Scribblings IV: On real ale, obesity, long life and settled science plus Notting Hill and French welders.

First a call to arms from Old Mudgie - or at least a reminder what the Campaign for Real Ale was set up to do:

CAMRA is not, and never has been, a generalised campaign for All Good Beer. If some of its members have at times given that impression, they have been wrong. It is a campaign to preserve and champion a unique British brewing and cultural institution. The clue is in the name, and it does what it says on the tin. There are plenty of great non-“real” beers out there, and CAMRA members should feel no shame in enjoying and celebrating them. But they don’t need campaigning for. Real ale does.

And he's right - real ale is the uniquely British product, something that Asterix can take the piss out of, that is central to our pub culture, and is at its best one of the world's greatest drinking experiences.

According to Grandad we have to ban obesity - 'tis the only way to solve the problem (given that studies have shown it's nothing to do with calories or exercise):

And because there is now a cure, they can start pushing for obesity to be made illegal. It will start with public transport and move on to pubs and offices but it's all for our own good. Soon fatties won't be able to even visit public open spaces because as we all know, blubber is now denormalised and we have to protect the cheeeldren from even the sight of a pot belly or a huge arse.

So it goes with science, hardly a day passes without what we thought was true not quite really being true at all. Unless it's climate science of course - as James reports:

Three professors co-teaching an online course called “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs recently told their students via email that man-made climate change is not open for debate, and those who think otherwise have no place in their course.

I gather the students weren't even allowed to share sceptical thoughts in an online forum - any questioning of that 'settled science' and bang - off the course.

Meanwhile Julia exposes the inconsistency of cops and councils by spoofing that they're banning the Notting Hill Carnival:

The Metropolitan police had asked the council to shut down the famous August Bank Holiday festival after the huge crime rate and the stabbings.

Of course, the closure isn't the carnival (454 arrests, five stabbings, 100 assaults on police officers) but the Fabric nightclub (no arrests, no stabbings, two drug deaths).

On a broader note, Bill Stickers talks about his family and, in doing so comes up with this telling paragraph:

As well as all the “But you can’t say that!” voices crying out that we should not talk about certain issues, or even allude to said facts existence, there’s a ‘health’ lobby out there determined that we will all end our days restricted to ‘care’ homes, dribbling out our dotage, and subject to naught but pity as the Alzheimers inexorably robs us of our marbles, bowel and bladder control.

Living well is more important than living long, which isn't an argument for dissoluteness but rather an encouragement to enjoy the time we've got - we only get one go at it after all!

So driving round France in a camper van makes sense even when trying to get a petrol tank welded means meeting the health and safety rules:

We learn that welding metal petrol tanks is a slow undertaking: at least in France, you have to have a special approval as a welder, and rules require that the tank be washed thoroughly before any work can start, a process that takes a fortnight. And today we are told that no welder here or in the surrounding towns is prepared to take on the job.

I get the cleaning bit (welding and petrol don't mix well) but no-one?

Finally James shares why we die and want medical research we fund. There's a bit of a mismatch with about half the research we fund through donations going on breast cancer.

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UNICEF join the New Puritans and call for advertising bans...

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According to UNICEF:

Research by Ipsos MORI for UNICEF UK found that children in the UK feel “trapped” in a materialistic culture and do not spend enough time with their families.

Parents are making up for the time they lose out on together as a family by buying their children gadgets and branded clothes due to the pressure from society - and advertising - to own material goods, the research claims.

I really don’t know where to begin with this – yet again we’re being told, this time through the ever flexible vehicle of opinion research, that advertising and marketing are trapping us, dragging us ever deeper into the mire of the consumerist world.

This comes from what UNICEF dub their “child well-being report” and, let’s be very clear about the research. After all we know Ipsos MORI as the providers of opinion polls for newspapers, so the research must be sound. However, the conclusion about children feeling trapped comes from:

A total of seven schools were recruited to take part in this research from each country (21 schools in total), with two discussion groups, (or one discussion group and two in-depth interviews) in each school, making a total of 36 groups and 12 in-depth interviews. Across the seven schools we also included one group of children with behavioural difficulties and one group of children with special educational needs, as well as 2 groups where the majority of pupils were from ethnic minority backgrounds to ensure the full range of children were represented as part of this research.

This is not a scientific study at all but a series of qualitative assessments of children’s attitudes and opinions. All conducted within the framework of something called the “child rights social ecology perspective” – which the authors of the report describe as follows:

Our methodology is underpinned by Ecological Systems Theory (e.g. Bronfenbrenner,1979; Comer et al., 2004) which sees child development as part of a broader social, cultural, economic and political set of systems. Bronfenbrenner suggests research to inform policy should take place within natural settings and that theory finds greater practical application when contextually relevant. He famously stated that “basic science needs public policy even more than public policy needs basic science".

So not a great deal of science – or even any substantial evidence-gathering – has gone to producing this report, which I find quite appalling. Yet on the basis of this pseudo-science – indeed research that celebrates an anti-scientific approach – UNICEF feel able to call for the following:

1.       encourage businesses to pay a living wage, so parents don't have to take on several jobs to make a living, which affects the amount of time they can spend with their children

2.       insist local authorities assess the impact of public spending cuts on children so that funding is protected for play facilities and free leisure activities

3.       follow Sweden's example and stop advertisements being shown before, during or after programmes aimed at under-12s.

Yet again government is expected to intervene, to control and to ban so as to make up for the supposed failings of parents. And yet again we are expected to believe that, between the scourge of advertising and the pester power of children, parents have no hope, no chance of resistance.

Not only is this nonsense, it is insulting to ordinary parents trying their best to bring up their children well and completely misunderstands the role and purpose of brands. But most of all the calls for action are wrong. I mean wrong as in illiberal and immoral – advertising is speech, commercial organisations have every right to promote their products and, if their products are used by children, to promote those products to children. It is for parents to say “no”, not for the government to remove rights to free speech just to make it so those parents do have to exercise that simple act of control.

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Not exactly a nation of drunks - but we like a tipple!

Benenden Healthcare has done a little survey - have no idea about its provenance - into the drinking habits of Brits. And they've found this out;

In liquid terms, the average Brit will down more than 5,800 pints during their adult lifetime, as well as 8,700 glasses of wine and 2,900 bottles of cider - translating to around 456 drinks a year, costing £962. They will also suffer from 726 hangovers.

I was especially taken by the hangovers figure - after all we're banging the stuff down. That's about ten a year - assuming we live to a decent age. The research tells us we start on the gloriously slippery slope at age 14 and that most people - 57% - prefer to drink at home rather than down the boozer.

Sadly, the fussbuckets at Beneden Healthcare see this as evidence of our "dysfunctional" relationship with alcohol:

Andrew Meredith, Medical Director at Benenden Hospital, an independent hospital and subsidiary of the Society, said: ‘This survey highlights the dysfunctional relationship many of us have with alcohol. The results can be seen in our town centres every week-end, in A&E departments where alcohol related conditions and injuries are a large part of the workload and the increasing numbers of admissions with alcohol related liver disease.’

Oh shut up already, will you. We get enough of that from the government.

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In which I wish the Joseph Rowntree Foundation would take its prejudices elsewhere than Bradford

Although the Joseph Rowntree Foundation does some good research it is sadly blind to the reality of its ‘poverty-mongering’ in Bradford. Over the past few years, JRF has run a “Bradford programme”:

Working in partnership with others to make a positive difference to the people in the city, and improve our understanding of issues in a diverse community.

All very worthy and so typical of JRF’s approach but I worry that, by beginning with a prejudice about the city and by immersing itself in the places and people that reinforce that prejudice, the charity do the City a disfavour.

So what is that prejudice JRF open with? It comes in three parts:

1.       Caricaturing Bradford as a place dominated by and fractured by issues of race and cohesion. JRF’s assumption is that they are “challenging existing stereotypes” when, in truth, they reinforce the stereotype of a racially-divided city

2.       Defining the city in terms of its victim status – its poverty, its crime and its struggle. This is the mindset that transformed a confident city into what we have today, the view that others – governments, business, ‘leadership’ – are responsible for the problem and that its resolution lies not in enterprise but in “getting our fair share of resources”

3.       Ignoring, absolutely and complete, the city’s suburbs and the villages that surround the urban core. JRF do not venture in their work to explore the lives of ordinary people in Queensbury, in Sandy Lane, in Baildon or in Apperley Bridge. Indeed, at times these people seem to be view as suspicious bystanders rather than contributors to the wealth and success of Bradford

None of this is to say that JRF’s work is ill-meant but it is to observe that, despite the years working in Bradford, the charity has clung limpet-like to its initial prejudice regardless of the evidence that it is a false description of the City. Evidence of higher rates of business creation, increased levels of self-employment and rising community aspirations are pushed aside as they do not fit with the predetermined view of Bradford as a victim, as a place of poverty.

JRF also remains wedded to qualitative research placing greater emphasis on the remarks of residents than on the gathering of data. Nowhere within this multi-million pound set of studies can I find robust, quantitative research conducted to look at Bradford’s problems. Rather than seeking to measure and assess – as good researchers should – JRF can only see to ‘participate’ and ‘engage’.

Such research methods – embedded deeply into the place studied – are not without their value if what we’re about is understanding culture, values and behaviours. But if, as JRF proclaim, they are seeking to guide the City towards better policy-making then we are navigating by asking random people for directions rather than using a map.

And just so you don’t think I’m making all this up, let me show you the evidence of the first caricature of Bradford – the pathology of racial politics – from a JRF funded project, JUST West Yorkshire: (this is from a e-mail bulletin – the website is very out-of-date)

As the disorder spreads to other London boroughs, residents of Bradford, Oldham and Burnley are probably reliving the divisive legacy of the Northern disturbances which strained community relationships and created a breach between the police and Asian communities who metaphorically sold their shares in the police as public confidence dipped.  If we are to draw any lessons from Bradford’s 2001 Disturbances then it must be that an effective policy response will not be found through recourse to simplistic rhetoric – whether it be about parallel and segregated communities in 2001 or about the increasing gun and knife ‘criminality’ among African-Caribbean youth in 2011 - but by sustained engagement with multiple and complex social problems.

This comes from the latest of this organisation’s left-wing diatribes and, in a sort of Trotskyite conclusion these folk say:

The rioters in Tottenham have just sent out their own message from the 'social market index' trading in public trust and confidence: between them, swingeing public sector cuts and Big Society tokenism have all meant the government has already defaulted on its obligations to the people of Britain. The big question is whether the government will be able to hear this message over the chatter between Wall Street and the City and – even if it does – whether it is capable of abandoning its ideological fixation with zombie neo-liberalism and, instead, invest in fostering the bonds of community. If it fails to do so then the hot money must surely be on the further growth of the already massive deficit in social harmony - and the consequent emergence of the Big Bad Society.

I suppose JRF will claim distance from this nonsense but for my part I want them to take responsibility for the prejudice they spawn. Maybe, Julia Unwin is happy to support those who would excuse away riot, violence and looting as some form of legitimate protest, but I would rather she took JRF’s cash and spent it elsewhere than Bradford.

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Skin Cancer UK: does he who pays the piper call the tune?

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In amongst other news, the BBC and others have reported extensively on a report from a charity - Skin Cancer UK - calling on schools to slap loads of suncream on kids the minute a watery gleam of sunshine breaks through in our English summer:

All UK schools should be required to have a comprehensive sun safety policy to protect children from skin cancer, a charity campaigner says.

A recent survey of 1,000 parents, commissioned by MPs on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Skin, found almost 40% of pupils have suffered sunburn while at school.

Richard Clifford of Skin Cancer UK says this is "entirely unacceptable" and wants mandatory sun rules for schools.

Now this may be a good idea (I am unconvinced) but why did nobody think to checkout who funds Skin Cancer UK? The funders include:

Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global BioPharma company firmly focused on its mission to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases.

This firm also manufacture suncreams.  And there's Croda:

Recognised as the world leader in the provision of specialist ingredients used by most of the major suncream manufacturers to produce their sun care products.

And The Deb Group:

The Deb Group aspires to be the world's leading away from home skin care system company — the supplier of choice for companies and organisations that value employee and customer well-being. For over 65 years, they have been establishing skin care regimes for all types of workplace and public environments.

Plus Schuco:

Experts in and specialist suppliers of skin technology and equipment to the medical industry.

The list concludes with San Tropez, Sunsense and Suntogs - all manufacturers of suncare products.

I don't know about you folks but the findings of the 'research' and the reports recommendations do seem to be in the interests of these businesses.

It just might be the case of "he who pays the piper calls the tune"?

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Apparently we're fat, drunk and grumpy because we're white!

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Or so the BBC reports:

Westerners could be genetically programmed to consume fatty foods and alcohol more than those from the east, researchers have claimed. Scientists at the University of Aberdeen say a genetic switch - DNA which turns genes on or off within cells - regulates appetite and thirst. The study suggests it is also linked to depression.

I guess thats not racist is it?

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Moments of insight...

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Sometimes a paragraph of great significance pops up:

Considering their donations come from the public, would they donate the cure to the NHS in recognition of where the funding originated? You know, give the country's money back to the people who provided it. Or would it be handed over to the pharma industry so that they can then charge the NHS (and thereby, us) for a profitable eternity?

Perhaps you should ask the collector next time you pop 50p in the tin?

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