I’ve always been a bit cynical about statistics. You may have noticed this. And today this cynicism became fully justified with the headline: “97% of all drug trials back the firm that paid for them”.

But who paid for THAT research? Someone must have paid the boffins at Stanford to test the test results. In which case there was bias. There’s always bias. You start with a question. Or a hypothesis, and that’s where you’re headed. Though in the case of drug tests, it is apparently perfectly legal to just leave out results you don’t like. Ignore negative, or non-corroborative data. Which is what happened when our government bought 500 million quid’s worth of Tamiflu vaccine the other year only to find it didn’t work.

Doctors prescribe drugs on the basis of these comparative test results, so people are basically getting the wrong drugs as a consequence. I can understand that if you’re Glaxo and just spent billions developing a new drug you’d be rather keen to sell a few packets. But really…

Parliament is crumbling.

Not the government, though they’re not looking too pretty either, but the building. The Palace of Westminster. The Houses of Parliament. They haven’t been repaired since the war when bombing damage was put right. And the buildings are full of asbestos, the stonework is rotten, as are the electrics and plumbing. To put it all right will cost £7billion.

Which is a lot of money, in these times of ‘austerity’. You could keep 3 banks afloat for less. But its reached a point where its becoming dangerous. People could get hurt. And not necessarily the people I’d be really happy to see get hurt. And the work will take 2 years.

I think that in the interests of economy and prudence they should just move parliament out of Westminster altogether. You could get a nice warehouse up in Stevenage for about half a mil, put a few chairs in it and make do nicely. ‘Black Rod’ couldn’t really knock on the door as he usually does, instead he’d have a remote and simply have the shutters lift electronically for the ‘opening of Parliament’. And to avoid David Cameron getting caught up in the terrible train service every day he could move from 10 Downing St to 10 Magnolia Drive, on a nice little estate round the corner from New Parliament. Well, when I say ‘nice estate’, I mean nice for Stevenage.

Then the developers could get their hands on the Westminster site, flog it off and put billions back into the national coffers which could go to Greece to help them meet their payments. The Houses of Parliament could become a housing development with a Westfield Centre and a really nice car park, which is desperately needed in the area. And Big Ben could be sold to the Americans, they love that kind of shit.

Happy Friday

A xxxx