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