Medicine balance of the sexes

There are more women than men graduating medical school. Is this a problem? Radio 4 debated this question this morning.

A male doctor made the point that there should be equal numbers of male and female doctors available to fit with patient choice and general equality. To satisfy this need one has to train 3 female doctors for every 2 male doctors. This is because female doctors retire earlier, work fewer hours and require maternity leave. Surely this logic requires more female doctors to be trained in a ratio 3:2?

A female doctor said 'it isn't true you get three times more work out of male doctors' which shows she didn't understand the point made by her colleague. Her final sentence is my quote for the day;

11% of female clinical academics are women

Married in the USA

So I've been away for two weeks to get married in the USA. Radiohead chose the two weeks I had no internet access to release their album online. First impressions; bland and uninnovative.

On the plane back I saw the movie 'Heaven Almighty'. This is a sequel to 'Bruce Almighty' and besides being a crap movie it is scarily right wing religious. It basically brings the Noahs ark fable to today. There is no questioning of the tale or of religion in general. When hollywood makes huge brainwashing propaganda pieces like this which contain no balance or irony then I have to fear for all those people in America who aren't given space to think for themselves by their culture.

Things about the USA which annoy;

* A lack of lane discipline is a recipe for traffic chaos
* Lawyers who drum up business on TV
* Everyone uses their mobile while driving
* Cars don't need to be that big and should have cleaner exhausts
* Religion on TV with no balance or questioning
* Biased TV (Fox especially). Gor bless the BBC
* Tips and sales tax - can't you just add these to the ticket price?
* The coins are too similar

Things I love;

* The food
* The low prices
* Most people are polite and welcoming
* Things just seem to work, like the the way the theme parks are run
* Free refills

Migration Impacts Forum

Cambridgeshire police force has an £800'000 bill for translation services. It has to deal with 83'000 legal migrants (that are known about) and more than 100 languages. The immigrant population carry knives and drink drive back in their home countries so they think it is OK to do it here. This has put a massive burden on local public services.

This is just one example of the problems caused by the vast numbers of migrants into the UK. We are told that the UK economy is propped up by such workers. I'm pretty certain that the tax and council tax they pay (if they pay it at all in certain cases) does not cover the extra costs imposed upon schools and hospitals and the police.

What is the solution? A lot of the problems are caused by social differences. Like the Polish drivers in South Yorkshire who think it is OK to park on a roundabout while they retrieve something from the boot of their car. There are some incidents where the people bring problems from their own culture. Like the group of somalis who attacked an ambulance in Bristol in which a man dying of stab wounds was being treated. They dragged a paramedic out by her hair. This went unreported nationally for some reason (see my earlier posts about the liberal BBC). These violent somalis should have been deported to their civil war ravaged country. Maybe once they were back there they would realise how easy it would have been to stay in quiet peaceful Britain, a country where public services are in place to look after anyone. Even stab victims from within a violent immigrant population.

The government solution is to "set up the Migrant Impacts Forum so public services can help shape our tough points system which is introduced in around 150 days time." Yes, that's right. The government is going to invite everyone around for a chat. What about charging some of the factory owners and gang leaders to contribute to some of the costs their slave labour workforce imposes on society? How about immediate deportation (at their own expense, they managed to get here so they should be able to manage to get back) for anyone who commits a serious crime or a series of small ones? And before I get labelled as a Daily Mail reader I do have lots of friends who make up the law abiding immigrant population and who do contribute to society (in some cases more than I do).

Party Politics

"People became eclectic in their choice of stances on individual issues as they were in their choice of morning newspaper, building up a portfolio of attitudes which defied simple categorisation." All Must Have Prizes, Melanie Phillips.

Party politics is no longer valid. In the past the two parties had clear constituencies; Labour stood for the working class and fair treatment for all. The Conservatives were for supporting those who worked hard for themselves and prospered under their own steam. Labour and Conservatives, do-gooders and moralisers. The face of Britain has now changed beyond all recognition and the old battle lines have dissapeared. Voting Labour does not mean getting an ideologically consistent package of ideas in the way it used to.

What frustrates me is that I agree with party x on some issues and with party y on other issues but I do not agree with any party on all issues. How should I vote? Prioritise issues? We now have the ridiculous situation where most people don't vote and the ones that do vote get mostly ignored. Iraq stirred up a huge well of public opinion which was ignored. The party political system is the number one enemy of democracy in British politics today.

How can this be fixed? Get rid of political parties. For each issue (schools, prisons, police, NHS, immigration, economy etc) vote for one person every three years based on their proposed policies for each particular aspect of their department. If they fail, boot them out. A bit like the mayor of London. Local MPs could then be responsible for making sure the head of each major department did their job according to the especial preferences of their local constituency. Party and personality politics have destroyed democracy in this country and the electorate have switched off, bored and disillusioned by Thatcherite "tough medicine" and the squandered promise and spin of New Labour.

Lee Hughes

Football player Lee Hughes killed a man and severely injured another in an RTA in which he was drunk and driving recklessly. In court he showed no remorse and behaved with total arrogance. After 3 years in prison he is now out and has immediately been signed to play for Oldham athletic. How has he been able to stay football sharp whilst in jail? Should he have been allowed to continue his football career upon release? Should the inevitable abuse he will suffer from away fans be quietly applauded or has the guy been punished enough? The question is the same one that we had to think about when the guy who stabbed Phillip Lawrence was released earlier this month; did the punishment fit the crime and should the offender be granted their full rights as a free man upon release? For starters Lee Hughes should have a lifetime driving ban. And a percentage of his earnings should go to his victims and their families. He should also be allowed to continue his football career.

In other motoring news a banned driver who led police on a high speed pursuit risking lives was caught and the judge gave him.... a driving ban. Sigh.

Crime Crazy

The whole of the UK is frothing at the mouth at the moment about crime. An 11 year old boy was shot in the back of the neck whilst playing football and he sadly later died from the loss of blood. This horrible tragedy is another item in the catalogue of shootings, stabbings, school fights filmed and put on YouTube and the general antisocial behaviour that seems to plague our consequence free liberal society.

The left have come out with the usual watering down arguments. August is a slow news month because the politicians are on holiday like everyone else. The Guardian said that this slow news effect is why we always hear about youth crime in August. Erm. No. It's because the kids are off schools that they can be the victims/perpertrators of crime.

The right have suggested National Service for all those who do not find work on leaving school, hard labour in prison, punishment for parents of unruly kids, removal of financial incentives in the welfare system that make a single mother better off than a couple who stay together to raise their children, a 2 year time limit on benefits for unemployment, tougher hands on policing/regular patrols and on and on.

The one person who has made sensible comment is Ian Duncan Smith, former head of the Conservative party. He said a many facetted approach is needed. Identifying problem families early and giving parenting support together with tough methods in crime fighting. Carrot and strong stick.

I worry that the media, by making it look like crime is the norm, encourage more crime and copycat crime. The broken window theory. If a house has a broken window already why not smash a second one? And why weren't the street gangs filmed in Liverpool yesterday wielding machetes for the camera arrested? Why was a TV film crew stoned as they drove past without the police intervening? The final insult came from the home secretary who said all this was OK because it is happening in a few tightly controlled areas - ie poor areas. But this isn't true. There have been many innocent middle class victims in recent months. Like Rhys Jones.

Emigration

Last year nearly 200'000 British citizens officially emgrated, a record number. The main causes are attributed to;

1. Expensive housing
2. Fears over crime
3. Cost of living
4. Lack of jobs outside service industries
5. Poor weather

I can understand all of these reasons apart from the last one. This summer has been cold and wet but people emigrating last year didn't know this. Methinks there has been a bit of editorialising there. In general, the past few winters have been mild and the past few summers quite pleasant.

Learco Chindamo

The man who murdered a school headmaster outside the school gates when he was 15 years old is about to be released from prison after serving 12 years. Learco Chindamo is an Italian citizen who moved here when he was 4 years old. There are now calls to deport him upon his release. Learco does not speak Italian and all of his family live in this country. I do not think he should be deported. What would be the purpose of this? Further punishment? I accept that we should not send out the signal that one way to gain UK citizenship is to murder a UK citizen. But this man has served his punishment and is now, by all accounts, rehabilitated and making a positive contribution to society by educating children who might get involved in gang/knife crime. If we believe he is still a risk to the public we should not release him from prison and we certainly shouldn't send him to Italy. What Learco Chindamo did was truly evil, but we can't just sweep him under the carpet now he has been through our legal system. From the sort of comments I have heard in the papers and on the web I think some people would prefer that we had executed Learco for his crime and got him out of the way.

We Don't Need No Education

Professor Dylan Wiliam, an expert on exams and testing from the Institute of Education, has suggested that GCSE students (14-16 years old) are being taught in a mechanical, parrot fashion way just that material that will help them pass the test and maintain the position of the school in the league tables. He suggests that pupils should be taught to think and critically analyse just as much as they are loaded up with acquired knowledge. I agree with this is the sense that league tables should be scrapped. If a school is failing miserably then the government, which has access to the figures in private, could step in.

Professor Guy Claxton from the University of Bristol goes one step further. He suggests that 'everyone knows that the kind of performance required is about accurate retention and regurgitation. But the demand for those skills is now pretty low in the marketplace.' He suggests children should be taught how to use their initiative and ask 'good questions', skills which will be more useful to employers.

There are two issues here. The first is whether school should act to prepare children for work. If we are to mentally fatten children up for the marketplace like this then why not do it properly; teach them how to use powerpoint, how to fill in expenses claim forms, how to handle factory floor banter and how to stay awake on the production line. It is the birthright of every person to spend their formative years learning about themselves and the wider world around them. They need space to breathe and grow. They should not be prepared to be an employee.

Now the second issue. Critical analysis skills are important and so is initiative but knowledge and experience come first. In science we spend many years learning to speak the language before we attempt to debate with the native speakers. Many years spent learning all the key principles of Physics have not been to waste. Later in my undergraduate and doctoral years I have learned to critically evaluate the scientific literature and to judge whether an experiment presents a fair and accurate test or not. Only the latter was taught to me at GCSE level (in a very dilute form) and the former would have been beyond my reach.

I feel that the same must be true of other subjects. How can a history student write an essay on the role of women in the second world war without first learning all the important facts about that conflict? The best history lessons at school were the ones where I was told a fascinating story and we later went on to look at all the sources of evidence to support or refute that story. The worst lessons were where studied the theories of primary, secondary and tertiary evidence and then applied these to some small corner of history without a feeling for the events and the time.

A-Level Pass Rate

Once again the A-Level pre-University exam pass rate has gone up. It is really difficult for Universities to distinguish students. A warden from the University of Oxford made an interesting point on the radio this morning. The universities want to know which students are the best so they prefer it if the students are graded relative to one another; the top 10% get an A for example. The schools want to be fair to the students and give them an absolute mark that isn't based on how well they fared against others ; they might be in a year of kids who are smarter than in an average year. The Oxford warden suggested this; give the kids a percentage mark. This way they can be both compared against other students and they also get a grading based purely on how well they did. Good idea. Problems might arise when kids miss out on a place by 1%. There might be a deluge of appeals for remarking of papers. But it has to be better than the current system of choosing between 100 kids, all with the same grade B or whatever.

The next problem to fix will be the creeping up of grades, year on year. Are the students getting smarter? Are teaching methods and schools improving each year? Unlikely. A sure way to test if the papers are getting easier would be to take a representative sample of the kids from this year and make them sit a paper from 5 years ago. Of course, it should be easy to look at a paper and see if the questions are easier than a few years ago. When I was at University I looked at past papers and the older papers always seemed to be harder. Older papers seemed to set really challenging problems that tested not just knowledge but understanding too. The more recent papers seemed to be an act of guided regurgitation.

Notes from the underground

The coal mining industry was the lifeblood of South Yorkshire. People were encouraged not to seek further education and to get a job in the local heavy industries. This was yanked away in the 1980's and the place really suffered. The jobs have recently been replaced with factories and service jobs. This has meant that a lot of EU workers have moved into the area and they are very welcome and make a valuable contribution to the economy.

This isn't strictly true. I have heard many shocking facts from people who work alongside the visiting workers. A guy with a family who has been waiting for council housing has been bypassed on the waiting list by visiting workers. When he challenged the authorities they said that the visiting workers had 'different circumstances'. The factory owners benefit from the cheap immigrant labour. They provide accomodation for their workers and pay reduced wages, very little of which go into the local economy because the visitors save it all up and take it back home. The most shocking fact is that they are allowed to claim child benefits for children back in Poland and Portugal. Surely this is wrong?

Retail Therapy

I had to do some shopping yesterday at the mall. This is the same mall that was devastated by floods recently. We were led to believe that all services were back to normal. They aren't. The place is a disaster still. The only food place open downstairs is McDonalds but, like the cockroaches, they would even survive a nuclear war.

The one shop that always irritates me is Debenhams. They arrange the clothes by designer and not by item. This means if I want a pair of trousers I have to look around the clothes for every designer. Ugh. I don't think to myself 'I'm going to buy a so-and-so t-shirt today'. I shop by item and it would be nice to have all the t-shirts in one place to choose from. This is why I never spend money in Debenhams.

Charlie Brooker on fashion

I don't like to quote other blogs because it feels a bit lazy but the Charlie Brooker blog on fashion is so good it should be in the Penguin book of quotes or something;

"It's a mystery to me. If the whole point of fashion is to distinguish yourself from the herd, why queue up to be part of it?"

"As far as I can tell, fashion is nothing more than a handy visual system that gives people with no personality some palpable criteria to judge each other by."

"I hate shopping for clothes so much, I wear things until they fall apart. Right now, the soles of my shoes have worn so thin I can stand on a penny and tell if it's heads or tails."

Hoaxed

Hetracil is a hoax. I couldn't find Shetty Pharmaceuticals but didn't dig any further. Anyway, an eagle eyed reader got suspicious about the number of prescriptions and googled it.

So I got caught by a very well done hoax. Utterly believable which is a bit scary because it means either (a) I have a low opinion of American medicine/ethics or (b) American medicine/ethics could stoop to something like this and I wouldn't be surprised just outraged.

And this all leads nicely into the new Michael Moore film about the US health system, 'Sicko', which is about to get a Cannes premiere after the master tapes were successfully smuggled out of the US.

'Thank' God For Hetracil

Wonder drug hetracil has been prescribed to 54 million people. The 'disease' that it treats is described on the hetracil website, and I quote;

"More than 80 million Americans suffer from some type of Homosexuality, and one in eight persons need treatment for Homosexuality during his or her lifetime. Homosexuality is not a character flaw; it is neither a "mood" nor a personal weakness that you can change at will or by "pulling yourself together."

Many healthy men can identify with having some of the symptoms of homosexuality, such as experiencing sexual fantasies about other men; But Homosxuality is diagnosed only when these activities take at least an hour a day, are very distressing, and interfere with daily life.

We encourage you to Learn more specifics about homosexuality from your doctor- The more you know about the illness itself, the more you can do to manage and recover from it.

Hetracil is the world's most widely prescribed anti-effeminate; it has been prescribed for more than 54 million people worldwide. Chances are, someone you know is getting better because of it. Learn more about how Hetracil works to make you better, so that you can know what to expect while you work toward your recovery."

What do you think about Hetracil, the people that make it and the 'disease' it is used to 'treat'? I am offering no personal opinions on this one because I think the quote speaks for itself.

Harriett Harman and Madeleine McCann

Harriett Harman, the unflushable underachieving turd of the labour party has made her bid to be deputy PM. Her main selling point is that she feels there should be a woman at the top of government. Excuse me? You think you're the best person to help run the country, to take charge when Gordon goes on holiday because of your physiology? We should positively discriminate and give you the job even though you have been a dismal failure in the past just because of the configuration of your genitalia? Go away, step aside and let the best person get the job.

On another note an interesting point was raised today on Question Time about the Madeleine McCann abduction case. Her parents are both doctors. If they were unemployed would their two children have been taken into care because of their negligence? Many children go missing every day. MPs never wear ribbons for black kids that go missing in Peckham. A complete double standard because of the media attention and the location of the abduction (and our ability to sneer at local Portugese investigative techniques) and the status of the parents. Why people buy Rupert Murdochs mouthpieces I will never know. I guess it's to read in their white vans and on the train.

Girls in Science

There are fewer girls studying Physics than boys. Is this a problem? Everyone seems to think so. Cue lots of silly suggestions like lowering the A-Level grades required of girls for admission to University Physics courses. This issue is very similar to the attempts to increase the number of people from working class backgrounds at Oxbridge. Barriers should be removed but positive discrimination should not occur. It should not be a case of 'it's OK that you went to a poor school and didn't learn much because we are going to let you in anyway because we think that if you went to a good school you would have got great grades in your exams'. Then what is the point of exams if subjective judgements and leftish social ironing are going to overrule them? The same applies to girls in science. Don't positively discriminate. Just remove the barriers. Like the notion that Maths and Physics are boys subjects. And Maths teachers who ignore the girls. Physics and Maths are hard subjects and they require a person with a specific set of skills. If a group of people are not studying the subject then so what? Just because there are few men doing womens studies or sociology doesn't mean that there fundamentally should be.

At the next election I will base my vote on these issues

The Iraq war
Trident
Effective privatisation of NHS dentistry
The price of petrol
Road pricing and commuter charges
Green taxes and their use/flight price hikes
Target/table culture in the police/NHS/Schools
Funding and policy for scientific research and education
Road safety/traffic police/drink driving policing
Bus lanes/transport and congestion policy
Council tax and refuse collection (local issues but local councils are failing on this and Whitehall needs to step in)

and I'm sure I'll think of more

Slave Trade Reparations

There has been some call this week for reparations to be paid to those whose ancestors suffered during the slave trade. This is an admirable sentiment but it changes nothing. The most we can do is to freely admit to what our ancestors did in order to build the British Empire and make sure we never do anything like this again. Handing out cash will not help. And anyway, the slave trade existed before British involvement. African kings were involved in the capture and sale of their own people. Should poor African nations be forced to pay reparations also?

A woman on BBC news this morning seemed to suggest that all modern social ills and deprivations that the black community suffer can be directly traced back to the legacy of the status of black people as being slaves. That is cod socialism. This lady must be doing an A-Level in sociology at evening school. Kids in London are not shooting and stabbing each other because they still feel social pressure from the slave trade. The idea of reparations is just like the idea of official pardons for those shot at dawn for cowardice during the first world war. It doesn't change anything or make it better for anyone. Those shot at dawn should stay labelled as cowards to make us feel eternally guilty for the horrible things done in our name over the years, from the World Wars to the days of empire building and concentration camps and genocide in Africa and back further to the days of slavery and conquest.

Cream rises to the top or s**t floats?

Harriet Harman has just announced her intention to stand as deputy leader under Gordon Brown. One of the reasons she cites is that she believes a woman is needed at the top of government. Really? Why? Is there something unique that only a woman could bring to the job or is it just to fill the quota and make sure the balance of the sexes at the top of government matches that in wider society? A person should not get a job based on positive discrimination. The best person for the job should always be chosen and no other factors should be considered.

Another thing about Harman is that she has been given a second chance in frontbench politics. Her first stint at the Social Security department was a disaster. We've seen this in politics before with Mandelson. We also get to see it in the world of football. A few years ago rat-faced England captain John Terry was involved in a spot of bother and I remember some commentators saying he should be booted out of football for good. Now, all is forgiven and he is the responsible face of the FA and all the merchandise and crap that goes with it.

I'm all for giving people a second chance but they better not screw up again. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Grampa Simpson gets an award for the cartoons Lisa and Bart wrote under his name 'It is a tribute to this great country that a man who once took a shot at Teddy Roosevelt could win back your trust'.