UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
The monthly comment from CTM founder, Phillip Day

'The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless
series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.' - H L Mencken

Dear All,

Welcome to this month's EClub. Great to drop you a line again with all that's going on in the world. It's a restless planet and the usual packed program is designed to help you make some kind of sense of this month's blithering idiocy blended bittersweet with genius, aka the human condition.

SCIENCE
Lots of you wrote in about my global warming feature last month - the majority agreeing, a few bewildered and angry. How dare you expose our precious planet to corporate damage and ignorance! (sigh). What are you, on Shell's payroll? (I wish). I think you're George Bush's stepson! (You think?) And off they go again apologizing for mankind's latest sins - um, well, slavery last week, this week's hand-wringing is over 'violating' President I'm-A-Dinner-Jacket's national sovereignty, doubtless to be serialized on Channel 4 shortly as Carry On Up the Shatt.

We've been here before - truth and lies, I mean, not grinning on Al Jazeera in a de-mob suit. A legion of real scientists, professors and meteorologists quit the IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Control) in disgust over the hijacking of real science by socialists. It's a phenomenon, I want you to take note of it. Uh, water vapour's by far the most prevalent greenhouse gas on the planet. Rubbish! You can't tax clouds! Um, the sun's in a new phase of sunspot activity currently being measured throughout the solar system. Arrest him! There are no Landcruisers on Venus! 'Er, sorry,' we slither with our latest penchant for mea culpa. Saying we're sorry for everything even if we're not.

Then The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary threatens to wreck everything. So arch-fraud Gore executes Plan B with a series of Live Earth concerts and you've got to admire the old fruit. 'Any excuse for a gig' coupled with the 'The Earth is finished and it's all your fault' mantra and St Bono and two billion others give Bold Al their imprimatur. Like cancer, AIDS, SARS, avian flu and 'health and safety' before it, global warming suits us. Like all good religions, it's got threats, absolution and the promise of salvation. So successful has global warming been as a movement that hundreds of thousands now depend on a doomed Earth to provide for their mortgages.

That the Earth is not doomed and that human global warming is complete scientific pants is the worst heresy you can mutter. Absolution may be granted by the priests (politicians) if you plant a tree or wash your face in a bird-bath. Other repentance might include sticking a windmill on your shed (Cameron), corking up farting cattle which are wrecking the ozone (New Zealand Fart Tax), burning heretics like me at the stake (electrocution please - marginally less carbon), or becoming one of 7,500 new Domestic Energy Assessors in the UK soon to coming calling to assess your gaff for green taxes. Believe me, these cuckoos won't stop chanting 'We Are the World' and waving their candles (more carbon) until we're all driving Fiats and Al Gore's the Antichrist.

POLITICS
Back in the sixties, the fear was that Russia would invade Europe and set up a great Soviet superstate stretching from Galway to Vladivostock. In 1980's, a Kremlin staffer by the name of Anatoly Golitsyn wrote his book, New Lies for Old, in which he alleged the long-range plan was to engineer what looked like a 'collapse' of communism and a move towards free-party democracy. But watch out because this was just a ruse to fool the West into complacency.

You be the judge. The Soviet Union inexplicably 'collapsed' in 1991 and today we have a communist superstate dressed up in democracy headquartered at Brussels stretching from Galway to Lithuania. All that needs to happen is for Russia to join. Bravissimo! Reverse invasion, comrades! Break out the Stolichnaya!

MEDICAL
A year ago, statins were gods. Today, they're trouble. If you are taking simvastatin especially, you're told to get proper medical advice immediately (from the same idiots who gave them to you in the first place). www.mercola.com has good info on statins. Search under 'statins'!!

Blueberries are good for you - official. 'It is hoped they could be developed into a preventative pill with fewer side-effects than commercial preparations,' witters Jenny Hope of the Daily Mail. Look, just eat the blueberries, OK?

Psychiatry finally admits fraud in a BBC2 documentary: "What happened is that we made estimates of the prevalence of mental disorders totally descriptively, without considering that many of these conditions might be normal reactions which are not really disorders. That's the problem, because we were not looking at the context in which those conditions developed." This from the same industry that drugs millions of children everyday with mind-bending substances, victimizes the elderly with anti-depressants and pathologises every little quirk of life into a disease. Lottery Stress Disorder. Chronic Tax Anxiety Syndrome. PMS. What frauds.

More fur is flying around Edzard Ernst, Britain's only complementary medicine professor who spends most of his time rubbishing complementary medicine. Is Herr Ernst a drug company stoolie? Who cares? Prince Charles is now denying he engaged in a vendetta to have Ernst sacked from Exeter University or perish in a Paris underpass over trashing his study into funding for natural alternatives. Watch this space. Edzard Ernst has got a lot of fur.

Next, a worldwide alert about rising levels of toxic mercury in the food chain is issued today by scientists. The risks posed by mercury-contaminated fish are now big enough to trigger a warning to the public to be careful about how much and which fish they eat. The big dilemma. Fish is good for you because of the fishy thingsin it, which sadly now contain high concentrations of methylmercury, DDT and the remains of Cherie Blair's blusher jettisoned over the Atlantic. Perhaps Duran Duran might consider performing the following at their forthcoming Live Earth venue?
· A View to a Kill (PCBs are the pits, yeah, yeah, yeah).
· Wild Boys (Rainforest destruction goin' into overdrive).
· Save a Prayer For Me Now (One third of the planet does not have access to safe water, whoa, whoa).

No corporate bucks for those issues, though.

And finally… Samantha and I have just ended our UK Life Map tour in Suffolk, which marks ten years almost constantly 'on the road'. We're taking a break from touring for the remainder of 2007 to get a life, paint the house, rejoin the office and bring you lots more. In fact, we're taking over the Credence Bookstore with effect from Monday, 17th April so if you press option 1 on the Credence main phone menu, hopefully you'll get us!

The online Credence Supermarket is to be expanded. Credence is now in Scandinavia under the able guidance of Ian Fasken's team. Further research is ongoing into several new areas and we're also getting the film side online with lots of interesting people to interview. This will take the form of podcasts on a whole range of issues. More on this in the coming months.

That's it! There's a great summer coming up for those of you topside, so enjoy it and try not to feel guilty. Otherwise, see you physically in 2008 or speak to you in a tinny voice sometime before then!

Phillip