Below is a letter to the Guardian, published today (11 February 2009) in reduced form. Jacqui Smith is keen that the Governments classification of drugs should send clear messages to would-be users. One message conveyed by her attack on David Nutt (Drugs adviser says sorry over ecstasy article, 10 February) is that she does not care …
February 2009 archive
Feb 09
The world’s biggest mega transport project
In December 2007 I delivered a Working Paper entitled Managing risk in a hypermobile world to the OMEGA Project – a project dedicated to thinking about Mega Projects in Transport and Development. I began thus: Transport projects facilitate new connections between trip origins and destinations. In so doing they disturb previous patterns of connection, often …
Feb 07
Risk Management: the Economics and Morality of Safety Revisited
Abstract The introduction to the proceedings of the Royal Academy of Engineering 2006 seminar on The Economics and Morality of Safety concluded with a list of issues that were worthy of further exploration. I have reduced them to the following questions: ¢ Why do moral arguments about ˜rights persist unresolved? ¢ Why can risk managers …
Feb 03
Vashti revisited
I began my inaugural blog on this website On becoming Vashti as follows: My nomination for the most prescient work of science fiction is The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. A recent comment on this posting by a former student, June Gibbons, has prompted a further re-reading of The Machine Stops. With each re-reading Forster …