A NEW YEAR DAWNS BUT THE OLD FIGHT CONTINUES

As 2010 appears over the Eastern Horizon it would be nice to think that this is the year that fluoride and fluoridation is finally destroyed. Even a cursory glance at the information on fluoride tells us that its extremely toxic, whether natural or man-made, and it simply does not work to protect teeth but damges them and many other vital parts of the human body. We know its never been thoroughly tested and that idiots such as the British and American Governments and their paymasters in major industries mare in complete denial. it would be nice to think that they are just misguided and well-meaning but clearly in most cases other than the most niave and blinkered dentists still living in the past, this is not the case.

The pro-fluoride movement is driven by a bunch of materialistic and greedy industries and their puppets who will say anything to increase their profits and clearly dont really care at all. A good example is the latest development with LIDL Supermarkets in Scotland. The Scottish Assembly of MSPs and the Scottish National Party Aided by the Green Party rejected clearly any attempts to add fluoride to the water supply North of the Border but the chief dental officer in Scotland, alarmed that it might harm his reputation or possibly his pocket has lobbied LIDL and convinced them that they should now sell fluoridated salt. One would think that salt was not already a problem without making it toxic as well.

I strongly urge LIDL customers and would be customers to avoid ChanteSel salt with added fluoride. Cutting down on salt is a good idea, cutting down on this muck is a very good idea> People can of course buy the stuff if they want and to be fair, LIDL are also selling un corrupted salt so the element of consumer choice is still in tact but sadly salt is one of those things deemed essential by many and most people dont look clearly at the labels. Most Scottish friends of mine enjoy a nice cup of tea or indeed several as much as I do and arguably are already receiving more than enough fluoride from that source. Add to this processed meals and junk foods, especially processed foods manufactured and processed in areas with water fluoridation such as the West Midlands and Newcastle and its probable that many are already ingesting too much. As a result there is no control of of the total dosage and individual or a group of individuals actually receives daily, weekly etc. A little from a wide variety of sources can add up to a lot and as up to 50% of ingested fluoride is not eliminated from the body, high and potentially dangerous levels of fluoride can accumulate over time.

With the current cold weather and snow and ice, i have purchased much more salt than i would normally ever use to reduce the lethal nature of my footpaths and steps. I did however check carefully that none of it contained fluoride because our outside drains flow directly into our local river and according to one Canadian study discovered, even levels of fluoride well below the alleged safe dose of 1 part per million were capable of halting salmon and salmonids such as trout incapable of breeding As a veteran water pollution campaigner with Friends of the Earth i would be neglecting my duties if i poured crap into my or anyone else's rivers.

Next year is General Election Year so when prospective candidates of ANY PARTY come knocking on your door or sending you letters and leaflets asking for you votes whether for local or National election. Question them carefully about how they stand on water fluoridation or the adulteration of foods and milk with this crap. And if they cannot give you their assurance that they are actively against the practice, just give them the bums rush. In the meantime tell all your friends and neighours of the dangers this chemical poses and if you can join one of the groups or organisations dedicated to eradicating this poison from the human diet and the wider environemtn. There are more than enough toxins in our food and water as it is without adding more and as for those who advocate the addition of fluoride to childrens milk i regard it as a form of child abuse and the perpetrators should lose their jobs immediatley for the good of all.

In the meantime i wish you all a Happy Solstice, a Merry Christmas and a Happy and healthy New Year, 2010.

TIME TO DUMP THE DEADLY DOC

TIME TO DUMP THE DEADLY DOC

FLUORIDE ACTION NETWORK http://www.FluorideAlert.Org
FAN Bulletin 2000: Mildura, 'the little town that roared' needs your helpDecember 2009Mildura, 'the little town that roared'In a press release issued yesterday fluoridation fighters in Mildura, Australia sent a letter signed by fluoridation activists and several scientists from around the world, calling for the resignation of Dr. John Carnie, the Chief Health Officer for Victoria. Dr Carnie continues to force fluoridation on communities without giving them any opportunity to vote on the matter; without willing to debate the issue in public and without answering basic questions submitted to him in writing by 20 professionals. This is how you can help this effort. We want authorities in Victoria to know that the whole world is watching how they deal with this situation, so please consider adding your name to the letter sent to the Victorian Health Minister yesterday, details below. He will keep receiving copies of this letter with the new names added.

HOW YOU CAN HELP.....

To sign on to this letter please send your name, town/city and country and a one sentence description of who you are to me at pconnett@gmail.com and afam.daniel@gmail.com also state in the email that you want to be a signee of the letter. Daniel will be forwarding your names to the Victorian Health Minister and I will be keeping count this end so that I can share progress reports with you.


Updates showing the number of signees can be found on http://fluoridealert.org/australia.carnie.letter.html
Thank you in anticipation of your support.
Paul Connett-------------------------------Demand for Dr. Carnie's resignation

Press Release - Friday, December 4, 2009
The Anti-Fluoridation Association of Mildura, along with other Victorian safe water groups, and a number of health and scientific professionals, are calling for the resignation of Dr. John Carnie, Victoria's Chief Health Officer. The call comes as community discontent with the Government's mandatory fluoridation policy grows.Today, the following letter was sent to Victoria's Health Minister, Daniel Andrews.

Dear Minister Andrews,
We are outraged by your government's continued efforts to force fluoridation on communities without giving citizens a chance to vote on the matter. In this matter the behaviour of Dr. John Carnie has gone beyond anything one would expect or should tolerate from a civil servant. Let us explain.Most recently Dr. Carnie's refusal to respond to the basic questions put to him by a number of Australian and international health and scientific professionals, in line with his "no debate policy," has outraged many in Mildura and around the world.While Dr. Carnie may truly and honestly believe that fluoridation is safe and effective, public health policy needs to be more than a belief system. It needs to be supported by honest and accurate science that can be defended when challenged.

Dr. Carnie has:a) made statements to the public which are inaccurate as well as others which are biased and misleading (see attachment 1)b) refused to defend his beliefs in public debate (see attachment 2)c) failed to answer direct questions addressed to him by Australian and international experts (see attachment 3).Despite this he is still prepared to force this measure on communities, even when a sizeable number of people in those communities, who have researched this issue for themselves, have made it clear that they do not want to be forced to drink fluoridated water. The only way to determine whether such resistance to this measure is coming from a minority of the population or a majority is to give the electorate of each community the chance to vote on the matter. But this opportunity has again been denied to them by Dr. Carnie.

This is a blatant example of the "arrogance of power."When politicians behave in this way, at least the electorate has a chance to make their feelings known at the next election, but Dr. Carnie is not a politician but a civil servant making his arrogance immune from normal democratic processes.

The only alternative for those who believe that Dr. Carnie is failing in his job to protect the health of the people, as exemplified by his unwillingness to answer basic questions on a practice he is prepared to force on them, is to seek his resignation. What other recourse do citizens have when their democratic rights are denied?Thus, we call upon the Minister to set in motion proceedings which will examine this complaint and if he feels that it has merits to remove Dr. Carnie from his position forthwith.We would add that this issue goes well beyond the dangers posed by fluoridation. If it becomes clear - as it has in this case - that public health policies are not based on sound science that can be defended in public and in writing -it will erode the public's trust in the institutions set up - at their expense - to protect their health and the environment.

The loss of that trust threatens our society in many ways and should not be taken lightly by the politicians running Victoria.As you will note from the signatures below, this issue is receiving attention well beyond Victoria and the shores of Australia. We expect the worldwide attention to grow as the shocking behaviour of Dr. Carnie is revealed to a larger audience. As Martin Luther King Jr once said, "injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere."We look forward to hearing your swift response to this complaint.Sincerely,

BHOPAL DISASTER IN INDIA, 25th ANNIVERSARY

Its 25 years since the Bhopal disaster killed 4,000 people in the first day where they lived and worked. . The death toll ultimately stood at over 9,000 within three years. The survivors'children are being born with terrible disabilities. One 22 year old is only the size of a ten year old. Despite orders from the Supreme Court for removal of all waste from the site, the ruin still stands and well water contaminated by the site hss levels tens of thousands of times the safe level of carbon tetrachloride which is known to damage the kidneys and cause cancer.

Thousands of people are still affected or afflicted by this monstrosity yet amazingly no one has been successfully prosecuted for what happened. There have been demos, marches, and countless calls for resignations of leading figures involved directly or indirectly with the disaster but to no avail. The Bhopal disaster is a terrible example of how super rich western companies operating in the third world can literally walk away from any problems they cause leaving the shit behind them. To call Union Carbide a disgusting nest of scumbags is to be charitable. If there is such a place as hell, i feel pretty sure they are headed for it.

For those who think I have exaggerated the scale and repercussions of the disaster, why not Google Bhopal Disaster and you will be amazed and appalled by what you read. A good start would be to visit this site. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1203/p06s04-wosc.html

VOLUNTARY I D CARDS IN MANCHESTER = TURKEYS VOTE FOR CHRISTMAS.

Our stupid Government who always thinks it knows best and listens to nobody unless there is money it in for them initiated the "Voluntary" ID Card scheme in Manchester today and of course whenever there is a Christmas, there is always a Turkey to vote for it. Up steps a "reporter" from the Manchester Evening News, the paper that appears to support fluoride and any other old tosh that the Government comes up with.

Its been like this in Manchester for many years. Back in the day when a Council Leader Graham Stringer and his gang The Stringalongs was busy removing demonstrators who like most sane people were objecting to the Manchester Ringway Airports latest runway, nailed his colours to the mast and decided a runway was much better than boring old fuddy duddy villages like Styal. Or good air quality or integrated transport with real trains, Of such common sense and resolve are future ministers made.

Remember the congestion charges fiasco. It was going to bring lots of dosh into the city and reduce traffic, congestion and the terrible emissions which were killing us all. Best of all, all this dosh would be invested in super-duper new public transport. Perhaps the good folks of Manchester (and here i can reveail i was born and bred there)remembered the pledges and promises of proper and fully integrated transport nationwide which Johnny Presscot was going to bring. He even said we were to hold him to it. Surprise surprise, it just didnt happen, he didnt even do diddly squat. Result Manchester with its ring roads and motorways is more congested than ever. But the good folks of Manchester remembered the broken promises and gave the congestion charge the bums rush.

Naturally the toadies jumped at the chance when Fluoridation of the water was announced. Step forward the Manchester Evening News which even orchestrated an anti-bottled water campaign. Even United Utilities joined in the fun attempting to rubbish bottled water on grounds of expense and pollution. Naturally they hadnt bothered with anything so trivial as research which could have shown them that with all its weaknesses and pollution problems bottle water would always win out over tap water with fluoride in it. In fact any old bucket of crap would. Even the plastic bottles could be recycled and new sources of oil to make them with could actually be sustainable if they were made from corn oil or hemp.

They overlooked another little thing too in their haste to do their masters bidding. United Utilities were also purveyors of water of course, a monopolistic legacy of the dark days of Thatcherism. but even she knew that compettition and choice are important to consumers and and governments who need votes and, though it may be permissable to advertise that your water is better than the oppositions, its not permissable to claim that the compettitors water is a pile of crap. Imagine for example, ASDA producing adverts saying dont shop at Sainsburys. When me learned friends were tipped off and a few phone calls were received, the bottled water hate campaign evaporated faster than the water itself in a heatwave.

So here they are again. the MEN has found a bimbo reporter to appear on the BBC and say how wonderful ID Cards really are, even despite in the nightfall of New Labour project the Card scheme voluntary or otherwise will be scrapped whether the Tories or the Lib Dems take power and believe me, it cannot happen fast enough. Would i like to get rid of New Labour, yes i would most certainly, I could handle a dose of Real Labour though with public services not stuffed with quangos and PCTs and assorted suits and seat pollishers serving their time and waiting for their gongs.

And no ministers like the incompetent Jack (i am against fluoridation but not enough to ever dare say anything against it now I am in government) and his bully boys. And certainly we dont need toadies like Andy Gis'a Job Burnham who will do anything say anything and go anywhere to further his ignominious career and bank account and of course, lets not forget the Home Sec, Alan Johnson who no doubt thinks that ID Cards will be very popular once the population have swallowed enough fluoride. Bad news guys, we dont want ID Cards and wont be turning ourselves in at the police station voluntarily on the off chance we may have inadvertently broken some petty new law the government thought up because it might be a vote winner. And of course last but not least Fluoride itself, seeing as you like it so much guys, why dont you drink it yourself, all of it and as soon as possible and then jump into a bin bag or wheelie bin. Dont worry, it will be collected in a fortnight or so and no one will ever know you were there.

FLUORIDE? CLIMATE CHANGE?. GM FOODS? IT'S ALL THE SAME RULES TO INDUSTRY AND GOVERNMENT

PROFESSOR NUTT LOCKS ANTLERS WITH GORDON BROWN

The row between Professor Nutt the chair of the Brown Governments Drugs Advisory Committee intensified on BBC radio four this morning and i make no secret of my support for the Professor. I do however differ over one point he made about the government. He said that Browns Government was the first to ignore scienfic advice of its own appointed experts. In their conclusions the York Revew noted a dearth of detailed and reliable studies in the past and could not categorically recommend an expansion of water fluoridation in the UK and said much needed to be done to establish safety and efficacy.

Despite this the Tony Blair Government decided to push new legislation through parliament to make it possible to force water providers to add fluoride to water supplies. The York Review had not recommended this. Therefore the Brown Governement was at least the second government to think it knew better than its experts.

The issues of assorted drugs most notably cannabis have been studied closely but never the less the government has ignored the science or medical advice except where it was convenient to do so and has thus politicised what should have been a science bassed decision in law making. Drug use and health issues should not be enshrined in law by politicians who are for the most part rather stupid on such matters. The Governments record on disasterous IT decisions is a glaring example and untill Brown intellectually challenged and scientificall illiterate bunch of plonkers learns to discriminated between science and politics, we wil all be at the mercy of blinkered and vested intrests who will continue to tell us what we can and cannot ingest and worst of all, will continue to force us to take substances which we never wanted and certainly never voted for. Fluoride being the most toxic example to date.

So professor Nutt, you are correct in practically every detail except one. Browns Government really is not the first to talk through its arse and then formulate law from its own flatulence.

FAREWELL PROFESSOR NUTT

It seems like only yesterday and in fact it was only yesterday that I posted about another outburst of common sense from Professor David Nutt, the chair of the Governments drug advisory panel. He was yet again desperately trying to hammer home the message that the Government had got it all wrong yet again. They had completely failed to get the drug problem in perspective by first reducing the classification of cannabis and then only months later re-classifying it. He had simply reminded them that the real enemies were alcohol and tobacco which were killing of tens of thousands of people every year. He dared to go further and famously said that horse riding was more dangerous than taking LSD.

Of course the government knew better. It didnt care for mind expanding substances because its minds, or what passed for them in the cabinet, were as usual, closed to all except more expenses claims and sucking up to big business because of the tax benefits this yielded. For example, It had only recently relaxed alcohol licensing laws to allow 24 hour drinking and did nothing to stem the endless supply of cheap plonk available in the supermarkets. It then began a long process of hand wringing about "binge drinking" which a cursory glance at real life policing in our towns would convince anyone that we now had a plonk pandemic. True it may be that the tax proceeds from the sale of alcohol were huge, but they were soon whittled down when the real costs of police and courts man hours, the overflowing A and E units of hospitals at weekends, the carnage on the roads and crimes of violence were taken into consideration.

Quite obviously David Nutt was a real thorn in their side. A government that believes it knows everything and is never wrong, hates to be reminded publicly that it frequently is. A good first step would be for the Government to simply stop referring to "Drink and Drugs" as though there was some kind of difference when any fuel doth know that there is none, Alcohol and tobacco are drugs, and very clearly some of the most dangerous and injurious to health and o f course very addictive. An artist friend of mine developed a heroine addiction, living and working with it for more than fifteen years. At last tired of the expense, the poor quality of the drug which was frequently cut by all kinds of dangerous white powders and his consequent physical and mental decline, decided to go Cold Turkey. He stopped literally overnight and never looked back. When i next saw him i congratulated him on his resolve and strength of character to be able to do this when so many were unable to do so. He grinned and shook his head and said, if was as you say such a strong character i would also be able to give up cigarettes. Not only have i not managed to stop smoking, I am a chain smoker and cannot even cut down let alone stop. Tobacco, he said was much worse than heroine.


So today Professor Nutt was given the bums rush. This will prove to be a pyrrhic victory however and as one pundit on TV only a couple of hours ago yet again pointed out, this will come back and bite them in the lower cheeks. However did we manage to elect idiots like Home Sec, Alan Brown and Health Minister (sic) Andy Burnham whose collective intellectual stature does not even come up to the shoulders of a garden gnome?? Saddest of all is the worrying fact that waiting in the wings is yet another bunch of intellectual dwarves and self-seekers. As the Hippies used to say apparently with some justification, "whoever you vote for, the Government gets in !"

PS..... SORRY ABOUT THE LACK OF PARAGRAPHS BUT BLOGGER SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO THEM.

HOW STUPID IS THE UK GOVERNMENT ?

The words associated with stupidity in the Thesaurus include absurdity, apathy, asininity, battiness, brainlessness, doltishness, fatuity, fatuousness, feeble-mindedness, idiocy, ignorance, imbecility, imprudence, incapacity, ineptitude, injudiciousness, insensibility, lunacy, nitwittedness, nonsense, obtuseness, puerility, shallowness, silliness, simplicity, slowness. It is of course difficult to quantify stupidity as such a definition would depend on the time and the place. At an early stage of human development when humans first climbed down from the trees, stupidity would be obvious to the humans of today due to the accidents caused by trial and error ending in disappointment, today and here in the technical and scientific vastness of the future it is less easy to determine. It can be disguised by various forms of artifice to appear as wisdom when in fact its a load of bollocks.

This reaches a pinnacle when it becomes enshrined in orthodoxy and appears as dogma. The Governments attitude to water fluoridation exhibits this very clearly and can therefore be seen for the stupidity it really is. But this is nothing new and today's news from the Governments own chief drug advisor demonstrates all of the above rather well.

Professor David Nutt (Nutt by name but clearly not by nature) today again condemned the Governments re-classification of Cannabis as a class B drug when it had originally determined that it was in fact a class C substance and therefore comparatively innocuous when compared with the evils of alcohol, tobacco, LSD Heroine and crack cocaine. Professor Nutt, chairman of the Governments Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and his colleagues, must be getting pretty sick and tired of being ignored and rubbished by Government front benchers who appear to know little about anything of importance.

The Brown Gov sets up the Advisory Council to look at drug classification then of course because it does not like the councils findings, first implements them then at the behest of the hyenas and snakes in the Tabloids, decides to do a U turn, creating confusion amongst the minds of young users and of course making it more desirable. It behaved in a similar cavalier fashion over its York Review on Fluoride which recommended no further expansion of water fluoridation because research was poor and their were too many dangerous unknowns. The Government even rewrote the conclusion to make it appear that the York panel were in favour when of course they were not. When Governments behave in such a dishonest way, is it any wonder that no one trusts them any more about anything.

To emphasis this lets briefly look at the MP expenses. Not only have they been milking the system en masse for many years, they behave as though they are amazed that anyone else is amazed let alone annoyed. Now they are wondering why they are being forced to pay it all back and why the British public have no sympathy for their plight. Perhaps they have merely demonstrated publicly that the crap always floats to the top as a quick listing of the current cabinet seems to prove. Both New Labour and the Conservatives should remember that opposition parties DO NOT WIN ELECTIONS but GOVERNMENTS DO LOSE THEM.

As a child of the 60's I am not unacquainted with drugs of various kinds. Alcohol made me sick and made me think i was brilliant as i fell on my face in public. Intelligent and sophisticated friends and colleagues turned into slobbering animals in front of me and when cannabis came on the scene i found it a blessed relief to remain coherent whilst intoxicated. I used it regularly and even passed two driving tests whilst under its influence. This was at a time when the Police broke down doors, wrecked homes and stole property whilst searching for only a roach. Looking back on it dope smokers or eaters were seemingly treated with the same hatred as we today save for paedophiles.

For the Love Generation this was Tough Love indeed. Even today when Pot smoking or growing a plant for personal use should elicit only a caution from the Bill, we find a local Plod breaking down doors to do just this. Ignorance seems to start at the top and work its way down until it manifests as arrogant assumptions based on little other than personal bias and ignorance.

Fluorine is undoubtedly a very dangerous and toxic substance and cannabis comparatively harmless but when you have a government and ministers of the appalling standard currently in power and who think exactly the opposite, its little wonder that many of my friends ask when why I even bother to try to explain the true facts on fluoride. Clearly There are none so blind as those who will not see. I recall what the late great and sadly missed DJ John Peel said to me when i was campaigning to stop the damage being done to the BBC by the John Birt media terrorists. He read out my letters on his program and then wrote back to me privately wishing me well with my campaigns and i clearly remember his parting shot. "The best of luck with your campaigns but don't ever forget that you are battling dickheads." We still are John, we still are.

REFERENDA ON FLUORIDE ARE NOT THE ANSWER

I strongly agree with Elizabeth McDonagh's comments about Referenda and i know that i am not alone. Its ok to make a statement and generate publicity by demonstrating the strength of public opinon against fluoridation but this has already been done countless times across the UK. A referendum fails to tackle the central fact that mass medication is the imposition of medication on a group or even an individual without their consent. This would be the case even if it was "safe and effective" and actually worked. The idea of fluoridation ignores and punishes those who in a democracy should not only have a right to refuse and vote against an idea but also to refuse medical treatment.except possibly in a case where an individual becomes a danger to others. As far as i am aware, tooth decay is not contagious.

Compulsory Fluoridation is a betrayal of democracy for which our parents and grand parents fought in world wars to uphold. Flawed it may be but its probably the best of the options currently available and it should therefore be strengthened rather than weakened. . Even now our sons and daughters are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to uphold and protect the principles and freedoms of democracy yet seemingly our own government does not see fit to allow its own citizens here in the UK to experience the benefits.

Not one single person should be forced to take fluoride without their individual consent, not even by a doctor and very certainly not by an elected MP or Government Minister with absolutely no medical qualifications and in many cases, little evidence of common sense or self preservation as recent events have demonstrated.. If i want to purchase a house i go to an estate agent not a politician, if i want to go on Holiday i visit a travel agent not an MP and if i want a medical examination or a prescription i visit a doctor and certainly not a government minister who one would expect to be busy with affairs of state or indeed a personal expenses claim. Even then I reserve the right to consider a doctors opinion and if i wish, refuse to accept the proffered medidation. A referendum on fluoride would give credibility to fluoride when we all know there is none and this would merely act as a distraction from the central issue.

The judicial review is a useful and important way of highlighting the illegality, and the lack of democracy and genuine consultation processes of fluoridation, but this should not even be necessary in a democracy just as unsafe and ineffective or uneconomic practices should not be used by a Government agency or public water supplier. It is high time that our elected representatives and their agents, realised that they are spending and in many cases, wasting OUR time and OUR money and that we as a nation can no longer afford this. Politicians are elected by all of us who vote, to carry our our wishes and they constantly must be reminded that they are not ordained by God. If you have a toothache and I am forced to take a painkiller, it not only sets a precedent for even more tampering with what should be pure and unadulterated water, it will not help your toothache and may even make me ill. Therefore we must be prepared to say NO to fluoride at the local and National level, not only online but also in the media, the courts of law, and the ballot box.

THE ELECTION SEASON BEGINS -- SOME CAUTIONARY WORDS

THE ELECTION SEASON BEGINS -- SOME CAUTIONARY WORDS

For at least the next six months and probably longer, we will be bombarded by various kinds of election propaganda from all the expected and usual sources and of course from some less likely ones who have somthing to gain. It is therefore very important that we lobby ALL candidates whether for local elections or for the looming General Election and remind them that the majority of the public in this country and across Europe are opposed to water Fluoridation and will not be voting for or recommending those who say they are in favour of this redundant, wasteful and dangerous practice.


Friends of the Earth are not affilliated with any political party although there are undoubted sympathies with some of the aims of The Green Party and some LIb Dems at the Local Level from some of our members. We cannot as an organisation therfore be seen to be be publicly recommending any political party lest the Government use it as another excuse to saddle charitable groups and organisations with even more draconian controls which limit groups powers to actually be useful. This does not mean that when we see environmental stupidity we should not name and shame the offenders, whosoever they may be. If we did not we would be failing in our aims and duties.

This method was referred to by the late and certainly great Andrew Lees as the "the carrot and stick approach." ie. If someone wishes to or better still actually does, something environmentally usefull like for example standing up against fluoridation we get out the carrots and distribute them, on the other hand of course if we encounter those who seek to defend and continue this barbaric and outmoded practice its clearly stick time.


In the Thatcher era its true that the Tories did pass some useful legislation on water quality for rivers and drinking water etc but usually only after much local and national pressure from a wide range of green groups and also leaving large holes which smart lawyers and polluters could drive a coach and horses through. New Labour made many large promises in the run up to 1997 most notably to be "the Greenest Government ever" but other than joining in the clamour about Global Warming and CO2 emissions has done even less than the Tories did. If the Conservatives "rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic," New Labour "repainted them." Sadly, i dont seem to get many canvassers knocking on my door nowadays, do you think it could have been something that I said?

I will leave you with some wise words in a quotation by Noah Webster of American dictionary fame, sent to me by a campaigner in the USA. "If the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.": Noah Webster - (1758-1843) American patriot and scholar, author of the 1806 edition of the dictionary that bears his name, the first dictionary of American English usage."

SLAYING THE DRAGON THAT IS FLUORIDE

If fluoride were indeed a Dragon, killing it would be comparatively easy, assuming that there were only one of course. But how would St George have faired if the Dragon had turned up with some mates, all of them itching for a fight.? At this point the analogy of fluoride as a Dragon begins to fail. It is in fact more like a Hydra.

According to legend, the Hydra possessed at least 9 heads and the poets go even further saying there were more heads than the vase-painters could paint. The Local Campaigner and Hero at the time was a guy called Hercules, noted for taking on very difficult tasks. Smoking the Hydra out of the cave was the easy bit, the trouble started when he began cutting off its heads. Each time he managed to remove one, two more grew back in its place. If this was not bad enough, he must have realised that one of the heads was also immortal. Although he probably began to wish he had stayed in bed that morning, our over muscled hero was not entirely devoid of brains and About this time he must have realised that he needed reinforcements and called on his nephew Lolaus for help.

Lolaus appears to have been something of a smart cookie who quickly realised that bravery and muscles were indeed not everything. He came up with the idea of using a burning firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. So, Hercules cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps thus preventing them from growing back. In one fell swoop, Hercules and his Nephew had not only rid the populace of a deadly menace but had also invented division of labour which put the Greek Clock forwards thousands of years.

There is an alternative version that talks about dipping his sword in the venomous blood to burn each head but this doesnt really make much sense and is probably the work of his publicists or agents.

Although the Dragons may have gone, the Hydra that is Fluoride which can take on many shapes and forms, is still rampaging through our western society. poisoning not just our bodies and the environment but even the minds of those one would have thought had more intelligence.

To defeat the evil menace that is fluoride will take much more than one over muscled hero and a smart nephew, it will take many of both. Not only this but they will have to work in tandem, together, regardless of all other differences and cut off all the Hydras heads. We must defeat the poisonous pseudo-science used to promote fluoride and denounce the poisonous pseudo-scientists who try to excuse and promote it. We must expose and cut off the heads of publicists and apologists in business and industry and of course Government and its PR machine which spread this discredited and dangerous nonesense. We will need to use the very tools which the Fluoridistas use to defeat them and yet remain uncontaminated by they poison which we confront which underlies fluoride, ie; financial gain. We will need to work together and share our knowledge and skills.

Negaativity is not enough though, we will not just need to campaign AGAINST fluoride but also FOR a clean environment, pure drinking water and an unpolluted food chain. The campaign to end fluoridation is a moral, ethical and spiritual campaign and only by recognising this can we inspire and win the support and the supporters to defeat fluoride. Together individually and collectively, we can defeat fluoride and its supporters not just for our own vanity but for the Planet and the People.

MUSICIANS AND GROUPS, HELP NEEDED TO ARRANGE FLUORIDE PROTEST SONG

Dear All

I've written an anti-fluoride protest song (lyrics and tune) with a really strong marching chorus and some pithy verses. Although I used to be able to play the guitar and sing folk songs in my youth, this, I feel, is beyond me now. I'd like to have the song arranged and recorded/videoed and put on a blog for free distribution so that all anti-fluoride groups worldwide could take it up as their anthem.

Do any of you have any contacts in the music world who would be willing to take on this project? I can put it on a sound file a capella for onward transmission to any interested musician.

With best wishes

Joy

West Midlands Against Fluoridation
www.wmaf.org.uk (website due to go live 4th October)

Water Fluoridation: The propaganda and public relations game.

At the onset of selling fluoride to the public as protective measure against tooth decay in the late 1940s, the companies involved brought in the mastermind and father of modern public relations, Edward Bernays. Alcoa Aluminium needed to get rid of toxic fluoride waste, and like any other giant corporation that had a big public relations and marketing problem – they called in Bernays to solve it.

Bernays was to perform some PR alchemy – turn rat poison into a publicly accepted cavity fighter. He succeeded with successfully selling fluoride to the public in toothpaste for his old client Proctor and Gamble.
Edward Bernays wasn’t just any backslapping public relations huckster running around glad-handing people at parties or someone pumping out fliers at the water company; he was THE public relations advisor to presidents, the US government, and multinational corporations. Among his many monumental achievements of PR hucksterism, he orchestrated and implemented a successful US Government hate campaign against Germans during the First World War. It was designed to incite a reticent American public to enter into the European fray.


However, ironically, Hitler's propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, was one of Bernays biggest fans and used the same precepts from his 1923 book “Crystallizing Public Opinion” to orchestrate the hate campaign against the German Jews which resulted in the holocaust – “The final solution.” Curiously, Bernays’ approach to getting rid of toxic waste was ‘The solution to pollution is dilution in the public water supply.’
Bernays moulded public opinion and manipulated the masses by the use of visual symbols and words that have and will continue to impact every person in the world well into the future. His basic rules are still applied to advertising and public relations today.


To Bernays, people were “The masses” and referred to them as a “Herd” to, more or less, drive like dairy cattle from pasture to pasture, told what to eat and drink, and even what clothes to wear and cars to drive. He saw himself as the leader of an elite group of people (“The invisible government”) working behind the scenes to create compliant social order out of a chaotic democracy. The base and aggressive animal instincts of the population were to be satiated by consumerism and thus domesticated like a compliant herd of dairy cattle.
“We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.” (Propaganda” – 1928, Bernays)
When I first got involved with the water fluoridation issue, I saw his name and knew that winning the fight was about public relations and propaganda. All the science and other altruistic arguments were simply distractions – ‘dog and pony shows’ staged to give the masses the illusion of participating in the democratic process, when in fact the decision to fluoridate the drinking water of a nation was predetermined by Bernays and his clients.


In 1947, fluoridation of the Nation’s drinking was government policy. The mechanisms, sales pitch, and bureaucracy to impose the new policy were in place well before they began to pitch drinking water fluoridation to the masses in the early 1950s. I would imagine a strategy to marginalise and discredit dissidents was also devised well in advance. It would have been fairly simple strategy based on Freudian concept of mans need to be part of the herd; Marginalise a dissident and their primal instinct to belong would bring them back into compliance with the group consciousness.
“Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.” (Propaganda).


The marginalisation and isolation tactic is still used on scientists who speak out against fluoridation. If a scientist speaks out against fluoride, they are discredited as a scientist. If one does a little research, there is a long list of scientists whose careers were ended by speaking out against water fluoridation. Essentially, they were made examples to keep the scientific community corralled like a herd of domesticated cattle. For the most part, the tactic has successfully worked.
The next thing I realised was that of all the successful PR campaigns Bernays masterminded for governments and corporations, he never actually got all of the “herd/masses” to accept water fluoridation although a majority would reluctantly acquiesce. Bernays pulled every trick out of his books on hucksterism to get everyone to accept fluoridation, and sixty-years-on, the heated battle still ensues, and today, on several continents.


People like to call it a debate about fluoride, but it’s not – fluoridation is basically a bitter battle of wills cloaked in a translucent veil of civility. Scientists, activists, and doctors argue back and forth about health issues, and at the end, they walk away politely ‘agreeing to disagree.’
Nothing much has changed in the basic rhetoric or tactics over the past sixty years. For every study that says fluoride is bad, the pros pump out ten studies trashing the study and the scientist, and the people who oppose fluoridation are still labelled as ‘kooks and crackpots.’
Sixty years later, it’s more than evident that Bernays’ tried and true PR strategies didn’t work. There were too many dissidents among the bovine ‘masses’ – So, I asked myself, “Why?”


In revisiting his 1928 ‘bible’ of public relations, “Propaganda,” it became evident that he violated one of his cardinal principles:
“The public has its own standards and demands and habits.
You may modify them, but you dare not run counter to them.”
His strategy to sell fluoridation was contrary to what people are led to believe about democracy and their freedom of choice – the very foundations upon which Bernays based his PR concepts – ‘give the masses the illusion that they have a choice.’ Strip away all the superficial reasons and arguments people offer for opposing fluoridation and what remains is person’s need to feel that he/she has a choice. Violate that somewhat delusional belief, and you’re in trouble.


Marketing fluoride in toothpaste was successful because people felt as if they had a choice, but put fluoride into their drinking water, and you’re imposing your will upon the individual – the person’s perceived right to make a choice is taken away which elicits either a conscious or a subconscious resentment and incites a reaction.


Bernays made the fatal mistake of assuming that people below his self-perceived intellectual status were nothing more than a mindless herd relying on people like him to make decisions for them. Forcing something on someone runs contrary to that fundamental belief in ‘sense of self,’ and the reality that all humans are individuals and prefer to believe that have some control over their lives.
However, the governmental policy of fluoridating drinking water sends a demeaning message: ‘The public is too stupid to be educated about basic dental hygiene, so we have to take draconian measures to reduce tooth decay.’


In essence, fluoridating the drinking is running counter to the individual’s standards and belief that they have a choice and the ability to think for themselves because the politicians are perceived to be brutally forcing something down their throat without their consent.
However, from a psychological standpoint, fluoridation of the drinking water is much more than a simple public health program to governments. Symbolically, it’s more about dictatorial power and the subconscious and symbolic imposition of authority.
For all intents and purposes, fluoridation is the symbolic imposition of ultimate authority and dominance by politicians – ‘shoving something down my throat. – forcing me to do something against my will.’ To most individuals that is abhorrent behaviour and completely unacceptable.
While some government officials may well delude themselves into thinking that they have the best interest of the citizens at heart, in fact, they’re saying to the individual, ‘You will do what I say, and I don’t care what you think – I’m in control of your life. Take your medicine and shut up.’

The truth of the matter is that when drinking water fluoridation comes into the frame, battle lines are drawn. Beyond all the superficial, altruistic reasons someone will give for their opposition to fluoridation, the bottom-line is that it is a personal issue, and most people don’t like to have anything force-fed to them - it’s an affront to and violation of their personal dignity. While the government has the power to win, they never really win because imposing one’s will on individuals only generates seething resentment and a need to retaliate in some form.
In reality, if the government was actually concerned about tooth decay, using Bernays tried and true methods of propagandising the public with multimedia public education would be more cost effective and ultimately, much more successful than attempting to ‘make inoculate the herd.’ About 99.7% of all the fluoride added to the water goes down the drain – not in people’s bodies.
Personally, I think Bernays’ involvement in water fluoridation was another of his grand societal experiments in manipulating public opinion, as he published “The Engineering of Public Consent” the same year he became involved with marketing fluoride. Persuading the entire population to accept drinking water tainted with rat poison would be his ultimate public relations triumph – something he could brag about in another book.


He knew it was rat poison, but being a self-aggrandising megalomaniac, Bernays actually thought he could persuade everyone to believe that it was a magic elixir and they needed it in their water. However, he forgot that ‘masses/herd’ don’t like to be forced to do anything, and fluoridating drinking water is just that.
As the old adage goes, “You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

GEORGE GLASSER

THE LAWYERS HAVE ARRIVED. ( Courtesy of UKCAF Web Site)

THE LAWYERS HAVE ARRIVED.

Back in March we warned that the lawyers were about to get involved in the fluoridation controversy. Now they are here, and the Government's duplicity is under scrutiny, with a Judicial Review of the law on public consultation.

When Southampton resident Geraldine Milner was awarded State legal aid to challenge the autocratic rejection of public opinion against fluoridation in the City of Southampton, pro-fluoride advocates in the UK were brought up sharply against reality. The first legal challenge of any aspect of water fluoridation to come before a Judge since Lord Jauncy effectively banished fluoridation from Scotland twenty six years ago has shocked the pro-fluoride Establishment to its foundations.

Fluoride pushers across the country are worried. The plan to fluoridate the English North-West has stopped dead in its tracks. Even in long-fluoridated areas of the country the Water Companies are nervously waiting to see what the Judge has to say about the Government's undercover attempt to remove the hazards of uncertain public opinion from public health policy-making.

It will be several months yet before we get the verdict, but behind the scenes there are signs that the Department of Health may be preparing a face-saving exit strategy. Only a few days ago the North West Strategic Health Authority announced that it is concerned that the costs of the proposed northern scheme are likely to be rather more than it had expected - £200 million. Ouch!

But quite why this is regarded as such a shocking revelation is difficult to understand We informed the NWSHA that it would cost precisely that amount two years ago, and we got it directly from the Water Company!

Our commentary on the issues that will form the basis of the Judicial Review are published here today - you will be surprised at just what has been going on behind the scenes!

Inadmissible evidence.

The impending Judicial Review will examine whether Parliament's wish that public agreement to water fluoridation must be the deciding factor was ignored when the Consultation Regulations were drawn up.

But the evidence given to Parliament during the fluoridation debates was itself scientifically illiterate, and may have improperly influenced the Members and the provision of the secondary legislation on consultation.

So should the Judicial Review now also examine the 'cogency' of the evidence given to Parliament and used repeatedly by the Health Authority, and the Health sector's irrational rejection of reliable scientific evidence of the serious medical risks of water fluoridation?

Doug Cross, 19th September 2009

IS IT TIME TO END THE NHS QUANGOS ?

How can it be right that at a time when the NHS is on its uppers and in immediate danger of having to make cuts of 10% or more, across the board it can not only completely ignore public opinion and its democratic status but also find hundreds of thousands of poundt to fight its own patients for the right to waste untold millions on their forcible medication for what is a minor problem which can be treated "safely and effectively" as they would say buy a few free toothbrushes and paste??? Persuing the unwanted and useless fluoridation is not just grotesque waste but genuinely begins to hint at fascism and totalitarianism. Is it time to hold a public enquiry into the conduct of these unelected bodies and abolish these out of date and out of control quangos that think themselves above the law before they do any more serious damage to either the NHS services or its patients. ?

FLUORIDE SONG FROM TRILLION

FLUORIDE SONG FROM TRILLION

MERCURY IN YOUR FLU JAB

THE SPECTATOR

Monday, 17th August 2009

The flu jab choice the Department of Health might not tell you about

Fraser Nelson 4:48pm

Which flu jab would you like this season – the one with mercury, or without? It’s a question you’re unlikely to be asked when the NHS vaccination programme gets underway in October but there actually is a choice. One swine flu vaccine ordered by the government, Panderix, contains thimerosal, a preservative which is 49.6% mercury by weight. The other swine flu jab, Celvapan, is mercury-free.

I found this out by calling the Department of Health on a hunch. When governments order vaccines, and have no intention of telling patients what’s in the mix, they tend to go for the bulk cheap ones. These often contain thimerosal. But the use of mercury in vaccines is far from uncontroversial. A few years ago, class action by American parents of autistic children was brought (unsuccessfully) against the makers of thimerosal. They suspected that mercury, a proven neurotoxin, could have impaired the mental development of their children given its presence in child vaccines. These controversies seldom kick off in Britain because parents are told nothing about the vaccines.

Andy Burnham said last week that his department intends to "target" 500,000 pregnant women when it starts its vaccination programme. Now, NHS24 has plenty to say about pregnant women and mercury. It advises them that mercury "can have a damaging effect on your baby’s developing nervous system" and that pregnant women had best avoid swordfish because it contains "a high level of mercury". By “high” it means that swordfish is a millionth mercury – one “part per million” is mercury." So why should pregnant women – who are advised to take a swine flu jab – inject themselves with the very stuff that the government considers it is prudent for them to avoid? Why not advise them to take the mercury-free jab? Or at least explain the risks and give them the choice?

The Department of Health tells me “we won't be advising against pregnant women using it as there is no reason to”. Its standard line (see it in full here) is that “there is no evidence” that mercury (at the levels that exist in thimerosal vaccines) is harmful. This is stating the obvious: if there were evidence of neurological damage – be it Alzheimer’s in the elderly or autism in children – it would be a scandal of Thalidomide proportions. But the Department of Health has for the last few years been phasing thimerosal out of the DTP baby vaccines. Why might it do that, you may ask, if it is so confident that thimerosal was doing no harm?

I suspect that the Department will have to rethink its decision not to tell pregnant women about Panderix (also called Prepandrix) and mercury. The era of the expert patient is upon us. Doctors have to explain themselves, their products, their prescriptions. They can’t really say “the man in Whitehall knows best, you may feel a little prick”. I’d argue they do have a duty to tell an inquisitive patient what’s in the mix. That patient may very well be nervous about mercury, perhaps noting that no-one in the UK government will actually say it is safe (they say there’s no evidence of harm, a crucial difference, and officials are very careful not to go any further).

The use of mercury in medicine is a deeply controversial subject, and one that may divide CoffeeHousers too. In recent years, there have been several studies into thimerosal – all of which have been unable to find evidence of harm. But the overall guidance from most Western governments is quite simple: if you can avoid mercury, do so. The NHS has two swine flu vaccines. It should give everyone, especially pregnant women, the choice of staying mercury free.

SUPPORT THE NHS, SAY NO TO FLUORIDE

Whatever you political persuasion, the chances are you believe that the NHS is a good idea which should be preserved. David Cameron has just come out in favour of it and this is not surprising, the NHS is "against sin" in political terms. Of course its easy for the the American politicians to snipe at it because such a system would undoubtedly make inroads into the grotesque profiteering of the American drug empires.

The credit crunch is the latest threat to the UK health service and it's obvious that some cuts will be necessary whatever Party assumes power next year. Rather than cut the services themselves, the Government should be thinking the unthinkable. they should be cutting out the men with suits in the SHAs and the PCTs. Most of them are just political appointees with little or no health background and who are rather better at looking after the PCT etc than the Health Service or Trusts.

Many of them receive grotesquely large salaries especially the CEOs, that are not justified and are no longer affordable. The Strategic Health Authorities are a case in point. One GP doctor in Essex complained bitterly that rather than benefit from the recently improved salaries the government put in place, that he had actually been sacked and advised to live off his pension. Meanwhile, the boss of his SHA was gettting £60K more per year than even Gordon Brown. I wonder how that can be justified. and dont forget these are the very people who are ignoring public opinion and trying to force fluoride down our throats because they think they know best. Its painfully obvious that most them dont even know diddly squat.

A couple of months back during the "consultation" on fluoridation in Southamption the SHA decided to completly ignore 78% public poll results against the toxic waste plan. Even Brown publicly stated that fluoride should not be imposed on people without consent and now even Andy Burnham who normally salivates like one of Pavlovs dogs at the very mention of Fluoride has stated the same as Gordon Brown. Its strange really, i had no idea he had any plans for a Damascus trip but it seems he met someone on the road and finally saw the light. Of course we cannot really believe anything that the Vicar of Bray says but at least we can hold him to it when the time comes. Its after all a bit of a pity that he was not so gung ho about "debate" before the Consultation(sic) decided to forece everyone to have it by law.

Manchester, which has close links with the Brown regime has also shelved plans for fluoridation in the North West pending the results of the Judicial Review which the good folk of Southamption have brought against the clearly out of touch and out of control SHA. Sadly councils in West Yorkshire have not yet heard the news and even as i write are still wasting time and our money on "studies" and "consultation" Hopefully, the penny will finally drop to the East of the Pennines and the credit crunch will be taken as an opportunity to dump this evil plan in favour of better dental education and more dentists.

THE ADVENTURES OF ANDY BURNHAM - THE CLIMBDOWN KID

DENTISTRY WEB SITE HEAPS DOUBT ON FUTURE OF FLUORIDATION

It seems like only yesterday that the South Central Strategic Health Authority was telling its dwindling audience that they didnt give a bugger about individual rights, Democracy or how many people objected to fluoridation: It was going to be imposed on Southampton and parts of Hampshire whether they liked it or not because it was the health "evidence" that mattered most. Indeed it said as much in the double speak of the 2003 Act which hoped to popularise mass poisoning (surely Mass Medication. Ed !) One thing you can be sure of however is that the delusional nature of the pro-fluoride loonies continues to grow


Only last week UKCAF's Web Site exposed the much trumpeted National Fluoride Information Centre as just an abandoned building lost amidst the sprawling campus of Manchester University. Even the campus security had not heard of it. It turns out that It was not a Centre of Excellence, It was certainly not National and if this was not enough, it contained no Information about Fluoride or anything else. Possibly the Fluoridistas have run out of money or at least soon will if threats of cuts to the NHS budgets because of the Credit Crunch are even half true. Or perhaps, the funding has been diverted to clean out a Moat, build a Dead Duck House or most likely, to pay the collossal salaries of the SHA's CEO,s which are even higher than those of the Prime Minister.


Perhaps this is one reason why Gordon Brown said during the Southampton "consultation process" (sic) that fluoridation would not be imposed upon people without their consent. It was a pity that this message had not filtered down to the SHAs whose determination to fluoridate us all knew no bounds. But better late than never. The good folk of Southampton have fought a valiant fight to stop this evil, expensive and totally useless imposition and the Judicial Review they have provoked, has served to concentrate the few brain cells remaining in New Labours Ship of State to a realisation that on grounds of expense and certainly electoral practicality and popularity, fluoridation is probably a no no.
Its not therefore very surprising that Burnham has now clambered down of his high horse and admitted that fluoridation will not be imposed upon anybody. Of course this might just be more weasel words, or maybe comrade Brown didnt like being contradicted by the upstart. And anyway, Should the Sec of State actually be moving the goalposts whilst the matter was before Judicial Review. If they move them anymore they will need to put castors on them.


Now we learn that the Fluoridistas in the North West have slammed on the breaks because they cannot afford to waste money on something which the review may find against if there is any Justice left in this septic Isle. Of course the wording of the 2003 legislation does say deep in the text that SHA,s do have the ultimate say, it now appears that this is being moderated by the words of both Gordon Brown and the Sec of State for health and local people will after all have the final word about any tampering with their water supplies. If this is truly the direction the government is now heading then lets encourage them to improve dental education and put in place more dentists and forget this outdated and discredited masturbatory fantasy called fluoridation once and for all. Its never too late to return to common sense and it usually proves very popular.

If this message doesnt get through however the fight will not only continue to rid us all of this madness but it will increase, We will not tolerate compulsory mass medication, we will not pay the water companies or anyone else for contaminated water and we will not pay for Trickle Meters which threaten our health and disrupt our hot water and central heating systems. The Government cannot disconnect us so now is the time to stand firm and once and for all Say No To Fluoride and fluoridation and all those politicians of whatever party who seek to impose it upon us.

The Dangers of Fluoride & Water Fluoridation

NATIONAL FLUORIDE INFORMATION CENTRE DOES NOT EXIST

The Government's flagship 'Information Centre' is a lonely telephone
answering machine in an abandoned building.

The UK Councils Against Fluoride website reveals that......

"The 'National Fluoride Information Centre' was set up by the British Government in 2004. It was enthusiastically promoted as a reputable 'academically independent centre', and every effort was made to raise its public profile as a new and reliable Centre of Excellence, to persuade the public and the Health Sector that it would become an authoritative official source of information on fluoride.

Five years on, we have the evidence of what we have long suspected - that this 'National Centre' is a sham. It has no full-time staff, and no office. There is no manned Help Line. Instead, it's a tiny locked room in an almost empty building, abandoned as unfit for modern science two years ago.

Unlike your local Health Centre or Tourism Centre, you can't book an appointment, or just drop in - there's no-one there. Even the maintenance staff have never heard of it! So today we show you what this prestigious National Centre of Excellence really is. Then we'll identify who is behind it, and what needs to be done to stop such political manipulation in the future."

When Health Secretary Alan Johnson attended the 2008 Annual Conference of the National Fluoride Information Centre (NFIC), he predictably echoed the familiar dogma of the pro--fluoridation lobby, urging Primary Care Trusts and Regional Health Authorities in England to "push forward with the consultation process about fluoridating water supplies". He was followed by the Deputy Chief Dental Officer, Tony Jenner, who sang the praises of Manchester University for hosting the NFIC which, he said, was "making a positive contribution to raising the public’s general awareness about the value of water fluoridation."

But were they really aware of just how empty their welcoming speeches really were? Despite all their no-doubt ernest intentions, their words were mere meaningless rhetoric. They simply reinforced the cynical propaganda that has become the foundation of one of the most offensive medical scams ever perpetrated on the public by the UK's increasingly disreputable Department of Health.For the NFIC is a charade; there is, in fact, nothing that resembles a 'National Centre' in the Coupland 3 Building of Manchester University - just a couple of (very) part-time staff and a deserted room with a telephone answering machine.

The whole set-up is a deliberate public relations scam by the Department of Health and its spin-doctors, an illusion designed to persuade the general public and, especially, health professionals across the entire country, that here is an academically respectable Centre of Excellence that provides reliable and unbiased information on which public decisions about water fluoridation can be based.For the rotten truth behind all the hype, the frenetic busy-ness of International Conferences, and the sponsored research, is that it's all nothing but a facade.

The Centre was designed to replace the Government's hopelessly ineffective propaganda outfit, the British Fluoridation Society, with more skilled professional manipulators of public opinion. A new operation, directed by professional spin-doctors, was essential to drive the Department's new programme to impose water fluoridationon almost half of the population of England. There was, inevitably, a problem. Public awareness of the dangers of water fluoridation is now far greater, since everyone has easy access to the world's scientific literature through the Internet. Resistance to ernest reassurances of the 'safety and efficacy' of fluoridation was becoming alarmingly high. So the new unit had to give at least an appearance of solid academic respectability - and where better than that hot-bed of fluoridation promotion, Manchester University's Dental Units.When the Centre was set up, the University proudly trumpeted its hosting of the NFIC:‘England’s first independent fluoride information centre has been launched using funding from the Department of Health, to meet an anticipated public demand for information after changes to the Government’s Water Bill.'

What it completely forgot is that the public is already very well aware of where it can find indepedent information on fluoridation - those sources already exist, and are not under tight Governmental control!The semblance of academic respectablity is boosted by the Centre's Annual Conference, attended by delegates from all over the world, and it channels some of its DoH funding of £125,000 a year into academic research aimed at improving knowledge about fluorides and fluoridation. The Centre's first Director, Professor Anthony Blinkhorn, enthusiastically encouraged the public to contact the Centre on its public Help Line, assuring us that "The helpline is manned Monday–Friday and incorporates an out-of-office voicemail service."The Department's dynamic new ‘Information Centre’, with its full-time high-tech ‘Help Line’, has been in operation for the past five years, so you would be justified in assuming that it is a well-established and polished operation, with a busy Reception area and cabinets full of reliable leaflets and information sheets ready for inquirers to pick up and take away to study.Health professionals across the country believe that the Centre has a substantial physical and academic presence, and its statements on fluoridation are received with appropriate gravity and respect throughout the Health Sector.

Coupland Building 3 reception - there's no-one here to direct you to the NFIC - the staff have never heard of it! The laboratories were abandoned as 'unsuited to modern science'. The safe stands open and empty!
This is where the phone rings when you call the NFIC 'Help Line'. Inside - just an answering machine.
Health and Safety would have a field day here - timber with upstanding nails strewn on the stairs.

Not exactly the image of respectability that the Dept of Health endorses. This semi-deserted, dirty and dreary building is the permanent home of the elusive 'National Fluoride Information Centre'.
The reality - an abandoned building, 'unfit for modern science'.
And that, of course, is exactly the impression that the Dept of Health's promotion and publicity has been designed to provide. It is an unfortunate fact that the most successful hoaxers rely on their victims being willing and gullible enough to deceive themselves, and there has certainly been some expert manipulation of the public's perception of this supposedly prestigious National Centre of Excellence.Government hype has persuaded lazy Health Service staff to swallow the propaganda pouring from the pro-fluoride spin machine - they don't have the time to check out the reliability of their sources, and assume that because the Department recommends the Centre, it must be kosher.But In reality, the whole exercise is a public relations illusion. There is no 'Centre' in the Coupland 3 Building, the official address of the NFIC. Although the University spent £1.3 million renovating the building ten years ago, the Shool of Pharmacy moved out in 2007, because the building was 'unfit for modern science', and the building remains virtually abandoned.When our Investigator walked in and asked a baffled receptionist and security man where the NFIC was, they were utterly confused. When he used his mobile phone to call the Help Line from the corridor, the phone in room CG117 rang; when he hung up, it stopped.So it emerges that the dynamic heart of this busy and illustrious 'National Centre' is in fact an empty, tiny, but securely locked room, in a semi-derelict building on the Manchester University campus. On its dusty desk is a telephone answering machine. Kate Tidman, the nominal 'Communications Manager' of the Oral Health Unit and (very part-time) of the NFIC and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, visits this forgotten outpost of the University for ten minutes or so, about once a week, to collect messages left by frustrated callers to the Centre's permanently un-manned 'Help Line'.The desk drawers are empty, the cupboards bare. The building's reception, security and maintenance staff have never heard of the NFIC, and even the few researchers still inhabiting this shell are confused and vague about the NFIC's very existence.So just what is going on here? The Centre's Annual report discloses only two members of staff. The Director, Prof. Robin Davies, is head of the Oral Health Unit, based in the Williamson
Building elsewhere on the campus, and also has a senior research post with Colgate. With his many research and management roles in the University's dental faculty, he is hardly able to spend a great deal of his valuable time twiddling his thumbs in a cramped and dusty room waiting to assist casual callers on the Help Line. Ms Tidman also has a busy schedule in the Oral Health Unit - again hardly a job that would allow her to slot much of her time into a busy schedule, despite the supposed great demand for information from the NFIC that was so eagerly anticipated by the University back in 2004.And since there is no sign anywhere in the room of all the 'information' that the Centre's website says the Centre can supply - room CG117 is indeed, totally bereft of any sign of any form of printed material at all - just where does Ms Tidman squirrel away this hoard of valuable guidance material?As far as we can see, the £125,000 Department of Health grant to the NFIC goes towards maintaining a catchy web site where most of the documentation can be downloaded free of charge and, presumably, to cover the costs of running the annual Conference. The only two staff identified are both full-time employees of the Oral Health Unit, and are presumably paid out of its £2 million annual salaries budget, so just what is the DoH - sorry, our - money spent on?The NFIC channels Department of Health funds (presumably not the cash included in the direct grant to the Centre) to sponsor research into such essential dental research as 'the assessment of facial attractiveness' in cases of dental fluorosis, as perceived by students. To our suspicious minds, this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to try to find just what degree of dental fluorosis the public can be persuaded is 'attractive', a desperate claim that we have heard several times recently from promoters of the more arcane 'benefits' of fluoridation.The evidence that the NFIC is nothing more than a paper exercise exposes the depths to which this depraved Government and its autocratic Department of Health will go to mislead even health professionals that fluoridation is a viable therapeutic option, even under today's supposedly more enlightened approach to 'evidence-based' medicine. In our next issue we will discuss who is behind this scam, and how commercial interests now manipulate ingenuous politicians to over--ride ethical and prudent health care policies.

FLUORIDATION IN YORKSHIRE GIVEN THUMBS DOWN BY BBC LEEDS LISTENERS

This morning, BBC Radio Leeds main story was the decision to hold the usual bullshit "consultation" and "fact finding study" on fluoridation in Yorkshire. None of this is at the behest of the public in Yorkshire of course but at the bidding of the Strategic Health Authority. and local Primary Care Trust. Neither of these are elected bodies of course, merely puppet organisations created specifically to do the bidding of the Government and ensure that Fluoridation goes ahead despite public opposition.

This time because of the pipe network, they claim that it will also have to be extended to Northumberland. This comes on the recent revelation that some 50,000 Sheffield are already getting fluoridated water from Severn Trent Water who last year cocked up fluoridation of one of their pumping stations and delivered up to twice the allegedly safe dose of one part per million. The worker responsible for the fluoridation it turns out, was untrained or qualified and when alarms went of, these too were ignored. The drinking water inspectorate, apparently part of DEFRA were not exactly quick off the mark either, Although its true that Severn Trent didnt notify the DWI until a couple of months had elapsed, this whole business only came to light when the DWI published its annual report. Surely it would have been more appropriate to notify consumers immediately in order to reduce any risk. But neither Severn Trent nor the DWI bothered to do so.

It would also have been nice to let the unlucky water consumers in Sheffield who "because of the pipe network" also get Severn Trents fluoridated water that fluoridation was already underway without consultation or notification. A few people know about this but not the general public. But of course when your the SHA or the PCT, you are a law onto yourself and don't need to trouble yourself about little details such as medical ethics or even democracy which lets face it, just gets in the way of incompetent buffoons, going about their business of doing as they damn well please, and drawing on their expenses untill they get their CBEs or Knighthoods for "Public Service" (sic) It also turns ouot that up to 32 primary schools in the Sheffield area are also getting fluoride in their milk.

Any one with a couple of braincells to rub together would be concerned that the allegedly safe level of fluoride in water is one part per million, irrespective of how much water you drink and that also supplying kids with fluoridated milk, might just take consumption over that level. Apparently however, the SHA members have been consuming their own product and no longer aspire to more than one braincell.

The presenters on BBC Radio Leeds, showed little understanding of the seriousnes of fluoride but were indeed impressed by the large volume of calls, emails and texts they received on the subject. Only a handfull of which, as they admitted were PRO fluoride. Most who contacted the station were concerned about this toxic material and its health effects, although the presenters thought poisonous was a more contentious word than Toxic. Presumably they thought Toxic was something to do with debt following on from the Credit Crunch. Most of the callers however were much better informed and complained about not just the effects on health in the long term and the fact that there is little evidence to show that fluoride even protects teeth. They also raised the issue of compulsory mass medication and the fact that the Consultation in Hampshire and Southampton had indeed been a total sham fuelled by a pack of lies about listening to the public, who were subsequently completly ignored. Now this same process is underway in Yorkshire subject to the results of the Judicial Review in Hampshire which has caused a temporary halt to the game.

The chair of the National Pure Water Association Elizabeth McDonagh was treated with little respect however, given only a little time and then challenged about whether she was medically qualified. And this despite the fact that most of the buggers on the SHA know virtually nothing about fluorides effects on the body, or profess too. As if to prove this they refused the BBC's invite to take part on the program. and this from the people charged with the fact finding and consultation process. One would thought that they would have jumped at the chance to take part to get the truth over to the public. The couldnt do this of course because it would merely highlight the real truths of fluoridation, ie; just how stupid and ignorant its proponents really are.

Of the phone calls however, One brain donee claiming to be an ex exployee of Thames Water said fluoride was a good thing because it "purified the water" Little wonder with such a knowledge base that he no longer works for Thames. And what of the poor Hygienist who obviously read directly from the propaganda sheets supplied by the fluoridistas when she claimed to have read "hundreds of reports" saying how "safe and effective" fluoride really was.

Fortunately, the large majority of the good people of West Yorkshire along with most other regions of the country are not that stupid and gave fluoridation the thumbs down and the bums rush. They dont want it. Full Stop. The presenter even spontaneously put the question to a Leeds University Research into Epilepsy who was also a guest in the studio but he made it clear that it should not be foisted upon the public without their consent. Well done that man.

Friends of the Earth should call for the sacking of the SHA' s and the PCT's who are clearly in no way representative of the public or their wishes. They have little understanding of the depth of feeling that compulsory mass medication evokes in people and apparently care even less. Maybe they are ignorant psychophants or just a pain in the arse, or most probably both. either way they should be abolished and replaced immediatley with panels of local people who really understand local needs and feelings and dont bow and scrape to Gordon Brown and his dwindling bunch of nonentities and time servers or dance to the tune of the next expenses cheque or the promise of some meaningless award for doing bugger all at great expense..... our expense!

SHEFFIELD FLUORIDATION WITHOUT PERMISSION OR CONSULTATION

It now emerges that because of the water distribution network in parts of Sheffield, they already get fluoridated water, despite the fact that there has been no "consultation" or even notification of the affected people. Severn Trent is in the news again this time because they are fluoridating Parts of Sheffield. Severn Trent fluoridate their water as instructed by the Strategic Health Authority and have apparently being doing so for years. So much for the bullshit about "consultation" and public consent. Sheffield was always strongly opposed to fluoridation but is now turning into a Fluoridation Blackspot with covert or at least silent water fluoridation and perhaps more allarmingly, fluoridation of childrens milk in 32 Sheffield Primary Schools.

Even those who have given permission probably have little real knowledge of fluoride or its wide ranging side-effects and this is not surprising as even people on the SHA's andin the BDA know little or nothing of the epidemiology or toxicology of fluoride. If fluoride has any beneficial effects on teeth at all then it is through topical application directly onto the tooth as in brushing with fluoridated toothpaste but even this effect is marginal at best. 99% of all the fluoridated water goes straight to the sewers and treatment plants where it passes into the rivers without any constraint or filtering.

Wake up Sheffield, you and your children are already being poisoned and any future conssultation is only a method of bamboozling you into believing they will take any notice of your opinions. Dont vote for these lunatics and dont pay for drinking water contaminated by fluoride. You are already paying the water companies for disposal of sewage so dont pay them twice over so they can potentially damage your health. They cannot disconnect your supply as this would be illegal. Say No To Mass Medication with toxic waste, Say No To Fluoride.

Further info on fluoride from the National Pure Water Association, the UK Councils Against Fluoride and the Fluoride Action Network and Friends of the Earth.