Johnadams

Author's details

Date registered: November 30, -0001
URL: http://www.john-adams.co.uk

Latest posts

  1. What is risk? — January 13, 2012
  2. Thinking Streets — January 8, 2012
  3. Reducing zero risk — July 8, 2011
  4. Road Safety: Myth Perpetuation — June 27, 2011
  5. Priorities — May 5, 2011

Most commented posts

  1. Is God trying to tell us something? — 21 comments
  2. The Cream Buns Act — 13 comments
  3. Seat belt legislation and the Isles Report — 9 comments
  4. Bicycle bombs: a threat to Westminster? — 9 comments
  5. Proving a negative and the onus of proof — 9 comments

Author's posts listings

Sep
14
2010

The Nanny State (again)

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In the news this morning is the story of 7 year old Isabelle allowed by her parents to walk 20 metres from her front door to catch the school bus.  Nanny, in the form of Lincolnshire County Council, discovered this case of parental neglect and threatened the parents with a child protection order. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-11295617 and …

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Aug
31
2010

The pursuit of resilience

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Resilience is a relative quality. There are no units by which it can be measured, but some have more of it than others. The ability to prevent bad things happening, and to mitigate their consequences and speed recovery when they do, is not equitably distributed. (full essay here) Tweet

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Jul
02
2010

The Cream Buns Act

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Mrs Thatcher had a minister, Neil Hamilton, responsible for deregulation. Under Labour a similar agenda was pursued by the Better Regulation Task Force. That morphed into the Better Regulation Commission and then into the Better Regulation Advisory Council and, finally, into a whole Department of State in the form of BERR – the Department for …

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Jun
09
2010

Should we ever take risks just to build resilience?

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This question was put ot me by an interesting website – Science and Religion Today . Not my usual stomping ground but, having reassured myself that they were defenders of Darwin, I decided they deserved an answer. Here it is: The pursuit of resilience involves risk management. The figure below describes the essence of this …

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Jun
09
2010

Letter not published in New Scientist

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In your special (21 May) report on denial you speak of “climate deniers”. This is a curious term  (who denies the existence of climate?) that appears to be deployed to smear reputable scientists who react sceptically to the “hockey stick” peddled by Sir John Houghton and  the IPCC. You (Jim Giles page 42) ride to …

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Jun
09
2010

Not published in the Guardian

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On 3 June Simon Jenkins published a devastating critique of  the “security industry’s” promotion and exploitation of paranoia to expand its domain. It prompted the letter below, sadly not published. So I submitted it to my blog where it was accepted with alacrity. Sir, Simon Jenkins (Not every adult is a paedophile, a terrorist or …

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Mar
02
2010

Theologian quoted out of context?

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In my last blog I noted that Benny Peiser and Sir John Houghton were having an argument in The Observer about something regarding man-made global warming that Sir John might, or might not, have said. To recap, Peiser had quoted Sir John as saying “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen”. Sir John, in …

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Feb
15
2010

Is God trying to tell us something?

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Sir John Houghton thinks so. Former director of the Met Office, former chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and former co-chair of the International Commission on Climate Change he is an influential voice in the global warming debate. He is currently demanding, in a letter to the Observer, an apology from Benny Peiser, …

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21 comments

Jan
27
2010

Bicycle bombs and the fourth policeman: the Freedom of Information Act

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Faithful followers of this website may recollect an earlier blog, “Bicycle bombs: a further enquiry and a new theory”, in which I called attention to the fact that, despite the absence of evidence that anyone-anywhere-ever had been killed by a pipe bomb disguised as a bicycle, Westminster police were impounding bicycles parked near Whitehall and Parliament …

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5 comments

Nov
05
2009

Seat belts: another look at the data

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I am grateful for a question posted today by Carsten Jasner in response to an earlier post of mine – Seat belts again. It has prompted another look at the data: “Very interesting! But when the number of car occupant deaths increases while the number of all road user deaths decreases – how can the …

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