It has been well documented by Guido that the last thing you need as a sports team (or obviously as a political team) is Jonah Brown on your side. MUFC will win the Champions League final because Avram Grant had the misfortune to meet Brown at Downing Street last night.
As reported in both measured terms and absolute shouting outrage the 'absolutely secure' "Choose and Book" section of NPfIT has been shown to have security flaws you could drive a coach and horses through.
Hands up all of you who are surprised?
Anyone?
Guido and Iain reported last week on the 'Editorial Intelligence' event where the establishment Commentariat had a good whinge about bloggers.
I do envy that lot one thing though: last night after the busiest weekend for visitors to this blog, mostly thanks to Ben Goldacre adding this post on the "abortion row" to his del.icio.us feed, a friend pointed out to me the glaring typo in the first line. So as a blogger, who carefully re-reads everything to try and avoid this, I would love to have a sub-editor.
Nadine Dorries is a former director of BUPA.
In common law and under the Companies Acts a company director is legally responsible for the actions of the company.
SO: as well as having been a Nurse, Nadine Dorries has been an abortionist.
She also seems to be the only voice the main stream media have opposing this new research, there doesn't seem to be one scientist lining up to back her claims that it is tosh, I wonder why? And even when they are quoting her unsubstantiated accusations that are possibly libelous they are doing so below the fold.
Nadine Dorries has shown herself to be utterly able to deal with any facts before. First her accusations against Ben Goldacre over stealing data that was published by her committee. Then falling for 'the hand hope' rubbish. Now a group of specialists in neonatal, perinatal and paediatric medicine and epidemiology read the comments of the house Science and Technology committee that "it was recognised that published peer reviewed UK evidence is lacking to answer the question of whether the survival of infants born at 23 or 24 weeks has improved in recent years." and did a study comparing 1994-9 with 2000-5. The study looked at all infants born in the region in question and concluded:
Survival of infants born at 24 and 25 weeks of gestation has significantly increased. Although over half the cohort of infants born at 23 weeks was admitted to neonatal intensive care, there was no improvement in survival at this gestation. Care for infants born at 22 weeks remained unsuccessful.
So what was Nadine's reaction?
This report is the most desperate piece of tosh produced by the pro-choice lobby and it smells of one thing, desperation.To use a particularly childish, but I think apposite response no you are. This isn't opinion, this is science, the only way this could be bunkum is if they had made the numbers up, which given these are numbers that are a matter of public record isn't really a feasible idea. There isn't even any complex statistics in the research to confuse someone not versed in epidemiological methodology, they key point pretty much boils down to: is an increase to 19% from 18% between two five year periods a significant one? I don't think it is difficult to accept the conclusion that the answer is no.
The really great thing is that Nadine asks the question "No improvement in neo-natal care in twelve years? Really? So where has all the money that has been pumped into neo-natal services gone then?" to which the answer is in the report! "The proportion of infants dying in delivery rooms was similar in the two periods, but a significant improvement was seen in the number of infants surviving to discharge". Nadine thinks that those using science and facts have shot them selves in the foot with this report, I think she has shot herself in the head with this reaction.
First neither Steve Richards or his subs can count.
Then it dubs The Register "a lesbian on-line magazine"
Such mistakes are not what is expected from the Indescribablyboring.
I am not going to sit here and try and persuade you in one way or another on the issue of whether a) the climate is changing for the worse or b) if humans are causing it, really you are all intelligent people; you have probably made your mind up as to which side of this very contentious argument you lie. What I would like to share is this video and the viewpoint that if you are not 100% sure if it is happening or not, using an argument along the same lines as Pascal's Wager you should do something about climate change. Whatever little you can.
Ok so I don't live in London, the mayoralty is still important, the capital can quite often be the only part of the country tourists see, the Olympics are coming up oh and like the rest of the country I'm having to stump up cash for the place.
So while Boris is so far an unproven force in running the city, he did win an election, fair and square. Yet the Internet is alive with people complaining about the how the result came about. The first group are just plain bitter and nasty, they are the ones infecting the place (especially commenting on sites like the BBC and Comment is Free) with complaints that Boris got in due to all the people in the suburbs who voted for him, They aren't proper Londoners, they don't have the right Postcodes, winge winge. To the best of my knowledge the definition of the bounds of Greater London haven't changed dramatically since 1965 so these have always been the people electing the umbrella layer of local government, even in the days of the GLC. But I don't recall any lobbying for them to not be part of the Authority before so this must be just sour grapes.
The other set of whimpering is about the voting system and that it caused problems. Some people such as the greens are even saying their supporters were too stupid to vote for them which seams a bit ungracious if you ask me. I think civics lessons are a good idea in general, but I don't think how to vote should trouble the curriculum for too much of the total time for them, given that it is a really simple process. I will be eagerly awaiting the report on the counts that will be produced by ORG but so far no-one is reporting chaos on the scale of the Scottish elections of last year, so I doubt that it really was such an issue.
Iain Dale is reporting "LibDems have overall majority in Sheffield of 6. The Conservatives lost their only councillor." Nothing from the BBC site yet and sheffield.gov.uk has been struck by the slashdot effect.
UPDATE The result has now also been posted on the BBC news site.
I have mentioned this before (in Can't play the game? Change the rules) but this time we can all have our say about it, so if you would like to have your say on the "Experimental Law Variations" go to http://www.rfusurvey.co.uk/
Hat-tip: A Very British Dude
Since everyone else is talking about the Elections (go, vote!) I thought I would do something a little different.
Every once in a while reading something drags me back to the days before beer and women distracted me from education and excitement was the prospect of flying fast jets or getting to play with the III-V substrate group when I grew up.
The latest on of these is this article in the register "HP pulls memory Missing Link from bottle of beer" (also covered in NS and on /.) which is erotic on a theoretical scale even before you look at the practical applications that effect me in $dayjob (the inevitable fate for scientists and engineers who fall in with beer and women at university is that they end up working in IT).
I'm not writing this to say that posting will be lighter while I am off at Whitby, things are a bit erratic around here anyway.
No it is just to mention that when I post it will be from my phone, so no spell check function and therefore there will be rafts of errors!
One of today's big stories is the trial of pink cricket balls at Lords; now the actual reason for this is that the white ball used in pyjama cricket gets dirty and difficult to see, but a lot of coverage has made the comparison to the many other uses of pink in sport to highlight the evil that is Breast cancer.
Now don't get me wrong, I am not against these attempts to promote fundraising for this cause, but here is the rub, deaths from breast cancer are gradually decreasing, all this money and awareness is working. But deaths from Prostate cancer are on the up. And while Excel's trendline function isn't the most rigorous scientific analysis you will ever see, it can't be far wrong with "if the current trends continue within a decade more men will die of Prostate cancer each year than women of Breast cancer" (and of course men die of Breast cancer too). So is it time to do more than the odd sponsored mustache growing event for this increasing cause of male deaths.
Of course after that we then should raise money for Bowel Cancer which kills more people than either Breast or Prostate and after that well there is lung, which kills more than both Breast and Prostate combined, not sure what colours to use for those though really.
| Year range | Female Breast Cancer Deaths | Male Prostate Cancer Deaths |
|---|---|---|
| 1981-1985 | 64,413 | 28,937 |
| 1986-1990 | 68,757 | 37,493 |
| 1991-1995 | 65,850 | 43,465 |
| 1996-2000 | 58,885 | 42,664 |
| 2001-2005 | 56,254 | 45,262 |
The cuddly puppy of the cabinet Andy Burnham wants to criminalise football fans who sell their spare ticket to a mate according to Dizzy. Actually having read the DCMS's response it is much worse, they want to do this and they don't want to do this, they want to help the consumer and the promoter and ask the secondary market what they think. They want refunds to be more available where the consumer needs them but not burdensome on the promoter if they get lots. It really looks like they took the original Culture, Media and Sport Committee report as loose leaves and a stack of random notes on the subject submitted by everyone in the department and then let the office afghan puppy loose on the two piles. After ten minutes anything even slightly legible was picked up, dusted off and passed to the typing pool with instructions for it to be transcribed verbatim.
I think there is a sensible middle way to all this, require that the promoter has to either accept refunds (and outlaw utterly disproportionate "fees") or allow the tickets to be resold at only at face value.
