I refer the reader to my previous comments...

Just a couple of quickies. Conscientious readers will recall an earlier post about how "survey" results often tell you more if you switch them round. In this context, I read the other day that "40% of people are feeling worse off in August". Which means of course that 60% of people, i.e. the majority, are not feeling worse off. Given the way the world is at the moment, that strikes me as pretty remarkable.

This links nicely to another previous post which lamented the decline in freedom of speech. One of the examples given was a government advisor who'd had to resign after saying that, far from suffering from the current global economic woes, many people would actually be better off, due largely to the low cost of borrowing. If you needed any proof that he was right (but being clever, I'm sure you didn't) then this survey seems to provide it. Don't expect the advisor got his job back though.

Along the same lines, the historian David Starkey has come in for some serious flak for daring to suggest that there's a racial element, or at least a cultural element linked to race, to the recent riots. Who knows whether he's right but as he himself said, there are some things one is just not allowed to talk about these days, no matter that they may be correct and therefore of not inconsiderable help in solving problems.

I wonder if this happens in science? I do hope not. Can you imagine a situation where a particle physicist was simply unable to float an idea simply because the science world regarded it as taboo or not politically correct, for some obscure and/or misguided reason? Goodness knows what discoveries we might have missed: no chance of a cure for cancer becuase no one will fund the research due to it being contrary to the fashionable views of the day.  

That said, we are pretty much there when it comes to green stuff, aren't we? There's a huge amount of doubt about the nature of global warming but despite this, governments are taking far-reaching decisions based on the absolute, 100%, unchallengeable need to be green. There's got to be a good chance that one day we are going to wake up and realise that diverting massive resources into windmills and the like was a waste of time and money and has got us into a complete mess. How silly will we all feel then?

When your lights go out because there's not enough power stations and all the money's been blown on a few becalmed windmills, and when you get that next thumping increase in your electricity bill, remember that it's all down to limitations on freedom of speech. Well that and the fear amongst so many of us to say things which are unfashionable.

Ah, yes - fashion. I feel another post coming on...