The Budget

[Danishfurniturelover]

who wrote that southstand?

I agree with it all and i said we should have made bigger cuts at the start because it would be harder later on.

One thing i have a huge problem with in this country is how long it takes to get thing done. We should be looking at building a new airport in the thames, but you know that would take years, when really they should start doing it now. I blame the EU for a lot our problems because i think when ever the government would try and do something for the good of the nation, the people against it just go to the EU and use stupid laws to try and stop it.

Pull out of the EU and we can make bigger cuts, we will not have people who go on work experince claim it is slave labour.

 

[southstand1882]

It's a bloody good read

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...nding-will-we-ever-tame-the-debt-monster.html

I particularly liked the quote from the chap at Tullet Prebon:

“No one has yet explained why the British state must spend ?ú700 billion today, having managed perfectly well on ?ú450 billion, at today’s values, 10 years ago.”

 

[Leeds Spur]

Labour has built a client state. Heroin addicts don't like going cold turkey.

 

[Danishfurniturelover]

Labour has built a client state. Heroin addicts don't like going cold turkey.

The wife works with drug addicts, im not allowed to say what i think of them out loud in the house, so i will say it here instead, they are scum. I blame the EU pull out of the EU and we can do what we like with drug addicts and to hell with human rights. I say the way gene hackans character in the french connection is the way to go.

 

[suffolkspur]

The wife works with drug addicts, im not allowed to say what i think of them out loud in the house, so i will say it here instead, they are scum. I blame the EU pull out of the EU and we can do what we like with drug addicts and to hell with human rights. I say the way gene hackans character in the french connection is the way to go.

None of the major political parties will pull us out of the EU though thats the problem. We are in there for the long haul im afraid.

 

[Yossarian]

None of the major political parties will pull us out of the EU though thats the problem. We are in there for the long haul im afraid.

Stop supporting/voting for them then and support/vote for the only credible alternative: the real Conservative party.

 

[Danishfurniturelover]

Stop supporting/voting for them then and support/vote for the only credible alternative: the real Conservative party.

Exactly.

 

[parklane1]

The wife works with drug addicts, im not allowed to say what i think of them out loud in the house, so i will say it here instead, they are scum. I blame the EU pull out of the EU and we can do what we like with drug addicts and to hell with human rights. I say the way gene hackans character in the french connection is the way to go.

Never going to happen, to many social workers, bleeding heart liberals and PC phalanx in the country.

 

[scaramanga]

Here you go!! I'm sure you know better than peer reviewed research in The Lancet, all Phd's of course!

http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/publications/smoking.pdf

Sorry about the delay, I've been meaning to respond to this for ages but ended up doing just about everything else instead.

The main difference between the study I posted and the ones you have is that mine was prospective, yours were retrospective. Obviously it would be wrong to say that retrospective studies cannot provide useful information, but they do have a tendency to produce the results the people commissioning them want to provide. There's far less chance of confounding and bias if you take a randomised group of people, study all know associative factors and monitor them over a long period. For starters, the people you're studying tend to tell the truth a lot more - someone who had a child die of cancer is unlikely to want to admit to smoking around them, yet if you ask someone a year into your study "Are you smoking near your child?" the answer is almost always honest. It's also extremely difficult to control for associative effects with a retrospective study - if you monitor from the beginning you can monitor whether the subjects eat 3 burgers every day. If you ask them after the event, it's probably easier to blame the guy in the next office who smokes than it is your own lack of willpower.

A good example is the (REALLY fudging SCARY) law just passed in New Hampshire, I believe. Using a retrospective study, religious nuts were able to 'prove' a link between abortions and breast cancer. Never mind that the moment you start to pass that through the logic filter (even as a layman) it's clearly preposterous. It's now 'proven' and it is now a felony for a doctor in New Hampshire to fail to provide a leaflet to a prospective abortee detailing the 'link' between abortion and breast cancer. Not only that, but it's also a felony for the doctor to hand over the leaflet and then explain why the 'science' in it is shoddy.

Sorry, went waaay OT on that 2nd paragraph, but it's a very good rantexample of how retrospective studies can easily produce the precise results you want them to.