Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 302

Problems of Debate

 

I bother with Mr Wooderson because I think he is not wholly beyond reason.  But the points I tried to make to him in an intervention yesterday don’t seem to have had the required effect.

I wrote: “Why is Mr Wooderson so anxious to die in the last ditch for such a rotten cause? He writes : 'evidence of the danger cannabis allegedly poses to mental health isn't growing, is it? With the exception of the recent study showing that long-term use by teenagers can reduce IQ, which is hardly a remarkable finding, quite the opposite is true.' I am really not sure how he can make this assertion. There is a huge number of studies suggesting that cannabis use may be linked to mental problems of one kind or another, not least the South London longitudinal study. Then there is what people such as him dismiss as 'anecdotal' evidence, but which seems to be enough to persuade eminent figures such as Professor Sir Robin Murray (a distinguished psychiatrist) and my friend Patrick Cockburn, a distinguished and experienced journalist of great probity and scrupulousness, that something significant is going on. I really cannot see how Mr Wooderson's blithe and breezy complacency cancels out such assessments, in a controversy in which there is ( as I repeatedly explain) an unavoidable and probably insuperable absence of exact, measurable knowledge). Sometimes humans have to act without certainty, using reasonable doubt (for instance) as a basis on which to act. What we have is not an absolute certainty but a reasonable doubt supported by so many 'anecdotes' that they simply cannot be dismissed as isolated events of no significance. In the reasoning mind, there must surely be more than one way-station between total ignorance and perfect knowledge. In an argument among normal civilised human beings, in which one side concedes to the other that he has not achieved perfect knowledge, and does not claim to be totally sure, the other side recognises this concession for what it is - an honest admission by a truthful person, made so as not to bring dishonesty or false claims in to the debate.. In this argument the pro-drug liberationists are so gripped by their dogma that each man rules his own body in total sovereignty, that they treat reasonable caution, and wise concession, as weakness. Thus their debating technique lacks all generosity, and they never learn anything from their opponents, or advance one inch beyond the position they held at the start of the discussion. I give an example of this below, from Mr Wooderson's pen: "Of course, if 'mental illness is not exactly or objectively defined', then the claim that cannabis is responsible for it is unfalsifiable, and thus scientifically worthless. There can be no evidence for it, growing or otherwise. Ironically, Mr. Hitchens elsewhere uses the fact that dyslexia as a condition is ill-defined as proof that it doesn't exist – so presumably we can infer from this that mental illness doesn't exist, and therefore that cannabis is harmless?' No, we cannot. Mental illness is a condition of far greater breadth and depth than the alleged condition dyslexia'. Nor, unlike the problems faced by those allegedly suffering from 'dyslexia'(whose difficulties invariably arise from bad teaching of reading, and can be corrected by good teaching of reading) can the problems of the mentally ill be explained by other factors, or resolved by other means. Mr Wooderson plainly has a brain. I do wish he would use it, rather than submitting it to dogma and so closing down his thinking.”

He replied : “Mr Hitchens writes, 'There is a huge number of studies suggesting that cannabis use may be linked to mental problems of one kind or another' I'm not sure about a 'huge number', but there are certainly a number of studies suggesting this. My point, though, is that their claims have become increasingly modest, to the extent that one might reasonably suspect the initial spate of alarmist findings to have been misleading. Robin Murray, however distinguished, is just one man, and the frequency with which his name crops up in connection with anti-cannabis studies hints very strongly at an agenda on his part. In any case, Mr Hitchens's deference to Murray's expertise clearly doesn't extend to accepting his policy recommendations, as I believe he advocates some form of legalisation. If we're to accept anecdotal evidence as relevant, then we should at least be consistent about it, and admit that those who claim to have smoked the drug for years without suffering any serious harm may have a point. Of course, anecdotes like Patrick Cockburn's tell us little about whether cannabis was actually responsible for his son's fate or whether the connection can be explained in some other way – an issue that Mr. Hitchens is quick to dismiss as merely obfuscation by the cannabis lobby. It seems to me to be just as irresponsible to disregard such doubts when advocating imprisoning a large section of society as it would be to dismiss any evidence that cannabis may be harmful.”

And further : “Mr. Hitchens continues, 'Sometimes humans have to act without certainty, using reasonable doubt (for instance) as a basis on which to act.' This precautionary principle might be reasonable enough if we were talking about allowing the sale of a newly produced pharmaceutical drug, but we're not. Rather we're discussing the most widely used illegal drug in the world, the demand for which is allowing violent drug cartels to devastate South America, after years pursuing an approach for whose effectiveness there is little concrete evidence. Personally, I'd rather a small number of cannabis smokers took a chance with their mental health than that innocent Mexicans continue to die because of a vague hope on our part that an aggressive war on drugs might put a stop to it. 'Mental illness is a condition of far greater breadth and depth than… dyslexia'.' But isn't it the 'breadth and depth' of the symptoms of dyslexia that prompt Mr. Hitchens to doubt its existence? I don't see what 'breadth and depth' have to do with it anyway.’

**I respond here:  No, it is not the ‘breadth and depth’ of the symptoms of dyslexia which ccause me to doubt its existence. It has no ‘symptoms’ as it is not a disease.  It is the ready availability of a good alternative explanation for these supposed ‘symptoms’ , which merely consist of an inability to read, plus the fact that it can be ‘cured’ by proper teaching of reading.

Mr Wooderson continues : ‘ Either mental illness and schizophrenia are so ill-defined that we can make no claims as to whether cannabis is responsible for them (and Robin Murray's work is therefore junk science), or they're well-defined enough for the lack of any increase in the rate of schizophrenia to be of interest. ‘

I respond. Professor Murray is a Psychiatrist, a follower of an inexact science. I forgive him for this because he is also a qualified doctor, trained in exact sciences.  I also forgive him for it because he sees, frequently, people whose minds are clearly not functioning normally. If he finds the categories of ‘psychosis’ and ‘schizophrenia’ useful to describe them, who am I to object?   He chooses to use such terms as ‘psychosis’ and ‘schizophrenia’. I would question the boundaries and definitions of these complaints. But I would not question his medical opinion that the people involved are in some way ill.  I have repeatedly answered the point about the lack of increase in the ‘rate of schizophrenia. I’d be grateful if Mr Wooderson would address that, rather than ( yet again) repeating what he and his allies said before I answered it, * as if I had never answered it *

Mr Wooderson then quotes me 'unlike the problems faced by those allegedly suffering from 'dyslexia'... can the problems of the mentally ill be explained by other factors' .

He says : ’They can, though, which is the crux of the debate about correlation and causation.’

I reply ‘Oh, really, And how can they be explained?’

 'I do wish he would use it, rather than submitting it to dogma and so closing down his thinking.' And I do wish Mr. Hitchens would accept that it's possible to disagree with him without being in the allegedly all-encompassing grip of the cannabis lobby.’

I reply. ‘It may well be possible. But Mr Wooderson has yet to show that it is possible in anything he has said. His arguments are identical to those used by the cannabis lobby. I have no idea why he wishes to support them, except perhaps because he is some sort of show-off. But if he wishes to expose unknown numbers of young people to the needless ruin of their lives *without* having any ulterior motive, then doesn’t he see that makes his moral position even worse?’

There are several points I’d make, all linked to the problem of debating in a civilised fashion. The crucial thing here is that you actually deal with your opponents’ points First, what does he mean by suggesting that Professor Murray has an ‘agenda’? As he rightly points out, the professor does not share my view about the law (then again, that’s not his area of expertise. I might possibly know more than him about the nature and operation of British drug law) . So what might that ‘agenda’ be? As far as I can tell from his writings ( I don’t know him) Sir Robin’s concern is over the strong apparent connection between cannabis and the large number of distressing cases he sees in his practice as a psychiatrist in a part of London where drug use is, how shall I say, unrestrained. The word ‘agenda’ seems to me to suggest a hidden self-interest. Given that Mr Wooderson objects to my criticism of him, that he is at the very least the unwitting tool of powerful commercial and moral forces, it’s a bit cheeky of him to hint darkly that one of this country’s most distinguished psychiatrists has an ‘agenda’.

I’ll leave it to others to refer to the many studies linking cannabis with mental illness. I don’t myself think it’s in doubt. Neither do I doubt the existence of many studies claiming therapeutic properties for cannabis. The difficulty (for both arguments) lies in the establishment of a causal link so objectively demonstrable that all are compelled to accept it . The widespread acceptance of IQ measurement as an objective science has, for once, made this possible in the case of the recent study. Generally, it isn’t.

I don’t myself rule out the possibility that some ingredients of cannabis may conceivably have some therapeutic properties, though I will not take these claims seriously until those who make them separate themselves from the general campaign for legalisation. How can a serious campaign for the licensing of a medicine have anything to do with one for the legalisation of a pleasure? The question is also whether these supposed benefits outweigh its grave ill-effects enough to justify its treatment as a medicine. Thalidomide was, I believe, highly effective against morning sickness. But the side-effects rather cancelled that out as a recommendation. Is permanent damage to the intelligence serious enough? I should have thought so. Is a general deterioration in mental wellbeing, almost impossible to measure, varying from person to person, a strong enough case against?  I should have thought so. Insisting on definitive objective proof of a link between cannabis and mental conditions whose own limits are not objectively defined is not an argument, but a trick played on the ill-informed.

By the way, when Richard Doll and his colleagues made their initial studies which *appeared* to show a link between cigarettes and lung cancer, they all immediately gave up smoking. Qualified scientists, versed in the language of laboratories and peer review, did not insist on total certainty before taking action. This was perfectly reasonable behaviour. Maintaining, and strengthening the legal barriers against widespread use of cannabis, especially by the young, is similarly reasonable.

Then let me dissect this section of Mr Wooderson’s response: ‘ If we're to accept anecdotal evidence as relevant, then we should at least be consistent about it, and admit that those who claim to have smoked the drug for years without suffering any serious harm may have a point?’

I have addressed this alleged ‘point’  many, many times. I would be grateful if just one spokesman for the legalisation side would respond to my rebuttal, rather than just saying the same thing over and over again. One of the reasons why this discussion is so frustrating is that the pro-drug [partisans are so utterly confident in their closed  world of smug mutual support that they never even try to respond. Thus we remain always in the same place,

But Mr Wooderson has the chance to break out of this dull circle. Let him answer this, if he is as serious as he claims.  1. People are unaware of their own deterioration, not just in this matter but in all others. It would be the carefully recorded observation of teachers, close family and work colleagues (preferably themselves drug-free) which would be valuable in this case. Without that, these claims are doubly discredited, first by being necessarily partial, second by lacking any objective confirmation.
2. These people may be all the things they say they are(though their anonymity prevents us from checking their credentials as rocket-scientists,  brain-surgeons, world-class business successes, aircraft designers etc)  How can we know what they would have been like if they had not used the drug ( save by conducting experiments of extreme ruthlessness on identical twins, impermissible under any moral code that I can think of)? Answer, we cannot. If they are as great as they say, what if they would have been greater still without the drug? Isn’t that a loss?

Mr Wooderson continues: ‘Of course, anecdotes like Patrick Cockburn's tell us little about whether cannabis was actually responsible for his son's fate or whether the connection can be explained in some other way – an issue that Mr. Hitchens is quick to dismiss as merely obfuscation by the cannabis lobby.’

Well, Patrick Cockburn and I have discussed this, and he (and remember here that Patrick and I do not share a world-view and would be on opposite or differing sides on many of the great issues of our time) is astonished at the number of men if his generation who – once he tells them of his experience – confide in him that similar things have happened to their sons, or to young men of that generation, personally known to them. I think  Patrick will not mind if I say that he is exasperated by the dismissal of this widespread experience as ‘anecdote’ by smug persons who have not encountered it directly.

What other explanation does Mr Wooderson offer for the troubles suffered by Henry Cockburn? Aren’t his symptoms in fact rather typical of those experienced by young men ( it mainly is young men) who have used cannabis,- except that in Henry’s case they have been specially intense? Would Mr Wooderson care to offer me some alternatives, which I will then pass on to Patrick and his wife Jan, so that they can marvel at Mr Wooderson’s ability to see further than they can into a problem which they have experienced, intensely and personally?  I can think of nothing which the cannabis lobby offer which is remotely comparable to the testimony of the Cockburns. And I regard it as callow and close to personally insulting (to them) to dismiss their experience, which they have rather bravely shared with outsiders, as ‘obfuscation’.

Mr Wooderson finishes with this :’It seems to me to be just as irresponsible to disregard such doubts when advocating imprisoning a large section of society as it would be to dismiss any evidence that cannabis may be harmful.’

Once again, he knows perfectly well that I have no desire to imprison anybody, and that the decisive enforcement of law is not intended to lock up large numbers of people - nor does it generally have this effect, or the jails would be full (as they are not) of drunk drivers and non-seat-belt wearers, and the civil courts crowded (as they are not) with martyred pub landlords who allowed smoking in their bars.  The reason why the drug lobby hate my proposal is that they rightly fear that it would scare them into changing their behaviour. And because they value their selfish pleasure above the good of others, and indeed are prepared for other people's sons and brothers to go mad and wreck their intelligence so that these arrogant persons can enjoy their dope, they scream and shout about mass jailings. I have made this point many times before.

Mr Wooderson deals with my argument by ignoring it completely.  This must be his last chance to debate seriously. If he will not, then he can join the other contributors to this blog whom I have abandoned as hopeless cases, incapable of serious debate,  and relegated to the role of tedious, tolerated background noise.

 

 

How do you Define Mental Illness? Another (former) cannabis user writes

Peter Hitchens says: "Imagine what would have happened if fashionable opinion, professors,  rock stars, politicians and media figures had all lined up to defend tobacco against the growing evidence that cigarettes kill, as they now defend cannabis. My guess is that a lot more people would now be dead or ill, who are now alive and well".

Peter Hitchens says :"Yet again, some annoying wiseacre (ignoring what I have many times said on this very subject) brays that the figures on 'Psychosis' or 'Schizophrenia' haven't risen dramatically despite the undoubted increasing use of cannabis."

Peter Hitchens retorts: "As I have many times explained, mental illness is not exactly or objectively defined.  I try not to use the terms 'psychosis' and 'schizophrenia' because I am not sure what they mean or how they can be precisely defined. What's more, our government, which is trying hard to avoid the huge costs of proper mental health care, has a great interest in minimising it. Further, databases used to track such things tend to rely on general practitioners. But the sort of people whose lives are destroyed by drugs tend not to register with GPs."

Peter Hitchens asks:"Do the mental illness figures record the unknown number of young men who were doing well at school until they began smoking dope and fell to the bottom of the class? Is that 'mental illness'? I'd say yes, and I'd say the same about many other 'minor' tragedies which overtake the foolish dupes of propaganda and advertising who take this drug in the belief it is harmless."

And Peter Hitchens adds: "The recent survey on IQ and cannabis is clearly suggestive of a connectiion between cannabis use in the teens, and loss of IQ. It cannot possibly be advanced as evidence that use of the drug by older people is 'safe' - only that no comparably clear evidence of its dangers has yet been produced." I was shocked that a scientist should have been quoted as saying that it was 'safe' for any age . It was an unscientific statement.

I reproduce here another testimony from a former user of cannabis, which I think is relevant to the mental health question :

'After reading the article on your blog today, I feel more confident about sharing my experiences. I can relate entirely to the story told by the former cannabis user. I am only 21, but already feel that it has had a negative impact on me - something which suggests to me that harm can be caused by the drug even with moderate to little use. I went to university in 2009, and a number of my friends who I made there would often smoke it. In the course of around 8 months, I used it a number of times. By the time second year arrived, I suffered from extreme anxiety in almost any social situation, including lecture theatres, concerts and parties, and was filled with dread whenever I thought about the future. In the end I used beta-blockers for a year to control the anxiety, despite my doctor's suggestion that I use antidepressants (that's an issue for another time). Thankfully I realised early that there could be a relationship between the drug and my mental wellbeing, and as such have not smoked it since the summer of 2010. The year that followed was undoubtedly the worst of my life, due to the extreme anxiety and unhappiness which I was experiencing

 

'I regained the confidence which I had lost. However, I still feel that part of my life (albeit small) was wasted due to using the drug. There were other complicated issues in my life which could also have contributed to the anxiety, but I can trace my first panic attack back to using cannabis. I strongly believe that things could have been different had I not used it. 

 

'Something which has become apparent to me as my experience with the drug changed is the way in which arguments are made to suit ones own ends.. During my first year I could easily have been described as a conventional liberal, as I strongly believed there was a war on drugs and that cannabis would not inflict any mental damage - it was all correlation, not causation. However as my mental wellbeing began to suffer I started to reconsider my views. As I began to discuss this with friends who did use cannabis, I was met with opprobrium for even suggesting that it could cause mental damage or that there was in fact no attempt to control drug use.

 

'This means I share your belief that advocates of legalisation are "selfish." My experience has taught me that much. Many have not yet suffered the negative consequences of the drug, and even of those who have do not think that there is a relationship between usage and mental health. Additionally, having been a student for the past three years I can easily say I have never met anyone, student or otherwise, who seriously worries that they will be penalized for using cannabis. The situation in which they can smoke it without any remonstrance from the police or society already exists, they just haven't realised it yet because it is still technically "illegal." Your writing on the subject has provided an armoury of well reasoned arguments and facts to combat conventional wisdom on this subject. I can imagine you must find it fairly dispiriting to put up with simplistic attacks from the drug lobby for arguing your beliefs, but there is no doubt a large number of people who share your sentiments - they just aren't as noisy as the advocates of legalization.'

 

'I have found your writings on the subject helpful, given the tide I feel I am swimming against, particularly at university where use of the drug is so common and it is rarer to refuse to smoke it than use it. I have realised earlier than some the damage it can do, and as such my opinions on it have changed entirely. I look forward to your book on the subject.'

NB: I have spoken directly to the author of this letter, and verified his bona fides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the Games transformed Britain? Tell that to tragic Jay's family

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

At last it’s over, six weeks of glutinous self-praise, smugness and delusion.

You might think, from the way that we’ve gone on about it, that organising an athletics meeting was a gigantic task equal to putting a man on the Moon, or finding a cure for cancer.

You might also get the idea that the entire nation lives its life in front of a TV screen, and that because TV is enthusiastic about an event, the rest of us are too.

My belief and hope is that quite a lot of people, apart from me, thought that the Olympic frenzy was overdone and overblown.

A strange zombie-like thought control descended on this country during the Games. If you weren’t keen, you were somehow a bad person.

Just as in the early days of Blairism, and during the even more stage-managed creation of David Cameron as Mr Blair’s replacement, the reliable followers of fashion and the  habitual suckers and dupes of public life all joined the choir of compulsory joy.

They said how wonderful it was that our bankrupt country was blowing nine billion pounds on a big party we couldn’t afford. There are always people like that.

But there was worse to come. One by one, men and women who I thought had independent minds stepped forward, like defendants at a show trial, to announce that they, too, had been converted by the beatific vision of Olympic piffle.

‘Yes, I was a curmudgeon to start with,’ they would intone, dashing tears from their eyes. ‘But now I have put my doubts behind me. I Love Big Brother.’ Well, actually, they didn’t say they loved Big Brother, but these recantations did strongly remind me of Winston Smith’s gin-scented collapse into the arms of conformity at the end of George Orwell’s 1984.

Let me remind you. During this supposed national triumph, our courts were still dealing with (and in some cases letting off) the culprits of the violent disorders of 13 months ago. It was still possible for a fine young man, Jay Whiston, to be knifed to death for behaving courageously at a suburban party. HMS Ark Royal, the  idiotically retired mainstay of our naval power, was condemned to the scrapyard. Our chief surviving weapons manufacturer was threatened with foreign takeover.

A great tidal wave of inflation, whose arrival is only a matter of time, was being created by the major banks of the Western world.

In every town and city of this country, small businesses are suffering and dying. In large parts of the North, former shopping streets are parades of shuttered and abandoned premises stretching for miles like a British Detroit.

Not one of our national accounts balances. The Government is borrowing frantically to maintain services it cannot afford to supply. We buy far more than we sell. Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has finally noticed that our schools are terrible, and that all the Blairite hoo-ha about ‘education’ had precisely no result (just as Michael Gove’s current hoo-ha will fail).

But take comfort. We have one growth industry. This country has never had so many cannabis farms, nor so many willing customers for their  produce.

Sister Frances and her awkward secret

Powerful, successful Left-wingers have a nasty habit of concealing the fact that they went to grammar schools, or single-sex schools. They can’t admit that these fine schools benefited them, because then they would have to bring them back.

The Home Secretary, Mrs Theresa May, is one such. Her entry in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, the MPs’ reference book, says that she attended Wheatley Park Comprehensive school. In fact, when she arrived there (from a convent school) it was still very much Holton Park Girls’ Grammar. Would she have gone to  Oxford and become Home Secretary from a modern comprehensive? I doubt it. The new chief of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, is another. She says that she attended Milham Ford Comprehensive. But when she arrived there, in 1971, it was a girls’ grammar. If it hadn’t been, I doubt very much if she’d now be in charge of the brothers and sisters of the TUC.

Lethal reality of the Arab Spring

Almost exactly three months ago I complained here that our useless media, and our purblind Government, had failed to give proper coverage or attention to an attempt by Libyan fanatics to murder our ambassador, Sir Dominic Asquith.

The attempt took place in Benghazi and the  would-be murderers used a rocket-propelled grenade. It came shortly after a grenade attack on the US consulate there. Now the US Ambassador,  Christopher Stevens, has been murdered in Benghazi, and his body apparently dragged through the streets.

The idea that the murder of Mr Stevens and his colleagues has anything to do with some stupid,  amateur film that nobody has seen, and which a  free country couldn’t have censored anyway, is  doubly ridiculous.

The reason why Mr Stevens was exposed to this risk is – alas – that the British and American  governments and media are blinded by dogma.

They cannot understand that the people they so rashly helped in the ‘Arab Spring’ were only using them, just as the Syrian ‘activists’ are using us now.

No Western diplomat’s life should have been risked in the violent, lawless chaos of post-Gaddafi Libya, and I wonder how long our embassy in Cairo will be safe. Arab Spring, indeed.

Time to make the break, Mr Bone

A Tory MP called Peter Bone seems to me to be sadly typical of so many honest British people who simply don’t understand what has happened to this country, or to the Tory Party.

In the past few days Mr Bone called for the resignation of Anna Soubry, a foul-mouthed ultra-liberal with ‘advanced’ views on assisted suicide, now a Health Minister; he then called for the resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister, who let slip that he thinks moral conservatives are ‘bigots’.

So Mr Bone wants them both to quit. Talk about the wrong end of the stick.

The point is that they have big jobs, and people like Mr Bone haven’t. Mr Bone reminds me of the  story of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, lying on his deathbed in Madrid. A vast crowd gathers outside his palace, chanting ‘Adios, Franco!’ His nurses open the windows so he can hear. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Oh Leader!’, they trill, ‘that so many people have come to say goodbye to you?’ ‘Yes, yes!’ the old monster murmurs from amid the pillows. ‘Very nice. But where are they all going?’

Mr Bone, do please ask Mrs Bone, but isn’t it you who should be resigning from a party that despises you and everything you stand for?

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Cannabis - A (former) User Writes

The writer of the words that I reproduce below recently e-mailed them to me.  I have since spoken to him ( he is 33, by the way) and have his permission to reproduce what he says here. I offer them without further comment, except to say that he is fairly sure that his memory and some other faculties have suffered permanently as a result of his now-abandoned use of cannabis. He is, in what he says, too kind to me, but the general message is so valuable that I felt it best to reproduce it as written.  :

‘I would like to offer a great deal of thanks for continuing to highlight the dangers of cannabis use. As someone who smoked the drug regularly for a period of time in my early twenties, I know, from first-hand experience, the debilitating effect it can have on the user's mind. I have no doubt that for a number of people, however small a percentage, cannabis can trigger serious mental health problems.

‘Before ever having taken the drug, I was a happy, smiling, extroverted young person with lots of friends and a positive outlook on life.  Once I started to smoke the awful stuff, that all changed - and it changed very rapidly. 
Paranoia, depression, panic attacks - This is how my life ended up. Most disturbingly was the way my mind began to lose touch with reality. I began to suffer from delusional ideas and would hear voices in my head.  Some of the things I imagined to be real, seem completely absurd to me now. For example, I used to think that songs I listened to were coded messages.  I used to think that God was trying to communicate with me via car licence plates. I believed I could speak telepathically with people and had the ability to read their thoughts and implant my thoughts inside their mind.

‘Eventually I ended up losing my job, I almost destroyed my relationship with my family and I was almost driven to suicide. With the help and support of a close relative, whom I cherish dearly, I eventually stopped.  And when I stopped, the voices stopped, the paranoia stopped, the feelings of despair and sadness all stopped and my mind returned to how it was before I ever took the ghastly stuff.

‘I have been married for the past five years and have a beautiful daughter who has just started school.  I am in full time employment and also do voluntary work using my talents as an artist.  Had I still been smoking cannabis, I would have none of these things, but rather I would have ended up in prison, in some sort of mental health unit or worse than that as I am sure you can imagine.’

Note to webcrawlers: "Peter Hitchens reproduces a letter from a former cannabis user, highlighting the fact that this drug is anything but safe, and far from soft"

A Witness to History - how Justice Decays

Here I reproduce (with the author's permission) another first-hand account of an important truth. The writer was a direct witness of the decline and weakening of criminal justice in this country, during the period when authority was in visible retreat. I don't agree with the author that these changes were 'motivated by economics', though I have no doubt that then, as now, cost was used as a pretext to drive a different purpose. I think it is arresting, fascinating and deeply dispiriting. Please read it:

 

'I joined the Magisterial service in the mid-1960s, qualified as a solicitor through night school and a year at law school whilst in service, spent most of my working life at a busy Magistrates' Court where I acted a clerk to the Court in excess of 8000 sittings . I retired a few years ago but continued working on an agency basis at different courts due to qualified staff shortages for another two years or so.   I feel well qualified to comment on the judicial process and especially Magistrates' Courts.
 
'In 1964 I remember that the offence of using a vehicle without insurance carried a possibility of a prison sentence.

'Driving whilst disqualified could be tried either by the Magistrates or by Crown Court (Quarter Sessions back then) and invariably resulted in a custodial sentence.  Compare those two offences to now when its usually 6 penalty points and a derisory fine because such offenders rarely have sufficient means.
 
'Burglars were always, OK nearly always, imprisoned.  A burglary committed during the hours of darkness could NOT be heard by the Magistrates, it had to go 'upstairs'. So you can imagine the kind of sentences handed down.
 
'Cautions?  In 1964 never heard of them, except perhaps the unofficial ones that right minded traffic officers used to administer.
 
'Magistrates had Licensing Committees that kept a strict control on outlets for alcohol and gambling.
 
'Women were forced by the benefit agency of the day to take proceedings in our court against absent fathers before they would be allowed benefit.  The Courts enforced payment by such fathers rigorously and most men paid perhaps because of the real threat of imprisonment for those who didn't.
 
'Those are just a few random memories, but what does stand out is that Magistrates were usually sensible people and properly advised by a clerk worked well in balancing the protection of the public, punishment of the offender and sympathy where common sense dictated.  Of course there was always a right of appeal
 
'Gradually however, motivated by economics I'm sure, Magistrates' hands became tied.   Precedent from higher Courts, usually restricting imprisonment, became commonplace and then eventually the biggest insult to the Magistracy in living memory, the Sentencing Guidelines Council!!!!!   Virtually ever offence has had its 'tariff' reduced and reduced over the years the Council has reigned over sentencing in this country, and virtually every Magistrate is utterly and completely frustrated, because they sit week in week out and see exactly what goes on in our society and in our Courts and they are powerless, unable to call a halt to the obscene leniency of sentences.
 
'Would I be wrong in thinking that if any political party were to take a real tough stance on criminality (not parking offences and people driving at 32 in a 30) then their votes wouldn't even need to be counted, weighed perhaps, but not counted.  Im talking here of harsh prison regimes, no computers or playstations etc.  Five years inside meaning five years served in a bleak environment to which no one would wish a return. Ok, at the end of the sentence I would offer the opportunity to stay in a kind of probation led half way house where meaningful rehabilitation could take place, but only AFTER completing the sentence.   I could go on and argue the case for capital and corporal punishment, but I fear things are too far gone for those sanctions to be reconsidered , although again I suspect a referendum would provide some interesting results. Having said that of course I realise that politicians no longer represent the views of those who elected them.'

Note to webcrawlers: "Peter Hitchens publishes a sad account of the decline of justice and morality in the English criminal court system"

 

Here Come the Comment Warriors

Peter Hitchens said :"Well, one thing is for certain. Within a few minutes of posting anything critical of cannabis, you can be certain to be besieged by angry pro-cannabis commenters. Could they be organised? Do bears go to the lavatory in woodland?"

 

And Peter Hitchens added: 'And would you believe that the Google webcrawlers, presented with so many other interesting things to pick up from this blog, have now reverted to the quotation, of a criticism of me and Melanie Phillips, which I had quoted to rebut, and which had been bizarrely highlighted out of all the many things I had written and which I had sought to displace by providing alternative material?'

An Experiment

If I say here “Peter Hitchens believes that numbers prove plenty. He also thinks that Twitter is an electronic left-wing mob” , will these words find their way on to the web?

If I say here that “Peter Hitchens says universities should select their students on merit, not in accordance with some egalitarian formula”, will these words find their way on to the web?

By posting these thoughts in this fashion (and readers are of course welcome to comment on them) I am hoping to find out how and why certain things gain prominence on the web, and others do not? Is it, as some say, purely to do with various automated crawlers and codes? Or is there some subjective influence at work, so that mentions of me only get wide circulation when they are, er, unhelpful?

Numbers Prove Plenty. And Accurate Quotation is good too

The Monitoring Department reports

On a brief patrol of the Twittersphere, I found my name being linked with the words ‘numbers prove nothing’. I could see this wasn’t intended to enhance my already pretty low reputation among the left-wing electronic mob which inhabits that twilit zone.

What was this about? Twitter, by its nature, doesn’t lend itself to detailed argument or presentation of facts.

As an experiment here, I am going to summarise what follows :"Peter Hitchens does not believe that 'Numbers Prove Nothing' . But he does believe very strongly in accurate and careful quotation".

Let's start with the alleged quotation ‘ numbers prove nothing’, it’s rather important how and where the words appeared. There are indeed occasions on which this would be true. The fact that millions of people supported the Iraq war didn’t make it right. The fact that millions of people believe in man-made global warming doesn’t make it true. Scientific theories are not resolved or proved by opinion polls or majorities, but by experimentation and above all by their testable power to predict.

But there are other occasions when numbers obviously do matter, not least when data are being examined. I use them a lot myself, and if I didn’t think they mattered at all, what would be the point of my spending weeks obtaining, and then publicising (for instance)  the astonishing figures on the numbers of people let off for illegally possessing cannabis?

So I wondered when and where I had used this phrase. I trawled the Internet, with my limited skills, and came up with two references (I’d be grateful to anyone who can do better).

I found, in essence, two (the others were repeats) Neither was sourced. Neither was complete or had any useful context:

Here they are:
I reproduce them exactly as they are displayed. The material begins and finishes with a line of asterisks

*********

There is still 'no evidence' to support global warming. All the existing scientific data are 'suppositions, allegations, predictions. Numbers prove nothing'

Peter Hitchens column in the Mail on Sunday

Found at http:/www.epa.gov/airnow/2006 conference/Sunday/maybe

Alternatively:

PETER HITCHENS
Peter Hitchens, like Melanie Phillips a provocative right wing journalist, is keen to promote denial arguments. In his column in the Mail on Sunday he claimed that there is still 'no evidence' to support global warming. In a reply to a complaint about this article he reiterated that all the existing scientific data are 'suppositions, allegations, predictions. Numbers prove nothing'

To be found at http://risingtide.org.uk/content/hall-shame

 

*********************
I then searched the Mail on Sunday’s electronic library for anything by me mentioning the word ‘warming’ and simultaneously mentioning the word ‘evidence’.  I seldom write about global warming anyway, and the only article I could find in which I made a substantial reference to it was this review of Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster’ , published on 29th November 2009.

‘AS IT happens I was Green before the word came to mean what it does now. From a very early age, I hated the ploughing up of this country for the motor car, and grieved at the mad closure of the railways, a view that has now become much more widespread than it was then. I began bicycling to work before bike lanes had been invented, when Boris Johnson was still at Eton.

To this day I get a sort of red mist when I see great trees being cut down by over-cautious councils, and I gaze with limitless regret on the bleak prairies of Southern England, where hedgerows once grew. If I can take a ship and a train rather than a plane, I will do.

So it's no use trying to dismiss me as some kind of petrolhead polluter who wants to cover the planet with runways and motorways, nor to allege I'm in the pay of Big Oil, when I say that I doubt the existence of man-made global warming. I just doubt it because I am not convinced it's true. Actually, now that Big Oil has bought into the man-made warming scare itself, I generally get even cruder abuse, being called a 'denier' as if I were some kind of Nazi. And if I mention my doubts at public occasions, I can feel the swelling wrath of the unreasoning mob gathering against me.

There's seldom time to make more than a few points before you are howled down by righteous zealots. And that is why I, and anyone seriously interested in this subject, owes a great debt to Christopher Booker, who has set down all the arguments for doubt in a single, concise book that will no doubt be either ignored or abused.

IT WOULD be very sad if, as a result, it fails to reach a wide audience. I think anyone remotely concerned about this huge controversy should read this courageous piece of work. I am not asking you to agree with everything in it, or assuming that you will. I am asking any reasonable person, who is influenced by facts and logic, to consider the case made here.

If you have had doubts but suppressed them for fear of being drowned in anger or contempt, buy this book to arm yourself. If you know any global-warming fanatics, buy it for them for Christmas and ask them, even beg them, to study it carefully. At the very least, it should allow the debate on this subject to be conducted with more fairness and without such expressions as 'denier' being used.

What you will find out is this. That much of what passes for accepted truth is not. Facts have been ruthlessly twisted, suppressed or invented. Scientists are greatly divided on the subject. Many people - and bodies - presented as experts actually have little or no knowledge of the science involved. Gullible politicians and gullible media men and women have repeatedly fallen for it. Hucksters, profiteers, world-government fanatics and, of course, the EU (always searching for an excuse to increase its power) have latched on to it. Huge public subsidies, including the carbon-trading racket and the tragicomic building of hideous, worse-than-useless windfarms, now depend upon it.

But take, just for example, the famous picture of polar bears on a melting ice-floe, supposedly doomed victims of global warming. The USA's ex-Vice President, the propagandist Al Gore, got audiences going 'Aaah!' by saying the bears had 'nowhere else to go'. Really? The picture was taken in August, when the Alaskan ice always melts. The polar bears were fine. Think about it. They can swim and they weren't far from land. Recent studies show that most polar bear populations are rising.

The world was warmer than it is now in the early Middle Ages, long before industrial activity increased CO2 output, a fact that the warming fanatics have worked very hard to obscure. Oh, and the most important greenhouse gas by far is not CO2 but water vapour, which is not influenced by human activity at all.

Meanwhile, an English court of law (despite buying the CO2 argument) has identified nine significant errors of fact in Gore's Oscar-winning alarmist film An Inconvenient Truth, ludicrously being inflicted on children in British schools. Among these: sea levels are not going to rise by 20ft any time soon; there's no evidence that atolls in the Pacific have been evacuated because of rising waters; the Gulf Stream is not going to shut down; the drying-up of Lake Chad, the shrinking of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro and Hurricane Katrina were none of them caused by global warming; the only polar bears that have drowned were four that died in a storm.

BOOKER also reminds us that even if all the measures demanded by the warming zealots were put into action, according to their own calculations this would only delay the effects they fear by six years. In my experience, people who employ alarmism, and who turn with rage on their critics, do so because they lack confidence in their case. Watch their behaviour at the coming Copenhagen climate conference, a festival of panic and exaggerated woe.

This particular frenzy, if not checked, could end by bankrupting the West and leaving us sitting in the cold and the dark whistling for a wind to power our dead computers - while China and India surge on to growth and prosperity because they have had the sense to ignore the whole stupid thing.’

 

I should say, by the way, that this sums up my views on man-made global warming quite well.

Then I searched for the words ‘numbers don’t matter’ . The library came back with nothing written by me which contained these words. When I tried ‘numbers’ by itself, it came back with 300 references in 11 years, which suggests that I take numbers seriously.

The quotation including the words ‘ suppositions, allegations and predictions. Numbers prove nothing’  is said by the second source not to have come from a column ( as it doesn't seem to do, though even electronic libraries can be mistaken) but to have come from a 'reply' (undated and without any traceable reference) to a complaint. The library certainly can't find it, in any form, under my byline.

Without more information, I cannot attempt to verify this. What complaint? By whom? To whom? When? But I would be glad if the anonymous person who produced this quotation would give the context, without which its burden is unclear. In the meantime, I would urge anyone who is seduced by the claim that I think 'Numbers don't matter' as a general proposition should view the suggestion with caution. Numbers do matter, in general. And accurate quotation matters just as much, as I pointed out to the BBC some weeks ago.

 

General Conversation Resumed

 
Looking back at responses to my columns while I’ve been away from the office, I am not surprised to see that the old death penalty quibbles continue. I do wish we could start this from a higher base(that is the purpose of the index). We might then break out of some of the logical circles in which many contributors are trapped.

Let me set out one or two of these;

1. How can you favour execution when the Ten Commandments say ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’? Well, because most Christians read the Commandment as ‘Thou Shalt do no Murder’ (this is how Christ himself expresses the Commandment at Matthew, 19, 18, Authorised Version, and how it is rendered in those Anglican churches which still display the Ten Commandments at the east end of the Church). Is this a get-out? I believe the original Hebrew of Exodus is ambiguous, but could any moral system survive which did not distinguish between defensive and offensive violence, or between the guilty and the innocent?  I don’t think so. Even the Roman Catholic Catechism, which became more hostile to the death penalty under John Paul II, is not wholly hostile to it. And the 37th of the Church of England’s 39 articles famously says : ‘The Laws of a Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences’ and further ‘ It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons and serve in the wars’. This is why I am particularly baffled by those who write in and ask how I can be against the killing in the womb of tiny children who are by definition innocent, while I favour the execution of (some) convicted murderers. Surely the contradiction is the other way? How can those who blithely accept this daily massacre of the innocents in misnamed ‘clinics’ not also be in favour of executing the guilty, since their view of the value of life appears purely utilitarian?

2. What about America, then? They have the death penalty, and it hasn’t reduced murders there. I cannot count the number of times that I have pointed out that no state in the USA has an * effective* death penalty, that is, one which is applied swiftly and consistently. The modern death penalty in the USA (quite unlike its far swifter and more consistent operation before the 1960s)  is a political show, designed to assuage an angry public, not to operate as an effective deterrent. The fact that people *are* executed isn’t the point. It’s that most murderers are not executed, and that those who are, are executed many, many years after their crimes.  The question of measuring deterrence is very difficult, as the British Royal Commission concluded. This was the case in this country. The penalty was suspended twice between 1948 and 1957 (with interesting effects on crimes of violence in both cases), and after 1957 was much restricted and much less of a real danger to violent criminals. Countries which abolish the death penalty invariably do so after a long period of controversy, during which the penalty is used less and is often suspended for lengthy periods. It often also happens at a time of general social change. The moment of actual abolition is often not a good point from which to measure its effect. I’d add (yet again) that in our world of very advanced medical skills and equipment, people nowadays survive violent attacks of a kind that would assuredly have killed them  in 1955. Offences which might have been deterred by the gallows are not, therefore, recorded as homicides, but as attempted murders or various forms of wounding. By some calculations, were it not for the NHS’s fine trauma services,  Britain’s annual homicide rate would now be in the thousands.

3. For the nine millionth time, the danger of executing an innocent person must be reduced by all possible precautions. But it is absurd to imagine that it will never happen. Is this an absolute argument against the death penalty? Only in the way that it is an absolute argument against defending yourself militarily from an aggressor (innocents are also bound to die in this process, though the aim of the violence is good, however hard you seek to avoid it ) and (in my view) by basing your transport policy on motor vehicles, which is certain to lead to a large slaughter of innocents . Many forms of medical treatment, particularly major surgery, also seem to me to be hedged about with this difficulty. But perhaps above all there is the fact that all murder victims are innocent deaths, many of them preventable by the death penalty ; and that convicted murderers quite frequently kill again after being released from prison. So the argument that ‘ we can’t execute in case innocents die’ suffers in two ways . First, if generally applied, it prevents many other actions we would normally regard as good, therefore if you cannot show that the death penalty is not in itself a valuable good, then the fear of innocent deaths is a hard argument to rely on. Next, that if the arguer’s concern for the deaths of innocents is so great, why does it not manifest itself in preventing the murders of innocents?

I won’t in future respond to any arguments here on the death penalty which don’t at least take the above points into account.

Mr Armstrong, our resident Tishbite, chides me for saying that universal equality has no practical application, suggesting that by doing so I am denying Christian principles. I did not, in a three-minute audio essay, wish to address the question of equality before God. Nor was I addressing an audience which would necessarily accept the distinction between  the temporal and the eternal. I happen to think that equality before God has no ‘practical’ effect, in the temporal world. It is only of interest or use, as a concept, to those who accept the existence of the eternal. It’s most unwise to assume that people generally do accept this,

So I don’t. By the way, something similar motivates my dislike of the phrase ‘born-again’, which I think (with its smug certainty and unappealing imagery) has done a great deal to repel inquisitive and sympathetic people who might otherwise have paid more attention to the Christian religion.

I note that on the Middle East I am chided for saying the bombing of the King David was a terrorist act. It most certainly was. Many non-combatants, including women, died horribly. One unpleasant detail of this event which has always stuck in my mind, as I know the hotel well, and the pleasant road in which it stands.  is the fact that one officer, going to see if a friend of his who worked there had survived, found out in the most appalling way that he had not. He looked up at the front of the YMCA building opposite the hotel, and saw his friend’s severed head, gorily stuck to the stonework, into which it had been propelled by the force of the blast.

Another correspondent chides me for quoting Samuel Katz. But I point out clearly that Katz was a highly biased witness. Nonetheless, his book is worth reading, as it illuminates parts of the history of the region which are normally ignored, and explains to the British or American reader the thinking of a powerful and significant segment of Israeli society.

I long ago concluded that neither side in this conflict is free of moral stain, and it is absurd to reach conclusions on the idea that one side or the other is wholly right, or wholly wrong. I particularly regret Israel’s failure to do more to reconcile its Arab citizens, as I have written. I favour a compromise. I acknowledge that, if we were starting again, we would be wrong to do as we did. But that does not mean we can now expect the state of Israel to disappear, or help it to do so.

But I see no significant desire for such a  compromise in the Arab Muslim world. Indeed, I would fear for the safety of any Arab politician or journalist who openly advocated any compromise which allowed for the continuing existence of a viable Jewish state in the region. Whereas many Israelis, and Zionists, have been willing to consider major compromise, and Israel has given up large amounts of territory in return for unreliable promises of peace. 

 

 

Numbers do Matter. So does Accurate Quotation

The Monitoring Department reports

On a brief patrol of the ‘Twittersphere’, I found my name being linked with the words ‘numbers don’t matter’. I could see this wasn’t intended to enhance my already pretty low reputation among the left-wing electronic mob which inhabits that twilit zone.

What was this about? Twitter, by its nature, doesn’t lend itself to detailed argument or presentation of facts.

As for the alleged quotation ‘ numbers don’t matter’, it’s rather important how and where the words appeared. There are indeed occasions on which this would be true. The fact that millions of people supported the Iraq war didn’t make it right. The fact that millions of people believe in man-made global warming doesn’t make it true. Scientific theories are not resolved or proved by opinion polls or majorities, but by experimentation and above all by their testable power to predict.

But there are other occasions when numbers obviously do matter, not least when data are being examined. I use them a lot myself, and if I didn’t think they mattered at all, what would be the point of my spending weeks obtaining, and then publicising (for instance)  the astonishing figures on the numbers of people let off for illegally possessing cannabis?

So I wondered when and where I had used this phrase. I trawled the Internet, with my limited skills, and came up with two references (I’d be grateful to anyone who can do better).

I found, in essence, two (the others were repeats):

Here they are:
I reproduce them exactly as they are displayed. The material begins and finishes with a line of asterisks

*********

There is still "no evidence" to support global warming. All the existing scientific data are "suppositions, allegations, predictions. Numbers prove nothing"

Peter Hitchens column in the Mail on Sunday

Found at http:/www.epa.gov/airnow/2006 conference/Sunday/maybe

Alternatively:

PETER HITCHENS
Peter Hitchens, like Melanie Phillips a provocative right wing journalist, is keen to promote denial arguments. In his column in the Mail on Sunday he claimed that there is still "no evidence" to support global warming. In a reply to a complaint about this article he reiterated that all the existing scientific data are "suppositions, allegations, predictions. Numbers prove nothing"

To be found at http://risingtide.org.uk/content/hall-shame

 

*********************
I then searched the Mail on Sunday’s electronic library for anything by me mentioning the word ‘warming’ and a  simultaneously mentioning the word ‘evidence’.  I seldom write about global warming anyway, and the only article I could find in which I made a substantial reference to it was this review of Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster’ , published on 29th November 2009.

‘AS IT happens I was Green before the word came to mean what it does now. From a very early age, I hated the ploughing up of this country for the motor car, and grieved at the mad closure of the railways, a view that has now become much more widespread than it was then. I began bicycling to work before bike lanes had been invented, when Boris Johnson was still at Eton.

To this day I get a sort of red mist when I see great trees being cut down by over-cautious councils, and I gaze with limitless regret on the bleak prairies of Southern England, where hedgerows once grew. If I can take a ship and a train rather than a plane, I will do.

So it's no use trying to dismiss me as some kind of petrolhead polluter who wants to cover the planet with runways and motorways, nor to allege I'm in the pay of Big Oil, when I say that I doubt the existence of man-made global warming. I just doubt it because I am not convinced it's true. Actually, now that Big Oil has bought into the man-made warming scare itself, I generally get even cruder abuse, being called a 'denier' as if I were some kind of Nazi. And if I mention my doubts at public occasions, I can feel the swelling wrath of the unreasoning mob gathering against me.

There's seldom time to make more than a few points before you are howled down by righteous zealots. And that is why I, and anyone seriously interested in this subject, owes a great debt to Christopher Booker, who has set down all the arguments for doubt in a single, concise book that will no doubt be either ignored or abused.

IT WOULD be very sad if, as a result, it fails to reach a wide audience. I think anyone remotely concerned about this huge controversy should read this courageous piece of work. I am not asking you to agree with everything in it, or assuming that you will. I am asking any reasonable person, who is influenced by facts and logic, to consider the case made here.

If you have had doubts but suppressed them for fear of being drowned in anger or contempt, buy this book to arm yourself. If you know any global-warming fanatics, buy it for them for Christmas and ask them, even beg them, to study it carefully. At the very least, it should allow the debate on this subject to be conducted with more fairness and without such expressions as 'denier' being used.

What you will find out is this. That much of what passes for accepted truth is not. Facts have been ruthlessly twisted, suppressed or invented. Scientists are greatly divided on the subject. Many people - and bodies - presented as experts actually have little or no knowledge of the science involved. Gullible politicians and gullible media men and women have repeatedly fallen for it. Hucksters, profiteers, world-government fanatics and, of course, the EU (always searching for an excuse to increase its power) have latched on to it. Huge public subsidies, including the carbon-trading racket and the tragicomic building of hideous, worse-than-useless windfarms, now depend upon it.

But take, just for example, the famous picture of polar bears on a melting ice-floe, supposedly doomed victims of global warming. The USA's ex-Vice President, the propagandist Al Gore, got audiences going 'Aaah!' by saying the bears had 'nowhere else to go'. Really? The picture was taken in August, when the Alaskan ice always melts. The polar bears were fine. Think about it. They can swim and they weren't far from land. Recent studies show that most polar bear populations are rising.

The world was warmer than it is now in the early Middle Ages, long before industrial activity increased CO2 output, a fact that the warming fanatics have worked very hard to obscure. Oh, and the most important greenhouse gas by far is not CO2 but water vapour, which is not influenced by human activity at all.

Meanwhile, an English court of law (despite buying the CO2 argument) has identified nine significant errors of fact in Gore's Oscar-winning alarmist film An Inconvenient Truth, ludicrously being inflicted on children in British schools. Among these: sea levels are not going to rise by 20ft any time soon; there's no evidence that atolls in the Pacific have been evacuated because of rising waters; the Gulf Stream is not going to shut down; the drying-up of Lake Chad, the shrinking of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro and Hurricane Katrina were none of them caused by global warming; the only polar bears that have drowned were four that died in a storm.

BOOKER also reminds us that even if all the measures demanded by the warming zealots were put into action, according to their own calculations this would only delay the effects they fear by six years. In my experience, people who employ alarmism, and who turn with rage on their critics, do so because they lack confidence in their case. Watch their behaviour at the coming Copenhagen climate conference, a festival of panic and exaggerated woe.

This particular frenzy, if not checked, could end by bankrupting the West and leaving us sitting in the cold and the dark whistling for a wind to power our dead computers - while China and India surge on to growth and prosperity because they have had the sense to ignore the whole stupid thing.’

 

I should say, by the way, that this sums up my views on man-made global warming quite well.

Then I searched for the words ‘numbers don’t matter’ . The library came back with nothing wruitten by me which contained these words. When I tried ‘numbers’ by itself, it came back with 300 references in 11 years, which suggests that I take numbers seriously.

The quotation including the words ‘ suppositions, allegations and predictions. Numbers prove nothing’  is said by the second source not to have come from a column ( as it doesn't seem to do, though even electronic libraries can be mistaken) but to have come from a 'reply' (undated and without any traceable reference) to a complaint. The library certainly can't find it, in any form, under my byline.

Without more information, I cannot attempt to verify this. What complaint? By whom? To whom? When? But I would be glad if the anonymous person who produced this quotation would give the context, without which its burden is unclear. In the meantime, I would urge anyone who is seduced by the claim that I think 'Numbers don't matter' as a general proposition should view the suggestion with caution. Numbers do matter, in general. And accurate quotation matters just as much, as I pointed out to the BBC some weeks ago.