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June 12, 2004

A rollercoaster week ....

This week has been an interesting one in many respects. The most public aspect has certainly been the European election and the plethora of local government elections which have evidently given our Illustriuos Leader a bit of a hammering. Losing over 400 seats in local government may not sound like much of a problem, but bear in mind that this removes his key workers from positions in which they can manipulate the local budgets to gerrymander votes for him in the General Election which should follow next year. Even the attempt to gerrymander the postal voting and the revelation that The Party issued a handbook, which included instructions on how to influence voters and not to identify themselves as Labour, has now been exposed. The Party stand revealed as liars, cheats, crooks, and blatant frauds. Let us hope that fraud charges follow - but somehow I doubt it - Tone's cronies will smooth it all out with some more fraudulent "spin".

The week has also seen the death and burial of possibly the last "gentleman" in politics, Ronald Reagan. He was a natural Statesman, unlike his successors in all countries, but particularly this one, who are simply poseurs. The late President Reagan was a modest man who believed passionately in doing what was right, and it is he more than anyone who brought the Cold War to an end, and the downfall of the Communist regimes who at least were open about their intention to retain power and to suppress all dissent. Unlike Mr Blair and the rest of his so-called democratic party. We will certainly be the poorer for the passing of a great and compassionate man, quite possibly the last of his breed.

A third and perhaps less well noticed event this week has been the inquiry into the professional conduct of a certain eminent paediatrician whose deeply flawed and totally unsupported evidence has been responsible for the imprisonment of a large number of women whose children died apparently of SIDS - Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The Professor has spent a lifetime in treating children and has specialised in the treatment of children who have been abused. This evidently now qualifies him to diagnose abuse in children from TV reports and to file abuse charges against parents who have already had their families torn apart by similar charges made by another eminent paediatrician now also under investigation. In both cases it seems that these doctors are so convinced of their own infallibility that they do not need any second opinion - unless of course, it is from someone who agrees with every word they say.

It is these huge egos that have imposed upon every parent the threat of immediate police and social worker intervention to tear their families apart and in many cases destroy one or both parents for quite simple and normal childhood accidents. Once these heavyweight egos weigh in, the parent and the child become simple pawns in a huge game of chess, with social services scurrying about fabricating and destroying evidence where the facts don't fit the theory and the emminent medics inflating their egos and their reputations at the expense of both commonsense and compassion.

In the latest case to be investigated, the husband of a woman already in jail for the "murder" of her two children was accused by another "expert" of murder - on the strength of an interview on television in which he mentioned that his infant son had suffered an unexplained nose bleed! Not satisfied with having already destroyed the wife, this monumental egotist set out to try and destroy the husband - with not a shred of medical evidence to support his charge. Naturally, both the police and the social services leapt into action, and only the fact that they could not find anything to support this totally irresponsible abuse of power saved the husband. The so-called experts are still in denial even after the wife was cleared of all charges by the Appeal Court last year. They still maintain that their grand-sounding Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a reality and not a figment of their desire for recognition. If anyone is suffering from such a syndrome, I would propose that they are themselves the prime candidates!

This onslaught on the integrity, decency, and ability of parents is an abomination. It has gone far beyond a joke and is now threatening the very fabric of society. The industry that has grown around child abuse has become a self-perpetuating monster, and it has bred a group of "experts" whose egos now seem to be more important than the many children and loving parents who are being systematically brutalised by these constant threats and abuses of power. It is high time that a more rational approach was taken. Yes, there are children being abused, but not every household has an abuser or an abused child. Children get hurt, they bump themselves, they fall off bicycles, they get into fights with their syblings, and the marks show. As a kid, I lost count of the times I had bruised knuckles, bruised shins, and black eyes. Not once were these the actions of my parents or any other member of the household. Yet, certainly with some of the marks I acquired, in today's society, my parents would have had threatening visits from social services and the police!

This is supposed to be a free and fair society. All I can say is, don't get married, don't have children - and find somewhere that is free of politicians and chattering nitwits whose constant whinging about abuse, dangerous dogs, dangerous guns, cars, and the cost of decent coffee has led us to this mess. There needs to be a review, too, of the selection process for juries - or possibly the dispensing of a jury altogether - where there will be a large body of "expert" evidence. Juries are all to easily swayed by the blather that accompanies a big-name, big-ego "expert", with the result that he or she can pronounce the most complete garbage and convince the jury simply by his or her reputation that it is "fact". No jury is able to distinguish between scientific "fact" and egotistical and unsupported "theory" in such cases, and theory is all to often all they get!

So it has been a mixed week. Some good, some bad. Let us hope that the election has served to put our illustrious leader on notice that he has gone far too far in his destruction of our Nation, and let us also hope that the inquiries will serve to rein in the rampant excesses of the army of "experts" now destroying families.

Finally, let us remember Nancy Reagan and her children as they mourn the passing of a great man.

Posted by The Gray Monk at June 12, 2004 02:16 PM

Comments

One of the scariest things is the way in which lawyers and doctors have leapt willingly into the role which was once filled by the priest - deciding on ethical questions.

That lawyers actually feel themselves competent to decide, for example, that a comatose patient like Hillsborough victim Tony Bland should have feeding withheld (and therefore starve to death) because in their perception his quality of life is such that he'd literally be better off dead.

After all, you or I may feel that about a number of people who AREN'T comatose - but we don't propose killing them.

And doctors feel it's quite ethical to prescribe contraception or abortion to an underage girl without consulting her parents.

Posted by: Laban Tall at June 13, 2004 05:43 PM

Ah freedom - or is that Human Rights? Thanks for the comment.

Posted by: The Gray Monk at June 13, 2004 09:27 PM