Francis Report fails to deliver

The Francis Report of the public enquiry into the years-long atrocities that caused horrendous unnecessary suffering to vulnerable patients, and up to 1200 avoidable deaths, and the worst scandal in the history of the NHS, is available to download in PDF format here: http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/report - After a 31 month public enquiry costing millions of ££, the report has failed to recommend criminal prosecutions for those many, many staff who delivered death instead of care. None of the ghastly staff so gravely at fault has been 'named and shamed'. They have not even lost their jobs. Surely they should be subject to criminal charges? If there is no accountability for even 'the worst scandal in the history of the NHS' then there is no hope at all of ending the cruelty and inhumanity so widely evident in so many NHS hospitals.

I blame the tutorial system...

Years ago, sitting in an uncomfortable chair without arms, in an airless, windowless, cold, subterranean room, I'd patiently listened to a lengthy lecture of the so-so variety, about newspaper archives in our area, and at last Providence had granted my voiceless plea that it come to an end. I turned to my companion and embarked on a sentence bewailing the ghastliness of the chairs. I didn't want to rush it; I wanted to temper the expression of my discomfort and be as polite as possible since it had been at her suggestion that we had gone to the lecture. Before I reached the tactful point of my remark, however, she had interrupted me and agreed with what she had decided I was about to say. - " Yes," she said. "The chairs are extremely comfortable, aren't they?" (I blame the tutorial system...(o: - They're taught to be so confident and swift in their opinions that they're even confident they know yours as well! - Don't you just hate it when people finish off your sentences for you?)

Thus was I lured along the wrong path

When I bought my first fridge it arrived containing a free voucher for Blue Band margarine, along with some baking recipes which listed margarine as one of the ingredients. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they may have been Philip Harben's recipes. (Philip Harben was one of the first TV celebrity chefs.) And they included making a sponge cake by the all-in-one method. Thus was I lured along the wrong path. For the all-in-one method proved an easy way to make a Victoria sponge cake. I see that Delia has also been led astray by margarine's easy virtue in the all-in-one department. And I've read that Mary Berry too favours margarine for the Vic sponge. And have you been seduced by the baddie propaganda? - Well it's never too late to repent and reform! Read about why Butter's Better!

Don't deride it till you've tried it! - Losing weight by eating less salt, that is.

Don't deride it till you've tried it! - Losing weight by eating less salt, that is. - Very occasionally, foolish people write to me to deride my assertion that the easiest, fastest, safest way to lose excess weight is seriously to cut down on added salt/sodium. For one thing, they are usually naturally slim people who have never had the problem of being overweight/obese and never experienced the difficulties of losing that excess weight while living in a society that relies heavily on processed food products that are high in salt and other sodium compounds. For another, they tend to think of losing weight only as losing excess fat. - There is a strange idea around that to lose excess fluid as a means of losing weight is somehow 'cheating' and doesn't count! - What nonsense! When overweight people lose excess fluid by cutting down on added salt/sodium they not only lose excess weight, reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, depression, heart disease, arthritis, fragile bones, premature aging, cognitive decline, dementia and many other degenerative conditions, but also lower their likelihood of experiencing a stroke, heart attack, frailty and mobility problems. - What's not to like? - Go on! - Try it! - Lose weight by eating less salt and salty food! - You will feel sooo much better!

We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

We have read in the last two days the most recent reports of extreme cruelty to which elderly patients have been subjected in an NHS hospital, the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch. See these reports in the Telegraph: Here, Here and Here. Yet we all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

 

We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution. We may wonder why no UK government in all the years since the NHS was founded in 1948 has done anything useful to stop the cruelty and negligence, the damaged health, the pain and suffering, the shattered lives of innocent patients. - Why? When we all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution. 

 

Why the official pretence that there are only a few bad (guilty) apples among a shiningly dedicated workforce? We all know that bad apples spread their rottenness to the other apples unless they are promptly removed. We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

 

Why are the most guilty (and usually the best paid) personnel moved sideways to jobs in other localities? - jobs exactly similar to those at which they have signally failed? And why are they paid golden severance settlements? We all know that NHS cruel negligence would end if the perpetrators were sacked and subject to criminal prosecution.

Weight Loss Ward: what I thought about it

I watched the two episodes of Weight Loss Ward on ITV (see here and here), about some of the work of the obesity unit of Sunderland Royal Hospital. The patients featured were extremely obese and their lives were consequently full of difficulties, ill-health - including High Blood Pressure and Diabetes - and emotional and social problems. Various healthcare staff sought to help them.

 

The main help on offer appeared to be Weight Loss Surgery, aka Bariatric Surgery, and we heard a lot from the chief surgeon in this field. He clearly believed he could help these unfortunate people, and wanted to help them, but his help was contingent on their losing a set amount of weight first, or he would not do the surgery. The patients in question were extremely keen to have this surgery and seemed to regard it as the answer to their weight problems, even though it would bring problems of its own afterwards.

 

Certainly the surgery did in the main appear to help the patients and they were happy about it. But me - I don't think I'd ever go for it, were I in their position. I've read too often about things going wrong after surgery like that, and lives cut short, about huge new problems taking the place of those surmounted.

 

Patients and staff told us about traumatic life events that were thought to have started the obesity, like early loss of a loved one, or sexual abuse, etc. The idea seemed to be to talk about these matters, to confront them and 'deal with' them. Well, maybe that helped, I don't know. They also had meetings with dieticians who tried to help and encourage them with that initial weight loss required by the surgeon in order to be accepted for surgery. - Now that's were I felt really important measures were omitted.

 

Some found it tremendously difficult to lose that initial weight, and honestly it was made more difficult than it need have been. Putting an enormously heavy guy on a low calorie diet and expecting him to be able to stick to it despite great hunger, and pushing temptation into his path every day by way of someone taking a trolley round and selling chocolate bars! He was being set up to fail. And although one of the women succeeded in losing weight by limiting her food to Rice Krispies, skimmed milk and Diet Coke, she should surely not have been encouraged to eat such nutrition-depleted garbage instead of real food! - What on earth were the dieticians thinking of?

 

The easiest, fastest, safest way for obese people to lose a lot of weight is to cut down drastically on salt and salty food, eating real food, raw or cooked from fresh without adding salt. - Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I heard any mention of salt. As well as bringing about weight loss, salt reduction is the most effective way of lowering high blood pressure. It also reduces risk of heart attack and stroke, reduces breathing problems, e.g. with asthma, and lessens the pain of arthritis and many other chronic pains.

 

So opportunities were sadly missed. As well as the salt thing, it seemed that not even one of the staff recognised the desirability of improving these patients' vitamin D status. I reckon that the frailty and those falls the fat woman had had which had frightened her relatives and confined her to her bedroom, were in large part caused by low vitamin D levels.

Positive Money has released a new video which explains how banks create money out of nothing

Positive Money has released a new video which explains exactly how banks create money out of nothing. - See eepurl.com/tbqZX

"Do you want to really understand how banks can create money out of nothing? While it may seem like a complicated subject - it's not that difficult. In this new video you can learn how commercial banks can create money through the accounting process they use when they make loans, how banks make payments between each other using specially created central bank money, if the Bank of England really can control how much money is in the economy ...and more."

Thinking of getting a stairlift?

This week, along with my copy of the Radio Times coming through the letterbox, there were also some of those leaflets advertising this and that. There is usually at least one with a photo of a photogenic TV doctor endorsing something or other, and doubtless being very well paid to do so. This time the 'doctor advert' was trying to sell stairlifts. 

 

If you too received one of these leaflets and it has started you wondering whether you should be getting a stairlift - a very expensive purchase - I would just like to invite you to read this blog article I posted earlier this year. You too may well be short of vitamin D. Most people in this country are short of vitamin D because the main source of vitamin D is sunshine, and we don't get a lot of that in the UK. Perhaps you too would benefit more from improving your nutritional status and thus your bone and muscle strength and general health, than by spending thousands of pounds on an expensive stairlift.

Dawn has lost a lot of weight by following my advice

Dawn started trying to lose weight at the beginning of January this year. She used to email me asking me for information and advice. (I can be emailed from my website.)

I told Dawn that for very overweight people like her, the fastest and safest way to lose weight is seriously to cut down on salt and salty food. She lost a lot of weight easily by following that advice.

But Dawn had a big problem that did not involve salt. This problem was her and her family's liking for sweet stuff, especially cakes and suchlike. For years she had been duped by the many misleading suggestions on the internet and elsewhere that by using artificial sweeteners instead of sugar, the lower calorie intake would result in weight loss. I explained to her that this was not true, but she found that hard to remember because of a lifetime's conditioning to believe the lies of the dieting industry.

I became very concerned about Dawn and sent her a particularly firm message about the dangers of eating artificial sweeteners - and indeed artificial additives of all kinds - and that message finally sank in, thank goodness. She gave up eating sweet and sugary foods. She severely cut down on carbs in general and instead ate mostly protein foods and foods high in healthy fat.

I'll bet you're wondering how much weight Dawn has lost since January. - Well she has lost well over 60 pounds in weight and looks set fair to reach a loss of 70 pounds, i.e. 5 stones, by Christmas! - That's a really impressive achievement, you will agree. - She has gone from a size 26 to a size 16! - And she is feeling sooo much better...(o:

Erin Brockovich is on Channel 5 tonight. I recommend it.

In my opinion, Erin Brockovich is a great film. It's on Channel 5 at 9pm tonight. Julia Roberts is exactly right for the eponomous role of 'spirited heroine', as Alan Jones describes it in his review in the Radio Times. And Albert Finney is a perennial favourite of mine - and very likely one of your favourite actors too. Do read the review!

The film's story is based on real-life corporate crime in America, in which toxic industrial waste water contaminated the drinking water of a local community. Erin Brockovich's straight-forward and genuine concern about the devastating harm done to the victims wins her their respect and impels her to fight for them in the courts, there to win financial reparation in a historic legal case. (I have made brief reference to this film in one of my previous posts.)

Fewer people in the 'at risk' groups are taking the free flu jabs

It's really good to read that fewer people are falling for the propaganda urging them to have the flu vaccination. Flu vaccines are pretty ineffective. See this article and this.

 

And why have vaccine injected into your body and take the risk of adverse effects from it, when there are excellent drug-free ways to avoid catching flu? Here are some good precautions to take:

 

Wash your hands frequently to lower the risk of germs being spread.

Avoid dieting.

Eat good, nutritious meals cooked from fresh foods, rather than processed meals which are nutritionally poor and usually contain unhealthy additives.

Make sure you are getting enough Vitamin D, the 'sunshine vitamin', which builds up immunity to respiratory diseases. Most of us are short of this vitamin, especially in the winter, so you may find that taking a supplement of vitamin D3 capsules or tablets would be helpful for you. Some GPs will get your vitamin D level checked for you - a little blood test.

Cut down on salt and salty food.

Cut down on sugar and wheat/bread.

Avoid synthetic chemicals like artificial sweeteners, colourings, flavours, etc and those ghastly artificial scented room sprays and laundry products.

 

I myself haven't had the flu or a cold since I stopped having the flu jabs many years ago.

Why is adding salt to food more harmful than in former years?

Adding salt to food is more harmful than years ago because in our developed world, a greater proportion of people are now sensitive to salt than used to be the case. There is both a higher incidence of salt sensitivity and the salt sensitivity itself tends to be more severe. - One of the factors contributing to salt sensitivity is the fact that these days, in general, most children- even toddlers -eat a diet that is too high in salt. Salt is especially bad for children. High salt intake, such as from salty snacks like crisps and salted nuts and junk like Cheesestrings, is a major cause of child obesity. - See Children and Salt. And a taste for salt acquired in childhood is not very easy to 'unacquire'. So the habit of eating over-salted food literally feeds a growing number of related health problems including high blood pressure, obesity, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, stroke, heart disease, depression, dementia and so many more.

 

But at least as important a causative factor in salt sensitivity as high salt intake in childhood is the ever-growing ingestion of pharmaceutical drugs. Pharmaceutical drugs are being prescribed more and more in the UK (and even more still in United States) and other industrialised countries. Most of the prescriptions are for drugs that cause sodium and water/fluid retention and salt sensitivity. I don't mean that they are prescribed with the intention of causing sodium and water retention, but problems with salt are the most common undesirable side-effects of the most frequently prescribed rugs. These include antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, steroids, birth control medications and many more.

 

When you couple the over-prescribing of these dangerous salt-sensitising drugs with the highly-salted processed food that is the norm for a majority of consumers these days, it is assuredly a recipe for disaster both on a personal scale and in the wider social context. - I suggest that you try to avoid prescription drugs as far as you safely can and cut down on salt and salty food as much as you reasonably can. You'll lose some excess weight and improve your health and you'll feel sooo much better!