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.


.

Pigeon Post's WW2 pigeon homework

.
.
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.

"Opportunity missed"

For all the publicity about the renovation of Reigate Priory Park through Heritage Lottery Funding of £4.2 million plus more millions from local businesses, I have always maintained that a DVD would be an ideal way of recording the process and the outcome.

So it was a great treat this Christmas to see the new DVD sponsored by the Borough Council and Legal & General. It features some key historical elements since the 12th century, as well as the ancient woodland deerpark, medieval fishponds - now the lake, wild flowers, Victorian-style herbaceous borders and numerous magnificent tree specimens.

Those of us interested in nature conservation might be astonished by the attention to regulations when it came to the demolition of the old air raid shelter with its one resident bat. Similarly with the draining and dredging of the lake, one single duck nest had to be protected by giving it a wide berth of several metres.

The silliest story in my opinion, though, is about the fully grown terrapin that is an unwelcome resident of Reigate Priory Park lake - certainly not a genuine heritage feature and according to Surrey Biodiversity Partnership, actually 'a serious threat to our wetland fauna'. Project manager Nina Porter explained that she had heard about the terrapin before, she had seen it herself and it was a menace, eating fish and ducklings. I wonder if it had been properly listed in the paperwork as a living creature that should be moved to a new and more suitable home, if the opportunity presented itself.

Well, now we know that there was indeed a perfect opportunity, but failure of communication with a naive contract worker.

Suffice it to say that, after all that hard work and financial outlay, the overgrown and unwanted exotic pet still lurks there. Yes, Reigate's Rogue of a Reptile was taking a stroll across the grass when it was spotted by a workman, picked up and ushered back into that beautiful, tranquil and ancient lake, where it remains to this day. Watch out - he or she has grown to the size of a dinner plate.

Now how about a Reward for anyone else who finds it again?

Castle cottages

There is some good news from my Lib Dem councillor Graham Norman about one of my heritage concerns locally - the boarded up cottages in Reigate's Castle Grounds are for sale!

Yes, it will be good to have them occupied again and one trusts fully restored in keeping with their age and location.

If they decided to put them on the market as a result of my raising the subject then I am very glad I did - and with the proceeds there will be more than enough to pay for the restoration of Reigate's magnificent Park Lane gates. After all, it is only fitting that the sale of one historic treasure in this ancient town can fund the long awaited repair of another. Problem solved.

Letters to the Editor archives

Now that the local paper has moved offices out of Reigate to Redhill, there is no space for the archives. They have all had to go to somewhere in Brentwood/ford, I hear.

So for posterity, here are two of the letters published in October 2008, one by a colleague and the other from me. Well, if only more people had read them at the time, such as our MP Crispin Blunt who lives in London, not his constituency. We really could have helped prevent at least 4,445 girls from getting side effects in less than two years, some of whom have needed long-term hospital care.

Yes, both subheadings were shown to be correct - the HPV comments WERE misleading, and Better safe than sorry - but it is too late now for those girls.

Click here to enlarge

Click here to enlarge









For an up to date account of my findings please take a look at my new Pigeon Post page: Truth about Cervarix.

Who tore the guts out of the Nazi forces?

(1) Lifesaving phage medicine as used for Red Army troops to fight infections throughout WW2 and the Cold War

(2) This Soviet medal was for meritorious service in WW2 - in Russian, "We have won"
















Back in August I was at the Cabinet War Rooms special tea party where I had a most delightful conversation with Mr Hugh Lunghi. He had previously told me about his experiences of being the official interpreter for meetings between Churchill, Montgomery and Stalin and now he enlightened me with some more gems.

Actually at one time during the war he was even stationed here in Reigate.

He had stayed for almost three months in the small wooden dacha/shooting lodge in Abastumani, near Borzhomi, Georgia where the Grand Duke Michael lived for long periods smitten with T.B. - a place I visited in 2007 on my Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship investigating their excellent approach to health and wellbeing.

Kindly commenting on my book chapter about Women who thawed the Cold War, Mr Lunghi explained that the phrase 'Iron Curtain' was originally coined by a German political philosopher in the 19th century. 'The phrase appears again in 1918, used by the Russian emigre philosopher Vasily Rozanov in "Apocalypse of Our Time". Goebbels picked it up in Feb. 1945. Churchill first used it in his May1945 telegram to Truman and again in his wonderfully prescient address in Westminster College, Fulton in March 1946.'

The solid piece of world history which I am especially grateful for, and which is certainly worth recording for posterity is this: 'The battle which won the war and liberated Europe was the battle of the Kursk Salient in the summer of 1943. It was more important than the whole of the Overlord operation on the Western front (see for example Europe at War by Norman Taylor pp110-112) Kursk was the decisive battle of World War II: 6000 tanks took part; the Red Army lost more troops in that one battle than the Western Allies lost in the whole war. As Churchill put it, "The Red Army tore the guts out of the Nazi forces". In the British Military Mission in Moscow, thanks to Stalin's deep secrecy, we were, at the time and even long after the War, given very little information about its progress. Churchill devoted only 5 or 6 pages to Kursk in his history of the war!'

A quick check on Wikipedia informs me of these terrifying statistics as we remember World War 2 locally this week:

German losses at Kursk: 203,000
Soviet Union losses at Kursk: 863,303,

and from reading a recent monograph about the WW2 medical emergency care, the losses would have been far greater without phage medicine.

For that matter, the German troops were also routinely issued with phage medicine in WW2 -and it was our Allied troops who missed out.

J Arthur Rank

Have you ever wondered what to write in an autograph book? Well, this is what J Arthur Rank wrote on 4th February 1923, here in his home town for a neighbour's boy, Eric Hurst of Edes Fields, Park Lane. I had the great honour of showing it to the two audiences of my lecture, Churchill's Secret Reigate.

Pray about everything
Always expect something
Be thankful for anything
Grumble about nothing.

J. Arthur Rank

As well as all his other achievements in the milling business and the movies, he was the superintendent of the Sunday School at Reigate Methodist Church in the High Street, commemorated by the Rank Memorial Hall which is where I used to go for Girl Guides, the youth club, taking part in plays and concerts - and not forgetting those glorious Saturday night evenings, bopping round our handbags to the latest bands in the 60s!

J Arthur Rank was a great fan of Winston Churchill, even adopting some of his speech mannerisms apparently, and you can see from the blue plaque at Chartwell, he was one of the generous benefactors who eventually bought the place for the Churchills to continue living there, as a thank you gift after the war. During the war itself, J Arthur Rank housed his milling business temporarily in Reigate Priory for safety - just the other side of the wall behind his beloved Methodist Church. It was a wise decision because Hitler's lot had already earmarked the huge London flour mills as key targets.

On another page in Eric's tiny autograph book is a wonderful pen and ink drawing of their beloved Reigate Heath with the old windmill in the background - just as it looks today. The historic windmill is still in good condition and used as a church.

If you would like to see the autograph book, maybe I can take it along, with my WW2 memorabilia and my brand new patchwork commemorative quilt, to the Age Concern event on Saturday 20th November at Merstham Day Centre, 11am - 2pm.

The next day, Sunday 21st November, J Arthur Rank will be featured in BBC's Songs of Praise at Carshalton Methodist Church. Yet they wouldn't have known about those memories and souvenirs of J Arthur Rank that Eric's family have cherished all these years. Perhaps the Reigate Methodists would like to include that special autograph in their service sometime, now that the Rank Memorial Hall has been demolished.

My DVD and photobook are still available of course, by post via http://www.relax-well.co.uk/.