Why protests against the GM foods field trials is pro-science
contribution by James MacKenzie
There’s been a lot of fuss this week about Jenny Jones’ support for Take The Flour Back, a revival of mid-1990s anti-GM activism. On one side, so the story goes, you have plucky scientists just doing research, and on the other side you’ve got anti-science vandals and woo-merchants.
The truth is rather different, but to be fair to the skeptic firing squad, some of the Take The Flour Back logic was poor. They’re worried that one of the genes inserted at Rothamsted is ‘most similar to a cow’.
I should declare an interest, or at least some history – I was convicted in Edinburgh in 1999 for an anti-GM protest, and acquitted on appeal in 2003.
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Robin Hood tax: backed by the rich AND the rest, says new poll
There’s lots of interesting material in the opinion poll released to mark the launch of the new CLASS think-tank today, and there will no doubt be a lot of further analysis of the resuts.
But I have a special interest in the Robin Hood Tax, so the question which asked whether voters would support or oppose “a tax on financial transactions by investment banks” was particularly interesting.
It’s not surprising that overall, 61% supported the tax (half very strongly) with only 19% against (mostly in the “tend to oppose” category).
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Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan
Mehdi Hasan has a piece in the Guardian today entitled ‘Sadly Barack Obama, like Mitt Romney, is an apologist for the 1%‘, which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Now, Mehdi is a friend and I think he’s right to say Obama hasn’t gone as far as many progressives would like.
But if we’re going to criticise the US President and lump him with the Republicans then the points should stack up.
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Do older people really need more NHS healthcare?
Unity’s post yesterday showed how Lansley’s proposals to weight NHS funding towards areas with higher percentages of older people will lead to massive budget cuts in poorer areas of the country at the expense of the richer ones.
As he points out, that is effectively a transfer of funding from ‘Labour areas’ to ‘Tory areas’. But it doesn’t get to the bottom of what exactly Lansley is up to with his argument.
Lansley is in fact correct to say that age is the principal determinant of healthcare need. As people approach being dead, their call on health services increases dramatically.
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There are alternatives to the reckless ‘Plan A’
Yesterday we learned that GDP actually fell by a bit more in the first quarter than previously believed, -0.3% rather than -0.2%.
But important as the severity of the double-dip is, the wider issue is the longer term stagnation of the UK economy.
It’s against this background that the FT featured a whole range of ideas to boost growth. But will the government listen?
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On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people
On the incompetent Mr Beecroft‘s attempt to take labour relations back to the 1830s – note that in private sector workplaces in England & Wales without union recognition agreements, all of the following are the case:
There are straightforward processes available to sack lazy/incompetent workers which, if you follow them correctly, take less than six months from when you first notice the problem with their work and don’t lead to complicated legal action.
I’ve personally dismissed people in this way. Anyone denying that is either lying or has no idea what they are talking about.
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Why Cameron’s claim of 600,000 jobs created is plainly wrong
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday (19 minutes in), Mr Cameron repeated his claim that his government has created 600,000 net new private sector jobs (hat-tip: @D_Blanchflower).
As Channel 4′s Fact Check has noted, this is a claim the Prime Minister likes to repeat, even though it has been disproved a number of times; yesterday’s figure simply updates similar data he quoted last year.
This is surprising, because a closer look at the relevant statistics reveals a story that is less flattering to the government.
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By using age to allocate NHS funding, Lansley rewards Tory voters
Health secretary Andrew Lansley said at a NHS Clinical Commissioners conference in April: “age is the principal determinant of health need”.
It follows from this the NHS should devote a greater proportion of its resources in areas with the largest elderly populations.
But the evidence doesn’t stack up. Furthermore, it looks like the funding is being shifted for political reasons.
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The rise in domestic violence deaths is not an “isolated” problem
contribution by Sian Norris
Earlier in the year I noticed that by the 4th January, Channel 4 news had reported the deaths of 4 women as a result of domestic abuse. This was a lot higher than the usual reported number of 2 women or 1.5 women a week. London-based charity NIA.
The Twitter account @OneinFour noticed this too, so they started to count the number of women and girls who were murdered throughout the year as a result of domestic violence.
111 days into the year, and the number had risen to 33. One woman or girl every 3.3 days. And today, just over a month later, the number has risen above 40.
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Adrian Beecroft highlights mindset of Tory right
Some of the £537,000 Adrian Beecroft has given to the Conservative Party in recent years came into his possession by lending out small sums of a few hundred pounds a time, at rates of interest as high as 4,000% a year.
It’s probably fair to assume that among those who see little choice but to subject themselves to usury will be people that have lost their jobs and do not have recourse to more reasonable sources of credit than wonga.com.
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» Robin Hood tax: backed by the rich AND the rest, says new poll
» Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan
» Do older people really need more NHS healthcare?
» There are alternatives to the reckless ‘Plan A’
» On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people
» Why Cameron’s claim of 600,000 jobs created is plainly wrong
» By using age to allocate NHS funding, Lansley rewards Tory voters
» The rise in domestic violence deaths is not an “isolated” problem
» Adrian Beecroft highlights mindset of Tory right
» The US is now a model for the Eurozone to save itself
» The IMF plan to revive the economy doesn’t go far enough
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