On Radio WM this morning there was a 'bird expert' giving advice about avian matters. By his account, there are people out there who are so afraid of bird flu that they have stopped feeding garden birds. Something tells me these dullards will be the same people who refuse to recognise the danger of driving up another person's rear end on the motorway.

It's no good, I can't hold back any longer. I should be blogging about how the Lords have let us down and how our civil liberties will be eroded by Big Brother's Dear Leader's identity cards. But instead, my brain is filled with the hideous image of that baby from the Triple Velvet toilet roll ads. You know the one, where he's dressed as a businessman, and 'talks' through the wonders of CGI?

HOW UGLY IS THAT BABY?

Is it even a baby? Or is it really a troll, dressed up to look human? Or a shaved monkey or something? Whatever it is, it is repulsive. How can anyone ever have thought that that would make anyone on this earth want to buy toilet roll? Whenever I see that baby's face, I am terrified, yet strangely paralysed with fear. Then my legs return and I run. There's no way I want to be in the same shop as a toilet roll with that baby logo on it.

But, since every cloud has a silver lining, the good thing about the ad is that every mother, on first seeing their child, will breathe a sigh of relief: their baby is not as ugly as the Triple Velvet one. That's if the very fact of seeing the TVB didn't put them off conceiving in the first place.

For the sake of the UK's birthrate, this ad must be dropped. Somebody, MAKE IT STOP!

Following my success in predicting Davina McCall's pregnancy-according-to-Helly (since I haven't yet seen it confirmed), I offer my latest dream-conversation with a celeb.

I'm in the supermarket with Kerry Katona, and she tells me she's lost loads of weight by not eating. Then I see her at the checkout and she tells me she's just put on four pounds in a binge. No sign of cocaine abuse, I hasten to add, though she did have a bag full of booze. So there we have it - Kerry Katona, binge eater. Allegedly (by my unconscious).

I've just had a thought: Is it unethical for me (a physiotherapist) to reveal my dream-conversations with celebs?

What I don't understand is why anyone who flies Ryanair is surprised when they are treated appallingly. Why should anyone be surprised when karma comes quickly? Or be surprised that they don't get what they don't pay for?

Take this granny, for instance:

27 March 2006
EXCLUSIVE: DISABLED GRANNY IS ABANDONED ON JET

A DISABLED gran was left abandoned on a holiday jet by its crew, cleaners and even the pilot.

Ellen Cummings was then ignored by staff who boarded the Ryanair plane to prepare for its next flight.

The 63-year-old paraplegic claimed one even barked at her: "Can't you get off, we're already 30 minutes late?"

Ellen was rescued only after her wheelchair was spotted in an inch of snow on the ground and workers finally brought specialist lifting equipment.

The furious pensioner, who claimed she was trapped for an hour, said: "I have never been so humiliated. It's a disgrace, no one should be treated like that."
[snip]
Ellen added: "They knew I was stranded but couldn't do anything." After she was rescued, she complained to Ryanair. But she said: "They didn't care and were very rude."
[snip]
Ryanair said: "We asked airfield services to investigate."

In 2004 the Mirror revealed the airline charged passengers £18 to hire a wheelchair.

It backed down but slapped a levy on all customers to cover wheelchair use.

victoria.ward@mirror.co.uk

Surely everyone knows about the wheelchair levy, the poor treatment of the visually impaired group recently and the way that Ryanair will not even give people a drink of water when they are stranded on their planes for two hours? Even those who didn't see the programme about how badly Ryanair treats and trains its staff (resulting in dangerous practice) probably heard about it from those who did. In addition, cheap flights are a major contributor to global warming. So we're back to this 'I'm alright Jack' mentality. 'I don't care if Ryanair shits on its staff and on disabled people. I don't care if I have a massive carbon footprint. I want a cheap flight, and that is the most important thing.'

Ryanair is a completely unethical company, run by a man for whom profit is the bottom line. He doesn't care about his customers, he doesn't care about the planet, he doesn't care about his staff. All he cares about is his own pay packet. Those who choose to line Michael O'Leary's pockets are either wilfully ignorant or as horrendously selfish as he is. They really aren't worth wasting sympathy on.

I was put onto this book by Purple Dragon, and it is well worth a read as a fast-paced thriller. However, it really reminds me of The Da Vinci Code, in that it is an excellent story, with an interesting premise ripped off from other people and really badly written, as though the main point of it is to sell the film rights. I'm pretty sure John Twelve Hawks in Dan Brown and only lives off the grid in the sense of not being real. The writing style is very similar - all those speeches, all the characters constantly explaining things to eachother. And the throwing in of other little things that try to give it extra esoteric interest - in the case of the Da Vinci Code it was the use of names and anagrams associated with the grail, in the Traveller there were lots of references to tarot cards - many of the scenes, similes and metaphors are from the the Rider-Waite deck.

Like TDVC, this book is going to be shocking only to those people who've never come across its central premise before. If you're unaware of the Illuminati conspiracy theories, David Icke, and especially if you think only those with something to hide should fear ID cards, then this book will be very unsettling. If you are a bit of a conspiracy theorist anyway, this is an interesting take on it.

I'll definitely be reading the rest of the trilogy, and I think it's going to be another fine little earner for Mr Brown.

I suppose Daily Mail types will be pleased that there's to be an increase in the threshold over the next four years. I think they're just being greedy.

Opponents of inheritance tax say that it is a 'double tax' - the dead person has already paid tax on their earnings. However, that person is now dead, so why should they care what happens to their money? You can't take it with you.

Inheritance tax redistributes wealth. Those it applies to can amply afford it - and they could always altuistically decide to redistribute their wealth prior to their death. A tax on rich mean people sounds like a great idea to me, and this is it.

I actually feel most sorry for the extremely privileged - those lords etc who lose the family stately home because they can't pay the inheritance tax without selling it. There's something romantically sad about it, a losing of tradition and stuff. But don't ask me to feel sorry for some middle class family in London who always intended to sell their parents' home and cash in on the huge (unearned) profits homeowners make.

At least there's been some comment in the media that the budget didn't mention the NHS at all. Unsurprising that the Leader-in-waiting should want to hide under his (private hospital) duvet and hope the problem will just go away.

From the Times

NHS sheds 2,000 jobs in a weekBy Sam Lister

Increased government funding has not prevented the downgrading of services to patients

TWO more hospitals last night joined the list of NHS trusts forced to cut services because of their debts, taking the number of job cuts to more than 2,000 in less than a week.

The Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, North London, and Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, southeast London, became the latest to announce cuts despite six years of unprecedented government funding for the NHS.

The Royal Free, which was praised by the Health Secretary last year for its work after the London bombings, said that about 480 posts will be lost under plans to achieve savings of £25 million in the next year. The trust said it would ensure that redundancies were kept to a minimum.

Hospital chiefs at Queen Mary’s also gave warning that 190 jobs may be lost in an attempt to reduce a predicted £13 million deficit.
[snip management's feeble excuses]

...Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at London Health Emergency, accused the Royal Free of trying to smuggle the news out on Budget day.

He said that the announcement helped to explain why Gordon Brown had “body-swerved the NHS question” in his speech. “Sacking nurses never looks good for the Government,” Mr Martin said. “These cuts will have a devastating impact [on] emergency planning in London.”

Andrew Lansley, the Tory health spokesman, said: “One year ago ministers were heralding NHS staff as the heroes who were delivering on waiting list targets. Today they are silent as the same NHS staff are threatened with redundancy. Faced with the failure of his billions to deliver corresponding improvements for patients, Gordon Brown and the Treasury have abandoned the NHS.”

[snip Department of Health robot parroting the usual Bliarite rubbish]

TIGHTENING UP

Hospital job cuts announced in last week:

Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, North London: 480

Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, Kent: 190

New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton: 300

University Hospital of North Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent: as many as 1,000

Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust: 200

On the Today programme some bloke was trying to jutsify the cuts by saying they were mostly temporary staff. What he failed to mention is that for the last 6 years at least, many nursing staff have been on temporary contracts. NHS managers realised in the 90s that nothing was safe, and constant changing and shilly-shallying around on the part of government could mean them losing income at any time. So whenever posts became vacant, the new staff employed would be on temporary contracts - usually for one or two years. That way there wouldn't be headlines when they were laid off at the end of their contracts. Some of these people on 'temporary' contracts may have worked for the organisation for years - having their contracts renewed as and when finances allowed.

I was fuming reading the latest physiotherapy magazine. In the face of all the redundancies the editor had the cheek to say that there could be a good side to it all - that physios could begin new and innovative services, putting the patient first. Where the hell does he think NHS physios have been putting the patient for the last 60 years?

NHS unions and management organisations should be saying enough is enough. Time to stop the gradual erosion of staff rights, time to stop all the 'modernisation' (change for the sake of being seen to do something - anything), time to scrap all the pointless targets. The NHS is huge. If the whole organisation refuses to go along with this government crap, the government will have no choice but to listen.

Nut all the employees have their own agendas. Those physiotherapists who are employed don't want to lose thier new pay rises. The managers know they are partly to blame because they are usually pretty clueless - not always their fault as they are made to manage hospitals and organisations that are far too large to run effectively, thanks to government policy for the last 25 years. So everyone just shuts up and makes the best of it.

Whenever a hospital is in trouble, the best staff are the first to leave. It's the same with the sinking NHS ship. The iceberg has struck; so when are NHS staff going to stop re-arranging the deck chairs?

So I was watching the budget, and instead of thinking of intelligent things to comment on in this blog, I spent my time trying to ogle David Cameron's bum. It would seem to be true that in the same way the devil has all the best music, the Tories have all the fanciable MPs. Oh, but then there's William Hague...

Can't think of any fanciable New Labour types though. Not even any slightly attractive ones. That's another way New Labour have failed us - less eye candy than under Thatcher.

When I was little, and my parents would whitter on like the Four Yorkshiremen about how tough it was in their day, and how they'd only have oranges for Christmas and so on, I used to think they were trying to make us feel sorry for them. Now I see that they were really feeling sorry for us. I feel the same about kids now.

Having more things just means you need more things to be happy. I was thinking about how I lived in some terrible flats and house shares (and squats). It was fine for me to do that, because at home we only had heating in the living room anyway. I was amazed when a girl in a student houseshare refused to turn off the heating at night when we were skint because, 'I've always lived in a heated house, and I'm not going to stop now.'

The difficulties first time buyers have in getting on the property ladder are because their expectations are so much higher than 'in my day' (yes, I have turned into my mother). They're not willing to buy in a dodgy area, or buy a wreck and slowly do it up. They're not willing to make furniture out of boxes until they can afford the real thing. They're not willing to live in a house with no sofa or bed. They've never had to, and they aren't going to start now.

When I was 16, my parents bought me a record player for Christmas. It was the best present I'd ever had. It was more than I thought we could afford, and my dad had a record player already, so it never crossed my mind they would buy me one, I didn't even ask for one as I didn't want them to feel bad about not getting me one. I couldn't believe my luck when I opened it up, there were tears and gushings like an Oscar acceptance speech. I've had far more expensive things bought for me since, but nothing has ever matched that. I want Little 'Un to feel that way one day.

And that is my excuse for not spending much cash on him!

There's an ongoing problem at Little 'Un's primary school with cars. This is a rural area, so some people definitely have no choice but to use their cars - the problem is that they all want to park right next to the school gates. To make matters worse, the school shares a site with a play group and a secondary school, and there is a T-Junction immediately before the gates. Letters to parents have had no effect - people still insist on parking right as near to the gates as possible - at any cost. On the pavement, double parked in the road, blocking driveways, you name it, these people will do it. It is really difficult for those with pushchairs and wheelchairs, as cars park over the drops in the pavement.

As a consequence of this, the road is full of children, pushchairs, wheelchairs, buggies, and so on, and this is a main bus route too. It's an accident waiting to happen.

I am going to suggest a new approach, since asking for consideration has failed. I'm calling it 'drivers beware'. If a person is dangerously parked, they should not be surprised if their car is damaged, by, say, a falling pedestrian, a pushchair or a wheelchair. Letters can go out to parents warning them of this. The onus should be on the driver to park his car in a place where such an accident is unlikely to occur.

But why are people so inconsiderate of others? There are plenty of other examples: people who park in disabled spaces, people who travel Ryanair, people who wear fur, people who buy battery eggs - I'm sure you can think of more.

Some of it is possibly thoughtlessness or ignorance, I suppose. Somewhere out there, they may possibly be a person who doesn't understand the consequences to the environment of cheap flights, the appalling way that Ryanair treats the disabled and its staff etc. There may be people who don't know how battery hens suffer, or understand how the fur trade causes suffering to animals. But how can anyone excuse parking in a disabled bay?

What that person is doing is saying, 'I know this bay is here to allow a disabled person to shop, but my convenience is far more important than that.' Where does that sense of entitlement come from?

Every action we take has implications and consequences for others, ourselves, and our planet. I'm not saying I get it right all the time (because there are often times I'll have it pointed out to me that I'm not), but the important thing to do is to *try* to make the right decision. To think about it.

Lots of people don't seem to give others a thought. It's more a case of 'what's good for me is all that matters.' Yet we are social animals, this isn't natural.

I really want someone who parks in disabled bays, or flies Ryanair, or wears fur to explain this to me, as I'm open to the suggestion that I've got these people wrong. Yet to me, they seem like Pete Burns, 'I've been given this coat, and I like it, and I'm going to wear it and I don't care what anyone thinks or how the animal suffered, because *I* am the most important thing in the Universe, and all that matters is my tiniest want.' (I'm paraphrasing here!)

Husband was ill over the weekend, a severe case of manflu, i.e. he was well enough to go to work, and for a little medicinal drink afterwards, but so ill he had to take to his bed for the rest of the weekend. He found that the easiest way to communicate his needs to me (I had a cold too) was to text his requirements to Tom Baker and get him to phone me with them. This became quite wearing, especially when the initial novelty had worn off.

But as a result of his phlegminess, I moved out of our bed and into our spare room/study/library/boxroom. Quite an upheaval as I had to unfold the sofabed, which then fills the room. So there are books all around the bed, and the computer at the bottom, and thank goodness I am supple or I'd not be blogging yet.

I can be quite claustrophobic, so I wasn't looking forward to sleeping here, but now, I don't want to go back! It is like sleeping in a little bookworm cubby-hole. Apparently there is a book shop on the Parisan Left Bank that has beds for impoverished writers. Here, I can pretend that I fulfil both (rather than merely the former) requirements.

Feng Shui has it that keeping loads of old books is bad for you. Well pants to that. I love it in here, and if I can find a way to make food and have a bucket emptied, I may decide never to leave.

I think the spare duvet has fleas though....

It's quite nauseating the way New Labour keep on trying to turn attention away from their sleaziness and onto the party funding system. Along with the Tories, they'd surely love it if there was public funding for political parties. Well I have a real problem with my money going to New Labour or the Tories, let alone the BNP (how could they be excluded from funding?). So I have a better idea.

Let's have a level playing field, and only allow political parties to be funded by individual membership fees. These fees could be set at a flat rate by parliament.

Of course, this would mean that parties would have vastly decreased funds. But I doubt many of us will miss Party Political Broadcasts and billboards and the like. They'll all have to cut their cloth and use things like cheaply built web sites, old fashioned political meetings, and leg-work to get their points across. They will become more reliant on volunteers to get their work done. Most of all, parties will become responsible to their members, and wouldn't dare do to them what New Labour did to its membership in voting in the Education Bill.

This would also hopefully increase participation in politics. If people wanted to be sure of their views being represented, they would have to join a party or volunteer their time. In doing so, they would shape politics from the grassroots. Parties that didn't respond to their membership would die. I'm thinking that this could only be a good thing, but I'm hard pushed to decide which one I'd currently like to see suffering its death throes first.

1) Spend loads of money training extra physiotherapists
2) Allow junior physiotherapist posts to be frozen or abolished due to lack of hospital funds
3) Sit back and watch with satisfaction as hoardes of physiotherapy graduates sign on or emigrate

North Staffordshire NHS Trust has announced 1,000 redundancies, including 15 consultants and 250 nurses. The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has cut 300 posts. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that other Trusts will follow.

Yet Patricia Hewitt has the gall to insist that patient care will be unaffected.

Presumably we are being asked to believe that all these people were just sitting on their arses doing nothing all day every day?

Now Trusts are being told to save money by doing more care 'in the community'. Community care was a Thatcher idea that was supposed to save money. It doesn't. It costs far more to care for people at home (staff have to travel between them, equipment cannot be shared etc) - unless you do it badly. Oh, I think I've spotted how this is going to work.....

As a prime piece of mutton, I really like Half Dead Sheep Nation. But I'm wondering if the name could be wrong.

Interest surges in trials despite patients' plight

Ian Sample and Jacqueline Maley
Saturday March 18, 2006

Medical groups are being inundated with people wanting to sign up for drug trials despite the disastrous tests at Northwick Park hospital that left two men fighting for their lives and four others seriously ill.

The Medical Research Council, a government-funded body that is running more than 350 trials of drugs for conditions as diverse as cancer and mental disorders, said there had been a surge of interest from people keen to take part in trials and inquiring about the payments volunteers can receive.
[snip]

Damian Gough of the website EnterTrials, which allows people to register for upcoming clinical trials said web traffic to the site had increased threefold.

Beforehand, he added, an average of 25 people a day used the site to sign up for trials, a number which has since leapt to 90 a day. "It's totally not what I expected. My initial reaction what that it was going to be detrimental to the industry as a whole," he said.[snip]

Lemming Nation, anyone?

From ManchesterOnline:

Schools to teach back-to-basics reading

PRIMARY schools will be required by law to teach children to read using a controversial back-to-basics method known as "synthetic phonics", the Government announced.

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said the statutory National Curriculum would be revised to make sure phonics was the "prime" teaching system used in reading lessons.
[snip]

Synthetic phonics involves blending individual letter sounds to form whole words, for example "s-t-r-e-e-t".

The Government's current literacy strategy recommends a mixture of methods, including understanding words from their context.

But while the national literacy strategy represents recommendations which schools can choose to ignore, in future teaching phonics will be a legal requirement.

Ms Kelly will say: "I am clear that synthetic phonics should be the first strategy in teaching all children to read.
[snip]

Ms Kelly said the Rose Review was "a clear road map" for teaching reading, based on the experience of teachers and experts who know what works best for children in the classroom.

I don't really understand why the government has a say on what is taught in schools. Aren't teachers in a slightly better position to decide?

Teachers are in a similar position to physiotherapists, I would have thought. I have my preferred method of treating people (craniosacral therapy and exercise). Other physios use either Cyriax or Maitland or other methods as their treatment of choice. What appears to matter most in patient outcome is the competence of the therapist, not the system used.

What would really upset the apple cart would be for government to say that all physios had to treat back pain by, for example, Maitland mobilisations. That would immediately turn some expert physios into beginners again, and deprive many patients of the excellent outcome they could otherwise have expected.

So far as reading goes, I would imagine that the competence of the teacher in their own preferred method(s) is more important than the particular method used. As an example, all of the children who went to my school at the time I did learned using ITA, a mega-weird phonics system that had its own letters. It was eventually discredited, but our teachers were very enthusiastic and motivated to use it, so we all came out reading fine.

Synthetic phonics seems to be the latest buzzword, but will it one day go the same way as ITA?

I've not been able to blog over the weekend, as my brain was full of snot and I couldn't think properly. Finally I understand why Ruth Kelly and Hazel Blears act the way they do.

So first it was Bush having a go at Gore for 'flip-flopping'. Then the poodle, ever heedful of its master, used the same tactic on David Cameron. And now this morning on the Radio 4 Today Programme, the presenter was harangueing some Tory boy on why hadn't he made up his mind what he thought about extended opening hours - he thought it was probably a good idea, but he wanted to wait until there was more data to go on before making up his mind.

I don't get what the problem is. 'Flip-flopping' is presumably believing one thing, and then changing your mind in the face of new information or changed circumstances. Reserving judgement until you have more information cannot be a bad thing, surely? It's not like anyone is going to die because the Tory Party doesn't know if extended drinking is a good or bad thing.

Here we are back in 1984. Having a change of heart isn't 'growing', or 'learning', or 'adapting', it is 'flip-flopping'. By altering the language, something that is probably commendable becomes a weakness. Strength is in making a decision and then sticking to it. Whatever.

In psychiatry, if someone persists in a belief in the face of all evidence, it is called a delusion, and is a serious sign of mental illness. In politics it is a virtue.

If someone never changes their mind, isn't there something wrong with that person? I cannot imagine what it would be like to have my views frozen somewhere around the age of 18. Thank Goddess I'm a flip-flopper or I'd still be a fundy Christian with an overdeveloped sense of of my own righteousness. Now we just need Blair and Bush to catch on.

New Labour have wrecked the NHS and now they are going to wreck schools too.

The new education bill promises that "external partners" will improve standards. This would be the equivalent of Public/Private initiatives in the NHS - and that has helped only the private investors, at huge cost to the NHS. New Labour is interested in one thing and one thing only - privatisation of everything. No wonder they had to ditch Clause 4.

Privatisation doesn't work. Are we any better off for having sold of the family jewels? Only if we became shareholders. We now spend vastly greater sums of our taxes in supporting the railways than we did when we owned them. The water companies piss out our money daily with impugnity, whilst imposing hosepipe bans and raising prices. The taxes we spend on the NHS are increasingly being spent on private firms treating the worried well.

So when our kids' schools are the property of McDonalds or Sony, will their education be any better?

And WTF does David Cameron think he's doing? He's very dashing, but even I won't be swayed by prettiness for too long. He's supposed to be the opposition, he's supposed to bring down the Labour Government. Stop fannying about and get on with it, man! You're a Conservative, we can accept total right-wing nastiness from you, especially if you bring down Bliar. Conservatives should feel free to support selection, and therefore to oppose the Education Bill, since Ruth Kelly insists that selection isn't an option. It's not too late, David, vaot against him next time and bring the bastard down.

Farthesthebrides commented on here recently that, "I thought the Thatcher era was unsurpassable in terms of the damage it did to the UK (especially Scotland), but the Blair era really takes the cake." That shocked me, because I remember the feeling of utter pointlessness and depression of the Thatcher era, I remember cheering when she was ousted, the sheer joy of the removal of a hideous dictator. I never thought I would feel like that again, and yet now I do. What makes it worse is that this is *Labour*. This is the party that was meant to save us, the party I joined in desperation after yet another Thatcher win. It's like a horrible recurring nightmare, and it's time someone woke us all up.

I got to read this book as Little Sis bought it. Basically, the answer is in the title and you don't need to remember anything else.

Excellent premise:

If he doesn't call, it's because he's just not that into you. Even if he lost your number, if he was really into you, he'd find a way to track you down.

If he won't leave his wife, it's not because of the children, he's JNTIY.

If he won't commit, it's not because he's scared, he's JNTIY.

I have to agree. My life changed when I stopped waiting for the phone to ring. He'll call back, and if he doesn't, he's JNTIY. I just wish I'd found out before I was 26.

Watching Richard and Judy last night, I saw those young kids who had started the campaign for animal testing. What a shame, I thought to myself, that they have no clue about the science.

The biggest thing wrong with animal testing is that it doesn't work. Then this morning we get this news:

Six men in intensive care after drug trial goes wrong
The Guardian

Six men were in intensive care in a north London hospital last night after a pharmaceutical company's trial went wrong. Regulatory authorities have suspended the drug trial and are investigating in collaboration with the police.

The six were healthy volunteers, paid to take part in the earliest stage of human testing of a potential new medicine for inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and leukaemia. The volunteers were needed to establish whether there were any side effects or obvious problems with the drug before it was tested on people who have the conditions.
[snip]

The drug company, the German firm Te Genero, had submitted the results from animal safety tests, as it must do under the regulations, to get permission to run a trial on human beings. There had been no irregularities in the animal tests, the MHRA said. Investigators at the site will be looking at whether human error played a part in the incident, whether the product was contaminated or something went wrong with its storage.
[snip]

The unit is run by the US company Parexel which contracts with drug companies to recruit patients and run trials all over the world. In a statement last night it said the volunteers had "an unexpected drug reaction" and that its staff had given them the right dosage.

The media is keen to downplay how animal tests may not have revealed the side effects a human would suffer. Yet even without this example (which may be down to other factors), the evidence that animals are poor substitutes for humans ('mice are not little men') is conclusive.

Thalidomide is the obvious example, but there are others. Vioxx is great at treating heart disease in rats, but had to be withdrawn in 2004 because it caused heart attacks and strokes in humans. HRT lowers the risk of heart disease in monkeys, but increases it in human women. Oral contraceptives thin the blood of rats and dogs, but increase the risk of clotting in humans. Phenacetin (a painkiller) was harmless to animals, but caused kidney damage in humans. Isoprenaline (for asthma) caused 4000 deaths in the 1960s, but even after the fact, the same results could not be reproduced in animals. Oxychinol (used in anti-diarrhoea drugs) was harmless to rats, cats, beagles and rabbits. Only after it had caused blindness and paralysis in humans was it found that it mildly affected monkeys, hens, cocks and mice in the same way. Believe me, I could go on. And on, and on, and on.....

Animal trials would have meant that penicillin would never have reached the human market as it is lethal to guinea pigs. Who knows how many effective cancer drugs have been lost because they are lethal to mice?

People assume that 'scientists' are altruistic, caring people who just want to benefit the human race. They would surely never test on an animal if it wasn't necessary? Yeah, right. The reality is that a test on an animal results in a journal paper. A test on ten different species gives you ten papers. If want to be a famous scientist, test on animals. In addition, published papers attract further funding, so if you want to be a rich scientist, then test on animals.

Then there is legislation. Even ethical and well-informed scientists have to test on animals if they want their drugs to be legalised. Yet even with this legislation, adverse drug reactions kill 10,000 people in the UK each year. Animal testing isn't working.

The greatest advocates of animal testing try to paint themselves as the rational, 'scientific' ones, and anti-vivisectionists as emotional and irrational. But when the science tells us that animal testing isn't working, who is being irrational and unscientific?

Maybe one day we'll have pioneering scientists like those in the 17th and 18th centuries who experiment on themselves (though there were still plenty who'd rather experiment on other). Until then, I would suggest the following:

1) Never take part in a clinical trial unless you are happy to test untested drugs - for in effect that is what you are doing.

2) Never take a 'new' medicine unless you are happy that the risk of taking part in a mass study of the drug outweighs the risks associated with your disease - again, you are taking part in a mass experiment.

3) Always make sure that any side effects of any drugs you take get reported.

4) Next time you see a 'scientist' defending animal testing, bear in mind he's not likely to talk real science. Whatever his reasons for supporting testing on animals, they won't be scientific ones.

I'm already disagreeing with myself about the rape post!

Why shouldn't men be more responsible? Why is it always women's fault? What about people who are fragile, mentally or emotionally? These are the sorts of women that certain men prey on.

Oh, I'm so indecisive sometimes. Is it any wonder I made so many 'mistakes'?

There was a lot of discussion about this campaign on BBC Breakfast this morning.

Sex consent campaign targets men

Radio advertisements warning men that having sex without consent could lead to a prison sentence have been launched by the Home Office.

The campaign, which will also use magazine adverts and posters, aims to reduce the number of sex assaults that occur when a woman is very drunk.

It comes amid low conviction rates for rape cases in England and Wales.

The government may also change the law to allow juries to decide whether a woman was too drunk to give consent.

The £500,000 campaign will be followed on 20 March by adverts in men's magazines, stickers on condom machines and posters in pub toilets.

They will say that unless a woman actively says "yes" to sex then men must assume the answer is "no".
[snip]

Rachel Mostyn of Cosmopolitan Magazine, which in January conducted a survey among its readers on their attitude to rape, said many respondents did not understand "the incredibly complicated consent issue".

"They have been in situations where they're out on a date, they then go back to someone's house for a coffee, things go on and then that person wants to have sex with them.

"They quite clearly say no but that person goes ahead anyway.

"Now, that's sex against their will, but they're still not sure whether that's rape or not."

She said she hoped the campaign would make men "take more responsibility".

Stephen Cooper, a campaigner against wrongful rape conviction, said that "steps should be taken by the man to say 'would you consent to sexual activity later on in the evening'?"

But if a woman was drunk, a man should not consider sleeping with her, he said.

"I think a lady is incapable of giving consent when she is drunk," he added.

According to Home Office figures, only 5.8% of reported rapes in 2004 resulted in a conviction.

Attitudes towards rape have also been highlighted as a problem.

Research by Amnesty International last November found that one third of people in the UK believed a woman was to blame