Well, at least the toilets are clean...

Normally, Liberator would not perpetuate health scares published in the Mail. But this one is credible and backed by evidence:

The ice served in six out of ten of Britain’s most popular high street restaurants contains more bacteria than the water found in their toilets, an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found.

Scientific tests have shown that ice from branches of McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Starbucks, Cafe Rouge and Nando’s all had higher levels of bacteria than samples of water taken from their lavatory bowls. Experts say it could be due to them being cleaned more often than the ice machines.

None of the samples found presented an immediate health danger, but four contained such high levels of microbes the restaurants should be considered a ‘hygiene risk’, according to a Government-accredited laboratory.

Which of these restaurants had the worst test results?

At 22C, Nando’s had the highest bacterial levels. The laboratory’s guidelines recommend no more than 1,000 organisms per ml of liquid. Nando’s had 2,100, McDonald’s 1,400, and KFC 1,100.

Challenged for a response, all the restaurant chains affected promised to take remedial action, apart from one:

A Nando’s spokesman said: ‘We challenge these results and do not accept that they demonstrate any failings.’

How William Morris poisoned Britain

There was a fascinating TV documentary on BBC4 the other night called Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home. It was a sharp corrective for anyone who disapproves of health and safety legislation, for we learnt that many of the Victorian era’s new household products and gadgets were lethal.

One such hazard was wallpaper, or more specifically wallpaper dyed with a green pigment containing arsenic. A leading manufacturer of this wallpaper was none other than the famous socialist, designer, artist and all-round romanticist William Morris. The documentary explained that, besides his wallpaper manufacturing business, Morris owned a big stake in the world’s largest arsenic mine (which was the main source of his inherited wealth). Morris was aware of the hazard of arsenic poisoning but dismissed warnings of the danger.

The documentary did not mention that Morris also poisoned Britain figuratively as well as literally. He shares the blame for one of the biggest problems in Britain today: the inability of people to come to terms with urban living. Britain is one of the most urbanised countries in the world (80% of us live in cities and towns), yet most urban dwellers want to create an illusion of rural life. They aspire to a detached or semi-detached house with a large garden, instead of a town house or flat as in most continental cities. As a result, British cities have sprawled outwards and used up far more land than is necessary, which in turn has increased travel distances and encouraged excessive car use.

This trend has its origins in Morris’s ‘back to the land’ anti-urbanism, an understandable sentiment at a time when many people lived in overcrowded slums but unjustifiable now. Morris, with his concern to protect the natural world from pollution and industrialisation, is today regarded as a proto-environmentalist. Yet the irony is that, by fostering a pastoral impulse, he bears more responsibility than most for the destruction of the countryside to make way for sprawling low-density suburbs. As Jonathan Meades put it, the trouble with ‘back to the land’ is that eventually there is no land left to go back to.

Morris remains a hero to many for his socialism, his art and his environmentalism. But he was a hypocrite even by the standards of his own time, and we will not create liveable cities in Britain until we reject the baleful influence of his counter-productive sentiments.

Why pseudo-science threatens Liberal values

Hardly a day goes by without a report in the media claiming that some activity or other harms your health. Being smug liberal types, we assume these scare stories are the province of the Daily Mail (the subject of well-deserved satire here, here and here).

Actually, you are just as likely to find such health scares in the Guardian or the BBC. On the Spiked website, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick tackles the pseudo-scientific links lobby that produces these stories. The ‘science’ is usually an epidemiological study whose tentative findings or dubious claims enter straight into conventional wisdom without being subject to serious scrutiny.

Fitzpatrick observes that these scares often relate to an activity that is already the subject of social disapproval, such as drinking alcohol or eating fast food. This should make us immediately suspicious that science is being abused to support fashionable prejudices.

Once an allegation of risk enters the public realm via the media, it alters behaviour, but not necessarily in a good way. Irrespective of whether a scientific claim is valid, people react by seeking compensation or quack remedies. Worse, these scare stories can kill. For example, the claim (subsequently exposed as fraudulent) that the MMR vaccine causes autism led to the deaths of several children from measles.

Quite apart from the unnecessary distress and physical harm, Liberals should be concerned about pseudo-science for two important reasons.

First, the roots of Liberalism can be traced to the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment, when free thought and scientific discovery replaced superstition enforced by despots. Accordingly, we should reject the trendy sentimental belief that emotions and feelings trump rationality and logic, otherwise we are fostering a climate that allows superstition to resume its historical role.

Second, the depiction of the world as a place full of risks diminishes us as human beings. It says we are all helpless victims and denies our capacity to take responsibility for our actions. It even promotes victimhood as something to embrace as part of our identities. As a result, there is a thriving industry in quack remedies and quack therapists.

Yes, there are risks and dangers out there. But that is no excuse for confusing correlation with causation. Before we start to panic, any claim of causation should be subject to rigorous scientific enquiry. Stringent scientific standards should not be set aside just to satisfy a fashionable prejudice. Let’s reserve our disapproval for genuinely proven dangers.

The Twelve Myths of Christmas

“It’s health and safety gone mad!”

That is a favourite cry of outraged right-wing columnists on the Daily Express and Daily Mail, although the outrage is usually a manufactured response to a fabricated story. The British tabloids love to make up stories about health and safety regulations, when they are not making up stories about the European Union.

The Health and Safety Executive has responded by publishing The Twelve Myths of Christmas. If you are firm in the belief that workers have been banned from putting up Christmas decorations in the office, that children have been banned from throwing snowballs or that people have been banned from putting coins in Christmas puddings, then prepare to have your certainties punctured.

Rest assured, Christmas has not been banned, so try to have a merry one.