To all those that think the poor love made a mistake - are you really that
naive?

For chrissakes don't you think she should check out her facts? She has an
army of advisors around her supplying her with info and sound bites.

As for Crazy horse or whatever his stupid name is. I have never had a
problem with people making mistakes and if the said minister for health made
a mistake come out and say so. Trouble was, this was not a mistake it was a
concious ,calculated effort to mislead the general public.

Of course there are problems with the NHS look at the demands placed upon
it an extreme example being that every one enters the country with
HIV -regardless of wheteher they have ever paid tax or NI contributions -
immediatley receives millions of pounds worth of treatment. Deal with the
truth don't use lies and distortions to deflect.

As for posting off topic, well In mitigation the initial post was about the
what is now becoming legend great drought of 2006. I think a look at Philip
Eden's post from march 18th would be apt.

" Let me summarise the points I have tried to make:

1) Rainfall statistics are spun by the water industry with the collusion
of the EA and the MO. We are told that it has been the driest 15
month period for a century (the caveats are there, but rather
hidden away, so it's hardly a surprise that journalists don't see them).
The data are spun in several ways:


a) It's 16 months now, but the analysis was put together before the
end of Feb so that the heavy Feb rainfall in Kent, Surrey and Sussex
was excluded.


b) It's only a very narrow zone, averaging 30km wide, stretching roughly
from Basingstoke to Maidstone, where serious records have been
broken. At one or two sites in this zone 2005 was the driest calendar
year since 1921 (i.e. 85 years ago, not 100). You can always find
one or two sites in a notably dry or wet period which are rather more
extreme, statistically, than the general pattern. Thus, if we concede that
1 or 2 water companies may be seriously affected, the way the data are
presented allows, encourages even, other water companies to jump on
the "we have a shortage" bandwagon.


c) Apart from SE England, 2003 was a drier year than 2005, as were
1997, 1996, 1991 and 1990, so although rainfall has been below
average over most of England and Wales, the shortfall has only been
noteworthy in the southeastern corner. (2004 was actually drier than
2005 over most of northern and western Britain).


d) The present dry spell began in November 2004, so to make the
statistics look more extreme, the water industry analysis compares the
dry spell only to other 15-month periods *beginning in November *.
If you compare it with 15-month periods beginning in *any* month,
1995-97 wins hands down every time. On that occasion below
average rainfall persisted from March 1995 to October 1997 inc,
a period of 32 months, so we've got a long way to go to emulate that.


B) The other aspect of the so-called drought that worries me is
the targeting of domestic users. I am far from up-to-date on these
issues, but I did research the subject back in 1990, in another
"record drought". (It seems that we manage the "worst since
records began" about every 4 or 5 years ...)


The water supplied by the water companies is used up in three
broad ways: by domestic users, by commercial users, and in
leaks from the network. From memory, 16 years ago, the
proportions were something like 60% to industry, etc,
35% to domestic, 15% in leaks (but my memory may be
faulty ... in any case the proportions will have changed since then).
Commercial users are charged more than domestic users, and
some pay much more to ensure an uninterrupted supply. Plugging
leaks is also expensive.


Thus in a time of low rainfall it is more economical for the
water companies to restrict supplies to domestic users. The only
recourse *we* have is to make a fuss, to reject the spun
statistics which are designed to scare us out of our profligacy
(I don't dispute that we are profligate, that metering is sensible,
etc, etc, but it's a cheap, two-faced trick to try to frighten the
general public by cherry-picking the statistics to present an
image of imminent desertification of southern England. They should
face the issue of metering head on, rather than blaming the weather).


No doubt there's a website somewhere that gives up-to-date
statistics w.r.t. commercial/domestic/leakage proportions.


C) Building a million or more new homes in the Southeast is
hardly designed to help.



Philip Eden"











wrote in message
oups.com...

T wrote:
""Lawrence Jenkins" wrote in message
...

snip tiresome polical crap

I thought this was a UK science/weather newsgroup.

alt.politics.british is over there -----

T

Unfortunately, no one is allowed to make a mistake any more, whether in
public office or not. If you do make a mistake then you are hounded,
criticised, persued, sneered at or (if you are driving) gesticulated
at, assaulted and possibly stabbed.

Why? Because there are so many sad individuals who have nothing better
to do than boost their own image of themselves by the continuous
criticisms of others.

It could be argued that I have made a mistake by typing this response -
only time will tell.