Letters - Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Contrary to what many think January 31 did not mark the beginning of the end it signalled the end of the beginning. The bells were ringing, let’s hope they don’t begin knelling.

Hitherto the EU problems have been mainly internal ones fuelled by an unsympathetic Parliament and an incompetent set of negotiators. The actions of a Labour Party intent on scuppering any deal made things even worse.

Now the problems really begin. There can be no more excuses from No. 10. The road ahead will not be bumpy it will be full of craters and IEDs.

To successfully achieve economic, legal and security deals that benefit our country we need negotiators who have knowledge, competence, flexibility, patience and exude trustworthiness. The truth must out.

The government has a good working majority. But it must not enter negotiations with the EU with a mixture of bluster, and arrogance. I fear there is already a danger of this given certain personalities.

We are today a relative minnow on the international stage. Our 60 million people are up against many more millions in Europe, and billions in Asia. We are no longer a major military power on land, ea or in the air. We are heavily dependent on America and President Trump knows this. It is high time we all did. Our role in the world must be a realistic one not one based on long past glories.

This nation nevertheless has much to offer a divided world. But we cannot survive as a ‘Little Englander’. How we navigate a position between America and Europe that is beneficial to our national interest is the huge task ahead. It will not be easy. Let us hope our negotiators are up to it. Verbal exuberance and silly quips from the Prime Minister are not wanted.

There will be no quick dividend from Brexit. Hard choices will have to be made along with compromises. What the nation needs is clear unemotional truths.

Many years ago President Franklin Roosevelt, a great President, guided the American people through a nightmarish period of economic depression with a series of morale boosting and rational fireside chats. It is what we need today. The immediate pain may have gone, but what faces us now requires leadership, and leadership of a very high quality.

Staunch remainers are I think wrong. The apocalypse does not await us, but neither does a Garden of Eden without the serpent.

Expectations will be watered down tucked away amongst verbiage. When this happens, and it will pretty soon, the public needs honesty not jollity and political subterfuge.

The government must level with us. In 1940 Winston Churchill levelled with the nation by telling the people what lay ahead involved ‘blood, sweat and tears’. Today, we will not have to shed blood but there will be plenty of sweat and tears. So Boris let’s have it straight from now on.

Dr Barry Clayton

Thornton Cleveleys

ROYALTY

Good starting point for trade

Our first trade deal with the US could be Prince Andrew (re Jeffrey Epstein) in exchange for Anne Sacoolas (re Harry Dunn). No tariffs involved and a victory for those parties seeking justice.

Stuart Scholey

via email

HEALTH

Right to expect protection

It’s Children’s Mental Health Week, a time when the focus rightly goes on to the mental welfare of the younger generation. There is however a problem.

Anything to do with mental health tends to fall under the psychiatric profession. This is the problem - psychiatrists have been trying to find ways of labelling children mentally ill rather than labelling them mentally healthy.

Childhood behaviour has been put under the microscope and, in a wholly unscientific way, certain bits of behaviour have been categorised as criteria for so-called mental ‘disorders.’ Psychiatrists need to look in the mirror. They’ve fallen into an obsessive habit where they make lists of emotional and behavioural characteristics and give them unscientific psychiatric names.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is an example. The diagnostic criteria for ADHD are reflective of nothing more than normal childhood behaviour. The pseudoscience connected with it has been accepted without inspection. It’s resulted in the unnecessary chemical restraint of children and adolescents with stimulants and other psychiatric drugs.

It demonstrates how psychiatrists are more concerned with mental illness than they are with mental health. If the solutions were so good, we wouldn’t keep hearing the psychiatric mantra that more and more people are suffering with mental illness that requires more taxpayer’s money.

Psychiatry is failing and is haemorrhaging public funds.

Another sad and unnecessary result of psychiatric interventions in childhood is the number of young lives lost to suicide after they were prescribed antidepressants. CCHR has spoken to many bereaved parents who have been left to pick up the pieces after their profound loss. That parental sadness turns to anger when they realise they weren’t informed about the dangers of antidepressants, drugs which are known to cause suicidal thoughts and suicidal behaviour. It’s made even worse when the prescribers carry on practising and prescribing, with no accountability for the lost lives.

There’s no doubt that young people can and do experience difficulties that can sometimes be serious, but to represent that these troubles can only be alleviated with dangerous pills is dishonest, harmful and deadly.

In Children’s Mental Health Week, we must remember that children are not experimental animals. They are human beings who have every youthful right to expect protection, care, love and the chance to reach their full potential in life. They will only be denied this as a result of the verbal and chemical straitjackets that are psychiatry’s labels and drugs.

Brian Daniels

National Spokesperson

Citizens Commission on Human Rights