davblog

Been Away

2010-09-02T11:50:49Z

It's over a month since I've posted anything here. Sorry about that. For the first half of August I was in Italy. The first week, I was speaking at a conference in Pisa and after that we spent a few days in Rome and Venice. I took more than a few photos and they're slowly making their way onto my Flickr page. They should all be up there in a week or so (although, having said that, I still haven't sorted out the photos from last year's holiday in the Baltic).

Rather pleased with the way this photo of the Colosseum came out. But given a half-decent camera, an ancient monument and the Italian flair for lighting there probably wasn't mush that could go wrong.

Not quite sure what happened to the rest of August though...

Greens and Science

2010-07-29T18:48:50Z

At the time of the European election last year, there was some debate in the blogosphere about the Green Party's attitude to science. Holfordwatch picked up on a report which said that the Greens supported the continued use of "alternative medicine" in the NHS. Rational people, of course, gave up all idea of voting for them.

To their credit, the Greens responded to this by clarifying (and, actually, seeming to completely drop) some of these policies. In this Q&A in the Guardian, their press officer, Scott Redding, was asked:

If the balance of evidence suggests that a treatment does not perform any better than placebo, should it be supported by the NHS?

He replied:

The short answer is No. Our policy is that any medicine or treatment available on the NHS should be backed up by scientific evidence. Some new treatments, and some currently available on the NHS, will pass this test, others will not.

Of course, you might well think that it doesn't matter what the Green Party thinks on this as they'll never have the power to enact their policies. And you'd be right to think that.

But they do have an MP now. Caroline Lucas is the MP for Brighton Pavilion. And whilst she's not exactly driving government policy, she does have the same ways to make her views known as all other MPs, including signing Early Day Motions.

So, given the clear direction indicated by Scott Redding, it's disappointing to see the she has signed one of David Tredinnick's nonsense EDMs on homeopathy (as discussed previously on this blog).

On one hand, the Greens clearly say that they won't support medical treatments without scientific evidence to support them. And then their first ever MP goes and gives her support to something that is on a the same level as witchcraft. If I was one of the enlightened people who voted for her back in May, I'd be feeling pretty pissed off about now.

I had hoped that, at least, the Green Party would prove themselves to be above the lies and spin that characterise so much of British politics. I'm really disappointed to see those hopes dashed.

Update: Lucas has received a lot of comment over this on Twitter in the last few hours. She has posted what I can only assume is supposed to be an explanation for her actions:

EDM is about lack of BMA's consultation & argues that local NHS better placed to know patient needs, based on objective clinical assessment

It's nonsense of course. Tredinnick is a well-known parliamentary advocate for homeopathy. His EDM is purely about supporting the provision of quackery on the NHS. Tredinnick is deliberately inventing scientific controversy where none exists. The science is settled. Homeopathy does not work.

If patients have been told that homeopathy is worth investigating, then their doctors should make it clear to them that they have been misled. Doctors should not be encouraging this delusion.

Government Ignores Science

2010-07-26T13:03:55Z

Section 47 of the Government Response to the Science and Technology Committee's Evidence Check on homeopathy:

We note the Committee’s view that allowing for the provision of homeopathy may risk seeming to endorse it, and we will keep the position under review. However, we do not believe that this risk amounts to a risk to patient trust, choice or safety, nor do we believe that the risk is significant enough for the Department to take the unusual step of removing PCTs’ flexibility to make their own decisions. We believe that providing appropriate information for commissioners, clinicians and the public, and ensuring a strong ethical code for clinicians, remain the most effective ways to ensure quality outcomes, patient satisfaction and the appropriate use of NHS funding.

So basically no change. Our new government is just as capable of ignoring scientific evidence as the old one. And the NHS will continue to squander millions on sugar pills.

I expect I'll come back and fill this in with some more detail when I've calmed down a little.

Petition Closed Prematurely

2010-07-16T08:01:05Z

Earlier this year, I created a petition on the (then) government's petition web site. The petition called for the government to fully implement the recommendations of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's Evidence Check on Homeopathy - basically calling on the government to stop wasting money on homeopathy.

The petition was due to be open for signatures for a year. In retrospect, that was probably a mistake as no matter who was in government, they would have made up their mind about the issue long before the petition closed.

But since the general election everything has changed. All of the petitions were closed to new signatures during the election campaign and they didn't re-open once the new government was in place. Instead the web site explained that the new government was considering the best way to proceed with the site. The front page of the site now says:

With a new Government in place a review is taking place of online services, including e-petitions. We are committed to improving the e-petitions process and are looking at ways of ensuring that it functions as part of a cohesive approach to public debate and transparent government. A full announcement on how we plan to use these and other services across Government will be made as soon as this important work is completed.

It goes on to say:

Existing e-petitions, submitted to the previous administration, will not be carried forward to the new administration as part of this process. E-petitions that were live at the time of the election announcement on 6 April, when the e-petitions system was suspended, will therefore not be reopened for signatures. We are issuing responses to petitions that had exceeded the 500 signatures threshold as of 6 April 2010 and these can be viewed on the HMG e-petitions responses page.

So my petition has been closed. In the three or four months that it was open, over 1,600 people signed it. That means that we can expect some kind of response from the government, although it's not there yet and there's no indication of when we will receive it.

Thanks to everyone who signed the petition. Perhaps in this new cuts-driven regime removing finding for magic water on the NHS is an obvious way to save a few million quid.

Polite Discourse

2010-07-08T19:13:28Z

So today was the day that I was called a "sack of shit" by one of the UK's most popular political bloggers.

It was all pretty silly really. I didn't even really disagree with what he had written. I just pointed out that his blog entry had two completely unattributed quotations.

It's Iain's blog, of course, so it's completely up to him whether or not he wants to publish unattributed quotations. My point was that not to do so might lead people to wonder where they came from. It's so easy to link to sources on the web that if you don't you run the risk of arousing suspicion.

I found a reference for one of the quotes (it was a parliamentary Early Day Motion - they aren't hard to find), but Google came up blank for the other. I had assumed that it came from a blog post, but that no longer looked likely. I asked Iain if he had made it up. I didn't believe for a second that he had invented it (although, of course, he has previous in this area), I was just demonstrating the conclusions that it was possible to reach from the information he had made available.

And that's when he might have overreacted just a touch in his reply. A suspicious person might wonder why that touched such a nerve, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt (I'm sure he'd do the same for me). I pointed to his reply on Twitter and he responded:

@davorg Next time don't make groundless allegations. if you can't stand the heat, and all that...

I made no allegation, let alone a groundless one.

Bizarrely, even though he took such obvious umbrage at my question, he followed my advice and edited his blog post so that it included a link to the EDM. He also stated in his reply that the other quotation came from a private email. So I got all the answers I wanted. Which was nice.

When you're blogging you can choose the amount of reference material that you show to your readers. I like to link to any articles that I'm quoting and generally throw in as many links as possible to my sources so that my readers can make up their own minds about my interpretations of what I'm writing about. Other people deal in scurrilous rumour or unsubstantiated gossip. You wouldn't expect them to link to their sources. That's their choice. It's their blog. They can follow their own rules. Whatever makes them comfortable.

In my opinion, showing your sources is treating your readers as adults. It's trusting them to draw their conclusions about what you're writing. It's showing your working for extra credit. Giving your readers no information about your sources is treating them like idiots. It's a tabloid style of blogging and whenever I come across that style of blogging it makes me wonder what they are hiding.

In my mind, showing your sources equates to quality blogging. Not doing so is suspect.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me. I do, however, expect to be able to make these suggestions on one of the UK's most read political blogs without the blog author calling me a sack of shit.

That's just rude.

Blog Nation 2010

2010-06-27T12:46:23Z

Yesterday, I was at Liberal Conspiracy's Blog Nation 2010 conference. This was a chance for left liberal bloggers to get together and discuss strategies we can adopt now that we find ourselves in opposition (or a minority partner in the coalition government).

Sunny has already blogged his thoughts on how the conference went. He asked for other people's thoughts/ These are mine.

It was great to meet so many liked-minded bloggers and to put faces to blogs that I've been reading for years. I also felt that most of the presentations and discussions were really useful and interesting. There were, however, a couple of area that I thought could be improved.

Pretty much all of the discussion centred on the messages that we can publish to counter the right-wing rhetoric we get from most of the media. This was all good stuff, but I couldn't help wondering if we were addressing the problem at the wrong level.

I have no doubt that we're all already doing what we can to publish these kinds of stories. I'm sure that we can all raise our game in this area, but don't believe that is the main problem that we have. The main problem is making sure that as many as possible are reading what we write. An d I was slightly disappointed that this issue was barely covered.

I have no easy solution to this problem. I suppose that we need to give some more thought to SEO. But I'm sure that there are other things that we can do to get our message in front of more people. I'd welcome a discussion on this topic at next year's Blog Nation. But in the meantime, feel free to add ideas in the comments below.

On the Intelligence of MPs

2010-06-25T12:12:46Z

It's easy to make cheap cracks about how stupid MPs are. The problem is that many of them seem determined to do nothing at all to counter this impression. Indeed, they often seem keen to reinforce it.

David Tredinnick (Con, Bosworth) is a particularly good example. He is a proponent of "complementary and alternative" medicine. This, of course, marks him out immediately as someone whose pronouncements on pretty much anything should be viewed with deep suspicion, but he likes to emphasise his idiocy by proposing Early Day Motions in support of homeopathy.

And it hasn't taken him long to stamp his brand of stupidity over the new parliamentary session. On Monday of this week he proposed four EDMs about homeopathy.

Each of these proposals is, of course, complete nonsense. They could only be written by someone with no understanding of science. If your MP is one of the (currently quite small) number of MPs who have signed these motions then I feel really sorry for you as your MP is obviously not quite as bright as you would no doubt want them to be.

There is, however, a brighter side to this. The new Lib Dem MP for Cambridge is Julian Huppert and he is obviously determined to continue the excellent work done in parliament by Evan Harris and he has proposed amendments to these motions which basically rip out the guts from the original motions and replace them with common sense (completely reversing the meaning of the motions in the process).They are 284A1, 285A1, 286A1 and 287A1.

I've written to my MP asking her to sign the amendments. I recommend that you do the same. Tell them that signing Tredinnick's original motions will lead to people they don't have the intelligence to do the job they were elected to do.

Iain Dale Talks Balls

2010-06-14T11:52:57Z

Iain Dale has some new and interesting information about Labour Party leadership contender, Ed Balls. Apparently whilst he was at Oxford in the 80s, Balls was a member of the Conservative Association there.

Except, of course, the news isn't as new or interesting as Dale would have you believe. Dale quotes from an article in the Independent from July 2006 where Tory MP Philip Hollobone remembers Balls being a member of the association.

But, crucially, Dale "forgets" to link to the article in question so that his readers can check his sources for themselves. And after the bit that Dale quotes, the article goes on to say this:

"Ed hasn't exactly advertised the fact, but he's never sought to hide it either. It even featured in the jokes at his wedding," I'm told.

"He joined the Tories at Oxford because they used to book top-flight political speakers, and only members were allowed to attend their lectures.

"Ed was, however, also a member of the Labour Club. He was more active in that, and was always, at heart, a man of the left."

Dale leaps to the conclusion that because Balls was a member of the Conservative Association, he must have been a conservative. The unquoted section of the article makes it clear that Balls was a member of the association because they had interesting political meetings. The comments on Dale's blog post go further than this and make it clear that this is really common at Oxford - if you're interested in politics then you'll join a number of political societies whether or not you agree with their politics.

Obviously Dale is a Tory blogger, so you'd expect him to try to attack the Labour leadership candidates. But to sink to this level shows a certain level of desperation.

If you're going to base a blog post on an article that can be found on the web, then it's only common courtesy to link to that article so that your readers can read it for themselves and draw their own conclusions about what you're writing. Not doing so immediately makes people think that you're hiding something. Which, in this case, seems to be the case.

It's a nasty, tabloid way of reporting. And I hope that Dale aspires to be higher quality than that.

Killing Maggie

2010-06-08T06:42:27Z

It's twenty years since she left office, but Tories still don't understand the depth of the hatred that Maggie Thatcher engendered in a large proportion of the population. Amongst my group of friends we had a agreement that any of us who got within striking distance of her would do our best to do her some serious damage.

Of course, there was no danger that anyone would ever get close enough to her that we would be called on to back up these threats with action. It was just a joke that we shared.

Well, until the day I found myself within striking distance.

At some point in 1993 I was in Madrid airport waiting for a flight back to London. We were in the departure lounge, the plane could be seen on the runway, but we weren't boarding. We waited and waited but they didn't let us board. Eventually, over thirty minutes late, we were called and started to make our way onto the flight.

As we were called, I was standing closest to the exit from the departure lounge, so I was the first person to head towards the plane. As I went through the tunnel to the plane, a door opened in the side and a small group of people appeared in the tunnel. They had obviously circumvented the usual check-in procedures and had come up some stairs from the tarmac.

And one of them was Maggie. I was standing about three feet from her.

Of course I did nothing. If I had, you would have known about it. "Yobbo Pushes Maggie Down Steps" would have been the headline in all of the British papers the next day.

I just stood there blinking as she (along with the rest of her party) was whisked onto the plane - where they were secreted in the first class section. By the time I got onto the plane, they were nowhere to be seen.

Of course there was no way I was ever going to do anything. Our bragging about doing something to her was just that - bragging. It was a one in a million chance that I was ever in a position to even consider making good on my promises.

But in my lifetime, there has never been a politician who split the nation like Maggie did. Of course, the number of people who loved her was larger than the number of people who hated her. But those of us who hated her, hated her passionately.

Which is why I (along with many people) can completely understand what John McDonnell said yesterday. Of course it was a joke, but it was a joke that will resonate deeply with almost half of the population who lived through the 1980s in the UK.

If I had a vote in the Labour leadership election, I'd be seriously considering giving it to McDonnell. He's obviously my kind of politician.

Update: I highly recommend listening to Elvis Costello's Tramp The Dirt Down.

BBC Radio Streams

2010-05-25T08:33:15Z

I've just written this over on my BBC Radio Streams page:

I've got email from a couple of people saying that the Real Audio radio streams were finally turned off overnight. This means that the few links left on these pages (and any links that you have saved from earlier versions of this page) will no longer work.

I expected this day to come at some point. The BBC really want everyone to use the Radio iPlayer instead.
This does, however, pose a problem for people who where using the Read Audio streams to power internet radios and similar devices. I'm not sure that there's a solution to this problem, but I'll have a poke around and see if I can see if I can find a way around it.

Other than that, I'd just like to say thanks for using these pages during the five and a half years that they have been live. When I sat down to hack out a quick solution in November 2004 I had no idea how many people would find the pages so useful.

I'd also like to thank the BBC for the enlightened approach they took to my pages. They could easy have just asked me to close the site down, but instead they chose to turn a blind eye and take my pages as an indication of something that was missing from their site.

Update: I've just found this entry on the BBC Internet Blog. The BBC have introduced live streaming of their radio stations to various mobile devices. I haven't investigated in detail, but this looks like it might be a replacement for the Real Audio streams.

Programme for Government

2010-05-20T11:57:56Z

Our new coalition government has released full details of its five year programme. They've even produced a web site that contains all of the information (although currently it seems a little broken and is just presenting a page where you can download a PDF).

I thought it was worth digging into it a bit to see what the programme says about some of the issues that the skeptical/rationalist community are interested in.

Firstly, I looked for information about the provision of homeopathy and other "alternative medicine" on the NHS. Sadly, the relevant section of the report is silent on this issue so we don't know yet whether or not the new government is in favour of spending public money on magic water. I should point out that my petition on this subject is still open - although the whole government petitions site is currently in limbo until the new government decides what to do with it.

Next I looked to see what the document said about faith schools. I found one mention. And it's not good news. In the section on schools, it says:

We will work with faith groups to enable more faith schools

So that's a bit of a worry. Of course it doesn't say whether they'll be spending public money on these schools. Hopefully this won't mean more religious-run academies where children are taught that the Earth is 6,000 years old.

Finally, I stepped back and tried to find out what the programme had to say about levels of science and research funding. And at that point, I had a bit of a surprise. Take a look at the list of high-level categories listed on the right hand side of the web site. Do you notice any obvious omissions? Look carefully now.

There is no category that obviously covers science. I downloaded the PDF version of the document and searched for the word "science" thinking that I must have missed something obvious. The word appears in the document twice. The section on the environment says:

As part of a package of measures, we will introduce a carefully managed and science-led policy of badger control in areas with high and persistent levels of bovine tuberculosis.

And then the section on schools says:

We will seek to attract more top science and maths graduates to be teachers.

Searching for the word "research" fares a little better (four mentions) but they're still rather specific and give no useful information on how the government feels about science and research spending in general. I find it astonishing that a document like this can find space to talk about badger control and completely avoid the bigger issues. Where is the commitment to levels of spending on science? Where is the discussion of the importance of science-led policy-making?

All in all, this document gives me no comfort at all. I strongly suspect that we're heading for a rather irrational five years. I really hope I'm proved wrong.

The Political Web

2010-05-13T08:16:38Z

Long-time readers might remember The Political Web, a web site that I threw together at a BBC hack day a couple of years ago.

The site has languished as I haven't had time to do anything with it for well over a year, but last night I refreshed the database that powers it so that it now contains details of all of the new constituencies and MPs.

I have other plans too (just no real idea when I'll have time to implement them).

Unelected Prime Ministers

2010-05-12T12:01:04Z

Over the last few days, there's been a lot of nonsense talked about "unelected Prime Ministers". It started off as scaremongering by the Murdoch press, but it soon started to be repeated by Tory supporters like Iain Dale. I've even heard people like Michael Gove and William Hague use the phrase in interviews.

Of course all of these people understand how the British Parliamentary system works. They know that we never have an elected Prime Minister. Anyone repeating this nonsense is deliberately lying to the electorate and shouldn't be trusted to give any kind of political commentary.

David Cameron isn't an "elected Prime Minister" any more than Gordon Brown was. Only 34,000 people voted for him. That's a tiny proportion of the electorate.

But the phrase "unelected Prime Minister" got me thinking. What if we did elect our Prime Minister? What if, instead of the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons, the tradition was that the candidate with the most constituency votes was invited to form a government. How would that change things?

Of course, the wonderful people over at the Guardian Datablog have the answers to these questions. They have a spreadsheet containing details of the votes cast for every candidate in every constituency last Thursday.

Unfortunately, there are two potential ways to interpret the data. You can find the person with the highest percentage of the vote in a constituency or you can find the person with the highest number of votes. The two versions give different answers.

The person with the highest percentage of the vote was Steve Rotheram the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton. He got 71.96% of the vote. In second place, with 71.08% of the vote, is Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams in Belfast West.

The person with the highest number of votes was Stephen Timms the Labour MP for East Ham. He got 35,471 votes. Just behind him was David Cameron in Witney, who got 33.973 votes.

So the next time you hear someone spout the tired old Tory nonsense about an "unelected PM", suggest Steve Rotheram or Stephen Timms as the best candidates for an "elected PM".

Don't Talk To Me About Football

2010-05-11T12:35:05Z

There's a football World Cup starting in the next few weeks. When domestic football competitions are taking place, it's usually simple enough to avoid getting drawn into conversations about them, but for some reason the World Cup sends a large percentage of the population mad and they start to believe that everyone is interested in their silly little game. It becomes impossible to go about your daily business without someone asking your opinion on last night's match or today's team news.

Having had a cursory look around the web, I failed to find anything that could be used to combat this nonsense. So I've designed some simple t-shirts that can be worn on all occasions to avoid getting involved in conversations that can only end badly.

I've put them up for sale on Spreadshirt. Please have a look. Even buy one or two. They're available in lots of colours (you'll need a lot as the competition seems to go on for months).

All pretty basic stuff to start off with. But I'll think about adding more slogans and some more designs. Let me know if you like them.

Voting History

2010-05-06T20:40:36Z

This is the seventh general election that I've voted in. Over the weekend I was trying to remember which constituencies I was in and who I voted for in each of them. I think I've worked it out so, to save myself from having to work it out again, I've decided to write it down here.

1983 - Hackney South and Shoreditch
I don't remember much about this election. I know I voted for Brian Sedgemore, but I don't remember staying up late to watch the results coming in or anything like that. I know that Sedgemore won though.

1987 - Putney
Probably the highest profile constituency contest that I've voted in. David Mellor was the Tory incumbent and he was being challenged by Labour newcomer Peter Hain - who I voted for. Hain lost. My flatmates and I sat up for hours getting very depressed.

1992 - Tooting
One of the most depressing nights of my life. We all thought that the Labour Party was going to win, but somehow John Major managed to scrape a win. I spent the night alone in front of the TV, but I ran up huge telephone bills sharing my depression with a friend. I voted for the Labour candidate, Tom Fox, who was standing for re-election. He won.

1997 - Tooting
This was much more fun. It's hard to remember how optimistic we all felt that night. It was a fantastic feeling. I spent the day working for the Labour Party (largely collecting voter numbers at polling stations). My wife and I sat up really late watching the incredible results coming in as more and more unassailable Tories lost their seats. I voted for Tom Fox again. He won again.

2001 - Battersea
The election that no-one remembers. The Labour Party had such a huge majority that it didn't matter what happened - there was no way that the Tories were going to beat them. It was a London Perl Mongers meeting night and a dozen or so people came back to my house to watch the results. They didn't stay that long. Things weren't very interesting. I voted for sitting Labour MP, Martin Linton. He won.

2005 - Battersea
Another year where there wasn't much chance of anything really changing - although there was a lot of anger aimed at the Labour Party because of things like the war in Iraq. I worked overnight on the Guardian web site making sure that the results pages were updated as quickly as possible, I was one of the people who felt that the Labour Party deserved to be punished so I voted for the Liberal Democrat candidate, Norsheen Bhatti. Martin Linton held the seat for Labour but with a vastly reduced majority of 163.

2010 - Battersea
So here I am sitting in front of the BBC election coverage again. I voted by post this year and my vote went back to Martin Linton. It's been an interesting election campaign and I really wasn't sure how I was going to vote until the last minute. I plan to stay up as long as I can to see what is going to happen. The BBC exit poll has just predicted a hung parliament with the Tories nineteen seats short of an absolute majority.

I hope you voted. Looks like there has been a much larger turn-out this time. Interesting times.