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18 January 2008

Josie Loftus
17/ 1/2008

I know it’s a bit late but I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year and hope 2008 will be everything you want it to be. And as far as resolutions go, if you’re like me they’ve gone out with 2007 before they had a chance to fail.

No use beating onesself up about failure and regret. Life is too precious and much too short for negativity. Move on as they say and make the most of what you have. Remember; ‘yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is the present’, the best one you can have.

For those of you who noticed that Golden Voices was missing from last week’s and Christmas week’s Advertiser it was because my computer decided to do its own thing and not deliver the email containing GV. I am still confused as to how the messages and the article’s show as being sent on my computer but they and other mail I have sent, failed to be delivered which can only mean it must be floating about somewhere beneath the keys I am now pressing; hiding somewhere deep inside the ‘technomery’ (my made up word for the hidden depths within the mind and memory of a computer) and if the stuff meets up with the bookmark list that just as suddenly vanished a few months ago, well I hope after the panic their disappearances have caused me that they suffer together in the wilderness of wherever they are.

During one of my nocturnal wakefulnesses I watched a news item on the television about how 2007 was warmer than the previous few years and how we can expect much warmer weather in the future. Who is it that is putting out this rubbish, expecting us to swallow it? As far as I’m concerned the proof of warmer weather should reflect in lower fuel bills and of course much less use of energy. Judging by my bills either I’m living in Antartica but think it’s England or they are living in the Sahara or in cuckoo land.

Did anyone notice something missing about the films that were on the television over the Christmas and New Year holiday’s? No ‘Towering Inferno’.

I think the powers that be who control our watching habits are bent on confusing us just for the heck of it. It has taken thirty years to associate the film with Christmas and New Year and now they’ve replaced it with the ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’ which was usually shown at Easter time or whenever there is a government scandal of some sort, like the salmonella eggs.

I always feel that whenever they show the River Kwai film it’s because there’s something nasty in store for the country and we’ve got to be thankful that we’re not prisoners of war … mmm … let’s move on.

Did any of you feel as astounded as I did about the unnecessary use of the F word by a certain comedienne and a highly acclaimed actress during a Christmas special that was purported to be ‘award winning’ and worthy of applause. I just can’t understand why female comediennes feel they have to resort to portraying the female caricature as lewd, crude, filthy, termagants in order to project themselves as acceptable artists capable of entertaining.

If it’s because they have to appeal first to a woman hating, male dominated industry and secondly to connect with the worst kind of language abuser; then they have hit the jackpot in the awards ceremonies and got the Oscar for the programme you would not want your grandchildren to ever watch as a piece of entertainment.

But, yes, definitely as a warning to watch out for and to avoid if ever they come across a family where the grandmother swears like something to be found on BBC 1 and which we have contributed to at great expense through our license fee. Please, lets resurrect Nana Norm from the ‘Royles’ who endeared herself to us all by her warm and wonderful spoonerisms, without any F words; of which is proof of talent, professionalism and acceptability and not forgetting Nana Bradshaw and all the other great Nana’s who would never, ever bring shame on their families by being anything other than a lady.

There’s been an announcement that there is to be a control put upon the ‘alternative’ practitioners concerning alternative medicines like homeopathy, herbalism, chiropody, and any non-medically trained body that provides a service for suffering people.

If this is because there are a lot of quacks and charlatans out there then I’m all for it because God knows, I and my husband have been very desperate victims looking for answers, cures and reassurance.

And as always they took our money whilst they practised their trade on us who trusted and believed in them as specialists in their field. Much to our ignorance and cost we eventually realised that they only know about their own limited subject and that if your condition doesn’t fit into it, you will never know this but they’ll keep you strung along until you go away in search of another ‘opinion’ only to discover that you have now been branded ‘a nuisance’ by the previous expert and by experts.

I’m talking about the highly trained BMA ‘consultants’ who play on our ignorance and our health.

Whilst I’m all for stricter controls and better services for the individual, I am more deeply concerned than ever with the way in which conventional medicine is being forced into complying with the big guns of the pharmaceutical industries.

I now know after very intensive investigation that my husband had a food related disease which was not and is still not recognised by the medical profession and as a result he and myself suffered some terrible discrimination at the hands of so called medical ‘experts’. I really feel that before the standards agency starts to judge the ‘alternative’ body of practitioners it should look at itself first and sort itself out for the better.

Which now brings me into an article I read about in a Sunday paper about ‘gluten free’ communion wafers. Well, hallelujah, praise the lord! Twenty-five years ago, when I discovered, by accident that my long suffering husband was a victim of Coeliac disease, so-called medical ‘experts’ dismissed any link whatsoever between food related reactions and diseases. So here we are, finally on the brink of a discovery that you are what you eat and the proof of it all is how you feel after eating and not how you look; sick and ill or bright and well. You really are what you eat. Think caveman diet, eg natural, home-grown, down to earth food, like when we were kids, and you can’t go wrong.

"Mum," said my youngest son with disdain, after reading this copy of Golden Voices, "You’ve not stopped complaining and moaning." This, from my boy who first inadvertently got me to question the viability of how expert is an expert … picture the scenario, it is 1973 and he complains:

Mum … I can’t see things properly’.

Optician … ‘he needs glasses and nice ones cost a lot’

Me … Oh! god … what ever it takes, I’ll pay.

Optician … ‘A lot!'

We arrive home in bits and find that the television is defunct. We call the engineer and he starts to tune into the contraption that now starts showing a perfect picture. The engineer skilfully adjust the vision and suddenly my little sightless boy says ‘ I can see! … I can see!’. So here we are now, after going through the expertise of the most eminent consultants in eye care, who diagnosed my son as being myopic and who now see it as being a ‘miracle’ that their £200 fee for spectacles is now unnecessary because, suddenly, his sight has resumed … thanks to the telly engineer. Yes, it was the television that was out of sync and not his vision.

Community radio has at last become a possibility for our region with North Manchester FM on 87.8fm. Last Monday morning at 7am the station breathed its first airwave with the early breakfast show and it will continue throughout the day and night for the next four weeks, after which it is hoped to win a full broadcasting licence - meaning NMFM will be a permanent station serving, advising and entertaining the community.

Golden Voices will be on air every Sunday and Monday starting at 12 noon and finishing at 2pm. I hope you will enjoy GV to listen to as much as you say you enjoy reading it in The Advertiser. I am particularly pleased for the people who are unable to read GV for themselves due to reasons of poor eyesight, illness and other disabilities.

NMFM 87.7 is a community radio station which means it is for you to not only enjoy but for you to get involved and be part of it. Listen take note and if there is some burning issue or something the community or the world should know about, good or bad, then get in touch and we’ll see what we can do for you. I look forward to being with you.

So many of you Golden Voices readers have been in touch with me over the Christmas holidays not only to wish me and you a merry Christmas and happy new year but also to share with each other good will and benevolence that becomes us all at this time of year. Life is really fantastic, make the most of it and make it happen.

Be strong and look after yourself ‘cos if you don’t, no one else will. Love to all of you, best wishes for 08 and always, look forward.