David Tredinnick MP – giving MPs a worse name
12:13 pm - July 23rd 2009
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contribution by Josh Plotkin
While second-home flipping and suspect renting arrangements are the stuff of which headlines are made, public scrutiny of expenses has revealed the weird and wonderful reality of some of our MPs. Let’s take…oh, I don’t know, David Tredinnick, Conservative MP for Bosworth.
David Tredinnick has superb form in the field of, well, being an idiot. Over the years he has come out with torrents of rubbish, popping up to add his own ridiculous noise to any debate on homeopathy, alternative medicine or other new-age nonsense.
In a debate on NHS homeopathy funding last year, his indignant support of public money being used to fund pseudoscience prompted one of my favourite ever soundbites from the House, from Rob Marris MP:
In this country we use a lot of recycled water, but I am surprised that water, which supposedly has a memory, does not have a memory of the faeces that were in it and thereby make us all sick. My right hon. Friend has referred to research, but against that background is she aware of any peer-reviewed medical research that indicates that homeopathic medicine works through anything other than a placebo effect?
This is about as complete a dismissal of a patently inane argument as I have ever come across. In one particularly enlightening speech – on the ‘evidence’ for alternative medicine – he wanders off the reservation completely.
Another issue is the introduction of evidence-based practice, which tries to specify the way in which professionals or other decision makers should make decisions. Naturally, as its name suggests, it places a greater emphasis on evidence. The practice guide, however, asks for evidence-based design and development decisions to be made after reviewing information from repeated, rigorous data-gathering. That militates against complementary and alternative medicine, where there may not be a huge number of rigorous or repeated databases to work from.
There is not a vast quantity of studies and that has been used against complementary medicine as an excuse. The methodology of assessing CAM might also be unfamiliar to primary care trusts. It might also be difficult to record accurately exactly how homeopathy, for example, treats. It is always different for individual patients, and that can be difficult to record. Sometimes, the treatments require a combination of remedies.
My next point is that homeopathy does not fit normal—that is, orthodox—methods of assessment. For example, the scale of prescribing is in reverse so that the weaker the dose, the more powerful or effective it is. That subject has always been hotly disputed by many doctors, but homeopathic treatments have been operating on the reverse scale of prescribing for 200 years. Some of the most powerful—the constitutional remedies—are so diluted that they can hardly be detected. There are similar problems with acupuncture and its acceptance, as some doctors and commissioners do not necessarily believe in meridians. The same issue occurs with herbs that are unknown in this country.
My favourite part is his argument that the lack of evidence for alternative medicine might be used “as an excuse” for PCTs not to use it to treat patients. Unless I’m missing something, treatment decisions are taken on the basis of evidence that they work. Alternative medicine isn’t used to treat patients for the same reason that, say, cream cheese isn’t used to treat patients: there is no evidence that it is an effective clinical treatment.
Anyway, it is in this context that Tredinnick’s parliamentary expense claims, along with those of every other MP, have been published in full. Alongside the by-now-expected second home claim and £7,000 per year phone bill (no doubt essential for communicating with the good people of Bosworth), Tredinnick has made a rare unique claim: £210 for software from a new age astrology company and £300 on tuition sessions from the firm, Crucial Astro Tools, to learn to use it.
A quick visit to www.crucialastrotools.co.uk (and I highly recommend it for all your astrology needs), reveals that to spend £210 he must have bought the whole shop: from Solar Maps 3 (”complete tools for the locational astrologer”) to the £19 Galastro and £15 Astrological Mandalas (apparently, the world of astrology is even allowed to invent its own words!). Well, I hope he got good parliamentary use out of them – if £300-worth of tuition didn’t at least ensure that I’m inclined to demand my money back.
David Tredinnick is, unfortunately, not retiring at the next election; and, with a 5,319 majority even in the context of an overall Labour victory, it looks like the citizens of Bosworth will stand up and be counted once more. I look forward to many more years of spurious nonsense from this man’s good offices.
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Josh has experienced politics from various angles: as a Lib Dem MP’s researcher, a temp in the lower echelons of several Government departments, and a deeply unenthusiastic lobbyist for a morally dubious organisation headed by a former Tory MP. He has been unimpressed with most of what he’s seen, and writes about it at the paidtoreason blog.
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Reader comments
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant
particularly liked the bit about cream cheese.
[1] Wot cjcjc said – savour this, it’ll probably never happen again!
That subject has always been hotly disputed by many doctors, but homeopathic treatments have been operating on the reverse scale of prescribing for 200 years.
And yet, in all that time, they’re never managed to come up with a way of reliably demonstrating that it actually works.
There are similar problems with acupuncture and its acceptance, as some doctors and commissioners do not necessarily believe in meridians.
Demonstrating the effectiveness of a treatment and deducing its mode of action are entirely separate questions. The effectiveness of asprin was well-proven long before anyone figured out how it works.
You’re right, Josh, this guy sounds like a complete prat who’ll believe any old nonsense he’s fed.
I’ll bet he thinks the globe is getting warmer and you can die from eating burgers and breathing other peoples cigarette smoke……
Nob head ! ! ! !
@ pagar
Is that sarcasm? Or have you just outed yourself as a subscriber to the idea that ‘obesity can cause heart attacks and death’ is just another liberal conspiracy?!
No
Was thinking more about the millions that have died from CJD
as some doctors and commissioners do not necessarily believe in meridians
Speechless, just speechless at that.
Imagine not knowing about meridians? They’re just down and to the left of your Ying, just along from your Yang, and above your chakras.
I know! as if they can find time for rubbish like “the respiratory system” at medical school, but not meridians! It’s a disgrace.
Perhaps an interesting slip that he states that doctors might not “believe in meridians” rather than doctors might not possess any ‘knowledge of meridians’.
Perhaps if alternative medicine requires belief rather than knowledge they should simply attempt to have it reclassified as a religion? At least that way it’ll get protected from all those naysayers who want to subject it to scientific analysis.
Hmmm rather rambling and not entirely connected. And the stupidity of the alternative medicine remarks.. well you don’t have to be a liberal or a conservative to appreciate what nature has to offer and to see, with clear vision, that it works when you use it. The answer here is that those who refuse to use it.. haven’t tried it and witnessed it’s ability.
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