15.05.2013
Via the BBC I I’ve learned of a new health and safety measure that I fully expect to be doomed to be a dismal failure:
“Screaming” traffic cones are to be used on motorways across England to protect road crews. The cones are fitted with an alarm that “will literally scream” when the cone is struck, the Highways Agency said. The yellow-topped, “lighthouse” style wailers alert road workers to the danger of vehicles coming too close. The agency said they will mainly be used on motorways, meaning students or other traditional cone nemeses are likely to be kept at bay. The cones were unveiled by the agency near Perry Barr in Birmingham. “We will only use them at certain localities,… Read more »
08.05.2013
Would you be surprised if I told you that, almost six months on from her all-too-public appearance on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, Nadine Dorries still hasn’t registered her income from appearing on the show with the House of Commons authorities? In fact, according to the most recent edition of the House of Commons Register of Members’ Interests she hasn’t declared any outside interests or earnings since June 2012, although she did register a gift in kind from Conservative Home in October 2012, which consisted of a Conference Pass, accommodation and travel for last year’s Conservative Party Conference, valued at £700. That’s a little odd isn’t? Between August 2011 and May 2012, the Register of Members’ Interests shows that Dorries was paid:… Read more »
02.05.2013
Yesterday, the chairman of the polling organisation ComRes, Andrew Hawkins, was busily touting a local election poll commissioned by the Coalition for Marriage on Twitter, the headline figures for which were as follows:
Conservative 31%, Labour 24%, Liberal Democrat 12%, UKIP 22%, Other 10%
Okay, so those figures look rather different to current national polling but that’s hardly surprising as this is primarily a Shire counties election in which you’d expect to see Labour, in particular, running behind the national figures because so much of the party’s electoral support is centred on urban areas where there are no local elections this year. Nevertheless, the figures still looked a little odd to me, so I took a look at the data and then ended up having… Read more »
29.04.2013
Another week, another internet generated furore to pick over, this time in regards to a now with drawn viral advert by the Korean car company Hyundai, albeit one that puts me in the rather unusual position of having to criticise Ben Goldacre for pushing a bit of dodgy science. You probably saw it for yourself but if you didn’t the back story here is that Hyundai released a rather clever if highly unusual viral video advert to promote the environmental credentials of one of their cars which depicted a man trying, and failing completely, to commit to suicide by piping the car’s exhaust through in the passenger cabin. The punchline of the ad is, of course, that the car’s exhaust… Read more »
24.04.2013
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, rape convictions have hit an all -time high:
The Crown Prosecution Service has today published new figures that show the conviction rate for rape and domestic violence prosecutions increased once again last year. The statistics show that the conviction rate for rape prosecutions has continued to rise to the highest on record, from 58% in 2007/08 to 63% in 2012/13. CPS recorded data on rape prosecutions includes all cases initially charged and flagged as rape, including those cases where a conviction was obtained for alternative sexual offences or serious offences of homicide or offences against the person.
Ah, but have you noticed the caveat in paragraph 2? In the parallel universe that bureaucrats inhabit a ‘rape conviction’ is not… Read more »
24.04.2013
So, there I was looking through the public bills section of the Parliament website for the new Lords’ amendments to the defamation bill when what should I notice but a new bill, introduced less than a week ago, calling itself the Abortion Statistics Bill. Hmm… A quick search of Hansard later, what we find is that it’s a ten-minute rule bill introduced by the Tory MP Fiona Bruce, who’s also the vice-chair of the All-Parliamentary Pro-Life Group and currently chairing the sham inquiry into abortion on the grounds of disability that I started to pick apart only a few weeks ago – rest assured, there is more to come on that ‘inquiry’ in the near future. If we cut through… Read more »
13.04.2013
Over the last day or so, you might have noticed that the Tories have tried to respond to the campaign to propel Judy Garland’s ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ to the top of the music charts with a bit of chartjacking of their own. The Tory contender is a rather obscure 1979 track by the Lancashire punk band the Notsensibles called ‘I’m in love with Margaret Thatcher’, which the Tories have so far managed to get to the number 6 position in the current live download chart on the back of a Twitter campaign which appears to have been led by Louise Mensch and which uses the #GranthamStyle hashtag. Ah very clever, eh? Or at least that’s how it might well… Read more »
30.03.2013
Over at The Guardian, Mathilda Gregory points out that women are woefully under represented on the writing side of TV science fiction and fantasy shows:
On Saturday, Doctor Who returns, kicking off the second part of the seventh series with a James-Bond inspired episode that sees the Doctor and Clara whizzing round London on a motorbike. Which is exciting if you like interesting drama with witty banter and thoughtful concepts. But less exciting if you like interesting dramas that include women on their writing teams. Because season seven of Doctor Who will feature no female scribes at all. Not in the bombastic dinosaurs and cowboys episodes that aired last year, and not in any of the new episodes we’re about… Read more »
20.03.2013
Okay, so there still seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill relating to publication torts and the extent to which these may, or may not, impact on bloggers. This is a situation that hasn’t been help either by the government, which tabled two revised clauses on exemplary damages and awards of costs shortly before Tuesday’s debate, leaving many people to base their comments on the wrong versions of these clauses, nor by the press, and organisations like Index on Censorship, which have spent the last couple of days spouting hyperbolic bullshit in the hope of rooking bloggers in volunteering to become human shields for the media barons. Not in my name,… Read more »
08.03.2013
Apropos of yesterday’s lengthy article on the anti-abortion lobby’s sham ‘inquiry’ on abortion and disability, we know have a transcript of a second oral evidence session to play with and of the witnesses called one name leapt immediately off the page, that of a Daily Mail journalist, Beezy Marsh. Marsh, who worked for the Daily Mail as health correspondent from 1998 to 2005 and who still writes for the newspaper, today, as freelancer, stood out because she has form for pushing anti-MMR stories long after it became apparent that there were serious issues with Andrew Wakefield’s original research. Her 2006 article, ’Why I am terrified of trusting MMR‘, which appeared in the Telegraph and drew a direct response from Ben Goldacre, is particularly… Read more »
