Out of step?

In various of yesterday's UK national papers, Tony Blair's remarks on risk taking were reported. With the notable exception of the FT, this wasn't front-page news, but coverage extended as far as the Sun as well as the weighter press.

Taking the ill-named Independent, for example, the headline is PM - we must accept risks. This was actually a piece of factual reporting. It does seem that Blair is indeed making a stand for rationality and evidence-based decision making. To take one quote:
"It is time to have a proper dialogue about how science and its risks are evaluated and reported. Biotechnology is probably the coming industry of the world," Mr Blair said in a speech in London to the Institute of Public Policy Research.

"Britain and Europe should be world leaders. We are in grave danger of blowing our chance. If we do, we will rue it bitterly."

The speech also criticised the compensation culture, and this is the main tack taken by the Times (Blair attacks compensation culture). The theme was still sensible risk taking: in this case, don't spoil the enjoyment of millions of schoolchildren on outings because of one tragedy.

Let's now see how this translates into real policy and action. We might, just might, be seeing a shift towards rational decision making in government. Whatever we may think of some of their decisions, we elect politicians to lead, not to cave in to whichever pressure group makes the most fuss.

My first posting for a while, so time for a good rant.

An unholy alliance of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Co-Op bank has tested the blood of "celebrities" for a range of potentially dangerous industrial chemicals (see "Toxic chemicals" in celebrities as reported by the BBC).

According to the report:

Justin Woolford, of WWF's Chemicals and Health Campaign, said the tests showed all the celebrities were "contaminated with toxic chemicals".

"It highlights the shocking fact that it is impossible for any of us to avoid these nasty substances," he said.

Actually, it highlights the fact that all these "celebrities" are alive and well and that there is absolutely no reason to suppose that minuscule quantities of synthetic chemicals are doing them any harm at all (assuming that Anthony Worrall Thompson, for example, was equally obnoxious without additives). Among the horrors we are told were found (and, by the way, no levels were given, so we're probably talking about close to the level of detectability in some cases) were:

• DDT - Banned in many countries because of some apparent negative impacts on raptors when used in a totally uncontrolled way, but now being used in a number of tropical countries as the cheapest, most effective and safest way to reduce malaria. The reason it is often detected is that it is a highly stable molecule. Since its toxicity is extremely low, and it is difficult to break down, that seems to me to make it pretty safe.
• Brominated fire retardants - responsible for saving many lives each year in house fires by preventing furniture foam burning and creating toxic smoke.
• Perfluorinated compounds used in non-stick treatments - Teflon to you or me. Since we regularly eat food cooked directly on this, it doesn't meet many normal people's criteria for "toxic".

So, once again, we have scientific facts (the low level presence of these substances) twisted to suit a particular political agenda, based on the fact that "man-made" or "industrial" = "bad". Not only that, but if I was an account holder or shareholder of the Co-Op bank, I would object to my money being used for such purposes.

The insidious propagation of material like this needs to be resisted: does anyone have any good ideas about how?