All entries for Thursday 24 November 2005

The scientific approach to politics

As I'm sure everyone is aware, the new licensing laws came in to action at midnight last night. This has enabled many establishments to serve alcohol for longer, and some around the clock. Many people are extremely concerned about the effect this will have on binge-drinking, crime and general antisocial behaviour.

However, at the same time the government have decided to get the police to target alcohol-fuelled offences. Why have they done this, I hear you ask? So they can cover their backs and palm off any increase in drink-related crime on the increased policing, instead of admitting that it might have something to do with the new, extended, licensing. Genius!

So if I had any influence I would call for a truly scientific approach to the introduction of new laws. In the lab we introduce changes one at a time and repeat the experiment under the same conditions, observing the changes that occur. This is the only way you can truly identify the source of a problem. The only way we could tell if these new licensing laws were improving matters would be to, as far as possible, keep all the other variables the same. But governments can't be seen to be wrong about these things, so they must manipulate each situation so that it seems that they're right.

Grrr!

: 24 Nov 2005 14:13 |  Tags: Politics Science |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem