 Wouldn't you know it that as soon as I say that I'm going to be doing a regular book review I run out of time to do much reading. However, I am reading again and enjoying it again. So today I'm going to look at this book and I love this and I'm gonna do this in a few parts because it's just so full of astonishing information that I want to get through it. Well a because I want to read other books at the same time but b because it's so full of information and we'll make a few different videos. This video is literally just about a tiny little part of it but I've got to talk about it because it's so mind-blowing. The book is Scared to Death from BSE to Global Warming, Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth. I'll talk to you about one of the most significant parts of the first section of this book which is the health scares of the 80s and 90s. And it goes into great detail about Edwina Corey and Salmonella in the 80s. I'm sure some of you will remember this but apparently she, I've taken some notes about this, apparently she'd said and I quote most eggs were affected by Salmonella when in fact according to this the total number of Salmonella cases officially linked to eggs amounted to a mere 26. Now in general this most eggs was based on flimsy science at best. Corey used as politicians are induced people who would back up what she was already saying they were when they going when we investigating eggs were looking only for the Salmonella within eggs. They weren't looking for any other causes. It was confirmation bias basically and it tells me and this is hardly a shock but that politicians will take sketchy science if it suits them and if it suits them to scare people, which is what this book is all about. Scaring us and scaring us for what purpose? Scaring us for greater control and what you'll see through this book is that the more a the more the media does the government's bidding and no, no, no, I'm not talking about any crazy conspiracy the the media will blow up these health care food scare stories. Public becomes frightened, incomes the state to rescue us and to rescue us with masses upon masses of regulation and of course taxes never forget taxes. So the following the eggs scare more and more food scares came throughout the 90s so that we ended up with an army of environmental health officers or bureaucrats or what's what's the other one the clipboard warrior that's the one I'm looking for and it led to absurdity. So I've got to tell you a couple of basics. This one was from Warwickshire and this was a Warwickshire GP reported a case of four people with food poisoning and they had become ill after eating a meringue and the eggs from that meringue were traced back to a local convent and the nuns in this convent headed by an 82 year old rather sprightly lady were issued with an infected place notice and were told that their 2,500 chickens would have to be slaughtered. So when the officials came to kill the birds the nuns wouldn't let them in. This made global headlines, global headlines. I don't actually remember this maybe some of you do but according to this book it made global headlines and it turns out that the whole thing was essentially scientifically wrong that the strain found in the nuns chickens was different to the strain of Salmonella found in the people suffering from food poisoning but regardless of this and the godless of the fact that it took them it took two months for the local busybodies to connect these eggs to the nuns. So within that two months they had still been selling their eggs and there wasn't a single other case but all of that even taking all of that into account a team of vets, police and world press turned up to kill the birds even though they'd sold 12,000 eggs in the space of time without a single repeated case. So throughout the 90s we had an army of bureaucrats as I say health and safety officers going out there, frightening people and with the opening line and again it says this in the book this is this is mind-blowing you've got to read this book they will go into and as they did to a lady named Dorothy Wood and she had a bakery a small bakery in Bolton and the clipboard warriors turned up at her bakery telling her opening quote I have the power to close your business. Don't you love it? Just imagine a little government bureaucrat coming into your shop and saying I have the power to close your shop. Wow So Dorothy was summoned to a magistrates court to answer criminal offences and who's what she had done? Who is what they listed as her her sins? Having a bucket of water in the shop. Now Dorothy explained that she was cleaning the floor at the time that the clipboard warrior arrived. She was cleaning the floor with her bucket of water Keeping a box of butter in the same fridge as sealed meat. I'm not sure. I'm not an expert on this I know sealed or raw and cooked meat can't be kept together but I'm not sure that keeping a box of butter in the same fridge as sealed meat is necessarily a catastrophe and one of her sideboards was chipped Her court hearing lasted two days and she was fined two thousand pounds and We go on. There are other there are other ridiculous examples but what was happening was that these these these bureaucrats were coming into small businesses and Largely because of directives from the European Union, but of course we choose how to put those directives into practice So I have no doubt and particularly of course towards the end of the 90s when labor in government. I have no doubt There is an enthusiastic public sector bloated public sector going out there and telling small businesses That they had the power to close their business and it led to yeah What was it what it was always going to lead to? Closing down small businesses people couldn't afford to keep up with the ridiculous Demands and I'll give you one example and this takes us into another area, which I mentioned a little bit about earlier this week which is slaughterhouses I mentioned this in the animal welfare policy video that I did earlier in the week slaughterhouses closed their doors get this this is an incredible statistic in the space of four years more than half of Britain's slaughterhouses were closed because they meet hygiene Requirements and regulations placed upon them as I say largely from Brussels, but I'm not letting the UK government get away with this They were clumsily applied these directives for a start and they're Well coming from Brussels, you know what the ultimate aim is which is major every aspect of life Regulated and controlled and guess what that means massive state power So you you know that the EU isn't exactly against it But small farmers and butchers paid a massive price for these regulations and there was an example Tom Chamberlain And he had a slaughterhouse right next to his butcher shop And that to me if you're gonna do me that to me is how to do it nowadays of course because we have We lost more than half of the small slaughterhouses in the country in the space of four years But we have massive factory abattoirs And of course as you would expect the animal welfare aspect of this has gone completely through the floor So Tom Chamberlain had a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse right next to it The bureaucrats came in and told him that no no you're not allowed to carry the meat from the slaughterhouse To your butcher shop. You have to build a refrigerated Tunnel between the two Not only that but you also have to build showers and rest areas for Drivers who come and go from your business and this is despite the fact that they most of his Drivers who would come and go from his would be within five miles. It's a very local stuff he weighed it up and Decided that it wasn't he couldn't afford it So this business had been in his family for over a hundred years. He couldn't afford to go along with these absurd Impositions from the state that he had to close his doors. So This is small business under assault and the effect on Certain things the effect on consumer rights. I think and I and again I think this year a party want I want our party to focus a lot more on consumer rights because you can feel this happening across society It's almost a that can't the call centre culture, isn't it? You pay for something You don't get it or you get it and it doesn't work You phone up you have to wait ten minutes to get through to the you have to press several different buttons And then you can't get through to anyone and when everyone knows how frustrating this is Yet the one thing that never goes wrong with these big companies You have to call their call centres and wait ten minutes The one thing that never goes wrong with them is them taking your money that part always works out and it's really Disempowering and frustrating that the consumer at the end is left feeling that I've paid my money And I'm not getting what I paid for it's a disempowering Experience and it disempowers people in society And I think that's a serious issue and the reason it's a small business is better for the consumer is because small businesses Will want your business you tell a massive company like sky that you're going to take your business elsewhere They're not going to care Really not they were talking try talking back for five minutes But in reality they have million or millions of customers no doubt And they're not going to be frightened by you taking yours away The effect on the consumer as I said is obvious, but also the effect on the community and the high street and You know we all like our familiar brands our w8 Smiths and things on that boots on the high street And it's we like our brands of course we do but I also like private small Businesses to flourish on local high streets around the country and I think that is good for the local economy I think it's good for local people I think it's it's it's good for community. It's a good thing It's a positive thing to have a thriving high street and with small businesses on it We for Britain is our policy to give tax Breaks to small businesses so that we can give them a hand off of parking brake Lowering or getting rid of parking charges for example so that people can go out to the high street again without paying a fortune for parking So a priority for us economically and remember the economy is still small business is still the backbone It's still the majority of the economy And I'd like to see us go back in a direction of small business community and customer service. So once again Fantastic book scared to death. I will go through several other parts of it. So we'll get through this over time Next week, I'm going to a member wrote in and asked me to review this book Unveiled by Yasmin Muhammad Yasmin if you happen to watch this I do get in touch. It would be great to talk to you. We of course have chatted before I think we did a podcast your podcast a couple of years back. It'd be lovely lovely to talk to you again Congratulations on this book and I'm going to try and get you on for a podcast So unveiled by Yasmin Muhammad is next week and I'll get back to more from that scared to death So take care