Spookdaddy
Cuckoo
- Joined
- May 24, 2006
- Messages
- 7,980
- Location
- Midwich
The 'leading academic' mentioned in the original post - one and the same with the now decidedly less chatty Professor Jackson - displayed, in his original thesis, an attitude to statistics which I suspect would have most academics screaming in horror.
The figures used were harvested from the Greater Manchester area, which covers around 500 square miles, but then employed as if relevant to a relatively compact area of Manchester city centre. (Whether Prof Jackson intended this or not, that's how the press ran with it - and he seemed to have been happy to play along.)
There's a local issue with safety barriers - or the lack of them. There's a general issue with pissed people and water.
That said, there's no doubt that occasionally people meet violent ends in such environments. But you really don't need serial killers to explain the figures.
Quite frankly, it's a bit of a joke - and an irresponsible one, because it completely takes attention away from the real safety issues involved. We love a serial killer, at least we do when they're in the papers and nowhere near us, but we don't like to think that our loved ones are capable of dying because too much booze turns them into idiots.
(Did not a similar process of distraction take place a couple of years or so ago in York?)
The figures used were harvested from the Greater Manchester area, which covers around 500 square miles, but then employed as if relevant to a relatively compact area of Manchester city centre. (Whether Prof Jackson intended this or not, that's how the press ran with it - and he seemed to have been happy to play along.)
There's a local issue with safety barriers - or the lack of them. There's a general issue with pissed people and water.
That said, there's no doubt that occasionally people meet violent ends in such environments. But you really don't need serial killers to explain the figures.
Quite frankly, it's a bit of a joke - and an irresponsible one, because it completely takes attention away from the real safety issues involved. We love a serial killer, at least we do when they're in the papers and nowhere near us, but we don't like to think that our loved ones are capable of dying because too much booze turns them into idiots.
(Did not a similar process of distraction take place a couple of years or so ago in York?)
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