My Personal Views on the Environment Issue

Lest the reader should think that I’m an anti ‘green’, climate change ‘denier’ or someone who does not care about our clean air, water and food environment, I should declare that I’ve been a passionate ‘environmentalist’ for virtually all of my adult life. An organic vegetables grower for more decades than I care to remember, tending to my first organic allotment plot in 1975 – when organic issues were not as popular as they are today. I’m the chair of an Allotments Trust and constructed a website for that organisation, and others like it. Click HERE. I believe my credentials are in order!

I wrote an article on Glyphosate back in 2013 (click HERE), reflecting concerns about this dangerous, and cancerogenic product that has by now permeated into our water sources, soil and everyday environment – including the food we eat daily. Food like cereals that have been treated with Glysophate whilst growing. The ever increasing evidence indicates that this Monsanto product is not only making many of us ill, from a variety of source contact – IT IS ACTUALLY KILLING US!

There is ample evidence by now to show that diseases like Parkinson’s, Senile Dementia and Autism in children between 6 & 21 years is linked to the contamination in the environment from Glysophate.

Although I’m a committed environmentalist I am nevertheless totally opposed to:

• The climate change hoax – climate change has been with us, in both directions since earth’s time began. Man’s influence on the climate is hugely over exaggerated, and is basically the hyped up fear-mongering whipped up by the establishment, and as usual advertised and promoted by the mainstream (propaganda) media. This is mostly a scam to raise ‘green taxes, and to allow big companies to make big bucks pretending to save the planet, by erecting totally inefficient wind farms, and extracting mouth watering grants and subsidies from the tax paying public. If you have the time and inclination you can find out the true facts about ‘man-made’ climate change by clicking HERE. Or listen to a lecture by one the ‘real’ scientists on the subject by clicking HERE.
  
• The views of so-called ‘green’ organisations, including the twisted views of political parties, like the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and others et al. They have a twisted and illogical understanding of the issues, and fall foul of the machinations of today’s ‘establishment’ (financed, controlled, and directed for their own interests, by the ‘Elitists’ and ‘Globalists’) who seem to be taking a page from the handbook of Hitler’s propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, who famously said:

  If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

• Plaid Cymru especially have been obsessed with irrelevant niche issues (like global climate changes) that play no part in the advancement of independence for our country. ‘Ishoos’ like LBGT and feminist rights, Brexit (which they have absolutely no influence over) and things like candle-lit vigils for world peace, which, although noble causes in Plaid’s liberal, progressive socialists eyes – are hardly life or death issues here at home. Popular niche issues do not progress us any nearer to our goal of making Wales a free sovereign nation. This is the case after nearly 100 years of their existence – giving the impression that they can change things. Sadly whilst they have their feet firmly planted in the establishment’s dinosaur minded political system, they will not move us an inch forward, or protect us from colonial rule for the next 100 years either!
• Rewilding projects like the Summit to Sea – Rewilding Britain (conveniently, their first project is targetted at Mid Wales) by misguided hippy ethos supporting organisations and certain politicians like Lesley Griffiths and Co. Which is nothing but a land grab – a Highland Clearance on a smaller scale to disengage Welsh farmers from their land – if that isn’t colonial asset grabbing what is? What has Plaid said about this? Not a lot, because they have both now, and in the past made an art form of snuggling up to the Greens and the London based Labour party, blindly copying or supporting their policies on these issues.
  

And So – On To Facts About Glyphosate

  The amount of glyphosate in tap water in South Wales has increased tenfold recently

Dr. Rosemary Mason, has had a long standing interest in conservation, and was former Chair of the West Area, Glamorgan Wildlife Trust. She had worked for the National Health Service for 35 years as Consultant Anaesthetist to West Glamorgan Health Authority.

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal and the British Medical Association Council Chairman, Chaand Nagpaul.

Her purpose is to not only draw attention to the impact of biocides, not least that of Glyphosate, on health and the environment but also to bring attention to the corruption that allows this to continue.

Along with her letter, she enclosed a 13-page document. Readers can access the fully referenced document here: European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage. It is worth reading in full to appreciate the conflicts of interest and the corruption that has led to the rise in certain illnesses and the destruction of the natural environment.

By way of a brief summary, the key points raised by Dr Mason and her claims include the following:

• The European Chemicals Agency classifies Glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage. There has been a massive increase in the use of Glyphosate in recent years. An increase in cataracts has been verified by epidemiological studies in England and by a 2016 WHO report.
• There are shockingly high levels of weed killer in UK breakfast cereals. After testing these cereals at the Health Research Institute in Iowa, Dr Fagan, director of the centre, said: “These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s Glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”
• The amount of glyphosate in tap water in South Wales has increased tenfold in a very short period.
• Glyphosate is largely responsible for the destruction of biodiversity and an increase in the prevalence of many serious health conditions.
• There are massive conflicts of interest throughout various agencies in the EU that ensure harmful agrochemicals like glyphosate come to market and remain there.
• In fact, a global industry has emerged to give ‘advice’ on biocides regulation. This results in regulatory bodies effectively working to further the commercial interests of the pesticide industry.
• The European Food Safety Authority sanctioned increased maximum pesticide residue levels (MRL) at the request of industry (Monsanto in this case, to 100 times the previously authorised MRL).
• The Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) is used by corporate backers to counter public health policies. Its members have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels. It is, however, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity. The ILSI describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”. But researchers from the University of Cambridge, Bocconi University in Milan, and the US Right to Know campaign assessed over 17,000 pages of documents under US freedom of information laws to present evidence of influence peddling.
• ILSI Vice-President, Prof Alan Boobis, is currently the Chairman of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT) (2015-2021). He was directly responsible for authorising chemicals such as Glyphosate, Chlorothalonil, Clothianidin and Chlorpyrifos that are destroying human health and creating a crisis in biodiversity. His group and others have authorised Glyphosate repeatedly. He and David Coggon, the previous Chairman of CoT (2008-2015), were appointed as experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), a group allied with the agrochemical industry and is fighting for higher pesticide exposure.
• Jean-Claude Juncker the President of the European Commission who, against a petition from more than 1.5 million European citizens, re-authorised glyphosate in December 2017 for a further five years. He set up the Science Advisory Mechanism, aiming to put industry-friendly personnel on various committees.

There are many more claims presented by Rosemary Mason in her report. But the take-home point is that the reality of the agrochemical industry is masked by well-funded public relations machinery (which includes bodies like the UK’s Science Media Centre). The industry also subverts official agencies and regulatory bodies and supports prolific lobby organisations and (‘public scientists’) which masquerade as objective institutions.

When such organisations or figures are exposed, they frequently cry foul and attempt to portray any exposure of their lack of integrity as constituting an attack on science itself; no doubt many readers will be familiar with the ‘anti-science’ epithet.

The industry resorts to such measures as it knows its products are harmful and cannot stand up to proper public scrutiny. And under a system of sustainable agroecology that can produce plentiful, nutritious food, it also knows its markets would disappear.

Motivated by fraud and fear of the truth emerging, it therefore tries to persuade politicians and the public that the world would starve without it and its products. It co-opts agencies and officials by various means and embeds itself within the policy agenda, both nationally and internationally.

And now, with increasingly saturated markets in the West, from Africa to India the industry seeks to colonise new regions and countries where it attempts to roll out its business model. Whether, say, through trade agreements, the WTO or strings-attached loans, this again involves capturing the policy ground and then trapping farmers on a financially lucrative chemical (-GMO)-treadmill, regardless of the consequences for farmers’ livelihoods, food, public health and the environment.

Other Effects On Our Environment

There are reams of information that can be presented as evidence to support the deadly effects of Glysophate use. Not least the evidence that shows the use of this deadly systemic poison, along with the use of Neonicotinoids that has had a devastating effect on our honey bee population.

Readers of my articles may have noticed my frequent use of quotes by Albert Einstein. Here is a sobering one about the extinction of honey bees:

A sobering and chilling statement

Nothing is more important than your health.

Having a productive allotment plot will help toward . . 

A Healthy Diet

You only get dietary fibre from foods that grow from the ground. The peas, beans, vegetables and fruit that can be grown on an allotment will form an essential part of a healthy diet. Many fruits and vegetables are also very good sources of vitamins. Food starts to deteriorate as soon as it’s harvested, so obviously food that gets from the ground to your plate in a truly fresh state is of added benefit.

Exercise

Visiting and working on the allotment will provide valuable forms of exercise that is not too strenuous and has the added value of being out in the fresh air. The following benefits to your health can be achieved with regular allotment gardening:

• Heart pumps more efficiently, circulation improves
• Fitness muscle tone and stamina improves
• Digestion and sleep may improve through increased relaxation
• Weight control is easier
• Emotional Health improves, you feel better, happier and more contented

Dutch researchers have found that allotment keepers in their 60s tend to be significantly healthier than their more sedentary neighbours.

While plenty of anecdotal evidence exists to suggest growing one’s own fruit and vegetables protects against ill-health, no one had carried out such a direct comparison before.

Agnes van den Berg, from Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands, said:
“Taken together, our findings provide the first direct empirical evidence for health benefits of allotment gardens. Having an allotment garden may promote an active life-style and contribute to healthy ageing.“

She and her fellow researchers polled 121 gardeners in the Netherlands, plus 63 neighbours who did not keep allotments as the control group.Allotment gardening can be good for your well-being, a new study revealed.

Experts from the United Kingdom found that allotment gardening actually helps increase a person’s self-esteem, ease depression, and calm anger. In a collaborative effort, researchers from Essex and Westminster universities interviewed 269 people, in which half of them were gardeners. The respondents who were familiar with gardening were asked about how they feel before and after working in an allotment.The study, published in Oxford’s the Journal of Public Health, found that respondents who spent as little as 30 minutes a week on an allotment plot experienced significant boost in their mental well-being.

Compared to those who didn’t practice allotment gardening, allotment gardeners were found to have fewer problems regarding weight as their body mass index (BMI) were significantly lower. These gardeners also had lower levels of tension, depression, fatigue and anger, researchers noted.

The Origins of Allotments

In Wales (Cymru) the origin of allotments (rhandiroedd ) goes back to Romano-Celtic and possibly pre Roman times. When a person who did not possess land would ask a landowner for a small amount of land to grow food and would usually be given a talar – the strip of land at the edge of a field that was not cultivated. In return the landowner would expect the cultivators of this land to help bring in his harvest and vegetable crops – like potatoes – when the time arrived (although at that very early time the potatoes were still in south America!). This tradition is still exercised in some hill farm areas to this day. It was a widespread custom up until the end of the 1950s. A variation was the tradition of helping with the potato planting in return for a row of potatoes for the worker who would lift his/ her row when the crop was harvested.

It’s possible to trace the origins of allotments in England back over 200 hundred years – they derive from the enclosure legislation of the 18th and 19th centuries – and the word ‘allotment’ originates from land being ‘allotted’ to an individual under an enclosure award (Enclosures were used by richer land-owners to stop the poor grazing their animals on common land).

The most important of the Enclosure Acts was the General Enclosure Act 1845 which required that provision should be made for the landless poor in the form of ‘field gardens’ limited to a quarter of an acre. At this time, allotments were largely confined to rural areas.

The modern notion of an allotment came into being during the Nineteenth Century. A lot of people from the country went to work and live in towns; there was a lot of poverty.

The First World War prompted a huge growth in the number of allotments – from 600,000 to 1,500,000. After the War, many of the temporary allotment sites were returned to their original use.

World War 2 again increased the role for allotments as a major provider of food; there was a blockade from the U-boats, and many farm-workers went to the war. Allotments became a common feature in towns and cities, Dig for Victory posters were everywhere, and food production from allotments rose to 1,300,000 tonnes per year from around 1,400,000 plots – that’s nearly a tonne per plot!

Today, allotments are (thankfully) again enjoying a resurgence; partly because people are becoming more aware of the benefits to their health and the environment and sadly because we are fast approaching a critical period in our economic system the World over and more especially in the aftermath of the hyped up Covid-19 virus outbreak. Often the problem however, is where to find land to cultivate.

Isn’t it strange how a crises drives people back to a simpler and healthier connection with the soil?