AOL

AOL is a major American media organisation
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Unfortunately AOL has a view about content that we all ought to be aware of
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Why?
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Because we often read their content, often without being aware that it emanated from them.
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It doesn't take a veteran of the publishing world to realise that AOL has its heart in the wrong place with content.
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AOL sees content as a commodity it can sell ads against.
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That might make good business sense (though I doubt it), but it doesn't promote good journalism or even good entertainment
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The above was written by a former employee who was referring to a leaked copy of a 58 page memo called the AOL Way.
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This memo began circulating earlier this year and detailed requirements for more average page views per article from its writers output  –

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Up from 1,500 to 7,000
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More concentration on video up from 4% of stories to 70%.
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Among the strictures in the document:
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AOL tells its editors to decide what topics to cover based on four considerations
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Traffic potential
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Revenue potential
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Edit quality
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And turn-around time;
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Editors are told to decide whether to produce content based on "profitability consideration"
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Which balances what sort of ads can be placed against particular topics.
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Stories which cannot attract enough page views are in effect not worth writing;
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In-house staffers are expected to write between five and 10 stories per day.
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Imagine working for such an organisation.
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Your whole day under the gun to produce things that sell.
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Things that can manipulate you and me to read them.
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Fortunately such organisations tend to implode or wither away.
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Lets hope this one does too.
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There is so much to write about that needs saying.
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So much that could serve humanity.
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So much that they could, with conscience, take a lead on.
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Let's hope that they find a way to move away from the blind pursuit of short term profit.
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Unlikely with current corporate American business practices.

Where we pay

We reap what we sow
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And where we have sown
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And if we have sown seeds of good and evil in this life and on this earth
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It is only in another life on this earth that we can reap what we have sown. 
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Would not a farmer be considered mad if he had sown a field in one part of the country where he lived.
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And some months later travel to another part of the country
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Far from where he sowed his seed in order to reap his crop?
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So it is with man.
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He sows seeds of thought, and he reaps that crop where he sowed them.
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Which is in himself and in this physical world.
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Our Universe is ruled by law and order.
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And this word karma expresses that fact of universal harmony and consistency manifesting in what we call law and order.
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We do not think about these things very much 
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However they influence and dictate everything we experience
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Day in day out.
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Life in life out
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You will today create what you experience in the future.
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Your choice, live wisely.
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Because it is here on earth that you pay
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Life after life

Eat dried fruit, bin the juices...........

Researchers said that fruit juices should be taken off the five-a-day recommendations 

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Most health guidelines encourage people to consume drinks such
as orange and apple juice in order to have a healthy balanced diet yet ignore dried fruits
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But the findings of two teams of British researchers turns that advice on its head – concluding that fruit juices should be avoided and dried fruit consumption encouraged.
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The first study found that even freshly squeezed fruit juices can contain as much as five teaspoons of sugar per glass because the squeezing process concentrates their sweetness.
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This is around two-thirds of the amount found in a can of soda and can contribute to obesity and also disturb blood sugar levels and the body's natural metabolism, the study found.
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Researchers said that the juices should be taken off the five-a-day recommendations so that people are encouraged to eat whole fruits and vegetables instead which have far more nutrients per calorie
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Dr Hans-Peter Kubis, Bangor University in North Wales, said that the fruit juices could encourage a "sweet tooth".
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I'd question the wisdom of including fruit juice in the five-a-day message.
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The problem is people often substitute them for real fruit which is a mistake.
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Fruit juice is higher in sugars than people realise and they are likely to encourage drinking too much sugar.
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He suggested that one part of fruit juice should be diluted with four parts of water in order to make them more healthy
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In the second study, partly conducted by the University of Leeds, researchers found that dried fruits contain just as many antioxidants, polyphenols and nutrients as normal fruit.
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It found that dried fruits can help combat cancer, metabolic disease and heart problems
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They are also a good source of fibre, vitamins and minerals.
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The researchers have called for advice to encourage people to eat more of the dried fruit and for them to be included in the five-a-day messages
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Professor Gary Williamson said that dried fruits were often overlooked because people assumed they were too tasty to be good for you.
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We are not saying you should get all five of your five-a-day from dried fruit but you could definitely get at least one.
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Some fruits including dried fruits contain high levels of a variety of polyphenols and we are just starting to understand their health protective effect.
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Professor Daniel Gallaher, of the University of Minnesota who was also involved, said: "Dried fruits are great sources of total and soluble fibre in the diet."
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The research was presented at the World Nut & Dried Fruit Congress.
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Richard Alleyne

Monsanto and GM approval

Or how Genetically Modified (GM) crops came to market in the USA.
The following is hard to believe if one is naive.
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All to easy to believe if one has ever been around such humans.
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So here is the story of how the the FDA was high-jacked to promote GMO's.
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In the US, new food additives must undergo extensive testing, including long-term animal feeding studies.
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There is an exception, however, for substances that are deemed "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS).
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GRAS status allows a product to be commercialized without any additional testing. 
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According to US law, to be considered GRAS the substance must be the subject of a substantial amount of peer-reviewed published studies or equivalent.
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And there must be overwhelming consensus among the scientific community that the product is safe.
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GM foods had neither. 
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Nonetheless, in a precedent-setting move that some experts contend was illegal, in 1992 the FDA declared that GM crops are GRAS as long as their producers say they are. 
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Thus, the FDA does not require any safety evaluations or labels whatsoever. 
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A company can even introduce a GM food to the market without telling the agency.
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Such a lenient approach to GM crops was largely the result of Monsanto's legendary influence over the US government. 
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According to the New York Times, What Monsanto wished for from Washington, Monsanto and, by extension, the biotechnology industry got. . . . 
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When the company abruptly decided that it needed to throw off the regulations and speed its foods to market, the White House quickly ushered through an unusually generous policy of self-policing. 
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According to Dr. Henry Miller, who had a leading role in biotechnology issues at the FDA from 1979 to 1994, 
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In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do.
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The person who oversaw the development of the FDA's GMO policy was their Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Michael Taylor, whose position had been created especially for him in 1991. 
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Prior to that, Taylor was an outside attorney for both Monsanto and the Food Biotechnology Council. 
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After working at the FDA, he became Monsanto's vice president. 
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He's now back at the FDA, as the US food safety czar.
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Covering up health dangers
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The policy Taylor oversaw in 1992 needed to create the impression that unintended effects from GM crops were not an issue. 
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Otherwise their GRAS status would be undermined. 
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But internal memos made public from a lawsuit showed that the overwhelming consensus among the agency scientists was that GM crops can have unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects. 
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Various departments and experts spelled these out in detail, listing allergies, toxins, nutritional effects, and new diseases as potential problems. 
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They had urged superiors to require long-term safety studies.
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In spite of the warnings, according to public interest attorney Steven Druker who studied the FDA's internal files, References to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement (over the protests of agency scientists).
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FDA microbiologist Louis Pribyl wrote about the policy, What has happened to the scientific elements of this document? 
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Without a sound scientific base to rest on, this becomes a broad, general, "What do I have to do to avoid trouble'-type document. . . . 
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It will look like and probably be just a political document. . . . It reads very pro-industry, especially in the area of unintended effects.
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The FDA scientists' concerns were not only ignored, their very existence was denied. 
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Consider the private memo summarizing opinions at the FDA, which stated, The processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks.
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Contrast that with the official policy statement issued by Taylor, Monsanto's former attorney
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The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way.
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On the basis of this false statement, the FDA does not require GM food safety testing.
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Natural News

Waking up

When you finally suspect that life can be more than what you have today
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When something inside you says "is this really it?" 
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When you finally get a grip.
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When you finally decide to be the best you can and live to your higher values.
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This is when you decide to cooperate with nature.
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Nature which is waiting to evolve you.
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Then your unfolding can proceed rapidly.
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Your past will decide present and future events.
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They may bring a sense of glorious freedom with deeper sympathies.
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New friends and opportunities.
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Or perhaps more often misfortunes.
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Suffering.
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Or enemies may arise from nowhere.
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Because none of us has avoided clashes with universal law.
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We have all created negative karma.
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This must be paid before we can move on.
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Just like any other bills in fact.
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However once this is done, and all must do this.
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And there are no exceptions to this rule.
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This makes evolution easier in a way to know that all those before us had to pay their karma too.
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Money, fame, power, riches, family, networks, class have no influence on this universal law.
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Eventually if you stick with it this self directed evolution. 
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For that is what it is and must be.
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Your decision to grow and move on to clear purpose and meaning of life.
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A life devoted to more love and altruism.
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Will lead out into the open spaces of freedom.
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Into glorious possibilities. 
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We are constantly on the edge or fringe of great opportunities.
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And at some crucial point.
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And then............
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Instead of grasping these opportunities.
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And moving on to a larger view.
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And a broader spiritual life.
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We shrink.
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We hold back through timidity.
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And so we lose them all.
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Our present time is an unusual cycle, with a great deal of change.
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And never again in this life will we meet these present opportunities 
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It's real if only we can understand to grasp them.
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These steps into clear understanding, for the first time in our lives.
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Into true freedom are there for all of us.
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Will you take them?
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If you do, I can only share that life is totally but totally different.
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More freedom less fear.
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More peace of mind.
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Once experienced no other way is interesting or possible.
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These times are a wake up call for us all.

Responsibility deal

The British Government is persuading companies to sign up to this new initiative, which is designed to reduce the amount of sugar and salt in different products.
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Many companies unfortunately have chosen to do so without telling their consumers that they have done so
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Heinz has done just that in order to conform to the demand by government health chiefs that food should have less salt. 
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The company has signed up to the Health Department’s so-called Responsibility Deal, a programme of targets for reducing the level of fats and salts used by food manufacturers. 
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So, whereas the previous HP recipe contained 2.1g of salt per 100g, it now has 1.3g – a 38 per cent cut that for aficionados is enough to make all the difference to the taste. 
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They say it is now too sour. 
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Marco Pierre White, the Michelin-starred chef, who was eating sausage and mash in a pub recently, sent the meal back because he thought it was off. “It was the HP,” he said. “
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It was definitely dodgy. 
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I had no idea they had changed the recipe.
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The HP case is different from the Twinings one in that the latter’s wounds were self-inflicted, whereas Heinz feels itself under pressure from the Government to make its foods healthier.
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This Responsibility Deal began in the spring and its impact is about to be felt. 
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Indeed, all of us who have a favourite food or drink might find our taste buds sorely tested over the next few years as manufacturers change products to meet their pledges under the initiative.
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Many of our best-known companies and supermarkets have signed up, promising to reduce calorie and salt content. 
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While they include producers of such obvious calorie-busting fare as burgers and pizzas, who eats so much brown sauce that it's salt content is going to make any difference? 
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Given that it is usually being splattered onto a full English breakfast or squeezed onto a bacon sandwich, the sauce is probably the healthiest part of the meal. 
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What are we going to have next?
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Mars Bars without sugar? 
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Scotch without alcohol? 
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The most famous advocate of HP sauce was said to be Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, though in fact he always professed a preference for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. 
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I have no idea what it's salt levels are, but will it now have to change at the behest of the health police?
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The argument comes down to honesty and transparency. 
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Heinz had already launched a reduced salt and sugar version of HP Sauce, yet it went ahead and changed the recipe of the classic version too, without making clear to customers that it had done so. 
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Why not preserve the original and allow people to make the choice for themselves? 
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And if you do change the recipe, should you really market the product as “original and genuine”?
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If Heinz thought it could get away with changing an old stalwart such as HP Sauce without anyone noticing, then it was mistaken. 
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It reckoned without the highly developed palates of people who were virtually weaned on the original and whose ability to spot an imposter is as finely tuned as the most accomplished wine taster — or Earl Grey tea drinker
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Be aware your favourite foods might not taste the same in the future.

Poor women

7% of women over the age of 50 are single. 

This means they are financially responsible for themselves.

50% of marriages end in divorce. 

Who typically ends up with the children? 

The woman does. 

So now she is solely financially responsible for herself and her children, hoping that possible  child support is paid. 

Sadly,  in the first year after a divorce a woman's standard of living drops an average of 73%. 

Of the elderly living in poverty: -3 out of 4 are women -

80% of the women were not poor when their husbands were alive.

Approximately 7 out of 10 women will at some point live in poverty.
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Time to change some things.

Bob Marley

A quote from Bob Marley, which might appeal to you.
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How to love a woman
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In all fairness, it should be noted that this may or may not be a Bob Marley quote
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It’s possible that it’s an anonymous quote that has been mistakenly attributed to Bob Marley by thousands of websites 
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However it is nice to believe that it was from him as he was a man of many sides

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. 

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She loved before she may love again. 

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But if she loves you now, what else matters? 

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She’s not perfect – you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. 

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She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break – her heart. 

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So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyse and don’t expect more than she can give. 

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Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.”

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Bob Marley

Shopping guide for your ongoing health

Tip #1: Buy Organic

Certified organic products cannot intentionally include any GMO ingredients. 

Buy products labeled “100% organic,” “organic,” or “made with organic ingredients.” 

You can be doubly sure if the product also has a Non-GMO Project Verified Seal. 

Tip #2: 

Look for Non-GMO Project Seals

Products that carry the Non-GMO Project Seal are independently verified to be in compliance with North America’s only third party standard for GMO avoidance, including testing of at-risk ingredients. 

The Non-GMO Project is a non-profit organization committed to providing consumers with clearly labeled and independently verified non-GMO choices. 

Look for dairy products labeled "No rBGH or rBST,” or “artificial hormone-free.”

Tip #3:  Avoid at-risk ingredients

If it’s not labeled organic or verified non-GMO: Avoid products made with ingredients that might be derived from GMOs (see list). 

The eight GM food crops are Corn, Soybeans, Canola, Cottonseed, Sugar Beets, Hawaiian Papaya (most) and a small amount of Zucchini and Yellow Squash.

Sugar If a non-organic product made in North American lists “sugar” as an ingredient (and NOT pure cane sugar), then it is almost certainly a combination of sugar from both sugar cane and GM sugar beets.

Dairy Products may be from cows injected with GM bovine growth hormone. 

Look for labels stating No rBGH, rBST, or artificial hormones.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE.

Tip #4: Download our Shopping Guides

Use either IRT’s new Non-GMO Shopping Tips brochure or redesigned Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help you identify and avoid GM foods. 

We devote an entire page in each guide to help you uncover hidden GM ingredients on food labels that often read more like a chemical periodic table. 

If you have an iPhone, download our ShopNoGMO guide for free from the iTunes store.

                              *May be derived from other sources.

After London's riots

Can we say it was just a once in a decade or so explosion of frustration and anger at police shooting a young black man?

Or just dysfunctional young people trashing their own streets?

A lack of discipline perhaps, poor parental upbringing?

Poor policing, poor tactics certainly

We could but that would be to take the politicians way out.

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The politicians have all failed over the last fifty years to address the issues raised.

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All of that might be true however this is much more important than any political behaviour.

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This is the opening scene in a much more powerful global seismic shift.

This is really a fork in the road. 

History suggests there is no iron law of progress and there have been periods when things have got worse not better. 

Take the following together

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The global imbalances.

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The manic-depressive behaviour of stock markets.

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The venality of the financial sector.

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The growing gulf between rich and poor.

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The high levels of unemployment. 

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The increasing screech of bad news in all the media.

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The naked consumerism and the riots are telling us something.

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This is a system in deep trouble and it is waiting to blow.

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Is it just a coincidence that London is one of the three major global financial centres?

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One of three global centres of unbridled greed.

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Where the gap between rich and poor is accelerating exponentially.

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It is not just London.

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It is warning us of much greater problems to come.

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To spell it out clearly the global financial system is about to implode.

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Break down.

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Meltdown.

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Whatever way you want to describe it the global system is kaput, over finished.

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Politicians will keep trying to mend it, fix it.

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Like King Canute they might believe that they can command the sea not to come in.

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However the tide has turned, it is coming in.

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A global financial system based on endless growth cannot continue.

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A global financial system based on positive interest has reached it's limits.

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Now will come the denials.

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The insistence that the system is fine, it just needs adjusting.

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No it does not.

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It has created a world of huge and growing inequality.

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A world of have and have nots.

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The endless abuse and destruction of our planet, our home.

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Time for us to try and fix it.

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Time for us to ban positive interest on money.

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A time to introduce negative interest.

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To reintroduce the commons.

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The commons are the air, the land, the sea, all those are called commons because no one can own them any more than anyone can own the air.

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Time to take back the commons for the people.

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This is the beginning of the end as we know it.

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Many will fight change. 

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Those in power and money will fight to sustain their wealth and power.

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Too late it's over.

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We can make the transition soft or hard.

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History tells us we will make it hard.

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So we will talk about this in greater depth in coming blogs.

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You will have your part to play.

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One of three choices.

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Protect and fight to sustain the status quo.

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Do nothing and let events take you where they will.

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Or join those seeking change.

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I might be premature in my timing, I think not.

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However it is over the rape and pillage of this planet has gone on too long.

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We must, we will change to a kinder gentler world

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None of us can be proud about living in a world of unbridled greed and abuse of nature.

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The London riots were just a curtain raiser.
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In it's own way is the so called Arab Spring.

Just a part of nature

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “universe,” a part limited in time and space.    
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He experiences himself.
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His thoughts and feelings.
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As something separate from the rest.
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A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. 
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This delusion is a kind of prison for us.
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Restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few people near us.  
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Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.                      
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— Albert Einstein
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Einstein was not only a scientist he also knew a lot about humanity and was aware of how few humans understand what they truly are.
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Today this is even more true with few modern citizens having any idea about the true nature of things.
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Interestingly nature is now obliging us to reconsider our relationship to her.
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The so called unusual and often violent weather is one such aspect of this.
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And our reaction so far?
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To feel frustrated about climate change.
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To feel that in some way it ought not to be like this.
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A cursory examination of history should have warned us that the sixties to nineties were the abnormal period, not what we are experiencing now.
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Another point not mentioned by Einstein is that our behaviour is certainly contributing to the more violent weather we are experiencing.
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Not talking about our carbon emissions here, that to all intents and purposes is neither here nor there.
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Rather our thoughts and behaviour are the major issue.
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Yes, our very thoughts lead to our actions and these most certainly contribute to the way nature behaves.
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This last point will be considered nonsense by many.
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But then so was a round Earth considered to be so for many years.
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Our thoughts determine our karma.
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Our thoughts today help determine what we experience tomorrow.
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So it is with nations and humanity as a whole.
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Karma affects humanity as a species as much as it effects us as individuals.
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So our thoughts and behaviour over the last hundred years or so have helped to create what we are experiencing today.
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These are a major contributory reason for the unstable and violent weather we are experiencing today.
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And as we have not understood this there is little reason to believe that things are going to change any time soon.
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Be prepared for more violent weather in all parts of the globe.