A bit of digging finds the ‘Bio Electromagnetic Resource Initiative.’ A fascinating list of people can be seen at bemri.org/archive/hese-uk/en/heseuk/who.php

I saw the name ‘Roger Coghill’, and it struck a cord. Or a nerve perhaps. Roger features elsewhere in Bad Science not least because of work quoted in connection with the Bridgend suicides And then I found Alasdair Philips, who has been involved with Powerwatch.

You can read the not-so-good article here: www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_cambridge/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=446064

Fellow readers may enjoy doing more digging. I’ll post this also in the Bad Science forums.

A study funded by mobile phone companies has suggested that radiation from handsets can cause insomnia, headaches and confusion in users.

www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.17046

And… the mobile phone industry isn’t monolithic. Won’t there be competition between companies to sell the least harmful product?

Like Edison reputedly boosting his direct-current electric business by promoting the alternating-current electric chair, and electrocuting dogs with AC in demonstrations. But I might have made that up.

Unfortunately there is no way to claim legally that your phone product is less harmful than the other guy’s in terms of radio wave radiation, because no one has found any measurable harm.

Then again… I suppose the tobacco industry is a possible counter-example. However, there was actual evidence against their product.

Note, it doesn’t say anywhere to get yourself checked out by someone suitably qualified; your GP, say, or a neurologist. Only if you suspect something. Who cares if you are suffering from anything as long as you are gullible enough to buy their stuff? Sick making vultures.

Yes, indeed there is. As a disabled guy I have to declare my disabilities on every VAT exemption form I complete (and it IS exemption, NOT zero-rating). Anyone making a false declaration is liable to prosecution. I don’t know for sure, but I think the only way disability VAT exemption claims could be verified is by comparing them with disability benefits records. That, or no-one checks and it doesn’t matter what you put on the form!

Note: for the record, if a product is zero-rated, NOBODY pays VAT on it – as with food and (I believe), kids’ clothing.

a) the device must be useable solely as a therapeutic device (whether or not it works is irrelevant)
b) the buyer must be disabled

This form of tax relief applies to a wide range of devices and the majority of them are familiar to us – zimmer frames for example. The taxman is not in the business of deciding whether or not something works.

However the buyer has to be chronically ill or disabled, and he has to sign a declaration in order to get the discounted price. I don’t think that anyone in the UK has been properly diagnosed by a qualified medical practitioner as disabled because of Electrical Hypersensitivity, so it is possible that no-one will ever be able to apply for tax relief legitimately.

Maybe the O rate is because there is no “value”?

How about a badscience bullshit detecting device that barks (or quacks) whenever it hears the words “quantum”, “field” and “resonance” in the same sentence…

An excellent idea! I’m up for it – we’ll make a killing (or is that the wrong word?). However, you’ll need to add the word ‘quantum’ in there somewhere to make it respectable. ‘Quantum Electronic Bible’, perhaps?

I wonder what the taxman actually said?