A concerned Cairns citizen

The letter below from a concerned Cairns citizen addressed to my wife, Karola, which arrived in our mailbox yesterday. We can easily imagine that there would be hundreds of concerned people in Cairns that are fed up with this government and what they inflict upon us and the government employees are frightened to speak out publicly for fear of losing their job. I assume that this is a response to a letter to the editor from Karola in the Cairns Post. - Werner

5/10/09
Karola Schmidlin
440 Varley Street
Yorkeys Knob 4878

Dear Karola,

As a citizen of Cairns, and taxpayer of Australia, I find it a very blatant waste of money to demolish the car park at the Cairns Base Hospital and build another one just across the road. This is very poor forward planning on behalf of all governments. Cairns is a fast growing regional city and needs more hospital expansion. It seems a new green stick site for the Hospital is out of the question, however in ten years time, there will not be any land left large enough for a new green stick site.

The question is why not leave the hospital car park where it is and build the hospital expansion over the road. There is in the existing plan an overpass to cross Lake Street. Therefore, it would save large amounts of money to leave the car park where it is and build the hospital extension over the road with the overpass as planned.

I write to advise you of this as I can not act on it myself because I am a government employee and we can be dismissed for speaking to the media or other people about government issues.

Signed,
Very Concerned

Why you shouldn’t hate broccoli.

We love broccoli cooked or raw mixed in salads with French salad dressing, it’s delicious and as you will see, very healthy. Here is Mr. Broccoli himself to tell you why broccoli should be part of your diet.

And, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said - The first wealth is health.- Werner

How broccoli each day keeps the cancer away.

A SERVING of broccoli every day can reduce the risk of colon cancer by almost 50 per cent. For years, doctors have recommended a high-fibre diet as part of a healthy lifestyle. Now scientists say some vegetables are more beneficial than other sources of fibre. In particular, vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and sprouts are good at preventing bowel cancer.

One portion a day can lessen the chance of developing the disease by 46 per cent, according to the results of a six-year study by scientists at the University of Liverpool in northern England. The vegetables, called non legumes, contain fibre rich in galactose, a sugar which prevents cancer-causing proteins known as lectins from attaching themselves to the lining of the colon.

The findings, published in the scientific journal Gastroenterology, could help save thousands of lives. John Rhodes, who led the study, said stories about the benefits of a high-fibre diet that had been circulating for years have "typically oversimplified the situation". "So it is not surprising there has been confusion and contradictory reports," he said. "People who avoid overeating, eat a good quantity of leafy green vegetables and take regular exercise can reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes."

Diet link to asthmatics.

SCIENTISTS are close to linking diet with asthma problems. Research projects around the world are shedding light on which foods can make asthma worse - and better. The latest report released last week in Britain indicates that a lack of fruit and vegetables can leave people more vulnerable to asthma.

Anthony Seaton, of Aberdeen University in Scotland, said rising asthma rates around the world could be linked to a corresponding drop in the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables. There is also growing evidence fish is beneficial for people with asthma. In Brisbane, Princess Alexandra Hospital chest specialist and National Asthma Council member Charles Mitchell said omega-3 fatty acids found in fish were the key. He said studies had shown that children with a high fatty fish diet had lower rates of asthma.

Who cares if George Bush Senior. hated it? The fact is, broccoli is one mean green. It boasts a fistful of phytochemicals, including sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol, that may detoxify cancer-causing substances before they have a chance to cause harm. In women, indole-3carbinol may turn the estrogen associated with breast cancer into a more benign form. A number of studies have linked regular consumption of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli to a reduced risk of breast, colon and stomach cancers. Broccoli is a rich source of beta-carotene, fiber and vitamin C (1 cup contains more C than an orange). The best way to unleash the nutrients is by cooking light and chewing hard. But if you simply can't stand broccoli, try your luck with Brussels sprouts, cabbage and bok choy. MEAN GREEN: Full of fiber, phytochemicals, beta-carotene and more vitamin C than an orange.

Sorry, Quaker," the fiber in oats and other cereals probably doesn't prevent colon cancer. But there is still plenty to recommend in them. Raw in granola or cooked in porridge, oats consumed daily can help lower cholesterol. They contain beta-glucan, a spongy, soluble fiber that mops up the precursors of cholesterol in the intestines and whisks them out of the body. New evidence suggests that oats may also help lower blood pressure in hypertensive patients. Other benefits: the oat is one of the few grains that contain hard-to-find antioxidants, such as the vitamin E-like compounds called tocotrienols. Another plus is that the dietary fiber and protein in oats
make you feel full fast. That should keep you away from more fattening foods and help control your weight. FEELING YOUR OATS: Eating them lowers cholesterol levels and fills you up.

My though for today.
Definition of Education.
Education is what is left after you have forgotten all that you have been taught.

Click to enlarge image.

A letter to the deputy Premier of Queensland from Cairns housewife.

The curse of water fluoridation forced upon the people of Queensland is causing a variety of health problems to many people. But the Queensland government is ignoring the plea of those people, not to fluoridate the drinking water. The only useful application of fluoride is the topical one by dentists. But too much fluoride also causes dental fluorosis, or mottled teeth. Below is a letter from a Cairns housewife, Margaret Phillips, who is very badly affected by fluoride, which gives her asthma. She wrote to the Deputy Premier and Minister of Health in the Queensland government, Paul Lucas MP, see her letter below - but she says that she is not holding her breath for a reply. Why don't you also write a letter to the Qld. Health Minister? Click on this link. – Werner

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Hon PT Lucas
Deputy Premier and Minister for Health
State Parliament
Brisbane

Dear Sir,

I commend you for your recognition that the people of Queensland have some rights. I have formed the opposite opinion in recent years, however.

The purpose of your title as Minister for Health for Queensland should be more than just as a figurehead. I am sure that you take your job and responsibilities very seriously.
You are directly responsible to ensure the health and wellbeing of some 4.2 million citizens, of diverse ages, social and cultural backgrounds, with a variety of health issues. This is a huge job with seemingly insurmountable issues to overcome.

There is one issue which I wish to address which, I believe, will negatively impact on every Queenslander in the coming years, not to mention the budget and function of Qld Health. This same matter which was resolved, at speed, in Parliament, without consultation with the people, even though it intimately involves each and every one of us.

I have spent many hours (months) researching this matter because I have already, in the last 12 months, been seriously afflicted by it.

Last December and January, and again in March I stayed in Brisbane. I have been predisposed to suffering from asthmatic symptoms since I was 18, while living in Sydney (fluoridated) (I am 58 years old) By the end of January this year, I was so incapacitated by asthma that I was incapable of getting up a short flight of stairs. When I returned to Cairns I had difficulty walking from the plane to the terminal. It took all February for me to recover. When I returned to Brisbane in March, I drank bottled water but had one severe asthma attack after my son in law cooked pasta in tap water, unknown by me at the time.

Perhaps I am extremely sensitive to fluoride, or perhaps something else was added to the water as well as the fluoride, but since it is soon going into my water supply in Cairns, I have no choice but am faced with the prospect of installing very expensive filtration systems and rain water tanks, so I can try to avoid further debilitating episodes. I estimate the cost to be more than $10 000 so my home can be fluoride free.

In the early 70s I travelled to Tasmania (fluoridated) and was ill the whole time, then I lived in Maitland (fluoridated) for several months at which time I was unable to walk to the letterbox from the front door of the house. Moving from Maitland in 1973, I lived, completely asthma free, in Papua New Guinea (unfluoridated) and Rockhampton (unfluoridated),

In 1978 I moved to Melbourne (fluoridated) for 2 years and became extremely ill within one week of arrival and spent the next few years dosed up on cortisone, which caused other health problems.
In 1980, since I have lived in Queensland, (Rockhampton and Cairns) (unfluoridated), I have been asthma free until my recent trips to Brisbane (fluoridated).

At no stage in the past did I know about water being fluoridated, never occurred to me that was the reason for my asthmatic condition. I thought I had "allergies"

I feel my realisation is important because I have been fortunate enough to be able to decide that I needed to move house when I became allergic to something in that place. I have moved house 25 times in my life. Yet lived quite happily for 12 years in one house in Rockhampton, and 10 years in my present house in Cairns. I don't have any escape now!

In terms of the cost, did you know that it will cost $35 million to set Queensland up for fluoridation, and $2.50 per year per person to pay for chemicals? Not much, you say. $10.4 million a year. Did you know that only $64.3 thousand dollars of that money is drunk? or that only $3216 of that money (fluoride) might be drunk by primary school age children?

We would be better off financially, and no worse off, otherwise, if we just invited the chemical companies who manufacture the product, to pay us $14 million to dump their product in our water supply. At least then, the Government could afford to subsidise filtration systems for those of us who are unable to tolerate it.

I keep hoping it is all a bad dream!

I await your comments

Yours sincerely
Margaret Phillips
275 Toogood Road
BAYVIEW HEIGHTS
ph 40336277

To vaccinate or not that is the question.

If you've been following the cervical cancer vaccine news, you already know that 14-year-old Natalie Morton died within hours of receiving a vaccine injection. A pathology report released yesterday somehow manages to shift blame to the girl herself, saying she had an undiagnosed cancer tumour that just happened to activate and kill the girl immediately after her vaccine injection. But the vaccine is safe, authorities say.

If it sounds ridiculous, that's because it's probably all a cover-up to protect the huge, lucrative vaccine markets in the U.S. and Europe. Read more about why Natalie Morton really died and how Big Pharma is pulling out all the stops to keep their vaccine profits alive. If you want to print the article from this link, click on "Printable Version." - Werner

The Queensland government is actually aware of the word “Referendum!”

Surprise, surprise! The Queensland government has actually the word “Referendum” in their political vocabulary, but they will use it only when it suits them. They can’t support Peter Wellington’s bill without a referendum, but they conveniently mandated fluoridation without a referendum. How hypocritical, two-faced and undemocratic was this? - Werner

REFERENDUM - "THE VERY HEART OF DEMOCRACY" - DEP. PREMIER, PAUL LUCAS MP.

Below are extracts from State Parliament, made by Deputy Premier & Health Minister, Paul Lucas MP, a few weeks ago. It appears that he believes that the citizens have some rights after all, but maybe he said these things just to score political points!!!! - (Thank to State President, Merilyn Haines for this information).

Might be worth an e-mail to Paul Lucas to ask if he believes in "democracy" for people who don't want to drink and bathe in fluoridated water.

Cheers, Bill Kilvert, FNQ Coordinator

HANSARD page 2373 CONSTITUTION (FIXED-TERM PARLIAMENT) AMENDMENT BILL
Second Reading 16th September 2009

Resumed from 17 June (see p. 965), on motion of Mr. Wellington -That the bill be now read a second time

Hon. PT LUCAS (Lytton—ALP) (Deputy Premier and Minister for Health) (7.40 pm): I rise to speak to the Constitution (Fixed-Term Parliament) Amendment Bill introduced by the member for Nicklin and advise the House that the government will not be supporting this bill. The government supports the principle of fixed terms.

However, we believe this issue should be put to the people of Queensland in a referendum. We are on the record supporting a referendum on fixed four-year terms for the Queensland parliament. The length of parliamentary terms, whether they are fixed or not, are issues that the people of Queensland should determine and not the parliament by itself.

This bill seeks to fix the term of the Queensland Legislative Assembly at three years, with elections to be held on the second Saturday in March every third year. We believe that any change of this magnitude to our electoral system should not be made unless the people of Queensland ask for it. It is not for members of parliament to set our own terms without asking our electors to vote on it in a referendum, even if it is technically possible to avoid one.

For example, even if we found a loophole to allow us to legislate for four-year fixed terms without a referendum, we should not cut the people out of that decision. These are matters that go to the very heart of our democracy, that is, the way in which the people of Queensland choose their representatives.

I have no issue with the member for Nicklin’s approach to this matter. He is representing the views that he believes his constituents hold strongly. However, the government has a broader obligation to take into account the views of all Queenslanders. For example, hypothetically tomorrow we could legislate to bring in daylight saving without holding a referendum, but it would be the wrong thing to do. In Australia we see a wide variety of electoral systems operating, with significant differences……..

And here is a letter to the editor sent to the Cairns Post.

I could not believe my eyes when I read the label on the multi dose swine flu vial, that Dr Uri Scelwyn was holding when his photo was in the Cairns Post on Wednesday 30th September.

Written on the label were the words, "0.01% Thiomersal". - This is the mercury based preservative that has caused the explosion of autism around the world. No wonder the Health Department does not want to give this vaccination to children. This is supposedly banned from all vaccination. Mercury is so lethal, that it is not allowed even at one part per billion.

This is on top of the Health Department forcing Queenslanders to drink the dangerous silicofluorides in our water supplies. This poisonous chemical concoction, also contains traces of mercury, as well as other heavy metals.

What other poisons is the Health Department prescribing? A Royal Commission is needed to get to the bottom of this.

Yours sincerely,

Bill Kilvert

And so say all of us! - Werner

The Queensland "Blight"

By reading the letters to the editor in major Queensland newspapers, talking to people in the street or shopping centres it becomes abundantly clear that the majority of Queenslanders are far from happy with the Bligh government for a variety of reasons. What do you think? - Werner

Following is an article by Mike O’Connor, published in the Courier Mail 21.9.09.

Only the truth will save Bligh.

WHEN you find yourself in a hole, accepted wisdom dictates that you stop digging; unless you are a politician, in which case years of conditioning urges you to shovel evermore frantically.

No further evidence of this Pavlovian response is needed than the reaction of Premier Anna Bligh to the release of opinion polls which showed her standing in the eyes of voters sinking faster than an Ipswich house built on a disused coal mine.

Rather than wonder at the cause of her unpopularity, the Premier and her minders decided that what was needed was a public relations campaign that would, at considerable expense, explain to Queenslanders how mistaken they were in believing that she was an unsuitable person to occupy the high office.

It did not occur to this intellectual powerhouse that the reason the Premier is held in low esteem is because people have had a gutful of public relations campaigns and are hoping against desperate hope that, for once, someone will tell them God's honest truth.

Indulging in yet another exercise in misrepresentation can only further infuriate and alienate them.

Australians put up with a lot from their politicians. They expect them to be economical with the truth and to put their own interests first and second, with the electorate trailing a distant third. But there is a limit to this tolerance and the Bligh Government has reached it.

People didn't like it when, as an opening gambit, she rewarded her predecessor Peter Beattie with a $300,000-a-year job in Los Angeles after he had declared he would not accept a government position.

No degree of public relations manipulation that claimed he was the best person for the job and Queensland desperately needed a trade representative there was going to convince people otherwise. She was not being honest and it showed.

Giving her husband a comfortable $180,000-a-year government job was another blunder. The public relations strategy was to proclaim that, once again, he was the best person for the job.

Perhaps, conveniently, he was but it looked like she had simply created a nice job for her partner and pumped another $180,000 a year into the Bligh household budget.

The public nodded and filed the information away. Taking a free holiday in the Sydney harbour side mansion of a person closely connected with a company that won millions of dollars in state government work was a mistake. The public relations campaign to justify this, swung into action - the person in question was a friend of the Premier. There was no conflict of interest.

Like her husband's appointment, it was a matter of perception. It looked bad and the people looked at each other and nodded and filed it away. An admission of misjudgement would have been accepted and forgiven by voters as proof of human frailty, but none was forthcoming.

Truth has become a casualty of an obsession with public relations. Bligh wants to build the Traveston Dam and goes on the public relations offensive, suggesting we'll all die of thirst if it isn't built.

"The State Government has given the green light to Traveston Dam," she said, adding that the final decision now rested with Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

This was not true. Her own Coordinator-General, Colin Jensen, had said there needed to be a lengthy process involving thousands of conditions, which needed to be met before he could give his approval.

The dam is a long way from being given the "green light", so why attempt to mislead people? The truth would have served her better.

Last week, a government public relations exercise announced that Professor Geoff Masters, of the Australian Council for Educational Research, said the Government's proposed "flying squads" of teachers had the potential to lift achievement levels in state schools.

Masters, in fact, had said no such thing and was surprised when he found the remarks attributed to him. On the contrary, he said that such squads could be a superficial response to the problem of numeracy and literacy and likened them to "putting on a fresh coat of paint".

Once more, truth was cast aside in favour of the public relations strategy.
There was another flurry of public relations activity when it was revealed Bligh was to appear on the television program, Master Chef.

She said she had accepted because she wanted to use the program to promote Queensland produce.

There isn't a man or woman in the state who believes this. They think she is hoping that by appearing on a popular TV show, she will somehow improve her political stocks.

The truth, once more, was denied. It's not only the big ticket deceptions like asset sales that are eating away at her standing, but the succession of smaller deceptions, which point to an inability to tell the truth.

It's not too late for Bligh to substitute honesty for public relations in her dealings with the people - but it soon will be. oconnorm@qnp.newsltd.com.au

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Lemon picker.

A Queensland woman applying for a job picking lemons in Tasmania seemed to be far too qualified for the job.

The foreman frowned and said, "Look, I have to ask you this; have you had any actual experience in picking lemons?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, I have!" she replied, "I've been divorced three times and I voted for Anna Bligh."

Two cucumber e-mail responses from the south.

Beverley Swanson from the Gold Coast wrote: - I quote:

You're a gem Werner.

An hour ago I had the makings of a nasty headache. I was reading all about the cucumbers and I thought it was worth a try. It didn't cure the headache instantly, but by golly it feels a lot better and I can go to bed now and look forward to a much better nights sleep than I had anticipated.

While I was cutting up the cucumber, I noticed a few spills on the ceramic hotplate that I missed earlier. I tried the cucumber on it - I thought it couldn't do any harm. It worked, and a quick wipe over with a cloth and it was a good as new. Thank you for all the hints. - Cheers Beverley - Unquote.

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Glenda Wyld from Byron Bay NSW writes: I quote;

Thanks for that Werner, very informative, who would have thought it could do all those things. I like your cucumbers and your blog. Glenda. Unquote. Look at Glenda's "untamed Art."