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October 2009
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Recent Posts Saying goodbye to Clive Cussler |
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| Scientist sacked for doing science | 31st October 2009, 12:13 | |
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It's been all over the news for the past few days: Prof David Nutt - the head of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs - told the government some science that it didn't like. It didn't like it from a moral point of view. No, he didn't tell them that creationism was rubbish (although I'm sure some MPs would have wanted him to go if he had), he merely commented on the relative dangers of several drugs. In a nutshell (see what I did there?) he said that cannabis isn't as bad as the government wants us to think. In fact, not as bad as other drugs that the government are happy for us to have (and pay them tax on when we purchase)... tobacco and alcohol. (Note that I use 'we' to be inclusive, not because I personally buy either of those substances). So, he's been sacked, because Alan Johnson (who I quite liked before) "cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and [has] therefore lost confidence in [Nutt's] ability." But I digress in my giving some background - for what I actually want to talk about is Twitter. In particular the effect it has on politics. It's great. It means that the three major political parties in this country can send me little 140 character messages whenever they like. The Conservatives seem to be using it to send me a blow-by-blow account of PMQs every week. The Liberal Democrats use it to send me instructions on how to lobby my MP about climate change. And Labour... well, I've not really noticed any themes there. In particular I want to tie both topics above together by commenting on the following tweet from the Conservatives. Or as we now have to say, from @Conservatives. "Chris Grayling has said the sacking of the Government's chief drug advisor was 'inevitable' following his latest ill-judged comments." "Inevitable" is such a lovely word, but what I particularly like about this tweet is that it is a typical politician's tweet. You can take it either way: a) Chris Grayling believes that scientific advisors shouldn't tell anyone science, and so it was correct (and inevitable) that Prof Nutt should be sacked. b) Chris Grayling believes that once an advisor speaks out against the Labour government, it is inevitable that they will be sacked. Because the government are stupid spinmeisters. So what does Chris Grayling (shadow home secretary) actually think? From Twitter alone, we'll never know. Twitter: politics as it's always been. |
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