In Praise of File on 4

I often listen to File on 4 and I never find it less than interesting. In fact it's often much more than that. - You feel as you listen that the matter is so serious and so urgent that 'somebody' will take steps to remedy or to ameliorate the situation. Just like with today's subject: dangerous, potentially lethal, levels of harmful oxides of nitrogen in diesel fumes from traffic in some cities, including Sheffield.

 

File on 4 can be relied upon for careful investigations and has excellent presenters to make the issues clear. You'd think after wrapping up the preparation for the programme, matters would be 'all over bar the shouting'. But no. All too often when the presenter puts the case to the person in the best position to effect necessary change and start the process of amending regulations or legislation, instead of being persuaded by the evidence and the importance of the matter, the 'powerful person' recites well-rehearsed ambiguous drivel that translates as, 'Sorry, mate; couldn't really care less.' Anyone who's ever experienced taking in a lungful or two of diesel fumes can have little doubt that the noxious stuff is injurious to health. We were informed of the special danger of babies developing severe breathing problems. Well heaven help those poor babies who live near to roads with busy traffic, 'cos it doesn't look like the powers-that-be have any intention of helping...

 

You can listen to the File on 4 programme from this page. "World health chiefs have branded diesel exhaust emissions a major cause of cancer. Despite the efforts of car-makers to filter out the most noxious substances, these fumes still play a big part in causing air pollution. Britain has the second worst respiratory death rates in Europe and has long been under notice from Brussels to clean up its act. So why are most UK areas in breach of legal limits?  And do ministers have any clear plan to reduce the huge annual total of resulting deaths? "

File on 4 investigates Deaths in Police Custody

Radio 4's excellent File on 4 has been investigating Deaths in Police Custody. The programme will be broadcast at 8 pm. It appears that a new putative disease has been invented in America and may be adopted here as a means of explaining away/excusing/covering up improper use of restraint techniques by police. The new 'diagnosis' is called Excited Delirium. File on 4 has also found that official figures understate the number of people who die in custody after being restrained by police."It discovered that anyone who dies following restraint without being formally arrested is excluded from death in custody figures. Campaigners want an inquiry into how the the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) collates its figures."

"The welfare of the * is paramount"

If you listen, watch or read the sort of radio programmes, TV documentaries and news items I tend to come across, I'll bet that you, like me, tend to associate that sentence template "the welfare of the * is paramount" very strongly with bureaucracy or hypocrisy or lying through their teeth. The radio programme I heard today was one such example. In this case, the social services were claiming that the welfare of some vulnerable children was of paramount importance to them, when, as is so often the case, covering their own uncaring backs was their paramount concern. Have a listen on the iPlayer to Radio 4's File on 4 programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019rqcl about Carers in Conflict.

"Jenny Cuffe talks to foster parents who find themselves battling with local authorities over the children in their care. They describe a Kafkaesque nightmare where doors are shut, telephone calls and emails unanswered, even court orders are ignored. Meanwhile, vulnerable children are treated as pawns as social workers move them from one place to another.

In one case investigated by File on 4, foster parents who offered to care for four siblings were denied the financial and practical support they needed from the council. Their official complaints were upheld yet key recommendations continued to be ignored and, as a consequence, the children have now been split up. After giving up their jobs to care for the children, the couple are now in debt and have to sell their home. The local MP describes the council's treatment of the family as outrageous. He says the case is extreme but not unusual and he's called for an enquiry.

In another case, a teenager with complex mental and physical needs was unlawfully removed from the foster home where he'd grown up. His sister told File on 4: "When he was in his foster mum's care he was always clean, always happy and he looked well but when I saw him he was dishevelled. It was as if someone took him away from himself. I felt his personality had gone." When his foster mother went to court to get him back, she was vilified by the council who used public funds to defend their actions to the bitter end but lost in court."

Private Finance Initiative contracts: File on 4 investigation

They are not guiltless, the gulls who played their parts in setting up these PFI deals decades ago. I urge you to visit the BBC webpage about this and listen to the File on 4 programme using iPlayer. "The Treasury is failing to monitor the "excessive" profits being made by the sale of PFI equity in the so-called "secondary" market, the BBC is told." Were the guys at the Treasury too dimwitted to be trusted with taxpayers' money or were they suffering from those infamous 'conflicts of interest' that are as near as dammit to bribes? - I know what I think, and I expect it's what you think too.

Only a snowball's chance in Hell remains for civil cases against pharmaceutical companies in England and Wales to obtain legal aid from the government

Only a snowball's chance in Hell remains for litigants in civil cases against pharmaceutical companies in England and Wales to obtain legal aid from the government in order to pursue a case of clinical negligence or personal injury, as investigated by Radio 4's File on Four this evening.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to AVOID taking prescribed pharmaceutical drugs if you possibly can! The drug companies have long histories of criminal negligence, corruption and giving misleading information about their drug products. They have teams of highly-paid corporate lawyers well-versed in all the technical dodges to secure a favourable outcome for their shady clients.

The programme will be repeated on Sun 23 Jan 2011 at 17:00 on BBC Radio 4.

Court of Protection: listen to File on 4 on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 27 July at 2000 BST

File on 4 is always well worth listening to, and I think this programme about problems experienced by people under the protection of this court will be an eye-opener (ear-opener!) for most listeners. It will be repeated on Sunday 1 August, at 1700 BST. You can listen via BBC iPlayer or download the podcast.

Since I first read/heard about the workings of the Court of Protection I have felt it to be a sinister body. See what you think when you read this Telegraph article of 28 May 2010 ("A secretive court, which ruled that a cancer sufferer must have treatment against her wishes, can order that mentally ill patients are sterilised, undergo abortions or have life-support switched off") and view this YouTube feature. When what goes on in a court is shrouded in secrecy, my antennae of suspicion become alerted (as with the Family Courts, thought by many, including myself, to have too much power and precious little accountability).

One of the affected people in tonight's programme has said: "I thought it would be nice not to have to worry about money, that it would be like a bank account with added security. I didn't think for a minute it would be like this. The Court of Protection doesn't provide protection."

It seems to be a nice little earner for lawyers though, doesn't it?

Is the Government trying to do a quick fix stitch-up with NHS IT service before the election?

Well I believe it is. - Yesterday in the post I received a letter and a booklet from the NHS, explaining about a new wheeze they intend to set in place. It's called the NHS Summary Care Record. They want to hold on the internet a central database of Summary Care Records (SCRs) for NHS patients. See http://www.nhscarerecords.nhs.uk/about .

The letter and booklet explain over and over and over again that if you are in agreement with having your records on the internet that you need to do nothing. There's less information about what to do if, like me, you don't trust the security of sensitive personal details being put onto the internet.

If you don't want your health records to be put onto the internet, given the government's deplorable history of lax security of personal data, then you can ring your GP surgery and make your wishes known, or you can download a form from that http://www.nhscarerecords.nhs.uk/about website and fill it in and post it.

This article on BBC News questions the Conservative Party's claim that the "government is trying to fix a quick deal with suppliers for its controversial £12.7bn NHS IT programme ahead of the next General Election". "Industry insiders and the Conservative Party allege the deals, which would be in place by the end of March, would "tie the hands" of whoever forms the next government."

"Shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien told File on 4 that Whitehall is trying to reset these contracts within the next four weeks, which could make it harder for whoever forms the next administration to cancel them."

You may like to listen to File on 4 tonight for further insight and information about this matter.

File on 4 is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday, 2 March 2010, at 2000 GMT, repeated Sunday, 7 March, at 1700 GMT. You can listen via the BBC iPlayer or download the podcast.

Most NHS trusts are endangering patients' lives by not implementing patient safety alerts

BBC News reports that the charity, AvMA, Action Against Medical Accidents, made Freedom of Information requests to NHS hospital trusts and found that 300 (75%) of them had not complied with at least one patient safety alert despite the deadline passing.

Radio 4's File on 4 programme this evening was an investigation into this matter and I listened to it. As a victim of many years of NHS blunders and knowing only too well the futility of expecting any lessons to be learned or remedial action taken, the horrors related in the programme held no surprise or shock for me. But if you are unfamiliar with the routine lack of importance accorded patient safety in NHS hospitals (compounded as they are by the uselessness of the Complaints Procedures) then I suggest you listen to the programme when it is repeated on Sunday, 21 February, at 1700 GMT. Or you can listen via the BBC iPlayer or download the podcast.

Radio 4's File on 4 tonight deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data re massive weight gain and diabetes side-effects

Radio 4's File on 4 tonight (26/01/2010) deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data about its side-effects of massive weight gain and diabetes. See article on BBC News. "The marketing team sued over a drug's alleged side effects tried to suppress key data, an ex-employee has claimed. Seroquel's former UK medical adviser told the BBC he was pressured to approve promotional material which said weight gain was not an issue."

The British Medical Journal editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, sensibly urges that the medicine licensing system be reviewed. She says the pharmaceutical industry should no longer provide the evaluations of its own drugs for the licensing body to consider.

See also File on 4 itself: "A British drug company is being sued by more than 15,000 people in the United States who claim its bestselling antipsychotic drug caused severe weight gain, diabetes and other serious medical conditions. Ann Alexander investigates concerns about the way it was marketed and asks how much the public should be told about the drugs they take."

Actually there are dozens of commonly prescribed drugs that have these side-effects and these are obviously a major cause of the continuing rise in the incidence and severity of obesity and type 2 diabetes and a host of other degenerative illnesses that are co-morbidities of obesity. The drugs include cortico-steroids, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like some birth control medication (contraceptives), tricyclic anti-depressants, especially amitriptyline, some SSRI anti-depressants, anti-psychotics (notoriously Zyprexa,aka olanzapine), some anti-epileptics/anticonvulsants, e.g. Epilim (sodium valproate). This is by no means an exhaustive list. See my webpage about steroids and HRT et al.

So the NHS (and all other purchasers of pharmaceutical drugs the world over), as well as paying for the drugs that its doctors prescribe, incurs the astronomical costs of the vast spectrum of disabling chronic health problems they cause. - ALL of this avoidable ill-health and suffering results from the primary adverse side-effect, which is sodium retention, and all of the innocent patients who are its victims become sensitive to salt/sodium, and should have been warned strictly to avoid salt and salty food while taking the medication, because for them, salt intake causes them weight gain. I have been researching this subject intensively for well over ten years now, and I have not heard of even one doctor who gives and stresses this vital message to his/her victims/patients. Inadequate knowledge of drug side-effects is lamentably widespread in the medical profession. Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Sodium in foods

Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.

Is the UK's Independent Police Complaints Commission really independent? Radio 4's File on 4 investigates.

I've just been listening to File on 4 on Radio 4. See File on 4. If you missed it, you may like to listen to the repeat on Sun 24 Jan 2010 at 17:00.

"In 2009, 2,445 cases, including allegations of police brutality, deaths in custody and serious negligence, were referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. But is it truly independent, and does its record over five years encourage public confidence? Gerry Northam investigates."

Having listened to the programme I was shocked at the bias shown by the IPCC. It seems clear to me that investigations of 'police brutality, deaths in custody and serious negligence' don't have a snowball's chance in Hell of being investigated fairly by the IPCC, especially headed as it is by Nick Hardwick, who appears lacking in deductive reasoning, to put it as kindly as possible.

Clearly complaints about police negligence are dealt with as partially as complaints about medical negligence. I reckon we'd be safer without the IPCC, just as I know we'd be safer without the NHS Complaints Procedures and without the General Medical Council. None of these august and expensive bodies can be trusted to tell the truth and to protect the members of the general public when powerful people like the police and the medical profession abuse their power in their dealings with the people they are paid to serve.

Doctors are regularly prescribing two powerful psychiatric drugs, risperidone and olanzapine, to elderly dementia patients despite 2004 safety warning

Doctors 'ignoring drugs warning'
Article on BBC website

Extracts:

"File On 4 questioned 355 GPs and found more than half prescribed the drugs risperidone and olanzapine.

The former Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) warned the drugs risked strokes in elderly dementia patients.

Prescribing the drugs was indefensible for many dementia patients, Ivan Lewis, Minister for Care Services, said."

"Dr Tim Kendall, of government agency NICE (The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), said it was horrifying that some GPs were prescribing these drugs for up to 90% of their dementia patients and it was an "awful indictment."

He added: "I think the doctors should be disciplined.

"A doctor prescribing for 90% of their patients an anti-psychotic when there is enough guidance to say don't - it's unacceptable.""

BBC Radio 4's File on 4 report about cancer research wasting vast amounts of donated money and taxpayers' money on worthless studies.

Cancer studies 'wasted millions'

Extracts from the BBC webpage:

"Millions of pounds of charity donations and taxpayers' money have been wasted on worthless cancer studies, the BBC has learned.

File On 4 has discovered thousands of studies have been invalidated.

It found some scientists have failed to carry out simple and inexpensive checks to ensure they are working with the right forms of human tumour cells."

"Cancer Research UK, which spends £315m a year on research, would not be interviewed for the programme."

Well I've had a low opinion of Cancer Research UK for years because they were extremely late in the day advising people to reduce salt intake and they still do not give salt reduction sufficient emphasis. - It is the simplest, easiest, cheapest and most effective way of reducing the risk of developing cancer...

Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.