Two sided stories blog

The title link is to a piece I posted on boomerang kids - or just never leaving home twenties. It seems I share this difficulty with many other parents and step parents, but there is an aspect to the continuing life in the parental home, and how to move beyond it, that I didn't cover - so I do so now.

What teenager twenties seem to need is an effective course in house skills. This is very hard because a key aspect of the "teentwent" is the raised eyebrow shrug, sigh and dismissal of any older person telling them how to learn anything. So I am compiling a list.
This is a list of "how to" skills that a small sample of eight year olds already have (normally due to an enforced caring role), that everyone should have by fifteen, and which should be learned by teentwents before being allowed to buy alcohol.
I want to check how many others have this difficulty...

1. Kitchen implement training: sharp knives - how to keep them safe and sharp, not cut yourself or others, either by cutting blindly towards own hands or by leaving them in a sink full of soapy water, how to use them to cut a slice of bread - rather than a chainsaw sculpture, techniques for cleaning with a cloth, where they have to be put away.
2. Similar knowledge re other kitchenware - including how to return glasses from your room, how containers, china, glasses etc. work with gravity, and hence how to walk without spilling tea everywhere, that sort of thing.
3. How to see and recognise dirt.
4. How to do something about the dirt that you have just made, or made within the last year.
5. How to turn off a tap.
6. How to turn off a light switch and when it is safe to do so.
7. Where the rubbish goes inside the house.
8. Where it goes outside when parents are away for two weeks and the bin men are wondering if the entire household has died and gone to smelly hell.
9. How to talk, (instead of: "I was like errrr - and she was like 'uh uaaah', and I said, Fuuccck, and I mean I was like... Fuuck!")
10. What a bus is, and which side of the road to stand on to catch one going to where you need to get to.
11. What a bill is and where the size of it comes from.
12. How to help bring groceries in - from a shop or a car you have just had a lift in.
13. How to shower in less than 25 minutes.
14. How to get out of a shower.
15. How to clean a shower/bath/sink/toilet.
16. How borrowing what cannot be paid back led to the world economic crisis.
17. How to flush a toilet.
18. How to switch off a light - again.
19. How noise really works.
20. What a hoover is.
21. How a toothpaste tube works.
22. That one phone line means people cannot ring in if it is engaged.
23. The difference, in terms of rights and responsibilities, between house owner/bill payer, child and "adult" tenant.

These are not thought of as skills by most adults, but for the teentwent they are virtually unlearnable. Kicking out of the nest is the obvious sink or swim cure but this is not always an option. (Step parents who want to stay married).
All successful experiments with solutions to these listed problems are most welcome, please post in comments.
Or, other listed problems encountered by householders - please share and make us all feel a bit better. By the way - these are girls I am talking about from my own home life, I have no direct experience of teentwent boys.

Shame on the Daily Tackygraph - this story appears in their "science and technology" section... ha very ha.

Anyone who understands the way Google compose their street images from digital still and moving images will immediately spot that this is one of those blips when a joint between one part of image and another includes a wrong angle and/or different time when the exposure was made.

I would not be that interested normally, thinking it a cream puff piece, but if this was printed on April 1st I would say it was a very poor April Fool's joke.

Take these comments of a "local medium". I am reminded of just how gullible some people are and how they pay out real money to be fooled by people making claims like this woman has:

"Local medium Jane Cohen, 39, said: "Apparitions have often been caught on film but are invisible to the naked eye...This woman is very smart - but she is dressed in clothes that you just don't see these days unless it's in a period drama on TV.
But what is really strange is that she doesn't appear as a full figure - you can't see all of her."

I often wonder if being blind to the obvious is a qualification for these people as well as for their victims.
Is that Jane Cohen, 39 going on 12?
- period clothes? what is she on about? no such thing these days, and she looks completely normally dressed to me.
"she doesn't appear as a full figure!" -really? as in, it doesn't appear you have a fully functioning brain, you witless ego-tripper.

These sorts of effects were out-achieved by teenagers in Edwardian times - never mind accidentally by digital cameras today - if you want to see really tricky photography, by the way, try the BBC edited version of the police charge at the miners outside Orgreave in 1984. The whole country believed the miners attacked the police first - what a scam!

Of course the Tackygraph is playing on this photograph being at the location for the special effects heavy childrens' TV programmes, Doctor Who and Torchwood - I wouldn't bet against the BBC spreading this around the other media for the publicity effect.

My more serious point is often made by others - and at least Derren Brown is busy debunking the money stealing "magic" and spiritualist hokum that people fall for.

There may be more to ghosts and spirits than we can ever explain. I do not find it impossible to believe in things that appear to be definitely supernatural, but Jane Cohen, if she is real, and most of these self important media mediums are sad, failed, below average plonkers, and should be ridiculed at every opportunity - to discourage the others.

There are things that are worthy of censorship, in cinema and TV:
Porn videos on display at the Council's main office reception,
the C*** word in office staff management (are you listening Paul Dacre?), violence as a means to excite -
and Ann Widecombe kissing Tony Blair. (I apologise if this image in your head has now ruined your day)

but there are also ridiculous decisions that actually support the "PC gone mad" brigade and should be stopped - for that reason first and foremost.
Take the following:

I quote from the end of that story the bit that reveals their dumbness:

'A Morrisons spokesman defended the checkout assistant's decision and said customers suspected of buying an age-restricted product for a minor should be refused sale.
He said: "These rules are in place to protect our customers and their families, as well as the general public as a whole who, in the majority of cases, appreciate our vigilance.
The DVD product in this case had an age restriction applied to it and the store followed procedure.
We apologise if the customer felt the store was being over zealous."
Miss Richards was eventually cleared to buy the DVD after a supervisor was called to verify her age.'

So many levels of the Age of Stupid here:

1st - PC is good, PC is what helps ensure that people are treated more equally, makes people check before they insult people and helps them confront their own prejudices. PC is guidance, not law. (Mac is law)

but this incident runs completely counter to this goal.
It is bad enough that Morrisons could get the idea of censorship of "Ladies in Lavender" through to a young checkout girl - but,
the bit in italics at the end there - did they really not believe that this woman was over 12 years old? after they had allowed her to buy alcohol?
And did the checkout girl think..."Mmmmm Ladies in lavender... looks like a porn film that the young lad has slipped into Mum's trolley. I don't mind her buying him the wine but porn for a 9 year old? - uh uh, only the over 12s are allowed that."

This isn't PC gone mad, it isn't PC anything - its the Age of Stupid enshrined by a company in its ridiculous policy. I dread the fact that our local Somerfield is about to become a Morrisons...

they used to employ moronic retards from special school before...
(SLAP - OWW!)

In an ideal world however, pornography would virtually disappear as people developed understanding and taste.
In the meantime, the worst thing those who believe they should be the arbitrators, or even rule makers, on what tastes people should be allowed to exercise, can do, is to try and ban porn or other sex related expression.

I do feel a need for there to be censorship for children (possibly right up to the age of 21 since so many at this age seem so immature or infantile these days) - but it should be censorship of violence, more particularly in its use for or, association with, thrill seeking... (e.g. Shwarzennegger's films would be savagely censored, apart from Pumping Iron...)
The Swedish have it about right.

There should be no such thing as rape
(some readers may find parts of this disturbing)

Sorry this isn't funny but I am angry about this, in the same way I have been for over twenty years.

The police have been lambasted for their failure to properly pursue rape cases over the past few days, yet this is nothing new. Their conviction rate for those rape cases they do ever manage to take to the court stands at 6% - a pathetic indicator of failure...
There is a worse ratio when it comes to failure to even pursue the case properly in the first place - partly a result of the fact that conviction is seen as unlikely, no matter what the police do. So possibly 98% of victims never see their attacker convicted of any crime...
Is this a failure of the police? or of the legal system in general?

It was frustrating to hear the issue discussed yet again on the Today programme this morning - John Humphrys almost hit the right spot when he said, (I paraphrase):
Surely the case of a woman who has been drinking with a man, goes to bed with him and then, at the last minute, says no but he pushes ahead, is different from a stranger grabbing someone from the street and assaulting her at knife point?...perhaps the first should not be rape at all, but a new offence?

BZZZZZZZZZ!

going in the right direction and then WRONG, at the last moment. We don't need a new offence, we need to get rid of an old, and very badly framed one. Here's why...

The law of rape, as it has developed in this country, is a property law. The issue was historically one of a woman being "spoiled" - becoming "damaged goods" - as in "the goods" that belonged to either a husband or a father, possibly being no longer virginal, possibly even impregnated.
This is important because it has twisted the way the law has been adapted over the years, with no one grasping the issue properly due to their confusion over the need for laws to protect and conserve societal mores, "property", and crime victims' need for justice.

My limited knowledge of the law tells me it is a lumbering beast and has some oddities to sort out from its legacy of its basis as "rich man's property protection". For those non-legally minded, you might be interested to know that the crime of burglary can be for two purposes:
1. Significant penetration of a building to steal, or intent to steal.
2. The same penetration of a building with intent to rape.
Both these are property laws, there must be the property owner's lack of permission for it to be an offence.

Recently there was much praise for the modernisers in finally allowing there to be such a crime as male rape (far more common than any figures would ever show, possibly as common as female rape).
But this so called success has merely further buried the need to get rid of the crime of rape altogether.

I have known and worked with both men and women who have been raped and those who counseled rape victims. If you ask the victim if the most important thing in the whole case is whether any protuberance that was used to penetrate them was in fact a penis, a fist or a bottle, I believe they would give a united answer.
Yet the law is very specific. Rape is the use of a penis, not any other object or part of the anatomy. Real cases have fallen apart in court over the inability of a victim to confirm which thing it was this aggressor used. The intent of the aggressor(s) is surely more important to the victim? - being forced or coerced, abused, assaulted - not what tool was used to do this.

My case is simple: There are already laws of degrees of assault. The case John Humphrys mentioned in his report of what some would call "date rape" is what I would say was towards the lower level of sexual assault. Punishments for this can still be severe - sex offender registers can still be used for those convicted, but let's not call it the despoiling of this piece of male property by the unwanted use of a penis, it's a sexual assault.

The degrees of sexual assault are many. They can include the most disgusting degradation, issues of duration, dehumanisation and violence - all of which are factors that any judge would take into account when deciding on sentencing...for assault.

Once you have taken the definition of rape out of the equation, the crime can be seen for what it is, an assault against a victim whose rights need to be protected. The best way we can do this is by making it a crime that recognises the real nature of assault and its effect on the victim (male or female) and one where a conviction is believed by the victim, and the police, to be a realistic possibility.

The modifications to the rape laws have made it harder for me to press this campaign to those in power - I have tried - and had some agreement from lawyers and police officers in fairly high places. But the emotive power of the word "rape" seems to hold everyone in thrall, it is a weighty detractor from an obvious correct path, a "lead herring".
Only when the law has become one based on victim protection and victims' rights will we begin to get the convictions and proper imposition of law to achieve justice.

The maximum sentence for assault should be brought to the level of the maximum sentence for rape - and that law repealed, done away with, along with the last medieval vestiges of property as the key issue. We need to catch, evidence and convict these sex offenders, and give the law the means, and motivation, to do it properly.

I commend this proposal to the house...

Eddie Izzard is famously a stand up comedian and actor with an unusual surname who attracts large audiences, likes to wear odd clothes and makes a lot of people laugh.
What chief rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks has in common with Eddie is...
most of the above - but he just isn't funny enough.

This morning, on Radio 4's today programme, he talked about the lion sharing zoo cage space with the lamb; and when the zookeeper was asked how he achieved this feat, the answer was that it was easy as long as you had a constant supply of lambs.
This old story is not really a joke, but a reflection of a reality. A reality that has a good analogy with the Zionist lifestyle: They can keep on getting away with killing so many Palestinians because to the rest of us spectators the supply seems to be never ending.

He then went on to say that there was one place where the lion and the lamb really did live together - aboard Noah's Ark.
He seemed quite serious as he said, "They knew that they had to, otherwise they would both drown".
...I was waiting for the punch line but it never came.

I know what Eddie Izzard would have made of this line - after giving Mr Sacks that raised eyebrow sideways glance, and a low "yeeeeess" at even sounding seriously as though he believed the Noah's Ark story to be true...
(see his take here)
Let's, as a sceptical audience, look at the statement about both animals drowning...
The lion, magically capable of future planning, didn't eat the lamb because he knew this would mean he would drown...
I don't think so. Eating the lamb, if you are a carnivore, stuck on a boat for 370 days... I would say that was a sensible and obvious survival choice.
As for the lamb's thoughts on the matter - what was his choice? (after grasping that he wasn't just there to be Jewish master's top choice Sabbath treat anyway) - errr, I know! I will decide that I won't eat the lion because otherwise I will drown.
...or I will decide that the lion won't eat me because otherwise we will both drown...
I think the fault in the chief rabbi's logic is plain to see here. Perhaps in labouring analogies he forgot to suggest that the lion and the lamb had a little face to face negotiation session before going on the Ark - and realised that they should take the risk rather than certainly drown if they didn't both get on board.

Unfortunately, lions being lions, 370 days later the negotiations would have been long forgotten. There would have been no lambs, no antelopes, no zebras, no ducks (obviously - Eddie) and the Ark would have been, literally, a scene of carnage.

So the analogy was a good one, in one way:- put the Zionist lions onto the land with the Palestinian lambs, and every time the lion is hungry it eats a few lambs but justifies it to the world animal courts by pointing out that the lambs just won't stop their bloody annoying bleating.

And the rest of us just love the silence of the lambs.

"What stops teen pregnancies: condoms or family meals? I suspect that the problem is more down to lifestyle than to lack of information." - BBC blog

I don't disagree with the above, but since we are desperately trying to reach those who won't change their eating lifestyles, let us have these adverts, at least they are for something useful.

I overheard the BBC radio 4 announcer say that they invited a Catholic bishop to join the debate about condom and family planning clinic advertising being suggested.
Why?
Do we ask President Ahmadinnerjacket of Iran to comment on our education system?
Do we get Osama Bin laden on a debate about fine art?
...Crusty the Clown to debate politics on Question Time? - well, perhaps thats a bit close to the truth. The BBC loves to set up the adversaries on any issue. My objection is to the catholic church getting any broadcast time for free anywhere on our media.

I have said it before, and will say it whenever these idiots get air time, any fool who believes that the Pope is infallible deserves to get the HIV virus through their Catholic taste in prostitutes.

The Daily Wail is blaming the government for...
well everything really... but more recently, causing the credit crunch they blame on the bankers...
They can't get over the fact that we are not allowed to wade through the smog and sewerage and rape our tubercular slave girls any more, like back in the good old days
- but that's an old story.
Today's headlines include:
Fat cats in terror after anti-capitalists attack Fred the Shred's home.

The news that Fred Goodwin's house has been attacked by vandals who have threatened to attack more rich bankers homes has been greeted more frequently by little, or large, smiles...
The head of a well known paparazzi agency said that the highest value picture he could sell at the moment would be of Fred Goodwin enjoying himself on holiday somewhere.

The massive resentment towards these obscenely rich people is loud, clear and interesting.
In the USA, generally there is a culture of respecting the rich, a "Good on you for fulfilling the American Dream!" sort of thing.
This country has, over the boom years, almost bought into that bogus and individualistic self-centered dream. But now the crunch has hit and it is revealed that these richest people's greed is actually won at the expense of others, indeed the whole country. Trickle down doesn't work as well as progressive taxation, once the truth of this is accepted then the dream is revealed as a nightmare.

The capitalist idealists will always tell you that wealth creation is what makes the world go round - "Don't tax the rich! they make the world work".
In a word that's bollocks.
A few rich people in their castles surrounded by angry poor means no one is happy, we have moved on from this medieval approach, please let's keep on moving forward...
Tax is about creating a more equal and sociable society and we need this more equal society for the good of the richer as well as the poorer. Every time the capitalist greed has led to these financial disasters, they are bailed out by the government - in the USA as much as elsewhere, crash recovery government intervention always reveals the lie of the wonderful "free" market, free trade and individuals' rights.

Research has recently shown the simple correlation between a nation's level of inequality of wealth and its (lower) levels of happiness and social stability.
It is not the absolute wealth of any individual - nor the overall wealth of the nation that determines the average level of contentment in a society. Research proves it to be very simple - the more unequal the society the less happiness abounds. The national comparison figures are, shockingly, a simple sliding scale, with countries like Norway, Sweden and Butan (socialist places!) at the top grade of happiness and societal stability, USA at the bottom. The scale also applies within countries to a lesser degree, with London less happy or stable than the average rural town.

This goes some way towards explaining the sense of "serves him right" when the unrepentant millionaire pension thief and bank ruiner has a few hundred pounds worth of criminal damage done to his house.
I am sure none of us want to encourage further vandalism...
but the way to tackle it is with measures to produce justice and equality instead of lectures on the freedom to be exceedingly wealthy and to hell with the poor.

On the other hand - one bit of ordinary vandalism did at least produce a better headline:
"Teenager's 60ft painting of penis on parents' roof spotted in space".
Nothing to do with wealth disparity, it's still just the usual tagging teenager shouting, "Here I am!".

A good and interesting gig at the Women's Institute this morning...
I hope I did not just hear a snigger... or vaguely expressed thoughts of Jam, Jerusalem or nude calendars...
as per

The WI is actually campaigning to create legal brothels in certain areas - yes, that's right - legal brothels in order to prevent ill health and exploitation of poverty stricken women - they did the research, found out what was needed to tackle poverty in this particular group of women and came up with a clear solution.
Watch this space to see how it progresses.

The youngest WI group is the new one at Goldsmith's college with 19 year old members - who are interested in the community building and eco friendly initiatives that the WI have championed in the 21st century - they are way ahead of their media image.

Today I taught them about why we need to spread laughter as a stress busting tool for everyone to use daily - or even hourly if possible (4 year olds average 35 laugh exhalations in every awaking hour)

and I think they enjoyed the laughter exercises and general levels of endorphin and oxytocin uplift* they received.
(*see title link for detail)

Long live the WI!

This guy probably doesn't support the death penalty, now do you?
(because it could be you - follow title link to see why).

how about for this guy..?

There are hundreds of cases on file now - where murders have resulted in convictions and life sentences but later evidence discoveries have proved the verdict wrong. People can rot in jail but in these cases there is the relief that we, as a state, have not murdered an innocent man; compensation for stolen years should be huge and immediate.

A similar use of new DNA evidence matching in the USA found that 110 prisoners on death row were undeniably innocent - too bad about the several more hundreds that weren't around to hear their good news.

So whenever I hear that 70% of the UK population support bringing back the death penalty I do wonder if we shouldn't seek them out to place the most vociferous 12 in a Big Brother house, where one is randomly selected to be found guilty of a murder they had nothing to do with and placed on their longed-for death row...
preferred method of execution sir?

Fact: Dick Cheney is the one man on the planet who has had the image and position of his house removed from the satellite maps of Google earth. This of course reflects his ultimate power in his role, now known simply as "Emperor Zod". Recently his regal eminence was gracious enough to give a state of the universe address to CNN, the hard hitting liberal news channel of the year.

The title link gives a précis of his interview; we are proud to present a transcript of the text cut from the show, just in case it might have been edited and used by terrorists against the God Blessed United States.

John King: So, Mr Cheney, Zod, Emperor of the known Universe, how do you feel the first 44 days of the new regime are going?

Dick Cheney: Well John, I think we have not done well with our first appointments, the figurehead President seems to be regarding himself as someone who can make decisions that affect the United States of America. But apart from the matters we cannot control, such as the Klingon peace treaty, we are still succeeding in our goals.

JK: And how do you feel your previous pawn did in his 8 years, do you think he and you were a successful team?

DC: Yes, in general I feel we have succeeded in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have created greater wealth for our richest members in keeping with our vision of the American dream, we have created fear and terrorism, in exactly the right proportion to keep the military spending escalating and the tolerance of our right to spy on our own people at an all time high - I'd say, in your parlance, "we done good!"

JK: Is there anything, such as the balance of payments and the global warming crisis, that you feel you may have handled a little better?

DC: We needed to spend the money John, that's a given, spending public money is what we have to do, just look at what our new regime is having to spend thanks to our policies of fiscal responsibility. and Global warming is a target, not a problem...

JK: Pardon me but...

DC: maybe...

JK: ...but are you saying you are not responsible for the financial crisis that Obama inherited?

DC: It was planned that way. It gives me power in my new role since all the richest and most honest financiers of the party are now able to control the financial world in a way that they never could if we had not hit our poverty targets.

JK: I see, and is there anything else, Emperor Zod, that you regret about George's time in the Whitehouse?

DC: Well he did leave poor old Scooter hanging in the wind... should have pardoned him. Its an honourable tradition in the GOP - we always pardon our own. The public expect it and he should have done it. It's wrong to leave any of our wealthy members with the taint of criminal activity hanging over their heads.

JK: Pardon me but...

DC: You're pushing it John, how much wealth do you have?... asking for a pardon all the time...

JK: I'm sorry, I just wanted to thank you, your eminence, for granting us this interview and wondered if you could give me a lift back to Mars?

DC: yeeeaas, These humans are beginning to bore me.

Sometimes - I get away from my evening part time job of putting the world to rights and demanding justice for the slightly less well off than me...
and have a little holiday type thing. And this was the scene in Brighton yesterday...

You may have thought that Friday 13th March was not an auspicious day to go away on holiday - but as is usual, my wish for good luck won over other's self-fulfilling superstitious natures. We didn't go to Brighton but far from the madding crowd in North Devon.
The weather suddenly went from dull, cold and grey to pure blue skies, and mild. Lying on the dunes in the still lee of the onshore wind at Croyde, with the sound of the crashing ocean surf in the background I actually fell asleep and got a tan. No one around but a few distant surfers, bliss.

good luck is sometimes a matter of faith and conviction. Back to picking on politics next time...

Germany has the second highest rate after the United States.
I hardly need do say the highest rate of what - deaths of innocent strangers by hands of deranged gunmen - usually young men.

I spent a good deal of time in the USA and during that time I shot a fair few weapons, colt 22, .357magnum, winchester 30-30 and a few others.
I used to enjoy the sense of power from shooting, used air guns a fair bit as a teenager. But now I am delighted that we have, in the UK, some of the strictest gun control measures in the free world. Had I continued to have guns as easily around when I went through an isolated, crazy and depressed phase, I dread to think what might have happened...

I hear the arguments of the gun owners, the "right to protect my property/life" spiel that is regularly trotted out every time this argument reopens - but it keeps reopening - because they are just so obviously wrong.

The German professor on the recent Newsnight programme supported the American who tried to state that it was the psychology of the young people we had to tackle, that knives would be used if guns were not...
It took an Englishman wearing a bow tie (usually a clear indicator of "not to be trustedness") to point out the glaringly obvious:

In those countries where the law has been tightened the death rates have dropped hugely. In Britain and Australia - out of sight.
The title link shows that this type of event is going to keep on going - but it doesn't keep on going with knives in those countries that have outlawed private gun ownership (not having them in the home at all).

I know this to be true, I also know that if you own a gun in America you are more likely to be killed by gun fire than your unarmed neighbour.
And the most likely fatal victim from that hand gun is someone in the immediate family of the owner, or the owner themselves. The American gun lobby tries to dispute the violence argument on the basis that suicides don't count! - insane.
The figures are indisputable, guns do kill people, people without guns grow up to make more sensible life choices.

And I speak from personal experience. I don't believe the gun lobby can speak to those pictured above in any way other than with shame.

The title link is to a piece I did in December on how medical science loves to attack alternative therapies, but is generally very lax about applying the same criticisms to its own mass marketed products.

Science correspondents such as Ben Goldacre have been vehement in their assaults on acupuncture and homeopathy - placing them alongside astrology and crystal healing in the spectrum of human attempts to help themselves.
Western medicine is apparently to be set above all these treatments due to its scientific credentials. There are many doctors and medical spokespersons who are vehemently protective of the exclusive rights of triple blind trial tested medication to be the only appropriate NHS chemical arsenal.

But now a respected medical journal, Pulse, reports a government funded report that clearly (though unreported in the Goldacre columns) indicates the efficacy and appropriateness of homeopathy and acupuncture for NHS adoption.

"The major new Government-funded study found there would be a range of benefits to patients in providing access to complementary and alternative medicine, and that the treatments could even save the health service money.
As many as 81% of patients receiving the treatments on referral from their GP reported improvements in their physical health, and 79% in their mental health."

To go in to some of the general ways in which Ben Goldacre and I might agree that make homeopathy different from the typical western science medicinal treatment -
he might well agree that homeopaths actually listen to their patients, as in really actively listen, and spend time making sure they have heard the person who has the first hand experience of whatever distress and illness that prompted their seeking help, whereas...

In first consultations, GPs, and to a huge extent consultants as well, tend to immediately come across as the experts - even when they must know in their hearts that, not only do they not know everything, they most definitely do not know the person sitting in front of them.
This listening in itself is often given as a reason why homeopathy can help, unscientifically, to cure people.
Taking an oblique look at that, I would go as far as to suggest that the scientists' (doctors) inability to listen is scientifically provable to be a hindrance to helping patients. One wonders why they don't learn this obvious lesson and try listening?
Instead they concentrate on attacking the "unscientific" aspects of the dilutions that constitute the hardest part of homeopathy for anyone to understand.

Goldacre and others despair at the idea that the remedies used by homeopaths might actually be the reason that such a huge percentage of their patients get better. They are SURE, that science cannot, and must never, support the idea that these are anything but sugar pills.
(apparently my cat's cure is a placebo effect caused by the contentment of the owner...?!)

I would maintain that one day, using science that is currently as confusing as quantum physics, there will emerge a scientific understanding of how homeopathic remedies work. We are just stumbling along the periphery of this area of human understanding - it pays not to be arrogantly sure about anything in this field.

Back to where the western model has its biggest contradiction and the reason for today's post:

The fundamental tenet of medicinal development is that any given drug will affect the human body the same way, no matter who the subject is.

There is a great deal of experiential truth in this assumption; generally human bodies do react to ingested chemicals in the same way. The root of this belief in mechanical human models is why triple blind trials are deemed the ultimate test of whether a drug can be relied upon in a scientific manner.

There is an assumption that the differences displayed by those who do not all show the same expected reaction must be due to some idiosyncratic chemical balance differences in the subject. These can be "eliminated" from research conclusions by the use of large samples and studying overall majority trends...
but they shouldn't be ignored should they? We have to look at human similarity versus human individual differences. I have often said in argument that it is astonishing how similar to each other humans can be seen as being - especially if we look at our world wide ability to laugh, communicate, eat, sleep, make love - and war etc.
However, the differences are also incredibly interesting - we are individually unique.

Homeopathy treats each individual as different.
Homeopaths know that two people who may present as being very similar, with ailments defined by western medicine as identical, will possibly benefit from quite different remedies. The judgment call of what suits each individual, who can only be known by what they tell you, is the trickiest aspect when there are thousands of potentially helpful remedies.

Doctors in their surgeries on the other hand see no such difficulty - "a few basic treatments or refer up to a specialist" - that applies to everyone coming to that GP surgery. (I am quoting a GP here)

But our experiences of GPs can also vary greatly...
my wife recently went to see the local GP to try and get a set of blood tests done because she was feeling extraordinarily tired despite her recent B12 jab for pernicious anaemia. Being a daughter of a doctor, a trained nutritionist, and a homeopath prompted by her own experience of chronic ill health, she knows a good deal about medicine as well as homeopathy. So she sought tests for iron levels, thyroid function and more...
She had spent many years undiagnosed, dismissed as having ME, living a barely acceptable life of tiredness, before this basic deficiency of B12 was noticed,(at last an alert GP) and since the jabs started some 12 years ago her life has been transformed.

She has noticed, and I do too, that the national standard gap of 12 weeks between depot injections is not really short enough - by 9 weeks she is usually needing to lie down each afternoon for extended periods, by 11 weeks life is very hard to manage. Often the good nurses, who have seen this shortfall often, just say come in every 9 weeks. They know it is needed and will give it.
This G.P. (after incompetently using both arms to try and get blood - nurses are generally much better at this having had more practice) glibly told her, "no one needs B12 more than once every 6 months..."

My immediate reaction on hearing this was to go in and tell him that I would be back to punch him on the nose every 9 weeks to remind him what personal experience is worth...

What was he thinking?
Is he really a man in the know? - no,
does he have relevant experience to make such a statement? - clearly not.
Does he believe that all human beings respond as per a medical text book he once read? ...probably.

I want to draw attention to something often overlooked, that a list of possible reactions to every prescribed medication is listed in a leaflet in the box - go check any you might have in your possession...
The chances are that you will not have had any of the bad reactions described therein.
On the other hand you may have had one or more - it may have made you change or cease your medication, as it did me.
The point is that someone, somewhere, had every single one of those reactions - otherwise the list couldn't exist. And since most drugs have lists of between 20 and 60 potential "side" effects, surely it should be clear from that alone...

we are not all the same.
Your experience as a doctor can never match that of the patient,
you should not pronounce a curse upon those things you do not understand but that have been shown to help others.
There is room for all approaches.
Here's an instruction, Ben Goldacre and others so sure of their knowledge:
Learn to listen, Mr Doctor.

Thanks to Pulse magazine for publishing that report, now I look forward to the battle as those fearful vociferous anti-homeopathy doctors have to learn to back down from their rigid and ignorant approach to alternative medicine.

P.S. I retain the belief, based on experience and science until shown otherwise, that astrology, colour therapy, crystal healing and many other wacko ends of the spectrum of healing attempts, belong on a different, and much sillier, planet.
They should not be taken seriously or talked about as in any way related/comparable to western medicine, homeopathy or acupuncture.

Back in 1984 I did some TV work covering the Miner's strike in South Wales. The title linked article does a reasonable job of explaining the real position with the Thatcher government - they could have done a deal with the miners but they would have been voted out at the next election if they did - and the miners would have retained worker power.

Who knows where we would be now - a better or worse state?
The ironies of importing coal that could have been mined here, and a great source of power security in the very near future, is lost on those who hate workers having any sort of power over politics.

The police state we now worry about Jack Straw imposing might have been harder if Thatcher hadn't shown the way to stay in power and sod obeying the law to do so.
Because there is no doubt that Thatcher ordered the breaking of the law in order to break the unions.

In her determination to crush the miners there were several new laws brought in, but several old and dearly held ones broken with amazing ease. A compliant BBC edited the Orgreave riots to reverse the aggressor role of the police and turn public opinion against the pickets, instead of revealing just how lawless the police had become.

Thatcher's cronies saw that the police in the mining areas were sympathetic to the miners suffering through the strike, so they ordered massive relocations of each mining areas police forces - making sure that no policeman would be comfy at home each night, or able to recognise any of the strikers as local fellow workers.

At Margham, the steel works was kept open by running illegal coal lorries (as in MOT failed vehicles with bald tyres, disqualified drivers, no tax discs, no insurance, yet escorted by Police) to break the picket lines and stop the successful support of the rail workers refusal to transport coal.

Now we get to hear 25th anniversary speeches.
Norman Tebbit on the radio still spreading his shitty myths about how what his Tories did preserved the nature of democracy and how unsupported the miners were...
Scargill's piece title linked from the Guardian, in which he conveniently forgets how his ego got in the way of the best courses of action...
Nothing from Neil Kinnock, who could possibly have become Prime minister from backing the strike, failed - and would probably have been one of the worst prime ministers of the century...
Others recalling, with perfectly failed memories, the BBC coverage without mentioning the most immoral lying piece of editing in their history.

The miners knew who was against them.
I filmed that piece at Margham for Channel 4 - we were allowed access to the shop stewards meetings, the miners wives soup kitchens, and escorted back to our cars at the end of the day. The HTV Volvo estate was mysteriously upside down in the ditch when they came back from filming their, government ordered, obedient segment on the dangerous behaviour of the pickets...

I don't want to see a re-opening of the mines, nor of old wounds, neither do I want to whitewash over the failures of the unions and others in preventing good trade and business practices, but it doesn't hurt to remember...
the sins of community assassination, of power crazed illegality by our own elected leaders, not to mention the Falklands debacle, and a hundred other dismal aspects of the Thatcher selfishness revolution.

All these anniversaries are coming together to help me remember just why I will be joining so many others in rejoicing rather than being sad, when the death of Mrs T is finally announced....

The Bank said it would expand the amount of money in the system by £75bn - a policy called quantitative easing - in an attempt to boost bank lending.

Anyone interested in this policy decision will almost certainly already be making comparisons with Mugabe's money printing exercises in Zimbabwe - so I won't labour that analogy.

I am more interested in the way this is the newest foul euphemism to be put out there by "the powers that be".
What, in itself, does that mean, "the powers that be"?
It clearly doesn't mean the current government, because surely we have the power to make them "no longer the powers that be" by our elective democratic process...
or do we?

I certainly don't feel that any vote I make, or inspire twenty thousand other people to make, will effectively change "the powers that be".
I would want to ask a question of those who are now like the trusting, hopeful, slightly radical, mildly anarchistic 20 year old I once was...

Can you see through the establishment now?
do you see them panic and lie like teenagers who have had the keys to the larder too long?
do you believe the world is run by people wiser than you, or just as dumb as you?
Do you think that electing Cameron's old Etonians will make a huge difference?

It is truly frightening when you reach a certain age, probably in your forties, and get that moment of enlightenment. In our era we were expecting to reach some sort of Nirvana-like "Oh Wow!" moment, in fact its much more like an "OH SHIT!" moment.

...the realisation that the world is being run by people of your generation and that none of them have a better idea of how to do it than you do. And no matter how highly we might rate our individual abilities this fear holds good.
I feel this is less an ego realisation moment, much more a dawning of understanding about just how out of control the whole international system: trade, government, armament, diplomatic, political, commercial - the whole world, really is...

Anyway, "Quantitative easing" - or printing money as it should be called...
one of the grand-daddies of euphemism is "Being economical with the truth" - which almost defines euphemism. Politicians and bankers use more and more of these as they get ever more desperate in times of stress.
It reminds me just a little too much of a more subtle version of Cpl. Jones, in Dad's Army running around shouting "don't panic!" - and of course, in international terms, it has exactly the same effect.

Mugabe may be described by politicians as "someone with whom it is difficult to do business", while back in the real world we all know he's a raving psychopath bent on wiping out his entire people...

in the finance world they created "sub prime" to mean "extremely risky bad loan", and "short selling" for "cheating economics by using other peoples money". "performance related pay" - well...
what happened to that idea?
I can think of an immediate source of a few billion pounds for us taxpayers if people in high places had their pay for the past three years' performances properly adjusted by forcible extraction from their bank accounts.

So what to do once you have made this reconciliation with the enormous mess that is the organised human world we all inhabit?
- Join the Taliban/Christian Union? puurrlease!, only the brain dead could decide that fundamentalist religion is a sensible position for a human adult.
Get elected and change the system from within?
(That might be like joining a nuclear submarine crew with the aim of changing it into a sailing boat)
Read the sports pages and eat fatty food?
or blog your frustrations into the void of darkest cornered cyberspace in the vain hope that some angel will notice your bright analysis and pluck you to ascend to a greater world that truly rewards the advanced brain...

(Uh oh...who else would be there I wonder?)

"because you're worth it!",
"with new entmolypodide, a new elemental combination that has been discovered by scientists to make your hair more manageable for up to six times longer..."
well, I made that one up actually, but then so do the shampoo manufacturers.

which of the following cheap detergents mixed with water do you use?
ARTec
ASiRA
Aveda
Bath and Body Works
Body Shop
BAMF
Clairol
Clinic All Clear
Decoré
Dimension
Faith in Nature
Fructis
Head & Shoulders
Herbal Essence
Jason Natural Cosmetics
Judith Jackson
John Frieda
Frederik Fekkai
Klorane
Lord & Mayfair
Matrix
María Salomé
Neutrogena
Oasis
Pantene
Paul Mitchell
Pert
PHYTO
ProTerra
Redken
Seda
Schauma
Suave
Trader Joe's
Tresemmé
T/Gel
VO5
Wella Balsam

Have you ever bought a shampoo based upon one of those adverts that flood our TV screens daily?

Would you buy a thimble full of "Elbow Grease" if it was advertised at you often enough by a mixture of international superstar actresses and backed by 'scientists' from Laborotoires Garnier?

Hi there,
I am one of several people you have never heard of who knows that shampoo is a great big scam. I haven't used shampoo for well over ten years now - in fact I just use warm water, daily... not even the soap and lemon juice recommended in the title linked piece that goes into some detail about the nature of this scam.

It's funny, back when I used to use shampoo and believed some of the crap they spouted about greasy hair versus fly away hair, and anti-dandruff concoctions, I used to get chronic itchy scalp and dandruff.

I still get an itchy head occasionally, I confess, but the dandruff disappeared for good about 3 months after I started using just warm water instead of these scam products, and my hair looks clean and glossy just like it did before.

I have tried to convince women that they can manage without these expensive bottles (85-95% water, and the rest sodium laurel sulphate, bar trace ingredients colouring and perfume.) They are so scared.
Years of seeing those head-bobbing adverts featuring desirable women with luscious heads of hair have them trapped in a spiral of drug dependency.

It is just like a drug - once you are hooked its very hard to come off -the immediate feeling of cleanliness and the smoothness, after you have used conditioner to temporarily replace the natural oils that the cheap detergent has just stripped from your hair. That will give way to the withdrawal of dull and itching hair for a good while if you go cold turkey...
I don't pretend it is easy, unless you have very short hair to begin with; in fact I would recommend having a short hair cut to begin the recovery process.

But, the facts are out there - well documented and scientifically provable - despite the millions of web sites and greedy capitalists desperate to convince you that their product is different. They are not.

They have got you by the long and straights!

Every single shampoo contains mostly (about 85-90%) water; between 7 and 14% of the sodium laurel sulphate group of detergents (same as dishwasher detergent in reality); colour, scent, and then these fancy trace elements they emphasise in their advertising...

Do you really believe that using a pipette to drop six drops of organic spring water on a lawn covered in weedkiller and phosphate fertilizer could make some sort of difference to its health status?

its beyond a joke, and time the manufacturers were given a far harder time. The regulatory bodies keep pulling up the advertisers for their claims, but never ban them all for conning the entire female population, as they should do.
It's a scam, and the advertising regulators are not about to sabotage the whole scam industry.

If you want to wean yourself off these sham poo products (and real poo is probably better for your hair) then read the linked article, understand the chemistry and stop believing those lies...

First of all realise they mean: buy this, "because you're worthless".

next month - how every perfume you have ever bought is made in a nasty little factory in Bridgend for a few pennies, then exported to France to be put in expensive bottles, and sold back to you... well, just like shampoo...

Back in the 1970s the idea of Jack Straw becoming a main stream politician would probably have been laughed at by his fellow protesters at Leeds University, who staged a sit in protest against the right wing apologists for Rhodesia and the Vietnam War...

He was head of a major student union body in the 1970s - these were the hot beds of radical socialist activity and to make it from there to Labour politician required some compromising of principles - particularly the pacifist principles he espoused, so fellow students must have wondered how he would perform as a Labour M.P.

As the title linked article points out, he seemed to be ready to support radical action and received a 10 minute standing ovation for his speech to the sit-in student body. But Claire Short, a more consistently socialist figure by anyone's standards, noticed at the time that what he really manifested was a desire for popularity rather than a serious regard for politics as "the art of the possible".

Cut to the present day and we can study the career path of Jack Straw the reality, rather than the political poser.

I am ashamed of him.
He makes me ashamed to have supported the party he espoused.

The first issue that made me see his feet of traitorous clay was the extradition of Pinochet as requested by Spanish radical judge, Baltasar Garzon, for the well known crimes against humanity this fiend/friend of Maggie Thatcher conducted during his fascistic rule of Chile.
Jack Straw had in this process the opportunity to live out his student dream of actually helping to bring one of the world's great anti-democratic right wing criminals to justice, and all he had to do was not stand in the way of the Spanish to see it follow a proper judicial course...
So, after many days of consideration, what made him bow to the Thatcherites and appeasers of murder in this country and disallow the extradition?

How hard was it for him to balance the clearly deserved tirade of public opinion, based on his own loud moral stance of the 70s and the pressures of power brokers who want to defend murderers against justice if they still seem to be supporters of their own power base?

no contest for Jack one suspects...
The audience he was playing to now was no longer the applauding, or in this case jeering, students seeking justice, his audience was those who control the greasy pole.
He has continued, since then, to play to that same audience in ways that must surely shock those who ever saw an ounce of human decency in Mr Jack Straw.

His introduction, and stout defence, of laws that erode civil liberties has been consistent, (with his life post ministerial office, not life before 1997); his statements to the UK public and his own party sound very much like the speeches of those against whom he would have organised sit-in protests in the 1970s.
His protection of the Iraq war documents that would reveal his own sordid role in that monetary war (they are all monetary wars after all) is equally the act of a now despicable man. As an M.P. in the 80s I am sure he objected to Thatcher's introduction of stop and block powers on people driving to strike areas in the UK, but we knew not then what we see revealed now...
He is in fact, a good little Thatcherite and an enemy of freedom.

Oh how the grown up world disappoints us as we see political expediency not only driving former liberal spokesmen into abandoning their morals, but further - to loudly and proudly championing the protection of the corruptly wealthy against the voices of dissent.

Some day I hope to re-dedicate this blog to the positive outlook of praising those who have helped humanity progress, people like Judge Garzon, who has risked bomb attacks to do what is right and just, but unpopular with the status quo.

In the meantime, Jack Straw, who should have been a champion of justice and peace, is nominated here and now for a posthumous cell in hell with the Catholic priests, bishops and Popes who still believe child abuse is not their problem...