The London Echo Opinion

Tamiflu and The Wolf: The Threat to Potency

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:29:31 +0100

The Boy Who Cried “Wolf” is one of the oldest tales in Western culture, dating back at least to Aesop.

The shepherd’s repeated hoax cries so inured his fellows that when, in due course, a wolf actually came, his call for help was ignored. His false warnings had built up their resistance.

Christmas: The X Factor

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:55:33 +0100

Every time I read about an alleged “war on Christmas”, I think of my mother, who’s been fighting on one front in that battle for a long time.

Even now, she’s making sure that she sends no card with a nativity scene or any other religious subject, and that any postage stamp she uses only bears a secular image. “Season’s greetings” as a message? Yes, please, that’s what she prefers.

A New Poppy for 2010

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:09:28 +0100

Each season, Charlton Athletic designates one home match “Red, White and Black Day” to recognise and celebrate the diversity of its community. While we long-suffering Addicks wish Charlton were as successful as a football team as it is as a social outreach agency, it’s an important and clear statement.

I wonder if it could also inspire a solution to the controversy and increasing ambiguity surrounding another annual tradition – the wearing of poppies for Remembrance Day.

Children Will Be Damaged By "Big Brother" Vetting Scheme

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:14:11 +0100

Dinner party conversations tend to be comfortingly familiar. For years, the 'ludicrous' rise in the value of the family home was discussed in terms of mock horror. Now that one's a definite dead duck, the new topic could well be the even more ludicrous need for perfectly well meaning people to undergo a Vetting and Barring Scheme check.

'Have you been done?' 'Who did they ask about you?' 'How long did you have to wait for the all clear?' 'Who's taking the kids to rugby meanwhile?'

With ten round the table, the conversation could see them through starters, main course and half way through pudding.

If we had any sense, we'd rise up en masse and tell the Department of Children Schools and Families to stick its Vetting and Barring Scheme and concentrate its resources on known offenders, children on the 'at risk register', training and supporting social workers - and leave the rest of us alone.

The government cites over and over the Baby Peter and the Soham murders as a grave warning and to justify a database they expect will contain details of one quarter of the adult population.

Why America is at War over Healthcare

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:35:38 +0100

The war for healthcare reform continues to rage here in the United States. I know it must be bewildering for some of you (why in the world would anyone fight against universal health coverage?), but believe, me it’s bewildering for us Americans too; and in the long hot summer recess, cable news adds fuel to the fire.

Have the Conservatives Scrapped Their Promise to Protect Health Spending?

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:38:36 +0100

When it comes to health spending, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne says only that "we will work hard to protect it".

That’s the new Conservative position, according to The Guardian, which published an interview with Mr Osborne today.

A word of caution – the interview does not tell us exactly what Mr Osborne said about the NHS, quoting only those seven words, which were presumably part of a longer sentence.

But if the impression the Guardian gives is correct, it looks like a major change of policy.

Up until now, the Conservatives have insisted they would “ring-fence” health, so that the NHS was spared from any cuts an incoming Tory government would have to make to public spending.

While other departments might see their budgets reduced, the Department of Health would be immune.

This commitment helped Mr Cameron counter Labour’s traditional charge that the Conservatives could not be trusted to run our hospitals.

And it actually allowed the Tories to claim they cared more about the NHS than Labour – because Gordon Brown has refused to make a similar commitment about his Government’s spending plans if Labour does win the next election.

But there is a huge difference between a firm pledge not to make cuts and a promise to “work hard”.

Unlucky Jim - We Don't Envy his Dilemma

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:55:20 +0100

Please Mr Cameron, sack Mr Duncan or persuade him to resign before a very good friend completely loses the plot and decamps to a longhouse in the Borneo rain forest.

After months of agonising and rationalising, he convinced himself that despite being a lifelong Labour voter, this time round he'd force himself to put a cross against the 'other man or woman's' name. He wasn't yet ready to admit - even to himself - he would actually vote Conservative. But fed up with being nannied, watched, inhibited and restricted by what he saw as an overwhelmingly bossy, self seeking and pompous government, he decided enough was enough.

Then up popped Alan Duncan, first of all on Have I Got News for You, where, being no match for the wits of Merton and Hislop, he made a fool of himself by laughing and posturing at their disingenous references to his good fortune in being able to take more or less whatever he fancied from the public purse.

My friend, let's call him Jim, decided there was really nothing to choose between the parties as far as rooking the electorate went, so continued to assert he would 'probably' vote Tory next time around.

However, yesterday's scene of unashamed greed was a step too far for poor Jim. Alan Duncan, one of those charged by David Cameron to lead the Tories' response to the expenses scandal, evidently shows no remorse and is disdainful of public feeling. As shadow leader of the House, presumable he would be offered a senior post...

Give With One Hand and Take Away With Another...

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:44:18 +0100

There are not many handouts coming the way of the middle classes - whomever they might be. So when at sixty I applied for and got a free bus pass I treated it like gold. Something for nothing at last.

But not for long, I fear. The news came yesterday that the association of local authorities is lobbying to have them withdrawn from 'the middle class elderly who have cars and can afford to pay their fares'.

I am hoping the Local Government Association finds itself in difficulty defining 'middle class' and 'elderly' to begin with, and even if they manage that, how will they know which of us has a car or can afford to pay our fares?

The association's argument should not be with pollution-conscious pensioners who queue at bus stops all over the country, but with the government that basked in the glory of bringing in such a popular scheme and then left the bill for paying for it to be picked up by local authorities.

Polls of Obama’s Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:53:09 +0100

From the constant drumbeat of falling poll numbers, gaffes, delayed agendas and economic woes, one would think that Obama’s presidency is on the verge of being broken. Fortunately for America, it’s not. Once more, Obama’s critics are lying with numbers.

Politics in the United States is becoming a never-ending reality tv show, thanks to near incessant and self-important polling, the corporate advertising/personality driven American media, and the advancement of an ever increasingly interconnected and immediate communications culture.

The side effect of this constant coverage is a certain temporal myopia, a state in which observers can neither look into the past to see how events have shaped the reality of today nor temper their future expectations according to historical trends and norms.

Let’s look at the current misleading conservative narrative in which, every week, President Obama has dropped from historic approval ratings to a new low, and how it abuses the temporally myopic.

"To all of you worried Democrats out there who are still having nightmares, relax. Obama’s got this."

Contrary to popular belief, Obama’s poll numbers were never "stratospheric". His approval numbers were about average. Further, recent presidents have had honeymoon period of about seven months (according to Gallup). Presidential approval ratings also tend to drop during tough economic times.

We’re seven months into Obama’s first term, and nearly 2 years into a global economic recession, the deepest in decades. Did anyone really think that Obama’s numbers would remain above 60 per cent for long?

Ronald Reagan, the arch-conservative himself,...

Access is Free, But Who's Paying the Pipers?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:41:37 +0100

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” is the best-remembered line by the great US journalism critic A.J. Liebling, although just as apt was his “people everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news”.

The current debate over whether people will pay for online news raises another question: how can we test and trust the provenance of free news and comment websites? How can we know who is paying the piper?

With mainstream media, we have some confidence in the rules that apply to staff correspondents, and we can make reasonable assumptions about the political stance of owners and publishers. There are also accepted standards about the labelling of advertorial material. Mainstream media can also be held accountable, at least in professional opinion or Private Eye, for conflicts of interest.

With "independent" websites and bloggers, however, how can we know who, if anyone, is financially supporting or subsidising them? The subsidy could be indirect; an “unpaid” freelance contributor might actually be on the payroll of another organisation such as a think-tank, with less than transparent funding of its own. (No one is paying for this piece, to be sure.)

The issue is made worse by the mainstream media’s uncritical use as sources of people from think-tanks that have innocuous, meaningless names. It's rarely explained what the think-tank stands for and never revealed who funds it, even if it is expressing “expert” opinion on, say, the future structure of the...