Noticed whilst on holiday..

Here

Nothing to add really.

NIMBYs Of The Week

Nominated by Steven L.

From Chronicle Live:

Up to 120 residents at Morpeth came out to show their opposition to plans for 280 new homes, a hotel, restaurant and road side services on the edge of the town.

The demonstration took place ahead of a meeting at which town councillors agreed to object to the application, on the basis that the site is outside Morpeth’s settlement boundary and has not been identified for development in a number of plans.

Irene Jones, a member of the Morpeth Northern Residents Action Group which organised the protest, said turnout had been “tremendous… I think it was a show of support for the neighbourhood plan because this development is obviously outside the neighbourhood plan, they do not want to see a commercial area outside the established town.

“They do not want to see a severe impact visually because it is outside the settlement boundary. There is the potential for severe environmental impact both for people and wildlife. She added there is concern over how services including schools would cope."

The development, on a 36-hectare site west of Lancaster Park close to the A1 and north west of Morpeth, would also include a new countryside park.

Back of a fag packet statistics - how it should be done.

Proglodyte in the comments to If you're going to make up statistics, at least make up laudable ones:

Comparing Greece, Finland and UK -

Similar life expectancy: c.81

Cigarettes smoked/adult/pa
Greece: 2,995
UK: 750
Finland 671

Alzheimer's/Dementia death rates

Greece: 1.8/100,000
UK: 17.1/100,000
Finland 34.9/100,000

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/alzheimers-dementia/by-country/

If you're going to make up statistics, at least make up plausible ones, you twats...

From The Guardian:

From 2003-13 – a decade which saw the introduction of a ban on smoking in public places and a rise in cigarette prices – the proportion of all deaths in the 35+ age group estimated to be caused by smoking fell from 19% to 17%...

Fewer than one in five people over 16 smoked in 2013, the lowest proportion since recording started in the 1940s. More than a quarter smoked in 2003...

So if just under a fifth of all adults smoke, and just under a fifth die from smoking, that means that all smokers die from smoking, yes?

Nope:

The British Heart Foundation said tobacco products still killed about half the people who used them and doubled a person’s chance of having a heart attack or stroke.

Unlike non-smokers, who live forever, presumably, placing absolutely zero cost on the social security system or the NHS or anything whatsoever.

Moving on:

The number of prescriptions for treating smoking dependency dropped from a peak of 2.6m in 2010-11 to 1.8m in 2013-14. Cheeseman [policy director at Ash] recognised rising use of e-cigarettes might be a factor, but said people who found quitting smoking most difficult would benefit from properly structured, evidence-based support from the NHS.

When a lot (i.e. all) of the evidence shows that smokers who start vaping tend to smoke a lot less - which is the whole bloody point of vaping - and very, very few non-smokers start vaping.

Mike Hobday [The British Heart Foundation's] director of policy, said: “These figures show current strategies to help people quit smoking aren’t going far enough... The government urgently needs a new strategy to help people stop smoking. With tobacco companies continually raising their prices...

Cigarette prices are dictated largely by the amount of duty on them; the cost net of taxes is around 50p wherever you go in Europe.

... this needs to include an annual levy on these companies to fund tobacco control and stop smoking services to help support people to quit.”

Actual tobacco company profits are a few per cent of the total tax already imposed on a packet of cigarettes.

Chris Woodhall, senior policy adviser at Cancer Research UK, said: “We want to see a tobacco-free country within the next 20 years – where fewer than five per cent of adults smoke. Falling smoking rates among adults and children show that we’re moving in the right direction, but we must do more to realise this ambitious public health goal.”

Tobacco free = fewer than five per cent smoke?

FFS.

National Spelling Bee ends in a tie for the second year...

... as boy, 14, and girl, 13, spell tongue twisters 'scherenschnitte' and 'nunatak' with ease.

??? There are three e's in "scherenschnitte" but none in "nunatak".

Gokul Venkatachalam, 14, of Missouri and Vanya Shivashankar, 13, of Kansas tied as winners of the national spelling bee on Thursday

I assume that those kids got plenty of spelling practice learning to write their own names correctly. Having mastered that, everything else was a doddle.

The Guardian at its unbiased best.

From Comment Is Free:

The problem with referendums is that they can go horribly wrong.

Ten years ago to the day, on 29 May 2005, France held a referendum over whether it should ratify the proposed European constitution. Opinion polls had predicted an overwhelming victory for the yes camp (some expecting the vote for yes to be as high as 65%).

Yet the outcome was a resounding 55% in favour of no. The outcome effectively stymied plans for a single European constitution. Jacques Chirac, then president, had massively overplayed his hand.

How can a referendum possibly 'go wrong', provided the pro's and con's of something are explained to the electorate fairly and in an even handed manner? Not that they ever are of course, it will be hysterical unfounded gibberish from both sides and referendums are usually rigged anyway.

It's like asking somebody what they'd like to drink/where they'd like to go on holiday/what their favourite colour is, and then when they reply, following up with "Are you sure?" or even worse, telling them "No you don't."

"BBC uncovers 'aggressive' tax avoidance scheme"

From the BBC:

Anderson Group, one of the recruitment industry's most high-profile companies, is promoting an "aggressive" tax avoidance scheme which experts are calling "abusive".

The scheme was once expelled from school for stealing lunch money off younger children, has since been found guilty of a string of petty thefts and is currently trying to mug the government's Employment Allowance.

The scheme has cornered the Treasury in a dark alley and is demanding tens of millions of pounds of National Insurance refunds.

Anderson Group says that all of its services are fully compliant with UK tax laws. It says it is "totally incorrect" to say that Anderson Group is promoting the scheme and says the product arrived at its offices one day and "made it an offer it couldn't refuse".

When invited to comment, the scheme punched our reporter in the face and left abusive comments on his Facebook page.

We're all going to die.

Leg Iron takes a critical look at one such announcement.

Here's the other:

Fruit snacks 'contain more sugar than sweets'

Great! Then people who skip their 'five-a-day' and eat sweets will stay slim.

Daily Mail on Top Form

From the Daily Mail

A former general secretary of the Cayman Islands Football Association.

The 58-year-old is an advisor to the CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb and is a former CIFA general secretary.

The U.S. Department of Justice lists his nationality as United Kingdom and he is understood to have studied at Imperial College in London in 1970s.

He and his wife own a £500,000 home near Turnpike Lane tube station in North London.

Reader's letter of the day - Evening Standard 26/5/2015