Stodge.org

I’ve been slowly reading through Frank Key’s excellent new book “Gravitas, Punctillio, Rectitude and Pippy Bags” – the third of Franks books currently in print.

Those of you fortunate enough to live within range of Resonance 104.4 FM’s feebly low-powered radio-beacon may know Mr. Key from his Thursday evening radio broadcasts. If you’ve never heard his live show, pretty much every word he has ever spoken on the air has been collected by my friend “Marvin Suicide” and posted on the Resonance FM Podcast site. Just subscribe to it with whatever podcast-downloader you use… if that application happens to be iTunes, please consider using an alternative which is not so tightly corporately controlled… but heck, you can use that too.

Perhaps it’s too late to get this book as a Christmas present, but as Mr Key informed me once, true Dobsonists do not celebrate Xmas, they celebrate on Boxing day.

CCTV Tower, originally uploaded by salimfadhley.

This rather sinister looking observation post is in a park in North London not far from my home.

Bach "Rescue Remedy", originally uploaded by salimfadhley.

Bach allegedly discovered the healing power of the ultra-dilute flower-essences in his products via some kind of telepathic study of the medicinal affinities of the plants he studied. What I find astonishing is not the that Mr. Bach was a blatant charlatan but that people continue to buy his worthless product.

Bach’s “Rescue Remedy” consists of 50% brandy dissolved in distilled water. Other compounds may be present in negligible trace quantities. It is based on the discredited “homeopathic” theory that chemicals present in trace quantities may have some sort of healing property.

The most expensive brandy sold by Sainsbury (a British supermarket) is £24 per 1000ml. That’s just under 2.5p per ml. Bach’s 10m product by comparison is just over £1 per ml.

That’s 43 times more expensive than the most expensive brandy sold by a typical supermarket.