Morts Musings

There’s been a bit of a buzz in the news this week about China, and it’s newly announced targets to reduce it’s carbon footprint and develop more sources of renewable energy generation; An effort to play it’s part in the fight against global warming, and a marked change in attitude from it’s previous stance that the West should shoulder most of the burden.

I do actually have some sympathy for that last arguement, as long as it’s not being used as an excuse for in-action. I mean, lets be honest, the fact that Western companies have outsourced a great deal of manufacturing to poorer, and less regulated, countries like China has undoubtedly helped our own apparent carbon footprint, while, quite literally, dumping a load of the dirty work on the third world. A point which Rob Newman makes in his video about Climate Change (at about the 3 minute mark, but, go on, watch it all, IMO he has some interesting ideas.)

Being the cynic that I am I’m not terribly inclined to take politicians on their words, especially when they might have PR, or other agendas at heart. Even so, I do find the fact that China’s Govt is even coming out and making these kinds of statements extremely encouraging, and hopefully a positive step forward in terms of starting to tackle the threat of anthropogenic global warming.

Afterall, China’s previous refusal to get on board with fighting climate change has allowed many nay-sayers to use the arguement that, if an industrial economy the size of China isn’t bothering to reduce their carbon footprint then everybody else’s efforts are largely in vain.

I also find it encouraging that a nation which has previously hidden behind the excuse of being a “third world” country, has begun to take the threat of global warming seriously, and has commited to not only meet it’s 2020 target for renewable energy production (15%), but actually exceed it. In fact they’re talking about generating at least 18% of the nation’s energy from renewable sources, but are aiming to hit the 20% mark; The target that the rich western nations have been set, and one, incidently, which some commentators are doubting Britain will be able to achieve based on the action our Govt’s currently taking.

I find it especially heartening that a nation with so many poor citizens is taking such an enlightened and forward thinking stance! Afterall it is now widely accepted that Global Warming will have the greatest effect on the World’s poor; On the whole they will be the ones who’ll be effected first, and most severely!

I won’t be holding my breath over any of this, but maybe China’s initiatives might actually shame the West into taking this issue more seriously ourselves?

It’s something that I touched on briefly in my post, Strange Bed Fellows, last week, but the stats on bed related deaths, which I found while researching that piece, were just so odd that I thought the subject deserved another mention.

If you’ll remember I managed to dig up some stats on the number of deaths in 2003, involving falls & beds, broken down by country. The stats don’t actually make it clear which deaths are due to people falling out of bed, and which were caused by falls on to beds, or even by being crushed under a falling bed, but the figures are apparently based on actually death certificate entries which recorded that a bed, and falling, were, somehow, involved in the deceased’s demise. They make stark reading!

I mean really who would have thought that something so common, & (usually) comfortable could be so dangerous! I’m surprised the Daily Mail hasn’t picked up on this insidious menace to society & started some kind of campaign to pressure the Govt into banning beds, or at least producing stricter laws about their production and use.

Afterall, according to the stats, Beds killed more people in the UK in 2003 than cannabis, a substance which is apparently dangerous enough to warrant being (re)classified as a “Class B” drug*. So, shouldn’t there be stricter warnings on the dangers of beds?
Having said that we in the UK can sleep relatively safely in our beds, coming, as we do, 42nd in the list of 46 countries for which per capita data is given. The UK only have 0.083 deaths per million people, which, in the grand scheme, amounts to a few really unlucky sods each year.

If anybody deserves pity it’s the Hungarians, the nation to come out top of the per capita listing. In 2003 they had a staggering 14.39 bed related deaths per million people! While Finland comes in, in second place, with 9.19 deaths per million. Still a startling figure but, well, I can imagine that up there in the frozen north things might be more icey, making trips and falls more likely overall. Not to mention the fact that the country lives mostly in darkness during the winter months, that has to make the chances of having accidents, in general, more likely.


But, really, what is up with those Hungarian beds??? Are the Hungarians a particularly accident prone nation? Is there a national tendancy for bedroom acrobatics? Or are their beds construsted in such a way as to make them more lethal than the warm, comfortable, beds which we Brits might pick up from one of our department stores?


I honestly don’t know the answers to those questions, but it is one of those odd little things that makes one wonder, or at least it does me. God bless bizarre statistics! *shrug*

*A report prepared, last year, by the The Global Cannabis Commission for this year’s UN drug policy review attributed two reported deaths, ever, worldwide, to Cannabis use (I presume this figure relates to deaths attributed soley to cannabis.)

I have to start this post by stating quite clearly that I am not a fan of Ms Tyler or her body of works, not that I hate it either, it just has a rather high reading on my meh-ometer.

In anycase, if you’re not familar with the concept of “literal video” it’s basically where somebody takes an artists music video and re-writes the lyrics to describe the action that’s taking place in the video itself; Given some of the drug, or ego, fuelled concepts which musicians have come up with for their videos over the years this really offers an abundance of potential comedy gold.

There are loads of these things floating around youtube and other video hosting sites, and to some extent the concept has suffered from the freedom which the ‘net gives just about anybody to have a go at being creative; Or, to put it less politely, some of the literal videos out there are utter crap!

Still, amongst all the chaff there are, if you look, some real gems; productions which you can tell somebody has put a lot of work into, in terms of watching the video and composing an alternate set of lyrics which describe the action, while still scanning, and following the pattern of the original artist’s lyrics. It may not be as impressive as coming up with a complete song from scratch, but it’s a form of artistic creativity which I respect none the less.

Anyway, I’ll stop waffling and let you get on with watching the video; This is definitely one of the best literal videos I’ve seen so far! So, without further ado, I give you the Literal Video version of Bonnie Tylers Total Eclipse of the Heart

Literal Video: Total Eclipse of the Heart

OK, so it’s not exactly breaking news but I felt the need to comment on the the European election results, and didn’t have time yesterday because of a pesky thing called work.

As far as I can work out the two main upshots of the elections were a complete kicking for Labour, and a sad, sad first for British politics, the election of a pair of unashamed racists to represent this country in the European Parliament.

According to the pundits and pollsters the two events aren’t entirely unrelated; The BNP’s increased share of the vote was a product of lower overall turn out, they actually got about the same number of votes as they did last time round. While it’s some comfort to hear that the country isn’t rampaging towards the extreme right, yet, any increase in power, or prominence, for this dangerous group of thugs in suits is cause for concern!
I heard it said, on the news last night, that many traditional Labour supporters feel betrayed by New Labour & are turning to the BNP because they are (in their own fascist way) addressing the concerns of the Working Classes, a segment of society which the main parties seem to have forgotten in their desperate rush to secure the votes of Middle England; for such appears to be the perceived “wisdom” of electoral success in this age of high spin, low substance, government that has blighted British politics since 1997.
I have to say, although I would never vote for a bunch of facists like the BNP, the arguement that they stand to gain from widespread dissatisfaction with main stream politics rings extremely true to me. As a disillusioned Labour supporter myself it seems all too clear! Where are people with a genuine socialist leaning meant to cast their votes these days?

Labour have just lost the plot, and in no way resemble socialists anymore, although they are still happy to try and wear this guise when it suites their purposes; it’s allowed them to pass some measures, over the past decade, which would have had the press, and public, howling with rage if a Tory administration tried the same, but somehow, because they’ve had this enduring facade of being a party for the ordinary people, they’ve managed to get away with it; All too often by ignoring what the grass roots are saying they really want!
OK, so I could vote for Scargill’s lot, but frankly they come across as a bit too looney old Labour, I mean I like the idea of socialism overall, but it has to be tempered by the realities of the (largely capitalist) world which we live in, & that’s something that old Labour always seemed to have problems with, no-one wants a return to the 1970s!
As for the the Tories, they’ve always been a party of the rich, for the rich, although somehow they do seem to get a good show of support from less affluent sectors of society. Largely by playing on these people’s aspirations, to become something more than “Working class”, I suspect.
Then there’s the Lib Dems, on many issues they “talk the talk” but it’s always easier to make promises from the safety of the opposition benches, even so I’d seriously like for them to have a chance to show us what they can do, even if I wouldn’t be holding my breath waiting for great results. Sadly though, they still suffer a great deal from the self fulfilling perception that they’re an unelectable third party, a “wasted” vote.

This only really leaves the minority parties, the ones with even less support than the Lib Dems, and I suppose out of those the BNP may, sadly, appeal to a populace who are feeling unrepresented, living through a recession, and are being told by the tabloids that their jobs are under threat from foreign workers. In these circumstances it’s easy to see how people will buy into a message which appears to have an easy answer for all their problems; Afterall, it worked in Germany in the 1930s, a worrying comparison which I don’t make lightly, but which to an extent does seem justified here. Not that I’m suggesting that we’re goose-stepping towards a Third Reich of our own, just yet. Afterall we’re only talking a 1.3% increase in the overall number of BNP votes, but there has to be a concern that if the BNP start to look like a viable party, they may start to attract more votes from sections of society who feel let down and unrepresented by the major parties.

How to solve the problem, and restore some of the populace, as a wholes, faith in this country’s political system, and political classes, is the big question. I’m not sure there are any easy answers, but a good start would be a non-extremist party which listens to ordinary people, and attempts to address their concerns; The emphasis, from both Labour and Tories, on winning the votes of “Middle England” has to stop! If other sections of society are feeling completely unpresented by the main stream parties they’ll naturally turn to someone who does appear to listen (even if it is a bunch of fascist thugs with a thin veneer of respectability); It’s hardly rocket science!

As promised yesterday, here’s the rest of my unfocused ramblings on the BCA vs Dr Singh ruckus

On the other hand though I’m a trained masseur, with over ten years experience of treating a variety of conditions, though I tend to specialise in back problems. From my own experience I know that there are good physiological explanations for why soft tissue, and bone, manipulation can help with some conditions, and even witnessed positive results from acupressure, which is somewhat harder to explain. But in anycase, I’m sure that chiropractic treatments can be effective for treating some conditions, I just find some of their claims a little wooly and nebulous.

I’ve also experienced the bias which many conventional doctors have when it comes to any form of complementary health care, and I have to wonder whether Dr Singh falls into this category; although actually he’s not a medical doctor, instead having gained his PhD in particle physics, something which the Independent’s article neglects to mention. The reason why I wonder whether Dr Singh is totally impartial is his use of the term “alternative medicine” in the title of the book he co-authored with Exeter University’s Professor of Complementary health, Edzard Ernst. Alternative medicine is in itself a loaded term, it implies that the treatment is a replacement for modern “conventional” medicine, rather than something which can be used in combination with conventional treatments. Some conditions are best treated conventionally, others can be more effectively treated with, for example, massage, yet other conditions can be best treated with a combination of the two approaches.

The term “alternative medicine” is actually a pet hate of mine, & I’d be less inclined to trust a practitioner who described themselves as “alternative” rather than “complementary”; It’s a tiny semantic difference, but to my mind it hints at an underlying attitude and one which does the reputation of complentary health as a whole absolutely no favours. In short, as someone who considers themselves an ethical and sensible practitioner I worry that the term “alternative”, along with treatment forms which promise great results with little evidence to back them up, undermine the credibility of respectable practitioners. Although part of the problem is that so many different treatment forms are labelled under the umbrella of “complementary”.

In anycase, I wonder whether Dr Singh’s agenda is as much about creating a name for himself, as it is about investigating which Complementary health forms have real therapeutic merit, but at the same time am also highly sceptical of chiropracty, or more specifically some of the ailments they claim to be able to treat through spinal manipulation.
Certainly if I judge that a client of mine might benefit from bone manipulation I’d always advise seeking out a good osteopath, rather than a chiropractor, from my knowledge of the two disciplines I’d say that osteopathy has a more solid root in accepted science.