Today I'm Going To Be: A Doctor

They're an odd breed, journalists.

In most professions you train for a long time to acquire the skills required and then spend years moving up the ladder.

"Experts are not born, they are hewn from the bedrock of endeavour and the granite of experience."

When I wrote that, back in the early 90s, I was considered an expert on computer that today few people have even heard of. It took many years to acquire the knowledge to be specialist in that comparatively narrow field and as a friend of mine wryly observed on me being introduced as an "expert":

Expert: an "ex" is something that was and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure.

Um... a few years later, I refined that into:

A specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less. So the ultimate specialist is someone who knows absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.

Richard "Holier Than Thou" Littlejohn and the cringe-making Peter Hitchens (to name two) are specialists: of the worst form - they're journalists.

The trouble is they have taken upon themselves the mantle of, well, whatever suits. One day they are doctors writing about MMR (a common theme in The Mail) another they are evolutionary biologists telling us that Darwin was wrong (Hitchens) and on yet another day, they become mystically transformed into climate experts and tell their readers that people like me are climate Nazis (Littlejohn).

Not one of these idiots possess anything remotely connected to a science degree and yet they choose to tell vulnerable people all matter of tosh they pick up unchecked from Wikipedia, or more usually thin air.

If I went to an airport and demanded to fly an jumbo to Hong Kong, I'd be escorted off the premises by security and probably handed to men in long white coats. Yet I can fly a jet - I just don't hold necessary licences. There's the small matter of those pesky months of intensive training, hideously difficult exams not to mention the £30,000+ cost.

There was a time when journalists checked their facts but somehow that's got lost to the mists of time. There was also a time when specialists were allowed to write and discuss their specialities - not any more. Now anyone with the journalist's mantle is free to write whatever bullshit they want: hell, they can even make shit up because on the (very) rare occasions they get caught, the fines are minute.

The author Mark Twain (I think) once observed that if you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed. In those wise words, I think that ignorance might just be bliss.

Even our elected politicians command less trust than the newspapers. While I'll grant you that some of our honourable members are, well a bit dodgy, at least they are subject to some degree of scrutiny and can easily lose their jobs. The same, unfortunately, is not true of most journalists.

Believe nothing - check everything.

Report: Academies Not Panacea

In a report which will be regarded by many in education as predictable and embarrassing for ministers, the Sutton trust has found that no less than 72% of the £25M+ super schools do not pass muster for the governments own benchmark.

Further and also predictably, the BBC reports:

"It [the Sutton Trust] also suggested rises in achievement corresponded to falls in the proportion of pupils from deprived backgrounds."

No shit Sherlock!

Academies are a fucking shambles. They are a massive waste of money that let lunatics (if well meaning lunatics) like Peter Vardy's Emmanuel Foundation get a foothold into something that should not belong to them. While Vardy himself denies being a tub-thumping Creationist, there's absolutely no question that his enforcer, Nigel McQuoid is.

McQuoid famously allued to being decended from monkeys (i.e. that he didn't want children to think that they came from or are related to our primate cousins). Problem is, as is typical with relgious twits, he confused APES with monkeys.

Humans are apes, albeit a highly advanced ahd largely naked version, but apes nontheless. McQuoid doesn't like that idea - he prefers to think of himself as something special: creation of a loving god... etc. The man's an idiot and I wouldn't put him in charge of the family piss-up, let alone a school.

McQuoid/Vardy's King's Academy opened near me a few years ago and caused a storm. Poor kids dropped out (or were thrown out) and the rich kids got in. The percentage of pupils on free school meals (i.e. the less fortunate) dropped markedly and results went up.

BBBC reports:

Schools minister Jim Knight said: "It is important to note that the number of children on free school meals (FSM) in academies has actually risen compared to the under-performing schools they replaced.

Are you listening, Lord Adonis? What about you, Jim Knight?

Funny - that's the complete opposite of what the independent report says and the complete opposite of what I see on my drive home from work... there's plenty of very expensive metal driving out of King's Academy! The poor kids from "Hemo" are mostly going to the other schools further away.

Academies DON'T WORK! Open your eyes and give the poor a chance - all you've done with this failed experiment is prove what we all predicted: money does not make for a better education if you concentrate it all in one place.

Pope Praises Gallileo: Still Picks Cherries

Pope Benedict XVI has praised the astronomer, Galileo for his work in helping us to better understand the universe and the fact that we live in a heliocentric solar system where the Earth is a rather insignificant rock. If we didn't live here, we'd probably not be that impressed by it.

His predecessor reportedly remarked in in 1992 that the catholic church's treatment of the great man was a "tragic error."

Tragic error? There's a fucking understatement. Thanks to the Roman Catholic church's mind buggering ignorance and unwillingness to adapt, the cause of astronomical science was put back decades and perhaps more.

Benedict XVI is a modernist of sorts - he's not daft enough to come out and suggest the Earth is flat or the Earth is at the centre of the solar system (making it the Terra system) or even the universe. He's smart cookie and just expands his views a bit to fit with modern thinking.

God's still real, but now we can use Gallileo's discovery to observe God's work.

So that's OK then.

That's the problem with these assholes. They need to justify their jobs - after all they get paid for promoting the biggest bunch of bollocks in history of, well, history.

Every time we figure out how something else works (evolution was a good example) they shit themselves and have to either deny it (as the Americans are fond of) or wrap it up in a nice box of God's doing.

It's a lot harder to burn people a stakes these days - people tend to notice.

That's the great thing about the God concept. No matter what we figure out about our surroundings, one God fits all a bit like one of those Magic Gloves you get down the Sunday market.

It rains - god did it. (No guys, that's precipitation).

Precipitation? God made clouds!

Clouds - that the weather and God made the seas!

Water. No guys that's hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen and Oxygen? God made them.

No they are atoms. Listen guys, Oxygen is made in stars and hydrogen when the universe was created.

AH! But God made the universe!

FAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRK!

and then there's this:

Life - god did it. (Wait no, it was evolution).

Evolution? God did it!

Abiogenesis - see, you can't explain that, so God must have done it!

Daily Mail: "Ming Emperor Had Swiss Timepiece"

OK, I admit I'm having a laugh at the Mail's expense, but this is the sort of dubious BS that it prints on a daily basis, so why shouldn't I?

The story now starring all over the net although I can't find an original source, is that a couple of archaeologists have found a swiss-made ringwatch in some rubble while excavating a tomb. The key bit is here, where the writer records:

"They believed they were the first to visit the Ming dynasty grave in Shangsi, southern China, since its occupant's funeral.

It's fairly obvious they are mistaken. Says Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Museum:

'When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, suddenly a piece of rock dropped off and hit the ground with metallic sound.'

Conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this. Perhaps it was a time traveller? But you'd have thought a couple of things would have occurred to them, notwithstanding that time travel is paradoxically impossible, the simple fact that the clumsy bastard could would have brought a more accurate electronic timepiece - not a early 20th century clockwork version.

I can see it now: "Flux capacitor: check! FTL drive: check! Antique clockwork timepiece: check!"

Oh do behave - the most worrying thing about this is that so many new sources are sufficiently slow to actually print this as news.

Let me spell it out for you O-C-C-A-M-S R-A-Z-O-R. The idea that when there are several conflicting theories, the simplest one is usually the correct one.

Christ, these people get on my nerves.

Great American Hubris: Still Wrong

EEK! Was Al Gore wrong?



According to my ultra-conservative source, even the Democratic leaning CNN is starting to doubt the prevailing scientific theory that global warming is entirely man-made.

I'm not a meteorologist, but I've lived long enough to see the climate change. When I was a child, white Christmases were a regular thing an summers were long, dryish and warm. Things have changed.

Left-wing Americans like Gore have promoted the idea that global warming is entirely man-made whereas the right-wing like Dubya have lived in some form of denial.

Gore has a point, he just makes it badly and we all know that Dubya is religiously-driven fucking idiot. You can get details of Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth here but be cautioned that the film has a tendency to exaggerate: something that Dubya supporters have seized on.

The Earth's been here for 4.5 billion years give or take (or only 6,000ish if you believe Ken Ham and idiots like him) and for a large part of that, it's cooled down from a molten blob into what we see today.

Our home's molten core is still pretty hot and reminds us on occasions when it breaks through the fragile crust and forms massive volcanoe, but for the time that life has been on this planet the majority of our heat has come from our sun.

Due to our orbital eccentricity, solar orbital distance and heat lost to space, the planet's temperature has remained fairly constant over that time: warmer at the equator where it's close to the sun and cold at the poles where it's further away. Yet strikingly, the difference between the warmest and coldest places on Earth is quite dramatic: tens of degrees centigrade. We experience seasonal changes (particularly at the far north and south) because the Earth is tilted a few degrees from vertical.

We know this because life as we know it cannot survive outside of a comparatively narrow range of temperatures. While simple bacteria can survive and even thrive in extremely hot water for example, the higher lifeforms require far more modest temperatures.

Our planet, our home is an ideal temperature to sustain and nourish life as we know it (although this is in part an effect of the anthropic principal).

OK. So what about global warming - is it happening or not?

The majority of Americans, or American politicians anyway, don't want to think so. Such is the state of their denial, they refused to sign up to the Kyoto treaty. (Neither did India, China or Russia). Another excuse suggests that the Kyoto protocol causes economic stagnation and that following such a path allows the non-signatories to get an unfair economic advantage.

But global warming is a fact.

The scientist and the weatherman in the video above both miss (or ignore) an important point about evolution.

Not evolution of a species - evolution of a system.

There are more people alive now than have ever lived and we are changing the planet in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. Chaos theory tells us a lot about that.

It's not just our cars - it's us! We are net consumers: we're not putting anything back. We're cutting down the trees that scrub the CO2 from the atmosphere and that leaves us with a net imbalance that the planet cannot absorb: it's never had to in its 4.5Bya history.

Sure, the sun is warming the planet. If it should experience a slight blip in output, we'll feel it for sure, but if the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise, the heat energy cannot escape regardless, the planet will warm and climate will change.

We are to blame and no amount of American naval gazing and well-meant bullshit won't help.

Plant a tree and observe your environment.

Mother nature is old and wise - listen to her and listen well because our future depends that we do.

Head over the Lay Scientist to see what right-whinger, God-botherer Richard Littlejohn writes in the Daily Bullshit Mail. Original article here and please try to understand that while there are people just as stupid as Littlejohn, they don't have the opportunity to sell their ideas as facts.

BBC Fined £95,000: but who pays?

The great British public, that's who.

Competitions ran as far back as 2006 were pre-recorded so there was no way that viewers could win despite being charged premium-rate calls. However, thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded (essentially an annual television tax) the BBC isn't actually paying: the poor British public is.

Fuck that.

If presenters, producers and others are going to play fast and loose with the rules, they should be sacked. Not suspended, not wrist slapped, but sacked for gross misconduct.

Job done. No excuses. No buck passing and no fining people twice.

Ah--Ah-Chooo! Damn I'm horny!

A scientist from Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, has discovered a link between sexual arousal and sneezing.

Although reports of the condition are extremely rare, its thought that this is due to a crossed wire in part of the old brain (the bit at the back of our head) that controls autonomic functions such as breathing, temperature control, heart rate and so on. Sexual arousal is similarly automatic (even if it requires a stimulus) so the scientist considers this a probable explanation.

A more commonly reported complaint (about 1 in 4 people) sneeze when exposed to sunlight - suggesting a similarly crossed-wire between the optic system and sneeze reflex.

Somewhat bizarrely, the BBC reports, our noses also contain erectile tissue leading to a condition know as honeymoon rhinitis where men and women experience stuffiness during arousal. (The same condition is also a well-known side effect of Viagra.)

I have to ask, albeit rhetorically and with a tongue firmly in cheek, is this where the phrase "fuck nose" descends from?

Fuck knows.

Another Cleveland Police Scapegoat

Suzanne Holdsworth will be celebrating Christmas with her family this year. For the last three years, this mother of two has been banged up after murdering a two-year old toddler by banging his head against a banister in a fit of rage.

She's free because Cleveland Police failed in its duty of care - not just to poor Kyle Fisher, but to all the people it serves.

In spite of the poor child's obviously abnormal skull, indicative of hydrocephalus, and several other brain abnormalities including a drooping right eye, and a hole the size of coin behind it, Cleveland police brought trumped up charges against the only person to be in the room when he fell terminally ill from a fit.

The babysitter.

No one thought to ask anything of the child's mother, a teenager herself at the time - who it is alleged once locked Kyle in a bedroom so she could have a night out.

It must have been the babysitter.

No one thought to question the several day old bruises.

Those must have been down to the babysitter.

No one checked the banister for blood or DNA where the child's head had, allegedly been battered.

Because police knew the babysitter did it.

No one bothered to check the child's health or his tendency to epilepsy.

That would have meant the babysitter was telling the truth and the police knew better. Even though, as the BBC reports:

"The retrial heard evidence that four nights before he died Ms Fisher left Kyle home alone, locked in a bedroom by tying a belt to a broom handle to block the door. Ms Fisher admitted that she had been a negligent mother. The court heard evidence that Ms Holdsworth was, in contrast, a caring mother to her two daughters, Leslie and Jamie-Leigh, who have never questioned her innocence.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Renzo Guerrini, a paediatric neurologist at the University of Florence Children's Hospital, said:

"In my opinion there is compelling evidence he had some head injury before this night. This might have been trivial but sufficient enough to produce bleeding on the brain which triggered the epileptic seizure which because of Kyle's brain condition was possibly prolonged."

Leading the investigation into Kyle's death, was Det. Supt. Tony Hutchinson, the supercop who brought serial liars John and Anne Darwin (the "canoeist" and his wife) to justice. Labels like this may have led to the sort of "never wrong" hubris that cost an innocent woman years of her life and her young children, the loss of their mother for that period.

Science teaches us that we should follow the evidence trail and never make assumptions - even about our own cleverness. Lord Kelvin, the man credited with discovering Absolute Zero, was prone to such mistakes. Just eight years before the Wright brothers made a powered flight, he declared that heavier than air flying machines were impossible; and also famously said that radio had no future. (He also believed in God - which speaks volumes to me but perhaps that's just my internal cynic.)

Cleveland police infamously followed the science (as presented to them) during the 1980s child abuse scandal. Sometimes science gets it wrong - but in that case, it wasn't the science that was wrong, but the person presenting it. Dr Marietta Higgs (who is still allowed to practice with children!) had developed and latched on to a dumb-ass theory called the anal-dilation test. Families were devastated and, by the time the truth came out, Cleveland - and its children - could never recover.

This time they chose to ignore the science and, coupled with an apparently lousy defence, there was a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Many of the professionals involved here are to blame. Some of the doctors involved early on were not specialists; the police failed to be thorough in their investigation - I don't want to suggest they ignored the lack of evidence - I don't know.

Worst of all: what of the defence team? Where they asleep?

Didn't anyone think to question even the most basic assertions that this Kyle, a child the jury were told was a happy, normal and healthy toddler was in fact a very poorly infant. A fact that's mind-buggeringly obvious from a simple photograph.

Perhaps everyone now can take time to heal this most egregious of wounds and poor little Kyle can rest in peace.

Assume nothing: question everything.

Sick of Hannah Montana

Am I the only parent who's sick of seeing that sugar-coated smile and perfect hair that is teen sensation, Miley Cyrus?

Cyrus, precocious daughter of one-hit-wonder Billy Ray, is everywhere. I can't escape from her. Bugger me, please give me a break.

I have a couple of teenage daughters (one of whom is completely taken with the hidden superstar, Hannah Montanna) so entering the living room after school and before bed is a tenuous dance preceded by some careful listening at the door for some tinny American squawks.

Why, you might ask, should I have a problem with the ultimate queen of clean?

It's because she's an actress and like all characters, her lines are written for her. What we (or rather our children) see is not Miley Cyrus, it's a phoney; and the real Miss Cyrus is heading off in a different direction.

It's not the controversial photos taken by Annie Leibovitz that bother me; Cyrus-Disney Inc.'s PR machine covered that to death, it's the other photographs that surface from time to time including one of Cyrus posing seductively on a webcam (she was 15 at the time) and another taken by a Pap showing her licking her teeth at her then boyfriend (she was 16).

Cyrus is a Christian (OOOOH please, get me the sick bucket) just like another MTVeen favourite, Jamie Lynn Spears (younger sister of Britney "no-knickers" Spears) of Zoe 101 fame. When Spears infamously became pregnant at 16, the PR machine denied the story, "She was a good Christian girl, and wouldn't do that sort of thing."

Well she did and she was, subsequently giving birth to daughter, Maddie Briann Aldridge.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a minute that Cyrus is pregnant, just that we only have to look at how child stars invariably descend into drugs and worse when age closes in and fame fades. Examples include the dreadful Macaulay Culkin and Drew Barrymore but history is littered with them.

What I am concerned with is that we're giving vulnerable kids the wrong idea about reality - just like soap operas and daytime bullshit-pedlars like Jeremy Kyle do for adults.

(Good grief, I'm starting to sound like my dad!)

Sorry folks, You Can't Sue God

Poor old God gets a rough ride these days, but at least no one can sue him/her/it.

Everyone's invisible friend is tangible enough to rain down fire, hail and brimstone; powerful enough to command the frogs to fall from the sky, but not it seems real enough to attend court. For that, we have to rely on real people - with jobs. Solicitors in fact and in this case, ambulance chasers.

Blame the blame culture whines Reverend Dr Alistair Stewart-Sykes bemoaning the decision to cancel a performance of Handel's Messiah in a century old building. (I'm paraphrasing here, what he actually said was "While we regret the cancellation we must abide by the law.")

Health and Safety is of paramount importance - I mean, no one wants the place to come down on the assembled throngs. But wait a minute, surely that would be God's fault.

Not a bit of it.

They have to have insurance in case someone stubs a toe in the dark and sues the place for every brass penny it's wheedled out of the parishioners for ten decades past.

I just love the way these people cherry pick what suits them. If the place falls down, it's God's will but the insurance will pay, but if the place falls down and kills a bunch of folk that's still God's will but the insurance won't pay.

I say: put your faith where your mouth is, Reverend. I say you're selling snake oil.

If this loving God of yours is so powerful, the place won't crumble to the ground and no one will get hurt. You have nothing to worry about. Not a jot. Who cares what the law says, God is the ultimate power in the universe - says you.

Funny how faith abandons people when reality strikes.

One day Stephen Green goes on holiday...

One day a Jew, a Hindu, and Stephen 'Bird Shit' Green all arrived at their hotel to find that there had been a mix-up with the bookings, and that there was only one room left for them to share.

The manager explained that this room only had two beds, but that there was a barn at a neighbouring farm which the farmer, an old friend of his, would let one of them sleep in free of charge. They complained a bit, but since there was nowhere else to go, the Jew graciously said he'd sleep in the barn.

The Hindu and Green were just settling down to sleep in their room, when there was a knock on the door. It was the Jew. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but there's a pig in that barn and because I'm Jewish I feel uncomfortable about sharing the barn with it.'

'No problem,' said the Hindu. 'I'll sleep out there instead.' So off he went to the barn, leaving Green and the Jew to share the room. They were just settling down to sleep, when there was a knock on the door. It was the Hindu. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but there's a cow in that barn and because I'm a Hindu I feel uncomfortable about sharing the barn with it.'

Green grudgingly agreed to give up his bed and stomped off to the barn leaving the Jew and the Hindu to share the room. The Jew and the Hindu were just settling down to sleep, when there was a knock on the door.

It was the cow and the pig.

Tony Blair is still confused

In an interview for the BBC, Tony Blair continues to live in denial that his faith actually scares the shit out of a lot of us. The fact that he's now joined the largest Christian cult is nothing surprising, his letterbox-mouthed spouse has been Catholic for years and his family are being raised with invisible friends.

What is amazing (or perhaps it isn't) is that Blair (or B'Liar as many call him) admits in one breath that he feared a palaver if he admitted to being a God-botherer while in office, yet in another he thinks that people: "in one sense, are a little comforted if they think the person leading them has some sense of spiritual value," he said. "Probably we could have been a little more adventurous on this without bringing the house down."

You know, I rather wish he had.

Blair rose to power with a grin. He is, I cannot argue, charismatic but he's about as much use to the world peace his puppeteer, George 'Dubya' Bush.

It's simple. In all likelihood there is no god. We can't prove a negative, so the best we can hope for is to attempt to find evidence of some supernatural force.

There isn't any.

Not a jot. Not a single solitary drop in the ocean (because if there were, I wouldn't write this).

We simply don't know how some things work and how some things came around - the Big Bang event, the origins of life (even though Miller-Ulrey came close) and so on.

Invisible friends and belief in things that contradict what we can prove give me chills. I don't really care if Bob around the corner thinks the world is flat, but if the bloke running my country thinks that, then I've got serious cause for concern.

Either Tony Blair is a liar or he's self-deceived and either way, I'm glad he's not running Britain any more.

Scientist: "Rom Coms Spoil Your Love Life"

Wait whaaaaat?!!

You mean that Sleepless in Seatle wasn't real? Four Weddings and a Funeral wasn't based on a true story.... Oh my world is shattered.

But seriously. According to Dr Bjarne Holmes of the Heriot Wat University in Scotland, Romantic Comedies give us a false sense of what's actually real.

I think Dr Holmes might actually be on to something too. Drippy comedies are one thing, but some forms of TV - Eastenders comes immediately to mind - are supposed to be mirrors of real life. Yet they mirror one of the most miserable, argumentative bunch of people you could ever hope to meet. Fact is, most of us wouldn't want to meet them.

They don't swear a lot - only because the watershed forbids it, but the violence and conflict is portrayed with true relish: and complete disregard to the viewers who perceive it.

Could it be that watching Eastenders or Corrie is actually bad for your metal health? There are certainly some (albeit tenuous) links between CRap music and violence; evidenced again most recently by the arrest of one Dizzie Rascal.

I'm against censorship and pro free speech, but I have to wonder if telly really is partly to blame for the breakdown of society. Perhaps these dramas are so close to real life (as are Rom Coms) yet magnify particular areas: interpersonal conflict, that they actually are colouring people's perception.

Of the people I know, those who don't watch Eastenders (in particular because it's one of the worst offenders at prime-time) are far less likely to be confrontational at work or outside.

Ironically, it may be the programmes that seem the least likely to cause harm that actually cause the worst. Few people try to ape the antics of Arnie and Stalone but how many young adults (not to mention older ones) mirror the disgraceful behaviour of soap characters? Don't dismiss this out of hand - I suspect Doc. Holmes might have opened a big can of worms.

I'm just a miserable git by nature, so I can't count myself.

Update: I just got through an entire episode of Holby City (BBC TV) and not once were the magic paddles used: which makes a change.

Seems like every week these mysterious descendants of Baron Frankenstein's workshop magically bring some poor soul back from the brink. Any doctor will tell you that's a bunch of fetid Dingo's kidney - "defib" machines only work in a small minority of cases and even when they do, patients rarely make a complete recovery.

Lucky for us, Holby City is only a fiction; unlucky for doctors though, people actually think this shit works like it does on the telly box - and therein lies a problem. Us ordinary folk go around believing that if our loved ones should fall into ventricular fibrillation, the magic "zapping" machine will make them all better.

Like I said, perhaps Doctor Holmes has a point.

If it sounds to good to be true...

then, as the saying goes, it probably is.

Of course that didn't stop city superwoman Nichola Horlick bleating "foul" when she got caught up in a "Ponzi" scheme. Like a pyramid scheme, money from new investors is used to pay the existing ones giving the appearance that large sums of money can be made with very little effort.

Like most of these city types (the RBS and HSBC are also implicated), Mrs Horlick is quick to blame everyone else when things turn to shit rather than shouldering some of the blame for being greedy.

Horlick is blaming the regulator (which should have spotted Bernard Madoff's misdeeds much earlier) for losing 9% of Brandean's total fund.

This is true. The regulator should have stopped Madoff years ago, but it didn't.

Nevertheless, fund managers also have to bear a large portion of blame. They take a shitload for making decisions with our money even when those risks don't pay off.

Fuck you superwoman. You took a risk and you got bitten on the arse. It's your fault and the buck stops with you.

Mary Kenny Is a Christian: A Dumb One

Mary Kenny writes in the Irish edition of the Independent that atheists are miserable.

"I've never yet met an atheist with a sense of joie-de-vivre (unless, in the case of one well-known public atheist, a certain drunken cordiality) most of them seem to be miserable blighters."

And you Christian types have it all sewn up, don't you, you smug bastards...

Kenny is dumb. Her argument is fallacy and filled with weasel words and she has the temerity to include the story of Baby 'P' almost as if faith could've fixed it.

Fuck you Mary.

Atheists aren't miserable, we're pissed off at people like you looking down your enormous hooters at us. You think you carry the moral high ground yet you allow no one else to tred that same path if their views differ.

Wrong.

Belief does not lead to morals and more than lack of it does otherwise. That's called CHOICE and it's something you idiots would rather we didn't have.

Bible Shock! You Don't Know Your Facts.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Child Dies From MMR! Oh, wait, No It Didn't

I don't really have the medical know-how to cover this one in the detail that my respected colleague, Ben Goldacre can so I'll let him give you the gory details.

Bad Science

If you don't fancy reading Ben's post (which is detailed and excellent) I'll give you the skinny.

As ever, the usual suspects reported (wrongly) that a child had died after being given MMR as this report in Metro demonstrates.

MMR was safe before Andrew Wankfield suggested otherwise and it is safe now. Get over it.

Karen Matthews Guilty

Karen Matthews has been found guilty of kidnapping her own daughter.

Frankly, what can I say?

Some people should not be allowed to breed.

Not This time, OJ!

OJ Simpson is sorry.

He says he's sorry for bundling into a guy's room along with a couple of his mates, armed with guns and held a couple of dudes up, making off with a bunch of sports memorabilia.

BBC News reports that in sentencing Jones to 15 years, Judge Glass commented:

"You went to the room, you took guns... you used force, you took property... and in this state that amounts to robbery with a deadly weapon."

So OJ is sorry all right. Sorry that he's going to have watch what the fuck he's doing when someone drops the soap. In 1995 I watched in horror as he walked free from court after prosecutors failed to make a case against him for the murder of his former wife and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

OJ was later found guilty in civil court and now, finally, he's going to make some sort of reparation and at 61 years old now, I'd be surprised if he ever gets out again.

Perhaps now Mr Goldman can rest in peace.

Acadamies Failing The Vulnerable

I've never been fond of the City Academy system. Giving control of our children's future to educational trusts form from religious nutters and businessmen leaves a knot in my stomach.

Says the BBC:

"..based on 24 early academies shows that the proportion of pupils entitled to free schools meals is down by seven percentage points to 35%.

This is precisely what all of the naysayers (me included) have been shouting for years: to mainly deaf ears across all three major parties.

City Academies are slowly but surely changing our education landscape: and not for the better.

There's a big difference between a rich family and a poor one - mobility. Pushy parents tend to come from more wealthy families - the sort of people who can afford to move into the catchment areas near to Academies as they appear. Little wonder these people are pushing the deprived kids out - and ironically, those same kids are left to go to the run-down schools whose funding has been spent on the Academy.

Rather than creating opportunity for the deprived, this is actually creating a very real class gap in educational opportunity between the haves and the have nots.

This experiment needs a non-partisan, critical examination now and it needs to be halted before it can't be reversed. I'm not holding my breath though.

Climbing Mount Bullshit

BBC news reports that a Think Tank has come up with the idea that so-called soft "A" levels may be a barrier to entering a decent university.

No shit!

The amazing thing is that it took a think tank to do it: surely that should be patently obvious to anyone with sufficient brain power to gain entry to higher-education.

Jeez Louise, that's what the old 11+ did: it separated the promising kids into the grammar stream and put the rest of us (me included) into Secondary Modern. "A" levels are perceived as the same thing. Three A*s at A level should be enough to get you into a good Uni - but wait.

A levels aren't all the same thing - it isn't a standard test. And just as some mountains are easier to climb than others, some A levels are easier than others.

Science A levels (even, if rumour is to be believed, have been gutted) are always going to be harder to pass than the arts. Not everyone is going to be able to grasp the concepts - my own weakness was mathematics. As hard as I tried, maths was an impassible path for me.

NASUWT's Chris Keates, said: "It is completely demoralising to teachers and young people to be on the receiving end of this complete denigration of the exam system. There are enormous demands placed on teachers and young people following A-level courses. We should be celebrating the standards that are achieved, not constantly seeking to cast doubt on their validity."

Bullshit!

Keates' position is defensive without actually looking at the real problem - standards are falling. This doesn't come from me but from the repeated reports from universities complaining that students are unable to perform basic maths (for example).

This is sort of robust discussion we need to have if future generations are going to be any use in our increasingly technological world.