Fear rules. Enrolments for nurseries have dropped about publicity for a couple of instances of child abuse. All parents and grandparents of children under five felt a clutch of fear at the bereaved parent's grief at the death of her child from swine flu.
It’s the heart not the head. The simple facts are that nearly 500 died last year with swine flu. Halfway through the winter it’s just over a hundred. Bookies odds we all understand. Few of us would ever gamble on odds higher than 1 in 20.
Is the chance of dying of swine flu, 1 in 1,000, or 1 in 100,000? Nothing like that. Tonight's, hysteria-free BBC calculation is that one in 440,000 people aged 45-64 have died. Among the under-fives and the over 65s it is one in 630,000.
While every death is a terrible tragedy the final winter toll of swine flu deaths is likely to be about 300. The annual road traffic deaths are ten times that figure.
The Health Secretary of State Lansley did not respond to part of my oral question asking that we treat swine flu ‘with a sense of caution and a sense of proportion.’
Shame. It’s one of the few policies the Government has got right.
Apology
I do not have the appetite for dragging newspapers through the courts even when they repeatedly tell untruths. This is especially galling when reporters do not both to check their fiction with the people that they are attacking. However, lazy journalists cannot be allowed to get away with it. On Sunday, the Wales on Sunday newspaper will print this apology:
"On Boxing Day Wales on Sunday carried an item in its Spin Doctor column claiming that Paul Flynn MP had sold serialisation rights to his book "The Unusual Suspect" to the Mail on Sunday. We would like to make clear that Mr Flynn played no part in negotiating the serial rights and received no income from the Mail on Sunday for those rights. We apologise for any offence caused."
Supreme
There has not been an American President in the past 100 years who could have spoken to the mourning audience in Arizona in terms as elevated as Obama did today.
His words were inspiring, moving and wise.
Winced
We can all get our words in a twist.
I winced yesterday when two of my friends mangled their oral questions to the Prime Minister in the full glare of the nation. One intended to quote the Aneurin Bevan accusation that a past PM was 'sticking labels on empty suit-cases'. He left out a few vital words. Another hoped to attack Murdoch but forgot to mention his name.
See 'Commons' Knowledge' comrades - section on 'How to survive crash landings.'
"Enrolments for nurseries have dropped about publicity for a couple of instances of child abuse."
Are you sure it's not because less people are in need of childcare, because less people are working?
Posted by: D.G. | January 14, 2011 at 02:51 PM