Chocolat for Lent 4

This is the fourth instalment of my weekly Lenten thoughts on the film and novel Chocolat. It is not connected to the makers of either.

There’s quite a lot of bossiness in this tale, screen and page.

In the book, Armande sweeps Guillaume off when his dog is dead in the manner that Vianne does to her. Vianne tells Josephine to stay with her when she leaves her abusive husband and not catch a bus to start a new life elsewhere; then she ends up employing her. When Armande has a health crisis, she tells Josephine she will (not asks ‘will you’?) look after her shop and child whilst Vianne calls a doctor, which she knows Armande will not want, and thus a posse turns up which adds to Armande’s predicament. I’m glad that Armande uses this as an opportunity to rout them all.

Vianne’s relationship to medicine is as mixed as her chocolate bowl: her cancerous mum refused hospital and carried on travelling to the end, but it’s implied that the alternative therapies failed and they ended up on black market morphine – hence she’s good at giving Armande shots for diabetes. Vianne and her mum thus ended with the mainstream method, but by illicit means.

Vianne feels Charly’s neck and decides that the lump is ‘hopeless’ – quite how she is able to make such an assertion, via any form of medicine, is not explained. I don’t really see Vianne as having healing gifts or intuition about health, other than crushing her magic beans. There’s a hint that Guillaume should have put Charly down sooner, rather than allow him to whine all night in pain – or shockingly, die naturally. Guillaume submits to the veterinarian euthanasia model. But there is a human in Chocolat who also chooses her end before it gets to that stage.

Armande’s stance is very relevant to our world at present. She’d have been isolated for the best part of a year as she lives alone, doesn’t get on with her family (and so wouldn’t be in their bubble), and the homes around her are mostly deserted. If Armande had kept to the rules, she’d have been alone with a potentially dangerous diagnosis. If she went into Le Mimosa nursing home, it would likely have fulfilled its Le Mortoire moniker, as so many can tragically attest. She would not have been permitted visits – or perhaps the support she needed would be denied her as the home would refuse new entries, and she’d be delayed getting hospital treatment. Long before last March, I know of people turned away from operating theatres on grounds of age; and if the likes of Armande had an attack, would a Do Not Resuscitate order have been placed on her? If Armande wanted to reach out to an alternative practitioner, she may have been forbidden from meeting with them for much of the last year. She ought not see Vianne either. Thus, with little to live for, Armande and her dodgy roof, failing eyesight, and advanced diabetes might well have left the world sooner, and not on her terms.

It’s possible to see Armande’s demise as literally death by chocolate, but it was a happy end, having lived more intensely during the 6 weeks of the story than for many decades. It was an end she was in control of; a Frida-like joyful firework of a finale. Armande had completed several strands of her life and been of service to others. In the book, she is friend to Guillaume, another older lone person who is grieving for his dog. She offers work, hospitality and friendship to the river folk, and they assist her. Her friendship with Vianne is a mutual benefit: via Vianne, she is reconciled with daughter and grandson, and Armande is a surrogate for the unhealed mother wounds. They also simply enjoy each other – it doesn’t need to be a transaction, like so much in this world.

Armande says, if you can’t do what you like at my age – which is 81 – then when can you? We can feel as if we’re waiting for the age when we’re given permission to truly be free and respected, to then feel it falling away again. Giving up her autonomy for nurses with clipboards to record bodily functions was not appealing to this clearly sharp, spirited lady. Why are some of us Carolines, happier at the thought of our elders ‘taken care of’ in that way – I’d suggest in both senses of that phrase. When do we start to infantilise those who were once our elders, our life givers and nurturers?

Armande stands by her right to be reckless. Does she harm anyone else? Does she actually cause any inconvenience? No. If she had, could it be argued that public resources were being wasted? It’s an opinion that has been mooted, on health and other matters. I would say that often the perceived inconvenience is systemic: that we expect an official, public body to handle anything we call a disaster, and that public body can be paternalistic towards us, whatever our age. Perhaps we need to give a little more leeway, and not to try and over-control.

Should we prolong life, at any age? Would ‘careful’ living, and entering that institution she so feared, have meant that Armande was living a better life? Life can seem over, or on hold, even when we are still breathing – rather like the senior priest that Reynaud of the novel consults. For all his power and status, this father can’t eat or talk or even register his consciousness. He is subject to nursy nuns, merely existing. Armande ensured she exited by another door.

Armande also defied the church. Her birthday party falls in Holy Week. In the book, it is on Good Friday, that most sacred, solemn day. Whilst the Lenten fast continues for at least another 24 hours, Armande and guests break all the rules, early. But Good Friday is not so meaningful for Armande or her party throwers. It didn’t clash with the worship of the day and nor is her party venue right near the church. Yes, it might have enticed others away from their commitments, but this was to be Armande’s last night – she couldn’t wait until the official restrictions end day of Sunday, just as many have left this world during the restrictions we’re all facing. We might also ask how a party could have done real harm, or was it truly that the joy-stealing controllers weren’t invited.

Reynaud is annoyed that Armande, that longlost soul, gives him and the medical world the slip. She has gone to Vianne’s Pagan side, rather than that of our Lord – although I believe Armande would have met him too. And not in the sense of judgement. Reynaud tries posthumous reclamation via the last rites that living Armande would not have wanted. But she’s grinning, and he knows that his words will do little now. She’s not lost to God – she’s lost to Reynaud’s power. Armande reclaimed her sovereignty and found joy and peace. It didn’t come from an ampoule, an enema, or a missal.

The line that Luc adopts from his Gran is the one I’ll leave you with, for it sums up much of her spirit: “Don’t worry so much about supposed to.”

Chocolat 20 years on – not simply a sweet tale

At the 20th anniversary, I began reading this old favourite. It has a chapter for most of the 40 days of Lent, starting with Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, which was last night in Britain, and working towards its culmination on Easter morn. I wanted to take the journey with you this year, seeing how this tale caught me a score later, with all that’s happening in the world, and the things that I have learned and experienced since. The film has always had personal significance. I saw it twice at the cinema and introduced it at a public community showing three years ago; I’ve watched it at home several times. My companions and the circumstances have often been of moment in my life.

I own the book, script and film, and a Lent Course by Hilary Brand. I’ve been long wanting to create my own. I’d like to have that in person with my community some other year; but for this, I will drop in throughout Lent, once a week.

None of this is connected to the author, or film makers, or Hilary Brand.

Here is my introduction of 3 years ago, based on a piece of about 10 years previous:

When this film was released here in Lent 2001, it seemed a crowdpleasing award winner, quite safe and saccharin. But Chocolat, based on Joanne Harris’s 1999 novel, is not simply a sweet tale.

It’s not just the chocolate that’s dark – the true, pure cacao-based substance with ancient Mayan roots, as much alchemic as aphrodisiac, more than a simple pick-me-up naughty treat. The extras on my DVD include an ode to the health benefits of chocolate, but this does not extend to its mystical, sacred powers and medicinal uses. Chocolate is as illicit and nonconformist as it is sensuous. The movie plays this down a little. There is dark but also light. This dichotomy is seen – or rather heard – in Rachel Portman’s score. The Comte [count/mayor] – a priest in the novel – has a traditional, pompous, staid, age old theme, the weight of the orchestra as well as his lineage behind him. Vianne – literally a blow in [the Norfolk phrase for newcomers] – is itinerant, mendicant, rootless. He is from the long tradition of the Catholic church; her heritage, more ancient still. Note the sensuous, haunting, mystical and melancholy in Vianne’s themes, even the joyful one. And yet, what I love best about Chocolat is that the Pagan behaves how the Christians should. There are many anecdotes and observations: that this is a truly international story, set in France penned by a Yorkshire woman who received a surprise home visit from the French star Juliette Binoche; filmed in a real French walled town, Flavigny, and on a set in Shepperton studios near London; directed by a Swede whose wife played Josephine; and that there are British, American and Irish cast, crew and characters. That Anouk’s invisible companion Pantoufle is metamorphosed from a rabbit to the more exotic kangaroo in the film, and the setting is pushed back to 1959; that the accent is a half American, half European invention. There is much to observe about who sets who free, and yet who is also held back another, and the ways in which characters are controlled and allow themselves to be controlled…

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This year, we’re aware as much as ever of how much the attitudes of others can enslave us. The parishoners of Lasquenet-sans-Tannes are a dull bunch, in colour and attitude. Vianne observes that their hat colours match their hair: black, brown and grey. They are desperately polite and reserved. There are unspoken codes as to what can be said to one another, especially to a stranger. In their lives of short rein, they are fascinated by the minutae of the lives of others. They notice differences acutely and judge them, and make it into something to report.

Vianne – whose name, a form of Anne, varies with each town – challenges everything that these people are and do. She is a free spirit in colourful clothes who brings a colourful, decadent, metropolitan shop to their village at the time of abstenance.

Drawing a parallel with Lent and lockdown should be very easy. It is a period they comply with, a directive they follow, for it is expected of them as good citizens. This denial serves their soul – although the denials we are asked undergo as a society are for the service of others’ bodies.

The people do so because of the power of one man, a lone figure, among them but set apart, representing long and large institutions which have set the limits of people for millennia. Reynaud is a dark pillar; in the novel, the tarot symbol of The Black Man that haunted Vianne’s mother as it does her. Reynaud has the trappings of the elite: his title, his lineage, his training. Up in his pulpit, Reynaud (or his puppet, in the film) preaches against the woman he considers to be his enemy. Thus, Vianne is their enemy, even though she is friendly, charming and generous, she represents unfettered womanhood and sensuous sin.

I’ve just been out and seen posters about how breaking the rules does us harm. Those posters are actually evidence against the organisation who put them up. I also received an email from someone I respect about harmful rules.

The people are taught that kindness is wrong; that indulgence is dangerous; that strangers are to be treated warily, and possibly excluded and flushed out (should they be those human vermin: river rats). There are expectations about sexuality and marriage, about games one’s child should play, about the businesses one should run – especially in Lent; and one’s whereabouts – in church during Lent, especially on high holy days; not in chocolateries on Sundays.

The rules we have are more harmful and nonsensical. During the next six weeks, the people are about to undergo a transformation, via Vianne and the properties of her product. I pray that this Lent, we too, will undergo an awakening.

AN OPEN LETTER ABOUT MASKS AND OTHER COVID-RELATED RULES

I wish to challenge the upcoming rules about masks, and also taking our contact details in pubs.

One – I think this shows how arbitrary law creation can be, and that it can contravene what we know to be right and fair; but even within law:

No statutes can contravene Common Law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a global, inalienable set of articles.

Lockdown has broken almost every one, and letting us out legislation has the potential for more.

But even so called emergencies can’t override these rights.

There is also the query that coronavirus a) was and b) still is an emergency, because figures have been greatly exaggerated and other narratives pushed aside. Many whistleblowers in medicine and science have queried the true infection rates, the death rates, the very nature of germ theory vs terrain – and thus how data has been used to justify government actions.

The act being used in Britain, The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 (note the year), states that emergency contingency must be proportional. If the disease isn’t as deadly or widespread in a dangerous way, then the laws are disproportional and thus not valid. They also are valid for only a short period – we have overreached ours.

Many doctors also state that masks don’t help protect. Studies are vague (one being cited in April was retracted, but it relied on only 5 people). I have read many times the common sense approach that masks hold in our old breath, making any germs go round and round our respiratory system, thus making us ill. But masks aren’t designed or effective for stopping what we breathe out seeping beyond the mask.

Masks make hearing aids out fall out; glasses steam up; they exacerbate breathing issues (this is allowed for in legislation, thus they know that masks aren’t good for us); they promote fear, obfuscate conversation and emotional connection; they can look sinister.

There is a strange shift from WHO and other medical officials from saying: masks are not necessary for the healthy general public, especially in outdoor or brief indoor encounters; to sudden regulations requiring them – as lockdowns eased.

This seems a highly political move, to keep fear and the economy moving side by side.

Is this law or guidance? The latter can’t be enforced, the former only by police.

Hence chairman of the Federation of Police of England and Wales, John Apter, who quickly made a statement to newspapers at the news, is wrong to say that mask wearing should be a condition of entry to shops. He’s really saying: the police don’t want the job, so we’ll push it onto front of house staff – who are privately contracted employees, some of whom aren’t even employed to do security.

He also made a statement that masks are necessary – but he’s not a medical specialist, and neither is that his role to make or stipulate policy.

I had hoped that the first bit of his statement meant he and the police were an ally, and I’d love for them to refuse to enforce such an arbitrary, difficult rule.

Recently reopened cafes in England are being asked to take customers’ contact details at the door. Mostly, you’re not warned of this and there’s not a notice to tell you the conditions, (eg how long are they held, by whom, and exactly what for.)

This is contact tracing through the back door: who deems that there has been an outbreak of COVID among customers and requires them to be told to self isolate? Is this going to be checked or enforced? I can see that this is also a compliance test as well as a possible excuse for house arrest and collection of genetic material and treatment – not in the patient’s interest.

I pointed out that this is a data protection breach, the terms of which are unclear. We don’t usually have to do this to enter a library, so why now? Why are security staff – not library employees – allowed to take this information?

I can see how this is a compliance exercise and several are worried about further stages.

This may not seem too unreasonable – but what follows?

We shouldn’t need a doctor’s note – they’re hard to get to, and it assumes a condition that the mainstream health system understands whilst ensuring you’re in their system.

For a security guard or police officer to ask for our medical history is an intrusion.

I note the inconsistency: passengers must wear a mask on the socially distanced bus – but the driver doesn’t. You can sit round a pub table with your friends for an evening, maskless, but not swiftly move through the supermarket where you’re meant to be 2m apart… or was that 1 now, Boris… we’re really not sure. We’ve shopped all along – why the sudden panic?

Masks make us ill. If you think different, by all means…. if you think it reassures your customers…

but don’t require it, or make it a division and something for strangers to argue over, or employers to threaten staff with.

John Miltimore, editor of the Foundation for Economic Education, said

“Good ideas don’t need force.”

And bad ones… perhaps that is why force is being used. For nothing about this – spending money we may not have, thanks to lockdown, on masks that I frequency see discarded, that make us ill…

Have you noted how much coronavirus rhetoric is about others before you?

Wearing something, washing something, giving something should not be a government condition of opening or entering.

I reiterate that right to work (23), to associate (20), freedom of movement (13), to participate in cultural life (27), to a good standard of living – food, clothes, supplies (25), leisure (24) access to services (21) – are all enshrined the UDHR and thus denying these is not legal, especially as this is effectively penalising for one’s opinion – also forbidden under UDHR (18/19).

And there’s no exceptions (30), no discrimination (2).

‘The Will of the People is the basis for authority in government’ – UDHR 21.3

These laws are not and therefore, being deleterious to the same, are not lawful, nor moral.

Hence these regulations need to be dropped as recommendations only and give the people the choice of whether to go elsewhere, and never have their livelihood dependent on it.

And to the papers who say that mask-refusers are less intelligent:

I think the tenure and vocabulary of this article (somewhat abridged) proves this invalid.

A loving list for lockdown loosening

Thank you to all who spread love and hope and solidarity

Thank you to all who have the courage to speak out

Thank you to all whose musical contributions have helped raise our vibrations to love – such as John Martyn’s I Don’t Know About Evil, Only Wanna Know About Love (which I play as I type)

Thank you to all those who acted unselfishly, even if I disagree with the need to stay in, or stay apart; and those who defied it – you did what you believed was right

Thank you to all those who came into work and served us – again, regardless of what the danger really is, that perhaps believing the worst, you came in anyway

Thank you to all those in enforcement who act with compassion and common sense, and have the courage to question unjust orders; thank you to those who don’t give them

Thank you to all those who have worked so hard to find solutions, whether political or medical; and to those whose solutions listened to the people you are here to help, and who refused to create or legislate anything that harms people, the planet, or the values we stand for

Thank you to all those who printed what they believed to be true, or gave the others the opportunity to hear other points of view, and did not print what powerful others told them to, inciting fear

Thank you to all who don’t report other people for breaking lockdown rules or use apps which allow for government spying

Thank you to all who are considerate of their neighbours and don’t make this time harder through selfish noise, tempting as that may have been

Thank you to all those who are lenient, especially on those who can’t pay, and even better – those who’ve started questioning the fairness of their fees during this time

Thank you to all those who have broken down boundaries, reconnected, been resilient, found creative ways to connect and allow services of all kinds to continue

Thank you to all those who call for a more equal society; thank you for those who are helping make it

And thank you to all those who read this

Love to you all

Love Warrior Speaks Out against enforced testing, tracing and treatment

I am deeply, deeply concerned about proposals for conditions of lifting of the lockdown – which many of us feared far more than the virus.

I’ve heard it said that the priority is saving lives – but it should be to protect life, a meaningful one with full human rights. The handling so far and proposals erode our basic freedoms and wellbeing.

Community testing can easily be community tyranny – such as army administered drive through tests (which trap us), or admission otherwise barred if we don’t comply.

We also show our deep discomfort about contact-tracing apps on our phones, and how the information is mis/used. Those we contact do not opt in and we fear for arbitary arrests and containment, and of targeting specific groups of people deemed to be a threat.

We have also long been concerned about vaccinations and other enforced treatments, such as what happens to us if we refuse or appear to test positive.

This gives the state, police, and army powers, takes away ours, and gives the government samples of us and allows it to know who we know.

We query what the tests actually show, what they really do, and what is really happening.

Whistleblowers have come forward in security and science. I heard the words of doctors asked to cook figures; experts in the field who say that the lockdown has weakened our immunity and prolonged the time needed for the virus to stop; who query the level of contagion and type of contact needed to be infected; that projected figures are exaggerated and that tests and vaccinations are not necessary nor effective, and often harmful; and as well as the fear many are living in, that health issues are caused by unhealthy substances in our environment, especially wi-fi. Some of those coming forward include Rashid Battar, Derek Henry, Wolfgang Wodarg, Scott Jensen, Knut Wittkowski, and some of these can be seen on the OpenHand website.

These links to YouTube and social media often suspiciously disappear.

All the official remedies have assumed face value and allopathic models, as well as total state control.

Many health professionals are saying that naturally building our immune system whilst avoiding the unnatural substances in our world, like fluoride, chemicals, coating of pans and tins, smart devices, and 5G, as well as restoring calm, balance, and at least some freedom (especially to be outside, with others than just our household) would better ways to combat the disease.

We ask that 5G does not come and for extra care about what is being sent through out airwaves. Some can already feel and hear strange things…

We ask that this is not a time for bullying or division (I know people whose benefits have been refused or threatened during lockdown!), not a time of telling on our neighbours or setting our own against us.

We ask that this city and country leads (whereever you are) by imposing no enforcement, roadblocks, uninvited home visits, or incarceration; and instead looks to why this virus is here and what we can learn from it.

[On Sunday afternoon, I’ll have a sermon to share]

Creative Maladjustment Week

This is based on a Martin Luther King speech who said “Here is a list of horrible things in our world which I’m glad to be maladjusted to, and I won’t be changing that”. He resisted being “normal” as officially defined (especially by psychiatry) and said we need a new group to improve our world, the creatively maladjusted. This international week celebrates that spirit, and here’s its website.

Here’s what I am proud to be maladjusted to:

– Benefits claimant hating, as incited by media and certain political parties; the belief that your worth comes from how much taxable income you generate

– Banks that can create theoretical money and make actual debts to chase you for, even or especially when you’re poor, and cause global crises that others both suffer and pay for

– a health system that’s as much about supply and demand and control as it really is about wellness, and which sees other forms of healing – often older and more universal – as a threat to be derided and blocked; a system that can make decisions on your behalf for ‘your good’ which affect your life and body and mind

– a world where governments and corporations try to own and control people and pry and don’t treat people as people and where other forms of life are only given value by what they profit other humans

– a world where we have judgment and fear, not acceptance, towards those who are different from us, whether that be due to nationhood, skin colour, beliefs, sexuality, gender, bodily ability

– a world where we are disseminated to and encouraged to ridicule or silence those who don’t agree with and expose and question the beliefs that those in control would like us to absorb

– a world of secrecy and control of the few, often masquerading as a people led open advanced society

– invasive customs control based on exaggerated threats; wars on terror justified through fear but which really have some hidden benefit for the few whilst causing more terror for those who we claim to protect

And campaigns to glorify and justify war, past and present

You know my flags by now – justice and liberty for all! And most important – Love.

Here is a big wave of them along with all those other CMs!

 

 

 

 

Candid Friend of the Green Party

Church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch sat in his home parish church (mine too) and said to camera that he is a “candid friend of Christianity”. I am too, but I am also the candid friend of the Green Party.

I’ve often found their website an interesting slant on news and opinions, and I found their response to events like the Boston Bombings and the Woolwich attack balanced and sensitive. I was sorry that they’ve kept up the fracking and 20 mile an hour speed limits news over commenting on the PRISM revelations (the same is true of the Socialist worker, whose views cannot be called balanced, but I like to hear from a range of people). With two welcome trials in Britain this week about security overstepping on the public toe, I hopefully peeked on the Green website to see what Mses Bennett, Lucas and friends such as the newly titled Jenny Jones might have to say against the Big Brotherism I felt confident they’d oppose. Instead, I found an article that made my eyes bulge…

Am I reading the Mail?! I asked, or my local rag? No – Green Leader Natalie, who I admire, was worrying about obesity, saying it requires “Political Will” to tackle – as per her leader’s blog of 30 Aug 2013.

My understanding is that the worldwide Greens are concerned with having freedom and supporting diversity; in devolving laws to the lowest possible level and not having intrusive and unnecessary ones. Which makes me think that they are against nanny state…oh, but aren’t those slow car laws are a bit controlling?!

What size and shape we are is NOT an issue for the government. The Greens rightly value all colours of the rainbow on the gender/sexuality continuum; they want freedom of belief, they hate racism and any other discrimination.

But this about obesity is controlling, value judging, discrimination! (everything the Greens are against).

When this country, like so many others, is in the pits of austerity, when this country, like so many others, is waging unnecessary wars, when this country is in the midst of revelations that it is being routinely spied on and laws are being passed to make protest harder, then the Greens, as the most radical and critiquing of our parties, the one who claims to be different, ought to be busy with these matters.

I’m sure another allopathic medicine diatribe (sorry that should say discourse) is due soon on this blog, though my Diana and Hannah post gives a flavour of my thoughts on that subject which I can explain more fully another time. But I think, as regards to our weight and size, I can do no better than refer readers to

http://voices.yahoo.com/in-defence-obesity-2630233.html

Who called the fat police? And who recruited Natalie Bennett?! Please resign your badge and get back to your better battles!

Watching the watchers

The Guardian wondered why there’s not a bigger outcry over the GCHQ/NSA public spying revelations. A quick search shows that news sites across the world are talking about it. I would like to make clear that we (royal if need be) are not at all happy or prepared to accept the situation. I admire The Guardian for speaking out and am delighted that GCHQ will be taken to the court of European rights and hope the US and other affected countries does likewise. I think this calls for some questions about the accountability and purpose of secret services. Australia’s Green Party has some interesting ideas and also defines what national security should really be about. I ask: how can you be legitimate or moral if your actions compromise your supposed reason for being – namely, to keep us safe and free in a country run by the people in a transparent way, we lose basic rights in all the above? It’s a paradox that cannot be.

The title comes from the tagline of British MI5 drama, Spooks.

Radiotherapy Rape

I wondered if that was a bit of a hard title – but it feels necessary.

If someone is forced to undergo bodily actions against their will, especially those that are harmful on a physical and mental level and that have altering affects, than that is rape. Rape is not purely for sexual abuse.

I refer to to the news around the Roberts family, where a court has forced a recalcitrant mother to let her son have an operation and therapy for a brain tumour that she doesn’t want – and to lose parental custody for a year, as well as banning her passport.

I cannot tell from reports quite how this got into the courts. Was it the estranged husband who raised the case, or that mother Sally took her soon away to stop him having the therapy? Did the authorities really come looking for her due to missed appointments?

I am incensed by the judge who really cannot call himself Justice anything.

Our bodies are our own, not the state’s, not the court’s, not the hospital’s. None of those places can make a decision on anyone’s behalf.

‘A mother’s choice’ in our society means she can choose not have a baby, but once born, that choice reverts to the state.

What really seems at stake here is that the mother, Sally, has defied the system. She has said no to submitting, as so many unquestioningly do, to the harsh treatments, and wanted time to explore other options. She is told that there are none and then forced to go to court. She is told by “experts” that these other treatments she considers are not “proven.” Truth – there is fear that doctors are losing their power and that the harm of traditional cancer treatments is becoming better known. And that “experts” and evidence are chosen to back up what those in power want us to know.

Sally is quite right to consider other options and query methods where damage has been done. Alternative healers often speak of the alarming statistics where the health professions harm, not cure. I don’t believe it is their way of getting our custom instead (I am wary of that); and nor do I believe that most allopathic medical staff intend harm; I am sure they are trying genuinely to assist.

But they have bought into their own medicine that there is one way – the established one – to deal with medical issues. When my own mum was dying of cancer, I found out that alternative health shops were legally unable to answer my query. I have discovered why – the 1939 Cancer Act, England, which has few search results on the net, but forbids the statement and advertisement of cancer cure other than via radio and chemotherapy.

You have to ask who made that law – people set to gain from these treatments, trying to have a legal as well as financial monopoly on cure. Donna Eden asks in her Energy Medicine book why such laws (also found in America) are there, as ultimately all genuine healers want to heal, and the prohibitions she found are not only curtailing patient choice (and her own gifts) but stopping that healing taking place.

I also discovered too the surprise of doctors when one does not simply go to the therapy rooms as prescribed, their almost anger at orders not being obeyed, at their plans not being followed. As an adult, my mother (encouraged by me) could freely choose not to have treatment – the little she did had precipitated illness, for despite having stage 4 cancer, she had looked very well til then. Yet Neon Roberts, Sally’s son, has not got that choice. No report speaks of what he wants and how much he can understand about the risks and treatments being foisted on him.

The medical profession also fears death as a sign of failure. But for those of us who see death as a passing from this to another, better world, it is not to be shunned at any cost. Perhaps we are worse at accepting child death now than when the mortality rate was higher and people were generally more religious. I think spirituality is returning, though not yet to the establishment. We feel a good life is a long one and that a shorter one, especially in children, is a life cheated. While desperately painful for loved ones, perhaps it is better to see that lives are of varying lengths and that growing into old age is not an automatic right and necessity. I believe we come into the world for a purpose and that sometimes that is fulfilled in a short time.

I do feel for the family. But this piece is about a serious and frightening point that a mother is being overruled and our bodies are not our own.

It seems that this is using emotive talk to get the courts and public to side against a mother for being open minded. It’s easy to read Dec 22nd’s outcome as rewarding the conforming, malleable father with care of the son so that what the state wants can happen. I did not like what his defence lawyer said, hinting (as did the judge) that Sally is going off the rails and being wayward – and therefore not deserving of winning the case or having care of her child.

Obviously what’s hard is that the parents do not agree on what should happen.

What’s the real battle here?

I am aware some believe in the conventional system and that others may genuinely think that this method is the best to save a life. But as Sally points out – what kind of life? And what if the other methods can also save him and be safer and less horrific to go through?

Having already subjected a little boy to a long gruelling op, he is recalled to hospital because they missed some of the tumour. That to me is rectifying their failure, fear of suing for negligence.

This is clear: no state or doctor or judge can force anyone (human or animal) of any age or mental state to have treatment they don’t want. I am sure Neon’s mum is not wishing her son to die – the reverse – but it’s not a choice that others get to make for her.

And as for evidence for other healing methods and against radioactive ones, there is plenty, but it is being hidden and curtailed. We need to ask – what is the business of medicine really about? The only answer is to heal and assist, and if it’s not doing that, then it is wrong and those wanting anything other than to do that need to resign (judges included). It’s not about drug profits or supremacy, it’s about care. And justice is just that – not imposing the will of the powerful.

I am pleased that Sally is mounting another appeal (Jan 3rd), and I’m appalled by the tone of reporting and the comments posted. I am often appalled by the views of many readers – and we are supposed to be a ‘developed’ country!

V for Vendetta

I watched this film as a political act at the weekend, not realising that Occupy protesters worldwide were wearing masks from the film.

I have always admired this film, not for its action sequences or because it’s cool, but because it has an important message of solidarity and hope to the people, and reminds governments that they are here to serve us, and that they will not last if they subjugate us and terrify us. The tag line is:
People should not be afraid of their governments
Governments should be afraid of their people

Believing that, I ironically felt fear to post this – hence the delay after Guy Fawkes night – because I do not feel free to express my views without reprisal. But that is not what this country is about or should be about.

Like the Occupy movement, I don’t believe in violence, at all (read my next post on poppies and war). Unlike V, I don’t want to harm even the people who have caused harm and who are the leaders (not that we in this country have any equivalent to Sutler et al anyway). Yet I hear that in America, police are searching homes for V masks; and that in London they forced a protester to demask. And I hate how the internet is at once a voice and also an easier way to have that voice traced and silenced.

My favourite moment of the film is when, having no response from their leaders, the army makes its own choice and decides to stand down. Note that the crowd does not prise the weapons from the military and use them, but peacefully walks past.

I was gutted to see the Houses of Parliament explode when I first watched this film as they are my favourite buildings in the world, and I love all they stand for about my country’s history. A corrupt inhabitant does not mean the building has to go. Since first seeing this, I have visited Scotland’s parliament and been very inspired by the ethos behind this national symbol.

It’s made me think what Westminster’s says: built in a style of a bombastic, violent war hungry king who treated women badly, at a time of colonising other countries, of imperialism, of business men becoming rich, of classism, whilst prisons, asylums and workhouses controlled and institutionalised the poor.

Or I can see that Tudor gothic as a symbol of times when women ruled: Anne Boleyn who I with others see as the woman behind England’s reformation, a step away from corruption and the courage to stand alone; Elizabeth I, who is credited with greater tolerance; and the next woman on the throne, Victoria, another popular and famous monarch, times of great achievement and moving forward, heralding new ages.

As those who believe that 2012 is a special year – other than the Olympics – count down to the dawning of the next new age, what symbol our parliament is for becomes important. I was pleased that V for Vendetta was recently shown on BBC, [Britain’s oldest and official TV provider] although I noted one TV guide downplay it as ‘futuristic action fantasy’. My hope is that leaders will watch the film and think where they are taking their country, and before it reaches a V for Vendetta type dictator state, stop and change direction. When I first saw this film, I feared for the leadership and direction of my nation – and now with a new government, I still do. Recent world wide riots and overthrows make this film feel more relevant than ever.

Revolution begins in the heart: what did Wonder Woman do to change the world? (see my summer entry). And for that matter, Jesus.