Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Cameron has written to NATO leaders urging various increases in military preparedness in eastern Europe to send a signal to Russia not to put a foot further west. To put it simply Cameron is either briefed by the wrong people or he is strategically clueless when it comes to foreign policy. In a changing world where the tectonic plates of power are in flux, this is dangerous not for Russia but for Britain.

Cameron was the first to suggest backing the rebels against Gaddafi; Libya is now a failed state with Europeans in flight from the country and embassies shutting down. He was at the forefront of the bomb Syria campaign which mercifully his own backbenchers stopped. He has been confrontational in Europe. He is gleefully painting the Russians into a corner from which at some point they may lose patience and lash out. His backing for the rebels in Syria finds him lined up awkwardly with Al Qaeda affiliates. He has been slow, slower even than Washington, to remonstrate with Israel over its bombardment of Gaza.

He has been the hawk at the heart of European policy making, oblivious to the failure of every initiative, the string of post 9/11 failed and failing states and the simple fact that refusal to work with Russia has made the situation in Ukraine worse not better. To the unsavoury element in Kiev he turns a blind or naive eye. Now that Hague has gone from the foreign office there is nobody to whisper caution in his ear. He believes that diplomacy is about confrontation and red lines; those countries who do not bow down are enemies. He has absolutely no comprehension of the notion that diplomacy is about building alliances founded on common interests and building influence through friendship and cooperation.

This is all a terrible pity because on the face of it he is a nice, kind and considerate man.

There is quite a lot of media coverage of an alleged error in an article in the British Medical Journal which apparently contained a statistical mistake about the effectiveness and risks of blanket prescription of statins for everybody over, I believe, forty. This is what happened to me.

I was prescribed statins when my cholesterol level was marginally high. I have a genetic liver condition called Gilbert’s Syndrome which makes the liver work a little differently but is not considered to have clinical significance. After a month on the statins I became ill with vomiting and difficulty in digesting food. The statins were stopped but it took two years before I could eat a meal in the evening and all meals had to be reduced, resulting in major weight loss, without having previously been overweight.

I am now fully recovered and by adjusting my diet my cholesterol readings are well within normal for my age. Cholesterol should be dealt with by diet and only if that fails, or there are other reasons for the problem, should statins be prescribed. Blanket feeding of these pills to the population is ridiculous. It is like giving people a pill to combat heavy drinking when the true medical solution is to cut down alcohol intake.

Drug based medical treatment should be a last resort, not a first call. Too many doctors see themselves, or are required to see themselves, as  super pharmacists. They need to get back to being medical practitioners. It is a different thing altogether.