UK
gregladen | June 27, 2016Television and movie producers currently have a good deal in Great Britain, not in small part due to stability in various markets and some funding. For example, Game of Thrones, an HBO production, is filmed in Norther Ireland with funding from the European Regional Development fund.
Both the stability and some of the funding for various productions is now at risk because of the Xenophobic whiny baby Leavers.
This may be on the smaller end of negative effects of the UK leaving the EU, but it is a microcosm of the bigger problem, and likely to get a disproportionate share of attention if The…
aardvarchaeology | January 14, 2013Current Archaeology #273 (Dec) has an interesting feature on an 18th century ship of the line found hidden as a construction kit under the floor of a workshop at a naval dockyard in Kent. The timbers were re-used, but not in an economically or structurally rational way. Instead the greatest possible amount of ship's timbers had been crammed in under the floor. Markings on them and historical records identify the ship as the HMS Namur, famous in its time for the battles it fought. It was launched in 1756 and broken up in 1833-34.
Investigators have put forward an interesting suggestion as to…
drorzel | July 23, 2010Earlier this week, there was some interesting discussion of science communication in the UK branch of the science blogosphere. I found it via Alun Salt's "Moving beyond the 'One-dinosaur-fits-all' model of science communication" which is too good a phrase not to quote, and he spun off two posts from Alice Bell, at the Guardian blog and her own blog, and the proximate cause of all this is a dopey remark by a UK government official that has come in for some justifiable mockery.
Bell and Salt both focus on the narrowness of the "dinosaurs and space" approach-- a reasonably representative quote…
stoat | June 22, 2010Some fairly random thoughts on the budget.
* VAT up to 20%: excellent. Calculating 17.5% was always so tedious. Score: +1.
* Child benefit and public sector pay will be frozen - for no clear reason we (as in, our family) get child benefit, which seems silly. The Economist wanted to means test it, but that would be dull and employ yet more bean counters. Still, it might at least ensure that only those who need it bother to apply. Score: -1. Public sector pay: well, tough. I got no pay rise in 2008 and I didn't see anyone sympathising. Score: +1.
* Personal income tax allowance: To be increased…
sciencepunk | June 9, 2009I'm in the Guardian again, talking about the Government's decision to scrap the two-year old Department for Innovation, Universities, and Skills in favour of incorporating these duties into the Department for Business. Science is in a vulnerable position at the moment:
As the dust settles following Gordon Brown's cabinet shuffle on Friday, it's clear that the landscape of British science has been transformed. Where the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills once stood, now only a vacant lot and several skips filled with DIUS-branded stationery remain. If the forwarding address is…
bleimanb | May 6, 2008Across the U.K., ravens, once peaceful scavengers, have taken to attacking livestock in huge murderous storms. Scottish and Welsh farmers have recently reported flocks of ravens descending on lambs and literally pecking them to death. Kind of like the movie The Birds! just more sensationalized by the British media...
Beware! Poor metaphors and juvenile symbolism ahead!
Jimmy Mills, a farmer from the town of Stratherrick claims to have lost seven lambs in the last two weeks. In this article in the Daily Mail, he said "The lambs are born at...
...1pm and by four o'clock they've been taken to…
tlambert | February 2, 2005 I wrote earlier about the pernicious and dishonest campaign by the London Daily Telegraph to scare people into thinking that self-defence against burglars was unlawful. To correct this misinformation the Crown Prosecution Service has issued a statement detailing what the law really says:
Does the law protect me? What is "reasonable force"? Anyone can use reasonable force to protect themselves or others, or to carry out an arrest or to prevent crime. You are not expected to make fine judgements over the level of force you use in the heat of the moment. So long as you only do what you…
tlambert | January 26, 2005 The latest crime figures in the UK are out and show that crime has continued to fall, reaching a record low: The risk of being a victim of crime, at 25 per cent, is the lowest recorded by the BCS since it began in 1981.
The BCS recorded an 11% drop in overall crime, a 10% drop in burglaries, a 14% drop in car thefts and a 9% drop in violent crime.
Police recorded crime figures show a 6% drop in crime, a 2% drop in murder, a 23% drop in burglaries, a 17% drop in car thefts and a 7% increase in violent crime. The increase in recorded violent crime is likely due to…
tlambert | December 12, 2004 The London Daily Telegraph has been running a cynical and dishonest campaign in the UK to give people the right to defend themselves against burglars. It's dishonest because, as I have detailed here and here, people in the UK already have the right to defend themselves against burglars or anyone else who threatens them. The Daily Telegraph's campaign is nothing more than a beat up to create an issue to attack the government with. The truly disgraceful thing about their scare campaign is that it could convince people that self-defence is unlawful and frighten them…
tlambert | November 1, 2004 Earlier, I wrote how Joyce Lee Malcolm had doctored a quote from the Textbook of Criminal Law to make it appear that self-defence was illegal in Britain. She wrote: Now everything turns on what seems to be "reasonable" force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law."
The word "it" does not refer to self-defence as Malcolm's addition to the quote indicates, but to…
tlambert | September 27, 2004 60 Minutes (the Australian version) has done a story on the use of deadly force in self-defence.
Unfortunately it sufers from the same problem that many of these stories do. Tony Martin (who was convicted of murdering a burglar) gets to present his account of what happened which makes it look like he acted in self-defence.
TARA BROWN: What led to you firing the gun?
TONY MARTIN: Fear.
TARA BROWN: Were you under attack at that point?
TONY MARTIN: I thought I was, yes, or was about to be attacked. Because the people downstairs, as I went down the stairs…
tlambert | August 7, 2004 John Ray left a rather odd comment to my post about the continuing decrease in violent crime in England. He stated that police figures for gun crimes will be more accurate than survey figures. His statement is probably true (gun crime in England is too rare to be well measured by a survey), but not relevant to my post, which was about the decline in violent crime, and not about gun crime.
For those interested in gun crime, the statistics show that in 2003/4 police recorded about 10,000 firearms offence in England and Wales. Some of the subcategories showed decreases---for example,…
tlambert | August 1, 2004 The latest crime statistics for England and Wales have been released. Sharon Howard has a good round-up of reactions to the statistics: What's happening here is that the British Crime Survey is suddenly being discounted by Tory politicians because it's showing falling crime levels (and, indeed, has been since the mid-1990s), whereas the police statistics record increases in violent crimes (but falls in most other categories). They've latched onto the one category and set of stats that are of use to them. David Davis, the shadow home secretary, will no…
tlambert | July 16, 2004 I've been having a discussion with Kevin Baker about his claim that self-defence in the UK is practically illegal. The discussion started when Carl Lindsay was convicted of manslaughter after killing an intruder who was trying to rob him. I wrote:
Pro-gunners such as John Lott, Glenn Reynolds and John Derbyshire have written about the Martin case, apparently unaware of the facts that showed that the killing was not in self defence, and proceeded to make bogus claims that self defence was against the law in Britain. Claims which they have never…
tlambert | May 3, 2004 Back in March I wrote about the way pro-gun bloggers leapt to the conclusion that self-defence in the UK was illegal, based on story about a man who defended himself against some robbers with a sword, killed one and ended up being jailed for eight years. Unfortunately, the story left out the fact that the killing was not in self-defence since the killer had stabbed the robber in the back after he fled from the killer's home. In the comments to that post and this follow-up post, Kevin Baker argued that restrictions on weapons in the UK made it essentially impossible to defend yourself. Now…
tlambert | April 3, 2004 Kevin Baker was one of the bloggers who posted on the story about Lindsay's sword killing, claiming that it showed that for all intents and purposes self-defence in the UK was illegal. Despite learning that Lindsay had chased the robber out of his home and stabbed him in the back four times, in the comments and on his blog Baker continued to insist that self defence was illegal in practice in the UK. His argument was that England's "laws concerning weapons make self-defense, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause". His argument is badly wrong for two reasons.…
tlambert | March 27, 2004 I wrote earlier about the Tony Martin case. Martin shot a fleeing burglar in the back and left him to die. He was convicted of murder (reduced to manslaughter on appeal). Pro-gunners such as John Lott, Glenn Reynolds and John Derbyshire have written about the Martin case, apparently unaware of the facts that showed that the killing was not in self defence, and proceeded to make bogus claims that self defence was against the law in Britain. Claims which they have never bothered to correct.
Last week this story appeared in the Scotsman: A man who stabbed to…
tlambert | January 26, 2004 Glenn Reynolds approvingly links to another poll that he claims providesMore evidence that the British public is taking a tougher line on crime than the British government.
Of course, Reynolds yet again fails to take notice of the fact that it is yet another meaningless on-line poll which tells nothing useful about what the British public thinks.
Also, Michael Peckham has some more comments on the infamous BBC phone-in poll.
tlambert | January 23, 2004 Yet another columnist has demonstrated profound ignorance of opinion polling. Scott Norvell writes about the meaningless BBC phone-in poll (discussed earlier here and here): Britain's chattering classes sure can get their knickers in a knot with the will of the people offends their liberal sensibilities.
A phone-in poll does not represent the will of the people in any way, shape or form. Norvell compounds his error by leaving out important details about the shooting by Martin, like the fact that the burglar was shot in the back while fleeing…
tlambert | January 2, 2004 Glenn Reynolds links approvingly to a post by Thomas Lifson on the results of a BBC phone-in and email poll that allowed people to propose a new law that they would like to see passed. The winning proposal was a law that would allow home-owners to use any means to defend their home from intruders. Stephen Pound, the MP who agreed to put forward the proposal, said that it was "unworkable". Lifson's comment on all this was:
MP Pound's disdain for popular opinion is typical of not only British, but Western European elites, who consider themselves, and the…