Some might say David Cameron is running scared of Nick Clegg. It sure seems he’s trying to impersonate him the whole time now. Flip flopping from the left to the far right and back again like this would have him floundering in an American election – is that on the cards in the next fortnight? In the meantime enjoy this hilarious game…
This is pretty funny, but of course the first debate has so far proven to be a game-changer for the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg seems to have tapped into a deep resentment towards the last parliament – the worst in living memory – and towards politics in general, and as a result is riding at the top of some opinion polls. Time will tell what the effect of that will be, but I find it enormously exciting – if the Lib Dems hold the balance of power in 2 1/2 weeks then the rollback of the government’s authoritarian project, electoral reform and constitutional change get thrown to the top of the political agenda. Clegg may yet provide the most important jolt to British politics in generations, and my fingers remain tightly crossed. Interestingly Labour have now started codedly to woo Clegg:
Lord Mandelson, who heads Labour’s campaign, criticised some Liberal Democrat policies but made clear that a coalition government would not be a disaster. It is the first time a senior Labour figure has spoken about a Lib-Lab coalition, in which Liberal Democrats would sit in a Brown Cabinet. In a memo to Labour members, Lord Mandelson said: “I am not against coalition government in principle and for Britain, anything would be better than a Cameron-Osborne government.”
The Secretary of State for Business said a two-party government would not be so stable without a “big unifying challenge”. He named that as constitutional change, urging Liberal Democrat supporters in 100 or so Labour-Tory marginal seats to vote Labour to secure reform of the voting system for Westminster. He predicted, however, that the voters would turn away from their current “flirtation” with Mr Clegg.
I think some will turn away from Clegg, as people reach for what they know when they reach the ballot box. But I’ve been saying for a long time now that the two main parties have completely underestimated the electorate’s hatred for politics as usual, and to offer only that at this general election could yet prove fatal for either of them.
Now I love Eddie Izzard – really really love him – but…
It’s an appalling fudge. Noone can fault Eddie for what his values are, nor for what he saw and experienced in his multi-marathon adventure across Britain last year. But he talks about Labour as a party ‘founded on fairness’, and immediately shoots himself in the foot. Control orders – are they fair? What about ID cards? The Independent Safeguarding Authority – who’s that fair to? A policy of destituting asylum seekers and jailing ‘failed’ asylum seekers’ children – I’m not quite sure that’s fair. Were the police fair when they beat protesters and killed Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest? How’s about the Tamils’ protest soon after when they attacked women (I’ve seen the video)?
He talks about compassion, but where’s the compassion in pre-criminalising protesters on secret databases, on holding DNA profiles of entirely innocent people, children amongst them? Was it compassionate to invade Iraq, when there was no evidence of WMD? He talks about community too, but how is it fair to promise to slash public services for the poorest in society when a Robin Hood (or Tobin) Tax could recoup money from those who caused the economic crisis in the first place? Was Labour’s utter dismissal of the online campaign by tens of thousands of people to hold back the Digital Economy Bill a demonstration of ‘community’ support?
Is Eddie unaware of these issues or does he really think they don’t matter?
“So we were talking Dave and me, and I said “You know Dave, the modern Conservative party is a lot like my critically acclaimed movie The Italian Job. It’s an occasionally jingoistic but ultimately lovable caper starring a band of young British men who get millions of pounds from somewhere overseas by being a little bit cheeky about the rules then try and get out of Europe as quickly as possible”
Following yesterday’s ban on the ‘legal high’ mephedrone, Britain’s Labour Party has today declared itself illegal as part of an ongoing crackdown on readily-available ‘dangerous governments’.
The controversial political organisation – which has been linked to numerous tragic pieces of legislation during the last thirteen years – will tomorrow be upgraded to a Class ‘B’ party.
The ban comes as a welcome relief to millions of disillusioned Labour supporters, who accuse Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of telling them “how high we’d get if we voted Labour – but not how low”.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson told a packed press conference this morning: “I have consulted with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Political Parties, and on their recommendation I am rushing through a law that will make my government illegal, at roughly tea-time tomorrow.”
“This legislation will also enshrine a generic definition to stop unscrupulous politicians peddling different but equally harmful political parties, such as the Conservatives,” he continued.
Illicit
But Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg condemned the move as a cynical ploy to win the ‘junkie’ vote and edge his own party out of the reckoning.
“Until today, Labour and Tory politicians alike could talk to the smackheads’ hands, but the smackheads’ faces weren’t listening,” he said.
“Now, every bloody mephedrone-honking hoodied scally will be gagging for their illicit fix of two-party state shit – and we Lib-Dems will be consigned to the terminally unhip dustbin of staid and proper legality.”
“I daren’t canvass in da ghettoes after dis, innit,” he simpered, in what he genuinely believed to be a convincing stab at urban vernacular.
Meanwhile Conservative leader David Cameron welcomed the ban, but described it as “long overdue”.
“If this legislation had been in force in the 1970s we’d have been spared the tragedy of Thatcher, Heseltine, Howe, Lawson, Bottomley, Archer, Howard, Patten, Portillo, Major, Blair, Prescott, Cook, Mandelson, Campbell, Blunkett, Smith, Balls, Miliband, Miliband and Johnson,” he said.
“Or then again, maybe not. You know what UK voters are like when they’re off their faces on miaow-miaow.”
I have just purchased a packet of Boots-brand 84 arnica homeopathic 30C Pills for £5.09, which Boots proudly claim is only 6.1p per pill. Their in-store advice tells me that arnica is good for treating “bruising and injuries”, which gives the impression that this is a very cost-effective health-care option.
Unlike most medication, it didn’t list the actual dose of the active ingredient that each pill contains, so I checked the British Homeopathic Association website. On their website it nonchalantly states that to make a homeopathic remedy, they start with the active ingredient and then proceed to dilute it to 1 per cent concentration. Then they dilute that new solution again, so there is now only 0.01 per cent of the original ingredients. For my 30C pills this diluting is repeated thirty times, which means that the arnica is one part in a million billion billion billion billion billion billion.
The arnica is diluted so much that there is only one molecule of it per 7 million billion billion billion billion pills.
It’s hard to comprehend numbers that large. If you were to buy that many pills from Boots, it would cost more than the gross domestic product of the UK. It’s more than the gross domestic product of the entire world. Since the dawn of civilisation. If every human being since the beginning of time had saved every last penny, denarius and sea-shell, we would still have not saved-up enough to purchase a single arnica molecule from Boots.
Then the process of consuming enough pills to get that one molecule also boggles the mind. You can try imagining Wembley Stadium completely filled with people, all drinking pints of medicine at the rate of two an hour. For just one of these people to eventually consume one molecule, you would need a million Wembley Stadiums all at full capacity with people who have drinking pints constantly since the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Oh, and you’d need 737 million such Earths.
That’s only for one molecule. Molecules are tiny: it takes about a billion of them to cover a standard metric full-stop. To put homeopathy in a medicinal context, if you wanted to consume a normal 500mg paracetamol dose you would need ten million billion homeopathic pills. Where each pill is the same mass as the Milky Way galaxy. There is actually not enough matter in the entire known Universe to make the homeopathic equivalent of a single paracetamol pill.
Homeopathy is actually based on 18th century wishful thinking that water will somehow remember substances that it had previous contact with (but will forget the countless effluent that it has passed through). That a 10 billion year old water molecule will remember everything it has touched flies in the face of all known science and is an insult to any thinking person. Sincere people with medical needs buy homeopathic remedies only because they masquerade as being something more than mere sugar pills.
They are an insult to the herbal remedies on the shelf next to them at Boots; at least snake-oil has the decency to contain some snake.
Matt Parker is based in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. He has no connection with any part of or person in the pharmaceutical industry. The working for his maths is shown here.
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