Month: November 1995

In medieval England they used to make accused people carry an iron bar three paces. Depending on how quickly God was said to have intervened to heal it, the accused was set free or hanged. It was called trial by ordeal.

Virtually any system would be better. For example, you could round up 12 people wandering around the street to make a decision. But you probably would not if you were working from from scratch.

The jury system defies what we know from experience. What do we do if we do something difficult, like building a bridge, learning to fly an aeroplane, building a brick wall for a two-storey house, doing surgery and so on? The best results are usually achieved with a gradual build up of theory and practice with the students asking questions as they go … in short, education. Thus surgeons are trained on dead bodies first. Pilots start with simulators and then go up with an instructing co-pilot and so on.
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The phoney election campaign over the past month presents a clear case for fixed-term Parliaments. One of the objections to fixed terms has been that they result in long campaigns because politicians know when the election will be held and start campaigning well in advance. America is cited as an example. But in the past month we have had a de-facto election campaign precisely because we do (ital) not (ital) know the election date.

If we had a fixed three year term, the election date would be know … say, March 16 … and the two parties could have a Bex and good lie down until, say, the beginning of February. There would be no wastage of ammunition in a phoney war.

There is no good reason why the government side should get the advantage of setting the date. Fairness suggests that all contestants should be able to plan with a set date in mind. It might improve government if policies were developed in the knowledge of the election date well-known. The present phoney campaign has resulted in a silly cat-and-mouse game the Government playing on Opposition paranoia of releasing policies too early because they might get subjected to a scare campaign.
Continue reading “1995_11_november_column07nov”

The theme music and credits of Neighbours disappear just before the major evening news bulletin on BBC One hits the air to tell that Diana does not think Charles is fit to be king.

The juxtaposition illustrates the images Britain and Australia have of each other _ Australia as an easy-going open land of sun and Britain as the nation of royalty, history, pomp and circumstance.

It is not the reality, of course, but the stereotypes do hinder business by raising false expectations. The Australian High Commissioner in London, Dr Neal Blewett, says, “”It is easier to operate diplomatically and in business terms if you have got realistic images of each other’s society.”
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Professor Michael Baum is confident that one day a rational, biological treatment for breast cancer will be found. It may be 10 or 15 years away. “”But in the meantime we cannot do nothing,” he says. So he is doing something, but he has come under a lot of irrational resistance.

Baum is on the co-ordinating committee on cancer research and is a professor in the department of surgery at University College Hospital in London.

He is working on a clinical trial of the drug Tamoxifen. And is seeking volunteers. It is different from a lot of medical trials. Rather than seeking people with disease and giving a new treatment to one group and no treatment or conventional treatment to another, this trial is not for people who have been diagnosed with cancer, but rather their sisters, daughters and others in families with high risk factors. The idea is that if the volunteers take Tamoxifen over five or more years it may prevent the onset of cancer. But Tamoxifen can cause cancer of the endometrium (the lining of the uterus).
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