Some points of order on PR

First up—despite the reduced output—your humble Devil has once again made it to Cision's Top 10 Whistleblowing blogs for this year. I know, I thought it was a bit strange too, but Cision describes "whistleblowing" in the following way:

Cision defines whistle blowing as the act of exposing injustice in society, government and public services.

Cision are, basically, a PR company and, above all of their lists, they print the following caveat for those wishing to get bloggers to push content. [Emphasis mine.]

The fundamentals of working with bloggers are the same as with traditional journalists at traditional media outlets: respect their schedules; take time to read their material to learn their interests; and only contact them if/when they want to be contacted.

Inevitably, this almost never happens, which is why I never publish press releases or product plugs unless I find something interesting off my own bat—and that point of interest usually differs from what the PR people want.

However, I am going to plug the new Sky News iPad application, and I'm going to do so for two reasons.

1. The first is naked greed: Sky are offering all those who plug the app the chance to win an iPad 2—and I want one.*


2. The second is a mixture of ego and a belief in plugging good practice, because the person who sent the request had actually pretended to read some of my witterings—which is a step in the right direction as far as PR people are concerned.

So, here you go: here is some blurb about the Sky News iPad app...

Sky News will be launching their brand new iPad on 17th March. The app is a completely new way of getting breaking news in your hands—allowing you to decide what you watch and how you watch it. It’s a ground-breaking service that offers live events, expert analysis and amazing graphics—all designed specifically for iPad.

... and here is a short video about the Sky News iPad app (it actually looks quite neat).

It's a bit of a pity that the video is delivered via Flash and, as such, cannot be viewed by anyone using an iPad, or an iPhone (or, to be fair, most other mobile devices**).

As an amusing aside, the Sky News iPad app PR company is called Jam, and they write a slightly tedious PR-speak blog. However, a piece on how Charlie Sheen had set a new record for gaining one million Twitter followers in the least time did amuse me. [Emphasis mine.]

Perhaps it’s the innate human interest in supporting the underdog or our love of all things taboo, but @charliesheen is set to surpass @justinbieber with the most followers by the end of the month.

Um, no. I think that you'll find that the reason that so many people are following Charlie Sheen is because there is a kind of grim fascination in watching someone go absolutely fucking hatstand right in front of you (as it were). It is, if you like, the finest example so far of car-crash Twittering.

* Since Dizzy doesn't want one if he wins, I am hoping to persuade him to flog it to me for cheap...

** Yes, I know that Flash has made it onto some mobile devices. However, in order to make it a "decent" experience (in as much as such a thing is possible) Adobe recommends that all Flash movies are recompiled for Mobile Flash. As far as I can tell, this video is not.

The Devil rides out (on the BBC)

Your humble Devil is in Peckham tomorrow, to take part in a debate on drink-driving, as part of BBC1's The Big Question. They are focusing on the North review of drink-driving laws—which is looking at dropping the alcohol limit—and whether this would be a "good" thing. As such, your humble Devil is spending some time researching current figures...

On Wednesday (hopefully—I've just about managed to clear my diary), I shall be having a five minute interview with The Daily Politics, as Andrew Neil does a short piece on the Libertarian Party as part of the BBC's focus on smaller political parties.

Provided I can stop myself from swearing, can a starring role in a major Hollywood blockbuster be far away...?

More fusion news

Test plasma inside WB7 (Polywell fusor reactor) using Helium: from the EMC2 website.

As regular readers will know, your humble Devil has been following the progress of the Polywell Fusor reactor project for some time. I happen to believe that fusion is the entirely attainable Holy Grail of power generation and that Dr Bussard's Polywell may well provide the breakthrough that we need.

I am pleased to report, via the IEC Fusion Technology blog, that sufficient progress has been made for EMC2—the company driving the research—to receive another big tranche of funding.

EMC2 has gotten almost eight million dollars to do further experimentation on the Polywell Fusion concept.

Energy Matter Conversion Corp., (EMC2)*, Santa Fe, N.M., is being awarded a $7,855,504 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for research, analysis, development, and testing in support of the Plan Plasma Fusion (Polywell) Project. Efforts under this Recovery Act award will validate the basic physics of the plasma fusion (polywell) concept, as well as provide the Navy with data for potential applications of polywell fusion. Work will be performed in Santa Fe, N.M., and is expected to be completed in April 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to FAR 6.302-1. The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, Calif., is the contracting activity (N68936-09-C-0125).

I think this is the award based on the solicitation discussed here and here and here.

Evidently the $2 million promised in May was just a place holder and the actual funds are significantly greater. This means that the work on WB-8 and the engineering for WB-9 will go forward with the next milestone in April of 2011. Which is in accord with Rick Nebel's promise that We Will Know In Two Years.

This last link is a referral to another IEC Fusion post: one that discusses when we might know whether the Polywell will, indeed, deliver industrial levels of power through nuclear fusion.

Rick Nebel, the head of EMC2 Fusion (Polywell), has a few words to say in the comments at Next Big Future about the progress he is making in understanding The Polywell Fusion Reactor and its chances for power production.

rnebel
I believe we will know the answer for the Polywell in ~1.5–2 years. I haven't looked at MSimon's design, but I know he has a lot of good ideas. We'll probably take a closer look at D-D reactors over the next 2 years.

I'm honored Rick thinks that I have made some useful contributions to the advance of this technology.

What most excites me is that we will probably know in two years or less if this technology is viable. That is very exciting.

So do I. Of course, we may find that it is not viable at all; but, the fact that the continuing funding is based on such strict presentations of current and extensive previous testing sounds extremely promising.

It is instructive to note, also, that even with this latest round of funding, the amount ploughed into the Polywell research numbers only a few tens of million dollars. Contrast that with ITER—based on a system (tokamak) that has never produced net energy output—which is currently estimated to cost in excess of €10 billion for what is, to say the least, an extremely uncertain result. Even if the 35 year project goes to plan, ITER's goal is...

... to produce 500 million watts of fusion power for at least 400 seconds...

... or rather less than seven minutes. Seven minutes of (admittedly, fairly high) power in return for 35 years and €10 billion—that's not what I'd call impressive.

Whether the Polywell will be successful, I don't know: you can study the latest results and conclusions in this PDF. However, for all that it is a summary, I find that I am unable to understand many of the technicalities.

What I can glean is that the system would be much more likely to work at a larger scale, since in physically small systems the fact of the tiny distances to travel has proved problematic as regards the ionisation of the particles involved (as well as with magnetic shielding of the ion guns).

The conclusion of the report, regarding costs, is quite clear however.

11. Once again, large machines will not suffer from these problems to any significant degree, but they will cost a great deal more. Costs tend to scale as the cube of the system size and the square of the B field. Thus, full-scale machines and their development will cost in the range of ca $180–200M, depending on the fuel combination selected. These cost estimates closely reproduce those made throughout the USN program life, from its earliest work (1991) to its conclusion (mid-2006) including those made at interim reviews (1995, 1999). USNavy costs expended to date in this program have been approximately $18M over about 10 years (2/3 in last 6 years).

That is to say, to design, build and test full-size 100MW commercial reactor should cost around $180–$200 million.

The adoption of a viable fusion reactor would end our reliance on oil. Not only would this render the Green machine impotent—for there are no long-lived nuclear waste by-products either—but it would also end our dependence on innumerable unsavoury regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere—not overnight, but within a sufficiently short space of time.

There is an awful lot riding on this, and—in what I would describe as a near-criminal oversight—our government seems to be blissfully unaware of it all...

On the bright side...

... it has been shown that it is possible to diagnose lung cancer from somebody's breath.

By employing recent developments in nanotechnology, however, researchers from the Israel Institute of Technology have overcome the need to pre-treat exhaled breath for analysis.

The new work appears in the current issue of Nature Nanotechnology. Hossam Haick, the principal researcher, and his team collected breath samples from 56 healthy volunteers and 40 people who had been diagnosed with lung cancer, but have not received treatment yet. They analyzed the samples and identified 33 biomarkers, chemicals that were present at significantly distinct levels in the lung cancer patients.

The team devised a sensor system made from nine chemiresistors that could respond to the biomarkers by altering their electrical properties. The chemiresistors were assembled from gold nanoparticles that are 5nm in diameter and functionalized with different organic compounds that allowed them to sense the biomarkers.

When the researchers exposed the sensors to untreated breath samples, they obtained readings that clearly distinguished between the exhalations of healthy patients and those with lung cancer. Regardless of the humidity of the breath, the gender of its source, or their smoking habits, the sensors were able to detect the lung cancer biomarkers. The sensors were also capable of working with a wide range of concentrations, and the process was reversible, meaning the nanoparticles can be reused.

The researchers point out that they need to test their sensors on "a wider population of volunteers to thoroughly probe the influence of diet, alcohol consumption, metabolic state, and genetics.” Those experiments are already underway.

Isn't human ingenuity brilliant?

Will we ever trust doctors again?

Ian Gilmore: His guitar playing on Shine on You Crazy Diamond was sublime but these days he's a proper cunt.

(nb. I am not DK)

The Lancet has decided to dedicate a whole issue to pushing the fuck-me-I-never-saw-that-coming anti-booze crusade that all us paranoid libertarians said would inevitably follow the war on tabs as a result of the slippery slope that apparently doesn't fucking exist.

Parading it to the blinkered morons of the Fourth Estate is ubiquitous arsehole Ian Gilmore, who makes the connection between smoking and drinking explicit:

"We need an international framework convention for alcohol control, similar to that on tobacco, as soon as possible, to put into practice the evidence-based measures needed to reduce alcohol-related harm.

"These include increasing the price of alcohol, reducing its availability and banning advertising, and the action needs to start now."

Translation:

"We've been fucking smokers up the arse for a number of years now and, frankly, we're in the mood for some fresh meat. Obviously we'll be using the same bullshit statistics to soften the British pleblic up for a good roasting. 

"But before we begin, I'd just like to thank all the docile pricks who pathed the way by supporting the smoking ban just because it meant they wouldn't have to wash their clothes or hair anymore. 

"Believe me, you dirty, smelly, gullible set of twats, a trip to the washing machine is going to seem like a fucking birthday party by the time we've finished with you."

Step One is a 50p per unit 'minimum price' on alcohol. In an attempt to whore this policy to the public, Gilmore came up with a 'fact' which, even by the standards of puritanical, lying, fake charity, quack bastard, burn-in-hell fuck-nuggets like him, is an egregious travesty. Not that the fucking Telegraph bothered to question it:

Minimum alcohol price 'could halve hospital admissions for drinking'

Prof Gilmore, the president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the move could reduce the numbers admitted for alcohol problems by around 100,000.

In 2007, just over 207,000 people were taken into hospital because of the effects of drinking.

Really? Upon what research is this based, Gilmore, you say-anything, do-anything, prohibitionist fucking little worm? Are you prepared to stand by this prediction if we introduce this piece-of-shit law and hospital admissions don't fall by half? Can we expect you to do the decent thing, ie. resign, stick an orange in your mouth and kill yourself? Or will you and your band of hateful motherfuckers simply demand a higher 'minimum price' and yet more vindictive bullshit?

The hopeless bastard reveals what a nonsense this is as he tries to suck up to middle England:

Writing in The Lancet, however, Prof Gilmore says that the price hike would cost the average person only 23p more per week.

Only 23p? So it'll be so small that no one notices and yet big enough to save 100,000 lives? Give me three bottles of your snake-oil, Dr Gilmore. Fuck it, let's make it 46p and eliminate alcohol-related admissions altogether.

Lying, evil little shyster. That's all he is.

If that little statistic sounds like bollocks—and by Christ, it is—it is entirely in keeping with The Lancet's special edition, of which the highlight is this study:

One in 25 deaths across the world are linked to alcohol consumption, Canadian experts have suggested.

And if 1 in 25 deaths seems a bit high, wait till you hear about the supposed rate in Europe:

Europe had the highest proportion of deaths related to alcohol, with 1 in 10 deaths directly attributable.

10% of all deaths? Let's do a quick bag-of-an-envelope calculation, shall we?

According to the ONS, there were 509,090 deaths in England and Wales in 2008 and there were 6,541 deaths related to alcohol in England. That last figure doesn't include Wales so let's be generous and add a further 500 deaths for the sheep-worriers.

Which gives us a total number of about 7,000, or 1.38% of all deaths.

Of course, that doesn't give us the percentage for the whole of Europe, but seeing as we're supposedly some of the worst drinkers in Europe (another fucking lie), that should be considered a conservative estimate. Still nowhere near 10% though, is it? It's not even close to the 1 in 25—or 4%—claimed for the whole world, and for that global total you need to factor in a billion muslims who don't drink at all, plus God knows how many people who haven't got a pot to piss in, let alone a pub to get pissed in.

So the only conclusion can be that, yet again, we're being lied to on a massive scale. And what does the prick who conducted the study have to say for himself?

"The big message is treat alcohol like tobacco..."

Yeah, alright, we get it...

... not as a substance that is relatively benign except for those bad alcoholics. That is not true."

And that, too, is a bare-faced lie. Being a tee-totaller is not good for you and moderate drinking is very certainly 'benign', as has been shown many times, for example:

Women who drank alcohol on at least one day a week had a lower risk of coronary heart disease than women who drank alcohol on less than one day a week...

For men an inverse association was found between drinking frequency and risk of coronary heart disease across the entire range of drinking frequencies. The lowest risk was observed among men who drank daily (0.59, 0.48 to 0.71) compared with men who drank alcohol on less than one day a week.

They lie and lie and lie. Do these fuckers really think that a few bullshit anti-drinking laws are worth dragging their profession into the gutter? One day these quack bastards will tell the truth about something important. Will anyone believe them?

UPDATE (by DK): Professor Ian Gilmore is, of course, not just "president of the Royal College of Physicians", oh no. He is also the Chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance which is, of course, a fake charity of some magnitude.

Now, a quick search of fakecharities.org for "Alcohol Health Alliance" throws up such definitely fake charities as Sustain, the Institute for Alcohol Studies and the Alliance House Foundation (formerly the UK Alliance for the Suppression of the Traffic in All Intoxicating Liquors); all of these organisations are heavily funded by the state which means, of course, that the Alcohol Health Alliance is also heavily funded by the state.

As such, Professor Ian Gilmore is a mouthpiece for the government and should probably have his tongue ripped from his lying head before being hanged by his testicles in a tank full of ravenous piranas. The cunt.

It is worth pointing out that nowhere in the Telegraph article is this information pointed out.

Now me—I'd say that taking the word of a man who is the Chair of an organisation, the members of which include the formerly-named "UK Alliance for the Suppression of the Traffic in All Intoxicating Liquors", without mentioning this little nugget of information—or massive fucking conflict of interest—is the act of a deeply stupid, tit-head, biased cub reporter.

I would view said nugget as something that a professional journalist might like to mention to his readers. You know—for balance, and that kind of thing. Not, apparently, in the increasingly bizarre and amateurish world of the fucking Daily fucking Telegraph.

Professor Ian Gilmore really is a fucking cunt of the very first water who first featured on The Kitchen in December 2007. Needless to say, he has made a couple of appearances since then.

And I fully expect him to become a regular hate figure in the future too.

Pig ignorant

(nb. I ain't DK)

Colossal scepticism tends to be the soundest response whenever a new 'pandemic' is announced, especially when the headlines...

How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare

(Daily Mail)

...are so utterly at odds with what the people who know what they're talking about are actually saying:

"If the avian flu H5N1 virus had spread from human to human like this then I would be extremely worried. It would be top of my Richter scale.

But this swine flu worries me less because as a population we have a basic immunity to H1N1. Outside of Mexico there have been no deaths, so it doesn't seem so aggressive.

And not only are we coming up to the summer, which makes it less likely for these viruses to spread as well, but Britain has enough antiviral drugs for half of the population.

So we should not panic in any way." 
(Prof. John Oxford)

Mishearing the advice to "not panic in any way" as "panic anyway", the press are telling us that swine 'flu will kill up to 120 million people.

Which it won't. 

Bird 'flu was supposed to kill 150 million people before it emerged that you virtually had to have penetrative sex with a chicken to stand any chance of catching it. SARS was also supposed to kill millions but that disappeared within a year. Neither 'pandemic' killed more than a thousand people worldwide (less than are killed by boring old English 'flu every winter), and none of them were in the UK. 

A 2006 report in The Lancet predicted that a future 'flu epidemic will kill 62 million, including up to 700,000 in the UK. Good news for the in-no-way sinister Optimum Population Trust if it happens, but, as Spiked have pointed out, that is not very likely (Leg-Iron begs to differ). The chances are that swine 'flu will kill a few hundred people, with tequila-drinking pig-fuckers at most risk, and then fizzle out.

Or so I had thought, but Gordon Brown's worryingly familiar response to the threat has sent a chill up my spine:

"Swine flu is an international problem..."

"Britain is among the best-prepared countries in the world..."

"We will all take action to ensure that these fears are allayed..."

See? No need to worry. Gordon the warden is going to take whatever action is necessary, Britain is best prepared to weather the storm, and anyway it's a global problem.

Oh fuck.

Submitted as a complaint to the BBC

As I saw yet another fucking BBC article uncritically citing the limits on alcohol, your humble and incensed Devil decided to submit an official complaint.

Dear Sir,

I notice, once again, that you have quoted the government's statistics on alcohol consumption limits in the attached story. In fact, you uncritically quote them in almost every story about alcohol consumption.

What I have never seen mentioned on BBC News is the fact that these limits have no basis in science whatsoever. This was admitted by Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced the 1987 report on which these limits are based. This was revealed in a Times article in October 2007, in which Smith is quoted:

"... it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t ... we don’t really have any data whatsoever ... Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee".

The article also pointed out...

One [report] found that men drinking between 21 and 30 units of alcohol a week had the lowest mortality rate in Britain. Another concluded that a man would have to drink 63 units a week, or a bottle of wine a day, to face the same risk of death as a teetotaller.

Why do we never see this fact reported on the BBC? Why does the BBC parrot the government's entirely arbitrary alcohol unit limits without criticism?

This is very far from being impartial reporting and is, instead, quite obvious bias towards government propaganda.

DK

It pisses me right off every single fucking time that I see it. Let us see what their pathetic justification for this piss-poor level of reporting is, shall we?

Uh oh!

Given Gordon's Brown's "Jonah" reputation, I fully expect something bad to happen to this poor fucker...

[Mr Brown] added: "Her determination to help her family is something that we have got to applaud and I wish her family well."

Yup, it's only a matter of time before something really bad happens to Jade Goody.

Oh, wait...

A confession

I hate cancer.

There: I said it. It's fairly uncontentious; I can't imagine that people are sitting in front of their screens thinking, "I can't believe he said that!" But today there is a specific reason why I hate cancer...

... it has made me feel sorry for that appalling professional gobshite, Jade Goody. To go through all of that shitty treatment and then find that the cancer has spread to your other organs and that you are, at the age of 27, effectively the walking dead is unbelievably an unbelievably crappy situation.

Former Big Brother star Jade Goody has confirmed the cervical cancer she is being treated for has spread to her bowel, liver and groin.

The mother-of-two was diagnosed with the illness in August and has been receiving chemotherapy ever since.

Her spokesman, Max Clifford, said the 27-year-old was "trying to put on a brave face" for her two children.

She told The Sun: "I am devastated, frightened and angry. I don't want to die, I have so much to live for."

Goody, who appeared on the Channel 4 series in 2002 added: "The reality is I have gone from a 40% chance of a cure to seeing how long I can stay alive.

"The whole thing is absolutely terrifying, I am hoping a new type of treatment will suppress and control the cancer, which is very aggressive. I am in a nightmare."

Clifford said the team of doctors and surgeons who had been treating the star at London's Royal Marsden Hospital were now discussing the best way to treat the three tumours.

The truth is that our means of treating cancer are still pretty primitive. If cutting the bastard out doesn't work, then we can resort to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, both of which embrace the same philosophy: we flood the body with poisons and hope that the cancer dies before the patient does. Chemotherapy, in particular, is painful and debilitating.

So, I feel sorry for Jade Goody.

There: I said it.

UPDATE: via haddock, I find a reason to admire Goody.

The 27-year-old has stage three cancer. It was misdiagnosed four times, but Jade says she won't seek compensation from the hospital, as she thinks taking money from the NHS is wrong.

That is a remarkably forgiving attitude, I think. Strangely, there no mention of this fact in the BBC article...

Snow, and lots of it!

Your humble Devil is working from home today, with the snow having brought much of the country to a standstill. It is, I must admit, very pretty but it is also an absolute pain in the arse.

And it's not just the roads that are fucked; trains and buses are nowhere to be seen. And, although I know that only 45% of the Tube network is actually underground, one is left speculating about the wrong type of underground snow...


Still, I feel a weird sense of pride that "my" Tube line—the mighty Victoria Line—is the only one up and running properly.

Not that I intend to use it.

Two hours to deliver your online newspaper...

Via Tory Bear, I find this rather wonderful news piece, from 1981, explaining a strange new phenomenon: receiving your newspaper over your telephone line...


Who'da thunk it?

The idiots win again

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

So, Jon Gaunt has been sacked by TalkSport for calling a horrible little bigot "a Nazi". Apparently the station "received a number of complaints over the broadcast". They received a lot of e-mails of support for Gaunt, too, but they ignored them.

As I made plain in my previous post, I don't listen to Jon Gaunt or, for that matter, TalkSport, but I wonder how many listeners to a show presented by a right-wing Sun columnist would really have objected to Mr Gaunt slipping into the vernacular when dealing with a man who would like it to be illegal for Britain's 13 million smokers to become foster parents.

As was amply demonstrated during the ridiculous Ross/Brand furore - and before that, the Shilpa Shetty bollocks (remember her?) - complaints procedures are a joke; they are nothing more than a vote on whether the non-listening public like the person or persons involved.

The knives have been out for 'Gaunty' for some time. He is none too keen on fanatical Islam and is a critic of multiculturism. His final mistake was to have a go at anti-smoking nutters and thanks to a few phone calls from some fellow anti-smoking nutters and a few liberal-left cry-babies he now joins the ranks of other right-wing populists like James Whale and Robert Kilroy-Silk. I'm no fan of any of them, but all were sacked for saying things that no free society would fear hearing.

James Whale's crime was to encourage listeners to a minority interest radio station to vote for Boris Johnson. The complaints came in, and he was fired. But let's compare his support for Johnson with a little-known section from the infamous Ross/Brand podcast in which they discuss Gordon Brown:

Brand: "He is a gorgeous, craggy hero."

Ross: "I like him."

Brand: "Do you like him?"

Ross: "If I could say where I was going to vote, I would say I was voting for them - but I'm not allowed to say where I'm voting because I'm forbidden by my BBC contract."

These words received absolutely no press attention, despite Ross virtually waving a flag as he said them. Even if Manuelgate had not overshadowed it, it is hard to believe that the media would have bothered to object to the blatant political bias.

Likewise, Gaunt's hot-headed words - spoken as a former foster child and not without a grain of historical truth - might be compared to those of that Communist newt-fucker Ken Livingstone who asked a Jewish reporter if he had been a "German war criminal" and then - after the reporter explained that he was in fact a Jew - said "You are just like a concentration camp guard."

Kilroy's words were described as:

"Unacceptable"

He was sacked.

James Whale's comments were described as:

"Totally unacceptable"

He was sacked.

Jon Gaunt's remarks were described as:

"Totally unacceptable and probably illegal"

He was suspended, then sacked.

Red Ken's antisemitic outburst, on the other hand, was described as:

"Unusually insensitive"

He was suspended on full pay for 4 weeks (annual salary £133,997) before continuing in his job of ruining running London.

Could there possibly be the slightest left/right divide as to what is considered "unacceptable" in this foul year of our Lord 2008?

To be clear, TalkSport is a private company and is free to hire or fire whoever it likes, but its sacking of Jon Gaunt is another example of how manufactured outrage and fake disgust from people who did not even hear the fucking show in question can force a radio station's hand. It removes another right-winger from the airwaves and makes sure like-minded broadcasters stay nervous.

The purge continues.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

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

Drinking heavily while pregnant is, of course, a very bad idea. Foetal Alcohol Syndrome is a serious condition and it has long been accepted that alcohol abuse while pregnant can lead to birth defects and behavioural problems.

Having the odd drink while pregnant, on the other hand, poses no risk to either mother or child. It's good for the ticker, relieves stress and there is not a shred of evidence that light drinking can lead to any of the problems associated with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. Consequently, pregnant women have always been advised to limit themselves to no more than one or two drinks, once or twice a week.

Or rather they were until May last year, when the Department of Health announced that there was no safe amount of alcohol that could be drunk during pregnancy and that the government was now advising expectant mothers to drink no alcohol whatsoever.

"Our advice is simple: avoid alcohol if pregnant or trying to conceive."

Since then, warning labels have been slapped on millions of bottles of booze with an unambiguous message that any consumption of alcohol by a pregnant woman was verboten. Unacceptable. Dangerous.

What led to this change of policy? Bugger all, as everyone involved admitted:

The Department of Health said the revision was not based on new scientific evidence but was needed to help ensure that women did not underestimate the risks to their baby.

Ten months later, NICE followed the government's lead, even though it, too, believed that occasional light drinking posed no hazard.
As the Beeb reported:

It brings NICE in line with government advice and replaces previous guidance saying small daily amounts were fine.
However, NICE concedes there is no evidence to support the change.

Only the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists held firm and maintained their position that small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy were harmless, basing their opinion on the quaint idea that medical advice should be based on fact rather than scare-mongering.

Yesterday, however, some evidence finally appeared. An epidemiological study found that the children of those who abstained from alcohol performed rather worse than those whose mother had had the occasional drink.

The study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found boys born to light drinkers were 40% less likely to have conduct problems and 30% less likely to be hyperactive than those whose mothers had abstained.
They also scored more highly on vocabulary tests and on identifying colours, shapes, letters and numbers.

This study pissed on the government's bonfire somewhat, and led to headlines such as:

Blessing of a weekly tipple in pregnancy

Light drinking in pregnancy may be good for baby boys, says study

Light Drinking During Pregnancy May Benefit Baby

Light drinking in pregnancy may be good for baby boys, says study

Light drinking when pregnant may lead to calm babies, says study

Let's be clear. This study, though large, is not conclusive and the idea that taking alcohol during pregnancy reduces the risk of behavioural and learning disorders remains a hypothesis. Be that as it may, it does seem to refute the 'no safe level of alcohol' theory. And since the UK government's zero tolerance advice was based on no evidence in the first place, will the doctors now be changing their advice?

Apparently not.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said: "We are concerned that the findings from the UCL study may lull women into a false sense of security and give them the green light that there is no problem with drinking during pregnancy. This is not the case."

These are weasel words. No one disputes the risks from heavy drinking during pregnancy but that is not the issue here. The question is whether moderate, occasional alcohol consumption poses a risk and this study clearly shows that it does not.

"The BMA believes the simplest and safest advice is for women not to drink alcohol during pregnancy."

That's because the BMA considers pregnant women to be a set of cretins who will go on a bender if it veers, even for a minute, away from the 'demon drink' rhetoric. Total abstinance may be the "simplest" advice, but is it the safest? According to this study, the safest advice is to have an occasional drink. Apparently the BMA is prepared to disregard the evidence, and resent its very publication, because it fucks up their simple but completely unsubstantiated zero tolerance policy.

But why should I give a damn? I'm not a woman and I'm never going to be pregnant. There might be a libertarian argument here but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it and I don't expect people to take to the streets to defend a woman's right to relax with a glass of vino while in the family way.

But I do expect medical advice to be based on facts. The lesson here is, once again, that the medical establishment can no longer be trusted to give advice without exaggerating or fabricating risks to scare the proles into submission. That is not advice. That is propaganda.

At the heart of the total abstinance policy is a contemptuous attitude towards pregnant women; that they cannot handle shades of grey; that unless something is defined as 'good' or 'evil', the plebs will not understand it. Beneath the talk about 'sending out the right message' is the fact that doctors are being told to lie to their patients about a risk that just does not exist.

9% of pregnant women drink above the old guidelines and there is doubtless a hard core of stupid bitches who binge their way through pregnancy. These are the people the doctors want to reach and they are prepared to mislead and stigmatise the other 91% to do so. But common sense dictates that if these women were ignoring the old guidelines, they will ignore the new ones. And so the campaign won't work because only the health conscious will pay any attention.

They are only guidelines, of course, and women can take them or leave them. But be under no illusion, if it was practical and enforceable, the doctors would be pushing for the government to make it illegal for pregnant women to touch a drop of alcohol. I'd take even money on a law being passed in the next five years to make it a crime to sell alcohol to a pregnant woman (as it is in parts of America).

For the time being, they will have to settle for a programme of denormalisation - to make drinking any quantity of alcohol socially unacceptable. However well intentioned, the outcome will be that women who are doing nothing wrong feel anxious, ashamed and guilty. They will be glared at, lectured to and abused. In Louisiana a few years ago, a man shot a pregnant woman dead because he saw her smoking a cigarette. It's a strange way to express your concern about health but that's how these things end.

Like I say, I'm not a woman so this won't affect me. But these quacks make it up as they go along. That's all I'm saying.

Sarkozy is wearing...

So, President Sarkozy is credited with bringing the Black Sea Distraction to an end. The Daily Mash is reporting that M. Sarkozy may have been spurred on by his wife's kinky promises.

The French president said: "When I left the house yesterday Carla said to me, 'if you can end the war in Georgia I will do that thing that makes you quack like a duck.

"I cannot actually tell you what it is, other than to say it involves a balaclava, a butternut squash and three feet of clingfilm. And Carla Bruni in the buff, obviously."

Mr Sarkozy said the incentive helped him to maintain a 'laser-like focus' throughout the negotiations.

"If at any point I felt a peace deal was in jeopardy, I simply pictured my wife soaping herself. Worked like a charm."

Whilst this may, indeed, have been a carrot for M. Sarkozy, may I suggest that his success was down to something a little more saucy? Might I suggest, in fact, that M. Sarkozy's negotiating skills were augmented in a similar manner as that of the gentleman in the video below...?


Indeed. Perhaps Gordo should try it...

Ugh.

Fame at last!

Thanks to the correspondent who not only pointed out that this post on the economy got a cursory mention on Sky News a few days ago (shortly before the presenter went on to dwell lovingly on Mr Dale's entry) but who also captured it for me.


Surely fame and fortune can only be a few short decades away...?

The police state again

A former soldier, Frank McCourt, has been charged after making a citizen's arrest.

When Mr McCourt, of Crawley, West Sussex, was confronted by youths hurling stones and threatening his wife, he thought he was within his rights to make a citizen's arrest. Instead, police arrested the 56-year-old on suspicion of kidnapping. They treated the youths as traumatised witnesses.

They put Mr McCourt in a cell and charged him with assault. They let him live for months with the threat of a jail sentence until—after the intervention of a local MP—the Crown Prosecution Service decided that taking Mr McCourt to trial was "not in the public interest".

Sitting in a front room full of family photographs and his wife's ceramic ornaments, Mr McCourt has his freedom but, he says, "a little bit of me has been destroyed forever – the bit that believed in British justice, that thought I would get help when I needed it, instead of being betrayed."

Please do go and read the whole article: it is a shameful tale. If I were the parents of the children involved, I would be ashamed to show my face in public; if I were the children themselves, I would go and drown myself in a fucking bucket before someone did it to me.

And if I were the police officers involved, I would go and hang myself in the public square with a big placard around my neck, saying...

"I am a total fucking cunt. Please throw dogshit at my hanging body and let the crows peck out my eyes. Then dismember my body and bury the various bits in unconsecrated ground near the crossroads. Then piss on the graves and take a dump in my skull. I am a total fucking shit and I don't deserve to live."

Tom Paine has a rather more reasonable take on the whole affair.

The linked story illustrates poignantly what has happened to our nation under Labour. There was a time when youths would have feared to act in such a way, because the local community would have dealt with them and the police would have exercised common sense. Common sense in this case would have rejected the allegation of kidnapping, which was clearly part of a malicious campaign. But "by the book" bureaucratic Britain requires that common sense is not applied. The allegation was made and must therefore be given credence. Worse, the bureaucracy incentivises the police to pick low-hanging fruit and win a quick statistic, rather than actually tackle the crime that makes many parts of the country unliveable.

Mr McCourt did his country as much service here as he did when he served as a soldier. He is patently a good man; the sort any country should be happy to have as a citizen. He is even - amazingly—still willing to fight, saying he would do the same thing again. His wife's reaction is more typical—and heart-rendingly sad

"If I had to go through that again," says Mrs McCourt, "I would walk out. I back Frank, but I just couldn't face it again." Forlornly, she eyes her home. "We have been left defenceless."

Who can blame her? The state is not there to direct peoples' lives. It is there to provide a framework of law within which they can direct their own. It is also there to protect citizens from criminals who interfere with their ability to do so. In this story, as in so many, it has done precisely the opposite. It has done so under the direction, and with the approval, of the Labour government.

And let us be quite clear: the police have willingly colluded with this attitude. In return for a few more lots of silver pennies and more power to harass those whom they are supposed to protect, they have sold their soul to the politicians.

And since politicians are unredeemably evil, so they have corrupted the—hardly previously spotless—police. So, let me remind any officers, who might be reading this post, of your founder's vision for what you should be: I give you the Peelian Principles.

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.


2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.


3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.


4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.


5. Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.


6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.


7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.


8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.


9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

There are decent policemen out there (I know one or two) but the force as a whole has become corrupted—it has become a tool for politicians in a party political point-scoring process.

We must remove the police from political control: politicians seek power over their fellow man and are thus unsaveable from their quintessential evil. The police should serve the people and uphold the law: these two ideas are incompatible with being political stooges.

Unfortunately, the stupid and lazy who make up the majority of the denizens of this country—those who want security above freedom—continue either to elect authoritarian governments or to care nothing about the process. And the rest of us suffer as a result of their apathy and greed.

Who is John Galt?

Lighter blogging

Your humble Devil is off to meet Mater Devil and the youngest Devil Brother for lunch in about an hour or so, so blogging will be light.

However, I do have a whole load of posts that I need to compile (as well as several bits of news), so I shall be posting more later on this evening.

I can't wait

James's new album, Hey Ma, is out on the 7^th April: I am actually very excited...

Huge gas cloud (no politicians present)

Apparently we are in for a bit of treat.

A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is racing towards a collision with the Milky Way, astronomers have announced.

Dubbed "Smith's Cloud", it may set off spectacular fireworks when it smacks into our galaxy...

Excellent! i do hope it's a clear night. When's it happening?

... in 20-40 million years.

Oh.

Blogging doc rises from the dead!

In a move that can only be described as akin to that of Lazarus, the good Dr Crippen has returned to the blogosphere.

Hewitt had gone, unlamented, and there was a spark of hope generated by the appointment of the more reasonable and rational Alan Johnson. And was there not, for a brief moment, a window through which it seemed that Gordon Brown was going to abandon spin and deliver some real improvement?

Oh! Credulous Crippen.

But could I continue to write about the NHS? I had said it all before, and said it so many times. Does anyone listen? Does anyone believe what I say?
...

Last Saturday, we had a re-union dinner of a group of doctors who have kept in touch since medical school. Some GPs, some consultants, and even a well known medical politician. You would have heard of him. All long-standing friends and all, over the last two years, a constant source of inside-track information. They have been missing their opportunity to vent their spleen through Dr Crippen.

And then, one of those wine-induced dinner-party epiphanies. The Paediatric Professor who we first met in Mrs Crippen’s Vagina said,

"You know, if I were suddenly taken ill, I would be terrified to be admitted to a British NHS Hospital."

We went round the table. Each and every one of the ten doctors present felt the same.

It is time to start again.

Excellent! Welcome back, Doc.