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A Better World

14/3/2015

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Do you ever wonder if you could make the world a better place?

Here are ten small things we can all do to make the world a better place without having to join the missions or fork out on monthly donations;

1)      Plant a Tree in your back Garden.

The world is a very simple place and if you want to keep it green you should start on your doorstep. Trees are a natural habitat for wildlife and help absorb carbon dioxide (a tree can absorb up to a ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime). Trees provide shelter and food for wildlife such as birds, squirrels and bugs. If you don’t have space for a tree, or if you want to maximise the benefit your garden can make, you should plant flowers that attract and feed pollinators like bees, butterflies, and birds: they’re disappearing at an alarming rate because of pesticide and insecticide use.

2)      Donate Blood

Want to save someone’s life? People in accidents, undergoing treatment, and even premature infants all need your help to survive. Just by donating blood once you’ve helped someone and this means you’ve made the world a better place. Currently only 1 in 30 people give blood, but 1 in 3 people will need blood in their lifetime, that doesn’t make sense now does it?

3)      Don’t Smoke

First of all smoking gives you cancer and you die, and if you’re reading this it means you care, so you’re one of the good people, Jack Johnson is potentially looking for you, and we need you to stick around. Smoking creates a drain on the health service because of the huge cost in treating smoking related disease & cancer. For example in the UK treating disease directly caused by smoking costs more than £5bn a year. This has a negative effect on the economy which impacts on the government’s ability to provide social services and support the community at large. But don’t just discourage smoking, take it a step further, support anti tobacco legislation and help rid the world of a problem that The World Health Organisation calculates as being responsible for 27% of deaths among men and around one in 10 among women.

4)      Become an Organ Donor.

Listen people, you don't need your organs when you die, someone else does. If you want to make the world a better place save someone’s life on the way out, when you’re done you’re done.

5)      Stop Driving Everywhere

We all know vehicle emissions are bad for the planet. If it’s a short journey just walk or cycle. Get to work by using public transport or car pool. If you need to use a car, consider purchasing a hybrid or an electric model. We can make a difference if we try. Individually we can become community leaders and collectively we can become global leaders in energy conservation.  

6)      Recycle.

Let’s reduce landfill waste. These days just about anything can be recycled—from newspapers and plastic, to computers and old mobile phones. Make sure your workplace has recycling facilities and ensure you buy recycled products whenever you can.

7)      Be Politically Aware

If you want the world to be a better place hold your politicians accountable for their actions. Vote for candidates who uphold your beliefs and voice your support for them amongst your friends and community. Read a newspaper, be aware of what’s happening in the world around you, aim to understand global politics.

8)      Adopt Ethical Practices when you shop.

Support companies that have fair trade practices, don’t let big business dictate terms over farmers and producers. Remember some companies use sweat shops to produce the clothes you wear, be conscious of the goods you buy. By purchasing products from countries which don’t respect basic human rights you are supporting their government and helping enslave people. If you’re not happy about the way a foreign government acts don’t visit that country, don’t buy their products. Boycotting an economy will put it under pressure. Remember to help reduce carbon output by purchasing energy efficient electronic appliances.

9)      Go Vegetarian at least once a week.

Meat based products are so readily accessible nowadays that we’ve completely forgotten how it is produced. Despite any moral implications of the mass genocide of animal life on this planet there are huge implications to the over industrialisation of  meat supply to our planets well being. For example: It requires 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. The international meat industry generates roughly 18% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions—even more than transportation—according to a report last year from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. Much of that comes from the nitrous oxide in manure and the methane from the natural result of bovine digestion. Methane has a warming effect that is 23 times as great as that of carbon, while nitrous oxide is 296 times as great. If you switch to vegetarianism, you can shrink your carbon footprint by up to 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

10)   Give your Children the right Education

Let’s look at what our children learn in school, are we giving them the right education? If you can, give them every opportunity to learn, teach your child an instrument, a foreign language, good ethical behaviour, instil in them a sense of responsibility to take care of this planet and everyone on it.  


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Drink Me

8/10/2014

1 Comment

 
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When ever I hear the word democracy I think of freedom, fair elections and a people’s government. When someone says the word Republic I think about the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. So I’ve always been instilled with a sense of pride when people talk about this little land of ours, the Republic of Ireland. I’ve often thought how much better we have it here, compared to one of those horrid countries you see on television. You know those countries where the governments decide how the labor force is fed and educated, where the people have no control over their own wealth and as a result they’re denied the opportunity to improve their living conditions, where people are ruled with an iron fist, a country where people are denied the freedoms we take for granted.

Yeah we’d all hate to live in one of those countries right?

The thing is that lately I can’t help thinking that perhaps we’re living with the wool over our eyes here in this little Republic on the Prairie, where democracy has brought us the illusion of grandeur and a tax system to match one of those despotic governments you scorn at on the television.

For example the average worker in Ireland pays 20% of their earnings in income tax, and approx 4% in USC, meaning a quarter of all his/her earnings goes straight to the government to begin with. Next off he/she might go to the supermarket to do their weekly shop, everything they buy has VAT  charged to it also, at the rate of 23%. So if they spend the rest of their wages in the supermarket nearly half of their earnings go directly to the government.

If you’re lucky enough to save anything the government look to get their cut there too, taking 33% of any interest earned in what’s called Deposit Interest Retention Tax (DIRT). Of course most of us don’t get to save that much anyway, every aspect of life in Ireland has a tax now; I pay motor tax to keep my car, septic tank charges to use my loo, a dog license for my best friend, a tv license to listen to the radio, Local Property Tax to live local - or remotely - or where ever it is that I’m living, as long as I’m living there I’m paying for it.

So it was no surprise to me when the government announced they were going to be charging us for water in a country where it doesn’t stop raining. I wondered why though, why another tax, why another tax when we pay so much tax already.

‘It’s so we can have better quality water’ they said, ‘to maintain the upkeep of water treatment facilities’.

To this extent I thought sure, sure that’s reasonable if it helps improve the quality of water supply, if it helps get clean water to our hospitals, to ensure our elderly get good clean water, that our children have access to good clean fresh drinking water. That’s reasonable right?

Because I have no problem paying for the treatment of water, especially if it’s good for us, but what if it’s not? What if the government are actually poisoning our drinking water with fluoride?

See if you’re like me you might have thought fluoridation is part of the water treatment process, that it’s required to clean the water, but you’d be wrong, it’s completely separate. After the water is treated someone comes along and adds the fluoride so that we can have better teeth, because apparently we eat too many sweets and don’t brush our teeth! Hello Mammy Ireland, thanks for the fluoride and the cancer that comes with it.  

I hear what you’re thinking, surely fluoride doesn’t give us cancer, surely the government aren’t actually giving us cancer?

Well scientific research says otherwise. In 2001 researchers at the University of Tokyo published findings in the Journal of Epidemiology which reported a significant association between water fluoridation and cancer. Researchers undertook detailed statistical analysis of cancer incidence rates and water fluoridation in the USA, comparing fluoridated and non-fluoridated states. Of the 36 cancer sites in males and females examined, 69% were significantly associated with water fluoridation. The reason given by the authors for the higher cancer incidence rates in fluoridated communities was the extended presence of fluoride in plasma and urine and the infusion of fluoride into the brain and other organs.

But hey, what do they know in Tokyo right, are we going to get scared by one little report coming out of Asia telling us about the water we drink?

Well they’re not alone in their research. In 2006 the US National Academy of Sciences completed a comprehensive & balanced scientific review on the health effects of fluoride in water. Its 500-page report, representing three years' work by a panel of 12 scientists, acknowledged adverse effects from even low levels of fluoride ingestion, effects including thyroid impairment, type 2 diabetes, moderate dental fluorosis, bone fractures & arthritis, as well as lowering of IQ and brain damage.

Still dismissive, thinking why governments would do this if it is so bad, well it turns out that they don’t. Governments don’t do this; it’s pretty much just us, as it happens Ireland is the only EU country and one of only two in the world with a national mandatory public water fluoridation policy.

In fact fluoride is considered so dangerous in the USA that all fluoride toothpastes carry a poison warning, by federal law. It states, "If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, you should contact a poison control centre immediately."


A POISON CONTROL CENTRE
,
if you were hit by a bus in this country you’d be lucky to see a doctor after you've spent the night on a trolley, not to mind gaining access to a poison control centre, and imagine the reaction you’d get when you finally get to see a doctor and you tell them you’re concerned that you’ve drank too much water today, which is exactly what you should do  because the amount of fluoride which requires a poison warning in the US is the same amount of fluoride found in one glass of tap water in Ireland, a glass which carries no warning.


All of this would make you wonder, perhaps we’re one of those horrid little countries you see on the TV, where the government decides how they treat their people, where the government dictates what’s ‘good’ for the public. Have we really turned into a country where we have no control over our own health? Is there any power in this democracy of ours? Do we have any say about how we’re taxed or about what’s in our water? Are we really going to sit back and swallow this?

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Letter to the governor

29/9/2014

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Reading through the Irish Times recently I came across more distasteful American   politics, Governor Pat McCrory unable to comprehend the value people’s health plays over that of the profits of the vile tobacco industry. The article reads

‘The governor of North Carolina Pat McCrory is the latest American politician to call on the Government to scrap its plans to introduce plain packaging on cigarettes and other tobacco products.’

The article further details the governor’s fight to help protect tobacco brands;

“Imagine if the United States required Guinness to be stripped of its universally recognised brand and be marketed solely as ‘beer’ or Jameson to be labelled simply as ‘whiskey’ and Baileys as ‘liqueur’,” said the governor

Of course when the tobacco industry brings in over $32 billion in taxation to the American government it will have a few advocates. Thankfully the Irish people have already taken a stand against the agents of evil, so I think that anyone who has come across Mr McCrorys letter should drop him a line to let him know what the people of Ireland think about his brand values.

'Dear Governor McCrory,

In response to your letter appealing to the Irish people to protect your cancer brands I would first like to introduce you to the concept that we are not a nation of senseless whiskey guzzlers as portrayed in many of your nations most popular media streams.

Comparing items such as anthrax and cigarettes to international alcoholic beverages does not make us feel any closer to your cause.

The reason we are introducing plain packaging is to fight the battle against lung cancer, see lung cancer is one of the most common cancers in Ireland and 90% of all cases are caused directly by smoking.

Ireland is a small nation, I don’t believe we can deliver world peace or solve global warming or put a man on the moon any time soon, but what we can do is to identify a clear injustice in the world, an injustice whereby Tobacco companies profiteer from the lives of ordinary people, and what we have done is declared a war on cancer and if that means taking on the tobacco industry so be it, because every life saved is a life worth fighting for.

In March 2004 Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce comprehensive legislation banning smoking in workplaces, this included public houses and restaurants, traditionally a stronghold of the tobacco companies, the result was that cigarette sales fell by 60% in bars and it was reported that that 7,000 people gave up smoking in the first 12 months after the ban came into effect, doesn’t sound like a lot, well Mr McCrory that is 7,000 lives as far as I’m concerned and nearly twice the death toll of US soldiers in your war on Iraq, to put things in context.

Plain packaging has already been introduced in Australia and studies show the fastest decline in smoking in over twenty years, encouraging for our goal to be tobacco free by 2025.

Mr McRory we will not deter form reaching our goal, we may not be the largest nation on this green earth but we will prevail in our fight against cancer agents, and we will lead the way for our European neighbors.

Please feel free to die of lung cancer if you are still in opposition to plain packaging by the time you read this.

Regards

The People’s Champ'

I decided to e-mail the Gov myself so hopefully he will write back and we can be friends and stuff, also please feel free to drop him a line if you're anti-cancer

http://www.governor.state.nc.us/contact/email-pat


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