Homeopathy Funding on the NHS

NHS money 'wasted' on homeopathy
The NHS should stop funding homeopathy, MPs say.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said using public money on the highly-diluted remedies could not be justified.

(link via BBC News)

It never made sense to me that the NHS was funding homeopathy. The NHS has to ration legitimate medical treatments so I think it's outrageous that public money is being used to pay for homeopathy which is not a scientifically proven treatment.

I hope the government will accept the recommendations made by the science and technology committee of the House of Commons.

What are your thoughts about homeopathy? Do you think it's right for the NHS to fund homeopathic remedies?

Laurence Olivier Audience Award shortlist

The Olivier Awards - Britain's equivalent of the Tony Awards - shortlist has been announced.
From a long list of 20, five shows have been chosen by the public to be nominated for the 2010 Laurence Olivier Audience Award.

The 5 Finalists are:

• Wicked
• The Phantom Of The Opera
• We Will Rock You
• War Horse
• Billy Elliot The Musical

The second round of voting for the brand new Laurence Olivier Audience Award is now open. And even if you voted in round one you can vote again now.

Anyone is eligible to vote by visiting the Audience Award voting page. You have until 17:00 on Wednesday 17 March 2010 to have your say on which show should win the award.

Vote for your favourite show and you could win four top-price tickets to the winning show!

The winning show will be announced at the star-studded Laurence Olivier Awards ceremony on 21 March 2010.

Guardian's Liberty Clinic - query about British citizenship

From the Guardian's Liberty Clinic How can I be discriminated against because of my mother's gender? The actual question was: "How can the the Borders, Immigration & Citizenship Bill - with its gender and age discrimination - be legal?" The answer from Emma Norton, a legal officer at Liberty, is quite disappointing and not very helpful or encouraging. And she had the gall to brag about how "Liberty welcomed this change in the law which removed this historic discrimination against those who wished to claim citizenship through their mother." The law has been amended but the discrimination has not been removed! We (the children born abroad to British mothers) finally are eligible to apply for British citizenship but it means we "have a right to register as a British citizen" and we have to pay £540 , and attend a citizenship ceremony before we can claim our British citizenship by descent! Liberty is also known as the National Council for Civil Liberties. Founded in 1934, we are a cross party, non-party membership organisation at the heart of the movement for fundamental rights and freedoms in England and Wales. We promote the values of individual human dignity, equal treatment and fairness as the foundations of a democratic society. Well, I certainly don't consider this very unfair path to citizenship with its conditions (registration, fee and ceremony) to be equal treatment or fair! The comments following Ms Norton's reply are very interesting. I suggest everyone reads the comments if they want to understand exactly why this issue of inequality regarding British citizenship is so very unfair. The MPs are guilty of passing a blatantly discriminatory Bill for passage into law. They should all be very ashamed.

Follow a Museum Day on Twitter

Sometimes the simple ideas really are the best!

The first Follow a Museum Day was today, February 1st 2010, to help draw attention to the museums on Twitter, and get more people to consider following a museum.

The hashtag #followamuseum is being used to help everyone follow the subject on Twitter.

It is really a fabulous idea because I've discovered quite a few museums to follow and to bookmark for reference when I'm looking for ideas for museums to visit.

Here's a list of museums in the UK to follow on twitter:

http://www.followamuseum.com/uk.html

I was already following some of them but I found some new ones too, such as; Museum of Childhood , The Museum of English Rural Life , The Computer Museum , At Bristol and The British Postal Museum & Archive (if you're on Flickr and have photographs of anything British and postal, you can add it to Britain's Postal Heritage )

I really enjoyed this idea. It was very interesting to find out more about various museums. And I'm sure the publicity it generated will help the museums a lot.