PositiveMoney's generic article: Why Are House Prices So High

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Why Are House Prices So High? (Press Release)

In the ten years up to the start of the financial crisis, house prices rose by over 200%. Why? A common belief is that there are too many people, too much immigration, and too few houses to go around.
Our new 2 minute video addresses the root causes of the housing crisis. It explains that house prices aren’t high because there’s “too many people and too few houses”. And it answers the crucial question: Why are house prices really so high?

INFOGRAPHIC: Why are house prices so high?

(click to enlarge)

You can find more details on this here:
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/consequences/house-prices/
and
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/consequences/house-prices/in-depth/

Our aim is to raise awareness and start conversations about the causes of the housing crisis and get us thinking more critically and creatively about the solutions.

Positive Money is a not-for-profit research and campaign group. They work to raise awareness of the connections between our current monetary and banking system and the serious social, economic and ecological problems that face the UK and the world today. In particular they focus on the role of banks in creating the nation’s money supply through the accounting process they use when they make loans – an aspect of banking which is poorly understood. Positive Money believe these fundamental flaws are at the root of – or a major contributor to – problems of poverty, excessive debt, growing inequality and environmental degradation. For more information, please visit: http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/

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British Health Foundation warns that severe heart failure can feel like drowning

British Heart Foundation warns that severe heart failure can feel like drowning.

The British Heart Foundation is currently warning that severe heart failure can feel like drowning, as is reported in this BBC News article today. "There is no cure for heart failure, which can lead to extreme exhaustion and breathlessness." The BHF is aiming to raise funds for its Mending Broken Hearts Appeal: ""We aim to raise money to carry out basic research into regenerative medicine. Stem cells could help by offering therapeutic interventions." 

The BHF is primarily a drug-oriented charity (see Health Campaigning Charities), with a heavy emphasis on the controversial drug family of statins. It always seems to me such a pity that they so rarely inform people that cutting down on salt and salty food can bring about dramatic improvements in heart health, e.g. helping with problems of breathlessness, reducing the size of an enlarged heart, reducing the risk of developing high blood pressure, heart disease and heart attack, as well as a host of other degenerative conditions, including being overweight or obese. Salt reduction is particularly appropriate for overweight that involves fluid retention. If you want to help people who suffer from breathlessness, whether caused by heart problems or by asthma, or simply by being overweight, you could do them a big favour by telling them of the benefits that salt reduction can bring. 

(I apologise for my typo in the title of this post. - It should say British Heart Foundation, not British Health Foundation.)

You can count them on the fingers of one thumb

You can count them on the fingers of one thumb - approximately - the civil servants, the Ministers and Secretaries of State, the MPs, the Select Committees, the Department of Health officials, the agents and agencies of the State, the GMC, the GDC, the powerful, the influential, the appointed ones, they who will rush, fly, speed, drift, dawdle, limp, turn to stone, in their resentful trudge to your aid when you have been harmed by that colossal injustice misnamed the NHS. - Just thought I'd clarify that.

Jeremy Laurance draws attention to vast scale of drug company criminality

Jeremy Laurance draws attention in his detailed article in the Independent to the vast scale of drug company criminality and the failure of multibillion-dollar fines to curb the criminality. What is necessary is for the criminal bosses of these companies to appear in court to be tried and sentenced as individuals. Prison sentences for the people who initiate and sanction the bribery, corruption, fraud, cover-ups, lies, etc that result in great and avoidable suffering and premature deaths for innocent victims would be more likely to curb the criminal behaviour than corporate fines.

Thomas Szasz has died

The Telegraph carries an excellent obituary of this great man. Thomas Szasz was a Professor of Psychiatry who did not 'believe in' mental illness. Many of his books are about what he described as "the myth of mental illness" and about the great harm that is done by a belief in mental illness (or the pretence of believing in it). I read most of his books in the 80's and I found them compelling reading. I regard him as the foremost writer on psychiatry and I have written about him before. (See HERE.) His books display an incisive intelligence and a mordant wit, as he sought to protect the victims of psychiatric labelling from the harm that such labels do in the hands of medically-qualified knaves and fools supported by a misbegotten legal system.

A reminder about the high levels of salt in bacon

A few days ago the Guardian reported that CASH (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) has again warned about the high salt content of bacon, and has described it as "now the second-biggest source of salt in the UK diet after bread." - Me, I sometimes describe it as laden with salt. One of the reasons the food manufacturers make it so salty is so that they can get away with adding more water to it, because salt helps to hold water in a product. This enables salt water to be sold at the same price as the bacon which holds it, and accounts for that off-putting feature, when frying bacon, of seeing water vapour rising from it as some of the water content is driven out by the heat. 

 

If you have high blood pressure, or if you are overweight - particularly if you are overweight as a result of taking anti-depressants or prescribed steroids or anti-epileptics or anti-psychotics - then cutting down on salt-laden food like bacon would benefit your health immensely and you would feel sooo much better. - Go on! - Give it a try!

The Radio 4 Appeal today was presented by Henry Blofeld on behalf of the Macular Disease Society.

The Radio 4 Appeal today was presented by Henry Blofeld on behalf of the Macular Disease Society. I thought it was a pity that the opportunity was not taken to mention that there is evidence of a dietary measure that can help with this condition. See this BBC2 webpage. Eating spinach helps to prevent "age-related macular degeneration", a major cause of poor eyesight and sometimes blindness. It can even repair some damage to the macula that has already occurred! - The nutrient involved is lutein. This nutrient is also contained in kiwifruits, leeks, peas, eggs, broccoli, etc. You can find them easily by using a search engine. Maybe Henry Blofeld would like to try this dietary measure for himself, since he is himself experiencing macular degeneration.

What's the difference between Winifred Robinson, presenter on You and Yours, and David Behan, new CEO of the CQC (Care Quality Commission)?

Well when I listened to Radio 4's You and Yours today, I found the most pertinent difference was one of language. Winifred Robinson is an excellent presenter who always seeks clarity and is really good at winkling it out of her interviewees. The big problem with the interview with David Behan was that she spoke in English, the language of most of her listeners, I guess, and he persisted in speaking in gobbledygook, aka management-speak/jargon, despite all her efforts to get him to engage in a meaningful exchange. It doesn't augur well. When the next ghastly incidences of cruelty and incompetence inevitably occur in a care home or similar place of torture/care of the vulnerable, the relatives and others concerned about the welfare of the innocent victims will all be complaining, writing, speaking or weeping in English, and will be bewildered by his agency's bureaucratic lingo. Except that I'm sure they'll recognise that it's bugger-all to do with Care, in any sense of the word. - Judge for yourself. - You can 'Listen now' from this page.

Clinical Trials of Drugs can cause serious injury and death without compensation to the human guinea pigs and their families

New drugs come at a price: a very great price of suffering to poor people you do not know or even know about. Read what Dr Mercola has to say about this in his new article today.

 

And read what Carolyn Thomas wrote in 2009 - that it is "No longer possible to believe much of clinical research published”

 

So all of that suffering is wasted anyway. - Read about it. Think about it. Do something about it.