With regard to your recent report on the vaccination controversy in Stroud (SNJ, 14 July). Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilisation. He replied that “It would be a good idea”. In similar vein, when asked what I think about our National Health Service these days, having formerly been an uncritical supporter of it, I am now increasingly inclined to reply, “That also would be a good idea”. For at present, what we have is essentially a National Vaccination Service, and a National Disease Service which has been comprehensively captured by Big Pharma – with millions of people now waiting for non-Covid related treatments. John Pilger has also written at length about these issues in ‘The Dirty War on the NHS’ (http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-dirty-war-on-the-nhs). The odious hypocrisy of those in the ruling elite falling over themselves to praise ‘our NHS’ when it is those very same people who have virtually driven it into the ground by their own nefarious actions knows no bounds.

It is well documented how private pharmaceutical corporations have been working for many decades to destroy complementary, alternative and indigenous medicines, and monopolise the world’s health and well-being with their narrow materialist ideology. Big Pharma has effectively captured modern culture, modern science and politics, and worst of all, the very ways in which people think about their own ill-health and well-being. Yet hundreds of thousands of people die globally every year due to orthodox medical treatment (I can provide the peer-reviewed sources on this shocking statistic to anyone who’s interested).

Deliberately and systematically depriving citizens of the full range of information available on any issue, including the hotly disputed medical ‘science’ around vaccination and Covid, is a direct attack on free speech, democracy and fundamental human rights. So the Stroud Info-Hug (formerly, ‘Hub’) is emphatically not an ‘anti-vaxx’ stall; rather, it is a pro-free speech, pro democracy stall; and thankfully, huge numbers of local people support what we are doing – and tell us so.

Yours etc.

Richard House

Stroud Info-Hug