John Cuthber

I'm not sure what the rules are like elsewhere but surely one side or the other has to prove their case. In the UK if I make an allegation I have to prove it's true or I'm in trouble.

What happens in the states?

Imagine that I were to say

"you would say that- you are a psychopathic murderer".

Under UK law you could take me to court and require me to prove that either the statement is true, that it's a reasonable exageration, or that I had reasonable grounds to believe that it was true when I made it. If I couldn't prove one of those justifications I would be in trouble.

Would you prefer a system where I can make an allegation like that without any comeback or one where you would have to prove that the allegation was false?

I guess you can prove your not a psychopath. What if I had accused you of plagirism?

What would you do if I said that the stuff you post isn't really your own work- you copy it from other people?

Under UK law I'd need to show that was true or I could be sued for libel. Would you really prefer that you had to prove that you didn't crib the stuff from someone else, and how would you do that?

"If water companies did a bad job directly serving the consumer, they would be boycotted, simple as that."

My God! You are right.

I will stop using water until the water company does exactly as I tell them and fixes all the leaks. (or until I get thirsty)

The water companies are commercial organisations. The government tells them what to do on behalf of the people. Requiring them to consider adding fluoride is no different from requiring them to ensure the water is fit to drink. If the people don't like it they vote them out.

I grant it would have been a better example to cite any of a number of consumer protection laws rather than murder.

The point remains that this is all perfectly normal behaviour for a democracy.

Re "Lets put ourselves in the position of a police officer. Lets let this irate man have a running chainsaw and be threating people he has cornered; perhaps in an enclosed alleyway. Lets say he has already slashed some of the people. Sure, you (and the other police officers with you) are physically capable of beating him easily in a fair fight, but again he has hostages and a chainsaw. What should you do? "

Did you not realise that I was joking with this bit

"I used to think that only the police should have guns. Now I'm not so sure about the police having them either." of my last post?

Anyway, as I already said "I thought that the accepted rule for the use of a taser was "if we didn't have a taser we would have had to use a real gun"."

I think a man run awry with a chainsaw would meet that criterion.

The evidence presented in the paper actually stresses the natural origin of the virus.

I know, I'm just making fun of the conspiracy "theory".

It's no miracle drug. I took some last night and died twice before I even fell asleep.

Was it dissolved in wine?

So you accept limiting the choice and violating the property rights(in case they try to set up an alternative to the government water service) of the minority who disagree? How very democratic!

Yes.

In the same way that I favour violating the rights of that minority who think that killing people should be legal.

Democracies do that.

Incidentally the risk assesment for adding fluoride to the water is pretty simple. If it's already high enough you don't add it. If it's high enough to cause fluoridosis then you can't supply it as potable water anyway.

You only need to consider adding it if levels are very low.

BTW, the UK water companies are not government owned; one of the big ones (EDF) is French.

"BTW, if your police need a taser to control an angry, unfit 60 year old then either you need much better police, or you shouldn't have let the guy have a gun in the first place."

Incidentally, I thought that the accepted rule for the use of a taser was "if we didn't have a taser we would have had to use a real gun".

Are the police in the habit of shooting 11 year olds?

If they are, then I'm going to have to revise my opinion on gun ownership.

I used to think that only the police should have guns. Now I'm not so sure about the police having them either.

What is wrong with the Libel law? If he made comments in the article which did indeed make "the plainest allegation of dishonesty and indeed it accuses them (the BCA) of thoroughly disreputable conduct" then he should have the evidence to back it up. If he doesn't have that evidence, then it is right that he should be sued and I have no sympathy.

What he wrote in a Guardian article was this

"The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments."

I guess it depends on your deffinition of dishonesty or disreputable conduct.

Does your definition include taking money from people with asthma (or the parents of children with the disease) to "manipulate" their spines as a "treatment" even though this has been shown to have no effect on the disease?

His evidence wasn't hard to find. It was the next paragraph in the same newspaper article.

"I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions."

I think the point of the protest is that the decision on such things should be made by those versed in science rather than the law.

Nine different beam lines. "Because you're worth it".

;-)

believ it or not these swine flu n bird flu viruses are genetically engineered virus, to bring chaos in the world.

Since we seem to be enduring a pandemic of what might be called "pathetic 'flu", it seems they have't done the engineering very well.

With due sympathy to those who have lost loved ones in this outbreak, this version of 'flu seems to only kill people who are already ill.

In the UK the current stats are about 6000 cases and 3 deaths.

1 Yes, reduced rates of tooth decay

2 Not as long as it's done carefully. The same applies to chlorination of water or other forms of water treatment and most people are happy with that.

3 I think the benefits outweigh the dangers.

4 I live in a democracy (of sorts) and I accept the majority opinion which (where I am) is generally in favour of fluoridation.

People who carry weapons sometimes think they are, therefore, safe.

Then they do things that they would otherwise avoid like walking alone through "rough" areas at night.

Then they get attacked and discover that if you and your assailant have the same weaponry, but they have the advantage of surprise, they win.

Incidentally, Bascule

re."Do you really think getting rid of guns will stop murders? There is more than one way to kill a man, you know."

Yes, I know. I said so in the 12th post in this thread. Why mention it again?

I also said that I think that if you could take the guns away it would make it more difficult for people to kill each other. Is that a bad thing?

"The alternative is what the UK has done: ban all "offensive weapons". I'm sure it's great to be a diminutive woman wandering the streets of London at night, unable to legally carry a can of pepper spray or mace."

I used to live in London; I knew plenty of women of all shapes and sizes who walked about the place. Most of them were quite happy to do so. As far as I know none of them was armed; I don't recall any of tem being attacked or threatened.

Are you aware that it's generally men who get attacked, rather than women?

It also depends on how much stuff you are weighing. A kilogram measured to 0.1 of a gram is pretty good accuracy

"Do you really think getting rid of guns will stop murders? There is more than one way to kill a man, you know."

I already answered that.

"The alternative is what the UK has done: ban all "offensive weapons". I'm sure it's great to be a diminutive woman wandering the streets of London at night, unable to legally carry a can of pepper spray or mace."

At least she doesn't have a weapon lulling her into a false sense of security.

"John,

Convicted felons are not really permitted to own firearms. Your statement that You seem to have a lot of murderers, yet you decide to let them have guns.

is false. "

All people who commit murder with a gun had that gun in their possesion at the time. They were, in fact, if not in law, permited to have a gun.

Many of those people were not, at the time, convicted fellons and were, therefore, entitled to own a gun.

Let me see if I can make this clearer.

The people who kill people with guns are

1 generally murderers and

2 generally permitted to own the gun (at the time of the shooting).

I think it would be better if you forbade them guns before they killed someone, rather than waiting 'till afterwards.

Re "That said, I think there is some merit to the idea that guns increase the lethality of criminal encounters (just as there is merit that guns reduce the amount of crime). Is that a fair trade for a fewer number of such encounters? Depends who you ask as this is purely a matter of opinion..."

My opinion is that the option that kills fewer people is better- particularly since it isn't generally the criminals who get killed, I accept that your opinion may differ.

"Yes, your country in particular seems to suck at reporting violent crime"

I know that. That's why I used the murder stats. They are generally (as I said) more reliable.

"Crime is virtually nonexistent here"

Lucky you. Doesn't that mean that, were you to own a gun, the odds would be even more in favour of it killing someone by accident rather than legitimately?

Glider,

Did it occur to you before you wrote " not quite convincing (to a British ear) because, although there is no Australian (I don't know where the others are getting that)..." that you seem to be in a minority of one here?

Incidentally, are there lots of accents in Australia?

I'm reserving judgement on whether or not he's a crackpot until he answers my earlier question.

 

 

If he really thinks that some form of life is the "simple" explanation for methane then, in my view, he's a crackpot.

Beacuse he won't answer can I just change my mind an assume he is a crackpot please?

On the whole, not a bad effort. You managed not to soumd like an American.

Now for the real challenge; try to sound like a Geordie, Brummie, or Scouser.

It seems that the murder rate in the US is about 3 times that in the UK according to this data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_rate

(and a lot of the UK's murder rate is due to one rather small part of it; Northern Ireland).

OK, I know there's more to "crime" than murder, but the one thing about homicide is that it's almost always reported (or discovered) and another thing is that there's not much variation in the definition so you can't say the statistics are not comparable from one country to the next. Also, let's face it, being killed is generally thought of as a worse thing than, for example, being mugged or burgled.

What's clear to me is that here in the UK I seem to be less likely to be the victim of a lethal, unlawful atack than I would be across the pond where there are a lot more guns. I can't help thinking that that correlation is actually due to causation in this case. It might be something else- there are differences in poverty levels for example or it might be that there are just more homicidal maniacs in the US.

If, however, those are the reasons for the higher murder rates, you might want to think about the question of giving those people guns.

Also, of course, not all of those murders will be gun crimes- but I'm willing to bet that a greater proportion of them are shootings in the US than in the UK so, again, that hardly looks like a point in favour of legal gun ownership.

You seem to have a lot of murderers, yet you decide to let them have guns. That's not what I'd do.

You say that this is so the rest of you can defend yourselves against these gun toting murderers. But the last set of stats I saw showed that many more people were accidentally shot than shot legally (ie by a householder defending their property or some such).

So, while your gun might save you or your family from an intruder, it's rather more likely to kill them.

I guess you will say "yes, but I'm responsible so my gun won't kill my family..."

You might be responsible but...

1) nobody's perfect- sooner or later you will slip up

2) these same laws let the idiots down the street have guns and it doesn't matter how careful you are in that case

3) it sounds like the arguments that were used against compusory seat belts "I'm not going to crash". Everyone says that until it's too late.

It seems to me that, as I said, gun ownership is " 'Favourable' in the sense that someone would probably have ended up dead."

BTW, if your police need a taser to control an angry, unfit 60 year old then either you need much better police, or you shouldn't have let the guy have a gun in the first place.

If you use varying magnetic fields they do affect the brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation

Bits of it do sound Ausie, but it doesn't sound American which, I guess, is what you were hoping.

Never trust a man who spells "polar" wrongly in a thread where he only had to look at the title to find the corect spelling.

 

He's a criminal right? If he had wanted a gun, are you saying he couldn't have gotten one due to the UK's omnipotent ban on guns? In that situation(one where the criminal buys a gun), it would have been favorable to you to have a gun as well, yes.

"Favourable" in the sense that someone would probably have ended up dead.