When I go into any shop, I rarely buy anything on impulse. I go in to buy what I wanted. However, I can’t be typical. Shops spend a lot of time and effort making attractive displays to entice customers into buying things they didn’t know they needed, and they wouldn’t bother if it had no [...]
The BBC today reports on the diets of centenarians, with the implication that following a similar diet might help other people to live past 100. To be fair on the BBC, they do give the article some balance by giving the opinions of a nutritionist. Yet there is no mention of statistics or probability.
When people [...]
This week has seen the disgraceful case of a woman, Linda Buchanan, being pushed onto a railway line by two young men, apparently after she had reminded them that smoking isn’t allowed on stations. Interviews the following day give a slightly different version of events, suggesting that Mrs Buchanan had spoken to them about smoking [...]
Today it was proposed that smokers should have to buy an annual permit if they want to be able to buy cigarettes. The proposal, by government advisory board Health England, is that smokers would have to choose to “opt in” to buying tobacco by paying £10 a year for a permit. The permit would have [...]
It is now three months since smoking was banned in enclosed public places in England, bringing it into line with the rest of the UK. I have to say that, while Tony Blair’s government have been unpopular on some issues, and have been criticised for producing too much legislation, the Health Act 2006 is one [...]
It is an unglamorous town in the south of England known for its rail junction, power station and nuclear research laboratory but today, Didcot in Oxfordshire enjoys a new and enviable reputation – as the place whose residents enjoy the longest, healthiest lives in England and Wales.
Read the whole story in the Daily Telegraph.
One thing [...]
Occasionally, I’ll see something in an article on the BBC News website that seems wrong, so I drop them a note via their contact form to point it out. They are actually quite good at correcting factual errors, although they seem not to write back to thank the the people who pointed them out. The [...]
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