Smoke, mirrors and dog-whistles

Now this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/61583/smoking-ban-in-cars ) is one debate in the Wedding Cake madhouse I might actually follow next week.
It will be a litmus test, firstly of who in the House actually bothers to research health issues and secondly whether the Liberal Vannin project is finally dead in the water – or should at least have the decency to drop the world 'liberal' from their name.
If your only references to this smoking in cars issue are the BBC and some of what are laughingly described as 'serious' newspapers you won't have a clue. So try reading Chris Snowdon at http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/ and Dick Puddlecote at http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/ to get the real back story.
Also, you need to know that when the BMA first peddled this atrocious bit of 'research' to the press and TV three years ago the BBC had to take down the original piece within hours and every newspaper which used it printed a retraction in the next issue. This was because the BMA spokesman 'forgot' to mention that the research was a computer model (not a physical experiment) based on a stationary vehicle with the engine and air conditioning off and all the windows closed. In other words, a hypothetical situation which was not physically possible in the real world.
Despite those numerous, often badly placed, retractions after the original story, the only 'results' from the 'experiment' that have since been quoted by the BMA , various state-funded 'public health' bodies and tub-thumping populist MPs are the sensational (and physically impossible) ones. While I am a lifelong non-smoker I think it important to point this out.
For one thing because the demonisation of any subculture without objective proof of harm or wrongdoing is simply not on.
For another because it is a worrying sign that a self-interested pressure group is persuading politicians to introduce measures which weaken the family and interfere with the ability of responsible parents to raise children in a decent, life-affirming way (not to mention giving police and other government agencies increasing power to barge into people's houses on the off-chance of catching them doing something that Stepford stiffs don't like).
A pressure group of Stepforders, by the way, which is often dishonest, increasingly even worse educated than their predecessors, but who gain jobs for life and fat final salary pensions when their complaints are taken at face value.
Having once briefly been at the same workplace as Zac Hall, back when he was earning money for flying lessons, I have serious doubts about him. He was a bit of an automaton even then, and nothing in his political 'career' has caused me to think he has loosened up since.
The tests will be (1) if Hall wants the statement in order to see fair, open and informed debate or if this is just another dog-whistle issue he thinks will get him elected again and (2) if his fellow MHKs (and especially Liberal Vannin) will cluck like headless chickens until the state grants itself yet more powers to kick in doors and pester grown adults doing things they have (unlike Manx politicians)made informed choices to do, responsibly and without bothering anyone else.
If the answers are 'No' and 'Yes' respectively then the only honourable thing for Liberal Vannin to do is disband or rename, and the only sensible thing the public can do is to happily and relentlessly disobey and mock such a cretinous piece of legislation until the police find something more useful to do.

Funny......absurd even......but just not fun

Someone close to me came home giggling today, after hearing a Creationist refugee from non-sectarian 'Norn Eylan' claim that I wrecked his chance to fleece Manx tinfoil-hatters - sorry, that's 'organise a challenging weekend of seminars from an eminent geologist'...no, sorry, wrong audience again, maybe that should be 'offer a prayerful exploration of alternatives to the atheistic theory of evolution for the benefit of true believers'........

Oh, you probably guessed it!

Actually, all I did was send a letter to the papers a few months ago pointing out to any churchgoer about to pay to hear a career creationist that said tinfoil-hatter also believes his Imaginary Friend commands bigots to execute gay people.

I wouldn't presume to tell anyone capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast to abandon their 'sincere beliefs'. There is very little point arguing with anyone who lives in a hermetic thought-bubble within an alternate universe, so I never bother. But even they have a public duty to consider if their odd ideas actually excuse genocide in what the rest of us recognise as the real world.

It appears that this odd character (clearly unable to distinguish between the results of several centuries of rigorously tested hard scientific exploration and the amanita muscarita-influenced ramblings of bronze age goat-herders) also does not understand why such views might be a problem.

My spy on the spot observed that he is considered an oddball even amongst his funny friends, so did not attempt enlightenment. For myself, I do not intend to follow the tongue-in-cheek example of experimental artist Joseph Beuys, who once performed a piece entitled Explaining art to a dead hare. It isn't just that it would be pointless, because I quite like the absurd.

It just wouldn't be fun.

Another day, another Manx drug SNAFU

I see from the government website ( see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/55367/methoxetamine-mexxy-classified-as-a-class-b-illegal-drug) that the island is to extend a temporary ban on various quasi-legal chemical substances and is also – at least in theory – offering advice to those who might like to be surer what they’re taking.

Except, of course, that this is not what is happening

In a nutshell, the tabloid-addled know-nowts up in the Wedding Cake who ‘advise’ on drug policy are trying to pretend their paranoid fantasies have been verified by UK government ‘expertise’. But as anyone who followed the David Nutt affair knows, the UK government does not actually have an expert panel of objective, independent drug advisors.

The chief advisor was sacked for giving evidence based advice rather than being prepared to rubber-stamp baseless nonsense and the principled members of the council resigned in protest. They now offer the objective research the UK government doesn’t want direct to interested members of the public instead (see http://www.drugscience.org.uk/ ) while a ragbag collection of pseudo-independent scientists, professionals and academics produce what reports and findings they’re told, when they’re told, and which fool nobody.

Except, of course, for a class of politicians and civil servants who are even less educated or honest - such as ours.

Meanwhile, a Manx drug advisory service which used to - at least - be guided by information from dependable (if sometimes self-serving) sources in the drug-control cottage industry lost government funding because it did not have enough religious friends there.
‘Advice’ now comes from a clueless consortium which does, and which having absolutely failed to give advice on its core area of inexpertise, ‘alcohol abuse’, now fails to give advice on topics it knows even less about while living off ‘sin taxes’ extracted from the industries which sell such products.

Some days I wonder what would happen if the Manx government sought advice on potential social problems from objective, knowledgeable professionals and tried to put in place coherent and realistic policies to deal with them (if they exist, which is sometimes also debateable). It would be a waste of time, because it has never happened, and will never happen.

Manx government culture just does not work like that, and its policies and ‘solutions’ just do not work. Period.

Bit busy, so here's some other libertarians instead

This week family duties prevent me spending time on the blog, so I can only refer you to some excellent stuff by fellow libertarians.

If you have been following the lies, half-lies and obscurantist twaddle posing as ‘research’ behind UK attempts to introduce alcohol minimum pricing, then take a look at some intelligent analysis instead at http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/a-total-ban-on-alcohol-advertising-the-next-logical-step-0 .

You also really, really need to take advantage of a free download opportunity for a 75 page paper (i.e. a small book) by Chris Snowdon. He demolishes the myth that “sinners”—those who drink, smoke, and eat 'unhealthy' food—cost more to society than everyone else. Then he suggests that this fairy story has been perpetuated in large part because “government has no incentive to tell the public that these groups are being exploited and the affected industries dare not advertise the savings that come from lives being cut short by excessive use of their products.”

Strong, funny, provocative… and also properly researched, which is more than you can say of the guff from ‘health bodies’ which has recently been sprayed all over the UK media like so much Friday midnight adolescent upchuck. See it at http://cei.org/studies/wages-sin-taxes .

 By the way, you can keep up with Chris at his blog, Velvet Glove Iron Fist, to the right of this page.

Elsewhere Dick Puddlecote, another excellent libertarian blogger, has been uncovering some astounding stuff about shady goings on at Westminster between politicos and the sock puppet ‘public health’ outfits they use to pretend the public have been consulted before losing their civil liberties.

Last week, (see http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/exclusive-attempt-to-kill-plain.html ) Dick revealed exclusively that Anne Milton, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health, had held a meeting - which was initially hidden from her official ministerial record - with ASH and the APPG on Smoking and Health, the aim of which seemed to be to discount a massive public objection to the ‘plain packaging’ of cigarettes. It has been all over the libertarian blogosphere since, but not picked up by the ‘proper press’. Funny that.

This week (see http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2013/02/earl-howe-held-inappropriate-meeting.html ) he found CRUK - a bogus ‘cancer charity’ that these days seems more interested in underwriting government sock puppets than researching causes or cures for cancer - try to take it further.

Well, what a surprise. Bogus charities who depend on government for the majority of their income (in return for pretending to lobby government on ‘our’ behalf for the introduction of draconian social policies that their sponsors thought up in the first place) holding secret meetings with those parts of government who don’t directly employ them, aimed at making sure that genuine public opinion about such policies is buried, disbarred and, in general, struck from the parliamentary record.

Granted, this nonsense happens in the UK in far more sophisticated ways than, say, the clumsy broom cupboard fumblings between fundie charities and their dim Manx political friends. The thing to bear in mind, though, is that we will see this pitiful drivel produced as ‘fact’ and ‘academic research’ over here before inevitable attempts to parrot UK policies.

For one thing, because the Manx government are either too dim or too idle to do their own research on public health issues. For another, because Manx health and social care professionals seem a little undereducated themselves.

How else would you explain this (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/education/collegehealthfay.xml) being presented quite seriously as ‘health education’?

Evolution-deniers on tour

Since my last post I've been digging further into the subject, and it appears that the Isle of Man is just one source of  easy cash from slow-witted folk with deep pockets. In fact the professional evolution-denier in question is on something of a UK tour of science-free backwaters, starting next weekend.

What is more disturbing is that, while the intellectually-challenged elsewhere will only host Mackay’s wacko antics once before pointing the way to the next houseful of eejits,  the Isle of Man is letting him spew his guff an incredible SEVEN times. Admittedly, four of these are being hosted by Broadway Batwits, but one of them is described as a ‘youth service’, and that has to be really worrying. Especially if you consider that some of the likely punters include public and third sector ‘professionals' who deal with vulnerable sectors of society.

See the full itinerary at http://www.amen.org.uk/cr/where/ . Note at once the absence of a date in any venue which might be even loosely described as a font of academic (or even theological) wisdom. And even swivel-eyed loons like that are not dumb enough to listen to Mackay twice.

The Isle of Man as an emerging British Isles centre for conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, and antics peculiar to three-nippled, cousin-marrying, superstitious peasants in general? What an awful vision! 

Not quite the international image our wise government pays all those PR agencies so much to create, is it?

Beware prats in tinfoil hats

If you happen to be in the vicinity of Grill in the Park, Nobles Park on the evening of 25^th October or The Studio, Upper Car Park, Central Prom the following evening look out for people in tinfoil hats. Even if you spot people in more conventional dress entering these establishments you might want to make a note not to trust them with any important matter regarding you or those you care about.

The thing is, information passed to me indicates that the Manx Tinfoil Hat Tendency is fast gathering momentum. If you can bear to follow some of the recent odd exchanges on the local newspaper letters pages and IOM Newspapers website you know the sort of person, and their flaky views.

You would think that these freaks meet in the corners of dingy pubs at night (which quickly clear when they start talking) or perhaps the cheaper caffs during the day after they’ve signed on.  Surprisingly not, in fact it seems they are about to go into the after-dinner speaking lark.

In fact one John Mackay of Creation Research UK is due to make all but the wackiest upchuck their food on 25^th and 26^th October. As stuff I’ve seen suggests those arranging this visit are barely literate I’m not sure this is wise, but hey ho, any entrepreneur has to be encouraged during a recession.

 Mackay, if you’ll excuse the pun, is a real dinosaur of the Evolution Denial industry. He started in the 1970’s (so must now be over 60) and is now seemingly moving into Global Warming as his traditional market shuts down.

Creation Research UK is the European arm of an Aussie outfit, Creation Research, and Mackay pretty much runs both as a means to push DVDs and speaking tours of views he variously claims to be presenting as a scientific or theological academic (depending on the punters and venues). However, credible evidence of his expertise in either field seems as light as creationist evidence that the Bible should be taken literally.

The British Centre for Science Education (which IS run by scientists, and regards the likes of Mackay as menaces to the young and impressionable everywhere) says that:

“Mackay has a doctrinaire (dogmatic) belief in his religion; he has absolute belief in the absolute certainty of the revealed truth of the bible, as literally interpreted.

He was originally a school teacher and holds a degree in geology from a reputable Australian university (Queensland). What Mackay has never been is a professional, practising geologist. Despite the name of his ministry, he has never had a peer-reviewed article in any scientific or geological journal. Nor is the author of this report aware that he has ever submitted such a paper.

Mackay has also been described as a geneticist, presumably because he undertook a course in this subject as part of his BSc. However, one thing Mackay is not is a geneticist. What he would have learned in a 1st degree in geology is both years out of date and well below the breadth and depth of education which most consider necessary to be a practising geneticist. Mackay certainly has never practised as a geneticist.

Nor does Mackay appear to have any theological qualifications whatsoever.”

Actually, the BCSE study the professional creationist racket rather closely (for obvious reasons), but remain objective enough to ask the main players precisely what they mean to say, and how they mean to say it. In the course of this they uncovered something else about John Mackay.

Do not read http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/MargaretBuchanan until you first place a pillow below your chin. You will need it to prevent your jaw breaking when it hits the floor.

Drink up, light up, keep calm and carry on

Well, another day, another bit of pointless legislation from the Manx government.
Last week, (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/legal_high_is_banned_after_death_of_teen_1_4059791) we became the laughing stock of Britain by outlawing a substance that wasn’t even found here until some numpty of a drug advisor, desperate for another year of public subsidy, downloaded a stock advice sheet from a similarly clueless or dishonest UK pseudo-charity.
The slim justification for this was selective misreading of a medical report on the death of a girl who may have (but more probably did not) acquire some from a much older man in between necking a lot of alcohol and we know not what else. As nobody involved in the inquest bothered to read the full medical report - so even the coroner does not know what other factors there were to the death (pre-existing medical conditions, social or psychological issues) - and the doctor who made it was not asked to look for any other evidence, the simple truth is we do not know why she died, and will never know, because it might be inconvenient.
Away from the pseudo-war on drugs, evidence this week of the real war by the Manx government on civil liberties at http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/should_smoking_ban_be_extended_1_4073426.
As ever, it is dressed up with a lot of false concern for poor ikkle kiddie-widdies.
Oh, grow up!
Does anybody on this island know one car-driving family so impoverished the car doesn’t have windows that wind down? Or one parent so indolent or evil they don’t open them?
If such a creature existed, and was ever the pig-ignorant stereotype these twonks take as a bog-standard parent, isn’t it far more likely that they would damage their kids in a far nastier way, and already have lost them to social services?
Similarly, how many folk do you know so selfish they light up in a company vehicle which may be driven or used by others, rather than being provided for their sole use?
I know none…. Zilch…. nada. And over the years I have worked for plenty of companies which owned vehicles, and with some pretty unsavoury workmates.
And once those red herrings are smoked, we are left with the real question.
Why is the state butting in on one more of the few private spaces left to individuals to chill out?
Some do it by listening to the radio, some by chucking their car a bit too fast round the Mountain Road. Whatever!
The point is, the state has no business telling its employers and sole income source if we can light up in a private vehicle. No more than it had stopping people who, by common consent, wanted to smoke in a closed area of a pub or other public building. No more than it has rationing alcohol to over-25s in weekly allowances any grown adult would consider nearer to a quick lunchtime snifter.
Wake up and smell the coffee - before they ban that too!
A government, guided only by tabloid hysteria, junk science, bogus charities (which it alone underwrites and in many cases picks staff and committees for) and other know-nowt freeloaders and prodnoses, is whittling away at any small pleasure enjoyed by consenting adults.
Time to do something about it, even if that ‘doing’ is, like Spanish bar-owners and customers, to simply, daily and en masse ignore a fatuous law until it is taken back off the books because it is impossible and impractical to police.
In other words, carry on as normal with your lives. Do that long enough, ignore the noise pollution of (self-appointed) experts and bansturbators long enough, and, who knows, we might just get enough peace to enjoy a quiet fag and a pint.

I'll tell you what you want, what you really, really want

Poor old Hugh Davidson. If the last real advertising campaign you worked on was probably the Playtex Cross Your Heart bra, how do you hold your head up in later years?
His 'official' profession wrote off such monochrome stuff in the 1980’s. As the publishing world, even then, was awash with pulped ‘memoirs’ from advertising’s golden era, he gamely reinvented his as ‘marketing manuals’ to try to cash in on the business guru/self-help boom of that hideous, shoulder-padded era. In turn his grateful publishers (I always suspect just to stop him hanging out in reception and scaring off newer clients) arranged a largely honorary ‘professorship’ at a ‘business college’ no truly ambitious teenage Sugar clone went near - being far too busy and successful knocking out dodgy videos from a barrow if we are to believe the hype.
When the wheels fell off vanity publishing and pedagogy, other geriatric marketing gurus were reduced to flogging their dubious talents to third rate offshore tax havens. It didn’t work out for any of them, because when the governments of such backwaters did their sums they found the rate at which custom was ebbing away was exceeded only by the ludicrous sums such chumps demanded for the alzheimer-induced ravings they passed off as ‘consultancy’.
Not to mention the tightening up of regulatory regimes, the OECD, etc., etc., which had the effect of getting the serious offshore world to engage with the real business community and the rest to go to the wall.
Except in the Isle of Man of course, where, as the finance sector and a few Treasury bods just got on with business, Uncle Hugh was talking to the swivel-eyed loons who run the rest of government. Entranced, like so many six year olds with learning difficulties, by his shiny baubles and fancy words, they sanctioned ‘Freedom to Fester’ – surely the daftest concept since…..well, the Cross Your Heart bra (which only MLCs are old enough to remember -and media trainspotters like me mad enough to trawl through old videos for in search of stone age advertising methodology).
Now the Alzheimers Army are at it again. See http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_159572.html for details of a ‘political poll’ which, reading between the lines, cannot even be flogged to the cash-strapped Fools on the Hill, hence Hugh’s kind funding.
To save you some trouble, I will explain something simple.
In genuine academic research involving public consultation, the academics choose an interesting question to answer, then find a way to structure the enquiry such that (a) the public get to say what they really think, know and do without helpful ‘prompts’ from interested parties (b) a reasonable cross-section of the public get to be involved and (c) ways to make sure unexpected findings, rather than preferred ones, are kept in (and all attempts by lobby groups and other interested parties to skew the evidence in their favour can be kept out) are sought rigorously.
As a result, however strongly they suspect certain findings will follow, the academics can never be sure what they will get, and whatever they do get will be fully written up along with the methods of getting them so that other academics can check for unintended bias or plain wrongheadness.
By comparison, a’marketing survey’ works the other way round. First the surveyors ascertain what the client wants the result to be. Then they plan the survey so that there can be no other.
The questions are loaded so that only the preferred answers will be given by a significant majority, with a few random ‘wrong’ ones from a predetermined minority of deviants. The sampling survey is rigorously chosen to ensure only suitable participants are included – this can include pre-surveying applicants, choosing only a certain geographic or economic demographic, a preferred ‘psychographic’ (e.g. conservative, suspicious, low in self-esteem) etc. etc. Added to this (and having enough friends at college who did this for pin-money I know for certain) the surveyors get bored, lie, make up answers and fictitious participants, while the public get even more bored and (as genuine researchers know) also have a tendency to try and guess the ‘right’ answer. Result – a ‘survey’ whose findings should not be trusted as far as anyone can throw them.
The only interesting question might be why, apart from boredom or egotism, anyone wants this survey enough to put up their own money to facilitate it? We may get the answer when the results are in and their sponsor tells what we want next.

Man talks sense on Isle of Man via YouTube

I cannot get over the fact that Brian Cox not only came to the Isle of Man and spoke to local sixth formers, but that he actually made the front page of a local paper during Tynwald Week.
I also cannot get over the fact that the 'scientist' (actually just a philosopher of science and mathematician) wheeled out by Manx Creationists to back up their nonsense did not even get a mention in local print, audio or electronic media.
Two-Nil to common sense.
Matty has been in contact to say that the Villa Marina conference involving Brian Cox and NASA astronauts is now on YouTube. Just go to http://www.youtube.com/user/wimanxIOM and enjoy.
Three-Nil to common sense then.