Up Close and Personal
The monthly comment from CTM founder, Phillip Day

IN BRITAIN the time came and went to go to the polls for the local government elections. A lot didn't bother. Those who did yawned and did their civic duty without too much hope as to what it might accomplish. More recycling. The worrying noise from the quarry. Schools. It's democracy, after all, and we should vote. How lucky we are not to have the kind of mess seen Zimbabwe, North Korea, China and the People's Republic of the Borough of Camden.

Hang on, what did we vote for?

Daniel Hannan's When in Rome article in this month's EClub strikes the right chord with me on the voting problem - expectations versus realities, one lot as bad as another, my vote won't count, etc. A deeper problem, however, is almost never highlighted in 'democracies'. How the steadily burgeoning army of local government apparatchiks has effectively rendered council government a communist dictatorship. Like their national counterparts, a Tory, Labour, Lib-Dem or Green local councilor in the UK has two goals in common; they want to justify their existence, and strive for an increase in budget. This is accomplished, among many means, via new rules from Brussels on Human Rights, requiring more departments to examine whether we are disparaging gays, lesbians and Lithuanians. Yet as the costs for this social revolution soar, what we don't get are safer streets, less government intrusion, crime down, and the proper 'services' to which an adult, civilized society should feel itself entitled - a real health system being one of them.

At the end of your tether? Peter Hitchens' advice was to place an extra box at the bottom of the ballot paper, add the words 'None of the Above', then tick it. 'Don't vote for clowns' being the point, vote for a person or system who embodies the values you espouse. If that's Tony Blair, David Cameron and whoever's running the Lib Dems these days, you did your duty. For the rest? A revolution anyone?

PYLONS KILL - sort of semi-official in view of the massive litigation, reconstruction and compensation bills likely to succeed a bare-faced declaration (£7 billion might be the bill in the UK alone). Unfortunately no such unequivocal statement will likely be forthcoming. The timing's bad. Radiation kills sends the wrong message to the cancer folk. The hope is, like GM, the opposition will fade and just go away.

For those of you to whom the problem of a daily fry-up is a depressing reality, you have three choices. If you live close to power lines, mobile phone masts or other intrusive, round-the-clock EMF emissions, you can start a campaign, move, or play the odds and hope you'll be OK. Whichever you choose, above all, be informed and strident. My village successfully fought off three attempts by the telecoms industry to place mobile phone masts around the place. Trust me, sometimes you have to get worked up and quite onery, no-one's listening anymore. 'Not my problem! Not my problem!' the local councillors shrill. Make it their problem.

THE SIMPLE CHANGES UK/IRELAND TOUR kicks off this week - the 100 things you can start doing today for a happier, healthier life! The Australasian tour commences the beginning of October 2006, so steel yourselves for a royal tune-up. With each ticket comes a free copy of my audio CD, There Must Be an Easier Way. Buy ten tickets, get ten CD's - how's that for spreading the word? Here is the UK and Ireland schedule. Ticket sales for Australia and New Zealand will commence from the start of July - we'll mail you the details as usual.

That's it, have a great May.

And look on the bright side. You've probably had a better week than John Prescott.

Phillip

Bertie Has Handed Everything
Pearse Won Over to the EU
says Anthony Coughlan

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible' - 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and his colleagues will be claiming this Easter Week to be the heirs of Patrick Pearse and his fellow rebels, who proclaimed an Irish Republic outside the GPO 90 years ago.

But is today's Irish Republic of which Bertie Ahern is Taoiseach, where two thirds of its laws are made these days by the European Union in Brussels, really a State where the people of Ireland exercise the right to 'the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies', to quote the words of the Easter Proclamation?

The German Ministry for Justice announced recently that between 1998 and 2004 some 23,167 legal acts were adopted in Germany, of which 18,917, or 80 per cent were EU directives or regulations.

Presumably Ireland, being a unitary rather than a federal state like Germany, would have a higher proportion of domestic national laws rather enacted centrally; so it seems plausible to assume the EU makes two-thirds or so of our laws rather than the 80 per cent there.

Powers
Having to obey laws made mostly by others means being ruled by others. It is the opposite of a country being independent, sovereign and democratic.

What role do the Irish State and the Irish People actually have in making EU laws? We have one member out of 25 on the EU Commission, the body of nominated, non- elected officials, which has the legal monopoly of proposing all EU laws. That is four per cent influence. We also have one minister out of 25 on the EU Council of Ministers, which makes EU laws on the basis of the Commission's proposals.

That is again four per cent influence there. In practice, most EU laws are nowadays adopted by qualified majority vote on the Council of Ministers, Where Ireland has 7 votes out of 345, that is two per cent of a say, and in which it may be out voted in most matters.

The European Parliament may propose amendments to draft laws of the EU Council of Ministers, but it cannot have these amendments adopted without the agreement of the Council and Commission, and it cannot itself initiate any law. The Irish State has 13 members out of 732 in the European Parliament, that is two per cent of a say, and the North has 3 MEPs.

Yet when the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom from 1800 to 1921, it had 100 MPs out of 600 in the British Parliament, of which some 70 were nationalists. That gave nationalist Ireland 20 per cent of a say at Westminster; yet the Irish people were unhappy with majority rule from London then and aspired to a parliament of their own in an independent Irish Republic.

As for 'the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland', how can Taoiseach Ahern pretend to have that right when under EU law it is illegal for an Irish government to adopt any measure that would prevent the 450 million citizens of the other EU states from having the same rights of ownership and establishment in this country as Irish citizens, in relation to land-buying, fisheries, residence, employment or the conduct of any economic activity?

In addition to being made subject to laws made overwhelmingly in Brussels, the Government is regularly fined for breaking EU laws by the EU Court of Justice - something no sovereign State anywhere in the world is ever subject to. How is that compatible with 'the unfettered control of Irish destinies'?

Sanctions
EU membership means that member states lose their right to sign trade treatise with other states, as this is done by the Brussels Commission acting for the EU as a whole. It means that the member states are legally obliged to work towards a common foreign and security policy and common rules in crime and justice matters.

Last September, a judgement of the EU Court of Justice laid down that the EU can adopt supranational criminal sanctions such as fines, imprisonment or confiscation of assets for breaches of EU law by means of majority vote.

This means that Ireland and its citizens may be subjected in future to such criminal sanctions even if they had voted against them, and for matters they do not necessarily regard as crimes.

Before Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, Article 15 of the Irish Constitution stated that ' the sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is hereby invested in the Oireachtas: no other legislative authority has power to make laws for the State'. The Irish State was constitutionally sovereign then in a way that is no longer.

Sovereignty
As a member of the Eurozone, Dublin has no control of either the rate of interest or its currency exchange rate, which are economic tools of all independent governments that seek to advance their people's welfare.

As regards interest rates and exchange rate, we have to abide by policies decided by the EU Central Bank in Frankfurt, whose priority necessarily must be the economic needs of the more populous EU countries.

All this is clearly incompatible with 'the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies' proclaimed in the Declaration of the Republic in Easter 1916.

Yet the Taoiseach and his colleagues who have put us under EU rule and who desire to give the EU more power still by ratifying the EU Constitution, proclaim themselves to belong to the Republican Party. On Easter Sunday next, they will perpetrate the hypocrisy of professing to honour the men and women of 1916 against the background of the above facts which make a mockery of their professions. And they will be supported in that hypocrisy by the leaders of the other major Dail parties, who glory in their servitude to EU rule and who equally support the discredited EU Constitution that was rejected by the peoples of France and Holland last summer.
Daily Mail, 12th April 2006

Anthony Coughlan is Senior Lecturer Emeritus In Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. He is Secretary of the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre.
And in the UK….

EU Rules

SIR, The EU Spokesman, Katherina von Schnurbein explains that the British Parliament can pass any laws it likes but, as Ms Schnurbein puts it, those laws have no effect until they have been approved by the EU. We should be grateful to an EU spokesman for putting the legal status of national parliaments so clearly and unambiguously.

Michael J Rose
Sheffield
Letters to the Editor, The Daily Telegraph, April 2006

Further Resources

The Real Face of the European Union by Phillip Day, video documentary (PAL format only)
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day

Taxpayers Face £2bn Hidden Bill for the EU
by David Rennie in Brussels and Toby Helm

The European Union's next budget is £20 billion more than Tony Blair admitted when he unveiled a British-brokered deal last December, a leading Brussels official will say today. In a severe embarrassment to the Prime Minister, Dalia Grybauskaite, the budget commissioner, will describe public statements issued so far about the size of the next EU spending package as "not accurate".

Mrs Grybauskaite, a Lithuanian with a black belt in karate, will say that final spending for 2007-13 will exceed  900 billion (£600 billion).That is about £24 billion above the budget Mr Blair announced and means that the taxpayer will have to find an extra £2 billion. Britain will now contribute £44 billion to EU coffers over the next budget period.

The new total makes a mockery of Mr Blair's claims to have held the budget to  862 billion at December's tense summit.

In an interview with The Parliament Magazine, Mrs Grybauskaite explains how the public budget numbers take no account of an extra  36 billion (£24 billion) in "financial instruments" on top of the deal Mr Blair negotiated during Britain's presidency of the EU during the second half of last year.

Graham Brady, the Conservatives' spokesman on Europe, said last night: "When Tony Blair cobbled together the EU budget deal, we thought it was the worst possible deal. Now, as more and more details come to light, it appears we are getting an even worse deal."

After Gordon Brown's Budget last month, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said he was suspicious that the true level of Britain's contribution was being obscured because Mr Brown had changed the method of recording EU budget figures. That made it impossible to compare figures on payments for this and future years with past ones.

Last night he said: "Now here is the proof that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have tried to conceal from the British people the true cost of the budget sell-out."

The deal agreed by Mr Blair was attacked at the time as a major "surrender" when he gave up £7 billion from Britain's budget rebate without extracting matching concessions from France on agricultural spending. Within days it emerged that, contrary to his claims at the time, he had set a precedent that is certain to be used by other EU countries to push for the abandonment of the rebate in the long run.

Last June Mr Blair incurred the wrath of fellow EU leaders - including, crucially, of his supposed allies in the new member states of east and central Europe - when he refused to sign a deal of £584 billion being proposed by Luxembourg. He said it would have cost Britain too much and did not include any guarantees on reform of the bloated Common Agricultural Policy.

Now Mrs Grybauskaite reveals that the December deal will lead to spending that puts the rejected Luxembourg deal in the shade.

The spending will be higher, in part, because the deal eased spending rules for new member states, making it easier for nations such as Poland or Hungary to tap into EU funds for new motorways, subway systems or bridges.

This month the December deal emerged from a routine approval process by the European Parliament and European Commission with  2 billion tacked on. In figures made public, that took the Blair deal to  864 billion (£579 billion).

Mrs Grybauskaite says: "It is not accurate that EU institutions finally agreed only  864 billion. We negotiated  900 billion." She describes that as "a significant, attractive result".

British officials did not dispute her figures last night but said that, if Mr Blair had accepted the Luxembourg plan, much the same instruments would have been added, creating an even larger final total.
The Daily Telegraph, 17th April 2006

Further Resources

The Real Face of the European Union by Phillip Day, video documentary (PAL format only)
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day

When in Rome . . . Copy the Italians and Vote for the Oddball
by Daniel Hannan, MEP

With one breath, Romano Prodi demanded that the electorate's verdict be respected. With the next, and without so much as a blush, he proclaimed: "The European constitution isn't dead; ratification must continue."

I suppose the habits of an old Euro-apparatchik die hard. Elections are all well and good, but they mustn't be allowed to determine the big questions.

Mr Prodi was the true capo of Italy from 1999 to 2004, when he served as president of the European Commission. He knows, and so do his countrymen, that going back to his old job as prime minister is a demotion.

Watching part of the recent campaign in Rome, I was hit by an unsettling realisation. I used to think of Italian politics as a rather jejune affair: a mess of lawsuits and conspiracy theories.

Even Mr Prodi, the squarest of Italian politicians, has an exotic past.

In 1978, he told the police where the kidnapped former prime minister, Aldo Moro, was being held, having discerned the location - or so he maintains - by summoning the spirits of dead Christian Democrats with a Ouija board.

In what other country, I used to ask myself, could such a man get away with the slogan "Seriousness in politics"?

But I now see that the Italians are ahead of the game. They have clocked, earlier than the rest of us, that elections don't affect the things that truly matter, and may therefore be treated as an enjoyable public spectacle.

If your vote won't change anything, you might as well give it to the most entertaining candidate: the one who calls his opponents "bollocks" and compares himself to Jesus, for example.

If your country is run from Brussels anyway, you might as well formalise the situation by importing someone who knows how to open doors there. Silvio Berlusconi understood this. A few days before the poll, he took time out to talk to a group of visiting MEPs.

His face, as always when observed in the flesh rather than on television, was tangerine-tinted; yet it seemed somehow wan all the same.

He ranted half-heartedly for a while about how the communists controlled the media, and how a chap like him could barely get airtime. Then he said something fascinating. Every recent election in the EU had been won by the opposition, he told us, with the sole exception of Britain in 2005. And what made Britain different?

It had stayed out of the euro, and so avoided the Continent's economic downturn. I think he was on to something. It's not just the euro that people resent; it's the sense of being taken for granted, the knowledge that, however they vote, they get the same smug Europhiles.

That's why increasing numbers of voters plump for oddballs, or support fringe parties or, most commonly, abstain. Across Europe as a whole, average turnout at elections has fallen by 12 per cent since 1970.

Every few months, someone publishes a survey showing that young people don't vote. This usually prompts a series of worthy editorials urging politicians to make themselves more relevant to the young.

But the real question, it seems to me, is not why young people don't tramp to the polling stations, but why the rest of us still bother.

If you are over the age of 30 and voted at the last election, ask yourself honestly what you hoped to achieve. Did you think your ballot would get your child into the school you wanted, or cut your council tax, or stop the incinerator being sited nearby? Or were you voting chiefly out of a sense of civic duty, from habits formed in the days when MPs had not yet handed away their powers to judges, civil servants and Eurocrats?

When we politicians can no longer effect meaningful change, we become parasites. Ceasing to be authoritative, we become contemptible. That is why referendums these days tend to elicit "no" votes, almost regardless of the question. As Ken Clarke puts it: "Ask people their opinion on bimetallism and they'll reply, 'Throw the rascals out'." Ken, characteristically, sees this as an argument against holding referendums. But the interesting question is why people feel this way.

The answer, I suspect, has to do with their sense of frustration. When they complain that "voting doesn't change anything", they are right.

Most contentious issues have been carefully lifted out of the electoral process. Human rights judges lay down school uniform policy; police chiefs decide whether possessing cannabis is a crime; regional quangos tell us where to build our houses; Eurocrats determine what hours we may work.

Elected politicians have progressively lost ground to the Child Support Agency, the Health and Safety Executive, the Financial Services Authority and a thousand more unelected bodies stretching up to the European Commission. MPs are left promising things that are not in their gift, which naturally makes people despise them.

Not even I am going to argue that this is all the EU's fault. A degree of anti-politician sentiment exists in most democracies.

Some friends recently gave my four-year-old daughter a book called Vote Duck!, the story of a farmyard fowl that keeps winning elections with the slogan: "Vote for a duck, not a politician". The creature eventually rises to the presidency, then retires in a huff. But the book's little conceit is that, like successful candidates the world over, Duck must present himself as an outsider.

While this may be a global phenomenon, it is greatly exacerbated in the EU, whose structure deliberately vests supreme power in the hands of invulnerable officials.

Brussels now generates 80 per cent of the legislation in EU member states. Let me repeat that: Brussels now generates 80 per cent of the legislation in EU member states. That's not my figure: it comes from the German justice ministry which, in reply to a parliamentary question last year, listed the 23,000 legal acts adopted in Germany since 1998 and showed that 18,000 of them were there to give effect to EU directives and regulations.

While our own Government refuses to publish such data, I think we can reasonably assume the proportion to be roughly similar across Europe.

When four out of every five laws are handed down by EU functionaries, it is hardly surprising that elections are treated as perfunctory, almost folkloric, affairs.

Just as in Iran, or the old Soviet bloc, Europe's national parliaments are becoming decorative rather than functional: true power resides elsewhere.

So why not enjoy yourself with your vote? Why not give it to a foul-mouthed clown, or a croaky-voiced Eurocrat? Why not vote for a duck, not a politician? The grisly truth is that it doesn't much matter any more.
The Daily Telegraph, 17th April 2006

Shocking Figures

Sir - Daniel Hannan, a Conservative MEP, reminded us (Comment, April 17) that: "Europe's national parliaments are becoming decorative rather than functional: true power resides elsewhere." "Why not vote for a duck?" he muses.

You reported that the final bill to British taxpayers for Tony Blair's cave-in on the EU budget is about £44 billion, an awesome sum of money to be extracted from the British taxpayer. Recently I expressed concern to Conservative headquarters over a debate in the House of Lords, when the Earl of Liverpool raised a highly informative point.

Citing the Orwellian aspects of the European Parliament, he said: "For reasons which I do not fully understand, it is decreed that the Parliament will meet for half the year in Brussels and the other half in Strasbourg. This inevitably gives rise to the need for accommodation requirements for commissioners, MEPs, their researchers, secretaries, and so on, in both cities. Quite apart from the absurd logistics of moving the whole apparatus around, it makes it very expensive and to some extent explains why it costs over £1 million to sustain one MEP for one year.

"So many extraordinary figures emerge as a result of the crazy way of operating. The library which serves the European Parliament has to be moved when the politicians decamp. If you take the cost of operating the library and divide it by the total number of books requisitioned each year, it works out at a cost of £48,000 per book. I find that an incredible and shocking figure."

Indeed shocking, and perhaps a reason why the British taxpayer has been saddled with a bill of £44 billion. Presumably the Conservative Cameroons are trying not to rock any boats at the start of what appears to be another cowardly opposition: "Catch the bus when you can"; "Get to know your neighbours better"; "Pick up one piece of litter from the street every day"; and "Don't overfill your kettle". Vote duck?
Renee Henry, Brighton, E Sussex

It's a medical scandal. The pharmaceutical giants are making billions by persuading us we have illnesses that only their products can cure.

This is the real Drug Abuse
by Jacky Law

Drugs companies commonly sponsor patient self-help groups, which help spread the word about drugs via the internet and other media. Then again, examine the treatment of depression.

When GlaxoSmithKline's anti-depressant drug, Paxil (called Seroxat in Ireland) was approved for the treatment of general anxiety disorder (GAD) in the U.S. five years ago, very little was known about the condition. Only one in a 100 people in the U.S. was diagnosed with it each year.

But at the time of the drug's launch in April 2001, news reports suggested that as many as ten million Americans were suffering from an unrecognised disease that had symptoms such as restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension, nausea, diarrhoea and sweating.

On the same day, a patient group called Freedom from Fear released details of a telephone survey which revealed that 'people with GAD spent the equivalent hours of a full-time job' worrying.

Surprise, surprise - the media contact for the survey was an account executive at GlaxoSmithKline's PR firm.

GAD is not the only condition that the drug is licensed to treat. Indeed, most Prozac-type anti-depressants are used for a whole range of conditions such as painful periods, depression, panic attacks, irritable bowels, incontinence, shyness or social anxiety - anything, in short, that has some kind of anxiety at its root. Critics say the truth is the drugs are a triumph of branding which cynically play on people's morbid fear that there must be something wrong with them.

U.S. bioethicist, Carl Elliot, says if a company is the sole manufacturer of a drug which tackles social anxiety disorder, it is clearly in its interest to broaden the definition of the disorder.

Indeed, Paxil's product director, Barry Brand, confirmed this attitude when he told the magazine Advertising Age: "Every marketer's dream is to find an unidentified or unknown market and develop it. That is what we were able to do with social anxiety disorder."

Of course, in some cases, these conditions are real sources of suffering and drugs clearly have a role to play. But the public are not necessarily best served by products which only deal with the symptoms rather than the cause and which marginalize all non-pharmaceutical approaches.

A former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Marcia Angell, has pointed out how the diagnostic criteria for 'abnormal' levels of blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity and bone density have all changed over the years to expand the markets for disease. This is a long and sophisticated process but it essentially involves drugs companies conducting studies into the dangers of, say, high blood pressure, and then pushing for revised guidelines on what is safe, thus creating a new market of patients who need treatment.

Human metabolic syndrome is another area that has been exploited by the drugs companies. It covers a cluster of common disorders, such as obesity, high cholesterol and raised blood pressure.

Not recognised before 1998, it is now said to be approaching epidemic levels with no less than 115 million sufferers world wide and each component part is an example of 'disease' being a much more fluid concept than one might have supposed.

High blood pressure (hypertension) was once defined as blood pressure above 140/90. An expert panel then introduced something called prehypertension in 2003, which embraces readings between (120/80 and 140/90).

"Overnight, people with blood pressure in this range found they had a medical condition," says Dr Angell.

But it is the cholesterol-reducing drugs market that best shows how the boundaries have changed. The drugs lower levels of bad cholesterol and have been shown to prevent heart attacks and save patients' lives.

Collectively, they earn more than 24billion euros a year and companies compete intensely for a greater share of this market. As they do studies to show the value of their drugs, miraculously, the cut-off point for high cholesterol has gradually lowered. "Once it was reserved for blood cholesterol levels over 280mm per deciliter," says Dr Angell. "Then it fell to 240. Now most doctors try to knock it down to below 100".

Because the patents on all drugs eventually expire, new heart drugs to raise levels of good cholesterol are being developed. Their success will be partly determined by how much 'normal' levels of good cholesterol can be raised.

The idea that people's health is not as good as it ought to be is conveyed in surveys that show what is normal and what is not.

Ray Moynihan, an Australian journalist, who has examined the issue of drugs firms 'inventing' diseases to boost their profits, looked into another tactic used by pharmaceutical companies - questionnaires.

They are widely issued to the public with the result that people are made familiar with diseases or ailments they never knew existed - and become more concerned about their own health.

One broadly circulated questionnaire produced results which showed that 43 per cent of women sampled thought they couldn't have sex properly.

Intriguingly, Mr Moynihan found the questionnaire's authors had links with Pfizer, which, at the time, was testing Viagra on women. The study had asked 1,500 women, aged 18 to59 if they had experienced any one of a list of seven problems for a period of at least two months over the previous year.

One area concerned a lack of desire for sex and another anxiety about sexual performance. Nothing was asked about the length of the woman's relationship with her partner, which is a major factor in most people's sex live.

In subsequent trials, the women given Viagra reported an improvement in their sex life - but an even greater improvement was noted by those who were given a placebo.

Nevertheless, surveys such as these have resulted in female sexual dysfunction being established as a disease and many lucrative treatments are in the pipeline to deal with it.

But such drug products totally disregard the existence of alternatives such as bunches of flowers and other token of appreciation that have improved women's sexual responsiveness over the centuries and which can work out better and a lot more cheaply.

But of course, these sensible solutions don't sell drugs.
Daily Mail, 13th April 2006

Jacky Law is the author of Big Pharma:How the World's Biggest Drugs Companies Control Illness

New Labels Send 'Unhealthy' Food Into Sales Dive
Richard Fletcher and Lois Rogers

Sales of 'unhealthy' foods have fallen by up to 40% since supermarkets started revealing fat, salt and sugar content on labels.

City analysts have found that within two months of Tesco introducing nutrition labels in April last year it was selling 26%-37% fewer prawn mayonnaise sandwiches and ready meals such as steak rosti bake and chilli beef noodles.

Separate figures released by Sainsbury this weekend show that sales of chicken madras have fallen 40% since it started its labelling scheme 15 months ago. Other ready meals have also seen sharp declines.

The government's Food Standards Agency (FSA) has been negotiating since 2004 to persuade food manufacturers and supermarkets to adopt its "traffic light" scheme for packaging. This uses colour coding to indicate levels of salt, fat and sugar per 100g and provide consumers with information about the nutritional value and potential health risks of their diet.

The scheme has been accepted by only a few chains. Waitrose took the first steps towards it last month with the introduction of traffic lights on sandwiches, but says it is too early to see the results.

The falls in sales of some foods suggest, however, that the supermarkets' own schemes are having a positive effect. The result may force producers to improve the nutritional value of processed foods.

Analysis of Tesco sales by Jeff Stent, a food industry specialist at Citigroup investment bank, suggests some foods, for example pork pies and meat pasties, simply cannot be made into healthy products. A woman eating a pork pie could be exceeding her daily recommended fat intake by 20%.

Stent's report says: "The scope for improving the nutritional content of savoury pastry is both . . . limited and costly. Savoury pastry products may face a very challenging future."

He compared sales at Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket chain, in the eight weeks before nutrition labelling was introduced with sales in the eight weeks afterwards. The labels on the front of packets tell people what proportion of their "guideline daily allowance" (GDA) of sugar, fat and salt is represented by each item

Sales of salmon en croute ready meals fell by more than a third once shoppers discovered that a pack contained 91% of the daily saturated fat allowance. Croissant sales fell by 8%, while stores sold twice as many low-fat, low-salt egg-and-cress sandwiches.

Sainsbury was the first supermarket to introduce explicit front-of-pack colour-coded labelling 15 months ago. Following recommendations from the FSA, products were given red, amber and green codes to indicate fats, saturates, salts and sugar.

According to the chain's figures released this weekend, sales of lower-fat foods have jumped. Spinach and ricotta cannelloni, and carrot and coriander soup from the Be Good to Yourself range are up by 142% and 123% respectively.

"We have seen significant changes in customer behaviour," said Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury. "It is influencing our thinking when we are developing products. If we make our products more healthy, more people are buying them."

A spokesman for Unilever, which owns 28 UK brands including Hellman's, Pot Noodles and Marmite, has introduced low-sugar and low-salt products, but says most consumers prefer "standard" versions.

Associated British Foods says: "There is no such thing as bad food, only bad diet. We support the consumer trends of convenience, indulgence and health. A healthy balanced diet will span all three of these - for example a pork pie served with salad."
The Times, 29th April 2006

New Drugs for Hyperactive Children Raise Doctors' Fears
by Roya Nikkhah

Doctors have criticised official guidelines recommending new drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in young people.

One of the two new drugs approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has been linked to a rise in suicidal thoughts in children - a point not mentioned in the guidance. The move to widen the recommended range of drugs - by adding Dexedrine and Strattera to the sole previous prescription, Ritalin - was described by critics as "deeply irresponsible".

A report into Strattera by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said two British children had attempted suicide after taking it. Eight more had suicidal thoughts. Others reported feelings of anxiety.

The Nice guidance lists "abdominal pain, decreased appetite, nausea and early morning awakening" as the most common side-effects.

Dr Sami Timimi, a leading child behavioural expert based in Lincolnshire, said: "It's outrageous that Nice is recommending … even more drugs for children when their long-term effects are still unknown. They have been linked with psychosis, drug dependency and even suicide, yet there's no mention of this [in the guidance]."

But Eric Taylor, a child psychiatry professor at King's College London, felt that having a range of drug options might increase safety.

And Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of Nice, said: "Our guidance is based on the best available evidence on the use of these drugs. It was developed in full consult-ation with patient groups and professional experts."
The Sunday Telegraph, 2nd April 2006

Oxygen therapy gave us back our child. Why is a remarkable treatment like this being denied to thousands of desperate patients?
by Elizabeth Grice

Andrew Waddington is as limp as a sleeping child in his father's arms. But he is not asleep and there is something disturbing about this kind of floppiness. His head is lolling and swinging. His limbs seem weak and uncontrolled.

Ten years ago, during a routine 10-minute operation to correct an undescended testicle, Andrew was deprived of oxygen. The medical accident, known euphemistically as "acquired brain injury", left him with a condition resembling cerebral palsy.

Now he is 13, a handsome boy who communicates by moving his heavy head in a semi-circle - right for yes, left for no, and subtle gradations in between, on a scale of one to 10.

"How was school today, Andrew?" his mother, Teresa, asks him. His head sweeps round three-quarters of the arc towards the right. "I see, seven out of 10."

"He may appear to be a terrible case," Teresa says, "but if you had seen him before you'd realise just how far he has come. He could not see. He could not understand. He cried all day. We spent all our time trying to alleviate his distress. We were told he would probably only ever recognise me as a 'familiar smell'. Doctors said there was no hope; to put him in a home, to have another child."

Andrew spent 21 months at Alder Hey Hospital's brain injury unit in Liverpool. Then the Waddingtons heard about a children's naturopathic clinic in Lancaster, close to their home, run by former nurse and midwife Jane Dean. In desperation, they took him to see her.

"Andrew's body was curved like a banana," recalls Dean. "He had no control over any of his muscles and was being fed through a tube. He was on 16 different kinds of medication. There was no cognition at all.

"He had that high-pitched 'cerebral' cry that, once you have heard, you hope never to hear again in your life. My heart went out to him. I thought, 'Surely there must be more we can do.'"

Dean had recently watched a television programme about the remarkable healing powers of oxygen administered under pressure, known as hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT). She decided to see if it would help Andrew.

She rented a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and had it installed on an industrial estate in Lancaster. For six months, Andrew was treated there three to five times a week.

He has now been receiving HBOT for eight years and his improvement, say his parents, is little short of miraculous. "Before the treatment, his body was tight all the time," says Teresa. "His understanding came back very quickly. To begin with, he couldn't see. But now he can read, his maths is good and he can tell the time. He is starting to be able to squeeze a switch, which could open up a new form of communication. We take him to football matches and to horse-riding for the disabled. He remembers everything. He will never walk, but we have our child back. I believe in my heart that if he had gone into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber as soon as the accident happened, he would probably have been OK."

Doctors might be more circumspect, perhaps, but access to HBOT for Andrew at the time of his accident would have been as unlikely then as it is now for thousands of people who could benefit from it.

Most doctors are unaware of the therapeutic potential of oxygen because they are not taught about it as medical students. However, research shows that not only can it reverse potentially fatal conditions, such as radiation tissue damage, carbon-monoxide poisoning, gas gangrene and necrosis (when tissue dies following infection), it is also effective for wounds that fail to heal and a wide range of other conditions, including multiple sclerosis.

Oxygen is crucial to tissue repair, but its delivery is often impaired by damage to blood vessels. Breathing high levels under hyperbaric conditions (increased atmospheric pressure) raises the amount of dissolved oxygen in the circulation - so more reaches the tissues.

The Daily Telegraph recently highlighted the case of Lisa Norris, 16, who suffered a massive radiation overdose during treatment for a brain tumour. Her symptoms included a severely burned scalp, which healed after several sessions in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

Following that article - which mentioned HBOT's therapeutic applications - many desperate people contacted us, wanting to know where their nearest unit was. The news is not good: oxygen chambers cost about £50,000 and most of the 75 hyperbaric centres in Britain are run by charities, principally for MS sufferers. A few are privately run, mostly for the victims of diving accidents, but there are only five NHS units.

"It is ironic that the most powerful intervention in medicine is being used by lay people in the community,'' says Prof Philip James, Britain's leading expert in HBOT, who is based at the University of Dundee.

Part of the problem, according to Jane Dean, is that HBOT is considered "alternative" and people are scared of going against their doctor or consultant's advice.

Dean, who, following her experience with Andrew Waddington, founded the Breath for Life charity to provide HBOT, says charities such as hers face other problems.

"Our centre is very small, yet it is unjustly classified as an independent private hospital with specialist technology. It is run by volunteers and has only one paid member of staff, yet we are being asked by the Healthcare Commission [the independent health inspection organisation] to pay the same annual inspection fee - £1,500 - as commercially run centres. The struggle for survival is acute. Day to day, we wonder if we will have enough money to pay British Oxygen Company [oxygen costs £1,000 a month]."

Leanne Walker, a psychology student who suffered brain damage following encephalitis, is one of the centre's most moving success stories.

"In the beginning, she woke up every day begging me to kill her," says her mother, Susan. "She told me later that she only called me Mum because she thought it would make me feel better. She didn't really know who I was. She went back to being a child and lost all sense of appropriate behaviour. We had to teach her everything, even the names of objects like cups and saucers. She had no long-term memory, and her short-term memory was about 30 seconds."

After four weeks of treatment at the Breath for Life centre, 25-year-old Leanne's memory started to improve. "One day she remembered something she had done the day before. It was a wonderful breakthrough," says her mother.

She was treated for an hour and a half three times a week for three months, then once a week. "We dared not miss it. Her improvement amazed us." Leanne was able to repeat her first-year course at Lancaster University, graduated with a 2:1 and now has a part-time job as a teaching assistant.

On the day I visit, Breath for Life's tiny premises are crowded with unofficial ambassadors for HBOT, each eager to produce living proof of its efficacy. George Birkett carries his 13-year-old grandson, Thomas McNulty, into the eight-seater chamber and adjusts his mask. The boy's crumpled body had been knotted with discomfort. As the oxygen floods through, he visibly relaxes and quietens.

Thomas was born 25 weeks prematurely with cerebral palsy. Before HBOT, says his grandfather, his quality of life was poor. "This chamber is his lifeline, without a doubt. The first thing we noticed when we started treatment was that his hands, which had been clenched tight, opened on their own. Then his speech improved and gradually his personality blossomed."

Zoe Greenwood, 51, has come in with daughter, Rebecca, aged 17, who has dyspraxia (severe coordination and communication problems). Rebecca has been having HBOT for five years. When she started using the chamber, her speech was unintelligible. Now she can express herself fluently, says her mother.

There is much ignorance and scepticism in the medical profession about HBOT, according to Prof James: "Patients who've heard about it obviously expect doctors to know something but, if it is not routinely taught, how can they?"

The hand-to-mouth existence of a non-profit-making centre such as Breath for Life is shaming. The charity charges £10 for children and £25 for adults for a 90-minute session in the oxygen chamber, compared with fees of up to £380 an hour charged by some private units.

The centre has just been threatened with "enforcement procedures" by the Healthcare Commission unless it pays £580 for one of its staff, Dave Holehouse, a life-support technician with 25 years' experience, to attend a course qualifying him to inspect the centre's 45ft oxygen pipeline.

"We have not got all the fancy gases they have in hospitals, delivered through miles of pipes," he says, "but we are being treated as if we had. Ninety-eight per cent of the course I won't need for my job and the other two per cent I already know."

The Healthcare Commission says it is trying to interpret statutory safety requirements sensitively but that charity staff must have "relevant and up-to-date training". Few would disagree, especially where vulnerable patients - many of them children - are concerned.

But there does appear to be an argument for charities providing services the NHS cannot - or does not want to - to have special status.

Jane Dean wants the Department of Health to reclassify charitable hyperbaric oxygen treatment centres as hospices, which have lower registration and inspection fees. "We are a tiny little postage stamp on the face of the earth, but we are plugging health service shortcomings on a daily basis. Surely that counts for something.''

www.dundee.ac.uk/surgery/hyperbaric
For more information on HBOT, see; www.abreathforlife.org, tel: 01524 855422; www.ms-selfhelp.org.
The Daily Telegraph, April 2006

One in 20 Has Personality Disorder
News section

Nearly one in 20 people in the UK has a personality disorder, according to new research.

The most common type is obsessive-compulsive disorder - whose high-profile sufferers include footballer David Beckham.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, involved interviews with 8,886 people followed by one-on-one interviews with 638 people.

It found that those who had been in care were more likely to suffer from disorders - and three times more likely to suffer from paranoid or schizoid disorders, where they feel withdrawn, isolated and have few friends.

The researchers said this could lead to earlier interventions for people leaving care. Research also found that all personality disorders apart from the schizotypal type - where sufferers have some delusions similar to those with full schizophrenia - are more common in men than women.

Anti-social personality disorder was also found to be five times more common in men than women.

Disorders such as paranoid personality disorder were also more common among those who were divorced or separated, unemployed or on a low weekly income.

People who had disorders that made them avoidant, dependent on others or obsessive-compulsive were also more likely to fall into the unemployment group.

Professor Jeremy Coid, from the University of London, said he hoped the findings would lead to better preventative treatments, especially for the young.
The Daily Mail, 2nd May 2006

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: And the last paragraph is surely the nub of it - preventative drug treatment for arbitrary personality disorders. This scam was exposed by Mary Wakefield in the Telegraph and written up by no less than the British Medical Journal itself. Moral of the story: avoid psychiatrists.

Further Resources

The Mind Game by Phillip Day

Click here to purchase or review any of the above.
Click here for telephone sales around the world.

Pylon Cancer Fears Put £7bn Blight on House Prices
by Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent

Up to £7 billion will be wiped off property values if the Government accepts the advice of experts that homes should no longer be built near overhead power lines because of possible links with childhood leukaemia.

About 130,000 houses could lose between 10 per cent and a quarter of their re-sale price if ministers take the advice of a committee set up by the Department of Health.

A draft of a report by the committee, seen by The Daily Telegraph, states that building houses within 230ft of high voltage power lines and 115ft of lower voltage lines should be banned.

The confidential document, written by John Swanson, the scientific adviser to the National Grid, considers the option of compulsorily buying all 75,000 homes in England and Wales that are affected.

But a more recent paper, written last month, sets out the group's preferred option - an end to the building of houses near overhead lines and a ban on new power lines being built near existing homes.

The draft report acknowledges that implementing this as a policy could wipe a quarter off the value of 25,000 homes within 230ft of 400kv and 275kv overhead transmission lines and some 10 per cent from the value of 55,000 houses within 460ft of them.

It also admits there could be a reduction of 15 per cent in the value of 50,000 homes within 100ft of the lower voltage 132kv power lines.

The documents are the work of the Stakeholder Advisory Group on Extremely Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields (Sage). This committee was set up by the DoH in October 2004 following the publication of a report by Dr Gerald Draper, of the Oxford childhood cancer research group.

Dr Draper suggested that children under 15 living near high voltage power lines could have a 69 per cent increased risk of getting leukaemia.

Some scientists pointed out that while the research found a statistical association, it did not establish a causal link and they rejected the findings.

Sage includes representatives of the DoH, the National Grid, the Health Protection Agency, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

Academics from the University of Bristol and Nottingham Trent University are also members, as well as a number of campaigners from groups committed to highlighting what they believe are the potential dangers of electromagnetic fields.

Nicholas Ashe, of Property Vision, a leading firm of country house and estate buying agents, said the potential loss of value to properties could be even greater than Sage's working group predicts.

He said: "The higher the value of the house, the greater the impact. We are talking about reductions of up to 50 per cent. For the kind of country house we find for clients, the majority of the market would be wiped out and properties could become almost unsaleable. It would have the same affect as building a road nearby or the property being under a new flight path."

The draft Sage report, dated last November, acknowledges that power lines already have an impact on property values, with a home in a rural location within 165ft of a National Grid transmission line losing 15 per cent of its value.

It considers potential policy options if the Government were to decide that no one should be allowed to live within 230ft of power lines.

These include the compulsory purchase and demolition of all houses near the lines. "This section considers the more modest policy of applying this prospectively, ie stopping any new homes from being built near power lines but not doing anything directly with existing homes. However one possible consequence of this prospective-only policy is that it nonetheless causes devaluation of existing properties."

The report lists four scenarios for the loss of value caused by the Government adopting Sage's preliminary advice. This amounts to between £3 billion and £7 billion.

The report will be presented to the Government in June along with another report on new advice on electrical wiring within the home.

It states that whether home and landowners could claim compensation from electricity companies will depend partly on the contractual arrangements between the parties, and whether the Government introduces compulsory or voluntary measures.

Whatever happens, it seems likely that the overall costs will ultimately be borne by consumers.

A spokesman for the National Grid said: "We are not going to disclose any details until the firm conclusions of the group are published this summer."
The Daily Telegraph, 29th April 2006

26 April 2006: Experts rule out houses near pylons
13 December 2005: 12,000 object to 200ft pylons in the Highlands
10 September 2003[Money]: Insurers fear wave of claims over pylons
6 October 2002: New evidence links power lines and cancer
Questions remain over pylons
Case study: Blighted by cables
The power game

Case study: £1m home 'blighted by cables' cannot be sold for half the price
by Nigel Bunyan

Dermot Finnigan has suffered greatly from the blight of a power cable.

Four years ago his home, set beside a golf club in Sale, Greater Manchester, was worth upwards of £1 million.

Today it is so compromised by the erection of a 40kva pylon that he cannot sell it even at a huge loss. A potential buyer agreed in February to pay £495,000, but pulled out of the deal on Wednesday following publication in The Daily Telegraph of the latest report linking power lines to childhood leukaemia.

An estate agent is charging £4,000 "up-front" simply to continue marketing the property, while his bank will not risk a £50,000 loan so he can meet domestic bills.

National Grid Transco disputes Mr Finnigan's claim that the huge structure encroaches on his land, while the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, which sees the pylon as integral to its hopes of extending the city's Metrolink system, refuses to even discuss valuation.

The impasse means Mr Finnigan, 51, a former demolition contractor, and his wife, Janet, 49, are trapped in the four-bedroom home they regarded as their slice of "countryside in the city".

At the same time, his enforced retirement because of cancer means the couple have only minimal income.

"This is a classic David and Goliath scenario, except we are up against two Goliaths," he said yesterday.

"GMPTE have passed it on to the National Grid and the National Grid are in denial. They say we are ineligible for compensation because the cables overhang a few centimetres beyond our boundary. They are wrong and we have a 1956 ordnance survey plan to prove it. They have a moral responsibility to compensate us."

The latest report means there will be a lot more people who find themselves in a similar position.

The Finnigans bought a 10-acre site at Fairways Farm, close to the M60, in 1984. They planted 3,000 trees and built a house.

"For more than 10 years it was perfect, an absolute delight to live here," said Mr Finnigan. "But in May 2002 we were served with a compulsory purchase order made on behalf of GMPTE.

"We were told they wanted us out by Christmas, but weren't given either a price or any possible recourse. Fifteen months later the CPO was removed. We were told the pylon was going up at New Farm, next door to us, but that we would still be compensated. But instead of putting it up in place of the two houses there they built it at a different spot and gave the houses to Sale Golf Club. They seem to have moved it to one side in order to avoid compensating us."

The Finnigans' problems have been made worse by the removal of hundreds of trees - to facilitate the pylon - that screened their home from the noise of the motorway.

"Ninety per cent of buyers are put off by the pylon; the rest by the noise," he said.

National Grid Transco insisted that neither the old nor the new route of the power lines crossed Mr Finnigan's land.

GMPTE said it took the case "very seriously". But despite being sympathetic to Mr Finnigan's situation, it said he was not legally entitled to compensation.
The Daily Telegraph, 29th April 2006

Third of Children are Too Fat

More than a third of all children are either overweight or obese, UK government figures showed yesterday.

A quarter of 11 to 15 year olds are classified as obese - double the proportion 10 years ago. Among boys the proportion rose from 13.5 per cent to 24.2 per cent and among girls from 15.4 per cent to 26.7 per cent.

When overweight and obesity were taken together, the percentage for girls was 46 and for boys 37 per cent.

Even in children aged two to 10, the proportion of boys classed as obese rose from 9.6 per to 15.9 per cent and in girls from 10.3 per cent to 12.8 per cent.

About 2,000 children aged two to 15 took part in the survey. Their Body Mass Index was calculated by dividing their weight - in stones or kilos - by their height - in feet or metres - squared. A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is healthy; between 25 and 29.5 is overweight and over 30 is obese.

Figures for adults were no better. Almost one adult in four is now obese; rising from 13 per cent to 24 per cent in men and from 16 per cent to 24 per cent in women. The figures from the Government's Health Survey were released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre. Prof Colin Waine, the chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said they revealed a "public health time bomb". Children who are obese aged 11 to 15 are twice as likely to die when they are 50.

He said: "This is serious news because obesity in adolescence is associated with the premature onset of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. It really augurs very badly for the future health of the population as these children move from adolescence to adulthood. This will have a significant impact on longevity and we are in danger of raising a generation of people who have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. "This is a public health timebomb as these children move into adult life."

He said increased inactivity, including not walking or cycling to school, together with more "energy-dense foods" were fuelling the crisis.

"Being obese at adolescence increases the cancer risk by 21 per cent for girls and 14 per cent for boys," he said. "In my youth, playing cricket and tennis was the norm. These have now been replaced by sedentary activities such as watching television and playing video games."

Amanda Eden, a care adviser at Diabetes UK, said: "We know that 80 per cent of people with diabetes are overweight or obese at diagnosis. We will soon be seeing our children growing up losing limbs and becoming blind as they develop the serious complications of having the condition. A firmer line needs to be taken to force the food industry to adhere to food labelling guidelines so that people know what's in the food they buy."

Barbara Harpham, the director of the charity Heart Research UK, said: "Parents need to wake up to the fact that it is up to them to make sure their children eat properly and lay down a foundation for good health. Giving your kids treats may make you feel good now, but imagine how you will feel 20 years down the line?" Caroline Flint, the public health minister, said: "We have taken huge steps forward already and are starting to change attitudes through the school fruit scheme and more investment in school food and sport."

Andrew Lansley, the shadow Health Secretary said: "There is no excuse for complacency and delay. We need active and competent, cross-governmental measures and we need them now."
The Daily Telegraph, Health Section, 24th April 2006

TV Adds a Stone a Year to a Child's Weight
by Roya Nikkhah

Watching television for an hour can increase a child's dietary intake by 167 calories and add more than a stone to their weight over a year, scientists have established.

The calorie calculation - up to nine per cent of a child's recommended daily intake - marks the first time that an exact figure has been put on the impact of television on children's diets.

Researchers also discovered that children were eating significantly larger quantities of the snacks, sweets and fast foods that they had seen advertised most frequently on television.

The new study has prompted calls from British health experts for "urgently needed" guidelines on the amount of television children should watch to prevent a further escalation of the country's child obesity crisis.

One million two- to 15-year-olds in Britain are now either overweight or obese, and the condition has been linked with a sharp increase in children in the type of diabetes normally seen in middle-aged adults. Doctors say the current generation of British children will be the first since the Second World War to live shorter lives than their parents.

The new study examined the television viewing, eating habits and physical activity of more than 500 children aged 11 and 12 over 20 months.

Forty-three per cent of the sample group increased the amount of television they watched over the period of the study. At the start, scientists recorded how much food the children were eating and measured its calorie content.

They then compared it with the food and calories the children were consuming after 20 months, set against their individual increases in television viewing. Each additional hour of viewing meant, on average, that a child had consumed an extra 167 calories.

The research was carried out by a team from Harvard University and is published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Jean Wiecha, a senior research scientist and one of the authors of the report, When Children Eat What They Watch, said the findings confirmed the link between increased television viewing and rising levels of childhood obesity. She was particularly concerned by the correlation between weight gains and the sorts of food advertising to which children are increasingly subjected.

"The perception is that children watching television only gain weight because they are sitting and snacking in front of the screen and doing less physical activity," she said. "But when we compared the children's daily calorie intake at the end of the study with what they were consuming at the start, the majority of the increase in calories was explained by them eating more of the snack foods they had seen advertised."

A second study, at Michigan University, found that young children exposed to two or more hours of television a day were three times more likely to be overweight than children watching fewer than two hours.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under two be limited to less than two hours of television a day but there is no official guidance in Britain. It has been estimated, however, that British children now spend as much as 53 hours a week - seven and a half hours a day - watching television, up from 38 hours a decade ago.

It is feared that this means weight problems linked with television could be even worse here than in America, where children watch an average of seven hours a day. Last night, Paul Gateley, a professor of exercise and obesity at Leeds Metropolitan University, called on the Government to recommend that children watch less than two hours of television a day.

"The lack of Government guidance on this is one of the biggest problems with the obesity issue," he said.

Prof Mary Rudolf, a paediatrician for the East Leeds Primary Care Trust, who specialises in childhood nutrition and obesity, said that "strong guidance from policy makers is now absolutely essential".

"These studies clearly show that television and its advertising play a large part in the childhood obesity epidemic. If we have a five-a-day fruit and vegetable guideline from the Department of Health we should have similar guidance on watching television."
The Daily Telegraph, 9th April 2006

ID Cards for Britain

This was written originally by Francis Stonor Saunders the former arts editor of The New Statesman, author of The Cultural Cold War, Diabolical Englishman and The Devil's Broker. She was awarded the Royal Historical Society's William Gladstone Memorial Prize. She lives in London.

"You may have heard that legislation creating compulsory ID cards passed a crucial stage in the House of Commons. You may feel that ID cards are not something to worry about, since we already have photo ID for our passport and driving licence and an ID card will be no different to that. What you have not been told is the full scope of this proposed ID card, and what it will mean to you personally.

The proposed ID card will be different from any card you now hold. It will be connected to a database called the NIR, (National Identity Register), where all of your personal details will be stored. This will include the unique number that will be issued to you, your fingerprints, a scan of the back of your eye, and your photograph. Your name, address and date of birth will also obviously be stored there.

There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your life on the NIR database, which can be expanded by the Government with or without further Acts of Parliament.

By itself, you might think that this register is harmless, but you would be wrong to come to this conclusion. This new card will be used to check your identity against your entry in the register in real time, whenever you present it to 'prove who you are'.

Every place that sells alcohol or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every bank will have an NIR card terminal, (very much like the chip and pin readers that are everywhere now) into which your card can be 'swiped' to check your identity. Each time this happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time and place that the card was presented. This means for example, that there will be a government record of every time you withdraw more than £99 at your branch of NatWest, who now demand ID for these transactions. Every time you have to prove that you are over 18, your card will be swiped, and a record made at the NIR. Restaurants and off licenses will demand that your card is swiped so that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to someone over 18, and that this was proved by the access to the NIR, indemnifying them from prosecution.

Private businesses are going to be given access to the NIR database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a London Underground Oyster Card, or a supermarket loyalty card, or a driving license you will have to present your ID card for a swipe. The same goes for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or an internet account.

Oyster, DVLA, BT and Nectar (for example) all run very detailed databases of their own. They will be allowed access to the NIR, just as every other business will be. This means that each of these entities will be able to store your unique number in their database, and place all your travel, phone records, driving activities and detailed shopping habits under your unique NIR number. These databases, which can easily fit on a storage device the size of your hand, will be sold to third parties either legally or illegally. It will then be possible for a non-governmental entity to create a detailed dossier of all your activities. Certainly, the government will have clandestine access to all of them, meaning that they will have a complete record of all your movements, from how much and when you withdraw from your bank account to what medications you are taking, down to the level of what sort of bread you eat - all accessible via a single unique number in a central database.

This is quite a significant leap from a simple ID card that shows your name and face.
Most people do not know that this is the true character and scope of the proposed ID card. Whenever the details of how it will work are explained to them, they quickly change from being ambivalent towards it.

The Government is going to COMPEL you to enter your details into the NIR and to carry this card. If you and your children want to obtain or renew your passports, you will be forced to have your fingerprints taken and your eyes scanned for the NIR, and an ID card will be issued to you whether you want one or not. If you refuse to be fingerprinted and eye scanned, you will not be able to get a passport. Your ID card will, just like your passport, not be your property. The Home Secretary will have the right to revoke or suspend your ID at any time, meaning that you will not be able to withdraw money from your Bank Account, for example, or do anything that requires you to present your government issued ID card.

The arguments that have been put forwarded in favour of ID cards can be easily disproved. ID cards WILL NOT stop terrorists; every Spaniard has a compulsory ID card as did the Madrid Bombers. ID cards will not 'eliminate benefit fraud', which in comparison, is small compared to the astronomical cost of this proposal, which will be measured in billions according to the LSE (London School of Economics). This scheme exists solely to exert total surveillance and control over the ordinary free British citizen, and it will line the pockets of the companies that will create the computer systems at the expense of your freedom, privacy and money.

If you did not know the full scope of the proposed ID card scheme before and are as unsettled as I am at what it really means to you, to this country and its way of life, I urge you to email or photocopy this and give it to your friends and colleagues and everyone else you think should know and who cares. The Bill has proceeded to this stage due to the lack of accurate and complete information on this proposal being made public. Together, hand in hand, we can inform the entire nation if everyone who receives this passes it on."

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: Forget Orwell, I don't have to get into what this would mean in the realm of health, or rather the opposite of it. A 'bad citizen's register' for vaccination non-compliants; 'psychiatric' profiles on citizens; drug-prescribing registers; child-smacking registers; non-payment of health insurance rosters. Apart from anything, this is very un-British. Smacks of a multiplication of those ferrety little jobsworths who come around to see if your lawn-sprinkler's been running. Let's get active or suffer what we must suffer. No to cockroaches. Sign up 'No2ID' today.

There's Clean, and There's Unhealthily Clean
by Steve Ransom

"While ears do need to be cleaned fairly regularly, this is a job that should be done in private, using one's own truck keys." Anon

While many books have publicised the common-sense approach to good health through adequate sanitation and cleanliness, another equation to consider in examining the cause of certain illnesses is when the pendulum swings the other way and obsession with cleanliness begins to have a negative effect on health. The Pasteurian idea that disease is caused by malevolent microbes in the air, on our work surfaces and in our foods, has proved to be one of the most powerful behaviour-changing ideas in history. Author of Germ Manic, Satre Stuelke, states:

"As we look about our environment, and specifically our home, we conclude that anything that is not an intended part of our home is naturally a contaminant - the most common contaminants being dirt, dust, and dust bunnies. Before germ theory, these were considered natural inhabitants of the floor; somewhat of a nuisance, not contaminants necessarily, but certainly not pathogenic. After germ theory it then became imperative in our minds for the health of the household to prevent the previously unchecked accumulation of dust and dirt. The eventual hysterical exaggeration of germ theory's importance in our everyday lives has made it possible for a multitude of appliances and cleaning products to infiltrate our psyches."

THE INFILTRATION OF PUFFING BILLY
At the turn of the 20th century, the Prince of Wales had an analysis taken from the dust removed from his residence. Bacteriologists apparently discovered over 355 million living organisms - many potentially lethal. At around the same time, H. Cecil Booth was adding the finishing touches to the first successful suction vacuum cleaner. His first portable machine 'Puffing Billy' was mounted on a horse-drawn trolley. Before the invention of the vacuum cleaner, people kept floors clean by sweeping them or by taking rugs into the yard to beat them free of dust. 'Puffing Billy' was to revolutionise the way we thought about dust and dirt. Now, if a king could have so many bugs in his house, then what chance the dirty pauper?

SEIZE THE DAY
In 1907, with few houses having an electric power supply, US inventor J Murray Spangler developed the first portable vacuum cleaner. He sold his idea to William H. Hoover. The first 'Hoover' went on sale in 1926. Advertising and commerce recognised the avenue being opening up here by germ theory. An appropriate level of cleanliness could now be marketed as vital for 'protection' and the maintaining of adequate health. We were now being warned that germs were everywhere, and that we must eliminate them. Hence the bathroom sponge with its 10,000 deadly spores of death. In 1993, almost 70 years after the first Hoover went on sale, a new kind of vacuum cleaner appeared, claiming to suck 100% of dust. By 1997, the Dyson Dual Cyclone, which was named after its British inventor, James Dyson, had generated sales of more than £1 billion worldwide. Satre Stuelke again:

"Our culture exists now in a well-cultivated classic Pavlovian response with a twist. The stimulus has been internalized as the knowledge of germ theory. The response is to obliterate anything that can possibly be linked to the presence, even the threat of the presence, of germs. Thus our culture is plunged into a vicious circle of inventing, marketing and using products designed to quell our fear of all microbes - dangerous or not."

And nowhere do we fear the microbe more than in the home.

AT WHAT PRICE TO OUR HEALTH AND PLANET?
Now that these fears have been linked to our immediate environment, our obsessions with the dust particle and maintaining high levels of cleanliness have given rise to all manner of bottled, household precautions. Anti-bacterial soap, anti-bacterial laundry detergent, anti-bacterial kitchen and bathroom cleaning solutions, anti-bacterially packaged goods of all types, room sprays, impregnated wipes, plug-in antiseptic fragrances and air de-ionizers that eradicate microbes with high voltage arcs - this is just a small sample of the massive anti-germ arsenal now being pitched to us by the £billion. And the massive rise in personal care products, containing all sorts of anti-germ chemicals, has raked in immeasurable fortunes for the multi-nationals. But at what price to our health and planet? Take the simple example of the effects these products are having upon our water supply, for instance.

A LOT OF FROTH
The tonnage of shampoos, soaps, deodorants and shower gels flushed into the sewers from our bathrooms are done so with little awareness of our wider ecological responsibilities. Can these suds be adequately dealt with at the treatment plant? Are they poisonous to fish? And what about the damage to ourselves? Apart from the potentially harmful effects of drinking such water, many people are using aggressive 'beautifying' chemicals directly on their skins, sometimes two or three times a day, giving rise to a whole host of skin and systemic complaints that were not with us before germ theory was introduced. There is no proof that an odourless, non-secreting body is a medical necessity and unpleasant levels of body odour can quite easily be resolved by the use of the many natural, ecologically friendly products now available.

SCRUB! SCRUB! SCRUB!
Today, in the western world, half of our entire domestic water consumption goes down bathroom drains, not including the water for flushing the toilet. Regarding our unnecessarily high levels of water consumption, Klaus Lanz, the author of the Greenpeace Book of Water states:

"The ambitions of the sanitary industry go even further - an individual en-suite bathroom for every bedroom, a power shower that pumps water at high velocity. People are still kidding themselves, or being kidded, that there is an inexhaustible supply of this natural element at hand for whatever aquatic fantasy that attracts them. The fact that water is part of nature, rather than a consumer item, and that extracting it in large quantities is likely to harm the environment, is completely ignored. The provenance of the water that pours from our elegant taps and showers is something we choose not to reflect upon."

GET THEE BEHIND ME, DUST!
Dust is increasingly taking the rap as another culprit behind illness and disease. But are these accusations entirely warranted? The following information is taken from the guidelines suggested to householders by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, should anyone visit the house with a dust allergy. Recommendations include taking everything out of the room before cleaning it; emptying and cleaning all cupboards; if possible, sealing all cupboards and storing the contents elsewhere; if this is not possible, then making sure to store clothing in zippered plastic garment bags; putting all shoes in boxes and storing them off the floor; cleaning the floor and any woodwork thoroughly. Advice is also given on the installation of various electric air filters:

"… which can help reduce the number of allergy-promoting particles in the air. There are two types: self-contained room units or filters that can be attached to a furnace. Electrostatic and high-energy particulate absorption (HEPA) filters are especially effective. But remember that an electrostatic filter requires regular maintenance. If it isn't functioning well, it can emit ozone, a chemical that can irritate the lungs. Dust mites like humid conditions, so a dehumidifier may be useful. But again, these devices must be cleaned frequently or they can develop mould. And also remember that for some individuals, dry air is irritating to the nose and lungs."

In reviewing the above precautions, Senior Magazine suggested the following:

"Maintaining a dust-free zone may seem like a lot of trouble, but making these cleaning steps part of your housekeeping routine can make it easier. The results? Less laboured breathing, fewer medications, and greater freedom from allergy and asthma attacks are worth the extra effort."

DIRT AND DUST MAY BE GOOD FOR KIDS
This is all very well, but what are the longer-term implications for our health through this excessive behaviour? It is often stated that the reason why a child suffers from the same condition as the parent is because, "… it's something he inherited." But with many parents unhealthily devoted to germ eradication, what role in that child's ill-health is being played by the negative effects of parental fears? The September 2002 edition of Parenting and Pregnancy included a liberating report entitled Dirt May Be Good For Kids. A condensed account is included below:

"Behind the ongoing epidemic of allergy and autoimmune disease there's a surprising culprit: cleanliness. One of the hallmarks of the 20th century was its war on germs. Kids now live in cleaner homes and suffer fewer infections than their grandparents did. There's irony in this, according to the so-called 'hygiene' theory. It holds that a germ-free childhood warps the immune system. A report in the Sept. 19th issue of The New England Journal of Medicine now offers powerful support for this theory. The researchers carefully vacuumed up dust from the beds of 812 children from rural areas of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The dust was measured for a basic component of dirt - the outer cell wall of common bacteria, known to scientists as endotoxin. Also collected were the kids' medical records.

The result: the kids who had the cleanest mattresses had the most hay fever, allergic asthma, and allergic reactions. The kids with the dirtiest beds - and least allergy and asthma - were most likely to live or play on farms. That's no surprise, as earlier studies showed that children raised on farms have fewer allergies and less asthma than rural kids who don't live on farms. Bacteria excreted by cows and other farm animals are the most common source of endotoxin."

So what exactly might that child have inherited? An identifiable, bloodline illness? Or is that child suffering from the ministrations of over-protective parents? The obsessive or abnormal traits parents attach to dirt, dust, spiders, etc., are 'passed on' to our offspring, leading often to that child experiencing the same bondages, fears and phobias. While the advice from Senior sounds safe and wise, what a culture shock it is to read that dirt and dust may not be such bad company after all. Jean-François Bach, MD, DSc, is the director of the INSERM immunology unit at Necker Hospital in Paris. Bach says that as the immune system develops in a child, it needs fine-tuning. Every time it fights a germ, it learns a little more. Eventually, it learns the best way to fight germs and how not to start allergic or autoimmune reactions. Bach warns that overprotection - especially by unneeded antibiotic treatments - can kill off harmless bacteria that have much to teach the immune system.

"I think the first thing is not to worry if a child has a piece of meat falling on the ground and eats it," says Bach. "Exposure to some minor infections is not bad. You don't need to sterilise and re-sterilise everything. The main thing is to avoid unnecessary antibiotic therapy."

In an article entitled, 'Allergies: Because We're Too Clean', the author stated: "The way we're living is far removed from the day-to-day confrontation with nature the way our ancestors experienced it. We're out of touch with the Earth, too safe and protected. We don't have enough cuts and bruises, or dirt under our fingernails."

CATS AND DOGS PREVENT ALLERGIES
With regard to the rise in allergies, one of the first things that an allergist will ask, when making an initial assessment, is whether there are any pets in the house. Household pets are generally off-limits to anyone who has been diagnosed with an allergy or asthma. But could pets actually help in the prevention of allergies? A study conducted by doctors in Virginia certainly indicates this. Doctors studied more than 200 children with and without allergies and tested their sensitivity to cat dander and dust mites. They found that children who grew up with cats in the home were less likely to develop allergies.

Naturally, with all this talk of dust, dirt, cats, dogs and farmyard toxins, no-one is suggesting we return to the dirt and squalor that led to so much illness and death witnessed even as late as the early part of last century. There is a sensible middle ground, wherein an appropriate level of cleanliness may be achieved without slipping into excess.

WHAT IS AN ALLERGY ANYWAY?
With the rise in childhood immune illnesses and the general dis-eases being experienced by our environmentally toxic society, there are now a huge number of non-conventional tests on offer today, claiming to be able to identify the triggers for today's skin reactions, breathing difficulties and general bodily irritations. Usually described as a food intolerance test, these tests are now very big business. In the UK, for instance, the York Laboratory has seen the number of people wanting to be tested double from 8,000 to 16,000 per annum. But how accurate is allergy testing? According to the British investigative journalist Nick Morgan, his research into allergy testing proved most disconcerting.

"Since mainstream medicine is reluctant to get involved, the alternative health lobby has been quick to fill the void. There are dozens of different tests, but are they accurate? And could they be harmful? Using myself as a guinea pig, I decide to find out…."

His journey took him to various allergy practitioners across London, each offering different advice, charging different fees and all drawing different conclusions. His diagnoses ranged from frail blood cells and fatigue to parasites that could only be detected by a particular machine. Over the range of tests, Mr Morgan was found to be 'intolerant' to over two hundred different foods. Muscle-testing, hair analysis, intuitive testing, electro-magnetic testing and blood tests, including the infamous ELISA test and the Antigen Leucocyte Cellular Antibody Test (an equally unspecific method of diagnosis), were just some of the allergy 'gadgets' that delivered these widely-varying results. Spending a total of £450, Mr Morgan concluded that allergy testing was a complete scam, albeit most times carried out by the most well-intentioned practitioners. Times Newspapers carried out a similar investigation, sending out a healthy individual who underwent seven different tests and was told she had to give up more than 50 foods. In one test, a consultant held a phial of food to the young woman's stomach to test for allergies and then spoke to her leg. Ms Penny Povey, who runs one such clinic out of a Selfridges store, told the reporter that she wasn't too surprised at the differing results. "We are moving energy and are never static. So what one practitioner gets may be very different from another."

Hmmm.

There will always be reactions to certain foods being exhibited by certain individuals, and sometimes very violent reactions. Anaphylactic shock is occurring more frequently and is surely a plain-as-day indictment of our synthetic and highly toxic, food and chemicals industry. Nick Morgan's research concluded that certain food and chemical intolerances do exist and that the best way to determine what food or household agent was causing the problem was a simple diary combined with a simple food elimination diet. Painstaking it may be, but according to one of Mr Morgan's interviewees, the two months it took to complete the diary was a much shorter and less expensive path, which also led to a successful outcome.

If we are to make any headway concerning food intolerance and allergies, especially in children, then a lot more research needs to be carried out on the damaging and accumulative effects of fast foods, vaccination, antibiotics and other medications which are injected into, and consumed by the populace on a massive scale daily.

COMMON SENSE
We are unique by design. Illness can affect everybody differently. We all have our own particular strengths and weaknesses and once again, I stress the above arguments are not prescriptive, merely pointers. Judy Rall again, making an important point:

"There is another element in this picture. It is, perhaps, the most important one - we are all unique individuals. Each person has a body which responds a little differently, sometimes a lot differently, to the same stimulus. Some are more efficient at handling emotional or physical stress, others more capable of eating foods that are not compatible with others, and some seemingly are immune to colds and flu. With rare exceptions, one culprit can't be used for the whole population. In reality, we each have our own suspects to round up in any situation. And it's up to each one of us to be aware of our own weaknesses, with the help of accurate information. Unfortunately, we are bombarded by misleading information from the media, advertising and even our own doctors at times."

PASTEURISATION
In the late 1800s, Emperor Napoleon III demanded that Louis Pasteur investigate the disease afflicting casked wines and causing considerable economic losses to the wine industry. Predictably, Pasteur stated that micro-organisms were responsible and that they could be killed by heating the wine to 55C for several minutes. Applied to beer, wine and milk, pasteurisation is now in use throughout the world, as a means of sterilising foodstuffs to combat all those horrible germs. However, heating live foods over a certain temperature causes considerable vitamin, enzyme, taste and texture loss, and in many instances, renders it edible but nutritionally void. As far as beer is concerned, the Campaign for Real Ale states:

"Alongside an overbearing gassiness, British beers in kegs usually have an insipid, stale taste, and the cardboardy tang of pasteurisation, with sometimes a caramel overtone thanks to the heat treatment. Our keg beers are nearly always poor beers, in some cases horrible, nasty beers, the brewer's receptacle for inferior ingredients. You wouldn't wish them on your worst enemy. That is why cask-conditioned beer has been placed on such a high pedestal."

And what is the opinion on pasteurisation from the connoisseur wine drinker? Take this from The Dark Side of Wine, penned by Robert Parker - a wine taster of some 14 years. Under the heading, Unspeakable Practice, he writes:

"The problem with temperature extremes is that the naturally made, minimally processed, hand-produced wines are the most vulnerable to this kind of abuse. Many importers, not wanting to assume any risks, have gone back to their suppliers and demanded 'more stable' wines. In real terms, this means the wine trade prefers to ship not living wines but vapid, denuded wines that have been 'stabilised', subjected to a manufacturing process, and either pasteurised or sterile-filtered so they can be shipped 12 months a year. While their corks may still pop out if subjected to enough heat, their taste will not change, because to all intents and purposes, these wines are already dead when they're put in the bottle. Unfortunately, only a small segment of the wine trade seems to care."
Excerpted with permission from Wake up to Health in the 21st Century by Steven Ransom

Click here to purchase or review any of the above.
Click here for telephone sales around the world.

From the Mailbag
Some comments from our new subscribers

"I very much enjoyed the informative Phillip Day talk in Cork." - Teresa O'D, Co Cork, Ireland

"Very interested in joining and receiving your Credence book list. Listened to 'Healthy at 100' and was very inspired!" - Jennie S, Wellington, New Zealand

"As a nurse, I commend the "Campaign for Truth in Medicine." - Edward H, NSW, Australia

"Attended Phillip Day's talk in Cairns - very, very enjoyable and thought provoking." - Philip & Susan R, QLD, Australia

"Thank you. God bless you." - Eve K, Suffolk, UK

"I love listening to Phillip speak. He speaks in the simple man's terms for everyone to understand. Count me in to attend his seminar when he is next in Melbourne. Keep up the great work of educating people on how to live and eat correctly!" - Michelle M, VIC, Australia

"I am totally behind a large group of people bringing the change needed. I am still learning about these criminal governments and what lengths they have gone to in the name of research." - Darren-James F, NSW, Australia

"[re: the EU] I would like to be kept informed. I agree with your comments on this website. We, as a country, should have voted on this subject but we know that never happened because the government would have failed to secure a public vote. I feel that we gain nothing and only lose out by being a part of this union and have never agreed with countries like France and Germany dictating what we should do. The money should be spent on our health, education and industrial services." - Christine B, Cleveland, UK

"I am very excited that there are people out there taking up the cause of accessible, natural good health!" - Eulela R, London, UK

"I want to raise ourselves and our children with optimum health. We want to educate ourselves to change to good habits. Thank you, Phillip, for your knowledge - can't wait to read your books!" - Catherine K, NSW, Australia

"Please sign me up as a member. I am interested in receiving a free newsletter. Thank you for your mission." - Robin C, Texas, USA

"I think we should do everything we can, and fast, to get out of the EU!" - Denise F, Kent, UK

"Amazing! Inspirational! Wonderful education!" - Vivianna W, NSW, Australia

"I love coming to your talks. Please keep me informed!" - Diane A, NSW, Australia

"Amazing stuff! A new way of life!" - Danielle T, Co. Westmeath, Ireland

"You are doing an excellent job!" - Katherine S, Ireland

"Excellent talk Phillip!" - Mary O'R, Kerry, Ireland

"Excellent, wonderful speaker. Great info: keep up the good work!" - Eileen McN, Co Cork, Ireland

"Thank you for a wonderful and enlightening talk." - Sylvia B, Fermanagh, UK

"The Talk takes the fear out of life!" - Carol McD, Co Down, UK

"Fantastic as always!" - Danny B, Co Kerry, Ireland

"Very good; great speaker." - Michael C, Co Cork, Ireland

"Excellent, informative, brilliant!" - Valerie McE, Co Kerry, Ireland

"(I am a) victim of totally unnecessary procedures in a 'teaching' hospital." - Lee F, FL, USA

"We are a group dedicated to pursuing health freedom of choice in the state of Texas and across the country. We meet by phone monthly to draft and pursue enactment of Texas' first health freedom legislation." - Dr Peter M, TX, USA

"I bought Phillip Day's book at the Vitality Show in London. I am studying to be a naturopath." - Kristen S, London, UK

"I thought Phillip was an excellent speaker and very interesting!" - Danielle S, Co Westmeath, Ireland

"Having read nearly all Phillip's books I strongly support CTM and use every opportunity to promote Phillip's talks and books." - Madeline F-F, Co Westmeath, Ireland

"I like to hear more of this Campaign for Truth in Medicine." - Joshua O, London, UK

"Went to the meeting at Guildford Sat 22nd April. Thought the talk was brilliant - the bars taste pretty good too!!!" - Marty T, Cambridgeshire, UK