Friday morning catchup

Just a few items that caught my eye but didn't have time to give proper attention to:

1. This Is London reports that:

'Schools are allowing Muslim families to withdraw their children from music lessons because learning an instrument is forbidden according to some Islamic beliefs.

Hundreds of pupils are thought to have been removed from state school music classes despite the subject forming part of the statutory National Curriculum.

Parents have no automatic right to withdraw their children from subjects such as music, although legal exemptions exist for religious and sex education.

...

The Open University's Dr Diana Harris, an expert on music education and Muslims, said she had visited schools where half of the pupils were withdrawn from music lessons during Ramadan. She claimed Ofsted inspectors sometimes turned “a blind eye” to the issue.'

2. The Mail reports that:

'British taxpayers were left with a staggering £1.2billion bill to tackle a swine flu pandemic that never materialised, it emerged today.

Health officials spent millions on a vast stockpile of vaccines, antibiotics and anti-virals - many of which remain unused.

Even when it became clear that the medicines were not needed, the Government was locked into inflexible contracts with no get-out clauses, a report into the crisis concluded.'

Hey it was only taxpayers' money, something the last Labour government were always keen to spend/waste. Whose company got the contract?


3. The BBC report that: 'Israeli air strike kills Palestinian man, wounds two'. In fact the story concerns a Palestinian terrorist killed after firing a rocket at Israel. It would seem that the BBC have moved from describing these people as militants to just men.


4. The BBC report that an 'Israeli pig-farming kibbutz draws religious ire'. How silly religious Jews are to take offence at the pig, seems to be the subtext. I wonder how they would treat a similar story if it happened in Saudi Arabia, for example? I think we all know why such a story would never happen...

The sixty-seventh weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's award goes to Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, as reported in The Mail who has "accused the makers of flu drugs and vaccines of influencing the World Health Organisation's decision to declare a pandemic."

What do you mean? Follow the money! "No shit, Sherlock!"


Remember that "The Department of Health warned of 65,000 deaths, set up a special advice line and website, suspended normal rules so anti-flu drugs could be given out without prescription and told health and local authorities to prepare for a major pandemic.

Planners were told to get morgues ready for the sheer scale of deaths and there were warnings that the Army could be called in to prevent riots as people fought to obtain drugs.

But there were "just 251 deaths overall"


"Dr Wodarg has branded the H1N1 outbreak as 'one of the greatest medical scandals of the century'." A second "No shit, Sherlock"

It's only taxpayers' money after all

I note that two swine flu call centres are to close just weeks after opening because staff have been spending most of their time playing cards and board games as the number of calls has not met expectations. The two call centres that will close are in Farnborough and Watford are run by NHS Professionals which supplies temporary-workers to the health service.

So we have call centres allegedly staffed by 16-18 year olds with minimal training and according to The Mail play games when there are no calls to answer.

A Labour government wasting money on a scare story; what a shock.

Swine flu pandemic - a nice conspiracy theory video - but based on more fact than most

Godfrey Bloom with his recollections of previous health scares and the baleful role of Sir Liam Donaldson. Ah Sir Liam, the Chief Medical Officer, always there with a scary prediction and seemingly always wrong. How I remember the fear when he warned that the death toll in Britain from bird flu would most likely be 50,000 but that a figure of 750,000 was ‘not impossible’. The actual death toll was .... zero. How about BSE, I seem to remember predictions of 400,000 deaths from this disease, how many in fact died? Less than 200 I believe. What about SARS, remember SARS, Sir Liam once suggested that hundreds of thousands of British people "could" die from SARS, although this time he did add the proviso that the actual figure "could be lower" although it also "could be higher". Oddly enough he was right... it was lower, somewhere not too far from zero.

So when Sir Liam Donaldson predicts that 40 people a day could die from swine flu, people remember the last scare and the one before that and the one before that, and so wonder why the government always want us scared of something... and thus conspiracy theories abound.

Now do you see why Tamiflu is being prescribed so freely?

I was wondering why this Labour government were happy to have Tamiflu prescribed almost on-demand, when previously there were restrictions in force. Then I read The jobbing doctor (my emphasis):

"Jobbing Doctor was talking to a colleague yesterday at a social event. We were sharing experiences about the current Pig flu epidemic, and the behaviour of our leaders in the profession. His assessment was not very charitable (I actually think that 'Sir' Liam Donaldson hasn't done too badly).

We then mused on whether we would take Tamiflu or not. Our general view is that it has such a marginal effect that it is not worth it.

He then told me why the Government were very keen for us to prescribe it to everyone who has a sniffle and a high temperature: you see, most of the stockpiled Tamiflu was for a previous flu scare, and it expires (passes its sell-by date) in the early part of this Autumn (2009) when it effectively and officially becomes useless (as opposed to being pretty useless anyway).

This is why they are peddling it.

Explains a lot, doesn't it!"

I wonder if that is the case. The fact that I even wonder if our government could be so duplicitous speaks volumes for the way that they have acted since 1997... Of course the fact that most patients will have to pay a £7.20 prescription charge in order to get their Tamiflu I am sure has not even been considered by this financially challenged government.

Egypt reacts to the outbreak of swine flu

Egypt and Swine Flu, can you spot the back-story?

"Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precaution against swine flu even though no cases have been reported here, infuriating farmers who blocked streets and stoned vehicles of Health Ministry workers who came to carry out the government's order."

Ah here it is:

"Most in the Muslim world consider pigs unclean animals and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions. One Islamic militant Web site carried comments Wednesday saying swine flu was God's revenge against "infidels."

Pigs are banned entirely in some Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Libya. However in other parts of the Muslim world, they are often raised by religious minorities who can eat pork.

...

In Egypt, pigs are raised and consumed mainly by the Christian minority, which some estimates put at 10 percent of the population. Health Ministry spokesman Abdel-Rahman Shaheen estimated there are between 300,000-350,000 pigs in Egypt."

Oh what a surprise...

Ramp up the fear and build up the PM

I see that the BBC are still pushing the swine fever scare factor by explaining that: "The World Health Organization raises the alert over swine flu to level five - a strong signal a pandemic is imminent, it says." and pushing that: " Britain will see "many, many more cases" of swine flu but most people will recover, a chief government adviser says.". Of course the BBC are keen to reassure us that Gordon "Father of the Nation" Brown was taking "the precautions to prevent the incidence of this disease in this country".

Meanwhile in the Number 10 bunker do I detect the slight smell of urine as Gordon Brown gets excited at the prospect of being able to cancel postpone
the June elections and maybe, just maybe, use the Civil Contingencies Act to keep his snotty little fingers on the levers of power.

In Downing Street are they asking "Could we?"

The BBC are faithfully reporting the latest Swine Fever news as their main headline, ramping up the fear and maybe starting a panic. Meanwhile, I wonder if in Downing Street Gordon Brown and his officials are wondering how bad Swine Fever needs to get (or more accurately the fear of it needs to get) before they could use the Civil Contingencies Act to legitimise rule by decree and the suspension of democracy. I wonder if the mere thought of this untrammelled power soothes the brow of our otherwise stressed out Prime Minister. There are EU and local elections in just over a month; elections which Labour seem likely to do very badly in, elections which Gordon Brown may prefer to postpone for a while (maybe a long while). Could he?

Here comes the pretext...

The BBC are faithfully reporting that: "A new flu virus suspected of killing up to 81 people in Mexico has the potential to become a pandemic, the UN says. " and that:

"Health officials in the UK say they are closely monitoring the deadly outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and the US, amid fears of a potential pandemic.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said it was working with the government to assess any threat posed to public health in the UK.

It described the outbreak as "unusual" and warranting "further investigation and vigilance" by other countries."

Just as Tony Blair used Foot and Mouth as a reason to postpone local elections, is this Gordon Brown's chance to postpone the upcoming EU and local elections? Might a panic over this "pandemic" be reason enough to postpone a general election? Is the Civil Contingencies Act being readied for use? Is this the start of the end-game?