Supermassive black hole collapses Radio 4

There's been a scientific discovery. One that deserves a modicum of awe, along with a pinch of excitement and a sprinkle of gravitas. Instead, the matter was subjected to the usual treatment on the Today programme this morning. That is, amused disdain and wilful missing of the point.

Oh, those scientists! What have they gone and done now? I don't know. Something about a large hole or whatnot.

Humphreys - and don't get me wrong, when he's up against a politician, that is to say firmly in the middle of his comfort zone, he can still deliver an illuminating interview along with the occasional barbed question or withering put down - is always totally out of his depth when attempting to cover science. In fact Radio 4 in general seems to have a schizoid approach to science in all its guises. Material World's guests have to fight with Quentin Cooper's attempts to squeeze a bad pun into every sentence, while in the same slot on a different day we have to endure, in The Infinite Monkey Cage, Brian Cox and some other equally populist drivel merchant trying to out-do one another to find the needle of comedy in the haystack of current science. Dumb, dumber and even dumber than that, science on Radio 4 is already a joke and recently it's been presented (it seems) by nothing but jokers.

But outside of the science programmes themselves, any current affairs reporting of matters scientific - especially by the channel's headline anchor men - is inevitably accompanied by an obvious embarrassment at their total lack of understanding, or even interest. So their stock compensation for that is to make fun of it, or make light of it. Faced with the news of the largest black hole ever discovered, we get the usual re-runs of guff like "we thought at one time the LHC was going to create a black hole, didn't we? Chortle, chortle." No, we didn't. "Do I remember reading that a teaspoonful of black hole material would be so dense that if you dropped it, it would fall right through the Earth?" Well... where to start. The teaspoon wouldn't be dense enough to pick the damned stuff up in the first place. Even if it could, it would be way too heavy for you to lift, so the idea of dropping it never arises. And so on. Pathetic.

One a related but different topic, the dinosaurs on the Today programme never did, as far as I'm aware, pick up on the story of Kepler-22b.

For the first time, astronomers have found a planet smack in the middle of the habitable zone of its sunlike star, where temperatures are good for life. We can't yet determine if the planet has a surface, but if it does it would have a temperature around 21°C. What we do know is that it's about 2.4 times the size of Earth, orbits its (smaller, cooler than our) sun every 290 days, and is unlike any planet in our solar system. Could be rocky, could be icy, might even have a global ocean. No idea. But at a distance of 600 light-years we won't be visiting any time soon.

Targeting targets

I listen to the Today programme on a regular basis - with one ear when I'm in the car taking Nikki to work and, after I've dropped her off and I'm on my way back home (or occasionally into the office) with both ears. And occasionally I hear something that makes my metaphorical jaw drop. Today was one such interview - some guy talking about the problems they were having with the process of getting people back to work off long-term sick leave.

They'd been set a target for this, after putting the people through the process, of 50%. That's half the people they interview have to give up their benefits and find a job. But hang on a minute. Surely people are either sick, or they're not? I mean, it's not hard to understand the concept that maybe - just maybe - there are people claim incapacity benefit when they're actually fit for work. But how can you have a TARGET that predetermines how many people that will be? I'd have thought the right approach was to decide in advance exactly HOW sick someone needs to be to qualify for benefit, taking into account what it is that's wrong with them (e.g. people with back trouble might not be able to do building work, but they can sit at a desk, or a till, or other light duties) and then run the process and accept the outcome. There's no place for targets here.

As if that wasn't silly enough, the guy actually went on to say their biggest problem was that they were actually getting 68% of people back to work, and that was TOO MANY! Hahaha. You couldn't make it up. Quite a few people who were forced back to work lodged an appeal, and 70% of the appeals were being successful (so a lot of money being wasted there for one thing, but even more importantly...) but the main problem was that appeals can take up to six months, during which time these poor folk get no benefit (so a lot of personal misery, heartache and pain being caused there then).

No wonder the system's in a mess. Another disaster left behind by the NuLab tossers.

Healthy debate

A three-and-a-half-thousand mile perspective on the current debate in the U.S. about health care can make the whole thing seem like some sort of political pantomime played out on the nightly news bulletins. Living in a country which, for more than 60 years, has had ubiquitous health care free at the point of use (or as near as makes no difference), is a far more significant barrier to understanding the issues than distance. I wonder how many in this country stop to realise how fortunate they are.

A package on this morning's Today programme brought it home to me in a "WHAT?" moment of epic proportions.

The article concerned a regular working mum in the US (so I should probably say mom?) for whom one thing separates her from most other regular working mums. Her medical condition: rheumatoid arthritis. Her health insurance allows her one course of treatment per year costing $500. Unfortunately a year's supply of just one of the medications she requires to alleviate the pain from her crippled hands costs $50,000. As a direct result, she lives with constant pain.

I didn't quite catch whether or not this was directly related to the problem with her hands, but she was recently dug out of a car wreck in which she almost died, and found an ambulance waiting to take her to hospital.

Shaken from her near-death experience and having sustained several injuries, she was nevertheless reluctant to step into the ambulance. She knew she couldn't afford the trip to hospital, let alone the treatment when she got there.

A single ambulance ride costs $11,000.

That was the double-take, jaw-dropping moment for me. First, a silent prayer of thanks that if I'm ever unlucky enough to have a significant car wreck, and lucky enough to be pulled out alive, the last thing I'll have to worry about is the trip to ED. Because our ambulance service, much maligned as it often is, doesn't cost a penny. But second: how much? $11,000?!? How on Earth can one trip by ambulance have that kind of price tag. Someone, somewhere, is raking in an enormous, toe-curling and utterly immoral profit from that, while ordinary people standing beside their written-off vehicles try to work out whether they can afford to be taken to a place of safety and given the treatment they need.

And this, in what is supposedly the richest nation on Earth.

A nation now engaged in an almighty bickerfest of shouted half-truths and vested interest, trying to protect the profits of those health insurance companies at the expense of that nation's most disadvantaged citizens. Wake up people. Someone said that most of middle America is only a single accident away from bankruptcy. It could be you tomorrow.

Thank God for the NHS. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it needs reform. Yes, it's been allowed to bloat until it is, apparently, the world's fourth largest employer at approximately 1.3 million staff. But for all its faults it will be there when you need it most, and whether or not you can afford it.

The Twittering classes

Before you ask, I don't tweet. I mean, I like to think I'm considerably more net-savvy and "down with the kids" than yer average 52-year-old, but I really don't get Twitter. OK, there might be a slight buzz in knowing what someone like Stephen Fry - a famous twitterer (notice I avoided saying twit. Oh. Damn.) - is doing from moment to moment, but for most people it must be a constant stream of mundane trivia.

Maybe that's the point.

Someone recently wrote that updating your Facebook status (something else I've stopped doing more frequently than once every couple of weeks) is equivalent to stepping out into your street and shouting "I'm going to have bangers and mash for dinner tonight!" and then going back indoors.

A good analogy which, if true, must make tweeting the equivalent of
"Going to the toilet now"
"Oh - I think it's solids"
"Wiping my arse now"
"No, still leaving a mark"
"Still wiping"
"OK. Clean now"
"Washing my hands now"
etc.

I think people sign up because they're afraid they'll miss something. Trouble is, the more people that sign up, the more likely it is that you will miss something. It's like having a website. Not so long ago - maybe, what? Ten years? Fifteen? - you were bleeding edge if you had a website. Now URLs are everywhere and you're considered a bit weird and antiquated if you don't have a website. Businesses especially. Everyone expects to be able to type in "hoover.com" and immediately find product details, nearest dealers, latest news, history of the firm, returns policy, recent recalls, whatever. It's just part of the fabric of society. And with immense and frightening rapidity, Twitter is getting there too.

Now, I'm seeing "follow us on Twitter" on company websites. Imagine that. You can follow Hoover and get minute-by-minute updates about new vacuum cleaners. Sorry, what? I mean, seriously, WTF?

So last night, North West Tonight (for the benefit of non-UKers and, probably, most non-Northwesters, that's our local magazine news programme) Gordon Burns was making a big thing about His First Tweet. He's been sending out an email newsletter for ages, which is pretty net-savvy and down-with-the-kids in its own right. I mean the guy's 67 ffs, so all credit to him. But now he's caught the Twitter bug too.

And then bugger me but here's John Humphreys on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning - that bastion of British Correctness And Rectitude - and he's doing it too!

Christ on a bike.

Comestible confusion

As usual on my way to pick Nikki up from work today I was listening to Radio 4. The pundits were discussing research into links between diet and prostate cancer and when I joined the programme one guy was going on about how he has recognised that dairy foods carry an increased risk and that he's eliminated them from his diet completely.

Now I'm as worried about prostate cancer as the next man. Well, actually, it's probably the examination to check me out for prostate cancer that me and the next man are worried about, but anyway... a life without dairy? No butter? No ice-cream? No CHEESE? No thank you.

As the programme continued, the alternative viewpoint came from a lady researcher, who shot the guy's argument down in flames. That's my spin on her arguments anyway. "Dairy hater obliterated by gorgeous cream-loving temptress." Or something. Her counter-argument was beautifully executed as a pincer movement. From the North came the revelation that this "increased risk" to dairy-eating prostate owners was only 10%. So if 1 person in every 1,000 is at risk on average, among the dairy eaters the risk will be 1.1 people in 1,000. Or, to put it another way, 1 person in 900. (Presumably. Stats was never my strong point.) Wow. I'm so scared. But she wasn't done. Remember the pincer movement. From the South came marching the second offensive. That dairy foods have positive effects too. In particular their calcium-related compounds have been proven to reduce the chances of suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

So there we have it. In stark, tabloid terms: go mad and keep your man gland, or stay sane but lose the juice.

But of course it's not as simple as that. These things never are. Foods are remarkably complicated chemical and biological agents, which often have beneficial AND deleterious effects in combination. And as if that weren't hard enough to get your head around, those effects can be reduced or exacerbated by your individual susceptibilities, whether genetic, environmental, or behavioural. Research continues into the complex interplay of all these factors, but increasingly I find myself asking: what's the point?

I don't want to live in a world where I have to eat exactly this much of this and not more than that much of that, not more than once a week and certainly not after consuming the other. Where I'm instructed to have five-a-day, exercise three times a day for twenty minutes at something that elevates my heart rate by 50%, avoid dairy, saturated fat, barbecued food, strong alcohol, sugar, cholesterol, and on, and on, and on. Jeez I'd be so stressed with worrying whether I was doing the right thing at the right time, the very act of trying to stay healthy would make me ill!

No, the research is all very interesting an' all, but I'll carry on doing what I like, when I like, and avoiding what I don't like, when I don't like it. If that approach has consequences then that's no different from any other approach. There's more to life than how long it is. It may be an overused phrase in these days of multi-forwarded emails, but it's still true that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Not to mention the fell ratio

While I'm on a linguistic roll, I caught the tail end of summat on Radio 4 yesterday (Word of Mouth, to be precise) on the subject of arcane English spellings and what a barrier they are to learning the language. I found it interesting as spelling has always been a strength of mine (to the extent that some of my colleagues refer to me as "the human spellchecker"), something I feel is important, and as such what I thought was the "modern" trend against teaching spelling in schools, or at least not correcting it when wrong, sat very uncomfortably with me when my children started school.

Well it seems the tide is turning, and received wisdom is coming full circle. After years of schools not concentrating on spelling, universities are rebelling against a tide of students whose use of language is so poor they can barely make themselves understood, and industry is suffering from a generation of semi-literate youngsters incapable of generating a professional-looking document or presentation. Despite 30-40 years of laissez-faire in the classroom on the subject of spelling, good English is still seen as a marker of educational attainment.

This is causing something of a backlash from those teachers concerned for their students in the lower ability ranges, for whom the unruly spelling of many English words is a hurdle they find hard to leap. It was this aspect (among others) that Word of Mouth spent some time discussing, and which I found so interesting - mainly because the difficulties that it poses had never affected me, so it was something I'd never really thought about.

To spice up what is essentially a dry subject, the programme had invited someone who campaigns for spelling reform - a woman deeply passionate about the scars of humiliation inflicted on the hapless learner - to explain the problem. Some of the facts and statistics she presented were quite illuminating, leaving aside the hyperbole with which she described the "injustice" of forcing children to learn English spelling - comparing it to the Victorians sending them down mines and up chimneys and implying that it is something which in these more enlightened times should be dispensed with.

The problem is, English uses far more discrete spellings of language sounds - graphemes - than other languages. Graphemes are the written representation of phonemes - standard vowel and consonant sounds plus combinations like ea; ou; sh; ch; etc.

Most European languages have around 50 graphemes. English has 114.

It's quite common for phonemes to have more than one grapheme - i.e. there's more than one way to represent the same sound - but what makes English so much more complicated is that the reverse also happens frequently. In 49 cases the same grapheme is used to represent more than one sound - for example 'ea' in treat, threat and great.

These are referred to by language teachers as "tricky" words - words which can't be learnt by following simple rules. Bright children start learning these tricky words right from the beginning but for those on the slower side, they're too hard and pose real problems. The speaker reckoned there are 3,695 common English words that cannot be spelled by rule. Things like

very - merry
arrive - arise
ballad - salad

1,000 of the tricky words involve doubling or not doubling a consonant, and their correct spelling has no connection with the "rule" about a double consonant keeping a vowel short (as in dinner/diner). The presenter argued that this is a relatively simple problem to overcome, whereupon the teacher suggested that while it may not be so bad for words pairs such as latter/later, what happens when you encounter lateral?

It was clear the presenter, Clive Rosen, wasn't convinced. Italian is well recognised as a "regular" language, he argued, but the same literacy problems exist in Italy, where a sizeable percentage of the population still struggle with reading.

Sadly while the programme expressed the problem eloquently enough, little time was devoted to any potential solution. The lady's campaign to reform English spelling would, for instance, see all the different ways of spelling the 'ee' sound in the language (leave; sleeve; receive; evil; magazine; siege; aesthete; ...) replaced with just one. But this is just one change. Does anyone really beleeve that this is a change that could actually bee introduced among the 600+ million English speekers in the world with any degree of success? We're talking peeple of all age ranges, not to mention ree-writing all the spell checkers, signposts, reeprinting all the books, and editing the overwhelming majority of the billions of Internet pages.

And that's even before considering the opposing view - that existing spellings reflect the origins of the language and make English what it is. It can't be *that* hard, surely, if it still enjoys such widespread usage?

A more realistic solution to my mind would involve the development of more effective teaching techniques targeted at lower ability levels. Avoid the kind of embarrassment the guest speaker was alluding to; devote more time, and earlier, to tricky words (as the more able students do naturally already); introduce more fun elements to the traditionally tedious subject. At least such changes would be restricted to the 4-11 age range, rather than forcing the entire population to relearn something we each already have such a heavy personal investment in.

(and of course, we're all familiar with these, aren't we? ;o))

No snow!

And there it was: gone! After listening to the 10 o'clock forecast warning that another two or three inches were expected (that'll be a disappointment for someone) and that some areas could have up to a foot (way too much of a good thing - someone else would be choking on it), what did we have?

A huge melt. There's nothing left.

Which, if repeated across the whole of the UK in these credit-crunchy times would be A Good Thing. At least, if yesterday's news is anything to go by. 6 million people failing to get to work, £1.2 billion lost to the crumbling economy, roads closed or impassable, trains, planes and buses cancelled, people full of the great British spirit battling their way to their local train station only to find that's as far as they're going to get. We wouldn't have won the war if we'd had this namby-pamby attitude back then, I tell you! Cough! Splutter!

Sorry. Got a bit carried away there. Still, it is faintly ridiculous isn't it? It's not like snow in February is exactly unexpected. It was even forecast. I heard Ken Livingstone on the news (mind you, he'll say anything to beat the drum won't he? Still smarting from having to hand over to Boris I expect) blaming the worst of the travel problems on councils who didn't want to send the gritters out on Sunday and pay overtime. What a load of bollocks. I was out and about on Sunday night and followed several gritters all over the North-west.

I tried to work out, in my usual geeky way, what proportion of the UK workforce 6 million came to. There's about 65 million of us altogether. If you assume a linear distribution of ages from 0 to 80 (I know that's not right, but for the sake of argument...) that makes 34 million of working age (over 18 and under 60), of which there's about 2 million unemployed (32) and an unknown number who don't work, or try to, at all. But even if you leave the figure at 32 million that's one-fifth of the entire workforce couldn't get to work! Crikey.

Rather madly I'd decided to stick to my usual routine and go in to the office yesterday. I could have worked at home, but as it turned out (and not surprisingly) a much larger than normal number of my colleagues had elected to do that, and overloaded the corporate VPN shortly before 9am, so I wouldn't have been able to get much done anyway. I really needed some light relief while negotiating the roads into the office, and it was duly provided by Radio 4, where they read out an email from a listener pointing out that we were now suffering the 21st-century equivalent of traffic chaos as well as the more traditional sort.

Yes, not only were the roads blocked and the public transport cancelled all over the place, but the traffic and travel WEBSITES were all crashing too, under the load of people trying to find out whether they should set out or not. What irony! What symmetry! The British do farce SO well.

Reality check

I heard on the radio a couple of days ago - while listening to a programme about sustainable food, the impact of supermarkets on health, and that kind of thing - a startling statistic.

That cities take up 2% of the Earth's habitable surface, but their inhabitants are responsible for using up 75% of the world's annual resources.

It wasn't so long ago - a couple of hundred years or so - that cities didn't exist. The Industrial Revolution began the lemming-like rush of populations into urban environments and it's really only in this century that urban populations have exceeded rural ones. But the city as it was envisaged in the late 18th century is no longer a sustainable model. A city the size of London - with ~10 million inhabitants - masticates its way through 30 million meals a day and the vast majority of those millions of people neither know nor care where the food comes from.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about, we now need to work out what "city life" or "country life" will look like in 100 years' time. "Unrecognisable" is probably the answer.

The human face of technology

The NeuroArm robot has been in the news a lot recently. I don't know why this has just burst into the consciousness of the UK media - so far I've only managed to catch the last few seconds of every news item on it - but we've been a bit slow to catch on. There's a news article on it here dated November 2007.

Still that's the British media for you. Quick off the mark with the trivial stuff, good at making things up for a catchy headline, but when it's something really interesting and important? Almost a year behind the times. Nice one.

The little bit of the news that I have caught seems to have been focussing on people's reaction to being operated on by a robot. Despite the fact that the device works with pinpoint accuracy in the kind of surgery where being a millimetre off at the end of a gruelling six- or eight-hour op can mean the difference between life and death, will people trust it? It looks like something out of The Terminator, which is bound to be a bit worrying.

Seems to me they missed a very obvious trick here. If they wanted to give the device a more "human" face they should just have called it...

Robot de Neuro.

Are you looking at me?

The number 8

We have a TV ad here for the HSBC bank where a room full of frantic Chinese people are bidding for a car number plate containing a single number 8. The spiel goes that the number 8 has great significance in China, where it's seen as a symbol of good luck and power. (The ad is for an account with an 8% interest rate, but that's by the by).

What I hadn't twigged until this morning, when I heard it on Today programme, is that the opening of the Olympic Games this year is seen as a VERY auspicious event in China, occurring as it does on the 8th day of the 8th month in the 8th year of the century. To maximise the good fortune, the opening ceremony will commence at exactly 8:08 Beijing time. The fanatical numerologists among you might also be interested to know that the word 'China', when converted to a number using the traditional methods, also has the value 8. Spooky, or what?

Door a done deal

No photo yet, because I haven't fitted the new handles, but the painting plan was completed today on schedule. To the new schedule that is. I decided to give it an extra day for side 1 to dry, both to harden it off more and because we went off to the party on Saturday and I didn't want to be doing painting before going.

So I flipped it over yesterday, and it took its final coat on side 2 today. Very nice it looks too.

Meant to mention as well something amusing I heard in the news last week regarding the petrol prices. There was a summit, apparently, to discuss whether or not OPEC should step up oil production in an effort to bring prices down, and it was reported that the Australian PM had said if they wouldn't comply we should "take a blowtorch to OPEC." The Radio 4 commentator said he thought that was an inflammatory remark.

Ho Ho Ho.

The 60-year-old Baby

Baby has been in the news this week. She'll be 60 on Saturday. Why am I excited? Well Baby, more properly known as the Small Scale Experimental Machine, was the world's first stored program computer, and so is the logical ancestor of every single computer on the planet, including the one you're using to read this.

Ten years ago, for Baby's 50th anniversary, a bunch of enthusiasts led by the men who originally worked on the project built a replica of the machine using all original parts. It's now on permanent display at MOSI. At one of our last-ever Engineering Conferences, one of the project members gave us an entertaining talk about the rebuild, the fun they'd had and the lengths they'd gone to to find the original parts to use. When Baby was first assembled, money was tight (when was it ever NOT tight for British science?) and they scrounged bits from all over, including buttons from Spitfire cockpits to use on the console. Naturally in 1998 these were pretty hard to come by! They managed it though. If you get chance, go and see Baby. It is a WORKING replica, and it's quite a challenge to think of a program you can write in only 32 instructions - the limit of Baby's memory space.

There's another interesting link that stems from this project. The next machine to be built in Manchester, developing the architectures and ideas used in Baby, was the Manchester Mark I. Two of the Mark I team - mathematicians Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods - would later marry, and their son Tim Berners-Lee would go on to invent the World Wide Web.

I listened to the Radio 4 coverage of the anniversary today, on which the presenter mentioned that Baby didn't use transistors because they'd only just been invented and were very unreliable. Instead, the scientists used valves - much more common and reliable in those days. I was amused that he then had to go on to explain what valves were! Makes me feel old, realising that there are now more people in the world that have never heard of valves than have.

A day of quiet satisfaction

One of those days when things just feel right. It has its own slow, measured beat and whatever you do, things turn out well.

I started the day helping Natalie move out of halls. It only seems like last week since I was carrying stuff in for her and here I was carrying it out. Only - as is always the way - there was much more to bring out than there had been to take in. I can't believe she's already completed her first year at Uni. Time slips away from you when you're not watching. Another era begins in a few weeks when she gets the keys to her new digs. Somewhere - hopefully - that will be "home" for a couple of years. Alongside the two other homes she already has. Three homes is more than enough for anyone, I reckon.

By early afternoon I'd finished the design document I'd been working on. Ahead of schedule, so I could revel in one of those lazy Friday afternoons when you can savour the approach of the weekend and pretend you don't have a care in the world.

And then, as I listened to the measure tones of Carolyn Quinn on the PM show, came the best news of all. That Ireland had voted NO to the EU Lisbon Treaty (aka a Constitution By The Back Door). Well done to the Micks and Paddys. One of the few countries to actually give its populace a chance to express an opinion and they got it bang on. Brown and Blair should forever hang their heads in shame for not allowing us the referendum they promised in their manifesto pledge (going back on manifesto commitments should be a criminal offence) but in the end Ireland has done our work for us. Hopefully that'll be an end to it, although I suspect there'll be a lot of wriggling and weasel words from Brussels to get through yet. Apparently some of the institutions and procedures that the Treaty calls for have already been implemented ahead of ratification. Typical European disdain for due process - steaming ahead with it anyway because a handful of Eurocrats think they know what's best for us. These should all be dismantled now, but do you really think they will be? The French are not exactly well known for sticking to the letter of the law.

Feeling congested

So it looks as though Manchester will be getting a congestion charge scheme after all. Not until 2012 or thereabouts, but with the amount of bribery subsidy on offer from the government, it's looking likely. The ten local councils all have to vote on it too, but since 7 out of 10 have already declared themselves in favour, there's no hope there either.

No word yet on what the scheme will mean for residents, although a local pundit on the radio today suggested that only 30% of the local population would end up paying. By this I think he meant many people will be able to "avoid" the charge by using public transport (which until they extend the tram system both South and East won't be an option for either of us, and unless they install guards on every tram to protect commuters carrying laptops from marauding hoodies I wouldn't use even if the routes were in place) or travelling outside the charge hours (7.00 to 9.30 in the morning and 4.30 to 6.30 in the evening - again not really an option for us).

We live inside the M60 orbital, so presumably leaving this area in the morning and heading out of town won't incur a charge, but if I were to be working at home and giving Nikki a lift to work, I suspect I'd incur a £2 fee per day simply for returning home from Northenden, and if I'm going into the office too, I'll pick up a charge when I leave the orbital and head into town from the other side. Sheesh.

An opposition pundit pointed out that drivers already raise £45 billion of revenue a year in one way or another, and this is just another tax on the poor motorist. With the prospect of a change in government in a couple of years' time, maybe this will all be scrapped. Or maybe by the time it's implemented everyone will be so hacked off with the cost of driving there'll be a mass non-payment protest like there was with the poll tax. A lad(*) can dream.

*Use of the word 'lad' not meant to imply age restriction. No warranty implied or given. Interpretation subject to status. Terms and conditions apply.

Pissing in the wind

The radio this morning had an article about teenage drinking that contained some alarming statistics. For the first time (I guess since they started doing surveys of this kind) more 11-13 year olds have drunk alcohol than haven't. In other words more than half have. So what? you might think, having in mind an idyllic scene of a family dinner at a large table on a tree-lined patio, the summer sun beating down as everyone takes genteel sips from their wine glasses. But such contintental scenes are, sadly, restricted to...err...the continent. We do it differently here. These teens and pre-teens are more likely to be seen falling around drunkenly in the park, the playing field, or whatever passes for a disco these days.

They interviewed a 13-year-old girl and asked her what she usually drank. WKD and Lambrini was the answer. They had to explain what that was for the Radio 4 audience (which made me feel quite street) and then asked her why that was her tipple of choice. "Because it tastes like pop," came the entirely unsurprising answer.

Then we were treated to a government spokesman wringing his hands and wailing about the problem of underage drinking, and drinking in general, and proudly announcing new powers for the police to be able to confiscate drink from anyone underage found boozing in the street.

Excuse me?

Is that really the best they can do? Hello? Horse. Bolted. This from a government that's been in power for more than 10 years, introduced the law that allows 24-hour drinking, and has presided over an ever-increasing thrusting of alcohol at all members of society through as many outlets as possible. Yes, you have to apply for a licence, but alcohol is now available everywhere. Last year I bemoaned the neanderthals who can't visit a concert without walking in carrying a beer bottle in each hand and proceed to interrupt the performance every five minutes to either replenish their supplies or make room for more. But it's not just concerts. An increasing number of people seem incapable of enjoying themselves without alcohol no matter what they're doing. And pint-for-pint in real terms, with two-for-one offers on already slashed prices, booze in all forms has never been cheaper.

So on the one hand, they cry and wail about how much everyone is drinking, and on the other hand they cry and wail about how pubs are going out of business and we're losing our traditional social fabric. The short-sightedness of this beggars belief. What do they expect? Even the booze-sodden masses can work out that it's cheaper and more convenient to buy a six-pack in Tesco's and consume it in the comfort of their own home rather than drive to a pub, pay over the odds, and then not be able to drive home for fear of losing their licence.

They (government and social commentators) bang on about how lovely it would be if we could adopt the European attitude to drink and just take it socially (and slowly!) rather than pouring it down our necks until we're no longer conscious, but in doing so they fail to mention that this is the Southern European way. Look at the history of northern Europe - Norsemen, Vikings, Saxons, whatever - and you'll find a much more accurate model for today's drinkers.

The solution to this is a lot more complex than our pathetic government (of any flavour) would have the stomach for. The problem has grown up over many years and needs as many to solve it, and turn the tide of public opinion away from reliance on ubiquitous inebriation. But there's one thing they could do that I believe would be more effective than anything else in protecting under-age drinkers and young people. Ban alcopops. The girl in the interview is an archetype. She only drinks it because it tastes like pop. Remove that option and you remove the attraction at a stroke for thousands of young people. It remains to be seen whether this morally bankrupt government would have the strength to make such a move in the face of the inevitable outcry from the industry, for whom alcopops are the 21st century equivalent of the golden goose.

I knew it! Football is bad for your health

I've never been a huge fan of any sport. I like to watch the odd frame of snooker or gymnastics or athletics on the telly, but I wouldn't usually stay in for it or build my life around it, and I've never understood people who do. The thing I find hardest to understand is the national obsession with football. It's hard to avoid - even at work it's there in a fair proportion of the coffee machine conversations. Sorry, but it bores the hell out of me.

Now this morning comes news that it's actually bad for your health! Yes! Vindication at last! A study has proven a direct link between the incidence of heart attacks in men and the dates when their team are playing a "big" match. Apparently there's a three-fold increase in heart attacks among supporters on match days. The worry and the stress kills them off! How mad is that?

In a world where there are already way too many things conspiring to make us keel over, I'm happy to avoid the totally unnecessary ones, and this is a prime example. What's more, I now have the perfect rejoinder for anyone trying to engage me in a football conversation: "Watch out! That stuff can kill you!"

Pick one that looks like you

I've mentioned before in the context of things going publicly wrong the importance of following procedure, and the difficulties that arise when trying to persuade people (in general, but unskilled workers in particular) of the importance of following procedure even in the face of compelling forces operating in directions opposite to those recommended.

I was reminded of this today on hearing a news bulletin about the issue of security passes to airport workers in the US. Following 9-11 security procedures were drastically tightened and steps put in place to perform detailed background checks on anyone applying to work in areas where the safety and security of airline passengers could be compromised. You might ask why such procedures were not in place before 9-11, but (a) I don't have an answer to that and (b) if I did it would probably be too long to type in here, so I'll concentrate on the topic at hand.

The trouble is, these procedures are designed by people who have never run an airport, or tried to recruit anyone, or even tried to follow the procedures they themselves have written. When you're a low-paid supervisor, and your manager asks you why the shift hasn't been filled, it won't cut any ice to say "because I'm waiting for the background checks to be done on these five candidates."

So I wasn't surprised (although more than a little disturbed) to hear that new recruits to the ground staff at Chicago's O'Hare airport are shown a box full of old security passes belonging to previous employees and told "pick one that looks like you."

Whiter than white

Heard on the news this morning: doctors are to be forbidden from wearing white coats as part of new rules being introduced by the Health Minister to try to curb the spread of infections like MRSA and c.difficile in hospitals. The Minister's comment was something like "the cuffs of long white coats could become infected."

What utter codswallop.

Yet another headline-grabbing move from this bankrupt government that will be forgotten as soon as the ink is dry on the newsprint, and one that will make not one jot of difference to infection rates in hospitals. Doctors have been wearing white coats for a hundred years or more. Why then did we not have massive rates of cross-contamination in the 50s, 60s and 70s? The simplest explanations are always the best: because the wards were kept clean by dedicated cleaners who took pride in their work, rather than agency staff who are paid a pittance, inadequately instructed or supervised, and content to sit on their backsides all shift having given each toilet bowl, sink and floor a cursory wipe with the same grubby cloth.

And moreover, each ward was kept under the watchful eye of a matron who let nothing get in the way of maintaining standards.

Let's have more attention to the simple, boring but essential details of running health care in this country, and less concentration on stupid initiatives that give the minister some air time in the media but do nothing to help either the overburdened NHS staff, or the patients at risk of coming out of hospital in a worse condition than they went in.

Additive Behaviours

The UK Food Standards Agency recently commissioned a study into the effects of food additives on levels of hyperactivity in children. The study has completed and the report was made available today. Not surprisingly it made the headlines and radio news programmes right from the off, since it provides evidence of a strong causal link between the use of food additives (specifically those used to give food strong colours, and when used in combination) and incidence of hyperactive behaviour patterns.

These links have long been suspected, but the FSA has always shied away from imposing a ban on the most likely culprits, claiming it didn't have "sufficient evidence."

ADHD is a modern phenomenon. Pundits argue the toss about whether it has its roots in environmental factors (such as those additives, but also air pollutants, increased electromagnetic activity in the home, widespread availability of violent computer games, etc) or bad parenting, or both. Meanwhile the parents have to put up with unruly, often aggressive and violent children, and children have to put up with being chemically controlled (stunned, more like) through the use of drugs such as Ritalin, use of which has ballooned alarmingly over the last 10-20 years.

Well now the FSA has conclusive evidence from a study they themselves commissioned. So is a ban any nearer? Was that a pig I just saw flying past? On Radio 4 this morning the news presenter tried to tie down an FSA representative to exactly when a ban would be forthcoming. The guy was completely evasive, hiding behind the fact that the required legislation was a European-wide requirement (funny how "Europe" can be used as a shield to hide behind, a bludgeon to beat people with, or an excuse for doing nothing, as the need takes them); that there was a need for due process, and maybe a further need for YET MORE evidence before any moves could be made towards a ban.

I don't understand this.

When new drugs are developed, pharmaceutical companies have to jump through endless hoops for YEARS of trials and tests to prove them safe before they are made available, and even then only a very small percentage of the population will ever be exposed to any remaining risk, because the drugs are only given to people who are suffering from the condition they're intended to address.

Contrast this with food additives, which manufacturers ladle into our food by the bucket load, willy-nilly, are consumed by almost every person in the country, adult or child, and yet the approach taken here is that independent agencies (not manufacturers, note) have to jump through endless hoops for YEARS of trials and tests to prove them HARMFUL before anyone will agree to take them out!

And for the most part, they don't have ANY beneficial effect on our food except to make it more colourful! Can someone explain the sense of that to me?

Good old British engineering

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link opened today. It links St.Pancras station in London with the UK side of the tunnel.

A marvel of engineering you might think, to allow a train to travel at 186mph, with short bursts of speed over 200mph.

I'm not so excited. The French have had their High-Speed Rail link in place between Paris and the coast since the tunnel opened in 1994, so this "good old British engineering" is only 13 years late. At a cost of almost £6 billion its nett effect is to shave 20 minutes off the journey time between London and Paris.

Is that all? Well worth it. Ah, but, you see you're not looking at the whole picture. Those twenty minutes mean the rail option is now competitive with the flight option, so from the rail company's perspective it really is worth it, since they expect passenger numbers to grow significantly.

Tell that to the commuters in Kent. The HS1 lines pass through the lovely Kent countryside, but they don't actually stop to pick anyone up, so those locals get all the noise and none of the benefit. Well, stopping would reduce the average speed wouldn't it, and defeat the object?