Prenatal smoking and ADHD.

According to an article in Science Daily

" ... when we looked at the effect of maternal smoking in children with one of our candidate genes, we saw a three-fold increase in risk, and in children with both genes whose mothers smoked during pregnancy, we saw a nine-fold increase," says senior investigator Richard D. Todd, M.D., Ph.D., the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor and director of the Division of Child Psychiatry at Washington University.

If that's the case, and irrespective of the apparent genetic link, Mrs Rigby and her siblings and cousins were lucky to escape.

Both Senior Rigbys smoked cigarettes and almost every visitor to the family home lit up while they had their cups of tea. At that time cafés, cinemas, pubs, buses, trains and railway stations were packed full of smokers, as were work canteens and even the workplace. It was normal, smokers were not outcasts.

Mrs Rigby is sure that, even had her mother not been a smoker, the developing Rigbys would have been exposed to so much so-called second and third-hand smoke via her bloodstream as to make foetal absorption impossible to avoid.

Mrs Rigby doesn't recall her education being compromised by those of her peer group who were incapable of sitting still for more than five minutes at a time. So she does wonder why, with all the health protection practices in place that ensures an expectant mother can avoid the slightest whiff of tobacco smoke, ADHD appears to be on the increase, with

Soaring numbers of children are receiving drugs to treat hyperactivity and depression

Maybe, just maybe, something other than tobacco is the cause.

The Queen's Speech.

The elements of The Queen's Speech are outlined here at the BBC.

Mrs R doesn't think many of the ideas will make the statute books, but she has a feeling that one might, and it's this one :-

Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Repeals legislation limiting protests around Parliament. Generally extends to whole UK.

Why does Mrs Rigby think they will make sure this legislation is repealed?

Mrs R wonders if some people think the best time for some protests outside Parliament and other city centres will be after a general election - after an election that will probably see Labour lose office - to show how dissatisfied people are with the result, and demonstrate to the world how much ordinary people hate the Tories/LibDems/BNP, or whoever manages to take seats from Labour.

If this should happen, Mrs R hopes the media will be sensible, will report things properly and explain how it's like a fizzy bottle exploding after it's been shaken, because she knows some people who are very fed up with "the way things are going" but haven't felt they can speak out in case they get into trouble and have their DNA taken and stored by the Police, even if they haven't been found guilty of any offence.

After all, if you have your name on that DNA database you can lose your job, as Lorraine Elliott discovered when, during a routine employment check, her name was found to be on the list - so she was sacked, from her job on the government's national identity card scheme. She plans to appeal to have her name removed, as a special case.

Maybe they'll change that too, and follow the EHCR ruling regarding storage of DNA, but then again, maybe not - it wasn't included in the speech.

A couple of videos.

Mrs R is trying to catch up after taking a few days off, so here are a couple of videos from other blogs.

Tory Bear takes on Labour's latest PPB and tells the truth about votes for women, the NHS and so on

It's here

Grumpy Old Twat shows how inoffensive the 'sexist' M&S Christmas advert really is

Look here

Building bridges with the TA?

From the Telegraph

Structural engineers and military experts are carrying out an urgent safety review of all of Cumbria’s 1,800 bridges.

and

The Army could be asked to build Second World War-style Bailey bridges over the River Derwent in Cumbria as a temporary replacement for the bridges which have been washed away by flooding, the local council has said.

because

“The military are pretty good at putting up these bridges quickly, and I imagine the council will be looking into how they can procure these bridges as a matter of urgency.”

Mrs Rigby has noticed that members of the Armed Forces have been conspicuous by their absence in Cumbria.

Maybe Mr Brown will come to regret his decision to cut TA funding, because even though he changed his mind quite quickly a fair number of part time soldiers will have resigned out of disgust knowing they weren't wanted unless they were being prepared to fight overseas - whilst their counterparts in the Navy and Air Force were still being paid and trained as 'weekend warriors".

Sick Britain #1

And meanwhile, in Cumbria, where flooding for the second year in a row has caused bridges to collapse and people's homes to be ruined, our Prime Minister pays a quick photocall and announces that government will provide £1 million towards the clean up - whilst sending £293 million overseas. So he's got his priorities right.

He's been copied by some little low life who also decided to help themselves - to the wheels of a BMW that had been abandoned near Ambleside when the flooding started.

Soldiers skiing in the desert.

You couldn't make it up could you?

From the Telegraph's report of the inquiry into the Iraq War.

Col Power was particularly scathing about the supply chain. ... he said, “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”

Maybe somebody in the MoD didn't have a good grasp of geography, which is why they also failed to provide enough desert boots!

Mrs Rigby does fractions.

Apparently Mr Balls tried to bamboozle Mr Gove by asking him to do some of the Maths our GCSE candidates are expected to master.

Here is the question he asked :-

Work out 3 3/4 minus 1 2/5

(that's three and three quarters minus one and one fifth)

Mrs Rigby once learned all about fractions and things called denominators and factors.

She learned that when you try to add or subtract two fractions of different values you need to change them so the number at the bottom of each fraction (the denominator) is the same. It's easy to work out if you know your multiplication tables, and makes it heaps quicker.

You need to choose the lowest possible number that both denominators will go into, it'll be somewhere in both the 4x and 5x tables - because the first fraction has a 4 as denominator, the second has 5.

4x
4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40 etc

5x
5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 etc

The lowest common denominator (LCD) of these two fractions is 20.

To make the 3/4 part of 3 3/4 into 20ths you multiply both the top and the bottom of the fraction by 5 (5x4=20) and (5x3=15) and so get 3 15/20 (three and fifteen twentieths)

To make the 2/5 part of 1 2/5 into twentieths it has to be multiplied by 4 (4x5=20) and (4x2=8) , giving 1 8/20 (one and eight twentieths)

It's now very easy to subtract the smaller number from the larger, by dealing with the numbers on the top of the fractions. (15-8)

3 15/20 - 1 8/20 = 2 7/20 (two and seven twentieths)

Okay, so it looks long winded, but it took much less time to work it out than to write it down, and Mrs Rigby didn't use a calculator.

When Mrs Rigby first learned to do this Maths calculators hadn't been invented, there were complicated things called Log Tables, but they didn't get used until half way through secondary school, ready for O-level work.

Mrs Rigby is still a little bemused to know that children of 16 are being asked to do calculations like this as part of their GCSE Maths exams, and can even have the benefit of using a calculator to help make things quicker and easier, because she learned to do things with fractions at primary school - which she left when she was 10 years old because her birthday falls in the summer!

Mrs Rigby is even more bemused by the newspapers that reported this and whose reporters turned the numbers into decimals ... and they did that by using calculators!

Mrs Rigby would like to know how modern children would have coped with pre-decimal currency, where they would have had to deal with multiple number bases and complicated addition, subtraction and multiplication just to know how much something cost.

It doesn't seem as if metrication did a lot of good.

As for the point of the question Mr Balls asked - probably not much use really unless it can be related to real life.

The new religion.

Mrs Rigby was interested to read in the Telegraph that :-

Chinese snowstorms kill 40 and leave thousands homeless

Up to 40 people have been killed and thousands more left homeless after unusually early winter blizzards hit north-central China.

which

caused nearly 10,000 buildings to collapse and destroyed almost 500,000 acres of winter crops

It's an historical event, because

The snowfall is the heaviest in the northern and central provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong and Henan in living memory.
Hebei's provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, has received nearly two feet of snow in three days, the heaviest fall in the city since 1955.

Without being too sarcastic, and trying frantically to link to the story she intended to write about, Mrs R wonders if the people of China should have taken care to switch to the new religion of the green god. They might have been saved from the snow, because the AGW prophets of the green tell us it's getting warmer and so they wouldn't have allowed snow to happen.

You see Mrs Rigby remembers reading about Tim Nicholson who, according to the BBC, said :

... his beliefs had contributed to his dismissal and in March a judge ruled he could use employment equality laws to claim it was unfair

The firm that had dismissed him disagreed, hence their appeal in October against the earlier ruling in March because they felt his views were political.

Mr Nicholson's appeal against his dismissal was upheld by the Tribunal in London because, his solicitor said :

"Essentially what the judgment says is that a belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperative is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations."

The company, Grainger plc, on the other hand thinks that

"This decision merely confirms that views on the importance of environmental protection are capable of amounting to a philosophical belief.

"Grainger absolutely maintains, as it has done from the very outset of these proceedings, that Mr Nicholson's redundancy was driven solely by the operational needs of the company during a period of extraordinary market turbulence, which also required other structural changes to be made within the company.

"Grainger rejects outright any suggestion that there was any other motivation relating to Mr Nicholson's beliefs or otherwise."

Mrs R had a rummage around the internet. The 'Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003' are here and apply to employers and employees, but the rules apply outside employment too. According to Human Rights legislation, as outlined on CivilRightsMovement website :

... religious discrimination is unlawful.

That means we are free to choose our own religion, and should be able to express ourselves because :

The Human Rights Act 1998 sets out the fundamental rights with regards to religion and beliefs

but it would seem that :

... the right to freedom of thought including religion and beliefs that are covered in the act only pertains to public bodies (my bold)

That bit, Mrs R thinks, is quite important, but left a loophole that lawyers later closed, because :

In Britain the Race Relations Act 1976 was amended in 2000 to include the clause that discrimination in employment due to religious beliefs is unlawful.

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 provided extra protection to those with or without religions beliefs in everyday life. (my bold)

So ... and please understand that this is a very tortuous train of thought that gets there in the end ...

Mrs Rigby thinks that last sentence is also very important, and should be looked at very carefully.

You see, Mrs Rigby thinks that, if the legal ruling means that Tim Nicholson and AGW-believers can say they hold a 'philosophical or religious belief' in relation to their employment then this has to be supported by all other aspects of Human Rights Legislation, so this ruling suggests that government and other 'public bodies' must also accept and acknowledge that a counter argument against AGW could amount to being without a 'philosophical or religious belief' in the same way as the 'there is a God' and the 'there is no God' believers have their rights respected and supported by law.

The law says that 'philosophical or religious belief' of ordinary people are protected in 'everyday life'.

Mrs Rigby thinks this means that government, public bodies, and other people are not allowed to presume that everybody in the country subscribes to any single one, group, or set of religious or philosophical beliefs. She thinks the government has to allow, and has to encourage a diversity of belief and philosophical ideas, as do all public bodies.

Following on from that, Mrs R thinks that government and other public bodies are not allowed to promote one 'philosophical or religious belief' over another - and they are not allowed to punish or disclaim or attempt to discredit those who do not place one, or another, 'philosophical or religious belief' in a position of greater esteem to or above another. It should also mean that people can choose, whether at work or in their homes, not to believe anything at all, if they don't want to, and nobody should be allowed to put pressure on them to change their minds.

Phew!

Mrs Rigby thinks the law also means that the government and other 'public bodies' cannot force people to subscribe to a particular religious or philosophical belief - if they could do that they could force us all to be Christians, or Muslims, or Buddhists, or Scientologists. Couldn't they?

They wouldn't ever do that, nobody would allow them to get away with it. Would they?

So Mrs Rigby would like to know ...

Why are government, and other public bodies, allowed to spend a lot of public money trying to force us all to believe in Climate Change and Anthropomorphic Global Warming - when there has been a legal judgement that that this is a 'philosophical or religious belief'?

... Still with me?

And why are those people who do believe in the 'religion or philosophical belief' of Climate Change or AGW allowed to call people who don't believe in this 'religion or philosophical belief' horrible names?

How would it work out if, say, somebody who regularly attended a church criticized a person who regularly attended a synagogue for being 'in denial', or said 'we still have a way to go in informing' them about Christianity? Mrs Rigby thinks that somebody would probably be told off, and very quickly too - quite rightly, because nobody has the right to force their 'religion or philosophical belief' onto another. The law says that too.

We are free to believe whatever we choose, that's what the law says, and it says nobody can be forced to follow a religion or philosophical belief. No individual, no employer and no public body is allowed to force their religious or philosophical belief on another, and try to force them to abide by that religion or philosophical belief. The law says we may all practise our religions and beliefs freely, by exercising personal choice - that's what 'freedom to choose' means.

So, because Tim Nicholson has been told that his views on AGW and climate change amount to a 'religion or philosophical belief', and he must be allowed the freedom to practice those beliefs, the same freedom must now apply to those who don't believe in AGW.

Ah, but it seems not!

Thanks to Iain Dale Mrs Rigby read The Times article announcing that :

Global warming is not our fault, say most voters in Times poll

It goes on to say that :

Only 41 per cent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made. Almost a third (32 per cent) believe that the link is not yet proved; 8 per cent say that it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15 per cent say that the world is not warming.

According to Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office :

growing awareness of the scale of the problem appeared to be resulting in people taking refuge in denial.

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said

We know that we still have a way to go in informing people about climate change

So much for freedom of 'religion or philosophical belief'. We have both a government minister and an important person with their own department at the Met Office both being paid to promote what a Judge has said is a 'philosophical or religious belief'.

It would seem, at the moment, that only the believers are allowed to have an opinion, and the 59% of the population who do not subscribe to the new 'religion or philosophical belief' and are 'uninformed' or 'in denial' must be converted, at all costs, otherwise the planet will burn up.

Mrs R wonders how long it will take before another Judge comes along and changes the ruling, otherwise Britain will no longer be a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith country, it will be a country with only one 'philosophical or religious belief' - with the state ensuring we all bow low to the green deity of Climate Change and Anthropomorphic Global Warming.

Airborn CO2 and Bristol University

From Watts Up With That

Bombshell from Bristol: Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing? – study says “no”

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO₂ than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO₂ should start to diminish as CO₂ emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

Read the complete article here

MoD bonuses and equipment shortages

The media is awash with news that MoD staff have received bonuses totalling millions of pounds, whilst at the same time soldiers are doing without or having to share equipment such as mine detectors

Mr Johnson said the MoD staff did 'difficult and sometimes dangerous' jobs which in some cases warranted a bonus

Mrs Rigby is intrigued to know what MoD staff consider is dangerous about their job, when they mostly sit in a nice chair in front of a carefully designed desk - to make sure they don't get RSI - and their working environment is controlled by air conditioning.

Compared to front line troops who drive vehicles through minefields whilst getting shot at because there aren't enough helicopters, Mrs R knows who she thinks has the most dangerous task.

Apparently there are

... 85,000 civil servants at the MoD, one for every two active troops.

Odd sort of balance, don't you think?

Mrs R ponders on the thought that soldiers go without body armour so the MoD staff can have plenty of pens and paper, and lots of pairs of scissors with which to make cuts - or would they be too dangerous for them to use?

Update:

Mr Brown has announced that he will :

... "examine" any questions raised over the bonuses paid to civil servants at the Ministry of Defence.

and :

"If there are any questions asked over the bonuses, I will examine them.

What a truly intriguing thing to do, examine a question.

Mrs R would have thought it far better to examine the issue raised by these obscene bonuses, but she supposes that in the end, all that will happen is that they set up a committee that will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and this money will come from the MoD budget, further reducing the cash available to the military.