Category Archives: Life

This is NOT how to campaign for sense in science

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I’ve blogged previously about Simon Singh being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for libel, in a case that debases both science and the libel laws of our glorious land. So far, so good.

An update email from the campaign today asks me to sign a fresh online petition. “Sense About Science has joined forces with Index on Censorship and English PEN and their goal is to reach 100,000 or more signatories in order to help politicians appreciate the level of public support for libel reform.” Brill! Point me at it!

It’s at www.libelreform.org. Fired with enthusiasm I go there and hit the “Sign the petition” button. I fill in my details and hit the “Sign now” button to record my total opposition to the ludicrous law that lets dogma triumph over facts.

… And rather than feel a smug glow of righteousness, I get presented with a pre-filled in letter to my MP (his identity presumably gleaned from my post code). There is a note at the top saying “[Please put your address here – MPs often do not respond otherwise]”, and a button at the end saying “Send the message”. Nothing about the petition that I thought I was signing.

Hang on, hang on. This is not what I signed up for. (a) I don’t believe MPs pay any attention to a form letter, even if it has been individualised with the addresses of their constituents. And (b) how do they know I haven’t already written to Dr Harris? Maybe I don’t want to spam the poor man with duplicate messages. But actually signing the petition (if I haven’t already: there is nothing to say either way) seems to lie beyond that “Send the message” button.

So, no, I won’t, sorry. This is completely the wrong way to do it. This is a petition about transparency, for Pete’s sake. So be transparent! Have a button marked “sign the petition”, and have it sign the effing petition. Don’t lower yourself to the level of the opposition. Stop trying to be clever. Don’t try to orchestrate our campaigning for us.

The email also asked us to “please spread the word by blogging, twittering, Facebooking and emailing”. Glad to oblige.

Shuffle! The Musical

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Driving to Oxford and back I had to decide what to set the iPod to. Of late I’ve worked through all my REM songs, my collection of carols, all the classical stuff, all the synth pop … I know, I’ll set it to shuffle through the musical tracks.

And then I’ll pass the time by working out a plot to encompass them all.

Track 1: “At the end of the day” (Les Mis). Easy. There’s a lot of poor, discontented people and one woman in particular is forced to prostitution for losing her job.

Track 2: “Everything’s alright” (Jesus Christ, Superstar). Sounds like she landed on her feet, falling in with a nice guy who stands up for her even when one of his friends complains about her expensive tastes in perfume. Mind you, he also comes out with the slightly bummer comment that the poor will always be with us, which coming after track 1 is perhaps a little smug.

Track 3: “Invitation to the Jellical Ball” (Cats). Our girl’s luck is still in: she gets an invite to the coolest party on the block.

Track 4: “I feel pretty” (West Side Story). Her star is truly in the ascendant. She’s met an even nicer guy – or maybe she’s just fallen properly in love with the nice guy from track 2 – not sure (the libretto could do with a bit of work here). Her friends are sceptical. To be quite honest, though the tunes are fun this is turning out quite a dull, feel-good sort of thing that Doris Day might have starred in.

Track 5: “One day more” (Les Mis). Aha! Revolution is brewing. That’s more like it. I knew there had to be something more.

Can’t wait for Act 2.

Random Park Lane-centric musings

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The Swinford toll bridge at Eynsham sold at auction yesterday for £1.08m. I have forked out many a 5p to cross this – it’s often been a handy short cut to get between north Abingdon and Witney without having to come round the ringroad to the southern A34 junction – but I had no idea I was contributing to an annual income of c. £195,000, nor that the bridge has its very own Act of Parliament (1767) exempting it from all kinds of tax. Cor. Nice little earner – though as the report does point out, maintenance of the bridge also has to come out of that £195k.

I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that the salaries of the spotted youths who sit shivering in the tollbooth day in, day out make a very small dent in the £195k indeed.

Apparently the auction was done in Park Lane. I was in Park Lane yesterday, as Marble Arch is one of the drop-off points for the Oxford Espress. I could have popped in and made a bid. I was however in the area for the much more important Random House Children’s Authors Christmas Party, off Berkeley Square. Had a nice chat with John Dickinson and this year finally did get to tell him that his father gave menightmares when I was 10. He seemed delighted to hear it and told me about the nightmare his dad had, of being burned as a witch, that inspired The Changes in the first place. I also met a couple of fellow ghostwriters: one for someone I have always suspected of being ghostwritten but had no proof, and one for someone I had no idea was, um, writing at all. Officially. We all shared a slightly baffled but gratefully smug bemusement that ghostwriting is actually legal. I mean, it’s lying! To children! (Which is not always a bad thing.)

A childhood spent playing Monopoly means I can never quite feel happy in Park Lane. I have a lingering fear I will make the wrong landing and go bankrupt. My cousin’s childhood Monopoly strategy was to eschew all properties except Park Lane and Mayfair. Sometimes it paid off richly but it was a high risk strategy with a lot of attrition on the way. I doubt he kept this up for long.

I must have passed it often before without blinking, but for the first time I noticed that Park Lane has a quite large war memorial – certainly larger than a lot of the ones you see for humans – for animals who died in conflict. The statues show pack animals like donkeys carrying machine guns: the engraving on the wall states “they had no choice”.

Well, true, they didn’t. I would however say they had more of a choice than the people who made them carry the machine guns. A donkey that refused would probably get sworn at. A man that refused would get shot by his own side. That is what I would call having no choice.