Archive for category Government
The Mass Libel Reform Blog – Fight for Free Speech!
Posted by Colin H in Activism, Government, Journalism, Libel Reform, Media, Skepticism on November 10, 2010
The English libel law is particularly dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows the High Court in London to have a global reach.
You can read more about the peculiar and grossly unfair nature of English libel law at the website of the Libel Reform Campaign. You will see that the campaign is not calling for the removal of libel law, but for a libel law that is fair and which would allow writers a reasonable opportunity to express their opinion and then defend it.
The good news is that the British Government has made a commitment to draft a bill that will reform libel, but it is essential that bloggers and their readers send a strong signal to politicians so that they follow through on this promise. You can do this by joining me and over 50,000 others who have signed the libel reform petition at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign
Remember, you can sign the petition whatever your nationality and wherever you live. Indeed, signatories from overseas remind British politicians that the English libel law is out of step with the rest of the free world.
If you have already signed the petition, then please encourage friends, family and colleagues to sign up. Moreover, if you have your own blog, you can join hundreds of other bloggers by posting this blog on your own site. There is a real chance that bloggers could help change the most censorious libel law in the democratic world.
We must speak out to defend free speech. Please sign the petition for libel reform at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign
Popes and Jokes
Posted by Colin H in Government, Journalism, Media, Religion, The Pope on May 10, 2010
As you may all have noticed, the Catholic Church has recently been creaking under the weight of its own paedophiles. That’s what happens when you keep hiding them. The glare of the media must have spooked the Church, because in the tradition of all large amoral institutions they’ve been trying to distract us with a story about virtually nothing. Well, I think they have… maybe I’ve just assumed it was down to them because it was so perfectly timed. It could just be coincidence that one moment everyone was shaking their heads in disgust at the sexual abuse of children and the next they were shaking their heads in disgust at a civil servant making a condom joke. I don’t know. There’s been a lot of Catholic-originated disgust and anger about in the papers, denouncing this affront… a few weeks ago every prominent Catholic was quiet for fear that the righteous fire of popular anger would burn their face off.
I really can’t get to grips with the psychology at work here. Read the rest of this entry »
Mad Journalist Syndrome
Posted by Colin H in Conspiracy Theories, Government, Journalism, Media, Public Health, science on February 9, 2010
On the 14th January, Simon Jenkins published an article online at the Guardian’s Comment is Free section entitled: “Swine Flu is as Elusive as WMD. The Real Threat is Mad Scientist Syndrome.”, in which he criticised both scientists and the government for what he saw as scare tactics and misinformation in the handling of the swine flu outbreak. The article annoyed me a little, but I had food in the oven, and as I’m a man who lives on his stomach (to paraphrase Dr. Bruce Banner, you wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry), I forgot about it and went about my merry way.
A week later, the article began to surface from the sea of my subconscious and I grew increasingly irked. I gradually came to realise that it was a much more frustrating article than I had initially given it credit for. Read the rest of this entry »
Evidence Check Evidence Check (or; What The Papers Say)
Posted by Mike in 10:23, Government, Homeopathy, Pseudomedicine, Public Health on December 7, 2009
Over the last couple of weeks, the Commons Committee on Science and Technology held a couple of their “evidence check” sessions, looking at homeopathy. Sessions such as this are held to examine whether there is evidence to support government policy.
The oral hearings take the form of witnesses with relevant backgrounds being quizzed by committee members. Witnesses for the first of these sessions included the legendary Ben Goldacre, Edzard Ernst from the University of Exeter, and Tracey Brown from the charity Sense About Science. Speakers in favour of homeopathy included Paul Bennett from Boots, Peter Fisher from the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, and Robert Wilson from the British Association of Homeopathic Manufacturers.
The big thing that came out of this hearing, from a rhetorical point of view, was the admission by Paul Bennett that Boots did not believe homeopathy to be effective – but they sell it anyway because of consumer demand. This lead to us here at Merseyside Skeptics drafting An Open Letter to Alliance Boots, calling upon them to withdraw the product. If you haven’t done so already, or even if you have, please check out the letter. Digg it, tweet it, repost it, write about it. Help up make some noise!
Ahem.
The pro-homeopathy witnesses, when challenged, mentioned a number of studies which they claimed supported the idea that homeopathy has strong effects beyond placebo. So I thought I’d look up a few of the studies mentioned and see what those studies actually say.
101 Ways to Save the Earth
Posted by Colin H in Climate Change, Government, Media, Pseudoscience, science, Skepticism on September 24, 2009
Earth is good to us. Like a kindly stable owner in Bethlehem, it gives us a comfortable place to stay in a cold, harsh universe that wants us dead. All it asks is that we don’t pollute or mine it too much, and in return it stops us floating about in the vastness of space and dying like this.
It is a simple deal that works greatly in our favour, yet humans in our infinite wisdom like to casually piss on it. Much like the bloke that stopped his car in the centre of my road yesterday daytime, got out and relieved himself on his own car, then got back in and drove on. This isn’t relevant by the way, it just pissed me off (no pun intended). Back to my original point… Depending on which climate experts you speak to, we’re either on the verge of messing up our planet, or are pretty much already in the red. The time to do something about it is right now, not tomorrow or when the mood strikes: right now. We might not be able to completely reverse the effects, but there’s still the chance to lessen the effects. There are, of course, self-proclaimed ‘sceptics’ claiming it’s all a bit of a mountain made out of a molehill and that everything will be fine some undetermined time in the future (when we’re all dead, probably). I would claim that the evidence for severe and destructive climate change is nigh on conclusive, and that the nay-sayers are simply burying their heads in the sand like environmentally averse ostriches, but then I’m not a scientist. However, the information is out there for all to find, and it’s building all the time. Seek and ye shall find. Who do you think I am, Al Gore? Read the rest of this entry »
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