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We live in an age when politics trumps science, and the choice of verb is deliberate. Remember “Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory Of Pandemic Emergence”? How about “Social justice matters more than social distance”? During the Covid-19 pandemic, the frequency of scientists and doctors issuing passionate debunkings of any vaguely scientific idea that Donald Trump happened to mention that day, only to issue equally passionate rebunkings the minute the wind changed, became so great that even the New York Times winced.
Science has always been politicised, but it was not always this bad. Cast your mind back to the turn of the century – 1998 to be precise. Antivax sentiment was not completely unknown but in general vaccines were seen by almost everyone as the means by which smallpox, diptheria and polio had been banished to the history books. I still see them this way. Here is a graph taken from the website of the Office for National Statistics of life expectancy at birth in the UK from 1841 to 2011. As the accompanying article says, the fairly steep rise in the second half of the time period was probably due to health improvements in the older population, but the ASTOUNDINGLY steep rise between 1890 and 1950 was probably due to health improvements in the younger population. Take a bow, childhood immunisation. We have forgotten how lucky we are to have been born in the age of the vaccine.
In 1998 something happened that caused trust in vaccines to slip. The following is an extract from the Wikipedia page for Dr Richard Horton, who was then and is now the editor of The Lancet, probably the world’s pre-eminent medical journal:
“On 28 February 1998 Horton published a controversial paper by Andrew Wakefield and 12 co-authors with the title “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children” suggesting that vaccines could cause autism. The publication of the paper set off a sharp decline in vaccinations in Europe and America and in subsequent years globally.”
I want to make clear that there was nothing wrong in the Lancet publishing Wakefield’s paper. How else is science meant to advance, other than by putting forward hypotheses and inviting all comers to replicate them or refute them? The wrong lay in sticking to this particular hypothesis long after it had been disproved. Horton only retracted Wakefield’s paper in February 2010, after Wakefield had been struck off the register of the General Medical Council for financial and medical misconduct.
There have been at least two switches in the political coding of Wakefield’s theory since it came out. Stereotyping madly, in the first few years after 1998, antivax sentiment was seen as a belief held by low-status Christian hicks in the American South. From about 2005 onwards, Antivax views also became popular among West and East Coast hippies, practitioners of alternative medicine and the like, most of whom were left wing, and a good deal more media savvy than the former group. Dr Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet who published and defended Wakefield, is, without exaggeration, a Marxist. Back in 2006, I posted about his view that, “As this axis of Anglo-American imperialism extends its influence through war and conflict, gathering power and wealth as it goes, so millions of people are left to die in poverty and disease.”
One of the many evils of the scientific and medical censorship practised during the Covid-19 pandemic is that people whose attitudes ranged from belief in David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards to having doubts about specific Covid-19 vaccines that might be right, wrong, or a bit of both, but which are certainly reasonable, were all lumped together under the heading of “vaccine denialists” and condemned en masse. That meant that people who might have been open to argument were never argued with. Persuasion in either direction cannot happen if people cannot discuss a subject. Science cannot happen if people cannot discuss a subject. I remember commenting to this effect to the Times in late 2021. My comment lasted about five minutes before being deleted.
It is 27 years since 1998, 15 years since 2010, and five years since the start of the pandemic. Time for another burst of news stories about autism and vaccines. The script is much the same but many of the actors have swapped roles.
“RFK’s statements prove autistic people and their families everywhere should fear Trump and his allies”, writes John Harris in the Guardian’s Sunday sister, the Observer. The initials “RFK” refer to Robert F. Kennedy Junior, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. There is a video of the speech made by Kennedy on April 16th to which Mr Harris is objecting here and I found a transcript of it here.
→ Continue reading: Two different types of irrationality over autism
Apple is doing the public a service in challenging the government on this important matter of principle. Encryption enables more than just ‘secure’ communication – it ensures freedom from government snooping, too. That’s why privacy and freedom of expression have long been considered mutually reinforcing rights. Encryption protects not only personal data, but also the ability of journalists and human-rights activists to operate without fear of surveillance or reprisals. Compelling companies to pre-emptively weaken those protections risks chilling users’ ability to communicate freely, share sensitive information or challenge the powers-that-be.
– Freddie Attenborough
LOL Remember this?
Like most people, I haven’t tuned in to Have I Got News For You for years. But when I heard of a staggering omission in last Friday night’s edition, I just had to see it – or, rather, not see it – with my own eyes. The biggest news story of the week – the momentous ruling by the Supreme Court on the meaning of sex in the Equality Act 2010 – was not covered at all, even obliquely. You’d think that the absurdity of the highest court in the land being called to adjudicate on one of the most basic facts of observable reality – that there are two sexes, and that the words man and woman mean, er, man and woman – would be a rich source of mirth, the kind of glorious nonsense that’s a satirist’s meat and drink. But no. Not a word. Zilch.
‘We begin with the bigger stories of the week,’ said guest host Katherine Parkinson, as is traditional. These turned out to be steel nationalisation and the bin strike in Birmingham. We also heard about the Blue Origin ‘mission’, gambling on the election date, Liz Truss launching her own app. But the thing everybody was actually talking about? No. That just hung in the air like a vicar’s fart, with everybody pretending it hadn’t happened.
– Gareth Roberts (£)
In the Guardian, April O’Neill writes,
The Online Safety Act is now partly enforceable. Paul might make you think a bit harder about it. Understandably, much of the conversation surrounding it has been focused on protecting children, but there is a glaring hole in this legislation regarding the protection of adults. Despite a 2022 report for the Ministry of Justice finding that the role of the internet in radicalisation pathways “was most evident for older rather than younger individuals”, the Tory government backed out from provisions that would have prevented adults from seeing “legal but harmful” content online over fears about freedom of speech.
April O’Neill holds that the people who need to be forcibly protected from hearing bad opinions are old people who distrust left wing media sources. Ms O’Neill is the winner of The Guardian Foundation’s 2025 Emerging Voices Awards (19-25 age category) recognising young talent in political opinion writing.
Of all the most pointless organisations in history, the Soviet Union’s Central Election Commission must be amongst the funniest. In the run-up to election day, CEC would be tasked with the important job of formally approving candidates. Fortunately for them, the Communist Party was happy to take on most of the work. On election day, the Commission would ensure that all processes were properly followed, dutifully noting down the names of any dissenters or abstainers. And, in the wake of the election, the CEC would rigorously audit the conduct of the election, invariably concluding that each poll was an unrivalled triumph of Soviet democracy.
It was striking to read the Home Affairs Committee’s recent report into the Southport riots, which adopted much the same tone. The report condemned fears about two-tier policing as “disgraceful”, denying outright the notion that officers were more heavy-handed when responding to right-wing protests. This will raise eyebrows for anybody who can remember the summer of 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests turned violent in cities across the UK, following the death of George Floyd. Often, the police stood by and watched the disorder — a far cry from their response to post-Southport rioting.
– Sam Bidwell
In the comments to my previous post, Zerren Yeoville was inspired by the Pogues’ 1987 classic Fairytale of New York to pen the following lines for Birmingham in its current travails:
‘They’ve got rats big as cats
They’ve got rivers of mould
The smell goes right through ya
You’d best have a cold
When you first took the bins out
On a cold winter’s eve
You promised me dustcarts
were “waiting, you’ll see”….’
The rats as big as cats were also mentioned in the Sun‘s headline today:
NO END IN SIGHT Huge blow for locals in UK’s ‘third-world city’ where Army called in to tackle cat-sized rats & 21k TONS of rubbish
A major incident has already been declared by Birmingham City Council
Lest anyone think the Sun is being melodramatic, the BBC’s headline does not merely feature cat-sized rats but cat-sized rats who have begun their insurrection against humanity:
‘Cat-sized rats are attacking our cars’
NickM also provided commentary in verse on the Birmingham bin strike, but, unless I have misunderstood, that one was written by A.I. so it doesn’t count.
Gosh, ChatGPT is getting alarmingly good.
‘Rayner calls in Army to tackle Birmingham bin crisis’, the Telegraph reports:
Angela Rayner has called in the Army to tackle the Birmingham bin crisis.
The Local Government Secretary has used formal powers known as Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (Maca) to summon Army experts after a strike by bin workers, which has lasted over a month, left more than 17,000 tons of waste rotting in the streets.
It is understood a small number of military personnel with operational planning expertise are offering logistical support to tackle the crisis. Sources said there were contingency plans in place to scale up the number of soldiers involved if necessary.
If such a scaling-up does prove necessary, Ms Rayner can cite the example of one of the most revered of Labour leaders:
The London dock strike of July 1949, led by Communists, was suppressed when the Attlee Government sent in 13,000 Army troops and passed special legislation to promptly end the strike. His response reveals Attlee’s growing concern that Soviet expansionism, supported by the British Communist Party, was a genuine threat to national security, and that the docks were highly vulnerable to sabotage ordered by Moscow. He noted that the strike was caused not by local grievances, but to help communist unions who were on strike in Canada. Attlee agreed with MI5 that he faced “a very present menace”.
OK, the parallel between Attlee’s summoning of the Army and Rayner’s is not close, and I made it mostly to poke fun at present day lefties, whose hymns of praise to Attlee usually leave out the verse about him using the army to break a strike, and always omit the one about him being the father of the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.
A better historical parallel to explain Ms Rayner’s distinct lack of solidarity with the striking binmen would be the 1978-9 “Winter of Discontent”.
In the future, people will study propaganda like “Adolescence” in the way they study “Triumph of the Will” as a way to understand Germany in 1935.
– Perry de Havilland
As Matthew Lynn, a columnist writing in the Sunday Telegraph (£) puts it, the compulsion on car firms to build more electric vehicles (EVs), on pain of large fines, was already causing great damage to the UK and European economy. With the US now imposing blanket 25% tariffs on car imports from the UK, the Net Zero obsession is suicidal for the UK-based car industry, home to brands such as Jaguar Landrover, which has just paused shipments to the US:
“It would be ridiculous for the Government to start fining the car companies for not selling enough cars that no one really wants at the same time as the Trump administration is hitting them with huge new levies in their main export market. None of the car companies is in exactly great shape to start with. The combination may well prove fatal.
The [UK] government should announce an immediate one-year suspension of the EV target, and then start a consultation on postponing it for another five or even 10 years. If it was scrapped immediately no one would miss it.”
Tens of thousands of car workers could lose their jobs, unless there is a drastic change in policy in the UK – never mind what the Trump administration chooses to do – and they live in those famed “Red Wall” seats that the insurgent new party, Reform, is targeting at the next General Election.
The modern view of a councillor is that they are there to promote state policies, such as Diversity and Inclusion (see, for example, the Equality Act 2010 – and the duties it lays down).
A councillor, or even a Member of Parliament, is not there, according to the modern view, to represent ‘reactionary’ residents or constituents – not AGAINST the state, but rather the elected representative is there to help the resident or constituent get benefits or services from the state. And to promote Progressive attitudes and behaviour.
I am not saying I agree with the modern view – I am just explaining what it is.
After all supporting ‘reactionary’ residents might imply that one shared their opinions and, therefore (according to the modern view – of the training colleges and so on) deserved to share their punishment.
– Paul Marks
I will get to the subject of Hertfordshire Police in 2025 in due course. First, answer me this: “Why didn’t anyone speak out during the Salem witch trials, given how incredibly fake they were?”
I came across this question in a tweet from someone calling themselves “Science Banana”. Mr or Ms Banana goes on to describe how the Salem accusers started off by denouncing easy targets – two women of questionable repute and a slave. But they did not stop there.
Their next choice was very shrewd. The fourth person the “afflicted girls” accused was a highly religious and respectable woman who had publicly expressed skepticism of their ridiculous bullshit. She was immediately arrested and imprisoned.
Genuine belief would do for most; preference falsification would keep the rest quiet.
After the skeptic, the next “witch” accused and imprisoned was an elderly church lady of spotless reputation. And the same day, a four-year-old girl. She went to prison too. At that point, the accusers knew they could get away with anything.
The Salem Witch trials are usually cited “as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolation, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.” The evil consequences of all these things were indeed made clear in the witch hunt, which cost at least twenty-five innocent people their lives. But the affair was also a tale of boiling the frog.
Now I’ll talk about what Hertfordshire Police were up to last week. Frederick Attenborough of the Free Speech Union tells the increasingly odd story of Hertfordshire Police vs two primary school parents:
A story that seemed troubling enough when it emerged over the weekend is turning out to be even worse than it first appeared, with the strange willingness of Hertfordshire Police to intervene in a debate at a primary school proving ever stranger.
On Saturday, the Times reported that in late January six uniformed officers in three marked cars and a van had been sent to arrest Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine after their child’s school, Cowley Hill Primary, objected to a series of emails and “disparaging” comments in a parents’ WhatsApp group. As the police carried out a search of the house, the couple were detained in front of their three year-old daughter, before being held in cells for eight hours. And all this for querying the recruitment process for a new headteacher.
Accused of “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors in an “upsetting” way, they were then questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property.
Following a five-week investigation the police concluded there was insufficient evidence and took no further action – although the knock at the door, the squad vehicles and the highly public arrest by half a dozen officers must have felt like quite a punishment already.
No wonder that Mr Allen, a producer at Times Radio, said the couple’s treatment represented “massive overreach” by Hertfordshire Police. He told the Times: “It was absolutely nightmarish. I couldn’t believe this was happening, that a public authority could use the police to close down a legitimate inquiry. Yet we have never even been told what these communications were that were supposedly criminal, which is completely Kafkaesque.”
But it now transpires that the force’s intervention wasn’t restricted to Mr Allen and Ms Levine. Hertfordshire Police also warned Michelle Vince, a local county councillor, to stop helping the family by sending emails to the school on their behalf – or risk being investigated herself.
On this occasion, the police attempt at intimidation backfired because Mr Allen is a producer at Times Radio and therefore had instant access to the national press. You can listen to him talk about what happened here. The fact that the police felt confident to proceed as they did strongly suggests that they have done this before to less well-connected people and it worked.
As the article says, it gets worse.
And still there’s more. The email to Ms Vince asked her to forward the warning to anyone she’d cc’ed when contacting the school. This included the local Conservative MP, and former Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Oliver Dowden.
Ms Vince said she felt “uncomfortable” passing on the warning to Sir Oliver. For his part, he was “astonished that a situation could have arisen where any police officer could think it would be remotely acceptable to suggest that an MP should be curtailed in carrying out their democratic duties”.
First a local councillor, then an MP. Note that when the police tried to intimidate a bunch of stroppy parents they did not know that one of them had a job with a national newspaper, but when they tried to frighten Councillor Michelle Vince and Sir Oliver Dowden MP (not just a Knight of the Realm and an MP, but a former Deputy Prime Minister – think about that) into ceasing to represent their constituents, the police knew exactly what these people’s roles were. To stop Councillor Vince and Sir Oliver performing the duties of their elected positions was the point. I rather think that the eminence of Sir Oliver was part of the point, too. They thought they could get away with anything.
The police probably thought of themselves as fearlessly taking on the powerful, a motive which has also been ascribed to those young girls in seventeenth century Salem. But if they really wanted to fearlessly show that no one is above the law, they could have directed the six uniformed officers in three marked cars and a van to arrest someone who might fight back.
Labour and its fixation on Net Zero must also take responsibility for the pending death of British Steel. It was Labour, in 2023, that promised to invest in ‘all available clean-steel technologies… innovations to make the UK a world leader in clean steel’. In the same press release, then leader of the opposition Keir Starmer committed to ‘greening the steel that will make the solar panels and wind turbines built to power our homes for years to come’. This was thoroughly delusional. Not only are solar panels and wind turbines not the answer to our energy needs, but there also aren’t even any British factories making solar panels at present.
Similarly, it was Jonathan Reynolds, in February this year, who claimed that decarbonising steel ‘will never mean deindustrialisation’, boasting of Britain’s ‘world-leading research and development capabilities’ in the sector. But this isn’t true. Between 2021 and 2023, Tata, a leading investor in steel research and development, spent just £11million annually on ‘green steel’ research. It will take many more millions (and many more years) for decarbonisation to ever result in anything but deindustrialisation.
– James Woudhuysen
My only objection to this article is it should read “The Labour and Tory fixation on Net Zero must also take responsibility…”
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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