“By submitting two parallel planning applications, Taylor Wimpey is creating a lot of unnecessary confusion,” says Mick Hamer, who chairs the Montpelier and Clifton Hill Association. “If you want to save the Alex you should support the conversion option (BH2010/03379) and object to both the demolition planning application (BH2010/03324) and the associated application for consent to demolish the main building (BH2010/03325).”

The GPs at the Victoria Road surgery have for the last few years claimed that there are no suitable alternative sites for a new surgery. It seems a strange assertion to make – over that time GP surgeries elsewhere in Brighton have successfully relocated to converted premises, for instance a former pub at the bottom of Elm Grove, and a former office block at Preston Park. In our area there are a number of vacant premises which could be converted, including 650 square metres on the ground floor of Crown House, Upper North Street; the former Blockbusters in Western Road; and the ground floor of Princes House, Queens Road. So why is the Primary Care Trust so reluctant to consider alternatives to the Royal Alex? As our editor always says, “It’s not what they’re telling you, it’s what they’re not telling you”.

Taylor Wimpey overpaid for the site, in the belief that they would be able to obtain permission to demolish all the buildings on it. According to the Distinct Valuer the site was worth £5 million for housing in 2007. Taylor Wimpey paid £11.5 million, so the National Health Service pocketed a windfall profit of £6.5 million. The Primary Care Trust has been using a Private Finance Initiative (PFI), Medical Centre Developments, to find new premises for the Montpelier Surgery. In November 2008 Medical Centre Developments signed a lease for a surgery on the Royal Alex site. It appears that to help finance this deal they raised money by taking out a mortgage on a medical centre in Birkenhead with the General Practice Finance Corporation (part of Aviva). The money that Medical Centre Developments paid for this lease has been in the hands of Taylor Wimpey’s solicitors for the past two years. So effectively the money that had been earmarked to find new premises for the Montpelier Surgery has been tied up for two years in the Royal Alex. If Taylor Wimpey can’t get planning permission for a surgery on the site, this money will have to be returned to Medical Centre Developments, with interest. Many in the area supported the well-funded ‘Save Our Surgery’ campaign, probably unaware that rather than being ‘given’ directly to the Montpelier Surgery, the Royal Alex surgery space would be placed into the hands of a privately-owned PFI company.

In surveys the public have consistently shown that they are overwhelmingly in favour of retaining and converting the main building. When Taylor Wimpey carried out a public consultation in August, about 80 per cent of comments favoured keeping the main building and only about 10 per cent were willing to sacrifice the main building for a surgery. The officers of the Clifton Montpelier Powis Community Alliance, the local residents’ association, have consistently repudiated these results, even banning residents from speaking about anything other than ‘the desirability of a GP surgery on the site’ at their public meetings, however, they now accept that a scaled down surgery proposal without a pharmacy in the conversion proposal ‘could be the way forward’.

So if all the parties involved would now agree to compromise, then we might be in sight of a conclusion to this saga. Taylor Wimpey’s S.E. Director David Brown has met representatives of the Montpelier & Clifton Hill Association and The Brighton Society to discuss the conversion scheme, which both societies support. Taylor Wimpey’s efforts to improve the conversion scheme and the fact that they’re persisting with it shows that they recognise the degree of public support there is for conversion. The MCHA is, albeit reluctantly, prepared to accept the demolition of the listable Dyke Road villa in order to save the main building. The Victoria Road surgery GPs say they do not need a pharmacy on the site, and they might now be prepared to drop their extravagant expansion plans and accept a smaller surgery in a new building on the site. With compromise from these groups now on the table it remains to be seen if the final player, Brighton and Hove City Council, would agree to trade off some of the affordable flats for a surgery. If they would then it would be possible to find space for the surgery in the conversion proposal. This could be a compromise that keeps almost everyone happy.

Related posts:

1. Royal Alex Update
2. The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits
3. The Old Market: Financial History

At this point some of you may feel that I am being unfair to the gentleman, that his bankruptcy is shame enough, that it is an issue between himself and his creditors. That certainly might be the case if Mr. Amerena was all that he claims. The rumour he seems content to have bandied around is that he is a hard-working pillar of the community, who has had the misfortune to be financially crippled by virtue of the loss of all the money he personally put into the failed Coach House project. If he did in fact lose money then he is not alone, and a great deal more sympathy should be extended to those who gave money when they couldn’t afford to lose it in this way. With a silver tongue worthy of a used car salesman, he told some of them that there was no risk, and they might even see a profit. Even now it is not known how much was lost as despite the intention that the limited company formed to manage the Coach House would be converted into an open and accountable charitable trust, Roger Amerena never did this, and has resolutely refused to produce satisfactory accounts.

The days of bankrupts being hanged are long behind us and some now see bankruptcy as a cheap way to avoid paying their debts. Bearing this in mind it is not unfair to say that the actions of some bankrupts today are far less honourable than in days of old. I would suggest Mr. Amerena falls into that category. In fact far from being the solvent local bigwig he attempts to portray Roger Vincent Amerena has been the subject of bankruptcy proceedings in 1994, twice in 1996, in 1997 (when he was declared a bankrupt for three years), in 2005, and again this year, which led to his second official bankruptcy. He certainly wasn’t involved in any “philanthropic” conservation ventures during any of those occasions.

There is a reason I think people in the area, particularly MCHA members, need to know this. The issue is one of accountability, which Mr. Amerena seems to think himself above. When I was a trustee of the charity in 2004 it was clear that in Roger Amerena’s mind both he and the association were one. He regularly referred to his association and even his newsletter when talking about the association’s magazine – and this was prior to him even being chairman. He took staggering liberties such as obtaining mortgage quotations on the Coach House in the name of the MCHA with no authority from the association whatsoever. He misled advertisers, telling them that the trade card he was producing for the association was distributed “all over the area” when in fact it was delivered to only a couple of hundred members. These are by no means isolated examples. The culmination of all this was when the majority of the committee wrote to the then chairman, Mr. Amerena’s predecessor, stating that they felt Roger Amerena was unfit to become the next chairman. Several years later … and nothing seems to have changed.

Related posts:

1. The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits
2. Royal Alex Site Update
3. Residents’ Association Hold Christmas Party In
 Chairman’s Front Room

At the beginning of this year, in a change of tack, Trustees submitted the first of two planning application attempts which sought to build two large glass penthouses on top of the historic Grade II listed Old Market building in Hove. Approval of this plan would have set a dangerous precedent giving carte blanche to anyone to make unusual changes to listed structures just on the basis of ‘needing the money’. The first application was refused and in September the revised application was also refused. Tellingly, planning committee Member, Cllr Paul Steedman, stated that he was not convinced by the claimed financial need.

In the wake of these refusals, a petition seeking grant support from the council is now being introduced before every event by Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman. He explains that the Old Market does not receive any funding from the council, nor from the Arts Council. He readily admits the Trust covers the cost of its operations, but says it is unable to clear its “historic debt”. An electronic petition (lodged on the council’s website) states that the requests for funding “have been met continually by both organisations stating that although they are supportive of the arts and community use of the building, they cannot support a project with such a capital deficit.”

Superficially it appears to be a reasonable request for some financial assistance – but is it all it seems? Prospective signatories are given the impression that neither the Arts Council nor the council have ever donated a penny. Even Delia Forester, ex-Labour councillor and ex-deputy chair of planning, takes as read this supposed lack of public funding in her letter of support for the two glass penthouses.

It is in fact an ungrateful slur on both organisations. In 1999 The National Lottery (through the Arts Council) donated £1 million to the Old Market Trust – at the time, the largest donation to an arts project in the South East. Furthermore the only significant condition was that there would be a clawback should the Old Market be sold within a 10 year timeframe. Those 10 years expired on 11th March 2009 – around the time the Old Market Trustees registered the planning application for the glass penthouses.

In 1998 the Labour administration provided the Old Market Trust with a loan of £275,000, to be repaid in 10 equal instalments. In 2001 that debt was deferred to 2006. Further funding 

came in the form of a £585,000 grant from the 
Single Regeneration Partnership, administered through Brighton & Hove City Council.

The Labour-run administration, in which Delia Forester was a key player, went even further in 2004. Council finance officers Catherine Vaughan and Peter Sargent presented a report to councillors recommending that the loan should be converted to a grant. Their reasoning was that should the Old Market Trust become insolvent Brighton and Hove City Council would be unlikely to retrieve the £275,000, and as they had already distributed the money to the Trust it would “have no additional financial impact on the council”. The report concluded that “The council therefore has no financial gain from pursuing repayment of the loan”. Spurious logic, but the report was approved, and the unpaid debt wiped out.

These actions helped to significantly reduce the “historic debt” to just over £1 million. In 2007, local businessman, Jonathan Bigg, entered into an agreement with the Old Market Trust to take 250-year leases on areas within the Old Market building with the intention of sub-letting them as office space. For this he paid the Trust £1 million, a sum he maintains Stephen Neiman and the Trustees assured him would clear their debt. Having given the money, he then learned that the Trust intended to build two glass penthouses above the areas he had just leased. When he discovered that their motivation behind the glass penthouse plan was again to clear this debt, he was told that his £1 million had made no impact on the debt and that the Trust remained in exactly the same position as before. He asks – quite reasonably – “where has the money gone?”

With stories floating around about late payments to staff it seems at least one person is sitting pretty in all this and that is the Old Market’s artistic director, Ms. Caroline Brown. In 2005 Ms. Brown took home £32,500, and in the following year £35,000. In 2007, supposedly at a time of intense financial pressure due to the Old Market debts, her salary rose sharply to £60,535, coupled with expense claims of £17,500. In fact Ms. Brown’s salary makes up a large chunk of total outgoings on salaries. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that Ms. Caroline Brown is actually Mrs. Caroline Neiman, the wife of Old Market manager and trustee Stephen Neiman.

It seems a shame that the Old Market could close its doors soon – it is undoubtedly a superb and successful venue marred by the seemingly poor financial decisions of its trustees. We invite readers to form their own conclusions.

Related posts:

1. The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits
2. Old Market Update
3. Royal Alex Update

But the Regency Society was the leader of the pack, attracting serious expertise to its ruling Committee. In recent years this has come to mean attracting expertise with unattractive agendas. Predatory developers, architects and politicians, looking to serve their own interests by standing for and being elected to positions on the ruling Committee, have increased the danger of a diluted or abandoned conservation remit.

How could the members of the Regency Society have allowed people like that to gain major positions of power on their Committee, neutralising the credibility of The Regency Society as a conservation voice! By next AGM it will just be an asset-rich club, protecting and advancing the careers of architects, politicians and developers.

For most Regency Society members (other groups work in a similar fashion), membership has been all about the tea and biscuits, the wine and chamber music in the Royal Pavilion at AGM, the garden party, the lectures, the coach trips and the £60 dinners. There is little interest or involvement with boring old planning.

For the committed conservationist, however, membership has been about protecting heritage, Grades 1 and 2 Listed buildings, the Regency era Brunswick Townscape (mostly listed buildings) and the cultural story of this nation along the thread of time. Architecture is certainly High Art to the Starchitects of our time and for me, these areas of listed buildings merit the term “Artscape”.
“My turn! My turn!” the Horribles shrill, bug-eyed, teeth bared, fame and wealth on their minds. They want these buildings “euthanized” and see ambitions thwarted by their taking up space THEY could be using. “Get off the stage! My turn! My turn!” And the cultural markers that tell the visitor what country they are in, what town, city or village they are in are just so-much “brown field site” to them.

In recent years leading members of the various conservation-agenda groups have “intermarried” so to speak. They have propped up each other’s dwindling memberships by joining each other’s groups. They have aged and died. They have not been replaced with new members possessed of their deep respect, wish to learn and understandings of history and heritage, their educational strengths and grit in defending the riches of heritage this country so proudly shows off to the tourism trade. The dwindling numbers of them desperately prop up each other’s conservation remits and become haunted by the dilution and marginalisation of conservation. Social memberships and the brazen infiltration by predators for whom conservation is optional has bred deep despair. And a lot of empty hand-wringing.

At the time of the Old Market’s February planning application to put 2 glass box penthouses on the roof of the Grade 2 Listed Old Market, the convenor of the Regency Society’s planning group was former Labour councillor, Delia Forester, a woman who used her position on the planning committee on March 23rd, 2007 to provide fulsome support for the Frank Gehry colossus on Hove seafront. She led the majority Labour Party vote which gave it planning permission.

How did someone like that become convenor of the planning group at the Regency Society? A weak constitution helped allow it. The supine, tea & biscuits credulous membership voted her (and others) onto the ruling committee and thence to the planning group, the credibility of the Regency Society being of no concern to them.
How was it right that the Chair of the Regency Society was also an Old Market Trustee? How is it right that the Treasurer of the Regency Society, Stephen Neiman, is also the Old Market Trustee raising this glass boxes planning application? Should he not have resigned from the Regency Society to do that? Entanglements and loyalties so deep that you can barely see the join have meant that the move by the Old Market Trust to put big glass boxes on its Grade 2 Listed roof compromised the Regency Society’s conservation remit. Or did it?

Ahead of the 2009 Regency Society AGM, and using her Brighton University email account instead of Regency Society letterhead , Delia Forester, convenor of the Regency Society planning group, Labour politician & architect, registered fulsome planning consultation support on behalf of the Regency Society. Nervous breakdowns, angst and hysteria ensued when this became known. Loyalty to Stephen Neiman, however, led to old stagers staying their hands and not objecting as they would otherwise have done and then getting in a state about it. Remit vs. Loyalty to a close & valued colleague and mate.

Why did she (with others in commanding positions in The Regency Society) do all this? Why not start their own group? Why destroy the Regency Society’s remit and credibility? How was it even possible to do so? Putting on a military hat, I would say that taking out the leader is the best way to topple the rest. And so it came to pass.
Over at the Hove Civic Society, conflicts of loyalty, angst, rage and shattered alliances tested their commitment to conservation to its limit. One of its two members on the Council’s Conservation Advisory Group resigned over this one application. The Hove Civic prevaricated, vascillated, hung back but finally moved to a position of objection – but with blood on the floor.

This story was repeated all over the shop.

At the Regency Society AGM, regime change led to the new Chairman withdrawing Forester’s Regency Society response to the Old Market application for the two glass penthouses, declaring to the Council that because the Society was divided, there would be no response. No response to an application affecting a listed Regency building in a massively listed Regency townscape. The infiltrators had done their job and taken out the conservation movement’s leader group.

Embarrassed and mortified, torn between hurting Old Market Trustee and applicant, Stephen Neiman, or hurting the listed building, the amenity groups were like chickens trapped in the coop with a fox. Only the 11th hour intervention of the London-based Georgian Group sobered everyone up.

The Old Market is saved from glass boxes for the moment. But now the time for reckoning has come. And it is clear that the Regency Society membership will not make the effort to defend the conservation remit by learning anything other than who will be playing what at the next AGM chamber concert. It is clear too that, unlike the Brighton Society, which allows anyone to be a member, but bars politicians, developers and architects from Committee membership, the Regency Society has failed to write a Constitution which protects itself from destruction of its remit & respectable purpose.

Related posts:

1. The Old Market: Financial History
2. Royal Alex Update
3. Royal Alex Site Update

However though the main supermarkets are able to offer a wide choice, have user friendly websites and alleviate the struggle of transporting heavy purchases, when it comes to the food itself, they are often unable to offer anything from local producers. This is because the big supermarkets buy on an enormous national scale and primarily on price, so small local suppliers rarely get a look in. Yet as consumers, when we buy locally produced food and drink, we are directly supporting small scale, environmentally friendly farming practices and the local economy, as well as getting much fresher and great tasting food, so I suspect that given the choice, most people would support ‘local’ every time.

I was therefore delighted, at the recent City Food Festival, to meet Simon Croft, who together with his business partner James Meldrum set up Crumbs of Sussex in 2005. They were determined from the beginning to run Crumbs in such a way that residents in this part of Sussex could support a wide range of local suppliers, either by visiting Crumbs’ own fresh food shop at “Shoots Garden Centre” or alternatively by using their home delivery service.

Before opening Crumbs, they spent seven months doing taste and quality research and meeting and interviewing over 120 food producers in Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Kent, with the aim of sourcing really fresh high quality produce, ideally from within a 20 mile radius of their shop, depending on the season.

However, uniquely, they also wanted to pass this information on directly to the consumer, so they designed a clear and transparent colour coded labelling system starting with ‘Low Food Miles’ ranging from as little as 0.5 miles, out to 70 miles, though the average distance from suppler to shop is around 20 miles. These product labels are on everything they sell and also detail the name and background of the producer. Obviously there are times of the year when they do have to source some produce from outside the ‘local’ counties radius, but this too has its own coloured ‘UK’ label. Despite global warming, nobody has yet cracked the growing of exotic fruits like bananas in the UK, so occasionally they have to use an ‘overseas’ source in order to maintain a good range particularly during winter months.

However during the summer months over 90% of the fresh food they sell has been supplied from within the ‘Crumbs Low Food MIle’ formula – just compare this with the estimate from the author Felicity Lawrence in her book “Not on the Label”, highlighting the fact that the contents of the average UK shopping basket have travelled around 20,000 miles!

Crumbs has undoubtedly the most mouthwatering and comprehensive range of foods. Whether you want to buy fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, cheeses, preservatives, breads and pastries,beverages or juices, frankly you are spoilt for choice. They offer no fewer than 50 cheeses, (50% supplied by 9 local cheesemakers) a great range of locally sourced smoked fish, a wonderful dairy and chilled food section, and their range of fruit and vegetables would not be out of place in the best French markets. In 2006, they even launched  their own growing operation at Wiston House, near Steyning, in about 3/4 of an acre of the Walled Garden.

I very much admire the obvious hard work, dedication and commitment that Simon and James have shown in their support of local quality producers, which has made Crumbs a genuinely unique food emporium. Furthermore everything they stock in the shop can be ordered from their website www.crumbsofsussex.co.uk and delivered to your door in Brighton on either Thursday or Friday each week.

If you want to visit them in person, the shop (Open Monday to Saturday 9am – 5pm) is at “Shoots Garden Centre”, (off A24 North carriageway 500 yards from Washington Roundabout) Washington, West Sussex. Tel: 01903 892527.

Otherwise why not relax and have everything home delivered like your favourite magazine!

Related posts:

1. Sussex Police Issue ‘Hoax’ Scam Warnings
2. Sussex’s Local Authorities Spend £50 Million on Managers
3. Sussex Police Bosses Enjoy Night at the Grand – at the Taxpayers’ Expense

During these meetings, Jo Thompson & Gill Thompson (no relation), made clear that the rejected option of complete demolition was not on the table, and that any planning application would have to involve retention and conversion of at least the main Royal Alex building. Also the green space in front of it must be preserved.
A poorly publicised exhibition was then held at Hove Town Hall during the last week of October. On display were five options, ranging from retention and conversion of all the buildings on the site, to complete demolition and redevelopment. There was no indication that the latter option was out of the question, and just included for ‘control’ purposes.

Only financial considerations were taken into account, although the District Valuer had not completed his assessment by the time of the exhibition. The exhibition appeared to be biased against the conversion option – complete demolition was the only option showing not so much a profit as a smaller loss. This is largely due to the Council in effect continuing to tax profit that does not exist, by requiring the provision of 40% affordable housing.  Coincidentally, the day before this exhibition started, there was a conference on land economics and valuation at UCL, which was attended by many of the best brains in the country. The conference unanimously concluded that the economic model that aims to build ‘social housing’ using the super-profit from development is for the time being dead; it was rather aptly referred to as ‘bubble economics’, and it was firmly stated that the bubble would not be around for the foreseeable future.

Local architect Mr. Graham Towers, who has more than 30 years professional experience of urban housing design and development, has found that the Royal Alex exhibition was incorrect regarding the numbers of flats which could be achieved in the different options. His calculations, based on a detailed and realistic comparison with the Taylor Wimpey planning application, show that more flats could be achieved in a conversion scheme than claimed in the exhibition, and fewer flats created in a new-build scheme.

The exhibition also did not take into account the fact that the large roof space in the existing building could be utilised for additional flats, as has been pointed out to Jo & Gill Thompson by Mick Hamer, who coordinated the MCHA case at the public inquiry in June.

Discussion of the planning brief for this site is pencilled in for the environment cabinet of 17 December. The MCHA is pressing for discussion of the brief to be deferred until the meeting of 26 January to allow time for a proper feasibility study by a qualified and experienced conservation architect, and to allow time for all stages of the public consultation to be completed. Otherwise there is the risk of yet more doomed planning applications followed by another time consuming and costly appeal. This is unfair on the community and also unfair on the developers, who need a clear and unambiguous brief this time.

Related posts:

1. Royal Alex Site Update
2. The Old Market: A Tangle of Conflicting Loyalties and Remits
3. The Old Market: Financial History

Mr Barradell’s appointment was unanimously supported by a cross-party committee of councillors. With this impressive background you may think that Mr Barradell has some very definite views about how our city should move in the future. It seems not: he was very firm about his belief that he was there to implement the decisions of the city’s elected representatives, not to pursue his own agenda. One thing that has emerged from the meeting from council leader Mary Mears was the desire to improve the Queen’s Road section of the city being, as it is, a “gateway” into our city from the train station. “At present when you walk out of the station you really don’t see the best of Brighton and Hove”, Mr Barradell observed.

The need for family homes was also discussed, as at present the numerous conversions of family sized properties into multiple flats are driving many families out of the city to places such as Newhaven and Peacehaven.
Mr Barradell does seem to have been somewhat thrown in at the deep end, right into the middle of union arguments over pay cuts for CityClean workers and a government inquiry into a major development on the Marina, housing issues, and general problems associated with the credit crunch, but his background and demeanour indicate he is a man who should weather these problems with relative ease. 

Related posts:

1. REGENCY Interviews Brighton and Hove Council Leader Mary Mears
2. Communal Bins Overflow
3. Brighton and Hove Abandon 
“City of Culture” Bid

Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret, who was paralysed in the bombing

25 years on and people again gathered in the Grand Hotel to witness the unveiling of a plaque in memory of those who lost their lives. Lord Tebbit and his wife, who was paralysed by the blast and confined to a wheelchair for the past 25 years, were in attendance to speak of the dedication and selflessness demonstrated by the emergency services that night.

Whilst the structural scars of the Grand healed quickly it was clear that was not the case for many present, who still suffered from the emotional scars of the attack. Although a sombre occasion Lord Tebbit raised the mood considerably with several quips, such as referring to when everyone present meet again “in another 25 years”. 

Related posts:

1. REGENCY Interviews Brighton and Hove Council Leader Mary Mears
2. Brighton & Hove’s
 New Broom?
3. Developments On The Seafront

But we won’t apologise for having to spend most of our days on people considerably more needy than Mr Hawtree.
If I can make one general response it’s that readers should treat his claims with scepticism.  His love of literary fiction seems to mean his observations are often rather weak on fact.

He says there has been much national publicity about lack of stock – in Jubilee Library in particular.   Well, readers might like to know Mr Hawtree is a journalist who often works for national newspapers. People with friends in such high places are more likely to get their views covered in the national press.  It doesn’t mean the targets of their campaigns are actually doing anything wrong.

He cites Rachel Cooke in the Observer giving much space to the Jubilee Library in an article about libraries being run down.  He doesn’t say that the paper published our correction in its letters page rebutting Mr Hawtree’s groundless claim in the article that the Jubilee Library had ‘no Dickens’.  In fact, it has lots.

More space was taken up in the article with a claim that sci-fi and crime books had “disappeared”.  In fact even a fairly lame cop could detect them in the “fiction” section.  And yet more space was wasted on a claim the Library had no biographies section – giving the impression we had no biographies. In fact we’ve always had a good collection.

Where do these national papers get their information? Three guesses.

Mr Hawtree is currently being taken to task on the internet for claiming Oxford’s library has “no Arnold Bennett at all”, when it does.  A blogger on the Good Library Blog describes this as a “cheap slur” and criticises Mr Hawtree for basing his comments on “second hand tittle-tattle and a lack of research”.  Not good for a journalist.  Mr Hawtree apologises on the same site.

And the idea that a library’s books should be “no older than 6-7 years” is certainly not ours and not practice within Brighton & Hove – despite the impression given. So there’s a pattern here.

The constant claim that we don’t have enough books cannot be justified.  According to the latest CIPFA statistics, we have 1871 books per 1000 population, compared with an average of 1601 for our nearest statistical neighbours  - i.e. similar authorities.  We are the third highest of this group.  We have lots of books because we have a great many more libraries than most places – 16 in all.

Not all our books are in the Jubilee Library, nor should they be.  We aim to give people out in the neighbourhoods access to books too.  However the Jubilee library has been a huge success and it is now the fifth busiest in the country, with visits and library use increasing.

No councils have limitless supplies of money.  We have to balance spending money on libraries with providing services for disabled or elderly people or children.  Not everyone will agree with our spending decisions but they are taken openly and in good faith.

As a well-read person, Mr Hawtree should realise life’s a lot more complicated than just demanding “more” like a latter-day Oliver Twist – especially when we already have more than most. 

Related posts:

1. Letters: Brighton Library
2. Bibliophile’s Paradise: Colin Page Books

It’s amazing to me how popular homeopathy is — in the UK alone it is a multi-million pound industry. Remedies are stocked in many pharmacies and even high street chemists like Boots and Holland and Barrett. It has legions of loyal followers who will swear blind that homeopathy cured them of whatever ailment they happened to be suffering from. It is also popular in Brighton and Hove, where not only do we have homeopaths plying their trade, but also a registered charity called Dolphin House devoted exclusively to the treatment of children with alternative medicine.

Surely all these people can’t be wrong? Surely they wouldn’t spend large sums of money needlessly? Well, as a sceptic you very often find that just because quite a lot of people believe something it doesn’t make it true or right. I’m sure there are many absolutely sincere homeopaths — people who genuinely think they’re helping, and thus have no qualms taking money for, as they see it, a job well done. When you ask most advocates of homeopathy how it works it’s really quite remarkable how few know the procedures involved.

The first stage in creating a homeopathic treatment is to do what is called a “proving”. This involves taking a perfectly healthy person (if you can define what that is) and giving them a substance – we’ll pick dandelion leaves in this case. Homeopaths will give this to a healthy person and wait for symptoms to develop. Let’s say this person develops symptoms of nausea, a high temperature and dizziness. Of course there’s no real proof that eating dandelion leaves has caused this effect in the person, but we’ll play along. This gets noted down and then passed around to other homeopaths.

Now, a patient goes to visit their homeopath with symptoms of nausea, a high-temperature and the constant feeling of giddiness. “Ah”, says the homeopath, “The ideal treatment for you would be a preparation of dandelion leaves”. You see homeopaths believe that whatever caused the symptoms can also cure the symptoms, but only when ingested in small quantities. Up to now you’ve probably not read a thing in this article that made you exclaim to yourself “What?!”. In fact injecting people with a small quantity of a virus, thus helping with their body to produce immunity to a full onset of the disease, has a basis in modern medicine. There are just two little problems when dealing with homeopathy: firstly introducing a virus into someone already suffering from that virus would have absolutely no effect whatsoever, and secondly homeopathy demands that the active ingredient be diluted to such an extent that not even a single molecule of the original substance remains.

Ah … there’s the “What?!”. It’s true — homeopathic preparations contain none of the so-called “active” ingredient, due to the preparation methods they use. To make a homeopathic preparation you take one part of the active ingredient, put it into 10 parts of water and apply a process called “succussion” (that’s their fancy word for shaking it and whacking the container against something). You then take one part of that diluted solution and add it to another 10 parts of water, and then the shaking ritual begins again. But there is no way you would give that to a patient … it’s far, far, far too strong (or is it too weak? You see how confusing this all gets.) This process continues many times until there is not one single molecule left in the dilation, and homeopaths insist that at every stage the solution is getting stronger and more effective.

Physicist Robert L. Park, former executive director of the American Physical Society, has noted that “since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth”

Homeopaths make it clear that it’s very important that you also have consultations with the qualified homeopath (it’s rather difficult to define what that is as well), for just as the right homeopathic preparation is said to aid your recovery, the wrong one could make your symptoms worse. Now if we follow all this to its logical conclusion it would mean that no one who believes in homoeopathy could ever drink a glass of water, bottled or otherwise, as the number of substances those water molecules have come into contact with is so vast and varied. Proponents of homoeopathy should either be suffering from a vast myriad of symptoms or so dehydrated that they resemble human prunes.

Many might argue that there is nothing wrong with all this — if people want to spend large sums of money on something which demonstrates nothing beyond a placebo effect in certain people, then what is the harm? To an extent they have a point, but what concerns me, and this is the case with much of alternative medicine, is that people who have legitimate, and sometimes serious, medical conditions are avoiding going to a proper doctor. I’m sure most reputable homeopaths would send someone to a doctor if it was evident that they were suffering from something more than the minor ailments that plague us each and every day, but I also suspect that some wouldn’t: — for example, there are companies on the Internet which offer homeopathic anti-malarial tablets, treatments for exposure to anthrax and several serious cancer related conditions. And, sadly, it’s all too easy to do. There is very little legislation on homoeopathy as, superficially, it does very little, and it is that loophole that allows charlatans to exploit people.

So why do so many believe in it? It is because it exploits a human characteristic, and that is to constantly search for patterns and explanations. Our bodies are the most remarkable machines, evolved over millions of years, and most ailments our bodies can overcome with no help whatsoever. However they seem to disregard this fact, and search for a reason as to how they came to be better. Whatever activity they happen to be doing at the time will end up getting the credit: if they use a homoeopathic treatment they’ll sing its praises, if they’re rubbing themselves all over with magnets they’ll declare them to be the best thing since sliced bread. This is what’s known in science as anecdotal evidence, and it is the very thing that science has learnt that we cannot rely upon. That is why scientists set up test procedures to evaluate the authenticity of claims. Sadly for homoeopathy it falls very short in this regard. Just look at the image below, a photograph of the back of a homeopathic cure sold in Boots. “A homeopathic medicinal product without approved therapeutic indications”. If indeed it did work so spectacularly it would be comparatively easy to prove, and would be in the interests of any homeopathic companies to do so.
For several decades now James Randi of the James Randi Educational Foundation has been offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can demonstrate homeopathic treatments having an effect different from water. The foundation still has that money, and I don’t think they’ll be parting with it any time soon.

Bonus: Tony’s Homeopathic Hangover Remedy

(This would produce quite a weak homeopathic solution, but it’s really not practical to use a container the size of the solar system in order to make a stronger remedy)

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1. Letters: Homeopaths Get Dose Of Real Medicine