Dear Tom Following our meeting at a dinner at the RSA over six years ago I sent you an email (22 February 2007).You replied the same day saying “When I have a moment, I would like to look into this in more detail and so I will follow up on the links you have kindly …
Category Archive: Uncategorized
Sep
14
2010
Risk and Freedom: the record of road safety regulation
Moving house I have discovered 30 copies of this book that I have put on Amazon for £5 – the inducement I need to go to the post office. Below an Amazon review that I quite like. Amazon Review (*****): Risk and Freedom is a book of historic significance. Published in 1985 and out of …
May
05
2009
Swine flu
Letter NOT published in the Guardian. Submitted 30 April. My two favorite commentators on the subject of risk have fallen out. Simon Jenkins (29 April) predicts that swine flu will end up with bird flu and Sars in the category of over-hyped scare that never happened. Ben Goldacre (30 April) says that if Simon turns …
Mar
18
2009
Risco
Risk Now available as Risco in Portuguese. See Deus é Brasileiro? for new preface – in English. Tweet
Feb
03
2009
Vashti revisited
I began my inaugural blog on this website – On becoming Vashti – as follows: “My nomination for the most prescient work of science fiction is The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster.” A recent comment on this posting by a former student, June Gibbons, has prompted a further re-reading of The Machine Stops. With each …
Dec
29
2008
Two old men
John Adams and (even older – positively venerable) Mayer Hillman are looking for a younger enthusiast to carry on a research project that Mayer and Anne Whalley began at the Policy Studies Institute. In 1971, they conducted a survey of English children’s independent mobility – how they got to school, visited friends and so on, …
Apr
08
2008
Making God laugh – part 3
God, I suspect, finds Photoshoppers especially amusing. Grudging thanks to Peter Holtham for spoiling my tutorial. See http://www.cargolaw.com/2005nightmare_catch-day.html for the answers to the questions posed at the end of my last post. Tweet
Jan
07
2008
Probably the best disclaimer in the world
Most risk assessments, warning notices and disclaimers are the legal equivalent of juju charms to ward off lawyers – and probably as effective as the kind that believers wear around their necks. This disclaimer for Nelson Rocks Preserve in West Virginia was sent to me by Paul Winston, editorial director of Business Insurance . It …
Dec
19
2007
Dangerous trees?
Arboricultural Journal 2007, Vol. 30, pp. 95–103 This is the published version of a paper prepared for a conference on The Future of Tree Risk Management, held in London on 15 September 2006. Abstract Britain, in the view of former Prime Minister Blair, is “in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to the risks …
Dec
08
2007
The cost of inaction: why cost-benefit analysis seldom settles arguments
Draft for WHO Workshop, Rome, 13-14 December 2007. The cost of inaction: economic valuation in environment and health. Contemplation of the costs of inaction usually provokes questions about the benefits of inaction, which leads to cost-benefit analysis. Cost-benefit analysis, as a method for settling arguments about action or inaction is enormously seductive. You simply add …
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