Good Schools & Good Teachers Are Obviously Better Than Poor Ones.

HOWEVER, FAR MORE IMPORTANT IS

THE LEARNING SPEED & ABILITY OF

THE INDIVIDUAL PUPIL.

SO WHY IS “LEARNING HOW TO  

LEARN” TAUGHT IN LESS THAN 

0.001% OF BRITISH SCHOOLS ?

Especially when starting with the subject of “LEARNING HOW TO LEARN” can make every student (including some of those with a physical or mental disorder) eligible for a fully merited “Grammar School Education”.

Everything Theresa May has recently said on this subject is fundamentally correct. Except for one thing. The same thing that a majority of educationalists get wrong.

They place too much emphasis on “the school” and on “the teacher” instead of on the barriers to study which can confront any and every child irrespective of their family background or wealth.

“Barriers to Study” which are developed in the very early weeks and months of their experience of life since birth.

Every family is intent on having the child learn to listen, to speak, to read, to write, to spell, to crawl, to stand, to walk and to learn to add up, subtract, multiply and divide, etc., etc., etc.

And the confusion which granddad, grandma, mum, dad, the brothers and sisters and the rest of the family can unwittingly generate in a child during his or her first and second year is enormous.

On examination one finds that the biggest barriers to learning are initially small unresolved misunderstandings leading to even further non-comprehension and confusion, and that this arises from being given or picking up false, erroneous, misleading or totally wrong and inaccurate data at an earlier point in time, and is very easily done – even perhaps in the womb – or (as many today would have us believe) in some past lifetime.

Be that as it may, when grandma offers a blue coloured plastic cup full of orange juice to her baby grand-daughter, the older lady can give her action “meaning” or “significance” in numerous ways. She can say: “drink” or “cup” or “blue” or “yours” or “orange juice” or “nice” or “this is lovely” or “you'll like this” or “get this down you baby” or “yum-yum” or any of a number of different accompanying words or phrases.

And so also can Dad and Mum, elder sister and brother or baby-sitter, etc., all with the same colour of cup or another colour or shape and with the same contents or another drink, hot or cold, sweet or savoury, etc.

Then they can also all so easily do similar confusing multiple actions and “word noises” with food in a bowl and a spoonful directed towards the baby's mouth.

But contentment lies in certainty.  Very little to do with whether baby likes the food or the drink.  Very much to do with their confidence and understanding.

Are they being told to “eat the cup from the drink”, or more correctly but still somewhat confusingly, to “drink” (verb) the “drink” (noun) from the cup ? etc.

In other words, quite apart from the child's own inherent learning ability, there is the question of how clearly, logically, accurately and coherently is the information being presented, because simple repetition of the same combined action plus the same speech factor provides a far faster learning gradient than a constantly changing choice of words attached to the same actions or items.

In fact from the above, we begin to recognise that, quite apart from the child's own immediate ability to learn, there exist numerous “barriers to study or learning” which derive from the new born child's environment and particularly the people in it.

The first of these barriers we have just looked at.

THE SPEED OR GRADIENT (sequence of ascending / progressive steps) WITH WHICH THE TEACHING AND / OR LEARNING PROCESS PROCEEDS.

Learning simple words before you learn the alphabet and its phonics, before you learn longer words, and learning words before you learn sentences, and sentences before paragraphs, chapters, and the full story, etc., can be one type of gradient.

But if you miss out the alphabet, or the phonics or an understanding of the different sorts of words, or get them out of sequence, etc., the whole gradient can soon collapse, and you finish up with no story. No punch-line. No comprehension and feeling foolish or bewildered.

As another example, gradient sequences are involved in safely and efficiently starting and driving a car.  You don't start the engine until you have depressed the clutch or checked that the gear lever is in neutral.   You don't move away from the kerb before you have checked your mirror, made sure the road is clear and signalled your intentions, etc.

And you certainly don't try to swim the English Channel without many months of gradual training, body-building and safety preparations.

The second important barrier is quite different.

It is fairly easy to observe that each piece of “knowledge”, each fact or truth is more comprehensible to the degree that it contains a balance of mass and significance (meaning), rather than either a complete absence of mass or no significance whatsoever.

(i.e. Is the object, idea or action actually with us and observable in the “here and now”, along with a matching significance explaining the existence / purpose of that object, idea or action ?)

FAILING TO HAVE THE MASS (of the object, thing or even a picture of it) PRESENT, AND FAILING TO SEEK A BALANCE BETWEEEN THE “MASS” AND THE “SIGNIFICANCE” OF THAT SUBJECT'S DATA, CREATES A BARRIER TO OBSERVING, LEARNING & COMPREHENSION.

For example, if, in the hope of recruiting workers for a jungle clearance project, you helicopter-drop a bright yellow JCB excavator into the centre of an Amazonian native village, with no explanation or other significance, the likelihood of their worshipping it as some new God from heaven is overwhelming.   No Significance.   All Mass.  And so generation of a false significance.

But if you send a knowledgeable and well trained engineering professor to do the recruiting, with all his technical books and explanations about JCBs, but no machine and not even a picture or drawing, the likelihood is that the professor will finish up in the cooking pot.   All Significance.  No Mass.  No common reality.

There are lots of minor barriers to learning, such as very bad handwriting or very different pronunciation.  Try putting a Glaswegian Scot together with an Essex Englishman and they each will tell you that the other cannot speak English.

Or try and speak with the ladies of certain religious sects, and you will not only be ignored but likely even attacked and thrown out by their menfolk.

HOWEVER, THE THIRD AND MOST POWERFUL AND WIDESPREAD MAJOR BARRIER TO LEARNING AND STUDY IS – “THE MIS-UNDERSTOOD WORD”, ESPECIALLY AS THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS IN WHICH A WORD CAN BE MISUNDERSTOOD.

It can be misspelt & / or mispronounced, it can have been assigned a totally wrong meaning, been assigned no meaning, have an incomplete definition, have numerous meanings all spelt and pronounced the same (e.g. catch, feel & see, etc.), be pronounced in two different ways with quite different meanings (e.g. project and project), be pronounced the same although spelt differently, (rein, rain & reign), etc.

And misunderstood words work both ways.  You can spread them around yourself, passing on your misunderstood words to others and, you can quite unknowingly pull them in from other people – even teachers, the radio, television and those professionals who like to blind their listeners with science, to prove their own education and your lack thereof.

The teacher, lecturer, trainer, commentator, presenter or professor who starts his discourse with: “Tonight our subject is “X, Y & Z”, and then fails to provide a definition and examples ensuring his title is understood, has not only given his audience a nice new misunderstood word, he has also just LOST his audience – as I might also have done at this point !    For the same reason.

Words are the building blocks of all languages and, whether written or spoken, it takes only one Mis-Understood word (M/U) in a sentence to interrupt the flow of understanding and to completely suppress comprehension of that whole sentence, as well as the paragraph and often the page – particularly if that lack of understanding is not immediately corrected.  And that's only the first problem M/Us create.

Where M/Us are undetected and uncorrected, we find the source of stupidity, failing exam results, damaging errors, derisory and harmful arguments, abandonment of study subjects and jobs, as well as friends and even family.

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN.  Knowing and handling the main barriers to study are the key to progress, proficiency, friendship and happiness – in many ways the key to life.

And once you've invested a relatively small amount of study-time into learning how to learn, you soon start to earn it back a thousand times over in every facet of not just your other studies, but also your whole life and well-being.

THIS IS WHAT IS KNOWN AS “AN INVESTMENT”, AND “LEARNING HOW TO LEARN” IS PROBABLY THE QUICKEST RETURN, LOWEST COST, LOWEST RISK INVESTMENT YOU WILL MAKE IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE.

Blessed is the child whose family members are wise enough NOT to confuse him or her with misunderstood words or either of the other two main barriers to study, which can lead to further non-comprehension and apparent lack of intelligence.   But even in the most coherent of families, some M/Us can still creep in.

Dyslexia is one of the more serious problems which can be handled by removing the barriers to study with the application of Study Technology.

And, have you noticed that a lot of English humour and jokes actually depend on deliberate misunderstanding of some word or phrase.

But it's no laughing matter when misunderstandings and non-comprehension are totally unrecognised by you.  Because they can keep you out of Grammar School - even if Dad drives a Rolls-Royce to work.  And equally “Learning FIRST How to Learn” can gain you a merited Grammar School place - even if Dad drives a wheelbarrow at work!

If you would like to be introduced to a trained and experienced “Study Technology” professional who will give you a free introduction to “HOW TO LEARN”, with no further obligation, phone 01342 810151 any weekday between 11.00am & 9.00pm.

S.A.F.E. Is A Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Formed in 1975.

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“MAY” Means “Allowed To”, and Theresa Definitely Has My Permission.

NO MATTER WHICH WAY SHE

 VOTED ON THE EU, SHE IS STILL

 THE RIGHT PERSON TO

BREXIT US SUCCESSFULLY.

I never always agreed with Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, and I guess I am also likely to have some disagreements with her as Prime Minister.

But, I like her style, I admire her dedication and hard work, and I am very sure SHE IS THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB !

However, she is going to need to urgently clean up a few troubling sectors of the society (for which I personally would be happy to offer some help) and handling those sectors is going to make handling the economy so much easier.

Those problem creating areas can be summed up under three main headings:

1) All forms of addiction (legal, illegal and prescription),

2) The National Health Service, Public Health England and the DoH,

3) Fairer Economic and Social balance in our communities.

These three sectors lap over into each other AND into most other government Departments, so that if we get these three right, the rest tend to look after themselves.

Obviously, in seeking success, any government must juggle Income Collection, Worthwhile Spending, Waste Reduction and Justice / Fairness, and practically all our current and future problems are created by a failure to reduce waste – mainly because of the false and selfish ideas generated by vested interests in the society, about what IS ESSENTIAL and what IS NOT, and therefore also what IS WASTE and what IS NOT.

Out of a U.K. population of some 64 Million we have 2.4 million addicted to prescription medical drugs, nearly 200,000 addicted to prescription habit management drugs, 500,000 addicted to illicit drugs and at least as many again drunk once a week – some daily and permanently.

That's a total of some 5.625% of our population not only nearly continuously incapacitated but also 3.6 million people whose drunken and drugged behaviour is having to be paid for by the rest of the working population.

But the “working population” actually contributing to the U.K. Gross National Product is NOT all of our 64 million of population.

Because there are numerous under 18s in education, as well as old, infirm and incapacitated citizens, military personnel, police, civil servants, the unemployed, prison and social workers, etc., - the truly productive working population is closer to only 36 million, so that 56% of the population are supporting the rest, and that “rest” includes 10% of adult citizens nearly continuously incapacitated by drink and especially by drugs - and contributing only “trouble”.

Now start counting up the cost to taxpayers of supporting that 10%.

According to the Government's own National Audit Office, the 200,000 of methadone OST prescribed addicts alone costs £9.4 BILLION EVERY YEAR to maintain, but because that massive wastage is spread across numerous government Departments, most politicians are SELDOM IF EVER AWARE of this.

The 2.628 BILLION of tablets, pills, capsules and liquid doses which EVERY YEAR go down the throats of 2.4 million medically addicted (mainly old people) is another Taxpayer DAILY COST of £7,200,000, which in most cases daily goes on for the rest of those addicted patients' lifetimes.

In examining police, probation, prison officer, Magistrate, Judges', Barristers', Solicitors', social workers' and civil servants' time, expenditure and effort, we annually find another few billions or more £pounds of taxpayers' money being wasted on the half million or so amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, skunk, designer drug and other sorts of illicit addicts.

Not to mention the cost of the nearly totally ineffective psychiatric and pharmaceutical prescription so-called “treatments” of such “illicit” addicts for which families and Taxpayers foot the often repetitive bill.

But what is most annoying is that, whilst the still prevailing Department of Health psycho-pharm “treatments” have failed miserably to cure more than 3% of such addicts, ever since 1966 – for 50 years – there has internationally been available a hugely effective residential programme of not-for-profit centres for training addicts in self-help recovery to lasting relaxed abstinence.

THIS HAS BEEN SO SUCCESSFUL THAT THERE ARE NOW NEARLY ONE HUNDRED SUCH TRAINING CENTRES (INCLUDING PRISON UNITS) IN 49 COUNTRIES.

But ACCESS TO British Government Ministers for the heads of the charitable organisations which deliver these services has for years been denied by the smear campaigns of those psycho-pharm vested interests who want to go on daily selling their addictive chemical substances to as many U.K. citizens as possible.

Then there are the thousands of British school children of all ages being basically force-fed Ritalin, Prozac and various other psychiatric drugs, by school psychiatrists and nurses, for invented so-called mental psychiatric “disorders” such as ADHD and SAD. This is an important pharmaceutical drugs marketing ploy, because the younger you can get a child addicted, the longer he or she will remain a profitable and compliant consumer.

Nearly ALL of course paid for by U.K. taxpayers.

As a consequence, IF it might appear that this one subject of “Drink & Drug Consumption and ADDICTION” is the most significant and vital of the three “troubling sectors” mentioned at the beginning of this blog-post, then that is only because DRINK & DRUG CONSUMPTION are together what do most to destroy all facets of the society and the economy upon which our survival most depends, including our National Health Service and the economic balance within our society.

The National Health Service each year spends an increasing amount on drugs and medicines (proportionally higher than any other service supplied by the NHS).

This is because of the palliative orientation of “symptom management” practices which (by psycho-pharm cash grants to medical teaching facilities) has gradually been made to dominate doctors' training over the last eighty years, to the increasing exclusion of more thorough pre-treatment testing, and the omitting of cure interventions based on detecting and handling dietary deficiencies and excesses, and based on allergenic investigations and avoidance of allergies' causal factors.

Most of the massive, wasteful, no longer necessary and in fact damaging addictive drug prescribing, over-prescribing and usage TAKES PLACE WITHIN the NHS.

And whilst most members of our society consume alcohol, it is in a sense mainly those who choose to buy the alcohol alone (and not the accompanying meal which should provide balance for the drink) who cause a lot of the ensuing trouble.

In fact, when you look at our town streets and pubs on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, you can quickly see that policing, cleaning up the mess, stopping fights and treating accident and fight injuries, repairing property and vehicle damage, keeping the peace and the handling of offenders in the courts, and occasionally eventually on probation and in jail, PRETTY WELL EATS UP MOST OF THE ALCOHOL TAXES collected by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But it's the LOCAL Council, the LOCAL Police, the LOCAL Shopkeepers, the LOCAL Doctors, Ambulance men and Hospitals and the LOCAL Courts which cover all these LOCAL costs – NOT the Chancellor who spends his alcohol tax collections (plus taxes from the pharmaceutical industry) on keeping 10% of the working population ADDICTED to psycho-pharm prescription drugs in the name of so-called “mental health”.

The trouble of course is that for over a century our population and our politicians have been very professionally conned into believing the stories about the “ethical” drugs industry, about what they contribute to the economy, about the “nice big” taxes they pay and obviously about how good drugs are for our health.

And don't make the mistake of thinking that some of this P.R. is not true.

Because, whilst some ruthless massive international pharmaceutical producers make fortunes by skating on the thin edge of honesty, humanity and the law (a fact proved by the number of court cases they lose and the vast penalties they regularly have to pay), most producers make normal profits and do produce, market and deliver ethical products serving humane and valuable purposes.

However, where many of them come adrift is when they try to expand from the field of physical medicine into that of psychiatry's version of “mental health”.

This is because the whole concept of the mind and mental health, as espoused by seriously flawed international psychiatry, proves to be a totally unreliable and damaging basis for the prescribing of most chemical substances – especially those of an addictive and / or hypnotic nature.

The bulk of “substances” which provide the first step towards alleviating the true, realistic and actual adverse mental health conditions are fresh good quality natural nutrition, balanced nutrition, natural vitamins, natural minerals and other healthy food and supplements, the prescribing of which is based on thorough and adequate testing, including the detection and handling of allergic conditions.

As long as the pharmaceutical industry continues to rely on psychiatric guidance in the field of mental health, they will find themselves getting further INTO the psychiatric mine-fields, instead of OUT, and paying more and more penalties.

It is my personal hope that Mrs May, with her already great experience of Home Office affairs, will soon combine that wisdom, with a new and closer experience of other Departments, into a coherent avoidance, prevention, eradication and ADDICTION RECOVERY TRAINING strategy.

And I believe she has the breadth and sharpness of perception to recognise that addiction can never be a ONE Department problem relying on a ONE Department solution, because ADDICTION impinges upon and requires some of its solution FROM ALL DEPARTMENTS – especially 10, Downing Street.

For further discussion on this subject, you may wish to phone (01342) 810151 any weekday between 11.00am and 9.00pm. If out, please leave your name and number.

S.A.F.E. Is A Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Formed in 1975.

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You Cannot Become Addicted To A Drug Which You Never Use

BECAUSE IT IS THE

USE

OF DRUGS

WHICH ALONE CREATES

 ADDICTION.

Not misuse, abuse or a psychiatrically invented so-called

“addictive personality”.    Just straightforward USE !

The Home Office is likely the busiest, hard-working and most wide ranging U.K. government Department, covering, as it does, a majority of our home affairs and the protection of all our citizens against a variety of every day threats.

(Which incidentally is why many observers consider that the Home Office experienced Theresa May may well emerge as one of the best Prime Ministers we have ever had).

As a consequence, in order to cover policing, fire prevention, probation, prisons, addictive drug distribution and usage, border control, immigration, terrorism, alcohol strategy, crime reduction and prevention, etc., Home Office staff work with 28 different agencies and public bodies which are expected to be independent, expert, sometimes executive and occasionally advisory.

Into the latter category falls the ACMD (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs), which carefully and cleverly fails to address more than one-third of the country's addiction issues, and thus avoids blaming Council members or their industry colleagues for their part in the acceleration and growth of addiction in this country.

Unfortunately, whilst it is clearly great on “advice”, the ACMD is neither independent nor expert, and in its published “Work Programme”, basically misses the point in respect of WHAT THE COUNTRY REALLY NEEDS. Which is:

1) to actually REDUCE and AVOID the increasing devastating scourge of addictive drug usage of every sort, and consequent debilitating addiction, which attacks the economy, the life of the community and that of the individual and his or her family, and,

2) to RECOVER victims of substance addiction to the natural state of relaxed abstinence into which 99% of them were born, thus also salvaging the economy.

Even the very title: “Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs” tells us that the Council is not expected to actually achieve very much, and is not truly independent.

This is because psychiatric & pharmacological professionals, in order to avoid any blaming of the psycho-pharmaceutical fraternity's practices & products, have for decades been successfully accusing drug USERS (rather than the drugs) for causing their own addiction by so-called “misuse” and “abuse”. So the ACMD membership is in no way independent of their employers.

Significantly, over half the membership of the ACMD is comprised of pharmacologists and psychiatrists, the very professionals responsible for researching, inventing and MANUFACTURING ADDICTIVE DRUGS AND PRESCRIBING THEM.

SO LET US BE VERY CLEAR – BY DIFFERENTIATING PROPERLY.

The ACMD carefully advises ONLY on illicit drugs, because it is their professions which are responsible for the 2.4 MILLION involuntary LEGAL drug addicts they have already created in the U.K., and which they have no wish to cure (or even advise on or discuss) because it is those sales – via the N.H.S. and paid for by the U.K. taxpayer – which are their profitable addiction produced daily bread and butter.

And those 2.4 Million addicted patients are in addition to the millions of other N.H.S. patients who also gratefully receive doses of useful and non-addictive pharmaceutically produced and G.P. prescribed medicines, which are daily and helpfully dispensed to U.K. patients.

In other words, EVERY DAY, an additional SEVEN MILLION OR MORE PER DAY of ADDICTIVE pharmaceutically produced drug doses also go down the throats of N.H.S. psychiatrically labelled and prescribed “mental health” patients living at home or in care.

But if the involuntarily addicted are “patients”, for what condition are they being treated?  And the only honest answer is: “They are having their involuntary addiction “managed”  (i.e. the addiction which mis-prescribing inflicted upon them in the first place).”

And here we have the real MISUSE of drugs, because addictive drugs were never intended to be used as a means of ensuring basically automatic daily sales of well over seven million profitable doses each and every day for the rest of those patients lives – just to ensure a continuing market for profitable psychiatrically prescribed pharmaceutical products – usefully (from the suppliers' viewpoint) paid for in bulk by U.K. taxpayers, not by the individual patients.

Neither the Department of Health nor the N.H.S. are capable of curing drug addiction, a fact which is proven by their dedication to the commissioning of “providers” to “rehabilitate” (not cure) addicts, or just to “manage” their addiction.

Which activities seldom result in the production of lasting relaxed abstinence.

Yet the ACMD continues to lure the Home Office into the false belief that illicit drug usage is the WHOLE addiction problem, and that LEGAL MEDICAL drug usage should be ignored, because "that" is Department of Health business !

As a result we have a massive hole in our addiction policy.  Note that.  In our ADDICTION policy – not DRUG policy.  Because it is not medication which is the problem.  It is ADDICTIVE AND HYPNOTIC DRUG PRODUCING AND PRESCRIBING which is the problem, and whilst the producers know a lot about making drugs, they know absolutely nothing about addiction and how to cure it.

Expecting the manufacturers of drugs to know how to cure addiction, is like expecting the manufacturers of razor-sharp scalpels to be the best surgeons, or the manufacturers of bullets to be the best marksmen !

Drug addiction, and the damaging conditions it inflicts on the society, the economy and on individuals is a bigger problem than terrorism, because terrorism actually depends on addictive drug usage for much of the development and control of its “warriors”.

Committing a hapless individual to a life of addiction is a vile crime, when the pusher is a criminal looking for a quick buck.

But, persuading an individual that he can “solve his problem” with an addictive drug is the same crime, even when the pusher is a professional adviser, and especially when that psychiatrist or other physician knows full well that it is the usage of that drug over only a very short period which is, in the vast majority of cases, going to make that patient into a drug dependent addict for life.

The pharmaceutical producers know this, and ENOUGH OF THEM USE THIS FACT TO MAXIMISE THEIR SALES AND PROFITS, AND SO ARE JUST AS MUCH CRIMINALS AS THE ILLICIT GROWERS AND SMUGGLERS.

However, they are not regarded as part of the massive addiction problem on which the Home Office SHOULD be taking genuinely independent advice in an effort to reduce the threat to the U.K's population posed by addictive behaviour.

Far too many politicians and civil servants, and especially the Home Office, still seem to be blind-folded and ear-plugged on this subject, so that more and more policy-makers need to recognise the direction in which addiction is inevitably taking our families and communities, and become aware that:

* Addicts cause the most accidents at work.

* Addicts mug and rob old people.

* Addicts and drunks cause most road accidents.

* Addicts sell drugs to children (and others).

* Addicts increase the numbers of prostitutes and

‘toy-boys’ in our towns,

* Addicts disrupt our schools, the education of our

children and the life of our communities,

* Addicts bankrupt businesses and destroy jobs.

* Addicts break into and burgle peoples' homes.

* Addicts spread HIV, AIDS and hepatitis.

* Addicts waste our tax money and other resources.

* Addicts and drunks commit the most crimes,

* Addicts (even if involuntarily addicted) cause a bigger
                                  drain on the N.H.S, than any other set of patients,

And addicts are undoubtedly the real current threat to our lives and to everybody’s future. (And that includes addicts on illicit, legal, licensed and prescribed drugs.)

This is because their addiction controls them, and THIS AFFECTS EVERYBODY,

EVERYONE’S FAMILY, EVERYONE’S INCOME, EVERY JOB, EVERYONE’S HEALTH AND EVERYBODY’S HOME !

It therefore follows that in a country like the U.K., its Home Office, which claims responsibility for protection of the population and its future wellbeing, should be the Department which enforces on all other Departments those policies that:

1) reduce the number of individuals starting on drug usage, by providing effective addiction prevention and usage avoidance training, and,

2) those policies which provide effective cures for existing drug addicts, including recovery to the natural state of relaxed abstinence into which 99% of the population is born.

Without these policies being widely and effectively implemented the Government will inevitably continue to create a nation where the majority of its citizens will eventually become addicts, and thus all eventually be bio-chemically controlled zombies.

Even if there were no existing cure for drug addiction, the above indicated current government attitude towards addictive drug production and prescribing would NOT be of any use to a society which needs and wants to be addiction free - unless factions within our Government covertly seeks population control by drugging ??

But there has been a sure cure for drug addiction for over 50 years which, via black propaganda, covert attacks, criticism and ridicule, etc., international psychiatry and pharmaceutical interests have been determinedly trying to have shut-down and made unbelievable and unapproachable for 66 years.

Nevertheless one residential self-help addiction recovery TRAINING programme has been expanding across the world since 1966, and today has nearly a hundred centres (including prison units) in 49 countries.  But the ACMD doesn't want representatives of that programme advising the Home Office, because the harsh light of truth they would shine on the U.K. addiction problem, “would not be good for the business of psycho-pharm interests.”

Unsurprisingly, one professional acquaintance, whose application to join the ACMD was refused, said that, in his experience and opinion, the initials more accurately stood for All Completely Misleading Delegates !

S.A.F.E. Is A Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Formed in 1975.

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Personally, I Don't Necessarily Agree, But . . . .

ONE OF MY FRIENDS BELIEVES

THAT THE FACT THAT “SOUTHERN

RAIL” IS MAINLY OWNED BY A

FRENCH COMPANY - IS PART OF THE

REASON FOR THE PRESENT STRIKES.

Whilst it is the rail unions who have called the on-going disastrous five day strike by Southern Rail employees, it is the staffing policies of the company's owners which have precipitated the strike call.

This is a massive French transport company based in Paris and partly owned by that government via the French national rail company who, my friend says, couldn't care less about British commuting passengers' delays, discomforts and income loss, about a reduction in the number of tourists visiting London or about whether Brexit is a rocky ride – or even a complete disaster !

After all, he says, it is French politicians who suggested that Britain ought to be penalised for voting for Brexit, and they have been further pixxed-off by Theresa May's eminently sensible and obviously correct and courageous decision to take a closer look before finally committing to the resolution taken 20 years ago to build a nuclear power station - when electricity production projects by other means have changed so drastically in the last two decades.

Stopping London based commuters from producing, whilst also reducing our tourist income, are both factors which will make leaving the E.U. look like a bad idea, and thus weaken support for French E.U. “independence” parties.

Unfortunately, those British trade unionists which wanted to REMAIN in the E.U. are also inclined towards trying to show that Brexit was wrong.

So whilst they claim that they “always” have the best interests of “our members” at heart, we all know that they can be extremely political bodies which, like the large commercial interests they confront, are NOT elected by the British electorate, and so have an undeserved and un-democratic influence on our lives and on our Brexit, etc.

I just wish they would play their games on the Continent, instead of on “our” (what a totally inaccurate word) on “OUR” railways !

Once they've settled whether the Driver or the Guard closes the doors for the passengers, I suppose they will then want to argue about who opens and closes the door for the Guard and then who opens and closes it for the Driver.

After all, increasingly expensive business executives and powerful political leaders have to be seen to be doing something useful – don't they ?

BUT JOKING ASIDE.

Whether my friend is right or wrong, he is managing to draw attention to the idea that Brexit is just as likely to be covertly attacked as well as openly, and that we must therefore all look more than once at events which carry other headlines, but may well be “poor loser” attempts to spoil a successful and beneficial Brexit - or even be a vain attempt to reverse it.

S.A.F.E. Is A Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Formed in 1975.

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