Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Overall crime in England and Wales fell by 15% in 2013, official figures show.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales reported 7.5 million crimes against households and adults in that year, the lowest level since it began in 1981.

Did removing lead from petrol spark a decline in crime?

Many Western nations have experienced significant declines in crime in recent decades, but could the removal of lead from petrol explain that?

Working away in his laboratory in 1921, Thomas Midgley wanted to fuel a brighter tomorrow. He created tetraethyl lead - a compound that would make car engines more efficient than ever.

But did the lead that we added to our petrol do something so much worse? Was it the cause of a decades-long crime wave that is only now abating as the poisonous element is removed from our environment?

For most of the 20th Century crime rose and rose and rose. Every time a new home secretary took office in the UK - or their equivalents in justice and interior ministries elsewhere - officials would show them graphs and mumble apologetically that there was nothing they could do to stop crime rising.

Then, about 20 years ago, the trend reversed - and all the broad measures of key crimes have been falling ever since. Offending has fallen in nations whose governments have implemented completely different policies to their neighbours.

If your nation locks up more criminals than the average, crime has fallen. If it locks up fewer... crime has fallen. Nobody seems to know for sure why. But there are some people that believe the removal of lead from petrol was a key factor.

Stop the English badger cull
Yesterday at 14:17 ·
"The battle over the findings of the Independent Experts’ Panel into the pilot badger culls has taken an increasingly bitter turn in recent days, with the British Veterinary Association threatening to withdraw support for the culls."
Read more: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/British-Veterinary-Association-calls-Defra/story-20994031-detail/story.html

farmers

The Economist has launched daily morning podcast In Other Words.  In Other Words provides listeners access to The Economist’s blogs, posts and interviews within a listening format.

farmers who suffer

In February 1986, British transport secretary Nicholas Ridley sought to reassure concerned lawmakers, saying: "Will rabies come? Will the Russians invade along the tunnel? Should Britain remain an island? I sympathise with these emotional arguments but I do not believe that they are rational."

Some members of parliament called for all carriages to be sealed to prevent unscrupulous travellers dumping their rubbish, attracting foxes and other pests.

In fact, a wild rabid animal was found on a beach in southern England in 1996, the first trace of rabies in the country since 1922. But vets revealed that the offending creature, a Daubenton's bat - an insectivore very common in France - was carrying a virus not transmissible to dogs, horses, foxes or other mammals. Most importantly, it had taken the aerial route across the Channel.

John Noulton, communications director of Eurotunnel, also sought to reassure claustrophobic critics that, although the tunnel was definitely dark, the train journey would be no worse than travelling on "a wide-body jet during the night".

Today, Eurotunnel supporters quote playwright William Shakespeare to describe the scare-stories as "much ado about nothing". In October 2012, the year of the London Olympics, Eurotunnel celebrated its 300 millionth passenger.

RELIGIOUS belief is usually a no-go area for British prime ministers. As Tony Blair's media advisor Alastair Campbell once put it: "we don't do God".

The current occupant of No. 10 seems to have decided otherwise. In widely reported comments made over Easter, David Cameron said that people in the UK should be "more evangelical" and "more confident about our status as a Christian country".

That provoked a chorus of dissent – some of it, rather unexpectedly, from the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Describing the UK as a "post-Christian country", Rowan Williams said that the era of widespread worship was over.

I am traditionally Presbyterian Protestant nut

Quote from: rjhowie on 2014-05-08, 22:52:54

I am traditionally Presbyterian Protestant nut

Who am I to argue.

Australia bans reporting of multi-nation corruption case involving Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam
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