So I forgot to tell you about a slightly odd and surprising E-mail exchange that I had last week. The E-mail pinging was between me and my MP, Oliver Letwin.
It all started, as so much does now, with Twitter. There was a tweet from someone asking us to send a letter to our MP before the last Wednesday’s debate in Parliament on libel law. There was a link to a prepared letter and then a website that directed you to your MP's E-mail address. So I did what they asked. Our libel laws are a little bit lax and do need some sorting out, so I cut and pasted the following letter,
Dear Mr Letwin,
Tomorrow there is a debate in parliament on the subject of libel reform.
English libel laws are being used to stifle scientific debate in the UK, to the point where many scientists are not bothering to make their opinions heard. Those that do criticise others are being heavily punished for doing so.
Medical doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre was recently involved in a libel battle following his criticism of a vitamin salesman who claimed that anti-retroviral drugs were ineffective in treating AIDS and offered his vitamins as an alternative. Despite the fact that Goldacre won, they still came out of it £150,000 poorer. The science author Simon Singh is going through a similar situation right now.
In 1961, the German paediatrician Widukind Lenz criticised the drug Thalidomide. By this time, at least 10,000 children had been born with birth defects. If he, and all other scientists since, had refused to make their criticism known for fear of legal action, the deformities may still be continuing today.
If we put a stop to criticism, we not only put an end to our ability to know which of our current treatments are effective and safe, but we also make it impossible to evaluate the treatments of the future.
We must do everything we can to reform our uniquely repressive English libel system.
The future health of everyone in this country and the world depends on it.
Yours,
Martyn Norris
A little hyperbole laden maybe but it makes the point and so I sent it and thought no more about it.
So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my inbox ( not a uferism) to see a reply. “I'm sure it's just an automatic response thing” I thought to myself as I clicked on it. I couldn't have been more wrong.
It may have been an underling that wrote the reply but it contained this line,
I am more than willing to do some research of my own to remedy this lack of knowledge -- but I think I ought to start by meeting you, so that you can brief me first on what I need to be looking for.
By meeting with me? Oh no no no no. That wasn't supposed to happen. I'm an armchair grumpy. More than happy to fire of an e-mail or sign an on-line petition but meet my MP! About something that I know next to nothing! What to do, what to do?
There was only one sensible and rational thing to do. Treat it as I treat all my problems, ignore it. Which I did. For about a day and a half. Then I decided that I was being rude. So I replied, thanking him for the swiftness of his reply and the slowness of mine (I didn't mention that I was ignoring his reply) but admitting that I knew little about the subject but was aware of those high profile cases. I also used the line “By "public interest" I mean in a scientific way and not the Max Mosley way.” which I was quite proud of.
He, again, replied promptly (show off), saying,
“Clearly, there is a delicate balance to be struck between protecting individuals against highly destructive and unfair allegations and, on the other hand, permitting wide and open public debate about matters of genuine public interest including scientific issues of general importance.
I shall discuss all this with my colleagues in our Justice team and commission some work on the question of whether current or proposed laws are threatening to choke off important scientific debate.”
I have to admit that I am very happy with the service that I have received for my MP. It's a shame that he is a Tory but maybe the taxpayer’s money spent to repair a pipe under his tennis court wasn't a waste of time after all. Although I am intrigued by the Tory Justice Team. Please be wearing capes, please be wearing capes.
Showing posts with label emails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emails. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Diana Watch
On the same day that I was asked to join Yes I got a call from David Bowie asking me to formThe Spiders from Mars with Mick Ronson. I have spent most of this weekend decorating my hall. Have I ever expressed to you how much I hate decorating? I really hate decorating. Well, I hate the painting of the walls, glossing is alright. A rather surprising thing has happened whilst doing the decorating though, I have put up a new coat rack/shelving thing and nothing has gone wrong. Not a thing. Putting it together was easy, all the parts were present, the drilling of holes in my wall was no problem, wall plugs slid in, screws went in, tightened up nicely and the unit it’s self fitted perfectly. This is very odd indeed. I don’t have the greatest history with DIY and shelf putting up more significantly, just ask significant other about her cherished glassware that was in our dining room, but this all seems to have gone scarily well. It won’t last. At least I can now do karate now after all that painting.
There hasn’t been a great deal of news this week due to the fact that no one has been watching the news because there have been many showings of Wallace and Gromit on the BBC (if news is reported and no one is watching, has it happened?) but what there has been has mostly been about Gaza and the destruction there of. Israel is like a badly behaved child. Since they were born they have been behaving badly, not playing well with other children in the neighbourhood, but their parents (America) has turned a bit of a blind eye. There has been the odd telling off and various empty threats to take the toys away but still they have been allowed to play with their cowboy outfit, the parent is secretly proud of the strong, independent child that they have bought up, every so often defending its behaviour with the “difficult/traumatic birth and childhood” excuse. What Israel needs is some sort of UN sanctioned Super Nanny to make it sit on the international naughty step for a while whilst it considers what it has done and why it might upset the other children to have their Lego knocked down. The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has said that Israel’s bombing of Gaza will lead to the radicalization of Palestinians against Israel yet when asked the same question about us bombing Iraq he denied that this phenomenon would take place, how odd.
Your Government wants to know what you are doing. They really, really want to know what you are doing. So much so that they have decided that asking you might end with you standing with your hands behind your back, sulkily looking at your feet, rubbing out an imaginary cigarette with one foot and mumbling under your breath “nothing”, and this won’t tell them what they won’t to know, so they are bring forward legislation that will enable them to track every phone call you make and email you send and website you visit. That won’t know the content but they will know who you are contacting. Oh and a private company is probably going to run it. Oh where to start. I don’t want the Government to know how many times I phone my mother or not in my case. Well, finding out how many times I’ve phoned my mum after a private company has left the information has been left in a kebab shop. There is also the point that if they don’t know the content of the message then what’s the point? Some one I know might be a terrorist, it could happen, my money is on my friend Kate, you know, best Christmas card of the year Kate, happy family life, pretty children, suspicious I think you’ll agree, and I could message them a lot simply because they are my friend and I could be caught up in their web of intrigue and terror because the content of my messages is not known, not that that is a reason for the Government to know everything. Why is the argument always “if you are innocent you have nothing to fear”? It is a silly argument. You do have something to fear. You have to worry about someone knowing everything about you, as it says on my shopping bag “anonymity is not a crime”.
Why do staggeringly wealthy people do adverts? Why does George Clooney advertise some piss poor coffee thing for Nescafe? Why do Bruce Willis and Alice Cooper appear in the new Norwich Union advert? And why, oh god why, does Ewan McGregor do that awful “fragrance for men” nonsense? Pierce Brosnan is worth it I’m told. Have you not got enough money? No, really, be honest, the only reason you can be sullying yourself to do them is for the money. You don’t believe the nonsense you are being told to say any more then I do. It has to be for the money but you are fantastically, don’t have to work ever again and live really well, wealthy. Why are you doing it? Why are you selling your souls and hawking crap on the rest of us? It’s because you are getting paid isn’t it? Despite the fact that you don’t need it you will do almost anything for more money. You disgust me.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m a little bile filled this week and I’m not sure why. It may be the result of the, not quite finished, decorating. Wax on, wax off. Just a couple of other things and I’ll leave you alone. It must be like answering the door and some bloke just starts shouting at you about things you don’t care that much about. A website was set up for worriers, by a worrier, and held a survey about worrying and guesses what? It found that the people on the worrying website (that’s a website about worrying, not one containing intimate pictures of Tony Blair with a Tonka toy) were worriers. Not a great surprise really but what was a surprise was to turn on BBC news and have some dimwit shouting “it’s official, we are a nation of worriers,” and then quoting from this survey as if it had something important to say or was carried out in some way that would give us some statistically significant results. Some crappy website survey is not science and it most certainly is not news.
The Awards for the week,
The Award for Oddest Music Show on the Radio of the Week,
This goes to Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6Music, Sunday evenings 17.30-20.00. Where else would you hear recordings of KPM all-stars playing the theme from Countdown, Channel 4 news and the Dave Allen show recorded live at the Jazz Café?
The Award for Really Odd and Slightly Sinister Medical Research of the Week,
This goes to Doctors at the HaEmek Medical Centre, Israel, who are going to carry out clinical trials to test the value of medical clowns for patients who are about to have cataract surgery. This will involve 100 patients and half of them will be half scared to death by, sorry, exposed to a clown before their operation to assess the effect on blood pressure and pulse rate of patients undergoing surgery under local anaesthesia. I would imagine that the pulse and BP of those who have to suffer the clown torture will be sky high or am I missing the point. Another week, another story from the BMJ.
A quick mention of the new Dr Who and no real surprise to find out that it wasn’t me. It was, however, slightly funny looking Matt Smith and, whilst I’m not familiar with his work, I’m sure he will be fantastic; he has a slightly sinister look about him. I’m told that he is not as pretty as Mr Tennant, information supplied by significant other there. Decided for yourselves. Ah well, better luck next time for me then.
Happy New Year everyone xx
There hasn’t been a great deal of news this week due to the fact that no one has been watching the news because there have been many showings of Wallace and Gromit on the BBC (if news is reported and no one is watching, has it happened?) but what there has been has mostly been about Gaza and the destruction there of. Israel is like a badly behaved child. Since they were born they have been behaving badly, not playing well with other children in the neighbourhood, but their parents (America) has turned a bit of a blind eye. There has been the odd telling off and various empty threats to take the toys away but still they have been allowed to play with their cowboy outfit, the parent is secretly proud of the strong, independent child that they have bought up, every so often defending its behaviour with the “difficult/traumatic birth and childhood” excuse. What Israel needs is some sort of UN sanctioned Super Nanny to make it sit on the international naughty step for a while whilst it considers what it has done and why it might upset the other children to have their Lego knocked down. The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has said that Israel’s bombing of Gaza will lead to the radicalization of Palestinians against Israel yet when asked the same question about us bombing Iraq he denied that this phenomenon would take place, how odd.
Your Government wants to know what you are doing. They really, really want to know what you are doing. So much so that they have decided that asking you might end with you standing with your hands behind your back, sulkily looking at your feet, rubbing out an imaginary cigarette with one foot and mumbling under your breath “nothing”, and this won’t tell them what they won’t to know, so they are bring forward legislation that will enable them to track every phone call you make and email you send and website you visit. That won’t know the content but they will know who you are contacting. Oh and a private company is probably going to run it. Oh where to start. I don’t want the Government to know how many times I phone my mother or not in my case. Well, finding out how many times I’ve phoned my mum after a private company has left the information has been left in a kebab shop. There is also the point that if they don’t know the content of the message then what’s the point? Some one I know might be a terrorist, it could happen, my money is on my friend Kate, you know, best Christmas card of the year Kate, happy family life, pretty children, suspicious I think you’ll agree, and I could message them a lot simply because they are my friend and I could be caught up in their web of intrigue and terror because the content of my messages is not known, not that that is a reason for the Government to know everything. Why is the argument always “if you are innocent you have nothing to fear”? It is a silly argument. You do have something to fear. You have to worry about someone knowing everything about you, as it says on my shopping bag “anonymity is not a crime”.
Why do staggeringly wealthy people do adverts? Why does George Clooney advertise some piss poor coffee thing for Nescafe? Why do Bruce Willis and Alice Cooper appear in the new Norwich Union advert? And why, oh god why, does Ewan McGregor do that awful “fragrance for men” nonsense? Pierce Brosnan is worth it I’m told. Have you not got enough money? No, really, be honest, the only reason you can be sullying yourself to do them is for the money. You don’t believe the nonsense you are being told to say any more then I do. It has to be for the money but you are fantastically, don’t have to work ever again and live really well, wealthy. Why are you doing it? Why are you selling your souls and hawking crap on the rest of us? It’s because you are getting paid isn’t it? Despite the fact that you don’t need it you will do almost anything for more money. You disgust me.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m a little bile filled this week and I’m not sure why. It may be the result of the, not quite finished, decorating. Wax on, wax off. Just a couple of other things and I’ll leave you alone. It must be like answering the door and some bloke just starts shouting at you about things you don’t care that much about. A website was set up for worriers, by a worrier, and held a survey about worrying and guesses what? It found that the people on the worrying website (that’s a website about worrying, not one containing intimate pictures of Tony Blair with a Tonka toy) were worriers. Not a great surprise really but what was a surprise was to turn on BBC news and have some dimwit shouting “it’s official, we are a nation of worriers,” and then quoting from this survey as if it had something important to say or was carried out in some way that would give us some statistically significant results. Some crappy website survey is not science and it most certainly is not news.
The Awards for the week,
The Award for Oddest Music Show on the Radio of the Week,
This goes to Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6Music, Sunday evenings 17.30-20.00. Where else would you hear recordings of KPM all-stars playing the theme from Countdown, Channel 4 news and the Dave Allen show recorded live at the Jazz Café?
The Award for Really Odd and Slightly Sinister Medical Research of the Week,
This goes to Doctors at the HaEmek Medical Centre, Israel, who are going to carry out clinical trials to test the value of medical clowns for patients who are about to have cataract surgery. This will involve 100 patients and half of them will be half scared to death by, sorry, exposed to a clown before their operation to assess the effect on blood pressure and pulse rate of patients undergoing surgery under local anaesthesia. I would imagine that the pulse and BP of those who have to suffer the clown torture will be sky high or am I missing the point. Another week, another story from the BMJ.
A quick mention of the new Dr Who and no real surprise to find out that it wasn’t me. It was, however, slightly funny looking Matt Smith and, whilst I’m not familiar with his work, I’m sure he will be fantastic; he has a slightly sinister look about him. I’m told that he is not as pretty as Mr Tennant, information supplied by significant other there. Decided for yourselves. Ah well, better luck next time for me then.
Happy New Year everyone xx
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)