±«Óãtv

My 'Dog and Duck' pub menu

Having doubled every year in 2005 125,000 were fined for driving and using a mobile phone. The fines and points have recently gone up but will it work?

Cannabis factories roll out across the uk. That and the escort and massage parlours boom. Are they signs the uk is changing character to an 'anything goes' culture?

Is there a confluence of serious plagues in the uk? Bird flu, blue tongue, BSE, F&M, bee colony death,oak processionary moth, horse chestnut blight you name it we've now got it.

Re Fish
We do farm cod. See

Available in some Tesco and some Sainsbury supermarkets .. maybe Morrison too

Customs HMRC appears to be in chaos and you are covering Cod this seems very odd...

Any chance of a special on homeopathy? Before I saw Ben Goldacre's recent Guardian article and a pro-homeopathy EDM signed by 206 MPs I had no idea just how widespread belief in homeopathy and practise of it is in this country. I was deeply shocked, and the way this astoundingly absurd nonsense appears to be growing in popularity and infiltrating supposedly science and evidence based areas of healthcare is very worrying.

Not because it necessarily has no place at all in healthcare (even publicly funded healthcare), but because it's being promoted on the grounds that it actually is supported by evidence and founded on rational scientific principles. It seems to me that because of this, it threatens to undermine science and science education in the UK in the same way - though less directly of course - that Judge Jones found Creationism to be threatening science and science education in Pennsylvania.

Now that Ofcom has cleared Channel 4, may I ask if Newsnight will reinvestigate what was a blatant smear attempt by both the CPS and West Midland’s police to discredit the Dispatches programme for exposing the bigotry and hatred that was being preached at Green Lane Mosque?

I’m glad that the tactic has spectacularly backfired and I personally hope that the programme makers will now sue the WM police and the CPS in the same way that Donal MacIntyre did when Kent Police tried similar smear tactics against his one of his reports. I also hope that there is also an investigative documentary by Dispatches, as well as full scrutiny by other reporters, into how these public bodies are being politicised to the point where they making utterly preverse decisions like this.

Well done to David Davies and Don Foster for demanding answers from the WM Police and CPS. I hope that they and others will now call for a public enquiry. However, I know that Newsnight has looked into this specific issue before may I please ask that you can look again into a very obvious disparity:

Bethan David (CPS press release): "The splicing together of extracts from longer speeches appears to have completely distorted what the speakers were saying... We have been dealing with a heavily edited television programme, apparently taking out of context aspects of speeches, ..."

Ofcom: the program was a "legitimate investigation" with "no evidence that the broadcaster had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity".
"On the evidence (including untransmitted footage and scripts), Ofcom found the broadcaster had accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context."

Can Newsnight please shed some light into the incongruities in the positions taken by these 2 public bodies?

Thank you.

Jason.

Why is it that only the UK fisherman actually abide by the EU regulations on quotas.

Probably because the UK is the only EU country that abides by all EU regulations.

We are and always will be the biggest bunch of mugs in Europe.

plh (#5) Good point, but I'm not sure why you're shocked (unless you're not a regular NN reader).

Elsewhere:
/blogs/newsnight/2007/11/friday_16_november_2007.html

Ed says that nobody disputes the driver which I've been 'banging on' about. Yet as I see it, most people don't/won't make the expected connections when there are so many instantiations of this insidious process all about them.

Why might that be? Could it be denial?

If protocols were in place to prevent the transport of personal information exactly why were junior officials of HMRC allowed to do this and twice !

Should the protocols have allowed such a download and transfer ability at all?

Chris (#10) The government and its civil servants are excellent at drafting protocols and legislation. Drafting skills are very much in demand in these circles. These are predominantly 'female' skills (throughout I refer to brain gender).

The trouble is, they are not very good at enforcing them. In fact, they have a very hard time even grasping that there's far more to human behaviour than just verbal ('rule governed') behaviour. I suspect this may be because verbal behaviour is largely a 'feminine' behaviour, and crime/rule infraction is largely a 'male' behaviour). See the rising prison population and other indices of social instability for examples of the inevitable consequences.

This has been explained to them. They just don't seem to listen.

In this case what is the point of a rule or protocol if it cant be implemented?
They have no value unless the physical ability to prevent it happening
is the protocol.

I understand that the Data Protection Act will now require the government to determine who's information was lost and then write to them to inform them of the breach. Will they be doing this?

Chris (#12) A cynic/realist would just say that it makes government APPEAR to be doing something. In practice, you'll hear politicians (like Blair) publicly stating that they know that legislation alone is insufficient and you'll even hear people like Michael Hoard say that they are advised by civil servants that when they can't do anything practically (as with the rising crime rate) they should just 'manage public expectations'.

To prevent undesirable behaviour one has to arrange contingencies which reduce its likelihood (e.g. speed-cameras/sleeping policemen/CCTV etc) or, as you rightly imply, rules do just become unenforceable, useless, verbal theatrics and people at best take calculated risks.

Good systems design and behaviour management prevents or at least minimises undesirable behaviour but is expensive as it demands intensive work. Bad systems leave too much to discretion. This is why so few government IT systems and policies ever 'deliver' in my view. There are not enough good staff, and there are too many salespersons selling snake-oil. Jack Straw even said this recently!

Huhne ..the medicine man

"Huhne has so few values he values them rather too highly and fights for them...because they aren't seen to be worth anything..."

"He obviously wants the freedom to enforce necrophiliac medical ethics and entertain himself watching us die for his justice...!!!"

"...enforcing his public values.. for the freedom to take revenge out on any of us..."

"...his liberals want the freedom to get revenge and proove they are better..."

"...our liberals have the freedom to inspire the world with initiative and possibilities and work out what to do...as a matter of opportunity and customer consideration"

"....we by belief self promote and take control of our own destinies... "

"....progressive equality..not regressive equality..."

".. liberation of potential.."

"..rather than enforcement of virtues..."

"..would you want us to become like him...or explore the world more easily...as entertaining libertarians"

TLC...THE LIBERTARIAN CONSERVATIVES...a political corrector in Bournemouth...

How could Northern Rock have got itself into the position it did. After all it had as a director Derek Wanless former CEO of Nat West who saw that once mighty institution into the ground and into the arms of a small Scottish bank.

On this Newsnight, in the slot on the UK vs France, a statistic was shown that claimed that average earnings in the UK are £31,000

According to latest Office of National Statistics figures, mean
annual gross pay in the UK is £24,908 and median annual gross pay in
the UK is £19,943.

Can anyone tell me where the ±«Óãtv got the figure of £31,000? The piece
appears to be particularly misleading as it was shown as a contrast to
average earnings of £22,000 in France.