.html.

Supporting Bloggers/Blogs

6. Ministry of Truth. [Online] http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk.


7. Liberal Conspiracy. [Online] http://www.liberalconspiracy.org.

Did I mention that the Baroness and the PCC can fuck right off? I have? Oh well...

MPs should be paid less

In an article about Professor Nutt (about which I shall write in due course), Dan Hannan says the following... [Emphasis mine.]

He’s plainly right, this Nutt, when he says that the government’s attitude to cannabis is counter-productive, ill-informed and vote-grabbing. But that is what governments do: they grab votes.

So, Dan is saying that politicians go for the most populist policy—hence the government's stance on drugs.

How fortunate, then, that Chris Dillow makes a logical argument for why this means that politicians should be paid much, much less.

On the one hand, there‘s the Burkean view, that MPs should exercise independent judgement:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

On the other hand, there’s the notion that MPs must follow public opinion.
Now, the Burkean view suggests we should pay MPs the sort of salary good professionals command, as Philip Stephens proposes, because we want them to have similarly good, independent judgment.

However, if MPs merely follow public opinion, there’s no need for such high wages. Any pub bore can echo the prejudices of the mob.

Which brings us to Johnson. In rejecting scientific evidence, and pursuing a drugs policy that merely panders to the most base and ignorant public opinion, he is rejecting the Burkean view in favour of the populist one.

As does Dan Hannan, apparently.

But if our representatives are to do this, why should we pay them as if they are taking complicated decisions? I can see a case for paying people good money for sifting scientific evidence, weighing arguments and making tricky judgments under uncertainty. But if they are just reading Daily Mail editorials, we should pay them as much as this skill demands - which is peanuts.

Good. Pay these fuckers peanuts and they will be so busy scrabbling around for the money to live that they won't have time to pass any laws.

Pay these betraying MPs less: it's the right thing to do.