Breastfeeding bollocks? You decide.

I read this loopy report today - "breastfeeding boosts the social class of the baby in the future". The breastfeeding lobby are delighted.

"CHILDREN who are breastfed have a greater chance of climbing the social ladder when they reach adulthood, a new study has found.
The research, based on two large groups of people born 12 years apart, shows that those who had been breastfed in both eras had similarly improved their chances of social mobility.
The study has been welcomed by campaigners who have long promoted the benefits of breastfeeding."

I'm sure  Nations who primarily breastfeed will be similarly delighted to know this. The social ladder indeed. Since the 60's, in Western countries, we've ALL gone up the social ladder. Each generation has been higher up the rungs than the previous one in health, education, ownership and comfort.

“We don’t know if the link is the nutrients of the milk or the close, skin-to-skin contact and bonding between mother and child."

So, mothers who bottle feed do it by remote control - no cradling in the arms, no burping routine, no touching, no skin to skin contact? And modern formula is not formulated, just dried milk powder?

"Breastfeeding increased the odds of upwards mobility by 24 per cent and reduced the odds of downward mobility by around 20 per cent for both groups, the authors found."

??????????!

  







Prof Sacker said: “The fact we found the same results in two separate groups, from different years, means we are more confident about our findings.
“Breastfeeding enhances brain development, which boosts intellect, which in turn increases upwards social mobility. Breastfed children also showed fewer signs of stress.
“The evidence suggests breastfeeding confers a range of long-term health, developmental and behavioural advantages, which persist into adulthood.”
But she pointed out that it was difficult to pinpoint which gave a child the greatest benefit – the nutrients in breast milk or the close contact and associated bonding during breastfeeding.
She said: “Perhaps the combination is implicated in the better neurocognitive and adult outcomes of breastfed infants.”
Karen MacKay, registered midwife and lactation consultant for NHS Highland, said: “There is a clear link that breastfeeding can break the divide between inequalities.
“We hope to raise the profile of the benefits of breastfeeding and reduce the impact of social inequality.” 

And - yes - I'm sure they will!

Those mothers who choose or are unable to breastfeed, are going to be more discomforted than they already are as they fail to keep their children moving up.

The Cattle Keepers

This post was inspired by Ravengrim's words on her radio broadcast Anti Nanny

I have always thought of humans as "sheeples", some of whom follow the prevailing grazing baaing gratefully, and others who strike out into different terrain to find  fodder themselves.

So I was delighted when "The Cattle Keepers" term  come into my consciousness, for it opened up a whole new vista of thought.

Imagine!

We are not sheep - but cows, bulls and calves. We roam about in the structure of society that has been erected by the ruling classes - our Keepers. Our Keepers get nutrition in the form of our milk and meat - our taxes and also, corporately, profit from our labours. This provides for our own upkeep that is returned in services once it has paid for the upkeep of the ruling classes and their affiliations.

We are farmed. We produce. We are coralled. We are managed. We are hoodwinked into thinking that one or two cows and bulls from our herds, mooing in the halls of our Keepers' headquarters is "our" voice. But the herd representatives are taught to moo in the correct fashion so that the herds are managed well and produce efficiently. Managed herds must be profitable.

The Cattle Keepers are also bovine, but they are superior by the fact that they are educated in the Bovine Education Centres that ensures every cow or bull attending, moos at the same pitch and in the same way as the rest of the ruling classes. The managed herds have un-manicured moos, all different at birth, until they too attend moo grooming as calves. By the time they have grown they are mooing in decibels appropriate for integration into the managed herds.  Those with moos that could be groomed into ruling class moos are selected for moo-washing in selected Bovine Education Centres.

When members of the managed herds show signs of irregular behaviour, new fences are erected to keep them under control by The Cattle Keepers. Cattle need to be healthy.  Much attention is paid to the conditions under which they are kept and there is great expenditure of the profits they themselves have produced, on these matters. The Cattle Keepers want their cattle to be happy for they know happiness makes good milk and meat. But the increasingly encroaching fences and electric wires that hem them in "for their own safety", can have the opposite effect. Strangely enough the current batch of Cattle Keepers are especially sensitive to any of their cattle that have found ways to make their own selves happy. They are restrained "for their own good".

The days of free-range happy cows, roaming unfettered is over.

The Cattle Keepers moo constantly that everything they do is for the good of all. But some intelligent managed cattle know that kept cattle are only profitable to the Keeper.

A message to doctors prescribing flucloxacillin to toddlers because it's "cheap"

My granddaughter has been put on the antibiotic syrup Flucloxacillin.

I believe doctors prescribe it on the National Health Service because it works, but most of all because it's cheap.

I would like all doctors in England to know that this medicine is the most ghastly tasting concoction ever invented by a drug company (presumably for the NHS). The idea that you might think toddlers should take it is is quite extraordinarily ignorant. The idea that it is designed by to be "children's medicine" is bizarre.

It is not cheap, in fact. The anguish that parents go through as they force their toddler to swallow the vile stuff, watching them as they gag and struggle to escape in every way possible is a dreadful ordeal for the parents. But, more importantly, psychologically, the child endures the situation of actual child abuse as their once loving parents' hands now manacle and overpower them and they are force-fed viciously bitter fluid that makes them retch and choke. Doing this to your child is abuse at the hands of our doctors prescribing "cheaply". Doing it four times a day for five days is costly in terms of emotion and trust.

My granddaughter is supposed to take flucloxacillin syrup for five days to treat one tiny school sore (impetigo) on her lip.

I am not an ignoramus about this topic having lived in Africa where impetigo is rife. No-one had to undergo such outrageous torture to get rid of it!

So, I ask all doctors in England to re-think prescribing flucloxacillin to toddlers. If you think I'm exaggerating, test it out on your own toddler. I bet you would not cause yourself to endure the experience for five days.

No, you would prescribe something a little more expensive, and palatable.

The following exerpt  is laughably out of touch with reality in the case of small children especially "It is important that you give your child the whole dose each time."

This is from the NHS Website

 Liquid medicine: Shake the medicine well. Measure out the right amount using a medicine spoon or oral syringe. You can get these from your pharmacist. Do not use a kitchen teaspoon as it will not give the right amount. You can also dilute the right amount of medicine (measured with a spoon) in a small amount of water or milk. Make sure your child takes it all straight away.

It is important that you give your child the whole dose each time.

When should the medicine start working?

Your child should start to get better after taking the medicine for 2 days. It is important that they take the whole course of medicine that has been prescribed. Do not stop early.

What if my child is sick (vomits)?

• If your child is sick less than 30 minutes after having a dose of flucloxacillin, give them the same dose again.
• If your child is sick more than 30 minutes after having a dose of flucloxacillin, you do not need to give them another dose. Wait until the next normal dose.
  

On the insane world of You Tube again

I am at screaming point. Has anyone tried "cropping" their channel art for the banner on You Tube? what a performance! I have now decided it's totally bloody useless to even try. "Cropping" involves moving the selection by about one millionth of a pixel! The only picture I can use is the red part above the mangy white cat in their gallery. The gallery is pauce - shameful in fact - a miserable offering of boring, boring, boring.

And as I said in my last post, everything I try to upload is "too small". So I downloaded gimp to scale my pictures just for blinking You Tube.

AND they have allocated me pages I don't want and another You Tube channel (blank!) AND my original channel name (which is easily google-able) HAS TOTALLY DISAPPEARED!

I am really fed up.

If anyone else has entered the land of the insane, I have discovered that if you click on the option to "disconnect my accounts" SOME of the problems come right.

I do still have TWO YouTube channels - one is blank, TWO Google+ accounts - one is blank - and a You Tube "page" (blank).

I was perfectly happy with what I had.

Fortunately when you "disconnect my account" you are given the opportunity to tell them why. So I DID!

You Tube - have you gone NUTS? Just leave me alone!

You Tube is driving me crazy.  Now I have channels that I don't want, pages that I don't want and pictures that won't upload because they are "too small".

It's all connected to Google+ and confusion reigns. My Google+ now doesn't match my You Tube channel or my Googlemail. What a cock-up.

I think others are havig the same problems because I am seeing lots of little blue and white boxes where once there were perfectly good recogniseable avatars.

Come on You Tube - put up a help page for people who think they're at the mad hatter's tea party.

The growth of The World Health Organisation, scientific evidence purveyors, neurons and frogs

I listened to Anti Nanny with Ravengrim episode 32

Ravengrim said something that resonated with me. She asked if The World Health Organisation, that once dug wells for those in need of water, or worked at stamping out Malaria in Africa, still did such things. Those were the things she remembered them doing. I do too. It was a wonderful group of concerned people "doing good". 

Nowadays, I think of them as interfering busybodies forcing countries to do their bidding, meddling in herbal medicines, clamping down on small businesses, warning us of imaginary global pandemics, insisting on vaccinations, collaborating with big Pharma and most of all Tobacco Control. I think of them as having World Governance.

So have they changed or have I just got old and cynical?

The World Health Organisation was established by the new United Nations after the war, in place of the Health Organisation of the old League of Nations."Its first priorities were to control the spread of malaria, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections, and to improve maternal and child health, nutrition and environmental hygiene. Its first legislative act was concerning the compilation of accurate statistics on the spread and morbidity of disease"

Thats what I remember it to be doing.

But in 1974, it partnered with The World Bank, The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),  and the United Nations Development Programme.

It started to grow in power and influence. In the 1980's, 1990's  it entered the "lifestyle" arena - and that's the annoying part for libertarians. It started to address the problem of tobacco smoking. At first it suggested - then it directed.

Now " The WHO and the World Bank constitute the core team responsible for administering the International Health Partnership (IHP+). The IHP+ is a group of partner governments, development agencies, civil society and others committed to improving the health of citizens in developing countries. Partners work together to put international principles for aid effectiveness and development cooperation into practice in the health sector."

It has partners  - partners that collaborate. That's the secret. It's partners are like the neurons in the World Brain, triggering action in the World Body.

It has a massive data handling sector and influences World Action via publications advancing its power. 

(You needn't read this if not interested but I include it to make my point - Wikipedia information )

My point is that The WHO has grown! Just look how it has GROWN!

With such neuronal pathways lighting up the World Brain, they have done amazing work in getting action happening on all kinds of levels.

So what's the trouble? Why do they make me cynical?  Well, they are AUTHORITY. Every country uses their data in creating legislation that binds people up, removes spontaneity, reduces personal liberty.

The influence of the WHO has grown, as the idea of scientific evidence has grown. It is a vast scientific evidence purveyor. I find The WHO unsettling by that power. It indirectly governs the World.  And I wonder if, for all the good it does us living in it's world health laboratory, that we aren't like frogs on the slab, who are made to move by the electricity in the prod controlled by THEM. That's what I don't like.

The Tobacco Control Industry's Numpty box

To confirm to me what a strange place this planet is - containing gullible humans, that is, The Irish Times  opened this article on the new plain packaging drive in Ireland with "The Cabinet decision to introduce plain packaging on all tobacco products for sale in the Republic from early next year reinforces Ireland’s position as a campaigning nation at the forefront of tobacco control." And I would say "No it does not. it just shows what a bunch of numties they are !"

Clive Bates article Are we being manipulated? wisdom of the WHO examined. is an excellent read - it explains the difference between tobacco consumption reduction and Tobacco Control Antics - and they are two very different things. Do check it out!


In Ireland they are aiming for a tick in their Tobacco Control Industry's "good boys" box.