[slackline]

lucky man
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25671745

Very lucky indeed.


NHS trust spends £5000 on "4 hour ‘Jazz Thinking for Transformational Leadership in the NHS’ course"

NB : This is worth reading to balance out the authors dumb claims about "13000 excess deaths"

Have there been 13 000 needless deaths at 14 NHS trusts?

It is clinically meaningless and academically reckless to use such statistical measures to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths. Robert Francis himself said: ‘It is in my view misleading and a potential misuse of the figures to extrapolate from them a conclusion that any particular number, or range of numbers of deaths were caused or contributed to by inadequate care’.

[Jaspersharpe]

"Plebgate" rozzer pleads guilty:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25682652

I include this purely so that I can post this photo...



Has anybody ever looked more like an 80's copper (out of Juliet Bravo, Dempsey & Makepeace, The Bill etc)?

[SA Chris]

Shit isn't that....the bloke on the left?

[Jaspersharpe]

 

[slackline]

Home Office admits it doesn't know if the "War on Drugs"^TM is working

[Jaspersharpe]

Depressing stuff. I'm not clever enough to work out exactly whose interest is being protected by this stuff but it must be someone's. I can't believe that it's purely fear of the Daily Mail et al that prevents logic playing any part in policy whatsoever.

[SA Chris]

http://www.climbing.com/news/climber-accused-of-killing-his-climbing-mentor-with-claw-hammer/

wonder if it's common to have hammers lying about at the base of crags in the US?

[mrjonathanr]

Fancy a swim with a dangerous shark?

It wigged-out and came at me. It's probably one of the dumbest things I've ever done.

If that's only probably, I'd love to know what the other contenders were 

[mrjonathanr]

The cause of the current bad conditions is finally out...

[slackline]

The cause of the current bad conditions is finally out...

@UKIPWeather 

[SA Chris]

The cause of the current bad conditions is finally out...

Is flat out bonkers shit like this supposed to win voters?

[JamieG]

Smart fridge sends out spam emails. Genius. This stuff writes itself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25780908

[lagerstarfish]

nightclubs and pubs serve drinks to drunk people

http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/01/03/jech-2013-203287.short?q=w_jech_ahead_sidetab

[seankenny]

Depressing stuff. I'm not clever enough to work out exactly whose interest is being protected by this stuff but it must be someone's. I can't believe that it's purely fear of the Daily Mail et al that prevents logic playing any part in policy whatsoever.

About half the population (Daily Mail readers and their ilk) are against drug liberalisation. A mix of pure fear, ignorance and puritanism I reckon, and with those drivers who needs logic and evidence-based policy? Anyhow, no politician wants the inevitable "legal cannabis turned my son schizophrenic" type headlines which you just know are going to appear, and saving blushes at the Home Office is well worth £3bn a year no?

[lagerstarfish]

from what I've seen recently, the likes of Psyclone and other "legal highs" are doing a fine job of giving a shove to people's potential for developing mental health problems

not that Mail readers approve of those things, but they do like to be seen as being on the right side of the law

[psychomansam]

I went to a talk by David Nutt last summer, at a festival.* He talked quite a bit about the harms of illegalising E. All the replacements are more dangerous, including plenty of the legal stuff. Obv some of the illegal stuff is pretty lethal. Yet the government thinks it's a good idea to try and hit MDMA supplies, inevitably just increasing supplies of other stuff.

As to the political benefits of illegalisation, I'd say it's quite useful for demonising a certain class of people. I listened to a French philosopher a while back who pointed out that one of the best ways for an elite to shit on people and make them put up with is to get them to mentally shit on other people 'beneath' them. So the working class and lower middles all put up with endless unjust shit as long as they can all say: 'at least I'm not.... benefits scum.....a chav....a gypo....a druggy....an immigrant.

It also maintains fear. Fear isn't just a Daily Mail thing. Fear is how oppressive governments maintain power - the Mail is working in their interests (FWIW Viscount Rothermere is a personal supporter of Cameron). We need to be afraid of feral youth, drug addicts, immigrants, gypsies, chavs, communists or whoever is in vogue at the time, because it legitimises an expansion of government authority, conservative policies, and in fact actually anything, because once you've manufactured a 'crisis' you can also manufacture consent (Chomsky) to do pretty much anything you claim to be the solution. Of course, the policies you implement (trickle-down economics?) may actually work to further embed elitism, social immobility and inequality in society, thus worsening the original problems, but that's not really the point is it. The point is to legitimise whatever you fancy doing.

Which brings us to the final goal of all this. Blame. It's their fault. I've read the news. I'm fairly sure the economic downturn was caused by lazy jobseekers and benefits cheats, not hedge funds, banks and deregulation. Unemployment was caused by immigrants, not economic and social policy. Crime was caused by druggies, not hopeless social divide and immobility, cyclical poverty, and institutional racism. Tax avoidance is something immigrants, chavs and gypsies do, not multi-national corporations.

*It was quite amusing watching the security staff around the tent eyeing up the punters with often rather-large joints. They apparently weighed things up and came to the doubtless wise decision that this was the wrong crowd to be interfering with.

[mrjonathanr]

Good post.

[mindfull]

 

+1000

Surely, if anybody willing to taken an interest and try to see some IMHO objective realisation at work, they should consume more of Chomsky. He's the intellectual that has motivated me most in objective thinking, away from most of all influences we have every day.

[lagerstarfish]

I'm just glad I'm a member of the elite and so don't have to worry my pretty little head about such things

[psychomansam]

I'm just glad I'm a member of the elite and so don't have to worry my pretty little head about such things

Too busy snorting fairy dust no doubt. 

[lagerstarfish]

absolutely not

I refuse to use fairy dust because of the brutal exploitation of woodland folk that is associated with its production and trafficking

organic, Fair Trade lavender is where I get my kicks

[tomtom]

organic, Fair Trade lavender is where I get my kicks

Bourgeois wanker - the Bee's used to pollinate the lavender are seriously abused by their employers! Tsk, thought you sympathised with the proletariat. Comrade.

[a dense loner]

So psychomansam you're telling me you listened to a free thinker to tell you things a child with an iq above 70 would know?
I like your opinions on fear.

[lagerstarfish]

the Bee's used to pollinate the lavender are seriously abused by their employers!

fuck 'em - they're only bees

[tomtom]

the Bee's used to pollinate the lavender are seriously abused by their employers!

fuck 'em - they're only bees

Its the think end of the wedge Lagers.

First the Bees - then farmers markets will be taken over - and the final step will be Waitrose.

THEN WHAT WILL WE DO!