Beedubya

Sounds just lovely David, our wedding last week was very low key too, married in the Registry office and a sit down meal for about 40 guests. It was a first time wedding for both but they have lived together for 3 years and have little twin boys.

The weather up north is definitely not as good as down south I have to say.

Wawa

Agree with you there Aviva! I spend most of my childhood in a wonderful little landlocked country and former British colony called Rhodesia. Its now Zimbabwe and under the dubious 'leadership' of Robert Mugabe who is arguably the biggest nutter of them all, commiting crimes from electoral fraud, re-distribution of land to other vile atrocities against his people while sitting with billions in a Swiss Bank account. I dont see anyone rushing to help those poor people.

dunroving

It's Cindyabs - she found a good flight deal for me last year, very quick at replying to emails.

dunroving

I do buy into the "oil connection" that seems to dictate some of the UK and US decisions whether to intervene. However, whenever Zimbabwe is raised in the TV political debate progams, the point is always raised that the other African nations would not support external intervention (and therefore any intervention would seem to be a colonial invasion).

Then of course there was the intervention in the Balkans, and Rwanda - presumably these were not oil-related but purely humanitarian?

Politics is complicated.

[On a side note, I watched an amazing documentary recently called "Mugabe and the White African". Very moving expose of what is going on in Zimbabwe.]

Derrygal

Oh I remember picnics in Delamere Forest when my children were young and we lived in Cheshire. Happy Days!!!!!!!!!

Derrygal

I work with a young man from Zimbabwe (born there when it was Rhodesia). We have often discussed the situation there under Mugabe (this young man still has family there). I totally agree - the only reason we are getting involved in Iraq and now Libya is because of the oil. The atrocities in these African countries don't seem to matter any more - and they should - Rhodesia was a British colony for many years.

cheers

I remember Kenya and the Maw Maw and I think we got involved in Singapore/Maylaya.

We have just got the bill for these military actions and we are in the poor house and we look up to the new upcoming prosperous nations.

With the events in Japan we are looking or getting a glimpse of their prosperity in Tokyo. Not bad. Where have we been? See above.

windsong

Ooooohhh! What fun!!

fulwood

error..

DDL

Cheers, I couldn't agree with you more. I think the US has disability benefits ALL wrong. Tony has a disabled (mentally) brother who lives here with us. David is in his early 50s and thanks to several charities, lives a full, active life. Because of this, we are fairly integrated into the disabled society as a whole - I am talking about the truly disabled - and we are amazed at what a great job that people in this country do to help them. I realize that in a roundabout way it is the government helping, but the real help comes from people (like my mother-in-law) who volunteer for these charities and give so much in time and money to help the disabled.

But I also see that, because of such a wide, generous system, there are far too many people taking the pi** out of it all and milking the system. You all can say what you want but it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

As good as the system is in many respects here, I don't think there's enough oversight and that's why so many people get away with benefit fraud for so many years.

DDL

And on the other side of the Atlantic it happened, too. My Mom was given Thalidomide and my sister was born with a club foot; it was directly attributed to the drug.

between two worlds

DDL Denise, I am surprised to hear this, because I thought in the USA the FDA, to their eternal credit, had noticed worrying things about thalidomide and not allowed it to be licensed or used in USA. (In fact I think I read somewhere that this was due to one vigilant woman in the FDA but am fuzzy on the details).

In Germany and UK and other places in Europe, it was marketed despite many red flags being raised by various researchers and doctors, but I have always thought that it was never used in the USA.

Your mother's/sister's story contradicts this--so perhaps it was used but on a very small scale?

Here's a link to info about a very interesting book by a thalidomide survivor, well-known in England, Louise Madus-Mansell. She tells her own story and also some of the thalidomide background.


http://www.gwales.com/news/?news_id=11794&tsid=2

Tina

DDL

Agree. And I hope he gets what he deserves ... but this should have happened years ago.

DDL

Hi Tina,

Hmmm, well ... that's what my Mom always said was the cause and she's no longer around so I can't ask her.

The Wiki article says this:

between two worlds

Ak thank you, Denise, I didn't know about the tablets distributed in the US in the clinical testing program.

Wow. Your mother was probably right, then. And thank goodness the effect on your sister--awful though it is about her foot--was not even worse, as in so many other horrific cases.....

I've appended below the whole Wiki paragraph you quoted, because it gives the name of the doctor who is responsible for refusing FDA approval, in case anyone else has been following this conversation. She deserves a lot of credit, her action must have saved unknown huge numbers of American thalidomide victims.

The impact in the United States was minimized when pharmacologist and M.D. Frances Oldham Kelsey refused Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for an application from the Richardson-Merrell company to market thalidomide, saying further studies were needed. And although thalidomide was never approved for sale in the United States, millions of tablets had been distributed to physicians during a clinical testing program. It was impossible to know how many pregnant women had been given the drug to help alleviate morning sickness or as a sedative.

Tina