Curing Cancer with Ribena - Part Two

In August last year I wrote about Ofcom's ruling against the evangelical channel Believe TV for promoting Ribena and an olive-oil soap as cures for cancer and other diseases, including heart disease and ovarian cysts, as well as the soap having the power to 'grow new kidneys'.

Today Ofcom fined The Light Academy Limited, in respect of its service Believe TV, £25,000.

You can read the full Ofcom document here but these are some extracts from it.

Given that the content was also soliciting a response from viewers and such individuals experiencing serious illnesses may be vulnerable to the healing claims being made, Ofcom found there was a material risk that susceptible members of the audience may be exploited by the material broadcast on Believe TV, in breach of Rule 4.6.

The breaches of Rule 4.6 were very serious because the promotions of the Paul Lewis products improperly exploited the susceptibilities of vulnerable viewers of these religious channels.

Ofcom noted for example that there were: no references for the need for people with any potentially serious illness to consult a doctor; nor any advisory text on-screen suggesting to viewers that they should seek medical advice before abandoning prescribed medicines; nor any examples of cases where it was made clear that individuals making “testimonies” of healing had continued or were continuing to receive conventional medical treatment for serious illnesses.

Therefore, Ofcom concluded that some viewers may have reasonably understood that serious medical conditions could be healed through faith healing or healing with special products alone and that conventional medical treatment could be abandoned or not even sought in favour of faith healing or using special products alone. Given that some viewers who may have watched this material may also have been suffering from serious medical conditions, and who were therefore likely to be in a vulnerable state, Ofcom concluded that this material clearly had the potential to cause very serious harm.

The absence of any form of objectively verifiable evidence for the claims made in the broadcast content.

At no time were steps taken by the Licensee to provide adequate protection to members of the public from harm or exploitation, taking into account the fact that the self selecting audience of Believe TV, given that it is a religious service, may have been less likely to question the potentially harmful and exploitative content broadcast.

Ofcom also said that In this instance, there are no direct precedent cases because this is the first case involving faith-based treatment for serious medical conditions.

Although the fine was comparatively small, this case may now set a precedent for future rulings. It also shows that offering cures is not just about freedom to express religious beliefs. This was the defence made by protestors against the ASA ruling on HOTS Bath, an organisation claiming to cure specific diseases (including cancer) through prayer. I wrote about this here.

There is no reason why religion should be exempt from the rules that everyone else has to follow. It's not persecution, it's not censorship, it's not an infringement of human rights. If you make claims to cure medical conditions through non-medical means, you must be able to prove those claims or stop making them.

Healing on the Streets

There's an organisation called Healing on the Streets (HOTS) that puts chairs out on the pavement so people can come and be prayed over.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has banned adverts by the Bath branch of HOTS that offered healing through prayer.

The HOTS website stated "Our vision is to Promote Christian Healing as a daily life style for every believer, through demonstration, training and equipping. We are working in unity, from numerous churches outside the four walls of the building, In order to Heal the sick ".

The ASA ruled that 'A video on the website made claims that HOTS volunteers had successfully prayed for healing for people with cancer, fibromyalgia, back pain, kidney pain, hip pain, cataracts, arthritis and paralysis. We noted the testimonials on the website and in the video but considered that testimonials were insufficient as evidence for claims of healing. We therefore concluded the ads were misleading'.

The ASA also 'noted we had not seen evidence that people had been healed through the prayer of HOTS volunteers, and concluded that the ads could encourage false hope in those suffering from the named conditions and therefore were irresponsible. We acknowledged that HOTS had offered to make amendments to the ads, and to remove the leaflet from their website. However, we considered that their suggested amendments were not sufficient for the ads to comply with the CAP Code.'

The ASA were concerned that 'the ads could discourage people, and particularly the vulnerable or those suffering from undiagnosed symptoms, from seeking essential treatment for medical conditions for which medical supervision should be sought.'

HOTS - Bath have stated that they will appeal against the decision. Their defence is that 'All over the world as part of their normal Christian life, Christians believe in, pray for and experience God's healing. Over that time the response to what we do has been overwhelmingly positive, and we find it difficult to understand the ASA's attempt to restrict communication about this. Our website simply states our beliefs and describes some of our experiences'.

They also comment "It seems strange to us that on the basis of a purely ideological objection to what we say on our website, the ASA has decided it is appropriate to insist that we cannot talk about a common and widely held belief that is an important aspect of conventional Christian faith".

The ASA adjudication is not an ideological objection, nor a restriction on their right to freedom of expression. They also claimed that they were being targeted by 'a group generally opposed to Christianity' whereas the truth is they were reported by one person, Hayley Stephens.

This is not a case of a religious group spreading the Good Word, which it is entitled to do, whether anyone likes it or not. It is a case of them promoting a 'service' that can have serious consequences. The ASA adjudication that they are 'misleading and irresponsible' was a scientific, evidence-based action to protect vulnerable people from unproven (and unproveable) claims.

There have been countless examples of people not taking medication and relying on prayer to cure them, sometimes with fatal results, for example here and here.

There is no conclusive evidence at all that prayer can cure what science cannot and no impartial scientific evaluation of these claims. There is no empirically tested, randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, peer-reviewed evidence. There is scientific evidence that prayer does not cure and that it can even make some conditions worse. At best, prayer provides a placebo - which may work when pain is involved but does not cure a cold, let alone cataracts or cancer.

And by the way, it's illegal to claim to cure cancer according to the Cancer Act 4.1.(a) 8.

One of the testimonials on the website claimed that someone had been cured of having one leg longer than the other. This is a classic faith healing claim. Derren Brown and others have shown how the 'cure' is done.

Although the ASA adjudication means that they can't use their current adverts, prayer is still their core activity. They will still offer prayer cures to people with serious conditions and to target the vulnerable. What they do is not the same as praying with ill people as a way of comforting them or taking their minds off a difficult situation.

HOTS- Bath is a registered charity. Although healing is not stated as one of their charitable objects, it is clear from the website that it is their main objective and activity, one of the non-specified ‘Services’ HOTS provides as part of its claim for charitable status. In order to be a registered charity, a group has to prove that it benefits society. According to the Charities Act, the 'advancement of religion' is one of the 'public benefits'.

The National Secular Society, where I work, has reported them to the Charity Commission.

Some people argue that there's no point going after the small fry. HOTS-Bath's accounts show that they make very little money from their activities, for example. But as other campaigners have said - think global, act local. The story was covered in the local paper and the NSS covered it on their website, so if even a few people question what HOTS are doing or the concept of prayer healing, that's a start. Not everyone has the time, energy or inclination to take on the Scientologists, the Church, litigious mediums or the alt med industry. Old-school grassroots action works. A complaint to the ASA or Charity Commission, a letter to the local paper - even a conversation in the pub - can have positive consequences.

HOTS-Bath operate outside Bath Abbey. They say they will be back there on Thursday March 1 from 11am to 1pm.

Updated 7 February 2012
Brendan O’Neill has written in the Telegraph about HOTS that the ASA ruling is ‘an outrageous attack on freedom of religion’ and that ‘policing the expression of an inner conviction, of a profound belief in the healing qualities of God, is ludicrous and authoritarian’.

He accuses the ASA of becoming a ‘Secular Inquisition’ and claims that ‘modern-day secularists betray the values of the Enlightenment’.

There is a big difference between standing up in the pulpit or even in the street and saying ‘God heals’, and making specific healing claims. The first is freedom of expression, the second is making unsubstantiated claims to be an alternative medicine of the most supernatural kind.

O’Neill has no problem with ‘monitoring health claims in TV commercials’ or ‘keeping a check on the scientific claims made by businesses in their ads’ but wants religious claims to have a special status. It’s a kind of noli me tangere - touch me not – argument. The Enlightenment was about rational, scientific values, not just, as he claims, about keeping the civil government out of religious affairs. He’s cherry picking and twisting the meaning of the Enlightenment to defend the indefensible.

With freedom of expression increasingly under attack at the moment, these bogus claims of its infringement should not be allowed to confuse issues. Even the Telegraph printed a counter-argument.

If your God cures, prove it. Put up or shut up.

Blasphemy is Back

The blasphemy law was abolished in March 2008 but is creeping back through claims of Islamophobia by both Islamic extremists and the Left.

The latest example of a growing attack on freedom of expression happened at the London School of Economics this week.

It started when the LSE Atheist Secular Humanist Society (ASH) posted a Jesus and Mo cartoon (see above) on their Facebook page. They did this in support of University College London ASH who had run into trouble with their Union after a few Muslims complained about the cartoon on their Facebook page.

The LSE Students Union (LSESU) told the group that unless it removed the cartoon from its Facebook page, it could be expelled from the Union because ‘posting these cartoons was in breach of Students’ Union policy on inclusion’ and that they ‘strongly condemn and stand against any form of racism and discrimination on campus’.

In a statement on behalf of LSE ASH, its President Chris Moos said:
‘There are no reasonable grounds for the LSESU’s instruction because we are in no way violating their policies or byelaws. The cartoons on our Facebook page criticise religion in a satirical way and we totally reject any claim that their publications could constitute any sort of harassment or intimidation of Muslims or Christians.

‘That there was no deliberate intention to offend is illustrated by the fact that the cartoons were posted only on the LSESU ASH page and not in other spaces. But even if some people are offended, offence is not a sufficient reason for certain artistic and satirical forms of expression to be prohibited. A university should hold no idea sacred and be open to the critiquing of all ideas and ideologies'.

An Emergency General Meeting was held at LSE on Thursday. The Union noted ‘That Islamophobia is a form of anti-Islamic racism’. The motion passed by 339 votes to 179. The voting bloc of 339 contained people from Far Left groups as well as Muslims. The Union resolved:

- To define Islamophobia as “a form of racism expressed through the hatred or fear of Islam, Muslims, or Islamic culture, and the stereotyping, demonisation or harassment of Muslims, including but not limited to portraying Muslims as barbarians or terrorists, or attacking the Qur’an as a manual of hatred”,

- To take a firm stance against all Islamophobic incidents at LSE and conduct internal investigations if and when they occur.

You can listen to the debate at the EGM here.

A spokesperson from the National Federation of Atheist Humanist and Secular Student Societies said: ‘This is not the first time that an AHS member has been caught up in a row over published material. In 2008, Warwick Atheists caused controversy with a poster showing religious symbols being put in a bin. Leeds and Southampton Atheists have both experienced intimidation when they proposed showing material that some Muslims took offence to’.

Schoolboy and campaigner against quack medicines Rhys Morgan also ran into trouble when he posted the same cartoon on his Facebook page. He received a barrage of hate mail and faced serious disciplinary action from his school.

In a separate incident, a debate at Queen Mary College about sharia had to be cancelled when a Muslim man filmed people there and threatened to kill them if they said anything negative about the Prophet.

The other side of the attack on freedom of expression comes from the probably well-intentioned but misguided liberal Left. A recent letter to the Guardian with a long list of signatories stated that 'over the past decade, a number of academic studies have indicated a worrying and disproportionate trend towards negative, distorted and even fabricated reports in media coverage of the Muslim community'. It called for an inquiry into media representation of Muslims on a par with the Leveson inquiry.

While it is true that Muslims often don’t get fair representation in the media, the conflation of religion with race and the portrayal of the Muslim community as a homogenous entity is becoming a way to blackmail and manipulate, to stop any questioning of Islamists and their activities, even the most serious attacks on human rights. Freedom of expression is being held hostage by a minority of religious extremists who are manipulating the well-intentioned but wrong-headed into silencing debate.

There are laws against inciting hatred and against attacks on individuals because of their race or religion. But Islam is not a race. And Islam is not Muslims. A religion is a set of ideas that anyone should be able to question, criticize or mock in public. It’s only through robust debate that human rights are protected, even if fundamentalist believers resent having their beliefs challenged. Only a person can be insulted, not a set of ideas.

Part of the reason the liberal left is being manipulated by extremists is the Japanese knotweed that is post-modern relativism. According to this, all truths are relative and all beliefs equally valid - even if this means that some people (for example women, LGBT and more moderate or secular/cultural believers) are not treated equally or accorded their Human Rights.

If Human Rights are mutable and vulnerable to demands from extremists and a violent minority, then they are not Universal, they are a pick and mix. If there is a hierarchy of rights, any privilege granted to one group means that other groups are seriously disadvantaged.

This relativism also forbids criticism of other cultures as colonial imperialism. It's one reason why dealing with Female Genital Mutilation and forced marriage is such a problem, for example.

If there is no freedom of expression and open debate of ideas in an academic setting, this bodes very badly for the rest of society, especially when the media and politicians either can't or won't defend free expression.

It should be made very clear that it's not just Muslims who want special consideration, there are many examples of Christian extremists claiming persecution, demanding exemption from Equality laws and trying to shut down criticism.

Other examples of how blasphemy is creeping back are here and here.

The National Secular Society’s briefing paper on Freedom of Expression is here . It has a series of useful extracts from the United Nations and Council of Europe on the defence of this Right.

The NSS submitted a response to the Police Powers Consultation to remove the word ‘insulting’ from section 5 of the Public Order Act. This states that it is an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

Claiming insult on behalf of a religion is becoming another weapon to silence debate. The NSS believes that insult is too nebulous a concept and too open to abuse. Its removal would protect freedom of expression and set the bar higher for a criminal offence.

There is a rally for freedom of expression in central London on February 11.

The situation at LSE and the other colleges is still developing and I'll post updates as they happen.

31 January LSE ASH have now been 'unaffiliated' by their Students" Union.

Dorries Rides Again

This week, Nadine Dorries MP failed to get a second reading for her amendment proposing that abstinence teaching should be promoted in schools - but only to girls, which I covered here.

But there really is no getting rid of her.

Now the Government has been accused of pushing ahead with her plans to strip abortion providers of their role counselling women despite her amendment on the issue suffering a heavy defeat in the Commons last year.

MPs voted by a majority of 250 to reject the Dorries amendment in September. It was intended to make women to see ‘independent’ counsellors before they have an abortion rather than be advised by abortion providers like Marie Stopes International or the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

Public health minister Anne Milton said just before the vote that the Government would try to implement the spirit of Dorries' proposal without the need for legislation. She said: "The Government supports the spirit of the amendments, and we intend to present proposals for regulations after consultation."

It now appears that this is exactly what has happened. It's almost enough to make you believe in Dorries' god.

Shadow public health minister Diane Abbott said she had walked out of a new cross-party abortion group set up by the Government to look at the issue of counselling following the defeat. She said: "I now believe the 'consultation' will be a front for driving through the anti-choice lobbyists' preferred option without legislation or a debate on the floor of the House."

The group has been considering three proposals:
:
The first would see abortion clinics, such as those run by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes International, barred from providing counselling, and under a legal duty to refer women seeking it to an 'independent' service.

An second option is for voluntary registration. This would would mean any organisation offering counselling to women with a crisis pregnancy would have to meet minimum standards, and only use appropriately-trained counsellors.

The third option is to retain the current system.

As I wrote at the time, allegedly independent bodies of the kind promoted by Ms Dorries do in fact have a strong religious agenda and use a wide variety of manipulative, emotive and factually wrong tactics to talk women out of having abortions. I also wrote about how Ms Dorries manipulated facts in support of the amendment. Which is putting it politely.

For anyone who may have forgotten, this is the same Nadine Dorries who is on record as saying that her political blog is "70% fiction and 30% fact" and that "I have chosen the facts I wish to believe".

It's easy to dismiss her as someone with little influence who is easily ignored but her persistence and the apparent support of at least some parts of Government mean that she can't be ignored by anyone who cares about choice and women's rights. She really is the wasp at the picnic.

UPDATED 27 JANUARY
On Newsnight last night, Dorries and Abbott faced off. Abbott's performance was less than sparkling. Dorries made a few interesting points.

1. No abortion counsellor should have an agenda.

In theory, yes. But her idea of having an agenda is being paid by the state to do abortions, You might as well say that NHS dentists shouldn't be allowed to do fillings because they have a financial incentive. The film clip before the discussion showed so-called independent advisors with a strong religious agenda to put women off having abortions. She didn't address this.

2.Dorries says that counselling would mean 60,000 fewer abortions a year.

Her Government wants to cut Child Benefit. How does she envisage providing for these extra children? She has said this before but it's not clear where the figure comes from.

3. University-educated, middle class women who live in London are fine, they know what they want and where to get it. She is concerned for the 'vulnerable' others.

This implies that women who don't fall into her very narrow category are incapable of knowing their own minds or of dealing with what she calls a 'crisis pregnancy'. And, referring back to point 2, it would seem that there are at least 60,000 of them.

4. Dorries listed Frank Field as a pro-choice MP.
He backed her amendment so the choice he is pro would appear to be hers.

The Government says there will be a public consultation before any decision is made, possibly launched next month.

Wasps and the Evolution of Language

Just like living things, language evolves - and sometimes in the same way. When a population splits into two isolated groups, both evolve differently. *

In the 11th century, the modern French word guerre was pronounced gwerra. When the word arrived in England (courtesy of the Norman invaders after 1066), it was effectively isolated from the original language 'population' among British speakers who learnt French. The word mutated and lost the G so we pronounced it, after a few more mutations, as war. Roughly: gwerra to werre to war. Dropping the E on the end of the word is a common mutation.

Mediaeval scribes often used signs as shortcuts. In the 11th century, the word for school was written and pronounced escole (compare with escuela in Spanish, also a Romance language - which means derived from Latin). Later, it was written with an accent at the start as a scribes' sign that there was an S after the E . It's now written école and the S has been dropped from pronunciation. But before that happened, it came over here as escole, from which we got school.

The circumflex was a scribes' sign with a similar purpose, for example hôpital and forêt were pronounced hospital and forest.

People in some parts of France, like Paris, sound the E on the ends of some words as a short UH as in uh-huh. More technically it's called a schwa. So école would be écol - uh.

In the 12th century, the modern French word guêpe was written guespe and pronounced gwesp. The English mutated it by dropping the G and pronounced it wesp and then wasp.

Sometimes words split into further separate speaker populations after the initial isolation to create a kind of sub-species. In some parts of England like the West Country where I'm from, the G of guespe didn't die off but the W did. As G is not hard when followed by E (as in gesture) and the final E of guespe was sounded as a schwa, pronunciation went gwesp - jesp- jespa and that's why we yokels call wasps jaspers.

What the connection is with the old song 'Oh Sir Jasper do not touch me' is not known.


*If you're a linguist, yes I know I'm simplifying and being a little elliptical.

A Christmas Ghost Story

It's traditional to tell stories about ghosts and spirits at Christmas. Let's imagine it's a still, icy, night. Small things die silently in the dark and the light of the full moon glints on sharp, merciless teeth.

In 1990, consultant psychiatrist and hypnotherapist Dr Alan Sanderson M.B., B.S. (London), M.R.C.P., D.P.M., M.R.C. Psych. returned to clinical practice after years of 'personality research'. He found psychiatry 'still stuck in the pharmacological morass' so he came up with the Spirit Release Foundation (SRF) 'to train medical practitioners and others to help people who are troubled by spirit attachment'. The SRF's members 'share a belief in the primacy of spirit and the soul’s development through reincarnation' (although they claim not to be religious).

What might spirit attachment be? According to the website:

'A minority of those who die fail to make their transition from this physical world successfully. They become what is known as ‘earthbound’, because they remain mentally attached to the earth plane and so cannot progress. Reasons for this include a traumatic death, concern over some unfinished business or anxiety for a loved one on Earth. Attached spirits may manifest in a variety of ways. They may attach to a person, or to a place with which they were associated in life, that place becoming haunted'.

Basically, it's ghosts haunting buildings and possessing the living. Even though the therapy is aimed at medical practitioners (among others), there is no attempt at scientific evidence on the website. One practitioner does explain the mechanism on their own website: 'Everything in the universe is made up of energy, spirit release simply deals with energies most of us cannot see and for the most part are unaware of... Spirit Release is really all about how external energies can, on occasion, affect our energy system in detrimental ways'.

'Energy' is the alternative medicine practitioner's friend, an undefined, unscientific term to explain pretty much anything. It is not the capacity of a physical system to perform work. This 'energy' is not measured in joules, kilowatt-hours or kilocalories.

Diagnosis is hardly more scientific:

'Some of the more common symptoms of spirit attachment can be: lack of energy, memory disturbance, behavioural change, mood change, addictive behaviour, relationship problems and hearing disturbing voices. There may be bodily pain and other physical symptoms. The degree of attachment also varies. Some individuals are scarcely affected, while in rare cases the individual's body and mind have been taken over completely. There may, of course, be other reasons for the presence of these symptoms, which a practitioner should investigate'.

The range of symptoms is so vague and general that almost any condition can be ascribed to attachment. The caveat that there may be other reasons for symptoms has the appearance of responsibility but how many practitioners are qualified to diagnose symptoms - and then hand the patient over to medical care (thereby losing their fee)?

Why aren't doctors spotting that their patients are troubled by earthbound spirits?

'Spirit attachment is not uncommon and is often misdiagnosed because many practitioners are not aware of it and because the symptoms might fit a number of possible diagnoses. In some instances attachments exacerbate an existing complaint with similar symptoms. They may be the reason that recovery from a complaint is very slow.'

The implication is that trained doctors are getting it wrong with their insistence on using their medical training. Even if a patient has been diagnosed with a genuine medical condition, it could be made worse by spirit attachment. They really have covered all the bases.

How do they cure this terrible problem that no-one had heard of until the SRF came along?

'Spirit Release is a two fold process. Firstly it involves releasing earthbound spirits from their condition of attachment in a compassionate, non-confrontational way, by contacting the spirits and communicating with them. Spirit helpers are then called upon to move the spirit on to its rightful place in the universe. The person who has been affected by the attachment is also offered healing, counselling or other therapeutic help, including advice about psychic protection'.

So basically, they give the spirit a hug and call it a taxi? Once they've dealt with the dead, they help the living too -possibly because the dead don't have credit cards.

Pretty much anyone can be affected:

Spirit Release is also about 'freeing the ‘stuck’ aspects within ourselves that invite spirit attachment, which may involve looking at past-life patterns, ancestral karma and any difficult influences that stem from childhood or later life'.

This is their version of preventive medicine (or maximizing your market share).

Therapy takes two forms. 'The Interactive Approach involves putting a client into an altered state of consciousness, through a form of hypnosis, in order to allow any attached spirit to communicate safely through them. A dialogue ensues, in which the spirit is induced to leave'.

Hypnosis is a tricky process, it's very easy for an inexperienced or unethical therapist to plant ideas, deliberately or otherwise. There can also be issues with False Memory Syndrome. There is a huge amount of trust required - a patient is hypnotised and when they come round they're told that the spirit possessing them has been persuaded to move on. This treatment is open to considerable abuse, aided in part by the placebo effect.

Alternatively, the 'Intuitive Approach is made through the psychic awareness of the therapist who learns how to communicate directly with a spirit. This does not necessarily require the active involvement of the client. It may be practised directly or at a distance'.

There's no indication of what happens if the spirit doesn't want to leave. The process as described is very benign, very low-key and reassuring as if it's no more than having your ears syringed.

If you feel there's a spirit inside you, there's a list of practitioners in your area.

The SRF may be a small group but they shouldn't be too readily dismissed. For example, the SRF website also suggests that gender dysphoria could be caused by spirit attachment and that Spirit Release is an alternative treatment to gender realignment surgery. They are part of a larger movement ascribing a whole range of problems to spirit possession. The Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) who are mostly GPs believe that mental illness among other problems can be caused by possession. There have been exorcists working with the NHS for forty years, as I wrote about here and you can read another piece I wrote on exorcism here.

The main problem with both the apparently cuddly SRF and the much less fluffy CMF is that practitioners' world view is predicated on unseen entities, some malevolent, some misguided. They are creating a problem and offering a solution to people who could well be in a vulnerable state and in need of proper medical attention. Even if the SRF are just treating people with more money than sense, they are dealing with people's mental and possibly physical well-being. Although the SRF claim that they are not a religious organisation, theirs is the same mentality as the churches that use violent - and sometimes fatal - methods to exorcise people, whether these are African evangelical churches or both the Catholic Church and the Church of England with their trained exorcists.

It would be interesting to know what church exorcists make of these rivals. As with religions, they can't all be right with their competing world-views of demons versus disincarnate humans.

Another problem is that anyone with a few hundred quid to spare can become a spirit release therapist. It costs £30 a year to be a member of the SRF and the Foundation Course costs £210. There's a leaflet about the upcoming London one here.

This way of thinking also leads people to blame outside agencies for problems in their lives rather than either taking responsibility or getting medical help. It can create a dependency on therapists. There's a kind of contamination theory at the root of the SRF; they are making people believe they have been 'infected' and need to be 'cured' except that they're not talking about bacteria or viruses, but the dead- truly alternative medicine.

This is a Christmas ghost story with no Tiny Tim happy ending.

Happy Families?

The Government is trying to rebuild society on the basis of a Victorian card game. But only a minority of people now live in a family like Mrs Bun the Baker's wife, Mr Plod the policeman or Miss Dose the Doctor's daughter

The Government's flagship free schools and academies have to sign up to strict rules introduced by Education Secretary Michael Gove to teach children the ‘nature of marriage’ and its ‘importance’ for family life and bringing up children.

Religious and political campaigners against gay marriage claim that marriage is only for a man and a woman and that allowing gay marriage would undermine the bedrock of society and destroy family life.

But now there is research by think-tank the Centre for the Modern Family (funded by Scottish Widows) which shows that eight out of 10 people describe their family set‐up as not the traditional two married parents and two or more children. Just 16% of people define themselves as part of this kind of family that the Government thinks is under threat.

Although the Government and religious campaigners might see it as their mission to repair society and restore their concept of family values, they are increasingly out of step with the people they claim to represent who are more likely to describe single‐parent, same‐sex, or unmarried couples as ‘proper’ families. 57% of people no longer believe that a couple with children needs to be married to be a family. 77% of people believe that single parents can be a 'proper' family and 59% believe that same sex couples can be a family.

The public doesn’t just disagree with the Government's image of a family. People feel alienated by the emphasis put on a ‘traditional’ model of family life. 22% don’t believe their family is valued by society and 18% feel judged because of their family set‐up while 52% claim the Government does not take their family set‐up into account. It should also be borne in mind that whatever high ideals are promoted, not everyone gets to choose their circumstances, especially when times are hard.

NSS President Terry Sanderson said in The Telegraph: "For children brought up by unmarried parents or single parents being told that marriage is the only valid family arrangement will be totally contradictory to everything they know about the world. It is telling our children that their own family structure is somehow inferior."

However, both the Government and ‘traditionalist’ religious groups are very good at ignoring data that don’t suit their agenda and carrying on regardless. No matter how many statistics are thrown at them, it's water off a self-righteous duck's back. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith recently called on the Government to preserve the traditional family as 'the most vital part of society'. He made a clear distinction between marriage and cohabiting, claiming the 'relationships are not the same - and there are consequences for us all'.*

When did these ideal families exist apart from in a pack of Happy Families cards? Certainly not within living memory of many MPs, including David Cameron. According to the Office of National Statistics, in 1961 only 38% of families consisted of a married couple with two or more children.** That was before the swinging Sixties kicked in, before the Pill was widely available, before the Women's Movement gained momentum and before homosexuality was made legal. These are all things blamed for destroying the ideal family.

Just in passing - how many Tory MPs have had affairs or got divorced? The unscientific answer is - too many for them to be preaching at the rest of us. This is 'don't do as we do, do as we say' politics. Or maybe I just think that because I'm not married.


* Speech at the Janet Young Memorial Lecture 4 November 2011

** ONS Social Trends 40 (2010 edition) p 14.