A call to reform or repeal the EU Directive on Herbal Medicines

This article calls for either the amendment or repeal of the EU Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (2004/24/EC), the THMPD in short, enacted back in 31/03/2004 and in force as of 01/05/2011. This directive has licensing requirements for safety and quality, but also imposes steep costs typically between €97 000 (£80 000) and €145 600 (£120 000) due mainly to the cost of testing. This is because the licensing requirements are intended to be similar to those for pharmaceutical drugs. Not a single license is in place for Ayurvedic medicine or traditional Chinese medicine which have both been in use for thousands of years, along with herbal remedies from all over the world including the Amazon basin.

More thoughts on tunnel signage and tunnel safety

In this article, I give more thoughts on tunnel signage as well as tunnel safety.  For me, metrication is a big must, and the only thing really needed, as well as ensuring the signs are as clutter free as possible, and which respect international standards, specifically SI (metric system) and the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals.

The UK on CET debate

I had hoped to post this article when the news was current, but was unfortunately extremely busy, and had little to no time recently. Nonetheless, in this article, I give my take on the debate regarding moving Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT) and British Summer Time (BST) an hour forward respectively, so that the UK would in effect use Central European Time (CET) in winter, and Central European Summer Time (CEST) in summer.

GMT (also known as Western European Time or WET) and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) are identical for practical purposes, the difference is negligible (only a fraction of a second), and the same applies for BST (also known as Western European Summer Time or WEST) and GMT+1. Similarly, CET can be regarded as equivalent to UTC+1, and CEST as equivalent to UTC+2 for practical purposes.

Throughout this article, I will be referring to UTC only to avoid ambiguity, and because UTC (not GMT) has been the main reference for time worldwide since 1972.  Having said that, one can still use GMT as a synonym for UTC, BST as a synonym for UTC+1, etc.

US-style mega-dairy plans are withdrawn

On the 16th Februrary 2010 there was some great and welcome news, plans for the US-style megadairy in Nocton, 10 km south of Lincoln in Lincolnshire, had been withdrawn.  The animal rights and environmental campaign groups have done a great job, and so has everyone who supported the campaign against this mega-dairy.  However, I believe it is not over yet, as the corporation behind the proposed factory farm still owns the land.  The root cause of the problems facing UK dairy farmers, especially small and family farmers not paid a fair price at the farm gate, also needs to be addressed.

When will the UK be prepared for snow?

So far, the winter of 2010 is looking like the worst winter in living memory in the UK, with arctic weather throughout the country, which is predicted to be the coldest winter in the UK since 1963, if not colder. November this year saw the earliest snowfall in winter for 17 years. Temperatures have been very low, as low as −21.2 °C in Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands, and snowfall has been 30-40 cm in Sussex, and 20 cm in Greater London.  In most of the rest of Europe, it is a similar story, with heavy snowfall in Northern France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ireland for example, where there has also been a lot of disruption.  It is not only the places which normally get snow, for example Sweden, Norway, and Russia, that have had snow this winter, although Norway has had its coldest November on record, one place in Norway, Karasjok, had a temperature of −35 °C on the 27th November 2010. 

There has been snow every January/February in the UK for the last three years now, including the South East of England, and there has also been snow in December for the last two years.  The snow this year is predicted to last until at least 26th December.  It seems that every time there is snow in the UK, everything grinds to a halt.  Transport is disrupted severely, and so are sports fixtures among other things. When will this change? And what can be done for the UK to be better prepared, and prevent scenes of chaos such as those at Heathrow Airport and throughout the country?

Suggested new signs for the UK: Mandatory minimum following distance

This is one of many quick articles to show some suggested new signs. The minimum following distance for vehicles are shown in this article. Typically whenever mandatory following distances would be shown, they would always have to be much longer than the typical stopping distance at a certain speed.

For instance, in the Fréjus Road Tunnel, the minimum following distance is 150m and the speed limit is 70km/h. By contrast, in dry conditions, the typical stopping distance in dry conditions is approximately 57m when a vehicle is travelling at 70km/h.

The two suggested new signs are shown in this article: Mandatory minimum following distance, and mandatory minimum following distance for LGVs over 3.5t.

Ban factory farming now

Factory farming, otherwise known as intensive farming, is an integral part of industrial food production.  The first factory farms were started in 1920s USA, and started in the UK during the late 1940s.  In order to get really cheap (and I would say unnaturally cheap) food, animals in factory farms are kept in really terrible conditions.  Factory farming is cruel to animals, damages animal health, damages our health through factory farmed produce, and damages our environment with pollution.  Lots of hidden costs, which are not reflected in the price of the factory farmed goods.  This type of farming is also heavily subsidised too which is also reflected in the cheap price.

I would recommend seeing the Food Inc. video, if you have not already done so, because it illustrates perfectly the disturbing truth about intensively farmed food and food in general, among other issues.

E-numbers: which ones to avoid

In this article, we look at E-numbers, and give a guide on which ones to avoid for various reasons, most importantly health reasons and keeping healthy, but also to avoid non-vegetarian, non-vegan, allergens, or forbidden foods for example.  And some highly recommended resources for further reading is given here. 

Of course, the best policy still remains to eat organic, fresh, and where possible local, and remember that too much of anything is bad (even food hitherto good for our health) - indeed one should only eat the amount required (whether that's the food, the drink, or individual additives within the food or drink). 

Additives with an E-number are not always artificial (for example curcumin and lycopene have their own E-numbers and are derived from natural sources), although many are (including aspartame, tartrazine, and many more).

Videos: Monsanto and GM

This article shows two videos about Monsanto and genetic modification (GM). The first film is a trailer: The world according to Monsanto, an award winning investigative documentary.  The second video clip is by Greenpeace explaining why biodiversity needs to be protected and why GM as practised by Monsanto (and others, but Monsanto has a 90% share in the market) threatens biodiversity, food security, and sustainable agriculture.

In praise of organic food

We have all heard of organic food, food produced with either no or minimal toxic chemicals, food "the way nature intended it to be". Organic food is in fact exactly how humans have eaten for millenia, it is only since the 20th Century that "conventional" food as we know it, involving toxic and polluting synthetic chemicals in the form of pesticides, insecticides, and fertilisers, and ghastly factory farming, all collectively known as intensive farming, have existed. This article explains not only why organic is best, but also suggests where to get organic.

Avoiding harmful chemicals

There are various artificial and harmful chemicals used in all sorts of products we use or consume, whether its the food we eat, the homes we live in, or in cosmetics. I have read a special report by the Guardian called Chemical World which looks at such chemicals in these products, including the problems they can cause and question marks over their long term safety, and also recommends completely natural alternatives.