Anthracite and gossamer

Rhodri Morgan's creed is the anthracite Labour of Aneurin Bevan and Jim Griffiths not the gossamer Labour-lite of Blair and Mandelson.

The ugly power grab by Tony Blair to choose Wales' first leader for centuries eventually helped Rhodri. He was unquestionably Wales' choice triumphing over London's choice. Wales was blighted by generations of politicians  promising home rule who failed at Westminster. Rhodri's generation honoured the dream. Never again,  will we have  alien princes and governor generals imposed on us. 

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In awe we witness the outpourings of his  encyclopaedic brain reminiscent of the poet's schoolmaster, 'and still they gazed and still the wonder grew that one small head could carry all he knew'. 

Rhodri's language is direct, honest and unadorned. When New Labour explained the credit crunch in soothing verbal ectoplasm, Rhodri was asked what will happen. 'God knows' he said. We all understood that. In spite of few opposition corgis snapping at his heels, Rhodri's popularity continues to soar. He is a beacon of straight forward  honesty in the cascading mire of  sleaze  that is engulfing politics. 

Comfortable in his skin and with his nation, Rhodri has led Wales with vision and courage. The deeply egalitarian personality of Wales can cwtch up to a leader that everyone knows by his first name. Sports loving, humour inspired,  untidiness-phobic,  history maker,  beer-tasting, casual dresser, two language wordsmith, Mwnt holiday-maker,universal friend, jargon-free talker, Real Labour rooted, international Welsh diplomat and icon, Rhodri has done Wales proud.

What a shame ten years is such a short time in politics.

Fatal medicine

Ben Goldacre has a striking example of fatal medicine in toady's Guardian. I can support his attack with a personal example. Twelve ears ago a close relative was given a near death sentence because of a cancer. She enthusiastically followed conventional and unconventional medicine and a strict diet. 

A constituent of mine in near identical circumstances refused conventional medicine. With the help of a local newspaper campaign she raised money for the alternative medicine. 

My relative wrote to her urging her to take the conventional medicine as an insurance in additional to the unorthodox treatment. She refused and died within twelve months. My relative is still in robust health/

Ben Goldacre attacks a thoroughly dishonest film that attacks conventional medicine. He writes, "There is an interview with Christine Maggiore, who talks about her difficult decision to go against medical advice by declining to take Aids medication, and how much better she felt as a result.

What the film doesn't tell you, as you shout at the screen, is that Christine Maggiore's daughter Eliza Jane died of Aids and PCP pneumonia three years ago, at the age of three, and, as I reported nine months ago, Christine Maggiore herself died two days after Christmas 2008 of pneumonia, aged 52 (the film finally acknowledges her death in the last 2 seconds of the film, at the end of the lengthy credits, in small letters)."

The film is a plausible series of half-truths and deceptions from the Bad Science industry. It should carry a large health warning.

 Its effects can be fatal.

Comments

[Tony]

A book well worth a read is called Unspeak

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unspeak-Words-Weapons-Steven-Poole/dp/0349119244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254037304&sr=8-1

Reason is the use of words to embody ideas - and how you can make ideas sound worthy without facts to support them

The 'complimentary medicine' industry does not have a body of evidence to support its claims but its careful editing of events can lead to think that it works

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Tony. Following that link, I came across this on UNRESISTING IMBECILITY
On faults both gross and evident

September 25, 2009 11 comments

I have had occasion to be reminded of Samuel Johnson’s splendid phrase, “unresisting imbecility”. It occurs in his bracingly splenetic account of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline:

To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.

This is often shortened in modern citation to something like “There is no point in quarrelling with unresisting imbecility”, which is a useful way to remark that something is extremely stupid (even though this writer goes on to do what he claims there is no point in doing). But the intriguing part of Johnson’s phrase, of course, is that it implies the existence of something that deserves to be characterised as resisting imbecility.

Imbecility that is unresisting, Johnson tells us, is imbecility that fulfils two conditions: its faults are so obvious that it’s not worth pointing them out; and the faults are also so huge that it’s not worth getting annoyed by them [it's not worth labouring the obvious | they couldn't be any worse].1 (Unresisting imbecility is even, you might say, rather cute in a way, like a shockingly ugly puppy, quivering happily in its basket and defenceless against sharp objects.) What is not clear, though, is whether resisting imbecility must negate both of those conditions or only one of them. (Do hidden large faults, or obvious small faults, count?) It is also, I think, highly debatable whether faults so huge that they are not annoying are actually the largest possible faults, which is what Johnson seems to be implying. (Only lesser faults, it seems, would lead to “aggravation”.)

These are not merely idle philological-historical questions, for it seems to me to be crucial to determine into what category of imbecility the work of “Melanie Phillips” falls. Take “her” latest post on Barack Obama and what she terms the “club of terror UN”. Perhaps its faults are too evident for detection and too gross for aggravation, in which case we ought to be guided by Dr Johnson’s ecology of intellectual effort and ignore them. Perhaps its faults are not so large in either dimension, so that it is a case of resisting imbecility, worthy of combat, and we can happily point them out. Or perhaps Johnson was misguided, and the grossest and most evident faults do actually deserve to be held up to intense scorn in the project of making the world a better place. It is a delicate question.

What kind of imbecility do you find resisting, readers?

Thanks to KB Player in comments for pointing out Johnson’s own definition of “aggravate”. «

[Craig]

Why is it that bad science can get away with spouting this rubbish (Fatal Medicine) yet a scientist can get into big trouble with the libel laws in this country for revealing the truth? It's an awful state of affairs. Surely these people should be taken to account for the really influential lies they preach to vulnerable people who will literally 'give anything a go' when all other options seem to be exhausted.