THE British government, and especially the Home Office, is under fire for its allegedly lackadaisical handling of foreign criminals. A lack of joined-up thinking between departments is often blamed.
Feedback recently received a press release from the government’s Patent Office, telling of new initiatives to fight counterfeiting and piracy. It referred to weekend raids last year on a market near Wembley Stadium in north London – a “hot spot” for fake merchandise where “more than £1.5 million of counterfeit and pirated goods were seized and intelligence passed to other agencies for action”.
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Unfortunately, the electronic document from the Patent Office still contained the trail of edits performed before the document was approved for release. A note after the statement above reads: “Thirty-four people were prosecuted and a number of suspected illegal immigrants were detained. (Have you tipped-off the Home Office that you’re including this? Might be worth giving them a quick call…)”
It looks like the Patent Office did call the Home Office, because the telltale passage was “deleted” from the final release, presumably to avoid yet more awkward questions about illegal immigrants and crime. Embarrassingly, however, it is still there on the page with a line running through it.
“The Mozilla Thunderbird email program offered Angela Brown the option “Restore natural order”. Will selecting it just sort my messages, she asks, or will it reset the entire universe?”
How nice to know that the Patent Office – the government body at the sharp end of innovation – also has trouble with computers.
DOCTORS and others who have to respond to fears over vaccinations may be familiar with the name Lynne McTaggart, author of The Vaccination Bible. In her online newsletter, she dismisses a study on vaccine safety thus: “Finnish doctors carried out a passive study reliant upon their capacity or will to notice and report any abnormal reactions to the vaccine. Many doctors who were not particularly looking for autism as a side-effect, may not have connected it with the vaccine…”
This seems to get the methodology of epidemiology entirely upside down – as though a lack of preconceived bias were a flaw. But it has convinced some – including the London Daily Mail, which quotes her as an authority.
But there’s more to McTaggart – much more. Next weekend, on 15 and 16 July, she will be holding a conference at the University of London Union, where you can “Develop reflexive remote viewing concepts and skills”. A snip at just £235, including tax, tea and coffee.
If you can’t make it to London that weekend you could do her four-year correspondence course, for only £239.97. This will teach you loads, including: “How to shield yourself from the negative and harmful thoughts of others, how to eliminate geo-magnetic stress, and how to tune into earth energies to maximize Field effects”.
But the one that really boggles Feedback is this: “How to remote view from the future.” Can this be as simple as taking a train to the place you want to see, and waiting there until the future arrives? Or is it something to do with the clear mental picture we already have of McTaggart’s weekend event?
SUPERMARKETS in Europe are under pressure to put labels on packaged food that warn about sugar, fat and salt content. The UK’s National Consumer Council hopes that all stores will adopt the same scheme, or risk bamboozling consumers. A friend recently told Feedback a tale of how even the simplest labels can confuse.
Shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed he played host to a group of Russian students, so he tells it. They visited a British supermarket and were staggered by the wide variety of tinned foods available. Few of the students spoke English so they just looked at the pictures of vegetables, fruit, fish and meat on the labels.
Suddenly one of the girls started weeping. She had found the rack of pet food with pictures of cuddly dogs and fluffy cats on the cans.
Teleportation in Birmingham UK
THE primary school in Birmingham in the heart of England attended by Jason White’s two children consists of a set of buildings completely surrounded by a playground and then an outer fence. On this fence is a sign which reads: “Deliveries: All deliveries must report to reception BEFORE entering the playground.” White wonders how this sign could be obeyed by those of us lacking teleport technology – or indeed a helicopter.
FINALLY, a failed skin graft on a patient’s scalp led to an article in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph about the surgical technique. In a statement reminiscent of A. A. Milne’s stories about Eeyore’s tail, a surgeon tells the paper: “There is no way of knowing if a patient has healed because of spray-on skin or the normal healing process. We’re doing a trial to try to nail it on the head.”
