It was a different kind of Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, in which contributors spoke Truth about the Abuse of Power

It was good to hear a different kind of Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, with much of its content selected and commissioned by PJ Harvey MBE, of whom I am ashamed to say I had never previously heard. I would very inadequately summarise it as an account of harm done by the lies, misinformation, and other abuses of power by many governments and rulers in the world, notably including our own. We learned, for instance, something of the way our arms industry, with the compliance of our Government and the assistance of members of the Royal Family(!), supplies weapons to dictators and the like, enabling them to subdue civil unrest. We heard of the legal word games that permit states, including our own, to torture people legally, by giving the torture a different name. 

We heard the media itself indicted in the global conspiracy of the powerful against the powerless masses of the poor. (Noam Chomsky and John Pilger and others have told us about this many times before.) We heard much about "War and the Pity of War". We heard from individuals who are suffering from the physical and psychological trauma and indignities inflicted on them as a result of Wars. We heard of the overwhelming greed associated with power.

I wasn't taking notes, and I missed much of the programme, so I do not know whether it included the malign power of the Drug Companies, the ghastly cruelty of much of the Farming Industry, the Food Industry's assaults on our health, and the corruption that put profits before truth in so much of what purports to be Science.

Were I to become a guest editor on the Today programme, I would seek to draw attention the word games devised for the NHS to abuse its power/unaccountability in order carry out profitable state torture and murder of many elderly and other vulnerable patients. - You remember, don't you, the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway? - I believe they are intending to continue using the LCP under a new name...

I would seek to draw attention to the prevalence of pharmaceutical drugs which deplete the body's vitamins and minerals, food processing which adulterates and transforms healthy fats to unhealthy fats (see also http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/health/a-lifelong-fight-against-trans-fat.html?_r=5&), adds chemical toxins and minimises nutrients to produce processed pretendfood/crap/junk, instead of good, nourishing food; food processing that kills off good bacteria, distorts our body's mineral and fat metabolisms, interferes with our hormones and with our gut activity, and thus makes us chronically ill, as well as ill-informed. 

The programme would seek to explain how so much of the human race, and the animals and crops that feed us, are now become grotesque distortions of their healthier ancestors. - And who knows what horrors still await us when Genetically Modified Organisms have had longer in which to wreak their havoc?

Hospitals still cover up poor standards and neglect and still give scant regard to complaints

UK hospitals still cover up poor standards and neglect and still give complaints scant regard. See this Telegraph report. I strongly suggest reading the comments beneath the report too. Unaccountability shames our health service and ensures that its many failings continue. I know from horrifying personal experience the cruel futility of complaining about NHS treatment.

About the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and its dire consequences

The film Inside Job takes a look at the financial crisis of 2008. It documents the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry, and the consequences of that systemic corruption. I strongly urge you to watch this if you can spare the time.

It takes nearly 2 hours but it is in 15 minute chunks and even if you only watch part of it I feel sure you will find it worthwhile. The greed, the lies, the corruption is so rank and did such terrible harm and caused such terrible suffering worldwide, the perpetrators should not remain unpunished and should not still be in positions of power - but they are still in positions of power! The Law has supported and protected these wicked people.

If you are one of the people who has suffered because of the financial chicanery of the banks and the useless regulators, venal politicians, etc. - and that is surely all of us -I do urge you to watch this film and see how easily and cynically it was done.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I believe these horrors will happen again because the fraudsters/criminals are still in power - still raking in shedloads of cash - still robbing the poor of all lands.

Please try to watch it!

Criminal practices within Insurance Companies are causing immense suffering to many American citizens

Criminal practices within Insurance Companies are causing immense suffering to many American citizens. Read this account by one of the victims.

Panorama: the shocking abuse of patients with autism and learning difficulties

Panorama: most people in the UK will have learned of and been horrified by the scandalous and criminal abuse of young patients in a British 'hospital' that purported to be a suitable residence for the care of these patients, some autistic, some with learning difficulties. In fact, it was for them effectively a locked prison in which they were physically and mentally abused by some of the 'carers'/gaolers, led by a bully who took pleasure in taunting and assaulting them. Most people in this country are aware of widespread, inhuman treatment of elderly patients in some hospitals and care homes, but the special extra horror that Panorama has revealed to us this week is this secret abuse of young, vulnerable patients.

But for Panorama's investigative journalist embedded in the hospital/prison and his video record of the assaults, the chilling probability is that those young victims would have spent the rest of their lives being tortured by warped 'carers' such as were seen in the programme last Monday. Because the shameful accompanying facts of the matter are that the abuse was repeatedly reported to the Care Quality Commission by a whistle-blower who had formerly worked at the hospital, but his evidence was ignored. - Ignored! - The poor victims have no voice themselves because tragically their complaints are routinely and automatically discounted as it is assumed that what they say cannot be relied on to be true.

Panorama has saved them from the continuance of great and unnecessary suffering: Panorama - not the managers of the hospital, not the CEO of the parent company, not - Perish the thought! - the indolent, unconcerned and negligent apology for a regulatory body, the Care Quality Commission! - And herein, in my opinion, is the most scary fact of all: that the highly-paid regulators were as useless to these tortured young people as a chocolate teapot...

Do you care about water fluoridation? democratic rights? forced medication? abuse of power?

Do you care about water fluoridation? democratic rights? forced medication? abuse of power? - Then I suggest you read this new article by Dr Briffa. - Speaking for myself I am firmly against the fluoridation of drinking water and firmly against forced medication.

On Radio 4's Thought for the Day this morning, the speaker was James Jones, Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. His talk was a paean of praise for the NHS.

On Radio 4's Thought For The Day this morning, the speaker was James Jones, Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. His talk was a paean of praise for the NHS.

I wonder how many hundreds of listeners were, like me, profoundly distressed by his message today. Bishop James praised the NHS and was especially commendatory of the fact that its services are 'free' - 'free' at the point of need. (They are not free, of course. They are extremely expensive, but are paid for out of taxation, rather than directly by the patients to the providers.) He roundly condemns the system in some other countries, of requiring the patient's credit card (to ensure payment) before providing treatment, but disregards the doctrinaire processes demanded by the NHS before NHS treatment is provided, e.g. here - or not provided, as is the sad experience, too often, of too many patients, including victims of medical negligence, and that includes me.

I challenge Bishop James to read of my long, cruel, shocking treatment at the hands of the NHS abusing its power and see if he finds that praiseworthy. How can he praise an NHS for providing 'free' treatment, when that free treatment includes the callous disregard that led to so much suffering and so many ghastly deaths at that Staffordshire Hospital? See here, here, here. How does a man of the cloth live with the treatment of hundreds of innocent children in NHS 'care' at the hands of Dr Andrew Holden? - See here and here. Why does Bishop James disregard the dark, evil side of the NHS? Why does he champion the powerful, rather than champion their victims? The NHS does not need his advocacy; its suffering victims do.

I have tried in past years to obtain the help of Bishops to bring about reform of the cruel system, and I have failed. - David Lunn, when he was Bishop of Sheffield, promised me that he would help, but he let me down shamefully. Similarly David Jenkins, when he was Bishop of Durham, said he would help, but did not. Other prominent, influential religious leaders I have approached have also passed by on the other side, allowing NHS cruelty and victimisation to continue unchallenged. Where are the Good Samaritans in the churches, with the courage and the compassion to do right by the NHS's victims and to work to reform a system that is rotten at its core?

I challenge Bishop James to come and spend some hours with me, that I can tell him more about the callous, careless NHS system that is my own experience, and that of thousands of his fellow citizens.

NHS Complaints Procedures are exercises in futility and exhaustion for complainants

Here is a website dedicated to exposing the NHS Complaints Procedures as exercises in futility and exhaustion for patients and their families seeking to get something done about negligence in the NHS.

Read about my own experience of the NHS Complaints Procedures in my Mensa article on Cruelty, Clinical Negligence and the Abuse of Power in the NHS

Papal letter of apology

To be honest, it seemed sincere to me, the Pope's long and detailed apology to the surviving victims of sex abuse as children by the Irish Roman Catholic priests and others, and by the institutional cover-ups of these crimes. The contrition, repentance and remorse in the letter seemed genuine, the suggestions and advice seemed helpful. But what do I know? I am not one of the victims; I am not a Roman Catholic; I do not believe in a God - though I used to. I hope the letter will do some good and that some of the victims will find some comfort in it.

I do not believe that those abusers and their protectors and apologists believe in the God they profess/ed to serve. They could not have behaved as they did if they had really believed that "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea."

Those cruel, wicked people should be subjected to the full vigour of the criminal law and the severest punishments, in the hope of discouraging future abuse of power by people unsuited to wield it.

Is the Pope going to write another letter of apology to other victims of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland? To the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries? The former unmarried mothers and their babies so cruelly treated by the nuns in those institutions of horror? I recently read about one of those mothers, Philomena Lee, who had been forced to give up her son to the Irish nuns, who had sold him on to rich Americans. For decades she had tried to find him, and he, when he grew up, tried for decades to find her. But with unrelenting and appalling inhumanity the nuns withheld the information mother and son needed. You can read that story here.

Is there going to be an apology for these long, cruel sadnesses? Any punishment for the heartless nuns and others who played roulette with so many people's lives? In the name of a God of Love?

Is the UK's Independent Police Complaints Commission really independent? Radio 4's File on 4 investigates.

I've just been listening to File on 4 on Radio 4. See File on 4. If you missed it, you may like to listen to the repeat on Sun 24 Jan 2010 at 17:00.

"In 2009, 2,445 cases, including allegations of police brutality, deaths in custody and serious negligence, were referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. But is it truly independent, and does its record over five years encourage public confidence? Gerry Northam investigates."

Having listened to the programme I was shocked at the bias shown by the IPCC. It seems clear to me that investigations of 'police brutality, deaths in custody and serious negligence' don't have a snowball's chance in Hell of being investigated fairly by the IPCC, especially headed as it is by Nick Hardwick, who appears lacking in deductive reasoning, to put it as kindly as possible.

Clearly complaints about police negligence are dealt with as partially as complaints about medical negligence. I reckon we'd be safer without the IPCC, just as I know we'd be safer without the NHS Complaints Procedures and without the General Medical Council. None of these august and expensive bodies can be trusted to tell the truth and to protect the members of the general public when powerful people like the police and the medical profession abuse their power in their dealings with the people they are paid to serve.

Evidence-based medicine? - You're joking...)o:

Medical 'experts' who assert their arrogant, prejudiced views with no scientific evidence to back them do terrible harm. Unfortunately there are far too many people who lack the courage to dare to believe them to be other than saints...)o: - Their biased opinions should not be called evidence at all. Very often their 'diagnoses' are mere guesswork. But doctors are extremely powerful and most people are scared of criticising them in case they 'get into trouble' in some way for doing so.

Think back to what doctors used to advise about how babies should be placed in their cots. - They used to advise mothers to lay their babies on their stomachs. - There was no EVIDENCE for the correctness of this advice. It was later shown that it is safer for babies to be laid onto their backs and not their stomachs. - Were there any apologies from the medical profession? - Of course not! - It was Anne Diamond who, after sadly losing a baby to cot death, fought for the truth to be told about how best to lay a baby down, and since her successful campaign there has a significant fall in the incidence of cot death in the United Kingdom. - Many people have reason to be profoundly grateful to Anne Diamond and her 'Back to Sleep' message.

Similarly, it was Esther Rantzen that fought to curb the terrible consequences of the medical profession's reckless overprescribing of tranquillisers, which even decades later are still wreaking havoc on many, many lives.

I am myself struggling to draw attention to the horrific harm that prescribed steroids, HRT and many other drugs do when prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with the side-effects and negligent about monitoring patients who innocently take these dangerous drugs because the doctor has prescribed them. My website is www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk

If you visit my website you will see that there has never been any scientific evidence to support the usual medical advice about how to reduce obesity. See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html and Obesity and the Salt Connection

I wrote to the Power Inquiry about the abuse of power by the medical profession, but they did not pursue the matter at all...)o:

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)