Thursday 10 February 2011

Surrey PCT legal boilerplate meltdown



Surrey Primary Care Trust replied under the Freedom of Information Act today. http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/hpv_vaccine_untrue_safety_claims

Watch out - before even opening the file there is a long load of legalese lingo - here's one paragraph:

Please note that the information provided is the property of Surrey PCT and subject to Intellectual Property and Database Rights. Any commercial application or use of this information may be subject to the provisions of the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005. This means that if for any reason you wish to re-use the information provided for any commercial purpose or applications, you must ask us for permission to do so. Should we agree that you can use the information it will be subject to the issue of a licence which may or may not involve a fee. If you have any questions about this process please contact the Head of Information Governance, c/o the email address below. Any breach of these regulations will be taken extremely seriously by Surrey PCT.

So I respectfully point out that


The aim of the Regulations is to encourage the re-use of public sector information by removing obstacles that stand in the way of re-use.
And that is straight from National Archives.

Besides, how silly! The 2 documents were

(1) a press release already published in the commercial press in 2008 and freely accessible online,

(2) a 32 page booklet published by the Department of Health, and Crown copyright, freely given out as 50,000 copies and online for the best part of a year.

To cap it all, Surrey PCT have now put back on the internet some faulty wording which is untrue and misleading, which had taken me the best part of a year to get all the faulty versions REMOVED! Yes, side effects to that vaccine are much more common than the government's PCTs have been telling you.

And here is the rabbit to pull out of my hat. Here is proof that Surrey PCT sourced its press release information from a document citing clinical trials that weren't even on the same vaccine! Well, that's too bad for Surrey children because the Reisinger paper was on Gardasil, and the studies were even designed by drug giants, Merck. This is all very odd for our Surrey girls who have been injected with Cervarix, made by Glaxo Smith Kline.

Ref: Reisinger Gardasil figures in TABLE 5.
Adverse Experience Summary Days 1–15 Postdose 1, 2 and 3.

Be warned. If you want to know facts, don't believe anything without checking.

And don't be put off by that legalese lingo either. Typical British bully tactics are just putting obstacles in your way, discouraging you from sharing information, and that, my little pumpkins, is precisely what the European Union was trying to put an end to.


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Saturday 5 February 2011

Pigeon Post's WW2 pigeon homework

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There is nothing better for cheering me up after a truly awful week than a stroke of luck - or was it merely a coincidence?

The reason I called this blog Pigeon Post is that during World War 2, a prize-winning pigeon loft at 18 Doods Road, Reigate was commandeered for the war effort. Reigate was the Battle HQ for South Eastern Command, headed by the military VIP, General Montgomery.

For my talks on Churchill's Secret Reigate, I always feature the role of these pigeons because it just goes to show how small creatures and small messages can make all the difference if they are delivered safely - and sometimes with great bravery. I have even suggested to the Council of the Reigate Society that they should be commemorated somehow locally, but they seemed to think it was a silly idea. Oh well it's their loss - our next-door ancient market town, Dorking, commemorates a flipping chicken on its main Deepdene roundabout, just where Churchill used to stay as a teenager.

I knew that the Dickin Medal had been awarded to at least one of Mr Blasby's Reigate pigeons. This is the equivalent of a Victoria Cross for animals! In total, 32 pigeons were awarded the Dickin Medal for their magnificent wartime work. Oh, how I would have liked to find out more - like their specific names, and which one did what. I guess that they had a key role in the D Day landings since these were secretly planned by Monty's army staff on a massive scale. I think it is an inspiring story.

So it was a great delight to go to Bletchley Park on Sunday - my birthday - and at the last minute to find a whole roomful of exhibits in code-breaker Alan Turing's Hut 8 - devoted to the role of pigeons in war! I shall have to go again sometime in warmer weather, and allocate an hour or so to view those exhibits in detail.

How strange that this morning, only 6 days later, when Dave my window cleaner and his friend Malcolm turned up about some household repairs - what should the guttering man do as a hobby but breed racing pigeons! So he is going to lend me a book.

And just as a bit of light relief from the ugliness and deceptions of this corrupt, sad world, I am now eagerly awaiting a DVD called "Valiant". It has only cost me one penny and it's the story of one of those splendid D Day pigeons - as a British-made cartoon. I hope that will be fun.

PS It was. I recommend it to schoolchildren needing to learn about World War 2 without any books or study skills.