Robert Campbell 
I described the first part of my Magical Mystery Tour earlier this year (here). ’The time has come’, as the Walrus might have said, ‘to talk of many things’. Time now for an update on how my journey is evolving; I would say that it’s not so much Magical as very Mystery. Part 1 was written before some more strange detours, though published afterwards. Basically, the oul boiler sprang some sort of leak and was losing pressure, so the loco …
In my first post (here) about Identities in NI I described the rise of a group of Non-Religious people who now form a political sector almost as large as that of Catholics: I suggested that the Non-Religious would vote Alliance. In my second post (here) I showed that while None had been the most preferred party until around 2019, it was replaced by Alliance, particularly in the No Religion group. I also showed that the Non-Religious did not feel themselves …
In my previous post (here), I described the rise of the non-religious in N. Ireland, showing that that there are now three main blocs as defined on a religious basis: And showed how a gradual trend has recently increased: I suggested previously that the rise of the non-religious was paralleled by support for the Alliance party. I’d like to look further into this, again using raw data from the Northern Ireland Life and Times Surveys (here). I entered their data …
I was casually leafing through the British Humanists’ newsletter recently, when this headline caught my eye: Northern Ireland’s Non-religious population surges I read further: The number of non-religious people is on the rise. The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, released in June, reported that 27% of respondents said they had no religion in 2020. This is a massive increase of seven percent in just one year. The latest surge means that the overall figure has more than doubled in …
I’m on a journey, one I’ve never been on before. It’s not exactly a “magical mystery tour”, for I know the destination — the terminus — and while I can guess at some of the intermediate stops, I can’t be certain of them. I imagine I’m in a steam train, a slow train which stops everywhere, though sometimes it might be an express. I don’t know how long this journey will take, though my fare is a single rather than …
You can read part one here… The Conservative Party and Brexit In her Bruges speech on 20 September 1988 Margaret Thatcher said[1]: We have not embarked on the business of throwing back the frontiers of state at home only to see a European superstate getting ready to exercise a new dominance from Brussels. The speech exposed the divisions in the Conservative party between Europhiles and Eurosceptics. The date is conventionally taken as the start of the Brexit process[2]. In a …
Introduction The United Kingdom joined the Common Market (EEC) on 1 January 1973[1]; the prime minister responsible was a Conservative, Edward Heath. Two years later two-thirds of voters agreed with this in a referendum called by a Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson. In 2016, a Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, called a European Union (EU) referendum and narrowly lost. What had happened to the UK and the EU in-between for this to happen[2]? Why did the EEC/EU become such an …
Public Health medicine is the speciality that manages diseases in a population, where a “population” can be the inhabitants of a hamlet, a town or city, or of a country, an island, or a continent. Management includes prevention and treatment strategies. It’s a multi-disciplinary speciality today and includes, amongst others, epidemiologists who study the spread of disease, statisticians and modellers, and those responsible for policy and education. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is an agency of the United Nations and …
What we now call Covid-19 appeared as a new disease in China in late 2019. It rapidly spread worldwide as a pandemic with countries struggling to manage it, and to prevent their health services being overwhelmed while simultaneously keeping their economies functioning. Before considering some of the issues around this, I though that an historical perspective would help to understand how and why “we are where we now are”. Leprosy is one of mankind’s oldest scourges. It’s mentioned in the …
QAnon began with an anonymous poster on 4chan who alleged that they were a government official in the US. The Conspiracy Theory that was described includes a paedophile ring involved in child sex-trafficking, the involvement of government agencies, Democratic politicians, and Hollywood celebrities who are all plotting against President Trump who is fighting them. The plotters, of course, are an elite who really run the world. This built on the earlier Pizzagate Conspiracy Theory with which it is now merged. …
Let’s be very clear about this; conspiracies are real, but Conspiracy Theories are fake, imaginary, and fictitious. (I intend to follow Cassam’s convention, using initial capitals to denote fake Conspiracy Theories, and lower case for real conspiracies.) Conspiracy Theories merge with fake news, alternative facts, and general misinformation. There are also conspiracy allegations, often in relation to specific events; the allegations usually allude to governmental malfeasance. Similar allegations in the past have often been shown to be (largely) correct after …
The recent publication of a Danish study into the efficacy of mask-wearing to prevent the wearer from becoming infected with the coronavirus has become very controversial. Some have suggested that mask-wearing confers no benefit to the wearer. The question of whether “to mask or not to mask” is now a political one. I’m going to look at the Danish study, and Prof Carl Heneghan’s response — the view that he said Facebook had censored (here). The Danish study is here: …
I’m sure you remember 2016. The year of the Brexit referendum, the year when Donald Trump won the presidential election. How well, how accurately, do you remember the campaigns, the slogans? I remember Take Back Control, £350 Million for the NHS, Make America Great Again, Drain the Swamp, and Crooked Hillary, and Lock Her Up. These were all on the winning side; there must have been slogans that the losers used, but they don’t immediately come to mind. What about …
A long established Slugger tradition is the annual posting on Bastille Day of the clip from Casablanca showing the emotional singing of La Marseillaise (here). Perhaps I can start another similar tradition. Today, 1 August, is Swiss National Day and a public holiday, but only if the date falls during the working week. It commemorates the events around the foundation of the country, and the struggle for freedom from the domination of the Holy Roman Empire. There is documentary evidence …
Let me tell you a story. In July 2004 I flew from Belfast to Manchester on a day trip. I was formally dressed in lightweight clothes and carrying a briefcase. On arrival, I was stopped at the security check; the policeman wanted to see my passport. I showed him my Irish one, which made him suspicious. He asked the purpose of my visit, and I told him I had an appointment at the Swiss Consulate; this made him deeply suspicious. …
In early January 2020, Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief Special Adviser, wrote a blog piece in which he advertised for advisers to work in No 10. One of the groupings was for “weirdos” and “misfits”. Andrew Sabisky was appointed. The media trawled through Sabisky’s own blog for his thoughts, finding that he’d said, for example: —There are excellent reasons to think the very real racial differences in intelligence are significantly – even mostly – genetic in origin —One way …
The pseudo in pseudoscience means false, or fake, or deceptively resembling; pseudoscience is fake science. What then is ‘real’ science? You can think of it as knowledge found by observation and experimentation in the natural or physical world. It is is a ‘systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.’ This is done by the scientific method. We are introduced to natural science in school when we study physics, chemistry and biology; geography and geology …
In his 1942 Report, Sir William Beveridge described five Giant Evils, obstacles on the road to post-war reconstruction. These were Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.[1] They were to be tackled by action and legislation on Social Security, Health, Education, Housing and a policy of full employment. At that time, men were seen as the ‘breadwinner’ and women did the housework; this assumption is inherent in Beveridge’s thinking. RA Butler, the President of the Board of Education set up a …
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg was on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show on Monday 2 September; he was taking phone calls. Dr David Nicholl, a consultant neurologist, called to ask what mortality rates could be expected in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Dr Nicholl wrote the relevant mitigation part in the Operation Yellowhammer document. Rees-Mogg has been characterised in the past as having quite exquisite politeness, extreme almost to farce. He wasn’t at all polite to the caller, saying that this was …
In the summer of 1969 Clive Limpkin was a staff photographer on the now defunct Daily Sketch. He’d found the job unrewarding, and was wondering if he wouldn’t be more interested in copywriting, going to J Walter Thompson for an interview. He didn’t take the job because of the meagre salary. He went back to the Sketch, where the picture editor had got wind of his intentions: he said: — Ulster. Apprentice Boys march in Derry on Tuesday. We think the shit …