Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

As far as I know a core tenet of all religions can be distilled into "Be nice to each other". There may be boxsets of guff on top of that, but it seems to be the gist.

I lose all interests in religion on the sixth word. By all means, if you need a sky fairy to tell you to be nice to your fellow humans instead of just knowing to do it on your own bat then go ahead. But it does seem a bit odd, and I do judge you for it. Bigly bigly.

All of which being said, I have never met anyone who said they are only nice to people because their religion says so ... (which then begs teh question what's the point ????)

where the Communists encouraged conspiracy theories about external enemies as a distraction.
The trouble is public trust is thin on the ground, and it's no good politicians just bemoaning that, they have to earn it. I've just bumped into someone spreading enough conspiracy stuff to make me wonder if some is being spread deliberately to stop us asking reasonable questions. One can overthink too.

I've just bumped into someone spreading enough conspiracy stuff to make me wonder if some is being spread deliberately to stop us asking reasonable questions. One can overthink too.

Was this not basically what Vote Leave did? Doesn't sound far fetched to me.

Good point. At least they were out in the open.

Emily
on my FB a chap said that I should wear a copper bracelet as that protects against MRSA
I pointed out to him that MRSA is to COVID
what I am to seaweed

Pepperwort
Creating internal division is the best way to stop people looking outside
which is why the libertarian right invented identity politics

Peoples front of Judea for the gender woke brigade

Cross posted BCF I was shocked to see notices in our hospital warning people with measles symptoms not to present at A&E. Turns out there was a measles outbreak focused on three schools, two religious (and one boys’ school run by undercover conservative christian evangelicals, the Headmaster moonlights as a preacher, you can find his sermons online advocating that women should submit to men 😏). My DDs commented that no pupils should be allowed in school if not vaccinated.

Details of the outbreak here www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/health/measles-outbreak-london-vaccine-school-westminster-fulham-chelsea-a8933441.html%3famp

Maybe the library angel is alive and well. I just flicked from this thread and saw this beautiful exchange ...

Why does everything have to be a bloody conspiracy ?

Because very few people are telling the truth

emily
You can thank Michael Gove ( and his advisor Dominic Cummings ) for that one
limiting LEA involvement and oversight in schools
broke the public health link

pattern here

@ListeningQuietly there is a really good recipe for marinated courgettes in the current Co-op little free food magazine

frumpety
Be careful what you wish for

when Brexit is settled and we have our mass meet up,
you buggers are ALL getting courgette and rhubarb preserves

Re the vaccination; I would be interested to see how it was phrased and at what point in the crisis it was carried out. At the point where Trump was advocating drinking bleach? When Johnson had it and was in hospital after shaking hands in hospitals? I've said often enough that to work with people's health you need their trust, which is one thing our leaders have squandered at any opportunity as the behavioural scientists well know If it was rephrased leaving out govt or pushing (as in making it compulsory) a different opinion might be reached as we are well aware from YouGov.

I did my Ethics and Law module on vaccination and got 85%. Part of the issue (after Facebook and false info - which is the main driver) is MC getting advice from holistic therapists and paying for the privilege - largely because it makes them feel it is somehow "better" than NHS. Trust is therefore higher but with zero reasoning as you don't need any medical training or expert certification to mash up some dandelions and tell someone they cure cancer for a sum. But it is legal and not regulated which I believe is the next step to draw them into line and have accountability for any epidemics. To add some humour to my point:

@Emilyontmoor sadly those kids are exactly the ones who desperately need to be in main stream education...

The trouble with trust is that people who are desperate and in need give it away freely if they are told that it will help their problem. I've witnessed this first hand with my sick friend here who has given money to the local BodyWell "clinic" who have done exactly what they did to me 7 years ago when they first opened:

1. Fill in info form on arrival inc [company name redacted] code (how I heard about them and another part to the puzzle)
2. Told I would be having an X-ray (! It was not a real x-ray)
3. Given some guff pseudo-biology using phrases I had NEVER heard of (alarm bells going at this point)
4. Given a massage where lots of impressive clicks were heard
5. Told to come back next week

Next week:

1. "X-ray" showed them my spine was a Z shape (strangely everyone i've met since who has been there has this terrifying deformity)
2. Reasons given as to why (sitting at a desk mainly, as everyone does at some point)

3.Will need extensive massaging using their own technique going on many months (makes them sound specialist)

1. Another clicking massage with the masseur commenting on how tense the neck area in particular was - what a surprise they "knew" what the x-ray had just said! (reinforcement and trust gaining)

My poor friend was impressed and I had to tell her I had the exact same x-ray and I wasn't convinced, but if it was helping then to continue (pain relief you take where you can get - placebo therapies can be just as useful).

IMO [company name redacted] and other's selling health services and any practice calling itself a clinic and espousing to be medical in any way connected to physical health should be regulated.

Without Googling who has heard of "Hitchens Razor" ?

(It's my "today, I learned that ...." fact).

From my experience ways to beat Cancer; medical treatment, luck

Ways not to beat Cancer;

Giving up cheese sandwiches. I am proof that if you carry on eating cheese sandwiches after a Breast Cancer diagnosis you will not die. I did and I didn’t whatever Jane Plant said

Squirting coffee up your bum

Reiki healing from 10000 miles away

An extreme plant based or anything other based diet

Rejigging something or other with a strange machine.

Drips containing vast amounts of vitamins for you to piss yellow the next day

Becoming a “cancer maverick” and rejecting medical advice

I could go on but it’s a absolute pit of snakelike salesmen out there, and no doubt they are on the COVID bandwagon too....

And don’t get me on the tyranny of positivity and warlike theoretic. Nobody dies from Cancer because they weren’t positive or didn’t fight hard enough. They were just really unlucky

Emily my mum had pancreatic and did actually say to me "I'm not going to fight this bastard thing by going through radiation for the last few weeks of my life" which at the time (I was early 20's) I found angrily defeatist. Took me years to realise that not having chemo and "fighting it" wasn't why she only had a few weeks and it all felt so sudden; it wouldn't have made any difference at all other than make her miserable. I get it now. Maybe the wisdom of this comes with experience? Although now I think about it people I know who have survived do seem to put it down to "fighting it"...

emily
Do NOT get me started....🤬
I've got a label maker to play with so I'm happy for now 😌
dgr do tell!

Pancreatic is the worst
you cannot "fight" it
you can get good treatment
and be lucky
but you will die within 5 years
hopefully not in too much pain

and it winds me up massively that pain clinics have been shut down due to covid

Isn't Hitchens where someone says "5G causes your bum to come up through your head and tiny bugs to drop from the sky into your anus" and the person they say it to says "Only if you have a blue car on a Wendesday".

I.e you can counter bollocks with bollocks because the first can't be proven anyway. Or something more concise

The end of covid will allow us to meet friends near and far

Yes Listening, as she said she was "riddled with it" so by the time they figured out why she was smelling non-existent drains and having auditory hallucinations it had got through the lymph to the brain and breast too. She had 5 weeks and I missed the last mothers day because we had a fight and my events work had me flying over the world so I never really got to say goodbye. She was mewling like a baby when I saw her next and on a lot of morphine. I spent 3 days bedside wetting her tongue hoping she might have a moment of lucidity. She didn't. It was pretty tough tbh, even though we didn't always see eye to eye. Anyone going through that without pain relief must be even more horrific and I can't even begin to imagine.

My DM was Dx'd with breast cancer in 1998. She immediately told her consultant it was a double mastectomy or nothing, against his strongest protestations (my DB had to go with her to get the point across).

The next 15 years we were treated to an ever growing list of all the funerals she'd been to of the people that had been in her support group that had tried chemo and radio therapy first.

But then she'd see her aunt die horribly of it and knew the familial links.

It's cruelly ironic that the same links condemned her to a terrible (albeit relatively quick) death with dementia .

DGR a few years after mum died I found her bio mother, who lived surprisingly close to where I am now. She also had dementia and kept insisting she had had 4 girls, not 3. Until I popped up they assumed she was mistakenly talking about one of my mum's sisters daughters, who they gave the same name as my mum! Poor woman must have been thinking, but I DID!

So yes, I've got that hereditary gem to look forward to as well. It's actually my biggest fear, especially living alone, to the point I've already explained to dd what it is and how upsetting it can be for families. I'm hopeful euthanasia will be legal by then but I don't want it to be a shock to her if not, or heaven forfend, if I get it young.