Panicology
Page 31
5. ‘It’s worth the wait’, Sunday Times, 4 June 2006.
6. ‘Forget Bridget Jones – meet Brad’, www.bbc.co.uk, 9 November 2004.
SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND?
1. BRG Consult at www.consultgb.com.
2. www.durex.com/cm/gss2005results.asp.
3. ‘Much more sex please… we’re British’, Guardian, 18 August 2004. Other variants on the title of the theatrical farce No Sex Please, We’re British include the mutually contradictory ‘No quick sex please, we’re British’ and ‘No sex please, we’re busy’.
4. Guardian, 15 August 2006.
5. Anne M. Johnson et al., ‘Sexual behaviour in Britain: partnerships, practices, and HIV risk behaviours’, Lancet 358 (1 December 2001), pp. 1835–42; Kaye Wellings et al., ‘Sexual behaviour in Britain: early heterosexual experience’, Lancet 358 (1 December 2001), pp. 1843–54.
6. Kaye Wellings et al., ‘Sexual behaviour in context: a global perspective’, Lancet 368 (11 November 2006), pp. 1706–28.
Chapter 2. Health
THE FAT THING
1. ‘Overweight and obesity: defining overweight and obesity’, www.cdc.gov, October 2006.
2. ‘Overweight and obesity: home’, www.cdc.gov, October 2006.
3. ‘Quality and outcomes framework guidance: obesity’, www.bma.org.uk, February 2006.
4. Independent, 22 April 2006.
CURRYING FLAVOUR
1. ‘Is your curry killing you?’, Sun, 2 February 2006. ‘Chinese food can kill you’ is a similar example from the Daily Star, 21 June 2001.
2. Hervé This, Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 94.
3. www.salt.gov.uk/salt_myths.html.
4. Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (London: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 545.
5. www.smartmobs.co/archive/2006/07/07/qr_code_hyper.html.
6. Joanna Blythman, Bad Food Britain (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), p. 172.
7. ‘Salt debate leaves bitter taste’, www.foodproductiondaily.com/redirect.asp?idc=13228, 23 March 2006.
8. Joanna Blythman, The Food We Eat (London: Michael Joseph, 1996), p. 258.
9. www.italkali.com/english/home.htm.
10. www.salt.gov.uk/salt_myths.html.
A DEAD DUCK
1. Mike Davis, The Monster at Our Door (New York: New Press, 2005), p. 5.
2. www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/country/cases_table_2007_10_08/en/index.html.
3. Davis, op. cit., pp. 76, 8.
4. Quoted in ibid., p. 125.
5. Quoted in David Boyle, The Tyranny of Numbers: Why Counting Can’t Make us Happy (London: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 80.
IT’S AMAZING WHAT THEY CAN DO
1. Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 256.
2. www.bbc.co.uk, 26 February 2004.
3. www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=1067&Pos=1&ColRank=208.
4. Geoffrey Cannon, Superbug (London: Virgin, 1995), p. xxii.
5. Garrett, op. cit., p. 248.
6. Garrett, op. cit., p. 258.
7. www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_az/staphylo/staphylo_FAQ.htm.
8. Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk (London: Earthscan, 2000) p. 92.
COMPLETING THE COURSE
1. www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_az/Vaccination/cover.htm.
2. A. J. Wakefield et al., ‘Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperphasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children’, Lancet 351 (28 February 1998), pp. 637–41.
3. www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004407.html.
4. For measles cases see www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_az/measles/data_mmr_confirmed.htm and MMR uptake see www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_az/cover/vaccine_uptake_data.htm
5. Committee on Safety of Medicines, Report of the Working Party on MMR Vaccine, 1999.
6. Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, Panic Nation (London: John Blake Publishing, 2005), p. 109.
Chapter 3. Passing the Time
ART IS DANGEROUS
1. L.A. Life, 8 October 1992.
CHEERS!
1. ‘The unbearable lightness of being English’, New Zealand Listener, 15 January 2005.
2. www.icap.org.
3. ‘London women are shameless drunks’, Daily Mail, 30 April 2003.
4. ‘Quarter of children so drunk they have passed out’, Daily Express, 17 November 2005.
5. ‘Alcohol in Europe: a public health perspective’, www.ias.org.uk, 1 June 2007.
6. Ibid.
7. ‘The not-quite-so-grim neurology of teenage drinking’, www.stats.org, 7 July 2006.
8. ‘Who is minding the internet liquor store?’ NBC News, 9 August 2006.
9. ‘Selling alcohol online survey snares NBC’, www.stats.org, 16 August 2006.
10. ‘Drink data to show disorder fall’, Financial Times, 6 February 2006.
11. ‘Fewer men exceeding benchmarks’, www.statistics.gov.uk, 28 November 2006.
THE DEATH OF CINEMA
1. Paulo Cherchi Usai, The Death of Cinema: History, Cultural Memory and the Digital Dark Age (London: British Film Institute, 2001).
2. ‘The decline in average weekly cinema attendance: 1930 to 2000’, Issues in Political Economy, 2002, vol. 11.
COLLECTORS’ AGONY
1. Kevin Hayes and Ailish Hannigan, ‘Trading coupons’, Significance, magazine of the Royal Statistical Society (Blackwell Publishing, September 2006), pp. 142–4.
Chapter 4. Social Policy
GOLDEN OLDIES’ TIME BOMB
1. ‘Pensions crisis is much worse than firms say’, Scotland on Sunday, 19 November 2006.
2. Europe Pensions Barometer 2006, AON Consulting, www.aon.co.uk, January 2007.
3. ‘Brown’s raid on pensions’, Daily Telegraph, 16 October 2006.
4. ‘The Whitehall pensions’, Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2006.
5. ‘The new pension crisis’, Wall Street Journal, 18 August 2006.
NEVER NEVER FINANCES
1. FSA Financial Risk Outlook, www.fsa.gov.uk, 25 January 2006.
2. ‘The iPod generation’, Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2006.
3. OECD Economic Outlook no. 80, www.oecd.org, 28 November 2006.
4. ‘Graduates fear debt more than terrorism’, USA Today, 18 May 2005.
5. ‘Money sickness syndrome’, www.axa.co.uk, 20 January 2006.
6. OECD Economic Outlook, op. cit.
THE HOUSING BUBBLE
1. ‘Global house prices are still rising’, Financial Times, 30 December 2006.
2. ‘No let-up in £45-a-day property price boom’, Daily Express, 21 December 2006.
3. ‘International Housing Affordability Survey’, Demographia, 2006.
4. ‘£1.1 billion worth of mortgages’, Daily Mail, 5 January 2007.
5. ‘The UK house-price-bubble illusion’, www.housingoutlook.
6. ‘Pay no attention’, Financial Times, 7 November 2006.
MIGRANT INVASION
1. ‘Environmental migration’, Optimum Population Trust, 2 November 2006.
2. ‘International migration outlook’, 2007, OECD.
3. Ibid.
4. ‘Foreign labour in the UK’, Labour Market Trends (ONS, October 2006).
5. Simon Briscoe, Britain in Numbers (London: Politico’s, 2005).
LOSING CONTROL OF YOUR VEHICLE
1. www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=618&Pos=1&ColRank=1&Rank=272.
2. Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk (London: Earthscan, 2000), p. 140.
3. www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casualtiesgbar/roadcasualtiesgreatbritain2005.
4. www.rotor.com.
5. Slovic, op. cit., p. 26.
6. Cited in Simon Briscoe, Britain in Numbers (London: Politico’s, 2005), p. 193.
7. Previous data may be found on www.num
berwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm.
8. www.swov.nl (1998 figure).
DEATH BY PHONE
1. The Register, 1 December 2003, www.theregister.co.uk.
2. ‘Association between cellular telephone calls and motor-vehicle collisions’, New England Journal of Medicine, 13 February 1997.
3. www.bbc.co.uk, 22 March 2002.
4. Daily Mail, 4 November 2005.
5. ‘Mobile phones and driving’, www.dft.gov.uk.
6. ‘Cost effectiveness of regulations against using a cellular telephone while driving’, Medical Decision Making 19(1) (1999).
Chapter 5. The Workplace
NO WORK OR LOW PAY
1. ‘Don’t discount the positive side of globalization’, Toronto Star, 31 December 2006.
2. ‘And now for a word about globalization’, Arizona Republic, 9 November 2006.
3. ‘Profits of doom’, Financial Times, 14 October 2006.
4. ‘Economic challenges facing the middle class’, Congressional testimony, 31 January 2007.
UNDERPAID WOMEN
1. ‘Memo to John Roberts’, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, September 2005.
2. ‘The gender pay gap’, Centrepiece, summer 2006.
3. www.amicustheunion.org/default.aspx?page=2299, 22 January 2007.
4. ‘Just pay’, 2001, and ‘Britain’s competitive edge’, 2004, www.eoc.org.uk.
5. ‘Scant progress on closing gap in women’s pay’, New York Times, 24 December 2006.
6. ‘Equal pay reviews survey 2004’, EOC working paper no. 32 (spring 2005).
7. ‘Women suffer pay gap’, Daily Mail, 17 January 2006.
8. ‘A third of women banking on men’, Metro, 11 July 2006.
9. ‘Rise of the women who earn more than their men’, Daily Mail, 15 November 2006.
10. ‘Progress on gender pay gap stalled’, Fawcett Society, 21 October 2006.
11. ‘30 years on’, Fawcett Society, 7 November 2005.
12. ‘Shaping a fairer future’, Prosser Report, Women and Work Commission, February 2006.
IT’S ALL TOO MUCH
1. ‘Seven million Brits are making themselves ill with worry’, www.bupa.co.uk/about/html/pr/150206worriedbritons.html, 15 February 2006.
2. ‘High-stress lifestyle leaves millions lost’, www.hbosplc.com, 22 November 2004.
3. ‘The age of rage’, Sunday Times, 16 July 2006.
4. ‘Stress is more damaging than obesity’, www.sec-ed.co.uk, 25 November 2004.
5. ‘Teacher sick-days stress linked’, www.bbc.co.uk, 13 December 2004.
6. ‘Call centres under pressure’, www.channel4.com, April 2005.
7. http://ki.se, 9 October 2006.
8. ‘Work related ill-health affects 2 million’, Financial Times, 4 August 2006.
9. ‘Stress and coronary heart disease’, National Heart Foundation of Australia, www.mja.com, 17 March 2003.
10. ‘A health warning for older armchair fans’, Financial Times, 30 June 2006.
11. Civil Aviation Authority survey, www.cnn.com, 8 August 2006.
12. ‘In the driver’s seat’, Auto Vantage, 16 May 2006.
13. ‘Is teaching the most stressful job?’, www.bbc.co.uk, 27 March 2004.
14. www.isma.org.uk, www.ismabrasil.com.br and www.isma-usa.org.
15. www.hypnosisdownloads.com.
16. ‘Ten steps to happiness’, Daily Mail, 28 June 2006.
GAMES OF CHANCE
1. Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: New Technology and the Revenge Effect (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p. 173.
2. Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, Panic Nation (London: John Blake Publishing, 2005), p. 239.
3. Guardian, 8 December 2005; www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk.
Chapter 6. Law and Order
TERROR ALERT
1. ‘Transatlantic trends’, Key Findings 2006, 6 September 2006.
2. www.synovate.com/knowledge/infact/issues/200510/, October 2005.
3. ‘Similar levels of fear of terrorism in USA and Great Britain’, www.harrisinteractive.com, 6 February 2004.
4. New York Times/CBS News Poll, www.nytimes.com, 7 September 2006.
5. NABE Economic Policy Survey, www.nabe.com, 28 August 2006.
6. ‘Worldwide poll shows 60% fear terror threat is worse after war’, Guardian, 28 February 2006.
7. YouGov poll, quoted in Daily Telegraph, 25 August 2006.
8. NCTC Report on incidents, 2006, www.nctc.gov.
9. ‘Deaths by age, sex and underlying cause 2004’, HSQ 26, www.statistics.gov.uk, February 2007.
10. ‘MI5 head warns of 1600 terror plotters’, Financial Times, 10 November 2006.
11. ‘Secret report: terror threat worst since 9/11’, Sunday Telegraph, 25 February 2007
BANG BANG
1. AKUF and the University of Hamburg, quoted in Vital Signs 2006–2007, Worldwatch Institute.
2. Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, quoted in Vital Signs, op. cit.
3. ‘Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq’, www.lancet.com, 11 October 2006.
4. www.iraqbodycount.org.
5. ‘Afghanistan risk exposed’, New Scientist, 9 September 2006.
6. www.oecd.org/dac.
7. ‘Reflections on Gulf War Illness’, Phil. Trans. of the Royal Society, 24 March 2006.
8. ‘Veterans told: there is no Gulf syndrome’, The Times, 25 March 2006.
LOCK ’EM UP
1. ‘Prison really does work’, Daily Mail, 20 June 2006.
2. ‘England and Wales lead pack on European imprisonment rates’, www.howardleague.org, 18 January 2006.
3. World Prison Population, 6th edn, International Centre for Prison Studies, King’s College, London.
4. ‘Lord Woolf: wild about Harry’, www.bbc.co.uk, 17 January 2003; and ‘Woolf warns of prison-riot risk’, Guardian, 20 June 2002.
5. ‘Too many in jail, says top judge’, www.bbc.co.uk, 30 May 2006.
6. ‘Prison population in EU countries’, www.civitas.org.uk/data/prisonEU2001.htm.
7. www.prisonrefomtrust.org, January 2004.
8. South Wales Evening Post, 4 March 2005.
9. ‘Even more prisons needed, Reid told’, Guardian, 27 July 2006.
10. Sunday Telegraph, 17 September 2006.
MURDER AND CRIME
1. News of the World, 3 September 2006.
2. ‘Crime in England and Wales, 2005–6’, www.homeoffice.gov.uk, July 2006.
3. www.wrongdiagnosis.com.
4. ‘Easier to panic than do the math’, Toronto National Post, 13 April 2006.
5. European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, 2003, www.wodc.nl/eng.
6. ‘Going off track’, Philadelphia Daily News, 10 July 2006.
Chapter 7. The Natural World
LOOKING UP
1. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 88.
2. ‘Late lessons from early warnings: the precautionary principle 1896–2000’ (European Environment Agency, 2001), p. 80.
3. John Gribbin, The Hole in the Sky (London: Corgi, 1988), p. 143.
4. G. Braathen, Geophysical Research Abstracts 8, 09861, 2006.
5. Chem@Cam, summer 2006, p. 16.
6. www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/PO/releases/2002/September/public.aspx.
7. Fred Pearce, The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change (London: Eden Project Books, 2006), p. 51.
8. J. Firor, The Changing Atmosphere: A Global Challenge (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 43.
THE SHORT, HOT SUMMER OF 2006
1. John Houghton, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 8.
2. Jonathon Porritt, Playing Safe: Science and the Environment (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), p. 63.
3. Fred Pearce, The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Clange (London: Eden Project
Books, 2006), p. 254.
4. ‘Katrina and the waves’, Independent, 23 August 2006.
5. Quoted in Roger A. Pielke, ‘Disasters, death and destruction: making sense of recent calamities’, Oceanography 19(2) (June 2006), pp. 138–47.
BECOMING UNSETTLED
1. Searched using the Factiva database, the phrase ‘global warming’ was used 16,755 times in June–August 2006, 10,547 times during the same months of 2005, and 6,196 times in 2004. Curiously, global warming is mentioned consistently less in the winter months. The comparable figures for December–February are 10,632, 8,411 and 5,055 respectively.
2. Warm Words, Institute of Public Policy Research, August 2006.
3. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (London: Allen Lane, 2006), pp. 3–4, 7.
4. Daily Telegraph, 28 August 2006; Eastern Daily Press, 28 July 2006.
5. Climate change protagonists sometimes argue that this renegade rump has dwindled to nothing, but see, for example, a letter from forty-one scientists in the Sunday Telegraph, 23 April 2006.
6. Quoted in Aaron Wildavsky, But Is It True? A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).
7. Quoted in Fred Pearce, The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change (London: Eden Project Books, 2006), pp. 24–5.
8. John Houghton, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 143–4.
9. ‘The threat to the planet’, New York Review of Books, 13 July 2006.