Two Tons, Five Days - How Long?

Whilst on the aforementioned Irish sojourn, we happened, one glorious evening, to fetch up on the small harbour near Dunfnaghy, Co Donegal to spend a picturesque night and morning on the harbour wall. Whilst there, a large articulated vehicle hove into view and much frantic activity ensued in and on the harbour while the local fishermen loaded crab onto said artic. In conversation with one of the locals it appeared that the lorry was bound, with its two-ton load of crabs, for France and was expected to arrive there in a couple of days loaded with Irish crab for the French market. It was also revealed that the two tons being loaded that night was the result of five days fishing and that the same scenario would be repeated in another five days. At this point I wondered for how long this can continue before the seas are stripped of crabs and anything else that can be consumed by an eager population. You can't blame the local fishermen. It's hard enough to find a way to make a living in this part of the northwestern British Isles and, by all accounts, the boat owners are only just breaking even at this level of catch. But you just have to wonder for how much longer the seas can sustain the ever-burgeoning world population's appetite for anything that moves.

Fuel Price Discrepancies

So, I've been travelling in a sort of camper in Ireland both North and South and it was all very picturesque and very pleasant. Firstly the population density is low countrywide; In the large conurbations the distance between folks is much the same as the UK and you can be ignored with as much enthusiasm as you can here, but as you leave the towns the people are more friendly, more welcoming and definitely more garrulous. I'm told if you coral rats into ever more confined spaces they eventually start to eat their young; I'm sure Johnathan Swift would have approved. What I can't understand is the fuel prices. My camper is diesel and in the UK I pay the penalty for that by being charged anything up to 5p/l more than petrol for my fuel. In Ireland not only is diesel cheaper than petrol by a significant amount but it works out at about 88p/l. I don't understand this discrepancy since on occasions there was just about 2 or 3 miles in the difference from North to South. Whatever it is, it provides a vibrant business opportunity for petrol stations just south of the border which is only matched by the equally flourishing trade in alcohol in the North from Southerners. Swings and roundabouts indeed

Mea Maxima Culpa

OMG – 134 posts nothing, no followers, no comments, nothing, nada, zip and other words from the thesaurus meaning nothing. Post number 135, posted 6.15am on a sleepless night and by 12 noon the provisional wing of the skeptics movement has moved into action letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that I had really pissed on the WRONG lamp post this time. Damn but that Google thing is good innit?

I'm quite obviously out of my depth. I'm certainly out of touch with reality and also out of interest in the whole us versus them mentality that has dogged CAM for years and, since the most cursory study of my posting history will reveal that this is supposed to be humorous blog with the odd vituperative belch as punctuation, this will not be a dialogue. So my apologies to those who were looking forward to a minor skirmish, if I'd thought before I posted that anyone would be reading this crap I wouldn't have whetted your collective appetites. I've folded up my tent and stolen away with my tail firmly clamped between my legs. What can I say, it was early, I was delirious. Mea culpa. Must get out more...

Cop out!

Undoubtedly

Running scared?

Indubitably

No balls?

Half right

Can't take a joke, shouldn't'a' joined

You're not wrong there

PS - apologies to all those waiting for my response. Owing to a slip of the click this got delayed while I holidayed in the Emerald Isle with my ill-gotten gains.

Chiropractors Reaping The Whirlwind

Holy crap, nearly a month since my last post. In my defence I've been twittering and maybe that has been releasing the pressure on my over-active ire. But a story has been building in the webverse that requires, nay demands, comment. To wit:

A media science guru, one Simon Singh, who amongst other things has co-authored a book with Professor Edzard Ernst, the worlds only professor of Alternative Medicine, has been hauled over the coals in the libel courts for saying in a piece in the Guardian that The British Chiropractic Association were promoting 'bogus' treatments. I don't propose to go into the details of the case because, frankly, all this yah boo sucks stuff bores me shitless and it's been going on ever since I first started as a chiropractor in 1974. Which is why, when I saw that the BCA were bringing this action, my heart sank. The two sides in this argument are never going to agree. As the chiropractic profession trims itself to fit some kind of acceptable model of what the likes of Simon Singh and his germanic mentor require, the model will change until all semblance of chiropractic as I knew it will have disappeared and its skills and scope will be emasculated beyond recognition. This has already happened to a large extent with the General Chiropractic Council's policing techniques eschewing all but the most anodyne claims to those that are 'evidence based'. The fact that approaching 50% of all medical procedures have no evidence base whatsoever does not seem to matter or is ignored. Also the fact that the so-called double blind trials so beloved of the champions of evidence based medicine are being called into question by advances in quantum physics also seems to have escaped many of the pack baying for the blood of the alternative movement.

Back to Simon Singh vs BCA. The BCA, no doubt under legal advice, saw fit to bring this case under the libel laws and who should it appear before but m' learned friend Lord Justice Eady. Anybody interested in the wider world will know that Lord Eady is the justice who has been single-handedly turning the justice system in this country into a laughing stock in the free-speaking world by supporting libel actions against book authors and publishers and preventing publication, at least in the UK, of several controversial tomes about shady characters in the international sprectrum.

So, it comes to pass that Simon Singh gets his knuckles rapped in round one of this saga for using the term 'bogus' which m'learned friend deems to have implications of fraudulent intent. And that, you might think, would be that. Done, dusted, time for quick one before home time. Sadly, and this was entirely predictable, things do not work that way in this day and age and a veritable firestorm is brewing on the internet including among other things a campaign of complaints against chiropractic clinics deemed to have broken the GCCs guidelines. So hundreds, if not thousands, of nit-picking geeks with nothing but time on their hands are currently pouring over the clinic literature of any chiropractic clinic they can get their hands on looking for guideline breaking verbage with which to beat the profession. Conveniently the GCC has made it very easy for them by making it's guidelines very exacting so it's pretty obvious when they're not being followed. The original guidelines were deliberately vague to allow maximum scope for varying interpretations but the GCC changed those rapidly once the full council got it's act in gear.

Still, one advantage of this coming storm is likely to be that the GCC will be far too busy covering it's arse to continue to persecute the members of its register.

At this point I should point out that I am no longer a chiropractor but an ex-chiropractor, having resigned from the register in 2004, I am free to pursue my particular form of unregulated bogus quackery which has kept me and an unspecified number of no doubt gullible clients happy since 1974 with little or no sign of an evidence base. Woohoo!

Here Be Dentists

Off to the dentist this morning. This is, without doubt, my least favourite occupation since I was drilled sans anaesthetic by an Oxford dentist named, I kid you not, Savage. This, as you can no doubt imagine was an unforgettable experience and has left ruts in my psyche deeper than those on the most used bits of the Ridgeway. Thanks largely to the Gestapo-like tactics of my batty old ma I have led a life of low-ish sugar intake so my gob is not the bacterial war zone it could have been without her Nature Cure philosophy. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand I have needed little dental work, on the other I have had minimum desensetising contact with dental personnel. The one and only extraction I've had was done under general anaesthetic and turned my previously pain free mouth into a raging week-long toothache in the extracted tooth. So my historical dental experience is not good to begin with. Add to this negatively balanced equation the fact that one can no longer have extractions done under GA, that I know I need two wisdom teeth pulled out and that my current dentist gleefully related a tale of doing and extraction on a Red Sea dive boat crew member with no anaesthetic and a sterilised screwdriver and it becomes apparent why I'm viewing this mornings appointment with some trepidation. Wish me luck

Gaia Like Balance

Two adjacent headlines from the Reuters Health eLine appear to support the Gaia hypothesis. This suggests that the Earth behaves like a giant organisim and reacts to threat levels in ways that try to restore a balanced state to the planet. Today I see a) Goal of eliminating malaria in sight: experts and b)Deadly flu breaks out in Mexico, U.S.

Gaia seems to be substituting one threat for a new more virulent threat which will kill countless numbers of people before we get a handle on it and eradicate it.

It is just possible that, unless we find some way to control our propensity for limitless breeding, the poor old Earth will find ways to do it for us. We can but hope.

Politicians Call Each other Names - Hold The Font Page

What is all this tosh about Damien McBride. Portly prat he may be but can anyone imagine that this kind of crap isn't going on in the corridors of every political party in the UK. It's a fact that politicians will find new and innovative ways to smear their opposite numbers before they save the country. Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic has been a priority for party activists since time immemorial and power hungry pillocks have been clawing their way up the political greasy pole for generations by digging the dirt on their opponents. What's changed? The only thing more sickening than the spectacle of McBride and the other one chortling nto their expense account blubber is the faux horror evinced by the 'wronged' conservative MPs at whom the relevant emails were directed. Please give us, the poor hapless goons who vote, some credit for knowing the score and get on with extricating the country from the shithole you and your American special friends have dropped us into.