From Cradle To Grave: Do Not Pass Go: DEFINITELY Do Not Collect £50

From Cradle To Grave: Do Not Pass Go: DEFINITELY Do Not Collect £50

 

 

Some believe that Cameron & Co are attempting to turn back time to before the First World War. I don’t. I believe this Fascist Con-Dem Coalition, are attempting to return the working class of this Country to the time before the Black Death when employees were OWNED by their Employer. SLAVERY.

The MAGNA CARTER, that marvellous old document you learned about in history lessons at school, where you were told this was the first document that protected your Human Rights. Untrue, (unless you were being taught in a public school), because the Magna Carter says nothing about the rights of the working class, it is a document that records a reduction in the Crown’s power over the Peerage and the Landed Gentry

We of the working classes need healthy, well supported Trade Unions in this country. This is because, since the Labour Party: the party we founded to represent us: became “New Labour”, there has been no voice for the working class, putting our needs before those of the Rich and the Mega Rich, other than the voice of the Trade Unions.

Our government has declared war on the Trade Unions. The weak kneed Prime Minister with seriously flawed judgement: David Cameron: condemned teachers for striking last week. Yesterday he SACKED the minister whose policies motivated the Teacher’s to strike. So who was right in the first place, Cameron, Gove, or the people with the welfare of the kids as their first priority, the TEACHERS?

Camerons political judgement reached a new low when, after three weeks of saying unions were finished and how he will wipe them out IF he is re-elected, he has had to give way to their superior knowledge. This is why he and his fascist "chums" want to wipe away all power from the unions just like their hero Hitler did through taking away bit by bit throughout the 1930's.

Please ask yourself, if there were no Teachers Unions would you know the desperate state our primary schools are in. If their were no Health Unions would you know the extent to which Andrew Lansley and Jeremy Hunt have sold off the Health Service that was built with YOUR MONEY, and would you know that too few nurses means care of hospital patients has been Chronically Compromised.

If it were not for UNISON and Disability Rights Activists would you know that because of the policies of Duncan-Smith and the NEWLY PROMOTED Esther McVey people were killed because of the actions of ATOS, the agency whose cock ups were laughed at by Tories in the house of commons, and would you have been alerted to the way this country's vulnerable elderly are abused, bullied, and generally mistreated in what are laughingly called "Care Homes"

It will be down to you next May: When the Tories tell you that they will stop the unions delaying your holiday aircraft, what they mean is that they want to take away your right to be alerted, by industrial action, that your kids education has evolved into classroom torture, that people are suffering and dieing unnecessarily in hospitals, that those on low wages or unemployed are being starved and their children punished so the bankers could keep being paid bonuses, and that the elderly and the disabled are being left to die because, well because Fascists believe that people like me are an expendable drain on financial resources who they can no longer murder so they leave us to fight our own corner while they wash their hands of us.

There you have it. The NHS and Social Services were founded to provide help for the vulnerable "From Cradle To Grave". These services, already starved of resources, will be totally destroyed if the Tories are re-elected with their Fascist belief system that "If you can not afford your cradle, then you belong in a Grave.

An open letter to the **** (just joking) Jeremy Clarkson

An open letter to the **** (just joking) Jeremy Clarkson

From a mentally ill ex public service worker.

Dear bigot (just joking) Jeremy,

I wonder if it's because you grew up with the initials JC that you believe you have some sort of God-given right to mock, abuse, and denigrate people whose lives you do not understand. Sad as that would be, for surely it would mean that you are suffering from some sort of delusional mental illness, I think that would be preferable to the alternative, i.e. That you are a loudmouthed, bigoted, sociopath who is unable to walk in the shoes of others. (That's not an invitation to walk in mine, I can only afford to buy one pair at a time and I fear that your aura might distort them beyond the point where they are useful to me. (Just joking: obviously.)).

Before I get to the nitty-gritty I suppose I ought to come clean and say that I am not a fan of either you or your television programme. In the days when I did watch motoring programmes on the television it was because I wanted to know about the sort of motorcar that I could afford to buy, it was not to watch grown men having the sort of conversation about cars that any group of 13-year-olds might have while playing a game of Top Trumps in the playground. It's about that age, 13 to 15, most young people realise that threatening to kill people is a fairly stupid thing to do, and yet you, an adult, told the world this week that you would like to shoot people like me.

Have you ever had any psychological tests Jeremy, I'm not qualified to say such things - (though that's never stopped you has it) - but I'm wondering if you're suffering from some sort of delayed cognitive development (joking?).

Am I being unfair, would I be saying these things if I really knew you? (I suspect I would be, don't you?). But it is unfair when someone does something like that isn't it? And yet this week you have used, possibly abused, your privileged position as a public mouthpiece to insult, to abuse, and to (attempt, (I think it failed)) ridicule me and thousands like me.

I am a public service pensioner. I was retired "on health grounds" when my spine collapsed and I lost the ability to remove myself quickly from the vicinity of the most violent of the people I worked with and supported in your name.

When I was 40 years old I had moved from "industry" to "social work" for ethical reasons, I knew that I would earn nothing like the salary I could have earned in industry doing a job with a similar level of stresses and responsibility, but was told that would be compensated for when I retired, when, because of the not insubstantial contributions I would have made, I would receive a "good" pension.

(No one needed to explain to me, after all, it's common sense isn't it? that many public servants, police, firemen, ambulance staff, have an upward age limit on the time they could continue in their jobs. It's always been obvious to me that these folk would require a reasonable pension if they were not to be impoverished when they retired in their 50s.

That says nothing of the dangers these folk face in your name, the dangers faced by the three examples I name above are self evident but teachers are attacked by pupils and the parents of those pupils, nurses and doctors by their patients, and social workers and probation officers, and the low paid office workers who make it possible for these people to do their job efficiently, are attacked frequently.).

The only time I have ever taken industrial action was in 1989 when we social workers discovered that the secretaries who were typing our court reports and our notes were taking home less money than the "impoverished" people we were employed to act on behalf of. The media and right wing politicians of that time, just like their counterparts this week, used their disproportionate control over written and televised media in an attempt to ridicule the strikers, by attempting to minimise the statistics regarding the number of people taking direct action, and to obscure the real purpose of our action by repeatedly quoting examples of the salaries of the most senior social work staff to drown out valid union representation of the least well-paid of its members. (Incidentally, those "High Earning", senior members of staff were not striking, they were staffing the telephones and emergency services so that social service users were not disadvantaged). Interesting isn't it that here we are over 20 years later listening to the same arguments from both sides (On the Government side from some of the same people!).

Now Jeremy, what I am in reasonably unique position to know is that those striking public service workers have contributed a great deal more to their pension schemes in the past than those in the private sector did. This is what the argument this week (this year) has been about, not what might happen in the future but what will happen to the money that these workers have, in effect, put by to support them when they retire. If this government were to say to you that they are going to retrospectively tax you on any savings you have made since you began work I suspect you might have some sort of opinion about that.

This week the coalition government has been laughably "talking up" the miniscule new tax they are applying to banks and bankers, but there is no talk of this being applied retrospectively, back to the time when banks first began making extortionate profits.

Know what Jeremy, I suspect that (like the true child of Thatcher you are) you do not like the term "unfair", I suspect you would like to see people with a problem get off of their arses and do something about it. Well Jeremy, that is what the public sector workers did this week, in accordance with "Laws" laid down by Thatcher's Government, yet you, and the right wing politicians who think the way you do, attempted to lampoon them for doing it. I realise that you were probably "Only Joking" but, I think you should know that the 2 million strikers and millions like me who supported their action, did not find any of it very funny.

The other thing I do not find funny is that my public sector pension, which you are all so envious of, is worth less than £100 a week to me. (And I'm not joking).
 

And now to your second "funny" remark of this week, the one during which you claimed that people who commit suicide by throwing themselves under trains are being selfish.

The sad thing about this for me is that it is different from "funny?" remarks you made about shooting strikers. Those remarks, along with your previous "humorous" soliloquies regarding the "Green" movement; and those you make to reinforce the gender stereotypes which some of us have been working as long as you have lived to remove; can be put down as the ranting of an uninformed bigot. Here my concern is that unlike those occasions, you appeared to have some knowledge of the subject you sought to ridicule. After all, in one of your interviews you made it clear that you are aware that those who choose to die in this way have a very high success rate.

You might like to know that among those of us who fight daily against the desire to end our own lives it is well known that those who have "had enough" will jump, (from bridges, buildings, or under trains), or, they will shoot or hang themselves (and my contempt of you is even greater because you chose to value being able to drive your car through traffic free London above the loss of human life during a week when the family of Gary Speed have had to begin the journey of coming to terms with his choosing to end his life in that way.).

When, like me, you have sat in waiting rooms or on wards full of people who really do see, and are genuinely terrified of, little green men, other people who desperately want to take "that way" out of a life haunted by televisions that speak to them, or hearing voices which constantly tell them to harm themselves or those they love, or hallucinations which play out before them scenes far more horrific than the most talented creators of horror films can imagine. Once you have got to know those people you will be entitled to begin to think you might have a right to apply cruel labels to us, to my people, and to my friends, the most courageous people I know.

In a society that uses the word "depressed" to describe the feeling when one loses a mobile phone or is upset by a remark made by another, it is easy to forget that Clinical Depression, and Bipolar Disorder are terminal illnesses, terminal because they cannot be cured and more often than not will end with the premature death of the person with the illness. (The impact of the second illness on the sufferer and those closest to them is further discounted by the way the term "Manic" has been so distorted through common, inappropriate, media usage).

The strategy used by many sufferers of mental illness, and the professionals who treat them and care for them, is to combat their wish to be dead through invoking and visualising thoughts of how their deaths will affect those who love and care for them. Wife's, Husband's, Children, Grandchildren, Partner's, Boyfriend's, Girlfriend's, the Cat, and the Dog, the feelings of all of these take on massive significance when the thought patterns of those with mental illness become dominated by the wish to die. Many of us will have been using these images and thoughts for the benefit of others for years, even though they keep us trapped in an endless cycle of fear, anxiety, loneliness and alienation.

For many of us our first thoughts on waking are occupied with deciding strategies we will employ that day to hide our innermost thoughts and feelings from those we love so they do not become worried or distressed about, or by, us.

Many of us travel to work praying that this will not be the day when something happens to cause enough extra stress for us to betray the torment in our heads. For some of us that means running through every possible eventuality of the coming day so that we are not "caught out" and do not betray our "true" self. This of course means arriving at work already mentally exhausted and travelling through the rest of the day on automatic pilot.

The same process begins on the journey home in an attempt to predict situations or actions by us, which cause worry or sadness for those we live with. While we sit and watch the TV with you we are constantly monitoring the affect of "our selves" on you while trying to grasp enough of the TV programme to answer you if you ask about it. (We are the best multitaskers in the world and I can tell you, because I've done both, it's a lot more tiring than driving very fast a car designed for that purpose).

Tomorrow begins the moment we get into bed tonight, when, instead of being able to celebrate the achievements of getting through the day just passed, we are compelled to begin plotting how we must be from the time we wake in the morning. A process that might take several hours, meaning that by the time we sleep, tomorrow is already here and we wake troubled, and un-refreshed, as the cycle described above inevitably re-occurs.

Selfish Jeremy, I don't think so, most of us who finally escape the cycle require more real courage to do so than you need to drive across a traffic filled London. We are often glad for a colleague who has managed to find that window of escape from the cycle, and those whose windows of opportunity lead onto a railway platform, onto the roof of the building, or onto a bridge, deserve the most respect because they chose a route from which they knew there was not the remotest possibility of return. These are often those of us whose previous escape attempts had been derided as "a cry for help" or "acting out".

When "our" day comes and the fog clears from our eyes, the voices in our heads are quietened, and our hallucinations are of kindly persons taking our hands and leading us to some calm and peaceful place, it will not be selfishness that drives us forward, quite the opposite in fact, for many of us it will be because prior to these wonderful things happening we have finally convinced ourselves that the best thing we could do for those we love the most: Wives, Husbands, Children, Grandchildren, Partners, Boyfriends, Girlfriends, the cat and the dog: is to save them from the future fears, and worries, and from the sadness and pain that we know we will continue to bring into their lives.

That's about it really Jeremy. I don't really expect any of this to change what you might do or say in the future. I, like many others, watched in disbelief as you and your playground pals vandalised and ruined the garden of Steve Redgrave in the name of "good television" and "charity" a few years ago, and we realised on that day what a massive Kant you are. Interestingly two other modern day massive Kant's; named Cameron and Johnson; are also very skilled at obscuring and minimising acts of vandalism perpetrated by themselves while spreading callous and damaging gossip about those whose lives they have made no attempt to understand.

In my opening paragraph I advocated that you should walk in the shoes of others before making condemnatory statements about them. I've changed that view. While placing your words of this week under greater scrutiny I've come to the conclusion that I do not want to subject my vulnerable and sensitive friends and colleagues to your adolescent, unfeeling rhetoric.

I would still like you to call them together before you next pass ill informed, right wing propaganda led judgements of them. I would still like you to ask them to remove their shoes, but, rather than placing those shoes on your feet, I suggest you place them between your lips and hold them there until the desire to pontificate in the uneducated, ill informed, manner of a bigot, leaves you.

 

In Memorium: 07-07-2005

I wrote these at the time of the Terrorist attacks. Please read them and reflect tomorrow.

07/07/2005

Someone's Father, someone's Mother, someone's Sister, and someone's brother, won't come home tonight.

Someone's Boss, someone's workmate, someone's friend and someone's lover, won't come home tonight.

Someone somewhere forever haunted, by harsh words unresolved,

Someone's somewhere lost in sorrow, some young and some old,

Someone somewhere lost a child, life story not yet written

Someone somewhere forgot goodbyes, now that won't be forgotten

Someone somewhere cooked a meal that never will be eaten

Someone's playstation shows a score that never will be beaten

Someone has a "Baby Gro" that will never be worn

Someone rehearsed wedding vows that never will be sworn

Someone very talented, now never will find fame

Someone might have saved the world, now we wont know that name

Someone somewhere who used to visit will never again drop by

Someone's somewhere with stomachs churning ask the question "Why?"

 

Someone's Daughter, someone's Son, someone's Dad, someone's Mum, won't come home tonight

Someone's soul mate, someone's Gran, someone's woman, someone's man, won't come home tonight

Or ever again.

© Bri 07/07/2005 In Memorium

Pin Drop: 14/07/2005: 12.01 P.M.

Those we pay to protect us, climbed in tanks and armoured cars that day,

While you, the unsung heroes; set out as usual, for your work or play.

Your bravery unrecorded, you negotiated the minefield of everyday life,

And the obstacle course of relationships, Someone’s Husband, Someone’s Wife.

Someone’s Partner, Someone’s Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Friend,

Just the ordinary folk who live next door, and on whom we all depend,

To heal us, teach us, serve us: to sell us holidays, food and clothes.

Invisible, unknown, to all but your closest, when on that day you chose,

as you had on every day before, despite the terrorist threat,

to leave your homes and keep society alive. We are now forever in your debt.

You are the true martyrs, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh,

West Indian, African, British: Bengali, Turk and Greek

You had no tank to protect you: you fought our battle by train and by bus

And today we stood and remembered you all;

murdered by bombs intended for us.

And you could have heard a pin drop.

© Bri 2005

2009 Budget

Reap what you sow.

As someone with both physical and mental disability I find it somewhat enjoyable to watch those who don't want me living next door, and begrudge benefits that allow me £30 a week for food, squirming about this budget.

As these closet tories have become more and more well off over the past 10 years people like me have seen our medical and social facilities reduced and have been hounded and made to feel guilty for things beyond our control such as the fact that medically qualified people tell us we should not work.

So what if the greedy have been asked to share a mouthful of their sandwich with those who are less well off.

It's about bloody time!!!

Thought of the day

Do you remember back in March when this "Socialist" government was patting itself on the back for stealing the Conservatives plan to force the feeble, the mad, and the sick, back to work regardless of what a persons doctor might think of the idea.
I can't help thinking it might be worth reviewing this from time to time now that the "Able Bodied" are losing their jobs as quickly as they did in the late Seventies and early Eighties, (when Thatchers government decided that many of the unemployed were actually "Sick" and got their doctors to sign them off. What a generous act that was, and I'm sure the fact that those treated in that way then vanished from the unemployment figures had nothing to do with it).
I digress, I think it might be worth watching this space to see how often we hear about the phony, work shy, sick people now, and how many of us will actually be offered employment when there are three or four A/B's going for the same job.

The Budget: An open letter to James Purnell M.P.

Wow that budget made me so mad again. I'm hoping the Guardian will print this but it might be too much of a personal rant.

At the same time as he was announcing measures to reduce child poverty for 1.7 million children, James Purnell announced that all 2.7 million Incapacity Benefit Claimants will be required “to seek work and have a tough medical assessment”.
Ignoring the fact that every criticism of the administration of this benefit implies criticism of the medical professionals who deem claimants to be unfit for work, Purnell proudly claims to have “shot a Tory Fox” through this action.
Doesn’t Purnell know that Fox Hunting is now illegal? That it is considered cruel and something that amounts to the persecution and bullying of a smaller, weaker, defenceless species.
The Tories are the recognised national experts at such bullying of the weak, the Labour Party was once known for being the opposite of that.
2.7 million votes are not many to lose I guess. Almost a quarter of those are all ready trapped in the Mental Health labyrinth, the least vote catching and the most underfunded and incohesive of both Medical and Social Services. All Incapacity Benefit Claimants, while not begrudging the aid given to others, will have been disappointed at yet another budget that has failed to recognise or seek to alleviate the relative poverty in which many of them live.
I am one such claimant. I am 58 years old and was obliged to give up work four years ago (having refused to do so when urged by Specialists and G.P’s six years earlier). I once had savings but I was obliged to use these up before being able to claim any help beyond the £80 a week invalidity benefit. I also receive Disability Living Allowance but this is totally consumed by running a car, something I am obliged to do because my doctors recommend I should not use public transport. (Being forced to stand in a swaying bus or train carriage could cause me paralysis). The cost of Taxi fares for Hospital appointments etc. would amount to more than the cost of the car.
I also receive a small Occupational Pension which, because I refuse to become homeless, is totally consumed by my mortgage interest. It was not until my savings were exhausted and I had lived solely on benefits for six months that I was able to access help with my mortgage. If I had not been a home owner my rent would have been paid from the moment my savings dropped to a certain level but, because I wish to retain my independence wherever I can, I was obliged to impoverish myself before help, which amounts to approximately 25% of my mortgage interest was available to me. All of this means that I am no longer buying my home, simply “renting” it from the building society. When my mortgage completion date is reached I will be forced to sell and through this act loose my entitled to some of my assistance until any profit I receive is exhausted and I am forced to join on the back of the benefits Que once again. This help with my mortgage interest is under permanent review and is reduced by the equivalent amount every time I receive a small increase in my pension or my other benefits.
I am no longer expected to pay Council Tax, but even with this one clear “benefit”, once I have paid my utility bills I have approximately £11 pound a week for food, toiletries, cleaning products etc.
I am not seeking pity here. Had I not been labelled a trophy “fox” by Mr Purnell you would still be unaware of my existence. Today I feel obliged to make people aware that, while there might be some who “choose” to live on benefits, the majority of us, and I can include here ALL those I have met who live with Mental Illness, do not “choose” to live in this way. Would you “Choose” to live like this?
So how did I end up here? A scavenging fox. Surely a drug user or alcohol abuser. If you will bear with me I will relate my story, which, in common with what is written above, is not untypical.
Possibly because my childhood was spent in poverty I have suffered from depression since I was seventeen years old (possibly younger if you count childhood “unhappiness”). While ever-present my depression worsens about every six years and requires some level of medical intervention. It’s a bit like bi-polar disorder but I don’t experience the manic highs, just the lows. I have never allowed this illness to define me. In spite of it, and sometimes because of it, I worked my way from manual work in my teens, through retail work in my twenties, computer related work for most of my thirties and then a Social Work Qualification, working with Children and Families until, in my late forties the events described below led to the first medical recommendation that I should give up work. Reluctant to do this but unable to continue in Social Work, I trained for, and then became an Adult Education Lecturer until the events below rendered me unemployable.
Definitely because my childhood poverty my spine began to disintegrate ten years ago because of a condition similar to Osteoperosis. Since then I am never out of pain, either in my back or, what is known as “referred pain” in my legs, and sometimes both. An operation carries the risk of paralysis so is considered inadvisable until paralysis occurs “naturally”. Pain killers reduce, but cannot remove the pain. Occasionally another part of the spine crumbles. One day one such event will leave me unable to walk but so far specialists have kept me on my feet by administering steroid injections into the spine. I have learned this week, following my latest relapse, that the risks of injecting are now so great that the option no longer exists and increasing doses of pain killers are my future until such time as paralysis occurs.
In 2002, while still lecturing, I suffered a major relapse. I have never been able to purchase medical insurance because of my depression. Faced with year long waiting lists I used £2.500 of my own savings to get myself back to work in three months, still not much evidence of lead swinging or benefit scrounging is there Mr Purnell.
Although I had fought the extent to which the back pain impacted on my depression for six years, in 1994, following the death of my Father, the two combined to bring me to a standstill. I suffered an extreme Mental Breakdown that led to me compulsorily attending a Psychiatric Day Hospital for 15 months. I now had to listen to recommendations from both Psychiatrists and those involved with my “Back Pain” that I should not consider a return to work. I guessed I was pretty much uninsurable by any employer since then.
As a consequence of my more sedentary lifestyle I have now contracted diabetes and am also treated for Hypertension and High Cholesterol levels.
Here I sit Mr Purnell, not just a benefit scavenging fox but a wounded benefit scavenging fox. Interesting that you chose that imagery, didn’t the Nazi’s include film of hoards of rats in films supporting their de-humanisation of the Jews? The Nazi solution to people like me was the same as that they used with the Jews. I guess leaving us to starve, contract hypothermia, or become so depressed that we kill ourselves is cheaper even than that “final solution”, no wonder the Tories thought of it first. Isn’t it your job to provide an alternative to that sort of thinking?
So we wait Mr Purnell. Wounded foxes. Those least able to avoid the hunt. So conditioned to being victims of the benefit system, that most of us will not even react when you carry out your bullying purge to see if you can catch one or two of us out. Over the past thirty years we have watched various governments remove most of our hospitals, reduce, until they are mostly ineffective, the numbers of Social Workers who help us, and the numbers of social provisions that once offered us Sanctuary. Dehumanised and disenfranchised to such an extent that no one bats an eyelid when you change the rules so that you can lock us up rather than support us in our homes as you do other groups of people in need.
As a life long socialist I find myself feeling like the scapegoated victim of family abuse. I do not want you, or your colleagues to go away but I do want you to stop bullying me. Sadly, I realise that is unlikely to happen so long as you run with the hunt rather than with the foxes.

Bomb Carrying Doctors! Why the Surprise?

I can never understand why the public are taken aback whenever a doctor commits a crime. The Doctors who carried out experiments on living Men, Women, and Children, for the Nazi’s in Second World War Concentration Camps had signed the Hippocratic Oath, Dr’s Crippen and Shipman had signed the Hippocratic Oath, GP’s who are struck off each year for sexually abusing female patients have signed the oath.

Why does the public expect Men and Women who carry out that profession to be somehow saintly and more above reproach than say a plasterer or a bus driver? Members of the Medical Professions are numerically over represented in national statistics regarding both Alcohol and Drug Abuse, not surprising given some of the things they see and hear, and possibly a sign that members of the profession are more prone to human failings than the rest of us.

During my own experience of working alongside Doctors as part of multi-agency teams for protecting children or the mentally ill I observed many things that proved just how “mortal” these “saints” actually are. I found:
1: That in a multi-disciplinary arena the “Doctor” always appointed him or her self as the leader.
2: Along with the above not being prepared to listen to any alternative to their own opinion.
3: Judging families (particularly within hospital) against a white, Christian, middle class norm.
4: GP’s prepared to pass concerns to Social Workers but playing those concerns down when on oath in court, or worse, denying that they were concerned at all.
5:Imposing his or her “ideals” on an unquestioning public, it seems that once a week now we are informed that some foodstuff or liquid that has been enjoyed across generations is bad for us.

This last point is well reflected in the way smoking and smokers have been persecuted over the past few years.

First, the revelation that smoking is dangerous, there is good evidence and those who want to give up or not start do so: next, the attack on passive smoking, the evidence of which has been greatly exaggerated, is used to alter our social life and our culture forever: and: finally: within two days of the new smoking law coming into being, we are hearing that they want to stop us smoking in our own cars. Now watch out sheep, if you let them win that they will be demanding the removal of radios, CD players, fluffy dice, and everything else that they can say “distracts”, until they have robbed us all of our individuality.

If you detect some anger creeping in here, you are right. The reason is a headline in the Observer newspaper yesterday. I will tell you what it was about in a second but first let me give some background.

Throughout my Social Work and lecturing roles, I was on multi-disciplinary teams looking at the ways the statutory agencies work together. An ever recurring question was the massive increase in the numbers of children, mainly boys, being diagnosed with “Aspurgers Syndrome” and Attention Deficit Disorder, both of which have been described as being on the Autistic Spectrum.

“Where have these things come from?” was the question from middle aged lay people like me to the medics, these things did not exist when we were kids.

Reasons from Poor Parenting to diet were presented by the medics who shouted down, often seeking to humiliate those like me who asked about the evidence from elsewhere linking these increases to the MMR injection. We were told this was rubbish by doctors who, not for the first or last time in my experience, set out to ridicule both the doctors who had collected the data, and those in the room seeking clarification.

I was not prepared to walk away from this issue. As someone who lost a brother to whooping cough before the injections existed, and saw multi-disabled newborn affected by Rubella whilst I was working at the hospital, I always agreed with the need to protect children from these illnesses. I was not however prepared to back down and deny or omit my experience that the increase in conditions on the Autistic Spectrum was in direct proportion to the number “guilt” messages being laid on mothers who did not have their children injected, that is to say that as the number of injected Children grew, so did the instances of Autism.

In meetings, doctors ridiculed me, and as a teacher I was verbally “attacked” by teachers from medical backgrounds because I asked a class to research and consider this evidence from an ethical perspective.

Anyway, front page headline on yesterdays Observer “NEW HEALTH FEARS OVER BIG SURGE IN AUTISM: Experts “concerned by dramatic rise: Questions over triple jab for children.

I guess I do not need to tell you that I am not surprised.

Luv Bri.