Travels of a Fish Nut

I’m a massive fan of The West Wing . It’s fair to say it’s what got me interested in politics and I still regularly get out the DVDs and watch a few episodes. In the final series, CJ Cregg, Chief of Staff, gets offered a job.

I have to admit, I haven’t paid much attention to the news on the Ebola outbreak in western Africa. It feels a long way away and I’ve had a lot going on closer to home which has meant my ability to, well, to put it bluntly, to care, has been limited. But last week I went to a talk by a doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders or MSF) which began to change that. I was invited by a friend and knew nothing in advance, but given the nature of the topic I was expecting a dry, statistics-filled talk. What we got was very different. The talk was by Dr Gabriel Fitzpatrick, Chairperson of MSF Ireland and it was a very much more personal and intimate talk than I anticipated. He had been working the previous month in Sierra Leone and described the work being done by doctors on the ground. It found it really interesting and thought there might be others who would also find it interesting.

Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, made a speech today. The Telegraph had the scoop, and what they report suggests that Mr Smith has gone insane. The BBC article after the speech does little to change my mind.  The Telegraph reports that he believes that, ‘[t]he economy will never fully recover unless families on benefits return to work’

Mark Harper may or may not be a name your familiar with. If you have heard of him, it’s probably due to his resignation in February of this year following the discovery that his cleaner was an illegal immigrant. This would be embarrassing for any MP, but excruciating for the Minister of State for Immigration, famed for his tough stance on illegal immigrants, which culminated in his ill-fated “ In the UK Illegally? Go Home or Face Arrest ” vans which were scrapped almost immediately after causing massive controversy and failing in their aims.

This is another long post with a lot of complicated words. I'm sorry about that, but this will hopefully be the last post like this for a while. In the next one we'll start looking at the different types of animals.  What is natural selection? Here’s an experiment for you to try. It will take both of you and your mum to watch and time you (and maybe help with the maths).

A couple of months ago I wrote about the government's announcement regarding the Disabled Student's allowance, or DSA. I was horrified at the changes, which were not so much modifications as a massive gutting of the funding provided to disabled students. I was particularly incensed over their plans to stop funding laptops for disabled students, plans which were 'supported' through the use of what can only be described as dodgy statistics; statistics that look supportive at first glance but are actually completely irrelevant.

Evolution is a simple concept when explained well (which I hope I will be able to do!) but in order to fully understand it I need to explain a few things about cell biology. I will make this as brief and simple as possible because it’s not our focus at the moment (though if I am able to keep up these posts it will be at a later date) but it involves some complicated words and ideas which I can't really avoid so apologies in advance.

What is biology? Biology is the study of living things. Living things include animals, plants, bacteria and possibly viruses. Rather than having to write that every time, we use the word " organism " to mean all those different types of living things.

These posts are primarily for Dan and Sophie to teach them some biology though if they get a wider audience then that's great.  Dan and Sophie, I'm going to try and write in the form of questions and answers so that your mum can ask you the questions and you can try and answer them before you hear my answers. You won't be able to answer all of them but I thought it would help you to think about things if I wrote like this rather than just making a lot of essays for you to read. If you have questions you can either put them in the comments or email them to me and I'll reply as best I can. If I'm not being clear or it's too complicated please let me know. Equally, if I'm telling you things you already know tell me and I'll make it more interesting. What I thought I'd do is write a couple of introductory posts about biology and evolution and then I want to tell you about the different types of animals that are alive today. Starting with sponges, j...

Has human evolution been influenced by our tendency to fight? If you’ve read the science headlines in recent days you would be forgiven for thinking so. Headlines such as “ The human face developed over 5m years of fisticuffs, scientists claim ” and “ Male faces 'buttressed against punches' by evolution ” have been proclaiming to the world that violence has literally shaped the evolution of our faces. But has it really?

I seem to have stopped posting as suddenly as I’d restarted. I went on holiday to Budapest for a long weekend which was amazing and much needed., and life’s been taking up my time in between. But I’m back, for now, and I want to talk about something that’s political but also personal to each and every one of us. Be aware, I’m talking about death and dying.

Yesterday saw the Department for Work and Pensions rolling out their latest attempt to get the long-term unemployed back to work. The new scheme, called “ Help to Work ”, is supposed to provide extra support to those who have been out of work for more than two years. Esther McVey, speaking on the Today programme on morning of the scheme’s start, said: “This is significant extra support, it's about helping people into work . . . It is absolutely not about punishment . . . This is costing money. We are supporting people, we are getting people who know as much as they possibly can . . . helping people into work, that's what they do every day, help people into work and we're putting more support for more people to help them get into work and benefit from our long-term economic plan."  [ Source , starting around 1h 40]  Unlike many government schemes, this one has been scientifically tested for efficacy. Ms McVey even used the study as evidence that the scheme...

In a few weeks’ time voters around the UK will go to the polls to vote for the MEPs they wish to represent them in the European Parliament for the next 5 years. Despite the highly publicised debates between Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg , voters still seem unclear exactly what they’re voting for. A poll taken a couple of weeks after the second debate showed a level of apathy among voters that hasn’t been seen since the Police and Crime Commissioner elections . Only 16% knew when the elections are being held, and only 7% could name any of their MEPs or even knew how many MEPs the UK currently has. I can’t criticise because I didn’t know any better so I thought it about time I educate myself and maybe do my part to help improve these figures by explaining a bit about the European Parliament and the voting process.

UKIP are a strange beast. They seem to court scandal, whether it’s over expenses , claims of sexism and racism , or renouncing their own manifesto and even their own members . Yet despite all this they are on a roll, having regularly trounced the LibDems in polls for almost a year. In the recent debates over the place of the UK in the European Union the consensus was that Farage won , despite (or maybe because) it seemed to be more about the personalities of the two debaters than any arguments they presented.

I know that the revitalised blog has been heavy on the politics and light on the science and pretty pictures that characterised its previous incarnation. I'm still writing about science, it's just that it's being published on my department's blog, EcoEvo@TCD . It's one of the reasons this blog has lain dormant for so long as my desire to write had been largely satiated by posting there. I'll try and remember to link to my posts there when they come up, but in the meantime here's links to the posts from this year. I'll post older ones at a later date when I'm feeling self-indulgent. Hopefully one or two will be of interest. Killing in the Name of Science (Part 1): The Science of Scientific Whaling The one where I dissect (pardon the pun) a paper on scientific whaling and [spoiler alert] show it to have nothing of scientific merit. Killing in the Name of Science (Part 2): What About the Bunnies?  The one where I look at the legislation covering...

I recently had a health scare. I had 'flu which left me bed-ridden for a week. Just when I thought I was on the mend I developed a chest infection which resulted in me collapsing in the street unable to breath and being taken to hospital. It was one of the scariest moments of my life (which tells you how uneventful my life has been!). I was in a strange hospital, not knowing what was wrong with me, how long I'd be there, and, for the first time in my life, wondering how much it was going to cost me. . .

A former advisor of Tony Blair, Peter Hyman, has made headlines this week following an interview in the Times Educational Supplement. In it he bemoaned the falling standards of the youth of today, complaining that they were monosyllabic and lacking in eloquence. It seems he had some good points to make, complaining about the decision by Ofqual to remove speaking and listening from the GCSE English exam and highlighting how important it is to be able to express yourself clearly. Yet these points were overshadowed by his expression of frustration with the youth of today. It's hard to know without reading the actual interview (I can't find it online but will keep looking) exactly where his priorities lay but the articles reporting the interview have taken and run with his implied complaint that standards are falling. Standards are not falling.

I was never particularly interested in politics, it just wasn't a big thing in our house. As a teenager I think I leaned slightly to the left though I'd never have been able to explain why. It's embarrassing to admit, but it wasn't even British politics that I first became interested in, it was American. I became a fan of The West Wing and it was through Josh and Toby and CJ that I learned about the political process. I know the show was idealised (certainly no real life Republican seems as accommodating and rational as those on the show) but I was hooked. I watched the results of the Bush/Gore election and a few years later I saw Stephen Colbert do what no political analyst or journalist seemed capable of doing and take Bush to task for the failure of his presidency. US politics was incredibly interesting and incredibly important. They were the world's last superpower and what they did affected everyone. The UK political scene paled in comparison.

A couple of days ago the Rt Hon. David Willetts MP (Minister for Universities and Science) announced his changes to the Disabled Students’ Allowance. The DSA is a grant given to disabled students to help cover costs that arise as a direct result of their disability. It's an excellent scheme and for many it can, and has, make the difference between success and failure. These 'changes', more accurately termed 'cuts', are far-reaching and devastating. 

I've been away from this blog for a long time and it's strange to think about what's driven me back to it. It's not exciting adventures or silly mishaps or even cool fish. It's the government. Before I get going I should say I will be trying, if I can get momentum, to post more here and those posts will be better sourced than this one which is going to have no links, no references, nothing but the words that I need to get out right now. I hate this government. This government is destroying our country and everything that made it great. They're destroying the NHS by stealth. Privatising small portions so we won't notice until, like an infection, it's spread so far that removing it would kill the whole thing. They're destroying our schools. Allowing academies to flourish while cutting funding to local authorities and forcing struggling schools to be converted, whether the students, staff or parents want it or not. These academies don't have t...