Giving pubs grants isn't the answer...

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Noted pseudo-liberal Tim Farron has clambered onto the "Save Our Pubs" bandwagon - anything for a vote or two! But, while he backs freezing beer duty and supporting (in some unspecified way) brewers, he also thinks that the County Council should hand out grants to pubs to "take on community facilities"

"It is important that we work hard to save our local pubs. I think that there a few simple steps we can do to really help these community assets. We need to freeze the beer tax, support our brewers and give small grants to pubs to house community facilities. By giving community pubs a small grant, we can help rural pubs diversify and bring back vital community services. I want to see the County Council back this scheme and commit to supporting rural areas."

Pubs are businesses not "community assets" and promising a few grants will go no way to addressing the disaster visited on pubs by Tim Farron and other MPs - the smoking ban.

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We're all going to die! Ban steak now!

Simon's fantastic Italian meatloaf

The latest episode in scaring us witless about cancer for having the audacity to eat things that are tasty (and that we've been eating since we first decided to cook dead animals).

The results of two observational studies by the same group at the Harvard School of Public Health have made headlines, spurring claims that red meat increases mortality risk and sugar-sweetened drinks raise the risk of heart disease. While these observational studies cannot show causation, it’s clear that many in the public are interpreting the studies in exactly this way.
 
The first study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and whose lead author was Dr. An Pan, analyzed dietary information from over 37,000 men and 83,000 women for up to 28 years. After controlling for a variety of lifestyle and diet factors, the researchers estimated that for every increase in red meat consumption of one serving per day, there was a 12 percent higher risk of all-cause mortality. Higher red meat consumption was also associated with a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

See, we're all going to die from eating steaks, burgers and (since I've pictured it) Simon's meatloaf!  Or are we?

“Unfortunately,” explains ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross, “these studies are excellent examples of data dredging. The researchers have a huge pool of observational data, and they just plug in whatever factors they can think of to look for ‘statistically significant’ correlations. But these small differences of 10 to 20 percent don’t mean anything in a retrospective observational study.”

Dr. Ross adds, “The epidemiological results that these two studies come up with are nowhere near strong enough to support the conclusions that the authors — and especially the press — arrive at."

So we aren't going to die - well we are but eating red meat or not isn't really going to make much difference. It won't stop the nannying fussbuckets lecturing us about eating bacon though.

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So what is sociology about anyway?

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Seriously folks, what is sociology? Trite statements like "the study of society", "human interaction" and "group behaviour" don't cut the mustard. And, so much of it seems to be only slightly advanced from story-telling.

Sociology is the scientific study of society. It is a social science which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity. It focuses on the influence of our relationships around us and how they affect our behaviours and attitudes.

Well that's the definition in wikipedia. The problems however are that sociology appears to have become more focused on qualitative enquiry that on either experiment or quantitative analysis. More insight is gained from work in the consumer behaviour sub-discipline of marketing - mostly because the practitioners want real, solid, empiricism.

So sociology has problems. Here's Fabio Rojas from orgtheory.net on the subject:

Politics: As a group, we simply are too far from the average person in political outlook. People write us off as kooks.

By which he probably means that too many sociologists are just too left wing! And more:

We hate math: I’m not talking about statistics, I’m talking about the near absence of formal theory building in sociology. It’s relegated to various small pockets like formal soc psych, math soc, networks, rational choice, etc. The average sociologist doesn’t acquire formal theory as a tool. At a deep level, most insight in social science is not mathematical, but by completely tossing math, we throw out something that is quite useful and brings credibility.

Hence the focus on qualitative and "critical enquiry" and the desperate urge to claim them as equivalent to quantitative analysis and the scientific method.

My problem is that the subject material of sociology is so fragmented that it leaks into economics, politics, urban & human geography, anthropology and what might be dubbed "cultural studies".

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Polling suggests Bradford backs an elected mayor!

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Early days yet and a small sample (just 500) but the initial soundings suggest that the Bradford people will vote for democracy and against the continuation of politics by party apparatchik:

Some 53% of people said they would like an elected mayor with 37% disagreeing and 10% undecided.

An encouraging start to this campaign.

Let's get an elected mayor for Bradford!

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...add sub-prime loans to business! Hey, that's a thought Vince!

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Sometimes I could cry. Vince Cable wants cheap loans to business from a state investment bank:

"It would almost certainly be necessary to lengthen the period in public ownership. It may well mean state-controlled banks being able to lend at cheaper rates than new commercial banks, thereby affecting the development of more diverse finance"

So fix the market, offer loans to people who can't pay them back at cheaper rates and all in the name of "growth". Are these people actually living on the same planet as me? Is their memory so short that they don't recall that it was cheap, government-sponsored loan-making that got us into the mess in the first place?

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It's the price isn't it?

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In a fit of populist fervour the government is proposing a scheme to help first time buyers get on the housing ladder:

David Cameron will today formally open the NewBuy Guarantee scheme, where the Government guarantees part of a homebuyer’s mortgage, allowing them to take out much larger loans than they might otherwise be eligible for.

The guarantee will allow people buying new-build properties to borrow up to 95 per cent of the value of their new home. 

Two quick observations here - firstly wasn't giving housing loans to people who can't afford them the biggest reason for the current financial train crash? And if so why on earth are we repeating this mistake?

And secondly, isn't the big problem price rather than access to finance? House values have (as the fortunate owners know) risen considerably faster than general wages for several decades - barring the occasional and inevitable price crash. This means that fewer people can afford to buy those houses.

So this scheme isn't about helping people who want to buy houses at all. It's actually about helping people who want to sell houses. The best way to help buyers is to build more houses in places (like the South East) where there is work and where people want to live. But I guess there's no votes in that, is there?

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Steam returns to Cullingworth!

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Choo, choo!

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