text:
Yesterday the winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine were announced: James P. Allison, Professor of Immunology at the University of Texas's MD Anderson Cancer Centre and Tasuku Honjo, Professor of Immunology at Kyoto University, Japan. Every media report that I have read/heard since they were declared the winners has discussed these two 'cancer researchers' and emphasised how their Cancer Research has paved the way for revolutionary new Cancer Therapies which have Saved Thousands Of Lives. Some of the accounts have also talked about Allison being inspired to Cure Cancer as a result of his mum dying of lymphoma when he was 10. Reporting the work of Allison and Honjo accurately would have made a rather less exciting story for the many millions of people who are not biologists.
Allison and Honjo are immunologists who have been working on a highly specific aspect of immunology since the 1980s. It is, if one is an immunologist, a very interesting and exciting area of immunology, but it is nothing like the media portrayals. Neither was Allison inspired to become America's own Dr Finlay when his mum died. In Allison's own words 'I'm a basic scientist. I didn't get into these studies to cure cancer, I wanted to understand how T cells work'. Which is what he has done. The story about a bereaved child wanting to save the world is a very obvious concoction, because if the media had simply reported the science, the vast majority of people would have no idea at all of what any of it meant and they would not be sufficiently 'inspired' to trawl through the text necessary to understand it. The sad reality is that when people like me talk about the sort of work for which Allison and Honjo have won this Nobel, people begin to drop off to sleep. The media friendly tale relating to Honjo is that of a man approaching Honjo on the golf course, shaking him by the hand and thanking him for curing his cancer. So someone on a golf course – if indeed the story is even true – recognised a Japanese biologist who is unknown outside of immunology, as he teed off and thanked him for saving his life. HOW he knew that the Japanese scientist saved his life is a conundrum, because the Many Life Saving Drugs which have resulted from Allison's and Honjo's work have, er, not actually been developed yet.
There are drugs based on the work of Allison and Honjo at clinical trials stage, but clinical trials take many, many years before drugs actually arrive in the clinic and the vast majority of them do not make it that far. Read the small print with regard to the Life Saving Drugs under discussion – of the very small number which have been developed, 'significant side effects' have been a persistent problem and the proudest boast is that there is ONE person who is still alive 18 years after the trial. One person is not statistically significant…
In the words of Professor Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician and a senior scientist at the Francis Crick Institute in London: 'Thanks to work from Allison and Honjo, patients now have real hope, with over a third of patients deriving long-term benefit and even cures from such therapies.' This is Cancer Research UK's best PR – 'hope', 'over a third deriving long terms benefits'. 'Even cures'? Er no, not yet Charlie and you know it. Furthermore, in this context Swanton is only talking about one form of cancer – metastatic melanoma. Swanton stated that 'the discoveries had been transformational for understanding the potential of the human immune system to control or even eradicate tumours and blood cancers'. 'UNDERSTANDING THE POTENTIAL'. It's great if you're an immunologist, but this is not a Medical Miracle Which Has Cured Cancer.
There are reasons why this Nobel Prize has been surrounded by even more dishonest hype that usual. One of those reasons is the appearance of a blog which has named a number of those with links to these Nobel Prize winners as having been involved in large scale research fraud and the most shocking misconduct while Allison and Honjo were engaged in their transformational research in the 1980s and 90s. See eg. posts 'A Cause Close To Our Hearts', 'I Don't Believe It!', 'A Trabant That Wants To Be A Ferrari', 'Oh Lordy, It's CR UK!', 'Reports of Death Were Greatly Exaggerated', 'Apocalypse Now', 'Interesting Facts' and 'Now Then…' '
Another reason is the enormous investment that various Gov'ts, including the UK Gov't, have made in Cancer Research in recent years. The reason for this investment, certainly on the part of the British Gov't, has been the dreadful outcomes of cancer patients in the UK. There is yet another report out this morning – with regard to cancer patients, the UK has poor diagnosis, poor access to treatment and people are dying earlier and at a greater rate than in many other European countries. On a global basis, progress in developing effective cancer therapies has slowed down so considerably that the Top Docs are looking a bit hopeless after all those decades of promises. So More Money is required. Not simply an admission that en masse research fraud and drug companies playing fast and loose with the results from clinical trials has remained unchecked for decades and is causing havoc.
Allison and Honjo are not based in the UK, but their field of research is international and there is much cross-fertilisation between them, their teams and people based in the UK.
One of those quoted in the media reports confirming what an all round great guy and wonderful harmonica player James Allison is, was Prof Sergio Quezada of UCL. Quezada, a graduate of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, carried out his post-doc work with Allison in the US from 2004. In November 2011, Quezada joined the UCL's Cancer Institute as Head of the Immune Regulation and Tumour Immunotherapy group. Quezada was a Cancer Research Institute fellow, 2005-08 and has recently been in receipt of a CR UK Career Development Fellowship. Since 2006, Quezada has been a young investigator member of the Millennium Nucleus on Immunology and Immunotherapy of the Chilean Ministry of Planning and has served as an external evaluator for the Chilean National Science and Technology Research Fund. UCL's website tells us that data obtained from the studies carried out by Quezada's research group 'will not only inform the basic understanding of the immune response to malignancies but, in the context of the UCL Cancer Institute, will be used as a platform for the development of novel translational strategies in the clinic.' So UCL could really benefit from this Nobel Prize if they play their cards right…
My posts 'More Dogs That Didn't Bark' and 'You Know I'm No Good…' discussed how very helpful The London Clinic, some 'independent experts' of Top Doctors and then the British Gov't, were to the Chilean mass murderer and torturer Augusto Pinochet when he arrived in London for surgery on his bad back in 1998, but found himself detained in The London Clinic under an international arrest warrant which had been obtained by a Spanish magistrate with the intention of extraditing Pinochet to stand trial for human rights abuses on Spanish citizens. Sergio Quezada is Chilean and retains excellent links with Chile. Pinochet remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 1998. He was Senator for Life of Chile, 1998-2002.
A brief look at UCL's Cancer Institute's webpages informs us that the Cancer Institute has collaborations with many who have been named on this blog as having done things that they should not have done. The Cancer Institute has a major collaboration with CR-UK. In 2015 CR-UK gave a £5 million Centres Network Accelerators Award to fund the UCL's Cancer Research UK Centre involvement in a new initiative in cancer immunology and immunotherapy, building a network across various Cancer Centres in London. This will be led by Professor Henning Walczak, Scientific Director of the Cancer Research UK- UCL Centre and Professor of Cancer Biology at the UCL Cancer Institute.
The Network which the Centres Network Accelerators Award will accelerate consists of UCL, UCL Hospitals, the Royal Free Hospital, the Francis Crick Institute, King's College London, Barts Cancer Institute, the Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research. Sergio Quezada was named as the Scientific Co-lead on the Cancer Immunotherapy Accelerator Award.
To summarise: Sergio's former boss has just received the 2018 Nobel Prize for medicine. In 2015, Sergio, who was by then working at UCL, bagged £5 million from CR-UK to fund a line of research stemming directly from Sergio's work with his former boss, yesterday's Nobel prize winner. During 2016-17, this blog exposed many of Sergio's colleagues in CR-UK as well as others as having been involved with serious research fraud and misconduct; I named people from Barts, the Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research in particular as participating in fraud in cancer research.
So this was a very fortuitous Nobel Prize for CR-UK and a number of institutions that were publicly disgraced in previous years with regard to their 'cancer research'.
The current Director of the Bart's Cancer Institute and lead of the Centre for Molecular Oncology is Nick Lemoine, Professor at Queen Mary University of London, who was appointed Director of Bart's Cancer Institute in April 2004. Lemoine was educated at Abingdon School, 1971-76 before studying medicine at Bart's, 1977-83.
Abingdon is an impressive independent school in Oxfordshire, although parts of it sound rather like the public school satirised by Monty Python, in which boys are caught rubbing oil into the School Cormorant. In 1963, to mark the Quartercentenary of Abingdon School's re-foundation, the Big Schoolroom was re-ordered as the Grundy Library (opened by HRH Ma'am Darling), together with erection of further buildings east of the Science Wing, the whole becoming known as Big School. In 1980, the Amey Theatre and Arts' Centre was opened and the Sports Centre opened in 1984. Mercers Court was opened in 1994 by the Chancellor of Oxford University and Visitor of Pembroke College (which has historical connections with Abingdon School), Baron Woy Jenkins of Hillhead, a man who concealed much wrongdoing on the part of the Top Doctors, including the organised abuse of vulnerable people (see post 'We've Been Expecting You…'). Woy died in 2003, but Woy was very big mates with someone who is still with us:
One of Woy's fellow travellers in the Gang Of Four is loathed by the whole planet (see post 'We've Been Expecting You…'), except for Top Doctors who remain deeply loyal to him and who have let him remain in their societies, which is very wise of them in view of the amount of dirt that he has on some of the biggest names in medicine:
Many Old Abingdonians have reached positions of influence. One of them who is just four years older than Nick Lemoine is Lord Francis Maude, who was Tory MP for North Warwickshire, 1983-92 and for Horsham, 1997-15. Maude was on the Gov't front bench for 25 years. In recent years his posts have included: Chairman of the Conservative Party, 2005-07; Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, 2010-15 and Minister of State for Trade and Investment, 2015-16, under PM David Cameron. Francis Maude is a criminal barrister, who before he became an MP was a Tory Councillor on Westminster Council and party to the illegal activities of Dame Shirley Porter when she led the Council. In 1984, Maude was appointed as PPS to Sir Peter Morrison in the Dept of Employment. Morrison was at the time abusing kids in care in north Wales and elsewhere.
Whilst he was in the Shadow Cabinet Maude was a non-executive Director of Jubilee Investment Trust plc, which held 21% of US porn star Jill Kelly's DVD business. He was also Chair of Mission Marketing Group which advertised for Playboy and was Director of a company which profited from sub-prime mortgages.
Francis Maude extolled the virtues of family values.
Francis Maude had a brother Charles, who died from HIV/AIDS in 1993, after becoming infected with HIV quite early on in the AIDS epidemic among gay men of the 1980s. Charles Maude was involved with London Lighthouse and supporting people with HIV from the mid-1980s. While Francis Maude went along with Thatcher's homophobic nonsense and Section 28, he was well aware of the reality and he knew that many of those dying of HIV/AIDS were former kids in care who had been forced into sex work by gangs like Dafydd's, while they were in care.
See post 'Disgusting Of Tunbridge Wells And A Few Equally Disgusting Others' for more details on Francis Maude and his circles.
Could a Nobel Prize have possibly been won on the the playing fields of Abingdon?
The Old Abingdonian ties (Griffen and Stripes)
And here's the Abingdon Cormorant:
When Nick Lemoine was a medical student at Bart's that institution was still very much run by mates and umbrellas of Dafydd's. Dafydd's mate Professor Linford Rees, the dad of 1970s sex symbol Angharad Rees, led the first professorial Department of Psychological Medicine at Bart's. Rees was parked at Bart's from 1996 onwards, throughout the duration of the Waterhouse Inquiry. See post 'A Galaxy Of Talent' for details of the extensive network of Linford and his celebrity friends and relatives.
The website of Bart's Cancer Institute still lists Professor Sir Nicholas Wright MD PhD DSc FRCS FRCP FRCPath FMedSci as the lead in their Centre for Tumour Biology and as being a Fellow of the Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College. We are told that for 2012-2017, Nick Wright was funded by a £560,547 CR UK Programme grant. Nick Wright has occupied some of the most senior positions in CR UK for many years, including that of Head of the Histopathology Unit at CR UK. Wright's wiki is still stating that he has been Warden of Bart's and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry since 2001. Nick Wright was the Head and Prof of the Dept at Royal Postgraduate Medical School/Hammersmith Hospital when I did my MSc there in 1986-87. He was overtly racist in a good old fashioned 'I hate the bastards' way, none of your just being a bit un-PC for our Nick; he punched a technician in a Top Docs vs Technicians rugby match for being a pleb who had the temerity to tackle the Head of Dept and Prof; I was told repeatedly that Wright and his colleagues had committed major research fraud; and an academic from Liverpool who spent a year working with Nick Wright and his team with a view to a long term collaboration walked away saying that Wright et al were 'a bunch of crooks' and that he wasn't going to touch them. Since I began this blog I have been told that Dafydd et al were in contact with Hammersmith while I was a student of Wright's and that a few people at Hammersmith did very nicely out of agreeing to keep quiet about what was happening to me at the hands of Dafydd et al, who unlawfully arrested and imprisoned me in the middle of that MSc.
I note that Nick Wright did his initial training at Durham/Newcastle-upon-Tyne University, the stronghold of the paedophile gang in the north east, which supplied staff and children to Dafydd's gang in north Wales for many years. See previous posts. The Bastard Of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Lord John Walton, served as one of Dafydd's biggest umbrellas for many years, including in Walton's capacity as: President of the BMA, 1980-82; President of the GMC, 1982-89; Warden of Green College, Oxford, 1983-89; President of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1984-86 (see post 'Little Things Hitting Each Other'). Professor Eric Sunderland, a well-camouflaged paedophiles' friend, had been summoned down from his senior position at Durham University to become Principal of UCNW (Bangor University) when Dafydd et al sent up a Paedophiles In Distress Flare in 1984, just two years before I began the MSc at Hammersmith.
Readers can discover more about Nick Wright and his mates' activities by reading previous posts.
Guess who worked at RPMS/Hammersmith Hospital as an Imperial Cancer Research Fund Clinician Scientist, 1989-96? Nick Lemoine! Better still, Nick Lemoine worked for the ICRF under Sir Walter Bodmer, when Bodmer and the ICRF became embroiled in the massive 1990 Bristol Cancer Centre/Clair Chilvers research fraud scandal which involved a friend and former colleague of Dr Tony Francis ie. Dr Peter Mcguire and resulted in the (presumed) suicide of Professor Tim McElwain. See posts 'Reports Of Death Were Greatly Exaggerated' and 'Apocalypse Now'.
Nasty business wasn't it Prof Lemoine? Never mind, I see that you've Moved On!
In an interview given by Nick in which he remembers his happy days working with Walter Bodmer, Nick remembers that Bodmer 'asked me what my 'big challenge' was going to be – to which I replied: "Defining the causes of pancreatic cancer and coming up with a treatment." Now, 20 years later, we have the tools to apply our knowledge of genetics and molecules to the early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, offering patients hope of containing the disease so that it does not spread around the body.'
There's more hope for those ever desperate patients then! They'll need it if they develop pancreatic cancer, by the time that it's diagnosed the patient usually only has months to live. It's a nasty one. At Hammersmith in 1986-87, the message was that if you develop a cancer, you really don't want it to be pancreatic cancer. If you're male, testicular cancer is not too traumatic, it has a very high survival rate. Which is why Mike Peters, the rock star who lives in north Wales, has served as such a rich stream of good PR for the Top Docs and butchers of that region, who's clinical outcomes are some of the worst in Europe. Mike Peters of 'The Alarm' plays another gig to say thank you to the Top Docs who Saved His Life! I can understand why Mike is grateful to still be with us, but it may not have had a great deal to do with the excellence of the Top Docs of north Wales. Whoever treated Mike would have had to have been as bad as Dafydd to have not seen him through that. It's difficult to get it wrong Mike, the testes are outside of the abdominal cavity, at a safe distance, so the cancer doesn't metastasize. Not unless you are very, very unlucky.
Nick mentions in his interview that after spells of working in different hospitals, he returned to Bart's, 'where it all started for me. I never expected to come back here, but it's a pleasure as we're blessed with a fantastic new cancer hospital which has great facilities for both research and patient care. Bart's medical school is also really committed to pancreatic cancer and we have recruited some real stars to focus on new treatments for this disease.'
So Nick didn't expect to return to Bart's – I wonder why? There will also no doubt be a few interesting reasons as to why Nick did return to Bart's in 2004 from his position as Director of the CR UK Medical Oncology Unit at Imperial. The Imperial College which by that time had merged with Hammersmith Hospital as a result of Lord Brian Flowers' political muscle and Flowers' desire to transform Imperial into something earth shattering and of course world leading. The Lord Brian Flowers who concealed research fraud, organised abuse and much other wrongdoing in the various institutions which made up London University. See previous posts. The Lord Brian Flowers who came from Swansea and who remained loyal to his old muckers in Wales…
One also wonders why and how Bart's got the fantastic new cancer hospital to which Nick refers. Particularly as Bart's was earmarked for closure for many, many years, until well into the 1990s and the Top Docs of Bart's did a great deal of loud squealing and called in global reinforcements to keep themselves in business. John Smith, then the Leader of the Labour Party died when Bart's were unable to revive him after that heart attack of his in July 1994. The Top Doc who found that poor old Smith couldn't be helped was the very same Top Doc who just three weeks previously, had shown Smith around Bart's and explained that it would be a great pity if Bart's or indeed any part of Bart's were to close (see previous posts). In much the same way that Dafydd told me on the phone in 1987 that it would be a 'great pity' if 'you were to be detained in Risley Remand Centre'. I just presumed that Dafydd had gone completely nuts because I was living in Leicester at the time and had committed no such crime that could ever have landed me in Risley Remand Centre. Brown heard the call and said 'he's trying to threaten you'. Weeks later I was arrested after Dafydd et al tried to frame me for 'attempting to stab a doctor'. The only reason why I didn't end up in Risley was that Sgt Morgan in Bangor Police Station and Jeff Crowther, a nursing officer at Ysbyty Gwynedd, didn't tell as many lies as they were required to tell. Documents now in my possession demonstrate that Dafydd et al had the whole thing planned months in advance and that Risley Remand Centre, David Ewart of the Mental Health Act Commission, Ysbyty Gwynedd and Clwyd Health Authority were all fully on board with the plan. See previous posts.
Fings Break you see, as John Smith soon discovered.
So where were the pastures new for which Nick Lemoine headed after he had graduated from Bart's? Nick went to the Welsh National School of Medicine, Cardiff University! He was a lecturer in pathology there, Aug 1985-Dec 1988. Which was when my friend Clare Cheek was a student and then a house officer at the Welsh National School of Medicine and when we used to visit each other! Or at least Clare was my friend until it was made very clear to her that she had better stop listening to what was happening to me in north Wales if she wanted to continue in her career as a Top Doc…
I have detailed in previous posts the very great wrongdoing which prevailed at the Welsh National School of Medicine during the years when Nick worked there. Much of the wrongdoing stemmed from the key role that the Welsh National School of Medicine and the wider Cardiff University were playing in concealing the crimes of the paedophile Labour MP for Cardiff West and Speaker of the House George Thomas – who in 1983, thanks to his friend Thatch, became Viscount Tonypandy (see post 'It Wasn't On Our Radar') – as well as the crimes of Dafydd et al in north Wales.
Surely this must be a coincidence, but it was just before Aug 1985 that I began approaching politicians about the wrongdoing of the Top Docs in north Wales. So Nick rocked up in Cardiff right on cue! I don't know about Nick Lemoine, but here are a just a few of the people who did know about me and about the many crimes of George Thomas and Dafydd's gang:
Not that I had any idea at all that I was so famous at the time…
When Nick Lemoine first went to work at Cardiff, Professor Sir William Asscher was still working as a nephrologist there. In Dec 1986 Prof Ollie Brooke of St George's Hospital Medical School was imprisoned for the possession of child porn. Ollie was a big name in the pan-European paedophile/trafficking ring of which Dafydd et al were a part and gosh did the Paedophiles In Distress send out an alert. The head of the Dean of St George's rolled and he was replaced by William Asscher, who was called to London to help out those High Society traffickers and to take over as Dean of St George's… Not that Asscher ever waved goodbye to his pals in Wales. He continued to keep a home in south Wales and he returned to live there full time when he retired from St George's.
By the time that Nick left Cardiff in Dec 1988, I had worked with his pals at Hammersmith and for the Cancer Research Campaign labs at Nottingham University, where there was yet more research fraud in progress – in collaboration with a US drugs company to be precise – and I was working for the Cancer Research Campaign at the University of Surrey, for Prof Vincent Marks. Vincent's brother was Dr John Marks, the then President of the BMA, who was locked in battle with Ken Clarke and the Tory Gov't. They really hated each other, but as everyone concerned was concealing the crimes of Dafydd and the Westminster Paedophile Ring, it all ended in stalemate. Nick Lemoine knows some of the people whom I knew at Surrey!
After Nick left Cardiff, he joined the crowd at Hammersmith and Sir Walter Bodmer. In 1997 Nick became Director of CR UK Medical Oncology at Imperial College; Imperial by that time encompassed Hammersmith…
In 2004 Nick felt the call of Bart's and their fantastic new cancer hospital.
Nick went from strength to strength once he was back at the once-doomed Bart's. He was Clinical Director for the Central and East London Comprehensive Local Research Network and the NIHR Clinical Research Network, 2007-14, which included three biomedical research centres ie. UCL, Great Ormond Street Hospital and Moorfields Eye Hospital. UCL and GOSH were both institutions which concealed organised abuse.
Nick Lemoine was the Clinical Director of the Cancer Clinical Academic Unit at Bart's, July 2008-Sept 2012. In Jan 2012 Nick became the Chair of the Challenge Awards Panel for the NIHR i4i Programme, a post in which he remains at present. In July 2012 he was appointed Director of Research and Development for the Cancer and Surgery Clinical Academic Group at Bart's, another post in which he remains. In May 2014, Nick became Medical Director of the clinical Research Network, yet another post in which he remains. Since 2015 Lemoine has been a Visiting Professor and Consultant Executive of the Academy of Medical Sciences at Zhenghon University, China.
Since April 2015 Nick Lemoine has Chaired the Board of Trustees at the Medical Research Foundation; he has been a Trustee since 2008. Nick was appointed as Chair of the MRF by the MRC. The Chief Executive of the MRC when Nick was appointed as Chair of the MRF was Professor Sir John Savill. Savill is a nephrologist – he will have known William Asscher – who is an Honorary Consultant Physician and Nephrologist with the Lothian University Hospitals Division. He is a member of the Lothian Health Board and Chairs its Service Redesign Committee. Savill was Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine and a Vice Principal of the University of Edinburgh. Savill's research interest is in immunology and he completed his PhD on this in 1981 – at Hammersmith Hospital. Savill's salary as Chief Exec of the MRC was between £170,000 and £174,999.
The Chair of the MRC – and who still is Chair – when Nick Lemoine was given that job as Chair of the MRF was Donald Brydon. Brydon knows plenty about medical research, being Chair of the London Stock Exchange. He is not even a Chair of the London Stock Exchange who has done a stint at Hammersmith Hospital. No, Brydon is a maths graduate of Edinburgh University. When he was at Edinburgh Brydon was Chairman of the University's Conservative Association alongside Malcolm Rifkind as Secretary, with whom Brydon had been at school ie. at George Watson's College. Brydon was also elected President of Edinburgh University Union. Brydon remained in Edinburgh to teach at the University for several years after graduation. So he'll know a Gordon Brown who was an undergrad at Edinburgh, then a PhD student and was also elected as Rector. The Gordon who was PM, 2007-10.
In 1977 Brydon began a 20-year career working at Barclay's during which time he became Chairman and Chief Executive of the company's investment arm, BZW Investment Management. From 1997 to 2002 Brydon was Chief Executive Officer at AXA Investment Managers SA.
Brydon has also been Chairman of Royal Mail, Smiths Group, the London Metal Exchange, Amersham plc, Taylor Nelson Sofres, ifs School of Finance and EveryChild. Brydon has been a Director of Allied Domecq and Scottish Power.
EveryChild was an international development charity based in the UK, which dealt with children's rights in particular the protection and aid for children growing up without parental care or family. In 2014, EveryChild worked with many of its former local partners and other grassroots organisations to create Family for Every Child; a global alliance of 27 local organisations working together to help vulnerable children and families. So Donald Brydon was tasked with keeping such kids out of the hands of trafficking gangs etc…
Who ever decided that a senior manager of Barclays would know anything about what is needed to achieve that?
Brydon resigned from the Royal Mail Group in 2015 to become Chairman of the London Stock Exchange Group. As Chairman of the Royal Mail, Brydon was paid an annual salary of £200,000 for working two days a week. Whilst in office for a period of six years Brydon oversaw the privatisation of the 499-year-old institution.Which I seem to remember was an idea conjured up by Mandy. Before Mandy and Miranda even try to explain Brydon's salary when he was Chairman of Royal Mail, perhaps they'd like to tell me why, when Brydon was Chairman and at previous times as well, letters to me were opened before they went through my letter box. Letters from my lawyers who were handling my case against the North West Wales NHS Trust to be precise. It is a criminal offence to interfere with the Royal Mail, posties can be imprisoned for doing that and furthermore I have been told recently that some staff of the Royal Mail were/are required to sign the Official Secrets Act, such are the (alleged) precautions re intercepting the mail.
Furthermore, many years ago when I was living in Harringay in 1987, studying at Hammersmith and under attack by the north London gang linked to Dafydd's, there was a spate of interfering with my mail. At one point, someone sent me my birth certificate through the post and that was one of the items which disappeared. I have always wondered whether a few people have been married in my name or whether a drugs mule is in possession of a passport and claims to be me. Having said that, Dafydd has been doing fake IDs for ages and as for criminal records, well my PNC was unlawfully altered to show convictions against my name for offences that I was never even charged with, so I won't lose any sleep over that birth certificate. All to be expected by someone who has tangled with the Top Doctors.
The other letter that definitely was intercepted, read and forwarded onto me was back in 1988. I had applied for a research job in neuroscience in the Vet Science Dept at Edinburgh University – John Savill was probably running the place at the time – and their reply to me had gone for a little walk…
Donald Brydon is also Chairman of the Sage Group.
The only thing linked to medical research that Brydon has any knowledge of at all is how to create a demand for and market pharmaceutical products, in which he will have excelled at Amersham plc, which in 1982 was the first privatisation carried out by Thatch. Ah – but that is now what Gov'ts idea of medical research is all about isn't it…
When I worked in biomedical research, a great many people were keen to get jobs with Amersham International, as it was then called. It was a magnet because the salaries were much higher than in universities. But then people would find that in their role as research scientists at Amersham, it wasn't the science which was prioritised…
The website of the Medical Research Foundation tells us: 'We exist to advance medical research, improve human health and change people's lives' and that 'The Medical Research Foundation is an independent charitable foundation. Formed by the MRC, we grow and nurture people and ideas wherever we see research opportunities with great potential.' The MRF also boasts that the heritage of the MRF 'is remarkable: scientists associated with the MRC have received a total of 29 Nobel Prizes.'
Well as the whole process is rigged and simply involves people doing favours for their mates and everything possible to ensure that the Nobel Prizes are given to the people who's work has already been identified – on the basis of previous nepotism and cronyism – to be worthy of investment by the MRC and its friends, that is hardly surprising is it.
Nick Lemoine is also Director of Research & Development for Cancer at Bart's Health NHS Trust and the Medical Director of the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network for England. He is a member of the NIHR Strategy Board and chairs the NIHR Invention for Innovation Challenge Panel. He is currently a Non-Executive Director of the Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and is a Visiting Professor at the Academy of Medical Sciences of Zhengzhou University in China.
Nick has served as Chair of the Clinical Training and Career Development Panel at the Medical Research Council, and as Vice-Chair of the MRC Stratified Medicine Expert Panel. He has previously served as Chair of the MRC Stem Cell Strategic Grant and Fellowship Panels and has been a member of the MRC's Molecular & Cellular Medicine Board. Lemoine chairs scientific advisory and grant award committees for a number of medical charities, including Diabetes UK, Prostate Cancer UK, Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund and Pancreatic Cancer UK.
Nick Lemoine was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2006 and as a Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineers in 2017.
As well as Nick Lemoine's mate Sergio Quezada, Allison's former post-doc, someone else was all over the media commenting on the richly deserving Nobel Prize winners ie. one Professor Dan Davis. Dan Davies wrote the book 'The Beautiful Cure', 'which describes the work which led to this Nobel Prize'. Yet the work is not a 'cure', beautiful or otherwise. Dan himself admitted of the 'cure': 'It doesn't work for everyone but lives have been saved…I think this is just the tip of the iceberg – many more medicines like this are on the horizon'. Yet no-one is sure IF lives have been saved; one person has lived a long time after taking The Beautiful Cure, a number of other people 'benefited' but suffered 'significant' side effects and that was the best that the much hyped PR could boast of. Never mind, if Dan wrote that book, it suggests that he had plenty invested in The Beautiful Cure and he'll be delighted to have heard who won the Nobel.
Who is Dan Davis? He's the Professor of Immunology at Manchester University and is currently the Director of Research in the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research. Unusually, Dan did not train as a Top Doctor or a biomedical scientist, he is a physicist. After obtaining his PhD in physics at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Dan began studying the immune system at Harvard University with Jack Strominger.
Prior to working at Manchester University, Dan Davis was the Head of the Immunology Section at Imperial College London. So somehow this physicist found himself in a senior position with the contingent from Hammersmith who had metamorphosed into Global Leaders under Lord Brian Flowers… Brian Flowers was of course a physicist himself who spent years of his career at Manchester as well as Imperial. As well as being Rector of Imperial, 1973-85 and VC of London University, 1985-90, Brian Flowers was VC of Manchester University, 1994-2001.
Dan Davis did his first degree – in physics – at Manchester University. He graduated in 1992. I think that Dan knows or used to know my former neighbour and landlord's daughter, Gwen Parry-Jones! Gwen was doing her degree in physics at Manchester at the same time as Dan. I blogged about Gwen and her family in my post 'Tan yn Llyn'. I and my friends lived in Gwen's parents' house on Anglesey for the years when Dafydd et al first declared war on us. Dr D.G.E. Wood lived down the road, the village was full of Top Docs and Angels and Gwen's dad Gwilym Parry-Jones was formerly a lecturer at UCNW when the institution was run by Dafydd and the trafficking gang. Gwen's younger brother Adrian is a Top Doctor at Manchester University! I have been told that Gwen's family were leaned upon by the Top Doctors and were duly rewarded when they succumbed…
Gwen was featured on BBC News Wales online today! Gwen is now the Executive Director of Horizon, who are responsible for the Wylfa Nuclear Power Station Project on Anglesey and she was featured on the BBC as an Inspirational Role Model to girls and wimmin! The girls whom Gwen is inspiring might be interested to know why Gwen did a degree in physics. It was because she did so badly in her A levels that she couldn't take up the place that she had been offered at Manchester to do medicine. Her dad Gwilym rang them up and begged, but no, they were not going to have Gwen with those very poor A levels. So Gwilym – who was also a physicist – rang the physics Dept in Manchester and because no-one wanted to do physics, there was lots of spare places and Gwen was in!
What a pity that Dafydd hadn't illegally imprisoned me by the time that you did your A levels Gwen! Manchester Medical School would have let you in then, no problem. Never mind, you and your family benefited from it in subsequent years, so you didn't miss out too badly.
Predators: Much as I am enjoying exposing you all online, indeed I haven't had such a laugh for years, I think that you ought to wake up to the fact that this is not going to go away. You have all been very, very naughty and appearing on the BBC and giving yourselves Nobel Prizes is not going to resolve this. You are in very, very deep doo doo. I'm not quite sure when Krakatoa will erupt, but believe me it will sooner or later.
Gwen's mate Dan Davis spent the years of the Waterhouse Inquiry as a post doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard. Very wise Dan. 'I know nuzzing'. Then Dan returned to the embrace of Dafydd's associates at Imperial and reached the very top…
Professor Dan – his research interest is in Natural Killer Cells – also known as T cells:
Dan is also Visiting Professor at Imperial College. The Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research – the research institute of which Dan is Director – is funded by the University of Manchester, AstraZeneca and GSK.
Professor Dan became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2011. He currently holds a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award. He is also the author of a popular-level science book ' The Compatibility Gene' (Penguin, 2014) which was picked by Bill Bryson as a Guardian Book of the Year. Don't tell me that Bill Bryson knows what happened to me at the hands of Dafydd et al as well… Are you a specialist in Natural Killers as well Mr Bryson?
Bill Bryson is an American journo who loves Little Britain so much that he has been resident here for many years. He first visited the UK in 1973 and decided to stay after landing a job working in a psychiatric hospital – the now defunct Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water, Surrey. Bill met an Angel there, Cynthia, whom he married in 1975. Jesus, perhaps Bill Bryson does know Dafydd. Bill definitely knew the sort of things that happened to psych patients and he hasn't ever told all either. Bryson wrote about Holloway Sanatorium in his book 'Notes From A Small Island' and recorded that the Sanatorium had a charm about it because 'it was full of wandering lunatics'. Bryson worked at the Sanatorium in 1973 as a janitor on Tuke Ward. He mentions the ward as home to 'long-stay male patients in a state of arrested insanity'. According to Bryson, the place was one of the most extraordinary communities in England. Many patients were allowed to wander freely down to the shops and back, mingling on equal terms with the locals, who affectionately referred to the institution as 'the sanny'.
Yes Bill and the patients whom you didn't write about were in there because they had knowledge of very serious wrongdoing. As might have the harmless loonies whom you did acknowledge but they were out and about because they had been sufficiently destroyed by their 'care and treatment' not to pose a threat to the reputations of the Top Docs or anyone else…
Bill: Patient F originally came from Surrey. The loonies from down there had dynamite – the lowdown on who was supplying underaged sex workers and drugs to rock stars and other celebs and the circumstances of the deaths of people like Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix (see eg. post 'Killing Floor – I Know Cos I Was There!' and other posts…).
Bill Bryson lived in Kirkby Malham in North Yorkshire in the 1980s and 90s. He knew about Savile and the trafficking ring there….
Bill mingles with the best. In November 2006, Bryson interviewed the then British PM Miranda, on the state of science and education. You should have asked him what the hell was going on at Bangor University Bill, you interviewed Miranda just months after the brother-in-law of Miranda's policy adviser John McTernan nicked my computer.
In 2005 Bryson was appointed Chancellor of Durham University. Here he is in his glad rags:
Bryson was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013, becoming the first non-Briton upon whom this honour has been conferred. Well I wonder how Bill managed that? His biography at the Royal Society reads: 'Bill Bryson is a popular author who is driven by a deep curiosity for the world we live in. Bill's books and lectures demonstrate an abiding love for science and an appreciation for its social importance. His international bestseller, A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), is widely acclaimed for its accessible communication of science and has since been adapted for children.'
The things that Bill didn't manage to include in his volume 'A Short History Of Nearly Everything' may be read on this blog.
It's just as well that people who are linked to Dafydd's network of umbrellas have won the Nobel Prize with their Beautiful Cure, because the Nobels this year have been rather tainted by the goings-on in relation to the Nobel Prize for Literature. Unfortunately it has been scrapped for 2018 as a result of one of those involved, Jean-Claude Arnault, being convicted of rape and sentenced to two years in prison days before Allison and Honjo were awarded their Nobel Prize. Jean-Claude wasn't due to receive a Nobel Prize himself, but he styled himself as the Swedish Academy's '19th member' and was married to Academy member Katarina Frostenson, a poet and playwright. The scandal involving Jean-Claude caused seven members of the Academy to stand down, including Katarina, as well as the Academy's permanent secretary, Sara Danius.
For many years, Arnault and Frostenson ran Forum, a club in Stockholm that showcased exhibitions and readings by prominent cultural personalities including Nobel laureates. The club was partly funded by the Swedish Academy, prompting secondary allegations of a conflict of interest. As the scandal unfolded, it was reported that an internal investigation by the Academy had concluded that Arnault may have leaked the names of seven Nobel literature laureates – the subject of heavy betting – in advance of their announcement, including those of Bob Dylan in 2016 and Harold Pinter in 2005. The Harold Pinter who was married to Lord Longford's daughter, Lady Antonia. Lord Longford and many members of his family and network knew a great deal about Dafydd, organised abuse, the Westminster Paedophile Ring and the wrongful imprisonment of witnesses (see post 'Comedies Of Menace').
The scandal first erupted last November when the Dagens Nyheter newspaper published detailed allegations by 18 women accusing Arnault – who describes himself as a photographer – of rape, sexual harassment, physical abuse and harassment over a period of more than 20 years, in Sweden and France. Eight women filed formal complaints, but all bar one of the cases were subsequently dropped for lack of evidence or because they had exceeded the statute of limitations. The woman in the case that came to trial – a writer and academic – told police of the 2011 assaults a few days after the Dagens Nyheter report was published, saying she had not come forward earlier because Jean-Claude Arnault was a good friend of her manager…
After finding out who were the colleagues of the Nobel Prize winner James Allison, imagine my delight when I read on 'The Guardian' online that an old favourite of this blog has won the Royal Society Prize for the Science Book of the Year – Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, daughter of Mr Oxford University, Mr Cambridge University and Mr MRC. I blogged about Sarah-Jayne in previous posts (eg. 'They Are MYRIAD, They Are Legion') and provided details of a number of her colleagues and mentors who either knew about Dafydd and the gang and remained silent or actively concealed their crimes.
Some of Sarah-Jayne's colleagues have even worked with Dafydd, such as Professor Mark Williams, who recently collaborated with Sarah-Jayne on a Wellcome funded project in an attempt to demonstrate that Mindfulness not only 'works' but can be demonstrated to work by scanning people's brains and other such techniques. Mindfulness was a research fraud perpetrated by Mark Williams in the late 1980s when Williams worked as a clinical psychologist in north Wales with Dafydd and the paedophile gang. Early editions of Williams's books had acknowledgements to social worker Keith Fearns, one of those who perjured himself in court in an attempt to have me imprisoned. Williams co-authored with Judith Soulsby, another colleague of the people traffickers who will never be forgotten by all who encountered her and with Isobel Hargreaves, who was married to Ralph Oxley, a botanist at Bangor University who in turn worked with Chris Wood, the wife of Dr D.G.E Wood. They all peopled Bangor University when Dafydd and the gang ran the place. Most of Williams's patients who's miraculous recoveries formed the basis of his publications are now dead and many of them died shortly after Williams told the world that he was working Miracles in that sleepy little corner of Wales which was run by a bunch of gangsters. Mark Williams made it known in north Wales that he wanted a Chair at Oxford years ago – at about the time of the Waterhouse Report. See post 'The Biggest Expert Of The Lot'.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is the Prof of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. Her network of friends and colleagues hold many positions on grant awarding bodies, as does Sarah-Jayne herself, including on the Wellcome Trust. Sarah-Jayne is continuing a family tradition. Colin Blakemore was Chief Exec of the MRC, 2003-07, which was when many of Sarah-Jayne's colleagues received funding from the MRC.
Colin Blakemore succeeded Professor Sir George Radda as the Chief Exec of the MRC, with an annual budget of more than £700 million. The reputation of the MRC had been damaged by what was perceived as financial mismanagement, the introduction of unpopular funding schemes and a lack of transparency in its dealings with researchers. Blakemore launched a national roadshow to consult the scientific community and quickly changed the mechanisms for handling funds, rationalised the grant schemes, introduced new forms of support for young researchers and overhauled the communications policies of the MRC. He maintained his research activity at Oxford University during his period of office.
Blakemore argued for a stronger commitment to clinical research and to the translation of basic research into benefits for patients. These actions anticipated Sir David Cooksey's 2006 "Review of UK Health Research Funding", which resulted in closer working between the MRC and the Departments of Health, but which recommended that "funding levels for basic science should be sustained". In the Comprehensive Spending Review at the end of Blakemore's term of office, the budget of the MRC was increased by more than one third over three years. He was succeeded at the MRC by Leszek Borysiewicz.
On the completion of his appointment at the MRC in 2007, Colin Blakemore returned to the Chair of Neuroscience at Oxford before his appointment at the University of London in 2012.
Sarah-Jayne did her first degree at Oxford University and her PhD at UCL. She received much funding from the Royal Society as a post-doc.
Soon after Colin Blakemore's appointment to the MRC, 'The Sunday Times' published a leaked British Cabinet Office document that suggested he was deemed unsuitable for inclusion in the 2004 New Year's Honours List because of his research on animals – research considered "controversial" by a British Gov't committee that oversees matters of science and technology despite being widely supported by political leaders and the public. Colin Blakemore was hated by animal rights activists, some of whom tried to kill him. However Blakemore's research was also considered to be very dodgy by his fellow researchers. I was told in 1990 by a neurosurgeon who had worked with Blakemore at Cambridge that Blakemore's research was cruel and could not be justified. This was a man who was very au fait with animal work and had done it himself.
I have never met Colin Blakemore, but I did meet some medical researchers who made it quite clear that they should be allowed to do whatever they wanted to animals in their labs and that no-one else even had the right to comment. Some of the experiments carried out by the Royal College of Surgeons, the Institute of Psychiatry and places like the Huntingdon Institute were downright cruel and many medical researchers themselves were of the opinion that they should have been stopped.
After Blakemore discovered that he had been blacklisted for an honour, he threatened to resign from the MRC, suggesting in interviews that his position as Chief Executive was now untenable:
It's a matter of principle. The mission statement of the MRC is explicit. There's a specific commitment to talk to the public about issues in medical research. How can I now go to our scientists, and ask them to risk talking about animal research, when there now appears to be evidence that in secret the government disapproves it, even though in public they've strongly encouraged it?
A Parliamentary inquiry investigating the matter implicated the Science and Technology Committee Chaired by Sir Richard Mottram. After expressions of support for animal experimentation from then PM Miranda; Chief Scientific Adviser David King; Minister for Science Lord Sainsbury; and the wider scientific community, Blakemore withdrew his threat to resign.
Miranda knows nothing about the use of animals in research and would have said whatever was convenient and Lord David Sainsbury was notorious for being a man who in return for huge donations to the Labour Party was given a job as Science Minister. Lord Sainsbury formulated mental health policy under Blair by the same method and after giving over £100 million to Cambridge University, Sainsbury was appointed Chancellor. More recently David Sainsbury has been bank rolling neuroscience research at UCL. See post 'Inside Information About A Hergest Unit Death'.
People who have been part of the Science and Technology Committee are not always the ethical men/wimmin of science whom one would hope to find on that Committee. Stars have included Dafydd's mate the Bastard of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne who laughably also Chaired the Medical Ethics Committee, 1993-94, while witnesses to the crimes of Dafydd's gang were found dead:
|The Lord Walton of Detchant
In a House of Lords debate in 2015. Christ, imagine that looming over your bedside after you've just had neurosurgery. I bet that there was some butchery in Newcastle that had to be concealed.
Lord Bob has also been a leading light on the Science and Technology Select Committee:
|The Lord Winston FMedSci FRSA FRCP FROG FRSB FREng
Lord Bob is media friendly but Lord Bob knew about the trafficking gang that was being facilitated by Prof Geoffrey Chamberlain et al at St George's and the rest of the wrongdoing by Chamberlain et al (see post 'Now Then…'); he knew about dear old Dafydd and the cartel of Top Doctors who unlawfully denied women in north Wales terminations and forced them into the hands of a dodgy private abortionist in Chester (see post 'I Predict A Riot' and 'It's Bachman Turner Overdrive – Not Arf'); and Lord Bob also passed an unhinged sexual harasser whom he unwittingly employed as a junior doctor onto Chamberlain's team, Lord Bob obviously believing that the sexual harasser would feel at home there. The sexual harasser surpassed himself by having sex with a research assistant, in the lab, while telling her how much he wanted to shag one of the other research assistants. Who, when she heard about it, told me that under no circumstances would she be having sex with him. Chamberlain in turn passed the harassing shagger onto someone else. Richard Penketh, the harassing shagger in question, ended up working as a Top Doctor in Cardiff, where Dr Brian Gibbons, the Welsh Gov't Health Minister who concealed the crimes of Dafydd et al, gave him an award for excellence.
Ah, the doctors they were wonderful!
I remember you well Penketh! As no doubt does every other female under the age of 40 who has ever made your acquaintance.
Richard can now be found advertising his services as a Top Doctor who works for Spire Healthcare.
Here's Penketh, picking up yet another award!
Colin Blakemore finally bagged his K in 2014, so there was a happy ending.
And now Sarah-Jayne has won the Royal Society Prize!
Sarah-Jayne's book is called, most appropriately, 'Inventing Ourselves'. Which is pretty much what they have all done. They've given each other big grants and prizes, they've supplied rave reviews for each other's books, they've invited each other onto media programmes and by such strategies, they have all become 'experts' and 'leaders in their fields'. People despair of the cronyism and nepotism in institutions like Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities and I can understand why, but nothing, nothing at all, beats the Top Doctors in the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle. Furthermore they are the ones who are at the top of CR-UK, the MRC and the Wellcome Trust and who end up sitting in the Lords.
I won't dwell at length on Sarah-Jayne and her dad in this post, readers can read all about them in previous posts. However, I am interested in the judges who awarded Sarah-Jayne her prize.
The Chair of the panel of judges was Professor Dame Frances Ashcroft, who stated that 'Inventing Ourselves' is 'truly a book that everyone should read'. Frances Ashcroft is the Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Professor of Physiology at Oxford. Gosh, I wonder who funded that Chair. Frances Ashcroft holds Bachelors and Postgrad degrees from Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. Ashcroft is the Director of OXION, a training and research programme on the integrative physiology of ion channels, funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Dame Frances has rubbed shoulders with a few of those we know and love on her journey upwards and not just Sarah-Jayne's dad either. Frances Ashcroft went to Talbot Heath School, an independent school for girls in Bournemouth. Famous old girls include Dr Death's mate Shirl. Ashcroft undertook post-doc work at Leicester University in the late 1970s, when that institution was heaving with people concealing the organised abuse gang in Leicester of which Greville Janner was alleged to be a member and which had links with Dafydd. The medical school at Leicester in particular was up to its eyes in it, as was the Dean of Leicester Medical School, Lord Robert Kilpatrick, who, like Lord John Walton, Chaired the GMC and loyally served Dafydd and his associates in that capacity. See previous posts.
Frances Ashcroft was one of five 2012 winners of the L'Oreal UNESCO Award for Women In Science. Because she's worth it! Look, she has lovely hair and ooh I do like that dress as well, black goes well on her but you wouldn't wear it in the daytime though would you and that necklace is nice, just right, understated oooh classy. Do you know I think that I recognise Frances, I'm sure that I met her when I was carrying out my post-doc work in Laboratoire Garnier.
Ashcroft is a woman of many talents and appeared (as a diner) on Masterchef during the 2011 series, along with several other Fellows of the Royal Society. Their taste buds are of superior quality to the taste buds of the lower orders, which is why the Fellows of the Royal Society were invited to taste the grub rather than the cleaners of the institutions in which the Fellows are employed. I expect that series of Masterchef was funded by the MRC and Wellcome Trust, which would have ensured that the diners weren't just anyone.
Ashcroft's work with Professor Andrew Hattersley 'has helped enable children born with diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy'. Hattersley is Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Exeter. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010. Hattersley did a degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and then trained as a Top Doctor at Oxford. He undertook further training in diabetes at Hammersmith Hospital. We're on familiar territory aren't we…
Hattersley was a lecturer at Birmingham University, 1993-1994 and he has worked at Exeter since 1995. So Hattersley lectured at Birmingham along with Dafydd's mate Professor Robert Bluglass who concealed the crimes of Dafydd and the gang (see post 'Enter Professor Robert Bluglass CBE) and Tony Francis's mate Professor Ian Brockington (see post 'Ian Brockington's Mischief'). Exeter also employs a few mates of the gang from north Wales, as a result of Exeter's collaboration with Professor Mark Williams and his Mindfulness con. For a long while, the head honcho for Mindfulness at Exeter University was Professor Willem Kuyken, but he relocated some years ago. Where did he go? Oxford University of course, Willem stepped into Mark Williams's shoes when Williams decided to 'retire'. Which coincided with one of Mark Williams's victims from north Wales writing to the VC of Oxford University about his experiences with Mark Williams. The person in question was a close friend of mine from Gwynedd. He then became seriously ill and was refused all NHS care by the Top Docs in north Wales and lived rough in Scotland for a while. At the same time, the Top Docs decided that it was time to ruin my life all over again and I was unlawfully detained for many months. Imagine my surprise, when I finally got back on my feet, only to find that Mark Williams had decided that perhaps retirement wasn't for him after all and had embarked on a major collaboration with Sarah-Jayne!
Then there were the extraordinary experiences that I had when I was interviewed for two research jobs at Exeter University; the NHS Chief Exec of the region who narrowly escaped a prison sentence after being convicted of fraud; the death of a young mentally ill man in the police station directly opposite the building housing Exeter's Medical School, which specialises in Service User Led Research; and Professor Edzard Ernst, who was forced out of his job at Exeter because his research consistently demonstrated that some of the 'therapies' which the authorities at Exeter University wanted to promote were clinically ineffective. If Edzard had made up his data like a few other people whom I could name, he'd have kept his job. See previous posts for details of these Exeter Experiences.
Andrew Hattersley has bagged many honours and prizes, among them: 1998 Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London; 2004 Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences; 2016 GlaxoSmithKline Prize; 2016 EASD–Novo Nordisk Foundation Diabetes Prize for Excellence.
I have no idea whether Andrew Hattersley is any relation of Roy Fattersley, the other half of the 'dream ticket' which was going to get the Windbag elected as PM many years ago.
One of Frances Ashcroft's fellow judges was Vivienne Parry, 'science broadcaster and journalist'. Parry has presented BBC's 'Tomorrow's World' and 'Panorama' and contributes to 'The Guardian' online. Vivienne Parry is Head of Engagement at Genomics England.
Parry was educated at the independent girls' school St Swithun's, Winchester. She studied Zoology at Bedford College (London) graduating with in 1978 and then went on to UCL to study immunology and genetics…
Parry was Vice Chairman of Council of UCL and in 2009 was appointed a member of the MRC.
Parry's first job was as National Organiser of the mother and baby charity Birthright,1979-94. Birthright was a charidee which has gone under several different names and was founded by Sir George Pinker, a friend of Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain. Pinker was the poshest of Top Docs and he was Surgeon-Gynaecologist to HM the Queen Lilibet, 1973-90 and oversaw many Royal births (see post 'Wimmin's Wellbeing – The Fortnum And Mason Connection').
Vivienne Parry worked closely with the Birthright's Patron, HRH The Princess of Wales for 12 years. HRH Di might not have realised it, but she wasn't the best advert for Sir George Pinker's clinical skills; there are indications that Pinker screwed up the delivery of Prince William. HRH was left with the impression that she had simply experienced a difficult delivery, but no, George misjudged badly because he wouldn't listen to the silly girl and he was quite lucky that William arrived in possession of a full complement of brain cells because that probably should have been a Ceasarian delivery… Not that anyone in the Royal Household clicked, George was wheeled out once more when Di was finally persuaded to have another baby, something that she had made clear that she was very unwilling to do because of what had happened before. Not that the Royals can be blamed for that, they have no way of judging the competence of their Top Docs, the Top Docs are a load of bloody liars who will not come clean when one of them should not be let loose on patients and so even Royalty get it in the neck.
Any Top Docs want to fess up as to which one of you it was who passed the gynae records of a high profile member of the Royal Family around London in the late 1980s then??? I heard the crude jokes. God, people would fucking clock you lot if they knew how you actually conducted yourselves. Never mind, give yourselves another Nobel Prize, it'll keep the wagon on the rails for a few more years while the clinical outcomes of people in the UK steadily continue downhill and you can scream for more 'funding' for the 'under-resourced' NHS…
Working conditions of the members of the BMA, 2018:
Duw, it's hard…
Vivienne Parry was briefly a Trustee of the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. Di survived the births at the hands of George Pinker but not the drive through that tunnel in Paris.
In September 2017, Parry was appointed to the board of UKRI (UK Research & Innovation).
Vivienne was very involved with the setting up of the Science Media Centre and Cheltenham Science Festival. In September 2017 Vivienne became Chair of the Cheltenham Science Festival and a member of the Cheltenham Festivals Board.
Here's Lord Bob enjoying himself at the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2011, but I have no idea of whatever it is that he is boasting about the size of:
Other judges on the Royal Society Science Book of the Year panel which awarded Sarah-Jayne her prize were Dr Leigh Fletcher, the Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Leicester – Leigh Fletcher has spent most of his career at Oxford and Cambridge; Peter Florence, a literary gent who is Director and Co-founder of the Hay Festival; and Greg Williams, Editor of 'Wired' magazine, which is all about techie things. I very much doubt that any of these people are in a position to judge whether Sarah-Jayne has written a work of genius or a work of utter cobblers. However they will all know who her dad is.
There was another judge on the panel as well. None other than Professor Brian Cox. Brian is the BBC favourite who is also Professor of Particle Physics at Manchester University. Brian is not just a David Attenborough or a Johnny Morris who deludes children into believing that he is a scientist, Brian is a real live physicist and he knows his stuff. He also knew about the likes of Jimmy Savile cluttering up the BBC but he kept as quiet as everyone else did about it.
Before Brian Cox achieved stardom as a TV physicist, he was best known as the man who played with the rock group D:Ream, who were responsible for 'Things Can Only Get Better', the sound track to Miranda's 1997 General Election victory. I was delighted to see the back of the Tories myself and I remember watching old Prezza on TV having a drunken knees-up. I did however have two mates who were Labour activists who told me that the arrival of Miranda as PM was no cause for celebration. They were quite right. Up in north Wales, life continued pretty much as before for Empowered Service Users. They continued to be found dead throughout the Waterhouse Inquiry, which had opened five months before Miranda became PM.
One big healthcare story in the news today is that ever increasing numbers of mental health patients are being tasered by the police while they are in hospital. The Hergest Unit was one of the first mental health units in the UK who called in the police to taser a patient. Lest anyone swallows the line that this might be needed in the case of Dangerous Patients, it is not. Not under any circumstances. Hospital in-patients sectioned under the Mental Health Act have no rights at all, absolutely none. Numerous Angels can pile on top of them and stay there for hours, even until the patient stops breathing and dies. It is not unlawful. Likewise the Angels can forcibly inject patients with Medication which kills them. The patients have no right to refuse, even if they know that they have reacted nearly fatally to such Medication on a previous occasion. All these were tried and tested methods of murdering patients before the introduction of police officers with tasers and they served the purpose just as well. Furthermore, if a detained mental health patient dies in police custody, there has to be an investigation and figures are kept regarding such deaths. There is no obligation for the NHS to hold such an investigation if the Angels murder a sectioned mental health patient and very few such deaths are investigated. Deaths of patients in mental health units are recorded but one has to fight tooth and nail to access the data.
Neither are people with learning disabilities faring any better. Horrifying figures were released today with regard to the use of 'restraint' on people with learning disabilities in hospital units in England. The number of times that 'restraint' was used on such patients rose by 50% between 2016 and 2017. That 50% rise wasn't from 10 times to 15 times. In 2017, restraint was used more than 22,000 times. Once every half an hour. The figures cover adults as well as children. Face down restraint of patients with leaning disabilities – which Gov't guidelines now state should never be used in any circumstances – was used 3,100 times in 2017. As with tasering mental health patients, this risks the patient dying and even if that doesn't happen, it is terrifying for a distressed patient as well as virtually always unnecessary. Many families and carers of people with learning disabilities report how bad healthcare staff are at handling the person whom they care for. The staff have no patience or understanding, they demand that the patient participates in pointless activities which just escalates their confusion and distress and should the learning disabled person swear in distress it'll be case of 'now don't you speak to me like that or we'll have you arrested, we have a zero tolerance aggression policy here'. They have learning disabilities you stupid fuckers, they have no idea what a zero tolerance aggression policy means.
Many of those being restrained are categorised as having challenging behaviour as a result of conditions such as autism. Some of Sarah-Jayne's colleagues at UCL, Cambridge and Oxford are considered to be global leaders in autism.
But the mates of those at UCL, Oxford and Cambridge have won their Nobel Prize and now thousands of lives will be saved and many more millions of pounds will find their way into the coffers of those institutions. Particularly as Sarah-Jayne has now won that Royal Society prize for her book explaining how they all Invented Themselves.


text:
Your microwave doesn't warm up? – Bosch Home Appliances can help!
There are numerous reasons why your microwave doesn't warm properly any more. You're best calling Bosch Home Appliances Service. You can call us on <CustSerPhoneNo> around the clock, 7 days a week. We'll repair your microwave quickly, expertly and for a fair price. Call us now and find out more. Your microwave will soon be warm again and you can reliably prepare and heat up your favourite dishes in it.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Whip up graphics for social media, ads, blogs, and more - even if you're not a graphic designer.
The perfect sized image is always one click away. Image dimensions for social media, display ads, blogs, emails, and infographics are available as clickable presets.
Don't start from scratch or stare at a blank screen ever again. Choose from thousands of pre-made templates that look professional and earn you more attention, clicks, and customers.
Get access to 3,000,000+ free, high-resolution, and totally not cheesy stock photos. You don't need to scour multiple stock libraries, worry about usage rights, or pay for the best background images anymore.
Create whatever you've imagined in seconds. Choose from 200+ fonts, 100,000+ vectors and shapes, and play with photo effects until your graphic is perfect -- no design experience required.
Share your graphics to Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social media platforms without leaving Snappa. Save even more time when you connect your Buffer account and pre-schedule your posts.
Never make the same stunning graphic more than once. In two clicks, you can turn your Twitter header into a Facebook cover, your Instagram post into a Pinterest pin, or a Facebook ad into a billboard ad.
Sujan Patel
Co-founder of Webprofits
"Snappa is the best tool I've used to create images for blog posts & Facebook ads. In 5 minutes I can do what used to take me hours to do or pay designers to do."
Spend less time making graphics and more time growing your business, building relationships on social media, and creating content.
Use Snappa like a pro without watching long video tutorials, reading how-to posts, or being a graphic designer.
All photos and graphics included in Snappa are 100% royalty-free and licensed for commercial use. No extra fees.
Olga Andrienko
Communications & Social Media Lead @ SEMrush
"Snappa is a must have tool for the non-designers who publish content online. It's super easy to use and has a nice set of templates, and despite its simplicity offers unlimited possibilities for creative minds."
Featured in:


text:
Home Page Chess Life Online 2011 July World Team Update: US Splits With Armenia, Crushes Egypt
|World Team Update: US Splits With Armenia, Crushes Egypt
|By CLO
|July 19, 2011
After a tough round one loss to Russia, the US World Team Champs squad in Ningbo, China drew in round two to Armenia. Although Onischuk lost on board two, Kamsky won against World #3 Levon Aronian on board one. The other games were drawn to split the match against the strong Armenian team.
The US then scored big in round three to defeat Egypt 3.5-0.5. Browse key games below and look for onsite recaps by Tony Rich as the event progresses.


text:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The Virginia Court of Appeals has affirmed the convictions of a former eighth-grade science teacher who sent sexually explicit images and messages to a teenage boy.
Connie Beth Klewer of Lebanon was convicted of electronic solicitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and using an electronic system to expose her sexual parts. She was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
Klewer claimed on appeal that photos of her breasts that she electronically transmitted to the boy were not "sexual parts" as defined by the law. The appeals court ruled Tuesday that she couldn't raise that claim on appeal because she didn't bring it up at trial.
The court also rejected Klewer's claim that there was no evidence she ever viewed nude photos of the victim.


text:
Bergeron Wellness Center
The vision of the Bergeron Wellness Center is to provide confidential care for the bodies, minds and spirits of our diverse students in support of their life long wellbeing. We welcome all of our students in to obtain the care that will support their lives on campus and beyond.
To that end, we have nurse practitioners and mental health clinicians available at the center each weekday to provide support. We are fully handicapped accessible and also have translation services for students as needed
Our mental health clinicians and nurse practitioners can assist students in obtaining appointments off campus with local medical providers, specialists, or counseling as needed.
The UVM Medical Center Urgent Care Walk-in Clinic is within close walking distance, while the UVM Medical Center and its emergency room are a short drive from campus into Burlington.


text:
Accommodation in Stockholm and greater areas - 1 hit
Your search: You haven't selected dates or number of rooms yet (showing 1-1 matches 1)
1 accommodation
Book your accommodation with visit.com! We offer a wide selection of accommodation. Here, you can choose between 145 hotels at low rates located in many different parts of town, anything from city center to countryside. We can also offer many centrally located hostels in Stockholm. There is something for everyone because we offer budget, three-star and luxury hotels.
Stockholm (City)
Stockholm (City) (3 mi. to Friends Arena) Map
Hotel | Eco-friendly Hotel Scandic Norra Bantorget is located in central Stockholm, close to shopping, restaurants, bars, theaters, and everything else the city has to offer. The Central-station with Airport-buses, trains and the metro is close to the hotel. Read more
In-room Internet access TV
Filter result
Change search
Build: 6/3/2020 9:10:04 AM, Host: online3core18, DB: o3.cbguide-8017.cbischannel-27247.v1 online3data04.db.citybreak.com:8080, Controller: AccommodationResult, Action: Index


text:
MPG Disclaimer: *Based on 2020 EPA mileage and driving range ratings. Use for comparison purposes only. Your MPGe/MPG and driving range will vary depending on driving conditions, how you drive and maintain your vehicle, battery age/condition, and other factors.
Excludes tax, tag, and title. $798.50 dealer fee not included.
Price does not include dealer installed options


text:
Let us help you stand out by building you a stunning website optimized for your needs. We get this. Let us do our thing, so you can focus on yours.
Need an app built that will work on all mobile devices? No problem. We've got you covered.
Enhance your business profile with eCommerce solutions. Shopping never looked so good.
We enjoy what we do. We help companies and organizations communicate better, grow their business, and expand their influence. And we like doing it.
We enjoy our clients. We have been blessed to work with a diverse group of clients who have grown to become friends in business. We feel a vested interest in their success and truly enjoy our relationships. We're people people.
As a result, we have enjoyed many blessings the past twelve years as our business has grown.
Not only do we have a keen understanding technology, we strive to understand you and your business. We listen well, collaborate with you, and act as a part of your team.
We are creative people who tend to think outside the box. We love to help you reach your current and prospective customers in new and engaging ways. We're pretty good at what we do!
To us, character is as important as competence. It's no accident that our team is filled with men and women of integrity. We do what we say we're going to do, and we will work hard to earn your trust!
Our commitment to outrageous and personal customer service sets the bar beyond that of anyone else we know. Our expectation of our own work is higher than our clients. We are committed to creating custom solutions that are ideal for your situation; then we train you and your team to maintain and manage them internally.
We get technology, and we understand how to put it to use to better communicate your company's capabilities in a crowded market.
Sell products online and your store is literally open in every city in the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Built in HTML5/Javascript, our mobile apps are instantly compatible with iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry mobile devices.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more an HD streaming video? If you're going to say it , say it clearly with streaming video.
Either integrated on your site, or on our dedicated ticket sales site, Tailfish can help you sell downloadable print-at home tickets to your organization's events.
Tailfish can help you set up your eMail Marketing Campaign, managing your distribution list, writing compelling copy, and developing an attractive and engaging design.
One of the most important decisions your company will make, determining your logo and your brand voice. Let us help you get your company's launch or rebrand off to the right start.
Individuals and companies are increasingly using social media to read, shop, research, advertise, increase client base and more. What are you doing to reach them?
From a simple brochure to a complete marketing campaign, our creative designers have the experience to design all of your print collateral.
6717 Hayling Way
Denton, Texas 76210
United States of America
Imagine that you have something you want to share with us.
Tailfish Solutions now provides online payment for domain renewals, invoices, and deposits. Your invoice will have a link which will take you directly to the payment page and pre-populate the appropriate fields. You can pay with any major credit card.
If you would like to make a payment online, please visit our secure online payment portal.


text:
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
March 18, 2013
According to the establishment media, Obama will resist Israeli pressure to immediately attack Iran in response to its imaginary nuclear weapons program. Last week, during an Israeli Channel 2 news interview, Obama said Iran will be capable of producing a nuclear weapon in a year and hinted action against the undocumented program will come within a year.
Instead of concentrating on Iran during Obama's visit scheduled for Wednesday, the United States and Israel will settle on a common goal – escalating the war in Syria and doubling up the effort to take out the al-Assad government and replace it with a government more amendable to Israel and the United States.
A "Buffer Zone" Pretext
Israel is considering a full-scale offense inside Syria in order to establish a "buffer zone," a prospect we suggested on March 7 after a shadowy terrorist group kidnapped United Nations peacekeepers near the Israeli annexed Golan Heights.
"It remains to be seen if Israel will use the latest development in the Golan Heights to push beyond the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force buffer zone established in 1971," Infowars.com reported on Friday.
Israel will claim Syria is transferring missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon to make its case for stepped-up attacks inside Syria.
In January, Israel warplanes attacked a convoy it said was moving Russian-made missiles to the Shi'ite group, a move green-lit by the Obama administration. Binyamin Netanyahu's government said it would strike again if it believes additional weapons transfers are occurring.
Israeli preemptive strikes inside Syria will reportedly dominate the talks between Obama and Netanyahu. In the past, Obama has said the United States will intervene to stop Syria from using chemical weapons or transferring them to Hezbollah.
In order to personalize the supposed Syrian threat, Israel claims the United States is directly threatened. "These missiles are not just a problem for Israel," said an Israeli official. "They include [anti-ship] missiles, and who has the biggest navy in the Mediterranean?" – a clear reference to the United States.
A New War in Lebanon
In addition to targeting Syria, Israel is looking to start a new war in Lebanon, one that will rival the 2006 conflict.
"What I hear over and over again from Israeli generals is that another war with Hezbollah is inevitable," a western diplomat told The Guardian.
The commander of the IDF's 91st Division, Brigadier-General Hertzi Halevy, told journalists in July that a new war against Hezbollah is in the works.
"The next war will be different, and therefore we should stop it as quickly as possible, in order to make things easier for the home front. This means carrying out a very strong attack against Lebanon, and the damage will be enormous," a senior officer in the Northern Command told Haaretz.
This article was posted: Monday, March 18, 2013 at 12:52 pm


text:
As we are to understand from the verse, "The people who truly do believe in Our Signs are those who fall to the ground prostrating when they are reminded of them, and glorify their Lord with praise, and are not arrogant" (Surat as-Sajda: 15), one of the most important conditions of faith is modesty. Therefore, as this verse explains, believers are always modest, being aware that Allah does not love anyone who is vain or boastful (Surat an-Nisa' : 36):
And the servants of (Allah) Most Gracious are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say, "Peace!" (Surat al-Furqan: 63)
The morality of Islam entails submission to Allah, and submission entails acknowledgement of one' s weaknesses. Believers, who recognise that everything belongs to Allah, and that they themselves are weak and in need of Him, also act modestly towards Allah' s other faithful servants. Being arrogant is contrary to faith, and the Messenger of Allah (saas) tells the believers to be humble and to treat each other like brothers in a hadith:Do not envy one another; do not inflate prices one to another; do not hate one another; do not turn away from one another; and do not undercut one another, but be you. O servants of Allah, brothers. A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim: he neither oppresses him nor does he fail him, he neither lies to him nor does he hold him in contempt. Piety is right here -and the Prophet (saas) pointed to his breast three times. It is evil enough for a man to hold his brother Muslim in contempt. (Muslim)
Arrogance and modesty especially manifest themselves during human relations. The conduct of Iblis, as related in the Qur' an, best illustrates this point. Iblis refused to prostrate himself to the Prophet Adam. Being aware of Allah' s infinite might, it was illogical for him to openly claim superiority over Allah. But, it was his pride that was hurt. It was the Prophet Adam to whom he showed arrogance, and thereby exposed his rebellious intent towards Allah.
Consequently, arrogance, which is, in actuality, a sin against Allah, manifests itself during the relations of one person with another.
Surely, modesty also manifests itself under the same conditions. Believers show their submission to Allah by behaving modestly towards His believing servants. Aware of the fact that they are not responsible for the creation of their qualities, they are grateful to Allah, and never forget that Allah may reclaim any of these at any time. Fearing punishment from their Creator, Who is the Possessor of infinite power, they take refuge in no one but Him. This submissiveness of the believers, and their fear of Allah, is related in a verse as follows:
Say: "No one can protect me from Allah and I will never find any refuge apart from Him." (Surat al-Jinn: 22)2009-04-14 17:22:24


text:
A Douro with loads of fresh fruit, a complex cabernet sauvignon, delicious merlot from J. Lohr, and a light cabernet franc that will perk you up.
Bill Zacharkiw's Wines of the Week: Jan. 11, 2019
Every week, Bill Zacharkiw identifies his top wine picks available at the SAQ and offers ideas for food pairings.
Under $16
Douro 2017, Lavradores de Feitoria, Portugal white, $15.10, SAQ # 13114621. Pretty aromatics with tropical notes and white flowers. Nicely balanced, with a bright acidity and, as it warms, a decent amount of richness. But this is about the fresh fruit, with juicy apricots and ripe pears. Great for the price. Grape varieties: malvasia fina, gouveio. Residual sugar: 1.4 g/L. Serve at: 8-12 C. Drink now. Food pairing ideas: apéritif, fried calamari.
Cabernet Sauvignon 2015, Columbia Valley, Powers, Washington state red, $19.80, SAQ # 13336582. Impressive in how it balances power with finesse. The fruit is complex, with darker notes of blackberry and lighter, fresher red fruits. Tannins are finely layered and give great length. Good complexity and length for an under-$20 wine. Grape varieties: cabernet sauvignon, merlot, carménère, cabernet franc. Residual sugar: 2.4 g/L. Serve at: 16 C. Drink now-2021. Food pairing idea: pepper steak.
Merlot 2015, Los Osos, J. Lohr, California red, $23, SAQ # 13526212. While its bestselling cabernet put J. Lohr on the map, the merlot is delicious. Exactly what you would expect, with a silky mid-palate, dark plums for fruit and elegant tannins. The malbec adds extra spice and structure. I was surprised by the finesse of this wine. Grape varieties: merlot, malbec. Residual sugar: 2.2 g/L. Serve at: 16 C. Drink now-2020. Food pairing idea: roast chicken with barbecue sauce.
$25 and up
Saumur Champigny 2016, La Folie, Château Yvonne, France red, $29.35, SAQ # 11665534. Organic. Tired of drinking after the holiday season? This wine will revitalize you. Beautiful aromatics and fruit. Delicate tannins. This just drinks so well, on its own or with lighter fare. My first wine of 2019, and it won't be the last time I drink it this year. Light and delicious. Grape variety: cabernet franc. Residual sugar: 1.2 g/L. Serve at: 15 C. Drink now. Food pairing ideas: apéritif, stir-fries with green peppers.


text:
Every year, in honor of Black History Month, Upstate's Faculty and Staff Association for Diversity gives two awards: one to an employee who "lives Upstate's mission of service to our community" and one to a member of the community for "leadership in our community. " This year's award recipients are E. Geralyn (Geri) Hall, a family nurse practitioner at Upstate's University Health Care Center, and The Rev. Phil M. Turner, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Syracuse. They receive their awards at the opening ceremony on Wednesday, Feb. 6.
Meet Geri Hall:
Geri Hall describes her clinic at Upstate as something akin to the United Nations. "We see refugees from all over the world," explains Hall. "It's common for me to hear five to seven different languages in a day."
Many of Hall's patients have spent decades in refugee camps and made it to Syracuse with only the clothes on their backs. Hall tries to learn to say a few words in the languages of each of her patients.
"It's a sacred experience. Our patients welcome you into their lives. They share their trauma, and their losses. They invite you into their pain. It's such incredible intimacy."
Hall works three long days a week serving patients at Upstate and teaches first-year internal medicine residents, guiding many of them through their first experiences providing basic women's health care to refugees and inner-city residents. She volunteers at the Poverello health clinic on Syracuse's northside and at health clinics for migrant farm workers in Oswego County. Hall's work with international communities began in the 1970s when she travelled to St. Lucia to rebuild housing after a devastating hurricane. In the 1980s, Hall learned Spanish in Bolivia and worked at a Somali refugee camp and with indigenous people in the mountains and slums of Peru.
Last year, Hall resumed her international volunteer work by going to El Salvador on a medical and humanitarian mission, accompanied by her teenaged daughter. (Listen to an interview about that adventure here.) They transported medical supplies and worked to find funding to enable children to attend high school. Hall's philosophy? "The more we are given, the more we need to share."
Hall is married to David Pasinski, who is also devoted to issues of social justice, and is a part-time chaplain at Hutchings Psychiatric Center and Onondaga Community College. They have two teenaged children, Mariah and Micah.
Pastor Turner is profiled in another blog post.
Upstate celebrates Black History Month
Chef Blue is catering the kick-off event
Listen to an interview with Hall


text:
In an ideal world, the thinking goes, every town has its own police and fire departments, its own school system.
But when it comes to paying for individualized city services in areas close to each other, we're begining to realize that we can't have our cake and eat it, too.
The cost is becoming prohibitive.
U.S. & World
Hollywood may be the center for entertainment production and Silicon Valley may serve as a reference point for venture capital, but San Mateo County is emerging as the beta site for sharing-- city services, that is.
Yes, San Mateo County - the one along the southern border of San Francisco.
Over the past few years, local governments in San Mateo County have shown a willingness to merge services at a pace unequaled anywhere else in the state.
Opponents argue that these changes come at a great price, notably the loss of city control of its own services.
But increasingly, city leaders realize that they are paying a huge price for maintaining independent jurisdictions at a time when the voters insist on holding the line on more taxes.
So far, it seems to be making sense in the towns in San Mateo County.
One by one, they see savings from contracting with the county Sheriff's office instead of using their own organizations.
On November 15, the Millbrae City Council will decide whether to become the third municipal government in the 18-city county to eliminate its 19-member police department and instead rely upon the San Mateo Sheriff's Department for public safety protection.
One study has determined that if Millbrae takes this route, the city can reduce its law enforcement cost to $5.8 million from its $7.3 million annual commitment.
To keep the city police force in place would require an additional $400,000, or a swing of $1.9 million.
The potential savings represents about 10 percent of the city's $18 million general fund budget, nothing to sneeze at in these tough economic times.
If Millbrae adopts the proposal, it will be the third city in San Mateo County to merge law enforcement services.
In 2009, San Carlos outsourced its police services to the county at a savings of $2 million to the satisfaction of residents responding to two surveys.
Last April, the City of Half Moon Bay, gave up its 12- member police force for protection by the county at a savings of about $500,000.
Such mergers make sense, given the county's relatively compact size of 741 square miles that house 20 cities.
By contrast, Los Angeles County is more than 4,000 square miles in size, and is home to 88 cities.
Still, it makes you wonder whether additional efficiencies can be found in San Mateo County from consolidating fire departments, school districts, and other special districts.
If so, maybe cities in other counties can experiences similar savings.
Let us know what you think. Comment below, send us your thoughts via Twitter @PropZero or add your comment to our Facebook page.


text:
Treating Mental Illness in Children
Tough Choices
By Douglas Bradley, NAMI HelpLine Coordinator
Having a child diagnosed with mental illness is difficult for parents, but choosing a particular treatment can be just as difficult. Every mother and father wants his/her child to be well, but since any treatment (or lack of treatment) has potential side effects, deciding on a therapy can be daunting. To confuse matters even more, the symptoms of a psychiatric illness in children may be different from those in an adult and may be hard to distinguish from normal childhood behavior.
The first hurdle many parents face is finding a doctor qualified to diagnose and, if necessary, provide treatment for their child. As children don't share all the physical and behavioral aspects of adults, medicine does not regard them as "small grown-ups" but as a distinct population with unique needs. Because of these differences, the best person to properly assess someone younger than 18 for mental illness is a child psychiatrist. However, in most areas there are few, if any, child psychiatrists available. Even when one is nearby, the cost of a consultation, specialized therapy and medicine can prevent parents from getting help–especially since many child psychiatrists do not take insurance. Negative attitudes of family, friends and the community toward mental health treatment can also discourage parents from getting assistance.
Perhaps the biggest cause of the confusion around the differences in diagnosing children vs. adults is the lack of basic research on children's mental illness and symptoms. While parents and doctors might agree that a child's behavior and mood don't seem "right," there is often disagreement about what these symptoms mean. Furthermore, professionals and parents may have "diagnostic biases." For example, family members or a doctor might be comfortable with a diagnosis of ADHD, but not bipolar disorder. Others may prefer a bipolar diagnosis, as treatment would not potentially involve stimulants.
Research on therapy in children, as with diagnosis, is far behind that of adults. Reasons include a lack of funding, researchers and research subjects. Also, the FDA has not required data from child subjects in approving new medicines. While off-label use of meds is needed when there is not a research base, physicians and parents often have to make decisions without knowing long-term impacts. Parents themselves may also disagree on treatment. Not uncommonly, one parent will agree to medication and/or talk therapy for the child while the other is adamantly opposed. Sometimes this difference is ideological, but other times it comes from honest but opposing views based on a general lack of information.
Fortunately, there are resources to help family members make informed decisions. To help clarify the risks and benefits of children taking psychiatric medication, The Hastings Center,a bipartisan, nonprofit institute, brought together panelists (including Darcy Gruttadaro, director of the NAMI Child and Adolescent Action Center) who represent all sides of the debate over childhood medication.
While some differences remained at the end of the workshop, there was also consensus on many topics. For example, members agreed that children can have severe mental illness and that the appropriate use of medication can ease a child's suffering. The panelists also agreed that withholding a beneficial medication was harmful. The main differences of opinion were the criteria used to diagnose, when to use medicine and when another therapy might be appropriate. The panel was careful to note that while the cause of most mental illness is not known, "This situation… is not unique to psychiatry; many diagnoses throughout medicine are not moored in an understanding of the underlying pathophysiology." Parents can ask question about pros and cons of treatments here, although this site will not give a treatment plan and is not meant to take the place of a doctor's opinion.
Another resource for parents is the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a branch of the National Institutes of Health, one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive health research organizations. NIMH has a website on child and adolescent mental health that includes information on illnesses, treatments, and current research.
Lastly, The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, a professional group of psychiatrists who specialize in this field, has fact sheets on mental health, substance abuse issues and effects of medication on children. Perhaps most useful is the nationwide child and adolescent psychiatrist finder which can allow a family to begin treatment and healing.
Caring for a child with mental illness is confusing, difficult and sometimes scary. However, the resources listed above can assist people having to make tough decisions. Also, as the needs of young patients are increasingly recognized and more research is conducted, the choices for parents, and the lives of the affected children, should become easier.


text:
Some gay and lesbian critics are questioning why Google is keeping Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in the closet, reports said Friday.
Nicholas Jackson, a writer for the Atlantic who is gay, wrote an entire essay on why Google's decision not to create a doodle was wrong. From the piece:
Instead of boldly declaring its support of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, Google added a rainbow to the end of its search bar. But it only appears when certain queries are entered. "Gay" does the trick, as does "lesbian" and "transgender." But try even the slightest modifications to those terms -- "transgender pride," "lesbian empowerment" -- and the rainbow disappears as though it was never there. This should keep the six-color rainbow, a symbol universally associated with gay pride ever since San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker created it 33 years ago, from appearing on the pages of those who are still opposed to gay rights. And keep Google from having to deal with any backlash.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Jackson suggests that Google decided against the doodle because of controversy, but a Google spokeswoman said that it was simply an exclusion of necessity. "We enjoy celebrating holidays and special events at Google. As you may imagine, it's difficult for us to choose which events to celebrate on our site, and have a long list of those we'd like to celebrate in the future," she said in a statement. She also reiterated that Google added a rainbow to Pride-related queries.
We believe Jackson has a point. Only a few days ago, Google celebrated the 92nd birthday of the late children's author Richard Scarry, before that it celebrated Les Paul, Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Jules Verne, Pac-Man and even Burning Man. So why not Gay and Lesbian Pride Month?