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Interesting news from Media Watch:
Since 1997 the annual suicide rate in Australia has dropped by close to 20 percent.
The Howard government was first elected in 1996.
Global warming and the Howard government. What a happy conspiracy!
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 12 at 12:36 PM • permalinkThe Howard government is obviously falsifying statistics. The lying, cheating, economy growing bastards.
Posted by alien kiwi on 2007 03 12 at 12:53 PM • permalinkSlightly off topic, Glenn Reynolds is on vacation and his three guest bloggers are over there pissing italics up the wall!
This will the Instapundit a fortune. It’ll surely be murder/suicide when Glenn returns.
I suppose South Korea is all droughty too?
South Korea also has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Paging Dr Steyn…
Posted by Don Charleone on 2007 03 12 at 05:01 PM • permalink#3 I rather suspect that John Howard would politely reject any offer of a Nobel Peace Prize, given previous recipients. It has become degraded beyond recovery (although the cash prize would be nice).
Looking at the suicide rates 1993-2003 is interesting.
death by suicide is a relatively uncommon event (in 2003, 1.7% of all deaths registered were attributed to suicide),
I cannot paste the graph of suicide deaths over that period but you can see it rising till 1996 and then starting down. The greatest contributor to the decline is “males 20-24” years of age. This surely has something to do with full employment.
Basically, within these figures the reduction in suicide by firearms has been taken up by an increase in deaths by hanging.
Suicide appears to correlate to depression and depression can be clinical ie regardless of the facts, or situational. Situational depression is caused by the time and place you find yourself in and how you react to it. Farmers clearly can be vulnerable as they have low incomes, poor prospects and not a lot of support. These are the facts but it is just as important to be able to deal with these facts. In this area great strides have already been made in public health although it is just the beginning. There is support available to rural people today from a variety of organisations, not just the federal government and time will tell if it is having a positive impact.
In the “you couldn’t make it up” category:
MINNEAPOLIS - A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.
The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment
Whether he can be accredited with lessening the suicide rate or not, John Howard’s policies on refugees probably have saved lives because fewer leaky boats are being sent to northern Australia.
This compares with the lives saved by Nobel nominee, big Al, which at present stand at…ummh, carry the 2….ummmh, you work it out.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 12 at 06:47 PM • permalinkThe morning after the 04 election I went into Oxford 130 for breakfast (yeah, that Oxford 130, the one razor boycotts). Some pretty long faces in there - one of the staff said he had a friend so depressed by another Liberal victory that she wanted to set herself on fire. No doubt she did, too, just like all those shattered Dumocrats who moved to Canada.
Oh, and Good Morning, Sparkles!
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 03 12 at 07:21 PM • permalinkThe Rum Hospital was located two doors from the Hangover Bridge. Now, gimme a tough one, eh?
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 03 12 at 07:35 PM • permalinkSo we’ll see you then. As they say in Hollywood, yours very truly.
I’ve never heard anyone in Hollywood say that.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 03 12 at 08:15 PM • permalink#20 - Ann Bancroft is an Arctic explorer?
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 03 12 at 08:58 PM • permalinkI would like to see a graph of the suicide rate overlaid with a graph of interest rates…
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 12 at 09:06 PM • permalinkActually, the employment rate may be more relevant.
Is there no end to the life saving feats of Mr Howard?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 12 at 09:17 PM • permalinkThere is a downside. Phillip Phadams wrote an article a while back saying he wanted to live long enough to see JoHo dead.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 03 12 at 09:23 PM • permalinkAtwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.
“They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming,” Atwood said. “But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability.”
but of course ....
Force of habit, Razor. I’ve been going there ten-plus years and I like their coffee, glasses and all.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 03 12 at 09:50 PM • permalink#18 Now that you mention it, the whole show was just plain dull.
It’s going to be a long season - Monica Attard is about as amusing as cystic fibrosis.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 12 at 10:13 PM • permalink#41- Maybe so, but with looks like this she doesn’t need to be interesting. Hubba Hubba!
Pooh to Maxine McHugh being the thinking mans sex symbol- Monica’s the middleaged schoolboy’s dream disciplinarian.
Next week Media Watch will be taking New Idea to task for including split infinitives in the cryptic crossword questions.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 03 12 at 10:31 PM • permalinkInisghtful analysis. But imagine, the blogfuhrer quoting Media Watch as an authoritative source. Media Watch gives no source for its claim. Maybe you could run a little harder and chase it down, just to make your point a little stronger. Be good to see if the suicide rate began to fall on the very first day of the Howard Government in 1996, or whether the good times started to kick some time later.
Or would that be all too hard in the cut and thrust world of cut and paste.
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2007 03 12 at 10:55 PM • permalinkOh happy day.
Welcome back Miranda - we missed you!
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 12 at 11:00 PM • permalinkSo, Miranda! The prescription has expired again?
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 03 12 at 11:07 PM • permalink#46
This here link (see page 3) shows that it took a year or so for John Howard to begin with his life-saving proclivities, but there is a marked decline in suicides over this period from around 2000 per year to around 1500.
Howard saves 500 lives a year!
Hope this was inisghtful
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 12 at 11:11 PM • permalinkTo put it into perspective, the reduction in suicides of Australians per year under Howard is more than all those Asian middle class people who died tragically on the SIEV X, somewhere a short distance off Indonesia while trying to take advantage of lax immigration laws and displace genuine refugees.
Thanks to Howard, there have been no further SIEV X scale disasters.
Then there are the East Timorese and Solomon Islanders who have benefited from Howard policies.
The man is practically a saint.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 12 at 11:39 PM • permalink#52 - Not to mention the Afghani’s and Iraqis who can now vote and start a blog.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 03 13 at 12:01 AM • permalinkMaybe you’ve used up all the believing Latham voters?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 03 13 at 12:05 AM • permalinkMiranda, why don’t you and Toni Collette do a tag-team job- you could duct-tape plastic bags over each others heads, no that wouldn’t work, as the points on top would puncture the bags. You could shoot each other, no, can’t get a gun (or sword, knife, fork or any other pointy item). I know, ram your cars head on to each other, that’ highlight the dangers of mechanised transport, no, when you drive a pair of Prius’, they don’t have the capability to achieve dangerous velocity. I know, overdose on patchouli- that’d really give John Howard a black eye, and you wouldn’t ming up the geodesic yurt for a few days at least.
Go on, do it for the cause!
#18
“It’s hard not to draw a correlation between the decrease in suicides by gunshot since 1997 and the election of John Howard’s government in 1996. Err, no I meant Howard’s gun laws.”
Yes, its called method substitution.
JWH stole private property using $500 million of taxpayers money so people can kill themselves with rope instead of guns.
It was worth if for the reduction in clean-up costs alone…... NOT.
Toni Collette and her empty words.
So I guess then that under John Howard, the number of empty suicide threats has increased, but the number of actual suicides has fallen.
Hmm its an interesting mechanism in play, between two contradictions. Despite the hysterical and alarmist rantings, the actual evidence is in the opposite direction.
Kind of like the Gore effect.
#58 rickw, I reckon a lot of people would be put off doing themselves in if they don’t have access to an easy method, ie a gun. Compared with hanging pulling a trigger is much simpler and given to impulsive actions. Getting hold of a stout rope, tying it to a beam, climbing a chair, getting over the worry that you’ll be dangling for 15 minutes… dunno I’m just guessing that some people might think twice.
JWH stole private property using $500 million of taxpayers money so people can kill themselves with rope instead of guns.
That sentence is worthy of a 9/11 truther.
Not a single act of regicide either. Unfortunately his reign has also coincided with a distinct lack of vaticide.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 03 13 at 02:09 AM • permalink#62- Gotta disagree- a huge over-reaction, and the end result has been to disarm law-abiding citizens and tool up the ner’ do wells. If concealed carry laws had’ve been in place, there’s a good chance Marty Bryant would be in a hole now rather than looking for day release, and a lot of people would be walking and breathing.
I’m highly distrustful of any government that seeks to disarm its populace- if there’s no more sinister agenda it’s still incredibly patronising and seeks to place more reliance from the individual on government, who unfortunately couldn’t protect Margo Kingston from the Kissing Bandit.
It makes me so mad, if I had a gun I’d climb up the Centrepoint Tower and randomly snipe at office workers, or go on a three state killing spree. I’ll have to make do with torturing cute, fluffy kittens.
Habib raises an interesting point. By disarming the population the government (and all subsequent ones to follow - unless they legislate to reverse the gunless situation) enters into a social contract to offer top protection for the populace. So good, that guns are unnecessary. Can they keep their side of the bargain?
Or will the scenario develop to the point where only the crims and/or momea have the guns, while police are neutered by Victorian style correctness.
The recent developments where we have all seen (a) vicious mobs run through Sydney suburbs with no police intervention, and (b) the pathetic cave-in to cave men “protesting”, and worse, the payment of damages to same, leave me in doubt that the State is in win mode for any similar future confrontations, or worse ones, which may occur.
To put it bluntly, no guns has to mean no guns, and it has to be backed up with zero tolerance of rabid incivility. We require tough policing, not wimp-policing. Police should be feared, not taunted the way we have all seen on video.On ABC Ruddio National Breakfast, Labor’s MSM Nanny, Michelle Grattan, discussing the Labor lead in the A.C. Nielsen polls but with the ominous task of winning 16 seats from the Libs.
Includes hopeful speculation, including “the Latham effect” on marginal seats closing the gap ...
[@7 min into 2nd hr of file]Attard in her other guise as host of Sunday Profile on ABC Local Radio interviewing the Thick Sheikh with the Geyser Trad as interpreter:
This interview was being simultaneously translated by the Sheikh’s translator, Keysar Trad, but, as you’ll hear, we became concerned at Mr Trad’s translation at one point during the interview and so we’ve had it independently translated and we’ve inserted the actual translation of the Sheikh’s answers.
Who’d've thunk?
We might not have guns, but we still have utes. I’m told that a number of single occupant crashes in the country consist of young male running off a straight road into a tree. No explanation for the run off. No skid marks. Only tree for miles around. The cops can’t call it suicide without evidence, so they just get added to the road toll.
So if we all chipped in and bought Toni a ute, and then ran around and planted some trees…..
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 03 13 at 07:33 AM • permalink#17 rebase;
“It’s hard not to draw a correlation between the decrease in suicides by gunshot since 1997 and the election of John Howard’s government in 1996. Err, no I meant Howard’s gun laws.”
Just on the off chance that you’re serious (a chancey proposition in these here parts)...
1) “Correlation doesn’t imply causation.”
2) While some gun banners figure that you’re only dead if you use a gun to suicide, the rational way to look at the issue is whether or not the total suicide rate changes before you can announce benefit (or not).
A couple decades bad, Canada passed a law that made handgun ownership much harder than previously, and they saw a drop in the rate of with-gun suicides.
Yay, right? Sadly, not, as instead they say a rise in total suicides, as other, more-lethal means were subtituted; things like stepping off tall buildings and bridges.
But the gun-control enthusiasts were happy.
/pedant
Did I miss anything interesting?#62 rebase;
“I reckon a lot of people would be put off doing themselves in if they don’t have access to an easy method, ie a gun. Compared with hanging pulling a trigger is much simpler and given to impulsive actions.”
Neat theory. Sadly, it’s battered insensible by inconvenient fact.
Suicide is only rarely an impulsive act; it’s overwhelmingly the end of an extended period, usually involving serious depression, of thought and acts leading up to it.
And there are just too many easy ways to do yourself in to make taking away just one means to have any effect.
As noted earlier, the Japanese, without access to firearms, had no trouble racking up very high suicide rates in the recent past.
It’s a comforting fantasy for some, I guess, but that’s as far as it goes.
The ‘no gun’ laws is a misnomer.
You can still have guns by the score all but semi auto rifles and pump action shotties.
Do as I and buy a lever action rifle, a lever action shottie and a semi-auto pistol.
BTW it would have only taken one shot to kill Bryant or to kill oneself so those points are moot.
Still, I do miss my handed in weapons. Sigh.Miranda. It is you, isn’t it Miranda? My God, you’ve gotten even sexier while you’ve been gone. Your unerring eye for the line between amusing trivial blogposts and serious analysis hasn’t gotten much better though.
PS, miranda, I assume you’re a guy. Please don’t sue me for sexual harrasment. That would be homophobic.
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