Once in a thousand years?

Until 2007, Dr David King was the Government's adviser on climate change. Interviewed on Newsnight last night, he was asked about the statement that the floods in Cumbria were the result of rainfall that only happens once in a thousand years. Dr King said that may have been true in the past, but in the future such events were more likely to happen about every ten years. He spoke about the £millions that would be necessary to clear up the mess and try to make people safe. It can take months for a house to dry out after a flood, even before it's redecorated. If you're in a flood plain, your insurance premiums will go up. Will it be worth cleaning up a house that might flood again within a few years? There's talk about the Government doing more - more flood defences, more compensation. It'll be a huge drain on resources (excuse the pun).

Little seems to have been said, so far, about the connection with climate change. Some people continue to deny that it's got anything to do with extreme weather. Someone sent a text to BBC News while they were talking about the floods, saying that it always rains more in the autumn, and it had nothing to do with climate change. He or she was probably one of the many who refuse to change their habits. He or she probably doesn't believe there's any connection between extreme weather and human activity - it's seems a majority think that way.

As Dr King said (more or less) on Newsnight, change will only happen when driven by disaster. Frequent floods, sky high insurance premiums, homeless people - maybe they'll start to get the message when it happens more and more frequently.

That won't be fast enough for the Pacific islands and others living in low countries, like Bangladesh. They don't have any higher ground to climb onto, any insurance, and hardly any well-drilled emergency services. Within the next few years their homes will be totally submerged, and they have nowhere to go. They, and the Africans who are suffering extreme drought, currently don't have any legal claim to refugee status. Where will they go? They didn't create any of the pollution that causes global warming, but they'll suffer far more than the people of Cumbria.

The next ten or twenty years are going to be interesting. Somehow, how you label your children doesn't seem as important as what sort of a world they'll inherit.

How dare we? It's not difficult

Criticisms of the "Don't Label Us" campaign from religious commentators are predictably ridiculous. One wrote "These people are immensely stupid, and arrogant. To suggest that one does cultural violence to one’s child by exposing him or her to religion is very close to nutty." Nutty is one way to describe the reactions of some of the critics, including Reverend David McIlveen in Northern Ireland, who says that the BHA are "just trying to draw attention to themselves" with the billboards. Well, yes, why else would they put up massive posters?

The critics either deliberately misrepresent the billboard's slogan or they don't understand it, and they obviously feel threatened. Whenever religious spokespeople feel threatened, they turn nasty. Richard Dawkins knows; he gets some very nasty emails. It's not surprising, I suppose. How dare anyone suggest that they're wrong? A lot more people who've only thought it until now are saying it out loud. The convention of deference towards religious leaders while politely ignoring all their nonsense is being ignored. The religionists don't like it, and because they're incapable of rationalising, they resort to name-calling.

It's ironic that the critics' responses are so childish. Their silliness might make more people realise that they have nothing to offer, to children or adults, and they seem to be having a tantrum.

Maybe Gordon can't spell but Mrs Janes has no manners

I've emailed the BBC about Mrs Janes and that letter from the PM:

Mrs Janes may be understandably very upset about the loss of her son but sharing Gordon's letter with the nation is sheer bad manners. Would she criticise anyone else who's written to her, or is it just because it's the PM? From years of experience as someone who has to deal with bereaved people and use their contributions in humanist funeral ceremonies, I can tell her that a significant proportion of the adult population, including many in professional roles, have problems with written English. From what I've seen of the PM's letter, I wonder if he might not be borderline dyslexic? My mother taught me not to mock the afflicted. Mrs Janes should have kept that letter to herself.

Of course, the Sun is an authority on a high standard of written English, isn't it?

They've let another blithering idiot into the House of Lords

That retirement home for the terminally bewildered, the House of Lords, has another deluded soul on its benches.

Lord Sacks, the chief rabbi, says Europe's facing a population crisis because of attacks on religion by "secular writers". If contraception was that easy, these "secular writers" ought to be writing a damn sight more.

Lord Sacks' idea of a population crisis is when religious people don't breed. The Pope has the same concern. They're worried about being outnumbered by atheists.

Sacks says,

Europe is dying, exactly as Polybius said about ancient Greece in the third pre-Christian century. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no-one is talking about it.

So, if Polybius was right, Rabbi Sacks must be too? But hang on a minute... Polybius lived in the second century BC, not the third, when the population of Ancient Greece was probably about 4,500,000. The population of Europe now? 495 million people, who consume more and waste more and pollute more than the bigger populations of less developed countries. So what's all this about a "moral equivalent of climate change"? No, sorry, Sacks, you've lost me. You can't do sums. You can't do history. You can't do morals. You don't know what causes climate change (people, you idiot), and you think "secular writers" are stopping people from breeding? If only.

Will the person sitting next to Lord Sacks in the House please keep an eye on him. He probably dribbles.

Result! ME is recategorised on the NHS Choices website

When the NHS Choices website posted the Independent's story about researchers finding a “strong link” with a retrovirus called XMRV, I was dismayed to see that it was listed in the menu under the "mental health" category. As there's nothing wrong with my mental health and it's now generally accepted that ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) or CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) is a physical illness, not a mental illness, I was rather annoyed, so I complained.

Today I had a reply:

Thank you for your email.

We have now recategorised this article under neurology following several requests from the public and after taking into account WHO guidance. We have also revisited the article and concluded that we have given a fair appraisal of this particular piece of research. Behind the Headlines aims to provide unbiased appraisals of health research in the news and we have no position on the wider issues surrounding ME. We do however understand that the classification of this condition has been contentious and caused distress for people with the condition. I hope that this email finds you well, and that this response is satisfactory.

Kind Regards,

The NHS Choices Service Desk

A result, but why did they do it in the first place? The WHO guidance has been available for some time; the illness is classified under the names ME and CFS by the World Health Organisation as "a disease of the brain and nervous system". However, UK ME organisations had to seek a judicial review of the NICE guidelines, which were biased in favour of the "It's all in the head" prejudices of some in the medical profession.

It might not seem a big thing, but having the illness recategorised under neurology on the NHS Choices website is satisfying. If only we could modify the prejudices of those doctors who still think we're mentally ill as easily. Fortunately, my GPs are not prejudiced.

Click here to see the new, recategorised page, with ME/CFS listed under "neurology".

Oh, and thanks for asking, NHS Choices service desk (whoever you are), but I'm not well. Haven't been well for 23 years. Some days I'm pretty bloody cheesed off with it, not "distressed". Suggesting that it's all in my head makes me even more cheesed off. So why have you got a link to "Mental Health" on the same page? I'll be in touch again.

Dear Mr Johnson, can you afford to ignore this?

In 2003, the cost of binge drinking was estimated at £20 billion a year, which would make it about £24 billion now, with inflation.

That figure probably didn't include the cost of the healthcare, disability benefits and special education for a generation of children born with FAS - foetal alcohol syndrome. It's caused by persistent heavy drinking throughout pregnancy and results in serious physical and mental disability. Many of the babies born with FAS have young mothers who can't cope with the consequences of their recklessness, so they're taken into care.

FAS is the biggest cause of non-genetic mental handicap in the world, and it's 100% preventable. The increasing tendency for young women to binge drink and then have casual sex without protection doesn't just put them at risk of HIV or STD infection, it also increases the risk of getting pregnant. If they then continue to drink, FAS babies are often the result.

In 2002, it was argued that the cost of cannabis control far outweighed the benefits. One of the biggest problems with cannabis is that there are no guarantees about its purity or strength. Most dope smokers may know someone whose over-indulgence has caused problems, especially if they were mentally unstable. I had a friend whose serious schizophrenic episode was almost certainly triggered by heavy cannabis use, and an employee who often turned up at work still stoned, so he was useless for the first few hours of the day (I sacked him). But, on the whole, cannabis users don't cause the problems to other people that drinkers do. They're not usually violent. They don't clog up A & E departments every weekend and abuse the staff, and so on.

So, Mr Johnson, your rejection of Prof Nutt's advice appears to be due to gross pig-headedness. One of my Twitter friends blames your lack of O levels, but I think you understand the science and the statistics perfectly well. You just don't like the scientists pointing out the blindingly obvious, which could lead to some very unpopular policy revisions if you were to take their advice. All those drinkers and smokers have votes, and all those tabloid readers think that the illegal drugs are much worse than the legal ones they enjoy, so what's a potential successor to Gordon Brown to do? Never mind the science, think of the media-manipulated electorate. A substantial proportion of them think that Adam and Eve were real people and that evolution's not true. Democracy eh? Marcuse wasn't right about everything, but he was when he said that it's a wonderful theory that doesn't work. People will muck it up, and then they'll have a little drink while they complain about the politicians.

__________________

Postscript:
Thanks to my friend Tim for this. Mr Johnson should note.
Principles for the Treatment of Independent Scientific Advice (pdf)

Whatever they are, they're not tw*ts

The BNP will be on Question Time tonight. The Independent lists 10 things you may not know about them. And on Twitter, there'll be more tweets with the hashtag '#thebnparetwats'.

There's no difference between calling someone a cunt and calling him or her a twat; they both mean the same things; a part of the female anatomy and a derogatory term of abuse. It's true that there's a word of abuse based on male genitalia - prick - but it doesn't seem to be used as often.

I've already written about the c-word. I feel just the same about the t-word. I can think of many words to describe the BNP, all of them negative, but twats isn't one of them. Anyway, they like being called names; it adds to their appeal with the malcontents who voted for them.