Take a look at this latest news item from the BBC. The headline reads:
“RETIREMENT ‘HARMFUL TO HEALTH’, STUDY SAYS”.
According to this latest ‘British study’, we all need to go on working till we drop, because if we don’t, we’ll become sick, depressed, and in the long term there’ll be a ‘drastic decline in health’.[1]
Could that be because, in the long term, we all die?
It all seems a bit disconcerting to us older folks, till we read that the study was published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The BBC merely describes the IEA as ‘a think tank’, and then devotes a page of its website to the results of a study that becomes progressively more dubious as one investigates its authenticity.[2]
Apparently, the ‘study’ was published in conjunction with a rather shadowy charity known as the, “Age Endeavour Fellowship”. This organization has no website, but is listed on “OpenCharities.Org” as, “a grant making charity for the elderly”. The name, Dr Edward Datnow, is listed as a contact, and the address as, 130 Holland Park Avenue, London, W11 4UE.[3]
Most interesting are the incomes and expenditures for this charity over the last few years. Since 2008, its income has dropped steadily from 34,000 GBP to less than 8,000 GBP in 2012. In fact, for the first time in five years their 2012 expenditure outweighed their income by 800 GBP. That’s bad news, particularly as Zoopla lists 130 Holland Park Avenue, London, W11 4UE as: a 6 bed freehold terraced substantial Victorian House (Circa 3800 Sq Ft) Arranged Over Five Floors And In Need Of Refurbishment. Apparently, it was last on the market in 2008 when it was offered for 2,300,000 GBP. Today’s mean property value for London W11 is a paltry 1,500,000 GBP.[4][5]
Is the Age Endeavour Fellowship in desperate need of funds? If so, how could it possibly finance the study so lavishly publicized by the BBC?
The ‘study’ is entitled, “Work Longer Live Healthier – The relationship between economic activity, health and government policy”. Its author is one Gabriel H. Sahlgren.
It begins, as is usual, with the credits:
This paper is published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in association with the Age Endeavour Fellowship. The Age Endeavour Fellowship is a charity that has provided financial support for this project and the author would like to thank senior IEA staff and Edward Datnow and Andy Mayer for their initiative and support.” [my bold]
As already noted, Dr Edward Datnow is listed as a trustee of the Age Endeavour Fellowship, though he remains fairly anonymous to the internet.
Andy Mayer appears to be a relative newcomer. Here he is in an image from the website, ConservativeHome.blogs.com [6]
He’s not listed on OpenCharities.Org, but the Charities Commission website lists him, along with another anonymous individual, Ms Valerie Kent, and a Robert Datnow – presumably some relative of the doctor’s – as charity trustees.
The ‘study’ itself is long-winded (40+ pages), filled with an abundance of technical diarrhea, and comments such as…
…mortality is a rather crude
measure of health…”
Surely, mortality is a highly exact measure of health? Unless, of course, the author, Gabriel Sahlgren, considers being dead a measure of vitality?
He doesn’t stop there…
It is quite possible that retirement may benefit health at first due to a reduction in stress levels and an ability to undertake enjoyable and fulfilling activities: this might be termed a “holiday effect”. As time goes on, however, other influences may lead health to deteriorate. These may include the lack of social interaction and physical activity. Also, the initial psychic benefit of retirement might fade away. In general, furthermore, behavioural changes take time before they affect health. For example, if an individual starts eating, drinking and smoking more because they retire, or in anticipation of retirement, the health effects are not going to appear until some point in the future.”[my bold]
For what is supposedly a ‘scientific’ research paper, this paragraph (and many others) is littered with ‘may’, and ‘might’, and the odd, ‘quite possibly’. Not to put too fine a point on it, the whole paper is bullshit from start to finish. To intimate that the freedom felt by those fortunate enough to retire before ill-health and old age incapacitate them is mere ‘holiday effect’, smacks, at best, of ill-thought-out ignorance, and at worst, of a calculating deviousness designed for nefarious purpose.
One can only ponder on how many individuals eat, drink, and smoke to greater excess as the proximity of retirement looms. Experience suggests it is the young who abuse themselves to excess; the more mature realize the dangers of such habits and take steps to curb them in order to enjoy the rewards of much deserved retirement.
Who, then, is the perpetrator of such a set of ideas so wanton they scarcely merit the description, ‘research’?
Sahlgren’s had a varied career, which has given him little opportunity to study the needs of the elderly. He hasn’t yet made Wikipedia, or any similar journal, so his exact age remains a mystery, though he’s obviously still somewhat damp behind the ears.
Follow his career back far enough and the name Koch rises from the depths. Sahlgren was a ‘Koch Fellow’ at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a US think tank founded by Fred L Smith, a big buddy of billionaire and right-wing plutocrat, Charles Koch. Koch and his brother fund the US ‘Tea Party’ movement).
Later (2009),Sahlgren worked as a research intern at the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank founded by Charles Koch.
Since January 2012 he’s been working as a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
So where does this all leave us? Andrew Marr, in his 2007 BBC documentary, “A History of Modern Britain”, describes the IEA as:
…undoubtedly the most influential think tank in modern British history”
This begs the question, ‘influential’ to whom?
Think tanks are not devised to assist the masses. Their influence is aimed at government. US and UK government policy requires some degree of evidential credibility if it is to pass scrutiny with the electorate, particularly if said policy is detrimental to ordinary folks.
Since the (probably) devised financial crash of 2008, ‘austerity measures’ have been the policy of both European and US governments (remember the US ‘sequester’?) and Tory policy in Britain is set to systematically destroy the socialist system and replace it with a US-style, de-regulated, capitalist, society. This is already far advanced in the destruction of the National Health Service and its privatization.
The pension systems in the UK and the US are viewed by politicians as unwelcome financial burdens they would dearly love to do away with. They conveniently forget the basic fact that workers pay into these funds all their working lives to finance their retirement. The money belongs to them, not the government. But governments would like to steal that money, then shift the whole pension system into private (corporate) control.
The background to this sordid saga is a right-wing, corporate-controlled, free market think tank of enormous political influence. Their aim is to provide ‘evidence’ to government, supportive of a substantial rise in the retirement age of British workers (US workers, beware!). What better way to achieve it than by presenting it as entirely beneficial, nay, necessary, to the health and well-being of the working masses?
Of course, the IEA is hardly a concern likely to evoke a positive response from ordinary people, so they roped in a near-defunct, anonymous, London charity with a sympathetic name -the ‘Age Endeavour Fellowship’ – to front the show.
We know from the records that Dr Edward Datnow and his associates were incapable of funding Sahlgren’s research. No doubt IEA footed the whole bill.
Quite what the trustees of Age Endeavour Fellowship got out of it, one can only speculate.
In September 2011, the Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, wrote an article condemning free market think tanks and the secrecy surrounding those who fund them:
…whenever you hear the term free market thinktank, think of a tank, crushing democracy, driven by big business.”[7]
The Institute of Economic Affairs is hell-bent on crushing the democratic right of every citizen to a long, happy, and healthy retirement.
It’s time to call it a day
They’ve burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It’s time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up – the piper must be paid…
The ongoing squabble about climate change has become so immature and simplistic that it’s truly hard to find anything worth saying on the subject anymore. Homo sapiens is such a narcissistic creature, the idea it might destroy its own habitat begets every excuse under the sun for not taking responsibility and doing something about it. We are so totally absorbed with ourselves and how wonderful we are – the ‘pinnacle of creation’ – that any suggestion we might be slowly annihilating ourselves is treated by most with utter disdain.
We couldn’t ever exist without our smartphones, tablets, Facebook (even the Queen of Britain tweets, you know)…
TheBritishMonarchy @BritishMonarchy
…and our plethora of petroleum products – all necessary attributes of our collective egocentricity. Anyone born after 1980 just couldn’t imagine ever being without them.
Yet there was a time when we lived quite happily without them. And, there was no reason why we would have had to do without them in the future, or, at least, similar alternatives, had governments taken their responsibilities seriously and concerned themselves with the welfare of their electorate, rather than those who bribed and corrupted them.
It’s too late now. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Oh, they will. They’ll laugh and snigger and snort derisively at the very idea of man-made climate change. They’ll still be doing so when their house is consumed by the next mammoth forest fire, or tornado, or catastrophic flood. Only, then, the sniggers will be a trifle more forced.
Those who must carry a heavy burden of responsibly for the imminent downfall of the human race are the religious. No, not your Auntie Edie who plays the organ at the chapel down the road every Sunday. The true politico-religious bigot. The one who stubbornly believes the Bible is the only history of mankind. The one who is convinced, despite all the evidence, that his “God” will save him at the last moment.
America has more than most. In fact, religious bigots in America are rather like its nuclear weapons. If you stacked them all up in a big pile there’d be more than in all the rest of the countries of the world put together.
Here’s one…
…John Shimkus (R-IL) doesn’t believe man is causing climate change. Here’s why:
“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though all inclinations of his heart are evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.
“As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.”
“I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for his creation,” Shimkus said.
Then he quoted Matthew 24:31. “And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other.”
“The Earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a Flood,” Shimkus asserted. “I do believe that God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.”[1]
This, from the Chairman of the US government’s Subcommittee on Environment and Economy. What chance did our environment ever have when its guardians believed they could do what the hell they liked, and “God” would always make it alright?
Here’s another:
Paul Broun (R-Ga) is another Bible thumper. Here’s part of his Wikipedia page:
2009 Global Warming controversy
In June 2009, Broun received a standing ovation when he said that global warming is a “hoax”. He said “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.”
2010 Global Warming controversy.
When Broun explained in June 2010 to the John Birch Society that the entire concept of man-made global warming is a conspiracy perpetuated by certain members of the scientific community to “destroy America.”
2012 Evolution controversy
On September 27, 2012, in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet, Broun stated that the sciences of embryology, evolution, and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the Pit of Hell … lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” This position is in support of his stance supporting Young Earth creationism. In the speech he also said that, “Earth is about 9,000 years old,” that “it was created in six days as we know them,” and that mainline Christian denominations are “going to send their people to hell”
Paul Broun serves on the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Yes, it does seem incredible, but it’s true. These are the very people we elected to watch out for our interests. These are supposed to be our friends in high places. Perhaps, we should reconsider who our enemies are? With hindsight, alongside these guys Osama bin Laden may prove to have been a puppy.
Not that it matters anymore because the Shimkus’s and the Broun’s won’t be going away. Because of them, it’s too late. This month the CO2 in the atmosphere passed 400ppm. We have enough fossil fuel reserves at present to double that figure within sixteen years. Yet, we’re pumping, blasting, drilling more out the planet than ever before; like our lives depended on it. In truth, the exact opposite is the case.
If we stopped emitting any greenhouse gases from this moment in time, the earth would continue to heat up for the next thousand years. We have witnessed – many have already fallen victim to – the drastic changes in weather patterns that have occurred over the last twenty or so years. Take a moment to imagine how the weather will be in a thousand years time. And that’s if we stop now; this instant. No more oil, no more coal, no more belching factory chimneys.
It’s not going to happen. Messrs Shimkus, Broun, and their political pals will guarantee that.
That’s why it’s already too late. Think it out for yourself. How could it possibly be otherwise?
