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Statins – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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  Many of us find ourselves prescribed one or other of the Statins by our GPs nowadays, often as a result of a routine health check. But are they really necessary, and what are the risks of taking them ? In this article, we’ll try to explain exactly what the statins are, how they work, and why the medical profession are so keen on prescribing them for us ‘en masse’. I’ll start with the ‘why’, to try to put the need for these drugs into context…. Our modern diet is rich in carbohydrates and fats, and often takes the form of highly processed ready meals, which also contain a lot of salt. The problem is that this type of ‘challenge’ to our digestive systems on a continuous basis is an issue – our guts, brains and metabolism simply weren’t designed for it, and the excess salt that most of us consume is likely to compromise our circulatory health. The explanation for this mismatch is relatively simple. For the vast majority of our evolutionary history, food was scarce, and...

Shadow Libraries, AI and the Casual e-Reader – Whither Publishing and Copyright ?

 Blog first published November 2022. Updated April 2023, January 2025, July 2026. Editors note: After a long period when the 'authorities' seemed to be in abeyance on take-downs of our much loved and well-used shadow-libraries, they re-started their war in early 2025 with a vengeance by taking down two of the most popular (Anna's Archive and LibGen), by forcing ISPs to introduce server blockages. I suspect the timing of this was no coincidence, given the imminence of a new US government regime likely to be less favourably inclined towards to this type of industrial censorship, and the frequent 'spats' between the UK Labour government and the new US regime. The war has continued into 2026. This nonsense has gone on for long enough...high time for a look at reforming the publishing industry model, I think... Can anyone sort out the mess generated by the advent of the internet and the publishers'  aggressive use of outdated copyright laws in trying to outflank it ?...