Spot The Agenda!

There is a horrible story about a teenage girl who has had to have her stomach removed after drinking a cocktail containing liquid nitrogen (the nitrogen wasn't an ingredient in the cocktail, it got in there by mistake) at a bar.

Can you spot the the agenda of the spokesghoul/ shroud waver quoted by the Daily Mail?:

But last night Dr John Ashton, director of public health for Cumbria, said she was a victim of a dangerous gimmick used to sell more alcohol.
He said: 'This girl is the victim of an irresponsible alcohol industry that's now competing on gimmicks.
....

Dr Ashton said it was time the Government brought in better regulation of the drinks industry to stop such tragic incidents.
He said: 'It is shocking that a teenage girl goes out to celebrate her 18th birthday and ends up in intensive care with life-changing injuries.
'The alcohol industry uses these types of gimmicks to make alcoholic drinks more enticing - yet staff can use liquid nitrogen without any proper training.

....

'These things are allowed to continue in this country because of the Government's lack on control over the drinks industry.
'Essentially it amounts to a form of cowardice because there are drinks industry interests in every constituency and the Government is worried about repercussions.'

Quick: Lets Ban Something!

The government has floated the idea of shutting down social networking sites during major riots, so that trouble makers will not be able to use them to coordinate their activities. Needless to say this idea is stupid, knee jerk authoritarianism of the worst kind, as Obo explains here.

When looking at history it soon becomes apparent that riots occasionally occurred before Twitter was even invented- hard to believe I know but when I looked it up on Wikipedia it turned out there have been a handful of high profile riots throughout British & indeed World history. Who knew?

The only difference between people inciting violence by word of mouth or by Twitter is that with Twitter anyone dumb enough to advocate violence (Hello Jody McIntyre) leaves a trail of evidence. Shutting down Twitter & Facebook would make it harder to convict rioters later on.

There is also the small matter of it being a punishment for the innocent as well as the guilty- some people have used social media to instigate violence but many more have used social networks to find out where trouble is happening and avoid it.

All in all the proposal is gimmicky, counter productive and unworkable.Witless authoritarianism did not die with New Labour.

Revival Of Ritual Abuse Myths?

This could be for real but given what happened in the 1980s and 90s this conviction of a supposed cult for sexually abusing children strikes me as worth keeping an eye on.

I Told You So

Actually looking through my archive it appears I didn't actually say that I thought the hysteria over "Meow Meow" would probably turn out to be completely unfounded.

Anyway it turns out that the teenagers whose deaths were attributed to the drug didn't actually take it:

Two teenagers whose deaths were linked to meow meow had not taken the drug, it was revealed yesterday.

The deaths of Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19, sparked fears about then legal synthetic stimulant mephedrone.

The rebuttal will get less attention than the initial allegations.

It turns out that the sudden deaths of heavy drinking teenagers with symptoms consistent with the effects of excess alcohol consumption was due to the alcohol they had consumed. In that sense the coverage of MCAT resembles the coverage of date rape drugs- when spiked drinks are blamed for effects that were pretty consistent with unspiked drinks.

Former government drug advisor David Nutt notes the role of the police in hyping up the dangers of legal highs in this case.

MP's Son Does Something Legal!!!!

How terrible:

The son of an MP was today exposed as a dealer in the latest designer drug mephedrone, which is believed to have been responsible for a string of recent deaths.

The revelation will prove to be a huge embarrassment to MP Louise Ellman, Labour's representative for the Riverside area of Liverpool.

A "huge embarrassment", he is selling a legal product that his mother happens to disagree with, I don't see how that even qualifies as mild embarrassment. I also like the use of the term "dealer". What makes it all the more ridiculous is that her son is not a minor under her control, but a grown man of 37 as they point out in this tortuously constructed sentence:

Her 37-year-old son Sean, 37, sells the legal drug - known as meow meow - from a chain of shops across the North of England.

Is she supposed to send him to his room to think about what he's done or withhold his pocket money?

The only thing shocking about this is that the child of a Labour MP has a proper job and hasn't been given a sinecure with a quango or lined up for a seat at Westminster.

Is This A Repeat?

After the myth of widespread sexual trafficking of women had been debunked last month there was always going to be a fresh moral panic:

Sophisticated networks of older men may be grooming hundreds of British children to be trafficked within the UK for sexual exploitation, the charity Barnardo's believes.

Or they may not, who knows? Best not to worry about it until someone presents some actual facts rather than idle speculation.

I'm not saying that they are definately wrong, but after the fiasco of the sex trafficking nonsense I don't think too many people will be willing to rely upon a report by 'campaigners' that says something "could" be happening or "may" be going on.

via Obnoxio.

Scaremongering About Vaccines.

The coverage of the cervical cancer jab has been ridiculous, with a flood of speculation that the girl who died was killed by the jab followed by a trickle of reporting that she probably wasn't.

Of course it it possible that some people will have bad reactions to some vaccines even if that doesn't appear to have occurred here. However as Theodore Dalrymple points out we have become so accustomed to the benefits of vaccination that the minuscule risks are no longer weighed against the dangers of infectious diseases.

The comments on this Daily Mail thread have to be read to be believed, with a solid majority of commentators peddling psuedo science, hypochondria and conspiracy theories (I'm not a fan of the government but anyone who thinks they are covering up the mass poisoning of children to protect the pharmaceutical industry's profits is insane).

Although deaths among 14 year old girls are very rare they do happen, the risk of death at that age is around 1 in 5000. So if there are roughly 500,000 14 year old girls in the UK then around 100 will die each year. If they have all received a jab that year then it is highly likely that once every couple of years someone will die with 24 hours of being vaccinated. These will be heavily publicised whereas the far more frequent deaths from HPV related cancers among adults will be ignored, unless it's Jade Goody.

As there are several routine vaccinations at around that age, it is amazing that more deaths don't get spuriously linked to vaccinations.

Competitive Shroud Waving.

Anyone else noticed that certain shroud wavers who were taking the silence* of right wing bloggers over the death of a G-20 protester (or passerby) to be "The stench of hypocrisy" or a "salient demonstration of quite what the right really thinks about freedom in this country" have been remarkably silent over the conviction of a police officer for causing the death of a schoolgirl by dangerous driving?

It can't really be claimed that the one death is less outrageous than the other, because driving at 94mph in a built up are without a siren on is clearly more likely to cause death than hitting someone in the legs and then pushing them in the back. So why the double standard? Could it be that synthetic outrage over one incident is being cultivated so that it can provide an opportunity for sanctimonious moralising and pretending that we live in a police state?

I suppose I should state my own views on the death of Ian Tomlinson to prevent any accusations that I'm justifying it, although my thoughts on the matter aren't terribly interesting. The degree of force he was subjected to was unnecessary and even though it could not really have been anticipated that it would cause serious harm let alone death it may be involuntary manslaughter if a medical examination concludes that it led directly to his death. It is possible that he had been deliberately walking slowly in front of the police but even if that is the case it doesn't justify being beaten with a baton.

* There wasn't any actual silence of course.

The Wicker Man Was Not A Documentary.

It appears that contary to claims made by Jersey's police force and the media, the people of Jersey do not routinely sacrifice children to whatever god those bloodthirsty heathens have worshipped since time immemorial.

I've been sceptical of the wild claims for a while, particularly when the 'skull fragment was found to be a coconut shell, but didn't want to say anything in case I was wrong and ended up making light of real abuse. Others have been openly sceptical for a while. As with the infamous Orkney "Satanic Abuse" case there seems to be an irresistable urge to believe that seemingly idyllic but remote communities are hiding dark secrets.