IANAL

I kept getting people asking me to sign this: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/dancers/ I couldn't find a new Violent Crimes Reduction Bill so decided the one it probably referred to is the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006. But none of that matched what the petition was saying, still I thought some of its provisions are about to be subject to a commencement order. At this point I asked the Internet for help.

The key bit appeared to be the talk of "historical re-enactment" and "sporting activity" which led a friend to point me at this statutory instrument from April. Which amends section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 in the same way that the VCRA '06 did. However as far as those dancers are concerned I can't see that it repeals the added defences that VCRA '06 added to CJA '88 which included "the purposes of theatrical performances and of rehearsals for such performances". From my reading various licensing acts and bizarrely the NI factories act I feel that an argument that a dance performance counts as "theatrical" has weight, but as it says in the title of the post IANAL^[1].

I await the governments response, to see whether they make a similar point or suggest that the petitioners are right.

What was most interesting was that none of the people asking me to sign the petition could point me at the proposal they wanted me to sign up to oppose. Why do I think that is important, because I feel that petitions with fatuous, inaccurate or pointless messages should be kept out of the way, the government love them as they help camouflage the really important ones in the system. It could however, in this case, just have been difficult to find. These days of course pretty much everything is online, but when you come to these pieces of legislation that are added to over the years by order and amended by later bills, it can be difficult to work out exactly how the relevant legislation looks now. There are shiny databases out there that purport to collate all this information, but they all seem to be proprietary and I don't even seem to have enough status to get a free trial.

^[1]If I had the time and the money I would love to at least do an OU law degree if not actually go the whole hog to lawyerdom. If I had even more time and money, going back to University to do it for real now I understand the value of learning could be a great experience.

Time for real Subs in Cricket?

To take nothing away from a fabulous performance which saw England post their fifth highest fourth innings total to win the match, I have a niggle of doubt. While the result is quite rightly posted under the current laws and playing conditions as by 6 wickets it is only by 4. New Zealand only lost nine wickets in each innings, due to the loss of Daniel Flynn to the dentist.

Should we look at the idea of full substitutions into the game to keep things fair?

Even more contentiously, should the idea of lighting tests be looked at to stop light based interruptions?

Stop what you are doing

If you are in politics stop bothering to campaign, it isn't worth your time or that of the people you are stopping on the street or knocking on the doors of. Really, don't bother, go home and relax, cancel your  plans to go to Henley next month. Harriet Harman has said that it makes no difference, that the result in Crew and Nantwich had nothing to do with the Labour party's campaign.

The morning after (sans pill)

Iain Dale has posted about the abortion debate and votes and I must applaud the tone of the post. I especially want to point out the last paragraph about Parliament itself and say that I for one agree that open debates with free votes are always the best parliamentary spectacle. I do however also understand why it won't work for the majority of business, not because a government can only get their programme through by whipping hard, but because an awful lot of legislation is just too dull.

Nadine Dorries hasn't posted about it yet, the last post on the blog we all pay for is about people accusing her of being a fundamentalist Christian. Which neatly sidesteps the actual accusation which was that her campaign was being funded by CCFON.

Chelsea will lose in Moscow

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.

In a shock move

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?

.p bum

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.

Something has just struck me about Nadine Dorries

Nadine Dorries is a former director of BUPA.

BUPA has a number of clinics/hospitals approved for the termination of pregnancy under the Abortion Act 1967, as amended.

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.

• Premature baby survival rates - Nature
• Very premature baby survival not improving - Reuters
• Baby study backs abortion law - ITV
• Premature baby study stokes row on abortion - Times
• Early baby survival 'not improving' - PA
• New research on baby survival rates stokes abortion limit row - Guardian
• Early baby survival 'unchanged' - BBC
• New setback to lowering abortion limit - Scotsman
• Survival rate for premature babies fails to improve -Telegraph
• The survival rate for babies born before abortion limit of 24 weeks 'has not improved' - Daily Mail

Late term abortion

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.

Is the Independent the new Grauniad?

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.

Climate change

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.

London has appeared to have developed an annoying whine

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.

Sheffield goes a yellowy-orange colour

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.

You can't get me, I'm part of the Union

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

Blast from the past

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).